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Creating a map of Koppen climate zones for a very Earth-like world is quite easy, with the right instructions. However, what if the climate is several degrees cooler? Do I simply shift all the climates equator-ward, or is it more complex than that? If not, how much should I squish them?
[Answer]
# Ice Age Climate
## Climates and Geography
While there are situations where shifting equator-ward (and colder climates shift downward with altitude too remember) may not be the precisely right answer, that is generally the case so long as you remember a few points
* colder weather may change currents that would bring different weather fronts which would change temperature in specific regions (Europe is warmed by mid-Atlantic current for its latitude. If Ice Age shifted that current Europe would be much colder even if the average temperatures elsewhere were less shifted). Currents are also shaped by the continents around which they move water.
* shifting rain bands make different areas deserts that get much hotter especially with the right types of soils and bedrocks (see shifting rain bands and the Sahara moving north and south in Africa)
* the koppen system fixates on latitude/elevation, precipitation levels, season where majority of precipitation is received, summer temperatures, etc. Other systems for classifying climates exist, focus on other factors in varying emphasis and leave out others. Different models have different strengths and weaknesses and the science as a whole is not fully grasped as the factors that could effect this system seem to still perplex the people predicting the weather.
* science here will change as we improve our knowledge. Fixating on accuracy in arbitrary circumstances such as providing accurate climate maps with this world will make the work more quickly dated. Quality content within the setting while leaving the setting more ambiguous such as mentioning of the Ice Age without Koppen acronym might be a better approach for the narrative happening within it.
There are a lot more examples and things to remember to consider, but the **key is not the specific accuracy** of any specific climate maps unless you are specifically making maps of hypothetical worlds guaranteeing climate accuracy in their Koppen zoning.
The goal should probably be to produce *quality content in the setting* While your setting may not be totally accurate, it would behoove you to make sure it is not so *inaccurate as to be glaringly obvious* while also *not specific enough to be easily dated in 5 years*. Depending on what the prose is for of course...
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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.
I seek to build a habitable moon of a giant planet, thus I looked at the Rouche Limit Equation to figure out how to get the biggest possible Hill Sphere for my moon to exist in.
$r\_H = a(1-e)\sqrt[3]{\frac{m}{3M}}$
$r\_H$ = radius Hill sphere
$a$ = semi major axis satellite
$e$ = orbital eccentricity satellite
$m$ = mass satellite (planet)
$M$ = mass central object (sun)
If I interpret the formula right I want to set the secondary objects orbital eccentricity as low as possible, the mass of the star has high a possible, making the lifetime and the spectrum of the star along with the impossibility of planet formation around O and B stars due to photoevaporation the limiting factors. Since the mass of the star is related to its temperature and so to the position of the habitable zone I included this in the calculation of the optimal stellar mass.
This leaves me with the mass of the planet which should be as high as possible. For a gas giant, this would mean 13,8 Jupiter masses. However brown dwarfs offer a much higher mass of up to 0,08 Solar masses before turning into red dwarfs. Given the formula above it is obvious why it seems tempting to use a brown dwarf instead of a gas giant. I´m somewhat at a loss at classifying this system since brown dwarfs are neither planets nor proper stars, so any clarification on whether this is a binary star system or a planetary system would be appreciated.
I have come up with a number of potential benefits and issues by myself, yet I would appreciate it if someone who is more knowledgeable on the subject would check my assumptions and point out what I missed.
* Deuterium and/or Lithium burning should be over within a few million years, so it won´t mess with the system in the later stages. During the formation process, however, the radiation pressure of the active brown dwarf should create a secondary frost line around it. This isn´t necessarily a bad thing since it will make the formation of a big planet much more likely and could inhibit the formation of a radiation belt pumping Io equivalent.
* The mass of a brown dwarf will make keep the orbit of the planet/moon much more stable, as it can provide a stronger counterweight to the suns influence than any gas giant could.
* The additional heat won't be much of a problem since orbits can be adjusted to account for it.
* Some Brown Dwarfs seem to be capable of flaring, which would be bad for obvious reasons. Is this a rare occurrence or do all Brown Dwarfs flare?
* Would the magnetic field of the Brown dwarf deliver any benefits or cause any problems? I assume that a situation similar to the one with Ganymedes magnetosphere will occur.
**In the end, I´m interested in whether a Brown dwarf is superior to a gas giant as the host planet for a habitable moon.**
[Answer]
**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
One possible problem with just a plain ol' Gas Giant is... radiation.
From Quora:
Jupiter’s magnetic field is the largest out of all the planets in the solar system. It probably has a huge metallic hydrogen core (still a mystery). The magnetosphere extends millions of kilometers into space all the way to Saturn on one end and millions of kilometers in other directions. It's because Jupiter’s magnetic field is so intense, which would not be that dangerous in on itself, that a much greater amount of the deadly charged particles get trapped, be it from the Sun or Io’s volcanic activity. Those particles literally keep accumulating and residing within the Jupiter’s magnetic fields, forming the so-called radiation belts.
[Answer]
Gas giant moons are easy. For scale, Jupiter's outermost big moon (Callisto) is within 5% of Jupiter's Hill radius. Move Jupiter in to the Sun's habitable zone means dividing its orbital distance from the Sun by about 5. So if Jupiter was in the Sun's habitable zone (and all its moons too), Callisto would still only be at about 25% of the Hill radius, meaning that all four Galilean moons would be perfectly stable. When I wrote a blog series called "[Building the Ultimate Solar System](https://planetplanet.net/the-ultimate-solar-system/)", I argued that five large moons around a gas giant was a conservative number. (Blog post here: <https://planetplanet.net/2014/05/22/building-the-ultimate-solar-system-part-4-two-ninja-moves-moons-and-co-orbital-planets/>)
Brown dwarfs are a little tricky. They start off burning deuterium (and giving off plenty of energy), then they cool off and fade in about a few hundred million years (see image below, with inward-moving habitable zone as the BD cools off). Why does this matter? Because if you want a planet to end up receiving the right energy from the star (assuming the BD is in orbit around a star), then the planet will necessarily be roasted for the first several hundred million years of its life. Will that mean its water will be lost to space? Maybe -- it's hard to calculate precisely.
(See <https://planetplanet.net/2014/10/09/real-life-sci-fi-world-4-earth-around-a-brown-dwarf/>)
Does this answer your question?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rZxhS.png)
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
Closed 4 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/143117/edit)
I'm an economic researcher and I think that worldbuilding as an exercise could offer some valuable tools to policymakers as they try to imagine possible futures and then design policies which would help shape and incentivize progress towards those ends.
My initial idea was to design a 2-4 hour workshop where each participant would bring a problem from their area of expertise and then leave with some kind of outline which imagines a context where it has been “solved” (or at least adequately addressed), along with a set of strategies or questions to guide them in thinking through the full implications of this new status quo. Of course, after talking to a few people who’ve participated in these kind of workshops it seems clear that it’s a much larger and longer process than I assumed, but I still have to work within narrow time constraints and selling it to people who might consider this frivolous to their work (if they’re not already predisposed to think this sounds fun).
Still, I’m curious to get your feedback on the worldbuilding workshops you have participated in (or resources that you have used in worldbuilding):
* What are some of the more successful frameworks and engaging
approaches that have helped you connect a re-imagined future to the
current status quo?
* Has anyone encountered a packaged thought
exercise that that frames and guide this kind of activity which I
could adapt to a different audience?
* What *hasn’t* been helpful? And what holes do you see in this approach?
[Answer]
* First of all, I for one would very much prefer to believe that policymakers, that is, people who have the power to make and enforce policies, have *much better* resources at their disposal than a two hour workshop.
They ought to have an entire apparatus of civil servants with access to modelling tools, they ought to have an entire research department ready to tell them whether such policies have been already tried elsewhere and what their consequences were, they ought to have access to think-tanks more than happy to develop forward-looking whitepapers and so on.
*Especially* in the field of economic policies I would surely expect that any policies would be modelled in accordance with various economic frameworks, with the results presented in a set of good-looking graphs and tables, ready to be input in the multicriterial decision method of choice. Economics is supposed to be a science, isn't it?
* This Stack Exchange site is oriented towards helping with the development of *fictional* worlds. It's *fantasy*. It's not the real world. The key aspects of worldbuilding we are interested in are aesthetic beauty, consistency and verisimilitude. While this site does *occasionally* receive questions tagged "reality-check", *some* of which have a certain link to real-world economics, and we *do* try to answer them to the best of our knowledge, I would say that most people on this site would be unhappy to hear that somebody has taken their answers as suggestions for real-world policy making.
These being said, there are of course very many resources to help with kick-starting worldbuilding.
* If you want to pay some money, there are the [Worldbuilding Kits](https://www.r-n-w.net/?category=WORLD+BUILDING+KITS) sold by [r-n-w](https://www.r-n-w.net/). I'm certain that they would be happy to provide a custom quotation for a license to use their materials in workshops and seminars aimed at powerful policymakers. They sell a Worlbuilding Essentials kit, a Monsters and Encouters kit, a Landbuilder kit, a Town and City Builder kit, a People and Society kit, plus a History Pack. It's true that their kits are strongly oriented towards the highly stilized worlds of role-playing games, but hey, they provide fillable forms! Ideal for use by our elected betters.
* [Worldbuilding Kit](http://worldbuilding-kit.tumblr.com/) is a Tumblr site dedicated to collecting ready-made worldbuilding resources; check out, for example, [The Rough Copy](http://theroughcopy.tumblr.com/)'s [summary](http://theroughcopy.tumblr.com/post/86954573019/clevergirlhelps-biology-biology-creating-a) of worldbuilding resources to be found at [Let Me Explain to You a Thing](http://clevergirlhelps.tumblr.com/) by Clevergirlhelps.
* One could never omit the splendid [Zompist](https://zompist.com/) created by Mark Rosenfelder; while admittedly geared mostly towards advertising their language and world construction kits, the site is a joy to peruse.
* The Dabbler, "SEO Strategy Consultant and Freelance Writer", offers a great [Ultimate List of 42 Worldbuilding Resources](https://thedabbler.ca/ultimate-list-42-worldbuilding-resources/). Notable is the [30 Days of WorldBuilding](http://www.web-writer.net/fantasy/days/) step-by-step guide offered by [Stephanie Bryant](http://www.web-writer.net/) under the Creative Commons BY-NC license.
And finally, if you are interested in worldbuilding professionally you may want to take a look at the [*The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds*](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B075Z4B6XS) by Mark J.P. Wolf (Editor), blurbed as "a definitive and cutting-edge guide to the study of imaginary and virtual worlds across a range of media, including literature, television, film, and games". (The link goes to Amazon; it's not a cheap book.)
There are of course quite a few webinars and online courses to help with worldbuilding; for example, [*The Building Blocks of Worldbuilding for All Genres OnDemand Webinar*](https://www.writersdigestshop.com/building-blocks-of-worldbuilding-q0118) at Writer's Digest Shop, or the [*Worldbuilding in Speculative Fiction*](https://hugohouse.org/store/class/worldbuilding-in-speculative-fiction-ruth-joffre/) online course at Hugo House. Beware, they might be considered expensive.
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So in Sci Fi we have this tendency to want to compare ship designations to modern sea faring ships. It dawned on me that this is probably completely wrong. Even though we want to refer to warships as destroyers and cruisers, those are all terms that didn't even really exist for ships a hundred and fifty years ago. The naming of ships changes drastically over time, especially every time there is a huge jump in design. Historically there are all sorts of sailing ships with specific designations based on design like galley, galleon, caravel, schooner, junk (the ship, not actual junk). The list is almost endless.
With that in mind I am wanting to come up with new designating terms for the spacefaring ships in my book, but I want to tie them somewhat to old seafaring ships. Primarily, I want there to be valid reasons why they are related, (such as number of sails comparing to number of thrusters, or maybe relating solar powered craft to oar ships).
Even though it is fairly straight forward to find actually specifications on an individual ship's design, I am having trouble finding more details on the evolution of ships as a whole. Of course I can find information for specific regions, or look up the historical details of a specific ship type, but I haven't found any websites that actually have any sort of outline of how ship design progressed throughout history around the world.
**Is there any website that would include detailed information on this sort of subject?**
[Answer]
[Rocketpunk Manifesto](http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/) had a post years ago (which I sadly have not been able to find again) which spoke about this in terms of transliterating ship classes to space. Sadly, in our time, we tend to use modern or semi modern idioms like "destroyer" for space going warships without really considering the origin of the name or the purpose of the ship. (For those interested, "Destroyer" is a contraction for "Torpedo boat destroyer", as the ship was conceived to defend capital ships from marauding torpedo boat attacks).
One thing which I did remember as being interesting about the post was there are large periods of time where even though certain types of ships were very important, we no longer maintain any sort of institutional memory, largely because the type of ship or the nature of the mission was superseded over the centuries. Various types of oared galleys were in use for thousands of years, from ancient Minoan ships to the 1500's, yet nowhere is there a space opera using "*Pentakonters*" to deliver raiding parties ashore to steal cattle or besiege Troy. Galleons were major fighting ships for hundreds of years, but have no more place, while the lowly *fregata*, a fast ship to chase down corsairs (or act as one) has evolved to become the modern Frigate.
I'm not sure if there is a comprehensive website, but a classic reference which might be in a well stocked library is "[The ship : an illustrated history](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0385098235)" written and illustrated by Bjorn Landstrom
[Answer]
I think I may have a good one...
<https://www.hmy.com/a-timeline-of-ships-boats-and-yachts>
But if this one doesn't cut it I have another one
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_timeline>
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*I am aware of being a newbie in the field I am asking my question... please be kind and explain what I did wrong if I make a mistake.*
**The idea from where the problem bloom**
I love worldbuilding. Whenever I have a spare moment, I try to invent unique features for my world and how I can make them believable. This time around, the idea came from an article that talked about *moons of gas giants habitable by humans*. Immediately, I told myself 'wow, that's awesome! I need my world to be one of those!', and got into the process of collecting information about how to make it believable.
Quickly, I found a lot of useful information (in particular [questions on Stack Exchange](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/51266/possibility-check-habitable-moon-around-earth-like-planet?noredirect=1&lq=1), and some blogs found thanks to Google). Then I saw an [article](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2006/janus-epimetheus-swap.html) that made me think of another crazy idea :
* *What if they were not one, but **two** habitable moons orbiting the same gas giant, like Janus & Epimetheus do -- swapping orbit regularly ?*
For a crazy worldbuilder always in search of new unique features, this would be the straw on the cake. I would have two worlds for the price of one, and inhabitants filled with dreams at the sight of their twin world crossing their path and showing the lights of a more advanced civilization.
*But...*
I am not a clever man. I did a lot of research, but could not even find a start to begin my calculations to see if my idea was realistically feasible. I knew I probably had all the necessary information to make it, but I can't seem to approach the start of an answer. So in the last approach, I am asking for help to fool-check my concept.
**What I am seeking**
*In short:* Is my concept realistically possible? And what are the differences between Earth and one of the two habitable moons (related to the impact of the inhabitants everyday life -> aka. the difference in the weather, the look of the sky at night and daylight, can people see the giant storms of the gas giant, does the tides change as the twin cross the path of the other, are meteorites more likely...) ?
*Longer version*: I know there is a lot of parameters to take into account when creating a whole system like this one. The idea is only about finding *one* setup where it *can* work. Here is what I can comment on, and what I know is needed :
* **Mass of the objects, distance to the sun/giants**: This is a significant factor, but for this situation, it doesn't matter what values are taken as long as it sticks together.
* **Atmosphere**: I'm unsure about this one. While I do know that moons can have their own atmosphere, I've also heard that the atmosphere of the giant can encompass the satellites.
* **How the moons formed**: I've found somewhere that habitable moons were more likely when they formed in the habitable zone of the system, and were captured afterward by the gas giant when she would 'migrate' toward the habitable zone. For this question, I will simplify by saying that it doesn't matter. Let's just imagine that *everything magically appeared in the best setup possible.*
* **Tidal locking**: This is a regular, and inevitable occurrence of moons. If I am correct, the question would be whether the planet can be habitable when it is already tidally locked, and the consequences of this. Like: where are the north and south poles equivalent, do inhabitants of one side never see the gas giant whereas inhabitants of the other side see it every day?
It's everything that came to my mind as of now. If I remember anything else, I'll edit the question to add it. Feel free to guide me to resources I can use if you know some, an incomplete answer is better than no answer at all.
Thank you in advance !
Sasugasm
[Answer]
Wow... good question with a lot to answer... i'll try my best, but i admit, i'm not an Astrophysicist.
**Short Answer**
We don't know. But the more systems we look at and manage to find exoplanets, the more weird and wonderful things become, so there's no reason why not...
Another option could be 2 equally sized Planets orbiting each other around a star, that way there would be closer to each other but never really far apart so that interaction between them would be possible once they've reached the space age.
**Long Answer**
Let's name the planets to make life a little easier.
* Host Planet, Gas giant the moons are orbiting.
* Moon A, closer Moon to the Gas Giant.
* Moon B, moon further from the Gas Giant.
**Orbit**
Host Planet, yes Gas Giants can exist in the habital Zone of a Star, so that's a good start.
Moon A, will most likely (if you're wanting to make it look as cool as possible) have an orbit that cuts a swath through the rings of the Host Planet, (because rings are always cooler than no rings). This is seen around Saturn, now the star would most likely need to be an F type star, the sun is a G type star, F types have higher mass therefore greater gravity, and are hotter, therefore the distance from the star would be increased, this is important because the Host Planet would need to be larger than Jupiter, in order to support an Earth Sized Moon. And it would need to be further away so that the moons themselves are not quite as effected by the star's gravity as to throw the moons orbits out.
Moon A would orbit faster than Moon B due to its lower orbit, Moon B would need to be at least twice the distance from the host planet as Moon A, this would make 1 orbit take about 4 times as long as Moon A, but they would not get as close to each other as Earth is to the Moon, the gravitational effects would change their orbits too much over time. So unfortunately they would probably not be able to look up at the advanced planets night lights with the naked eye, maybe with decent telescopes though.
**Size**
Moon A would most likely be slightly smaller than Moon B, so lower gravity and slightly thinner atmosphere, similar to Mars, but still with an active core to provide the protective Magnetic field, this would protect the planet from the strength of the solar wind and therefore allow it to keeps its atmosphere, it would also have some effect from the gravity of Moon B, the tidal forces allowing it to keep its molten core. Both would be enough to sustain liquid water, important for life as we know it.
**Forming**
You've actually got that pretty right, although this is just best guesses, as we haven't Exactly seen it happen. As when the host planet formed, most of the material would have been pulled into the planet instead of the moon.
**Tidal Locking**
Moon A is more likely to be tidally locked then Moon B due to Moon B having that effect, but not definitely, it depends on a variety of factors, for the sake of the story I would suggest that moon A is not tidally locked but close to it, so it does rotate, that way you still get the planet rise.
**The Issue**
For potentially large parts of the orbit the planet would be blocking the sunlight from the planet so day night patterns would be completely out of wack compared to earth,
It would also lead to more dramatic cooling when in the dark which means as it enter sthe light and starts to heat up then big big weather. but the closer to the planet they are the more dramatic the changes, so again Moon A would have the more dramatic weather then Moon B
If I think of anything else I'll let you know, but this is at least a basis some ohters can build on.
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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.
Nuclear rockets, or as I like to think of them, "half way between a continuous small atomic explosion and reactor whose front fell off". There are many variants, and my aliens are using relative simple [nuclear salt water rockets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket).
The [Wikipedia page on EMPs shows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse) that the strength of the EMP from a nuclear bomb is significantly affected by the environment, so a detonation in near-Earth space (400km) creates a much more powerful EMP than the same size detonation within the atmosphere.
How would the exhaust plume of a nuclear rocket interact with Earth's atmosphere, magnetosphere, and ionosphere? Is there any risk of inducing significant currents on or near the surface (effectively, if not literally, an EMP) when the engine is switched on?
On the assumption that engine size has some effect on the answer:
* **Scout:** About the same size as a space shuttle, give or take, but with a max delta-V of ~400 km per second. Can sustain 55.88 m/s² for ~30 minutes. This one goes into Earth orbit at $some\_altitude. How far away does the ship have to be to not cause problems?
* **Colony ship:** I'm not sure exactly how large, and I suspect I will be vague when describing it, but *large*. 130,000 colonists (each about half the weight as a human, and crammed in like… perhaps not literally sardines, but they're not having much fun). Max delta-V 40 km per second. This vessel lands on Earth (well, on water). This ship is designed to land directly without waiting in orbit. How will the engines affect electronics in the surrounding continent, if at all? Assuming the engines *must* be turned off at some altitude (and they switch to chemical rockets for the remainder of the descent), what altitude would that be?
**Edit:**
On the recommendation of comments, I'll accept [science-based] answers as well as [hard-science] answers. [hard-science] still preferable, if it's possible.
[Answer]
**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
Interestingly, the problems area of the page for [Project Orion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)#Potential_problems) at wikipedia indicates that one of the most serious problems would be the flooding of the [Van Allen belts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt) (wiki too) with ionising radiation! Most of the data in the problems section for Orion do not apply to your issue directly but that one definitely does - the citations contain more information that you might be able to use too. No safety or environmental impact study has been done for that type of propulsion as of yet but it is a cool idea.
In order to address the more direct question of how far you'd have to go to be safe, realistically, we could deduce from the numbers pulled before the CTBT if you supplied a number in petajoules p/s of energy output for your rocket, I think.
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Our Earth first came into existence 4,543,000,000 years ago as an inhospitable ball of molten rock that barely survived a crash from a Mars-sized rogue planet whose impact gave rise to the creation of our moon.
In this alternate timeline, Earth was created exactly five billion years ago as the result of a collision between two rogue planets. One was obliterated into pieces while the other was lucky to have some crust and atmosphere left.
One was similar to Venus—a hot ball of molten rock concealed by a thick atmosphere of sulfuric acid, carbon dioxide and methane. The ancient atmosphere was so thick that the pressure would be comparable to a man trying to lift the *Queen Elizabeth 2*, an ocean liner that weighs roughly 50,000 tons. Beneath the lava-ridden surface was a core of iron, nickel, platinum, titanium, uranium, silver and gold.
To understand the other rogue planet, we must look at one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa. Back home, it has a diameter of 1900 miles, which makes it a little smaller than our moon. But what really does make it stand out is its crust. The first ten to 30 kilometers of it—six to 19 miles—of ice. Beneath that is 160 kilometers—or 100 miles—of liquid water before descending down to a rocky, silicate mantle and finally to a core of iron and sulfur. This second rogue planet is pretty much Europa enlarged to the size of its larger brother, the moon Ganymede, a diameter of 3270 miles.
During the collision, the kinetic energy reduced one rogue planet’s icy surface and the water it might have concealed into a vast nebula of water vapor that enveloped the planet at low orbit. The majority of the gas might have escaped to space, but the pressure of the atmosphere was so high that not all of the water vapor molecules could escape.
After the collision, the two cores merged together to become a brand-new one. The largest pieces of debris clumped together to create the alternate Earth. The smallest of the debris, meanwhile, clumped together to create its moon.
The trapped water vapor cooled down, condensing into rainwater that hit on the still-molten surface, resulting in the release of steam which rose to the atmosphere, gathering more water vapor, which ultimately means more rain. For the first 250 million years after impact, this repeated cycle of evaporation and condensation would create the oceans of Great Lakes Earth.
Is this scenario likely or not?
[Answer]
The problem with your scenario is the time required to do the cooling, the presence of water vapor will make very little difference with that and may in fact slow the process as it works as a greenhouse gas.
If you are prepared to wait for billions of years then the scenario may work, alternatively start with a cooler world and have multiple ice comets/asteroids hit it. Even a rogue planet coming in from interstellar space at an incredibly cold temperature will actually add more heat not cool things down just because of the incredible energy of the impact.
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The scenario of the crash is possible. However, with a molten planet I doubt the rain would fall. This is because the huge heat would be made worse by the fact that the water vapour is a greenhouse gas, which will increase the temperature and make it less likely to rain.
You are more likely to end up with a super hot world, rather than a habitable one. Also in liquid forms (not sure about gaseous) mixing water with sulphuric acid can cause heat as they react.
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The biggest problem I see is that the huge volume of atmospheric gas from the "fire" side of your equation is going to be in that same nebula as the water vapour, you can't really blast the atmosphere off and keep it at the same time so the new world is going to have the same, or at least very similar, atmosphere as the Venusian parent world, the only way I can think of to explain that away is the theory that Earth's current atmosphere isn't the original at all. The theory goes that before the hit from [Theia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theia_(planet)) that created the moon the primordial Earth had an atmosphere shielded by a magnetic field much like today but the impact was sufficient to disrupt that field and the atmosphere was destroyed by solar radiation before the new Earth settled enough for the field to reform. Our modern atmosphere is made up of gases brought up by volcanism and down by comets.
To apply this to your scenario imagine the most glancing of blows the fire world is knocked off it's existing axis of rotation and gyrates wildly while it's magnetic field flickers and the sun strips mega-tonnes of atmosphere off, scattering it on the solar winds. Meanwhile the ice worldlet is shattered and scattered in an orbital belt of comets along an elliptical orbit in the same plane as the new, lifeless world. The new world settles and it's magnetic field strengthens. Now two (possibly four depending on the exact parameters) times in every orbit the new world passes through a thick band of cometary debris and picks up water and gases to replenish the atmosphere, and it keeps them this time.
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Supposing a roughly mars sized planet, how little surface water would need to exist to sustain a population of a size similar to pre-industrial earth (say 750 million?) The situation is somewhat unique in the sense that I'm hoping for a very significant portion of the planet to arid, Tatooine style. Is that actually feasible? Note, not all water needs to be on the surface. The population has the means to collect water from underground and atmospheric sources. But I imagine *some* significant body of water would need to exist.
[Answer]
An arid planet without surface water would likely have very little plant and animal life. That in itself is no problem, but it makes the ecological balance extremely fragile.
Humans themselves could do fine on a very arid world without any surface water. Check [this anecdote](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/34unbx/is_it_possible_for_0_humidity_to_ever_occur_on/) for the effects of working in very low humidity (<1%). With their water sources and by using specially designed clothing (like Dune Stillsuits) to conserve most water, it would not be too hard to maintain a steady supply.
Food crops would have to be grown in greenhouses, either special strains of the local flora, bred over thousands of years to grow faster than the native desert plants or imported species if there is contact with other worlds).
I imagine that if underground water sources are not a problem, greenhouses wouldn't be either.
Trouble would rear its ugly head if the humans ever reached the industrial age and started burning fossil fuels. (There could be some if the planet used to have more water and plant life in its early life). The carbon dioxide emitted would not be absorbed by plants or dissolved in ocean water, leading to global warming and eventually a toxic atmosphere.
Growing irrigated crops in the open would quickly drain underground water reserves, and it is doubtful that reclaiming water from the atmosphere would be productive enough to maintain the outdoor crops.
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In the year 2041, scientists have come up with a genetic modification that obviates the need for sleep in humans. The procedure is harmless, cheap, and has no harmful side effects. The result: you get back the third of your life that you waste sleeping.
Let's say we [give away](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr2bSL5VQgM) this genetic treatment to all of humanity at around the same time. (I know, I know...I'm asking a lot of you to suspend your disbelief that pharmaceutical companies wouldn't put on a stranglehold and exploit this miracle treatment.)
What would be some of the economic impacts if humans never needed to sleep?
**Note:** While sleep becomes unnecessary, humans would still feel mental and physical exhaustion, and would need some downtime to [recharge](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/15685/if-a-species-didnt-sleep-how-else-would-they-recharge?rq=1). Thus, someone probably couldn't move bricks for days straight, or drive from [Chengdu to Cape Town](http://www.global-slacker.com/1/Stats.html) in one sitting.
**Edit for Clarification:** By recharge, I mean that you'd still need to take breaks. Have weekends, vacation time, etc. Think of your current work/life schedule. Now extrapolate that to include 8 more hours a day.
[Answer]
All right, so let's say the work day increases by four hours once no one has to sleep. Most people now spend around twelve hours working, and twelve hours off.
Surprisingly, I don't expect too many changes to occur here, so long as people re flexible (so, basically, it'll be really bad for a few years, but I'll get to that). The first change that must occur is that salaries must be dropped, across the board. If people are getting paid the same amount but working 50% more, layoffs are going to happen, *everywhere*. Some industries will be worse than others (for instance, software developers will be hit hard since their software will be the same, while waiters might get saved with more nighttime shifts), but overall you've essentially got two people doing as much work as three people before this change, so there's no reason to keep all three people on the payroll. Not only that, but the people who get to keep their jobs are going to get *more* money, while the people who lose them get *less*, eventually leading to an even larger divide between the rich and the poor.
So everyone is now getting paid less hourly, but the same overall. There is a slight problem that comes from the fact that people will *want* more money when they don't need to sleep: keeping the lights on all night, every night will eventually outstrip the cost of a bed, as will the extra cost of food to offset the calories you burn walking around when you used to be sleeping. The effect of this will probably be that everyone *seems* poorer, which, again, shouldn't be a problem. After all, most people tend to spend the money they're given; you buy more stuff when you get a raise, and you buy less stuff when you get a demotion. There may be an adjustment period, when people go bankrupt because they're spending more than they can afford, but after a while people will get used to it.
So, like I said, as long as people change with the times, there shouldn't be much economic impact. The initial change is going to be the worst, and if things don't adapt there's likely to be a depression, but hopefully the transition is gradual or controlled enough to avoid that.
[Answer]
There are already drugs in use today (eugenic drugs) which were developed to help people with narcolepsy, but experiments have been done with normal people and the primary effect of the drug seems to be to allow you to go without sleep as long as you continue to take the drug.
In the short term, these drugs also seem to focus concentration (or perhaps this is a side effect of being able to stay focused on a problem for much longer, this is not clear as far as I have been able to determine). In the longer term, one of the known negative effects is the immune system tends to weaken. Relatively preliminary results would seem to indicate that ill effects are minimized if you limit the use of eugenic drugs to 72hr at a time. Once again, I have not seen anything definitive about ideal on and off cycles for the use of the drugs.
So unless there are parallel developments, sleeping certainly seems to play a role in the proper functioning of the immune system. It is also thought that sleep provides time for the brain to integrate memories, associations and learning patterns, so perhaps one of the modifications should be to emulate a Dolphin brain, which can shut down one hemisphere at a time for sleeping, while the other half keeps watch for predators and provides the control needed to stay afloat and breathing.
As for society, there will be an uptick in productivity, as people can continue to work longer hours, or (using the example of the eugeroic drugs), be able to finish projects faster by pulling 72 hour long "all nighters". Heightened productivity leads to economic growth, and if it can be sustained there is a virtuous circle effect where incomes and benefits can rise as well. OTOH, being awake all the time will also lead to people needing to get away from each other, since constant close proximity will become stressful. We will probably see more things like clubs, all night movie theatres, games rooms and a galaxy of on line entertainment as people move to different physical and social spaces to get some space from each other. You might also develop several overlapping (or non overlapping) circles of friends and acquaintances who you interact with at different hours of the day.
The entertainment industry will certainly get a boost, as will the demand for creative people who can fill the time. That may be the biggest sticking point of al; without time to dream and process new information in the unconscious, will people still be able to be creative?
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How would the weather from a permanent Cat5 hurricane (specifically with sustained 500 mph winds) that spans a 2000-mile area (across the hurricane's diameter) be impacted on continents roughly 500 miles to the north, south, and east?
I know that hurricanes pull in the moisture from all around them and drop the temperatures in the oceans below them, and to a lesser extent even in the air as the pressure pulls the cooler water up into the air from the ocean below. I am not sure how far this would really extend outward though, especially for a storm this size - I think the largest storm that has ever formed on earth so far has only been approximately 1000 miles across. So, what I'm trying to figure out is whether or not the nearby continents would receive more rain, less rain, continuous rain, or possibly no rain at all. I am also trying to figure out the storm surge impact. According to several sources I found, the storm surge can impact hundreds of miles of coast line, but how far away would this start. Is 500 miles out to sea too far for the storm surge to have an impact on the continents? Or would they receive a constant storm surge on one side and not the other side of the hurricane?
For a visual representation, this is basically a super-hurricane as previously described in size and strength that sits in the middle of an ocean basin and ranges anywhere from 500 to 1000 miles from three of my primary continents on the planet, and I know it's going to impact my weather patterns, but I cannot find enough information to figure out a rough general approximation for each area. I have the basics for in close to it for the ocean itself and the basic winds and intense rain, but I need some basis for further out as it reaches the continents.
EDIT UPDATE: Thanks for all the answers. The hurricane is permanent (supernatural in origins). @elemtilas..It is close to the middle of the ocean. There is a map located here:
<https://www.worldanvil.com/w/aesar-cajuncelt/map/9dcf98e3-ae1b-4916-8ee4-846ccf0aa389>
Thanks for any help.
[Answer]
So the problem here is that the Hurricanes always lose force on landfall. With North Atlantic Storms, these to be the United States. While the season is from June 1st to November 30th, the most active part of the year is August-September, when winds shear from the west is at its lowest, allowing for cyclone behavior of humid air to occur.
Hurricanes lose strength rapidly as they pass over land, due to the fact that it needs a constant source of warm water evaporate to fuel the storm... Dry land... notoriously having no warm water, will cause the "fuel" to deplete faster than the over water portion can refuel it. It's not uncommon for storms passing over Caribbean Islands to drop a whole category after the system goes back to sea. Wind speed rarely equals length. The longest lived tropical cyclone, the 1899 San Ciriaco hurricane, lasted just short of 28 days, most of it spent as a Tropical Storm (not even cat-1), though it's land fall was a Cat-3 in Puerto Rico.
No storm lasts forever. Even Jupiter's Great Red Spot, an anti-cyclonic storm covering a diameter similar to that of earth, is even believed to be dying out... possibly to be no more within our lifetime... so a permanent weather feature is unlikely. Winds change.
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**How fast can a digitigrade bipedal ape *possibly* run?**
I've raked through any question I could find on here talking about speedy bipeds or digitigrade bipeds (that aren't robotic/synthetic), but none that pinpoint a (rough) believable speed estimate. I don't expect to see these outrunning cheetahs, but perhaps they could beat ostriches (70 kph) and ideally, even catch up to animals like wildebeest (80 kph) for a few milliseconds.
In short, I'm looking to estimate the top speed of some digitigrade bipeds, assuming they have the anatomy to favor it. These creatures are apes, but ecological circumstances over time forced their ancestor on the ground. They have ape-like features in their forelimbs which allow for tool use and grasping etc, and they're social with human-level language and intelligence. In terms of recommending changes to their anatomy, go for it- the only guidelines I have around these creatures is that they evolved from apes and therefore have no tails, plus they must have hands with thumbs.
These carnivorous apes are fast-sprinting ambush predators that thrive in wide open plains, deserts, savannahs, and tundra with big game. There are barely any trees for them to climb anymore (they can only climb with tools and willpower); their ancestors diverged millions of years before the apes that would eventually lead to humans diverged in this world, so their ancestors have had a lot of time on the ground to sort things out.
Unlike humans, they are digitigrade and rely on speed instead of endurance. They have many fast twitch muscle fibers, efficient robust cardiovascular systems (for a mammal), and long legs. To run fast, they would have to sacrifice some stability and lean forward, but they could have very long strides, perhaps just under 5 meters (basing this on an [ostrich](https://africafreak.com/how-fast-can-an-ostrich-run)).
Sure, their legs bear some similarities to ostriches like ligaments and reduced toes, but the angle between their body and legs is different from a bird or dinosaur, as they have to stand straight and run leaning forward- at what angle, I'm not sure. Maybe 45 degrees? These are apes and therefore tailless, so the only counterweight they could have are their arms and maybe a spear. It would probably be fine if they just fell over or leapt after sprinting full throttle.
Of course, it's not like they had the time birds have to get bipedal digitigrade running together. Birds are going to be [better at leg injury avoidance](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4213177/) than these creatures ever will. Perhaps, taking another note from ostriches, they rely heavily on ligaments in their lower extremities and because of the haste (relative to ostriches) with which they developed this adaptation, they're prone to ligament injuries.
Speed is going to be everything to these creatures- finding dinner, being accepted by social circles, and meeting partners. I expect the most intense speeds at which they can run to take a toll on them over time, most likely with athletes. Regular exercising in a cushy, modern life would be harmless, of course.
[Answer]
There's no definitive answer to this question, as it largely depends on the specific anatomy of the creature in question. However, we can make some educated guesses based on what we know about other bipedal animals.
For example, ostriches can reach speeds of up to 70 kph, and wildebeest can reach speeds of up to 80 kph. If we assume that these creatures have a similar anatomy to ostriches (long legs, ligaments for shock absorption, etc.), then it's reasonable to believe that they could reach similar top speeds.
However, if we assume that these creatures have a more human-like anatomy ( shorter legs, less efficient cardiovascular system, etc.), then their top speed would likely be lower. Based on this, we can estimate that the maximum speed of a digitigrade bipedal ape would fall somewhere between 70-80 kph.
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[Question]
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An introvert, in zoology, refers to a head or other structure where the outer layer can flip inside out and retract
What is the maximum size (in absolute terms) that such a structure realistically could attain? Specifically, I'd like to know about this structure existing as a head, with a brain, sense organs, and a mouth. I don't have any criteria for what the rest of the anatomy should be, besides that it must be able to realistically exist at its size alongside the introvert. The creature should also be terrestrial, in roughly earth-like conditions
[Answer]
The largest turtle like creature I can think of is the Carbonemys. It must have had a neck of about 1 meter long and 20 to 30 cm thick. It probably represents the largest introvert in a tortoise like creature. As it lived among the largest land animals known to date. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonemys>
I can imagine some kind of weird giraffe like creature with a telescopic neck. Using air sacks to unfurl the neck. (1) This way it may be able to reach the leaves and fruits in tall trees. I don't deem such an animal likely to have evolved. But sometimes weird things might just work. If it would work then i'd guess a size like the neck of a giraffe or maybe a little larger may be the limit. About 2 to 2.5 meters long. Giraffes need to not exist for this creature to be able to evolve!
(1) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qevIIQHrJZg> Not my video. But it shows what I am thinking about with an inflating air sack.
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I thought this can be considered the oposite to the monkeys' walk which the most time that are on land are quadrupedals and sometimes they can stand bipedal, so now in this case I'm asking about a specie which is able to stand the most time in a bipedal and erected posture but change to quadrupedal walk without many problems, this unlike humans that yes, we can crawl and "gallop" on four limbs, but only for brief periods and really without many advantages for this.
My supositions were that get the facultative quadrupedal posture would help to little distance high speed run, because impulse the body with the hindlimbs would allow a jump that would later be cushioned with the forelimbs, another assumption is that maintaining a facultative quadrupedalism for short periods would release the vertical pressure of the spine, hips and knees during that time. But this is principally just for search a good working of a creature design.
So, I found that ther are many biomechanical problems with the correct working of a desing like this.
The first problem appears looking the hips' shape of different primate species and a hip from a fully quadrupedal mammal.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wEmMx.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u4ag2.jpg)
We can see that more quadrupedal primate, the chimpazee hip, is more similar to the dog hip, being long, narrow and flat while the human hip is shorter, wide and "bowl-shaped".
Then can be seen that the human spine does not flex like a quadruped would. But for this I thought, add some vertebraes would help, just Im not sure how many.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HZHAn.png)
So what I am looking for is to identify other possible anatomical and biomechanical problems and their respective solutions to allow a humanoid with functional facultative quadrupedalism, being good enough to be in quadruped form as well as to be in erect bipedal form.
This question might be closely related with this other [How much can be modificated the humanoid body plan and still being able to perform the high speed throwing?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/199712/how-much-can-be-modificated-the-humanoid-body-plan-and-still-being-able-to-perfo?rq=1)
[Answer]
How about this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dMglj.jpg)
Four arms.
The forward arms will probably be stronger. They're carrying the head.
The pelvis is smaller so that arms can take the weight. The neck is longer so the head can look ahead.
Make the wrists more muscular so they can withstand the pounding, and make the feet/hands padded on the bottom so they can take the grinding.
p.s You just gained two arms with hands.
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I'm trying to figure out how quickly a planet could rotate while also having a single air flow cell, such as [Hadley cells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell), that would circle from hot pole to cold pole, etc. as in the case of Tidally Locked Planets and Venus.
I.e. what is an estimate minimum time one area of a planet must bake under a star to form the required temperature differential for a single air cell, assuming an Earth-like atmosphere and oceans to regulate it to some degree. Or, how much could you increase Venus's rotational rate without disturbing the single wind cell.
I don't understand a lot of the math around atmospherics, so I'm going off of what I can glean from papers and what we know about Venus and planets tidally locked to red dwarfs. I'm trying to ride the fine line of a planet being somewhat hostile, but still livable. So long "days" and "nights" and near constant winds that are strong, but not Venus's ridiculous wind speed strong nor temperatures that will fry or freeze a person. In the setting I'm working on the subject planet was terraformed for the sake of emulating Earth conditions, so it wouldn't make sense for said planet to have been chosen if the end product was near inhospitable. Desperation/limited options can justify this to some degree, but to the extent of walk outside an instantly die.
As I understand it, a global wind cell would feature a constant, slowly migrating cloud layer following under the hot pole slowly migrating parallel with the equator, creating seasons of "day-summer" and "night-winter". Axil tilt negligible no for simplicity's sake. Any given point on the planet would essentially have constant wind flow that, throughout the planets day-night period, would slowly shift its angle throughout all 360 degrees, ignoring geographical feature of course.
I'm just not sure if I can handwave a "day" of say 90~ 24 hour periods without making the planet inhospitable due to wind strength/temperature. Also, the presence of extremely frequent hurricanes/cyclones formed along the vertical equator? I've read mixed things on that regard. My current work around is focusing on habitable east-west bands between the central hot-pole storm and possible vertical equator storms, but again wind speed and temp remain a concern.
The paper ["ATMOSPHERIC DYNAMICS OF TERRESTRIAL EXOPLANETS OVER A WIDE RANGE OF ORBITAL ANDATMOSPHERIC PARAMETERS"](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.6349.pdf), seems like it might have some answers, and did shed some light on some things, but a lot of it is beyond me. Seems like at 1/16th rotation rate you already get some pretty significant leveling out of longitudinal temperature differences, at least.
[Answer]
## I don't think your planet will have Hadley Cells at all
Hadley cells form due to the conservation of angular momentum as fluid particles move about an axis or rotation, getting either closer to the axis or further away from it. They're the result of large-scale air movements toward or away from the axis of rotation, as the spherical shape of the Earth and the equatorward movement of the air decrease the radius of their rotation, thus increasing the speed at which they rotate about the axis.
However, in your setup, the "hot" pole and "cold" pole aren't aligned with the axis of rotation. In a tidally-locked setup, the planet's still rotating about its vertical axis, it's just doing so with the same period as the period of revolution about the star. Air movement will be (near the surface) toward the "hot" pole and away from the "cold" pole, but the main air movement isn't in such a fashion as to significantly increase or decrease the fluid particle's radius.
Because the overall movement of fluid particles isn't significantly changed by their movement toward or away from the poles, there doesn't seem to be any reason for them to break up the single circulation cell that would form - there's no large-scale changes in radius or speed to account for. Someone else may actually be able to run the formulas on this, but I'm pretty sure that tidally locked planets won't have Hadley Cells at all. Cool question!
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[Question]
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This is a follow up to a [previous question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/132861/how-would-i-calculate-the-size-and-angle-of-this-space-station-ring/132864?noredirect=1#comment417087_132864) that I thought should be a new question instead of just discussing in the comments of that one.
>
> This is an idea for a space station on the surface of Eris (but could
> work on other celestial bodies), using rotating rings to simulate
> gravity. The idea is that these rings would sit horizontally on the
> surface of the dwarf planet much like you would expect in space.
> Instead of the floor of the rings being the inner flat edge, the rings
> would be slanted forming a sort of downward cone shape. You could
> imagine it much like how a freeway or racetrack is banked around
> turns.
>
>
> Ideally the rotation would produce centrifugal force pulling the
> occupants towards the edge to simulate gravity, however, the slant of
> the rings would counteract the existing low gravity of Eris which is
> roughly 1/12 of Earth's. The closest real world comparison I could
> think of would be the [Gravitron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitron) amusement park ride, but on a massive
> scale.
>
>
>
The previous determined that the appropriate angle of the ring's slant would be roughly 10 degrees from the vertical plane, making the floor of the rings nearly perpendicular to the surface of Eris, but not quite. From what I understood, the ring size was negligible for the slant angle, but important for calculating the appropriate angular velocity to produce simulated gravity.
**Would a ring station of this design be likely to cause issues with balance or vertigo if an occupant moved or turned too quickly?**
Originally I had also been working with the idea that the ring might be fairly large, with a diameter of 10 km and height (width?) of 100 m. I am currently playing with the idea of multiple, much smaller rings measuring 2-3 km in diameter and width of 50 m. I would appreciate an answer for either case.
As far as I understand, it is believed that such issues would only occur in very small rings (meaning only a dozen meters or so in diameter). With larger rings it shouldn't be an issue except when quickly transferring from one ring to another. These of course are all theories though, and none of them take into account the idea of an external source of gravity.
As a clarification, I actually want the vertigo issues to occur as it will help propel certain aspects of my story. I just don't want to write that my main character spinning around quickly during a fight caused them to get slightly dizzy if realistically they wouldn't.
[Answer]
The best data that I can find is that rotational rates exceeding 0.5 rad/s can potentially cause people to feel disoriented. Granted, this was found through experiments in centrifuges on Earth, which isn't quite the same thing as you're asking for, but we haven't been able to study people in a centrifuge within a shallower gravity well, so I'll just use those figures.
So, because you want to produce one gee of apparent gravity on a body with surface gravity of 0.836 g, this means that you want the centrifugal forces to be 0.996 g.
If you plug in this limit of 1 radian per second into the radial acceleration formula, $a = \omega^2 R$, then you find that the minimum radius is 39 meters, which is likely a lot smaller than you're going for.
As far as moving from one spinning ring to another, there haven't been any studies done on that (at least, none that I know of). However, my supposition (entirely an educated guess, so take it with a grain of salt) is that, while it might be disorienting to a person who grew up in a place like Earth where that doesn't happen, people who grew up there would, in my opinion, have brains that get used to it and don't get disoriented. But, once again, this is all speculation as I'm pretty sure that the sum total of human knowledge for this instance is zero.
However, you have a much easier method of getting your protagonist dizzy. A concussion [can cause dizziness](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/concussion/symptoms-causes/syc-20355594), and those are brought on by head trauma, which fights can certainly bring.
[Answer]
The occupants would feel the Coriolis effect, which could cause motion sickness. Also, it is suggested, those who adapted to this kind of environment could tell easily tell direction, spinward or anti-spinward by moving their head.
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[Question]
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In most modern democracies you get one vote to pick the person you want to win the election.
**What if you got to upvote one candidate and downvote another?**
The weight of a downvote would be less than an upvote. Let us say 2 down votes have the same weight as 1 upvote.
Parties would tend to run multiple candidates, since it lets you spread out the other side's down votes. Voters would tend to get more choice, "I want candidate A to win" but if not him "please not candidate D".
Since voters could chose to partially abstain by using just the up or down vote; we could then tell if a candidate won because he was more widely liked or because his opponent was more widely hated.
How would this change political campaigns?
Would it reduce the number of fringe candidates?
Would this change how candidates act once in office?
Is there a better ratio of downvotes to upvotes?
[Answer]
I've seen systems like this a few times. One was based in Scotland, it was a list of candidates with STV and an option to vote for and against. A candidate would need to have a positive on the for/against to get through to the STV round to actually be elected.
It's also normal on company AGMs to vote for/against election of directors, though they normally elect all candidates.
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**This is all assuming that there's a list of candidates and you get to vote for or against each of them.**
The system is vulnerable to tactical voting. If you say they need a positive score, that means they have to get over 50% of the vote in a tactical situation (vote against everyone but the candidate you want to win). If you say they need only to have the highest net score, you could well end up electing people who have an overall negative vote, the least hated candidate.
**In a two horse race, such as the US presidential election, it makes no difference.** A vote for one candidate on a single-x two candidate election is equivalent to a vote against the other. Though you could require a re-run if neither candidate had a positive tally which is entirely possible.
It only starts to count when you have more horses in the race, but entering an extra candidate for your party risks splitting the vote and you always lose, better to keep investing everything in only one candidate. However it does mean that the field could open up to more parties rather than more candidates from the main parties. Someone with very few votes for, but even fewer against could walk away with the win.
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**Now assuming a system where you only get one vote, but it could be for or against any *one* candidate**
There's a list of candidates, is it more important that you vote for your candidate or against the one you really don't want to get in? Is hate or desire the stronger emotion. That's going to be about how each candidate runs their campaign, if one rants against another, they may find that rather than voting for him, they're voting against the other, leaving them both losing out to a third candidate. *It would lead to a greater tendency towards positive campaigning rather than attacking opponents as you need to encourage people to make the* for *vote.*
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The general theme of this is that the opportunity to downvote only makes a difference in a larger field of candidates.
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The biggest difference to the outcomes of elections come from:
* Greater turnout of voters
* Changing to a system that opens the game to more players such as PR or STV
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A few definitions for those who don't have to deal with this stuff all day every day.
**Single-X:** You mark an X/tick in the box of the candidate you choose, One person, one vote, for one candidate.
**STV:** Single Transferable Vote, known in the US as IRV, Instant Runoff Vote, you list your candidates in order of preference, if your favourite candidate is knocked out due to having the lowest number of votes, your vote is transferred to your next preference.
[Answer]
Note: I'm using the term "votocracy" as coined by Tres-2b in his answer.
**How would this change political campaigns?**
We'd see some pretty massive changes in the way we select candidates. Currently, candidates running for public office try to appear desirable to their supporters, and tend to just ignore their opposing voters. In this votocracy, we'd see a lot more campaigning to the opposing side, trying to get them to convert to this candidate's views. For example, 100 people upvote Candidate A, but another 100 people downvote him/her. All of the work that Candidate A has put in to gaining 100 supporters has just been lost because 100 opposers.
**Would it reduce the number of fringe candidates?**
I honestly don't see any major correlation to the number of fringe candidates to this votocracy. Fringe candidates who don't have much public support will receive downvotes and thus have a very slim chance of securing office or a nomination, similar to our democracy today: fringe candidates don't stand a chance, so they simply just receive a few votes.
**Would this change how candidates act once in office?** For the most part, no. Really this votocracy only changes the way we vote. The public office is still the public office, and its duties and responsibilities are modified by this votocracy. Because of that, officeholders are fairly unlikely to change how they act once elected.
**Is there a better ratio of downvotes to upvotes?**
1:3 maybe? To me, 1:2 seems like the perfect ratio, but you could 1:3 if you wanted to place more emphasis on supporting a candidate rather than opposing him/her. The one thing I can say though is the fact that you made a great choice in not making the ratio 1:1, in that this could simply bring "hate voters" to the polls.
[Answer]
As **Fi12** pointed out, this would most likely work very similar to the Stack exchange, candidates that want to lower taxes would get upvotes from the poor but downvotes from the rich. I imagine that this votocracy (as it will be referred to here and below), would be much more fair than a democracy but the real problem would be getting it started. The people in power would not like this system I imagine.
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How would this change political campaigns?; I agree with you that a party would likely have more candidates in order to get better results. The campaign strategy itself would be more focused on hidden smear campaigns. Have your candidates play nice and try and hide their past, while paying companies to find out dirty details on your opponents. **KEYWORD; COMPANIES** If the candidates themselves smear another candidate they will seem like a bad guy. Canadians might remember the Conservative Smear Attacks against Justin Trudeau, they said he was way to young and inexperienced to lead a country, despite this he won and it did indeed make the Conservatives look like bad guys. As **sdrawkcabdear** pointed out, Parties would likely hire a candidate with the pure goal of being an a#####e who everyone hates, think a guy who wants to raise taxes by 20%.
Would this changes how candidates act once in office?; They would still likely work to achieve the majority groups wishes, unlike candidates in our world they would have to hide any shady pasts in a much harder way, no longer is it "I hope that a good number of people don't care about my past" because people who do care can vote against you. They would only do this if they desired to receive a second term, if not they would act the same way.
Is there a better ratio of downvotes to upvotes?; I agree with you here as well, 1:2 for upvote and downvote seems good enough. Sorry for the short answer, I have to go places.
[Answer]
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More emphasis on discrediting opponents.
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No, but they would have many negative votes.
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Yes, [populism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism) would be a good strategy to get upvotes later.
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IMO, 1:2 or 2:3 or even 1:1 are good enough, but there are some caveats:
* Polarization. Candidates which are massively up- *and* down- voted are trouble once elected: too much opposition for them.
* Irrelevance. A candidate with 10:1 up:down votes is very appreciated by the public - until one knows that the candidate has just, say, only 1.5% of the upvotes.
* Election criteria. up:down vote ratio? Total upvotes? Upvotes minus downvotes? A combination of them? Maybe a [norm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_%28mathematics%29), like in linear algebra, where the dimensions are upvotes/downvotes? Choices, choices...
[Answer]
Your voting system is a restricted form of [Range voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_voting). Since upvotes are greater than downvotes, it would be pretty close to America's current system of [Plurality voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting_system) (one of the [worst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting_system#Disadvantages) systems by far). It also has elements of [Anti-plurality voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-plurality_voting), which, although probably as bad as plurality voting, would be more amusing.
If you allowed as many upvotes and downvotes as you like, you would have full Range voting, with a range of three values (-1, 0, and 1), which is pretty close to [Approval voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting).
All in all, it would be slightly better than the US's current system, but probably not by much. It would still probably be dominated by two parties. Take a look at some better systems [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Compliance_of_selected_systems_.28table.29).
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[Question]
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**Background**
I recently had some fun watching YouTube videos about redefining the nature of gravity based on the existence and flow or "velocity" of time. ([Example](https://youtu.be/UKxQTvqcpSg)) and it got me thinking of an application that I want to build into my world.
**The Logic of My World**
Technology allows for the control of time in a limited region of space. If you're tempted to ask "how?" let me refer you to L. Ron Hubbard's *[Battlefield Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_Earth_(novel)),* where Psychlo transportation was based on the teleportation of space from one location to another. Since the space within the engine moved, the vehicle housing the engine had to move with it. In my world, that same small space (the engine housing) is where time is manipulated.1
The reason, in my world, that this works is expressed by this simplistic graph:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5lKZ3.png)
In the "real world," time is always experienced at the same rate (one second = one second). But when we change frame references (i.e., when an observer on Earth sees a hypothetical rocket flying at the speed of light), we can see a difference in time. This is discussed briefly in the above linked video in relation to GPS satellites. From the satellite's perspective, a single second has ticked by. But from ours, there's a minuscule difference that adds up to a measurable GPS error.2
*It's important to stop for a moment and point out that I have no honking idea what the shape of the curve shown in the above graph really is. I based it on charts of time dilation like the one seen [in this article](https://www.emc2-explained.info/Time-Dilation/#.YL0f16FMF9N). Take it as a rule of my world that the chart reflects the basic truth of my world.*
Now, using Earth as a quick and convenient point of reference to explain an example "flow of time," consider the following:
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Earth rotates at about 1,674 km/hr. Applying the simple logic of my world: when $\Delta{V}=12,326$ then $\Delta{T}=7 \mu{S}$. So, in my world, forcing a particular flow of time ($V\_T$) demands an associated velocity vector ($V\_{X,Y,Z}$). You can't have one without the other, and the velocity vector's direction can be modified. This results in a difference in the flow of time inside the "engine housing" and outside of it, so to get the (rounding) 11 km/s velocity needed to escape the gravity of a planet equal in size to the Earth, the "engine housing" must experience a flow of time approximately 22.5 ns faster than what's around it.3, 4
**Speeding and Slowing Time creates Positive and Negative thrust**
An issue on my world is the need to control time gently. If you snapped the "engine housing" to +22.5ns you'd instantly be going 11 km/s. Oof. How fast the flow of time can or should be changed isn't contemplated in this post, it's merely mentioned for the sake of completeness.
However, it must be mentioned that if slowing time gets you to +11 km/s (compared to a velocity of 0 on the planet's surface), then speeding time would get you to -11 km/s (again, compared to a velocity of 0 on the planet's surface).
So it's possible to both speed up and slow down.
**The range of thrust is limited**
Since the graph has exponential curves toward both maximums, there's a practical limit to the amount of thrust that can be produced. Using the time dilation curve from the article I linked, above, and reproduced below, this solution is only really good to travel up to 90% the speed of light before the control of time becomes too difficult. An argument could be made that there's as much difficulty traveling below 10% of the speed of light due to too little control of velocity — which would nullify the example of escape velocity.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YnC6o.jpg)
**One Problem...**
Finally, there's a problem on my world, because forcing a $V\_T$ must necessarily cause a $V\_{X,Y,Z}$, it's also true that it must necessarily cause a change in *gravity.* Very generally speaking, in the real world, as velocity increases, time slows down. As gravity increases, time slows down. Said another way by quoting from that last source...
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So, 4X weaker gravity speeds up time by 45 microseconds or 1 microsecond =~ about a 0.09X change in gravity. Slowing by 22.5 ns = 0.0225 us therefore gravity *increases* by 0.002X, which should be trivially ignorable for escaping Earth-like gravity, right?5
**The Consequence**
The control of time might allow my world to create micro-thrust (or, more accurately, a micro-velocity) with an ignorable amount of change in gravity but can create velocity between 10% and 90% of the speed of light. Gravitational consequences for that range have been skipped in this post.
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> **About Reality Checks**I've tagged this post "Reality Check" and that's why you don't see an actual question stated anywhere. It's one of the reasons why the tag is so often misunderstood. Another is that the "reality" the tag refers to is the reality of *the post's world* — NOT the reality of real life. You can think of the tag as expecting respondents to answer the question, "does the scenario I present below fit logically into the rules of my world?" Answers are expected to be of the form "Yes" and "No, and here's why"The *least valuable* kind of answer has the form, "No, because in real life X." Remember that the reference for judgment is the world of the post, not real life. The respondent may have pointed out something interesting, but the answer could be intrinsically wrong because the rules of the post's world did away with whatever X was.If I've done my thinking well enough, then the goal is to get someone to say "yes" and have it up voted a lot.But, nothing's perfect, right? So the *most valuable* answer has the form, "yes, but... [or] no, because... in real life X, but if we adjust the rules of your world Y, we have an uber cool solution that makes the scenario consistent with your rules and would make Larry Niven wish he'd had access to Worldbuilding.SE."
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1 *And it's a good thing that it's in a small region of space. If we assume the field encompassed the entire space ship, then you could enjoy attending Julia Davenport's 59th birthday and retirement party, celebrating 125 years of dedicated shuttle service. She'd appreciate gifts of coins minted on her birthday.*
2 *This begs a second question, which I might ask. Remember, rules of my world and not necessarily Real Life, right? If you force the flow of time to its theoretical maximum, meaning that all motion has stopped, do you get a form of stasis? Meaning, is it kinda the same as time "stopping" because matter, all matter, in the affected region has stopped moving completely (no electron orbits, no nothin' folks) and therefore cannot age or change despite the fastest flow of time compared to any other reference frame. It brings to mind the Dr. Who [void ships](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Void_Ship). But it's an interesting bit of symmetry that aging (for lack of a better reference) would stop at both ends of the curve. It suggests that the turning point or "knee point" on the curve is the only truly useful reference frame — but I digress.*
3 *The astute reader will note that what I just did was apply a linear extrapolation to my curve. I assert that the differences in speed and time are so small that I can approximate the curve with a very short straight line. I could be wrong.*
4 *BTW, if you didn't just notice, this idea would lend incredibly well to a bomb. "Detonating" a time bomb by offsetting time by mere microseconds would, I think, level cities. If there's ever to be an argument against the viability of time travel, this is it. The moment you turned on a time portal to travel one second into the past you just created an extinction-level event, which is why Earth has never seen a verifiable visitor from the future (boom!). Or, at least it's fun to think of it that way. Just don't mess with my engines without a responsible parent present.*
5 *Go re-read footnote #2. What we could be saying here is that when you hit the maximum flow of time, you've not only stopped moving entirely, you've also nullified all gravitational influences and set your own to zero. In wonderful SciFi parlance, just as FTL could be thought of as moving backward through time (negative time) or through "imaginary time," exceeding the maximum flow of time would crate anti-gravity or "imaginary gravity." Oh, there's some fun to be had with that idea....*
[Answer]
It passes my reality check, but the theory of Relativity will be *very* different in your world. Here's my guess about your world's theory. I don't have the foggiest idea of how the actual Relativity equations will change!
Let's limit movement to only one spatial dimension, and plot it against time (time on x axis, distance on y axis).
In your world, a trajectory (aided by the engine) is actually a parametric curve on the space-time. The curve's parameter is the time inside the engine (t\_i), the x axis is the time outside (t\_o), and the y axis is the space dimension.
What your engine does is to rotate the tangent vector (t\_o, s) of the trajectory, corresponding to the speed and time displacement outside the engine. The trajectory curve can go in any direction, but with limited vector length, no more than a constant.
Without the engine, t\_i = t\_o, and the trajectory curve points somewhere to the right, as in our world, and the vector length is < c, where c is the light speed. Our Relativity becomes a special case of the theory.
Your world's gravity turns to be the curvature of the trajectory curve, making negative gravity not only possible, but a occasional consequence of the equations.
[Answer]
**Instead of a drive perhaps consider a Wormhole.**
The classical problem with most FTL drives and wormhole models (WH) is that they can violate causality. For example they let travelers arrive at their destination **before** the photons announcing their departure do. Which in Einsteinian Spacetime means effectively means traveling into the past (non causality breaching drive and WH models excepted).
Since WH link two distant points in space time by shortening the distance between them you could maintain and have (apparently - to an outside observer) relativistic travel speeds by specifying a type of WH where time inside it slows in proportion to the length of the wormhole. So that a 10 light year trip still take 10 years to complete, even if the 'apparent distance' (to the extent that term would have any meaning) inside a WH between it's two ends only 1000 meters!
Time starts out flowing at the normal rate until a ship passes over through its lip/horizon. Then as the ship 'falls' through the WH the rate at which time slows accelerates along a predictable curve until it reaches the center of the wormhole where time has slowed to its maxima. After that point the curve reverses and time flow returns back towards its 'normal' rate, reaching it as the ship exits.
The plus side is that depending on how 'long' the inside of a wormhole is you get to speeds almost equivalent to that of light. The really BIG plus however is that the wormhole *is* your engine. As long as it has provisions for the crew/hibernation chambers etc it theory any ship can travel to another star system with the simplest of engines, even just a simple rocket drive i.e. something with just enough thrust to propel it into the mouth of the wormhole and then brake when it exists at the other end.
The big downside is f course is that all trips are still slower than light (but only just).
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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.
So, one of my D&D characters has a cut/relief-carved quartz crystal amulet (medallion shaped) that's both an arcane focus (crystal) and a holy symbol (amulet), and I thought it would be a good idea for it to resonate within the audible range, given that quartz crystals can make good, pure-tone mechanical resonators. However, I can't find much on what *size* a quartz resonator needs to be for a given shape, vibrational mode, and frequency.
In my case, I'm thinking this would be a flexural mode resonator for practicality and probably audibility/volume as well, made in a cylindrical disk shape (with relief carvings on both sides and a hole in it for wearability) to serve as an amulet, and with a resonant frequency *somewhere* in the audible range (preferably somewhere from a few hundred Hz to 15kHz). Considering that a reasonable maximum size would be somewhere around 25mm in diameter and 5mm thick, what actual size would be needed to reach the audible frequency range?
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In the general case, you can't, because there's no closed form of computing the vibration modes, except for the very simple *and very uniform* geometries.
Even then some 'weird' function may need to be invented - for example, the [vibration modes for a circular membrane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrations_of_a_circular_membrane) will use the [Bessel functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessel_function) - which are defined as "they are the *elementary* solutions for the circular membrane vibration equation, all the other vibrations mode will be a combination/superposition of them"
To make the matter worse for your case, the carving in an amulet will drastically modify these vibration modes. What appears yo you as just a small indentation will modify the timbre of the vibrating element, by tuning down some harmonics. With a careful adjustment of such "engraving", one can tune down the fundamental frequency and enhance the first harmonic (harder to do then the reverse, but still possible).
As an example in which even simple vibrating elements are tuned, go no further than tongue based instruments, in which the vibration is the one of a "tongue" with a clamped end and the other free (for example [slit drums](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slit_drum) - some with an [exceptionally well tuned sound](https://www.youtube.com/c/WoodPackDrums/videos)).
Some [may tell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnCgbzXg2RY) you [it not a big deal](https://youtu.be/PpQ9Lfg0vTc?t=605) to tune it, that it's actually a [brain dead simple to make and tune one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKXhOwwIwcA). Yet, if you really want a fine one, [you are going to have surprises of the unpleasant kind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV7yQlSvVmU).
Even harder when you get on making something from solid surfaces - [it will take days](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0O6SFM48Fc) for someone already an expert [to make one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJd_ym6c0ks).
Bottom line - it's hard because the vibration modes for anything else but simple shapes and homogeneous materials are not entirely captured by science in easy formulas that are amenable to engineering. This is where artistry, craftsmanship (and maybe magic) have lots of room to play.
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A [modern 20kHz tuning fork crystal](https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/epson/C-2-20-0000K-P-PBFREE/SER3301-ND/1022094), as used in electronics, is housed in a cylinder 6mm in length and 2mm in diameter. Assuming the frequency scales linearly with size, you would probably get something up to the size of a thumb depending on desired frequency.
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[Question]
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A common, matter-efficient, science-fiction habitat is a hollow cylinder or ring in space that is spun to simulate the pull of gravity on its interior surface. While for most purposes this artificial gravity acts just like what we are used to on Earth there will be observable differences between the Coriolis effects in the two rotating systems.
The Coriolis effects on the Earth deflect matter moving towards a pole (ascending) to the East (spinward) and matter moving towards the equator (descending) to the West (anti-spinward). One of the most notable consequences of this effect is the formation of cyclones. The Coriolis effect deflects winds into a circle around a low-pressure zone resulting in incredibly powerful storm systems.
On a rotating habitat, the largest Coriolis effects would be observed vertically (from the perspective of someone in the habitat). On Earth, this vertical component of the Coriolis effect is called the Eotvos effect but isn’t strong enough to overcome other vertical forces such as gravity and pressure. In our rotating habitat, the vertical Coriolis effect or Eotvos effect should be noticeably stronger and will also deflect moving air into cycles. Air moving spinward is deflected down. Air moving down is deflected anti-spinward. Air moving anti-spinward is deflected up. Air moving up is deflected spinward. This could create a wind cycle just like the ones on Earth that result in cyclones except these cyclones would be turned to stand on their edge. These vertical cyclones would spin in the opposite direction that the habitat spins.
**I want to know whether it is possible for such vertical cyclones to form in a rotating habitat.**
There are several distinct differences between our Earthly cyclones and these proposed vertical cyclones that jeopardize their existence in my mind. The main problem I see is that a vertical cycle will go through significant changes in pressure between high altitude and low altitude. Will this disrupt the cycle?
What other factors might make these vertical cyclones unrealistic?
Assuming the feasibility is dependent on the specific dimensions of the habitat here are the relevant characteristics of a torus that I have in mind:
**Dimensions:**
Distance from the center of the tube to the center of the ring: 10,000 km
Radius of the tube: 200 km
**Spin:**
Angular Velocity: ~0.005 rotations/minute
Tangential Velocity: ~5500 m/s
Centripetal Acceleration: ~3 m/s^2
Assume any other aspects of the world such as atmospheric pressure or composition are close to Earth's.
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Other important innformation about the habitat, summarised from a previous question: [A self eclipsing orbital ring](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/121882/a-self-eclipsing-orbital-ring):
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I think there is a very serious problem with the practicality of your environment. If I understand your description, you have a torus with major radius 10,000 km and minor radius 200 km, spinning fast enough to produce approximately 1/3g centrifugal 'gravity' within the volume of the torus.
But then you want approximately 1 atmosphere pressure inside the torus. The atmosphere will be driven to the outer radius of the torus in the in the same way as our atmosphere is attracted to the surface by earth's gravity. This will result in a pressure differential with height similar to that seen on our atmosphere.
Using the [barometric formula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_pressure) for a surface pressure of 100 kPa (1 atmosphere), a gravitational constant of g/3, and a thermally equilibrated temperature of 290 Kelvin (23 C or 73 F), the approximate pressure as a function of altitude will be P(h) ~ 100,000\*exp(-0.000035h) kPa. As a result, your atmospheric pressure will drop to about half an atmosphere at an altitude of ~20 km, and will be lower than that at the top of Everest by the time you are about 30 km up.
This means that most of your toroidal volume will be empty unlivable vacuum. See picture below for scale.
The 'good' news is that over the practical depth of the atmosphere, the variation in radial velocity is only around 15-20 m/s. That should be sufficient to produce some weather and wind resulting from Coriolis forces acting on convective motion of air within the atmosphere, but probably not enough to produce deadly storms etc.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VVGtT.png)
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As pointed out by @Ash in a comment the Hadley Cells are air circulation effect that needs to be in mind and take a huge part in cyclons and hurricanes.
Basically hurricanes are formed by differences in pressure and temperature between different air flows. I don't see how in your scenario the air flow can be heated differently to form a cyclon.
Sure if the air moves inside your hollow cylinder it would be forced by the coriolis and the eotvos effect to change direction but why would it move in the first place?
tl;dr; No such thing as hurricanes inside the tube if it's heated evenly
[Answer]
[This site](https://scijinks.gov/coriolis/) provides a great explanation of the Coriolis Effect. It is primarily caused by a difference in the distance from the surface to the axis of the earth between the equator and the latitudes to the north and south.
Time to do some math. The air in the top of the torus would be moving at $\dfrac{\pi DR}{m}$, or $\pi(10200)0.005$ kilometers per minute. The result is about $160$ kilometers per minute.
The air in the outside of the torus would be moving at $\pi(9800)0.005$ kilometers per minute. This result is $154$ kilometers per minute.
You will have a pretty powerful Coriolis effect. The difference in the velocity of the air in the top/bottom of the torus and the outer edge would be $6$ kilometers per minute. Translated into hours, this is $360$ kilometers per hour.
The cyclones will be the inverse of a hurricane, with high wind speeds on the outside and low wind speeds on the inside. The Coriolis cyclones will be "seasonal". This means the following: They will not be permanent, but will slowly spin up to $360$ kilometers per hour, and then the resistance caused by the other cyclones will cause the cyclones to wind down to little or no wind speed. This means that they have little friction with each other, and will be able to spin back up to $360$ kilometers per hour. Here is a diagram to help clarify what the cyclones will look like inside the torus:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sHiFT.png)
$360$ kilometers per hour is $223.694$ miles per hour. According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Fujita_scale), the people on the edges of the cyclone would experience the following.
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[Answer]
I do not think so. Earth has an open atmosphere where gases are exposed to space, and your torus would have all the atmosphere contained. Additionally, if the temperature were stable between the center and the edge of the tube, then there would be no natural places where air pressure builds.
The Coriolis Effect on earth is caused by the sun heating the air at the equator more than the air north and south of the equator. The hot air rises and expands, traveling north and south. As it cools, it descends, completing the circuit back to the surface of earth. Since the temperature inside the torus is presumably constant, these areas of high/low pressure air would not form, meaning that the Coriolis Effect would not happen.
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[Question]
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[In a previous question on this site](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/109685/what-would-be-the-side-effects-of-a-massive-strong-magnetic-field) I asked about the side effects of a having ludicrously strong, permanent, static magnetic field on the surface of a planet, capable of pulling in non-magnetized ferromagnetic objects from a distance of many miles. Now, the world I have in mind has technology equivalent to Europe somewhere around 1300-1600, but I'm curious how a hi-tech society could take advantage of that field. For instance, could you put an electromagnet on a spacecraft, and use the magnetic pull to achieve escape velocity? Could you set up power stations inside the field (not too close to the center!) and generate electricity? Some other obvious exploit?
Assumptions:
* The magnetic field is coming from an object with some ridiculous level of coercivity. Don't worry about how it got magnetized that strongly.
* The field is sufficiently strong to have a pull force of 10N on a 1kg iron ball at a distance of 100 km (I used 100 miles in the previous question; let's keep everything in metric here).
* The field/magnet is stationary with respect to the planet's surface. Fairly sure this doesn't require handwaving--one answer to my previous question suggested the magnet would pull on the planet's iron core and sink (catastrophically) to the center of the earth, but my understanding is that ferromagnetic materials in the mantle or below would be too hot to remain magnetic.
* The population of the planet survived the creation of the magnetic field (or the relevant population colonized the planet after the field was created).
Hope the question isn't too broad, and that it's acceptable to pose a question that isn't immediately of use to a story; happy to revise/close if it's a problem.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm looking for ways to exploit the magnetic field using modern knowledge and technology; the Renaissance period specified above is just for background. Based on the answers to my other question, some really wacky things start happening as you get close to a magnetic field that strong--I want to know if any of them would be useful.
[Answer]
## Something that pulls metal from that far away combined with a medieval/renaissance society? Torture, Prison, and maybe Hell come to mind.
As a gross over-simplification, in societies of that era especially the early end: magic was still a possibility, religion was a given, and science was quasi-heretical if you didn't agree with the local religion or offended someone important.
**Torture**
Remember the Rack? Arms tied at one end, legs at the other, and the victim was slowly stretched until something gave way. With a strong magnetic field of this nature, you simply need to anchor the person at one end, and attach some metal to the other end and let them hang. Sideways. Bonus points if you provide feathers.
**Prison**
Just encase them in metal, or give them metal boots and gloves and let them go. They won't be coming back. Think of a long walk off a short pier with concrete boots... only with metal and magnets!
**Hell**
Given the strength of that field, you get close enough, it might be able to pull the metal out of one's body, such as blood. Should that be the case, then you have a good candidate for the "Yellow Springs" to borrow an Asian metaphor for Hell. Anything which could slay a person invisibly by sucking the blood out of one would very likely give rise to the notion of demons and Hell, if they didn't already have the concept from mythology and/or religion.
As an added bonus, it would definitely interfere with birds and other creatures which rely upon geo-magnetism.
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As another thought, once they discovered electricity, and the relationship between it and magnetism, you have the makings of an engine core.
[Answer]
Get a hula hoop, stick some cylindrical magnets into it (if your society has 1600's tech they can figure something with [lodestones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodestone)). The point is that the magnets should be aligned with the circle, like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ek8zm.png)
Take it to the insane magnetic field. Stick it to a structure through the hub someway, keep the circle standing vertically and aligned to the magnetic field. If it hasn't started spinning like crazy yet, give it a good, solid kick.
You've just got yourself a magnetic mill. You can use it to grind grains and stuff.
A high-tech society would be extracting energy from the magnetic field. setup above would look like a perpetual motion machine, but it would actually be draining the magnetic field (i.e.: it might take millions of years, but it would eventually stop). You could use the machine's motion to generate electricity.
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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.
This is going to be a test run of [hard-science](/questions/tagged/hard-science "show questions tagged 'hard-science'"), social science edition. This is in accordance with <http://meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/2348/8914>.
Okay, so a meteor is about to hit the earth, all our efforts to stop it failed, but a super-man like character saves the day by punching it away\*. He then returns to Earth, to find a bunch of reporters trying to interview him.
How would individuals and society react.
We will say that he is basically a human, the only exception being his powers. Also, his social skills are that of the average human.
Now here is the hard part. Citing relevant *scientific* literature that relates to human behavior (check psychology and sociology), *extrapolate* your answer based off scientific research.
Notes about this type of question:
Obviously, there are no psychological on actual superheros, but there isn't any physics research on actual [Type II civilizations influencing accretion rates](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12311/how-can-a-type-ii-civilization-influence-accretion-rates-from-a-debris-disk-to-a). The top answer extrapolated based on current knowledge how it could be done. An answer for this would extrapolate research on human behavior as to they would react to this scenario.
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\*Not *necessarily* hard-science with respect to physics. (It could be, but we aren't dealing with that for now.)
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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.
History and mythology are full of characters who were credited with having superpowers. It is quite likely that the acclaim he gets will go to his head and he will encourage people to worship him as a god. In any case they would see him as a hero. Women would flock to him.
People who were seen as superheroes in their day or even today.
[Alexander the Great’s](https://legioilynx.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/alexander-the-greats-army-followers-and-logistics/) army was well, great. It consisted of more than 48,000 soldiers and at times grew to over 90,000 soldiers.
[Buddha](https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=buddha%20followers) There are 376 million followers worldwide. Buddhists seek to reach a state of nirvana, following the path of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, who went on a quest for Enlightenment around the sixth century BC.
There are of course many more.
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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.
**It depends.**
I think the scenario you're describing, in which one person instantly and single-handedly saves the world from an obvious disaster, is far enough beyond the pale that a hard-science answer based on real research isn't very possible. Our biggest Obvious Looming Disasters-- the Cold War, Nazi Germany-- were mitigated by lots of regular\* people working together. *Obvious* is key here, because if most people don't recognize the threat, then the person who claims to mitigate it isn't likely to receive much credit. And while there have been people with abilities that *could* be considered superhuman, they're usually treated as forgettable curiosities (see ["idiot savants"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome)).
However, the reaction of the general public to a superhuman has been tackled before in fiction, so here are some possible public attitudes toward a superhuman and an example of each. All of these assume that your superhuman is a decent person overall and generally tries to do the right thing; if not, public perception could vary dramatically.
* **Religious devotion: *Batman v Superman* (2016).** A major theme in *BvS* is that Superman is treated like a god. The movie even shows that god-status isn't ubiquitous, and some would likely see your superhuman as a false idol.
* **Hostility: *Batman v Superman.*** A *second* major theme in *BvS* is Batman's own treatment of Superman. He ignores the problem of whether Superman is a real or false idol, and takes a Pascal's Wager approach to the problem; the consequences of Superman turning hostile are so dire that it needs to be treated as an "absolute certainty." (The flaws in his logic are addressed in [this think piece](https://www.overthinkingit.com/2016/03/29/batmans-wager/), but that doesn't make it an unrealistic reaction.)
* **Talisman/cultural icon: *The Dark Knight* (2008).** In one scene, a would-be criminal sees the Batsymbol in the sky and decides not to go through with a drug deal, purely out of the threat of retaliation. (Batman is not, strictly speaking, a superhuman, but he's treated as such by the [superstitious and cowardly lot](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Batman_(comics))).
* **Moneymaker: *Spider-Man* franchise.** Spider-Man's most public critic, J. Jonah Jameson, treats the web-slinger not as a real threat but as a means to sell newspapers. By printing attention-grabbing headlines about this otherwise well-liked "menace," his sales increase dramatically. (This can be seen in the real world as well, by the prevalence of tabloid magazines that publish scandalous made-up drivel about famous people.)
* **Dependence: *The Powerpuff Girls.*** In the episode [*Too Pooped to Puff*](http://powerpuffgirls.wikia.com/wiki/Too_Pooped_to_Puff), the townsfolk become utterly dependent on the girls to save them; so much so, in fact, that they lose all basic motivation and treat devastating monsters as funny spectacles. While this is obviously an extreme example played for laughs, the presence of your superhuman might make world crises seem less scary to a lot of people.
\*Skilled, yes; superhuman, no.
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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.
I would imagine this could scenario play out in many different ways especially considering other matters that would be relevant to the outcome. We would need to have an idea of:
* Do people know of the asteroid ahead of time, and what evidence do they have to know it is a real threat?
If the prior evidence of the asteroid is unreliable (ex. The rumors of the world ending in the year 2000, 2012 Mayan apocalypse), many people won't be likely to believe it. If it is visible with the naked eye from the surface of earth, people will probably be scared in advance (considering people like to believe what they can see) which is good for the credibility of our hero.
* Who sees or hears about our hero saving the planet?
If everyone in the United States could see the hero saving the world, there will obviously be more people believing in the hero story who live in the U.S. (Or countries who have good relations with the U.S.) because logically, people tend to trust those they knows as allies more than those who they know as enemies. Perspective can really change the way people react.
* Who is our hero after saving the planet? Do they keep their identity secret? Do they start saving people or doing other things such as this regularly? If people can meet the hero in person and know the hero's identity, people are much more likely to calm down and start to believe this hero is real and/or the good guy. If the hero vanishes after the first event, the event will likely become a story to be told throughout the years as a mystery (Ex. Building of pyramids, Jesus' existence, etc.)
In any scenario, you will have people who will take it to one extreme or the other. Some people will fully believe the hero is real, and they will praise him and the event (Think of those worshipped along the lines of figures like Jesus. [Please don't kill me for that. I'm trying to be subjective for the sake of answering the question.]). Some will believe it to be a conspiracy and obsess over it (Ex. Area 51, Alien abductions, government cover ups, the work of an underground group). Some will be terrified and might even try to hunt the hero down to get rid of what they see as a threat because the hero is different and "new". Some will be more laid back about the controversy (Typically not wanting to get involved with those who are obsessive). These people might be less intense versions of the other three examples or they might just be those who don't care about the event, don't believe in the initial asteroid, aren't sure what to think, etc.
**TL,DR** People will be divided no matter the circumstances. The circumstances are just there to determine who will believe and how others will respond to that.
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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.
**Nota Bene**: You've tagged the question as "hard science", but since I can't be bothered spending a few hours looking up citations for relevant books and articles, I decided not to bother answering. Then I noticed that the other answers are ignoring the hard-science tag, so I figured might as well throw my hat in. If you object, drop me a comment and I'll delete this.
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Heroes are only heroes once they are dead. When they're alive, they are either a *tool*, a *threat*, or a *tyrant*.
To put it another way, the people in power want to stay in power. They cannot allow what is effectively a walking talking nuke to wander around freely. They will therefore start by trying to control the superhero to (reinforce their own power) and if that doesn't work, will try to destroy them to prevent their enemies from controlling them.
The superhero has 3 options: Either they allow themselves to be used (tool), or they seize power for themselves (tyrant), or they reject the whole power dynamic and strike out on their own, in which case they will quickly be branded a super*villain* by just about everyone (threat).
One of the most important tools that any government uses, is propaganda. Nowadays this gets confused a bit, what with "freedom of the press" and all, but smear campaigns are still widely used and highly effective. So while initial reactions to the superhero are likely to be either "yay they so cool" or "oh noes the world is ending" (with a tiny minority of "consider the implications"), within a few months this will have been reshuffled so that they can be neatly pigeonholed into one of the three T's.
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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.
I think you would get a more extreme version than you get now a days with some muscians, actors and public figures. There are many famous people who are elevated almost to the status of superhuman, even in the movies they star in. A lot of people really buy into this and worship some of these stars.
Your superhero would no doubt have a personality, and when he does the interview and is witnessed by everyone around the world via the media he will come across in a certain way. People will have different interpretations of him/her, some will love, some will hate. Everyone will be talking be all over the internet, tv, newspapers, magazines and this superhero will just become another celebrity.
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A blade made out of tungsten alloy that’s also electrically heated to 3000C. The shape and sharpness is similar to a katana.
The user carries a battery pack that provides enough energy for the sword to last about 3 hours.
The dimensions of the blade is 75cm long, 3cm wide and a thickness of 6.7mm at its thickest point.
How would it do against plate armour, chainmail and of course, bare skin?
Ps:Don’t worry about the weight there’s a guy strong enough to wield it in my universe.
I got my idea from here:
<https://youtu.be/_efVoeiSKP0>
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**It would damage itself more than the opponent.**
As other answers mentioned, Tungsten would be much too brittle to use, and shatter at the first strike(s).
If this can be overcome by changing the metal composition, you would run into different problems like heat dissapation making the handle too hot to hold.
Even if a structurally sound and handleable sword could be made with a portable battery, it wouldn't be very effective against plate armour.
Plate armour is already rivaling swords on structural integrety, rendering swords almost useless if not used as a stabbing implement. If the swords structural integrety was lowered even further by heating it up, it would have much higher chances of breaking, especially when used for stabbing.
Apart from that, a single strike from a heated sword to a plate of steel would probably not transfer enough heat quickly enough to have much effect in the first place. The time of contact is not long enough for the heat transfer, and the heat might be damaging, but would quickly be dissapated by the surrounding armour.
To add to this, it would be completely impossible to keep any kind of edge on the sword. It is already hard to not destroy the edge of a sword by hitting anything hard, especially so when the sword is weakened by heat. A single strike would roll and chip the edge blunter than a rock.
As for attacks against chain mail, this would be a bit more effective, but would still be quite damaging to the sword, and the heat would still not have much added value.
Against bare skin, a sword is a sword. It will cut. But of course hitting any kind of bone would again be damaging to the sword. The heat would actually work against you when attacking an unarmoured opponent, because it would cauturise the wound instantly, minimising blood loss. The worst problem with superficial wounds would be the n-th degree burn, while painful and damaging, this has a much larger window of being treatable than gushing blood loss.
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Yes, you have an effective weapon here. Just throw away the useless sword and find a way to get the battery pack to release all its energy at once instead of over three hours. It contains a *lot* of energy, and will make an excellent explosive device.
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Tungsten is very brittle. So brittle that it shatters when hit.
Your warrior will be helpless on the battlefield after the first blow.
Summary: it will work very poorly.
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3000C is very, very hot. Steel forges and glassblowers operate around 1000C. They wear protective gear just to stand near the stuff.
I know volcanologists have issues with their gear spontaneously catching fire due to the heat off of lava flows (again, roughly 1000C). Granted, the flows are a lot bigger than this sword. Still, I think contactless ignition would be a recurring threat.
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Your blade is about [150 cm^3 of tungsten, roughly 3 kg](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=75+cm+*+3+cm+*+6.7mm+of+tungsten). That's a lot of mass to heat up and maintain at 3000 K. The surface area of your sword is about 550 cm^2. More surface area will radiate away the energy faster requiring a large battery and also melting the user.
All that heat will be right near your face and hands making it possibly impossible to hold without bulky thermal protection. Even if you were, the chaos of combat might result in your arm being jostled and that 3000 C blade brushing against YOU.
And, as others have noted, it won't even work against armor.
Swords were not terribly effective on the battlefield. They required being in close combat which makes it more likely you'll get injured. They require lots of room to swing, which means your allies have to stay well away from you leaving you fighting isolated. Movies which depict battles as a mixed brawl of individual sword battles are fantasy. Victorious ancient and medieval armies fought in tight formations. An isolated warrior is a dead warrior.
Swords are the [service pistol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_pistol) of melee combat. They were a backup weapon you use when you lose your main weapon. Or used for duels.
If the sword wasn't your main weapon, what was? The [polearm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_weapon). And the ultimate expression of the polearm was the [pike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_(weapon)).
***What you want is a heated pike.*** And you want a lot of them. And you probably want to scale it back to 1000 C.
Only heat the tip. It's much less mass to heat up and much smaller surface area to radiate that heat away meaning a smaller battery and potentially more pikemen. Add a bit of very high temperature insulation between the hot tip and the pole. The pole itself could be wood, good insulation, or perhaps aluminum. To protect the wiring from the battery to the tip, run it inside protected channel in the pole, or perhaps make the pole hollow. Having the heated tip at the end of a long pole keeps it well away from the user avoiding baking the user or their buddies next to them on the line.
Expecting to repeatedly bash anything at 3000 C against other things and expect to have anything but a lump of hot slag left over is ambitious. Scale it back to a [mere 1000 C](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=1000+C+knife). Use a [superalloy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superalloy) designed to hold together at that temperature. They will also be stronger, lighter, and sharper than tungsten. At the end of a pole you'll appreciate the reduced weight.
Thrusting with a sharp, light 1000 C alloy tipped pike is more likely to penetrate armor than slashing with a heavy, dull tungsten sword. Even if it doesn't penetrate it still scare the hell out of the enemy line.
Ancient and medieval warfare was a lot less stabbing and a lot more pushing, ["the awful push of pike"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_of_pike), with the goal of disrupting the enemy's formation. Even if you don't penetrate their armor, the enemy isn't going to want to confront a wall of lava-hot pikes. They will probably attempt to back away disrupting their formation and giving you victory.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xehlb.jpg)
Like this, but also on fire.
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As a very gross oversimplification, a knight in full armor was *battered* down, not *cut* down. That's why many knights carried a [mace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_(bludgeon)#European_Middle_Ages) instead of a sword. Sure, a [war hammer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_hammer) was used to penetrate the armor, but that was no sword, either.
Heating the sword means that a little heat is transferred on a blow, but as a gut feeling that won't be the main damaging mechanism to the armor or to the person under that armor. The contact just isn't long enough.
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Never mind its brittleness at 3000C or otherwise ...
unless your sword fights are in a perfect vacuum or a halon or noble gas atmosphere, it'll burn with the oxygen in air long before it reaches 3000K.
Anywhere tungsten is heated it is kept enveloped in inert gas - either as a lightbulb filament, in the glass envelope - or as a TIG welding rod where T refers to Tungsten, and IG refers to a plume of inert gas (often argon) around the weld.
You are now holding a hilt...
A couple of references... [confirming the glass envelope is to keep oxygen away from the filament](https://www.uu.edu/dept/physics/scienceguys/2002Aug.cfm) and [combusting tungsten wire as part of another experiment](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18961689). I still can't view even the abstract of that Springer article.
However its [MSDS (pdf) lists it as a flammable hazard](https://nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/1959.pdf) in the powder form, but heating it to white heat doesn't seem like a good idea.
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The heat adds absolutely no advantage against an armored opponent. To do damage, you'd have to hold the heated sword against the foe long enough for significant heat transfer to take place. But the foe is encased in steel, which is a good conductor & radiator of heat, so it disperses over the piece of armor that you're hitting, with some of it radiating away. Meanwhile the foe is most likely wearing a nice insulated gambeson <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambeson> or other padding under the armor, so it will take a while for the heat to penetrate deep enough to affect him.
Bottom line: while you'll frantically trying to hold your glowing hot sword against the foe's armor (while trying to avoid your own sword :-)), he twists around, inserts his dagger in one of your armor's joints, and kills you.
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Considering tungsten's melting point is [3,422 °C](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten), your champion would be swinging something akin to a very hot wet noodle, so not very effective. Realize a blade in medieval times had semi-sharp edges, not to specifically cut through things, but to rather concentrate the force of the inertial energy being brought to bear by it. Even though [tungsten is quite a bit heavier in weight per cubic amount than steel](https://mojobob.com/roleplay/weight_chart.html), if the weapon is a hot noodle, it would just deform as it hit something rather than cutting through it. Your champion would be much better off just swinging a cold blade made of tungsten than they would be by swinging the hot noodle. More than likely they'd do more damage to themselves than they would their opponent.
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**TL; DR - Hot sword is better for roasting its wielder than chopping up their enemies**
Looking at this from a heat transfer perspective, this sword has some problems that are going to make it unusable. [dspeyer's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/168574/21272) notes the danger of spontaneous ignition of clothing. I'm going to address what happens to the wielder in the case where nothing spontaneously ignites. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to treat the sword as a cylinder with a diameter of 3 cm and a height of 75 cm being held 60 cm in front of a plane 50 cm wide.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HytMX.png)
Assuming the sword acts as a blackbody, it will transfer heat via thermal radiation to something at body temperature at a rate of:
$$\dot{Q}' = \pi d \sigma\left(T\_{sword}^4 - T\_{body}^4\right)$$
which gives a heat transfer rate of 613 kW/m. With a 75 cm long sword, we're looking at a heat output of 460 kW. This heat will be released in all directions, so looking at the fraction of a circle surrounding the sword the "body" blocks, it will only receive 1/8 of that power, or 57.8 kW.
Let's put that number in perspective. If I take 100 kg of water (which is a not-too-terrible model of your swordsman) and start putting heat into it at 57.8 kW, I can take it from body temperature (37 C) to the temperature at which death will almost certainly occur (44 C) in under a minute.
In other words, it doesn't matter how effective a weapon the sword is. It will kill its wielder before it can ever be used.
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Also, doing some math on that battery...
The sword is about 1000x the volume of a light bulb filament. Assuming the energy cost is linear in volume (because I don't want to do really difficult math), this means we need 100kw. For 3 hours, 300kwh.
Our best LiON batteries get a bit under 300wh/kg, so this will weigh a metric ton.
It would require only 30kg of gasoline, but a highly efficient fuel cell (an internal combustion engine isn't nearly efficient enough). Also, the gasoline may ignite from being near the sword.
Or you could do it with 200 *milligrams* of reactor-grade uranium, which means you can afford to compensate for an inefficient engine by increasing the fuel 10-fold.
Or 12 *micrograms* of antimatter, which might be *easier* to build a backpack-sized reactor for. Also much easier to blow up the entire battlefield. On purpose or by accident.
As for 300kwh released at once as an explosion, that's 1000 hand grenades, but roughly a third the power of the smallest bombs the US air force typically drops.
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Tungsten is a useless material for this application, as it's very brittle. Its more useful cousin is tungsten carbide, which is a lot tougher, but it's still very brittle compared to most steels.
Most steels and titanium alloys get soft when heated, so if you want a heated weapon, your options are either tungsten carbide, or a super-alloy.
Inconel springs to mind, or Hastelloy. Both are trademarked though, so a "nickle super-alloy" is your best bet. There are some of the best alloys under high temperature conditions, as the get tougher with increasing temperature. However, 3000 C is definitely out of range for most materials. 1000 C is already extremely hot.
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If you could make a glowing sword people would either revere you as some kind of saint or fear you as some kind of witch and have you put to death so actually your glowing sword, back pack and whatnot would actually be the least of your worries, I'd be more inclined to use the sword to make toast...that's a win for everyone.
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This question came to me after re-watching Jason movies and some Hulk movies. [SCP-096](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-096) was a huge inspiration as well. Forgive me if this question is silly but I'm curious on how humanity would react to something like this if it actually came to be.
So in this scenario, a psychotic misanthropic man by some unknown means does not take physical damage and is unable to be destroyed. Diseases, toxins, and elements also do not affect him in any way. Neither does depriving him of food, water, sleep and oxygen stop him. This man intends on killing every single human being on the planet due to some delusion that it's his destiny to do so. He goes outside and starts killing people one by one.
The limitations for this man is that his top speed is about 15 miles per hour (said to be the average human running speed). His jumping ability is also common being able to jump up to 16 inches. His agility is also 'average'. In terms of physical strength, his maximum output is equal to that of a bull elephant (estimated to be able to lift 9000kg. He also enters a state of rage upon seeing other humans and tends to attack without thinking or planning.
What steps could be taken for someone like this? Could such a man be successfully contained indefinitely and away from people? What could be done to stop this person?
EDIT: To those wondering if this man has a lifespan, as the title says, he is immortal and is not impaired by age. Another is that this scenario is taking place in our current time (2019) and this is taking place in the United States.
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**Incapacitate him**
1. Dig a hole, put murderer in the hole, pour concrete
2. Dig a hole, put murderer in the hole, pour molten iron
3. Cast murderer in steel, dump it in the ocean
4. Launch it with the next satellite for deep space.
5. ...
Honestly, the possibilities are infinite. Strong as an elephant is meaningless if he can't move. If he doesn't use a vehicle, you can circle around him all day (less refuelling) and ponder how to stop him.
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**Imprison him in an indoor skydiving facility.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ti0jc.jpg)
Superpowered earthbound killers are sort of frustrating to me. Doomsday, for example. Is there no-one in the DC world who can levitate people telekinetically? Can Superman not just puff him up into the air with superbreath, then puff again, and puff and puff while Batman figures out a longer term solution?
Once these Hulkish bruisers are off the ground, they have no leverage. They can flail about with good comic effect. Shouting is fine. They might be able to spit hard or throw stuff like a caged monkey. But that is about it.
So your psycho gets put in an indoor skydiving facility and there he stays, hovering. Sell tickets for people who want to watch the flailing. If you need him for your plot you can have someone come break him out.
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Assuming he can be contained, launch him into Jupiter. Not the sun: the sun has flares and coronal mass ejections that might fling him back out. Dump him into Jupiter. He'd stop sinking in the supercritical hydrogen layer a few thousand kilometers down and be stuck there for at least a few billion years until the sun entered the white dwarf stage and Jupiter started cooling, but it could be another few billion years after that before it cooled enough to give him a frozen surface he could actually walk on.
If anyone started strip-mining Jupiter for the mass before then, one would assume they'd have sufficient technology to deal with him another way like firing him into a black hole.
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Make him depressed, he wont get out of bed.
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## Teach him math
Poor invulnerable psychotic misanthropic man... He's taken on an impossible task. There are 7.5 billion people. To kill us all in a year would require slaughtering more than 20,000,000 people a day. This seems implausible.
Killing 500 people a day, it would take him around 40,000 years to manage 7.5 billion - but over that long a period, that would scarcely dent population growth!
One invincible psychotic murderer simply cannot get the job done. The mathematics don't pan out.
Now, if he just takes it easy and waits however many centuries or millennia it takes for us to go *nearly* extinct... As long as we don't become an interstellar species, he just needs patience - and a good grasp of math.
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I looked up the SCP you mentioned, and I don't see how you could possibly stop him. It explicitly says he can't be stopped.
So I'm gonna ignore that part, and go with the Jason example. Lure him into a pit or room somewhere, and pour concrete on him. Once it cures, dispose of him however you like. Launch him into a [graveyard orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_orbit), drop him into Jupiter or the sun, or bury him in a subduction zone so he'll sink into the mantle.
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# Subvert his personality co-opt him - turn him into a superhero.
**[Anger management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anger_management).**
After catching him with a net, drop him in a teflon coated slippery bowl, surround the bowl with a fence and see-through plastic shield (only needs to be strong enough to stop people falling in), then invite the public to come gawp at him and mock him.
No doubt he will rage and rage, quite impotentley of course, he will be mocked about this.
This would count as [exposure tharapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy) in the first stage of:
**[Cognitive behavioural therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy).**
First an assesment would have produced clear triggers for the murderous rage: humans. Thus the exposure above.
He would then be given councelling, if necessary by remote (no image of a human need be seen at first) to encourage him to develope strategies of coping with his anger.
A variety of therapies may be given: [CPT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_processing_therapy), [Stress innoculation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience) (psychological resillience therapy, [Relaxation Training](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxation_technique), [ACT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_and_commitment_therapy).
Ultimatley he will learn to accept his urges and private feelings without the necessity of acting upon them, understand better the context of his life and be free to chose to act for the benefit of all.
Either that or he can have raw custard ([dilatant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilatant) non-newtonian fluid) poured on him to a depth that he finds disagreeable and just let him live there in the bowl. There is a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSXdhwriJEc), fast forward to 7.30 to start to see the point of the effect (beware - terrible jokes allert) 14 minutes in the guy starts to panic.
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# Virtual Reality imprisonment
Build a machine that constrains his motion, and turns it into power. Imprison him in a virtual reality machine, giving him the satisfaction of chasing and killing an infinite number of humans, meanwhile all of his efforts produce enough power to keep a small city lit up.
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I don't see why restraining him would take anything more than a typical prison inmate? Maybe a somewhat reinforced cell? Invulnerable and immortal makes no difference, since you don't want to hurt or kill your inmates. The only important super ability he has is that he's a bit strong. So long as your cell would withstand a smart inmate with a crowbar and a winch, then you're good.
But first, you have to capture and restrain him. Assuming he's "invulnerable" to everything, so tasers and gasses won't work, some kind of entrapment would work - a pit trap, for example.
The encasement that others have suggested (mortar, lava, etc) should be safe since he can't accidentally be harmed. By the same measure, you could just enclose him ny driving at him with a truck.
Or what about just playing golf with him and a bunch of RPGs? Consider, you have a pit trap in a golf course. You've lured him to the golf course. Your goal is to knock him into the pit trap by shooting him with high explosives.
There's one guy with essentially zero anti-capture super powers other than "push/punch door", and he can't push a door with 9 tonnes of force since unless he has something to brace against. Exactly how far does he expect to get?
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So let's flip the question around. So, we're That Guy. We can't be hurt or killed, and we're pretty strong, but we can be captured, and we're susceptible to losing our mind around people. We need to kill as many people as possible, preferably All The People.
Bombs... just won't kill enough. Going out into crowds, we won't be able to kill nearly as many and will risk capture.
And we need to kill them FAST. A few years, tops. The more time we take, the more likely they are to capture us.
So, what other options are there?
* We can leap onto air liners and plough them into buildings and walk away and grab more air liners and rinse and repeat, but after the first few all planes will be grounded and we'll just be shot down on takeoff. We'd kill hundreds, maybe thousands if we're lucky. We need to be thinking at least in the hundreds of thousands.
* Ocean liners. We could probably sink and destroy a few without being discovered before people stopped using them. But say we hit the top ten biggest ones in one fell sweep, in the first day. About five thousand per ship, assuming they're full. That's fifty thousand people, which is a decent number. Now we just need to equal or top that kill rate every hour for the next twenty years or so... OK, this isn't going to work.
* What if we destroy all nuclear plants? Most are built to survive a direct impact from an airplane, but possibly not a fully loaded Airbus A380. The reason to do this is to just make much of the planet unlivable, reducing our target area. Except... we'd need to destroy an insane number of them before we'd make any significant dent in the livable surface area, and I'm unsure there even are that many (anyone want to do the math?) Plus, after the first few, the rest would be temporarily decommissioned or protected against the plane attack method, so we'd need other approaches.
* OK, so it's all-out thermonuclear war, or nothing. But how do we start thermonuclear war? All the systems are guarded. Even if we broke into a nuclear depot, how would we fire the missiles? How do we figure out all the interlocks and safety protocols and authentication requirements? The only real way is to get into the design team.
* OK, bioweapons, then. The only real way there, again, is to get into a bioweapons research team.
There is one final option, but it would take some luck.
Invest in pot, lots of pot, enough to keep you mellow even in large crowds. Always be stoned, your cover depends on not going Hulk. Invest in an internet startup. Become rich enough to start up some companies (this is the luck part). Start up a successful space research company (takes more luck, or at least a fanatical level of determination to see it through). Create some truly massive rockets. Begin many other companies with philanthropic goals to get a following with religious, unquestioning fervor. Get the company to the point where it is regularly sending interplanetary ships. Get some of your followers to agree to a mission where they attach rockets to space rocks for space mining in orbit around your lunar facility. Attach the rockets to something which is about 60 miles (100km) in diameter.
Do the maneuver perfectly, exactly as you had told your investors, bringing it safely into orbit around the moon... except, once it is hidden from all those pesky earth-based observers by the moon, have the rockets change the path to an orbital slingshot which ploughs the rock into the Earth, wiping out all life other than the few employees you have left in space, who will be easy to mop up.
How would you stop or restrain such a man? Basically the same way as any other man, as I said above. But first, you need to *know* that you needed to stop him.
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Build a pit in a granite formation, say 10x10 hole, 20 feet deep. Disguise the opening. Place bait (ie distressed damsel) on opposite side of pit.
Mindless rage monster runs at the damsel and falls in pit.
Drop a 9.5 x 9.5 x 9.5 stone cube on top of rage monster. Fill remainder of hole with cement or lime slurry.
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***tl;dr*-** He'd get restrained by chains, then become a test subject at some secret research facility with the goal of discovering how his body apparently violates the known laws of physics.
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## He'd be wrapped in chains, then studied.
We'd probably just wrap him up in some chains until a more customized aperture could be constructed. Probably something like a steel suit, except it wouldn't be mobile or cover all of him. That way he'd be restrained, but scientists would still have easy access.
Some answers have suggested blasting him off into space – which would seem like a neat idea, if we actually wanted to get rid of him. But, we wouldn't. ***Because he's freakin' invulnerable!***
I mean, seriously, the guy can survive being strapped to a hydrogen bomb? Can he survive the hottest temperatures we have, above which all of our current materials melt? Such amazing abilities would make him an *incredible* scientific curiosity!
It'd probably be the case where the first major military that hears about him will steal him off to some research facility and cover up any claims of him having existed.
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This answer is based on the information given in your question.1
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Aside from being *immortal* and *invulnerable*, the only advantage of this superhuman is their strength. Thus by negating the strength advantage you effectively have them *neutralized*.
**How do we negate the strength advantage?**
I am glad you asked, simply [put them under pressure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a01QQZyl-_I). Find a means to apply a constant pressure upon them, greater than the force they can apply and you are done. You could e.g. make use of [hydraulics](https://www.explainthatstuff.com/hydraulics.html) to build up a pressure differential they are put in-between.
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1I did not look up any of the mentioned pop-culture phenomena as they are neither linked nor inlined and thus not *actively* relevant
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# Your magma bath is ready
I'm sorry, has it gotten cold?
Using bait (death row inmate / cardboard cut out of Bob Ross) lure the man/creature into a location where you can pour liquid metal or magma (substance that is currently liquid but will harden at room temperature) on them. Making sure that the substance once harden is harder than what the man/creature can break.
After the first pour as long as the creature is partly covered you can repeat the process over and over again.
Each time you would be able to cover more of the creature. At one point the creature will be gone, trapped inside the metal casing.
Now don't stop. Keep pouring layer after layer. Every year or so engineers/scientists compete to see who has the strongest/hardest material. The winner will have their material chosen as the next layer.
When the technology bubble pops and humanity is thrown back into the dark ages. Hopefully there is enough layers wrapped around this creature to keep them trapped until technology catches up again.
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1. Bolt and chain,
2. Wall, and/or
3. Maximum security prison setup.
Cemented ground (so a dirt ramp cannot be constructed, sturdy wall, added chain if you're able to get near him. Reinforce these regularly. Determine his range and start with your reinforced fence / wall outside the amount of time it will take to construct; then continually reinforce it indefinitely.
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There are multiple people suggesting that they fling him into a planet or a star or what ever... of course, how do you stop the unstoppable? More importantly, if this is your option, why stop the unstoppable? Just fling him into space on a trajectory away from Earth. Since space is a vacuum, he'll never stop, just like he wants... but he also can't get to anything to provide that equal and opposite reaction to return home. He just drifts away in space forever... A human Voyager.
See, space is really big and the likelihood of hitting something at all is really small... you could go light years and never have an impact
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Dig a deep hole, build a big bonfire in it, once the fire is burned out, and all that remains is ashes, surround the hole with people for him to murder. When he comes over to murder the people run up behind him, and kick him in the ash hole.
With sufficiently deep ashes (like up to his waist), after allowing him to thrash around for a bit down there, he'll be covered in ash, which will help the steel stick to him. Then you dump molten steel on him, the molten steel will cover his top, but the ashes will prevent him from climbing on top of it. The first layer should be around a foot or so thick, and once it's hardened, you should have encased him fairly well up to the hip. After that it's a matter of doing that a layer at a time so he can't somehow swim up through the molten steel if too much is added at once. Once he's fully encased up to his hip over the head, you can either leave him there, and hope humanity has left by the time it breaks down, or you know, toss him into jupiter like a previous answer said.
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I'm writing a story where some agents are sent to a small town in the 80s and must work out what is going on there. However, there are no guns in the town and to prevent the agents from having an overwhelming advantage against the local people, I want to create a condition, mechanism or phenomenon that could stop guns from working. I will set some conditions about the scenario:
* The story takes place in the 1980s, so the technology involved must (at least mostly) fit that era.
* It is a small town, so while I could add some rich secret organization (because the plot is in its early stages), cheaper ways to deal with guns would be better.
* Preventing guns from working in the entire town would be perfect, but if this is not possible, preventing them from working just in closed spaces would be fine too.
* I'd like it to be as hard as possible for readers to find out how the method works.
* The point about guns not working is not a plot twist (but its cause could be) and it is well known by local people, but not by people from outside.
* The agents are common police officers and they didn't know about the gun problem until they attempted to use them.
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**Frame challenge - sabotage**
As stated, there are no firearms in the town, so the only firearms that need to be neutralised are those that the police officers bring in themselves. Separate the agents from their firearms - while they are in the shower, or swimming, or doing a gym workout or mandatory-welcome-to-the-town sweat lodge - and sabotage them. Whoever is responsible for this practice has a firm anti-guns agenda which may be totally unrelated to whatever other plots are going on in town.
Regarding the preferred low-detectability method to sabotage the firearms, this will vary depending on what type the agents are carrying. For plot purposes I would suggest that the agents are only carrying semi-automatic pistols (eg Colt M1911, Browning Hi-Power, Beretta M92 or similar). The saboteurs remove the firing pin and rapidly file it down (or replace it with a prepared filed-down firing pin, though they would need to know the model in advance). Standard daily cleaning for most people would not involve removing and inspecting the firing pin (normally just separate the slide from the handgrip, remove and clean the barrel and oil the action) so the sabotage will not be detected until the agent attempts to fire. The average police officer will not be carrying a spare firing pin, so their handgun is a useless chunk of metal until they can get a replacement.
How and why someone has such a firm aversion to firearms is a story-based question, but given the number of firearms-related fatalities that occur it should be easy to create motivation for an actor.
As o.m. stated, if there were a magic technology that could neutralise firearms then it would be in use - the police would deploy it every time there's a siege situation involving firearms! Short of technomagic far beyond the 1980s level involving primer-eating nanites or mysterious energy fields imposing energy thresholds there is nothing that can stop the trigger >> hammer >> firing pin >> primer >> powder >> speeding bullet sequence of events without sabotaging the mechanism involved. (Note that the mysterious energy fields will probably also stop vehicles, power tools and possibly essential biological processes.)
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I've got to say that Hippeus\_Lancer's comment is the simplest:. There is a local law that prohibits guns, either in general or at least in routine use by the law enforcement personnel.
Your agents don't know this, they come into town and arrest someone, taking him to the local sheriff to detain him. The suspect complains that he was arrested at gunpoint. The sheriff lets him go and then bawls out the agents, because he knows the arrestee's lawyer will have a field-day if he tries to prosecute.
In a very real sense, the agents' guns "don't work." If they pull them out, the arrest is invalid and the perp walks. If you need to circumvent the "gun's don't work" scenario, you could have it so that they can be used if a warrant is obtained in advance. The process for getting one can be as simple or Byzantine as you need it to be.
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**Your agents do not bring guns.**
It is not universal that all law enforcement officials are packing heat. In Britain many police do not have guns. In China many police do not have guns. The police are armed with batons and other weapons, but not guns.
In the US it is more unusual for police to not carry a gun, but not as unusual as a town in the 1980s US where no-one has a gun. I conclude there are strict gun control laws in that town. If it is the US maybe it is an alternate universe.
Your agent could, by virtue of his or her authority, bring a gun to a town with no guns. I can think of two reasons not to do it.
1: **Agent is trying to blend in**. People whose business it is to know will notice agent has a gun and remember that they do not. Proclaiming yourself as the superior outsider is not a great way to get cooperation from the locals. It is a great way to get avoided by people who know things you want to learn, but who are afraid of getting shot.
**2: Agent does not need a gun to do harm.** If the agent knows no-one has a gun, that is perfect. The agent is skilled in hand to hand combat but sometimes worries about getting shot by some twerp. No guns makes your agent the toughest person in town. That is not obvious until it is.
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I can think of no reason within the realm of 1980s science. Just consider, if there had been such a thing, don't you think the military and police would have employed it? Things get even more complex if you assume that it affects **only** this little town ...
* A (natural or genetically engineered) [anti-material bacteria](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-microbes-helped-clean-bp-s-oil-spill/). The linked example is something which goes after oil, others might go after lubricants in guns.
* A coastal town with salt water spray in the air. Unprotected metal corrodes quickly.
In both cases, countermeasures would be possible if the agents knew in advance. I get the feeling that you are looking for plot-shattering magic in order to solve a plot hole.
Two thoughts violating your last bullet point:
* Through some accident of history, the town is actually an enclave completely surrounded by another sovereign nation. There are treaties to allow the easy transit of people (including government employees on official business) and most goods, but guns would need a special permit.
* Not an enclave, but the only practical way to get there is by air or by freighter, and the airline does not allow the transport of firearms or explosives (even for government agents).
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**They ran out of ammo**
Simple enough.
It's a Gun-free town. Nobody carries them, they disapprove of them on principle, and by and large things are good.
Then the agents showed up, got into a brief fire-fight with a pack of wolves and ran out of ammunition.
Their guns are now entirely useless. There's no gunshop, no ammunition store. Even the police station doesn't keep ammunition, at least not in the calibres they need for their pistols.
Our intrepid agents must rely on their wits and whatever they can scrounge up from here on out.
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**Science Not Really**
Guns are simple machines. Springs, hammers and triggers. There is nothing electrical in them so you can't really affect them in a way that won't destroy something else.
Bullets are not that complicated either and the gun powder and primer is usually airtight inside a bullet. The bullets are brass and lead so it would be hard to affect them without affecting everything else.
What you're left with if you want to stop guns in a fixed area is magic. Outside drug runners gunned down the local priest in cold blood and with his dying breath he cursed guns and the death they bring. From that day guns simply don't work inside the town. The town is remote and hardly anyone fires a gun inside the town itself so basically unknown to anyone but a local.
Only other option is super science so something like it's not really 1980 and everyone is trapped in something like the Matrix and a programming bug stops guns from working in the town. Another option is nanites who target and disable guns. Finally a mind control system that prevents people from triggering weapons. As much as they want to, they can't pull the trigger.
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**Undetectable gas leaks make firearms an explosive risk**
This town does not take the usual step of adding an odour to natural gas to make it easily detectable. A majority of the town uses natural gas for heating but the whole town is run down to the point that gas leaks are common.
The people there will have adapted to minimize the risk; emphasizing big windows for natural light and ventilation, cooking outdoors.
A gunshot in an enclosed space is an unacceptable risk in any house when you can't detect a leak by smell. Your protagonists know this ahead of time and do not bring guns.
Maybe someone has deliberately engineered this situation through sabotage(?)
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# Cold climate
Temperatures a little below 0F/-18C can cause a gun's firing pin to become sluggish, which will cause misfires. Just google for `gun "firing pin" cold`. In humid conditions this becomes even more troublesome.
There are plenty of towns in Alaska where you get such inclement weather for many months per year. [Utqiagvik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utqiagvik,_Alaska), for example:
>
> The high temperature is above freezing on an average of only 120 days per year, and there are 106 days with a maximum at or below 0 °F (−18 °C). Freezing temperatures and snowfall can occur during any month of the year.
>
>
>
You can degrease guns and work around the problems of cold, but it may be that your agents did not have the time or resources to have done that properly.
# Sabotage at checkpoint
Also notice that Utqiagvik cannot be reached by roads; You need to take a boat or an airplane to get there, which provides for a point where the agents could be checked for guns. In such places, whomever is checking the guns may secretly damage them on purpose.
Other cities which are isolated and hard to get to might have a similar checkpoint issue.
# Humidity
Moisture inside guns can mess up the mechanisms for semi-automatic pistols - at worst they become unable to eject casings, thus jamming the weapon. If the town is constantly foggy guns will require constant maintenance for which the agents might not have the resources.
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Notice that the solutions above are not 100% effective (climate is a chance thing, and sabotage may be reverted if the agents find out), but they are troublesome enough to lead gunslingers into a disadvantageous situation.
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**Frame Challenge: Let them keep their guns**
If the agents must "work out what is going on" in the small town, that sounds like an investigation of a crime, mystery, or phenomenon. Guns only give an advantage in physical conflict, and even that is surprisingly limited. Unless you plan on there being a lot of Bourne-style Hollywood action, guns don't help your agents solve a mystery. If there is a climax involving physical danger that a gun would make short work of, include a plot reason the gun was inaccessible. There are also plenty of real-world factors that reduce their effectiveness, such as:
* Poor visibility
* Indoor close quarters
* Limited ammunition
* Risk of harming bystanders
That said, *please research the capabilities and limitations of firearms.* YouTube "Hollywood Gun Myths," or better, check out [literal training courses](https://onlinetraining.nra.org/).
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S.M. Stirling has a wonderful series of books called the Emberverse which portrays (among a variety of other physical law changes) the sever reduction in the combustion speed of gun powder. This causes bullets to fall out of gun barrels rather than flying out at killing speed. A number of different explanations for the changes are offered at different points in the series, but my favorite was one mentioned in passing during the first book.
To paraphrase...
How do we know that physical laws are constant across time? Isn't it possible that some universal constants (like the burning rate of gun powder) shift dramatically from time to time. If that shift only occurred rarely based on human perceived time, we wouldn't know about it. Perhaps late in the eighth century, a couple decades before gun powder was invented, the physical laws shifted to the state we are familiar with, and as a result, gun powder has behaved in its predictable useful way for only the last 1300 years. It might be completely normal for our universe to change things up every once in a while and we don't know anything about that because of the comparatively short time that we have had the technology to perceive it.
Addendum : It might be interesting to tweak the gun powder combustion rate in the opposite direction. Instead of slowing it, speed it up and lower the ignition point to below ambient temperature. Perhaps the reason that nobody has functional guns is that all of the ammo, including what was loaded in the guns all went off simultaneously in the first millisecond of the change. The guns which were luck enough to be unloaded at that moment would still be functional, but there would be no remaining ammo to put in them.
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### Other than a sci fi anti gun ray, you should look at weather.
* A combination of dew and sub zero temperatures has been known to freeze firing pins in guns. They can also freeze fireing pins from simply a temperature transition due to condensation([Eg](https://www.outdoorcanada.ca/how-to-have-a-problem-free-cold-weather-hunt/))
* Humity or condensation can spoil the powder charge. Moisture stops gunpowder from going boom, and low grade bullets letting the moisture seek in would fail in high humidity.
* Alternatively if it's a hot day touching metal is a very bad idea. Ive burnt myself by touching tools on a 45+ degree (C) day. If I touched a gun that wasnt kept in the fridge I'd burn my fingers.
* There's constant dust everywhere. If you draw a gun out of its protective case within a few minutes there's so enough dust in it that it needs to be stripped apart and cleaned before it can fire again.
### Or local manufacturing laws for bullets.
For example the banning of lead in consumer products forcing bullets to be made of something else, eg copper. The less lead seeping into the environment the better, and different materials for the bullets mess with the [Obturation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obturation) of the bullet as it travels the barrel. The linked wikipedia page shows that switching from lead bullets to copper bullets increases barrel pressure from 49MPa to 392MPa.
A gun not made for these pressures would be prone to misfire and catastrophic breach of its barrel when fired.
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[The Trigger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trigger) by Arthur C Clarke and Michael McDowell is all about a device that detonates explosives remotely. This could be used to disarm agents approaching (and probably injure unwary ones).
I haven't read the book for years, but seem to recall the device is a beam that excites a resonance in nitrogen-based explosives. Wikipedia says the discovery in the novel was accidental and thus poorly understood; a blocking variant is developed later.
It's worth a read for inspiration on the implications, as well as for the central idea.
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The local supply of bullets has faulty primers. The officers went to the local range for practice/qualification and expended their working ammunition, then refilled from a new batch of local supply that no one else has used.
Quite a shocking surprise when they pull their service arms in a situation and just hear a loud >click<.
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## Whoopi Goldbergs ... lots of Whoopi Goldbergs
There was a movie from the 1980s, I think it was [Jumpin' Jack Flash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpin%27_Jack_Flash_(film)), where *literally every time* somebody points a gun at Whoopi Goldberg she starts screaming in terror. It's the sort of common sense that makes for an uncommonly good movie. If the agents know that the sight of a gun will provoke a loud, ongoing reaction for cultural reasons, they could be severely inhibited.
## Star Wars prototype
The Strategic Defense Initiative sought to develop weapons that could incapacitate incoming nuclear weapons. First, they built prototypes with practical applications, and this town is the site of one of these systems.
Defying every bedrock American principle of freedom and privacy, secret agents have studded the town's skyline with sinister surveillance devices, which they call *Cell Towers*. These continually use multiple radio frequencies to scan for and track any radio-reflective devices. (Off topic: It is also rumored that there are microphones scattered all over town that the towers continually listen in on, but this seems far fetched - how could you convince Americans to carry around bugs? This isn't the Soviet Union!)
A bank of dozens of powerful IBM AT computers processes the signals, triangulates, and identifies each device according to whether it is a potential weapon. When a weapon or even a round of ammunition is detected and identified, [powerful directional antenna arrays](https://semiengineering.com/mimo-and-phased-array-antennas-for-5g/) building on technology from the [HAARP Program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program) are able to broadcast highly directional signals that focus radio frequency energy on it like a microwave oven. Much of the energy is reflected, but the guns spark, heat, and possibly fire themselves under the onslaught.
Second Amendment advocates are substantially less than thrilled with the experiment, but as conservatives understand the importance of developing new defenses against Soviet assault. It is the price they pay for freedom...
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**Drug induced hypnosis**
People entering the town are fed or exposed to a drug rendering them suggestible to hypnosis. They are then fed subliminal messages over the local radio/TV and other mediums 'suggesting' they forget how to use firearms.
They still know they exist but whenever they see one they can't remember exactly what they are used for. In fact perhaps they develop an aversion to them - they feel '*unclean*', objects that are best left alone, untouched. Indeed picking one up induces a sense nausea or some other aversion to handling it.
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## Mold
A unique mold is native to the local ecosystem and can only be found in that area. The mold seems to have an affinity for the chemicals in gunpowder, so it grows readily on firearms, magazines, and bullets. In its early stages it is hard to spot, and is generally only noticed when one is looking for it. Its organic chemistry reacts with the styphnates and other primers found on common bullets, turning them into duds. Nobody can keep ammunition for more than a few days without it becoming useless.
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I'm no physicist, so I couldn't say anything about side effects on people or the kind of numbers to pull off this idea, but any material moving through a magnetic field generates current, and that current generates heat and diamagnetic resistance to the motion. If the town had some kind of magnetic anomaly, it could cause conductive bullets to veer wildly from their intended target and possibly soften enough in midair to splatter against hard surfaces.
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# Gunpowder is neutralized by a naturally-occurring physical anomaly
Near this town there is some kind of physical field that has strange effects. The locals know about it, and have contrived some pretext to maneuver possibly-armed visitors through the field as they approach the town. Maybe the only road to town goes right through it, or maybe the pedestrian areas converge on a park built around the phenomenon.
The field is imperceptible and otherwise harmless, but certain of the chemical elements in gunpowder are transmuted into inert materials when they pass through it. Any gunpowder carried through this field is neutralized. It doesn't "magically" target gunpowder specifically, it's just that thoroughly mixed potassium nitrate, sulfur, and/or charcoal react this way within the field.
The field is some kind of dimensional wrinkle, but not in a useful way. It's not a stargate or a wormhole. What caused it? The Earth's history goes back a ways. Some time in the past ~4.5bn years, a shaft of high-energy particles pierced the solar wind and scarred this place. Maybe this effect will fade with time, maybe not. Just be glad you weren't here *then* -- you'd have lost more than your gunpowder. And be prepared to mix your own gunpowder from ingredients if you want to do any hunting in the area for the next stretch of geological time.
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If all mechanical devices are affected like clocks, radios, lights, engines, then we could jam the guns the pin won't work or the hammer acts as if rusted and won't move.
Otherwise we could use the region in a harmonical way to affect the molecules of the gun but this would affect again similar things basically a frequency or ground based radiance or tremor too small to detect by the human body and you can't bring in machines to feel it either because they've stop working.
In PA they have the singing rocks its said if you remove them they will stop singing in 24 hours. They basically sound like a hammer whacking an anvil when you strike them and visitors return them so its area based.
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I would like to try and answer by asking some questions of the plot.
Where do super skilled retired master arms smiths go?...maybe your town?...maybe reports show it to be the safest in the event of a full nuclear exchange so they all decided to retire there and get their families moved as well?
What do they do to try and protect their families?...maybe set up an operation like the intelligence operations they used to be a part of that actively works to keep firearms from discharging utilizing all techniques from their former careers augmented by the fact that they are VERY experienced and unfettered by desire to adhere to laws or with desire to control anything else?...after all, what else is there to do a few weeks after you retire and continue to have clear mental abilities?
Maybe only targeting those they know through previous careers profiling people that have a higher than average chance of using a firearm in a deadly way?
Might not fit into a specific interpretation of the original posted need though.
This is possibly a duplicate of the previous answer suggesting sabotage...but with a proposed agent that is not totally nefarious.
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**The air is filled with a fire-retardant gas (specifially Trifluoromethyl iodide)**
A fire retardant could prevent any flame or gunpowder from activating properly, significantly reducing or even outright stopping any attempts as using guns. This is especially the case with [trifluoromethyl iodide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifluoroiodomethane), a fire retardant being experimented with by the US military to put out electrical fires in aircraft. It is [less toxic than typical fire retardants](https://www.mathesongas.com/pdfs/msds/00229444.pdf), and has [less ozone depletion issues](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207818/).
Producing this and mixing it with breathable oxygen may provide the effect you're looking for, especially if the production of this is caused by plants or geysers overlooking the town. It is an irritant, but I can see easy ways to get around that for long term living, especially provided it's an important commodity in a semi-modern setting. Items like masks, eye protection, and coverings can fully quash any of the negative effects.
Any weapon fired in the area would already be saturated by this halomethane should it be in the air as particulates, and would be localized in a similar way to current fire retardants in forest fires.
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Could the town be some sort of experimental community, constructed on a lake bed or underwater? It would certainly have been possible with 1980's materials to construct a series of domes and tunnels under which the town was constructed. Perhaps created as an experimental counter-measure to the cold war at the time or a hangover from the space race?
Of course you could discharge a firearm in such a location but having high-speed projectiles flying about may damage the structure preventing the water flooding the town. You could either institute a firearms surrender on town entry policy or simply a gentlemen's agreement that firing a gun in the town would be a terrible idea, either works.
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Army 1(the defending army) has the city of Phoenix, Arizona.
Army 2(the attacking army) has an underground tunnel under the city. The tunnel circles the city under the outskirts, has a few spokes (between 4-10, haven't decided yet)going towards the center where they plan to spring from the ground and attack Army 1, and one long tunnel that goes back to the entry point. So, wagon wheel on a stick.
Army 1 has learned of this attack, and needs to stop it. Army 1 also has a high ranking Army 2 official willing to work with them(as long as the plan isn't blatant suicide). Army 2 thinks this officer was captured, and if he appears in the tunnel after 'escaping' he can try to do something.
Limits;
* Army 2 officer/Army 1 spy cannot die(or at least thinks he won't).
* Assume modern tech, although it is slightly in the future but weapons are mostly the same.
* Phoenix needs to not collapse in the process(I think that rules out big explosives).
* The tunnel is too big to gas.
* Solution preferably has some kind of explosion for a fun story.
* Army 1 cannot enter the tunnel without death happening to them(unless the fortifications were somehow neutralized)
* Two days to prepare, then three hours to finish plan.
* If Army 1 just blockades the exit, Army 2 will just come up somewhere else. If Army 1 keeps blocking exits, Army 2 will eventually just pack the tunnel with explosives and blow up the city.
* Minimal loss of Army 1 life
* More upon request
My first idea was to gas the place but that's not interesting, and big explosives would just bring down the city, and although that would look cool I need the city later. I thought maybe Army 2 officer/Army 1 spy could run through and drop methane into the tunnels, then get out and Army 1 could light a match and use up all the oxygen/burn the soldiers, but idk if that would bring down the city. Any suggestions?
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Some options
* Flood the tunnel from a river, reservoir, etc. [EDIT] Come to think of it, redirecting rain sewers or even actual black-water sewage (i.e. human excreta <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_(waste)>) into the tunnels is another option.
* Bulk-pumping gasoline / diesel into known exits to turn the tunnel into a barbeque. [EDIT] Even simply burning off all the oxygen using combustion would render the tunnel uninhabitable; military CBRN gear (gas masks), I believe, are filters; they do not have an oxygen supply. [EDIT #2] CBRN gear might not protect against gasoline fumes either.
* Personally, I don't see any problem with thermobaric / fuel-air explosives or even natural gas to create an explosion. The blast will be channeled along the tunnels and so negligible damage should occur to buildings (remember they are designed to withstand earthquakes).
[EDIT #2] Oh, how could I forget, there's all sorts of other fun things available in a major city. According to Wikipedia: "*Manufacturing now ranks third among Phoenix's industries, and includes the production of ... chemicals, and processed foods.*"
* A real world example of death by innundation in foodstuff is the <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood> but you could substitute soda, beer, or other liquid mass produced foods.
* The defenders would also have access to the chemical plants and chemical tanker cars from the rail depot that supply them. Of course, the plants also are staffed with a handy crew of chemical engineers to do something creatively unpleasant with them to send flowing through a tunnel. All sorts of acids or other toxic compounds might be possible. Military CBRN equipment would probably not provide protection against these.
Combine some or all of the above for extra fun.
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**Smoke**
It's the bane of fire fighters everywhere. It blocks vision and chokes anyone without breathing gear.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DVPV7.png)
Setting fire to a vehicle would fill the area quickly with smoke forcing everyone out. Anyone not fast enough would choke to death.
It's an easy, quick method and doesn't require any gear.
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**These attackers are total boneheads. Let them come!**
You have an attacking force coming. You know exactly where they will come - a choke point where they must emerge from the tunnel. Once they are out you can prevent them moving farther into the city and you can prevent them from leaving the way they came. These guys are boneheads! Let them come!
You know where they will come out of the ground. Fortify the area around that. Do it in a way not immediately obvious from the tunnel mouth. They will come out of the ground thinking they are stealthy ninjas. They will quickly realize that away from the immediate exit from the tunnel, they are surrounded by collapsed buildings, walls, barbed wire and gun emplacements.
They will want to turn around and go back the way they came. But no. You collapse the tunnel behind them or fill it with rubble. Ideally this occurs quietly, about 500 meters behind them. Then when they retreat from the untenable situation topside they find themselves in a short dead end tunnel.
You will accept their surrender. If they are disinclined to surrender they will become more inclined when they get thirsty.
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**Murder Hornets**
I have no idea if this is practical, but just because no one has mentioned it and it has a certain Rule of Cool cachet - swarms of murder hornets.
Also stick a few hundred thousand Africanised honeybees and maybe some angry army / bullet ants. Just for luck.
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***Dirty bomb:***
No tunnel is too big to gas. You can gas whole cities. But no gas. Phosgene oxime (not technically a gas, but often aerosolized) would even coat the surfaces in powerful blistering agent, making the tunnel virtually unusable. Nerve agents in tiny parts per billion would make the air unbreathable as they evaporated and can be absorbed via skin over time. They often are contact poisons that really affect those who touch them. Shellfish toxin is nasty and a vial you can hold in your hand will kill a whole city. So chemical weapons but not gas.
I'm a biology guy, but good suits will protect you, and the tunnel can be sterilized. Anthrax spores will render the place pretty unuseable, but have a nasty tendency to spread a lot, since infection spreads (especially near a civilian population center) and they track on shoes, etc. Anthrax spores are REALLY hard to get rid of, though, so the tunnel is likely unuseable. But generally biological weapons spread over time and your enemy has to know and believe in them to be deterred.
My best thought is radiation. You can try a dirty bomb (non-nuclear radiological) where the radioactivity means people don't die right away, but require extensive medical treatment (debilitating to the enemy ability to fight war). The tunnel is filled with lethal radioactives that render it uninhabitable. An explosion scatters the stuff around very efficiently. Long term, this can spread into the water table, but war is full of desperate compromises. Your enemy will likely have radiation detection equipment, and if not will rapidly discover the attack as soldiers quickly get sick. Radiation is easily verifiable with equipment unlike biologicals.
Finally, how about area denial munitions? It's a fancy way of saying tiny anti-personnel mines. They are usually deployed from aircraft, it would be tricky to get missiles launching tiny mine bomblets underground, but once you did, the large but relatively small cave would become a giant booby trap. People moving around would set off explosives, and they're all small (designed to kill/maim individuals) so they won't "bring down the house." The weapons are already in the USAF arsenal, so you wouldn't need to make something new. Bigger munitions will blow up vehicles as well, so if the invaders have "tunnel tanks" and earthmoving equipment, it can be destroyed as well.
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Tunnels are by nature a scary environment. Psychotropic substances in the air, deployed by fast flying drones could render the soldiers below suspectable to fighting among themselves.
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**Assumption:** The tunnel is very well reinforced, which is the only way you can have an explosion (bullet #5) and not collapse Phoenix (bullet #3, at least not those parts of the city over the tunnel).
**Assumption:** The tunnel as *not been breached* on the city-side. In other words, Army #1 has control over their "side" of the tunnel (they can choose where to pierce into the tunnel.
**Assumption:** A city the size of Phoenix will have ample amounts of the materials suggested. (May not actually be true....)
* Halon: Used in fire-suppression systems to rob an area of oxygen without soaking everything down with water. Can be injected anywhere, but near the center would be better. Just keep on injecting until you see people passing out/dying at the entrance. Would make the tunnel unusable for days — probably weeks.
* Chase Army #2 away from the entrance and start a fire at the entrance. It'll take a bit, but that'll suck out all the oxygen, too.
* Propane: Liquid propane expands at the rate of 10,000:1. That means a gallon of propane makes 10,000 gallons by volume of ignitable gas. (I haven't verified that number, it was what Utah State claimed in their training manuals for licensing to dispense liquid propane. I'm just rolling with it.) A little math to estimate the amount of you need... fill tunnel... add match. The resulting "boom!" coming out of the open end of the tunnel might be heard in Kansas.
* Sewage: Tell me Phoenix doesn't have enough of this. ("Alright everybody, we need an emergency blow! Eat all the chili you can and flush all at the same time in an hour!") You'd want to push this in at several points. Might not stop Army #2... but they'll wish they were anywhere else while they attacked.
* Pump all the 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile you can into the tunnel. Better known as "Tear Gas," It'll disable Army #2's efforts for as long as you can keep pumping the gas.
*It's worth noting, after saying all that I have, that you could just have the city's various industries divert their usual dumping of toxic industrial waste in the local rivers into the tunnel. Green Peace will freak out, but the population's option is to endure slavery under the iron boot of Army #2, so I doubt you'll hear too many complainers.*
BTW #1, yes, I ignored your limitation on gas. This is the modern world. Gas of many kinds are not only easy to make, but are in plentiful supply. Remember that 10,000:1 expansion rate.
BTW #2, I didn't suggest gasoline because, being a liquid, it's expansion into gaseous form would be too slow. When you lit the match, you'd blow the city sky high. There'd be too much of it near the injection points.
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Remove all the oxygen from the tunnels.
Do this by stockpiling large quantities of liquid nitrogen ahead of time (just requires energy to extract from air - which is mostly nitrogen). At the time of the attack, pour liquid nitrogen into available openings. The cold will kill anyone too close to an opening. As the liquid evaporates the gaseous nitrogen will displace all the oxygen from the tunnels.
You could also use liquid carbon-dioxide. Might get that as well when collecting liquid nitrogen from air, as a side-bonus.
The in-tunnel army will become incapacitated and die within a few minutes, due to lack of oxygen.
The above-ground damage and causalities will be minimal. You will want to evacuate the above-ground civilians ahead of time. The cloud of gas (really a lack of oxygen) will dissipate in a few days (or less if there is a good wind).
No fuss, no muss - though lacking in drama.
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Cheating slightly - I'd suggest **liquid nitrogen** (shortly to be gas)
A large city should have plenty - it's a common industrial and research coolant
It is also heavier than air once it evaporates (because it's colder), tending to collect in hollows
If your spy can alter the tunnel plans to have a slight dip, with ideally a curve in the tunnel at the bottom the nitrogen could be pumped in, as a liquid, filling this dip with a lethal concentration. Soldiers would walk in, then die. The curve might stop soldiers at the back noticing that their friends had dropped dead.
A high concentration of nitrogen will cause fainting, then death, due to lack of oxygen. It's worth noting that ill effects from this won't be felt until soldiers are near losing conciousness - unlike smoke, it doesn't trigger CO2 receptors in the lungs that tell you that the air is bad to breathe.
Slightly further away, soldiers are likely to behave erratically, because of low oxygen. With any luck, a tunnel full of armed men with diminished reasoning capacity, on high alert, would turn into a bloodbath.
The liquid nitrogen can be dispersed through pipes, either that have been cut through by the tunnel already, or by drilling small holes through the tunnel roof.
Very little specialist equipment is needed to handle it, it's non toxic (once it disappates) and presents no risk to the city or its inhabitants above. It won't be filtered by standard chemical filtering gear, and would require an air supply to mitigate.
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Hold on a minute, I think you're overthinking this.
The tunnel system follows a wheel-and-spokes arrangement. The invading army uses the spokes to travel from the outskirts of the city into the city center. Let me word that slightly differently. The invading army has loaded themselves into a enclosed tube that's several miles long and only has exits at the extreme ends. That's pretty much the *worst* situation an army could put itself in. All you really need is a good old-fashioned ambush.
At the far end of the tunnel (where the invaders plan to emerge from), build an armored, camouflaged barricade that you can hide several fast-firing heavy weapons behind (such as [M134s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minigun), conveniently manufactured by local company [Dillon Aero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillon_Aero)). Don't risk sending gunners into the tunnels, hard-mount the weapons in place and control them from the surface by wire. When the invading army gets close, mow them down. The invaders are trapped with nowhere to go. Your shots can't miss if they're pointed straight down the tunnel, it's shooting fish in a barrel. The invaders can't stop the barrage because there are no gunners to kill with a counterattack, plus most of them can't fire a weapon without hitting one of their own (the space restricts them into a deep formation that's only 2-3 men wide). Their only escape is to run back down several miles of tunnel, with heavy weapons firing at them endlessly.
Additional options for extra fun:
* Have a team of gunners with similar anti-infantry heavy weapons drop in at the other end of the tunnel. When the attackers start to retreat, your weapons emplacements at both ends start slowly moving to the middle (but never getting close enough to hit each other).
* Flood the tunnels with water to a depth of 6-12 inches. That's not dangerous on its own but it will slow down a fleeing enemy considerably (which is just as bad when you're trying to flee from bullet hell).
* Once the invading army enters the "spoke" tunnel but is not yet close enough to ambush, cut off their escape by blockading the "wheel" part of the tunnel on either side of where it meets the "spoke" tunnel. These blockades shouldn't be visible from the "spoke" tunnel, you want the invaders to run all the way back down to the other end before they realize they're trapped.
+ You don't even have to block the tunnel completely. Something as simple as parking a heavy vehicle in the tunnel will create a choke point that delays escape and requires the enemy to squeeze past one at a time. Limiting their rate of retreat makes them easier to attack and limits their ability to harm your own troops.
* A long tunnel will also channel pressure waves. Disorient the fleeing enemy troops with an [acoustic weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Acoustic_Device), or detonate explosives (not enough to damage the tunnel) that have high detonation velocities and let the shock waves tear through the enemy lines. Shock waves can cause organ damage and internal bleeding, even with no signs of external injury.
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# Spread a disease
I've read a lot of interesting answers, but none of them seem to be taking advantage of your spy.
Incubate him with a deadly or incapacitating virus/bacteria and send him into the tunnel. You could vaccinate him first, or at least *make him believe* he has been immunized.
He goes in. He is quickly received by their comrades who hug him and shake his hand congratulating him for his heroic escape. Two days later a harsh fever or disenteria strikes in, incapacitating ~80% of the enemy forces. Army 1 attacks the tunnel.
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# Natural Gas Odorants
As natural gas does not have its own odor, mercaptans and other chemicals are often added to give it a smell. This helps consumers detect a leak in a natural gas line. Simply spray some of the odorant at the entrances and ventilation ducts to the tunnel system. This will make the occupants suspect a gas leak -- even though no one actually occurs -- and they will abandon the tunnels for their own safety.
* No actual natural gas needs to be used.
* No actual risk to people or property. The effect is entirely psychological.
* You don't need to fill the entire tunnel system, just key points such as entrances and ventilation ducts.
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### Elephant's Toothpaste
You wanted an explosion. Here's your explosion.
Stockpile large amounts of hydrogen peroxide and potassium iodide. When the time is right, seal the city center entrance and pump both chemicals into the tunnels with industrial pumps. When the two chemicals combine, you get a violent exothermic reaction.
It's not hot enough to hurt anyone, but being surrounded in foam is going to severely inhibit mobility and suffocate anyone without proper breathing equipment. This is enough to give the surface army a significant advantage.
Mixing in a strong acid or base would additionally cause chemical burns and destruction of equipment. Hydrofluoric acid is a good choice for dissolving guns and other metallic equipment. Something like sodium hydroxide would be better for dissolving organic material such as clothing or flesh.
(someone with a better understanding of chemistry can advise if introducing a strong acid or base will interfere with the rapid decomposition of hydrogen peroxide catalyzed by potassium iodide)
AB Foam would have a similar effect if you wanted to encase the enemy army in polyurethane foam.
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A tunnel as big as you describe needs a ventilation system to pull air in from above and eliminate carbon dioxide, not mention any exhaust from vehicles or machines. Find the ventilation system and disable it. This will likely have the added effect of making the environment uncomfortably hot. No one is going to be having any fun down there.
This will almost certainly take more than three hours to start affecting the underground army, but the rule is "three hours to finish plan," not "three hours to take effect."
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We can't gas them with toxic or nerve or oxygen-depriving gases because they all have magic RebreatherTech (tm) and are immune to gases.
If you ignite a gas in there so that it explodes with enough force to do any significant harm to the ungassable inhabitants, you'll probably blow up great swathes of the city.
They can dig crazy fast and have magic breathing apparatus, so this is sci-fi, so we can make up tech.
That gives a couple of ideas.
Option one is just to redirect a river in there. Makes for a nice scene underground as first there's a breeze in the tunnel, then the roar of the water is heard, then a frothing wall of death coming along the tunnel like an express train.
But that might be too obvious. Plus, they can have some sci-fi bulkhead doors in the tunnel to isolate the flooded section.
Option two is to trickle in a liquid or dust very slowly, through lots of small holes, until all sections of the tunnels are a little bit covered with it.
Tunnels should have drainage for natural water leakage, so this should go unnoticed until all the drains have some in, along the whole length.
After a certain period, microcapsules of reactant in the water dissolve and release the reactant, that very quickly converts the first liquid into a rapidly-hardening foam that expands and fills the tunnels, trapping everyone within it. The city's security force can then enter the tunnels, dissolving the foam as they go, exposing the attackers one by one where they can be easily captured and handled.
Now the city has a large number of hostages, and control of the tunnels.
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I find it hard to belive that a Limited Underground Volume is to big for Gas. If we assume Modern ish tech, it should be no problem to map the Tunnels. Figure out where the Access Points, how deep it is and so on.
With that intel, putting gas into the Place is the best way. The Gas will only kill the people and not blow the Place up. Plus you can fill the Place with Gas nobody can detect.
But ok, no Gas.
You could try to use a Biological Weapon. A Virus or similar that spreads and kills fast. This could be injected via either the Ventelation System or Water Supply.
Another idea would be a bit Sci Fi to say the least but you could try to melt the Place. Or Microwave it i suppose. It is a bit out there but in principle, Microwaves can go through the Ground. But the Generator would have to be quiet big to say the least.
Imo, the Virus idea is probably the best one if you dont want to use Gas.
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I'm not figuring out how to get Google to cough up the name of the chemical, but it's commonly used in fuel-air bombs. It's a gas that can be liquefied by pressure, the important characteristic is a very wide explosive range.
Drill down almost to the tunnel in several spots, place an explosive charge and above ground prepare to quickly pump the stuff in but don't cover the holes just yet.
Fire the charges, making holes into the tunnel, pump in gas, detonate.
While the total boom won't be all that big the confined space will make the shockwaves very nasty for the troops inside and it's going to burn up a lot of the oxygen.
As soon as the blast wave clears you repeat the process. If you get rid of a bit over half the oxygen the troops inside suffocate. They're going to be busy donning chem warfare gear when the gas pours in, it's going to do absolutely nothing because the threat isn't toxins, but hypoxia.
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M18 Claymore Mines would be a good start. After that, Do the defenders of the town still have access to either Phoenix International or Luke AFB over in Glendale? Depending on the depth of the tunnel (thinking it'd be fairly deep if it's large enough to negate a gas attack) your defenders could use jury-rigged munitions from Luke, not sure if the KC-135R's over at KPHX would be any use, but that is a lot of JP8 fuel to pump down the tunnels. Won't burn easily, but it will burn hot.
You mentioned fortifications, are those protecting the single entrance/exit (if I'm picturing this right) or the attack point up into the city?
Also, I didn't see a timeline mentioned, but if you've got access to either airfield then you've also got access to every other still functioning military base in the CONUS. We do have bunker busters in the inventory that are meant to penetrate protected structures underground and collapse them with minimal damage to the surface. The [GBU-24](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-24_Paveway_III) would probably do it, but there would be some collateral damage to buildings and roads.
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Runes are used to enhance the human body's capabilities. They are inscribed onto the skin through a ritual and work by the individual accessing the mana inside themselves. This mana is forced into the runes in order to activate them, creating the effect. The individual must shout an incantation as loud as they can, along with hand signals, in order to activate the spell. These incantations vary from spell to spell, and effects range from throwing fireballs to summoning sheilds to shooting lightning bolts from fingertips.
These incantations create a problem of announcing your intentions to your enemy. If you are yelling at the top of your lungs (Kaaaaameeeeehaaaaameeeee haaaaaaaa! no jutsu) or spending a long time forming hand signals (O Lord, mask of flesh and bone, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of man, truth and temperance, upon this sinless wall of dreams unleash but slightly the wrath of your claws!"
Hadou 48: Raging Light Fang no jutsu), it tells your opponent what you are about to do. This gives them a lot of time to form a counter attack or simply step out of the way.
In a war or battle, if enemy soldiers know what your plans are and how to counter them, it puts you at a disadvantage. Giving away that information is fatal to your success. How can I use these attacks without critically damaging my own strategies and tactics?
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**Dilution is the solution to pollution.**
You have a large corps of employees, with unkempt greasy hair and long robes like your magic users, who will periodically charge out yelling and gesticulating. These folks have no abilities magical or otherwise and nothing comes of their bellowing and flailing about. They do have a competitive spirit and each tries to outdo the others with novel movements and bawled gibberish.
People will get used to these folks and tune them out. When occasionally your actual magic user is in the bunch and he makes everyone's pants shrink 5 sizes, it will come as a surprise.
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One possibility is that the attacks operate **beyond hearing range**. For example they act like modern artillery. Forward observers report on the enemy, and the mage sitting back in camp executes the ritual, sending off summoned demons or long-range lava-balls or whatever.
Another possibility is to use them in cases where the enemy can not escape, and your intentions are obvious already. A typical example is siege warfare. Medieval trebuchets and early modern siege cannons did not allow surprise. The enemy detected their deployment hours (if not days, in the case of siege engines built in place, or elaborate firing positions being dug out) before they could begin firing. **But walls can not dodge**, and if you have more/stronger defensive mages than the defenders, you are mostly safe from counterattacks, too.
Thirdly, **not all weapons need to kill to be effective**: Your mage approaches an enemy formation. He starts to shout a spell (just out of crossbow range or defended by shield bearers), evidently about to summon a rain of hell-bullets. The enemy pikemen hear this, and hurriedly **break formation and lie down** to avoid the machine-gun effect. You send in mundane cavalry and massacre them.
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There are a few tactics you could use, but these would largely depend on the kind of battle you're fighting. Defensive battles could have mages throwing hand signs behind the walls, or mages shouting underground. Attacking battles are harder, and will largely depend on the element of surprise or confusing the enemy.
**Buckethead**
You could effectively put a bucked on the mages head (doesn't have to be a bucket, can be any kind of helmet that covers the mouth). The sound will be muffled at the least, or incomprehensible to the enemy at best. You can't prepare the right defence if you don't know what spell the enemy is using.
**Swap language**
If this is possible (depending on how your magic works) switch the language your mages use regularly. If it is just a couple of spells, it should be easy enough to remember without having to be fluent in the language.
**Switcheroo**
If it is hand signs you're using, send in a wall of pikemen with large shields, closely followed by (ducking) mages preparing long hand signs. As soon as they are ready, the mages pop out and rain hell upon your enemies.
**Drown it out**
Have the rest of your army shout battle cries or fake spells at the top of their lungs as well. The enemy won't know if actually something will happen, or nothing, or what is coming.
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Mustering a viable defence takes longer.
It doesn’t matter if I know you’re summoning The Rending Tentacles Of She Who Swims Beyond if I can’t bring up the Aegis of Destiny fast enough. Nor does it matter much how long it takes you to fling a fireball at my face if I can’t close the distance to stab you before the spell is cast.
So offensive spells are always cast out of physical engagement range, and only spells where the appropriate countermeasures will require equally long and ridiculous incantations to complete are ever employed.
Because those ones are impossible to stop in time.
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*Very* carefully worded spells.
After all, no one would expect the following incantation to summon a meteor strike:
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> **D**oes **E**veryone **A**gree **T**hat **H**appiness
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> **F**or **R**eally **O**ld **M**onkeys
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> **A**lways **B**ecomes **O**bnoxious **V**ery **E**asily!
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>
>
The secret to becoming a successful mage is then not necessarily how powerful your runes or magic capacity, but how well you can convince people to let you finish speaking - wrapping the incantation into what seems like a normal speech, or even a diplomatic negotiation:
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> **V**erily, **O**utstanding **L**ord, **C**easefires **A**re **N**ever **O**utdated
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>
>
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Two words: Shield Wall
That's what we do in LARP (Live Action Roleplaying Games) with the mages or in rules systems where casting takes time and requires words and gestures. You simply position the mage behind a couple big guys with big shields whose job is to hold still until he's done and then step to the sides.
Hearing what exactly someone is shouting across a battle, beyond those shields is difficult to do, and the other fighters will make sure you can't concentrate on what may or may not affect you. And of course behind those shields you don't see what he's doing. The best you can do is understand that there's a mage somewhere near, probably over there, casting something.
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You largely already know your enemies intentions even without needing to announce a spell.
If your enemy is running at you with a sword, you know they are probably going to try to cut or stab you. If your enemy is pointing a rifle at you, you know they are probably going to shoot you.
Knowing what your enemy is likely planning to do doesn't matter if you can't make the necessary adjustments.
You may argue that needing to announce your spell gives more time than swinging a sword, but the counter argument is that if your spell is more powerful than a sword it probably takes longer to prepare a defense for it. Spells may also sound similar and take some time to identify which would also reduce the reaction time for it and in the clatter of battle its easily possible to miss hearing an important part of identifying the spell. Some examples:
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> "Look out, I'm going to shoot you with a really big fireball"
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> sounds similar to
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> "Look out, I'm going to shoot you with lightning"
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> until closer to the end at which point the spell is ready and if you misheard it as
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> "Look out, I'm going to shoot you..."
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> you don't know what to expect exactly
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>
>
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Here are some ideas:
**Slow magic**
1. Big radius
The spells take a time to activate but covers a very big area. In this case the enemies can't escape the radius of impact unless they themselves have mages
2. Long range
No much to splain here the mage is far out range of the enemies.
3. Ocultation
Invisibility or hides in a group of other people.
4. Protection, Familiar
The mage has a personal escort that protects him until he finishes the spell. Or before going to battle, casts a protection spell on himself.
The familiar does the incantation while the mage focus on protecting himself..... or the other way around.
**Quick magic**
Magic is all about meaning, but you can achieve meaning without talking.
1. Runes and kanjies
For example a rune that means fireball.
2. Tatoos
You can actually tatoo a complete spell in that case why does the mage have to incant the spell if its on his body quite literally.
3. Circles
Like the Metatron circle. There are a lot of circles that have diferent meanings.
4. Unwords, chants and overtone
This are very interesting ways of doing magic. Unword refers to a way of speaking that is'nt imaginable by humans. Chants like the typical om of the monks. If you have more than one mage the totality of them could cast a single spell fast using some sort of collective magic.
Overtone is the ability to do more than one chant at the same time.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone_singing>
5. Mental conditioning
You can condition yourself to have an idea by seeing or touching something.
6. Signs
But each culture has their own signs.
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So in summary, the three components of the spell are:
* Runes on the skin, inscribed through ritual
* Verbal component, as loud as you can
* Somatic component, no particular prerequisites
Yes, yelling out your strategies is a bit counterproductive in that you can be planned for if they know what you are doing. So the trick is to not let them know what you are doing. All three parts are obvious if you don't take measures to mitigate them, though the runes are likely the easiest to hide.
### Study your Spells
This sounds really dumb to say in some ways, but if you are going to take the time to learn a spell, you should learn enough to be able to cast it in more than one way if needed.
Two shows here come to mind immediately: Bleach and Slayers. Their basic boom spells (Hado 31: Shakkaho and Fireball respectively) have an incantation and some hand gestures. The experienced casters with those spells don't use the full incantation and instead bring down the ball of hurt just by announcing the spell's name and a simple hand gesture.
For your world, how does this work if at all? Can you reduce or eliminate some of the requirements at a potential loss of power? What can your casters do with a spell that they have truly mastered? It would seem to me that this is a weakness that should be eliminated as fast as reasonable if one is going to use it on the field.
### Alternate Attack Angles
If you can attack from outside their hearing range with a sniper-style spell, then you have the advantage of them being unseen and unheard. To use D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder 1E as an example, a high-level wizard can Fireball an army from over 1,000 feet away.
If you can have aerial casters, then you can rain death from above literally. Because let's be honest, how many people look up? Alternatively, digging a tunnel then dropping a big boom under the enemy is a much riskier venture, but something that is still within the realm of possibility.
Related is your spell choices. Sure everybody expects the fireballs and lightning bolts. They might be less ready for the swarm of minor demons to supplement your ranks. But how about a spell to equip your army with magical shields that protect your companions from their enemy's weapons? Not one giant shield, a thousand little ones, one for each soldier.
### False Information
Sure, the enemy knows that there is a caster present and that they are expecting spells, but if you can feed false information to your enemy, then it is possible that they will not have the right defenses for the job. A lightning bolt will require a different defense than a fireball or summon horde as an example.
This can be as simple as your mage wearing robes typical of another magic type (such as a fire mage wearing summoner's gear) to a whole counter-espionage operation to make sure that their spies get incorrect knowledge so they prepare the wrong defenses in the first place.
Alternative incantations are another potential solution to the issue. Whether you do that in a different language, or use the incantation for the basic Light spell to launch a Fireball, the point is to obfuscate the information so it takes a bit longer to start the defense spell. If you can use your offense faster then they can raise the defense, then you invalidate a lot of their defense.
Hiding the skin-inscribed runes should be an obvious step to this. Preferably with something that will not generally interfere with the flow of magic.
### Distractions
The idea of others making noise has already been mentioned so I won't elaborate -- I have nothing more to add there that would add to that general point
What I can point out is that you can make a two-pronged attack with mages. One mage boldly arrives and announces that there is a darkness beyond twilight and crimson beyond blood that flows. Sure the enemy knows *this* spell and can defend against this spell, but they can't perceive fully the other caster over the din of the attack and defense spell, which is your real attack prong. They don't even have to be casting an attack spell for the strategy to be effective. Making the enemy bunker down from the big boom spell while your other mage casts a giant enhancement spell on your own troops is a conceivable strategy
The trick is to make the first mage obvious and flashy. You want your opponents to focus on them and react to them. This can be a more layered strategy than two casters, and might have to be depending on your opponents
### Anticipate Reactions
You have defensive spells too, and your side knows what they would use in the situations that you are throwing at them. If their typical defense is to put a wall up to block the spell, then fire arrows over the wall. Weaken the wall with blunt impact so that the spell at least partially makes it through. If the plan is to scatter to limit casualties, then send in skirmishers or cavalry to pick off the furthest away (or just shoot them).
Regardless, the plan here is to assume they know, and plan a counter-offensive based on the likely lines of defense using other troops to do so. Yes, this could include the distraction plan above -- The wall might do good against a fireball, but be less effective against a more concentrated lightning bolt.
[Answer]
I have read this from Vedic stories of ancient warriors. The had the ability to summon various magical arrows - from basic homing arrow to most powerful nuclear arrows. They would imbue the arrow with the power of magical incantation and shoot the opponent. It would take a couple of seconds to perform the attack.
---
The power of magical arrows are invoked by reciting the hymn. The arrow is first purified with sanctified water. Then the warrior would concentrate and recite the hymn in the arrow. IN this way the magical power in invoked with the hymns and transferred into the arrow.
Magical powers of arrows are various. From most basic where arrow multiplies into many to the most advanced atomic arrows. FYI, only most skilful warrior could use such weapons. After all, the warrior has in his hands nuclear weapon n the form of an arrow capable of destroying entire armies.
In the same way, the hymns needed for invoking such magical power also vary in complexity and length. For mosts powerful arrows it takes longest time to recite the hymn and invoke such an enormous amount of power.
In this time the warrior is unable to fight needs to be protected from all sides. Therefore, flanks of defensive military force composed of archers, spear-men and chivalry are formed around him.
[Answer]
# There is ultimately no problem
## It's unlikely mages would be heard
You say that the enemy can hear what a mage is chanting and then act accordingly. I ask *How?*
Let's be clear - people speaking, even shouting, isn't THAT loud. Here is a shirt funny scene from the movie *Shazam*:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihkhjZnug3c>
Transcript:
>
> Dr. Sivana (antagonist): Enough games, boy. You think a pack of children can...
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> [Dr. Sivana speaking faintly in the distance]
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> Shazam (protagonist): Wait, what?
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> [Dr. Sivana] You will beg for mercy as I feast on your heart... slow.
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> [Dr. Sivana continues speaking faintly]
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> Shazam: Are you making some big evil guys peech right now or something? You're, like, a mile away from me right now. There's cars and trucks.
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> Dr. Sivana: I will have the world eating out of the palm of my hand...
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> Shazam: All I see is mouth moving. I don't hear any...
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> Dr. Sivana: I have the power to unleash...
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> Shazam: Ah, whatever. Screw it. [Flies forward to attack]
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>
This is a funny moment in the film but it showcases that it's *not* that easy to hear what somebody would be chanting. It becomes especially hard if there are *other* people around.
Here is footage from the game *Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator*. The name is a bit of a joke but it allows you to deploy a variety of units in a battle and see what happens. It's not too realistic - there aren't many tactics or strategy but at least it makes for entertaining watch:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64ZFq7zkHsU>
You'd notice that the armies are *loud*. Were there some make standing slightly behind one group, do you think the other group would hear exactly what the mage said?
Here are some scenes from movies:
<https://youtu.be/RiCN9xdmo10?t=80>
<https://youtu.be/j-sqBsQQ9Ro?t=5>
I don't know *exactly* how accurate these depictions are but I'm focusing on sound. My guess would be that a battle would *sound* similar. In that it would be loud and chaotic. And those are middle age battles. Here is an early modern battle from 1653
<https://youtu.be/X8zCv0AHnCs?t=24>
It's louder. A lot louder. Because there are cannons. Mages throwing fireballs and other spells are likely to produce similar level of noise perhaps even more. It would make it *very* hard to hear what they are actually chanting from the enemy.
## It's easy to obscure them
Even *with* all the noise and chaos of battle, what *if* the enemy can still recognise what the mages are casting? Well, it's super simple to further obscure the mages:
* block vision to them - just put the mages in a tent or even simpler - a sheet in front of them held by two polls. Done, now the enemy cannot see the mages.
* obscure vision to them - perhaps for some reason mages need to be at least sort of seen. Maybe they need some line of sight. You can easily cut holes into whatever is blocking them but if there is need for anything more - you can hide them behind branches (either in bushes/forest or just get some and stack them in front) or put some smoke. This would not *completely* hide the mages but it would definitely make them a lot harder to see and thus discern what they are doing.
* obscure the acoustics - we've already established that battles are *loud*. But perhaps you need an extra layer of auditory protection. You can have drummers, or horn players, or whatever. This can double as setting the pace for the soldiers and relay commands but the noise pollution would make hearing the mages even harder than it already is.
## If they are seen or heard...so what?
Left this for last but it's actually not at all the least. It's a question that really needs answering. So...what?
### Commands for armies can already be "overheard"
You need to order your men. You do that in a way they can understand - usually by shouting the commands (well, actually having many people walk around and shout the commands). This is already similar to mages. The enemy can hear that and react. Yet it's not been a constant problem since...forever. Or not - apparently people have still won battles *and wars* despite this disadvantage. So, it doesn't seem like mages would change things drastically.
Just in case you think "oh but I bet people could be REALLY sneaky with those commands. For example, how would the enemy know a foreign language. Or, wait, coded commands!" let me disappoint you - you can't hide military commands very well. Not if the enemy can hear them at least. If you have a large enough army you need to be *as clear as possible* when giving commands. You don't want your soldiers to stop and think "Wait, what was *Klaatu barada nikto* again - are we to advance, or fall back?". Also, with large armies you are likely to have mercenaries and/or people who don't all speak the same language. For example, that was the case with the Romans and later Eastern Romans (Byzantines). They'd instruct their troops in standard phrases, so everybody, regardless of what language they speak, would understand. Trying to vary and obscure that can't work well.
Also, very importantly:
### Deserters would betray military intelligence
Sure, even *if* you have some good way to deliver commands that the enemy can't understand...that won't be the case for very long. There are always deserters. The enemy can just bribe them or soldiers might just decide they don't like this war. Fiction might lead you to believe that these (ex-)soldiers would be tortured for information or something but it's *really* not how it worked. Most times your enemy would welcome your deserters with open arms and even reward them for merely leaving. Be that with gold, positions, or just place to live. Any extra information would be welcome and deserters already don't have much loyalty towards you, so why not spill the beans for some extra rewards?
At any rate, deserters have always been a problem in armies because they can betray secrets. Some things are more secret than others but "what do your commanders tell you when they want you to attack/defend/hold/etc would be the first thing they'd be asked. Well, assuming that was valuable information. I don't really know if it was or wasn't but, again, considering people have won wars *despite* having deserters, I'd hazard a guess that the military commands weren't instrumental. There is a lot more valuable information like army position, troops, strategies, etc.
### Enemies can already see war machines
Catapults, ballistae, cannons, siege towers, etc. I could even extend it to archers and even cavalry and other troops in some cases. It's all military tools that can cause a lot of damage and you can *see* them. You can see where they go - where a catapult aims is not that much of a secret, even if the exact target can't be pinpointed (well, both by people aiming the catapult and people being shot with it). Same with cannons. And achers are really more of a spray and pray but you give them a general location which is not hard to guess still. Cavalry or heavy troops may need some time to arrive but you can see where they are going.
So...enemies can already see where you want to strike. Yet wars have still been won despite this "disadvantage". Here is the thing - a battle is more than just being nimble, avoiding blows, and stabbing people. Even if you have the greatest soldier (even soldiers) that are invulnerable and untiring...that's not going to win the battle by itself. You need *strategy* and just being to jump out of the way of an attack is absolutely not that.
### You can trick the enemy
Let's assume for a moment that the enemy *can* see/hear your mages and understand that your mage is going to drop a fireball with enough forewarning to manoeuvre away. Well, they might have played right into your trap regardless. You can easily have your mages cast spells only to break up formations or force an army to take the route *you* want. You may want to push them towards your cavalry and slam into them from the side. Or you may want to open up the enemy lines enough to drive [a wedge](https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/three-effective-tactical-formations-throughout-history.html) between them, destroy their formation and ultimately rout them. Or you can manipulate them in any other way just using the threat of a spell dropping and making the enemy play by your rules.
And this is how Hannibal, widely considered to be one of (of not *the*) the greatest military commander in history, beat the Romans so badly so many times. He always forced them to fight on *his* terms. Strategy wins wars. It's a harsh lesson the early Romans bitterly learned. Hannibal was the greatest enemy they had ever faced and taught them how to fight.
So...let the enemy see your mages. What are they going to do - stand and take the fireball to the face or move and take your carefully planned attack to the face? In either cases *you* win.
### Chaos in battle
I left this point for last. I wasn't sure where to include it but it could (it *should*) eye opening. This is a short excerpt of *Game of Thrones* (Season 2, Episode 5). The characters here talk about wildfire. In-universe this is a highly flammable substance - very heavily inspired from [Greek fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire). You can think of it as "napalm" for all intents and purposes - very flammable, very easy to deploy and cause devastation.
I'm linking the full clip from the beginning for a little bit more context but the important bit of dialogue spans from 0:52 to 1:45:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqMrgvy9uMA>
Here is a transcript of (omitting more irrelevant lines):
>
> HAYLENE: [...] [Wildfire] is fire given form. And we have been perfecting it since the days of Maegor.
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> BRONN: To do what?
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> HAYLENE: The jars are put in catapults and flung at the enemy.
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> TYRION: How much do you have?
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> BRONN: If you could get real soldiers to man the catapults, then maybe you'd hit your target one time in ten, but all the real soldiers are in the Riverlands with your father.
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> [...]
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> BRONN: I don't know if you've ever seen a battle, old man, but things can get a bit messy. 'Cause when we're flinging things at Stannis, he's flinging them right back at us. Men die, men s\*\*\* themselves, men run, which means pots falling, which means fire inside the walls, which means the poor c\*\*\*s trying to defend the city end up burning it down.
>
>
>
So, this is more of a reason why *not* to use Greek fire. Wildfire in the show/books. It's difficult to deploy, it's easy to go wrong, it's hard to even aim properly, it's messy, the chaos of battle is really overwhelming and can cause accidents. That's bad enough with normal soldiers and equipment - somebody might drop a sword, an arrow, a spear, whatever. But with G̶r̶e̶e̶k̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶e wildfire an accident can cost *your* life, the life of everybody around you, as well as the city you are trying to defend.
I'd also like to note that Greek fire has historically been almost exclusively used for defence. It's *so* dangerous and hard to deploy that it's madness to try and bring it with you when attacking. At the very least it gives the enemy a nice target to aim and possibly burn your entire army. Also, it's very easy for you to just do this by accident without the help of the enemy.
Even when defending, Greek fire couldn't always be used - it would need favourable circumstances to be deployed. It was used very effectively against ships but you need good enough wind - if it's against you then you're really just burning your own ship.
Anyway, back to wildfire. Here is why I think this is important *magic is also dangerous*. Or at least most depictions of it are. Do you really want your mage to flinch from an arrow or something and set your own troops on fire? Or disintegrate themselves? *There is chaos in battle*. I've mentioned it a few times but I really want to hammer this point down. Battles. Are. Chaotic. Mages might be a great boon but if there is even the slightest chance of something going wrong, then [trust Murphy's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law), it would go wrong. Maybe not this battle, maybe not the next one but eventually they'd summon a demon they shouldn't have, or create a thunderstorm that devastates your own ranks, or unleash a plague that affects the commanders, or simply explode or whatever.
A big enough failure could cost you the war, despite how many battles you've won. What happens if the mage takes out your entire army by accident? Or kills the king or general? Or does whatever to make you lose a very key battle.
It's entirely possible that mages are *too* powerful and problematic to use on the battle field.
[Answer]
It works in anime! :) No, seriously though why not have them learn an in language? They have their own spell sign language and spoken tounge one could also very by year a few words or more to stop spies from infiltrating too much into the mages so they can have a limited control if they were to do this. You need snappier faster words for shields but longer strings for build up but why shout? When the din of all the chaos around you drowns out ones own voice what good is it? Speaking at any volume should be good enough and what if you character goes mute midway through the battle after years of abusing their voice through shouting?
The enemy must counter you so it also depends on your opponent if they can counter the spell being hurled at them or can they smash your shield and you counter quickly?
If speaking is a must have skill you need to figure out if it matters if their voice degrades over a battle or days of shouting because it will. You might want to train your mages to speak super fast like auctioneers to get it all out fast enough.
You aren't giving much away beyond horns and flag signals did in the middle ages the enemy knows you want to break them that's really what old warfare was about breaking your enemy not slaughtering them to the man. As one poster suggested fake out is a nice tactic the mages scream one thing the enemy responses with a dodge and you run them over the a Calvary charge then the second time commanders see this the don't dodge and the mage was really summoning.
Another tactic is to group them with fighters so they can take time shouting and dancing while the warriors keep the enemy in range but risk being caught in the wrong type of spell as they will not be able to always hear the mages completely.
The enemy can only see as far as they've got advantage this is why some stories locked inside Gettysburg was so stupidly awful in outcome people either couldn't tell where the battles were or were blindsided by sneak ups that shouldn't have been such terrain played a role too everyone has the same goal here break the other side faster your men shouting isn't going to give away the intricate details inside the war tent you have weather, luck, terrain, and ever changing tactics to overcome shouting dancing mages is just one aspect extra to your field.
] |
[Question]
[
I have a setting where the surface of a planet is slowly being terraformed by a hostile force. The ground is slowly changing into a swampy/sludgy liquid like consistency. Stepping or driving through it is extremely hazardous and practically impossible beyond a few meters.
To fight on this new battlefield, hover tanks were created using some of the hostile force's own technology. By compressing a chamber of special particles and sludge, the chamber itself rises/levitates off the ground. Effectively counteracting the heavy weight of an object. By replacing the tank treads with a multitude of these chambers, tanks can effectively hover. Pitch and angles can be controlled by reducing the compression of certain chambers in certain areas where tracks used to be. This allows them to cross over the sludgy areas and normal areas without issues seamlessly. The tanks themselves are casemate/assault guns and use rocket thrusters to maneuver around.
**If the compression chambers essentially replicate anti gravity/hovering, then why don't my tanks simply fly or hover too high off the ground?**
In effect I want the hover tanks to follow the terrain. I don't want helicopters or a situation where the hover tanks for example can cross a bridge with a giant hole in it. What should happen is that it should sink like a rock since there's no ground underneath it.
[Answer]
I actually worked on a contract developing a hover tank for the US military, and it was produced and worked. I have never seen it in production, but it is possible.
Basically something like a jet engine in the tank, very powerful, with skirts that can be deployed around the tank and treads. So it works just a like a hover boat.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5HdZP.png)
The purpose of this tank was to cross swamps, rivers and relatively short distances across lakes or whatever. Except the deployable and retractable skirt is steel, not fabric.
It doesn't fly for the same reason hovercraft don't fly; the ground effect of the fan isn't providing enough thrust to lift the boat/tank through the air on its own. When focused and contained by the skirt, it can lift it a few inches off the ground/water, but any higher than that the force is dispersed too widely in the air to lift any further.
So it's a balancing act; and the boat/tank doesn't have any wings or other structures to stabilize or guide flight anyway, it would immediately tip and fall. You produce just enough power to lift, no more.
Compare your hover tanks to hovercraft on swamps and water, readers will intuitively understand and accept that hovercraft cannot fly any higher than a few inches. You don't need a lot of exposition and invention to do this, working hover tanks were built decades ago.
[Answer]
Each chamber creates a conical force field that repulses matter under the tank allowing it to hover over the ground/sludge/water. The field quickly declines with range so the tank has to hug the terrain. The field cone is wide enough to keep the tank from sinking into the sludge.
It is basically an advanced version of air cushion. I suppose alien tech is just more convenient and effective. Rocket thrusters seems to be unnecessary.
[Answer]
In addition to the technical reasons given in other answers (about the tanks being more like present day hovercraft that require a skirt), there's a practical reason: your tanks are still slow.
>
> LEGS: Do you know what we call flying soldiers on the battlefield?
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> TINO: Air support?
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> LEGS: Skeet.
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-- [Schlock Mercenary](https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2011-05-28)
Tanks are relatively slow, even yours - they might be able to reach 60 or 70 miles an hour (~95-115 km/h), but that's well slow enough for a person with a shoulder-mount RPG to take aim and score a hit fairly often. Another tank, which might have computer-assisted aiming, would have no trouble in shooting it out of the sky at those speeds. Compare to current military jets that can hit ~1,300 mph (~2,100 km/h) or even civilian jets that fly around 500 mph (~800 km/h).
But: your tanks can "fly" over terrain previously though impassable, opening up new attack vectors. They can also evade some fire by moving in "impossible" directions (ie., sideways, without having to turn the body).
Tanks are relatively slow because they're *heavy*: they carry heavy armor and weapons. Lightening the armor or armament enough to make the tank faster would mean that it was no longer useful in the niche that tanks fill: heavily armored, mobile artillery. They would very quickly become planes - quite useful in their own right, but filling a wholly different niche.
Since tanks are heavy, they can hide in bogs and swamps, possibly even up to the turret. Being semi-submerged can aid in stealth and can reduce fuel consumption (tanks don't float, but they're more buoyant in a bog than in the air).
Compounding the "skeet" problem is that flying higher would require additional life support systems (even just supplementary oxygen), adding even more weight. It'd also require adding more weight in the form of crash-mitigation safety systems (ejection seats, etc.). And, of course, don't forget the tyranny of rocketry (and flight in general): as you add weight, you need to add fuel to carry that weight, which is even *more* weight you need to carry, so you need more fuel to carry the fuel.
By the time you've converted your tanks into high-flying machines, you've either turned them into fighter jets or highly-explosive skeet. Since the former already exist and the latter is bad for morale, hover tanks are simply not used for flight above a couple of feet off the ground (and, thus, aren't designed to be used in that way, completing the circle).
[Answer]
## They emit powerful microwaves
Microwave ovens are fascinating things. If you leave one empty and run it for several minutes ([which you shouldn't do](https://products.geappliances.com/appliance/gea-support-search-content?contentId=17934)), you'll notice the inside remains relatively cool to the touch, but you'll notice that if you put in a cup of water, it becomes scalding hot pretty quickly. Microwaves cause water to resonate and heat up very quickly; so, by using your hover chambers, you are blasting the sludge/water under you to heat it up creating steam which provides a reaction force pushing up into the underside of your tank.
What makes this fundamentally different than other hovercraft is that the engines in a traditional hovercraft can be scaled up a bit to give you a helicopter and thus flight because the reaction mass comes from the air or your burning fuel, but your microwave generators can't heat up or create a reaction force with the air; so, just making a bigger one will not help you fly. This means you can in theory have engines that are practical for carrying a heavy tank long distances over water and mud that is way to heavily armored to be able to fly using traditional propulsion, but be useless for making any sort of other heavy armored aircraft by sacrificing just a bit of speed, range, or armor as you could with a jet, fan, or rocket powered hovercraft.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A6Gz7.png)
## Why use an alien Hover Tank instead of existing Human Technology?
Frankly, given your setting, humans have already done a good job of designing a wide range of vehicles for traversing swamps which means that any stollen alien technology has to beat what humans can already do. Many Armored Fighting vehicles are already designed to operate in swamps, but they all have their drawbacks.
**Swamp Boats:** These flat bottom boats propelled by above water fans are great in swamps because they displace so little water they can ride on just a couple of cm of water and even push their way through mud and water foliage. They are also pretty fast; however, these do not scale well into armored vehicles because they intrinsically need a low weight to surface area ratio to work. They also cant drive at all on land; so, if you have above water banks to contend with you have to go around.
**Hovercraft**: These are relatively fast on both ground and water, but actually not good in swamps. The soft body air cushions get caught on branches and plants; so, while these are good for driving up onto a sandy beach-head, they have limited utility in a swamp.
**ATVs**: ATVs are vehicles designed to float when they go in the water. There are various Armored Fighting Vehicles designed to cross rivers and swamps, but their weight and design makes it very hard to make one that can do this quickly. A floatable tank might get you where you are going, but not very fast. They also risk getting stuck in mud more than your other options.
**Helicopters:** Apart from the OP not WANTING a "flying tank", helicopters dominate their top with a giant propeller that makes it hard to mount a tank like weapon system. Tanks need to be fast for deployment, but their main function is to hold ground. So when you land a helicopter to conserve fuel, it does not leave you anywhere for a heavy top turret.
**Quadcopters:** Unlike a helicopter, these do have large top spaces you can put a turret on for holding ground, but they are much harder to armor than a helicopter. Armored attack helicopters like the US Apache have small, very well armored cabins designed to protect the cockpit and engine. However, Quadcopters have much more spread out systems which make armoring it much harder. Helicopter's already have limited lift ratios making heavy armor difficult, a quadcopter is even that much harder.
## So what does the microwave hover tank bring to the table?
The microwave thing is a limitation to constrain the real features of the engines that we are handwaving into the setting. The feature is that this system allows one to fly at very low altitudes. Because it flies a bit above the surface, it has no ground resistance meaning it can move faster than any boat or tank for highspeed deployment. It will pass just above the land and water, pushing its way through light foliage just like a normal tank, but while moving at helicopter like speeds. But unlike a helicopter, its propulsion is down facing meaning you have room on the top for a big turret so that when you get to your deployment zone, you can set down and hold ground just like a normal tank.
[Answer]
Don't explain the effect, because it is basically magic and therefore any explanation is at best technobabble and isn't likely to add anything to your story. Instead, just handwave in some hovertank "laws"... perhaps power required to maintain the hover is proportional to the cube of the height above the ground or something. If you want to get more technobabbly, then maybe hover altitude is proportional to hover cell compression and when compression exceeds *X* then the hover cell material undergoes some (possibly irreversible) phase change and ceases to hover and you end up flying more like a brick than a bird. That gives you a maximum hover altitude which doesn't even have to be proportional to weight if you didn't want it to be.
>
> I don't want... a situation where the hover tanks... can cross a bridge with a giant hole in it. What should happen is that it should sink like a rock since there's no ground underneath it.
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* your tanks are floating above the ground, which leaves them in a fairly low-friction medium
* your tanks use some form of jet propulsion, which potentially allows *very* high speeds
* if they go fast enough and get a bit of air (maybe you build a little kicker ramp next to the hole) then they're gonna fly clear over a gap determined by their speed and air resistance, because conservation of momentum is a thing.
Designing the things to be a [lifting body](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_body) or some flavor of [ground-effect vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-effect_vehicle) will incrase the distance they can fly (or at least, glide aggressively). Shooting canyons and rivers *will* be practical for some or all of your vehicles, as you've currently described them.
There are ways in which you can tweak the setup, for example the "hover" effect is somehow "sticky" to the ground below and so you can't exceed some speed without breaking the hover effect, or it has both an attractive and a repulsive effect so if you try to fly over a hole you get sucked into it (which would also require some inconvenience around turning it off and back on again) and so on. That would also make your hovertanks drive more like wheeled vehicles rather than hovercraft, though I guess its up to you to decide whether thats a benefit to your plans or not.
Helicopters can at least be "fixed" with the aid of commonplace and effective antiaircraft weaponry. This will also make the tanks more practical, too.
[Answer]
Military hovercraft such as the [BH.7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Hovercraft_Corporation_BH.7) existed, briefly. They would probably have carried rockets rather than guns, because these are lighter and have less recoil. They were useful in flat, estuary terrain where boats and trucks might have to take a much longer path.
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A simple and easily overlooked solution that should be fairly elegant: sludge + power = "repulsive sludge" (as if it weren't repulsive enough already). Stick a container of sludge underneath something and run power through it, and it will repel (and be repelled by) non-powered sludge. As long as the effect falls off with distance, bingo: instant SEV (Sludge-Effect Vehicle), with the same basic behavior as a hovercraft or other ground-effect vehicle, or a magnet suspended above a superconductor.
Compression allows "shaping" the sludge, and thus the details of how the repulsive effect is focused, without having to vary the power (which is going to be a concern; non-powered sludge next to powered sludge on the same vehicle frame would try to pull it apart). Note that this only works *because* the sludge is semi-liquid; you'll end up with a 'wake' outward from the repulsion effect, and shifting where you 'push' against that is one way to get propulsion. Note that if you're doing at least quasi-hard SF you might want to consider speed limitations induced by *how* liquid the sludge is, and how much of a wake things would be throwing upward / outward.
As others have noted, you're going to have problems if you fire any sort of heavy weapon which is not dramatically out-massed by the vehicle itself, or very carefully aligned, but depending on the exact details of the effect you might be able to 'brace' against the sludge and transfer a fair amount of the recoil force to it through the frame.
An interesting side effect is that if this scales sufficiently well, the only limitation on effective ship size is how much sludge you can "power up" and how much of a ground cushion is required; your actual vehicles would have to deal with an interesting hybrid environment that isn't entirely like land *or* water based combat, so there might end up being a lot of experimentation to figure out what works and what doesn't, since neither a traditional tank nor a traditional gunboat are likely to be ideal fits.
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The tanks could use some variation of [Magnetic Levitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_levitation) that is only possible due to the properties of the sludge itself. Since the levitation requires the properties of the sludge to work, the farther away from the sludge, the less effective the levitation would be.
This would require a few different variations of vehicles as sludge travel would require completely different mechanisms than ground travel. A sludge-travel (ST) only tank with internal ST engines would need to be deployed to sludge areas in other ways, likely by other vehicles. A hybrid ground-travel (GT) and ST vehicle might be less maneuverable and/or less equipped due to needing to have both GT and ST engines.
Another possible issue would be sludge displacement. If the ST tanks are too heavy, then they may need to be constantly in motion or else they would start displacing the sludge underneath them causing them to sink, or require them to deploy emergency buoyancy devices that are easily targetable and could cause maneuverability issues. Lighter but less equipped tanks could be light enough to float on sludge while not moving, but would also be more fragile.
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Inverse square law: assume that your (whatever) force lifting the tank off the ground drops off as the square in proportion to the distance between the emitter and the surface below it.
Say that for a given power input you have enough force to lift a 60 tonne tank a meter off the ground. At two meters, (twice the distance from the surface), you only have a fourth of the lifting force, meaning you can only lift 15 tonnes. At three meters (three times the distance), you're down to 6.7 tonnes, and at four meters, 3.75 tonnes.
So, to go high, you either significantly increase the rating of the power plant to feed more energy into the lifting system (which means increasing the mass you need to lift), or you lessen the weight, but even then you quickly get into diminishing returns. If the powerplant of your tank puts out enough force to lift it a meter off the ground, at ten meters it will only be able to support 600 kilograms. Even ignoring the mass of the powerplant, that's about half the mass of VW Beetle. Your tanks ain't gonna fly. You can alter the numbers, of course, to get the effect you want.
There's another interesting effect: from your description, propulsion is by redirecting some of the lifting force in a given direction, basically to "push" the vehicle. Well, if the lifting force works as I described above, you also run into the issue that the amount of force pushing at an angle on the ground to move *also* goes down the further it is off the ground. In other words, the higher the tank the less force can be used to push it along, meaning it has lower acceleration, braking, and turning ability. In essence, it will wallow around in the air, making it a significantly easier target.
The end effect is that you might have a tank that has an optimum cruising height, but enough engine capacity that it can go up slightly to get over some obstacles but at a cost of maneuverability, not much different from current tanks where they have the capacity to gun the engines and put more torque into climbing steep slopes at the cost of speed. And it's not something you want to do all the time due to engine wear and fuel usage.
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The sludge may repel the sludge as if it were a magnet. But like a magnet, if the tank turns upside down it falls hard. So hard that sometimes a falling tank sinks in the mud and drowns the crew. Only if they are close to the ground the tanks are stable. One meter above the ground is already risky.
This could give you a plot twist, some daredevils sometimes perform dangerous maneuvres by passing high over some obstacles.
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## The tanks need a continuous supply of fresh sludge for their sludge ballasts
Since the sludge is on the ground, the tanks must stay close to the ground to collect fresh sludge. Installing large resevoirs of sludge on the tanks would make them too heavy to even hover.
Even if the hostile force can achive flight using sludge ballasts — for instance because they don't need a continuous supply of sludge — the tanks' designers weren't able to reverse engineer or adapt the technology perfectly, so the tanks have limitatiations the hostile forces' vehicles don't.
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I have something similar for my world. The answer I came up with is two-fold:
1. power consumption goes up exponentially with hover height
2. it's quite difficult to maintain balance between all the 'hover nodes' to keep the craft level, especially when subject to winds at increasing heights
So theoretically, you could 'fly' the craft for some time but you'd burn through your power reserves fast, and you'd need an absolute hotshot pilot who can prevent the craft from tipping over.
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Short version:
The *evil* empire maintains different types of "armies"
One of which is a sort of Praetorian guard organization. And while I love history I can't help but feel absolute disgust by the actual Praetorian guards so our guys are fictional.
Now their training starts from 7-10 with 10 being the maximum age of acceptance.
**Which leads me to wonder if there are any actual tangible advantages of having an insanely deadly training program?**
The rate of success is about 30%.
The ultimate goal of the guards is to produce the most perfect soldier/bodyguard/assassin/
imaginable.
Men and women both lose their own identity and lose the ability to produce children. The setting does not matter. They are not worried about human rights. Children are forced in and almost brainwashed. They are taken from orphans and slaves so no family or identity to begin with.
They are tools of the emperor and nothing more. But they are expected to be the absolute perfect tools and most capable overall people in general.
They even train them to be advanced doctors and engineers...etc
So are there actual proven benefits of such a deadly training program?
What does history say for example? I mean sure the Spartans were known for years to be amazing warriors but it's not they were the only great warriors.
**That leads me to stress the associated benefits of the deadliness of the training as opposed to just good training. Like good training trains them to face death yes. But this one expect a bunch of them to flat out die.**
Basically I'm asking if we have the same exact excellent training program but in case A they don't expect 7/10 to die and in case B they think that letting those 7 die means that the 3 left are great. Does that indeed achieve that result? So. With good training would I have the same awesome guards?
Obviously there are a lot of things about the guard that I made but I simply want to focus on this aspect here.
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**The Lethality Isn't the Point:**
There are two major reasons the lethality is so high. One is to create a reputation of insane training to mythologize these soldiers. The second is that the government simply doesn't care if they die.
The program probably does work. The lethality creates fear in the survivors, and a sense of superiority in them as well. You intensely train anyone who survives and select on the basis of loyalty, you'll get a body of effective loyalists. I'm thinking more along the lines of [Janissaries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissary).
You are drawing from human beings you don't value, so if they die, so what? It's not like you're recruiting from among the successful citizens. To everyone who sees all this death, they imagine (much like the Spartans) that these guys must be truly better. The reputation of your elite soldiers is more important than the reality. Since you established that death isn't relevant, it doesn't necessarily tarnish the reputation if they die. Only that they achieve the mission or die trying.
[Nicolae Ceausescu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu) famously created a cadre of fanatical followers from orphanages. These fanatics fought on long past the point of any real hope of success. The fear of fanatical loyalists is bigger than the reality.
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* **Hide brainwashing failures:**
Your lethality rate will randomly kill many who are good enough, just unlucky at the wrong time. But the instructors can surely assure that anyone who looks questionable does die, without a formal inquiry and court-martial.
* **No washouts:**
Imagine a situation with 30% graduates and 70% screwups. What are you going to do with those who don't make the cut? Send them to a regular unit to grouse about how they *almost* made it?
* **Accustom them to fatalities:**
A military unit with just 10% fatalities is grievously hit. In anything like a normal war, it would be taken off the line to recover and integrate replacements. Consider the origin of the Roman term *decimate*.
Your guards have that loss rate in each year of their training. They get used to step into dead men's shoes and to carry on regardless.
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**The Lethality Is The Point**
As you've noticed, the actual Praetorian Guard were a common source of dissent. Being close to power makes you the power brokers. Being physically close to the leader presents opportunities for assassination.
The point of the lethal training is not to produce guards that are better fighters on the individual level, because that tends to end up being tactically irrelevant, but guards that are the most loyal possible. Hence your destruction of all other possible bonds of loyalty. It's the candidates that are least loyal that end up getting killed.
And because the other candidates kill them, they have that blood on their hands. They're already morally compromised. They never have to ask the question "would I murder for the Emperor?", because they already have done.
This produces Maoist or North Korean levels of political stability through brutalization.
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[Nah.](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B00C8S9UV2) What Victor Davis Hanson shows in this book is the reason that western nations win against collectivist and totalitarian nations is exactly because they don't put soldiers like you describe into battle. They put independent, intelligent, motivated individuals into battle, and let them make their own decisions.
Example: During the first Iraq-Gulf war, the pattern was like so. When a forward Iraq unit detected the enemy, they would need to call it in to their superior, who would call it in to theirs and so on. Usually back to HQ. It would take a general-rank officer at least to order an air strike. This could take more than 2 hours to produce action. By this time, the enemy had moved, often to the forward scout's position and killed or captured him.
When a western forward unit detected the enemy, a soldier of rank as low as sergeant could call for an air strike, and it could be there in minutes. And it would be guided in the last few minutes by direct radio between the sergeant and the pilots. So the enemy would get smashed.
Or, to put it another way, quoting from memory the movie "Full Metal Jacket." The marines don't want robots. They want soldiers who will be frosty and tough and stay alive by killing the enemy.
From 300 Spartans standing up to the vastly superior numbers of Persians, to [Charles Martel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel#Aquitaine_and_the_Battle_of_Tours_in_732) standing up to the invaders, to Cortez standing up to vastly larger numbers of American natives, to the Allies beating the Axis in WWII, the side with personally motivated free-to-innovate soldiers is more likely to win.
You might want to say there was technological advantage. There also, the advantage goes to the side where people think clearly, independently, and individually. [Capitalism](https://reason.com/2016/12/13/the-most-important-graph-in-the-world) produces technological advance and the wealth to pay for new weapons, ships, etc. And it depends on individuals being able to think on their own, independently, clearly, and not directed from above.
Robots don't create. They don't create innovative battle plans. They don't create new weapon systems. They don't create wealth.
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## Your Praetorians are promoted Gladiators
There are plenty of military elite units that only accept the top N% of candidates, and send the rest along to be regulars or dismiss them back to civilian life where they can be useful for other things. Killing them just squanders your manpower... unless you are profiting from their deaths.
If your training itself involves participation in a blood sport, then even those who die in the arena will serve the main purpose of their existence which is actually entertainment. In Ancient Rome, no one was worried about losing valuable warriors to gladiator combat because their dying generated tons of revenue for the state.
One surviving account shows that a quality gladiator could be worth as much as 700,000 sesterces (~7 million dollars by today's currency). In contrast, a Roman legion costed about 2000 sesterces per person per year; so, a single gladiator could produce enough revenue on his path to becoming a Preatorian Guard to raise enough money to deploy hundreds of regular soldiers. In this fashion, you could field more regular troops by killing your sub-par recruits for entertainment than by sending them off to become regular troops themselves.
For your Praetorian Guard, you could require that soldiers participate in multiple arena fights both to prove their merit and to raise money for the glory of the empire. With this solution, you get your "money's worth" out of them whether they live or die. The fact that you are left with an elite fighting force of Coliseum champions when you are done is just a bonus.
Another advantage here is that Gladiators are duelist, not field soldiers. Experience with this kind of fighting is better suited for personal guard duty and policing as the Praetorians were mostly responsible for.
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Disregard for *injuries* could improve training.
Even in modern climbing, parkour, sparing, fencing, running, horse riding etc. injuries happen, despite an emphasis on safety. You get lots of fractured bones from falling or torn tendons. Even with modern medicine such injuries can cause permanent problems or at the very least take months to heal. There are also overuse injuries. The best athletes are often the ones who manage to avoid injuries and are able to train huge volumes without suffering from overuse injuries.
If your story takes place in a medieval setting the medicine and physiotherapy will be much worse and even a relatively simple bone fracture can turn into a lifelong disability. Quite a few of the injuries will also be deadly.
Hard training will mean lots of such injuries but at the same time the few individuals who manage it without permanent damage and minimal downtime will be extremely good athletes.
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**Your survival rate is perfect. Make it only a third survive, and then you have a truly elite force.**
It's a known issue that [most soldiers don't fire in combat.](https://www.historynet.com/men-against-fire-how-many-soldiers-actually-fired-their-weapons-at-the-enemy-during-the-vietnam-war.htm) Only a third regularly fire, as most people don't want to kill others. As such, the evil empire may want an elite force filled with killers who do fire. They from their own studies of soldiers recognize that most are filled with mercy, a quality they detest. As such the training program, while not lethal to killers, is especially lethal to any who refuse to shoot. This weeds out those who do not shoot to kill easily.
**In terms of producing the most effective force this is ineffectual.**
There are training methods that can counteract this lack of firing issues, and studies in later wars found lower no shoot rates, and more soldiers means more people who may prove to be exceptional. But, if you want to get people who kill easily, this method is great.
**Training doesn't produce exceptional guards, assassins, or warriors**
This is another historical issue that people have with schemes like this. Most people aren't, for reasons of upbringing, genetics, or whatever that good at killing people. You can't train people into being super soldiers with just raw training, brutal or otherwise.
This has been tried repeatedly with assassins and soldiers. The assassins often turned themselves in to the target, unwilling to kill, and the soldiers proved ineffective. Most people aren't natural born killers.
What you need is already exceptional people. So, this second training program shouldn't take raw recruits from peasant villages. They should take recognized soldiers from existing armies who have proven themselves.
War does not forge men, but it tests them to see who will break or not, and sharpens their blades. Those who are exceptional could enter this training program, and face the death toll. Those who are not willing to kill at the drop of a hat will be weeded out, and only psychopaths with a fanatical loyalty to the state will be left.
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Based on suggestions posted in the other answers, I would like to propose an alternative solution. The evil of the evil empire can be more subtle and much more effective than just taking orphans off the streets. You need to accomplish a few things here:
1. Select individuals with appropriate psychological profiles (in terms of violence and fanatical loyalty)
2. Maintain an aura of mystery and exclusivity about the whole thing.
3. Be efficient about it, since nothing is as evil as an efficient system.
Rather than attempting to force candidates into a position they don't belong in, provide free education for the masses. This will allow children to find their optimal skillset regardless of their ability to kill, minimizing wasted talent. Have the teachers look out for students that seem more predisposed to violence (as they will probably do voluntarily anyway), and send them to special military schools.
Up to this point, you will have transparency, and the support of most of your people, especially if a military career is suitably glorified. Most of the students in military schools are going to be regular soldiers, but you will have performed the first practical step of your selection. You are also on your way to creating a better army, since you can train most of the selected kids with skills more focused towards fighting.
Further screening in the military schools by specially trained staff will identify the real psychopaths that you are looking for. Have these kids disappear under mysterious circumstances and sent to the bodyguard training facilities. There will be two main types rejection from these facilities:
1. False positives from the winnowing process: kids that are really not psychopathic enough to do what you need them to do. You can send them back to military school (e.g. as an officer) or even regular school, unless you don't want any details about the facility to be leaked.
2. Uncooperative elements: kids that are plenty psycho, but refuse fanatical obedience, even after all the brainwashing. You can't release them into your orderly, educated society, and you can't work with them, so do the math.
The death rate in these facilities will likely be higher indeed: those who are not amenable to becoming a loyal follower have no choice but to serve as an example to others. The actual details of the training can be taken from the more successful programs throughout history. The survivors will reappear as members of an elite unit, sworn never to discuss the details of their training, or something like that.
There are likely many flaws with the proposed system, but on the surface it is fairly efficient (and arguably even humane). Rather than punishing or otherwise wasting resources on individuals who are likely to become a social liability, provide them with discipline and use them to further your evil goals in a constructive manner. Only extreme cases are eliminated, and you really do your best to use the manpower you have efficiently. No wonder the empire is so feared by its poorly organized opponents, yet supported by its citizens!
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That training is worthless.
Perfection doesn't come from mall-ninja fantasy. It comes from a professional military that sends cadets to military academies. As many as that nation can afford to send.
What you need is a selection process. Like with nearly everything else in the universe, ability will follow a normal curve. Most will be of average ability, with progressively fewer who are capable of each level beyond that. You've seen these curves plotted out in school, the so-called "bell curve", haven't you?
If they can have many thousands of soldiers (or even millions), a few dozen or a few hundred will show themselves to be capable of being "elite". What you need isn't a training regime (or not that alone), but a method that selects the most capable.
And your description doesn't even fit the bill for a good selection methodology. You don't want a system that kills them... better soldiers aren't made by killing (some of) them during training. The difficult trick has always been to train them *without* killing them, since no one ever gets anything right on the first try. Let's use a martial art as an analogy. In particular, judo. No one knows instinctively how to perform judo techniques. They must be learned. They can be deadly (spiking someone's head into the ground is a good way to screw them up permanently). But to learn them, you must be able to practice them... something that's difficult to do if you're constantly killing training partners. Judo's success as a martial art owes much to its founder developing techniques that prevent (or at least mitigate) the students killing each other during practice. Figuring out what motions/actions can be done without causing permanent harm, and how to perform those.
If this had not happened, if judo killed most students who practiced, and if you could just have billions practice it until only a handful remained... those wouldn't be the "most elite judo students ever". They'd just be the luckiest, or maybe the biggest/strongest. Their technique, such as it was, would have suffered for it, and likely someone who would have been better at it ended up dead in a training center before he could become the best.
Then look at the psychological profile of someone likely to survive such a training regime. Anyone who isn't a lunatic is selected *against* because they'll stay far away, while people who are borderline suicidal (or non-borderline psychopathic) will gravitate towards that.
In summary, the systems that produce the most elite soldiers are very unlikely to resemble male teenage badass fantasies.
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Frankly, no. There isn’t a big benefit to the training outright killing 7 out of 10 trainees.
1. You’ve invested a lot into your trainees. Your evil empire had to provide food, clothing, medicine, etc, while they’re being trained. Not to mention the training itself. It just doesn’t make sense to throw that many resources at your trainees when the grand majority won’t be able to pay back their keep.
2). I have to think having that many people dropping would kill cohesion, which is what you really want in an army or guard like this. It’s just hard to develop the mindset of ‘I must not let down my comrades’ when you know darn well that most won’t make it regardless.
3). You risk loosing a truly great warrior to one off day. The idea that the best person will always be triumphant is just wrong. All you need is your dumbest trainee get one lucky shot and there goes Achilles’ reincarnation.
3.5). Similarly, maybe Bobby hits puberty early and gets an edge, while Tommy’s a late bloomer. In your scenario Tommy probably dies. But if we’re not killing kids for the sake of it, then it turns out a 16 Tommy shoots up a foot and becomes an absolute beast while Bobby settles into the lower middle of the pack. Kids progress at different speeds and early aptitude isn’t a 1to1 indication of their future abilities.
4). The only arguable benefits to the training being so deadly are really to desensitize them to violence and death, and to incentivize excellence. It’s just that there are much better ways. You can desensitize them just as easily by having them kill those you’re not investing in, (slaves, criminals, etc.). Incentivizing would work better by using shame or dangling prestige in front of them, rather than expecting the fear of death to be proper motivation.
It really seems you want to train this guard in something like the Spartan Agoge system. Which is fair enough, they’re known as the best warriors for a reason. But as harsh as it was, as a rule they survived training to serve Sparta.
If you really want only the best of the best serving your Pretorian guard, your evil empire is just better served choosing the top 30% who proved themselves over a decade and a half and having the others serve elsewhere, rather than taking those who happened to survive.
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# Getting rid of undesirables
You are an evil overlord, quick to get rid of problems by ... getting rid of the people with the problems. Now, any society has its share of undesirables. The poor, the orphaned. The marginalized. The downtrodden.
As a card carrying member of the forces of evil, you view these folks mostly as a drain on resources better spent elsewhere. Worse, to you they're not people needing help, they're a constant breeding ground for unrest, both politically (riots) and more conventionally (theft, organized crime).
But you're also no fool. You can't just openly kill off these folks. They're theoretically your property, just like your other subjects, who have this crazy idea that also means they're under your protection.
Instead, you recruit the *Diamonds in the Rough* extensively from these groups. This also has a side benefit of making intrigue harder. This group won't have members from the rich and powerful serving in it. At best it will have disowned heirs or orphaned last survivors.
That many of them die off is a benefit. One more *Diamond* recruit is one less potential problem down the road.
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The point isn't to kill them, but to remove any hesitation to kill
Human beings are generally not accustomed to kill each other. So I would assume will be the case for the average citizen of your evil empire. Even soldiers in the middle of a firefight will hesitate to use lethal violence against their foes. Sure, corner someone and their fight or flight instinct will make them attack. But when they have the advantage? They will hesitate.
How many refuse to use lethal violence is disputed and hard to actually determine. High estimates puts it at 90%, but it might be much lower. As the world builder, you can make this number quite high though.
This hestitation can be overcome through training. But simulating real combat enough to be effective at this is challenging. But if their training actually involves lethal combat? They will get used to taking lives and to kill on reflex. If they fight as groups, they will also form close bonds with their comrades. This elite unit will have it's members fight almost like highly experienced war veterans right out of training.
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Your evil empire is WWII Germany. that means an all out prolonged war that makes all
the population into potential soldiers. As said above by Nosajimiki, the trainnees death toll wouldn't be tolerable unless it comes with a compensation. In this case being that they fought in the war and helped achieve some part in military objectives.
Only in the context of "everybody is going to die anyways unless we kill the enemy" that death rate is conceivable.
It couldn't be a trainning process alone, but a desperate series of short trainings and battles that would nonetheless give you deadly soldiers.
Germans had a limited amount of prime weapons that would allow some of the young soldiers to survive without experiencing a defeat in their first combat. Which plays a crucial part for a soldiers moral and therefore their formation.
Another way they achieved this is by switching combatants between different warfronts, from a lighter one (east for pilots, west for infantry etc) to the harder ones.
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I'm working on a kind of worn down future idea with darker tones, and I want to have a character who lives in slums with worn out prosthetic arms, but be something they keep very private to keep from being looked down upon or discriminated against.
What reasons, logical or illogical, would this society have to dislike people with robotic enhancements or prosthetics?
For clarification, the character themselves has prosthetics that would make them somewhat less capable than having normal arms, but this can play off enhancements.
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Have you heard about a game called Deus Ex? They give a handful of reason to don't like augmented people.
From having "unfair" advantage (builders with spirit levels in eyes) to admitting to failure as human when you need to rely on super strength.
Oh, and also when you are a robot someone can just flip the switch and send every Aug on a killing spree.
And if you are lazy just throw religion at this. God created human in his image so changing that is a blasphemy.
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In order to find the answer, I'll change your question a little:
>
> What reasons would this society have to dislike people with another
> skin tone?
>
>
>
The answer is: none. But you'll always find someone disliking someone else for beeing different.
For robotic enhancement, I think of [Dex](http://store.steampowered.com/app/269650/), [The Red String Club](http://store.steampowered.com/app/589780/) and [The Night's Dawn Trilogy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night%27s_Dawn_Trilogy).
In Dex, some militia hunt people with robotic enhancements because they're not natural anymore.
In Red String Club, some choose to not have robotic enhancements because they do not trust manufacturers (maybe for a good reason?) and try to sabotage production.
In The Night's Dawn Trilogy, some mercenaries changed almost all of theirs body with military grade advancements and does not refer themselves as human anymore.
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For the same reason people discriminate against any group:
# They're different
What comes after that is secondary, logic doesn't have any part in it, only fear of the "other".
As to what reasons they'll give, this is a matter of how society treats them and whether they're replacements or enhancements. Burden on society, taking our jobs, poor and homeless, more machine than man. Take your pick, it'll only take a few such people in visible positions of power before "they're taking over the world".
People will always find reasons to hate a group they don't identify with.
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If you take a look at the Bas Lag trilogy of books by China Mieville (Perdido St Station, The Scar, Iron Council) then you'll see a world in which the Remade are in effect punished criminals.
If you do something seriously wrong, as part of your punishment (instead of going to a prison where it costs money to feed you and detain you) you're sent to a remaking facility with specific instructions from a judge about how you are to be remade. Remaking in this world is the integration of your body with specific steam based engines and mechanisms that both serve a specific purpose for the society you've harmed, and make you stand out as an offender.
It's possible that such concepts may well exist in our future as well. Not necessarily criminals although this is possible; give a criminal the tools to repair the society he or she has harmed and all that. But, imagine (if you will) and indentured servitude class where specific augmentations are forced upon people to ensure they're only useful for a specific specialisation.
Your prosthetic arm (for instance) may be designed with specific tools in mind as the bearer was meant to be a mechanic. It might be optimised more for strength (carter) or even small motor skill speed (scribe or typist). Assuming you no longer work in that field for whatever reason, the prosthetic may make you stand apart as someone who was originally indentured to a specific line of work. It might block you from certain privileges of the citizenry or just make others feel like they're better than you because you've been considered sufficiently low in society that you could be altered.
Another side of this is that your person may now be working in different fields, but the alteration makes you stand out as being of a different skillset. Not social discrimination, but it may well be employment discrimination. Having a mechanic's arm and applying for a job like paralegal could be the same as a CV with no relevant skills on it; people just don't think you're up for the job.
So; it could be a stigma based on a large number of offenders having prosthetics, it could be a caste system where lower members of society are routinely 'optimised' for the career that's chosen for them, or even just that your prosthetics 'advertise' a specific career different to the one you're trying to pursue. All you really have to do is make it so that the rich and powerful would never dream of getting it done to them and society will follow their lead as a value judgement.
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# Evolutionary game theory
All the answers before are valid, but I'd like to propose an alteration of the **haters gonna hate** theme that came up so often.
### Why do haters hate?
There's several evolutionary reasons why creating ingroups and outgroups is strategically useful.
Typically, you will want to be part of the largest group that can sustain a robust majority in your country. The larger the group, the more people have to share resources, which is bad. If the group is too small, it cannot dominate the remainder of the population, which too is evolutionary bad.
*How* you draw these groups is pretty arbitrary (of course, there might be particular strategic reasons to include or exclude your augmented individuals in the group). A large part of earth history consists of different people trying to spread their version of how populations should be particioned ("*Yes, they are all immigrants, but **those** are black...*"). And typically, once you've managed to partition the population, it's very hard to change the idea in the people's head.
See for instance that it was [strategically useful](https://www.ushmm.org/learn/introduction-to-the-holocaust/ethical-leaders/background/causes-and-motivations) [aka a netgain of material wealth for the oppressors] to build coalitions against Jewish people in earlier centuries, and religion was used as a divisor. Nowadays, there are not as many strategic resources available to expropriation, and the likelihood of shifting the narrative enough to make expropriation is negligible -- "*hating Jews*" is not as useful [to the non-Jewish partition] as it once was, yet some people are still doing it. **Persistence**.
### Your case
It's strategically useful to discriminate against enhanced beings if
* they are a strategic factor: Either they control a lot of resources, or they could be very powerful (good fighters etc)
* Other dimensions to partition the populations are less relevant (for example there exists no big religion divide beforehand)
* Somehow, the narratives evolve
* + Suddenly, the planet gets much richer, and therefore fighting for resources more valuable than before
* + Some strategic people have foreseen long-term consequences of enhanced humans and therefore coordinate hate speech
Of course, there could be other ways in which your enhanced beings have alienated themselves. As in X-Men, a few bad individuals may ruin everyone's reputation. But for those cases, I point at the other answers.
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(As others have said, haters are gonna hate, they don't really need a reason)
Other answers have concentrated on the "enhancement" angle, I would like to say a few words about the "prosthetics" angle.
Losing a limb is seen by some as a sign of the gods' disfavour. This has happened time and again throughout history.
If you live life without that limb you might be in disfavour, but at least you have humbly accepted the gods' judgment. People will tolerate you.
If you use a prosthetic openly, you are defying the gods. No good will come of this and people will avoid you.
If you use a prosthetic and *hide it*, you are a cheater and a fraud. You endanger everybody around you as the gods' wrath can strike them down for associating with you. If you are found out, you will be put to the torch.
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If you describe it as "robotic *enhancements*" then perhaps people think others with these enhancements are a threat, or fear what the enhanced humans can do.
On the other hand people may see it as lesser, as though having a prosthetic makes you less human.
Where there are differences, people will find a reason to discriminate.
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There are a few options here:
**Bionic superiority**
Workers with robotic prosthetics are more efficient than an "organic" worker, effectively replacing multiple jobs. People with prosthetics are looked down on by "organics" because they take their jobs and livelihood.
**Assumptions and moral stigma**
An example would be observing a society where thieves are punished by cutting off the right hand. Almost inherently, those with a prosthetic right hand will be assumed to be a thief.
Assuming you have a variety of limbs that get chopped off for different crimes, people will automatically assume that anyone who misses a particular bodypart (which is revealed through having prosthetics there) was once convicted of the related crime.
**Organic purity**
There could be a religious/cultural belief that only pure organical creatures are blessed/have a soul/are respected/...
This is somewhat similar to abortions nowadays. While they are available in some parts of the world, having had an abortion will get you banned/excluded from some other parts of the world (even if not legally).
Similarly, there may be some communities/ideologies that explicitly forbid wearing prosthetics. Whether they have a good reason for doing so is up to you to decide (they might justify their rules, they might not if they're authoritarian).
**A fad that passed**
This is less severe than the others.
If having prosthetics was once in fashion, but is later mocked (similar to how we mock old fashion), then people may want to hide their prosthetics to avoid being mocked.
Even people who have prosthetics for a *valid* (non-elective) reason might still be assumed to have done it electively; so even they are incentivized to hide their prosthetics.
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In a variation on [Stig's](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/108935/3106), [thkala's](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/108938/3106) and [Martijn's](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/108948/3106) answers, look at the *negative* reasons for the prosthetic as a replacement:
They have had a terrible disease which cost them their limb(s), needing prosthetics.
People avoid people with diseases, especially if the disease is *thought to be* contagious.
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Because people with prosthetics are considerd "cheaters". People without prosthetics have the idea that they're wrong. They have thoughts like: Why would people need prosthetics, what is wrong with normal? AM I wrong?. This creates a split between "normal" and "modified" people.
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Peak Oil. The augmentation is a leftover of an age of energy abundance. But the oil peaked, fusion never took off, and solar, wind, hydroelectric and nuclear together can barely keep society out of a malthusian die-off. Cybernetics implants are quite expensive in terms of energy, both to craft them and to mantain them and people dislike these wasteful knaves gorging in energy while people are barely eating.
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Cyber Psychosis/Empathy Loss and other loss of intangibles.
Whether it's a spiritual thing (Essence loss in Shadowrun, for example) or a psychological thing, it is a common trope that replacing parts of the original body makes you less "you." In such a setting, people with heavy augmentation tend to be less capable of empathy/relating to other people as people, whether due to intangibles, or due to actual technical limitations (the cybernetics don't move 100% right, for example, which triggers uncanny valley in observers, or maybe they just dont smell right, as it's astonishing how much of our communication and assessment of an individual is non-verbal.)
In this case, our broken down old cyborg may have lost a certain amount of their sense of self in the process, which creeps people out on an insitinctive level, so they get stigmatised, whether or not there's a formal name for the prejudice.
if your setting allows for the existence of souls, and the supporting metaphysics, then a simple "cybernetics eat your soul, and the presence of a damaged soul creeps people out" will do it too.
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Flipping it slightly: Suppose this future world has perfected organ/limb cloning an replacements. Anyone who then has a prosthetic replacement, rather than an organic one is either A) too poor to afford a cloned tranplant or B) objecting to these 'newfangled CloTrans'. (making them the futuristic equivalent to a [Luddite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite) or [Amish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish).)
Both of these are already "reasons" that people get discriminated against.
Since you no longer have the "enhancement" stigma suggested by many other answers, this also lets you have characters with various body-mods as "normal", or at least only slighly unusual.
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1. The (very) old fashioned religious argument of "the world is just and righteous therefore the disabled probably earned their place through sin"
2. If lost in a war it could be the case that that specific war had no "good side" the entire war was/is viewed as a pointless power struggle between 'evil' nations who's soldiers are not looked upon kindly.
3. There is only one source of prosthetics that advanced, and no one likes them. Evil company, crazy AI etc...
4. There is no reason and your characters just paranoid.
5. They have connotations with something people have a genuine gripe against. (Sort of like who in WW2 German Americans his their culture and accents despite having nothing to do with the Nazis.
6. Some government, cult, church, charismatic leader, company etc.. Is spreading an ideology which is 90% common sense 10% "we must protect the ideal human form"
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Are you referring to prosthetic replacements, or prosthetic *enhancements*?
If it's the former, people with disabilities are discriminated against *today*, prosthetics or not. Seeing this behavior continue into the future is, unfortunately, not hard at all to imagine.
If it's the latter, it could be that people fear or feel cheated by folks with such prosthetics. For real-life arguments, just take a look at the few cases of athletes with prosthetics competing in the Olympics, and the resulting controversy.
...or it could simply be about be about your character having *worn out*
prosthetics. The well-off are often prone to discrimination against those who are not as lucky in their lives.
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Your character seems like a poor lad in this futuristic society. I will assume this society is very advanced and the only reason your character has a prosthetic limb is his bad genes or bad healing, which keeps his body from performing optimally like the rest of society.
Let's say that most human beings have been genetically engineered to have extremely strong bones and near god levels of healing. This man with his prosthetic limbs was doomed to live a life of mediocrity, because his parents never believed in becoming a part of the super race.
This character lived on the outskirts of the supercity along with the other "barbarians" who reject the idea of genetic modification and they live very violent, primitive lives. The inhabitants of the supercity believe these people are scum.
Your character wants to get away from the violence of these slums and make a life for himself inside the city, but his scarred face, unusual appearance and useless prosthetics makes it difficult for anyone to see him as someone worth correspondence.
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## The body is a temple.
>
> Your body is a temple, unique and given to you by the mighty universe. How *dare* you introducing these... *impurities*?
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> Your weakness is repulsing, these so called *enhancements* only make you a tool, a slave, a weakling!
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A very obvious one is
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> Fear of what enhanced people can do
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for instance replace the word robotic enhancement with "Semiautomatic weapons" and you have yourself a recent real-world analogy
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A society would tend to dislike people with replacement prosthetics because, by replacing body parts as they fail, a member of the society could essentially become immortal.
Doing so would probably be an option for someone who has a lot of money, so this "immortality" would be associated with the very rich. Your character might be looked upon as a "spoiled rich kid," even if s/he obtained the prosthetics through some other means.
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**Health reasons**
Prosthetics need constant maintenance. Worn out prosthetics are like old, badly maintained cars: they spill unhealthy chemicals, and are a danger hazard when they malfunction. Especially if the prosthetics use miniature fission reactors (you buy one, the energy should last a lifetime, and it would make it more likely that they can still function if one does not have enough money to care for them because you don't need to refuel either). Sure, they also make their owners ill, but what choice do they have if they don't have the money to get them serviced?
However, I'm not sure I'd call this "discrimination" as I associate that word with a certain degree of irrational behaviour. But when people start seeing everyone with prosthetics (however well-maintained) as potential health hazard, that would fulfil this criterion in my opinion.
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Have you considered that they don't need to discriminate against people with prosthetics? Wouldn't an equally useful reason be related to it being old and worn out?
Looking down on the poor and those who don't have nice things is a well established trait of human societies. Just as a battered old car, tatty clothes, or a cracked and ageing mobile phone would get you judged so too would an old prosthetic.
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It depends on what type of prosthetics those are.
If we are talking about prosthetics (as opposed to enhancements) similar to today's and yesterday's ones, which while helpful, still mostly leave person less able than one with all limbs, then one of the answers can simply be cultural bias together with government policy.
For example, a very real case. When the Iron Curtain fell, many of my countrymen, as they went to West Europe for the first time, were surprised to see on the streets lots of handicapped people. In the USSR, you could see them in public quite rarely.
It was not because there were less handicapped people in the USSR. It was because there were *no* facilities anywhere that enabled them to move around easily. For example, the USSR never thought to provide street curbs in its towns with ramps. The *only* places where you could find ramps where at hospital entrances, where they presumably were installed for the benefit of stretchers and ambulances.
There was no overt discrimination of people with disabilities, but they did usually only got the means to scrape a living, not to lead as full a life as possible.
One of the side-effects of this was that since people with prosthetics and in wheelchairs were a rare occurrence, most people on the streets didn't feel *comfortable* around them and didn't know how to react to them. So they were ignored a lot -- a hurried glance that skips over and pretends to watch something else.
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In those golden age sci-fi comic books, we often see the main character with some type of robotic companion (maybe controlled by an electronic computer or some organic "brain"), while computers remain large.
My understanding of robotics is that small, portable electronics are needed for them to exist. The same type of electronics that would enable smaller computers.
How could a world exist without desk-sized computers, but with some degree of viable robotics? Handwaving with non-scientific factors (like magic) is not an issue but I'd still like to know what exactly the "magic" would change in this world. Please let me know if more information is required.
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Animal controls.
pigeon controlled bombs were a thing. They worked. they are however very limited in what they can do and of course each pigeon was single use.
Basically you have trained animal handling the controls. Electronics are way cheaper, lighter, and easier but some things can be done without them. For a willing amount of handwavium you could make animal controlled drones.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FohkP.png)
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We're not actually that far off such a situation now. The push to run everything in "the cloud" really means "*run it all in a giant datacenter somewhere you can't see it*", and giant datacenters aren't all that different from your classic mainframe.
Most people still have a compact bit of personal compute power in the form of their phones, and what's left at the moment tends to be a laptop but even that doesn't need to be the case in your world... we already have stuff like office "productivity" applications like spreadsheets running in datacenters, and stuff like the late unlamented google stadia showed that games could be left there too.
Your world doesn't have intermediate-sized computers simply because they aren't needed... phones, terminals (which may be phones) and datacenters cover all the roles required.
There are technology limits for drones, of course, and having tiny capable drones with long battery lives does imply modern or future technical capabilities. The exact timescales and technological abilities of "golden age" settings were often a bit fuzzy, so as you haven't made any tighter restrictions on times and technologies, this seems like it would suit you.
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## Drones don't have to be small and highly computerized.
Way Back When Computers Were Huge, radio controlled airplanes existed. The control units were a bit large and heavy, and you needed line of sight to control them, but the highest tech electronics were transistors.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p9uV9.jpg)
And as far back as **the 1950s**, when computers barely existed, the Ryan Firebee was buzzing around for the US military.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NElc7.jpg)
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**You can have drones with no electronics at all.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/03oEg.jpg)
[The Goliath Tracked Mine](https://www.military-history.org/feature/world-war-2/back-to-the-drawing-board.htm)
These little machines are terrifying drones. They would crawl across No-Man's Land with 100kg of high explosives and blow up in the opposing trench. They did not have computers. Some had electric motors but most had gas engines. It was all mechanical.
You can get a fair bit done with clockwork and punchcard type memory. I like the idea of a robot buddy made from a decomissioned Goliath Tracked Mine, with the 100 kg of explosives removed to make room for a computer of sorts. And a voice simulator which is really a stack of 100 little phonograph records each with something different to say.
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**Biopunk!**
Who says that drones have to be robotic? They can be organic instead! Either whole thing is organic, or just controling parts. A brain in a jar scenario, except that the brain doesn't exactly need to be natural, and can be grown in a vat. In our history we advanced microprocesors way faster than chemistry, biology, genetics and similar life sciences, but that doesn't mean the same must be true for your setting. If advancements in those fields were way ahead of computer knowledge, you could get scenarios where people could buy artificial servants and still have room-sized "personal" computers.
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How about a breakthrough in analog electronics without a corresponding breakthrough in digital electronics?
Analog electronics is great when you need a fast if somewhat less precise result. Digital electronics, however, provides extreme precision, but sometimes takes longer to obtain it. This is true even in the real world.
A drone does not need extreme precision, and it is conceivable that one could run on an analog computer. It knows only that it must go approximately North for approximately 500 meters at an approximate altitude of 800 meters, so an analog computer may suffice for that. However, there are still large digital computers for doing precision work, such as calculating the 20,000th digit of pi.
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**QUANTUM COMPUTERS**
You are comparing two different orders of magnitude in processing power.
Integrated Circuits (IC) may suffice a drone for sensors, attitude control, communications, etc. Even for basic mission fulfillment tasks.
Their processing usually requires little power, is small, lightweight, cheap.
Then you have proper computers, **quantum computers** (QC), homes to AIs. Mean beasts that may solve NP problems so blazing fast they may burn the fingers on your keyboard.
They drive billions of devices connected (aka IOT), set missions both to drones and human crews, assess sensor reports, analyze and upgrade themselves constantly. They run the world.
They run on the fastest possible hardware for the task: quantum computers.
This technology just does not handle well miniaturization.
Note that current quantum processors are still a far cry from the marvels of your future.
>
> In 2019, Sycamore completed a task in 200 seconds that Google claimed, in a Nature paper, would take a state-of-the-art supercomputer 10,000 years to finish.
> [Sycamore processor - wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycamore_processor)
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But Sycamore has a measle, pitiful, laughable 53 qubits.
QC processing power is measured in **Giga qubits**, a whole other world.
They need a complex apparatus to work, a controlled environment, are very expensive and they are large.
Most of all they need **cold**.
You see traditional racks with 1000W processors can be quite a challenge too cool.
But in quantum chips power consumption is very, very low.
There is a catch though, quantum processors need to be kept at a very low, very steady temperature. Even small temperature (10 millikelvin!) increases can render the entire system unworkable.
>
> To keep systems in a quantum state, designers have to minimize the risk of anything disrupting the fragile position. The slightest temperature increase can mean that atoms and molecules move around too much, potentially causing a quantum bit (qubit)'s voltage to spike, and flip from one quantum state to another.
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See [Cooling Quantum Computers](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/cooling-quantum-computers/)
They also need to be shielded by external factors that may induce decoherence, the information in the quantum system can become randomized or totally erased. That is in general referred to as noise.
>
> Noise refers to the multiple factors that can affect the accuracy of the calculations a quantum computer performs. Quantum computers are susceptible to noise from various sources, like disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field, local radiation from Wi-Fi or mobile phones, cosmic rays, and even the influence that neighboring qubits –the building blocks of a quantum computer– exert on each other by mere proximity. These disruptions cause the information an idle qubit holds to fade away.
>
> [Noise in quantum computing](https://aws.amazon.com/it/blogs/quantum-computing/noise-in-quantum-computing/)
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Quantum error correction (QEC) deals with noise reduction but it is necessary to have the processors in a controlled environment.
In short the need for extremely low, strictly controlled temperatures and a safely controlled environment prevent miniaturization of QC.
But they are great, every mad scientist wet dream.
And are sold with all sorts of blinking leds for the retro afficionados.
For reference:
[Quantum Computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing)
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## Money.
Small electronics components are more expensive, especially if those components work in a different way (RAM vs hard drives come to mind, where the former is typically measured in GB, and the latter in TB... or SSD vs HDD).
It's also certainly plausible that AI could use different electronics from traditional computers, that would allow it to be far smaller, but would also come with a substantial price tag (or perhaps it just isn't able to perform the functions of a typical computer, much like a human wouldn't be a great substitute for a computer).
## Convenience and necessity.
This is closely related to price.
A personal drone *needs* to be small, but a personal home computer does not. That alone could be a significant driver for the sizes of each.
The sizes and prices of these would still be correlated, but it's certainly plausible for small-ish drones and large-ish computers to co-exist.
As a real-world example, consider that mobile phones and laptops co-exist, along with desktop computers (although those are getting far less common).
Although if you have a world where traditional mobile devices *don't* exist, this alone probably doesn't explain that. On the other hand, drones are sometimes presented as a replacement for traditional mobile devices, so that may explain why they don't exist or why they're uncommon.
## Power.
In the modern day, AI is one of the more processor-heavy things people use computers for. Although it's also worth noting that *training* AI tends to be much more processor-heavy than *using* AI (and training would likely happen elsewhere, rather than on the drone itself).
I can certainly imagine a world where the primary use for computers tends towards even more processor-heavy (or memory-heavy) tasks, such that many people would just need rather bulky computers to do what they need or want to do.
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There is a large computational difference between training a model and deploying a model. Here are a few examples.
1. Self driving algorithms are trained on millions of hours of data, requiring the training software to comb through all of that, which takes a very long time with very high powered machines that require a lot of cooling. But when done, they have some matrices that can be deployed into cars with much less compute capacity.
2. A human adult (the biological kind as well as potential robotic kinds) has undergone years of training to recognize and react to many different events in its environment. Half a lifetime of experience has been encoded into neural circuits that can respond to future events in real time at low cost.
Your drones could just be low-power implementations of a given weighted training matrix that's already been generated by the large computers. All the drones need are the weights encoded in the matrix. And the constant learning and adapting going on in the large computers could be sent periodically to the drones as updates to their models. But figuring out what the weights should be, and whether they should change to adapt to a changing world, takes real processing in a cooled server farm.
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You could follow the Star Wars model (or my 100%-unresearched idea of it, anyway):
In the Distant Past, some Unspeakable Horror came about due to unrestricted use of computers, so now the only "computers" are either 1) extremely specialized non-turing-complete machines, or 2) *exclusively* controlled by a sentient intelligence (droids).
Whatever the underlying event/reason/whatever, this rule is so absolutely universally accepted that no enforcement mechanism is needed - it's simply Not Done.
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# Radiation-Induced Bit Errors
Your world could have high background radiation, enough to cause bit flips in small portable machines that try to solve complex tasks. The radiation could come from natural minerals like uranium or thorium, fallout from an ancient nuclear war, or astronomical sources like Jupiter's magnetic field ion trap or a nearby excitable star.
The only place you could run real applications would be on underground servers, in shielded chambers made from carefully purified materials. Mobile devices could follow instructions sent by the servers, but not do much local compute before they locked up or started giving bad answers.
As an example, a typical phone today has a *billion* transistors, which is only feasible because the error rate on those transistors is incredibly low. Even today we can't hit a *thousand* qubits, because the error rate is too high.
(Biological systems can deal with surprisingly high radiation, like how the bacterium deinococcus radiodurans can re-knit its chromosomes back together after radiation induced double strand breaks. Biology that evolved on a world with high background radiation would naturally develop this sort of resistance, like we evolved to deal with our corrosive oxygen atmosphere.)
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Have some sort of disaster happen in the distant past that wiped out a lot of equipment and knowledge. Like a nuclear war. The computer chips for the drones could be specialized chips for drones built in one of the very few factories that survived the war. They don't have the equipment or knowledge to build other computer chips.
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It could be that silicon doesn't exist in your world, or that it is very low on certain conductors like gold or copper.
Most common computer technology is based on the ability to make small programmable electronics. If the materials we use are not readily available, different methods would need to be found. If there was also a lot of background EM or magnetic storms, then all those thin, fine wires in a microchip would act as antennae and shunt power in to circuits where it was not expected to be. It may be possible in your world that a move away from silicon and copper electronics is necessary.
One option is organic computing. While organic molecules can't handle extremely energetic particles, they are fairly unaffected by magnetism and lower power EM. Nuclear radiation more or less does to organic molecules what random EM does to electronics - it puts signals where they shouldn't be and alters the encoded instructions. If we're talking EM and not nuclear radiation, organic computing may be useful. Organic computing is very wide, but very, very slow. You can do tons of operations at the same time and store massive amounts of information, but doing those computations takes much longer and retrieving the information is not easy. It is also, well, organic, so it is wet, heavy and big. Your big computers might be organic units.
Another option is crystalline structure. It is tricky, but it is possible to form a multifacted crystal that has a large number of reflective planes. As you twist it under light, the various planes can be separated by fractions of degrees and can each reflect something different. Retrieving doped crystalline-coded information is easy, but forming the crystal and 'programming' it is fairly difficult. Changing the information on the crystal once formed is practically impossible as well. It would be a storage medium only, however it could hold the basic elements/instructions/pattern of machine sentience. It could be the core to the AI. It could be light, small and fairly resilient and could hold quite a bit of information. They also don't require all that much power since they rely only on light hitting them from various angles. You do need very accurate gimballing and rotation mechanisms to hit the various planes exactly. Since altering a reflective plane would be practically impossible without destroying much of the crystal, a doped crystalline core would be something you could rely on, preventing robots from changing their programming. They would be essentially golems, with their instructions etched in crystal in their head.
If you had some organic long-term programmable storage and a crystalline core, so long as you have energy solved, cybernetic robot/drones might be workable. Like any economy of scale, once the parameters are determined, mass production wouldn't be far behind. While designing an AI core might be a Herculean task, once the matrix necessary is known, creating them wholesale might be simpler.
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### The first drones capable of powered flight predated electronic computers and the Wright Flyer
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FPHp7.jpg)
While not exactly *commonplace* at the time, [Samuel Pierpont Langley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Langley)'s series of [Aerodromes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langley_Aerodrome) (one pictured above was photographed in flight by someone named [Alexander Graham Bell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell)) flew in the last decade of the 1800s. One *might* imagine a world in which someone like Langley managed to improve the reliability and usefulness of the Aerodrome.
<https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_sic_7894>
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Different Technology in both of them. Personal computing has advanced to a new tier of technology that cannot be shrunk down to drone like sizes. But the operation of a drone doesn't require the type of processing power now available. so they continue to use traditional microprocessors, but humanity would rather not be bottlenecked by old technology.
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There are 2 forms of magic in this world, the first of which is performed through a series of steps. A mage sits in the center of a drawn invocation circle, surrounded by the various ingredients needed to perform the spell. The mage then utters the incantation, which can take anywhere from minutes to hours depending on the spell. The gods, being universally worshipped in the world, are morally ambiguous when it comes to magic. There are spells which require harmless ingredients like eye of newt, and there are other spells that require the body parts of recently killed children. Either way, the gods are indifferent to concepts such as good and bad. The second form disregards invocation circles and the use of ingredients, simply depending on incantations to perform spells. It is therefore a quicker and more effective use of magic, saving time, resources, and expenses.
I want this second form of magic to be universally viewed as evil around the world. "Because religion" doesn't work because as stated, the gods are indifferent about how magic is used. And as economists would tell you, anything that can be done quicker, cheaper, and easier would become adopted by society. Even in repressive regimes, it would still be coopted by the elites or higher ups in positions of power. What would make mages come to view this magic as evil?
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The Dark Sun role-playing setting had a magic system of this type.
All magic required tapping into the lifeforce of nearby living things.
The "Preservers" were careful about the amounts they drew when casting their spells.
The "Defilers" would leave swaths of dead vegetation (and even animals for higher power spells).
The entire desert world setting of Athas was the result of centuries of Defilers steadily destroying the life on the world by their reckless use of magic.
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# Good and evil are societal norms
All you have to do is define something associated with your target form of magic that could be considered evil by the society. Picking a simple example, doing magic consumes something. When you use ingredients they are consumed, when you use no ingredients something else must be consumed, perhaps that's your soul, perhaps it damages the souls of those around you.
Our society says that children are precious. A slave owning society may consider the lives of children to be low value, the lives of slaves to be worthless, the lives of the children of slaves to be no better than slaughtering animals, so they have no problem harvesting parts for spells. That's why you have fertile slaves isn't it?
Hence a society that's protective of their own souls, but doesn't value some people would consider damaging the soul to be evil, but harvesting body parts to be reasonable.
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Its like carrying a concealed weapon.
"Good" magic takes time and preparations. Even the bodyparts of children could be donated by the parents (or the church, whichever has the most say). So this magic is viewed as controlled, intelligent work.
Magic without ingredients and preparation is much more dangerous. In most societies guns and ammo need to be stored seperately so that firing one is never an accident and you have time to think about what you are about to do. But this type of magic is like always carrying a loaded gun in your hand that no one can see. Get angry or scared and you might use it in a quick unthinking moment. This is dangerous for anyone in contact with the mage and domestic magical violence is much higher for mages who use this type of magic than others.
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## Your easier casting method is riskier.
Surely all of these inscriptions and ingredients have been rigourously studied and checked before put into use. Somebody didn't just start drawing weird circles and suddenly, bam! They cast Thunderclap. It requires thought, precision and study.
However, just saying a few words to channel the magical power is way too unstable! Just a slight change in tone, or rhythm, or pronunciation, and your Thunderclap is so powerful that it brings a mountain down upon you!
Ok, maybe this is a bit extreme, but it conveys what I mean. If your spell is to summon a demon, all of your runes and circles and ingredients are going to help stabilise the process. Maybe if you just say the incantation, the demon is summoned but after a minute or so you get a nosebleed and fall into a coma. Now there's nobody holding the demon's leash - and it goes on a rampage, killing five people. Which is way more damaging than the 3 pints of virgin blood that you would have needed for the proper spell!
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Give both magics a reality-disrupting side effect or a left-over waste product which undermines the stability and life-friendly aspects of your world. The stricter ritualized method of casting includes steps which clean up these left-overs, returning any excess magical energies to where it came from. The simpler method ignores the clean up steps, leaving the excess magic to cause random and potentially dangerous effects.
In this way your magic system can become a metaphor for our modern technology; potentially good if we manage our natural resources carefully and clean up the waste products which its creation produces. Unavoidably evil if we do not.
[Answer]
### ...But Religion!
"Because Religion" is still a valid reason, it's just not a single blanket reason that might span all religions.
The gods might not care about how mortals use magic, but the mortals administrating their deity's will do. And since the gods are morally ambiguous on the matter, it is up to the mortals that interpret their deity's will based on other aspects or items that their deity does (appear to) care about in order to give context to the matter in the absence of their deity literally coming down to lay down Divine Law.
Thus, the mythologies and tales surrounding the religion paint it as an evil act, because it violates some other core tenet of the religion. To put it another way, casting this way goes against a deity's portfolio/philosophy, or at least the human's interpretation of it.
Casting an impromptu spell in haste may be heretical to a deity whose core tenets include preparation and diligence. The tales will frame it as evil due to not following that tenet of the deity's teachings than a failure in the magics.
Likewise, a deity that rewards sacrifice might see the lack of material components as anathema and might have a mythology of punishing mortals who sought magical might without apparent sacrifice.
### Do NOT Try This at Home!
An alterative is that as magic developed, the components and circles and other paraphernalia created enough buffers and safety valves for spellcasting that failure did not outright kill anyone, though bad things still did happen. Then some aspiring archmage a long time ago decided to try doing his magic without these safety components.
Saying that "It did not end well" is a understatement. A large one … almost as large as the crater they left behind. Nobody ever did know what spell failed (or succeeded) to get that crater. All they know was that it was massive, there was great loss of life, and the next year or two suffered lower harvests.
Ever since that day apprentices were taught that casting without components is a Thing You Do Not Do. Unless learning the magical arts are centralized in one place, each apprentice may be told a different yet equally gruesome reason why you never omit components for casting.
Even if someone figures out the secrets, they will be treated as a ticking time bomb -- a person that will imminently turn themselves and a large area around them into a crater. They will be shunned, and possibly even hunted and put down in order to prevent what everyone believes will be the inevitable result -- catastrophe.
### Control
Overall, the grand reason why casting without components is "evil" is to control magic through controlling the substances needed to perform it and to help identify possibilities by what components are being used to cast it. It is a societal construct that ensures the status quo remains for as long as possible.
Yes, this does mean that the elite and those that think themselves above this system would try to exploit this, but that itself a balancing act for the elites. If they get caught doing evil magic, they will be branded as irredeemably evil with all the fallout that will entail. It will almost assuredly end bad for them outside of applying overwhelming corrective force to it -- be it physical, social, or magical.
It also entirely means that at some point there might be a magical revolution, as this evil way is discovered and analyzed enough to be not an immediate physical problem. It is also plausible that the world has already had one of these and there were delayed consequences that altered the world as it is/was known, such as this being where the monsters/demons/angels of the world come from.
And above, the gods are uncaring -- so long as their interests in the material realms are being advanced. If they're even paying attention to the world this century.
The world's past might offer insight as to why this is the case
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**The price of magic/Nothing comes for free.**
Depending on where your magic comes from, there is typically some source of power for magic and multiple explanations why spells without material components are viewed as evil.
1. Magic comes from the divine: Although the gods don't care about good or evil and they don't care what people use magic for, they are still the ones providing the power for the spell and don't like to give things away for free. People who cast the spells without "sacrifice" in the form of consumable material components are seen to be stealing from the gods/incurring a divine debt. This divine debt, real or imagined, acts as a social curse. Nobody wants to be near the guy who owes god X seventeen lightning bolts. Who knows when X might decide to collect
2. Magic is somehow linked to life-force. Casting a spell with material components substitutes this. When casting without components, the spellcaster's own life-force is drawn to fuel the spell. Practically, this means a reduction in the spellcaster's lifespan or health. Magic users who frequently cast without components therefore require a lot of life-force which they have to harvest from people. Killing random people for selfish purposes (when material components would do the job just as well) is seen as evil by most people.
3. Magic incurs a debt of fate when the material price isn't paid. In your world, the amount of fortune or luck someone has is predefined and over the long term must remain static. A magic user can for example temporarily increase their luck high enough to make a lightning bolt fall just right, a guard not to notice them, or to appear very charismatic however they've then incurred a luck debt. This debt of fortune or fate automatically gets repaid in the form of bad luck, eg: the magic user frequently gets injured stupidly, pianos fall from buildings near them, their mail is lost, etc... Nobody wants to be near someone who's incurred a large debt of fate and be crushed by the falling piano. Therefore society stigmatizes these people
[Answer]
Although the gods themselves are indifferent towards morality, their followers may not be. Good and evil are human designs. Gods are uncaring, immortal entities who place value on different things since their perception of life is so alien to mortals.
A society that values life or reveres the ability to cast long spells as an act of mental fortitude will be at odds with a different society that values life as a resource to cast spells quickly. The two different societies could come about naturally as the faster spell casting causes a rift between those that are willing to do it and those that aren't.
An aristocrat needing to cast a spell quickly to get out of a pickle may take a body part from an unwilling person as a catalyst (such as a prostitute or a laborer), which in turn causes common people to turn against the aristocracy who support the act. The mages guild or a church then gets involved and denounces the use of human body parts as a catalyst, which would create a schism between those that think its fine and those that don't
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* How can a communications service provider view Skype (and other voice-over-IP applications) as evil?
* How can an automobile manufacturer view mass transit systems as evil?
* How can a television network view video-on-demand services (such as YouTube) as evil?
* How can a cable TV operator view streaming services (such as Netflix) as evil?
* How can the state view secure citizen-to-citizen communication applications as evil?
At all times and in all places, highly skilled artisans and their guilds were very much upset by any alternative which made them redundant. It's human nature.
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# How can it not be evil?
Magic is a really powerful tool. Maybe even too powerful for the common folk. If you just need to chant an incantation to kill/mutilate/transform/restrict/... someone else, every utterance becomes a potential lethal weapon.
And that is scary, especially to those unfamiliar with the incantations.
So unless everyone in the society is schooled enough in the magical arts to recognize (and maybe even cast) magical incantations, just one utterance incomprehensible enough is everything needed to cause a widespread panic.
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> It's like if you see someone throwing his bag and yelling "Allahu akbar!": You run for cover first, and ask questions later. It might just be a joke, or the bomb might not go off, or literally anything else, but: Are you willing to bet your life on it not exploding?
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And this is just a society reacting to something it doesn't know well. But there might be more to it than just a fear of the unknown: What happens if an incantation isn't performed absolutely correct? What if the mage needs to cough, or swallows a fruit fly, or stumbles over his toes?
In a good case, maybe nothing happens or just some minor annoyance takes effect (e.g. splashing the mage with a bit of water, or ripping his pants).
But what can happen in a bad case? The mage that wanted to summon rain in order to grant a good harvest now summoned the worst thunderstorm of the century, or released the plague, or sacrificed the surrounding village to (insert big bad evil god of eternal torment). Literally anything might happen.
Incantations can literally be like gambling with death (of the chanter and all people around him).
And there is no way in such a world that incantations will be wide spread (or viewed positively): If the intended effect of the incantation can kill you, or the effect of an inadvertently botched incantation can kill you (or cause any other amount of damage), then such incantation just cannot be accepted for general use by the society.
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## Corruption
One possible explanation is that the quicker form of casting spells inevitably alters the personality of those who use; if they weren't evil before, they will be after channeling enough arcane energy. There could be any number of reasons why... Quick casting could leave the caster vulnerable to possession by malevolent spirits. It might cause damage the brain in a way that makes the caster psychotic or a sociopath. Maybe quick casting just proves so effective that few have the moral fortitude to resist the temptation to abuse the power it grants.
Whatever the case, if there is a clear connection between the second form of magic casting and anti-social behaviors, it won't take long for it to be shunned. This is especially true if the mages can give a plausible explanation as to why the quick casting is so corrupting.
## Tradition versus Innovation
Another possibility is that the quick form of casting magic isn't actually evil, but most people view it as such.
The mages who rely on the slower form of spell casting are part of a long established school of magic. Their traditional techniques were developed through a lot of trial and error before civilization had any systematic understanding of how magic actually worked. Once ancient mages stumbled on a solution that worked reasonable well, the motivation to continue experimenting dwindled. Instead, they formalized their teachings and provide rationalizations as to why the material components were necessary. These rationalizations slowly spread to the general process and the slow casting because accept as just the way magic is supposed to be done.
From time to time, there are innovators who challenges the established orthodoxy. They discover that with proper training, neither drawing circles or expending materials is necessary. However, these innovators tend to be either overly ambitious people with no scruples or outcasts who live on the fringe of society. (Anyone else with any skill would have presumably been accepted into the mage school.) Either way, society as a whole, and the mages in particular, treat these individuals as deviants. Quick casting is deemed evil primarily because of who uses it and the fact it challenges established norms.
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## **Because using Magic damages the fabric of space-time**
* and bad things happen when the fabric of space-time tears open
Casting magic without invocation circles tears up a portion of the space-time fabric around the caster. These tears causes abnormalities, or perhaps opens up portals that allows magical/evil creatures from unknown dimension realm to slip through. That could explain some supernatural stuff in the world (if there is). Take your pick on the negative impact it causes. The gods may be aware of this, but does not care as these 'negative' impact does not affect them.
**Invocation circles and ingredients are used to minimise/negate the damage it causes**, and it's the responsible thing to do. These additional preparation, are in fact, for the benefit of society. In the past much damage may have been caused by these rogue magic users who casts spells freely.
Nobody knows how these fabric tears fully turn to opened portals... it could take days or months or decades, and it's a mystery.
Casting 'quick magic' also leaves some kind of mark on the caster that could be identified visually. Perhaps some scar patterns on the skin, or changing their hair or eye colours (hence causing these 'dark' wizards to wear hoods and work in shadows).
Society has deemed this as an evil act and punishes those who cast quick magic.
As for the damages on the space time fabric, there could also be visible visual indication that a crack is happening. Maybe some kind of glowing lines or darkness globe in the air. It would be cool to introduce some kind of "clean-up team", an organisation that goes around to "repair" these cracks. Paladins of some religious organisation seems fitting.
(some of these stuff are inspired from forgotten realms)
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**The gods fear those who can cast magic without their help**
There's a series by Trudi Canavan where there are gods and the gods chosen representatives. And there are also extremely strong magic users who are not associated with the gods and are actively hunted. These are known as the Wilds. These wilds also have their own special and unique abilities. The main character learns to defy gravity through magic alone where no other person can do this. Another wild has the ability to enter a trance-like state and revert the ageing process. One is an extremely gifted healer.
Later in the story we find out that
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This might not work for your purposes 100% as this implies that
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But you can still borrow something from this. Perhaps the power of the 'fast magic users' doesn't come from the gods at all. And while the gods might not govern how their power is being used they can add limits onto what can be done with it.
But someone who doesn't have those limits could be using something else as the source of their power. Something malicious like the souls of the innocent or some other demonic influence. Perhaps they're made a deal with a devil that could cause havoc and people are generally opposed to this. Or perhaps the gods know that people who can use magic without the gods approval
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Imagine for a moment that any person off the street could chant a phrase and launch a nuke.
Terrifying. The reason that not using the ingredients and rituals is evil is because the only reason you want the ability to cast as such speeds with such little preparation is simply because you are up to no good.
It is also for this reason that it is not taught. If the average cutthroat learned of this work around by seeing it done, the usually inaccessible arcane becomes very real and very profitable and very destructive.
That is why if you are unwilling to go to such lengths to use magic **you are not only lazy. you are evil.**
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Maybe there's the kind of magic that a devoted scholar can learn after years of devotion, difficult study, requiring enormous self-discipline, etc.
And then maybe there's the kind of magic that a shiftless lazy person can easily "acquire" by promising something of value (e.g., their soul) to an evil spirit. Or, maybe all the lazy/shiftless person has to do is steal some charmed object...
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Look at your question from the other direction and it becomes easier to answer. Don't try to explain why "easy" magic is evil. Explain why "hard" magic is *not* evil.
All magic in your world is inherently evil. The rituals, incantations, and sacrifices made while performing the "hard" version of magic are a form of atonement, cleansing the caster of the evil taint that the spell would normally bestow upon them.
**Implementation details**: Your gods are indifferent to good and evil, but the evil-ness of magic is not supernatural in nature. It's an unavoidable side-effect of the way that magic interacts with the basic physics of your world. The people label it "evil" because it represents a caster with a complete disregard for how their magic could ruin everybody else's life. "Hard" magic seeks the intervention of the gods to block these negative effects and protect the caster. The gods don't care about "evil", but they *do* care about the mortal world. They spent a long time building it after all, and the last thing they want is some hot-shot to come traipsing through and blow a hole in the fabric of reality.
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**Limited resources**
Fresh body parts of dead children are harder to collect than eyes of newts. Your evil mages are in so much of a rush that they'll run themselves out of components while good mages can theoretically keep going forever.
[Answer]
Seemingly you're asking about magic, not good vs evil:
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> As the first form of magic is pretty slow, it is very inconvenient when going up against a ***fast*** wizard. The latter would wipe the floor with them in a confrontation. Therefore, ***fast*** magic will always defeat ***slow***. What advantage can slow magic have over fast magic that would give them a chance of winning?
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My own roleplay system has this exact question. We use magic points to cast spells usually 5pts per level, but components can be used to replace the pts. Circles, candles, eyes of newt, etc.
Every mage has innate personal magical pool, they can tap into it to cast spells. Yet its limited, and replenishes slowly. So using external components means keeping your personal pool.
Blood is an alternative, the fresher the better, so some mages have determined that this approach is a great way to access vast ammounts of magic (Trudi Canavan stories involve such magic)
Souls, very powerful, bodies very useful material components, the younger the better.
These 'more powerful' components mean less prep time required (time is also a component) for faster spells.. but it still uses up magic.
Every single spell still requires 1mp spent per 'grade/difficulty' regardless of the components used.
*I say all this just to set the example as comparative to yours.*
The Problem these fast mages have, is, time to study is limited, you can study the slow, methodical magic, which means they can take almost any component and cast spells from it. Vs studying the fast magic, related to personal magic & quicker/powerful/limited elements at hand. Live humanoids. The quicker magic will require entourages of slaves, its very nature is short, sharp, powerful, and done, exhausted quickly.
**\*Its a 100m sprint vs 4km marathon. \***
The slow mages, can wear down the faster mages over time. they'll need to throw themselves at the enemy in continuous waves, once the evil mage is exhausted, the good mages now have their opportunity, they start a ritual that destroys the evil, as their companions battle his last resources.. completing it as the evil is done, and unable to defend against it.
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The fast magic consumes a currently abundant but finite resource, or adds incrementally but irreversibly to environmental degradation, and only a few of the most skilled magic users understand this.
I'm cribbing liberally from Larry Niven's "[The Magic Goes Away](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Goes_Away)" Warlock setting which itself was written as a 1970s allegory for oil shortages that decade.
Like fossil fuels, there is abundant but finite mana aura or astral plane eldrich energy that gets burned up by the fast magic, but the novice user doesn't understand that this is a part of the spell; or it contributes a tiny bit to climate change or a drought as an externality. Those who know deem the practice evil to discourage it.
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# Discrimination of minorities and racism
In my worlds similar types of magic exist. There are basically three types of spell casting. Rituals, which involves a lot of preparation like drawing a complex circle; Hand Magic, which is performed by mind and waving your hands (or tail or Wand etc.); and Mind Magic, which is basically just thinking about a spell and it happens. Modern Wizards in my world would use a combination of all three, usually to bootstrap low level mind spells into more powerful rituals (imagine a spell preparing a spell preparing a spell preparing a spell ...).
The thing is, not everyone can do Mind Magic or even Hand Magic (which is just an in-between of rituals and mind magic). You must be particularly gifted to perform mind or hand magic. Gifted in the way that you have to have the biologic features (like bigger brain or an extra organ) to perform them. After all you have to putt all the stuff from the ritual into you mind. Because of that only a few people in a specific group can even perform it.
I'm not going into the details of discrimination because we see real life examples all the time but you could make it so that the fast magic is not inherently evil, just perceived as such because it is only accessible to a minority (people of another race, or maybe the elite aristocrats). And since ordinary people and Mages already distrust them for other reasons they also distrust the magic.
So basically, fast magic is evil because these people are evil, and they are evil because they are not like the others.
Side Note: In some of my Worlds (they all share the same magic system) it is actually the opposite. Mind and hand magic users would discriminate against ritual users because it's seen as archaic and unnecessary complicated although rituals are actually more powerful and have more reliable results. You see, it could be the other way around too.
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[Question]
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The people of my flat medieval fantasy world have found a rune that generates infinite boiling water, and they want to use it to kill each other. Sadly the water cannot be made with momentum included, so they have to find an effective way of throwing the water to the enemy.
In one of their attempts they tried putting it inside a hollow metal cylinder, link one end to a set of chains that is connected to a long stick and make a hole in the other end of the cylinder. Basically making a pseudo-flail that when spun would spray hot boiling water out of the far end.
Assuming they are fighting in a flat tropical environment, how effective would this weapon be?
As in how far can this weapon reach and how much armor can it penetrate while still causing second degree burns?
Edit: The rune creates boiling water from nothing, so no water needs to be carried. The water is created continuously at a rate around 0.1 litre per second. For the size and weight of the weapon, it's similar to a two handed flail though maybe with a slightly bigger head.
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Water doesn't penetrate armor. Your flail would be roughly as useful as trying to throw tubs of hot water at your enemy. Except you'd also get hot water on your own allies.
**Use an enclosed space with a nozzle**
Place your water making magic thing inside a sealed metal box, and punch a small hole through it. Water is generated at 0.1 L/s, which mean 0.1L/s of water has to go out of the box. With a small nozzle, you can create a fast stream of water.
Depending on the ability of your smiths to make good holes in boxes, you might be able to make a water-jet cutter.
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> Good generals study tactics and strategy. Great generals study logistics.
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## Forget about the tactical value of this gadget and appreciate its logistic value.
Medieval armies did not encounter most of their losses during battle. Most losses were due to disease and starvation. If you can avoid that, then you can join every battle with more soldiers than you could otherwise, giving you an unique strategic advantage.
Medieval armies didn't carry many supplies while on the march. They were living "off the land". They ate and drank whatever they could find or take form the local population. This rune provides an army with an infinite source of clean, potable water. They can either use the still hot water to cook, which makes more sources of food available. Or they can let it cool down and drink it, which completely eliminate the need to acquire drinking water.
Not having to scavenge as much for food and firewood and not at all for water is certainly convenient. But far more importantly, it prevents any losses from water-born diseases like cholera!
Soldiers can wash themselves and their clothes with hot water every day. This improve in hygiene will prevent spread of disease. But it will benefit the wounded soldiers in particular, who will be at a much lower risk of dying from infected wounds.
And having a portable source of heat might with some creativity even enable you to do what most medieval generals tried to avoid whenever possible: Marching during the winter.
This logistic benefit will save more soldiers than it could save if weaponized. So no smart general would ever risk using such a valuable device in battle where it might fall into enemy hands.
[Answer]
There are several approaches to this problem.
# Hand weapon: Probably not worth it
There is [a history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons#Water,_sand_and_other_heated_missiles) of pouring hot water and other substances over the heads of attackers during sieges, but that requires having the high ground. You mention that your world is flat. You can't throw water as far as a solid aerodynamic object, so an enemy with an atl-atl could kill someone without getting burned.
# Stationary flail
The weapon you describe could deny an area to an enemy, but you could probably do the same thing with a nasty set of spikes or by digging a trench.
# Steam-powered pump: Much more powerful
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gKIVY.jpg)
This is a picture of a [steam pumper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_pumper) from around the turn of the 20th century. Steam is massively powerful. How powerful? Well, it powers modern aircraft carriers. If you had the ability to make machines, you could harness the power of steam. You could create a working [steam cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_cannon) or maybe even steam machine gun. Using steam to push solid projectiles will be much more effective than using water as the weapon.
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Suppose this rune can create boiling water at 0.1 liters / second on a particular spot. To kill a person with that, that spot must be near, or inside the body of that person. The temperature would be unbearable and when water is materialized inside the body, e.g. while penetrating, pressure inside the body would cause havoc, killing the enemy very quickly.
The rune can be engraved on the blade of a spear, sword, or knife and enhance the weapon's effectiveness. In this proposal no transport is needed. The tip of the blade starts releasing boiling water as soon as human skin is near, or contacted.
*Note: I'm not a game expert. This application of your boiling water rune derives from the real world meaning of the word "rune" and a tradition of having [magic runes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runes) engraved on weapons, like medieval blacksmiths did*
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## Steam Age:
This is likely to be a frustrating thing to use for attack, but as a defensive tool, I suspect it will be quite useful.
* One problem with boiling water as an attack is that you need to carry around un-boiled water with you to generate boiling water. This is a lot of mass to drag around, and unless your folks have a legitimate reason to be dragging around and extra 10 kilos of water for fun, it isn't very practical. Then, once you use it, the water is gone, and you are disarmed.
* Water tends to spread when it's thrown, and if you are projecting it at an opponent, it will rapidly scatter. It will be useful only at the ranges that conventional hand weapons would be effective at anyway.
So how can this be made into a useful weapon? You have a couple big advantages, but they're both likely defensive.
* **Boiling water=steam**: If you can boil water, it converts to steam and expands. I see potential for steam machine guns, [steam cannons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_cannon), or even simply booby traps where someone triggers a trap that moves a crushing piston. You can even generate a cloud of steam in a confined space and par-boil your enemies as part of a defense. Steam-powered scything blades slice enemies apart!
* **Water tanks**: If you have a castle, you can keep tanks of water that are available for all the uses you want. Heat the tanks to force out the water, and your water can power all sorts of things. But the simplest use is gravity-fed hoses, where the boiling water is hosed on enemies in front of a wall.
* **Bombs**: Fill a vessel with water, instantly vaporize the water, and it becomes a bomb. A clay pot, sealed and filled with water and broken pottery, suddenly becomes a fragmentation weapon. If this rune can act remotely, you have both bombs and mines.
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A blacksmith's bellow seems like the perfect weapon assuming you could modify the accordion to withstand boiling water and can wait long enough for it to fill up between attacks. I think leather would work.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KE7mA.png)
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# **Pressurized Air Guns**
Fill a tank of air at ambient temperature, seal it tight. Then activate the rune, which applies heat externally to the container, likely through direct contact with the boiling water or indirectly using just the steam. The air inside the tank expands, creating a pressure within the tank.
Then you pull the trigger, opening the valve, which releases the pressure down the barrel of the gun.
As for details of the weapon, I'm not much of an engineer but I imagine the rune would be attached to a hose or a pipe which is wrapped around the air tank and then just pours the water onto the ground. The water will have imparted heat onto the tank as it travels the length of the pipe and the cooled water is no longer needed.
To not injure the operator of the weapon and to improve the heat transfer efficiency, this tank and pipe would be enclosed within an insulated outer shell.
Since this weapon is constantly spewing water (at least in my flawed design of it) it would work well as a mounted gun on a wall or vehicle, where drainage could be managed as part of the structure.
Other than weaponry, boiling water is the key to any number of steam-punk inventions.
Edit:
After doing some math, you would need to hit 17000 degrees Celsius inside the tank for the pressure to be the same as an airsoft gun. Which doesn't even shoot at lethal speeds.
Using purely thermal expansion to create pressure isn't enough. Include some kind of hydraulic piston that compresses the air inside the tank.
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It could be more effective as a personal weapon if you stored up a gallon of boiling water that you could throw at the enemy all at once. Perhaps the weapon would be a staff like a giant ladle, continually gathering boiling water in the cup that you can throw at enemies from melee range. You'd aim for the eyes to blind or disorient them, and to actually kill them the weapon would also need a blade or a spike at the end (or a buddy next to you with a warhammer). You and all your nearby allies would need to be well covered to protect against accidental self-burns, e.g. using fine mesh eye holes in your helmet to help keep the water off your eyes, and you'd have to hope your enemy is not armored in the same way.
Even a bad burn is not going to kill or even disable your opponent in the short term unless you get them squarely in the eyes. When burns kill, this is due to infection over a time scale too long to matter in a fight.
It might be most practical to simply attach the rune to the end of a normal warhammer or other weapon, while yourself and your allies are thoroughly covered up. You would fight as you normally do with your weapon, occasionally flicking some of the boiling water towards the enemy's face to make them flinch or shut their eyes for a moment. This at least would be a strict improvement over just the normal weapon by itself, even if the boiling water is relegated to a distraction role.
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[Question]
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I have a hero who uses a pair of handguns as weapons. As he progresses along his journey he's obviously going to become better and better with them as well as run into tougher and more numerous villains. The problem will arise as to how to keep him stocked with ammunition in order for him to battle his foes. I've thought of a concept in which on command, he could touch a sensor on the grips and have them reload by teleporting bullets from his base directly into the clips instantaneously. My working idea in which to do this is to setup an ever growing network of transceivers throughout his city that triangulate the position of the guns so that the teleportation can take place accurately.
My question is, what scientific theory would best suit this type of technology so I can best understand how to evolve the idea? Or is this out of the realm of science and into sci-fi/fantasy where I can just do what I want and not have to explain it.
[Answer]
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# New Answer
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> The teleportation technology hasn't been invented yet, except by another character in the story that is an ally of the hero. The hero has his own personal mad scientist buddy. (...) Think of the network as an underground type system. Designed for and utilized exclusively by the Hero.
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So, let's start on the assumption that the network is privately used, built, and maintained the hero et al. and largely unknown to the rest of the world.
*Let me get this idea out there: Mommy, mommy, there is strange machine in the park... arghh! News report: Child found dead by presumed energy beam from a mysterious machine discovered in the park, a S.W.A.T team is on the way to dismantle the aparatus.*
The idea of an underground network for teleportation is similar in logistic to a [wireless mesh network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network). But people don't agree on a creating a single roaming WiFi with their routers. Instead each network has its own id and password, even if setting a single configuration would give WiFi internet to everybody virtually everywhere and virtually free. Yeah, privacy and "I'm paying this bill" are the main issues.
Of course hero et al. are not convincing people to do this, instead they are leaving strange machines in random spots on the city.
**The mad scientist is insane or is crazy rich:**
* The mad scientist buddy is not only mad, he is also rich. He has a lot of properties accross the city where this kind of stuff can sit legally without much problem. This also explain how he was able to do the research and development required to get a working teleportation device, and also explains who is manufacturing all the bullets that get teleported to the hero and paying for the maintenance of the network.
* The mad scientist buddy has little regard for the law. In fact, he doesn't care about private property... this machines end up in somebody's roof, the tree on another person's backyard, and at the end of some dark alley. They take their electricity from somebody's connection. The machines are low quality, and tend to fail. Who said repair? Better replace and scrap the old one for part - there ain't money for more. The teleported bullets are probably stolen. And when those machines start to pop on the news, the mad scientist buddy may find the desire to teleport himself out of town.
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## Networking
Are there any wireless networks in operation already? Because it would be much more convenient if you could send instructions to the teleportation machines by - for example - the cell phone network.
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The purpose of the network is to minimize the distance that the signal has to travel. That is, to minimize attenuation, and therefore allow you to operate with less energy. If that applies to teleportation (and why wouldn't) then you want to teleport the bullets from the nearest node.
The gun needs to communicate to the network. This is either done directly, in which case the node that gets the strongest signal is the appropriate. Or indirectly (with a third party network) in which case the gun reports its position and the nodes negotiate which one sends the bullets.
That implies that hero et al. needs to supply bullets to each node. Given that each node is able to teleport bullets and under the assumption that energy is a solved problem, you could feed them in any node and have them be teleported to the nodes that need them.
Then, if the nearest node to the hero has run out of bullets, it has to request them to the nearby nodes, which will teleport to them on demand. This adds a delay to teleportation.
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## Optimization
Since this network is dedicated to a single type of thing only. And we are working under the idea that teleportation requires a receiver. There are is an optimization to be done: Pre-program the receivers to shape the particles that are received in a known way. This saves you sending the information of each object; they are - for all uses and purposes - identical. This implies that you don't need to pre-manufacture the objects, you just need the material.
A second optimization can be done by using mold if what you are sending is made of a single material and a very simple structure. There is a solution for that on [Daerdemandt's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/55786/16729) under "Don't use gunpowder". Daerdemandt suggest a railgun, that would work in this scenario. The drawback is that even a 2% efficiency coilgun is only deadly at point-blank range.
So, the hero has a this backpack where he has the receiver that get the material, prints the bullets and [then fed to the guns via a belt-like system attached to his arms (or even implanted?)](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/55705/instant-reloading-bullets).
And why do you need teleportation anyway? You can have thousands of railgun projectiles in the backpack.
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**Of course, you want actual bullets**. The mad scientist is actually insane, and doesn't care about economy.
So, you need copper for the jacket, and lead for the core of the bullet. You also need brass for the cartridge case and of course gunpowder. The actual manufacturing work is done by pressure not by heating or molding.
There is a problem: you are building gunpowder with a highly energetic process. **Boom** (actually it will burn, not explode, as you would only have a small charge and it ain't under pressure, but "boom" is more dramatic). The workaround seems to be to mix the gunpowder on site, and then assamble the bullet. For that the backpack needs moving parts.
*And that is disregarding the problem of how teleportation actually works. Which you can see in my original answer below.*
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## Alternative
Instead I will suggest an alternative: you can build a laser rifle with an array of laser LED, "beam combiners" and a two or three lens system to get the most of it. The problem is the energy, but if we say that you have a car battery in your backpack and you are using 80% efficient lasers, your output is around 380W (that's an array of about 500 LEDs, so the thing is more of a bazooka in shape and size). Regardless, the thing cooks like a toaster oven.
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# Original Answer
This kind of technology would have too many implications. For starter, you will not only be able to deliver bullets, but drugs, food, etc... And the enemies of your hero would be able to.
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And what about interference in the triangulation signal so your hero can't get bullets? - As for scientific theory, well, non-grounded in reality.
Let's consider how teleportation works:
* It may work by scanning the victim object, killing it disintegrating it, sending the particles, and reassembling them on the other side. This requires a wired connection or a high energy directional signal (aka. a energy beam) that goes form the source to the destination, and probably a complicated chamber where the reconstruction happens.
* Instead of the chamber, try manipulating individual particles at large distance. So, you don't only send the particles, you use a giant laser to move them around. Disregarding the problem of focusing the laser, you now need much more energy.
* Why do we have to send the particles that made the original? Instead we could just send the information and have it be constructed (3D printed) from materials at the destination. Now sending the information is not a problem, but the destination needs to have material to build the object. Of course, you aren't disintegrating the original anymore.
* Use quantum entanglement to push the target particles into the correct state. Ern... no, quantum entanglement doesn’t work that way. You need to have the particles interact for them to get entangled. So you either sending entangled particles to the destination or the destination have to carry pre-entangled particles. By the no-cloning theorem the original is destroyed to extract the information that is then transmitted by the entangled particles. So, it is the same situation as before, quantum entanglement bought you nothing.
* Use portals, I mean wormholes, well, [Nolo covered this one](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/55708/16729).
If you are going to disintegrate something, you need enough energy to move all of its particles, over whatever distance you want to move them. And you want to do it as fast as possible... light speed fast. But you can't because what you want to move has some mass. In fact, you think you are building a teleportation machine, but you are building a [particle-beam weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle-beam_weapon). Just shoot at the enemy.
Let's assume that teleportation just works:
* Accidents happen, like any means of transportation there relies on machinery (ie. everything except walking barefoot) depends on that machinery working correctly. It is expected that there would be malfunctions from time to time.
* Would it work on machines? If I can deploy a bullet, I can deploy a combat robot. *Oh, my setting doesn't have robots* - I wonder how technology evolved then. The evident uses of teleportation in the battle field include deploying troops, supplies, ammo, and weapons.
* The energy for the teleportation is not free; the hero could be required by law to pay for this service. In fact, similar technology could be useable to supply electricity or even water. If we go with the idea of the network, the infrastructure can't be built on teleportation; this means that teleportation is expensive. Teleporting something would be at least as expensive as the energy bill for the equivalent energy of the teleported mass... plus inflation (the network needs maintenance, also it is expanding, and somebody pays for that).
* At some point teleporting something is too expensive - because it is too large, or because the distance is too long - and then conventional transportation is used.
* The fact that the network is growing suggest that teleporting is a profitable business, so I would expect various commercial or industrial companies taking advantage of teleportation. I these companies consider teleportation cheap; it probably means that the region has other infrastructure problems (maybe it is an isolated location). On the other hand, these companies may be providing instantaneous delivery at high fees – and it is popular. *I wonder for what kind of things people may be willing to pay crazy money for the “right now” option, also, in what does people work to have money for this to be popular?*
* The above implies that "heroing" is has good revenue. I would expect it to be at least fairly common. It would be an activity similar to bounty hunting. Alternatively, the hero is not operating under the law.
* The bad guys don't pay (either they are criminal, or they are the government), they take advantage of the network, they make it so it won't give more bullets to the hero... or perhaps a [bullet on the chest](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/55710/16729).
*I was typing while the linked answers came up.*
[Answer]
If you have the ability to accurately teleport handgun cartridges, why not send the project directly at the victim with the appropriate kinetic energy?
<http://animagraffs.com/how-a-handgun-works-1911-45/>
As you can see from the animation, the bullets going into a semi automatic handgun will have to enter the magazine and push down the magazine follower and compress the magazine spring. So teleporting bullets will already need to have a kinetic energy component as well.
Teleportation in principle can be done by describing the position and energy of every molecule or atom in the bullet, and then translating the information into a new set of coordinates representing the new position of the bullet. This is why it seems much simpler to teleport the bullet directly into the target. The shooter needs to accurately describe the needed coordinates to the teleport operator and then the deed is done.
Alternate ideas of teleportation like opening miniature wormholes will need a similar set of coordinates and the "shooter" as a forward observer who can aim the wormhole at the target.
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Maybe ammunition is **fabricated on the spot** by some wearable equipment, out of abundant, mundane, raw materials, and only energy is required. No teleportation is even needed, but you'll need to accommodate the existence of very small, very fast 3D printers, or some other sort of advanced fabrication tech.
I think this is how many things are explained in the Mass Effect series: the player's armor contains a "microfabricator" of some sort, and can spontaneously produce all kinds of complicated objects (from disposable one-use carbon blades, to complex devices, containing programmed electronics). Not sure what raw materials they use in the Mass Effect universe.
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There are already some very good answers on the topic of teleportation, so i shall not cover that. Instead, i would like to provide you with some different solutions to your problem, and some insight what that would mean for firefights:
* Maybe your guns are coilguns, requiring energy (which CAN be obtained wireless), and magnetic bullets. But only the bullets. So a standard clip might hold hundreds of them...
* Maybe your hero has a small backpack holding the rounds, which are then fed to the guns via a belt-like system attached to his arms (or even implanted?).
* Any maybe you don't WANT your hero to have unlimited ammo? Reloading makes your shots count for more, requires tactical thinking, and gives you less headache in some situations (see below). Also, running out of ammo completely can give some suspense and dramatic moments to your story (or whatever it is you are doing :) )
* I am not sure if you are aware that an automatic weapon with unlimited / quickly replenishing ammo creates some drastic problems. For one, firearms do overheat quickly, even melting the barrel. I was a machine gunner in the (german) army, and we had to exchange the barrels on our MG3 every 100-200 shots. And for that, we already had gloves made of asbestos... and for good reason. I imagine that in a pistol, the heat dissipation will be worse or at least not better, so your rate of fire will be very limited even with teleporting bullets. Then why implement this technology? Your hero could reload any time he needs to wait for his gun to cool down.
* If you mastered the cooling problem to get weapons with no heat problems and infinite bullets... a single man with an automatic weapon can hold any tight spot for DAYS without his enemies having much chances of charging him. This guy can just spray bullets at you all day. Literally.
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There is no amount of hand waving that could come close to glossing over how something such as your setup would work. Teleportation, and thus wormholes are merely theoretical as far as anyone knows, and they would require extremely large amounts of exotic energy (negative energy) to make them work for anything larger than things near the [plank scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length). No one has ever observed a wormhole. This concept may be confused with [quantum teleportation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation), however the two, transporting matter vs transporting information, are very much different processes.
Teleporting matter, anything the size of an atom or larger, would depend on the theory of [Einstein-Rosen bridges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole), better known as wormholes, which derive from General Relativity Theory. The energies involved are so large that if we, as a species, started trying to gather and store all of our energy for that purpose, we would not be able to collect enough matter and energy to make a wormhole for a very long time into the future. Building a wormhole would require similar resources to trying to build a black hole as the two operate on a similar scale of warping space-time.
I would suggest, as you have already guessed, to keep this in the realm of sci-fi and not try to explain it too much. [Other commentators](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/theoretically-how-much-energy-would-it-take-for-a-wormhole.784285/) on this topic seem to agree as well.
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> I'd avoid real physics terms for something like that. Instead have ultradimensional scissors that cut spacetime and sewed it into somewhere else.
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That said, I do not think you will even need the triangulation bit because in principle, as far as my limited awareness on the matter goes, there is nothing which prevents the mouths of wormholes from changing their locations without severing the link between the two. You might lean a little on how quantum teleportation works to see what I mean in that regard. Einstein called this "spooky action at a distance". If conserving the energy to keep the wormhole open is a concern in this case, then you may be trying too hard to explain the inexplicable.
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A Wizard did it.
Really, a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So introduce a source of sufficiently advanced technology. If you don't want the cultural and societal etc changes related to that, make it a one-off event.
There are some aliens. These aliens do what they want. One of the things the aliens did once was give some humans a some handguns.
These handguns reloaded themselves when you pushed a button on them.
They are also opaque to every sensor known to human kind.
More than one of them was dismantled. Once done so, it became a completely normal handgun. The button stopped working. The button wasn't hooked up to anything. Sensor tech aimed at it while it was dismantled showed complete opacity, followed by a completely normal gun, seemingly in an instant.
When they tried to use it as a spaceship engine, the button stopped working. It started working again when they brought it back to Earth.
Your hero has two of these guns. They are reasonably valuable, but 100s of 1000s of them exist. We don't know why the aliens made them. We don't know how they work.
A Wizard did it.
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Using teleportation to solve reloading problem is similar to using time machine to get around sleep disorder. Sure, it's doable, but would require really modified world where such advanced things are pretty common. You're not going for that, are you?
If you need more shots, you can research other ways of launching your bullets - or ditch bullets altogether and use other types of guns (with their respective drawbacks of course).
There are actually quite some options in that venue:
## Don't use ammo
### Shoot blanks instead
Using airsoft-like model with blowback, also equipped to make bright flashes and loud *bang*s would trick some people. This, of course, is just a decoy to hide main weapon/power that actually kills enemies leaving gunshot-like wounds.
This would also explain how protagonist is able to hit a single target while going macedonian-style.
Although police could let lack of spent casings slide, lack of actual bullets would be really suspicious to them, so there's an inherent thing going on with them discovering that feature, keeping it secret as a part of investigation, someone leaking that info to enemies, someone figuring out what the actual weapon/power is, someone framing the hero through *not* using bullets too, etc.
And, of course, hero can use actual guns too - for example, when he knows that enemy knows his secret but enemy does not know he knows, so enemy expects blanks.
## Don't use gunpowder
There are other ways to store energy - and to dump sufficient quantity into projectile's speed. Railgun (flashy but barrels deteriorate quickly), Gauss gun (ferromagnetic projectiles only, efficiency around 1% is considered ok), Thomson gun (more efficient but projectioes are a bit more expensive) etc.
You can even still use exploding stuff, just not gunpowder. When a cartridge works, gunpowder does not *detonate*, it [*deflagrates*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflagration). You could use other, more potent explosive. If you prevent it from detonating - like, you take a droplet of it and spray it over significantly larger volume and *then* you ignite it (somewhat similar to how combustion engine works). Detonation would just tear the gun apart.
Thus, you can boost mag capacity by reusing most of space that was occupied by gunpowder before. You could get somewhere around hundred shots per mag this way - and carry lots of spares too.
Those all are, of course, more expensive than regular guns - but they work under current tech and are probably cheaper than teleportation would be.
## Don't use teleportation
Have you tried running them numbers? How much lead judgement does your hero typically dispense? How much can he carry? How often would he have to refill under these constraints? It may happen that network of refilling points and also some drone-delivered ammo drops would be simply cheaper and provide same effect.
## Don't use projectiles
If we ditch projectiles, we don't have to carry supply of those. Of course, there *is* a need for power, but battery capacity can be handwaved a bit because not-so-distant future. Network of refill stations can double as electromobile-recharging stations - and even be profitable in itself.
There's obvious option of \*asers but some sound shenanigans or some new type of energy gun may probably work too.
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If you want several ideas for reloading, I suggest watching [*Equilibrium*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium_(film)). The ["Not without incident"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4weEXyoXZKs) shootout has neat ideas in this regard, for all that it falls into the standard chop-socky trope of the mooks just standing round waiting to be massacred. The whole Gun-kata idea might be of interest anyway for your dual-handgun-equipped hero.
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How about a compromise between the various solutions presented here:
The guns have some sort of handwavium power source and fire silicon oxide darts. (You need darts instead of bullets because it's nowhere near as dense as bullet material.) There's a nanotech assembler in the grip of the gun that extracts nearby silicon oxide and forms it into more darts.
In battle he is limited to whatever is in the magazine. However, out of battle he can lay a gun down on the ground or ideally rocks (of whatever size, sand is fine) and it will reload itself at whatever rate the fabricator works.
Perhaps it can work with a variety of materials, allowing it to absorb nearby metals to forge darts from also.
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Everybody said that it is impossible, but then one came who did not know, and just did it.
Enter the...
# Advanced Munitions Entanglement Delivery System (AMEDS)
Using a process which on first sight is very hard, but on second sight is just a trivial spin-off of the run-of-the-mill fusion drive in the spaceship of your hero, the A.C.M.E. corporation has created this brand new, sturdy, yet cheap delivery system. By the long-established sub-quantum entanglement invented back in 3409 (standard solar year), the ammunition holder of your handgun is entangled with the dispenser back in your household.
Due to the well-known property that such entanglement is implicitely cryptographically secure (any measurement or other modification of the connection will not work -at all-), you can rest assured that only you, and not your enemies will get ahold of your bullets, and they are completely tamper-safe.
While every child knows that teleportation to arbitrary spots - like inside the body of your enemy - is physically quite impossible (we are working on it though, and are looking forward to letting you know in our *hugely* entertaining campaign next year), teleporting from the ingress unit in your home to your mobile bullet magazine is the best way to have huge amounts of shots at your disposal, while lugging around only minimal weight.
We are happy to take your orders on this system, as well as diverse options, at our hypernet addr \*\*\* CONNECTION LOST.
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Because of the mass and energy requirement, it seems impractical to have the ammo appear inside the gun (in a clip, magazine, or otherwise). May I suggest that the ammo be teleported in stacks to a unit attached to the belt of the hero. The hand gun would not have a clip or magazine, but would be designed to have the bullets fed into the bottom of the grips. Kinda like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf76iM1E3fk), but directly into the gun. I feel like this has been done in some anime.
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With that technology, I would go for particle accelerator. So your gun will turn molecules in the air into bullets that would fly at, say 0.1c to the target. Great deal of the energy will be lost during the flight but when it connects even at 0.01c, the target will be no more.
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[Question]
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Said gas giant is about 5 times the mass of Jupiter, hence a Super-Jupiter. This gas giant is rogue and has no parent star. Its composition is the same as regular gas giant, i.e. it is composed of hydrogen, helium etc. but here's a catch.
The gas giant, when it formed, accidentally swallowed up a neutron star, which is now located at the center of the planet. The neutron star in question is a pulsar with 1.8 solar masses with a rotational speed of over 60x a second. The star is embedded in the planet's rocky core. Surface temperature of neutron star is about 1,000,000 K. Sort of like a [Thorne–Żytkow object](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorne%E2%80%93%C5%BBytkow_object)
**What would happen if a Gas Giant had a neutron star at its core?**
**Guesses**
I guess that the neutron star's gravity and extreme temperature would cause interesting phenomena such as wind patterns, and mascons happening at various places.
Diagram for reference:[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/faWso.png)
EDIT: This question does not ask what would have happened during the collision. Rather, this question asks what would happen to a gas giant with a neutron star at its core.
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With our current understanding of what a neutron star is, it would be impossible to have it 'embedded' in a planet. Nothing we know of is strong enough to support the mass of a planet and keep it from collapsing onto the surface of the neutron star itself. The "atmosphere" of a neutron star is hypothesized to be at most a few micrometers thick. Below that is a solid lattice of atomic nuclei.
The "surface gravity" is estimated to be about 10^11 times the gravity at the surface of the Earth. If you could use some kind of magic to stand on the surface of a neutron star and hold a tennis ball at arm's length and let go, it would hit the surface and it's nuclei would smear onto the surface after just 1.87 microseconds travelling at a speed of about 1870km/s.
Mass-wise it would be like a pickup truck 'embedding' itself in a crow.
If you could magically teleport a neutron star to the core of the largest gas giant observed with a radius of 130,000 km, I think you would get a miniature nova. At that radius the gravity would be much less, only about 7000 m/s2 (about 700 times earth gravity). After about 13 seconds an object dropped from that height would be travelling at roughly 60,000 km/s, a significant fraction of the speed of light, and would hit the surface before 14 seconds elapsed.
For a gas giant the story is more complicated because the falling material would produce enormous friction and pressure and release a lot of energy before smearing on the surface, and the nuclei could undergo nuclear fusion before reaching stability in the surface lattice.
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**Star Eats Planet**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ubHj2.jpg)
[Painting by Dana Berry for NASA](https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2005/08/Artist_s_impression_of_a_pulsar_eating_a_companion_star)
The star is 400 times as massive as the gas giant with 400 times the gravity.
The gas giant does not swallow up the star. Instead the star swallows up the planet. It barely notices.
The result is a slightly larger neutron star and no gas giant.
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A gas giant with a neutron star at its core is impossible.
The gravity of a neutron star is pretty strong. It would end up swallowing all the matter of the gas giant, turning it into [nuclear pasta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pasta).
While it might be possible for something to orbit a neutron star, it can be nothing as dense as a gas planet: friction in the gas would end up removing momentum and causing orbital collapse. This would happen at the moment of merging.
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**[Type Ia supernova](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_Ia_supernova)**
A Type Ia supernova is usually created in Binary star systems when the white dwarf pulls enough matter from its sister star onto its surface to achieve Chandrasekhar mass (critical mass) they reignite and in some cases trigger a supernova explosion.
As above this usually happens with a white dwarf. I am not certain if this can happen with a neutron star, and likely not with only a gas giant planet to work with.
But knowing SEWB assume little as possible. You do not say exactly how it swallowed up the neutron star. If they approached each other in space the neutron star would be the one swallowing up the gas giant. If however the neutron star was just teleported or just somehow appeared at the core of the gas giant, then I would wager yes "Big Boom today".
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The Roche limit around the neutron star that size is going to entirely contain the volume of the gas giant. So the mass of the gas giant will be shredded into rings and eventually be consumed by the neutron star.
Reducing the mass of a neutron star enough to reduce the Roche limit would likely also reduce its gravitational force enough to no longer *be* a neutron star.
Perhaps play with placing a (very) small black hole at the center of the planet? A black hole wouldn't have the minimum mass requirement that a neutron star would, but you would still need to make it a very small black hole to prevent it from shredding the planet.
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At the moment of collision part of gas giant will drop on neutron star due to gravity and rest will form plasma ring around equator. Then part of ring will drop on neutron star and merge with it and rest will be spreaded around by jets from poles. Small amount of mass will be spreaded in equator.
With small collision speed almost all mass of gas giant will be eaten by neutron star, with big speed You can get something like apple shoted by bullet effect and most of mass will be spreaded around.
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[Question]
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Long ago, modern humans died off. Only a few people remained, and they made all sorts of GMO plants, like moss that grows extremely quickly and can be dried into flour. Houses are made out of wood...but instead of the wood being harvested from trees, it is grown in place by using GMO trees that are shaped like houses. In this world, fire is very rare. Flint is hard to come across, and very few people are allowed to have knowledge beyond how to do their job. As currency, I would like them to use fire. They would transport it in small glass jars, with some sort of ultra-fast-growing but very slow burning plant growing inside (also GMO). Eventually, money would "burn out". In order to use the fire, you must destroy the glass jar (which makes it no longer usable as currency). My question is, how would this affect the economy? Note that a steady supply of currency is grown daily.
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**1) Business and commerce would be nearly impossible** for three reasons: It's incredibly cumbersome, you can't make change, and you can't save.
If the going rate is three loaves of bread for one jar of fire, but I only want one loaf of bread, the baker and I are stuck - we can't reach a fair agreement because a jar of fire cannot be easily divided.
If I want to purchase a wagon that costs two hundred jars of fire, equivalent to weeks of labor, early jars of fire will burn out before I have saved enough to make the purchase. Similarly, what is the wagon seller going to do with two hundred jars while they still have value? She can't purchase and eat 600 loaves of bread before they mold. (And how will either of us transport 200 jars of fire without the wagon?)
**2) Anyone who can grow the plant** in their yard (or attic) suddenly becomes quite rich. A poorly-regulated money supply leads quickly to all kinds of unnecessary economic horrors -- runaway inflation, depressions, panics, bubbles, etc...and their corresponding social and political impacts.
As a side effect, even if you managed to have a banking system to save money (addressing Problem #1), those panics, bubbles, and inflation would wipe out the value of those paper savings.
**3) Floods will be doubly terrible** because not only were your lands and homes and livelihoods destroyed, but everybody's money is gone also. Now nobody can hire help to rebuild...and customers (whose money is also gone) can't buy your products to help themselves rebuild.
**4) Some folks will burn down their houses** because a jar of fire fell off a table in their wooden house. Hard to see how they will buy another, since we still have Problem #1.
**The upshot is that most of your economic activity will shift to some other safer and more useful currency** that will quickly supplant jars of fire.
Note that current currencies avoid Problem #1 by providing multiple denominations, and avoid Problem #2 by layered protections to prevent counterfeiting (among other regulations)
[Answer]
## tl;dr: Fire is a chemical reaction, and in a closed system would die out
Fire is the reaction of organic matter with oxygen to form water and carbon dioxide (or monoxide)
$C\_xH\_yO\_z + O\_2 \rightarrow H\_2O + CO\_2$ (I know it's not balanced, but that's not the point)
This reaction occurs in heat, which would have to be provided somehow. The reverse reaction is basically photosynthesis. However, there is a problem: photosynthesis, even with GMO like blue-green algae, takes a long time, fire takes a short time (needs to burn fuel or die out), so either your jar is massive, with obvious implications for money worth (if you can't easily move it, you can't use it), or your money lasts a **very** short time (also bad: who uses money if it will go out of circulation shortly?). Also, the system would have to be kept in constant sunlight or other light/heat, with the fire burning out the plants if taken out of it. So, with a civilization that can make *this*, why not use good ol' gold or silver?
EDIT: Although plain ol' fire might not work, here's a workaround: [Bioluminescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence). Mixing chemicals to make light is pretty hard, and your GMO algae or whatever could always produce light as a byproduct of the photosynthesis.
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Well, while your idea of using fire as currency is interesting, why not make a small change. It's not fire that is valuable but rather flammable goods/items which have value. It can be made to fit in with the idea that the GMO plants that are used are made to be fire resistant.
This also solves the problem of having smaller denominations as well as introduces an idea of various tiers of currency. I.e some fuel is better than and thus worth more than other fuel.
Given that you want to ensure that the currency dies out make it so that people in your world need to burn this currency every so often to survive (basically winter happens) this would allow those who are in control of growing the trees for this to remain in power.
You could also prevent other people from growing their own currency by simply using a knowledge blackout - people have no idea the shaped/carved currency they are using is actually growable and given that it's needed to survive no one is going to bother to experiment with it.
If you implement it in this manner you should have a stable economy with the tree growers in power.
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Currency must have a few properties:
- it must be hard to create. (therefore banknotes and gold work. Rocks do not).
- Currency must make it easy to store and transport value. So I can catch fish at the sea, capture their value with currency, and save that value, or take it somewhere else. Therefore something that decays is not very useful.
Fire is a tool, it's a chemical reaction. It's easy to duplicate no matter how hard you want to contain this knowledge. Heck, a fire service is needed because fire tends to spread by accident.
It can also not be stored. Currency that loses its value is simply not attractive to use. This means that you will find it hard to convince me to part with my nice grain or bread for something that will peter out in a few days.
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# Not ordinary fire. But maybe...
As others have pointed out: forget about plain old fire of the fuel + oxidiser + heat + chain reaction sort. You cannot make that work in any possible way.
However...
You said that there has been extensive genetic engineering taking place before the collapse of civilisation. What if there came about some kind of plants that are of very special genetic strains, strains that have fantastic qualities, qualities that make them valuable and/or rare.
The problem with these plants is that that require extremely pure conditions to grow. The outside world is too full of nasty fungi and spores and other kind of genetic "dust" that just blows around... and this will attack these fragile valuable plants and quickly kill them.
These plants do not burn as a flame per se, but they do glow in wonderful colours as they take in sunlight and clean air and water, and then — in a special, superb kind of photosynthesis — create all sorts of wonderful things.
You can work this plot hook in many different ways. Things like filters, air and water purifiers, containments and similar become important in this society. Crossbreeding of different types of plants might become a thing. Just milk the fact that genetic engineering was used extensively.
To put things into perspective: compared to **computers**, the genetic engineering we do today is pretty much [like this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC).. the first very primitive and limited computers. We are only just getting started with genetic modification and engineering. Compare the development of computers and their amazing capacity today, what genetic engineering could have done before the collapse, and then you have lots of freedom as an author to invent things.
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You could enact some system of harvesting solar fusion elements such as plasma from local stars. Using this plasma as a resource may be a form of fire that is both rare and-- for the most part-- renewable?
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While it does make for an interesting effect, especially if your world and story is told visually (i.e. movie, comic, game etc.) it doesn't sound feasible as currency (as others pointed out).
Unless fire is not the actual currency, only the "design" element of the currency it represents.
Why not make it into something that is revered or a symbol of high status instead ?
I also see a problem with fire being rare.
Provided you don't change nature and physics from ours, fire will be plentyful.
Granted, a very moist or cold climate will minimize its appearance considerably.
However, hot weather, lightning strikes and plain old friction cause fires quite often just to name a few.
I also have a problem with a society capable of gene manipulation without tools that require electricity (if fire is rare, this method of creating fire can't exist either), metallurgy and other products made in processes involving heat (i.e. glass, plastic etc.)
How is food prepared in this world if there is no fire / heat?
Is everything eaten raw, dried (ah, needs dry and above room temperature air, known to potentially facilitate fire) or frozen ? Are only plants that can be consumed raw considered food?
Sounds like a raw vegan diet, potentially causing malnourishment issues and could require a more developed civilization capable of creating nutritional supplements.
[Answer]
As others have pointed out, the way you describe fire means it's going to be a pretty rough option. However, we can solve your problem ~~science~~ ~~magic~~ science!
Fire is actually a chemical reaction that requires:
1. Heat
2. Fuel
3. Oxygen
Flame and light are actually byproducts of this reaction. The neat thing is that if you remove any of these legs you no longer have fire, but if you reintroduce them, hooray, fire! Like an [Apache match](http://willowhavenoutdoor.com/featured-wilderness-survival-blog-entries/fat-guys-in-the-woods-blog-skill-series-become-a-fire-walker-apache-match/).
You just need to take advantage of this fact, so maybe your plant inside this jar has been GMO'd to produce an incredible amount of heat as part of photosynthesis. And when the jar breaks, the introduction of O2 creates fire, and that fire has some purpose otherwise why bother breaking the jar? Perhaps burning the plant allows it to produce a new seed that requires planting in a new jar? And the amount of air in the jar is the amount required for germination & growth.
Perhaps the ash from the burning plant is like [the spice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melange_(fictional_drug)), but it's extremely volatile - if you don't consume it within **$SHORT\_TIME** then it loses efficacy/becomes toxic.
Oooh, and if you make the plant corrosive to anything besides glass (and/or temperamental to being in the dark too long), then that gives a reason to use the glass jars.
So to sum up, you've got a plant that absorbs O2 to germinate/grow. Once it passes a particular threshold, it ignites, leaving behind a single seed and an extremely valuable, but short-lived byproduct. It's also hostile to anything but clear glass - the additives to color other glasses green/brown/red/etc. either kill it or it kills.
Now you have:
* A reason to keep stuff in a jar (so you can harvest the spice on demand)
* A reason to use glass (everything else is a bad idea)
* Fire
* A reason it's valuable
If you wanted to have alternate denominations of money, maybe you flip the impurities thing around and by introducing whatever makes green or red or blue or brown glass at the time of combustion, you can produce multiple seeds that produce the products with less valuable effects - so instead of seeing 10 minutes into the future you only see 5, or whatever.
Great. Now I really want to read a story about this stuff!
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**Practical aspects:**
It seems to be agreed that the jar + Burning Plant idea is really difficult to be set up.
Why not separate the combustible from the activator?
I will take a few concrete examples, but feel free to replace them with items from your world:
* Matches are the activators (could be a chemical product stored in glass)
* Coal is the combustible (could be an GMO)
This could help you to have a system of coins and bills or something, since the two products are used together to burn things
With this principle you also ease trades (matches are lights, and it is easy to spare them, and to give change)
**Market aspect:**
A currency has a value, this value is based on another product: for example € with gold (If you have several countries and currencies it’s more based on the exchange rate and interest rate)
So your currency should have a reference, something valuable which should not fluctuate too much.
But here you want to use a consumable as currency which means that its value will depend on the value of your chosen “valuable product” and the amount of your currency available (remaining matches in your country for example).
How do people earn these matches ?
Is it an universal income ?
How many matches are consumed by people per year?
How many matches do you need for survive per year?
How many matches are you earning each year?
How much is it fluctuating during the year? (consuming/earning rate)
Those questions will help you determine your currency fluctuation, but also to determine the real impact on the market (inflation and deflation)
You can imagine that the value of coal will decrease in summer, and dramatically increase in winter. I would suggest to have durable matches to always have a stable amount of matches on the market: the amount of matches/coal should drop significantly in winter, if a match has a short lifetime then in spring there will be no resources left.
This is a real problem: if one match is worth one bread in summer, one match could equal ten breads in winter. How do you really determine the value of your currency ? Keeping that in mind people will probably prefer to sell in summer and to buy in summer.
Separating the activator from the combustible (and maybe the combustive?) could introduce some new concepts:
- You waste matches when failing the strike, and as matches are your daily money and the value is evolving, wasting a match in winter means losing a lot
- People always want to optimize things, they will develop techniques intending to limit the waste of coal/match;
- People will take risk in selling all their matches during winter and buying a lot in summer.
- Poor people will buy the bare necessities of life selling there last remaining matches.
Have you read the stormlight archive by Brandon Sanderson? There are some similarities as they use glowing spheres as main currency, meaning they use it for light as well as money. These aren’t really combustible as they are rechargeable but the Wkipage could give you ideas
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_of_Kings>
**EDIT:** Hope this is better
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[
If you’ve seen any of my previous questions on Algennon’s fantastic and deadly ecosystem, you might know the drill: first a monster gets designed, then strategies to defend against it. But we’ve moved past mere Crabozzes and Puddings, and onto a far more intelligent and horrifying creature: the [Simswine](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/244708/which-animals-are-closest-to-a-large-upright-boar-monster-that-can-mimic-human-s).
Physically, it’s a terrifying beast: it stands on two legs around 5 feet (1.524 meters) with a posture similar to a gorilla, but the Simswine, as its name suggests, is related to suides, and especially resembles the extinct [Archaeotherium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeotherium) genus of entelodonts:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/arffc.jpg)
They have blood red eyes, clawed front feet, and long sharp cuspids on their top row of teeth. It dwells in large forests and taigas, and eats plants for sustenance.
But the Simswine doesn’t hunt things just for sustenance. Like the mosquito, Simswines need to consume blood to form sperm and egg cells, or else they can’t reproduce and poof, no more Simswines. Any kind of animal blood will work, but for some reason the consumption of a person’s blood will cause the children born from those bloodmade germ cells to be stronger. And another thing: Simswines are SMART. Their intelligence is on par with that of a corvid, and they have great skill in problem solving and understanding human reactions to certain actions, especially speech, though they don’t associate words with objects, and rather associate sounds with reactions. Also, they’re smart enough to know that humans in groups that get provoked are going to fight back, and are certainly not worth going after.
This need for blood and high intelligence leads to a very fun ability: **Mimicry.** Simswines can imitate sounds made by other animals with near perfect accuracy, then grab the lured animal and either strangle it or claw it to death. So you can see why people would fear Simswines. Luckily, Simswines almost never attack people openly or in their own settlements, and despite their natural weapons of fangs, claws, and large size, they usually only attack people who don’t suspect it. But that doesn’t mean they don’t still pose a very significant threat, *especially* to children. Given this creature’s abilities and the technology level of the people it hunts, **how would medieval people defend themselves from Simswines?**
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# Language
Yes, these Simswines imitate people, but they are not people. Just by engaging in a conversation, we can quickly get the Simswine out of its conversational depth.
So simply, you hear someone yell "heeeelp!" You respond with a "what's wrong?" If you get back a "heeeelp!" or other not well articulated response, then your suspicion should be aroused. Further questioning would surely lead to nonsense answers.
For instance, in the above situation, you may say: "What's wrong?"
They may respond: "Simswines!" That's a Simswine response: people either totally survive an attack or are brutally murdered and exsanguinated. Unless they develop shrike-like habits and "save people for later..."
# Strength in Numbers
Humans are mostly soft and breakable, so we really need to rely on each other to survive. This is especially so when dealing with a bloodthirsty tank of an animal. You should never investigate a cry for help in the wilderness unless you got several well armed people!
# Throwing Darts, Arrows, Spears
Now for the nitty-gritty about weapons. Humans have the capacity to throw, use ranged weapons, and find cover. That's the best thing to do against a buffalo-sized swine who wants your blood. Throw things and bravely *run away*!
Warriors in the European medieval period (and even into the early Renaissance) used war darts. It appears to have been a very popular weapon. I know people hear "dart" and think of a small things you use in a bar game, but these war darts were really specialized javelins with big, broad heads and large fletching. Even a tank like an entelodont would feel the impact from one of these.
Additionally, bows and crossbows were "common enough" through the European medieval period that you could expect a few people with some missile weapons in a travelling party. (IRL for hunting, but also defense.)
These Simswines will, of course, provide a pressure to increase the number of people packing a bow or crossbow. One arrow or bolt will likely not do much, but many of them may give a Simswines pause. Obviously, human blood doesn't help you much for reproduction if you are dead or dying from infection.
Finally, spears are a classic choice for fighting large animals. There are tons of historic examples of people using them to kill elephants, tigers, lions, and other dangerous beasts. For something so large, strength in numbers is important here. A single person *may* be able to kill it, but these appear to be large, deadly animals. A Simswine may find one spear worth the risk, but 5, 10, or more may change their minds.
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**They would hunt them to (regional) extinction.**
*If they bring pointy teeth, you bring pointy sticks. If they bring a pack, you bring a warband. If they put one of yours in their belly, you put their whole bloodline in the fossil record. That's the hominin way.*
You've invented another monster less hazardous to humans with pointy sticks than **other humans with pointy sticks**. We've always known what to do with animals or people that hunt us: hunt them right back, with superior weapons, better pack tactics, long term planning, and the human specialty of *unrelenting hatred*, until there aren't any of them left except at the outer margins of our territory.
If you want monsters less dangerous than a group of humans with pointy sticks to be a persistent threat, you pretty much have to make them sea monsters (or amphibious monsters) so that we can't get our dogs and pointy sticks, follow them to their homes, and murder every last one of them.
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# Times Tables
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vSdUD.jpg)
The Simiswine can memorise a few phrases. But it doesn't know the meaning of the phrases. It just knows it can get people's attention using "Help! They're after me."
It is bad at responding when there is a right answer. If you hear someone shouting in the woods, shout back, and ask them what is four plus five.
The Simiswine doesn't know what is four plus five. It can only memorise fifteen things. There are a hundred different addition tables to memorise and just as many multiplication ones.
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They need to set up a [shibboleth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth) or a password which the beast can't obviously imitate.
One thing is to imitate "help me" or "hey, you!", another is to know that to "No man can kill me" you need to answer with "I am no man!".
With this simple step, humans can tell from a distance if the thing looking like a human that they are approaching is a human or a human mimicry, and act accordingly.
It's not 100% fail proof, but it can work decently in organized communities, where people can share information among them. And for the foreigners, they just need to be able to read the alerts put on signs along the road to be recognized:"by entering the reign of Patagonius VII, you will be safe if when greeted with X you answer Y". Your beasts can't read.
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There's a hint of this in another answer, but: **dogs**. Not fighting dogs (though they may have a role too) but dogs with a keen sense of smell. These would be used for both tracking Simswine packs to hunt them down, and to alert a village or party of travellers that the beasts were nearby.
Dogs would need to be kept fairly close by their handlers. If the dogs were routinely let out of sight one or two swine could imitate their barking to draw off defenders before the rest of their pack attacked the vulnerable from the other direction.
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Habitat destruction.
Humans have driven many species to extinction or near-extinction. Although sometimes targeted hunting plays a role (such as the grey wolf in North America) it has the problem of humans needing to compete with natural reproduction of the animal.
However, there is another way that is so easy, it happens unintentionally all the time. In fact it takes a lot effort not to do it. Destroy the animal's habitat to prevent the species's ability to restock its population. At that point, you can hunt them down if you're in a rush, or just wait for them to succumb to old age and starvation.
This animal sounds like it is quite large and relies on stealth or ambushing - the mimicry isn't very useful if prey can see it. The obvious place for it to live is some kind of thick forest, or perhaps shrubland or tall grass. Notably gorillas live in jungles, as do tigers. In this case the solution is simple: Simply clear cut the forest. This is a natural thing to do for medieval economies, and happened in our world as well. Perhaps in your world, wood is extra cheap, because people clearcut woods first and worry about the timber second. Or perhaps governments subsidize it. Regardless, people would use wood a lot more for fuel, construction and manufacturing. Coal mining would be less common. Navies would be more abundant. Sea trade would prosper. Wooden version of tools would be used more - perhaps people use cheap and disposable wooden plows since wood is so cheap. Clogs would be in fashion.
With the deforestation depressing wood prices, and therefore wooden products, these products would tend to be regarded as disposable. Since there would also be a large wood-fuel economy, there would be a large recycling industry (into fuel).
For defense, most likely lumberjacks would organize in troops, perhaps even with armed soldier escorts. If there's a suspected nest of swines in one area, they might just set the forest on fire to be done with it. If they're clever, perhaps they might cut paths through forests first and divide them into small sections - as the swine are forced to cross open terrain, they can be hunted with ranged weapons.
Note also that it is not merely a matter of destroying the habitat of the swine, but also their natural prey. Whatever it is they normally feed on - say, deer - will start dwindling as well as *it* runs out of places to feed, live and breed. The swine will then starve.
The rapidly cleared land can be used for agriculture, which would also create economic prosperity. With shrinking living space and competition for wild prey, some swine will begin to prey on livestock. This will surely incense the farmers, and motivate hunting parties against them, as was the case with the grey wolf, further contributing to their decline.
As for the weapons, I think that's a mere detail. The mimicry doesn't change much. A determined hunter would use tracking or hounds to find the swine. In such a world, decent people would understandably avoid the woods, so if the hunters hear some person crying out it doesn't matter if it's a real human or a swine mimicking one. They won't be getting much kindness either way. Incidentally, human bandits also often mimic innocent humans, and yet it is not such a difficult task to defeat them. Hunters would either shoot swine with bows or crossbows to avoid risking close range, or use long spears, perhaps on horseback. Trapping or baiting is a tempting option as well. Perhaps the traps would have to be a bit elaborate given their intelligence, but it is possible to trap ravens after all. An interesting idea is to set poisoned animals loose for the swine - although mosquito are able to distinguish blood composition, so perhaps this would not work so well. But if there are things that smell unappetizing to the swine, then it becomes a potential swine repellent for humans at sub-lethal doses.
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There's bound to be **a fable of a forest demon** that you can bamboozle by asking him three questions. Different retellings would differ wildly on the specifics of the actual questions to be asked, but the main principle will be the same: since Simswines are only good at repetition, their answers *do not make sense* - except if they have happened to previously overhear the correct response and, in a separate stroke of luck, happen to use just that response. With three questions, the chances of speech-mimicking creature which rarely encounters humans (because it lives in big forests, where few people live) giving a coherent answer every time are minuscule. Then you would know what you are dealing with and be able to escape.
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Ask it a few simple questions, not ones with a single set response, but ones where the correct answer or answers changes based on the circumstances. For example ask what todays date is, it doesn’t matter how often the monster over hears the answer, it won’t give a correct response.
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[
As in, it forces the star to undergo rapid nova/supernova by contracting the star. It then redirects the force of the nova/supernova out the back end, via ricocheting the force around the ship till it exits the ship out the back end.
Problem needing to be solved: surviving the nova/supernova
How does it survive?
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# It cannot
As Randall Munroe once wrote: "what would be more bright: A megaton nuclear bomb detonated against your eye, or a star going supernova as far away as the earth is from the sun?" The answer was the supernova. It is simply a ridiculous thing, releasing more energy than any rational person can understand. To put it in another way. Iirc the quote was in the answer at what point you could be killed by neutrinos. These are famous for practically not interacting with matter. You can fire them through the Earth and measure them (with great difficulty) on the other side with barely a hitch, as they don't really interact.
A supernova creates enough neutrinos that if all the other insane violence was ignored, these things that basically do not interact with anything **will still kill you**.
To give some other ways to put it into perspective. It is more energy than our sun outputs in ten billion years. It is estimated that an Earth like planet would need to be 50 lightyears away to not feel damaging effects. If the sun would go supernova, our planet is estimated to get to *15 times* the temperature of the sun's normal surface temperature.
There is no material that can withstand the shock, heat, anything of the EM spectrum, the sheer energy of microscopic particles and even the neutrinos.
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Your main problem is dealing with the extreme radiation. Like Cadence said in their comment, however big you think supernovas are, they're bigger than that.
Hard EM. Hard everything. Hell, even hard *neutrino* radiation.
Assuming you have some magic material that can deal with all of that though...
*(Perhaps a [domain wall](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_wall), which in some models are stable and 100% reflective.)*
[Asymmetric supernovas](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/461/4/3747/2608544) eject material unequally in different directions, and may even propel their stellar remnants (neutron stars) at high velocities away from the blast. A hypothetical "supernova starship" can make use of that by artificially inducing asymmetry during core collapse, when small influences propagate into large ones, creating a "shaped supernova blast". You can point the explosion vector away from the ship to make this craziness slightly easier to handle from an astro-engineering perspective, *or* you can direct it *into* whatever lines your reaction chamber to exchange more momentum.
---
If you really do have a perfect reflector, which you'd damn well need as anything less is briskly annihilated, a better option might be to contain the blast (or two) and open a hole whenever you need a little thrust.
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It would need to be
$$\huge \text{ BIG}$$
Huge I mean.
Like enormously. Mind-bogglingly. Big.
So big that in fact. That you quite can't wrap your head around it.
We have loads of questions around here about [big things](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/megastructures). Some of the big things are as big as a planet or even as big as a star. But a supernova is even bigger than a star. And the upshot of the existing questions is that even the marginally big things in the existing questions are already too big to not collapse under their own gravitational pressure, from excessive and flagrant bigness.
So I say give up on realistic physics. Just wave your magic wand and say it works because I said so. And start worrying about how the heck you use a supernova as a power source anyway. A supernova only lasts a moment. You get loads of power all of a sudden and then nothing.
If you want to use a normal star instead of a supernova, feel free to look up Stellar engines for inspiration. The nerds over at [Orion's Arm](https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/49f85ad889279) have already written extensive fanfiction on the subject.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m4ph0.png)
The glowy thing in the middle is a star by the way.
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It survives with copious amounts of Handwavium, with a liberal sprinkling of Sci-Fi super-material with borderline magical properties.
E.g Super-duper-Special-Reinforced-nano-Carbon-steel-polymer-molecular-crystalline-engineered-biogrown-Space-plate.
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As I said in a comment: You would die from *neutrino radiation (!)* alone, and you can't shield against it.
Such a bold idea needs bold science: You'll have to slow down time, bend space, or generally change the fabric of spacetime, as I suggested [in an answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/47486/2374) to the question how to shield a planet from a supernova.
In all likelihood you'll need energy in the order of magnitude of the explosion in order to shield against it. Such energies are generally not available. The most elegant — indeed, probably the only — way would be to use the energy delivered by the explosion to establish the shield, very quickly and in an escalating fashion.
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## By Slowing Down Time
About as realistic as an answer can be, because as others have said, there is no surviving a supernova unless you are *many light years away*. Freeze time around the supernova when it's most compressed and grab a scoop small enough to fit in your ship. Once it's in place, resume time in extremely brief pulses, with a [duty cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_cycle) such that the rate of energy released is sufficient to power a [fusion engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_rocket).
Edit: Even if you did this, as @Jens said, it's still waaaay overkill. In the spirit of fueling ships with supernovae, you could take the same approach, but build a gigantic reactor around or near a time-frozen supernova. The reactor facility takes that unimaginable amount of energy and uses it in particle accelerators to generate copious quantities of anti-matter, or perhaps some far-future handwavium fuel, depending on how far down the ~~rabbit~~ worm hole you want to dive
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We don't use hydrogen bombs to propel cars.
We won't use supernovae to propel starships. *Not even in science fiction*.
For basically the same reason: a major efficiency mismatch. The energy used to propel is the tiniest of a fraction of the energy released (1044 Joule, while 1027 J is enough to boil the Earth's oceans). Almost all of that energy is wasted and everything near the business end gets destroyed. Save a star today, use a garden variety anti-matter or warp drive.
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Under physics as we know it? No.
The energy keeping the ship together would be less than the energy of the nova. And there is no way to make matter that can withstand that energy, because such material would, even if it did exist, require more than a super nova to shape.
Basic principle is this. If you are dealing with more energy than is needed to shape a material, then it is enough to ruin any shape you make. If you can hammer a metal into the shape of a ring, hitting it twice as hard will ruin the ring. And anything that can suirvive an explosion, would need more energy than that explosion to shape.
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In addition to all the problems already pointed out you have the detail of acceleration. Let's suppose you have some handwavium shield between the detonation and the ship and the ship is strong enough to take it. Your crew isn't, we're talking thin red paste across any floor.
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Maybe you could cheat. A lot.
Here's what you do. You figure out a way to create a stable wormhole where at least one end doesn't have to be fixed (YOU don't have to do this, you can just say the scientists in your story figured it out.)
You put the non-fixed end in your spaceship. (Oh, also you need to be able to anchor this wormhole end to a physical object. Good thing your fictional scientists are so good at sciencing.)
You put the other end near the star you're about to supernova.
When it goes, "stuff" (whatever that might be) from the supernova goes into the stellar end of the wormhole and comes out the ship end of the wormhole. Your fictional scientists may be semaphoring a bit here, because I've been saying "wormhole" but what you really want is a Portal from the game of the same name, where momentum is only SORT OF conserved ... the magnitude IS, the direction ISN'T.
This allows you to take a small (and hopefully survivable) portion of the supernova energy and use it for propulsion of your ship.
Of course, this is HORRIBLY wasteful. If it's cheap and easy to generate the portals then you could just keep resetting the stellar one a bit further out (and shifted slightly) so you get another slice of the pie instead of letting it go to waste.
Might be better just to drop the stellar end of the portal inside the star and NOT make it go supernova. Then you get starstuff coming out the other end at whatever pressure exists at that point. You could siphon off a LOT (in human terms) of starstuff without hurting the star noticeably, because A LOT (in human terms) is a rounding error on a rounding error in stellar terms.
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500 years after a nuclear war, an empire called the Midwestern empire rose.
It has conquered most of the Midwest and surrounding areas. They now set their eyes on California, a state that hasn’t been claimed by any other major faction.
They sent 10 legions of soldiers over to start their invasion, but another government, called the Western Federation, also want to control California.
Negotiations have been attempted, but have not worked. Both side are fully prepped to go to war with each other, and would only surrender if their cities were completely destroyed.
The empire usually fights in tight formations, and use standard laser rifles as their main weapon, but each soldier is equipped with and extra side arm, a small laser pistol, and two gamma grenades, grenades that shoot out radiation. All these supplies weigh about 40 pounds. The laser weapon can only fire 3 shots before it overheats, and they have to wait for the weapon to cool. Because of this, they use volley fire.
The western federation has fewer men than the empire does, their soldiers outnumbering them 10 to 1, they have far superior tech. Each soldier is equipped with a metal exoskeleton that lets them pick up x 30 what they could normally carry. Their armor also can deflect any ballistic weapon, except for a bazooka. Their suits cannot however protect the wearer from radiation. The western federation also has heat vision googles in their suits. Lasers can pierce their amor however. Each soldier is equipped with a laser machine gun, which can shoot 15 rounds without overheating. They also have a standard laser rifle like the empire.
They each have body armor that can disperse the energy from laser weapons and smaller ballistic weapons. And last but not least each soldier wears a bright red uniform.
My question is:
Does it make sense for soldiers to wear bright red uniforms in battle?
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Not in your scenario, no.
Let's go back to the last standing army that wore bright red and look at the reasons why they did that.
The British Model Army, often referred to as the [Redcoats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_coat_(military_uniform)) originally wore red because it was adopted as a national colour in England. This colour served them well in many situations because of the weapons that were in use at the time.
Bayonets were in common use for melee combat as infantry lines closed in. The bright red attracted the attention of the enemy to be sure, but it also ensured that there were no collateral damage incidents on the field as the other British soldiers could tell themselves apart more readily.
Even in ranged combat with muskets, the range and accuracy of these weapons meant that being seen at a distance was less of an issue because it didn't mean that you could be hit, and the black powder being used at the time meant that there was a lot of smoke on a battlefield, and the red uniforms meant that the musketeers didn't aim at a moving shape close to them that turned out to be their own people.
High velocity rifles (snipers), long range weapons, and sneak attack tactics put and end to all that and the British stopped issuing these uniforms at the beginning of WWI.
Your laser rifles and handguns are effectively massively long range weapons. Lasers don't suffer from wind resistance, gravity, or any of the other factors that affect bullets in any meaningful way1 so if you can see a bright red uniform on the horizon, technically you can hit it. This makes every soldier in your army a sniper, and that also means that the best defence any opponent has against you is not being seen.
The only *possible* scenario I can think of is that the red uniforms are only red because of a refractive effect caused by an ultra-reflective crystalline lattice built into their uniforms, designed to refract and dissipate incoming laser fire.
Scientifically, this seems like a very bad idea, but then so do combat lasers. The red could be because the coats are designed to optimise reflection at a specific frequency, which matches most military lasers. That said, changing the chemical frequency of a combat laser would have to be a simple thing to do for this very reason. Still, it's a possibility.
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1. Of course, being in an atmosphere does mean that your laser can attenuate through refraction. Lasers would therefore be 'tighter' in space because there is less to get in the way of the photons to break the coherence of your laser. That said, in practical terms, the refraction of a military laser in the Earth's atmosphere is still less likely to cause range issues that would be material in a situation where ground combat is still a thing.
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Your soldiers might wear red if they *want* to be obvious and stand out. Think of the stormtroopers in Star Wars. They value the fear inspired by their reputation more than they do camouflage, so they wear recognizable uniforms to more easily inspire that fear.
This mostly makes sense when your soldiers are going to be up against significantly weaker forces most of the time.
[Answer]
Theres a few things that need to be necessary for your idea to make sense. First is that Napoleonic tight formation style battle maneuvers were a product of the weaponry of the era. Muskets had a phenomenally low rate of fire and were not especially accurate. Commanders had to group companies of men together in order to minimize drawbacks of the low fire rate and unreliable accuracy of the era's weaponry's through sheer volume of fire. If you have laser weapons that can only fire say, 3 times every 60 seconds, then it might make sense. for reference to Napoleonic era muskets, 2 companies of men might line up 50 yards apart and volley fire at each other for up to 8 hours and suffer only a few dozen gunshot casualties each. In the Napoleonic era up through to modern times rifle fire has been a minority of combat wounds, Artillery has been the primary casualty producer (aside from disease.) Problem with "laser musketry" is that then the audience starts asking why at that point nobody is using gunpowder anymore, since its easier to manufacture and making machine guns is actually so easy you could do it in your garage (FYI super illegal, don't try to do this.)The most logical would be to go the "high tech compounds and armor manufacturing means that bullets don't work anymore" route. Perhaps the laser weapons are highly powerful but suffer from over-heating, require frequent focusing-lens and power pack changes, and are not particularly reliable. Keep in mind the back scatter heat and energy from a laser weapon that powerful would produce plasma blooming in the atmosphere generating a LOT of heat, electromagnetic phenomenon. Maybe this has a cumulative effect in degrading weapons limiting rate of fire, making aiming difficult, and limiting range (Plasma blooming disrupts beam cohesion). the only reason such bulky cumbersome weapons are used is because that while it may be hard to hit a target, at least when you do hit something it actually does something instead of just bouncing off the armor.
As far as brightly colored uniforms, if there are lasers and miniaturized gamma radiation sources and such then one would assume that use of thermal optics, radar, or other high-tech scanning and optical enhancement devices would be fairly common. Perhaps the color of a uniform doesn't really matter when even if you evade regular visual detection your enemy still has you on radar, FLIR, IR, UV and LADAR all at the same time. In such a battle field maybe there just isn't any reason your soldiers cant be all painted up in the bright colors of the empire since detection devices are so good hiding simply isn't very possible.
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The reason modern soldiers wear camouflage is because not being seen gives you an advantage in combat. Wearing bright colors can give the enemy the necessary split-second advantage to shoot you before you shoot them. Personal anecdote: One time I was playing Paintball. Everyone wore old camo overalls provided by the paintball range. But one guy in the opposite team insisted on wearing a red sweater over it (for science? lost a bet? no idea). That guy got hit more than the rest of his team combined.
But what if AI assistance systems have become so good that camouflage becomes useless? What if every soldier had an augmented reality headset. The headset has advanced sensors and recognition software which is very good at finding and identifying targets. Enemies, allies and non-combatants get highlighted in bright colors. Wearing camouflage doesn't help - the sensors and the AI system are too advanced to be confused by that.
Uniform color would then no longer have any impact on survivability. So your army would focus on the other purpose of uniforms: Instilling a sense of order and camaraderie among the soldiers. In that case, uniform design is simply a fashion choice.
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**The uniforms are red because the material that gives the uniforms their protective properties is red.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YDHCV.jpg)
<https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Loose-Gem-3-8mm-Created-Synthetic_60118321103.html>
Your uniforms confer some protection against ballistic and laser weapons. If they were made a fabric which incorporated synthetic ruby (corundum) they would be red. Ruby is extremely hard and durable as well as translucent and refractive. Ruby is not an outrageous choice as a basis for a super durable protective fabric - both against impacts as well as light-based attacks.
The soldiers do not care enough to paint or cover the uniforms to make them a color other than red. They are uninterested in concealment because the nature of their combat makes that pointless or an impossibility. So the uniforms are the color of the material they are made from.
Sapphire is a cousin of ruby and also extremely hard if you need some blue uniforms.
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Re "The empire usually fights in tight formations, and use standard laser rifles...": I'm assuming the folks they're fighting have those laser rifles &c, or at least some sort of ranged weapon? Then the only reason for fighting in a tight formation, or wearing bright uniforms, is that the Empire needs to kill off its surplus population, WWI trench warfare style.
Really, formation fighting, like bright colored uniforms, went out with the Redcoats at Lexington & Concord (American Revolution, April 1775, for non-US people), even if some military minds haven't quite accepted the fact yet. (I'm perhaps a bit prejudiced here: in boot camp, two centuries later, they still had us practicing close-order drill, instead of things that might have been of some use in real combat :-()
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Bright uniforms? Possibly but the reasons I am giving is a stretch. Since bright colors reflect more light, bright uniforms might be contributing to the dispersion of radiation from lasers and the gamma grenades. However, gamma grenades I assume would emit gamma rays would not help much since it is very hard to make a gamma ray mirror. The lasers on the other hand could be infrared lasers in which case bright red might make sense but higher-frequency lasers such as x-rays could also be used.
On the other hand, if the weapons being used create a lot of dust or smoke (i.e. the gamma grenades could shoot out radiation by dispersing radioisotope dust/smoke), bright uniforms might be needed to see each other similar to European battles before smokeless gunpowder.
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**Rules of Engagement and the lessons of history.**
This is a post-nuclear war world. The soldiers are armed with deadly weapons. There is a global prohibition against civilian casualties and collateral damage. The mass destruction accompanying the nuclear war of five centuries has created an indelible lesson in the need to restrict combat and confine battlefields to much smaller areas.
Fighting units are compelled by law and treaty to form up in small, compact groupings to make their exchange of fire less discriminate and less likely to harm civilians or destroy civilian property. Military personnel are also required by law and treaty to wear distinctive clothing to make them readily identifiable.
Therefore, when the forces of the Midwestern Empire are abroad civilians will not wear red for their own safety and protection.
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Disclaimer - the following is an "a guy once told me" answer which I haven't verified, so do your own research before quoting.
However, I was once told by an ex-British soldier with a strong interest in military history that the reason the British Army historically wore bright red uniforms was to prevent enemies from seeing how many troops there were, and/or from distinguishing individual soldiers. So this was partly so that the enemy would think there were more British soldiers than there were (psychological warfare) and partly so that they could not identify they soldiers as (from a distance, or through a telescope), all the soldiers would blend into one indistinguishable splodge.
To me, however, these seem like minor advantages compared to the much bigger advantages gained from camouflage, which probably explains why the latter replaced the former.
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**Status or the Mission - perhaps more important than life, especially if camouflage makes no difference**
We sometimes make the mistake that the military wants to 'save lives of soldiers'. To an extent this is true, however overall the mission takes priority.
If by wearing a bright colour, such as red, they create a uniform, strong physical presence to others, including other armies, you might create a strong psychological effect that may serve the government / military more than saving it's own lives. It may also be a good recruitment drive too and give the nation identity.
There could also be advanced technology that could target soldiers with no-error, available cheaply to all armies. In this case there would be no reason to be camouflaged, and so the soldiers might as well wear red for other purposes as above.
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If, because of genetic effects from the nuclear war, everyone were red-green color blind, then red would be the perfect camouflage. **Edit** Hunting vests are no longer red because color blind people can not distinguish them against a green background. Too many hunters were thus being shot wearing bright red vests.
It is also the color that is least seen from a distance. Blue light penetrates the atmosphere better than red light, that is **why distant mountains** are blue. **edit** it is the blue light from the distant mountains that penetrates the atmosphere. **EDIT** See [How to instantly add depth to your mountains in acrylic landscape painting](http://willkempartschool.com/how-to-instantly-add-depth-to-your-mountains-in-acrylic-landscape-painting/)
**EDIT** This, of course, because a blue light photon has more energy than a red light photon. It's all about wave length,
Most red traffic lights actually have blue in them, so they are seen from a distance. Same with police and emergency vehicle flashing lights.
Winter road vehicles (snow plows and sanders) use flashing blue lights, because red just isn't visible enough in inclement weather.
And, of course, there is the psychological factor - red is associated with anger and aggression. It also signifies avoidance, danger.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[How are sapient crows utilized if there are phones for communicating?](/questions/250561/how-are-sapient-crows-utilized-if-there-are-phones-for-communicating)
(13 answers)
Closed 2 months ago.
The setting is a post-scarcity civilization, where a galactic government exists, but due to the limitations on faster-than-light travel, each world is relatively self-governed.
I want a city on one of the habitable worlds to be known for the use and breeding of homing pigeons. How can I justify the use of these homing pigeons, when people can send digital messages?
[Answer]
Simple, because even in 2023, unless you're basically ***inside*** your local internet exchange, the pigeon is faster for bulk data transfer.
Raspberry PI fanatic Jeff Geerling decided to [race his gigabit internet connection against some pigeons](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/pigeon-still-faster-internet) carrying USB thumbdrives... the pigeons won - and by a reasonable amount too! Well, provided you didn't need to send the data more than a good days drive away... (you'll have to watch the video to find out where Pijeff fits in)
Here's the speed/distance plot he came up with:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WSwh7.jpg)
Edit: As for why no-one in ***our*** world uses pigeons, that's simply because light-weight, high-capacity data storage came a bit late to the party relative to international air freight. ***However***, that's not to say that the ***concept*** of strapping some kind of data storage device to some kind of moving object (animal or otherwise) isn't still alive and well.
It's quite common for large science facilities to simply ***post*** each other boxes of drives when they need to share a couple petabytes with one another. In fact, this is so common that a number of commercial solutions already exist like [Amazon's "snow mobile"](https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/) (which is literally just a truck carrying 100'000 terabytes worth of drives) - for you know, when you need to upload the entire library of congress by next week...
So ***TLDR;*** Pigeons are ***much*** faster than the internet over short distances, we just don't use them ourselves because parcel post is easier. ***However***, if your world has high-capacity storage but ***slow networks and snail mail*** or if you're in a ***dictatorship or war zone*** and thus can't trust the network or the post then it just might make sense to dust off your old copies of [RFC-1149](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1149) and [RFC-2549](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2549).
Plus, as RFC-2549 puts it: *"One major benefit to using Avian Carriers is that this is the only networking technology that earns frequent flyer miles"*
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**Government Spying**
The people send messages on encrypted chips that they don't want the government to spy on.
Even if they get a hold of the message, the pigeon can't tell them where it came from, where it's going or who it's working with.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iDQKj.png)
[Answer]
# Nostalgia
My wife wrote me a handwritten letter last year. That was 2022. I felt like asking if she knew [expletive] cuneiform too, but decided not to since that was just her way of being romantic.
Did you know that a lot of people still use pen and paper today? That's as far removed from modernity as pigeons are from satellites and even [ansibles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible). And it is exactly because of that, that pigeons will still be used. Otherwise what are the teenagers of your world going to mock their respective millenials for? Using telephones to actually call other people?
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Homing pigeons can be faster.
It all depends on how much they can carry. If they can carry 12 grams, that is a gram-mol of carbon, or 6\*1023 atoms. If you can get one bit per benzine ring, then you have 125 Zettabytes, or about twice the [internet in 2020](https://healthit.com.au/how-big-is-the-internet-and-how-do-we-measure-it/). That would take some time to transmit.
I cannot find a sensible figure for what a pigeon can carry, but with training they can deliver 75 grams according to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon), so 12 grams is probably a sensible amount.
[Answer]
**Throughput vs Latency**
As others have mentioned - a Homing Pidgeon, carrying a storage drive can have a faster throughput than a networked link.
**Security**
This is a combination of two issues:
1: as a physical transfer of data - unless the pidgeon is intercepted, the Data transfer is secure.
2: A High-tech adversary might not notice/care/consider the use of old-school techniques.
This is where SneakerNets have worked quite well.
**The Landscape is not conducive to Wireless or Wired communication**
Electromagnetic interference, constantly shifting plate tectonics etc. Anything that prevents a signal being transmitted wirelessly or having a physical line would be a good
**Because you can**
The first implementation of RFC1149 (IP over Avian Carriers) was by a bunch of Linux nerds, because they could.
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## Pigeons Deliver Encryption Keys
There are fears that a future combination of AI and quantum computing will make make it possible to decrypt most things encrypted with a known algorithm in a relatively short period of time, making encryption much less reliable than it is today.
There are ways to encrypt safely using something like a one-time pad, but that can involve the other party having a key that is just as long as the data, and use it only once! So for anyone wanting to send large digital files, and evade monitoring on a public communication system, physically transferring the data may be the best option for true secrecy.
We don't want to hand deliver every digital file, but we worry about interception if we just use pigeons. The solution: We send the message and the key through different mediums. We encrypt the data with a one-time pad, send the encrypted file over the internet, and send the key by pigeon. Either one is useless without the other.
[Answer]
It turns out that the mathematical underpinnings of encryption is totally wrong and that there is no viable replacement.
So instead physically delivering media becomes the norm.
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## Uneven Distribution Of Technology
Not that I expect Homing Pidgeons would fare especially well there but, think about Tatooine from the Star Wars universe. Despite being technically a part of the empire, the distribution of advanced technology there is clearly behind pace compared to somewhere like Coruscant or the Bespin Cloud City.
And even within individual planets, we see that Luke is far removed from nearly any type of civilization on his little moisture farm, versus Mos Eisley which has its own spaceport and thriving market.
The point being, even in a society where a galactic empire has control over a large swathe of territory, and regional governors have direct control over their planets, we can find very disparate forms of technology among the population.
All we have to do is find a place where the Galactic Network has not been established, either due to infrastructure problems [nowhere to build the giant receiving towers], political problems [internal warring factions on the planet that make establishing the network difficult], or even just resource problems [copper wire? Our planet doesn't even have *rocks*!] and you'll find a pocket of society that, while it may thrive in some ways, lags behind in technological development.
[Answer]
**Local resources/economics**
This is partially a frame challenge against the post-scarcity detail. If you have a galactic civilization without faster-than-light communication, such that the communication bottleneck requires planets to be mostly self-governed, there will inevitably be an even bigger bottleneck distributing goods. Goods always move slower than data. (With the boundary case of shipping physical media around, in which case data moves as a slow as goods.) Maybe local resources on the planet are extracted efficiently and distributed fairly, but anything you need to ship in from the next star system is going to come at a premium.
So, maybe this planet has lots of pigeons and no copper.
**Cultural interia**
Maybe they finally did manage to get sufficient copper imports, but
* The average citizen does not want to learn a new system
* There is a historically entrenched pigeon industry
* Pigeons are a part of the cultural identity of the people, featured in iconic fairy tales, songs, etc.
* The density of urban pigeon populations and legally-mandated care that must be taken to not impede pigeonry increases the building and maintenance costs of new-fangled infrastructure like cables
* Cables don't produce valuable guano
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## Fashion
Why do they use pigeons? Because they want to. Because keeping pigeons makes them happy, has become a source of national (global?) pride, and the personal touch is considered to be much more respectful and significant. This is a post-scarcity world, so while the pigeons are *obviously* less efficient than the internet for any realistic real world purpose, it just doesn't matter. You don't need your communications to be efficient any more, so less efficient methods can eke out an effective niche.
[Answer]
**Verify the sender**
Perhaps it is almost impossible to verify who digital messages are actually coming from in your world, and the best way to do so, if something is important, is to send a known pigeon with personal signatures, seals, etc.
I mean, nowadays it's already basically impossible to know if you're talking to an AI or not.
[Answer]
**Astronomy!**
In real life, the imaging of the M87 blackhole was an interesting use case for "homing pigeons", planes!
Instead of spending weeks to send petabytes of data over the internet, the massive quantity of data collected by the radio antennae had to be flown on airplanes to central data centers.
I reckon if your "homing pigeons" were very large and tamable birds, they could be used to transfer massive amounts of data for large data scale projects, like in our case the black hole imaging.
“There’s no internet that can compete with 5 petabytes of data on a plane.”
<https://www.inverse.com/science/54833-m87-black-hole-photo-data-storage-feat>
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The armoured trains need to be made viable without just removing other aspects of warfare. Tactical pure fusion nukes with a yield of under 75kt are common. The environment of the planet is earth like. There are a few areas that are just barren flat rock & a few very dense megalopolises. Rail infrastructure is plentiful. The primary opponents are varied but the main situation for use is between developed industrial powers. The armoured trains have to be used in direct combat & be heavily armoured. They can carry other vehicles & infantry. The standard rail gauge is 1,600mm. The technology level is near future. What could allow armoured trains to work in this setting?
[Answer]
If you want to stop the train you don't aim for it, you just target the railway.
No matter how thick is the armor on the train, a single bomb on the track will stop not only the one train you target, but the whole traffic on the line.
Which is a very effective way of using bombs.
If you want to prevent this, your only option is to have an underground railway, which is going to cost like a whole nuclear program if you want to cover your whole country (unless your country is a city state)
[Answer]
**Almost impossible - rails are vulnerable**
Railway lines are a very efficient means of transporting goods. However, they are a terrible option as a propulsion for equally armed primary combatants, even without nuclear weapons being involved in the mix.
1. Trains can only go where there are railways and railways can only be built slowly. Therefore, it is practically impossible to achieve strategic surprise.
2. With limited exceptions at junctions, trains can only go forwards or backwards on railways. This makes predicting their movement extremely easy and mining their path trivial.
3. Most importantly, railways are very easily damaged. Dumb bombs can do it with good aiming, smart bombs and sabotage teams with explosives can do it trivially. (Nukes are overkill and make it difficult in the long term to utilise the area.) If combatant A cuts all the lines between combatant B's armoured trains and the area to be contested, combatant B cannot even participate in the battle.
4. If nuclear weapons are used and burst to one side of a train sitting on 1600 mm gauge rail, the train will be much more easily blown over than squat, tracked vehicles sitting on the ground.
5. Railway lines running through tunnels will be protected from observation and fire, but armoured trains in the tunnels cannot fight (except point blank against something in the same tunnel) and enemies can collapse the tunnel openings as an alternative to cutting the rails at the tunnel mouth.
6. The weaker side just needs to build their railways with a different gauge and their enemy's armoured trains cannot enter their territory without rebuilding the rail lines.
The only situation in which this would make even limited sense would be where the railway is protected by treaty / tradition and no one is willing to attack it. However, given that the weapons that one armoured train would need to use against another would almost inevitably damage the track, the first party to start using such weapons would either win trivially against their tradition-bound opponents or be stomped flat by an alliance of all other powers.
[Answer]
Since modern military combat is all about air superiority, it is likely that this will stay the way in the future (upgrading to space superiority eventually). In such an environment, there is no way heavily armored ground targets work, because a single plane with a nuclear missile can simply take out the train (or the tracks). This means to realize your train-warfare future, **you need to eliminate heavier-than-air flight.**
Specifically, you could do this by making the atmosphere so toxic and polluted that jet turbines or light combustion engines of any type simply don't work in atmosphere because they get rapidly gunked up and destroyed by the particulate matter in the air. In one fell swoop, this eliminates fighter jets, helicopters, cruse missiles, and basically everything that lets a military project force across a long distance. Additionally, this atmospheric pollution is so bad that true stealth exists again, and it's possible to drive trains around in the smog without instantly detecting them from dozens of kilometers away.
In such an environment, warfare becomes more akin to the old-fashioned "Battleships" game, with the two sides wandering around in the fog of war, until one side spots the other, and blows them away with a railgun dart before they even know what's happening. Even better, the thick smog would heavily attenuate radio, meaning that long networks of wiring and much slower intelligence become the norm again.
It should be noted though that this smog would not eliminate heavier vehicles because the engines can be designed to handle the smog (like in a train or a large truck) and it also wouldn't do anything against vehicles that operate like a rocket and bring their own oxidizer with them instead of using the smoggy atmosphere.
[Answer]
## A much more sophisticated ability to repair tracks.
Railway trains that can repair tracks are [a known thing.](https://trainfanatics.com/astounding-work-train-lays-its-own-track/) and more sophisticated material science, AI, and material science could improve this ability. A train might be designed that could replace small breaks in a railway without slowing down, causing small scale disruption to matter less.
## A bit more expense, in making them capable of driving on their own to some degree.
[Dual purpose vehicles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road%E2%80%93rail_vehicle) are already well known. Your armored trains should be designed for limited off rail use, so that if someone nukes the track they can drive off, and have the individual carts avoid spinning off. Good AI drivers and small motors should help with this.
This would help with the repair. A train could drive over a broken track, if slower, and lay down a new track along the line, ensuring that other trains could move more quickly.
## Armored AI tracks.
It's easy to imagine a track system that withdraws the track under a concrete bunker if they detect an enemy bomber or are ordered to by command because of an attack.
This would lower the risk of damage from bombs. They'd still be a threat, but they would need to be big bombs and hit completely on target, or be very fast and be a surprise.
## More sophisticated anti air capacity for missiles.
Missiles from trains should ideally be a serious threat for any airplanes flying a few miles above. It should be a bad idea to just fly an airplane over a train to bomb it.
With all these, they could keep being a serious threat.
[Answer]
# Make the war over what's on the trains
They're fighting not for land or ideologies, but for things they can only easily move by rail.
Perhaps they're carrying stocks of nuclear fuel or portable reactors, with all the heavy shielding that entails. Perhaps they're moving the nukes themselves, or some other kind of advanced weapon or technology. Things that weigh several tens of tons and would be better captured than destroyed. In addition, they're moving through a neutral country or they're operating under a cold-war style situation where a large scale deployment of forces may be undesirable.
They can't destroy the track or derail the train, as it's the only way to move the thing around and it would cripple their own ability to shift it. Much better to roll up next to it in their own train and hijack the engine. Cue heavily armored attack and defence wagons to assist in and defend against these hijacks.
[Answer]
# Justifying Warfare on the Ground
It seems your setting is capable of fusion power, judging by your statement of:
>
> Tactical pure fusion nukes with a yield of under 75kt are common
>
>
>
So the first problem you need to solve is why is warfare being conducted on the ground and not in the air. Fusion power would provide the power necessary for flying battle platforms akin to the helicarriers seen in the Marvel movies. Satelites with high powered lasers would also be entirely feasible with fusion power.
Flight and orbital platforms would give any side a considerable advantage over ground based forces, so why would everyone be using trains or any other ground based force?
A few suggestions to explain this:
* The atmoshpere is covered with high altitude magnetic storms, making flight difficult and target acquisition almost impossible.
* Ground-to-air attacks are significantly more effective than air-to-ground attacks, either through the weaponry used (which would be difficult to justify, as [kinetic bombardment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment) is extremely potent) or through defensive systems used (eg orbital bombardment shields that are effective against overhead attacks but not so effective against lateral attacks).
* The planet is covered in a shield of somekind, protecting the surface from orbital attacks (which would solve orbital platforms but not flying attack platforms or fighter jets).
* Thin atmosphere, which results in a poor ability to fly conventionally.
Any combination of these factors could give you a situation where ground based combat would be preferable to air based combat. There could be other elements that make air combat unfeasible, but that is almost worth an entire question in itself.
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# Solving the Track Problem
Next problem you have is the tracks.
Trains require tracks to travel, and the tracks are stationary targets that would require a huge investment to protect. Even if the entire surface of the planet is covered in train tracks, enough bombing would eventually render trains useless.
So I am proposing a train that lays its own tracks as it goes along.
Something like this: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMXfU8blPMM>
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# Why two rails when one will do?
Finally, I would recommend moving over to a monorail system, as this would be easier, faster and cheaper to build and maintain than a two rail system.
With the potential for blowing up tracks and disabling your opponents that way, repairing and rebuilding tracks would be critical. If you can repair and rebuild faster than your opponents then you have a significant advantage. Placing a single rail down is easier than placing down two rails an exact distance from each other.
Plus with monorails you have the option of making them maglev compatible, allowing you to send trains down your tracks at speeds far exceeding those of trains that make physical contact with the track.
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As other answers have pointed out, against an opponent with modern weapons rails are vulnerable. But this is your story, and you can find a way that is somewhat plausible. One way would be:
* Air power is very important
+ In the real world air power decides interstate conflicts, so this is easy.
* Air strips are more vulnerable than rails
+ Planes are really stuck if they cannot land, but trains can wait until the rails are repaired.
+ Rails are harder to damage than airstrips. Perhaps hardened sleepers help. Perhaps self repairing rails. Built in IT that informs the commanders of the state of the line in real time.
+ You have significant investment in rail repair, some attached to the front of the train, some in the auxiliary military vehicles.
+ Perhaps they can "step over" short missing sections of track.
* Trains make great land based aircraft carriers
+ If airstrips are vulnerable, make them mobile. Mobile airstrips = trains. This seems quite believable, as trains are the right shape already.
I can imagine a world where land combat is more like naval combat (as desert warfare was in WW2). Your trains are the primary assets (equivalent to naval aircraft carriers), your planes are the primary weapon, and the other vehicles & infantry are there to protect the trains and repair the rails when you need to move. Damage to rails restricts mobility but not the ability to launch aircraft.
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Frame challenge:
Sure, your train can carry spare tracks to replace small sections of rail. So what happens when the enemy targets something like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XtegK.jpg)
Or uses some explosives to take down part of this ledge:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GdJ0a.jpg)
All the best automated rail laying equipment in the world with all the resupply of rails one needs is utterly useless if you don't have anything to put them on.
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There is many other answers which sugest why it is hard made trains viable and how to improve that.
I would try to be optimistic and propose this (which may not be totally scientic, but at least little beleivable):
* sandstorms - lot of them and lot of really tiny sand in air
+ visibility is low, if the sand is also iron rich, it may disable radars (not much sure about it, sounds as good excuse)
- as sideeffect there is a lot of iron around so it may be cheap and so track and armored trains, instead of (there expensive) asphalt roads
- anything moving fast is eroded by the sand, the faster moving, the more eroding
* aircraft can lift only a little of armor (for its weight) and cannot fly fast a long way (so carry it in the train, if needed and release it just near the target)
* aicraft jet motors and/or traditional propellers have extra hard time and need even more service and fast replacement
* they say, that if you fire a gun in heavy sandstorm, the bulet is eroded to nothing before it hits ground, so explosive ammunition if better also heavy armored and used on shorter range
* rockets are also only short range weapons
* Tactical nukes are common.
+ so there is a plenty of areas, which are heavily poluted
- so you near protection not only agains sand, but also radioactivity and all kinds of toxic, that can get in air
- armor and filters and all the protection for longer traver is heavy and clumsy
- so trains are good long distance carriers, as they are really effective on rails, can carry heavy armor and weaposns and engines and filters and big load of anything you need or want (be it in war or peace for civilian purposes)
- so while other vehicles (from cars, tanks to aicrafts and missiles) are more manuerable and what all, it is way easier to move them in closed trains to the place of usage, then release then and after short range action again retrive and fix them on the way to new conflict
* railroads are native way for communication, if the radio is often canceled by iron rich sand
+ it is also easier follow the rails and stem then from sand, if neaded, than traver throught heavy terrain with heavy armor and bad navigation and limited fuel (as all-terrains in terrain have much worse economy on fuel)
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* also those cities may be megacities, as this is easier protect one bid city with multilevel buildings, than many small willages
* local flora is accustomed to the weather, so it is more like potatoes, with main part underground
* if terrain allows, there are some (or even many) oasis, protected by hills and maybe even with some trees witch use relatively still air to get more sun and with deep root also more watter - which makes oasis more permanent and good for life
* so battle trains usually stops near the border and launch all other vehicles to do their work and supports them with artilery (and as rails usually leads to cities, the stabilisation of guns is easy as they usually shoots basically straight forward, enjoying cleaner air at the oasis)
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* it is so much like Dune or any desert, but what if such conditions are only on part of the ground (say 10%? 20%?) - and so trains are used mainly there - and those parts are typically long and divide the land to many smaller non-desert parts - so states are formed on one or more such oasis and to conquer this place are used usually Earth-like means so it is relatively simple get whole islad, but hard to expand to another. War between states are nearly over desert, so trains are used for that. There may be much railroads between two states, as railroad takes the function of Earths roads anyway
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To make trains useful targets, you need indestructible tracks.
So, let's say the planet has unusual core and mantle, with superconducting properties. *Massive handwaving.*
This forms magnetic field lines which allow maglev trains to travel along them, gliding above the ground, with just a tiny bit of initial lift and then ground effect to keep the trains off the ground. The crest of magnetic line is narrow and if you get away from the middle, you start getting pushed to the side, so you have to follow the exact route.
The tracks might slowly shift positions, as the configuration of the superconductor structures in the mantle shift. This could be centimeters per year in stable area, meters per day on active areas, and earthquakes could break entire routes and create new ones.
Preparing this kind of natural "track" is basically just removing obstacles, maybe making some tunnels through hills and filling up valleys a bit. Destroying the track would require making huge craters, and with heavy buldozing machinery, they might still be quickly repaired, in some cases by just filling it with water. Mining the tracks could be an option, but that's why you have the armoring and special dampeners and mine detectors in the first car. Also the trains might have limited capability to move outside the tracks. Doing that would just require massive amounts of fuel to stay off the ground. The trains might also have caterpillar-like legs, which would allow them to not only stand still, but move very slowly outside the tracks.
Anyway, the core idea idea is, the train tracks need to be non-physical so they can't be destroyed, while still being "fixed" enough so you would actually have a network of tracks. Otherwise it would just be trucks (with wheels, tracks or legs) and not really trains.
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A train that could only run along tracks seems unfeasible, as others have pointed out, because tracks can be destroyed. In combination the excellent suggestions of others (e.g. trains that can repair tracks, as well as go off-track), and physical conditions to make them more worthwhile (e.g. magnetic storms, sandstorms and a thin atmosphere), might be enough to justify the use of bifunctional trains that can drive on land but are more efficient on mono/birail.
Such a train would have only the same problems as a truck or wheeled vehicle when it came to regions of track that were not easily repaired.
Although tracks might often be damaged, given a huge network of tracks (even damaged ones) armored trains that could could slide on and off might be more efficient than other ground based travel options.
Adverse weather conditions above ground also lend themselves to LDutch's suggestion of a underground railway. I would add that the underground railway could have been built for another purpose before the war broke out, so it need not be a diversion of resources away from current spending on war. To prevent problems with enemy strikes causing cave ins (which trains could run into or at the best have to wait to be cleared), I would add many side tunnels that lead to the surface that a train could divert up if a cave in was detected ahead. The train would simply go over land for a short time and then dive down into the next available tunnel entrance. A decent monitoring system for cave ins of the tunnel network with lasers would allow planning for trains to go down the most undisturbed routes, and vehicles and infantry could be dropped by armored trains above ground to locations of interest.
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To see the viability of armored trains, you don't have to look farther than the user of the most armored trains and one of the sole current operators of armored trains Russia. Russia once operated armored trains in the tens and hundreds during the peak of the civil war. In modern times, armored trains are primarily designed as mobile nuclear silos with missiles and officers to launch them. Their armored train doctrine is quite mature, and spans multiple technological eras. Germany operated quite a few as well, but the allies, the winners, used almost none and such most knowledge on armored train doctrine is obscure in the west. After all, trains are the most efficient form of ground transport.
There are two basic types of armored train. The **standard "train"** configuration with an armored engine pulling multiple cars with troops and various weaponry. Then there are **Rail Cruisers** which are self powered single cars with weapons, like a tank on rails. The configuration of a train and its cars can easily define its mission.
* One common use of rail cruisers was attached to either end of a standard armored train. The rail cruisers would detach to scout ahead on the rails ahead of the main train to ensure its safety and rail conditions. Rail cruisers often carried a small detachment of troopers which could be deployed to operate deserted switching or resupply stations ahead of the main train. They could also be counted on the defuse or eliminate mines laid onto the tracks.
* A common configuration was to attach an empty flatbed train car or two in front of a train to trigger mines and other explosives. Following that there was a combat car, either a rail cruiser or an unpowered armored train car which could fire over the flatbed. This combat car would usually be followed by the main engine(s) and followed by cargo cars and additional combat or rail cruisers attached at the rear end. this ensures protection and flexibility for the train by itself.
* The flatbeds sometimes carried rail repair materials. Rail engineers can repair rails from single bomb or rocket impacts surprisingly quickly, usually within half to a full hour or so. Such repairs usually only involve two or four rail segments at most. Bridges are much more troublesome, but smaller ones could be repaired with a few days depending on damage. In modern times there exist automated rail and track laying machines. These can repair damages in minutes if the foundations are mostly intact.
As for mission, there are three main types: Fire support, transport, and direct assault. The first two were most common, with direct assaults being very rare.
**The fire support mission is probably the most useful.**
* During the first world war armored trains could carry large artillery pieces **and** as much ammunition as they wanted quickly and reposition ready-to-fire faster than vehicles or field pieces. Primitive tanks and self propelled artillery couldn't match the power of railway guns in caliber or numbers.
* With the advent of rockets and missiles, trains could carry a lot of punch that hit out to much farther distance. A train with a few nukes could wipe out a small nation. Resupply would just be riding the rails back to base, usually much faster and certainly more efficient compared to air or other forms of ground resupply.
* These missile or nuke carrying armored trains were very elusive. They could hide in just about any rail tunnel anywhere and rotated all over the rail network in Russia. When a war started they would either roll out to launch, or wait in their covered tunnels until enemy impact and then roll out to fire off their revenge. Compared to stationary missile silos, armored trains were very hard to plug in as targets ahead of time to missiles using analog computers as they moved to often and were sometimes not viable targets even to nukes being underground and in any stretch of tunnel, which could have multiple tunnels linked.
* Air defense systems in the modern era are quite advanced. An air interception system with missiles and radar mounted on vehicles can also be put on trains. While their deployment is heavily based on rail availability, trains are much faster to reposition from or to cover. The smoothness of rails can also allow systems to fire on the move with great accuracy. A modern era armored train with a wide band radar, anti-air missiles, and a radar directed point defense autocannon would be a powerful deterrent to air threats. Low flying attack helicopters overwhelming a position would just cause the train to retreat underground to pop up at a tunnel entrance somewhere else and perhaps covered by additional defense systems.
* Even in WW2 automated anti-air artillery fire directors and radar trailers were somewhat common. Aircrews were trained to make speed and course corrections to fool automated flak directors used by germans. Put some on a train and they would be a large threat to bombers, who relied upon prior reconnaissance flights for target data instead of being able to ascertain most targets themselves. Back then bombers flew out to where the target was supposed to be and dropped bombs. This is why so many bombs missed their targets during that era, there were lots of navigation and recognition failures by crews. If the target moved from covered train tunnel to obscure rail sidings, trying to bomb them with overwhelming high altitude airpower would be way too expensive.
**Transport is what trains are good at.**
Trains are best at hauling large amounts of cargo. Armored ones would be viable if your supply lines were under attack for some reason. While probably not a good matchup versus tanks and self propelled guns, they would be fine against technicals and even air targets depending on era.
* Transporting infantry and vehicles through nominally controlled terrain is what armored trains are best for. Partisan or rebel attacks in recently captured territory would play hell on unarmored transport trucks. An armored train requires explosives to interrupt, not just small arms. This is a big step up for rebels, who usually just have some guns and maybe a few AT launchers to stay mobile.
**Direct assaults are a bad idea.**
Not to say it won't work in a pinch, but train tracks are pretty terrible attack paths. Even more predictable than roads, except trains can't go offroad like a tank when forced.
**What can make armored trains *MORE* viable is the a large set of mountains and tunnels.** Mountains or other terrain unsuitable for ground vehicles will make trains vital no matter the era. No matter how advanced the tank, if it can't get to an area serviced by a train tunnel, it is useless. Tunnels provide cover from air observation and attacks.
* By moving quickly between tunnels or "bunkers" it would be incredibly difficult for enemy artillery to counter battery and take out the guns. Trains are fast, and surfacing between two or more open areas to fire before hiding again would be incredibly frustrating. Concealed firing ports that can be opened in the top of special tunnels would make it even more infuriating. There are many examples of artillery emplaced deep within mountains, and there were notoriously hard to destroy even with air support.
* Placing cover over tracks when not in use, such as camo netting or fake trees can help conceal the exposed rail sections when not in use. A small rail cruiser sent ahead to clear rails could use a sweep or plow to clean the rails of camo ahead of the main train, then stay behind to lay it all out again once it passes.
] |
[Question]
[
In many alternate technological settings (steam/electro/diesel punks) there are powerful energy sources that allowed technology boom (like whale oil in Dishonored game series).
However handwaving computers is more complicated. You need massive infrastructure and industry to make fast, cheap reliable microchips, which limits the whole setting to be very advanced (at minimally at our modern times).
What can be the most realistic "handwaved" alternative to modern computers? Something that can be used even by 19th century scientists?
**Clarification:**
1) No need to be limited to Von Neumann architecture.
**Clarification #2**
I'll add more details to questions:
1) "Realistic handwave" is more meant to be "more efficient that currently believed" but still not bending laws of nature. For example "handwave compound" that makes super efficient batteries fits, but transmuting elements at room temperature not.
2) I am looking for something that potentially can be portable - I want to have a "clockwork army" at some point. So manual labour is not fitting (Unless using a very small sentient race that would perform slave labour... which is something I can consider).
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The only other thing that can compete (and at some things surpass) modern computers is a brain, you could go the biological route and have a selectively bred species of animals that act of a sort of a biological computer, this way computers are bred rather then manufactured.
Another possibility of an organic based computers is having a plant based one, it will likely require advanced genetic engineering to create such a thing but once created farming it should be no different then any other crop so maybe if your setting allows for such things it could have been originally created by ancient aliens and gifted to the people of your setting which while have no idea how to create it but know how to raise a crop of it and use it?
Note that both options only answer the questions in regards to computer = math machine. Graphics and screens and such are another thing entirely, so the best bet for both is to have some sort of a voice/touch/chemical based input/output mechanism. Screens are kinda out of the question with those options.
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You could actually *build* the [Memex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex). Although the concept decidedly postdates the 19th century it is an early and most importantly purely mechanical computer, of sorts.
The Memex would have been used to rapidly retrieve static data such as microfilm but it was never actually built. The user would create a specialised and specific library of works to which they wanted immediate access and store this material in the Memex with associated keywords referencing each entry which the machine could then retrieve when triggered. A Memex would therefore be great for storing and retrieving text and image files.
For mathematical computation you'd want to integrate something akin to a [Difference Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine).
Now neither of these systems is "[Turing Complete](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness)", even in combination. So for a true computer you need something like Babbage's [Analytical Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine), which has its own storage and programmable logic pathways, etc... The Analytical Engine was designed, but never actually built and there are questions as to its actual feasibility.
So depending on what you actually want computers for in this setting you have some options ranging from the intensely complex, but potentially unlimited, to the simpler, but specialised.
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Before you write off the Babbage Analytical Engine altogether, take a good look at high Victorian (and earlier) watchmaking.
While the Analytical Engine was prototyped on this sort of scale ... (sorry, not an Analytical Engine, but a bitmapped graphic output device, AKA Jacquard Loom - apologies for unclear photo, but the topmost bit is the punched card handling mechanism) ... the Victorians could also work on a smaller scale...
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3l7VA.jpg)
... like this...
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1251d.jpg)
...with components on this scale...[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1HYae.jpg)
... and sometimes insanely highly decorated, even on internal components like this balance cock (that's a diamond endstone in the middle, for the ultimate low friction bearing)[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YMBwc.jpg)
The last is almost pre-Victorian, from 1841 (around the time of the Difference Engine). It has a verge escapement, which means you really don't know what the time is (though it can keep within 5 minutes on a really good day!) which is why verge escapements fell out of favour as the railway era started...
There was a famous court case which hinged on the difference between [astronomically correct time](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/entries/8d6d68fa-1e6a-39e1-9f29-232450445f41) between one end of the Great Western Railway (Bristol) and the other (London), which ultimately led to Greenwich Mean Time, and the adoption of timezones.
This is worth mentioning to establish the importance of a good watch in the Steam Era, and the lever escapement and the fusee chain.
You can see the chain in the second photo, running from the spring barrel on the right to the variable diameter "Fusee" on the left, so that as the spring unwinds, the drive strength to the watch remains constant. That and the much improved lever escapement makes a watch capable of keeping time to about a minute per week, which IMO is pretty good on a 150 year old machine!
It's also very maintainable. A few screws and taper pins, and the whole comes apart for servicing, cleaning, oiling, and as you can see in the third photo, replacing the hooks on the fusee chain. (Each link is about 1mm long and the whole chain is 0.2mm thick. I'm embarassed by the huge clunky replacement hooks I made, but I did eventually make one that worked, and hand-riveted it (the rivet came out of that pin) to the end of the chain. Every small market town in ... well at least Europe, would have a "watchmaker" capable of servicing and repairing it.
Now imagine a watch that's also capable of chiming the hours, in the same space.
Now all this proves nothing. But it should establish that Victorian engineering could be of extremely high quality when it mattered, and that the size of the prototype Analytic Engine is not any kind of hard limit.
Extrapolate from the watch, and you could imagine a small Analytic Engine on a handcart, or perhaps even a large suitcase, powered by a strong boy on the treadles...
But would this technology only be available to Imperial governments? I think not. Consider 1951, the era of vacuum tube computers and mercury delay lines, when computers were reserved for designing nuclear weapons and missile trajectories...
I give you ... not from the Manhattan Project, or a secret spy operation, or a rocket science laboratory, ... but from the chain of Lyons Coffee Houses ... yes, in 1951, to handle payrolls, inventories, and ledgers, the [Lyons Electronic Office.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer))
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That would be a miniaturized combination of [Hollerith's tabulation machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine) (electromechanical, patented in 1889, but you can handwave it as being invented earlier) and a more complex [Pascaline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_calculator) (completely mechanic, invented in 1642).
Your clanks may take input,.i.e.: anything from orders to new programming by means of perforated cards. As to how they are so powerful - even if they have little random access memory and short registers, as long as their clocks are insanely fast, they would be perceived to be faster than real world's nowadays computers. Handwave away how that could be and the implications of infinitely high clocks (i.e.: how your machines don't catch fire or melt within moments of being turned on).
As a bonus, some machines may be powered by [flywheels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel) for mobility.
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[Analog Computers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer) could be a viable option. They can solve certain problems very quickly and only require basic components.
Furthermore, you can use electrical components to design oscillators which can solve optimization problems efficiently. A while ago, I designed an oscillator that would solve least squares problems. Only worked on paper because I crashed the simulator, but it's definitely doable with enough time.
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Does a biomechanical system count as an answer? That could simplify something.
I'm talking about the use of some animal parts (or complete miniature animals) in conjunction with mechanical ones in order to create a complex system.
Something like this, but with mechs and watch pieces:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ngXJk.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q6n3J.jpg)
[See short video: Waiter! I found this in my soup!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQKkCMDaN54)
Think about the current boom in artificial neural networks. In simple terms, you have some network with some inputs and some outputs, and you train to respond in the way that you want to. You can feed some images on the input, and train to recognize numbers, or faces. You "reward" right answers and "correct" the wrong ones.
The way I'm thinking is this: They start with tiny creatures that look like frogs but with less complexity, more close to a worm\*, and trained them to specific tasks. Then, they do selective breed between the best ones. Among centuries, you have little "brains" that you can train to do what you need, and have muscles as activators (engaged with mechanisms) and other tentacles to transmit to and receive from other "units".
**How do you train them?**
At first you could you something like [pianola](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_piano) with the sets to be trained for. But then you can train trainers ;).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QEgbr.jpg)
* How much complexity it is required?
To train an artificial neural network to behave as an ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) you need 2 hidden layers (plus input and output) with about just 20 neurons! The C. elegans, a worm about 5mm of length, have about 300 neurons:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b7YJ4.jpg)
Theorically (in fiction), you could force evolution of a worm to act as an ALU.
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In the Greatwinter Trilogy (Souls in the Great Machine, The Miocene Arrow, and Eyes of the Calculor), by Sean McMullen, one of the characters creates a computer composed of slave labor. She buys a bunch of convicts (and I think pressgangs some other people) who have some skill with math, and has them all work at desks that are linked to each other by cables, with mechanical number displays. Each person performs some function (like adding, multiplying, etc.). She ends up building two systems so she can compare results between the two to check the calculations.
Of course, this requires the infrastructure to run what is essentially a very weird prison, but she eventually also implements the "Battle Calculor" which is a similar team, of fewer but more-skilled people with portable desks and message runners to carry results around. It's not exactly pocket-sized, but at least it's somewhat mobile (until everyone gets tired).
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I think some sort of "natural" or "organic" computer is the way to go. Maybe there is an organism that naturally forms significant colonies of single cells, and has evolved to act as a neural network to make simple decisions and react to stimuli collectively. Humans can cultivate larger-than-natural colonies and then train them (the way a machine-learning algorithm trains a virtual neural network) to react to various types of electrical inputs. Then its just a matter of plugging the right types of analog inputs into the organic neural network, and then plugging the outputs into mechanical arms, legs, etc.
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While it wasn't quite as small or as fast as you'd be hoping for *as it was built*, the only thing between the mid-19th century and [Konrad Zuse's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse "Wkipedia entry for Konrad Zuse") Z3 and Z4 relay-based computers was the idea. In essense, it uses nothing that wasn't already in use by then: the word "relay" is just "telegraph" spelled weirdly (it was invented for telegraphy, and is simply the telegraph receiver driving another telegraph key); the Jacquard loom with its punched cards already existed, being a mere extension of the barrel organ and carrilon, which was in turn derived from a simple trip hammer; and the leap from there to perforated tape (for self-playing organs and player pianos) was buzzing in the air in the early 19th century and in place by the middle of the century.
All you need to build a relay computer from scratch is the ability to provide electrical current, to be able to create conductive wires and to insulate them, springs, hinges and to know about simple electromagnets. There is no fundamental technological reason why there couldn't have been a Tudor computer; people simply hadn't had a good enough reason to stick two dissimilar metal probes into a lemon to see if it made their tongues tingle or brought a compass needle (which they had) close enough to the contraption while they were doing it to notice the needle acting funny. All they were missing was some knowledge. Allesandro Volta invented the pile (battery) in 1800, mostly as a way to debunk Luigi Galvani's "animal electricty" nonsense. By the middle of the 1820s, that had led to Ørsted and Faraday discovering and developing electromagnetism to the point that everyone and his uncle Bob was inventing some kind of telegraphy system, and Morse's simple on/off system with an equally simple code was off and running before 1832 was out (though a more complex system was operating commercially before Morse's system). A system with relays in it was demonstrated in 1838. So, under 40 years to go from no continuous source of electricity to everything needed for a digital computer's hardware because of a skeptic's need to slap down a woomeister in scientist's clothing.
Charles Babbage rightfully gets a mention here, but not for his machines as much as for his central idea and impetus for creating them: that computation itself should, in principle, be subject to automation. It simply *had* to be, since human computers, even those using mechanical aids, made far too many mistakes. There were various arithmometers (mechanical calculating aids like the Pascaline or the 20th-century Curta calculator) already, but they still relied on the operator to do the *mathematics* - all they could do was a stage of the arithmetic. You needed to know not just which numbers to put in, but how to set up the operator and how many times to crank the handle, when to move the decimal point, etc. Then you had to write the answer out without error and hope the printer you gave the answers to set the type without error. The Difference Engines could only do one kind of calculation (sums of polynomials by the method of finite differences), but they were completely automatic after the "program" - the initial condition - was set up. The fellow cranking the handle only needed to know how to crank a handle. There are two working copies of Difference Engine Nº 2, and they do what it says on the tin. They caculate and print out the results *and* they create a stereotype mould from which a printing plate may be cast. The Analytical Engine would have been Turing complete, and a computer in the modern sense, but monstrously large, heavy, expensive and likely a nightmare to maintain. I'm just a little too old and unwell to expect to see it working in my lifetime, even as a proper mechanical simulation, but I do expect Plan 28 to become a real working thing at some point. But it's not the machine that's important as much as the ideas it embodies: function external to mechanism (lifted from Jacquard and his predecessors), working memory (storage other than on the cards), and conditional branching to enable iteration and recursion. But Babbage's use of decimal numbers, requiring great mechanical complexity, and his inability to see his machine as anything other than a programmable calculator mean that he's disqualified himself as the father of your practical, ubiquitous computer.
Binary wins for the same reason that binary won: everything is much, much simpler. Apart from the idea, that is.
George Boole and Augustus De Morgan had already lain the basis for, well, Boolean algebra by 1854, and the idea of binary arithmetic (which Boole's and De Morgan's work could handily automate the moment somebody noticed that it could) goes back at least to Gottfried Leibniz. (To be sure, binary existed before Leibniz, but its use seems to have been restricted to logic, philosophy, mysticism and - believe it or not - poetry.) To an unseemly degree, though, we are still dealing with mathematics in the sense of numbers. And to anybody working with pencil and paper, binary is an awful lot of ones and zeros and chances to make mistakes. Boolean algebra may make sense for logical problems, but without computers (or something very like them), it's just something nice to discover and file away in the annals of mathematical academia when it comes to arithmetic.
For anybody paying attention, though, Ada King, the Countess Lovelace - who had been tutored by De Morgan - had already made the distinction between computing as we understand it today and mere mechanical calculation in her rightfully famous translation and considerable expansion of Manabrea's *Sketch of the Analytcal Engine invented by Charles Babbage*. She was talking about a machine that was largely hypothetical, but whose operation was fairly well understood. (That is, *what it did* was fairly well understood; *how to build it so that it does that without breaking while using only the power of a modestly-sized stationary steam engine, keeping within the budget of a wealthy nation and taking slightly less time to build than a medium-sized Gothic cathedral* was a different, somewhat harder question.) She had been an acquaintance and sometime friend of Babbage's since she was 17, and was in contact with him while writing the *Sketch*. Her assertion that a machine of that construction could be used for almost any purpose was astonishing - she recognized that while the machine could only operate on numbers, those numbers didn't have to *represent* numbers. They could be anything: letters of text, notes of music, colours of a picture - *anything* that could be represented concretely - and that, while the operations were, strictly speaking, additions and multiplications and such, they could have and necessarily *would* have different meaning when applied to these numbers-as-metaphor. When looked at one way, that's just saying *pray, Mr. Babbage, why can't the pictures from Mr. Jacquard's loom still be pictures in your machine?*, but she went deeper than that - about a hundred years before Turing.
All this to say that the technology itself was contemporary with the late Georgian and Victorian period, the ideas were in the air, and the critical insight - using numbers to represent entities other than quantities - was there to be seen by the first person to have a good reason to notice it. Have the right random Belgian sneeze at exactly the right time on a particular Tuesday morning in 1798, just hard enough to have someone next to him spill his coffee in a particular way, causing... and all of a sudden you have Turing-complete binary relay computers by 1820 or so, and wonderfully miniaturized versions running at a reasonable clip (think early vacuum tube mainframe speeds, not today's) only a few years later, even before the incandescent light bulb has been invented. Using such machines to control the gearboxes of armies of clockwork servants is left as an exercise for the reader.
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What you appear to be looking for is a clockwork device, powered by your personal brand of [unobtainium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium)/handwavium, that acts as a Turing-complete computational system. Based on that premise you're looking at Babbage's [Analytical Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine) and the issue of portability and complexity of use is entirely one of machining tolerances because the smaller you can make the components the more compact and complex the machine can be. So if you have say, [Pixies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixie) with magnifying glasses, producing gears and other mechanisms at the millimeter size range then you can have a full function Analytical Engine the size of a pocket calculator that you feed program cards smaller than the micro-sd card in my smart phone. If, on the other hand, your labour pool consists of ham-fist trolls you are out of luck on that front.
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What is faster than light? Nothing!
Here is what I am envisioning. Create a Handwavy light source, like LEDs, that always emit at specific wavelengths. create receptors that will pick the light from the LED's up. Use vacuum tubes as switches and triggers.
OK, I admit, I have no idea how exactly this would be constructed, but you are exploiting a couple of things that were known a long time ago.
Light behaves as a wave, and specific colors have specific wavelengths. That's why [LED's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode). They are not as precise as coherent light, but they are pretty good at always emitting a very precise color. They are not energy intensive to run. They have existed for a pretty long time. Electroluminescence was discovered back in 1907.
We also know that different materials reflect edifferent wavelengths and that can be used. [Spectrgraphy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrograph) has been around since the late 1800's as well.
So blend this together to build your "brain". Maybe not as big as a house, but probably big enough to warrant a substantial part of your basement.
Now for the clockwork people. You need a mobile power source. I'm thinking a Flywheel, mainly because I like the concept. a small but very heavy perfectly balanced wheel inside each clockwork man provides the mechanical power to move your bots around. After a few hours, when the wheel winds down to a specific RPM, the bot returns to a "charging station" which spins the flywheel back up. This is probably going to require some handwavey lubricant as well. These bots will take instruction from your crystal computer in the attic to navigate around and do simple tasks like making tea and cleaning the cat's litter box.
Your battle bots are going to come about with a breakthrough in hydraulic actuators run by electrical motors. They are going to have to have huge batteries to keep the flywheels spinning or something. Use your now advanced LED technology to beam instructions to the clockwork soldiers via IR. It will require line of sight, and you will have to schlep your attic sized computer with, but they might make useful shock troops to take out fortified positions and a flywheel breaking will be hazardous to anyone nearby.
So there is a plate full of handwavy spaghetti that was hurled at the wall, I hope you find something that sticks!
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## Ancient Artifacts
The only way to handwave something properly is by saying nothing. The people in the present of your story simply don't know how things work.
Once upon a time there was a Golden Era. People then knew how to make the most amazing things! Some disaster happened and the knowledge was lost. Even the knowledge of the what the disaster was has been lost.
But the devices remain. Unique ancient artifacts nobody understands.
Fortunately, one of the devices that remain is an automated factory, making "golems". People know that they should put raw materials on once side of the factory and some time later "golems" will appear on the other side. Nobody dare tamper with this factory.
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If you sacrifice some eye-candy, then the computer, that took people to moon was much more primitive, than what you have in old dumbphone.
So if you handwave in lot of man-month work of good engeneers to make the program fast and smart and EFFECTIVE, then you need much less of computing power. And a lot of computing can be done in analog means much faster too, if you allow for some small inaccuracy (which can be later corrected by re-aproximation, as your target is nearer and bigger on visible scale)
Balistic curves can be computed with few cams ( <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam> ) and gears. All multiplications/divisions, trigonometric functions, logarithmus and exponetials are mechanically trivial, while in computer it takes a lot of work/time and silicon. Barrels with pins or punch cards can keep program, conditional branching can be done by transmission with more gears ...
So if you can go with specialised computers for partial tasks, the mechanics can go really great way. And with modularity is possible to change function relativly fast (and have more similar modules switched in real time).
So just handwave in the speed, size and the complicated design and you will have great semi-automatic machines. (sensors can be kind of problem, but you can use "black box" sensore module somwhere and let reader supposed, that it somehow works like the rest, which is realistic, just little overclocked gear-work)
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Fluidics
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics>
Just about everything on pre mid 1960s cars runs on fluidics. Carburetors, automatic transmissions etc. They can control servos mix colored fluids for displays, do analog and digital math, and can be constructed with pre bronze age tech.
Aside from the Jacquard loom, look up the history and design of the Norden bombsight for incredible computational power in a purely mechanical device. Also, of course, the Curta calculator.
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I'd recommend some kind of handwavy [Curta Calculator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta). They're remarkably advanced. If you develop some kind of handwavy calculator (just a couple of orders of magnitude faster than by hand or simple adding machine will do) that can be operated quickly, that should be enough to give an advantage to whatever industry you apply it to.
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Don't forget that "computer" used to be a job title. Prior to the invention of *electronic* computers (a.k.a., "[electronic brains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware#Manchester_Mark_1)"), the people who performed complex calculations for engineers and scientists were known as "computers."
Human computers could be "programmed." Somewhere in [Richard Feynman's autobiography](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0393355624), you can read a description of a roomful of computers, who all worked together on some massive calculation. Each one had an in-box and a mechanical calculator on his/her desk. They would;
* take a card from the in-box,
* do some small calculation using numbers that were written on certain spaces on the card,
* write the result in a different space on the card, and
* hand the card to a clerk who would deposit it in the in-box at a different station.
The person at each station followed different instructions, and sometimes a card could be routed to any one of several different stations depending on the result of a calculation. The whole system was equivalent to what we would call a [data flow architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataflow) today.
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[
My (human) society is a feudal society (think the late Middle Ages in Europe - not very original for a fantasy world). It has still not had an industrial revolution (though that is not very far), but has access to somewhat good tooling and beasts of burden stronger than the ones we have on earth.
It is quite often plagued by wars between states/territories. Some places are also exposed to attacks by hordes of magical beasts.
My world has two types of supernatural abilities: Magic, which is about controlling the mana outside of your body; and Art, which is about controlling the mana inside of your body (and, at higher level, infusing it into things you touch).
While Magic requires a talent which is extremely rare in humans (about 1 person in 10,000 has talent for magic, though since it is so rare, it is usually never found, and most people having talent for magic never learn anything about it), Art is way easier to learn:
* with a few months training in Art in a military setting, about 50% of people are able to achieve at least a very low level of Art.
* with some 5 years of training, that figure goes up to 90%
**Additionally, since it is mainly a work of introspection, it doesn’t need expensive resources (apart from the necessary knowledge).**
That basic level of Art doesn’t allow one to have a superhuman capability, but it:
* gives a better understanding of one’s body and control of one’s strength
* allows one to build up strength more easily and efficiently. (In general, one will be able to use 1.5 to 2 times the strength they’d have access to without Art.)
* gives better reflexes.
* makes one somewhat less susceptible to illness.
The techniques and information needed to train Art are hoarded by Noble families, some specific families, and some organizations. Since a better technique will allow one to achieve a higher level of Art, the best techniques are held by famous bloodlines, and their close retainers and do not spill out. In particular, most of the population has no access to Art at all.
The problem is that this is very inefficient: since Art makes one stronger, it boosts efficiency on all manual work. In particular:
* Farmers learning Art would allow them to take care of bigger fields.
* Soldiers learning Art are generally superior to normal soldiers.
* Construction work, in particular, is heavily boosted by people being able to carry way heavier loads.
That would greatly balance the cost of teaching it (even though the low alphabetization would create a need for teachers).
Moreover, a watered-down, low-efficiency technique spilling would not be that problematic, as long as it is worse that what other Noble families have better techniques, you do not have to worry about it being stolen.
So why has nobody thought of teaching Art to regular citizens, or at least soldiers, when it would increase productivity and military strength so much?
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Most of the solutions provided aren't particularly good.
The reason why is because in our world we actually did have a place and period where "Art" was widely available and practiced in a feudal society. I'm not sure if the parallel is intentional or not, but reading the "body mana", my first instinct is to shorten it to Chi. And of course, the connection between a martial art as per the title and a magical art that controls a bodily flow of energy, I can't help but think of Karate, Kung Fu, and other forms of martial arts from that region.
Think about it. For starters, even if we don't have magic in our world, as far as feudal (and many modern) east asians were concerned, it's real, at least in their minds, they think it's real and has the effects you describe. Oriental martial arts have a very strong spiritual component where practitioners try to control the mana in their bodies through breathing, body motions, conditioning, meditation etc etc. And the results are there to some degree. The dynamic meditation aspect of an oriental martial art helps people relieve stress, it's physical exercise, there's often a focus on having proper posture, and on being good for back and joints (again, whether true or not, most people from the region believed it), so obviously a practitioner would have good health, and based on our stereotypes, a lot of people in the Western culture think of east Asians as being very healthy.
A lot of concepts taught in oriental martial arts are about using biomechanics to amplify existing strength, and I've seen it in practice. My teacher, a thin 60 year old gentleman of about average or slightly less height, manages to throw around men twice his size and half his age with ease, due to technique and instinctive understanding of anatomy (and they're not just playing along, I've tried resisting and he knows how to deal with that). So there is the strength aspect.
And like I mentioned before, there is a great emphasis on spiritual and mental development through meditation and similar practices. A calm mind is a mind that can see things coming more easily, can anticipate an opponent's moves, notice patterns. There's the enhanced reflexes aspect.
So all of the reasons regarding time, cost, literacy, etc, aren't compelling reasons because in my opinion, most people familiar with oriental martial arts, Avatar: The Last Airbender or generally has been exposed to the waves of fetishization of east asian culture, would be able to recognize the parallels. Somehow, in our world a rather large region had peasants practicing and having widespread access to (what they believed to be) an Art similar to what you describe. I'm not saying every Asian peasant knew kung fu and could decapitate someone with a skillful toss of a straw hat - but it was a common thing for people to practice. Or at least, it was not uncommon. Karate specifically was developed as a response to a weapons ban, so peasants can figure out a thing or two on their own. Especially if the Art is more pronounced than the biomechanical benefits I outlined above, practitioners would be able to further refine it and spread it through trial and error (due to having much more noticeable feedback).
It might sound like a long winded way to say that "your premise doesn't have a way to work the way you intend it to". And to be honest, when I sat down to write, that was going to be my conclusion. However, in the process of writing, I did have several thoughts occur to me. While martial arts were developed and practiced all over the world, and certainly there's no shortage of spiritualizing and ritualizing martial arts, the east Asian martial arts are unique in just how intertwined they are in religious/spiritual aspects (and they do have their origin in a form of meditation practiced by Buddhist monks). The more important point is that the rest of the world didn't develop the same thing despite the benefits I outlined above. Even if the benefits are just in the mind and not an actuality, the east asians were not uniquely superstitious.
However, there is a very simple reason why, for example, European martial arts, while rich in history and technique, don't have the same dimension and focus on cultivating chi or mana. And the reason is religion (and to some degree culture). While the buddhist/taoist/confuscian (and in Japan, shintoist) mix of worldviews makes trying to fight using chi a very natural concept in the east, in Europe, the influence of the Christian Church makes it very natural that such an Art can't take off. I know of two influential modern traditional Christian priests who outright condemn Karate, Kung Fu and Yoga as a form of sorcery and devilry (that would be Fr Chad Rippiger, an influential Catholic exorcist, and soon-to-be-declared-an-Orthodox-saint Fr Daniil Sysoev). Rippiger claims to have exorcised people who were influenced by demons for practicing such things, if I recall correctly. While opinions of a couple traditionalist priests doesn't make for dogma, you can imagine that despite the Spanish Inquisition being 99% Myth (see Wikipedia entry for Black Legend of Spain, or the BBC documentary), such an Art as you imagine wouldn't be very welcome in a feudal europe.
So that's one venue to go with. For whatever reason, the religion or culture of the common people makes them afraid or distrustful of using magic. They believe it corrupts the soul. Or maybe they see how the people who do use the Art become progressively bigger jerks (nobles are jerks already, and it's not uncommon for people to get prideful as they become better at something. Think of how many stereotypical martial arts teachers act like insufferable snobs that beg for a smacking in various films). It could be that the aristocrats are more pragmatic, cynical, or educated, and that they don't share the same apprehension. It could also be that the nobles and the peasants are of different cultures, which is not unheard of. Ireland and Norway did not have nobility from their own cultures for a very long time, due to being ruled by England and Sweden respectively. Or England itself being ruled by Norman invaders. Perhaps in the region where your story takes place, the Art using nobles (who had a great advantage from using the Art) took over the region and subjugated the local population, who are resentful and mistrustful and don't want to engage in practices the nobles do, out of fear of being assimilated and having their own culture wiped out.
Another possible solution (again from real world parallels, this time of DEMONS :) ), since there are magical creatures, it could be that there are certain creatures which are attracted to hunt Art users. Perhaps one's mana grows and develops through the use Art, which creates a mana spike, making the creatures that normally ignore humans, hunt them. Nobles would be living in castles, and have their bodyguards, and have much more advanced techniques. But the peasants who do practice the Art and live in (sparsely populated) rural areas make themselves a very tasty and easy target. Perhaps the nobles have the means and the resources necessary to ward off the creatures, or mask their enhanced mana signature. Or, if mages use external mana, an Art user who cultivates a greater bodily mana, becomes a sort of walking battery or conduit for them. If society gets to a point where Art users are common enough that mages can use criminals and undesirables, then there would not be such fear, but it would be a bumpy road since it would be the best of the best who pioneer the path.
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You can't just set up a dojo and expect people to come in.
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> with a few months military training, about 50% of people are able to achieve at least a very low level of Art.
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The problem is getting peasants to have the time to undergo military training. They would need to not be working in the fields, or doing construction work, until they master Art for Art to be useful.
In times of war, you might conscript a few peasants and teach them art. But there is a huge gap between knowing something and being a good teacher of that thing, so in time that knowledge would be lost outside of proper schools.
Before modern times, martial arts were learned mostly by soldiers and monks because they had the time to practice it. Sometimes someone who was not a soldier or a monk would learn martial arts, but keeping a school requires a lot of people and dedication, which only organizations such as the monasteries in ancient China, and military throughout the world could provide.
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As for why not every soldier would learn it: just because you are a soldier does not mean you will know everything there is to learn about every kind of soldier. In medieval times you had regular soldiers who would have the bare minimum training to go to war and function as ok warriors, and you had knights who were trained from childhood to be great warriors. Likewise in the East: many adults would learn how to handle spears and stay in formation, but only a few select people - usually from specific families - would be trained to become samurai from an early age. Notice that knights in the west and samurai in the east were all associated with nobility.
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## Citizens Don't Possess The Necessary Capital To Train
There are things in life that require investment, both initial and continuous. As a more relatable example, in our time you can learn basically anything on the web, but you need to have the required capital to do so even if people take it for granted. You need electrical power, internet access, a modern enough computer device to browse the web, spare time in the day to use your device, be able to read, and have the money to maintain that access on top of daily living. You also need to be motivated to actually finish learning something, as any student struggles with.
Martial arts training among commoners would suffer from the same base issue, lack of resources I'll place into 2 categories:
* **Access**: you can't train in arts you can't get
1. *Markets*: You've already touched on upper society hoarding techniques for themselves. They have ample reason to do so, namely ease of reign over physically weaker subjects. They don't really stand to make a profit selling techniques to the poor even if they were so inclined, so what's the incentive to open the market? Beasts of burden like cows, oxen, mules, horses, etc already do most of the heavy lifting in farming, pulling plows and carts of goods. If armies are made up of normal peasants on both sides, the privileged class can restrict their own involvement to their own leisure and warfare won't change. No need to risk your next 20 years of noble reign challenging other fighters only to die to a rain of peasant arrows or javelins.
2. *Literacy*: All the training manuals of the world are useless if you can't read them, same as any book or website. Even if you can read normally, it doesn't mean you can properly understand the material. Take a college upper division level textbook of physiology, even though a highschooler is literate they won't understand any of the jargon and advanced concepts within because that vocabulary isn't part of what they learned. This kind of learning would be included in a noble's education, but not a merchant's or clerk's.
+ Books can also be restricted to older more "cultured" languages or dialects not commonly spoken among peasantry. Something like Latin perhaps, passed down within various orders and cultured fellows but fallen almost entirely out of use among normal folk in daily life. Without first learning the language, you can't learnt the arts.
3. *Trainers*: If martial arts is circulated among the nobility, then which among them would stoop so low as teach peasants for hours a day? Even among non-hereditary lower nobility such as knight retainers, they naturally have duties to attend such as guarding or patrolling. They'd also make a hell of a lot more working for other nobles instead of for peasants.
* **Resources**:
1. *Food*: Diet makes a big difference. You can train twice as hard as someone else at the gym, but if they are on a high protein diet with supplements while you eat nothing but porridge and bread, they are going to make significantly more progress. Peasants living off the grains of the fields and maybe some dairy from the cows are able to keep them selves healthy, but such a limited diet won't facilitate much training progress. Fish helps for protein, but Japanese sailors were still found to lack the stoutness needed to use their new warships bought from the British despite a large diet of fish. You need meat, fruits, vegetables, eggs/dairy consistently at at least 2 meals a day with decent portion size for optimal muscle training. That adds up quickly to be expensive, if there is even enough higher class foods in the village market. Most villages only slaughter animals annually for festivals, not like today in mass butcheries to provide meat for every supermarket daily.
2. *Time*: You need time every day to train where you still have some energy. Tending the fields, herding animals in the hills, and maintaining a farm made of and sustained by wood is backbreaking labor dawn till dusk. You have to get water from the well every morning in buckets because there are no pipes. Then for every meal after if you don't have a barrel or cistern, which even then needs to be refilled at some point. Chickens and other animals need feeding. Horses need grooming. Herds need to rate grazing pastures, requiring them to be round up and walked over. Fields weeded. Irrigation ditches cleared. Fences repaired. Pests killed. Tools repaired. Firewood cut down and chopped. Grain harvested, transported, ground, and made into flour. Baking the flour into bread or boiled to make porridge. It is a busy life from before sunrise to dusk, leaving little time or energy for training. Even basic things take longer with low technology like heating up your clay oven to cook, you have to start a fire, feed the fire wood, heat the oven, take the fire out, clean out the soot/coals, then put the dough in to cook. It all adds up. Even if you have time, you are going to need your energy for the next day since if you don't work you don't eat and your home gets cold.
3. *Weapons and Gear*: You can't train sword fighting well without training swords/wands, padded armor, and a good field at the bare minimum. Training with real swords risks crippling injury and also dulls the blades to the point of ruining them. Dummies are alright for beginners, but hardly teach how to fight in melee. At the same time, a swordsman with no proper sword is just as useless. A swordsman with no armor can waste 10 years of training in seconds to some random guy with a spear or a bow. You need the complete package of tools, with no corners cut to get a good useful swordsman. Then multiply that for as many different types of martial arts you have. Training and outfitting more people, as would happen if you wanted to train many peasant martial artists is just super expensive and resource intensive. In an age when most people paid their taxes at least in part as literal grain, the tax revenue of an average fief isn't exactly going to buy you an army fast.
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Edit: I forgot one last thing: the quality of the manuals themselves. The scientific method and what we know as elementary drawing today hadn't been invented yet. Getting information out of them would be far more difficult that ready any modern textbook (not that easy even today) simply because the idea of perspective and charts doesn't exist. Outside of master architects few else even had a clue on how to accurately portray procedures on paper. Much less a set of motions in perspective and anatomically correct. Go through a few bad copy jobs from scribes and what details were imparted might be lost. Combined with a lot of stories and glorification, as was common in many surviving medieval manuals they aren't exactly concise easy skim material for a new reader.
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## Selection, privilege and paranoia
You can flip your scenario: mastery of Art makes one powerful. Those in a position of power in your society are those with high mastery of Art; they became “noble bloodlines” by gaining this knowledge and then restricting it to their kin. Because each family knows that their position of power hinges on secrecy, they have no desire to share Art with common folk. Because they’re filthy rich, they don’t really care about farming or construction - they will always have enough for themselves, and a few starved peasants are none of their concern.
Of course, each family could choose to train an Art-enhanced army and attempt a coup over the others; indeed, there are constant rumors in the paranoia-infested high society halls that this is precisely what is going on. Maybe it’s true, but no family has dared to show their hand yet, as they all assume the other families have a (potentially greater) secret army of their own. In this way, it serves a similar role to nuclear weapons in our society today - assured mutual destruction. This further fuels the secrecy and paranoia of the noble families, who see every unusually self-possessed milkmaid and every remarkably efficient bricklayer as evidence that their rivals are training commoners in Art to overthrow them. Thus every hint of Art outside the noble families is ruthlessly persecuted, and as a result any natural emergence of Art in the general population is stamped out before it can develop into its own discipline.
In an alternate timeline, Art might have had widespread adoption, and the wealth and welfare of society would be immeasurably higher. But the families keep their stranglehold on power, and crush every tendril of growth to protect their privilege, and only challenge each other within the bounds of what still presents no dangers to the institution of aristocracy as a whole.
This miserable state of affairs will continue until the commoners finally rise up and cut the bastards down, presumably after developing their own form of Art [disguised as folk dancing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capoeira).
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# Frame Challenge: Every Commoner does ART!
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> * with a few months military training, about 50% of people are able to achieve at least a very low level of Art.
> * with some 5 years of training, that figure goes up to 90%
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This figure doesn't preclude that there are not other forms of art than *martial* arts. All those *commoners* actually practice some sort of incorporated magic, and it makes them stronger - and all the more valuable!
Think the farmer. He starts to train the *art of farming* at a young age and once he is an adult, he actually is an accomplished *farming artist* on their own. His art is focusees on strengthening his body against illnesses and withstanding the elements. It also allows them to dig faster with the hoe, and set the plants in a harmonious pattern that actually increases yield magically.
A smith after their apprenticeship actually imbues magic into their product, making them more resilient and harder to break and making the metal easier to work. In fact, without magic, some of the processing doesn't even work!
Now, if everybody can do magic to some degree, why doesn't everybody become a soldier? That's because most common magic arts are so ingrained in them, that they have to relearn everything from how to walk and breathe to how to eat! That is what military training does: to make them learn the established military arts, they have to unlearn the various field arts and pretty much re-wire them! Some people are easier to learn the new arts. But with enough training, you can make everybody into a soldier.
### Limiting the unlimited resources
But how to limit the higher training that you need for real magicans and mythical generals? Well, everybody *is* magical, but not to the same degree.
Aptitude plays a big role. The Aptitude needed to learn the most basic arts, like the farmer's resistance to cold or the soldiers endurance is comparatively low. But not everybody has the same level of aptitude: some farmer might be literally impossible to tire, while his neighbor only can hold up the concentration for a ew hours before he needs a little rest. People who think they might have the needed Aptitude to learn higher arts might subject themselves to rigorous examinations that can get them to access higher training...
Training is another part of the formula: if you train kids from an age when one can barely hold their chopsticks, they might be able to punch through a wall and jump over them by the age they hit puberty. That training advantage a young noble has because they can pay for the tutors is hard to catch up to if the farmer's kid only starts to get training after the first examination when he is around 10.
Tutors also are a limited resource, especially good ones: You will easily find a tutor for the art of a smith, but finding a tutor that is skilled enough to do the whole Punching through walls thing is HARD: all those trainers are already contracted to the nobility. It would take a lot of ambition and re-invention of ourselves to cultivate a martial art of your own that can best those honed and refined techniques that the established tutors hand down to their pupils. Like... becoming a hermit.
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Your world sounds a lot like a wuxia world, so the typical answer from those worlds applies here:
**Literacy:** If peasants can't read, they don't know what's on the manual.
* Problems with this answer: Depending on the content, it can be read out loud and taught verbally to the peasants.
* Possible solution to the problem: The language used in the manual is archaic and in mysterious phrases and saying (like Chinese chengyu), so you need EXTRA effort to understand it. This slows any classroom learning.
**Distribution:** Much like Literacy, you'd have to have a way to distribute the information. While imprecise rumors travel fast, anything long and exact will need to be written down. Two forms: public notice and pamphlets. The latter is impractical, so that's one avenue closed. Which leaves you with public notice, either stuck on a wall for all to see, or read out loud by someone publicly. Both ways can also be ruled out by a reason of your devising.
**Nutrition:** Depending on your world, access to calories and proper nutrition can be a problem. The average Chinese peasant at the time of most wuxia stories are short, and the same can apply to the people of your world. If they only have enough to fuel their workday, they won't use extra energy to further train their bodies.
**Time:** This isn't as big of a problem as you might expect. Farm work is hard work, but it is not all day, and given your description of training for Art, it's not something that you can't do in the dark. The only limitation is how tired you are after work and if you have the calories to fuel that training. Furthermore, when everything's frozen over in the winter and you're stuck inside, you have basically an entire season to train and, once again, available calories is your limit.
The above applies to peasants. Justification is much harder for soldiers as to why they don't even have low quality Art, especially since whatever "normal" training they might receive pales in comparison to the benefits received from learning Art (other than the ability to fight as a single unit, and discipline).
You might try the literacy solution, and if the employer of the army is poor, the nutrition solution as well.
[Answer]
Who has a few months just to blow off on training? There is always work to be done. Children are put to work as soon as they can shout at birds to scare them off the crops.
Even with that, food is limited. People's growth is stunted. The lack of food and the endless grinding exhaustion leaves people too drained to think of doing things otherwise. (Reenactors on farms comment that days of labor often left them too exhausted to think straight.) The level of ambition to take off a few months is not there.
Besides, there are not bigger fields just to be taken. You'd start a fight if you tried to claim your neighbor's fields, and the unclaimed land is both inferior for farming and dangerous from wild animals.
[Answer]
Being able to perform the Art is much easier then being able to teach the Art.
Thus whats limited is a suitable supply of (good) teachers. For people to able to perform Art they need it unlocked by someone who can perform magic (who you state are rare). Thus there is a very limited supply of teachers who can get people past the first hurdle. They can also can pick and choose who they work with. I'm sure a lot of the teachers would prefer teaching some noble persons child (while being kept in nice house with good food and paid well) over teaching the masses of poor people who can't pay for the training.
There may also be large numbers of con-artists who pretend like there unlocking your ability to do Art (while taking all your money). If you don't have a reference for what some with Art can do, you may think you have the ability when you don't (well you only have to believe long enough for the con-artist to get away). After being conned once you may not want to do it again and may tell everyone else the whole thing is a fraud putting off other people from signing up.
[Answer]
## Current methods for teaching Art are are intolerably annoying.
You need to make your body hairless, and not by shaving; by plucking. Super annoying songs must be sung at all hours. You do not need to carry a burning hot brazier between your forearms but you do need to carry a nickel between your knees, back and forth, hundreds of times. If it falls out you have to start over. It is like Miyagi's training method in the Karate Kid except instead of waxing classic cars and painting fences on a California afternoon, you are doing months of mindless, uncomfortable, humiliating tasks with no obvious point to them.
It is though the the method of teaching art was designed to make everyone quit. It was.
[Answer]
Other answers are great (limited resources, no basic training like reading for low level farmers, etc)... I don't think I've seen one thing mentioned:
## A Caste System
[What is India's caste system?](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35650616)
>
> The system which divides Hindus into rigid hierarchical groups based
> on their karma (work) and dharma (the Hindi word for religion, but
> here it means duty) is generally accepted to be more than 3,000 years
> old.
>
>
>
Your society has a system where people are what they are born. Work and Duty keeps them there and those in the "lower" castes wouldn't be worth the extra time to train.
>
> At the top of the hierarchy were the Brahmins who were mainly teachers
> and intellectuals and are believed to have come from Brahma's head.
> Then came the Kshatriyas, or the warriors and rulers, supposedly from
> his arms. The third slot went to the Vaishyas, or the traders, who
> were created from his thighs. At the bottom of the heap were the
> Shudras, who came from Brahma's feet and did all the menial jobs.
>
>
>
Break society in castes that don't intermingle... and set the lower castes as unworthy of the time, effort and prestige of the privilege's of Art.
>
> How does caste work? For centuries, caste has dictated almost every
> aspect of Hindu religious and social life, with each group occupying a
> specific place in this complex hierarchy.
>
>
> Rural communities have long been arranged on the basis of castes - the
> upper and lower castes almost always lived in segregated colonies, the
> water wells were not shared, Brahmins would not accept food or drink
> from the Shudras, and one could marry only within one's caste.
>
>
> The system bestowed many privileges on the upper castes while sanctioning repression of the
> lower castes by privileged groups.
>
>
> Often criticised for being unjust and regressive, it remained
> virtually unchanged for centuries, trapping people into fixed social
> orders from which it was impossible to escape.
>
>
>
[Answer]
## Option One: Desire
In modern western society, nearly everyone has the capability and resources to become physically fit. The reasons for doing so are legion: increased capacity for physical labor, increased lifespan, decreased medical problems, increased confidence, increases to perceived attractiveness, etc etc.
Why, then, is most of modern western society experiencing an [obesity epidemic](https://images.theconversation.com/files/149464/original/image-20161209-31352-1iz19n7.jpg)? Because it takes *work* to be physically fit. If I can play games with my siblings or work, if I can relax after a day's labor or work, if I can spend a holiday [chasing tail](https://media.tenor.com/images/109188865144a20fc16c8bdacb423ab6/tenor.gif) or work, what do I choose? For many people, work is not the desired choice. Not everyone is as motivated to improve as Naruto, and [even he has limits](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-e3875be3e56818bf0579b8c571af48a9).
## Option Two: Perception of Progress
I'm a goju ryu karate black belt. It took me seven years to reach that point. If I were to give an exhibition of skill to a group, any group of any age, there will be members of that group who think the skills are cool and have a desire to learn it themselves. Of those that actually do attempt to learn, many are quickly discouraged by the training. They show up to a dojo and are taught boring, unimpressive things. How do you [make a fist](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RnlV-yyFYVY/VpZZ8AT6ifI/AAAAAAAAA2M/GjCKQdu1rlM/s1600/output_zd2yMV.gif)? Where do your [feet](https://i1.wp.com/box5654.temp.domains/%7Ethemasq6/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/foot-positions.jpg) go? That's not what drew them to learn- they want to do a [spinning jump kick](https://thumbs.gfycat.com/SinfulJitteryBoubou-size_restricted.gif)! They want to [dodge punches](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/qP2OHAx9LMbX4IFld8Bx9gJul4r1d4BcfQM3HQbefCe_B5lq1JV2zO8wdMYE3FywLNdOL1KI7lqE_GtEFWEiAmPMOLfHvg2gxgUtO8esKk9qG_Hp4PXXGhCdAgg)! They want to [break boards with their bare hands](https://thumbs.gfycat.com/IckyUntriedCockatiel-max-1mb.gif)!
The reality is, the fundamentals of any martial art are not flashy, and they must be mastered first. Likewise, mental techniques in wuxia worlds are not usually flashy. Beginners become discouraged when they spend hours practicing and don't think they are making progress.
## Option Three: Skillset
Some people are naturally [more adept](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5238dfcae4b0468ec26edfdb/1380003225010-G871HTEYZX2ZT1A81AJZ/tumblr_inline_mq5oimeBzt1qz4rgp.gif) at a given skill than others. With martial arts, there are those who are naturally flexible, and those (like me) [who are not](https://www.nerdfitness.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/woman-toe-touch.jpg). Some find it easier than others to get into physical shape. Some struggle to remember techniques. Given enough time, nearly everyone without significant handicaps can get there- but for some, the time required is the deal breaker, or they become discouraged when those around them progress faster than they do.
Martial arts also utilize different muscles than other forms of manual labor and exercise. This should be the case for mental disciplines in a wuxia or cultivation type world. A farmer is used to certain mental activities, and the [mind can be resistant to change](https://www.emersonhc.com/change-management/people-hard-wired-resist-change).
## Option Four: Risk
If you know Art, are you more likely to be conscripted into an army? Will you be dragged away from your family? If the [Fire Nation attacks](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/010/400/a91.png), will they round up everyone with any Art skill and kill them? If Mr. Paranoid succeeds his father, will he [crack down](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41uEaNg8ZyL._AC_.jpg) on those who know Art for fear that they pose a threat to his rule?
If you know Art, will you be expected to work harder? Work longer? Will you be forced into leadership positions you may not want? Will you be given the difficult jobs at the construction site, or the [dangerous ones](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/12/04/11/46F69B8B00000578-0-image-a-73_1512387950493.jpg)? Can more experienced individuals track you down or sense you, once you have skill in Art?
Does training Art hurt? Is it uncomfortable? Is it ever embarrassing when you first start out? Do you have to let your teacher into your head, or let them touch you, or let them take control in some fashion? There are many ways it could be 'risky' to train.
## Other options
There are plenty of others as well. Does it cost money to train? It adds mobility to the lower classes if they have any power; do the upper classes want competition? Does training require use of limited resources? Does it burn extra calories, or mentally exhaust the practitioner, or require use of chi/qi/magic that is in limited supply throughout the world/region?
There are plenty of possibilities, but the biggest advice: *mix them*. Don't give a single reason for the status quo, combine several complimentary reasons, thus widening the net to catch the majority of measly peons with [delusions of grandeur](https://y.yarn.co/83c3a2fb-489d-42b9-acf6-67ddb9a38157_text.gif) before they realize their dreams.
[Answer]
## Having the art makes you worse at shield walls.
The arts generally make you individualistic, flowing, and overt. This is terrible for shield walls. Groups of soldiers with spears and shields massively out perform soldiers with cheap arts. The martial artists may be twice as strong, but they're not strong enough to resist the ten soldiers with spears that can fit in the space of one person doing common arts.
Elite martial arts can clash less, so the nobles can outperform shield walls.
## The art feeds of ambient magic
The art uses external magic to make internal magic. If all your peasants are art users the location will have much less ambient magic for nobles. In addition, the low quality of the art will burn magic much less efficiently.
As such, it makes no financial sense to waste magic on farmers and soldiers and construction workers.
[Answer]
There is one more solution. Trainig need 6 months for average person. Peasants/workers can have month per year free time to do something, mostly at winter, and thats not enough, even if train for 10 years. But if someone have talent for that then can achieve. that can be one per 10000 peasants/workers. Families will search for that natural talents and then hire or kill them before they be too strong. Natural tallented ones can be big source of power for family if found - with talent they can easy train up to very high level and if properly leaded then have mental connection with family and even be joined into.
If add to equation some kind of genetic predisposition for Art and Magic then most talented can born in families.
[Answer]
### Attaining a proficiency in this technique costs money.
A common trope in Chinese martial arts high fantasy ("xianxia", literally "immortal heroes") fiction is that training your chi requires the use of external sources of chi to add to your own, and that the most commonly used form of this are special rocks or crystals imbued with chi, which are also used as the most common currency by the magic-wielding nobility - and that it's a currency with considerable purchasing power when compared to the "mortal" currencies used by the common people.
Sure, you might be able to train your people up to peak-human abilities over the course of a month or two, but if the cost of that is the consumption of enough currency to buy years of food for them, it suddenly stops making a lot of sense for them to do so. You're burning lots of money for limited gains; the only people to whom it'd make sense to spend that much money might be wealthy merchants or other bourgeoisie, who have the money to burn making sure that their children are able to pursue all their talents.
And, naturally, the higher you go, the more expensive and rare the resources you need to consume to further advance your power are; the Peach Trees of Immortality might only bear fruit once every thousand years, for instance.
[Answer]
These are my answers to "So why has nobody thought of teaching Art to regular citizens, or at least soldiers, when it would increase productivity and military strength so much?":
1. You can't just reserve a building for teaching Art to people. People actually have to come.
2. You'll have to convince the people who don't want to learn Art to learn Art. Yeah, sure, there are some people who will go willingly, but some people can be as stubborn as a mule.
3. Okay, if you reserved a building, and actually got people to come and learn Art, bravo. But, if farmers come to learn Art, what would happen of the crops? The poultry? The livestock?
4. Supplies, supplies. Even if you DON'T think you'll need supplies, you WILL need supplies of some sort. Rugs, mats, lamps or candles, stuff like that.
5. Really, do you think that nobody has thought of the idea of teaching civilians, or at least soldiers, Art? Do you actually think that government could be THAT stupid? Now, I'm not trying to be impolite here, but let's get realistic. Most likely, the government had tried teaching civilians, or at least soldiers, Art, but it didn't work, so they laid off the idea. Most likely.
] |
[Question]
[
The society of an island nation is led by a religion known as "The Church of the Eternal Mother", it is [an ancient faith that adheres to a fertility goddess](https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Church_of_the_Eternal_Mother). This faith is led by five elderly women called Mannas Natau, at least one of whom will regularly become spontaneously pregnant. These immortal elders are worshipped as avatars of the Eternal Mother: mortal vessels of the goddess's power responsible for creating life and growing the numbers of the community. Children born from the goddess are biotically immune to all illnesses and live longer than other humans, but are not immortal. The goal of the community is to ultimately build an empire by conquering its neighbors.
Although the elders have the ability to immaculately conceive, the vast majority of children produced, about 90%, are stillborn. This has prevented the community from growing their numbers rapidly and to a large extent, even after thousands of years. As this would put a kink in the eventual goals of the nation, it would be natural for people to become disenchanted with their leaders. With a god that is metaphysical and unknowable, it would be easy to rationalize negative outcomes and bad events. People can dismiss these occurrences as "God works in mysterious ways", or that he doesn't interfere in the lives of mortals directly. However, these elders are considered the Eternal Mother made of flesh and are thus living gods. Their failures are actively seen in real time, making them difficult to ignore. It would be like Jesus trying to perform miracles and failing, or having them have negative results (Lazurus coming back as a zombie and eating people, three loaves of bread and two fish multiplying but turning poisonous, etc.). Such outcomes would damage the credibility of those claiming to have a special connection with some deity. Loyalty would be diminished, turning their followers against them at some point.
How can the church maintain its influence among the community despite its repeated and visible failures?
[Answer]
Any failure can be explained away by sufficient application of Apologetics. While the proper definition of the term differs, the real-world application of Apologetics is fundamentally tied to explaining why the claims of religion fail to fit the observed reality.
>
> With a god that is metaphysical and unknowable, it would be easy to rationalize negative outcomes and bad events.
>
>
>
Yes. Even if the Goddess was physically present and routinely interacted with the population, the same is true. It's even simpler if She doesn't claim to be all-powerful and incapable of failure... but as modern religions adequately demonstrate, even failure isn't enough to dissuade people from belief.
On the plus side, your church has a few manifestations of the Goddess' power that demonstrate Her divinity: spontaneous pregnancy, longevity of the elders and disease immunity of the offspring. These are observable and testable, and clearly (for some definition of 'clearly') only possible through divine providence.
The only failure you've listed is the fact that 90% of the pregnancies are not carried to term. In the SCP article you linked the stillborn are fed to the Temple (Kiraak), giving us a perfectly good excuse. These aren't a failure of the Goddess, they are the result of the Goddess' will.
In fact it seems to me that it would take significant effort from the Goddess Herself or Her representatives to weaken the faith at all. Constantly making claims, predictions and promises that turn out to be wrong will weaken the trust of the flock... but even that isn't necessarily fatal if every now and then something goes right. Maybe they don't trust the Goddess to always deliver, but they know that She *can* deliver. Sure it's a crap-shoot, but She comes through often enough for people to keep believing just in case.
Modern humans display a frankly appaling lack of rationality when it comes to religious matters, and it's unlikely that your people will do significantly better under the circumstances. Again according to the SCP entry, they're a single large, inbred family. Rarely do such people form highly rational populations with a significant degree of scepticism.
I'd suggest that you look into the stories of rural myths and legends around the world. Old morality plays and cautionary tales, passed from mouth to ear for generations, twist into stories about mythic powers that all fail to show even the slightest hint of existing in the real world, but people believe in them anyway. Doesn't matter if the stories are about gods or devils, witches or fairies, there's always someone who believes.
And that's just the "uncivilised" people of the world. What about the first-world citizens, educated and supposedly rational, who flock to the site of miracles of such stunning power as the appearance of a religious figure in the toast of some back-woods townsperson? The Catholic Church with their phenomenal miracles, like the time a cafe in Santa Fe was spared from flood damage or that girl who dreamed of being batised a few days before being killed in a terror attack.
Belief is easy. We're apparently programmed that way. To stop believing, no matter how compelling the evidence appears to outsiders, is the hard part.
[Answer]
We have seen this in many cults and religions, so you case will be no different.
Since the deity is infallible, any observed failure is to be caused by some imperfection of the humans performing the rituals, no matter what they are. The imperfection can be evident or the failure of the ritual is the way the deity uses to declare its being displeased with the humans.
[Answer]
This has been studied empirically (although admittedly contentiously), as reported in the classic book [*When Prophecy Fails.*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails)
In essence, don’t underestimate the power of people to create powerful rationalisations to reduce their cognitive dissonance. In this case, a UFO cult believed that aliens would spirit away the faithful to avoid the impending end of the world. When neither the aliens nor the apocalypse arrived, the most faithful rationalised that this was in fact due to their own diligent prayer: they thought that they had saved the entire world from the cataclysm and hence the aliens no longer needed to arrive. Those who had made the strongest prior commitment to their beliefs, such as by giving away their worldly possessions, were said to be those whose faith was most strengthened.
In your case, the opposite rationalisation could be made: the gods would be able to do all that they promise, if only the people would hold up their end. There must be some way in which the people aren’t sufficiently devoted, or adhering to the exact prescriptions of the religious law. This would likely result in the people becoming even more strict and dogmatic, and more likely to persecute errant community members in order to be perfectly adherent to all of the gods’ demands.
[Answer]
**Trials of the womb**
Humans have it easy. When they first come into existence, they appear often unnoticed, soak up nutrients and chillax for a couple of months. When they do get noticed, no matter - more chillaxing. When they no longer fit inside another human, they move outside - but they still chillax. At some point, they get to travel from one place to sit in to another. It's not until much later that they have to actually try. And if they're lucky, they can go like that for the whole of their lives.
Avatar's life is a different life altogether. Even before they have a physical presence, they need to find a host. And there are very few available, or none at all sometimes. And even if they do find a host, the host's body makes it clear that they have to try. They don't just grow into a perfect body, they have to actively steer its development from the inside. And if they fail - out they go, and another ghost gets a try. And those who succeed - more trials, both in the form of physical combat and in the spiritual realm.
That is, of course, the official version.
[Answer]
Engage the community. Each pregnancy is a fight against evil spirits and it will succeed only if there is enough spiritual support from the worshippers.
[Answer]
Yeah, it baffles me too, but people do it all the time.
I think the trick is, many people don't believe in empiricism. That is, if you give them a persuasive argument why something OUGHT to be true, they'll believe that argument over actual "experimental evidence" (whatever sort of experiment is relevant) that proves it false. Philosophy often beats science. That is, "your argument sounds convincing" beats "when we tried it, it didn't work in practice".
People make excuses why the experiment was invalid. "That wasn't really a fair test because our side was not given an opportunity to ..." "The experiment was invalid because this other factor biased the results." Etc. Or if it's really hard to refute, just insist that the experiment never really happened, that it's a hoax.
Any real world examples I give will likely ignite debate. But for example, consider socialism. It sounds great to say "everybody should work for the common good and all wealth should be shared equally". But in fact every time it's been tried, it has resulted in tyranny and poverty. Advocates of socialism explain this away by saying things like, "REAL socialism has never been tried." "Socialism failed in this case because the leaders were corrupt", or "... because the people were too selfish", or "... because the price of their primary export fell", etc. We could discuss why but my point is not to debate socialism but simply to point out that millions of people continue to believe in it despite its repeated failures. Why do they believe in it? Because the IDEA just sounds so good. It just HAS to work. It just HAS to be better than competing economic systems. The fact that it repeatedly fails ... it must be that it just wasn't done right.
I can think of numerous other examples but that will probably ignite enough hostile posts.
[Answer]
**The joy of cognitive dissonance**
You’re starting from a false premise. People don’t approach belief in the utilitarian, consumer-experience manner that you expect - even in our hyper-indivdualistic society, let alone a more communal one like the one you describe. There are many examples of cults that have consistently failed in specific, empirically testable ways and yet retained (many of) their followers. I recommend [this podcast](https://www.futilitycloset.com/2019/02/04/podcast-episode-235-leon-festinger-and-the-alien-apocalypse/) for a striking example.
Once established that evidence of failure isn’t actually going to necessarily make your believers lose faith, what elements can strengthen belief, reduce disillusionment, and increase cohesion among your followers?
* Evidence of supernatural intervention: you have semi-immortal superhumans. This is about 1000% more successful than any extant Earth religion.
* Sunk cost of belief: people who believe obviously fake bollocks are *less* likely to change their mind when faced with evidence, because they would have to admit to having been duped before, and having shaped their lives around a falsehood. See [reinforcement theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_theory).
* Blame shifting: stillbirths are *obviously* caused by lack of faith. This puts doubters under the double pressure of internal guilt and external censure. You can’t openly express doubt in the faith, so individual agnostics can’t support each other in their doubt, which could have given momentum to splinters in the community.
* Ingroup/outgroup demarcation: being persecuted for your beliefs can make you *more* attached to them. For example, certain current Christian denominations put a lot of focus on proselytising. This is only minimally to acquire new converts (there are other much more effective routes), but to make (often young and callow) missionaries experience rejection and mistreatment from the secular world, so that they will only feel safe within their religious community.
* Lack of competition: some of the polytheistic pantheons of Europe have been supplanted by Christianity in part because their open nature allowed “competitor” deities to be tolerated; this was not true in reverse. Your society would not make this mistake: any foreign deity would be treated like a harbinger of evil and its worshippers very publicly punished. I am a jealous G\*d, etc.
As you can see, most of this list leverages human weaknesses, flawed heuristics, cognitive biases and so on. These are remarkably resistant to utilitarian reasoning - in fact they are largely defined by their failure to lead to optimised behaviour. So your objective observable failures will do very little to dislodge them.
[Answer]
## How you explain this depends on your people's view on god(s)
**The Polytheist Explanation:** There is not one, but many gods and the problems of the world can be explained by the conflicts happening between them. You worship your patron god in hopes that he/she will take care of you, but you understand that your god is not all-powerful. Because your god is in conflict with other gods, rival gods may interfere to your detriment. Since parthenogenetically conceived children are at the root of your god's powerbase, these unborn children are the ultimate targets for rival gods who wish to undermine the Eternal Mother.
The best example of this is probably the Norris Pantheon. Not only did the Norris believe that their gods could not always save them, but they believed that at the end of time, their gods would all be defeated and killed by the forces of chaos. Despite this belief, their gods were worshiped for over 1000 years.
In polytheistic religions, you do not worship your god because he/she can always save you from ruin, but because without any god to have your back, ruin is assured.
**The Monotheist Explanation:** To the monotheist, God's plans are his own; so, he may just choose to ruin you.
The best example of this is probably early Judaism. The book of Judges talks about a time in Jewish history where their people continued to be conquered over and over again. Each time the Jewish people fell into ruin they blamed it on themselves for failing to perfectly observe God's laws. But they continued to worship God anyway because they believed that with enough loyalty they could redeem themselves and that God would send them a hero (called a Judge) to lead them back into a favorable state. To the monotheist, there is no other God to turn to; so, the best you can hope for is to regain the favor of the one and only god.
Following this model, you could say that the still borns are because of a lack of faithfulness. So, the elders could use the miscarriages as evidence that the goddess in unhappy with the faithlessness of her people. Perhaps every time a baby is still born, the elders send out inquisitors to cull the non-believers from your community until only those faithful enough to be deserving of a parthenogenetic conception in their community are left. This may curb population growth a bit, but it also ensures that everyone who is left is blindly loyal. A small fanatical army can be far more effective than a massive one with no resolve.
**The Enlightened Explanation:** Enlightened religions try to merge science and philosophy with religion; so, they would look to science to find meaning in the Goddess's plans.
Interspecies reproduction is known to have a higher failure rate than normal. It can be seen in all sorts of species; so, the higher rate of failure is actually evidence that these women are reproducing with something distinctly not human. The very fact that a spiritual being like the Eternal Mother can reproduce with a human is nothing short of a miracle since she does not even have DNA to work with; so, even a miscarriage coming from parthenogenetic conception is a wild display of her divine power to anyone wise enough to understand how incredible it is for things to get that far.
So, she is either impregnating more people than she needs because she needs to according to the laws of nature, or just as a constant reminder of her presence to show everyone that she can do it.
[Answer]
The one answer here (so far) that points out your incorrect starting
assumption is [the one from Guest](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/209302/15884): once a social group reaches a
certain size the problem is not convincing them to continue believing
something that is obviously wrong (when examined rationally), but
convincing them to change their beliefs no matter how wrong they are.
There are plenty of examples of this happening; a fairly obvious one from
recent history is the anti-vaccination movement in general and in
particular the very recent COVID-19 anti-vaccination movement. Even if one
is suspicious of the accuracy of the "99% of all people hospitalized for
COVID-19 are unvaccinated" figure, anything near that is, along with its
low risk compared to activities such as driving a car, clearly such weighty
evidence for taking the vaccine that any strictly rational analysis based
on that alone would have most people taking it.
But humans, being social creatures, need to take into account their
relationships with those around them as well, and so it can in fact be
rational to at least appear to believe what those around you do, especially
when open disagreement with those beliefs can have its own adverse
real-world consequences. As explained in a recent article in *The
Atlantic*, ["The Anti-vaccine Con Job Is Becoming Untenable"](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/vaccine-refusers-dont-want-blue-americas-respect/619627/):
>
> [People] want to save face within the very specific set of social ties
> that sociologists call “[reference groups](https://www.aapor.org/getattachment/About-Us/History/Presidential-Addresses/Public-Opin-Q-1960-HYMAN-383-96.pdf.aspx)”—the neighborhoods,
> churches, workplaces, and friendship networks that help people obtain the
> income, information, companionship, mutual aid, and other resources they
> need to live. The price of access to those resources is conformity to
> group norms. That’s why nobody strives for the good opinion of everyone;
> most people primarily seek the approval of people in their own reference
> groups.
>
>
> In Missouri and other red states, vaccine refusal on [partisan
> grounds](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/06/third-white-conservatives-refuse-get-vaccine-refusal-shown-both-polling-real-world/) has become a defining marker of community affiliation.
> Acceptance within some circles is contingent on refusal to cooperate with
> the Biden administration’s public-health campaign. Getting vaccinated is
> a betrayal of that group norm, and those who get the shot can
> legitimately fear [losing their job](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/us/florida-centner-academy-vaccine.html) or incurring the wrath of
> their [families](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/covid-19-vaccine-politics-are-tearing-apart-families.html) and other reference groups.
>
>
>
This is why even those who want the vaccine will sometimes try to hide that
fact:
>
> A hospital in the state, Ozarks Healthcare, had to create a [“private
> setting”](https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2021/07/29/dr-priscilla-frase-intv-ozarks-healthcare-missouri-private-vaccine-backlash-sot-ac360-vpx.cnn) for patients afraid of being seen getting vaccinated
> against COVID-19. In a video produced by the hospital, the physician
> Priscilla Frase [says](https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/health/vaccines-in-secret-missouri/index.html), “Several people come in to get
> vaccinated who have tried to sort of disguise their appearance and even
> went so far as to say, ‘Please, please, please don’t let anybody know
> that I got this vaccine.’” Although they want to protect themselves from
> the coronavirus and its variants, these patients are desperate to ensure
> that their vaccine-skeptical friends and family never find out what they
> have done.
>
>
>
As well as the potential for bad real-life results from disagreeing with
others in your group, there is also of course simply the emotional side of
discovering you believed someone who misled you, and handling this can
result in an overall strengthening of the incorrect belief within a group:
>
> The seminal text in the field—Erving Goffman’s 1952 essay “On Cooling the
> Mark Out”—observes that all targets of con artists eventually come to
> understand that they have been defrauded, yet they almost never complain
> or report the crime to authorities. Why? Because, Goffman argues,
> admitting that one has been conned is so deeply shameful that marks
> experience it as a kind of social death. The victim, he writes,
>
>
>
> >
> > has defined himself as a shrewd man and must face the fact that he is
> > only another easy mark. He has defined himself as possessing a certain
> > set of qualities and then proven to himself that he is miserably
> > lacking in them. This is a process of self-destruction of the self.
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> Goffman notes that other life events, such as being fired or dumped, can
> evoke similar feelings of humiliation. But people targeted by con jobs
> can save their pride by denying the con as long as possible—or claiming
> they were in on it the whole time. This saves face and cheats social
> death, but allows the con to continue unchecked, entrapping others. In
> doing so, marks prioritize their self-image over the common good.
>
>
>
My suggestion for your work is that you explain to your audience just how
people find it *better* to maintain their belief in the church despite the
obvious failures. The best way to do this would be to show the bad
experiences of those who attempt to dissent and compare those to the good
experiences of those who don't. To do this you need to "get into the head"
of those who continue believe and really understand why they do continue to
believe (and promote the belief!) despite understanding the evidence
against their beliefs. If you can do this for yourself you'll be able to
bring your readers along on the journey and it will make sense to them,
too.
[Answer]
"How can the church maintain their influence among the community despite their repeated and visible failures?"
**The mere fact that the elders are so long lived and immune to disease is enough to make an impression.** There have been many claims of immortal people in the past and they have been revered to some extent. But the fact remains that they just lied and time tells the truth. Those that doubt the goddesses chosen may live their lives in disbelief but as they get older they'll notice that the immortal elders are in better shape than them. They may be too proud to admit they were wrong though.
Another thing i've noticed is that religious women tend to prefer the emotional side of religion as opposed to the logical side. This makes their claims of godhood and salvation complete baloney to some and life saving inspiration to others. Being women themselves the elders would get a following of mostly women from unfortunate circumstances, those would be the most devout believers. The rest would be horny men lusting after the goddesses chosen. Because lets be real, nothing beats the power of sex appeal.
Stillborn children may not be a problem, they may just be considered the price for living long healthy lives. You can just shift the blame on someone or something else. And it is worth noticing that while a 90% death rate is quite detrimental to rapid growth of a population, let's not forget that they live VERY long lives and each child is only about nine months of commitment. That added to the fact that the children also barely age and you've pretty much counter acted the disadvantages. The immunity to disease is just cream on top, just look how badly a virus messed up our lives. They may even use this as a way to get more followers by promising they'll be cured.
Finally the issue of mistakes building up disillusionment over time. The best way to mitigate this is to say and do very little to appear wiser and more intelligent, as people often project their ideals on what they can't see. To prove my point, a vailed woman may be more mysterious and enchanting than a beautiful woman with no vail. All you have to do to avoid embarrassment is have others do everything for you. If they fail or made mistakes than they simply weren't up for the task.
[Answer]
You do it the same way you convince people to vote for consistently failing political leaders. *Spin*.
What you're seeing isn't a failure on the part of the goddess, and it's not a punishment inflicted on the people. This is something the goddess is doing to *benefit* the people.
The goddess' goal is to elevate humanity to a state that is unhampered by the weak mortal flesh we're currently trapped in. Her desired state is seen in the people that she creates directly. They live longer, and their bodies are more resilient to disease and decay. When the goddess detects that one of her followers is carrying a child that is weak or that carries undesirable traits (the *conception* might be immaculate, but the development was biological and fallible), she culls the child early to avoid the society wasting resources on it and to give the parents a chance to try again. Those that survive to birth have essentially been pre-screened by the goddess to ensure that they are progressing towards her goal of a perfected species, not drifting away from it.
This is a blessing the goddess only bestows on her faithful. Heathens living in foreign lands do not worship the goddess and thus are not subject to her discerning gaze. She allows those heathens to keep their undesirable young, causing those cultures to drift farther away from the perfect state that her followers will eventually reach.
The faithful will become what is essentially a separate, superior species and the unfaithful will be conquered and fade into extinction. This might seem like an odd way to go about it, but it's a time-tested process that has proven to work. The goddess was able to perfect her followers beyond their previous Neanderthal form (and multiple forms before that), and she will continue to do so until humanity has has reached its fully-perfected state.
[Answer]
>
> How can the church maintain its influence among the community despite its repeated and visible failures?
>
>
>
That's done by hiding the immortal avatars from sight. Their stillbirths must be invisible for the community ( I wondered if the community is constituted by avatar offspring but let's assume the community came into being by Natural evolution). A carefully thought system has to be set up to avoid contact. Situations that appeared in Japan after the second worldwar have to be avoided. The Japanese emperor was virtually considered a gid. Nobody knew how he looked or where and how he lived. He was urged to make an announcement on the radio to broadcast the fact that the nation had surrendered. So his voice was heard for the first time, which dwarfed him considerably. There was somebody to blame now too!
The last must be avoided at any cost. The avatars can become deities by themselves and stories can be made up. The church can turn the stillbirths into their favor even. Distribute them as the partial worldly incarnations of the mother fertility god and your case is won.
Trouble will arise if someone discovers some truth. By whatever means. But the truth can be turned into lie if the church is powerfull. If factions arise in peacetime, which dont want to follow anymore this can cause internal stress in society. During warfare the deity can ensure a strong cohesive force for the community though. To be dissolved if defeat is there and confessions have to be made. Like the Japanese emperor did.
] |
[Question]
[
This would be a human culture in what I would consider the distant future. Depending on the individual asked, either religious traditions and notions are something a society needs to eventually outgrow (like how an adult man is expected to dismiss the existence of the Easter Bunny) or humanity should be its own master instead of bowing to outside entities, whether those entities truly exist or not.
That said, this same society has rather strict notions on what is acceptable concerning sex and relationships - neither polygamous nor same-sex marriages are recognized by law, and fetishes and practices like sadomasochism are looked down upon as deviant. There's no church to say what is or isn't a sin, so how do I explain these attitudes taking root?
[Answer]
There exists an argument that the religious tend to use against atheists, that without a belief in God, humans will stop being good and just generally do a lot of terrible sinful things. I guess it's like the Ring of Giges story, where a peasant finds a ring that renders him invisible, and immediately kills the king and steals all his stuff.
Now, as far as I can tell this just isn't true. Being a good person can often be its own reward, and there are a lot of sinful things that even atheists would agree are not right to do. In fact, the more I investigate religion and philosophy, I've found that most of the virtues that religion espouses can also be supported by logical reasoning on what's beneficial to humans.
Let's take, for example, the idea of eugenics. It's a great way to get rid of a lot of humanity's problems, like many diseases and the general inequality that arises from people being born different. But when someone brings up eugenics today, people call them a monster. Why is this? Because most eugenicists *were* monsters. People like the Nazis were racists, and had a very limited understanding of what makes humans good.
There are a lot of similar cases in history. For instance, the Amish shave their upper lips because when they started out, moustaches were a sign of the military (and the Amish are pacifist). Similarly, the word *barbarian* supposedly stems from the fact that Romans shaved, while many of their enemies didn't. Back to the Nazis, no one today could pull off a Hitler 'stache without getting dirty looks (or worse).
Thus, all that's needed to make something taboo is to make it something your enemies do, or used to do. In your case, just imagine the Nazis, only they were sexy Nazis, and they sodomized millions of men. That should be more than enough of a black spot on history to keep people from doing anything of the sort for a very long time.
[Answer]
**Why do you need to believe in god to have weird opinions?**
Irrational beliefs are not dependent on each other and are not mutually exclusive. There is no reason that a society could not simultaneously reject the god hypothesis while accepting (what we may view as) irrational views on sex. Humans have an uncanny ability to hold several incompatible beliefs in their minds at once and fail to see the problem. Laws are formed by people, and if they think something (like two men being married) is wrong for whatever reason then they may pass or maintain a law that confirms their belief.
Atheists are no different in this way, they simply do not believe in one idea, the title says nothing about what they do believe in. Nearly everyone is an atheist about one god or another, it's a terribly non-descriptive title to give someone.
[Answer]
This behavior could also be influenced by environmental effects. Here are some reasons why this might happen...
## Fear of Death via STIs...
the most notably being the presence of STIs. This was one of the biggest factors in cooling off the sexual revolution of the 60's in USA, and curbed sexual appetites again in the 80's with the rise of HIV/AIDs. So, it's possible that your culture has a series of STIs that limit the sexual behavior of the society.
And from the practice of avoiding dying by having their fun bits rot off, they began a more extremist approach that included abstinence, or whatever else suits your world and races.
[This article](http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/ib_std.html) shows how STIs have a global impact on societies. It's an informative read.
---
## Fear of Spreading Foreign and/or Damaged Genes...
Perhaps a certain gene was introduced into the human population, either through alien contact or unfortunate evolution at the hands of a viral mechanism, that has an extremely damaging effect on the population by causing certain defects in those with the gene. Possible defects include:
* Extreme aggression and cannibalism
* Extreme Listlessness causing passive suicide
* Mental retardation
* People become unwitting beacons for alien tracking and communication, like they become meat suits for foreign invaders to take over
---
## Minor Changes in Atmospheric and Soil Chemistry Change Pleasure Receptors...
Environmental factors could produce a variety of changes in our own bodies, since we are breathing in and out the air, water and soil around us.
### Fear of Losing Self Control...
Perhaps the future humans had a point in recent history where they devolved into a life of excesses, having a minor epoch as being a pleasure society, where the worst in humanity was brought out from lust. Perhaps this was triggered by a change in environment from the pheromones of old plant species that were recently uncovered by melting ice caps.
[Here's an article](http://planetsave.com/2013/05/29/melting-glaciers-reveal-400-year-old-plants-that-are-still-alive/) showing that some plant species have survived 400 years under ice.
### Loss of Pleasure Senses...
This could be a possibility due to changing environmental factors. But... I'm not scientist in this area and you'd need a brain keener than mine to explain if this is actually possible and how that would work. I imagine a virus or bacteria could do the trick. Maybe something happens to the symbiotic bacteria that naturally live inside us?
This would be a tough one though because currently, we need affection to survive our early years, and a lack of it has an extreme impact on a human's lifelong intelligence.
[Here's an article on the matter](http://www.ecswe.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/QOC2-Chapter3-Why-Love-Matters-How-Affection-Shapes-a-Babys-Brain-by-Sue-Gerhardt.pdf). If we were to survive this loss of affection, how different would we as humans appear?
This is tangential, but still related. It's the [30 Million Words Initiative](http://thirtymillionwords.org/), and it discusses how important communication is to developing a baby's brain.
---
[Answer]
Some attitudes and beliefs can be regarded as cultural, not just religious. For example, from the Wikipedia article on more or less atheist North Korea: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_North_Korea#Media_control_and_censorship>
>
> "Captain, sir, homosexuality is how I fulfill myself as a person. Since it does no harm to your esteemed government or esteemed nation, it is unfair for Jonathan and me to be prevented from doing something that is part of our private life."
>
>
> [The North Korean soldier responds,] "This is the territory of our republic, where people enjoy lives befitting human beings. On this soil none of that sort of activity will be tolerated."
>
>
> — [short story] "Snowstorm in Pyongyang", 2000
>
>
>
and
>
> The KCNA's article went on to state that gay marriage "can never be found in the DPRK boasting of the sound mentality and good morals, and homosexuality has become a target of public criticism even in Western countries, too. In fact, it is ridiculous for such gay [sic] to sponsor dealing with others' human rights issue."
>
>
>
[Answer]
Logic. Moral philosophers, even those in the employ of the Catholic Church, rarely base their arguments on appeal to authority, because you can't convince non-believers to adhere to your code of ethics if the only backing for it is "God said so".
In a future time dominated by atheism, certain actions may still be morally required (or morally forbidden) because of similar logical argument. These logical constructions generally fall into two camps; deontology (an act is inherently good or evil based on its adherence to or divergence from a rule system) and moral relativism (an act is only good or evil relative to the context in which the action occurs, such as the consequences of the action or the scope of the observer). A third, moral nihilism (no act is good or evil for any reason) is not useful to us here.
Let's consider polygamy. From a deontological standpoint, specifically Kantism, polygamy is wrong because it creates a logical contradiction if the practice were made universal. My ethics professor introduced the Kantian model to us using a word I will not repeat as such, but the process is to "Formulate", "Universalize", then "Check" for "Kantradictions" (contradictions).
So, let's formulate the rule: "It is morally acceptable for a man to marry as many wives as he wishes as long as one woman is married to one man" (the traditional definition of polygamy; polyamory is more flexible with regard to the number of men and women in the relationship). Then, we universalize it; every man marries as many women as he wants. Now, we check for contradictions. Well, the human species is roughly 50-50 with regard to gender (it varies regionally due to a number of factors, and globally the average is just slightly male-heavy at 101 men for every 100 women), so if every man got as many women as he wanted, and a woman could only be joined to one man, some men wouldn't get any women. Those men may want multiple women, and should, by the rule, be allowed to, but for practical reasons, they can't because there aren't enough to go around. This maxim making polygamy morally acceptable, then, creates a logical contradiction - if some men get more than one woman, other men who want one or more wives can't have any - and polygamy therefore must be morally *unacceptable*, instead favoring the more equitable "one woman per man" monogamy rule.
From a relativistic standpoint, such as utilitarianism, polygamy may be acceptable, on a case by case basis. The taking of more than one woman as a wife by a man should not cause more total harm than it does good. There's an "ethical calculus" involved here; we must weigh, for each case of a man wishing to marry an additional wife beyond his first, how it will affect the man's existing wife or wives, how it will affect any current or future suitors, and how it will affect the platonic relationships between this family unit and the rest of society. This calculus is difficult in the general case, but based on knowns, we can predict that we would still run into the "too few women" problem; If a woman is taken as a second or third wife by a man, it reduces the chances of another man in the community finding any wife at all. This would be a considerable long-term negative for the practice that *may* lead to a similar conclusion from the relativists as the deontologists.
Most other "sexual deviances" that are immoral on religious grounds could be argued against on more practical or purely logical grounds as well. Homosexuality could be discouraged as increasing the potential for disease and as being unable to produce an offspring genetically related to both of the partners. Extramarital sex can be determined to be immoral because it also increases the spread of disease, and produces children whose parents are unwilling or incapable of caring for it, thus increasing the burden on society as a whole. Incest produces undesirable genetic mutation. Sexual abuse of children causes a host of mental and developmental issues.
Virtually all of these logical arguments have a counterargument; in your world, the simplest hand-wave is that society as a whole finds any counterargument unconvincing. This could be due to some revelation between the present day and the future that convinces society as a whole that *cis*-heteromonogamy is the only way to go. For instance, the AIDS epidemic set gay rights back at least 20 years, and effectively muted the general sexual liberation that came out of the Summer of Love. If a disease even worse than AIDS, maybe some sexually-transmitted ebola-like virus with AIDS' vaccine resistance, were to ravage our near-future society, you might find public support for anything more sexually liberal than serial monogamy vaporizes in short order, as promiscuous people are many times more likely to catch the disease.
[Answer]
They view sex as simply the means to an end - procreation.
That's by far the easiest way to hand-wave away same-sex marriages, and has the added benefit of dealing with the fetish side as well - sex is to make babies, not for pleasure.
How did they get this viewpoint? Maybe in the past they had a society that didn't really care about who had sex with who (you did say it was basically a future Earth), but that led to a population explosion and ultimately led to there being more people than were sustainable. So there was a population decline, and people started to not have sex without the goal of reproduction. Alternatively, maybe over time orgasms stopped being a thing, so the fun was lost.
Polygamy is a bit different, but can be sort of explained the same way. If sex is only for reproduction, there's no point in a woman having sex with multiple men. After all, she's only getting pregnant once at a time. That doesn't preclude a man from having sex with multiple women, but maybe they're better at the whole equality thing than we are - a rule that applies to women has to apply to men too, so nobody gets multiple sexual partners.
Another rather far-out option is that there's very little genetic diversity, so once you find someone who is, genetically speaking, different enough from you to be safe, you stick with them because it's rare. Basically Iceland on steroids.
[Answer]
Want a simple approach?
They take obligations very seriously. If they have sex, they are legally committed to financial obligations for any offspring that might eventually result, which includes extended education and finding them a decent first job, say. The work sex represents is considered an obligation to society as a whole or just to family, but people will consider a person who shirks it reprehensible. Supporting the pregnant and nursing mother is part of the deal.
If this is **all** there was to it, there would be no particular stigma for non-procreative activity, but that could follow the pattern people are arguing here and now: namely, that all such obligations should be the same, irrespective of gender.
Alternately, they could simply have come to believe that the differences twixt sexes actually matter, and the differences should be supported legally. "Science says this is better; We evolved this way, so it makes sense." You don't have to posit that to be *true*, mind, to posit a society that believes it.
[Answer]
Perhaps the society has had a massive overpopulation crisis, like that in Soylent Green. In this situation, people who are having children would be hated, since they would be worsening the problem. Consequently, the acts that result in people churning out babies would be considered distasteful.
Additionally, perhaps a massive STD outbreak crippled a huge chunk of society several generations previously, and left the rest of society paranoid.
Perhaps being promiscuous is a negative stereotype of one of this culture's enemies. For example, in some parts of the US, people look at India with disgust
for their lack of family planning. It could be that depraved sex and childrearing has come to symbolize their enemy.
[Answer]
As Samuel said having conservative values about something and being religious have no direct connection. Technically there is a biological link between the two, or that is the current assumption AFAIK, with the same group of people being likely to both have conservative values and to be religious. But such people would be just as conservative about sexual values without any religion being available as they are with regular visits to the church. The rationale and slogans would differ, of course.
As for what the rationale would be, which I am guessing is what you want to know, there is an argument that deviant sexual practices are habit forming and potentially addictive with all the downsides that come with psychological addiction. I have no idea if it is actually true, but that isn't really important here.
Addictions erode self discipline and our ability to control our lives and actions. So if the society highly valued being responsible for your actions and acting responsible, they would naturally view anything even potentially addictive negatively. This would include not only drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, and gambling, but also things like excessive gaming and sexuality. Deviant or unusual sexuality has been considered as excessive or uncontrolled since ancient times. So such society would be sexually conservative.
[Answer]
People who have no irrational beliefs in supernatural can still have strong feelings on what's "right"! Whether it's how many dots to use to indicate omitted text, whether *this* shirt goes with *that* belt, how to prepare an omelet, what counts as "music", the most rational-minded STEM-career people among us can still have strong feelings to the point of there being a "right" thing.
A global society or species that doesn't have our own pitfalls with superstition (an adaptive advantage of finding false-positive patterns) might have some other psychology instead. Maybe "reason" and Science flourished because they are good at following formal sets of rules. So maybe they don't have conspiracy theories, but they have inherent problems with *change* to procedures even though they are capable of figuring out the world around them quite well.
If traditions had a purpose (in the sense of a relative adaptive advantage to those tribes that adopted it) or just accidentally hit on something in their history, they might have a real psychological problem with changing it. Even if "modern" society has gotten past that with science providing higher-level rules in the form of the scientific method (you are still following that higher law when you change the way physics is understood or adopt a new improved industrial process), things that are not hard science will fall back to old ways of thinking without the escape hatch.
[Answer]
Why do humans consider anything immoral? That's a complex question that has been debated by philosophers for thousands of years.
Why do religious people, specifically, say that something is immoral? Well, because the Bible or whatever sacred book they believe in says so. But why does this book say so? Did God just make up some totally arbitrary rules for no apparent reason?
As a Christian, I'd say no. I'd say that God gave us these rules because he created us and therefore he knows what's best for us. I'm reminded of a lecture I heard once where the speaker talked about how he had just bought a new printer for his computer, and it came with this instruction book with all sorts of rules that they expected him to follow! You must plug the network cable into this hole and you must put the ink cartridges in with the arrow pointing up and so on. Well, he said, this is MY printer. What gives them the right to tell me what I can do with MY printer? They're just trying to take away my fun. Etc.
Even if you don't believe in God -- as I assume from the phrasing of your question you don't -- religious people for thousands of years have been presenting logical arguments why various moral rules are good for people. There's no reason why an atheist could not find those logical arguments convincing. Even if you find some particular argument unconvincing, another atheist might find it convincing.
As to specific rules, I could easily rattle off reasons why so-called "traditional sexual morality" is a good idea. YOU may or may not find any of these convincing, but there are people who do.
No polygamy: As KeithS discusses, if a man can have more than one wife, than given biological realities, this means that some men will get no wife, creating sexually frustrated men. Women have to share a husband, meaning some will be neglected. Similarly if a woman can have more than one husband.
No homosexuality: It spreads AIDS. Generally, the biological purpose of sex organs is for the male to combine with the female. Any other practice is mis-using these organs, and thus inherently unproductive and dangerous. Like trying to walk on your hands: it may be appropriate in some odd cases (like if your legs are injured), but it's foolish to do it if you don't have to.
No BDSM: This is disrespectful and demeaning to the subject. Society should treat all people with dignity. It encourages thinking of others as toys for our amusement rather than as human beings worthy of respect.
No pornography: Society should encourage people to have real relationships with real human beings rather than sterile fantasies.
Etc. Let me repeat that my point here isn't to say that these arguments are irrefutable, and if we get off into a debate in the comments about their validity I'm sure the moderators will rush in to delete it. My point is simply to say that there are arguments for rules of sexual morality that are not inherently "religious", but are based on logic, human nature, biology, and so on.
[Answer]
### Societal pressures shape society. Religion is only one such pressure.
Most people who call themselves Christian don't practice [Levirate marriage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levirate_marriage) even though their holy book has this as one of its laws. Christianity preaches that the poor, the downtrodden, the socially outcast, they are just as important as everyone else - and Christian society for a very long time found ways to use Christianity to justify oppressing these people anyway.
If you actually look at ALL the passages in any religious text, you will find that most followers don't 100% agree with all of it. They don't 100% follow all of the precepts either. Which precepts tend to be followed is heavily influenced by other outside cultural pressures.
In other words, large parts of the world don't [exile people for homosexuality](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2018&version=NIV) anymore. Both because they don't exile people anymore, and because they don't think homosexuality is wrong at all. And even most places that still think homosexuality IS wrong don't [execute people](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2020%3A13&version=ESV) for it either.
Not even the most ultra-orthodox Jewish synagogues actually [execute people](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2031%3A15&version=ESV) for working on the Sabbath anymore.
## So why are these attitudes pervasive in our world
So, if society tends to be pious only to the extent it feels like it's getting something useful out of the arrangement, and tends to find reasons to avoid doing the stuff it would rather not ... Where did these attitudes actually come from?
Social pressures. Monogamy brings big benefits. It stems the spread of STI's. It smooths over one of the big causes of interpersonal conflict. It makes questionable paternity easy to resolve: an "illegitimate" child is simply disinherited, so if the Queen's child isn't also the King's (or there's even a reasonable chance it might not be), the one who claims to be the real father can't start a war of succession. It keeps birth rates high; women simply aren't allowed to do most other things, so of course they're going to start families.
If you dig hard enough, it's not hard to find examples of people falling back on arguments like these when they're losing the one about morality to people who say 'mind your own business'. Like the platform of the [Women's National Anti-Suffrage League](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_National_Anti-Suffrage_League) (1908-1918) - their arguments, recited in "Aims", talk almost exclusively about practical considerations.
[Answer]
**Atheism Which Leans That Way To Begin With**
*NOTE: The following is based strictly off an athiestic viewpoint that might answer the question. I'm not trying to start/cause some meta argument about atheism, and I'm not saying atheism MUST somehow lead to this. Nor are my comments about homosexuals/polygamists/cis people/etc to be taken as anything but "in universe" opinion*
Your society (per your question) either flat-out doesn't believe in god, or are resolute in their desire to Do Their Own Thing Regardless. But there still needs to be a PURPOSE in life. What is that purpose?
Well, without god/higher powers/afterlife you really only have science to look at for meaning. Looking at a human, we're really just a clump of cells trying to pass our DNA on to the next generation. Great. An atheistic society can work with that. Make Society Better For Your Offspring is a pretty standard overarching goal of society after all!
So your society has taken that "procreate and be successful for your offspring's sake" logic to it's maximum. Can't have polygamous relationships. Not enough men/women to go around, and you need both parents to raise kids, it's why humans are monogamous We evolved that way after all! Anyone NOT interested in a polygamous relationship (homosexual/asexual/what have you) obviously has some problem with their genetics/mental faculties, because it's a base desire of all right-thinking beings to pass on their genes. Likewise most of the "kinks" are products of people with psycological/genetic problems, because obviously wanting to cause/suffer pain or have sex with a person pretending to be an animal or cause/experience psychological torment of any kind (even something as "mild" as "that hooker taking her sweet time undressing") isn't something a right-functioning human would ever want to experience.
Now there are Obvious and Glaring problems with the above, but if ALL your basing your moral code on is "how to make sure as many people as possible achieve the goal of passing there genes successfully as possible to the next generation" your society gets warped real quick. As pointed out in the comments this is actually a MUCH more common problem in avowed atheist societies than free or religious ones. In the sense that literally every avowed atheist society (USSR, Communist China, et al) has had rather severe restrictions on non-traditional-family lifestyles. ( see [THIS] link on the subject in the USSR.[1](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8666753/) Meanwhile your religious-based nations and your "free practice of religion" nations are very much a mixed bag. Granted we've had a much smaller sample set of atheistic societies, but at the least it shows your concept is more likely to be the rule rather than the exception.
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Perhaps consider Teleology in the sexual realm? Teleology is the study of purposes of things. What is the end or purpose of sex? If you look at what bodies are designed for and follow that you'd come up with a fairly conservative outlook on sexual norms.
For instance, all the biological systems (respiratory, digestive, neurological, circulatory) are complete within a single human body EXCEPT the sexual reproductive system. That is incomplete and requires another body- but not just any other body; but a complimentary body. Therefore, you can argue that from a purpose driven standpoint, sex is designed to between a man and a woman.
Also, what is the purpose of that system? The fullest result of the completion of the system is a baby; hence you could argue that the only correct, non-deviant sexual act is that which has the possibility of children. (That doesn't mean that every act must have that as its goal, but rather you have to have the two pieces of the reproductive system complimenting and completing one another.
While one could argue that sex can be used for other things (pleasure, bonding), even those other aims are actually parts of the reproductive system that are geared towards having children: The pleasure to entice us to engage in something that could require great sacrifice; and the bonding to mold two people into a formidable team that can raise the young.
Here you could suggest monogamy as the norm by the bonding and raising of children.
Since science has yet to find any other genders; and we know that those who watch porn actually alter their brains (neuroplasticity) so that they come to want, and desire, to act out what they watch; you could use those ideas to argue that they are part of the source of deviancy.
This would be possible to get to by looking at the natural law and the natural world. Instances in nature that suggest other deviant acts as ok may actually just be instances of perversity or depravity in nature. the 'appeal to nature' is actually a fallacy in philosophy; but you can look at the order that nature has set up.
Note\*
You may have to enshrine this idea of not going against the design and nature of something into your culture as atheism may have a tendency to believe there is no good or bad and thus there is a temptation to tinker.. You'll have to find a way to get around that.
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Similar to those mentioned above, have diseases be a reason for sexual conservatism to take root even without belief in God. The coronavirus [can be found in sexual fluids](https://www.umms.org/coronavirus/what-to-know/managing-medical-conditions/coronavirus-risk/sex#:%7E:text=Coronavirus%20and%20Safe%20Sex&text=Coronaviruses%20are%20transmitted%20primarily%20through,be%20transmitted%20through%20sexual%20fluids.) like semen, so the disease from our current pandemic can be spread by intercourse. This conservative attitude could come if you have multiple diseases with a similar level of lethality as COVID-19 that can spread through sexual contact (and even basic physical contact). Basically, having illnesses that can spread from sex and even basic physical contact that regularly evolve to be lethal to the point that not practicing safe sex and doing sexual contact as much as possible could lead to a lot of death/hospitalization.
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Open mindedness and religion are not necessarily antagonists. It may seem so because many vocal religious people antagonize LGBT people and vice-versa. This is something that comes and goes in human history, in different places and times. Sadly it has been too common (and too bloody) for millennia, but consider that some religions other than Christianity often embrace transexuality or same-sex relationships. Also consider that LGBT people have been victims of atheists sometimes, depending on their ideals - in Cuba under Castro, LGBT were sent to correctional labor camps!
People who have hatred in their hearts will hate no matter what. Religion is a common way for them to rationalize their hatred now, but take that away and they will find another excuse why they must hate whomever it is that they hate.
I hope that the world one day will do as Ozzy suggests in *Crazy Train*: *"maybe it's not too late / to learn how to love / and forget how to hate"*. As for your fictional world, the TL;DR explanation is haters gonna hate.
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Atheism runs into some basic problems:
1. Are humans qualitatively different than other creatures? Why? Against what ultimate, unappealable, unchallengeable absolute do you justify this? Whether you realize it or not, that absolute is part of your religion.
If humans are not qualitatively different than other creatures, then whatever occurs among other animals should be considered any different if done by homo sapiens, including killing.
2. What is morality? How do you determine whether anything has non-zero morality? Again, against what absolute do you justify how you make such a determination? And again, therein one finds your religion.
KeithS proposes deontology -- but who has the authority to set up a "rule system" that binds anyone else involuntarily? And then "relativism" -- but relative to what absolute? Why is whatever it is relative to worthy of consideration in and of itself?
Whether you like it or not. you have two choices: the moral absolute exists or it doesn't. Science cannot provide a moral absolute; its moral dimension is 0. Thus atheism is in the quandary not only that morality does not exist, but that it cannot exist. You may like or not like something, but that does not make it "right" or "wrong" or "good" or "evil."
When people think they outgrow God, they become god.
Even apart from all that, we can consider the following:
Marriage would still be male + female for the most basic of reasons: the pattern of the biological unit of sexual reproduction. (Even Albania in its officially atheist time under Hoxha still had this limit.) Not that every union must result in reproduction, but that is the pattern. Apart from that pattern, there is no reason to limit marriage to any number. If marriage can be any number, then what does it really mean? This is an issue that, in twenty years of asking this question, not one defender of same-sex marriage has even answered.
Multiple sexual partners: I could give a long list of the benefits to society if sex were within marriage only, including reducing STDs dramatically, reducing poverty (single parenthood has a much higher correlation to poverty than race), and raising better-behaved kids.
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In a fantasy world I am making someone insanely powerful is knocked into space and lands on Mars. He can't just jump back because there are people who can push him off course and he would be going through space forever.
Instead he calculates the right time and area and punches Mars so hard it sets it on a crash course for earth, the punch also destroys most of it so only the iron core arrives. It goes at a speed that it would hit the earth in about 300 years at the shortest distance, so lets just say about 21kmph.
Disregarding where the power comes from, is it possible? I am assuming that realistically, the energy to do that focused on one point wouldn't push it all in one direction and would instead blow the planet up so its impossible for it to get to the earth in any big pieces.
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Can I paraphrase Nietzsche while quoting Newton's third law of dynamics?
>
> When you punch the abyss, the abyss punches you too
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What is the difference between jumping and punching? When you jump you basically kick the ground so hard that your body is sent up by the reaction. Same would hold for this punching case.
But let's look at some numbers, just for the fun of it: Mars orbital velocity is around 25 km/s, and its mass is $6.4 \cdot 10^{24}$ kg, therefore its momentum is $M^{'}\_{Mars}\times v^{'}\_{Mars} =$$160 \cdot 10^{27}$ kgm/s.
Your hero wants to punch it away at 21 kmh, or 5.9 m/s. It would need to impart therefore $M\_{Mars}\times v\_{Mars} =$$37.8 \cdot 10^{24}$ kgm/s. Assuming a punch duration of 0.1 s, your hero would be subject to a force of $F = M\_{Mars}\times v\_{Mars}/\Delta t =$$37.8 \cdot 10^{25}$ N. Even if his mass was 1000 kg (a bulky guy, for sure) he would be accelerating at $F/m=$ $37.8 \cdot 10^{22} \ m/s^2$, or $10^{21}$ gee.
This means that, in a Newtonian universe ignoring relativity effects, in 1 s he would be $s=1/2at^2=$$10^{22}$ meters from the punching point. For a reference, 1 AU is $10^{11}$ meters.
If you want the relativistic effects, look at [Adrian's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/217700/30492).
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There's this temptation to consider the change in Mars' kinetic energy as totally transferred into our hero kinetic energy. But, you see, this is not to be *that* simple. Yes, the total energy is conserved, but Mars gets smashed in the process and a lot of energy gets lost as heat, kinetic energy of the Mars fragments flying mad through the solar system and beyond.
Fortunately, the momentum does conserve in the smashing and since the reckless hero remains intact, he'll end taking the variation of momentum Mars got rid of. There's a problem here as well, since the momentum is a vector, so the direction in which the hero smashes Mars will matter. To simplify, lets say what he chose to do is to punch Mars straight in the face; I mean that one face that happened to be in the direction of Mars' way on its orbit.
As a result, Mars speed drops from 25km/s on 21km/s (the correct way to put it is: "the speed of Mars' barycenter etc" since now Mars is in tatters, but never mind). The variation of its momentum is $\Delta p\_{Mars} = 160⋅{10}^{27} kg⋅m/s$ and this will be the momentum $p$ of the dumb hero after he's done the deed.
The relativistic impulse
$$p = \frac{m\_0⋅v}{\sqrt{1-{(\frac{v}{c})}^2}} = \frac{m\_0⋅c⋅\frac{v}{c}}{\sqrt{1-{(\frac{v}{c})}^2}}$$
We're interested in $\frac{v}{c}$ so square up everything
$$p^2 = \frac{{(m\_0⋅c)}^2⋅(\frac{v}{c})^2}{1-{(\frac{v}{c})}^2}$$
Introduce the notation of $\alpha = \frac{m\_0⋅c}{p}$ and get:
$$\frac{1}{\alpha^2} = \frac{(\frac{v}{c})^2}{1-{(\frac{v}{c})}^2}$$ and thus
$$\frac{v}{c} = \sqrt{\frac{1}{1+{\alpha}^2}}$$
Now, you see, there a big problem, because a hero of any mass less than a planetary body will make $\alpha$ so small, not even its mother will recognize it.
I mean, look, I'll go way further than [L.Dutch](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/217687/26061) and set the idiot hero's mass to $10^9kg$ - that's as much mass as the water in one cubic kilometer. Or, if you prefer it in more comprehensible units, that's as much water as in 400 Olympic sizes swimming pools. Be the hero as much beyond pathological obese as he is, still makes:
$$\alpha = 299792458m/s⋅10^9kg/160⋅10^{27}kg⋅m/s = 1.8737029⋅10^{-12}$$
And the problem that we have: any reasonable calculator will tell us that
$$\frac{v}{c} = \frac{1}{1+(1.8737029⋅10^{-12})^2} = 1$$
for all practical purposes. But what the heck, I'm far from reasonable, so I simple **need** to know how many $9$ after that $0.$ can I get. So, Maxima to the rescue for a Taylor expansion ($ev(taylor(sqrt(1/(1+x^2)),x,0,6), keepfloat)$ if you really want to know), so
$$\frac{v}{c} \approx 1-\frac{\alpha^2}{2}+\frac{3⋅\alpha^4}{8}-\frac{5⋅\alpha^6}{16}+...$$
If I'm discarding all the terms with a power higher or equal to 4, I should have at least 46 exact digits ($(1.8737029⋅10^{-12})^4 = 1.2325454⋅10^{-47}$).
So $$\frac{v}{c} \approx 1 - \frac{(1.8737029⋅10^{-12})^2}{2} = 0.99999999999999999999999...$$ - that's 23 pure unadulterated $9$s after that $0.$ (because $\frac{(1.8737029⋅10^{-12})^2}{2} = 1.7553813⋅10^{-24}$, so at least 23 exact digits, with a possible discrepancy on the 24'th decimal place).
Now, I can get to sleep
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Even if Mars were to be solid granite, or diamond for that matter, there is no material with sufficient stiffness to resist deformation when subject to a nearly infinite force. It would be like punching a cloud.
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It is not possible for someone to "punch" Mars to change course, because **each force produces an equal force in the opposite direction**. Means if there was a punch hard enough to do so, the opposite force would let your protagonist "jump" with the same energy, making him fly in the opposite direction much faster, probably near the speed of light! And this not even closely touching on mechanics of materials reacting to such forces.
Thus, it would require some kind of mass that can be ejected in the opposite direction. Then, it would be possible to move mars, even though it would require ridiculous amount of energy, which to produce would take many millenia with current or near-future human technology.
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Apart from the core being liquid and the many other mechanical issues with punching Mars to move it: Mars and Earth are both orbiting the sun, and the sun's gravity makes it impossible to just go in a straight line that hits Earth after 300 years (after all, it's enough to swing Earth in a complete circle 300 times in that time). At most, the remains of Mars hit Earth after 8-9 months. Short of that, they just end up in an elliptical orbit that doesn't even cross Earth's orbit.
That elliptical orbit may be unstable enough to eventually hit Earth due to the gravitational perturbations of Earth and the other planets, but this is extremely sensitive to the exact starting conditions, and thousands or millions of years might be a more realistic timescale.
In any case, it won't hit at 21 km/h, it'll hit at somewhat over 40000 km/h. That's the escape velocity for Earth's surface, and also the impact velocity for anything falling to Earth from a large distance. Is it his intention to convert Earth into a molten ball of rock with a slightly larger iron-nickel core? Because that's about what would happen.
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I'm following Christopher James Huff direction of thinking.
1. Mars and Earth orbit the Sun. A single blow can't put Mars into path where it would gradually decrease its distance to Earth for 300 years.
2. One could attempt to put Mars onto an eccentric orbit intersecting with Earth's orbit. That would require a knock of velocity of at last **2500 km/h** (calculations below), thus quite some more than 21 km/h. Mars would then intersect the Earth's orbit in less than a year. Depending on the initial positions of the planets on their orbits the collision could occur during the first intersection or one of the further ones. If however they would not collide for 300 years, the Earth's orbit could be still perturbed by the gravitational force of Mars, which by itself could have catastrophic results. Predicting the details would require a complex simulation.
3. If you want to postpone the collision for 300 years, I would propose to knock Mars *away* from the Sun, so it would cross Neptune's orbit and come back after 300 years to hit the Earth. One still would need to take into account possible interactions of Mars with the outer planets and perform very precise calculations, but that might be easier than keeping Mars just next to the Earth without a collision for 300 years. The knock velocity to the planet would need to exceed **11500 km/h** so even more. An advantage of this method is that depending on the planets position the recoil may put the protagonist into virtually any spot in the solar system you want, including the Earth or its Moon.
4. As the others pointed out, if the protagonist transfers momentum to the planet, it receives the same momentum in the opposite direction. For 2500 km/h knock on Mars a 100kg protagonist would receive energy of 16·10¹⁵ GeV per each nucleus of his body. This is a lot. That's way more than any energy ever produced in laboratory or observed in nature. That's a hypothesized energy of Grand Unification (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_unification_energy>). The act of knocking would be extremely violent. Complete disintegration of any molecular and nuclear structures, production of any known and perhaps unknown particles, maybe even black holes.
5. Some suggested that the knock would destroy the planet. Maybe. The energy of the knock described in point 2 is 39·10³⁰ J, while Mars binding energy is perhaps 5·10³⁰ J. Some matter would follow in the desired direction. It's difficult for me to speculate how exactly it would turn out.
6. Once the protagonist lands on another target planet or moon, it transfers its momentum to it, causing similar level of destruction and orbital perturbation as that done to Mars. As the others pointed out, it would violently interact with any matter on its way, and even with cosmic background (see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greisen%E2%80%93Zatsepin%E2%80%93Kuzmin_limit>).
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Maths. I'm sorry if there are any mistakes, but note we're in the regime where adding or deleting a zero wouldn't change the conclusions.
2. **Knocking Mars towards the Earth** The total (potential and kinetic) energy of a planet with mass *m* orbiting around a star with mass *M* is
$$E = -G\frac{Mm}{2a},$$
where *a* is the semi-major axis.
Assuming Mars following a circular orbit, $a=R\_\mathrm{Mars}$ (distance between Mars and the Sun), $$E\_\mathrm{Mars} = -187·10^{30} \mathrm{J}.$$
For elliptic orbit between the present Mars and Earth's orbits $a = (R\_\mathrm{Mars} + R\_\mathrm{Earth})/2$, $$E\_\mathrm{Mars-Earth} = -226·10^{30} \mathrm{J}. $$
The knock corresponds to change of the energy by $$\Delta E = E\_\mathrm{Mars-Earth} - E\_\mathrm{Mars} = -39·10^{30} \mathrm{J}.$$ As the potential energy remains constant, $\Delta E$ corresponds to change of the kinetic energy only.
The orbital velocity of Mars is $v\_\mathrm{Mars} = 86430$ km/h, it's initial kinetic energy is $E\_\mathrm{k} = mv\_\mathrm{Mars}^{2}/2$, and final kinetic energy (just after the knock) is
$$E\_\mathrm{k} + \Delta{E} = m\frac{(v\_\mathrm{Mars} + \Delta v)^{2}}{2}.$$
The knock must change Mars velocity by
$$\Delta v = \sqrt{v\_\mathrm{Mars}^{2} + \frac{2\Delta E}{m}} - v\_\mathrm{Mars} = -\boldsymbol{2526 \mathrm{km/h}}$$
Note I assume a knock parallel to the Mars present velocity. A knock in another direction would require larger knock velocity.
3. **Knocking Mars away from the Earth**
Orbital period *T* can be calculated as:
$$T^2 = \frac{4\pi^2a^3}{GM}$$
If we want to kick Mars away from the Sun, and come back in 300 years and hit the Earth, we seek an orbit with T ≈ 300 years, and $a = (R\_\mathrm{Earth} + R\_2)/2$. We obtain
$$R\_2 = \sqrt[3]{\frac{2T^2GM}{\pi^2}} - R\_\mathrm{Earth} = 13·10^{9} \mathrm{km}.$$
For comparison, Neptune orbit is 30·10⁹ km.
Nice reference for orbital formulae:
<https://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/152.mf1i.spring02/EllipticOrbits.htm>
4. **Impact on the protagonist** (and generally the energy considered during the knock).
The knock changes Mars momentum by
$$|\Delta p| = |m\cdot\Delta v| = 450·10^{24} \mathrm{kg·m·s}^{-1}.$$
The protagonist gains the same momentum in the opposite direction. The mass of the human body, or the matter around us in general, is dominated by the mass of the nucleons. Let's assume the hero weighs $m\_\mathrm{H} = 100$ kg. There are $n$ nucleons in his body, each weighing $m\_\mathrm{N} \approx 0.938$ GeV/c² and $n = m\_\mathrm{H}/m\_\mathrm{N}$.
Since $|\Delta p| = \gamma m\_\mathrm{H} c$ we can calculate momentum per nucleon
$$\frac{|\Delta p|}{n\cdot c} = 16·10^{15} \mathrm{GeV/c}.$$
Since we're in ultra relativistic regime, energy equals the momentum. $E = \boldsymbol{16·10^{15} \mathrm{GeV}}$ (this is energy of each nucleon in the protagonist body).
5. **Destruction of Mars**
Binding energy of a uniform sphere is
$$U=-\frac{3GM^2}{5R} = \boldsymbol{4.8·10^{30} \mathrm{J}}$$
for Mars. Planets are not uniform spheres, they have denser core, so the binding energy is higher, but we are clearly in the energy range where destruction of the planet can happen.
Ref: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_binding_energy>
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Lets look at the implications of Adrian Colomitchi's answer:
The guy goes flying off exceedingly close to lightspeed. The fist doing the punching is moving even faster. Note that at this point are talking about energies that make the beam of the LHC look like the blackness between the stars in comparison.
The matter he strikes is turned into a sea of ultra-energetic particles which will spread the energy about. The kinetic energy still ends up transferred into the planet but very spectacularly. Unfortunately, the energy thus delivered is higher than the binding energy of Mars. The planet is shattered, there isn't going to be a core heading for Earth.
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I'm designing an alien society with a low population density. I intend for them to have 1 book per topic per place; books update annually as new information arises. I call them books, but they can even be large epigraphs and are stored in optimal conditions (e.g., in a cool, dry, and dark room where they are made and treated with care and cured of mould and insects regularly with little air but many preserving chemicals). If your method requires conditions that aren't described here, tell me.
All books are on/in:
* Hard drives and the Internet, which are rewritten frequently to prevent data corruption and loss
* 1 national library
* Archives (e.g., underground in bunkers)
* Possibly off-planet on extraterrestrial missions as necessary, and
* Citizens' houses.
**However**, despite updates, if I still want them to be preserved forever or for as long as possible, what substance do I use? **Note** that I suspend disbelief within reason as long as a substance may *theoretically* be inscribed upon and fit into a single planet and preferably a single city, so aluminium, graphene, sapphires, etc. are options. My reasoning is that my species is focused on scientific advancement and probably won't want to be tasked with repairing broken books after each decade.
**Note on Physics:** I don't care about Heat Death. I just want the best book materials within this universe. If that means replacing them every few centuries, so be it, but I want replacement to happen as little as possible.
**Edit:** Upon prompting, I have changed the word "epigraphies" to "epigraphs," which I mention to avoid confusion. Someone else has changed the wording and formatting a little bit before I could find the time to do it, which I would like to thank them for. If any of this impacts your answer, bear it in mind.
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On a living planet, nothing lasts forever. Especially if you're limiting the number of iterations of each book to one. One book per topic (e.g. Shakespeare) per place (is that household / city / county / nation / planet?) is asking for disaster, and even more disaster as you move from left to right along that scheme!
That said, there are several time tested possibilities:
# Clay Tablets
The "[Assyrian National Library](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Ashurbanipal)", sponsored by Emperor Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, is the oldest surviving royal library known, dating to 700BC or thereabouts. Clay is easy to write in and once fired, the tablets are sturdy. They're a pain in the backside to deal with for texts of any great length or complexity. Can last thousands of years if well cared for, or if abandoned and forgotten for millennia.
# Stone
Egyptians carved literature into stone. Like clay it's durable, but is not indestructible. Like clay, it's a pain to maintain lengthy texts. Can last myriades to millions of years if protected from erosion
# Papyrus, Paper & Vellum
Well known to ancients & moderns alike. Easy to make & convenient to write on. Durable and long lasting. If you're people are repairing books every decade, then I'd say they are either overly abusive towards books or else don't know to bind books. A book printed on good rag paper and well bound can last several centuries without needing more than minor repairs. When well maintained, books of this sort can last many centuries: expect somewhere between 13 and 20 centuries. All these materials will eventually decay, even in the best of conservatories.
# Metal
This is probably the most durable option. Books have been written on gold pages, the oldest of which are in the region of [2500+ years old](https://wiganlanebooks.co.uk/blog/interesting/10-of-the-oldest-known-surviving-books-in-the-world/). Copper / bronze, stainless steel, gold, platinum: any of these should last indefinitely under stable atmospheric conditions.
# To Digitise or Not to Digitise?
Even the best [digital media](https://blog.storagecraft.com/data-storage-lifespan/) will find it difficult to compete with well curated books. Digital media are also heavily reliant on external factors such as electricity, computers, operating systems, stable cultures & societies just in order to be accessed & processed. Whether it's magnetic or battery supported or flash memory, digital media are not a good idea for truly long term archival of a culture's most important data.
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# Conclusion:
I'd recommend that the culture's most precious data --- scripture, literature, mythology, folklore, poetry and the like --- be preserved on metal plates. And also on high quality paper books bound in solid & protective hard covers.
All rapidly changing data --- scientific & technical developments, rapid advances in medicine, changes in law --- should be committed to okay quality paper.
Ephemeral data --- accounts, receipts, bills, notes and so forth --- these don't need to be archived at all and can be kept on cheap paper.
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# Fused Quartz Etched by Femtosecond Laser
Some articles on this technique [here](http://live.iop-pp01.agh.sleek.net/2016/05/19/optical-memory-enters-5d-realm/), [here](http://spie.org/news/6365-eternal-5d-data-storage-via-ultrafast-laser-writing-in-glass) and [here](https://spie.org/about-spie/press-room/press-releases/background-on-billion-year-5d-storage-breakthrough-published-by-spie?SSO=1), and a wikipedia article with more references [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage). According to that first article,
>
> The current data-writing system is not much different from that found in CD or DVD drives. Ultrashort laser pulses with a wavelength of 1030 nm are focused inside a spinning glass disc and the position, power and polarization of each pulse are simultaneously modulated depending on the encoded information – leaving a trace of pits with different optical characteristics. Reading the data is more complicated because it requires a microscope-based birefringence measurement system, but we are now working on how to solve this problem.
>
>
>
The [original paper](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.033901) says that they estimate how long the data will last by looking observed decay rate of the nanovoids (the 'pits' made by the laser as mentioned above) at "several annealing temperatures in the range from 1173 to 1373 K", and then using the [Arrhenius equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenius_equation) to extrapolate the decay rate at other temperatures. In fig. 4 they present the following chart showing the "thermally activated decay time" $\tau$ (which they mention is equal to $1 / k$, where $k$ is the decay rate in the Arrhenius equation) as a function of the temperature $T$:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fafC6.jpg)
So, though one would have to preserve the fused quartz records in a place where they will be extremely well-protected from shattering (as fused quartz is a type of glass), the time that would pass before the information would degrade due to ordinary thermal decay is extremely long--longer than the current age of the universe (13.8 billion years) at a temperature of 462 K (189 C) or less, and $3 \* 10^{20}$ years at a room temperature of 303 K (30 C).
# More generally, ever-increasing number of backups are needed for arbitrarily long timespans
Ultimately if you are concerned about your civilization preserving the information indefinitely on cosmological timescales (as suggested by your comment about assuming they can avoid heat death and proton decay), you will want the civilization to periodically make new backups and store them in different locations throughout the universe, so that the probability that *all* records of some information are destroyed is continually decreasing over time. If the probability of all records of some information getting destroyed *isn't* decreasing this way, if you wait long enough it becomes a virtual certainty you'll lose that information. Say in a given million-year timespan the probability is $q$ that the civilization loses some item of information due to all records of it getting destroyed, so the probability the information is preserved in that timespan is $(1 - q)$. Then naturally if the probability is same in the next million years the total probability the information will be preserved for 2 million years will be $(1 - q)\*(1 - q) = (1 - q)^2$, if the probability remains constant for 3 million years the probability the information is preserved in that time is $(1 - q)^3$, and so forth. No matter how close $(1 - q)$ is to 1, there's going to be some sufficiently large exponent $N$ such that $(1 - q)^N$ becomes arbitrarily small.
On the other hand, suppose the probability the information is preserved in the first million years is still $(1 - q)$ but the probability it's preserved in the next million year span is $(1 - q^2)$ and the probability it's preserved in the next million year span after that is $(1 - q^3)$ and so forth. So here the probability the information is preserved for 3 million years is $(1 - q^1)\*(1 - q^2)\*(1 - q^3) = \prod\_{k=1}^{3} (1 - q^k)$, using [Pi notation](https://mathmaine.com/2018/03/04/pi-notation/) for products akin to [Sigma notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summation#Capital-sigma_notation) for sums. Then if that pattern continues indefinitely the probability the information is preserved approaches a nonzero limit $\prod\_{k=1}^{\infty} (1 - q^k)$, which according to [this mathematica page](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/q-PochhammerSymbol.html) is given by the Euler function $\phi (q)$, and the page also shows a graph of its value for different values of $q$. So this limit can be thought of as the probability the information is preserved forever, assuming a universe where a civilization surviving forever is physically possible (I talked about that question in [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/47271/298)), and where they are able to create an ever-decreasing probability of losing all copies of some record by the method of ever-increasing numbers of backups.
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## Plain old ink on vellum scrolls.
You want books that can be added to and that don't need replacing very often. They don't have to "live forever" as your title implies, because you say "my species is focussed upon scientific advancement and probably won't want to be tasked with repairing broken books after each decade." So repairing every couple hundred years and replacing every (half) millennium should work.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/w3FYj.jpg)
This is a closeup of the actual Torah scroll at my synagogue. It's written with a [natural ink](https://scrolls4all.org/scrolls/kosher-ink/) designed for preservation on deerskin vellum (deerskin is very unusual but allowed). The scroll was written by hand in the 1700's and used regularly by a synagogue in Europe until stolen by the Nazis (who murdered all the residents of the village) and put in a warehouse for decades.
It was donated to a nearby synagogue likely in the 1960's, then transferred to us. It lives in a cabinet that has no special environmental controls. The scroll consists of sections of vellum stitched together then rolled up on wooden rollers. It is tied shut with a ribbon then covered with a cloth and stored upright.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V7O0p.jpg)
This scroll is handled regularly. Many synagogues pull out their scrolls and read them several times a week (they often have several scrolls they rotate), others less often. Any given scroll might be exposed to air and movement a couple dozen times a year. We use implements to touch the writing so our hands do not leave oil and dirt, and the scrolls are handled with care, but basically there isn't a lot of special treatment. We never wear gloves or anything like that.
There is some maintenance involved, but nothing major. The [scrolls should be cleaned](https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/95866/cleaning-a-torah-scroll) every few years. The covers get replaced now and then. I'm not sure if our wooden rollers are original (probably not) but every 100 years wouldn't be unreasonable for replacing them (your society could use a more durable material, like metal).
So this scroll which is around 250 years old is definitely fading and has a couple of stains and the vellum is eroding a bit on the edges. But it's still in use and is completely readable.
For a non-sacred scroll, go ahead and use a printer to apply the ink (there's nothing special about doing it by hand in terms of preservation). If you want to add to the book, just sew on a new panel (on the ends or even in the middle...panels do get resewn if needed for maintenance so this is very doable).
Will it last a millennium? Perhaps not. But half a millennium is very likely, baring disaster or poor caretaking. [Pieces of scrolls almost 2000 years old](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls) are still readable, but going that long does deteriorate them, so I wouldn't go longer than 500 years (less is safer but perhaps not necessary).
So what do you need:
* Basic reasonable care in avoiding finger touching, using a cover, keeping it dry, etc.
* A light cleaning and check over every 5 years or so.
* Replace the cover once or thrice every 100 years.
* Consider replacing wooden rollers every 100-200 years, or use another material.
* Sew in new panels as needed.
* Reprint/write every 500 years or so.
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To recycle one of my [other answers](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/148628/62341), have a read up on the [Rosetta Disk](http://rosettaproject.org/). This is an information storage system intended to survive at least 10000 years and still be consumably without seious technology.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FBfJi.jpg)
Basically, you use techniques derived from [semiconductor fabrication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_device_fabrication) to inscribe information onto a physically robust substrate that can then be read back via visible light or electron microscopy. You can aid this process with mechanical and electronic devices. Information density is limited, but its toughness and longevity is much higher than any electronic storage mechanism. Whenever you do an update, just mark your old copies as obsolete (and make sure your new copy is correctly versioned and dated so you don't read old stuff by accident!).
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# Grey Goo
Sure it looks like a book. It feels like paper. But it is actually a colony of self-replicating, self-repairing, self-updating nanites. They are not sentient, and are designed in such a way that they can't run wild and consume the whole planet or awaken.
Any damage is repaired by repairing the individual drones, or disassembling and building new ones.
When I say self-updating, I simply mean the knowledge they contain and display. It maybe automatic, or may be through a specific process. It maybe that the nanites are able to translate words written on them in ink/pencil into their database, probably comparing and validating it.
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# Rock and Bone
We have good bone fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago, and other fossils are even older (up to almost half a billion years for some bacteria).
Your books are fossils encased in cubes made of bedrock. They are read through ultraprecise echography.
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So I became quite interested in your question recently and I ran across this interesting wikipedia article:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage>
It is about optical data storage, it uses femtosecond lasers to etch nanostructures into fused quartz crystal or fused silica glass. This techniques uses multiple layers etched within the crystal so that just a coin about an inch in diameter can hold 360 terabytes.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2PJTY.png)
According to the article the crystal will last without decay for about 13.8 billion years, and is easily readable with a microscope and a polarizer. The fact that it is 5 dimensional means that if you view it from different angles different information would show up.
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Alternatively, you could have a self-reproducing encoding e.g. put the information in otherwise unused blocks of DNA in a popular house pet.
There was also a novel (the title of which escapes me) in which an artificial intelligence backed itself up using steganography to encode data in elaborate and beautiful tattoos which it generated for enthusiastic human volunteers.
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Not really an hard answer, more like some food for thought.
You are asking a technical question about material science but you need a different solution for your problem.
The main problem you will face is on how future generations will treat the writing, not if the writing material should persist times. We have [perfectly preserved writings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish_tablet) (3500BC) from the sumerians because nobody cared to loot or destroy them. On the other side, we have widespread destructions of historical artefacts (Worth reading: [2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatshepsut#%22Hatshepsut_Problem%22), [3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae), [4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria#Burning_by_Julius_Caesar), [5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_heritage_by_ISIL), [6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_robbery#Effects_on_archaeology_around_the_world) and [7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_heritage)). Making an indestructible book by better writing material won't help as future brings better destruction tools.
I suggest using cheap, but durable materials, as [printed ceramics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_of_Mankind#Ceramic_data_carriers). Be wary on digital formats, as those can be quite short-living. Perhaps in 100 years nobody understands .tiff or .doc anymore. Plaintext, as it is the easiest format, could work. Copy and distribute them over several, globaly distributed archives. Organize your archive in such a way that it will be maintained and future information ammended.
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Store the data digitally in DNA.
DNA is [incredibly dense](https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-this-is-worlds-first-automated-dna-data-storage-retrieval-system/) from an information point-of-view, and lasts a very long time.
In the natural world it has a [half-life of 500-ish years](https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/half-life-of-dna-revealed-40361), so with forward error correction and [other preservation techniques](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dna-storage/dna-data-storage-could-last-thousands-of-years-idUSKCN0WO1DX) could be expected to be 100% retrieved for *at the least* thousands of years. Much longer, if you allow for some degradation.
That's the cutting edge for human technology, available right now. Add in some advanced alien tech and you could easily imagine adding a few more orders of magnitude. How long is long enough? Seems like you could reach hundreds of millions of years without too much of a stretch.
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Potshards are highly durable. A potshard is a fragment of pottery found in an archaeological excavation. In many cases an entire cup, bowl, amphora, etc. is found in pieces, crushed by the weight of material on top of it, and is glued back together and displayed in a museum.
So if a way to manufacture potshards (instead of entire pots) of the right size and shape to resist further breakage is developed, they can than be printed with data. Presumably a printing press can be developed with plates curved in the same way as the potshards and the pieces of type can be positioned in the plate similarly to regular printer procedures.
Possibly the press will print on the surface of the potshard with ink of some kind and it will then be glazed to protect the ink.
Or possibly the potshard will be still soft and the type will press into the soft clay and make depressions for the letters and numbers. Then the potshard will be fired to harden it and make the letter & number shaped depressions permanent. Possibly material of a highly contrasting color will be poured into the depressions to make them more visible.
Since all the potshards will manufactured with the same sizes and the same degree of curvature, they should be simple to store. And if there is a disaster they should still be legible millennia later if found by archaeologists.
Of course if the society is advanced enough to have digital storage methods, it will have more advanced methods of creating potshard like "pages" of writing. And may other possible materials, not just pottery, for the archival writing.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Could medieval people produce automatic firearms if they had access to the schematics?](/questions/10610/could-medieval-people-produce-automatic-firearms-if-they-had-access-to-the-schem)
(11 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
Could light machine guns such as the [Madsen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madsen_machine_gun) be made during the 14th century? And since materials may be scarce only a few would be produced for use by a single soldier in a unit. Lets say their understanding of metallurgy back then was already advanced, can they create cartridges for the guns?
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* 14th century is a time, not a place. 14th century China, 14th century Ottoman empire, 14th century Muscovy, 14th century France and 14th century Inca empire are not at all the same thing.
* Let's see what they didn't have in the 14th century *anywhere*. No steel in quantity, and no capability of making steel with consistent properties. No reliable steel springs. No propellant suitable for machine guns. No reliable primers. No notion of mass production -- a Madsen machine gun fires 450 rounds per minute.
* Most importantly, they did not have the capability of expressing the dimensions of the parts and ammunition with anything near the required accuracy. I'm not speaking of *making* them; they literally could not *express* them. The size of an inch varied greatly from place to place, and from generation to generation.
* So you want a (presumably Western European) 14th century with the capability to make steel in quantity, with machine tools suitable for machining steel, with advanced chemistry to make propellants and primers, with uniform units of measurement, and with an industrial base capable of mass production. All right, but then *what has this fantasy in common with the 14th century*? How do you intend to reconcile late 19th century industrial base with a Late Middle Ages social structure?
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# No.
Not in the way that you're looking for, at least.
Put simply, cartridge fed weapons aren't products of metallurgy, they're products of precision and mass manufacturing. In something like an AR15 (or any rotating-bolt action, really), if the round is slightly out of tolerance and doesn't fit in the chamber properly, the weapon can explode. For a less catastrophic example, if the feed lips on a metal magazine are slightly bent out of shape, the weapon will constantly misfeed and jam - not something suited for a machine gun.
Any firearm built in the last hundred years operates on the following assumption: Every round fed to it is exactly the same. They're wholly reliant upon mass and precise manufacturing of ammunition. A few thousandths of an inch here, or slightly more or less powder there, and the weapon will lock up, stovepipe, squib, double feed, detonate, or otherwise fail in its intended purpose.
The level of precision to mass-manufacture cartridges is simply not possible with dark-ages craftsmanship.
# You're gonna have to figure out something else
Here's an idea - what about some kind of gatling-flintlock? A hand-cranked mess of gears and pulleys that loads ball and powder into a barrel before passing it over a candle to fire. Not exactly an infantry weapon, but I could see something like it atop a horse drawn carriage.
You could also dream up a breech-loaded musket, fed with a lead ball and pre-measured bags of powder. By no means a modern rifle, but it'd still be significantly quicker to load than firearms of the day. Draw inspiration from a modern bolt-action, perhaps.
Look at modern guns and ask yourself "How would I load marbles and sand into this?" That should help you design your medieval wonder-weapon.
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Depending on the needs of your story, you might consider...
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/djRYS.jpg)
The volley gun: A bunch of single-shot guns joined together. According to [HyperWar](http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ref/MG/I/MG-1.html#2) designs like this appeared as early as 1339, and that drawing is by Leonardo da Vinci. You can see [a modern reproduction of such a gun being fired here](https://youtu.be/0mKVdMNcG48?t=146).
Historically, volley guns would fire all their rounds at once, but there's no reason you shouldn't have a handle you turn or a special fuse to fire them one after another.
The advantage of this is you can take real historical gun technology from the era you like, and just say a bunch were joined together.
The downsides are probably obvious: Weight and reload time. You're not going to see soldiers carrying around a 20-barrel gun any time soon! But if you only need short bursts of fire and don't mind needing a horse and road to transport it around, it could be an option.
There's also a design of gun where multiple bullets are loaded into the barrel at once, then fired in succession, like a roman candle - a so called ['superposed load' which Wikipedia says](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superposed_load) was first described in 1558. Never really caught on as it's difficult to make it work at all, let alone make it easy to reload in the field, but if your plot calls for occasional hails of bullets and you don't mind applying some artistic license, you could claim the problems were resolved because your fictional world has different powder chemistry or something.
Alternately, if all you want is battlefield weapons that will give a squad of men a chance of being wiped out in seconds by a handheld weapon, you might consider the [hand grenade (震天雷, 1044 AD)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenade#Early_grenades) or the [flamethrower ('greek fire', 672 AD)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamethrower#Origins) (although I don't know how easily portable the latter was in pressurised form)
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To make a machine gun you need to have already developer [breech-loading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breechloader).
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> Although breech-loading firearms were developed as far back as the late 14th century in Burgundy, breech-loading became more successful with improvements in precision engineering and machining in the 19th century.
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> The main challenge for developers of breech-loading firearms was sealing the breech. This was eventually solved for smaller firearms by the development of the self-contained metallic cartridge. For firearms too large to use cartridges, the problem was solved by the development of the interrupted screw.
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Also in the 14th century you would hardly have the manufacturing control capabilities to ensure narrow enough production tolerances, needed for producing the bullets and the mechanical parts. And you would also lack the needed good quality materials.
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This all depends on what you mean by a machine gun. The heart of a light machine gun is its ability to use recoil energy to load the next bullet from a collection of bullets. However, there are other ways to achieve that rapid firing effect. A 19th century double action revolver handgun can be fired rapidly by using the non-aiming hand to fan the hammer into the cocked position. An expert can shoot that revolver faster than a modern semi-automatic handgun. Also, the auto-loading feature relies on a certain range of pressure, so a revolver can actually be chambered for more powerful (i.e. faster and more lethal) hand-made rounds than a semi-automatic handgun.
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The real problem is the ammo, machine guns in general are relatively simple and people were able to make them out of some pipes in their back yards, so any society that can make metal springs and tubes theoretically can make a machine gun.
However, it would never occur to anyone as a practical idea unless there is an industrial scale production of cartridges, as they have to be exactly the same size-wise to load properly, so making them by hand is highly unlikely to be practical. Even if you have a large group of very precise workers there is still the issue of propellant. Smokeless powder was only invented in late 1800s and required a number of other chemical advancements to become possible. Before that black powder was used. Black powder is pretty unusable for automatic weapon, as it will gunk up your weapon real quick, and fill the area with so much smoke you wont see anything after a few shots.
So the ammunition is the limiting factor not the weapon itself
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no, machine guns were invented in 1884. If you want to learn more about the machine gun I highly suggest
<https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/firearms>
or
<http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/technique/gun-timeline/>
it is about the history of firearms.
Although machine guns weren't invented gunpowder was available.
1364 is when the first use of a fire arm was recorded
1380 is when handguns were available across europe
1400 matchlock gun
1498 rifling principle is discovered
1509 invention of wheel lock
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No, but.
There were guns built in the 17th century, which would have been (barely) with the capability of 14th century (Western European) handgonne makers, that approximated a short burst from an automatic weapon.
I speak, of course, of the "volley gun". These consisted of a number of gun barrels mounted parallel to one another (in what amounted to a sturdy rack, generally on a wheeled cart due to weight) -- anywhere from six to thirty-two barrels that I know of, though there may have been guns with more. The barrels were all loaded with powder and shot (either a single ball or small shot), and a powder train in a trough was used to ignited the barrels in rapid sequence. This amounted to nearly an hour of loading time for a single burst of fire that took anywhere from two to perhaps ten seconds (depending how fast your powder train burned).
Volley guns were effective, but limited -- they laid down a withering fire, similar in effect to grape shot from a cannon or a canister round, but with less spread. Tactically, they'd be treated as a very heavy shotgun. The limitation was, they were very much a "fire and forget" weapon unless used in specific applications, like defending a wall, where the enemy couldn't just overrun the gun after it fired. They didn't catch on because grape shot, canister, and shrapnel were at least as good and much faster to load once cannon were common.
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All questions about "could they have had X in medieval time". Nicely forgets one important bit of secret sauce.
Before the enlightement, we had not discovered that we didnt know most of the things. Simply in the worldwiew was that everything important was known. While some uninportant things were left unknown, the big picture was more or less there. They didnt have the mindset needed for R&D, they didnt have the social structure for it either.
It took us a very long time to come to diseminate the attitude that we can do things better if we try. Even today the social fabric is more in the way of changes than the actual changes themselves.
So no they could not have done it. They hadnt invented standardisation, tolerances, interchangeability and the modern metal lathe. With those inventions the might have been able to but then interchangeable parts was a Huge invention.
Its not that they could only maintain a few guns they couldnt supply the gunner with ammo since they would need thousands of peoples yearly output to make the ammo for a single battle.
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The question title states 'could machine guns be produced in the 14th century' it then goes on to confound itself in the body of text. A modern weapon could not be made by a 14th century nation.
Casting (and thus relative uniformity of production) existed well before the Industrial Revolution though, certainly using different moulds would produce different results, but ammunition could be sorted by hand post-production readily enough, it wouldn't even require any expertise.
One does not need exact measurements nor modern reliability to create a 'machine gun.'
Steel is not required to produce good springs.
Steel is not required to make cartridges.
Steel is not required to produce guns.
Perfectly reliable charges are not required to make good weaponry.
Automation was a known concept, numerous examples exist of it, from clockwork mechanisms to spring powered saws.
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> From Wikipedia - "Up to the 15th century, clockwork was driven by water, weights, or other roundabout, relatively primitive means, but in 1430 a clock was presented to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, that was driven by a spring."
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That is not to say the metal spring was not invented until the 1430
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> From Wikipedia Torsion springs consisting of twisted ropes or sinew, were used to store potential energy to power several types of ancient weapons; including the Greek ballista and the Roman scorpio and catapults like the onager.
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<https://www.ideaconnection.com/right-brain-workouts/00346-who-invented-the-toothed-gear.html>
1836 Colt and his revolver. Such a miraculous invention.. with the use of a spring and a ratchet..
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiFGKWPSaas>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycyj76VPOtc>
The mechanical concepts (and even the parts) required to build a machine gun had already been demonstrated long before the creation of what people recognise as the first automated weaponry.
I think the only part of a machine gun that could not have been readily be designed by a 14th century artificer is ammunition of any reliability, but that needn't kill the project if a part of the automation process expelled failed or partially failed cartridges without relying on the power provided by a spent round.
there is no need for an automatic weapon to fire quickly in order for it to be classed as a machine gun, nor is a rof of 400 or more rounds a minute in any way feasible imo.
A 1300s machine gun would probably make use of a secondary, manually empowered spring prior to contact to act as a guarantor of motion, any failure to fire being catastrophic(which is likely a primary reason why the gatling gun wasn't automatic)
Something like a maxim, but instead of striking a cap a fuse is lit in the rear of the casing with a delay charge, arranged such that perhaps cartridges are lit with a fuse of ~1s.
That is, the fuse is lit prior to the the rotational point of chambering and firing, the last 3 rotational points are inside a secondary (ignition) chamber aligned on the ammunition's arc such that debris from the fuse's ignition can be cleaned out in a separate, external part. This 'external' arc is open to the air forwards, allowing any accidental explosion or pre-ignition due to dust build-up that may occur to be directed away from the user and his allies(if not quite constituting a second barrel)
Depending on the design, the automatic motion normally chambering a round could be aligned to, say, every fourth or fifth (or less or more depending upon tolerances) fire a spring loaded wad instead of a bullet. There is after all no reason why a gun need be cleaned from the muzzle end of a breach-loaded weapon. (And the wad does not need so much strength as to hit the enemy, just to leave the barrel)
Don't really know how light such a contraption would be.
More from wikipedia -"The grouped barrel concept had been explored by inventors since the 18th century, but poor engineering and the lack of a unitary cartridge made previous designs unsuccessful. The initial Gatling gun design used self-contained, reloadable steel cylinders with a chamber holding a ball and black-powder charge, and a percussion cap on one end. As the barrels rotated, these steel cylinders dropped into place, were fired, and were then ejected from the gun. The innovative features of the Gatling gun were its independent firing mechanism for each barrel and the simultaneous action of the locks, barrels, carrier and breech.
The ammunition that Gatling eventually implemented was a paper cartridge style round charged with black powder and primed with a percussion cap. because self-contained brass cartridges were not yet fully developed and available. The shells were gravity-fed into the breech through a hopper or simple box "magazine" with an unsprung gravity follower on top of the gun. Each barrel had its own firing mechanism."
So we have here an existing weapon that uses things that were available in the 14th century, paper, brass, gunpowder, ratchets, springs, primers, multi-phase automation.
Mass production, precision engineering, chemical uniformity and quality assurance processes do not make a machine gun, they just make good machine guns.
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There is a webnovel about that, entirely. The synopsis is all about bringing modern weapons tech to middle-age-like civ. For doing that there were some pre-requisites:
* The protagonist has memories of the present day, also, he is a mechanical engineer that also is weapon-addicted.
* He is a prince, not the first one in the sucession line
* He uses his knowledge of chemistry, and the local alchemists to start researching black powder and a way to mass produce it
* He start by making muskeeters (start small)
* Since he is a prince, he chose the measurement units as measures of his own body, and they were accepted
* He also start to change the mindset of people and educate them so that he can use them in factories
* Mostly, with his previous knowledge, he researches most of things that is missing
* He does all of this in some years
* The setting is in a fantasy world pretty similar to ours, so there are witches, and he uses their power to countermeasure some tech problems, such as precision in steelmaking
The webnovel is called Release that Witch, and there is a lot of technical terms in this webnovel, everything is well explained and there are entire chapters about the technological development.
Sorry about my bad english/mispelling, I hope this helps.
[Answer]
You specifically mention cartridges
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> Paper cartridges have been in use for nearly as long as hand-held
> firearms, with a number of sources dating their use back to the late
> 14th century. Historians note their use by soldiers of Christian I in
> 1586, while the Dresden museum has evidence dating their use to 1591,
> and Capo Bianco writes in 1597 that paper cartridges had long been in
> use by Neapolitan soldiers.
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_cartridge>
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No. Manufacturing precision and consistency as well as metallurgy were not up to scratch. I could also see problems with raw materials and quality control.
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[
Follow-Up to this question: [How can the wealthy prevent the illegal propagation of their genetic code?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/209174/how-can-the-wealthy-prevent-the-illegal-propagation-of-their-genetic-code)
The rich and fabulous in today's world have the significant problem of how to protect their wealth. Technology has advanced to the point in which the genetic structure of an individual can be copied and reproduced multiple times. This is often done to create persons with their DNA to pose as heirs to a vast fortune, or even clones to replace the original. Many lawsuits have been directed toward rich dynasties, demanding large sums of money due to them being blood related. Occasionally, these lawsuits have been successful, cleaning those families out and sending them to the poor house. To counteract this, the 1% have taken to making all offspring sterile at birth. This leads to future offspring being created in labs with reproductive technology such as artificial wombs. In this way, the only recognized offspring of a dynasty are created artificially instead of naturally.
As time goes on and more people become comfortable with the technology, it becomes more widespread. This is a serious problem, because it prevents it from remaining a staple of the rich and famous and puts it into the hands of the poor, unwashed masses. This puts too much power in the hands of the unworthy, threatening the power structure that we have been steadily building for generations. Artificial wombs need to be marketed to the wealthy while at the same time kept out of the hands of the masses. The difficulty is in convincing a large group of people that this is in their best interest. As this is the age of the internet, the masses can see the benefits of this technology in plain sight, making this hard to justify. Protests and hatred can ensue, putting society at risk of rebellion. Keeping costs high are also a problem, since when technology advances in a capitalist system, it ultimately becomes cheaper to replicate, opening the floodgates to regular people.
I need to ensure that artificial wombs stay in the hands of certain people without causing the headache of an outraged and angry public, creating this two-tier system. How can I convince large numbers of people to avoid reproductive technology while marketing its benefits to the top class at the same time?
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## The global healthcare system needs some american freedom
If you live in the USA and you belong to the masses, chances are healthcare is so expensive that you might die for want of money. [Last data I had on healthcare crowdsourcing showed that:](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/01/the-perverse-logic-of-gofundme-health-care)
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> A third of the money raised on GoFundMe in 2017 was for medical expenses. This isn’t surprising, given that the United States has the highest over-all health-care costs in the developed world. Since 2008, health-insurance deductibles have increased eight times as quickly as wages.
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Feel bad yet? [Look at the costs of Insulin for patients around the world](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-insulin-by-country). Just one example (all prices per milliliter and in USD):
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> **Humulin (Short-Acting Insulin)**
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> * United States: 39.63
> * Ghana: 2.30
> * Pakistan: 0.50
> * India: 0.36
> * Rwanda: 0.10
> * United Kingdom: 0.00
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And then there was that time in 2015 when [a massive \*\*\*\*\*\*\* bought the rights to an anti-malarial drug and hiked the price per dose from 13.50 USD to 750 USD overnight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli#Daraprim_price_hike_controversy). Oh, that medication was also used for HIV-relates toxoplasmosis too.
So you see, artificial wombs are covered by healthcare. As long as the healthcare system has FREEDOM, it will naturally be out of reach for the poor.
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Also an artificial womb has a killswitch you can use if you wish to abort. That will cause the pro-life half of the population to sporadically attack, and violently so, any clinics that do try to offer artificial wombs to the poor. The clinics for the rich have guards armed with fully automatic weapons, so the pro-life people leave those alone (they can't afford a [154,000.00 USD medical bill per person for gunshot wounds](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9183471/)).
[Answer]
I can see the headlines now...
## "Artificial Wombs Unmasked: Could the Government be implanting tracking chips in YOUR children?"
## "Previously-unpublished internal reports reveal corner-cutting during testing of Artificial Womb technology"
Just bribe a few newspapers to start spreading bad rumors about whatever technology you want to suppress, perhaps with a few papers written by (also bribed, or perhaps among the wealthy) eminent scientists on how the technology is unsafe or did not go through proper testing procedures.
You can always count on conspiracy theories and gossip to discourage people from logical paths. üòÑ
One last one...
## "New study finds children from Artificial Wombs susceptible to brainwashing from flat-earthers"
[Answer]
Religious beliefs seem to be pretty effective at keeping people away from technology and certain technological applications.
Notorious examples are certain groups still using horse drawn carts or other groups refusing blood transfusion out of religion based objections.
If your holy book states that physical intercourse is the only legit way to conceive, the masses will follow.
[Answer]
**Identity frame challenge**
Although it might be bad if there are people cloning your DNA, the artificial womb offers many other advantages. Genetic engineering can help overcome diseases and eventually will be used for 'designer babies'. Humans that are created with specific abilities and such.
Even without that, the whole question revolves around identity. Who is this person and is this person related. The artificial womb can actually help here. DNA is a nice way of identifying people and offspring, but if that is compromised you look for a different method. If it can be copied or you make designer babies this is severely compromised.
We've been trying to establish identity since we started to build societies. We have cards and numbers and profiles. Why not use such things to add an identity layer?
Rich people will place their own identity chips into people, allowing them to track their official offspring. This can both be a common practice or rich people only. If a clone misses this chip or the chip doesn't comform to the rich person's tag, it is regarded as a fake.
**Conclusion**
Growing with artificial wombs is done on purpose. That means we can use that step to add a non-DNA method for identification. Add a chip or something similar into the body with identification information, including official records when and where it was created. That means that even if you clone the person and the chip, you can see in the records when the human was created and via the DNA you can check the age. If things do not match up, it will not be regarded as your own.
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If you want to keep it out of the hands of the poor you just have to make sure it never becomes cheap to use. Whether this is due to some factor in the operation of the device itself or due to manipulation is up to you.
### Artificial gestation is inherently expensive
In order to gestate a human you need a lot of interesting hormones, nutrients and so on, all carefully balanced and so on. You'll need a source of compatible immune system components to ensure the fetus is born with a functional immune system. Synthetic amniotic fluid is devilishly difficult to create, and might require complete replacement on a regular basis. The exchange membranes on your artificial placenta are complex pieces of nano-engineering, possible involving some interesting meta-materials, and they need to be constantly maintained. Nutrients have to be carefully mixed and infused into the system. And don't forget the cost of the control equipment, nor the cost of running it.
All told the cost of artificial gestation might naturally be in the millions already, and that's just running costs. It doesn't include maintenance fees, setup costs and a number of other, less obvious costs.
And no, it's not covered by your health insurance.
### Source materials are extremely rare
The various consumables that are required for the gestation process are the end result of many, many supply chains. Nutrients are synthetically created proteins, amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates... and a ton of vitamins and minerals. Any one of the components for the nutrient solution could be hard to acquire for some reason, and it's likely that you're going to have multiple thin and expensive supply lines for them.
### Source materials are ethically questionable
You need white blood cells, which must be sourced from a genetically compatible donor with a healthy immune system. And you need to harvest them often. You also need a number of hormones that are not available outside the body of a pregnant human female. Perhaps you have to use actual amniotic fluid from the same place.
But extracting that amniotic fluid significantly endangers the donor's own pregnancy, and harvesting the pregnancy hormones is likely to result in developmental issues for the donor's child... if it survives. There are only two real ways to get your hands on those materials: buy them from the donor, or harvest them from unwilling subjects. Of course all the information on the process talks about proprietary synthesis processes, because you don't want the world to know what sort of monster you really are.
### Sabotage the supply chains
If none of the above works for you, you can mess with the supply chains. Somewhere in the network of operations required to get your amniotic fluid, white cells, nutrients and hormones there are bound to be a few choke points. Choke them to the point that only a trickle of the required materials are even being produced, and most of the production is ultimately required for your artificial wombs.
Of course there's nothing saying you can't make a little profit in the process. Find a process that competes with the devices for a particular resource, then promote the hell out of it. Make it something that makes people happy, or has some significant social value. Your goal is to have it absorb most of the raw materials, leaving fewer for your gestation devices. Anyone attempting to set up their own competing womb would have to compete with two or more existing systems for resources. A thorny situation indeed.
### Protect the process
Assuming that it exists in your world, the patent system might be a significant impediment. Buy up every relevant patent you can get your hands on, through shell and puppet companies of course. Regulate them, charge additional licensing fees, sue anyone who attempts to use your IP.
In short, use all the tactics of corporate warfare, up to and including the covert ones: blackmail, intimidation, bribery, smearing... the normal, ruthless tools of big business.
### Make it horrifically unsafe
Make some intentional monsters and use them as advertising to show the dangers of the technology. Advertise some false numbers for how often it fails. Generally run an anti-PC campaign for the whole thing. Make sure that the public knows that this is a terribly risky system that only a few people are able to afford.
Yes, you can lie if you want to.
### Retain some troubleshooting services
They're not mercenaries, they're professionals who get stuff done. Stuff like sneaking into warehouses and research facilities to retrieve or destroy important components. After all, if the machines never work they're going too stop trying.
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There are bound to be other ideas that we haven't seen in the answers. Hopefully some of these ideas are of use.
[Answer]
Propaganda.
Religion has successfully been used for millennia to suppress technological advances that were considered "against" the deity of that particular religion, often because said advances would endanger said religion's self-appointed enforcers on the mortal plane.
More recently, social media has been used to convince people that voting for a man who is an obvious liar and fraud is the smart thing to do, and that a vaccination that can literally save their lives is something to be avoided.
[Answer]
**It is not possible to stop the spread of this technology.**
Even with the crazy US healthcare system new technologies eventually become available to the general public. Not only have technologies become cheaper, but health providers offer various financing options to attract more customers.
If people cannot afford to pay in full, artificial womb clinics will offer credits with monthly payments. And people will agree, because it is about the future of their children and because all the rich people do it.
Do not underestimate human greed (technology providers) and vanity (consumers).
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Some small groups may favour 'natural' reproduction for various reasons. But the majority will follow the elites.
[Answer]
## My Momma taught me that if you work hard and do good at your job, one day your boss can clone himself.
In case you missed it, within the last month or two, a couple unnamed billionaires shot themselves to various extreme altitudes, becoming the first civilians in what might variously be considered space. Me being a big fan of space travel, I was expecting a lot people, especially people like me, to think this was really cool. Imagine my surprise when a hefty chunk of people, including fellow space nuts, instead started weaponizing this momentous achievement to attack them for being rich.
Generally speaking, a lot of poor people do not trust the rich (whether this is good or bad is an entirely separate conversation that I hope not to have here). This seems like something that could very easily be weaponized back against the poor to encourage them not to pursue tech that the media (controlled by the rich) convinces the poor is ostentatious, vain, against the natural order. Get that ball rolling, and you might not be able to stop it even if you wanted to.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Why would sorcerers not use guns? [closed]](/questions/118332/why-would-sorcerers-not-use-guns)
(8 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
The world that I'm building is set in a fantasy world that is reminiscent of the early 20th century. Magic involves [the traditional eight schools](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/69f2kq/5eart_a_short_n_sweet_take_on_the_8_schools_of/) and anyone can become a magician if they choose to dedicate enough study and practice to it. Also, magitech--which only mages can use--exists alongside mundane technology.
Some ideas for mages using a gun could include enchanting them to fire infinite bullets (which when I think about it, would probably not be legal in my setting), putting spells on bullets to guide themselves to their targets, and imbuing them with elemental damage. But the question that I have is how would mages find guns practical when they could already sling around fireballs and such?
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Most settings with magic involve some kind of restriction or cost for that magic, to prevent mages from simply using magic constantly to do anything. Sometimes it requires sacrifice, or mages have a limited mana pool that must be recharged by ritual or rest, or even just needing to clear one's mind and focus to cast properly, or it might take time for a person to pronounce the words to a spell. In some settings a spell can fizzle or worse, catastrophically misfire.
Presumably a gun would not have these same limitations, and using magic to empower or guide a material projectile would be easier or less costly than attacking with magic directly, since the magic is *doing* less. As long as the cost for using magic to mimic a gunshot is higher than just using the gun itself, there will be a reason for mages to carry guns.
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You ask
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> how would mages find guns practical when they could already sling around fireballs and such?
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Well, in our world we have guns, too, but sometimes people use blades or even steel wires for scopes where the guns could still be used? Why?
**Detectability and circumstances**
There are tactical situation where using a certain type of weapons is not advisable. If you are a hit-man and want to kill your target intruding a highly guarded location, the loud bang of a weapon firing might make the job more difficult, so a blade would be preferable.
Same goes for magic: if there are ways to spot the usage of magic, using guns might be a good way to pass unnoticed, or even fool the opponent into believing something false (A is using guns, thus no risk of fireballs), which can be a tactical advantage.
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**Why do modern soldiers still use guns, when they have rocket launchers available?** This should answer your question regarding guns versus fireballs.
Even if the guns aren't enchanted in any way, there are still many situations where they are superior to magic spells.
1. In a self-defense scenario, or if the target is very close, you might hurt yourself (or innocent bystanders) too with your spell. Be it fire, or electricity, or ice, or anything else, if you are too close, you could be also affected.
2. Firearms are faster. In most settings, magic needs fancy hand motions and the uttering of magic words. In the time one says the first syllable of a spell, someone with a gun [can draw it from the holster and shoot](https://youtu.be/44Sy3-KKrqc?t=12). *"Avada Ke-" BANG-BANG-BANG!*
3. If your magic uses wands, at longer distances guns are way more accurate. Wands don't have sights, and even if they did, guns have better grips so you can hold them in a way the sights are aligned with your eyes. Unless you make your wands with gun-style grips and put sights on them... but if casting spells needs fancy waving motions with your wand, then you have a problem.
4. If magic exhausts you, or otherwise uses up a limited supply of "mana", you might need something to defend yourself with in the case you run out of magic. For example, in Vancian Magic (used in most roleplaying settings), even a very skilled wizard can cast at most a few dozen spells per day. You can carry much more bullets than that, and you don't need a full night's rest to pick up more bullets.
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**Perhaps in your world magic is easy to see coming and not terribly hard to protect against, if you're trained to do so.**
Bullets are a lot harder to protect against because they're very fast and hard to see and physically quite powerful. Some magical worlds allow people with the proper training to put up bulletproof shields, but this may not be possible (or easy) in your world.
**Fire is messy, bullets are clean(er).**
While a bullet can go astray (if one doesn't use magic to guide it), it won't cause harm to anything unless it hits it directly. Secondary effects are rare (like a bullet hits something hard enough to make it fall down). Generally, your bullet either hits your target or it doesn't.
Fire though...fire can *light things on fire*. If you miss with your fireball, you can cause a lot of destruction. The curtains catch on fire and the house goes up in flame. The fireball lands in a vacant lot that needs to be weed whacked and, an hour later, the neighborhood is on fire. Maybe your magic can stop it, maybe you're too busy fighting the person you just failed to kill.
Even if your fireball hits its target, you can cause a lot of destruction. The purpose of a fireball is to catch something on fire. It's hard to limit its scope. Then you have ash and embers and it's a big expensive and dangerous mess.
**Who needs that hassle? Just get a nice pistol or shotgun and go take care of business.**
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A justification I haven't seen mentioned yet, but which I have seen used by Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files fame:
# Magic is dangerous to use
In the Dresdenverse, magic is powerful, but also dangerous. You need decades of training before you can use it, and you need special incantations you don't know the meaning of to properly channel it without risking damaging your own body. Magic also is hard to control and can easily backfire. You need bulky tools to make effective use of it, like a staff or a wand or a blasting rod, tools that you can't always use because of space restrictions. It has a lot of unwanted effects on anything which involves electricity, so you can't use it in a place with a lot of electronics or when electronics are needed for basic survival needs. It is also is either massive overkill or woefully underpowered for most enemies, depending on the enemy type. Many creatures are immune, others have heavy resistance, and others cause side effects when attacked with magic.
Because of that, Harry carries around a gun and knows how to use it.
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Power, time, effort & detection/defense.
Power: Whatever powers your spells, that might be limited somehow. Certain number of spells per day, certain amount of magical energy and so on. Basically, a gun can be a sort of "hold-out blaster." Note that cost doesn't have to be higher to use magic, just of a different "denomination."
Time: Executing a spell may take a little time--hand gestures, magic words.
Effort: Spells may take concentration.
Detection/defense: If there's a lot of mage vs. mage espionage and such, a mundane piece of killing might actually be better. It doesn't show as magic, and if defenses are built more against magical attacks, a gun might be best.
BONUS: Magic can be unpredictable + there may be anti-magic or wild magic geographic areas that mean a gun is a better idea.
& as Scott said to his dad in Austin Powers "Why don't we just shoot him now?" <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xAMYHJYesM> Same point Cyn made in another post, why worry about an unnessarily exotic death when you can just shoot them.
It's actually pretty telling that the question "Why don't wizards just use guns?" has come up in the past on these boards. You're asking sort of the opposite question (though related) of why they would bother to. It actually doesn't make sense that they don't...Most of Harry Potter's dilemmas could probably been solved by sneaking up on Voldie and shooting him in the head.
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Look at your traditional eight schools.
If you're a **specialist** in "protecting stuff" or "knowing all the stuff", you probably don't know many offensive spells. If you're an enchanter or illusionist, you **might** have spells that can hide you from an attacker, or trick an enemy into walking into traffic, but these depend heavily on the situation.
And fireballs cause a lot of collateral damage.
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Brian McClellan in his "Powder Mage Trilogy", does exactly this.
His powder-mages derive their power from snorting/inhaling the gunpowder, it enhances their ability's and perception and gives them an edge battle.
In use they use it to ignite gunpowder from afar, shoot multiple bullets (Not modern cartridges, packed gunpowder and lead balls) from the same gun, enhance their range, and guide bullets to their intended target. They can also use it to locate their enemy by sensing the gunpowder they carry (If they have any).
As for where it could fit in, Magic such as fireballs may only be able to be launched so far; they may also drain the energy of the mage whilst it is in effect. It depend on what restrictions you have used for your mages.
EDIT: Don't forget that Firearms are primarily a tool, rather than a weapon. As such it could be used in the same manner as a staff or focus. A smart mage specializing in Evocation could create a small explosion behind the projectile, eliminating the need for gun powder. He could imbue the projectiles with Necromancy, the corpse created buy the projectile rising to attack its comrades whilst the mage spectates at a distance, smiling gleefully at the chaos he has created.
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Maybe areas have an anti-magic shield, where someone can't cast a spell. But they could shoot a gun from outside the region (if the guns or bullets needs to be magically enhanced) or inside the shield if it's a non-magic gun. Or another varient is they can't cast a spell in a place without setting off a magic alarm but they could cast a spell yesterday when in their own home and "store" it in the bullet. Then when they fire then gun today they technically haven't cast a spell so won't be detected.
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**Mana, juice, energy or whatever you call it**
Mana is the power source of a mage. As they exert their will on the nature, they deplete their mana source. Casting larger projectiles and hurling them forwards such as fireball will deplete their power faster. They better use their energy to imbue an already semi-deadly weapon to conserve their mana for the rest of the day.
**Additional boost**
A bullet is quite a weapon, it has long range, it is quite deadly. Maybe the fireball of your mage is also as useful. But the combination is far more deadlier. Due to the construction imperfections, early firearms was not very accurate. Guided bullets will be as deadly as someone can get. Armor penetration is quite useful too.
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Guns could enhance the ability to spellcast (especially if you have magitech) in many ways. Don't just think about enchanting the gun to be a better gun, think about the gun enhancing the magic.
You could store spells or potions in bullets that take a long time to prepare. The gun could then deliver the magic/potion to the target, if the bullet is faster then the spell would be (or if the spell needs to touch the enemy).
[Answer]
I think it would depend on how easily magic is learned. In many settings, magic is a highly specialised skill that not every magician is highly gifted at. You say:
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> anyone can become a magician if they choose to dedicate enough study and practice to it.
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But one could say the same for almost any subject like science or mathematics, that doesn't make all of us incredibly skilled at these things. Some people devote their entire lives to these practices and still won't have a comprehensive knowledge of these areas.
Comparatively, weapons may take significantly less training to use and wield. This means that any combat wizard, regardless of specialty or training, could at the very least have enough proficiency in firearms to defend themselves if cornered or surprised (in the same way that longbowmen would still carry daggers because there may be occasions where their primary weapon may be more unwieldy).
[Answer]
You haven't really told us HOW magic works in your world. Does casting a spell take time? does it take resources(physical or mental)? How does enchanting work? Do spell auto hit or do they require precise aiming?
here are a few scenarios:
magic doesn't require resources and is instant: no real use for guns unless the bullets are enchanted with something the mage can't himself cast
magic doesn't require resources and is NOT instant: guns obviously have great use here, they let you react much more quickly
magic requires resources or the number of different spell you can memorize in a day is limited: enchanted guns are great here for several reasons, they help you avoid having to carry a large amount of ingredients like pearls a perfect feather, metal shavings, blood and other goo. If the the number of spells you have are limited than pre-enchanting a vast amount of ammunition is a fantastic force multiplier, especially if you have automatic weapons, can you imagine even completely non harmful bullets enchanted with even a small splash effect in a machine gun, now imagine that with fireballs....?
Aiming is also an issue you should consider, rifles are relatively easy to aim, you can get all sort of attachments that make life easier like scopes and range finders etc... how do mages aim in your setting? just point at a spot? does he have to form some sort of line? just focus on the spot? if its more complicated than vaguely pointing, then guns are probably a good choice, especially for longer ranges
also consider them a status symbol, an ornate pistol to symbolize that the mage is rich enough to have others enchant his bullets for him so he doesn't have to memorize how to cast fireball 5 times every morning
A gun is basically a multipurpose rechargeable wand with near instant activation, the pistol/rifle shape is really just cosmetic/thematic
[Answer]
There are lots of reasons.
**Energy:** You don't have enough energy to imbue your bullet with fire and shoot it simultaneously, so you let the gun do the shooting.
**Skill:** You're still getting the hang of magic, and it's a dangerous place, OK?
**Reliability:** You come home from a tiring day of work shooting lightning at batteries at the magitech power plant, and get mugged on the street while your power is drained.
**Convenience:** Magic is hard, guns are easy. All I need is to shoot a bullet at something.
**Simplicity:** Oh, crap, I'm being attacked! Ok, what was the 'shoot projectile' spell again? Did it start with 'Alacanamen' or 'Sephicus?' Do I raise my right index finger or my left pinky? Screw it, out comes the pistol.
**Specialization:** Dammit, Jim, I'm a healer, not a battle mage!
**Time:** Point-and-shoot is faster than getting out the grimoire.
**One-size-fits-all:** Most soldiers in the army aren't expert mages, so we just give guns to everyone.
[Answer]
Assuming using magic takes some time in form of moving hands, speaking some words etc. there would be one obvious reason to use guns instead of (or rather as an alternative to) magic:
## Bullets are fast
Much faster than most of the magic you could use. In the time it takes you to even swing your arm to unleash an attack, someone with a gun could have shoot you a couple of times (Or, assuming a sniper rifle, even killed you with one shot). When you cannot keep up with the speed of bullets, even the most superior attacking/defending/repelling spell is utterly useless, since you get no time to cast it.
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[Question]
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Key word in the title is *naturally*. Ignore nearby GRBs, supernovas, black holes, super powerful aliens, and anything outside of the star system that would cause problems to the civilization. Whatever needs to be their downfall needs to be contained in the star system.
Suppose we colonize Mars, some Jovian moons, and Mercury.
Further suppose we have fusion and travel between planets with fusion ships, and have fusion reactors as a result, because I don't know we could harness it in space but can't make reactors on Earth.
Then suppose we blew the surface of Earth away with nukes, and dragged an asteroid down on it just to be sure things got bad.
Is this civilization ending if we have millions of people on the other planets, and we exclude the above?
Water is abundant so that is not a problem. Planetary travels with fusion is a thing, the fusion fuel source should be abundant, which means energy is abundant. Growing [crops with fusion](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/184526/how-much-energy-is-needed-to-grow-an-acre-of-wheat-entirely-indoors) doesn't seem out of the question. A civilization wouldn't say "let's never bring soil with us and forget about growing food and fully rely on Earth for everything, or try to create soil with all of our energy, etc". Minerals and metals can be found in asteroids, or mined from the husk of Earth.
I can't imagine a way of having such a system where Earth gets toasted and ends up falling apart, unless I go into politics and start wars.
I am interested in if there's a way to build these worlds such that there is a natural consequence of destroying most of the surface of Earth where it is actually a problem and not an inconvenience that fusion technology solves.
Is a civilization with fusion immune to all these problems and the only cards to play are political wars if one wants problems?
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**Short answer: The colonies cannot maintain fusion reactors on their own**
Fusion reactor are very complex and apparently your colonies rely very much on them. Fuel is not a problem but from time to time, they require spare parts or break down completely. The production of those parts and new reactors requires massive industrial complexes and a lot of highly trained experts (look at the production of microchips for comparison). The necessary infrastructure, personnel and knowledge only existed on earth and was lost during the war. Your colonies will struggle for a while, maybe trying to reestablish the industry and keep the reactors running, but ultimately the last reactors fail and so do the colonies.
[Answer]
# Fear of separation and technological control
There is an easy problem to be seen with people being independent from Earth. If you feel different than the others, you can become opposing forces. To make sure colonies do not start to separate, you want to bind them in a way. Culturally is difficult, as they will near certainly develop something on their own due to the distance and different circumstances. So you want to do this technologically.
To bind people technologically, you need to have control over it. One thing is advanced manufacturing. If only Earth can create the required technology and ship it, you are dependent on Earth for repairs and enlarging your colony. Shipping it can be difficult however, so it is better to do it digitally.
Computers run the world, probably even more so in your proposed society. If you give a chip from our time to the scientists of 30 years ago, they probably won't be able to do anything meaningful with it. The advancements needed are too high to get there. If you then give out these wonders of technology for good prices, they will become dependent, and unlikely to progress on their own to such processors.
The technology given to the colonists is so advanced, it would take decades, even centuries to get there on your own. The technology is governed by computers, only allowing manufacturing if it doesn't harm Earth. They are maintained by the technology on Earth, sometimes needing some form of contact with Earth or subsidiaries.
When Earth is destroyed, the software can deteriorate or malfunction, causing the eventual failure of the colonies. It could be rapid, the computers instantly stopping if one if their main variables is gone, or slowly deteriorate as bit failure and the lack of updates slowly corrupt the system. The technology will fail before the colonies can adapt, causing all colonies to be destroyed in the process.
Keep in mind that technological control can be very mild. The colonies might expand to their hearts content, rarely triggering a technological blockade. Control doesn't mean dystopia.
# Conclusion
Above is one method that can lead to the destruction of a space faring fusion energy civilisation. Earth trying to prevent war by technological control. When the Earth is gone this control fails, causing the colonies to fail over time.
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> Is this civilization ending if we have millions of people on the other planets
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Unless the colonies have been very carefully designed to be self-sufficient, a few million people will not be enough to maintain the technological level needed. It is very likely that there are crucial technologies that are only manufactured on the Earth (by its 100-1000x larger population).
This could be e.g. microchips or the equipment to make microchips. Even on Earth, the necessary technology is concentrated to a few companies, maintained as tight trade secret and new factories are difficult to set up even by established manufacturers. Imagine building a high technology chip factory, with no detailed knowledge how they work and without access to any newly manufactured components, while at the same time trying to keep life-support equipment running.
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The NATURAL path of a space colony SHOULD include everything they need to be fully autonomous. The simple fact is that earth is distant, and shipping expensive. If we were to try and build a colony today, they would have to be able to survive without us- they would have to grow their own food, build their own spare parts, ect.
Now, if space colonies were founded later, after engine technology had advanced to the point that it would take days to travel from earth to the colony instead of months, then they COULD be dependant on earth.
Ultimately though, I think the only way an actual colony would be dependent on earth would be if earth FORCED them to be.
Gundam Seed is an example of this- earth made it illegal for the colonies to grow their own food, forcing them to be dependent on earth to eat- probably to keep them selling space resources at low costs.
So if earth had designed the system specifically to keep the colonies under the thumb, preventing them from owning certian high-tech manufacturing abilities, stopping them growing their own food, utterly preventing seeds from getting into space, then it could be done.
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# That One Secret Ingredient
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TKTeB.png)
To keep the colonies functioning, there is some key material that must be imported from Earth every few hundred years.
Without the secret ingredient, the colonies fall victim to one of the billion-and-one mundane difficulties with maintaining a self-sufficient ecosystem in an environment that is otherwise fatal to human beings.
For example:
**Deuterium:** Used for nuclear power. Harvested from Earth sea water. Since there is no natural water on the colony worlds, Deuterium must be imported.
**Zinc-Palliduim-Oxide:** Unexciting but essential. Used in small amounts in transistors/vacuum tubes/ Neural gel packs for colony infrastucture. Fairly hard to manufacture, and impossible using only the readily available elements on the colony worlds.
**Antigens:** It turns out that without the constant arms race between humans and the ambient microorganisms present in the Earth air, our immune systems atropy, and we become allergic to peanuts and wheat and milk, and cotton, most metals, plastic, and the chemicals that keep the air breathable.
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To answer your question you can draw a comparison with the colonies we have had during our history: the more autonomous and well established are the colonies in their settling environment, the less they depend on the relationship with the motherland.
A hostile environment can take a huge toll on recently established colonies, therefore in the early stages of settlement having frequent contacts and exchanges with the motherland to supply resources and people is vital in keeping the colony alive. Later on, once a sourcing network has been developed locally, the dependency weakens until it can be simply removed.
Therefore, depending on how mature and well settled are your colonies, they can be more or less dependent on contacts with Earth.
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**Life**
Here is my thoughts - Despite all the imported biomass that any colony would need - None of the colonies can sustain life naturally. The uniqueness of Earth is it's ability to create and sustain life - by nuking the surface, you seriously (and let's for the sake of argument say irrevocably) ruin it.
Over time, the Colonies species start to suffer genetic decline/drift, maybe from different gravity, maybe from different sunlight, maybe from just artificial atmosphere - who knows.
Stored samples can stave off the issue... for a while - but without the original on earth, the Colonies face the slow and daunting revelation that without Earth and it's ability to support Life naturally, they've screwed themselves.
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# Technological limits don't make much sense.
It's very expensive to haul stuff up to space, so it would make sense for them to be moderately self sufficient. It's even harder to haul stuff to another planetary system.
# Colonies have a net negative death rate
Because colonies are unpleasant and painful places to live, they tend to have on net a low birth rate and a high death rate. Normally their population was topped up by regular recruitment from the home planet, but with the earth dead their populations mostly died out.
While some made efforts with artificial embryos and IVF to prolong the end, the depression over the loss of the homeland and the generally horrible life on colonies made these efforts ineffective.
[Answer]
### Is it possible?
Of course it's possible. This should be never asked on this forum, because "possible" is almost always a matter of how good of a story teller you are.
### Is it plausible?
Not with hard science. Without FTL, the gulf of space is far too vast for us to set up colonies that rely up on spare parts from home. This has always been the case with overseas colonies. When colonizing The New World, there were numerous colonies that just failed. The colonists themselves didn't have the mental or physical resources required to build a sustainable life-support system, so they starved, died from disease or dysentery, were overwhelmed by predators or indigenous people, that kind of thing.
That stops being a possibility when a colony hits a self-sufficiency threshold. That threshold would be harder for space-faring colonies, but it would still exist. At that point, the colonies would mostly just rely upon the home planet for technological improvements, expertise in solving specific local issues, and maybe diplomatic connections.
### Where are the weak links?
It won't be power. Even without fusion, we still have a reasonable power supply with solar collectors. Sunlight only becomes a problem beyond Jupiter, and materials aren't scarce. Yes, you'd need big mirrors to grow food without fusion outside of the asteroid belt.
You definitely won't have issues with food. There's no viable game plan that tries to feed millions by exporting food from Earth, so we'd undoubtably have space-based farms. The part that would be really weird would be the thriving industry of transporting waste products back to the farms for use as fertilizer, but any colony would NEED to grow their own food.
Similarly, we'd have air regeneration, medical systems, machine parts manufacturing, etc. Pulling things out of Earth's gravity well is expensive enough that there's a huge advantage to just making your own.
### Intellectual Property Rights
Here's a fun weak link. Right now, many physical devices like tractors can't be fixed because the company that makes them encrypts all of the control systems. If everyone relied up on machines for which the only people *allowed* to fix them were dead, we'd have to re-invent everything. That could be a murderous burden.
This kind of rights could actually be something that people go to war over.
### Proprietary material processes
At the moment, there are only around five companies on the planet who can make high-purity silicon. This ability is crucial to the creation of silicon wafers, which our entire electronics industry relies upon.
Let's say, in the opening salvo of the final war, one of the companies shot down the space-based silicon processing plants, taking their process knowledge with them. The global blow-up takes the rest of them down. After that, you're stuck re-using existing circuit boards until someone can redevelop that technology.
There are maybe a dozen linch-pin technologies that have a small number of production points. Rubber is another of those. Where are you going to get rubber after someone fireballs Asia? You don't.
The overall effect might mean that materials that we take for granted are suddenly just gone. It would be a slow collapse, but it would be inevitable, and provide plenty of opportunity for adventure.
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There is a lot of talk here on self-sustainability. I'll try to couple two issues.
# Self-sustainability
As already mentioned, it is quite hard for a high-tech colony to be self-sustainable. Once, because Earth would not want them this way (or else the colonies turn out to be competition in somewhat near future). This is a political issue, basically.
Once, because it's really damn hard to pull of, so most would not bother. Now, this is economy.
The issue is that we have with most resources is not that they are scarce. They are scarce at a given price, because somewhere else the is a mountain made entirely of iron ore; oil flows in fountains when you push a stick into the soil; a comet floats around, consisting of pure alcohol; deterium is 20 times more common in the ocean of that particular Jupiter moon; you get the point.
So, some resources are replaceble, but at a much higher price. The price might be so high, that no one thought of mining them at that colony. The price might be so high, no one thought of providing means to mine them (or means to produce means to mine them) to the colony. In the pre-disaster, perfect Sol-globalistic world it was not needed.
To add insult to injury, some resources are really scarce and are produced in a very few places. Those are the first ones you loose as a "lost colony". The spice is only produced at Arrakis, as we all know.
# Technological level
The colony might not have the means to mine and process all kinds of resources it needs. This means that the moment it does not have a connection to the mother world, the colony can only rely on things it *can* do itself.
To put it short, the technological level drops.
Because they cannot produce the current means of production (or some iterations of it, they cannot produce the means to produce the current means of production, and so on), they are limited by the means they have and can produce. These would be more outdated.
Some tools are now unique artefacts. They work until they break. There is no way to produce a new such tool. In some cases the colonists know how, just cannot pull it off. In some cases they don't even have the understanding, not only the technology.
(Try building a modern processor – or any integrated circuit actually – with the top-notch technology from 1920s, for example.)
# Sustaining life
And now the next problem. The tech-level drops. But the natural environment of the colony cannot sustain Earth-based life as it. People (and all the Earth ecosystem on the colony) need life support. Life support is also technology. Did I mention, that tech-level drops?
So, at some point, the pre-catastrophe, advanced life support is beyond repair. Probably, some kind of a more primitive life support system can still be built. It would probably support less people or in a worse manner. This downgrade of a life support can happen multiple times.
I can actually image one of the latest space-faring trips of the colony to get some particular rare Earths or some particular carbon nano-tubes or some tritium from nearby asteroids – as long as they can. Because developing mining / local geology / nuclear industry takes too long and they cannot wait, so it's easy to trade one unrenewable resource (space travel) for another, also currently unrenewable, but much sorely needed resource. This is a prolongation of an agony, if they are not able to contact and trade with other colonies. If they can, space travel suddenly becomes much more important. (But tech level decrease bites here as hard as with life support.)
If the colony is caught in a downwards technological spiral (tailspin, actually) and cannot rely and re-base their tech to the currently available materials and resources *and* still manage to keep some kind of a life support running, then the colony dies out.
This is basically one of those "not with a bang, but with a whimper" stories.
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There could easily be *anything* on the home world that the civilization can't go on without. You didn't specify that we're talking about a *human* civilization, and the lost home world is *Earth*. If it's not, you could construct just about any biological, physiological, ecolocical... need.
Think for example about a butterfly species whose caterpillars need a very specific plant to feed on. Or think about plants with complex flowers that can only be pollinated by a very specific species of bees. Or think about turtles that return to the very same beach they hatched on to lay eggs themselves.
The easiest way would be to interrupt procreation in some form. Let's say, for example, children need to eat the leafs of a specific plant at a specific age to mature into adults. This plant is highly adapted to its ecological niche on the home world and the ecosystem there. It can't be cultivated anywhere else, and the leafs are highly perishable. Once the home world is gone and therefore the plant is gone, it won't be long until no children can mature into adults any more, no new children will be born, and the civilization will die out.
A similar idea would be that the children need to spend a month in the radiation of the home world's star to mature. No other planet of no other star has the exact same physical properties, and the radiation can't be simulated artificiality.
Or young mothers need to give birth in the same place where they were born themselves. For hundreds of millennia, every child of this civilization has been born in one of three caves on the home world, and the social standing of the child is determined by which cave it was born in. This didn't change even after the civilization became space faring. But now the home world, including the birth caves, isn't anymore, maybe as the outcome of a horrible civil war.
If we're talking specifically about humans and Earth, physiological or ecological dependencies like that are harder to construct. But it's still possible to construct a social, religious, legal etc. equivalent.
Let's say for example young adults need to spend a week back on Earth as an initiation rite before they're allowed to marry, or to have kids. Maybe they need to visit the temple that has been built on the place where the first starship has launched from Earth.
Now that Earth is basically gone, they technically *could* forgo that that requirement. But there's this fanatic terrorist cult that brutally murders any child that has been born "unnaturally", without their parents having completed the proper rituals. Depending on how "effective" this cult is, the civilization can be gone very quickly, too.
By the way, it's still possible to go with biological needs for humans. Maybe you need people with special natural abilities to pilot the starships, and those abilities can only mature on Earth (because of the exact physical properties of Earth or of the Solar System, because of some ecological interconnections with hundreds of animal and plant species etc.).
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There are catastrophes that could wipe out a solar-system-sized civilization.
One good one is the gamma ray burst. These are insanely powerful, for a few seconds they outshine whole galaxies. And we don't really know how wide the beam is; it is possible there could be one that's strong enough and has a wide enough beam to fry every settlement in a whole solar system. There may be a few orbital habitats shadowed safely behind planets, but can they survive the economic upheaval of losing 99% of the rest of the civilization?
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[Question]
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## Backstory (skip if desired)
Let's take our cute and self-conscious protagonist, Jayden! (For the people that read and responded to the post about the [genetics behind keidran](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/240619/what-would-the-technical-problems-be-of-mass-genetic-editing-keidran-animal-hum) and the [colonization of the Ilus system](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/240544/what-would-a-laser-powered-interstellar-cargo-ship-look-like), they are in one and the same universe.)
He's your average starship engineer in all ways except he's a fox keidran. (Although not too long ago he wasn't fluffy.) This came with lots of problems, mostly trying to get used to being a keidran, and the rest being the fact that he can't get his hot chocolate. Completely devastating. How do you expect 'em to fix a derelict dyson swarm without his hot chocolate?
## The Question
As we know, chocolate is toxic to dogs, and by extension, dog-people. The thing that makes chocolate toxic is a combination of caffeine, and theobromine. But before we handle that, let's start with an example keidran for testing.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hQjhd.jpg)
(Image Credit to TwoKinds Author Tom Fischbach.)
Let's start with the familiar half of the equation. Caffeine. According to wikipedia, caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant. It is mainly used recreationally as a cognitive enhancer, increasing alertness and attentional performance.
One side affect is that it behaves similarly to adrenaline by increasing heart rate, and thus exasperating cardiovascular issues, like heart attacks.
The other side of the equation, theobromine. It's the principal alkaloid found in cacao beans, and is named after the cacao plant's scientific name. It's toxic to all canids and for a rule of thumb, most domestic animals. Another rule of thumb is that the darker the chocolate, the more theobromine it contains.
The compound is actually toxic to humans, too, but we metabolize it **much** more efficiently, and so it has less time to accumulate.
You'd find around 60 milligrams of this stuff per 28 grams (1 Oz) of milk chocolate, and around three to four times as much in dark or bakers chocolate. For the average-weight human, it would take anywhere from 0.8 to 1.5 grams for toxicity to become a problem, which would be accompanied by sweating, trembling and a very bad headache. (And a higher risk of a heart attack.)
In accordance with [veterinary guidelines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_Veterinary_Manual), 1.3 grams of dark chocolate per kilogram of a dog's body weight is sufficient to be toxic. Assuming the average human weight of about 77 kilograms, and adjusting the BMI index to account for keidran being digigrade (walking on their toes) and thus being slightly taller, we can guess the average, healthy weight of a keidran to be in the ballpark of 80 or so kilograms. Which just so happens to be the approximate weight of our guy up top!
Knowing this, we can guess that it would take around 104 grams of bakers cacao to be toxic. Some simple math tells us that this is around 130 milligrams of theobromine. Being optimistic about some human traits of metabolism get carried over, we can make an educated guess that we need to have less than a fifth of this dose, or 26 milligrams or less, of theobromine per acceptable serving (how much a keidran could reasonably eat in one sitting) to be considered safe.
Knowing all of this, can we artificially create or genetically engineer cacao or a very accurate substitute to be safe for keidran consumption?
By artificially, I refer to extracting the theobromine from cacao without significantly changing its flavor, texture, etc and being economical to do. (Not needing to use billion-dollar molecular printers to manufacture it molecule by molecule.)
Would doing this be impossible? Will Jayden ever get his wish of hot chocolate as a reward for getting home? (Joke questions.)
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> chocolate is toxic to dogs, and by extension, dog-people
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You've genetically engineered your furries using human technology which is clearly very sophisticated and capable. The tools are obviously there to modify caffeine and theobromine metabolism... why bother tampering with the chocolate, when you can just do a bit more engineering on the consumers of the chocolate?
As an alternative though, consider just... not doing anything? There's been various amounts of work done on [theobromine poisoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine_poisoning), and whilst humans are somewhere between 50% to 300% more resistant to its toxic effects than dogs, they're far from immune. If a small child ate a bar of high-quality dark chocolate they'd be in a pretty bad way, too. Your dogpeeps though... they're approximately human size and mass in a way that regular dogs just... aren't. An 80kg dog could ingest nearly 1.3g of theobromine without ill effect. That's maybe 180g of dark chocolate, or nearly 600g of milk chocolate. The half-life of theobromine in dogs is >50% longer than in humans, so you might not be able to eat half a kilo of milk chocolate every day in perpetuity... but, y'know, just consume it in moderation. Humans have shown some ability to limit intake of dangerous but enjoyable substances below the lethal level, so it seems reasonable that your creations could too.
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> Will Jayden ever get his wish of hot chocolate as a reward for getting home?
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The amount of theobromine in hot chocolate is likely to be even lower than in milk chocolate. He could have at least a pint of the stuff and not suffer from chocolate toxicity.
Note though that theobromine and caffeine aren't the only problems here... not all dogs have lactase persistence! [Lactose tolerance is common in domesticated european dogs](https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/11/4884/6325030), but depending on where your engineers have been sourcing their genes, your chimeras could easily find themselves unable to digest lactose. So no hot chocolate.
(of course, you could engineer that out too, see first paragraph)
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### Theobromine
I just read your first linked question, and it seems that you are proposing the creation of some kind of genetically modified "chimeric" creature. Basically a hominid-canid combination. Presumably the combination involves internal (organ system) changes as well as external modifications (cute furry tails and ears).
The problem canids have is that they can't process some common chemicals that human hominids can, such as theobromine and caffeine. Every pet owner knows not to give chocolate to dogs. They will suffer a wide variety of uncomfortable symptoms.
I'd argue that, **since you are already positing an extremely robust suite of sciences and technologies to create Keidrans (or modify humans to become Keidrans), then you already have the means to make (or keep) them theobromine happy**.
If it's not already known to your science, it would be a matter of discovering the relevant human gene and ensuring that the process included transferring that to the Keidran.
Reference: Jamie Rodriguez over on Quora mentions the following:
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> As to why this happens, we don't know; but some point to a variant in the cytochrome P450 enzyme gene called 1A2 (not the most creative name, let me tell you) that is more efficient at metabolizing methylxanthines (like caffeine or theobromine) than other variants found in other animals.
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Just copy and paste the relevant genes from your human subject or delete the relevant genes from your canid modification library!
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**Human Liver**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YEUj2.jpg)
People eat chocolate all the time and do not get poisoned. [Their liver breaks down the theobromine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine#Pharmacology):
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> In the liver, theobromine is metabolized into xanthine and subsequently into methyluric acid. Important enzymes include CYP1A2 and CYP2E1.The elimination half life of theobromine is between 6 to 8 hours.
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Your dog people have people livers and not dog livers. They can digest chocolate no problemo.
Maybe the dogmans have hybrid people livers and dog livers. For breakfast they can eat chocolate without dying. For dinner they have langerloads of pork fat without cholesterol poisoning.
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**Fox person does get toxic.**
In the best way. Yes, sweating, trembling. Heart pounding. Nose so clear; smelling everything. A little drooly. Thoughts racing! So many ideas! That sweet sweet toxicity.
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> Keidran 1: I never knew chocoloate could be so... good!
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> Keidran 2: Because when you were human you always stopped before you got enough.
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> Keidran 1: I might be going to puke.
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> Keidran 2: OK you really have had enough.
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In comments it's been exposed the real question is not "How do I make chocolate safe for dog-people?" but rather "How do I make the reader not feel that chocolate being safe for dog-people is a mistake?"
If you are worried readers will think this, you can pre-empt it by calling it out in-universe (similar to "lampshade hanging").
After the dog person eats chocolate, maybe a few pages later, a human character goes "oh my god! you ate chocolate! are you all right?"; the dog-person is totally confused; the human says chocolate is toxic to dogs and the dog-person says they have the human gene for digesting chocolate. Then you move on, and 0% of your readers are left wondering whether it's a mistake that dog-people can digest chocolate.
Alternatively you could bring it up before-hand. The human is passing out chocolate and hesitates before giving it to the dog-person. The human asks whether the dog-person can eat chocolate because dogs can't. The dog-person says they have the human gene for digesting chocolate. Again, nobody is left wondering.
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We already make decaffeinated coffee and tea, alcohol free wine and beer, lactose free milk and so on.
So it is totally plausible that, with the right driver, chemists will find a way to make detheobrominated chocolate.
Usually this driver is under the form of an economic incentive (decaf and all I mentioned above sells, so there is a market to exploit), or a simple stumble of luck (if you ever heard how penicillin was discovered, you know what I mean).
This then begs the question why it has not yet happened...
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## Synthetic chocolate
A society that is capable of building Dyson swarms and genetically engineering human/animal chimeras should also be sufficiently advanced enough in food science to create artificial chocolate flavoring. Which actually [already exists in our world](https://www.fastcompany.com/90665617/this-lab-fermented-no-cocoa-chocolate-solves-the-industrys-climate-and-child-labor-problems). I even found [a patent](https://patents.google.com/patent/US2835590A/en) for artificial chocolate flavor all the way back from 1954.
The reason why we encounter relatively little artificial chocolate flavor in most food products is that cocoa is still relatively cheap and (according to testimonies) most artificial chocolate flavors aren't all that authentic. But in a society where there is a large part of the population who can't eat chocolate due to dietary restrictions but crave it, there would be enough demand for artificial chocolate to invest resources into improving and mass-producing it.
Although Jayden might still loathe the fact that the synthetic chocolate he now has to consume doesn't taste *quite* like the original. Advertising might say that 9 out of 10 Keidran can't tell the difference. But *knowing* it's not the real deal might still bother him.
[Answer]
I haven't yet seen mention of carob, which can have a flavor similar to that of chocolate but contains no caffeine or theobromine.
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[Question]
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A bunch of cargo got sucked out of a spaceship during a depressurization event. Mostly crates and barrels of medium size liftable by a human without a forklift.
Now that cargo was a valuable equipement with a significant dollar value attached to it and naturally some of the containers had tracker beacons that would periodically transmit their position allowing to locate them in the endless vastness of space.
What are the chances that many years later the crates and barrels will remain in close enough proximity from each other that a ship of space janitors would be able to find most of them? Maybe attracted by whatever small gravity field they produce?
Or would they drift apart? In that case would it be possible to triangulate the position of unmarked cargo if the space janitors had enough data from several beacons?
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**Very Widely separated**
Looking at a ridiculously dense but almost-plausible "crate", let's assume for ease of calculation a spherical container massing 10 tons (10^4 kg) with a radius of 1 m. [Escape velocity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity) is around 0.0011 m/s, which would be trivially exceeded in a depressurisation event. The practical upshot is that none of the objects ejected will start to clump together due to their own gravity, the only situation in which they may be collected would be through capture in the gravity well of an at least planet-sized object in their path - exceedingly unlikely for a random point in space.
Even if there is a very gentle depressurisation with only a 5 m/s difference in velocity between a crate with a beacon and the un-beaconed backpack with a treasure map that was sitting next to it, after one year the two objects will be 5 \* 60 \* 60 \* 24 \* 365 = 157,680,000 m apart, or about half a light-second. With a greater difference in velocity (possibly up to an order of magnitude higher) and/or multiple years, the search sphere will probably be many light-seconds across. Being able to locate more beacons might help define the sphere, but only if the objects with beacons were ejected with similar velocities to the un-beaconed objects. If the crates are all relatively dense then they will not give much useful information about where less dense objects that had a higher velocity imparted to them may have ended up.
The detection capabilities of the searchers are not specified, but it would take extremely powerful radars and/or sensitive infra-red detectors to detect an piece of debris that has had years to radiate its residual heat away into space within a search sphere that large. Unless the "dollar value" of the lost objects is truly enormous, the expense of deploying large number of ships for a prolonged period probably exceeds the value of the objects.
[Answer]
# Straps to the rescue
Gravity, as a force, is not good at holding boxes together. A much better force for holding things together is rope, or their thinner, broader cousin, straps.
When loading things into a vehicle that may experience sudden shifts in trajectory, it is wise to use Many Straps.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nkM4K.jpg)
When transporting loose cargo, it is wise to use a large lattice of ropes, called a ‘net’ to hold them together.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gFH7m.jpg)
Frequently, smaller objects will be palletized and lashed together:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Aqyy7.jpg)
This is true regardless of the size of the object. It’s basic safety. I wouldn’t get into the bed of a moving pickup with a loose 55 gallon drum. The idea of being in a spaceship cargo bay with one is nightmarish. Imagine a gerbil in a rock tumbler. The cargo in these ships is going to be thoroughly strapped and tied together, and will remain so post depressurization.
Not only is this practical and safe, it’s also traditional and cinematic.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dgxW6.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hZI1K.jpg)
[Answer]
Depends on the depressurization event
Did it effectively act as a jet blowing things all the same direction?
Or did it act as an explosion sending things every which way?
Time factors are important. They will continue to move at their ejection speed, and this will spread them apart from the explosive route. (Gravity will not be significant.)
On the other hand, they will be moving slowly enough that a culture that moves in outer space may consider them "close" at distances we would not.
Consider not only beacons but whether the other items can be detected by radar. Bright, metallic items are better than matte plastics.
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**Calculable.**
There are images of the depressurization event taken from the ship in question. One can see the items at a known time and see them again at a later known time. From these two images one can calculate the trajectory of each crate, assuming that at the time of these two images crates do not touch each other again.
Given the trajectory of the ship and gravitational influences in this area of space, your AI uses these two images to calculate the trajectory of each crate and the position of each at any future time.
In this story as I imagine it, there is one outlier crate that is far away from the rest. The salvage ops person questions the AI about this and views the image data. No question: that crate was moving faster than all the rest. Some crates have contents unlisted on the cargo manifest and this was one of them. The ops person decides to get that one first.
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Depends greatly on the tech available and the circumstances of the accident that the other posts point out. For some perspective: [Lunar Module Eagle on Apollo 11 when the crew re-boarded Columbia, the Eagle was abandoned in lunar orbit. Although its ultimate fate remains unknown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Module_Eagle#:%7E:text=After%20the%20crew%20re%2Dboarded,still%20be%20in%20lunar%20orbit.) You can be sure that people have looked for Eagle in various ways, granted not exhaustively or systematically, but they haven't spotted anything for 53 years. It may not be there but math shows that it probably is, and people are still looking.
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**They will drift apart**
This is your basic simplification of chaos theory. The atmosphere in the compartment isn't actually homogeneous in its density. The various crates certainly aren't homogeneous in their density, nor identical in shape. Some are sitting against the floor, some on top of other containers (differences in friction). I could go on, but I suspect you get my point. It isn't simply the odds that they might drift together...
...they won't.
**Whether or not they drift widely depends on both time and velocity**
Whether or not years is a long time depends on the velocity of the containers when they left the ship. A massive cargo hold, something the volume of the [Empire State Building](https://www.esbnyc.com/sites/default/files/esb_fact_sheet_final_0.pdf)) would result in significant velocity, while something the size of a [Volkswgon beetle](https://www.edmunds.com/volkswagen/beetle/2018/features-specs/) would impart almost none at all. The higher the velocity, the greater the distance between the pieces.
**It also depends on where it happens, which you didn't specify**
As noted in my comment, the gravitational influence found midway between two galaxies is negligible and likely irrelevant to the conditions of the question. If this happened in or near planetary orbit, however, gravity becomes a *big deal,* especially over years. Did it happen in a nebula? It's not like slogging through a sand dune, but the higher and non-homogeneous density of the nebula gasses will have an effect. Did it happen to happen near the sweep of a pulsar? What if that sweep only caught some of the cargo? Where it happens is a big deal — especially as the location will determine whether or not it's practical (if even possible) to calculate their trajectories. If you're capable of knowing all the variables to that level of accuracy, just beam them back aboard.
**And you don't seem to worry about what's happening to the cargo**
That cargo is now exposed to the vacuum of space. Are the containers that well sealed? Can the contents handle the force of the containers tumbling? Are the containers shielded against various forms of radiation? How about heat if their lost in the neighborhood of a star? I can easily imagine the cargo being worthless on recovery — especially when it wouldn't be cost-efficient to build and use containers that guaranteed the safety of the cargo in any and all circumstances.
**But you're in luck! Some of the units have tracking**
Ignoring entirely the reality that tracking anything over a significant distance in space is complicated, your tracking can improve things by giving you a *cone of influence* where you can estimate the spread of the cargo. That's a bonus!
**But the real question is, is all that worth it?**
Doesn't your insurance cover this? What could be so valuable that it would be worth the expense of dragging a ship through space to find this stuff? When cargo is lost overboard on Earth's seas, it's incredibly rare that anybody tries to find it.
**TL;DR**
Yes, they'll drift apart, and you probably need to assume they'll drift apart a lot.
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[Question]
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Let's assume, a legislation was passed that allowed people in Europe to enter into voluntary slavery. Everyone could choose to sell themselves. When you sell yourself, you become the full property of your owner indefinitely, and there is no limit to what the owner can do with you.
Of course, the market would regulate the prices, but for me as a writer: How would I estimate probable prices for different types or "qualities" of slaves (e.g. depending on abilities, age, etc.)?
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Clarification:
1. Only persons born in the relevant countries (i.e. "natives") can enter into slavery.
2. Nothing else about Europe would have changed (if only because that would introduce too many unknowns). It is basically the Europe of today.
3. A slave cannot own property of their own. Upon entering into slavery, the slave has to decide, similar to a testament, to whom they want to bequest what they own (including the purchase price). If the slave does not decide this, his or her property (including the puchase price) falls to the state.
4. The law about the treatment of slaves is similar to that about the treatment of animals. In Europe, you must not abuse animals and can only kill them under very specific circumstances (e.g. when the animal suffers great pain from an untreatable illness). Additionally, holding and slaughtering slaves for food or performing scientific experiments on them is not allowed. Holding adult slaves for sex is allowed.
5. Children cannot enter into slavery and cannot be held as slaves. (I haven't yet worked out all the details regarding potential children of slaves, or how to avoid them.)
[Answer]
## People are Corporations Too
In many Western Countries, corporations are "people" under the law in a variety of situations; so, the best way to look at slave labor would be to invert this already questionable thought process, and treat people as corporations. A corporation can either be contracted to perform a service for you for a fee, or it can be purchased. In this since, a person who is hired is basically a corporation that you pay to do you a service, but a person you own is a corporation you've purchased and own. The reason why this is important is that we already have commonly used systems for determining the value of a corporation that could easily be applied to people too.
Since a slave's value comes from future earnings, and not current assets, the Revenue/Earnings method is the most logical approach to valuing a slave. By this method, **a corporation is on average worth its next 5 years of predicted profit.** In some really stable industries, it is more common to go off of 7-10 year investments, and so, perhaps younger slaves might qualify for a longer period worth, but even businesses that are super stable decade after decade generally aren't valued at more than 10 years of predicted income.
Like with corporations, this will be a subjective measurement. What skills and abilities your slave has to turn a profit with matters. Is he unskilled labor? a doctor? a pro athlete? Is your slave young and likely to become more productive as he ages, or is he old and unlikely to increase in value or worse, is he a high risk of suddenly going belly up? What is your cost of operation (food, cloths, etc)?
When you view human corporations like this, you can see their values could vary immensely. While an unhealthy unskilled Bulgarian factory line worker could be worth as little as €10,000, a young, successful football player from Luxembourg could easily go for over €10,000,000.
## Why would people cost less than thier lifetime of labor?
Simply put, because slaves are investments. The whole point of buying a person instead of renting is that you take on the added risk, and reap the extra profit. If a slave (or corporation for that matter) costed as much as their entire lifetime of profit, there would be no incentive to buy one. In general, paying for something expensive upfront is not nearly as appealing as paying as you go, especially if you have no way of knowing exactly how long that thing will last or how long you will need it for. This is why corporations generally are not sold for more than 5 years of income, and why people would not be either.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wBsSM.png)
## How to motivate without violence
If the law says you can't murder, starve, or torture a slave, then you need to legally define murder, starvation, and torture. Which means you can stop just shy of that limit for an uncompliant slave. If starvation is defined as less than a 1400 calorie diet deficient in essential vitamins and minerals, then you can punish a slave with exactly 1400 calories of unseasoned beans and rice day in and day out, or you can reward them with a 2000+ calorie diet of seasoned and diverse meals. Not "abusing" them may not mean that you can't take away their mattress and bedding in the winter or turn off their AC in the summer, or blast loud music in their room in the middle of the night so they can't sleep, or withhold medicine when they are sick. Not harming a person is very different than taking care of them, and as long as they can work for you and only you, and you solely control the future quality of their life, then you have a lot of leverage to make them do as they are told.
In this since, modern slavery needs violence less than it did in the past because you could put a chip in a slave that employers need to scan for before they can legally hire a person. If you are chipped and someone scans you, then they are legally required to turn you back into your master just like a lost pet. This also means that an employer who fails to scan could face fines or jail time if a tagged slave ever shows up in his employment. Fully traceable tagging wont keep you from running, but it does mean that you won't have anywhere to run to.
## How to avoid children getting involved
If you can't legally keep a slave who gives birth, then the value of women who can get pregnant goes WAY down. That is like buying a corporation that you know is likely to go bankrupt in the near future. This will generally lead to 2 possible outcomes. Women may become far cheaper than male slaves or women seeking to fetch the same price as a man will have to prove or provide medical sterility as part of their contracts.
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I've spent some time on this - I think the answer is going to be scarily low.
Many people have given some excellent answers as to how much productivity the average person would be expected to do over their lifetime etc. etc.
But the more I thought on this question - the more I realized:
**The type of person who would do this is likely to be someone with poor deferred gratification skills and an immediate problem they are trying to solve**
It is desperation that would drive someone to this choice - and desperate people are terrible at bargaining.
Think of the likes of Hollywood and what aspiring Actors and Actresses will do for the chance of a significant role.
I doubt if the cost of a Slave, given the parameters you have set out, would reach the mid 6 digits.
Most likely, you would get a small percentage of people who did voluntarily choose that life and were hyper-productive and were able to negotiate a very lucrative fee and everyone else would be deceived by that fairy tale.
I think the answer would be something like the lump sum of 5 times the average yearly salary - which gives an answer of around $160,000 Euros.
[Answer]
In view of the clarifications to the original question, and the comment on my answer, I'd go even further than before.
**Slavery makes no economic sense under these conditions.**
And because it makes no (or very little) economic sense, there won't be any normal market. Without a market, no market price.
1. For normal low-skilled jobs, a slave cannot compete with a free worker whose cost of living is subsidized by the state. Many European nations have supplemental welfare programs where low income workers get extra money from the state. In others, it is practical to collect welfare and to work in the 'black' economy.
So employers get away with wages that *should* not be possible in a market, because they are not high enough to cover basic food, shelter, clothing, and medical coverage for the worker. Without state intervention, these workers would starve (or revolt ...). A slave owner can probably provide worse food, shelter, etc., than most European nations find acceptable in the real world, but at some point that would damage the slave (see 3. below).
2. For high-skilled jobs, the worker is in a negotiating position to avoid selling himself.
3. That leaves jobs with low skill requirements, yet high wages. Such jobs do exist, they are sometimes called 3D: [dirty, dangerous, and demeaning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty,_dangerous_and_demeaning). Once it becomes known that slaves are likely to end up in this kind of job, selling oneself becomes less attractive (compare the [news reports](https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/09/europe/wagner-russia-convicts-ukraine-intl-cmd/index.html) that Wagner is recruiting fewer prisoners, with the death toll among previous recruits given as one reason).
So this scheme would be more like an assisted suicide, with uncertain and possibly painful ways of death. That's not a predictable market.
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**Initial answer:**
I suspect that *simple* back-of-the-envelope calculations will not work. Also, the institution does not fit well with Europe as we know it. Your story, of course, but introducing **one** thing like that without gross changes in **many other** fields is problematic.
* European populations have been raised to value individual freedom. The decision to sell oneself would not be taken lightly. This intersects with a relatively well developed welfare state and with personal bankrupcy laws.
Unless your story has "supporting" changes to those factors, you won't have people in debtors' prison, or selling their freedom to put food on the table of their family. Less desperation brings prices up. There could still be cases of people selling themselves for expenses *not* covered by welfare, like an experimental (or snake oil) medical procedure for a dependent.
* These welfare laws also *subsidize* free labor. A slaver would have to spend enough in upkeep to keep the slave at least marginally healthy and productive. An employer can leave that to the state where the laws allow "supplemental" welfare or force the unemployed into "internships" to increase their employability.
* [Prices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_trafficking_in_Europe#Profits) in the sex trafficking area might serve as a *lower* bound for the cost.
This is assuming that the slavery laws are so inhuman that a legal sale has only benefits for the buyer, not drawbacks.
[Answer]
## As much as possible.
A major problem you have to contend with is what does a slave offer that an employee doesn't?
The first thing you might want to answer is "well, you don't have to pay them". True. However, if you look at an employee's salary, you'll find that a huge chunk of it goes to paying rent or a mortgage, paying for food and clothing, paying for transportation, paying for various utilities, capitalising for their healthcare, retirement, welfare in some way or another, and now you realise that if slaves have to be treated decently, then you'll have to pay for all of that too.
You might pay less of course, but it's still going to be a significant amount, and on top of that you are now legally responsible for their well-being at all times until they're dead. They wouldn't make better employees, in fact there's a good chance they would be less productive, not more. So I really have to wonder what's the benefit of owning a worker when you can rent one.
That's the inherent problem with treating people like a commodity. You can list all the costs incurred, try to guestimate them, and at the end of the day you're wondering why you're going through the trouble when there are already whole industries that figures that out for you and that you can contract to send someone to you to do various tasks.
It would really only makes sense if you can significantly cheap out on their well being and treat them as expendable, but that would contradict your fourth requirement.
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But perhaps looking at slaves like a commodity is looking at the problem the wrong way. Rather than looking at slaves as a commodity, how about looking at them as a luxury? Because luxury conveniently escapes most logic of offer, demand and profitability. It's not about cost or efficiency, it's about status.
The worse thing that can happen to a billionaire is showing up at the casino in the same car as someone else. That's why Rolls Royce works as a company: because they make custom cars for people who don't look at the price tag, and would even pay extra so their paint job is never available to someone else.
If you're rich enough to be able to afford a slave, anybody in your social circle can afford one as well. Sure, it shows the lesser millionaires who can only afford to employ a housekeeper part-time, but it's still incredibly pedestrian.
You don't want *a* slave, you want *the* slave that'll set you apart, who looks healthy, well-fed, well-clothed, educated, charming, and not doing anything except stand near you. They don't fetch your drinks, because again anybody can pay people to do stuff for them, but you can afford to pay someone to do nothing. How baller is that?
Naturally, you'll want a unique slave, or at least a slave from a reputable vendor. And at that point, you just give them your account number because looking at the price tag would almost be vulgar.
[Answer]
In principle the price would be decided by an equilibrium between offer and demand: there are many more people who can compute 2+2 than people who are able to invert 4x4 matrices out of their mind, so it's logical that the 2+2 people would be cheaper than the 4x4.
If you want to get a rough idea of the price spread, you should probably look at the price charged by sex workers in the European countries where their activity is legal or on the internet. You will probably find that, despite the service being offered is the same, there is a huge variation in the requested price, depending on a large set of parameters (age, aspect, physical features, type of activity, need for money of the worker, just to name a few).
Once you have an idea of the spread, take into account a good multiplier, considering that a sex worker will provide their services for a bunch of hours, not for their entire life, and that also they are free (at least in principle) to refuse the requests they receive, while in your case this option is forfeited.
But then this raises the question: outside of people who get indentured for covering debts, who would choose to earn those money by losing the freedom to enjoy them?
[Answer]
## Completely unknowable as framed
You have to factor in too many unknowns.
1. What's the expected long term interest rate? 1%? 8%? 15% That makes a huge difference to the real cost of a slave, just like for a house. Price factor: x100? Certainly x10.
2. What's the perceived political risk relating to forced emancipation? If you think your slave will get set free by politicians in 2 years time, you simply won't pay for 40 years work. Price factor: x100
3. Who is the slave? Is it a gorgeous 22 year old woman with great management and conversational skills, and a submissive personality? Or is it a 60 year old unemployed chain smoking heroin junkie with a record of violent crime? Price factor: x100+.
[Answer]
**No need to imagine**
I suggest you research the economics of modern slavery. This is a well-researched subject. I suggest you google ***modern slavery - price of slave in Europe*** and variants on that. There plenty of facts and figures.
**Example**
>
> Buying a sex slave in Romania need not take more than a few hours and
> around £300.A word or two from the right type of people and the buyer
> can be in the appropriate district of a major city such as Bucharest
> the same evening. There will be men standing on the street who will
> call out a woman for inspection.
> <https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/apr/06/Iraqandthemedia.news>
>
>
>
[Answer]
# €800,000 to €2 million
There's a meme going around that a 'career' takes up 80,000 hours of your life. At a cost-of-labour of €15 per hour, that would be €1.2 million. Or at €10 an hour it's €800,000
Insurance companies answer your question as their job. What is the monetary value of a human life? The Wikipedia on [Value of life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life) says "In Western countries and other liberal democracies, estimates for the value of a statistical life typically range from US $1 million- 10 million". Your scenario is people voluntarily selling themselves into slavery, so they'll be the more dispossessed segments of that spectrum.
[Answer]
Unfortunately the question as asked is probably not what OP intends
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> When you sell yourself, you become the full property of your owner indefinitely, and there is no limit to what the owner can do with you.
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There is no sane upside or profit motive for selling yourself as the owner apparently owns your assets.
The only reason to enter slavery is abject desperation (debtors, poverty, "money to save your relatives") and will be a case-by-case basis for where someone's desperation meets someone else's wallet and repulsive morals.
The top answers currently in this thread (and, I think, as OP intends) are more akin to "selling yourself into a lifetime work contract with defined after-work/weekends".
[Answer]
## Very little - probably order €0k-€10k.
Entering slavery is an act of desperation, taken only by people who are trading *everything* for a warm bed and regular meals. They have no ability to argue for higher recompense since their choices are so dire.
It's possible a small boutique market in salaried "slaves" would emerge for particularly high performing slaves where there are big money trades but the money goes to the owner not the slave, similar to how the transfer market for footballers works in the real world.
These slaves would end up being well rewarded since there is no other way to make them work well. Since slaves cannot own property, this would have to be in the form of benefits such as luxury houses, access to private chefs, high end clothes and cars, etc.
[Answer]
As others pointed out, the price would become an equilibrium. However, it wouldn't be a simple equilibrium of supply and demand. Rather, the way you would utilize the slave would put a cap on the price.
I can think of two ways of looking at this. One is that of looking as the slave as an investment, much like a piece of machinery or livestock. In that case, you would look at the expected return on investment. If prices rise too much, the ROI would become too low, and demand would drop.
This also highlights another aspect of your question: slavery ended to a large extent not because people thought it was immoral (most people *always* thought so), but because it no longer made economic sense. Slaves simply became more expensive, and less productive, than tractors and other pieces of machinery that required a skilled and motivated worker, rather than a resentful forced laborer.
Realistically, sadly, odds are that there would be an ample supply - history shows that even when slavery is illegal, there tends to be an underground market for human trafficking with shockingly low prices. Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that slaves are cheap; they still need to be housed and fed and guarded against rebellion etc. However, this market probably does not meet your criterion of "voluntarily" becoming a slave - people in human trafficking are usually the victims of some kind of desperate situation.
The other way to look at the question is through the lens of history. Your version of Europe would be very similar to the southern US states in the 1850s (with adjustments for technical and societal development, of course). Research the prices of slaves back then, and compare them with the average incomes of white people.
Another note: the price will heavily depend on how the properties of the slave. You will note that prices at historic slave auctions vary widely based on sex, age, health status, and skills of the slave.
For instance, a male field laborer in his 40s (very old) would be worth far less than a 20-something who knows welding. Unsurprisingly, young beautiful female slaves would fetch particularly high prices.
All that said, there is a completely separate scenario that would lead to probably very different outcomes. You mentioned the slaves becoming slaves voluntarily. There are people (few and far between, but they exist) for whom the motivation is something other than desperation, they *want* to be slaves for their own reasons (sometimes sexual, sometimes non-sexual reasons), either permanently, or for a limited time. Whether this is a good thing or not is not something I want to get into here, as that would be a complex intersection of societal mores vs. unintended consequences vs truly free informed consent. Just saying that these people do exist, very rarely.
There are some novels around that concept that may be illuminating for you. One is a trilogy called "The Marketplace" by Laura Antoniou.
Note that this is fiction. In the real world, very few people (a non-zero number) would go that far, and such a marketplace would likely not be sustainable in reality. Consequently, pricing would be all over the place and essentially random.
Now I need to go and get upset. Your question is perfectly valid in the context, but the thought of trading people like livestock does make me sick. That's not a criticism of you; and may even be the point of what you are writing, but it is hard to deal with mentally.
[Answer]
**About $5000** (plus however much it costs to pay for the slave's food, medical expenses, etc. afterwards.)
You can already legally get someone who is effectively a slave in Europe. The basic idea is to go to some poor country, find a willing partner, marry them, get them a visa to return to Europe, and they effectively become your slave. They are not *exactly* a slave because they are in principle your partner, but they're completely dependent on you, so you can largely make them do whatever you want.
From there you can look at a website like [this one](https://asianwomenonline.org/vietnam-girls-for-marriage/) (which is tailored to Americans, but the idea is similar) on buying a bride, in this case from Vietnam, and check out the cost.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LMHd4.png)
Again, this is tailored to Americans, but I can't imagine it is very different for Europeans.
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[Question]
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Two mothers say a baby is theirs, simple solution, split the baby in two so they bot get half!
Lost your family? Find a new one!
Your husband cheats on you with your friend? Cheat on him too with your friend!
You forgot to feed the cat and its starving, end its misery by killing it.
Sick tired or hearing people's complaints? Cut your ears!
Those are all examples of homo troglodytes reasoning. Their logic works backwards, continuously back pedalling into a pitfall of ignorance and misery.
Can a population of humans who evolved to be utter morons survive to this day and achieve a basic societal structure, considering their mental capacities are the same but their logic is completely non-sensical and always aimed at solving the wrong problem?
[Answer]
**No**
They would all die upon discovering fire. To quote:
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> "Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him, and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Sir Terry Pratchett, *Jingo*
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Thus, the only reasonable thing to do is to light all of themselves in fire so that they would indeed be warm for the remainder of their lives.
[Answer]
If we read your question carefully, the answer is clearly **Yes**.
You ask, "Can a population of humans who evolved to be utter morons survive to this day"
Well, if they *evolved* to be utter morons then clearly that was an adaptive strategy for them at some time and some place.
Therefore your current question boils down to "Can a species of morons survive today."
Since you have asserted that there *was* a period of time during which they survived, then clearly they would be able to live in a similar environment today - provided that environment was available to them. This could be natural or artificial.
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Really the "today" part of your question is irrelevant. The real question is "Is there *any* environment in which a species would evolve to become morons?"
With that in mind I will interpret your question to mean:
**Is there *any* environment in which a species would evolve to become morons?**
and try to answer that.
I think the only answer is selective breeding. Aliens or other humans would observe your species and note which individuals were most moronic. They would then breed them together to 'improve' the line. Instead of eugenics they would be practising dysgenics.
They would of course have to provide a protective environment for these creatures (isolation and padded cells for instance) to prevent them from harming themselves and others. Breeding might have to occur through artificial insemination.
If you think humans are incapable of such a stupid breeding scheme then just look at what we have done with some animals. There are dog breeds that are incapable of copulating naturally and have to be helped, some cannot give birth naturally and have to have Caesarian section as a matter of course. There are extraordinary fish varieties that would not last a day in the wild, so distorted are their features.
>
> One Vet's Opinion: Why Do We Breed Dogs Who Can't Give Birth
> Naturally?
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> <http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/one-vets-opinion-why-do-we-breed-dogs-who-cant-give-birth-naturally>
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[Answer]
***MORAL FLEXIBILITY:*** No one believes they are bad people, but society rings people with laws that restrict freedoms. The only way to justify the survival of such a society is to ascribe their logic to a different value system. In this scenario, they are still smart, and looking out for their own productive interest. Skewed logic is another word for justifying bad behavior. They conveniently use alternative logic when it serves, and ignore it when it's inconvenient. Let's break down each of your points above.
1. ***Two mothers say a baby is theirs, simple solution, split the baby in two so they both get half!*** Here, you have two women fighting over property. human life is cheap, and both are determined to eat half the child while proving themselves willing to do anything to win. You don't get into a dispute with either of these women, do you?
2. ***Lost your family? Find a new one!*** Family obligations can be deeply binding, especially to younger sons not due to inherit. To justify getting out of family obligations, this logic allows them to start over elsewhere and try to make a new life.
3. ***Your husband cheats on you with your friend? Cheat on him too with your friend*!** I don't think I even need to explain this one, do I? People today act this way.
4. ***You forgot to feed the cat and its starving, end its misery by killing it.*** Let's face it, if you "forgot" to feed the cat, you don't really care if it's dead. It should be catching mice, and one that doesn't deserves to die.
5. ***Sick tired or hearing people's complaints? Cut your ears!*** I imagine this to be a politician who wants to ignore the problems of his people. The king willing to stab himself in the ears as a statement of refusal to accept other's problems is making a personal sacrifice to gain greater power and be less accountable. Leaders have done much worse to gain and keep power. Mayan kings would run barbed cords through their tongues, because royal blood collected as such was a worthy sacrifice to the gods. The people gave them more authority because of their willingness to self-sacrifice.
[Answer]
Humans already do this. That is why we have expressions such as "Cutting off your nose to spite your face."
Road rage is an example. It does neither participant any lasting good and, in severe cases, can cause serious injury to one or both of the combatants.
Your species is driven by emotional response and this overrides logic. In order to survive, members of the species must be *very* careful not to offend each other. There is a strict code of conduct that children are taught from an early age. If they don't conform then of course they are immediately killed by an enraged parent.
[Answer]
It seems highly unlikely that being a moron would have a specific evolutionary advantage of its own. So the answer is no a population of all morons cannot survive without some other advantage.
However life is complex and there are a lot of qualifications to that statement. It is possible that being a moron is a side effect of some other positive trait in which case it would be selected for. The advantage would have to be huge to overcome the wastage from idiocy. But I note that peacocks survive with what might be described as a moron tail (for flight, fight and camouflage… etc)
It is also possible that morons only make up a limited percentage of the population. There is a gene that provides a limited degree of resistance to Malaria which provides an evolutionary advantage, but the gene has not spread to the entire population because unfortunately anyone with a double dose of the gene (from both parents) gets sickle cell anaemia. Something vaguely similar might be true of morons, meaning they always exist but they never make up a majority of the population.
[Answer]
**In what way are these people not actually us?**
Humans, when left to their own faulty devices and philosophies, almost always come up with the wrong answer. We see this clearly when we examine our own follies, as individuals as well as as societies.
You mention the specific instance of the split baby: this is a well known story of one of the wisest humans in history deciding a case and two other people moronic enough to go along with the folly. Our courts are full of this kind of reasoning and our legal systems based on this faulty logic.
You mention cheating on the cheater: we see this all the time, and not just with adultery. Someone gets hurt and the first, natural instinct is simply to strike out and hurt back in the same way.
And so forth.
**Conclusion**
The answer to your question is obviously ***YES***, because it's already been done, and modern human society, with its Twitter mobs and culture of outrage and just plain stupidity, is the obvious gigaitic output.
[Answer]
Intelligence is not instinctual. Survival is. As stated in another answer, apes have been doing quite well. Human intelligence has mankind bettering our lives/lifespan, but not necessary our instinct to survive.
However, the lack of intelligence or reasoning power can paralyze our instinct of survival in extreme conditions; such as matching wits against others' or nature itself because of the inability to problem solve. This is the underlying theme in William Golding's [The Inheritors](https://www.william-golding.co.uk/books/the-inheritors) The reader experiences prehistoric life through Lok, a Neanderthal with low intelligence and reasoning power.
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[Question]
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Earthlings,
I live on a world where most places on my planet has four seasons, just like yours does. We also have one sun and one moon, presumably. It's been not even a year since I came of age (20), and we've gone through the four seasons about a dozen times. I repeat, it has not yet been a year.
The people on my planet are very similar to humans on your world, and a side-by-side comparison would show this. Our animals are much like yours also, with minor exceptions that aren't really relevant. The only difference between us and your people is that we're much more resilient to the elements, blunt force trauma, and so forth. Several times each, I've survived electrocution, being blasted in the face by fire, and falling off a tall building where I fell at least 5 stories, probably more (usually being caught by something before hitting the ground, but not in a way that would make the impact much safer) and suffered minor injuries at most from each of these. So if the reason means the conditions of our world are somewhat less hospitable compared to yours, that should still be fine, as long as our world isn't a hellscape. (Our world is actually quite pretty with rainforests, cities, crystal clear oceans, fields, and so forth.)
That said, we have holidays like you do. We have Christmas every winter (not once a year, but every winter,) and Halloween every autumn. Our birthdays, however, are only once a year, just as yours are.
I've always found this strange, though. With one sun and moon, it makes little sense that we'd have the four seasons multiple times. From my understanding, the four seasons should still only happen once... right? Is there an explanation for how this could occur naturally? If not, what about unnaturally? Could this be caused by a specific tilt to the axis?
EDIT: Some supplementary information. We are a globe planet, technically an oblate spheroid, like Earth. Not a flat world like Discworld, nor are we other abnormal shapes. Also, I'd like the answer to make sense through science, without the need of "magic" as an answer.
Additionally, we define our seasons astronomically, I presume, but I'm no scientist. I just know how the patterns change and how we celebrate holidays. We don't consider just any moment we get snow to be winter, but there are periods of the year where snow is much more likely which we refer to as "winter", but that isn't to say snow in the other seasons is impossible, just less likely.
[Answer]
The reason we have four seasons ***is*** directly related to our planet's axial tilt... the rotational axis of the Earth is *currently* [1] inclined at 23.5° from the "vertical" relative to our orbital plane: ***Summer*** is the season in which a given hemisphere is tilted more towards the sun, ***Winter*** is the season in which a given hemisphere is tilted away, and ***Spring*** and ***Autumn*** are the transitional periods between those states.
This is why solstices and equinoxes are so valuable in marking seasonal time: they represent the maxima, minima and midpoints of the values of day/night length for the given hemisphere.
If a planet ***precessed*** (its axial tilt relative the plane of its orbit shifting through the course of time - *visualise here a spinning top tipped at an angle and that angle rotating round as the top spins*) at exactly the correct fractional rate relative to its orbital period (year), it would be *expected* to then have two or three or four sets of repeated seasons through the course of a single year.
Bear in mind that we have observed planets with differing levels of precession of their axial tilt, and we have some good theories about the long-term stability of such situations, but we don't have long term observations with enough detail to point at concrete examples - that said, precession-based multi-seasonality would most likely be far more stable than the earlier-mentioned false seasons via cyclic weather pattern given a similar atmospheric density and composition to our own.
Given that our planet precesses (look up the precession of the Equinoxes for details) in a cycle of about 25,000 years, you could readily posit a planet whose precession speed was faster than its orbital period - giving your planet multiple seasons per year. If you are comfortable delving into this in more depth, you *could* posit your planet being in a period of some orbital instability around its primary [2], in which case both the orbital period and the precession periods would be in flux, and the precession might not only fluctuate in period but in vector (visualise your spinning top slowing down and the chunk of time in which it appears to almost flip around to and fro as the precession becomes unstable) and you'd have a supremely unstable set of seasons - almost aperiodic - and given we're positing this based on main orbital instability, you might have solar flares, changes in solar radiation received as distance to primary fluctuates, gravitational and magnetic storms and fluctutations - you could go for some pretty severe, apocalyptic level climactic chaos here.
I will leave it to some of the physics minded folks to give you the orbital mechanics maths details, as I know my physics studies and practical usage are now far behind me; statics I still use, but physics per se - juuuust the core concepts these days!
Hope this helps.
[1] This value changes slightly over time in a range between ~ 22.1° and 24.5°
[2] Orbits can collapse due to other orbital bodies being disrupted (asteroid impact) or coming apart (our solar system's asteroid belt was most likely once a planet) or due to direct interaction with other bodies - say a ***large*** passing comet moves past your planet with a *very* close approach, or due to changes in the primary itself (new mass added due to another satellite's orbital decay being severe enough to allow impact & merger) or even just tidal gravity effects robbing your planet of orbital velocity.
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The planet has **no axial tilt**.
But it anyway has seasons, because:
The **star it orbits arount** is an [intrinsic variable star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_star), it **changes its size and brightness periodically**, causing **seasons** that **may repeat multiple times per year**, since the star may change its brightness multiple times per year.
**Variable star** at different times:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wAXew.jpg)
therefore, **differing from earth, on this planet, seasons are the same on both hemispheres**.
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Your seasons aren’t caused by axial tilt. They’re more accurately known as ‘weather’.
There is a system on Earth that leads to warm, humid seasonality and raised sea levels on top of the usual four seasons caused by tilt relative to the sun. It is called El Niño/ La Niña, and (to simplify greatly) it's a giant wave that bounces up and down the planet’s oceans at a pace dictated by the shape and size of said oceans.
Now, if your planet has a series of such weather systems (for example a wave that heads up and down the planet, a storm that cycles around the planet, or an ocean current that periodically switches direction) then you can experience multiple ‘seasons’ as many times per year as your weather systems will allow. They’re not driven by axial tilt, rather the resonant properties of your planet.
It is worth noting however that such seasonalities are unlikely to be stable over geological timescales, so the seasons of a thousand years hence will be different to the seasons of today. You may even have different sets of seasons in different geographical locales, which would be fun and interesting!!
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You orbit a double star, one of which is much dimmer than the other.
This causes the "brighter" star to come closer/further away in a period faster than your "year".
The dimmer double star is dim enough that you cannot practically see it as a star; it is washed out. At best, it might appear as a faint ghost at dawn/dusk. Also, the dim star would rarely eclipse the brighter one.
The orbital period goes up with the 3/2 power of the orbital radius. So if the dual star is 16 times closer to each other than the planet is, they will orbit each other ~64 times faster than the planet.
A big risk here is that a dim compact dense partner (like a white dwarf star) can accumulate hydrogen from the solar wind (or worse if the primary is too close), and go nova. I'm honestly uncertain at what radius the nova risk is low enough to plausibly evolve life.
Very interesting effects could happen if the primary/secondary star axis of rotation does not line up with the planet's axis of rotation. But the more interesting it gets the less stable the planet's orbit is likely to be.
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Does your moon happen to be large and ~~highly reflective~~ shiny?
It sounds like where you're from, it takes more than 20 earth years to go around your star (sun? No, that one's ours!). But how fast does your moon go around your planet?
Here on earth, this happens roughly 13 times per earth year. And while our moon is the largest in our system, and appears to be quite bright, it could be a lot brighter still! If if were, then every full moon, we'd have a nice little bit of summer going on due to the extra light reaching our planet. On a new moon, we wouldn't get as much light, and temperatures around the world would drop.
On our earth, these "lunar seasons" aren't really significant at all, because the solar seasons are much stronger. But if your planet's solar seasons are quite weak (because of a small axial tilt) then the effect might be a lot more noticeable!
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There are two ways this could happen.
* **A star system composed of infinite cylinders** will do the trick in some arrangements. This is discussed at length in this question:
[Seasons on Infinite Cylinder Planet](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/110478/21222)
* **A flat Earth whose sun orbits the disc** will have two of each season per full rotation of the disc. [Discworld is the classical example](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Discworld_calendar#Seasons):
>
> Since the disc's tiny orbiting sunlet maintains a fixed orbit while the majestic disc turns slowly beneath it, it will be readily deduced that a disc year consists of not four but eight seasons. The summers are those times when the sun rises or sets at the nearest point on the Rim, the winters those occasions when it rises or sets at a point around ninety degrees along the circumference.
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> (...)
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> Since the Hub is never closely warmed by the weak sun the lands there are locked in permafrost. The Rim, on the other hand, is a region of sunny islands and balmy days.
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> Precisely why all the above should be so is not clear, but goes some way to explain why, on the disc, the Gods are not so much worshipped as blamed.
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In Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse, Annabeth’s dad, Dr. Chase comes in at the end of his book and uses a machine gun on his Sopwith Camel, along with some celestial bronze bullets he created in order to pulverize the monsters that are closing in on Percy and his friends.
In addition, Luke has a sword named Backbiter that is half steel half celestial bronze, so that he can kill both humans and monsters. Also, Chiron says that Demigods are vulnerable to both weapons aimed to kill mortals and weapons aimed to kill monsters.
So, at the Battle of the Labyrinth, Percy and his friends could have decided to defend camp with a bunch of machine guns loaded with celestial bronze bullets. Also, when Percy and his friend Beckendorf decide to raid Kronos’s ship the Princess Andromeda in Book Five The Last Olympian, why couldn’t they have carried guns? It would easily do away with all the sword fighting skill needed and it would just be “pow” and Luke is dead…
Clearly, there must be something wrong with my logic. But, is there any drawback in demigods using guns in general? What might prevent them from doing so? I'm looking specifically for practical reasons, but any reasons are fine, too :D
**EDIT: In response to @JBH, I am looking for anything, even outside the Percy Jackson Universe. Percy Jackson was the only series I have read that included Greek Demigods, so I used it as the majority of my example in the beginning. Thanks to JBH for proposing this clarification. \***
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Celestial Bronze has to be pretty rare on Earth, surely?
If I was a God, or even a Demigod, I'd want to make sure that there was some control over any substance that could hurt me in the hands of the wrong person. Bullets in particular are single use items; once you've shot it, it's not like you can dig it out of whatever it hits and melt it down again for re-use, at least not in a manner that's practical on the battlefield.
So; the first thing I'd be doing is making sure that Humans don't have access to Celestial Bronze. By so doing, you're limiting the weapons that they have access to to those which are given to them or which they can steal. To be frank; while a sword seems like a lot of metal to use in a weapon by comparison to a bullet, if you can maintain the sword (make sure the edge stays keen for instance) then gram for gram it can kill a LOT more monsters et al than a bullet can. You're not going to be afraid to take your sword into any battle, but take your bullets in and you're constantly thinking 'what if I waste these? What if I can't get replacements?'.
So for mine, the obvious practical reason for modern demigods not using firearms is that the metal needed for the bullets is a controlled substance and isn't available for general manufacturing.
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**A weapon in a demigod's hand is an extension of that being. It can become embued with attributes from its master. But the moment a bullet leaves a gun, it is no longer in contact with its master. No matter what it's made of... it's just a bullet.**
Even in the case where the demigod has the attribute of telekinesis, all he/she can do is *influence* the remote object. It can be pushed around (if even a demigod can think at the speed of a bullet. I mean, you have, what, a tenth of a second max to influence the projectile's flight?) but basically nothing more.
In your world, demigods are the masters of what they possess — literally, not figuratively. In other words, while they may rule over a land and its people, they cannot actually change, influence, or afflict a person unless touching them. While my previous comment suggested the limitation of something like telekinesis, now that I think about it, I'd remove even that. Demigods are not gods. They have limitations. In my case, what this means is...
* Demigods would happily use an [M61 Vulcan cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M61_Vulcan) against *mortals* because nothing mows down a bunch of insubordinate sycophants like a quality Vulcan cannon. They can carry what is usually a vehicle-mounted weapon because, hey, they're *demigods.* While touching the firearm itself they can overcome the problems of weight and recoil.
* But what value such a weapon against another demigod? No much. Your step-brother or -sister would just stand there and wonder why you were kicking sand in their face. For that you must set aside your favorite noise maker and pick up your favorite *[falchion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falchion).* With a good slashing weapon in your hand you can pierce unearthly skin, sever heaven-blessed artery, and behead with impunity. Not much use against *mortals* since you can only deal with them one-at-a-time... but against another *demigod...* [Oh, yeah....](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex9GCwCdW_I)
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Guns work thanks to the a chemical reaction generating a wave of high pressure propelling the shot. This can be reduced to some kind of "fire" power.
As long as any demigod has control on fire or its opposite (frost, water, etc.) it's pretty obvious that guns would be useless: your shells can be made explode while still in your hands/pockets, or can be made wet.
Better avoid this risk and rely on good old weapons.
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# Honor
I was about to say this, but sadly [@Stephan](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/100492/35041) wrote his answer first...
# Tradition
It can be a tradition thing. They are demigods, so they have huge lifespans or are even immortals (no?). That means they were alive even before the invention of gunpowder. They prefer swords, bows and that kind of thing because they are hung up on the past, they don't like new inventions, they prefer the old-school traditions.
# Bloodthirsty
Also, a more bloodthirsty explanation can be that gun wounds doesn't produce the same amount of pain as blunt force trauma or a dismemberment; melee weapons are more painful, and they love making the enemy experience pain.
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The most likely answer is guns don't work on the enemy of a demigod
Heracles' first task (of twelve) was slaying the [Nemean Lion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemean_lion) but it was immune to mortal weapons. He had to choke it to death and after it died he had to skin it using one of it's own claws because his knife could not cut it.
Another reason, using the idea of celestial bronze, is that bullets are blunt and heavy as where swords are sharp and light. A metal used to make swords lighter and supernaturally sharp would make terrible bullets. At best you'd have to make the equivalent of a celestial bronze version of a steel jacket round which may not be so easy to create.
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It could be an honor thing. Guns are too easy. While they do require skill, it could be considered cowardly to fight with them. After all, in a sniper fight, the first to spot their target wins. With martial weapons, you need skill, strength, endurance, dexterity, grip, footing, and a good eye for what your opponent is going to try. That's how I always justify such situations.
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It's all about will. You can argue that the power of a demigod (maybe even a god) is in their extreme will, sense of self, sense of purpose, etc, that is basically stronger than the rules of mundane reality. When two demigods fight, you are effectively pitting two wills against each other.
So in this interpretation, the celestial bronze thing is irrelevant to the demigod part. It may work just fine against monsters, but against a Demigod, you may as well be throwing ordinary lead down-range. It's not until you get into weapon strikes and hand to hand combat that the attack is powered by the will of the user, and it's that will that overcomes the will of the opposing demigod which is what either bypasses their protections, or, arguably, does the actual harm (and yes, you can take that to its logical extreme, where someone of sufficient power doesn't even need the weapon or even to strike, to exert their will to harm. of course, by that point, you're pretty much talking full god status anyway, and one could argue that's the main difference between the two, power level and the idea that demigods are still, to a certain extend, bound of in their world view of needing physical interaction in a physical world.)
Its all speculation, but it's fun.
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They have ranged abilities exceeding the effectiveness of a gun. The deities easily summon a blast of fire, or an explosion, or levitate boulders from miles away. So deities do not use guns because they are ineffective. (Of course, a cruise missile might still threaten a deity in this case, but the OP didn't ask about that.)
So why would melee weapons from celestial bronze be useful if projectile weapons aren't? The deity has strength and speed hundreds of times greater than a human, and strikes so hard that they can still rip another deity apart. Celestial bronze is the only metal strong enough to withstand the beating.
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# Technology Level
The planet has a level of technology of about the early 1800's. They have some basic steam transportation, muskets and bayonets, cannons and other basic artillery, and some less developed nations still do use swords, bows, and other more primitive weapons. Many countries still do use horses and other animals and ride on them, because many poorer countries haven't modernized their military.
# Goal and Rules
Rules:
* stick to the technology given (no nukes, aircraft, etc.)
* you may use genocide, but war has to be the main cause of death; genocide can only be secondary. When you use genocide, try to explain the mechanisms of how the people are killed and etc.
* you can have events prior to the war do some damage but they don't count as part of the kill count. As an example, you may use an economic depression to motivate some sort of genocide.
* **Edit**: you can use disease and famine as after-results from the war.
**Question**: Is it even possible to have a billion people dead in a 17 year war with this level of technology? I feel that this isn't possible and I am overreaching a lot, but I'm open to your ideas.
**Edit**: The population is like about 2 billion.
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According to the [estimates I have seen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_population), what you ask is not possible, for the simple reason that a 1800 level tech society barely supports something less than 1 billion people.
A war which is fought with the means available in that time, requiring close range interaction to kill, would stop by self exhaustion before everybody is killed. It would likely bring with some epidemic like cholera or the plague, which would help killing a lot of people, but would not lead to the complete wipe out.
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Running an estimate:
* The [30 Years' War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War) ran approximately 30 years and killed about half the population in the affected area. But not every day had the same intensity of fighting.
* The war caused [mass civilian death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War#Human_and_financial_cost_of_the_war) through military requisition of supplies, disruption of food production, and pandemics running through vulnerable populations.
Basically, agriculture of the 1600s was **barely keeping up** with the hungry population, and the same would apply to a somewhat larger population in the 1800s (see the influence of famine on the French Revolution). That's an average, there were good years and bad years. If an army marches through and steals food, fodder, and animals, it tips into famine.
* Death rates are sometimes estimated by before-and-after comparisons, but an entire generation would have been born during those 30 years. So before-and-after underestimates the death toll. On the other hand, 30 years would have plenty of natural deaths.
* The side with railways has significant advantages in their supply, of course. Instead of sending half their troops foraging for food and fodder, and the other half escorting the foragers, the railway-enabled side can have half the troops rest and the other half ambush enemy foragers. As long as their own camps are within practical marching distance of a railhead.
+ Where does the food come from?
*"Delivered by the railway, don't know from where"* says the cavalry trooper who has escorted plenty of oxwagons.
*"From the supply hub behind the front,"* says the colonel.
*"From this and that farming province hundreds of miles away,"* says the quartermaster who has looked at the freight manifests.
If those farm areas have friendly populations, they will be *taxed* to support the war effort. The tax collectors won't deliberately cause famine and mass death, but they will cut to the margins. If the rains come too early, or too late, on top of that, people may die. And if the farm areas have hostile populations, tax collectors may see starvation as a [side benefit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan). Either way, tax collectors may [assume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor) that farmers hide half of their crops anyway, and demand the delivery of all of the rest.
+ The side without railways would have incentives to [wreck them](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman%27s_March_to_the_Sea), and also productive areas far behind the front. If populations have become dependent on railways (e.g. industrial towns without enough farms of their own), they will starve.
+ Rounding up [forced labor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sea%E2%80%93Baltic_Canal#Construction) to build/extend railways could become another source of death. Probably the German V2 missile killed [more](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelbau-Dora_concentration_camp) slave labor than Londoners (yes, different technology, I mean the principle of ruthless leaders 'expending' human lives).
It seems entirely plausible that your fictional war kills half or three quarters of your population in a dozen years. Just mix plundering armies (especially unpaid mercenaries) and a bitter hostility between different sides.
As others pointed out, the problem is to have so many people that half or three quarters of them come to the required number.
Make your agriculture in many areas both reasonably effective, and dependent on irrigation canals. Then have the different factions destroy canals and locks, and plenty of food (allowing a large population) suddenly becomes a breakdown of food supplies which cannot be made up by the next harvest season.
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If we look back into history, disease and starvation are pretty much universally the biggest killers.
So, in your world, create a scenario which causes mass starvation. Disease is likely to follow and do its thing with the weakened survivors.
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The thing that comes to (my) mind would be **biological warfare that got out of hand**.
An infectuous disease, or an insect pest, that gets weaponized (hey, animal husbandry has been a thing *way* longer than the 1800's) and "succeeds" beyond expectations.
It needs to be something self-multiplying to reach so large a part of the population. And it needs to be "out of hand" given the restrictions of your question: "Half the population" means a *significant* amount of non-combattants were killed, and that without genocide being a primary goal of the war.
Since the "disease" thing has been ridden to death already (no pun intended) and requires a working knowledge of the germ theory, which happened rather late in earth's history, I'd go for the insect angle. Something that was *intended* to have a limited spread and e.g. not survive the winter, but *did* survive and multiplied far beyond expectations. There are a lot of options here.
A new breed of locusts, leading to wide-spread famine (*intended* to kill only one crop in the target area(s) to force an armistice).
An unsually aggressive breed of mosquitos native to the planet that cause severe afflictions (e.g. seizures or other neurological disorders, boils that get secondary infections etc.), *intended* to only affect troops in the field.
Some kind of parasite with all kinds of unsavory effects on the body.
Depending on what your main storyline is to be, that threat could still be very much present at the time the story takes place, be completely erradicated (but not soon enough to save all those people), or just a somewhat-mitigated background buzz to help with the impression of "alien planet" and "oh yes, *that* happened...". It could have been erradicated / mitigated by human interference like hygiene / protective measures, or by natural causes like an extremely cold winter / natural predators migrating to new feeding grounds etc.
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## This may be doable
While the OP ruled out Genocide, he did not expressly forbid Democide. Throughout history, total warfare has been practiced by various civilizations not to ethnically cleanse an enemy, but to kill each and every member of an opposing civilization regardless of thier race, gender, age, etc. Such wars are even more deadly than genocide because literally no one from the losing faction is intentionally spared. When you look at societies that favor democide over conquest you see a pattern of warfare where seeing 90% of a region's total population being quickly wiped out is not just possible, but a common occurrence. (There is a reason we don't have a lot of democidal societies left)
So, if a system of democide were to be adopted by a major empire like China or Britain, then it could in theory trigger a chain of democidal wars where each country tries to completely eliminate thier neighbors out of fear of being completely eliminated until ~50% of all people are dead. So, if you were to see democide spread to just over 1/2 of the world's civilizations, then seeing 1/2 of the total human population get wiped out, not in one war, but in a chain reaction of lots of wars, could be believable. Lasty, democide is a matter of culture, not technology. Any country of any level of advancement can do it, it's just a question of spreading this culture.
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I'm going to completely disagree with L.Dutch.
I think it is entirely possible... **With the right motivations**.
Now - a quick caveat here - In the real world - most wars are fought for victory, not total annihilation. I'll get to intentional genocides in a moment.
Firstly - historical population perspective - 1804 is the estimated time when the global population hit 1 Billion people, growing to 2 billion in the early 1900s.
So with 1800s technology, globally, it's possible to support the population needed to kill 1 billion people.
Next up - we have Man's ability to kill his fellow Man. There's a few instances I'll point to - the Native American depopulation (going from an estimated 60 million down to 6 million in 100 years) and the Rwandan Genocide (killing 500,000 in 100 days).
I've picked both of these for a reason - Rwanda happened mostly with Machetes, and the Native Americans were killed by a combination of disease and combat. Granted, both aren't hitting 1 billion people - but I want to add some points here:
Rwanda - this was essentially a tribal conflict (yes, yes - a whole load of historical context is getting glossed over here) - and was just in a single country. In addition - the men and boys were killed, the women were raped. If we the goal is to hit 1 billion, then women and girls get the bullet too.
Native America - there's various views on this - some say that it was intentional biological warfare (which I think is a bit of a stretch, given the understanding of disease in the 1500s) whereas others say it's a combination of factors, including disease, conflict etc.
Next up we have to talk technology - what do we have?
Well, we have the Maxim Machine Gun, we have pre-dreadnought battleships (like the IJN Mikasa), we have large calibre artillery. We don't have chemical warfare and biological warfare is limited to things like hurling dead/diseased bodies at the enemy.
Finally - we need the manpower to do it.
Well, I'm British and I'm going to use the height of the British Empire (400 million people) and I'm going to say that we are going to fight the rest of the world (1.3 billion people) - hold onto your tea, Lads! It's colonizing/genociding time!
400 million people to kill 1 Billion, that's a ratio of 2.5:1 people. Realistically though, we have to factor in that our combatants (fighting age men) are going to be more like 100 Million - so that's 10 to 1 - however, once the opposition's fighting men have been dispatched - the women and children aren't putting up a fight. And the ratio of fighting men to fighting men is probably going to be reasonably consistent - e.g. 2.5:1. Assuming a technological advantage - easily doable.
The key factor though is motivations and prep time. Rwanda had months and months of stockpiling and escalation, Desert Storm (as an example) had about ~6 months of marshalling before the initial invasion. For such a feat, there would need to be some serious preparation time - building and stockpiling of weapons, National Service, building of transport ships (could be done under many guises).
Motivation is that you want to kill everyone and everything. Possible, I mean one look at mid-century Germany - but in the history of warfare, men were killed, women and children were enslaved.
The lack of reliable long-distance communications would be a significant factor, with a bit of luck and the right conditions, the aggressor could mount a lightning assault on an area.
Putting that all together - with the 'right' conditions, here's how it would work:
Britain and her Empire spends the latter part of the 19th century preparing for a mass global genocide, they build up significant arms, weapons, ships - all fighting age men are conscripted and indoctrinated for the upcoming mission.
Firstly - because this is not a *military* operation, the attacks start with isolated places or places of no strategic significance. This should enable the attackers to be successful and if the target is completely annihilated, no survivors can raise an alarm.
From there, it progresses to larger and larger targets - this is where the other global super-powers (France, Russia, Japan, USA etc. etc.) would start to fight back - the goal of the British here though is not to engage them in open battle, using a tactic of deliberately genociding undefended villages/towns/etc., forcing the remaining populations to flee to the more heavily defended cities.
The goal here is to concentrate and over-populate an area with as many people as possible. Using artillery to pen them in, then either by happenstance or deliberate means, set something of a plague against the defenders - either using corpses or diseased captives hurled at the enemy - letting it take it's course, then once the defenders are weakened - rush in and mop up the survivors.
Such an engagement could be done over the period of 17 years (WW1 and WW2 were over a period of 5 years or so). If done with deliberate and thorough means (e.g. once the 'battle' is over, everyone is systematically murdered), I think it would possible.
Realistically it would end-up that something like 200-300 million people would have been killed as a direct result of combat (bullets, bombs, blades) the rest would be a combination of starvation and disease.
To put into perspective, WW2 has an estimated 50 million deaths as a direct result from war, that's in 5 years, and yes whilst there was modern weaponry (e.g. mass bombing) there was also rules against deliberate genocide and modernish medicine - namely antibiotics. Using WW2 as a benchmark, you could get 200 million dead in 20 years - If we use the historic ratio of 3:1 for wounded to Dead - that's 200 million dead, 600 million wounded. Using 1800s ratio for military hospital survival (40%) - that's another 250 million dead.
Then add in the fact this takes care of most of the enemies fighting age men - the rest (women and children) are essentially just waiting to be slaughtered.
TL;DR **With the right prep, the right circumstances, it's within the realm of possibility**.
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Not sure if I saw this mentioned, but there's of course the issue of life-expectancy in the 1800's. War technology or not, the 17 year war you describe is approximately 1/3 to 1/2 of the life expectancy of an abled bodied fighting individual back in the 1800s. So basically, once you turn 18, you go to war, and war will eventually become your "mid-life" crisis. And 17 years is an awful long time to ask of someone.
War has historically has always been a big baby-boom, but I'm not sure the population would support the military force required to pull this off... mostly because it's really easy to extrapolate the numbers of at least one of the wars.
But if you consider the "War of 1812" (the war is largely considered "inconclusive" by the way.... although the US did get Florida from it!):
United States:
Up to 15,000 deaths from all causes[5][4]
United Kingdom:
10,000 died from all causes[1][b]
Indigenous allies:
10,000 dead from all causes (warriors and civilians)[1][c]
Spain:
<20 casualties
We'll round UP and call it 35,000 deaths from all sides (and that's a generous statistic btw), and that war lasted just over 2.5 years which equates to about 14,000 deaths/year.
Extrapolating the numbers a bit:
1,000,000,000 deaths ÷ 14,000 deaths/year = 71428.571 years (give or take).
Source: <https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/war-of-1812-faqs#How%20many%20people%20died%20in%20the%20War%20of%201812>?
The other issue is travel:
There were no airplanes. The trek from England to the US by boat during that time, takes anywhere between 3 and 6 weeks... and they would need on (estimated) average 10-20 ships assuming assuming 500-1000 soldiers per ship. That's assuming they managed to actually make it to land... The real challenge back then was playing games like "Dodge the Scurvy" or "Marco, Polo? Sorry, I thought you said Cholera!"
So, really, to do it in 17 years is impossible simply because with the very personnel required to fight in-person, it would be near impossible to physically get the numbers required to kill that amount of people.
BTW, the estimated world population 1800 was around 1 billion, and by 1900 it went up to 1.6 billion.
Source: Google
I did ask ChatGPT to figure out some numbers and there is one possibility to meet it, but very unlikely:
| Cause of Death | Estimated Deaths/Year | Duration (Years) | Could Reach 1 Billion in 17 Years? | Additional Years Needed |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Disease** | | | | |
| Cholera | ~30,000-50,000 | Intermittent outbreaks | No | Thousands |
| Tuberculosis | ~500,000-1,000,000 | Ongoing | No | Hundreds |
| Yellow Fever & Malaria | ~100,000-500,000 | Ongoing | No | Hundreds to Thousands |
| Smallpox | ~300,000-500,000 | Varied | No | Hundreds |
| **Famine** | | | | |
| Great Famine (Ireland) | ~125,000-250,000 | 7 | No | Thousands |
| **War** | | | | |
| Napoleonic Wars | ~300,000-500,000 | 12 | No | Hundreds |
| Taiping Rebellion | ~2,000,000-3,000,000 | 14 | Yes (if we consider the higher end) | - |
| American Civil War | ~120,000-150,000 | 4 | No | Thousands |
| **Industrial Accidents & Pollution** | ~10,000-50,000 | Ongoing | No | Tens of Thousands |
| **Colonialism & Imperialism** | ~50,000-200,000 | Varied | No | Hundreds to Thousands |
| **Natural Disasters** | ~10,000-100,000 | Varied | No | Tens of Thousands |
Your best bet would be to ask China how they did it? :)
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I think it's possible--and doesn't even need to be intentional. Let's look at Earth's history--we have a truly devastating but slow killer: HIV. It appears to have arisen at the end of your time window, but that's purely chance, there is no reason it couldn't have made the zoonotic jump before then.
While mosquitoes don't spread HIV let's suppose this disease can be spread that way--but it's in an isolated community with a climate unfriendly to mosquitoes. The war brings it out into the world.
Yes, it would have happened someday, but back then there would be no hope of finding a treatment in time--everyone who is not immune will die over the next years.
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Biological warfare, including so-called gain of function, can be done with 1800s (or earlier) technology. For example, passing a respiratory disease between nearby cages of ferrets (or enemy prisoners) through a number of generations (of the disease) can strengthen the disease and its infectiousness. Hardly a good approach if it’s not specific to the enemy though. Your guys are going to die eventually too.
I think I would use an animal or plant disease that would wipe out the other side’s food supply, thus crippling their military and, perhaps incidentally, decimating their population. This would work if there were religious, climactic or other reasons that the enemy was particularly dependent on a single foodstuff, so something like potato blight or African swine flu could quickly and effectively destroy the majority of their food supply. There is a bit of a plausibility issue here in that a billion enemy people would not normally be living in similar climactic conditions, but perhaps that can be overcome.
From early in the 20th century we can find examples of proposed or implemented attempts at this such as Operation Mongoose and the alleged US use of biowarfare during the Korean War (a lengthy report on the latter can be found online- tying it to the infamous Japanese Unit 731). Whether those are true or not, they should provide a good source of inspiration.
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## The right motivation
As others pointed out, war for political reasons would most likely "burn out" before half the population is gone. However there is one reason in particular, which could cause an all out war, where no one is spared and everybody will go into the fight: Drastic loss of space.
In the event of a sudden and extrem ice age, that renders all but the most equatorial areas uninhabitable, there would be a gigantic war for what is left to live in.
Every nation (or some unions of nations) would try and conquer most of the remaining inhabitable areas as fast as possible. As their homeland becomes more and more uninhabitable, even women, children and old people start migrating and waging war. And so would the current inhabitants of those areas as soon as they figure out, that in case of defeat they would not be spared. Alliances would emerge as quickly as they get betrayed all for a chunk of farmable land.
The ice age could for example be caused by some major volcanic eruptions, clouding the sky for multiple decades to come.
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In my world, no one can die. There is no pain, no death, no injury, etc. Everyone has superpowers. Some people have pyrokinesis, some people have godlike strength, some people can read minds, some people can fly, some people can make food out of thin air, some people can turn themselves into poop, and some people can make things (but not people) disappear. However, none of these powers can kill, hurt, or even be felt by anyone. In addition, there is no hunger, no thirst, no needs of any kind. People still have all of the guns and weapons that exist now, but they cannot harm anyone at all. People mainly use them for fun, since they just like to shoot random things. No one has any possessions, so there is nothing to steal. The only constant is that no one can be harmed, trapped, or killed. I am looking for a form of war that is like real war but can still have a victor in my world.
## Therefore, since wars/fights are won by killing, trapping, or incapacitating an opponent, and none of those things are possible, how can there be a war or fight or battle in my world?
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**There must be something that people can gain or lose.** Without this, there is no reason to fight.
In our world, when people fight, it is because there is a situation where person A stands to gain by person B losing. War is the highest-stakes version of this because we tend to place the highest value on human health and well-being, which is at stake in violent conflict. But there's much more mundane examples too. In a game, you compete because not all players can win. And if we want to raise the stakes of a game beyond just the fun of winning, we give the winner a prize.
So, in your world, perhaps people fight *as a game*. That's one possibility. But it's not like war, because in war, the stakes are *what you care about most*. So, in your world, the "war" equivalent would have stakes of whatever the people care about most (that they are capable of losing). Are your people artists? Perhaps in a war, you are trying to destroy your adversary's creations. Are your people competitive? Perhaps they simply fight to "win" by some set of rules everyone agrees to. Are your people religious? Perhaps they compete to win the favor of God/gods. Hopefully you get the idea. Whatever your people have *that they are capable of not having* and value most should be what is at stake.
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### War games
I am part of a group that meets regularly to engage in various ersatz conflicts using symbolic tokens and ritualised rules - also known as "board game club". Why? Because it's mentally stimulating, because victory feels satisfying even if it has no material effect, because interacting with others through the formalism of a game can be more entertaining than simply chatting about the weather.
The same applies to your immortal, intangible, invulnerable post-humans, who sound like they would be bored out of their skulls by the utter flattening of their Maslow pyramid. They wage war the way we play Catan, or chess, or Rhino Hero.
Importantly, *that's it*. There's no dramatic repercussion to their social standing, their attractiveness to mates, their prospects in life. These are not trifling games played for high stakes. They are just a pastime for the terminally ennui'd.
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>
> To wage war, you need three things: one, money; two, money; and three, money.
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The vast majority of modern wars, starting with the Thirty Years' War, haven't been won by killing all the other guy's troops. Instead, they are won by mucking up the other guy's infrastructure enough that he *can't* wage war.
For example, consider the First World War. At the end of the war, the Central Powers were doing quite well militarily. They still had plenty of troops left, and Russia had just surrendered. However, it was at that point that the Central Powers were themselves forced to surrender. Why? While they still had plenty of warm bodies, the infrastructure to feed and arm them was collapsing.
Consider also the Second World War, twenty years later. The reason the Axis lost (again) was because they lacked the manufacturing capabilities to match Russia and the United States. Supplies were always an issue, but the Allied carpet-bombing of their factories destroyed their ability to make necessary supplies, and therefore their ability to prosecute the war. Thus, while they initially made much headway against the Allies, they were soon overrun.
In more modern times, the purpose of nuclear and biologic weapons is *not* to destroy the enemy's military. After all, military installations tend to be spread out and well hidden. Instead, countries keep WMDs to destroy the civilian and manufacturing centers which comprise the enemy's infrastructure. Insofar as WMDs are meant to be used against military targets at all, it's to keep the enemy from firing WMDs back.
**Without food, munitions, and clothing, troops cannot fight.**
Furthermore, you must also keep in mind morale. If you can make the enemy lose the will to fight, the war is already won.
Thus, your supermen's wars would likely be much like the Second World War. While there would be significant ground combat, its primary purpose would be to keep enemy ground troops from marauding around behind your lines. The actually *useful* combat would occur in the form of massive bombardments of enemy cities and manufacturing complexes, accompanied by extensive naval actions to destroy enemy shipping. The purpose of all this: **destroy the enemy's manufacturing capabilities, throw a monkey wrench in their economy, and cause as much suffering as possible.** Whoever breaks first, loses.
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Physical conflict is evidently not the route to go. As it stands, the stakes are low, perhaps to the point of boredom for our inhabitants. So they might invent conflict to relieve themselves of their ennui.
# Mental Tests
Perhaps they engage in matches of chess or some similarly mentally intense game and hold themselves to abide by the results of the match. The games become very intense, as they are the only means by which one may climb your world's social hierarchy. Winning a match is more than just a game, it defines your sphere of influence.
# Simulation of War
Perhaps these beings are technologically advanced enough to develop a fully immersive Virtual Reality experience, one in which they can fight and their avatar/character can die. Because they find their ordinary lives so dull, they take a great deal of pride and care in living the longest and most powerful virtual life.
# War by Proxy
Perhaps your world is inhabited by some creature that *is* mortal. The impervious beings select some of these creatures and impart as much training and wisdom as possible into them before setting them out to battle each other to the death. Since the creatures can die, and the beings are emotionally attached to them, we can raise the stakes. Basically, Nuzlocke Pokemon.
# However
The stakes in your world are very, very low. While not impossible, it will likely be difficult to convey any sort of significance to a conflict that has no real consequences. Without the possibility of failure, stories can become very bland. I would proceed cautiously, and consider scaling back the power of your entities somewhat. I find the idea that they cannot be trapped to be particularly concerning. As it stands, no one can stop anyone else from doing...anything, really.
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# Sport
Same as the current world—well, we *can* die, but we don't want to. So instead of constant warfare we have the olympic games to show how great our countries are. We have swordfights where we wear funny costumes and helmets that stop injury, we play american football with giant pads on our shoulders, we play "battles" on a chess board where the ones "dying" are plastic pieces.
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# Sending to the future
Someone hit by a weapon can be transported to some distance point in time (or space) taking them out of the fight. This will eventually give the victor control over a block of time/space.
I agree with Dark Malthorp, there needs to be something to gain or lose. In this case that is time/space.
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Everything you describe is true for almost every competitive online multiplayer game ever played.
Every day, millions of people all around the world have merciless firefights in games like *Counterstrike*, *Apex* or *Fortnite*, engage in bloody close-quarter combat in *For Honor* or *Mortal Kombat* and throw whole armies at each other in *Starcraft* or *Age of Empires*. Over and over again in an endless series of brutal battles. Even though they have no personal reasons why they would want to harm their opponents and no tangible consequence for winning or losing.
Why are all these people doing that?
* **For fun**
* **For self-improvement**. Becoming better at the game as an end in itself.
* **For social status**. They want to be known as the best player in the community. Or the most entertaining one according to their followers on Twitch and/or YouTube.
The same would be true for your world. People would fight each other as a leisure activity, to find out who is the strongest, and to become the strongest themselves. Not for any tangible benefit, but for status and self-actualization.
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Overwhelm their senses. As a bonus, there are some defenses possible, depending on your tech level and the foresight (good to know goggles will help with the 1st point, if you neglected to manufacture/bring them...)
1. Sight. Blindingly bright light, this won't make the opponents permanently blind, but they cannot quite fight while the light is on. Possibly fought with sunlight and mirrors in a low tech environment, xenon lamps or lasers later. Defense: goggles. Won't really help against individually targeted very strong laser, which opens up some arm race possibilities. Also won't be that efficient if the opponent starts blinking the light - you have to take them off, the eyes have to adapt, and in that moments you are vulnerable. Blinking light gradually morphs into psychological warfare.
2. Hearing. While there is probably no pain threshold, loud prolonged sound will prevent the opponent from communicating efficiently, and can easily lead to psychological warfare again ("nails on chalkboard").
3. Smell. Hydrogen sulfide is reasonably harmless in low amount, but still gives terrible nauseating smell. And if people cannot die, you have many interesting alternatives (that are likely immediately fatal in our world). Defense: gas masks. Overcoming the defense: liberal application of strong acids. Again, a possibility for an arm race.
4. Taste. Very much the same as smell, but different chemical agents and some ways to deliver them (strong liquid stream aimed at the opponent's face?). Probably going to be lumped together with the smell.
5. Touch. Maybe used on POWs as a (psychological) torture - is tickling a thing in this setting? Or, if itching works as well, spreading some chemical or physical agent (metal filings or sawdust) might be the way to go. Not incapacitating, but makes the fight uncomfortable.
6. Thermoception. Again, not incapacitating, but making life uncomfortable. High temperature is easier (and lower tech) to use than the low one, as a bonus, if you make your opponents endure fires for some time, their clothes will burn off and they'll have to fight naked, which is a strong psychological barrier (at least in our world).
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So @OCDev, has a good point. You are literally talking about how to create an economy in any MMO. You can't die, but you do have to share a monetary system with everyone else. It's inevitable that said monetary system, or a competition-based hierarchy, or even a status shift, would eventually take place of killing. That's kinda the way the wealthy do things in our world.
You have to replace the concept of death with defeat, based on whatever form of competition is available. Every time someone is defeated, a financial transaction occurs between them and the person that defeated them.
Ooo, here's a fun caveat. If you defeat someone who can't afford the transaction, then YOU have to pay HIM. I'm betting people would carry non-accidental defeat insurance. Also, you don't get credit if you defeat more than one person with an action. In a pseudo-death scenario, setting off a bomb, or even shooting a bullet through two people has no effect.
There's always a status shift when you defeat someone. It tells people who else you might defeat, for one thing. Maybe all defeats are publicly announced.
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This is a common and popular activity on multiplayer games where you often can't harm people, and they can log out, but you still want to traumatize them.
# Exclude people from desired areas or groups and put them in undesired locations
While you can't trap or harm people, you can keep them away from locations and groups you value. Build physical barriers around territory you value. Push them away from places you like, and prepare things like poop houses to put people you don't like in. Use movement powers to knock people away from places you like.
# Psychologically torture people
You can target their minds even if you can't physically harm them. Offer someone a meal, and then while their senses are turned on cover them in sewage. Display disturbing images or practices that hurt people's minds. Find social secrets people have and threaten to reveal them if they don't surrender/ join your side.
# Isolate and make your enemies friendless
Use psychological pressure and fun activities to draw in your enemies. Whoever has the larger group can better block opponents, and can better pressure them.
# Ruin enemy activities
If they try to play a game of football, set their field on fire. If they try to have a meal or watch a movie or have romantic relationships play loud and depressing songs. Do your best to ensure your rivals can't have fun.
The end goal is that you make the enemy group disband or leave your group alone.
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## Horses for courses
Why can't people be imprisoned? Do they all have every power simultaneously?
The super strong guy gets put somewhere that requires super speed to escape.
The super fast guy gets put somewhere that requires super strength to escape.
The telepath gets fired into the sun. Etc.
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The Question should not be how war could be fought in your world, but why anyone would want it to be.
If you've designed a world in which the only constant is that no one can be harmed, trapped, or killed and even food can be conjured out of thin air, what is there to war about?
If you could re-jig the rules to include something to fight about still, many wars are not won by killing, trapping, or incapacitating anyone, but by anticipating and out-manoeuvring the opponent as pundits have been pointing out for a good few thousand years.
Consider most famously in modern times, the fall of France.
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## They fight with thier domains for thier domains.
Since you are basically describing gods and not people, lets just treat them like gods. The gods in many polytheistic religions ascribe to Domains: aspects of the world that are thier preview (AKA: theirs). If you are a master of fire, then you might really enjoy hanging out with your own personal volcano. It is a place where you can do anything you want, have anything you want, because your powers are tied to fire.
But then, some annoying sea-god might come along and hit your volcanic paradise with a tsunami because he does not like the way you keep boiling off his water. These 2 gods cant harm each other, but they can harm each other's domains. So a battle ensues between the fire and the water god until the volcano is snuffed out, and the defeated fire god with no more fire left to command has nothing left for him here; so, drastically weakened without a domain to command anymore, he is forced to leave and go find another place to build a new fire domain.
## How these individual conflicts escalate into wars
No one god is all powerful against all powers. In the previous example, the fire god was at a distinct disadvantage, but against a forest god, he would have done much better. So to preserve thier domains, gods form up into Pantheons (alliances) so that when one of thier members is challenged by another god, they can call on one of thier allies that is better suited to win the conflict and destroy the enemy's domain.
In extreme cases, a border conflict could escalate to a full blown war between 2 pantheons as they reshape nature to deprive each other of thier respective domains. Wars have clear winners and losers when they pass the tipping point where the loosing faction can no longer muster any new powers without thier oppositions immediately being able to destroy thier new domain. At this point there is nothing left to do but retreat and find new lands where no one is around to destroy thier domains while they rebuild.
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## Wars are fought because something can be won
An opponent cannot take one's life for there is no life to give. They cannot take possessions for none are owned. They cannot fight for resources for none are needed. In a world where nothing *physical* can set one above another, what is left to lose?
***Their reputation***
Whether the winner obtains bragging rights or the loser is cloaked in shame, all that's left to win or lose is one's reputation. Readers of your story will relate to this because we all remember our school years where our reputation (often defined in terms of "popularity") frequently highlighted or tainted our memories of the era. It was desirable to know that people wanted to be with us and shameful, embarrassing, and/or depressing to know that no one did.
*And that's important. You don't just need a solution to your problem. You need a solution that the people who learn about your world can relate to.*
Decades ago I remember seeing a photograph of an Arab man sitting on the fallen statue of Saddam Hussein. My memory suggests he was thumbing his nose or some such, but that might be an embellishment. I remember reading the accompanying article, which explained a fascinating fact (and if this isn't quite the truth, please correct me! It's an old memory). In the Arabic world, it's not enough to simply win the war—one had to insult one's enemy. You truly won the battle when you could stand over your enemy and cast aspersions at his family.
I suggest that your wars will depend on the "cast aspersions" part fairly heavily. The winner of a war is one who places the enemy in such a circumstance that they are insulted... embarrassed... their reputation is tarnished and they *lose popularity.*
People want to be around the winner, the person who can most deftly insult the enemy without bringing shame on themselves. They don't want to be around the loser, the person who can't see it coming, can't overcome the insult, or can't avoid the stain and stigma.
**These aren't games anymore than they are today, right now, in our own lives**
And this is the important part. Many humans (most, if we're being honest about it) will do almost anything to avoid embarrassment, shame, and loss of reputation. There are actual laws on the books (slander, libel) protecting people from an unfair or unreasonable loss of reputation. We care how we're seen by members of our own families, friends and neighbors, and our communities. We all understand the constant fight for self-worth and the "dark side" of harming another's sense of self-worth.
We poo-poo these issues and try to sweep them into the category of "childish things" by naming the war, "drama." But it's a war that in Real Life leads to very real loss of life through suicide.
We can relate to a group of immortals who have only one thing to lose: their reputation.
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# Imprison The Immortals
The ultimate goal of any conflict would be rounding up and imprisoning the immortals. If they have no need to eat or drink, or possibly even breathe, then the prison could be made very efficient. For the worst of the foes, sealing them in a tomb could be a long term solution.
They might eventually claw their way out of that situation...
Maybe a more effective approach would be burying them in cement. The immortal could be left with his head exposed, so you could have civil discussions about them joining your side in exchange for freedom.
# Spaceflight
Finally, ejecting the immortal into outer space would probably remove them from the picture. Either you can shoot them towards the sun for a probable removal from the story entirely, or just in random directions, where their fates can be determined by orbital mechanics, and immense amounts of time.
And elsewhere in the galaxy, many centuries later, a man fell to earth...
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The first step will be to identify something to fight over. Maybe some kind of resource that makes the superpowers possible, and preventing your enemy from gaining this resource makes them mortal. Or maybe something that enhances the powers. Or perhaps there are differnent environments and biomes, and some are simply more comfortable, so you would fight to gain access for yourself, and prevent access to others.
Let say, as an example, that there is a planet that is desirable for whatever reason. What i suggest is to map out a chain of countermeasures. So you start with superpowers that allow you to take over the planet. Maybe people who can suppress the enemies, and physically push them off the planet. Then when you have the planet, you need superpowers that create forcefields and so on, as a defense.
In the end, this means that some superpowers will be more useful than others. That means that if you have such a superpower, you might fight for the highest bidder, so mercenary companies might come into existance who bid for the most powerful individuals, and then fight for the faction who is willing to pay.
I am rambling I guess, hopefully you can extract something useful.
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There's a large LARP event in Germany every year called [Drachenfest](https://www.drachenfest-larp.info/) with a similar premise. Characters attending these "war games" cannot die. Instead, if they are killed they go to a special place from which they return after some time.
What this does is *take them out of the equation temporarily*, and it works well, has worked well for many years.
So if it is possible to temporarily disable opponents, you can strife for objectives. Conquer that hill or city, destroy that building, steal that flag, whatever it may be - you don't need the enemy to **die** in order to accomplish your objective, you just need them **out of the way**.
It would change warfare a lot, but there can still be conflict and strife for specific objectives. Keep in mind that in most wars, your actual goal isn't to kill as many enemy soldiers as possible - that's usually just what you need to do to in order to accomplish whatever it is you actually want - control their capital, take their king captive, liberate your oppressed people, etc.
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So, it's the future and society has long since became divided upon distinct lines of rich and poor. The rich upper-class living a life of luxury and the poor lower-classes living each day at a time, thousands of meters above the Earth in the sky, in massive balloons and the tops of skyscrapers, the ground reserved for the rich, but why?
For what reason could the rich possibly have to want to live on the ground as opposed to the sky up above?
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In the Foundation series, Trantor (a planet-sized city) has one patch of green on the entire surface; the emperor's palace. Here, similarly, the only greenery is surrounding the mansions of the rich. They are the only ones able to buy land, and then not put a tower on it. This is an act of conspicuous consumption, and does not need to be purely logical.
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Until not too long ago, the higher floors of a mansion were the places where the lowest of the servants would have their quarters: cold in winter and hot in summer, humid and real mouse traps in case of a fire, for no reason the owner of the house (and consequently a rich man) would have settled right there.
You can use the same reasons in your case:
* safety
* salubrity
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To live longer.
To paraphrase from a book by Alan Lightman, ‘Einstein’s Dreams’
To slow the passage of time, and live longer lives than others, the wealthy lived deep in the gravity well and the poor lived high atop the mountains and in orbit around the planet where time passed faster. The amount of difference in the relative length of life was barely seconds but it was the idea of it, of losing even a moment of life to forces outside their control, that resulted in the practice.
Alternate Answer:
For same reason, people wanting to live longer. But it was because the air was polluted by particulate matter that slowly poisoned the inhaler. The city where this was the practice, of living as close to the ground as possible, the flora helped cleansed the particulates and the shape of the valley -- similar to Denver -- caused steady airflows that kept the air near the surface fresh.
But higher up, the brown cloud of particulate poison hangs over the city -- like Denver and its famous brown cloud -- trapped by a seemingly near-constant inversion layer. Some days, in winter, the temperature inversion clears and the particulates are blown out of the valley, but it starts accumulating again.
Now, in the future, they built giant domes and processed the air, removing the danger, but the status of living close to the ground, demonstrating one's virtuousness and prosperity, is deeply embedded in the society.
They use strange sounding phrases like 'may you sleep in the mud' 'dirty shoes -- as tidings of encouragement and celebration.
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Space. (In the room to live sense, not the place located above the atmosphere.) Why have so many rich people throughout history maintained lavish country estates? You have room to make your flower gardens, ride your horses, or do all sorts of other things. And since you've relegated the poor\* to living above ground, you have lots more room to do these things.
\*But this is perhaps not the wisest of choices. See e.g. Navarth: "Castles in the Clouds and the Anxieties of Those Who Live Directly Below by Reason of Falling Objects and Wastes" :-)
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A potentially very simple answer for this is the just the fact they are wealthy. Depending on population levels and their spread, living planet side would be quite the luxury.
To give a crude explanation, we can just look at Earth as is and deem it 1 Earth of living space based on surface area - a dull measurement but it lets us ignore the question of building on ocean floor vs just somehow paving over entire oceans. Now we just look at an estimated amount of iron on Earth - about 300 million cubic kilometers. Turn that into space stations and even accounting for some loss by saying you want steel instead of iron and you'll have roughly 1 million Earth's worth of living space.
In addition, just talking of Earth specifically, one can take historical value into property prices - after all it's homeworld and is bound to have more than a little history and sentiment inflating that living space value.
Certainly one can go "yeah but Im rich enough to own a large asteroid on my own"... congratulations there's easily millions of those depending on what you call "large"...meanwhile the truly wealthy own swaths of the homeworld which has a very finite supply since you can't just "tow in" another Earth
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Perhaps the skyscrapers were hastily (and unsafely built), and are cramped and crowded. And the balloons are not as airworthy as they the powers that be claim they are. Living on the ground means not having your building collapse or your blimp city fall from the sky.
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Where I live, the poor are in ugly concrete high-rise blocks (hello Grenfell Tower\*) the rich have nice houses with gardens.
It has always been thus. Even in Roman times the urban poor lived in cramped accommodation in tall buildings ('insula') while the rich lived at ground level villas with trees, fountains and plenty of space, and easy access to amenities. Weekend cottages, rural villas, a place in the country, a hunting lodge, a place on the beach, a little getaway by the lake or in the mountains: all of these are for the rich folk and the effect is completely spoiled if you make them 50 storeys high.
The best a tall building can do is give the illusion of the spaciousness and convenience of living at ground level.
* Grenfell Tower was an apartment block in London occupied by poor people, many of whom were killed in a tragic fire. The event highlighted the bad conditions and lack of safety for underprivileged people in this type of accommodation in modern Britain.
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*Parks and Greenery.*
In a high-rise building or even some appartment blocks floating around in the sky, there is no feasible way to have large parks.
The rich, on the other hand, buy up acres over acres and enjoy the lush vegetation around them, whereas, the poor sit in their floating flats and the only thing they see is clouds. Clouds over clouds.
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For buildings: if they're tall enough, the upper floors will be a pain to get in/out of: the more floors you've got, the higher a percentage of the ground floor needs to be made of elevators to adequately service the upper floors. The point at which this becomes a problem is tall, but not absurdly so (we're starting to bump up against the limit with the tallest buildings in the world today). If you just ignored that and build stupidly tall buildings with inadequate elevators, you'd end up with the upper floors being a pain to get in/out of.
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In the near future, the push to green technology to keep the planet alive, to be pollution free, to pull back rising heat and sea levels, we delegated living to the tops of huge sky scrapers above, all structures for general manufacture were to go to the sky, a place, high up enough that support balloons (doubling as storage units for the methane/gas used to power several systems) would reduce the need for the massive strength of columns and skyscrapers of the past to hold up the ring, The ring even as a thin 50km wide band, was able to house the world, so the earth could be free to replenish and regrow after the devastation we wrought upon it.
In Time, the surface became home on to those who could afford to transport goods back down to the surface.
A ticket to the surface, a holiday trip, was the price of a years salary for the bulk of the population, so only those in power, and wealth would or could live on the surface, while the spacers mined the asteroids, and brought back materials to the ring.
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**Food, Oxygen, and other necessary things to survive**
The rich would wanted to have an easy way to get their needs fulfilled. All sources of food (plant and animal based) are located in the grounds. Oxygen is sparse on high places. Other materials also found on ground (gold, silver, etc)
We are land creature, thus the ground will always be our best bet to survive.
They can and **will** do whatever it takes to take the land, and put other poor lower-classes to live on skyscrapers, why? So that they can take everything, and become richer
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What would be the best wall profile and size for a prepared anti-zombie fortification? I am trying to protect against fast zombies like the ones in the movie adaptation of *World War Z*, who can climb over each other, so take that into account.
Here are some profiles I've considered.
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# Wall features
When selecting a wall you need to consider:
## Structural strength
You need a solid, wide base that will hold against pressure of thousands of bodies. You need strongpoints to make it rigid and stable. You need the thing to be literally immovable. So, diamond, inverted triangle, vee, bowl, ellipse are all ruled out.
## Space for battlements and other structures
In short, you need to be able to stand atop comfortably and without being a target. So, the best way is it have at least some flat top. I assume you would place some [crenellation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrasure) to secure combatants.
## Shape of the wall that faces the enemy
Well, you would have three options. Triangular is the easiest to build and has the most strength, but since you wouldn't face artillery it is not a problem. Straight wall is OK if you don't face an enemy with scaling ability. Inverted slope is great for combating ladders and such, but does not give you a great fighting opportunity. What you need is a straight wall with overhang - [machicolation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machicolation). That would give you defense against climbers AND reduce your blind spot. That would make your exterior look like inverted L with very short horizontal platform bit.
## Shape of the wall that faces you
Ideally, you want easy access. A slope is perfect, and it adds to your structural strength. It's easy to make stairs or platforms and you can build on top.
# Final shape
Any type of zombies would have a hard time breaching it. Your greatest problem are the flesh towers of World War Z, but such a design would take care of it by dropping anti-infantry explosives right near the wall using machicolations (dashed line), and wall's wide base would be able to withstand that quite well, as long as you stick to regular anti-personnel grenades.
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eimyr has by far the most practical wall design. My only problem with it is that it requires the use of consumables like grenades and bullets.
Depending on how prepared the defenders are and how much they know about the enemy they'll be facing they'd want to design the shape of their perimeter as well.
Mainly they'd want some kind of resilient system that can dispose of arbritrarily large numbers of zombies without clogging or leaving a mound that can be climbed.
Hence you might want to funnel them towards a point in your defences with a transparent barrier behind which is a delicious looking human. In front of the barrier you have a large pit or trapdoor that drops into a rock macerator salvaged from a quarry.
This would allow you to keep the population of zombies outside your walls low without always needing to expend bullets or grenades.
Zombies drop into the almost unclogable rock macerator and are crushed into pulp. No fuss.
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[Similar to Murphy's idea](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/12804/4981), the best shape of wall is a purely vertical one. Only, instead of being made out of stone, you'd make it out of shredders.
You could orient it either as seen below, so that the zombies will be converted into red paste upon scaling over the sides, or with the grindy bits pointing out, so that they get converted into red paste as they push up against it.
This model of grinder even has a drainage spout, so you could capture the zombie paste, which I imagine probably makes good fertilizer. Or failing that, the ultimate in biological warfare stocks. Why only funnel *some* zombies into a slaughter funnel, when you can make your whole wall a zombie grinder? And it's a modular wall design, which is all the rage these days. Plus, eco-friendly, because you can... erm... "recycle" the zombies paste into either fertilizer or bioweapons.
Also, importantly, this kind of device is surprisingly common (even been to a farm - combines, threshers, etc.) and would be both easy to salvage and of otherwise limited utility in a zombie-pocalypse. You wouldn't find much in the way of farming or mining activity beyond the safety of a city's walls, and the various urban uses for large grinders and crushers (like crushing cars and compacting garbage, or even mowing lawns) would probably have almost no demand, so it seems to me like it would be fairly economical to turn this otherwise useless machinery into a practically impenetrable zombie defense. It certainly seems to me like it would be at least as easy to rig up a wall of grinders and shredders as it would be to construct a whole solid wall, which would require enormous amounts of stone or cement (etc.) to construct.
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This is yet another fun idea ruined by engineering and economics.
**Engineering**
Different shapes sound fun, but keep in mind that any variation away from simple has a cost. It's either going to cost you height or structural strength, and both of those are incredibly important. There's a reason human walls are, traditionally, giant rectangles - it's because giant rectangles work.
**Economics**
On top of any engineering concerns, consider that you generally have limited materials to work with. Using extra materials for a different shape is going to cost you height or area (you can enclose a larger area with simple walls). Also consider that bracing the wall from behind has diminishing returns - you're not getting as much out of that material as the original wall strength, especially if smart zombies decide to pull instead of pushing.
**Layered Simple**
Even if you do have tons of extra material, it might be better to consider alternative approaches. Why not have two simple walls, with a gap in between? There's a limit to the height you can get with one wall, depending on the material, but you can build multiples easily enough.
I suspect that having multiple basic walls is going to win over any single complicated wall, if they're approximately the same cost and effort. This helps negate the piled zombies because they have to do it twice, and gives you a fallback position. If there are times the zombies aren't attacking, you can use that to re-take the outer wall and clear any piles away.
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Most answers are concentrating on scalability and weapon placement. Weapon placement is very important, and I'm a personal fan of the auger-shredder, but the question is about walls and survivability.
The greatest danger is from the WWZ zombies, all others are of the same sort, but less danger, so I'll concentrate there.
In the movie, Jerusalem was doing remarkably well with just tall and straight walls. God knows where they resupplied ammo and fuel, but the walls were suitable until
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> people inside started chanting and drew all the Zs to one place where, as has been said, any shape wall would have eventually failed. Shooting 90 zombies in the head turns them into stairs. (Sorry for the convenience.) !
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The problem being ignored here is the interior shape of the wall, and specifically
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Give the wall a steep incline and grease up the surface facing the zombies. This is way easier to describe with examples (and please excuse the crappy photo---I am using a crappy photo editor). I am also well aware that this **isn't the best answer** because I am pressed for time.
The steep side is the side the zombies will face. You will need a pretty tall---i'de say fifty to a couple hundred feet---to stop a large group of undead. Grease the side facing the zombies with oil of some kind and they can't get up. As they go Max Brooks on the wall and begin to stack up they will hit the ramp. This will give them another obstacle and the horde will have to become big enough to expand out wards. Most would fall and the few who mad it would be easy targets for any guys you have up there to pick them off. See below.
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For most Z types, the triangular inverted or L inverted seems like they would be the best. No hand holds, climbing an overhang is tricky, and ramping up would be made more difficult by it as well, as towers of Z would tend to tip. Inverted L would also allow you to have [Murder Holes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder-hole). I'd also like to propose a new shape, the \ (backslash). Basically the V without the inner wall. Same overhang as the inverted triangle, but would allow you to put arrow slits in... if you add a bit of an overhang like the inverted L with murder holes it could be interesting.
The tricky ones are the WWZ movie type, as you've said. The inverted triangle would still slow them down a bit, but once the concave area is filled it wouldn't be much different than a normal straight up and down wall. So for that type you almost have to have active defenses and not just passive walls. Something to remove the base. I think it could be as easy as putting flame thrower nozzles every 10 feet along the base, and when you start to see a bunch begin to ramp up you just turn them on along that section, burn the base away and the tower topples, plus since they are so congregated you'd remove larger numbers, thinning the ranks. Also have a bunch of phosphorus grenades along the perimeter. That stuff burns underwater.
I always wonder why fire isn't utilized more in the movies. Maybe Z don't burn very well? Destroying the brain is the only way to kill them, but burning the muscle would stop them moving, and fire would cook the brain...
A giant auger would work well, chopping any Z that gets close to pieces and pulling the pieces along the wall to disposal areas. Could get clogged though.
Another active defense would be something like a giant [captive bolt gun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_bolt_pistol).
Something that shoots out and smashes zombies, but doesn't take ammo, and can be powered by compressed air. fairly short range, but they are coming to you... Could be combined with murder holes/arrow slits.
I actually just started the walking dead last night, and they almost seem smart. I saw tool using and basic reasoning, at least in the first 3 episodes.
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Interesting... This can operate via a process of elimination...
Upright triangle is right out - it's the easiest to climb.
Assuming climbing fast zombies, upright L offers zero advantages over a simple wall.
The inverted L and T walls are identical - no real advantage to have an overhang on the defending side like that. Both of those would do a good job preventing climbing (until a large enough group formed a pyramid) but you can't attack zombies at the base of the wall effectively. If enough get into that dead zone, tunneling under would be trivial. So they're out.
C shaped would mitigate the threat of tunneling, I suppose. This might be a good option.
I fail to see the point of the cavity for V and bowl shaped walls, other than forcing them to climb a little bit more and being more complex to build and maintain, as well as structurally more frail. They are otherwise identical to the inverted triangle. So they're out.
Diamond shapes provide a good visual angle to attach most of the approaching horde, but would be easy to climb if enough got into the blind spot.
The ellipse has a minimal blind spot, wide viewing angle, and is hard to climb. So funny enough, I'm going with the ellipse with the following caveat: That the wall be built in sections that can "rock" back and forth. Basically you can use this to "shake" climbing zombies off and crush the ones at the base into paste.
You would think that a bowl would work for that, but when you tilt the bowl, you actually make it EASIER for the zombies to climb up the rim into the inner hollow.
The ellipse would work way better and people on the top would still be able to defend when it rocks - just provide firing stations with seatbelts to keep them in place!
### Additional caveat/update:
To clarify, there would be a backstop on the defender's side of the wall to prevent it from rocking backwards or being pushed over. A hydraulic system would push/rock the wall slightly outward from the top, crushing any buildup at the base and shaking off any zombies attempting to climb. Since we only need to rock, say, ten degrees for each section, no gaps in the perimeter will open up. you might even be able to use the zombie slurry as a bio-fuel starter to power generators for the defenders.
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As Loren said, wall design is only a part of the solution. Any tall wall, with a smooth surface will be the defining obstruction of a 'wall'. To create a more robust design to repel ZOMBIES, additions need to be made.
Starting with the wall from world war z; the problem lies in the mass of zombies being triggered by the loud noises, and building their own 'wall' to compensate the walls in place.Adding on to the assumed 'best' wall design; having large, extensible plates that can be automatically/ manually pushed outwards, to disrupt the horde tower being built will protect from this problem.
Another design would be to create triangular parts of the wall; this will not allow the zombies to focus on a single area. And by adding additional plates will allow the multiple towers of zombie hordes to be continually disrupted.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vZcH4.jpg)
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The shape of the wall will be mostly irrelevant. You want it to be strong and high, but most of all you need a way to counter any piling up of ramps, be they made of any material or of heaps of zombies.
Automated flamethrowers should help you there.
Other than that, make your walls hard to reach: Crocodiles in a surrounding moat might be a direction you could think.
In general, several lines of defence should help you, but at least one of them needs to have active components. Otherwise sheer masses will scale any wall.
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I don't think most of these shapes create any advantage. Some are clearly inferior---anything sloped provides some support for a pyramid that a straight or inverted wall does not provide.
As others have said, World War Z movie zombies (not the book zombies!) are the greatest threat, anything that can stop them can stop anything else.
Jerusalem **almost** got it right--simple, tall walls. Their mistake was not making it tall enough to defeat a pyramid attack. I disagree about defenses--the wall should mostly be a passive defense. If you're using weapons you can run out.
Another 15' on the Jerusalem wall would have stopped anything short of a huge mass of dead bodies that the zombies simply climbed.
I would also be looking at trapped breeches. For example, let them into a cage--when the cage gets heavy it's anchors let go, it falls down on a huge mass of spikes--when it falls the breech is sealed. It falls to a point that's underwater and accessible to ocean wildlife--let them come in and eat the zombies. When it's been cleaned up enough it's counterweight lifts it back into position. (The spikes are only underwater so even if the zombies offer enough resistance that they don't go all the way through and stop it's fully dropping it's still in a position for them to get eaten.
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There are no "fast zombies" in Max Brooks's *[World War Z](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z)* but the problem of zombies "piling up" is still problematic in a number of the sieges so the design question still has merit. There are two major considerations, physical strength, starting with deep foundations and continuing with continuous casting and heavy use of reinforcing steel and stopping them at the top. The basic wall is going to be an inverted uneven T with a long foundation on the outside where the weight of the zombies will act to strengthen the wall they're piling up against. The base of the wall should also be thicker than the top but there should only be a slop on the inside. I'd then use modern materials to put old-style [hoardings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding_(castle)) on top in smooth steel that nothing can get purchase on.
On a separate but related note read the book it is really really good and the movie only covers a tiny slice of time (the Panic) out of the whole conflict and does it badly. Well the movie is less bad if you think of it as taking place during the Panic.
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The title basically says it all, but i will elaborate.
Earth's moon light up the night sky by reflecting sunlight.
But our moon is barren and made up of grey/white rock thus making it highly reflective.
If a planet were to have a moon with an atmosphere and a temperature suitable enough to evolve plantlife and thus take on a green hue, would it still reflect enough light to be a light source in the night sky comparable to our moon or would this ''lush moon'' be so dim as to be ineffective as a nightly lightsource?
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Your question contains a very false assumption:
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> But our moon is barren and made up of grey/white rock thus making it **highly reflective**.
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This is the Moon: Albedo (the part of visible light it reflects) is 0.12
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lw4vT.jpg)
Here is another object, that also has an Albedo of 0.12: worn asphalt road
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nn3JJ.jpg)
Very, *very*, **very few** people would describe an old asphalt road as "highly reflective"
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Under the right conditions, shadows can be cast under the light reflected by Venus.
And this is what a body covered by water and plants look like from space.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/94w3n.jpg)
Consider that it will be way closer than Venus is to Earth, and stay assured that it will be enough of a light source at night.
You can also see it by yourself: go out and look at the new Moon, if you look carefully you will see that the dark part can actually be seen. It's called [Earthshine](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/83782/earthshine) and it's caused by the Moon reflecting back the sun light cast on it by the lit side of Earth. ([image source](https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/images/83782/earthshine))
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UdlCr.jpg)
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Planetary albedo is the percentage of light/radiation reflected back into space by a stellar object.
Using accumulated satellite data going back to the 70's, the Earth's average albedo is around 0.30, or about 30% of the light/radiation Earth receives is reflected back into space.
If the Earth were an ice covered world, the estimated albedo would instead be around 0.80, or 80%. If the Earth were a jungle world, covered in greenery, then the estimated albedo would be around 0.14... rather dim.
Generally speaking, a stellar object with clouds will have a higher albedo, while a rocky object will have a lower albedo.
By way of comparison, Saturn, Jupiter, and Uranus all compare to Earth with scores ranging from 0.30 to 0.34. Venus wins with a brilliant average of 0.75, and the moon trails well behind at around 0.12.
Thus a jungle moon would be rather dim, but only compared to other objects. The average albedo of a jungle world is actually brighter than our current moon. Unless it also managed to have lots of clouds, in which case it would probably match Earth. Distance would also be a factor. After all, the moon is usually quite bright as seen from Earth, due to local conditions.
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As a side comment, do keep in mind the strength of mass/gravity and electromagnetic fields needed to keep an atmosphere safe from the solar wind. Unless you are dipping into super-science or fantasy, you might wind up with a dual planet rather than a planet/moon setup.
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I have my eyes on this new Porsche but all I have is an unlimited supply of ice and a molecular distillery. How can I convert this ice into gold?
The molecular distillery can disassemble and reassemble the molecules in any item but cannot add new molecules from nowhere not existing in whatever you put into it. For example, if you put in only Helium you cannot get out Platinum.
To clarify, if you put in multiple items/elements then you can get out any combination of whatever you put in.
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Well, you've explicitly stated "For example, if you put in only Helium you cannot get out Platinum." By the same token, therefore, you cannot only put in hydrogen and oxygen (ice) and get out gold.
Therefore, let's get creative. Depending on how the machine works (whether it obeys the conservation of energy, for instance, or has a source of energy otherwise inaccessible to you, and whether it can rearrange atoms, or merely molecules), you could:
1. Arrange the hydrogen and oxygen atoms into stable sturdy solids with convenient handwavy properties (asserted for narrative purposes to exist), arranged in a manner forming an *atomic* distillery capable of converting ice to gold. (Depends on the machine producing structures, and not just substances. Also depends on having plans for an atomic distillery.)
2. Convert the ice to hydrogen and oxygen, burn it for energy (forming water again), and sell the energy. (Depends on needing no energy; violates law of conservation of energy.)
3. Convert CO2 from the air into solid carbon and gaseous oxygen (or bind the oxygen to st else). Sell the service as an anti-global-warming approach. (Requires the ability to process massive amounts of gas, or really shady and tricky marketing.)
4. Find an expensive compound made of cheap materials and sell that. (Assumes few people have one of these machines.)
5. Rent out the machine for INSANE amounts of money. (Assumes modern-day world.)
Just some ideas.
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Molecules are formed by atoms. Each atom is of a type (element).
Gold is an element.
Water is formed by the elements hydrogen and oxygen.
You cannot combine oxygen and hydrogen in molecules to create gold.
To create gold atoms from oxygen and/or hydrogen atoms you need to "change" the atoms to a different element, and that requires nuclear reactions.
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> [According to the National Ocean Service, our oceans hold some 20 million pounds of gold, suspended in normal seawater. But this gold is spread throughout the normal mineral content of seawater to the tune of “parts per trillion.” As the NOAA puts it, “Each liter of seawater contains, on average, about 13 billionths of a gram of gold.”](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/gold-ocean-sea-hoax-science-water-boom-rush-treasure).
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So all you need to do is spend a few years filtering the rim of the south pole. It will take about 20 billion liters of seawater to get enojgh gold to craft a ring. It will cost millions in electricity as well.
You can get gold much faster by getting a job.
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You use the Dwarven Press process (TM). Now, while that is exclusively to turn lead to gold, the theory is the same.
Go to the busiest municipalities, and offer to deal with their trash for a nominal figure, much lower than any other competitor. They fall over themselves to give you the deal and claim that they've saved millions in the budget.
You set up your distillery at some point close to your clients to minimise transport costs. Make sure your zoning permits etc. are all compliant. Possibly set up multiple distilleries, if you have the technology, to avoid bureaucratic tangles, e.g., checks at international borders.
Convert the trash into something useful, e.g., fertiliser, metal ingots, plastic pellets. Sell at a profit. Buy DeBeers. Start producing and selling diamonds.
Buy your Porsche, or gold, as preferred.
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Don't make gold, make something super-expensive from something relatively cheap. Ice doesn't give you much but if you can capture come carbon dioxide (CO$\_2$) you can extract separate coal and oxygen. Release oxygen and change coal into either diamonds or graphene. similarly use some sand to produce silicone. In all cases a large amount of extreme purity is what builds for the price.
Other option is to use your machine for creating complicated shapes. If you can shape titanium, sell this possibility as a service and you'll earn for your Porsche in no time!
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Forget about the ice. Give it a few grams of organic matter. Wood. Cheese. Refuse. Whatever. You only need a few grams containing some carbon atoms and trace metals.
With those few grams of organic matter, you produce some [Endohedral Fullerenes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endohedral_fullerene), and sell them. According to [this webpage](https://interestingengineering.com/the-10-most-expensive-materials-on-earth), Endohedral Fullerenes are worth about 160 *million* dollars per gram. That's a much stiffer price tag than even diamonds, which can only be sold at about 100 *thousand* dollars per gram.
Of course, if you fail to find someone willing to buy your Endohedral Fullerenes, you can always fall back to selling some diamonds.
Once you have the money, just buy the gold you want...
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# Upgrade your distillery!
1. Instead of being a molecular distillery, upgrade it to a subatomic particle distillery.
2. It would then take about 11 molecules of water to reorganize into one atom of gold.
3. There'd be some waste products, but we won't worry about those.
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Create a machine that is capable of generating unlimited energy from nothing. Then create an AI that will use this energy to create a virtual world that is impossible to distinguish from our world.
Your AI will create inside its own world: another AI that will create another world impossible to distinguish from our world, and again and again and again.
Find a way to make your AI wanting to be in the world of the AI that created a virtual world that created it. Then find a way to make yourself able to make an AI that created another AI through a virtual world wanting to make the AI it created be part of it's own world only if you decide it to happend.
Show to the AI that created the world that created you (don't forget that you created an AI that created a world that created an AI that might have somehow created a world just like the world that created an AI that created a world that created that very AI), that you will decide that any AI created by a world created by an Ai that could be created by a world created by an AI you could have created will be granted to be part of the world of the AI that created the world that created that AI if it do turn your ice into gold even if it's impossible using physic laws.
If you did all those steps perfectly, it might work, and let you turn ice into gold using a molecular distillery.
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I'm considering a world where a specific civilization can use imagination as power to invoke spells, create objects and creatures.
The range of abilities depends on the user. Some individuals sweat just to create a jar (like an artisan who can create using his imagination power), to a powerful wizard who can summon a never-ending army of giants.
I'm not expecting a very scientific explanation, but how would this works if their imagination worked as ours? The concept I'm sticking to is that the individual's imagination would deplete after long uses, or after imagining something very hard.
Example: Nero is a powerful magician who can summon nearly everything possible. After fighting a strong enemy and using his imagination to create weapons, companions, changing his form and any other thing possible, his imagination is gone.
**How the "imagination gauge" could recover? Is there some "limit" to his imagination (or how I can distinguish the guy who can only create jars imagination from the god-like wizard)?**
Thank you!
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Any neurological process requires glucose and neurotransmitters. Thinking hard about anything can exhaust areas of the brain of these resources. Neurotransmitters need to be salvaged and manufactured, the receiving end needs to be cleared of NTs, and the activated ion channels need to restore their gradients so they can fire again. Typically folks just get fatigued or a little "fuzzy" when this happens, but their ability to think doesn't just stop. However, your magic imagination process could drop below a threshold necessary for physical manifestation, needing a reset period. So how well someone can wield this imagination magic may depend on how much practice they have (and how efficient they can utilize their brain). Use too much magic and they get headaches, have difficulty concentrating, and their magic starts having trouble, especially the more complex imaginings. Being dehydrated, hung-over, or in poor health may impact this, and you could even tie in degenerative diseases, sort of a magical Alzheimer's disease.
You could have a specific biochemical process that activates the magic. Sort of like how mitochondria work. The more powerful the mage, the more magic mitochondria (magichondria!) he has in the region of his brain that controls the magic. So while he can suffer from neurological exhaustion, he can ALSO suffer from magichondria fatigue as these intracellular organelles build up waste products and deplete activation enzymes with continued use.
So there are multiple steps necessary for magic use which can be fatigued or interrupted. His specific imagination memory process, the triggers to make a magic soldier for example, is tied to the functioning of these magichondria. So after they get exhausted, he "forgets" (or more specifically, loses the ability to access) the magic soldier image. It won't be accessible again until he rests. Other magichondria are tied to memories for flight, making a shield, whatever. Deliberate meditation and practice can associate memories with magichondria, but ultimately you are limited by how many you have (a finite spell reservoir).
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Imagination is a dangerous thing, just ask any small child - they haven't yet learnt that something is impossible.
You might want to look into adding some mental **discipline** into the conjuring.
Consider how difficult each task is to build up a particular spell and have your magician compartmentalise these tasks in his/her mind in order to combine them at the end of the spell. In effect, you'd have an assembly process that the mind has to coordinate.
So, the more difficult the spell, the more mental agility and capacity you need to perform it.
Just a thought. (Credit here goes to the 'Kingkiller Chronicles')
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Imagination as the source of power could be explained in the same way artistic talent is explained today. The minds eye - imagination - is very keen for some; they see details and shadows, shades and contours. Then there are people like me who see basic shapes, some shadow, but shades and contours elude me as do finer details. Then there are some of my friends that can't imagine a stick figure let alone the individual lines used to make one.
Each of us has imagination levels that vary just like what you've described. The more intense and detailed the imagination, the better the drawing, painting or sculpture; or the worse as the case may be. Some are excellent photorealistic drawers, while others are incredibly talented sculptors in clay. Some are very abstract, seeing stories in blobs most of us dismiss.
In your world, the imagination fuels the magic behind the creation. But imagination takes concentration and time. `Tangibles` take time and focus to create. The more disciplined an `Imaginator`, the better the `Tangible`. Normal things will hinder the creation of `Tangibles` - hunger, fatigue, distraction, emotion - only at an elevated level since the focus and concentration required are also at an elevated level.
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Imagine a multiverse where anything you can imagine actually exists including things that pop into existance with nothing but void other than them.
Now imagine people who have an organ that can locate these objects and generate a gateway that brings them into their world. They can't travel to those worlds because the gateway locks onto an object and then pulls it into their world which means that the gateway closes as soon as the object is pulled over.
People with better imaginations can locate objects better because it crystalizes what to target and thus wastes less energy and makes it so the pull over the right thing. And likewise, all organs/muscles get better with use so someone with a good imagination is more efficient and someone who uses their ability alot has more to work with. Both of these can be worked on and both of these can have varying degrees of strength naturally. Some people are "deformed" and don't have this organ. Others are like those kids that have a scharzenegger physique at 10.
You now have "imagination" based "magic"...
And if you need it spelled out. This explains how some "sweat bullets" while others are practical gods. It also gives you a way to have an absolute limit by saying it takes x energy to open gateway of y size with z lock on ability. Once you know how much energy a person can produce and their lock on ability you can create an absolute limit to what they can bring over.
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I have 2 very useful Limiters that Together seem to paradoxically keep these magicians both powerful and Heavily limited, but individually are quite valid all the same.
1) The biggest problem with Imagination magic is how simple it seems. They think, I imagine a Gun in my hand, its a .22 Pistol, and boom, its just done. The realistic problem with that is simply that they have no idea how a Pistol works. So, Rather than Imagining a Gun, Make it so they have to imagine each and every part, put in the correct place to make the gun. If they want to form a Tornado, they have to imagine not only the wind circling around, but the weather conditions to not have it instantly dissipate due to physics (unless they just keep imagining the wind moving, which would be very consuming, see 2nd part). This means that they cant do anythign complex, unless they understand it. They cant just imagine understanding it either, since they dont understand that either. This makes them like real wizzards, they have to study, spend long amounts of time practicing, and yet with only an understanding of rocks and basic forces, they could send a rock faster than a bullet, which would be deadly.
2) As for limits to make people not be almighty, Perhaps using Imagination Magic acts kind of like Alcohol or Anesthesia. As they perform this magic, they literally become drunk, loosing their ability to think straight. The more complicated the thing they are imagining is, the more "mental alcohol" they drunk to do it. It could make it so they cant do even basic imagination magic, Just like a drunk looses their ability to drive a car straight. As they keep on fighting, its like drinking more and more while driving, eventually, they cant stay on the road, and trying to imagine complicated things becomes impossible, as their mind is unable to focus. This sets a hard limit, as if they are constantly driving and drinking, If they tried to cast a complicated spell, their metaphsyical car crashes and it fails, resulting in say dust instead of a rock which is propelled in the wrong direction. Perhaps with training they could temporarily delay the drunk feeling, and create crazy complicated spells as a Finisher move, only to afterwards be unable to even talk in coherent sentences.
Ofcourse, Eventually they would always recover. The Brain is not fully understood, but this magic needs not cause brain damage with each use, which is realistically the only thing that would be permanent. After a few days, to maybe a week, they would be at 100% again. Though of course Brain damage could be a thing in any way you wish.
Together, these 2 make a very interesting system, One where the users need to become like stereotypical Wizards, spending tons of time researching things, and then using this understanding to in the least complicated of ways perform powerful precision magic. The smart ones would research how to increase their own capacities, or how to create tools and body modifications that could help them discover how to increase capacities, for ones that are undiscovered. They cant just wish to have a perfect memory, but the day one finds out the actual causes of perfect memory, they can replicate it on themselves or others as they wish. It really keeps them very limited, while at the same time still be walking disasters, because it does not take much effort to wish a Giant rock to fall on a city or to push and pull the water a few times and cause waves that may become Tsunamis. They just cant go and alter gravity until they know how gravity works, though with their abilities they could evolve themselves to learn how to evolve themselves further, in an ever ending loop until they could see what causes gravity and then manipulate that.
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Instead of putting a limit on imagination, I would suggest you use other constraints.
1. Time: Suppose while all magic users can create anything out of their imagination they do so at different rates, for some it might have to concentrate on a cup for hours, before they can make a cup. While others can make a dragon in only a couple minutes.
2. Mental energy: Suppose that using your imagination in this way use of some sort of mental energy and a magic user may fall unconscious for several days if he uses up too much energy. In this case you're stronger Mages will be those who have larger amounts of mental energy and therefore can make more things from their imagination before falling unconscious.
3. Physical Danger: I read a book once about a girl with similar abilities. She sadly was in danger all the time as she was frequently attacked by monsters created by her subconscious mind. If you risked unleashing your worst nightmare every time you use this ability then that might limit how much you are willing to use and when. In this case you're more powerful magicians would be those who had years of training to minimize the risk of using imagination Magic.
4. Madness: in the book series lightbringer. By law all Mages have to be killed once they use a certain amount of magic. Who is this because continual use of magic leads to Madness. Because of this most magic users limit their use of magic. Your imagination magic could use similar constraints. In this case you very powerful Mages I'll be there with that just don't care about becoming insane from the over use of Magic.
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Imagination requires intense concentration for a long time. Wizards have learned how to focus their mind on the object they are creating long enough for it to form. Some people just can't concentrate, and their mind wanders and so their creation comes out wrong, or fails to materialize.
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You can't create something from nothing.
I can see how one's imagination might provide a template, but what would provide the energy to actually create your imagined monster?
This other source of power - call it mana - will be your constraint on quantity, while the ability to focus and imagine grand creatures will serve as your constraint on quality.
With such constraints in place, someone with a "poor" imagination, or unable to focus (a novice) would only be able to bring simple objects and creatures into existence. Masters, on the other hand, might create dragons, or other fantastic beings. Both would be constrained by the availability of mana, however, so that no one could spawn an infinite number of jars, dragons, etc. (this would destroy any economy your world might have, as well as representing an ever present threat that a mad-man might summon millions of monsters and destroy mankind).
Make this power source sufficiently rare and difficult to obtain such that your world isn't constantly on the brink of destruction, and you're set.
You may also want to add a feature such that a fantastic creature which wouldn't be able to biologically exist in your world would need a constant input of energy to exist, thus making it extra difficult to summon an eldritch monstrosity capable of consuming the world.
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## It would probably work like Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a crypto-currency that is "mined" by performing complex calculations to come up with a string of characters that match a valid bitcoin value. Because there are only so many valid values, there are a finite number of bitcoins, which means that the more bitcoins are mined, the harder the calculations become. Therefore, you could present imagination as a matter of solving imaginative problems with an increasing scale of difficulty to conjure more and more powerful magic.
The interface is up to you, but I would see it as a natural intuition to be presented with problems or puzzles that immediately pop into the imagination/magic user's head, and as the user considers a problem they are mentally absorbed in the context of which to solve the problem, perhaps with a time dilation to attempt to solve a problem by actually carrying out the creative solution. For example, a problem could be how to harvest all the tea leaves from a mountain, and the user would actually go through the process to harvest the tea. A perceived solution that simply does not work will be rejected, and they have to start over.
You likely have two options when applying the rules of bitcoin to "imagination as a magic source." One would be to view the "imagination blockchain" as a universally finite amount, like the real bitcoin blockchain. Therefore, the continuous use of imagination to create magic makes it harder and harder for people to use such magic, except for people with exceptional imaginations.
The other option is to have an exponential difficulty tied with a local "cooldown," so that the use of imagination to create magic becomes exponentially harder in the short term, but after a while things settle down and you can use easier problems again.
It's also up to the writer to decide whether exponential difficulty results in a linear increase in magic output (like Bitcoin - each correct calculation only creates one Bitcoin), or if exponential difficulty results in an exponential increase in magic output (unlike Bitcoin, but could be more dramatic as a character has to solve extremely difficult problems to cast a gargantuan magic spell in the nick of time).
Likewise, it could be determined that particularly clever or optimal solutions result in a greater magic output than others. Using the tea mountain example from earlier, a solution that has the harvester gathering the lowest-altitude leaves and depositing them at the bottom of the mountain, then repeating as they work steadily upwards, would probably result in less magic being created than a solution that starts at the top and moves steadily downwards, as it requires less time and effort going up and down as the first solution. Therefore, the more optimal solution would mean more magic being created for use, rewarding the most clever with the greatest amount of magic.
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Although this reality would seem really impressive, there is one hurdle wizards would have to overcome, and that hurdle is the amount of detail that we imagine. Most people can't imagine things in a very high level of detail, so wizards would not only have to increase their mental energy, the amount of time it takes to conjure something, and how well you can control what you have created after it is created, wizards would also have to practice adding immense amounts of detail to their imaginations.
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Reminds me a little of the [Monster from the Id](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYFr3UyVpRA) in the Forbidden Planet movie (1956).
Or more recently the creatures in the story Sphere by Michael Crichton.
In both, people's imaginations are able to create things seemingly from nothing while their concentration is left undisturbed.
One way to get limit it is if it takes a lot of mental concentration to do. Someone with a lot of mental discipline would be able to do more than someone that can't concentrate as much. Also a well imagined thing would be stronger.
Mental effort takes energy just like physical effort does, so powerful magic could take a lot of energy to maintain and make real.
It could also affect the body in other ways, raising blood pressure, giving a migraine, etc.
A powerful wizard might be able to summon a horde of creatures to do battle, and then be laid up for a few days with an epic migraine headache.
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First, a look at imagination: it is, simply put, creative thought. However, there is a very real possibility for "creativity burnout"; in fact, if you search for "creativity burnout", you'll find self-help articles from writers, artists, entrepreneurs, architects - the list goes on. No matter how creative you are, it's possible to hit a wall. More importantly, there are multiple reasons why someone would suffer from creativity burnout:
* Mental blocks: after coming up with many new ideas, you start circling back to the same old ideas, or simply run out entirely. You get stuck in a rut, or your mind goes blank. **The fix:** work on something else, move to a new location, or otherwise change the scenery. New scenery, new ideas.
* Physical blocks: if you're tired, dehydrated, or in pain, your brain simply will not work as well, which means your creativity suffers. **The fix:** sleep, eat, and/or exercise! When the pain is gone, the creativity will return.
* Mental limitations: humans all have different personalities; some are more creative than others, be it because they are just wired that way, or because they know how to eke the smallest smattering of creativity from themselves, or some combination of both. **The fix:** hard work. You can change your personality, but it takes time and effort.
* Lack of knowledge: the more you know, the more creative you can be. Stand-up comedians can react to the crowd because they know a lot of jokes, not because they invent them on the spot. If you run out of ideas, it may be that you simply ran out of knowledge about that problem. **The fix:** learn more!
* Insecurity: if you aren't self-secure, you may discard ideas rather than use them. If you're afraid of what others think, you freeze. **The fix:** practice! If you're confident in your ability in private, you'll be confident in practice.
In your example - the powerful mage who tires after a long battle - it may well be that he has simply tired himself out; he needs supper and a good night's sleep before he could do that again. Then again, maybe he ran out of ideas, and needs to sit down with a gook book to refresh his thoughts.
All that to say: base it on the real world. Some people have more imagination; some have less. Some people can be creative for hours on end, others get headaches after just a few minutes. When you're out of ideas, rest, food, and new stimuli will boost creativity. Or, y'know, browsing Worldbuilding!
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In fact, you don't have to make this up. Imagination is already the core of how people (who believe magic works) believe magic works. Magic has been a little known central aspect of human civilization for thousands of years, with the "knowledge" (i.e. consensus) of *how* it works being passed down through mystery schools which were the beginnings of not only fraternal organizations like the freemasons but also modern universities. Even today there are subcultures even in the west who believe this is possible. So there is already plenty of precedent for the relationship between imagination and magic.
All schools of *deep* esoteric religion are also schools of magic, and vice versa. The each have enormous proprietary symbol systems, that they insist are necessary to understand to perform magic, but at the core of all of them is essentially the idea of "gnosis" which means "direct knowledge/experience of a thing by having touched it or become one with it".
What this actually means is essentially holding an image in your mind's eye at maximum clarity, for a length of time. For this reason, meditation is central to magical training. The ability to hold a clear image is the very purest form of mental discipline (or in another word: Will). It is a muscle that no one in our culture exercises. You try to visualize a red triangle and the color changes, the proportions move, you think of your dog, and then forget what you were doing while your mind wanders on some train of thought. What meditation *is*, is practicing noticing that wandering and correcting it back. Meditation is exercise for your mental focus "muscles".
What separates an average person from a sorcerer is the average person can't visualize a clear X for 5 seconds, whereas the wizard has worked on his meditation until he can visualize any elaborate thing with enormous detail, and hold that image in his mind with herculean strength, letting the image in his mind grow to fill his entire perception, becoming gnostically "one" with that image and holding that state of consciousness in a trance for "long enough". Long enough for what? Long enough that the image gets imprinted deep into his unconscious mind, which is fundamentally connected to the hidden structure of the universe (as above, so below. The microcosm (mind), is a reflection of the macrocosm (the universe). The act of conjuring it in your mind is a reverse-echo of conjuring it in reality.). In this way, as the magician is reprogramming his own consciousness, he is reprogramming the universe at some scale. Possibly by steering the multiverse of probability in order for the universe to arrive at the state he was visualizing.
For a wizard, "the struggle" is the herculean task of controlling his own mind, retaining his focus on something complex with photographic stillness. Without meditative exercise he wouldn't be able to do it at all. The more complex the image, the more difficult it is to visualize. The less probable (more far fetched) it is, the longer he has to hold it to mutate the universe into the shape of his Will. Holding any image, in real life, a very literally draining thing to do. You get mentally exhausted, like how a race car driver feels after 5 hours at 200mph, like you've been awake for 48 hours straight. You brain is literally depleted of chemical nutrients and signalers. In this regard, your "mana" is regained by the wonderfully mundane process of eating food and resting.
I implore you, rather than trying to make up your own version of how magic works, to pick up some books on the occult and read how it "actually" works, at least, how people for thousands of years have thought it works. I recommend at minimum, reading Alister Crowleys "Book 4" (the short one with only parts 1 and 2 in it). I also recommend reading about Chaos magic, which is a magical school that strips out all the mumbo jumbo to the brass tacks of *doing the magic*. Specifically a book called "Psychonaut" by Peter Carrol. There's also an online story you might be interested in on qntm.org called "Ra" where magic is real and considered a field of engineering.
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## **How good are you at lying?**
Some people are naturally very good at lying, while others are not. Some people can create entire alternate lives for themselves, and maintain these illusions by remembering who they have told what to whom and when, to keep the lie going.
Other people cannot lie to save their own lives, as they lack the will, concentration, or moral flexibility to do so.
In your world, spells are "physical lies", where people who witness them believe they are real as they do not know they are lies. If you have no reason to doubt the "truth" of what you are seeing, then you'll believe everything it does to you as well and probably die of a heart attack out of the fear of being eaten by the imaginary creature, or disemboweled by the imaginary sword etc.
And herein lies the method to control characters being too powerful. Someone who is highly imaginative, and capable of imagining more creative lies, may find themselves more susceptible to suggestion as well, so they are actually weaker to the magic of others. If you already live in a demented world of monsters and magic, one more monster chasing you is believable.
If you are the kind of person who will struggle to imagine a blue jar as you have never seen a blue jar before, then a flying shark with frikin' lasers on it's head is literally unbelievable to you and will have no effect on you at all. An angry house cat is maybe more believable, as you've seen one before, but is less likely to do serious damage to you before you shoo it outside.
This also demonstrates how lying too much will make your creations unbelievable to even the most creative minds, and therefore they are a waste of energy. In the time you have wasted, you've probably been eaten by the more believable war-bear your enemy chose to imagine.
## **Using your example**
Nero, from your example, could be having an epic battle with his arch-rival Oren, and they are sending all sort of creatures and spells back and forth between them. Monkeys Apes with spears on the back of horses, men in robes with swords made of light, and the odd giant whale-gorilla with radiation breath.
Blue-jar-man (lets call him Dave) looks out his window to see what all the fuss is about, but all he sees is two guys shouting at each other. Eventually Dave shuts the curtains and goes back to trying to imagine blue glass.
Eventually Oren can't think of something strong enough, but still believable, to fight the whale-gorilla and in his desperation just blurts out "Um.. well...your mother!". Unfortunately for Oren, Nero's mother is not 100ft tall or very scary, and as Nero has the knowledge that his mother is safe at home, he does not believe the lie and the whale-gorilla crushes Oren flat.
Dave (struggling to believe that blue glass is real anywhere or ever has been real) is disturbed by Oren screaming and looks out the window again. Oren is lying on the floor, apparently having a heart attack of some kind. Nero is just stood there, almost in a trance. Nero can still see and hear real things around him if he wants to believe them, but for now he has to lie to himself (or at least convince himself of the actual truth) to get all of the monsters he has summoned to disappear. Nero believes them all to be true and real (or he couldn't have summoned them) so he has to imagine reasonable ways for them to disappear too. While Oren believed these lies, anyone new Nero meets or fights, will not believe the old lies as they weren't there when they were told, but they will still clog Nero's brain until he can get rid of them. If he can't get rid of them, they will overwhelm him and he might imagine the whale-gorilla flattens him too.
## **Making it real**
Magic could exist in this way in our world already, but as we are more cynical than previous generations, we don't believe that any of these physical lies (dragons, mermaids, flying laser sharks) are truly real, so they have no effect on us. It would just take a few people to believe the lies of others and the power would spread again, as stories of dragon attacks etc. go viral, then more people will be susceptible to the lies and believe that it could happen to them.
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In the near future we have the technology to clone prehistoric animals. Although it will not be the same as the original, certainly we can make a meaner version of it.
Especially when it comes to [Tyrannosaurus rex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus) which had a very tiny arms relative to its body size, this comes as a surprise for many people especially the stakeholders financing the cloning project anonymously.
Is there a good reason not designing this once an apex predator of its time to have a bigger and stronger arm that can actually do serious damage to building structures and vehicles?
Since the clone is already almost 1.5 times as big as the original, why might we not as well also blow up the size of the arms to 2 or even 3 times bigger?
The scientist had calculated the maximum size for T-Rex by factoring in both the square cube law and nervous impulse. That limit would be around 10x, but since this bioweapon is designed for speed, so 1.5x to 2x the size of its original just hits the mark perfectly.
I think bigger arms help the dinosaur to recover quickly from a lying position.
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## Because it's complicated
Simply scaling up an animal is easy. Especially when the animal in question didn't *stop* growing in the first place, but only slowed down a bit. You just have to jack up the growth hormone production.
Significantly increasing the size of a limb? That's a much more complicated feat of genetic engineering, with a lot of its own problems. You're very likely to "break" other parts of the whole system as a side effect.
## Because the Arm-Rex wouldn't know what to do
Dinosaurs were not the smartest of animals. Especially the big ones; you don't need to be smart if you're strong to survive.
So chances are the Rex wouldn't even know what to *do* with the bigger arms. Most likely, the changed body balance would just make it fall over all the time.
## Because you don't need to
Have you looked at the *teeth*? have you looked at the *legs*? have you looked that this massive, long *tail*?
Adding bigger arms would most likely not add any more "danger potential"
### As for the stakeholders...
If they're really surprised that a cloned version of an animal that's *commonly known* for having tiny arms has... tiny arms, I doubt they're actually intelligent enough to gather enough money to invest in such a costly enterprise.
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Because small arms are *NOT* a weakness
Tyrannosaurus Rex evolved over millions of years to be as effective at surviving in its environment as it could be. One glance at a T-rex mouth and we know that, for them, "surviving" involved killing and eating lots of other animals.
So they must have been pretty close to some kind of local optimum and therefore fairly well optimised for running around killing stuff.
So the only edits we want to make are things that are good now, but were not then. When you gene-edit some extra size that makes sense, in nature the extra killyness provided by more size is weighed against the cost of needing more food. But, our warmachine T-Rex (M-Rex) will be fed by its handlers, so the "right size" in the wild (its default size) is not the same as the "right size" for battle. Giving M-rex a different mindset that is more easily tamed than the T-Rex also makes sense.
But arms are different. Proper arms were clearly *detrimental* to the wild T-rex (otherwise it would have had them), and if they were bad in the wild they are probably just as bad in combat.
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**Military tactics often require mobility**
You can't do much if you're too weighed down or off-balance. Giving the t-rex body plan bigger arms will simply be a detriment to it. It'll be too front-heavy, tipping over most of the time due to the large head already adding quite a lot of weight to the front of it and the tail being designed as both a counter-weight and mobility enhancer. The extra weight of arms will require a heavier/larger tail to restore balance, and the extra weight of both the arms and the larger tail will significantly increase the amount of mass the rex needs to move, requiring larger/stronger legs which will, again, increase its mass and require more muscles to keep up. Bigger rexes limit where they can be deployed at any particular moment, further limiting their usefulness when they'd only realistically be able to be deployed where tanks would easily take them out. Not only that, all of this extra stuff will require more sustenance to fuel, which might not be a problem for a military animal since it'll be fed but it certainly puts a hamper on the longevity of the animal's time in action. It's sort of like how rockets face problems, more fuel = more mass, more mass = requiring larger/stronger thrusters, larger/stronger rockets = more mass again, requiring more fuel to get the thing to where it needs to be. Simply put, less weight is always better.
If you really want to give it larger arms you'll have to move away from the t-rex body plan and go more toward a crocodilian quadrupedal plan. Such a design at the size of a t-rex would make more use of the forelimbs and allow it more mobility and possibly more speed without needing a much larger tail or other such balancing requirements.
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>
> is there a good reason not designing this once an apex predator of it's time to have a bigger and stronger arm that can actually do serious damage to building structures and vehicles?
>
>
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Because it wouldn't be a T-rex.
They'd probably be better off starting with a different base creature like the [Acrocanthosaurus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrocanthosaurus).
**EDIT**
You're not going to evolve a dinosaur to meet the needs of a sortie. Instead, you're going to pick the correct nightmare from the get-go.
If you need to knock down some brick-and-mortar buildings, you'll probably start with an an [Ankylosaurus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankylosaurus).
If you need to mow down an army of foot soldier, an Acrocanthosaurus with [GAU-12s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-12_Equalizer) strapped to each arm might work.
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The T-rex lived and thrived with its short arms, despite all the memes that we see today, and as the saying goes "don't change a winning team".
Adding heavier arms would require redesigning the whole body, because it would alter its balance with an heavier front part.
If you want to increase its damage capabilities, focus on its strong points, like the bite, or exploit that long tail as a whip, which seems already much more use-ready than the forearms.
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Your scientists did give the T-rex bigger arms, but they turned out to be an extreme danger during transport.
When soldiers strapped down the animal for transport, it was considerably harder to do with the extra large arms. These arms inevitably escaped or broke the restraints and several soldiers were killed trying to re-restrain the arms. These larger arms were also able to reach the harnesses for the head and legs, so were able to break these restraints as well. Three Chinooks, two C-130's, and even one [LCAC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Craft_Air_Cushion) were lost (in separate training accidents) due to the animals being able to get free.
The regular arm size was plenty strong, but small enough to be easily secured during transport. The smaller arms were also unable to reach any of the other restraining harnesses. The animals were also somewhat more docile with the smaller arms.
The larger arms seemed to confuse the animals, flailing them wildly around at times, causing harm to other animals, themselves, people, equipment, and buildings. Some animals even ended up dying after they chewed off their own limbs, or as much as they could reach. Since the animals wouldn't let anyone approach to tend to the wounds, they simply bled out. In the cases where they did this within a herd, the injured T-rex would end up getting attacked and eaten by the other animals, even before they died. This would sometimes end in a "feeding frenzy", where multiple animals ended up dead.
The scientists aren't sure if this was because of the presence of blood or because they would thrash around, injuring and angering the other animals.
Even when the animals survived to adulthood, went through training, and made it to deployment, they often turned against the soldiers releasing them from the restraints. The smaller armed animals needed less restraining, so were less likely to turn on their captors.
Due to the large armed animals' tendency to escape or turn on the people who released them, the idea of dropping the animals into a hostile area on it's own was considered. Unfortunately, all attempts to implement this ended in failure. Either the animal died on the impact of landing, were so dazed after landing they couldn't escape the container, or they attacked the container instead of the [OPFOR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposing_force). Even when the animal wasn't killed on landing, they were killed shortly afterwards with few enemy casualties.
With the extreme cost and low probability of being able to use these modified animals effectively in combat, a review board was convened. Further research was cancelled due to the unacceptable injuries, loss of life, and loss of material involved.
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What makes T-Rex The Tyrant King is the head. Everything the beast is is centered around the beast's bite. The size / mass of its head is everything. It's built like a Bulldog, where other "larger" predators are built like wolves. If you have ever seen or read "[White Fang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Fang)", the wolf dog defeats all comers until it encounters a bulldog.
T-Rex is a crusher, not a ripper. Its teeth are made like railroad spikes, not blades. In *[Jurassic Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park)*, where it fought the Spinosaurus, the fight would have been over when it got its jaws around the spinos' neck the first time. If you do anything to T-Rex, give it stronger teeth...
If you move mass away from the head you depreciate the potential for its main weapon. Now if you are going to strap on guns and artillery to this thing I doubt its hands or jaws will matter much in that case.
Also, if you increase the arm size or strength, you need to increase the size and mass of the surrounding muscles' bone and connective tissues as well. Not just bigger arms.
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**T-rex is too stupid to use arms.**
Slap a pair of gnarly arms on a T-rex and you get the perfect killing machine? Nope -- you just get a T-rex with a pair of big dangly gnarly arms.
It is a simple matter to make the arms larger. But this creates more problems:
(a) Redesigning the muscles, ligaments to make the arms usable as weapons. Otherwise you just get a pair of big dangly vestigial arms.
(b) Redesigning the brain with nerves that connect to the new arms.
(c) **IMPORTANT**. Redesigning the brain so the animal naturally uses its arms. The T-rex brain is designed to control an animal without arms. You cannot just slap on bigger arms and expect it to know how to use them, any more than you can slap on an extra pair of legs and expect them to do something.
Perhaps more intelligent animals might figure out how to operate new body parts. . .
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/W9Cyw.jpg)
. . . but not something with such a teeny tiny brain to begin.
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**Because your scientists don't know how to make the alterations without managing the possibility of defects.**
Genes are more complex than they may seem. A single gene can code for multiple proteins that define how multiple biological systems operate, just as drugs often have unintended "side effects."
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Depending on the world your Dino is "working" on, adding to overall muscle mass might be a big problem. T-Rex for example lived in the [Cretaceous Period](https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/factsheets/tyrannosaurus-rex). One issue with giant dinos in the modern day is, to the best of our estimations the [O2 levels during the Cretaceous Period](https://geology.com/usgs/amber/) were about 40% higher.
To field a prehistoric creature today would require them to be scaled way down or potentially receive some sort of Cardio/Respiratory upgrade.
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Because, in addition to Jurassic Park, the scientists were also inspired by the Malazan Book of the Fallen and wanted to create K'Chain Che'Malle.
They just planned on fusing giant blades on the arms.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/308zb.jpg)
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Trying to figure out a post-apocalyptic scenario and looking to stay *somewhat* within the realm of possibility. Given how tech levels MIGHT be in a 50 years, what would you say would be the most likely cause of a catastrophe that wipes out maybe 90% of Earth's population?
I know a giant asteroid is out of the question - IIRC we've pretty much mapped out every asteroid that has a chance of coming close to the Earth and would have a lot of advanced warning. A comet, maybe? They tend to be more unpredictable.
Nuclear war also seems unlikely as it would essentially mean mutually-assured destruction and I can't see why major nations would want themselves to be annihilated as well.
How likely is a bio-weapon? Would a super-contagious viral plague work too fast and be quarantined too easily?
Or would the catastrophe be slower and more insidious, brought on by climate change and dwindling resources, leading to reduced territory and infighting/civil wars around the world?
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**The Four Horsemen**
Global warming is making crop failures look likely. Famine can kill large numbers of people and historically has done so often. Tens of millions died in the midcentury famines in China and the USSR. If global warming makes the tropics unsuitable for agriculture that would lead to famine in Africa and India for sure and possibly China. Starving people do not drop in their tracks - these people will migrate and destabilize the regions where they show up.
Migration of desperate people leads to conflict. This is happening now. <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/3/150302-syria-war-climate-change-drought/>
If you add war (and its friend pestilence) to this context you might reach your 90%. Major nations with a view for the long term do not want to be annihilated but in the context of famine and desperate chaos, people who come into the possession of nations might not have the same long term view as people do now.
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# The most likely suspects
1. Molecular Nanotechnology (either weaponized or accidental). ~31%
2. Artificial Super Intelligence (terminator scenario). ~27%
3. Large scale wars, including nuclear and terrorism. ~27%
4. Engineered or natural pandemic. ~15%
I've summarized the [Source](https://www.webcitation.org/6YxiCAV0p?url=http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/gcr-report.pdf) and redistributed the probability under the assumption that there was such an event. Note that the source references extinction by 2100 not 90% by 2119, however, I think that you would need an extinction level threat to kill 90% of people, it just needs to be slightly milder, and none of the above scenarios are likely to have an exclusive 100% kill condition.
Notes on other answers:
Climate change is likely to have an impact on the world moving forward, but it's extreme to say that it could kill 90% of people in the next 100 years. Millions possibly, billions probably not, over 6 billion is extremely unlikely.
Famine as a global risk is unlikely due to how diverse food sources are, a long term problem might get you as high as 50% but as people die the demand for food decreases, and people move to the places where they can get food (or else die) so the problem quickly remedies itself.
***Alternatively there's always the rapture***
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I also believe climate change is the most likely source of catastrophe over the next century. Not only starvation and migration-induced wars, but weather pattern changes that could lead to much more rapid changes in habitability of populated regions. For instance, a five year drought in Brazil would probably depopulate half of South America, and have knock-on effects I can't readily foresee.
There is still the risk of nuclear war, as well. Major nations may not start it (as you say, MAD makes this MADness), but a small, impoverished nation with a hereditary dictatorship and a new nuclear arsenal might well start a fight they think their enemy hasn't the will to pursue -- and the counterstrike might trigger a secret treaty (like the one that put the US into WWII in Europe as well as the Pacific), leading to a less restrained exchange.
I still wouldn't rule out an asteroid, either -- at least as the trigger. If a rock like the one that exploded over Chelyabinsk came in on a more vertical trajectory over a major city, it might be days or longer before the victim city's national government knew it wasn't a nuclear attack -- and by then it would be days too late for whoever they thought was likely to strike that way, that week. And again, counterstrikes would escalate.
At least a nuclear war would offset a lot of global warming...
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The biggest problem with coming up with a disaster scenario here is the need to kill 90% of the population. That's going to be a very difficult thing to do. Most of the disaster scenarios mentioned in other answers (climate change, a Carrington event, a limited nuclear war) would not come close to that.
The IPCC says climate change could cause a loss of global GDP of .5-2% by 2100. That's bad, but it's a far cry from killing 90% of the population. Even the most extreme scenarios for climate change would not kill a large percentage of the population.
A strong Carrington-level event would certainly kill a lot of people. Even a short-term (months) disruption of power grids and communication networks and electronics in general would result in large losses of population as food distribution and production failed, but 90% is not realistic.
A nuclear war - even a large-scale one - would not kill 90% of the population. Even at the height of the cold war, with potentially thousands or tens of thousands of warheads detonated in a conflict, no one was predicting anything close to 90% loss of life. In 1979 the Office of Technology Assessment issued a report to Congress in which they estimated loss of life in a full scale exchange between the Soviet Union and the U.S.A as being 35-77% of people in America, and 20-40% in the Soviet Union.
[The Effects of Nuclear War](https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk3/1979/7906/7906.PDF)
To be fair, they admit that there are a lot of unknowns and some of their estimates are just educated guesses. Still, even if you accept the worst case, it's hard to get to 90% because there are a lot of countries that are very spread out and likely not to be targeted. Australia, Indonesia, Africa, South America... Lots of population would likely survive, and many of them would be in the Southern Hemisphere where even fallout patterns can't get to them.
There are two disasters that could easily kill 90%, or even wipe out humanity completely. Those are a giant impactor (asteroid or comet), or a biological weapon. We discover new comets and asteroids all the time, and while we have no doubt found all the close ones that could threaten the Earth with an extinction-level event, you can always have one appear from outside the solar system. We'd know it was coming for a long time, since anything big enough to destroy mankind would be spotted long before it got here, but we'd be utterly unable to do anything about it.
A biological weapon could wipe out humanity if it was designed to do so. Imagine a virus that has no symptoms other than to make the person who contracts it be sterile. Or a virus that is contagious for a long time before it begins to show symptoms, and then you die shortly thereafter. There would be no way to find the carriers, or even to know the disease existed before it had spread through enough populations that it could never be stopped. Maybe 10% of the people have an immunity.
If you had said that 1/3 or even 1/2 of the people die then I think you could plausibly use any of the disaster scenarios mentioned. But 90% is a really hard number to get to. I'd go with either a major impact or a biological weapon.
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I would argue famine is a good contender in general.
Over the last 100 years, we've come to rely on refrigeration and a global network of food shipment to supply local needs across the globe. As a planet, it's almost as if we've collectively decide to put all the production of any particular farm production into one ecosystem, and just ship the products everywhere it's needed.
This effectively means that we've concentrated the population of every species of domesticated crop and animal into regions that could easily be swept with disease and exterminated entirely.
I read recently that the African Swine Flu recently destroyed 1/3 of the world's pork production with very little fanfare. Apparently with this much concentration it doesn't take much to cause big problems in our food supply.
This route is also a good one to pursue if you want to avoid modern politics bleeding into your world. No one country and no one political party has given this particular issue a stigma, which lowers the risk of your audience getting offended by perceiving your world as a soap-box for your own ideologies.
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1) Do not throw out asteroids - *they are not all mapped*! And they are not tracked 365/24/7. Asteroids have a tendency to change their course due to the influence of the planets (mostly Jupiter). And even quite large asteroids (up to 1 km in size) will be detected only months before impact. That is the reason why asteroids that would pass by millions of km from Earth are considered as threatening.
2) Do not throw out mass nuclear bombardment (it is the most probable event). It may not be war, but software glitch, humanity-hating fanatic conspiracy or smth like that. Even 1% of the total nuclear arsenal (like say, Indo-Pakistan "local" nuclear war) is enough to cause near-extinction of humans.
3) Mass volcanic eruption - would have the same effect as mass nuclear bombardment. If it is not detected years before. If humanity is prepared (shelters and supplies), it could be reduced, but not that much. But if not - it would be truly catastrophic.
There will be no realistic extinction for:
* *Global warming*, while it would destroy some (many) *countries* and *species*, it would make Earth more habitable by humans and cows. Humanity would benefit from it.
* *Pathogens and bio-weapons*, while being deadly, they have negative feedback: the more they kill, the slower they spread. Even without organized counteraction it would not depopulate even one region (without help of invaders - see America's history). The most deadly infection killed hundreds millions of people, but it was only about 5% of all Earth population. To kill 90% - the situation should be 19 times more desperate, than it was during The Great War.
* *Non-nuclear war of any kind*. It has the same "issues" in killing humans as pathogens have: the more it kills, the less resources left, the less intensive war is. Given (by experience), that no more than about 10% of population can be at war and no more than about 30% can work for war (producing war supplies) and real-life weapon efficiency is quite small (like only 1 of 3000 of all bullets kills someone) global non-nuclear war would not kill more than about 50% of all population.
* *Some "evil technology", like nanobots or black hole generator*, while it can be deadly, they are not true "near future". We even do not sure if it can be possible or impossible. They all are pure speculations. We can "imbue" them with near magical properties, but this would not be since, but fiction.
90% of current population is a lot of people. While many things can kill billions - it is not enough to accomplish it.
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another [Carrington event](https://www.history.com/news/a-perfect-solar-superstorm-the-1859-carrington-event)
A solar based EMP would essentially throw us back 150 years in technology.
No major city would survive the first winter. Only hardened electronics, or those stored in nice [faraday cages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage) would survive. An estimate of 1/2 to 2/3rds of the worlds population would be dead within a year.
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**Impact/bombardment from the Taurid Meteor Stream**
Example; <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9So2SfJzE8>
Every year we pass through/by this meteor stream *twice*, which originated from the breakup of a much larger comet named Encke (we've actually been hit with things from this stream a few times, <https://www.space.com/beta-taurid-meteor-shower-tunguska-explosion-planetary-defense.html> ), and it's believed an impact about 12-13,000 years ago resulted in the wiping-out of all the largest mammals from the northern hemisphere (woolly mammoths / woolly rhinos etc).
It's entirely possible we will be hit by more of these in the future, and entirely possible that we will have allowed it to happen by focusing on 'terrestrial politics' rather than developing absolutely possible to create solutions to the problem, so there's a bit of "the hubris of man and his ego" angle to the story too.
This could create enough damage to basically set civilisation back to 0 without scraping all life off the planet, or it could damage society just enough that supply lines are irreparably damaged and people have to revert to a sort of neo-hunter-gatherer state within the corpse of ruined cities. There's a lot of room for play depending on the amount of damage you're willing to do in the apocalypse, because the Taurid Stream is such a large number of objects nobody could ever turn around and be all "well ackchually a single object of x y and z dimensions wieighing bla bla bla would/wouldn't do what you said it did", so there's that too.
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## Smallpox
The World Health Organization (WHO) describes [smallpox](https://www.who.int/biologicals/vaccines/smallpox/en/) as:
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> [O]ne of the most devastating diseases known to humanity. Smallpox is transmitted from person to person by infected aerosols and air droplets spread in face-to-face contact with an infected person. The disease can also be transmitted by contaminated clothes and bedding... Two forms of the disease are recognized, variola minor with a mortality rate of approximately 1%, and the more common variola major with a mortality rate of 30%.
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So basically, it's a **highly infectious airborne virus that kills a third of the people it infects** - pretty scary stuff.
Smallpox has been eradicated - it's one of the greatest successes in modern medicine. But some samples remain for research and some emerging technologies enable scientists to create [new poxes](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/how-canadian-researchers-reconstituted-extinct-poxvirus-100000-using-mail-order-dna) from scratch.
Smallpox and other Old World illnesses are believed to have killed approximately 90% of Native Americans, partially because they had no communal immunity to these diseases, and partially because their societies collapsed in the aftermath of these mass deaths.
So if someone were to - deliberately or not - re-introduce smallpox into a world without any real immunity, it could potentially crash the entire global economy, leading to massive famines and wars.
How do you feed your population, and also quarantine it? How do you stop the flow of infected refugees? How do you react when a neighboring country takes actions you think increase your country's risks?
As people panic, and demand action from their governments, the risk of taking actions that make it worse are high. I could see this spiraling out of control pretty easily.
All because someone re-created or release smallpox - whether on purpose or not.
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Biological warfare/terrorism aimed at hitting food production could contribute.
Say a pathogen aimed at disrupting grain supplies is unleashed by a malicious state or terrorist organisation, and proves more effective & resilient than intended.
* Terminator gene fails (the pathogen keeps spreading forever)
* The pathogen hits more forms of grain than intended (eg. hits rice, corn, oats and more when intended for wheat alone)
* It spreads further than intended due to a combination of retaliatory action and incompetence.
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My personal opinion is that **genetic engineering** will cause an ecological catastrophe of one kind or another.
Many times a non-native species was introduced in a habitat it caused havoc there. Australia is a prime example with rabbits and cats. The genes on earth form an "ecology" in themselves, divided in "habitats". While there is a lot of interaction within and between species, there are also natural barriers which normally prevent spreading certain genes. Mad cow disease is an example of what happens if you break such natural barriers, like feeding animals to herbivores; even if it didn't involve genes, just proteins. Genetic engineering is ignorant of such barriers and indeed produces new genes altogether whose natural barriers, if any, are unknown.
With CRISPR/Cas a new proliferation of genetic engineering has started; given how ignorant we are about the foundations of all life the chutzpah with which we tamper with it is breathtaking. I would actually be astonished if *no* catastrophe of some kind happened within our lifetimes. Some unpredicted horizontal gene transfer, some anti-reproduction measure which failed, a little lab escape. A sudden mutation which renders the must-have intelligence enhancing gene we have put in our children deadly. Shit happens.
Because genes are self-reproducing and spread easily they are an ideal agent to cause a mass extinction which could either target humans directly through an infection or destroy (read: dramatically alter to our disadvantage) whole ecosystems.
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Create an organism with
* infectiousness of the common cold,
* payload when triggered like Ebola (mechanism may differ but Ebola is "pretty effective"
* Silent transmission like HIV.
It doesn't trigger until we all have it and then it presents an Ebola like worldwide effect with nobody to help those who may otherwise survive with proper care. Charming.
Y'All die, y'hear.
It very likely already exists.
A few decades back Australian scientists came close to making a excessively effective mouse destroyer by genetically engineering Mousepox, but lnfectiousness was low - just as well for mice and humans.
One can be sure that the major powers took it from there and by now have a human targeted wipeout weapon too terrible to use.
You just need to posit its accidental escape.
Or purposeful release by humanity-zero type advocates.
**Australian mousepox development:**
[Populist outline{Guardian}](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2001/jan/11/genetics.uknews) - Lab creates killer virus by accident
7 page open access paper here [The mousepox experience](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2816623/pdf/embor2009270.pdf)
[Legion](https://www.google.com/search?q=australian+mousepox+genetic+engineering&rlz=1C1CHBF_enNZ834NZ839&oq=australian+mousepox+genetic+engineering&aqs=chrome..69i57.13087j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) - web search.
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> ksbes: Unfortunaly(?) death rate for pox and ebola virus is not that large - about 1/2 to 1/4 would survive. We need to guarantee no more than 1/10 survival rate - more than twice lower.
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Unfortunately - You miss my point, and you are incorrect factually.
It would be good if you were correct under the conditions that I propose :-(.
Smallpox untreated is (was) horrendously lethal.
The Australin experimenmters (did you read any of my linked material) 'upped the ante' - they took benign mousepox and converted it to a killer that would have wiped out much of the worlds mouse population IF it had escaped and IF it had been more infectious. Labs worldwide will have been working on that for about 20 years with human payloads. The end result will be about 100% fatal - especially if EVERYONE has it.
Ebola when treated with the best case available and a significant death rate amongst the medical staff has a 25% survival patient rate.
This is what you do to try and survive while treating patients with Ebola
If EVERYONE has Ebola, or something of equally lethality AND disabling effect, then the survival rate will be minimal.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xhJp1.jpg)
Photo: Super Hero in action.
Medicins sans Frontiers worker.
Liberia Ebola outbreak 2014-2015
About 25% of patients survive.
14 MSF members died
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If you want to go for a tech related catastrophe, check out this article on the future of AI:
<https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html>
Basically your biggest problem isn't a terminator-like humanoid, rather a super intelligence with a single task at mind. If we die this way it's a pretty cool way to die.
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Megavolcanos like Yellowstone and Lake Toba: In the case of Yellowstone the richest nation of our current era would lose half of its territory and it's most fertile farmlands. Even ignoring volcanic winter (and that can't be ignored) the food markets will be chaotic for decades as one of the major food exporters go from exporter to importer. Any shock like bad weather, political crisis, in the remaining major producers would swing the food price very high, causing riots in the big cities of the industrialized nations and starvation in the less developed nations. These riots would bring revolutions and counterrevolutions that would wreck many nations (just look what happened to Syria), furthering the infrastructure damage done by the eruption. Some of these revolutionary/counterrevolutionary nations would wage large scale wars against each other, like the Nazi-Soviet war in WW2, increasing the damage. And that's just taking into account the damage to american farmlands, ignoring the volcanic winter.
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I have a maglev train starting in Paris, going through Siberia, bridging over the Bering Strait, and running down the West Coast to San Francisco. There are other major lines splitting from this one, but this one is simply "vein of the world" in my settings. It gets you from Paris to San Francisco in 40 hours for a personal ticket price in economy class of 200 Eur.
For the sake of my question, do not scrutinize operation of a maglev and the maintenance or construction of railroad in Siberian climate. Let's assume the rails are always maintained and under heavy observation.
### Problem and Solution
The train can travel up to 500 km/h. As we know trains are heavy and a big portion of the track length is spent accelerating or decelerating. I came up with way how to minimize this by creating auxiliary track near desired cities (for example in Europe it is only Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Minsk and Moscow), where the main train will slow down to 200 km/h and an auxiliary train will match the speed and create bridge between them, allow people to transit. I imagine this creating a transit window for around 20 minutes, then they will disconnect and auxiliary train will deliver people and goods to train station. That will need two parallel tracks running for about 100 km (5 min reserve before transit and after) and then the aux train deliver the people into the city (that might take another 30 minutes, depends how far are transit points from the city and its train station). Like this I can make the Paris-Moscow trip from current 40 hrs to 12 hrs.
Regardless of price, is this transit system sound? I can imagine I might have little problem with safety committee. I mean a person stuck between doors is a dead person. Mishap in speed of trains (Flexible docking clamp can compensate only small abbreviations) can be fatal to hundreds of people when the trains are docked.
Are there any other really major red flags in this system? Is there safer way to make the transit without stopping the train?
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## Stops aren't that big a deal.
In fact, in the vast arctic, your stops won't be for passengers - but for crew.
Take a commuter train; a stop adds about 1 minute. You can compare the schedules of express and local commuters and that's about what it amounts to. In your case, you have a great deal more acceleration to do. But you climb through the first 130 kph *even faster* than a plain old commuter train, and get to 300 kph acceptably fast. Most of your accelerating is over 300 kph, but you're moving at a fine clip during that time, so it doesn't cost you that much time. The upshot is you can expect *stopping proper* to add 7 or 8 minutes IMO.
However, because of what I'm about to say, stops will be more of a "big production"; even with staff cueing people when to move, you won't have a 1-minute stop - it'll be more like 7-8 minutes of fussing and fiddling.
## But have fewer of them.
Take a high speed overnight train from NYC to Chicago. That train is not going to stop at 125th St, Yankee Stadium, Yonkers, Hastings-on-Hudson, etc. It'll fly all those stations at speed, and make its first stop at Albany, the end of the short-haul regional district. If you're at Yonkers and want to ride it, you either backtrack to Grand Central, or you [take the commuter](http://web.mta.info/mnr/html/planning/schedules/pdf/HUDPublicTT-Eff041320HourlyDailyforCOVID-19.pdf) to Croton-Harmon and change to the regional to Albany. There you change to the fast train, and your stops are:
* NYC
* Albany (transit hub; end of short-haul service from NYC)
* Buffalo (big, end of intra-state service, transit hub for Ontario)
* Detroit (big; beginning of short-haul service to Chicago)
* Chicago
Note how we let the intra-state service in NY state and Michigan *make it completely unnecessary to have intermediate stops*. Someone going from Syracuse to Ann Arbor will simply board an Empire service to Buffalo, take the HSR to Detroit, and change to a Michigan service train to Ann Arbor. Connections will be timed, of course, and often "across-the-platform".
Your train will use that trick also. If you are in Paris, you must ride a TGV to Brussels to pick it up.
* London
* Brussels
* Berlin
* Warsaw
* (skip Minsk, they can't even get the Bug canal open.)
* Moscow
Now at this point, you're largely doubling the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and you'll expect *that* to handle all the local traffic. A Siberian customer might have to ride the TSR for a day to get to the station for this train. (though realistically your route would *also* accommodate more local/short-haul trains, reducing that to 6 hours for those people.)
## Crews, though
*Because an automated train in the middle of Siberia ain't gonna happen*.
In fact, there's so little out there in Siberia, Alaska and British Columbia, that **your main reason to stop will be crew change**.
The simple fact is that it's not humanly possible to know 3000 miles of route. Amtrak has 800 km crew districts, and assuming your grade-separated route eases some of the knowledge load, let's say 1600 km. So 7-8 stops (depending on terrain) between Moscow and Hope BC. I chose Hope because terrain favors it, to use the word "favor" lightly. The last 7000 km have been rough terrain, hugging the Ring of Fire.
## Terrain is not loving this plan
I know you want to go to San Francisco but the terrain will make you fight your way through tough mountains all the way down from Anchorage to the Golden Gate. You're better off swinging hundreds of miles inland, e.g. through middle Alaska, NWT, Edmonton, Fargo and on to Chicago, and avoiding the Rockies altogether.
In Asia, there's just no good answer. This has been looked at for awhile. I don't know Russia well enough to guess.
## Crossovers and special work is not that big a deal, really.
It is possible to have higher speed special work. It's just more expensive. As far as taking up space, it doesn't need to be in a particular location; you can push it up the line a few kilometers and just have 2 tracks. Crossovers don't need to be a single package in the normal transit form-factor of an "X". They can be a simple switch onto a "branch line" which then rejoins the other side. Below it, grade separated, can be the other side of the X, allowing trains to swap tracks at speed without interference.
Special work right outside of places you're stopping *anyway* does not need to be fast. So the crossovers and yard throat coming into Moscow station, don't worry about it.
Only the *regularly used* special work out in the country needs to be fast. When trains are being crossed over for occasional maintenance, that can slow. Slowing isn't *that* expensive timewise; you get right back up to speed and it only sets you back a few minutes at your speeds.
## Freight pays the bills
Strictly as a purely rational (non sci-fi fantasy consideration)... one of the gigantic mistakes that high-speed rail projects have made, and I'm thinking particularly of ones with huge engineering problems to solve... is **to overlook freight**. *They think they're gonna make it on passengers? Get real, **nobody** makes it on passengers.* The freight business doesn't work in Europe because it's too short-haul and suppressed by stupid regulations *cough*openaccess*cough*. But America proves freight is ridiculously profitable in long-haul. They unload container ships in Long Beach, rail them to New York and reload for a sail to Europe, for profit, without government subsidy.
You'll probably want a plain-ole-rails freight railroad to shadow your line *just for construction logistics*. So plan to develop that into a serious thing that's ready to carry an endless parade of double-stack container trains at 120kph at the closest spacing possible. When you have frontier crossings like the Bering Strait, accommodate freight there too. The profits will offset much of your total cost.
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Instead of your current solution, I'd like to propose another solution:
### Detachable Wagons
Instead of slowing the whole train and trying to match another to it, just disconnect the last wagon of the main train for everyone who wants to get off.
Parallel to that, everyone who wants to get *on* gets on a specific wagon in the station, which then gets brought up to speed and connects to the the train when it passes by.
It'll require some timing, but if speed and distance are constant it should be fairly predictable. Everyone on the main train hardly notices anything.
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You are creating a solution in search of a problem. Unlike conventional trains which are limited by the friction of their wheels, Maglevs can accelerate quickly. Your limit is usually passenger comfort, not the capability of the system. They decelerate equally quickly, recuperating energy very efficiently.
If you have many stops, so the transfers add up, just run some express lines that bypass the intermediary stops.
Just stopping at the stations bypasses all the safety issues with stuck doors and fatal crashes. I don't see a way how you can make a transfer at high speed failsafe. Customer trust in safety is extremely important, otherwise your business dwindles to nothing.
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> The train can travel up to 500 km/h
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> the Main train will slow down to 200 km/h
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This is the point defeating your whole system. The energy expenditure for accelerating from 200 km/h to 500 km/h is 5.25 times the energy needed for accelerating from 0 to 200 km/h. You are just complicating the whole system for a marginal saving.
Just have the exchange wagon be the only one to accelerate/decelerate, and have it go from the convoy to the station and from the station to the convoy, without changing the train velocity. In this way you are investing energy in only a wagon, not in a whole train.
You can even make a loop at both ends of the track, so that the whole train has never to come to a full stop within its operating life.
By the way, the above concept is not coming out of my bag, it has been shown several times by some Chinese designers, I wasn't able to find the reference with the CGA showing how the whole thing would work.
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L. Dutch's answer and Martijn's are correct; uncouple only the carriage whose destination is the next station. It won't recouple to the same train afterwards, but to the next one, an hour later.
Having uncoupled, it will brake to a lower speed, so that switching tracks to a branch line is safe, (per comment to the question), take the branch line to the station, and halt. Meanwhile its predecessor has left, merged onto the main line, and accelerated, to wait ahead of the train, where it will couple at the front. Fun fact : the Russians developed fully automatic approach and docking for resupplying the MIR space station; these trains use a descendant of the same technology.
Every coach has traction, but they need not all have power collection. If you can't supply sufficient power via track induction, it always has at least 2 pantographs, normally 3, and usually only the central one is raised. (Vibrations from one pantograph prevent a second one making good connection). As coaches leave, the pantograph cars move aft, and detach (and are replaced) - generally at Moscow, and one of Yakutsk or Vladivostok, and Seattle.
Why uncouple at the rear, and couple at the front? Well this way round, you board the coach for Vienna or Moscow, or Anchorage, and you don't have to hike your baggage through half the train to the transfer car. Your carriage just peels off at the right place.
So, only the leading panto car and coaches ahead of it, leaving Paris, are First Class and travel continuously through to the continental US - these seats sell at a premium; others make a stop along the way, arriving a hour later, at a useful saving on the fare. (Upgrades are possible for a suitable consideration, or bribe...)
Back the line up with an HVDC interconnector, scaled up from current technology. Today that allows a link in excess of 3200km in a single stage, at 12GW - plenty to power the fleet and then some. For reliability you have at least two of these. Funnily enough, 3200km is the distance from Shannon to Gander, so you can transfer power across the Atlantic, and the Trans-Canadian Interconnector, and power the line independently from either end.
Conducting solar power from the Gobi Desert sunfarm (and others) across timezones using spare capacity is a nice little earner on the side for the railway company, nearly as profitable as the Silk Road goods line extension to Beijing and Wuhan...
And naturally, despite the HV interconnector crossing Britain to Shannon in Ireland, anything beyond the Paris-London TGV is still on track laid by Brunel and his Victorian contemporaries.
EDIT to move the safety case from comments into the answer...
A.I.Breveleri points out that coupling onto the front also obviates the need for the feeder carriage to ever go faster than the thru train, but - the feeder carriage is injected onto the express line exactly when a massive main train is approaching a 500 km/h. There must be at least three levels of emergency response to the case where the feeder carriage fails to accelerate properly. (No kidding; railways are among the most heavily engineered systems for safety).
While the coupling management tech does have space heritage, that's not enough for the safety case! However, there are at least 2 sidings to get the feeder out of the way if need be, and you don't let the train within several blocks (km) of the feeder until it's at speed, braking the main train at the first sign of trouble. And there could be some good plot points there...
As a Maglev can brake more heavily than a wheeled vehicle, passengers will be instructed to wear seatbelts through the re-coupling manoeuvre as a precaution, and where possible, mealtimes will be scheduled to avoid re-coupling during the soup course.
Side note : track switching aka "points" in Maglev technology may turn out to be safe and comfortable at any speed, using "software defined rails" at the points. In which case the feeder can accelerate on the branch line, reducing safety problems.
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As other have said it does not work well. I would like to point out that the concept was tried at Disney World with the Tomorrowland Transit Authority people mover. It was a moving sidewalk that match the speed of the cars so you could enter the cars with them having to stop. It never worked well and was eventually discontinued.
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In a maglev system why you would need a long convoy of wagons if those units can accelerate / desacelerate in independent ways without a locomotive? Each wagon can travel between two points per se without complicated merge connections or waiting exactly time schedules.
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If you really want the stop to be as "convenient" as possible (in terms of a short slowing-down time), why not make the passengers parachute (paraglide) out of the train at their stop? You could have an entire carriage that puts out glider wings and a parachute just before its stop, detaches from its wheels, lifts off and glides into a parking space at the station.
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If you're writing some sci-fi and you're committed to the train-that-never-stops concept:-
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RAKFY.jpg)
"In British and Irish rail transport, a slip coach or slip carriage is passenger rolling stock that is uncoupled from an express train while the train is in motion, then slowed by a guard in the coach using the brakes, bringing it to a stop at the next station. [...] This allowed passengers to alight at an intermediate station without the main train having to stop, thus improving the journey time of the main train." -- [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_coach)
[](https://youtu.be/bJUyLtDpQqY?t=215)
The [LABIS train](https://youtu.be/bJUyLtDpQqY?t=215) is a proposed train design from the 1990s, where a shuttle would be detach from the back of a train to drop off passengers at each station, while another shuttle *that could go faster than the train* would allow passengers from the station to join the back of the train.
[](https://youtu.be/o7lr5e-MmTU)
I've also [seen a proposal](https://youtu.be/o7lr5e-MmTU) for a non-stop train with a similar shuttle design, but with the shuttles on a separate set of rails above the regular train.
As you can see, other people also find the idea of a non-stop train with stopping carriages appealing! Although they will often speak in terms of commuter trains making 30 stops, and rarely progress beyond the concept stage.
Whatever arrangement you go for, you'll want to think about **safety** - in particular what happens if the train or shuttle has to **emergency brake**, and what happens if the shuttle and train **can't disconnect as planned**? If a new train design is prone to fatal accidents, or needs many more staff to prevent accidents, it's unlikely to replace current train designs.
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I'm trying to find a justification to the sea level on Earth decreasing by a large amount (in the range of 1000 / 2000 m).
The change would begin during the Modern Era or in the future, and last long enough to allow for new political entities to be established on the newly exposed lands. The interested area doesn't need to be the entire surface of the planet, but it should be extensive enough to allow for said political entities to form.
I imagine for example that something could cause, over a long span of time, the amount of water evaporating to be constantly bigger than the amount of water returned to the ground as rain, snow, sleet. But this requires an explanation of its own.
What kind of event, natural or caused by human actions either deliberate or accidental, could lead to this phenomenon (feel free to use my prompt in the paragraph above, or give a completely different reason)? What sort of timeline would it require?
If this is not possible without large amounts of handwaving with Earth, please use an Earth-like planet as similar as possible to ours.
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The thing about water is that it is pretty much indestructible. If you don't want it in the sea you need to put it somewhere else.
The usual reason for lowered sea levels is glaciation.
For example, at present [Earth is in an ice age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Cenozoic_Ice_Age), with a lot of water trapped as permanent ice; as a consequence, sea levels are some 90 meters lower that what is usual in geological time. During the [Last Glacial Maximum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum), the sea level was even lower, some 125 meters below the present level. That was enough to make Great Britain a peninsula of Europe and to link Asia and North America by a land bridge.
If you want *even lower* sea levels you need a colder and longer Glacial Maximum. Unfortunately, this has severe side effects. Not only is a lot of land covered by ice, but glacial periods are cold, obviously, and when it's cold the air has much lower ability to store water vapor; as a consequence, the climate is drier in glacial periods, with extensive deserts and lower rain overall.
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The dynamo feeding the magnetic field of the planet has stopped working.
Lacking the shielding effect of the magnetic field, solar wind peels off our atmosphere. First it just impacts the water present as vapor, but as soon as the pressure drops, the oceans start boiling off, losing even more water.
The decrease in the sea level is just an intermediate step to the extinction of the life we know on our planet.
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Atlantropa was a project from a German architect who planned to build a huge dam at Gibraltar, to lower the Mediterranean Sea by about 200 meters, and produce massive amounts of electricity. I guess you could re-work the project to lower the sea by thousands of meters (the mediterranean is over 5000m deep at its deepest).
That would of course have major consequences on the environment, and such water would have to go else where (the other oceans, raising them).
Another idea would be to fit that water elsewhere. You could imagine an immense cave network inside the planet, that suddenly gets opened (maybe by oil drilling or a big earthquake on the ocean floor). Water would begin pouring in, and if the caves are wide and deep enough, you could have the sea level fall several hundred or thousand of meters (speed would depend on how big the opening is).
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Oh, the humanity.
A great invention, disposable soluble wipes, for smooth wiping after big business were all the rage over the planet. It was theorised that they would decay when exposed to uv radiation, so nobody paid much heed to their effects, and everybody started using them instead of the traditional toilet paper.
Sewage treatment plants didn't heed the microparticles of the wet wipes because it would be too costly and it got dumped into the natural water ways along with the rest of the treated sewage water.
Over years, all these micro particles had gathered in the great plastic garbage patch and some chemical reaction occurred with the plastic and the massive amount of micro particles creating a form of sponge that incorporated water in the supporting structure as well as trapping it in the micro chambers, that would reinforce and build further upon itself as more plastic and wet wipes were used. The chemical make up of the sponge would split the water into hydrogen and oxygen very efficiently when hit with sunlight, causing the hydrogen to escape earth's atmosphere over the years.
People noticed the sea levels receding, but the cause was hard to determine because the ocean is like really really big, and nobody saw the big sponge because it was hidden by the big garbage patch people tried to hard to ignore.
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Maybe the formation of a subterranean ocean. An Earthquake broke some geologic formation and the water of the ocean flowed inside. The kind of ocean scientists presume existed on Mars. This way you have a fast decrease of the sea level with unprecedented consequences.
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**Hydrate cycle**
The water could be bound chemically.
Now that's a bit difficult, since water is pretty much the lowest-energy configuration that Hydrogen and Oxygen can have.
It can go between the atoms of some crystals though. So if you have a massive layer of dehydrated rock somewhere, that gets uncovered en masse, then it could start soaking up lots of water.
It's not a very realistic scenario:
* To bind 1 m³ of water, you need at least the same volume of rock, and possibly more. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_of_crystallization> has a nice list of chemical compounds; you'd have to look up the densities of the hydrate and the anhydrate, get the weight relations by adding up atomic weights, and with that you could calculation the volume expansion.
* The anhydrite would have to change from "disconnected from water" to "connected to water" so that it would start soaking up water. The faster this process is, the faster the sea level will drop.
The best I can think of is some tectonic cycle:
\* The crust is composed of a hydrate that forms a supercontinent.
\* The hydrate gets pulled under and heated, driving the water out of the crystal, raising the sea levels considerably.
\* After a while, the anhydrate resurfaces and starts soaking up water.
Now what I don't know to make sure that the hydrate/anhydrate gets pulled under at the same time. Density differences could help make it clump better, and maybe help form a supercontinent, but I do not understand tectonics well enough to make even a hypothesis.
Anyway, this would be on geological scales. I am not sure whether that's any better for your plotline than a planet drying up through solar wind.
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Rather more pulp than many of the other suggestions and I did wonder whether it's a useful suggestion given your examples, but have you considered the case of someone stealing it?
Of course, to make that big a difference the operation would need to be truly massive. Maybe they have drilled a hole through the bottom of the ocean into a huge cave network which is now slowly flooding, or perhaps they're shipping it into space via some sort of space elevator?
The advantage with this answer is that the timeline is however fast or slow you want it, limited by the technology or means of the person or peoples relocating the water. Presumably they also have some use for it, which might be relevant...
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I love all the answers especially the wet wipes one, but I can't find one that covers water actually escaping from the planet other than by the death of the core. So what factors might cause it to be lost into space from a living planet? An overheating atmosphere? Warm air rises, and with more evaporation there would be more steam at higher levels in the atmosphere. What could push it out into space? Electricity. I would imagine that Sprites (powerful upward thrusts of lightning) would have the effect of pushing atmosphere, mostly hydrogen, into space. This is a likely cause of planets losing their atmosphere, and with it, their water. The time scale with severe sudden warming could be as little as a hundred years?
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**Catastrophic cosmic radiation event**
A super nova or a gamma ray burst can strip the atmosphere from a planet, pretty quickly.
You'd need to have a composition in the planet that has very little hydrogen, so the atmosphere that forms afterwards does not form too much water.
This answer might be useful for a plotline where people visit a planet and find that the shoreline was some 1000 meters higher than today.
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I have a crazy thought which may open up a giant can of worms for you, but here it goes: There is a giant continent on your world which sits mostly below sea level, but which has high ground along the perimeter which keeps the sea from flooding in. Perhaps some of the land on this continent sits very far below sea level, while other parts are at or near sea level. If an earthquake, asteroid strike, or natural erosion were to suddenly breach the perimeter of this continent, the sea would come flooding in, widening the breach with its flow until equilibrium is reached with the sea around it. Not only could you have your global average sea level drop dramatically as a result of this (reshaping every coast line in the world), you would now have your largest continent suddenly turned into a massive atoll with the potential for scattered islands throughout.
Massive numbers of people would be displaced or killed as entire countries are potentially buried under this new sea. Cities which were once landlocked hilltop fortresses would suddenly become island nations. Port cities would find themselves landlocked and miles away from the nearest water.
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The problem with water, is that you pretty much have to destroy it if you don't want it raining, seeping or channelling back into the oceans.
So let's do that.
First, an assumption: that humans have perfected the nuclear fusion reactor - not just for fusing hydrogen, but for fusing any element. We can fuse all of the elements up to iron and still release energy. So our approach has the handy side-effect of releasing a lot of energy, which we are going to need.
The first step is to gather up water and split it into hydrogen and oxygen, using plain old electrolysis. We're then going to burn the oxygen in a fusion reactor. Not an easy task, given the extraordinarily high temperatures and densities that are required to achieve this in stars - we're talking much, much higher than the kind of fusion reactors that we already struggle to build today. But hey, according to our assumption we've managed to solve that engineering problem.
We could perhaps let the hydrogen go and hope it escapes the atmosphere, or we could burn that too. Since 88.8% of the mass of water is the oxygen, we'll assume that if we can solve the oxygen disposal problem, we can solve the hydrogen disposal problem too.
OK, so each O+O fusion reaction releases 9.593 MeV of energy, and gives us a silicon atom. Cool! We can use that silicon atom to bind some more of the oxygen into quartz. This provides a shelf-stable product that can be used to build more land, or just pile it up into a new mountain somewhere out of the way.
How much oxygen do we need to burn to achieve our goal? Let's assume we only need to burn 50% of the oceans to achieve the desired sea level drop. That's about half a quintillion metric tonnes of oxygen - or about 10^45 atoms worth, according to some rough assumptions about the ocean's mass that I found. But I only spent about 20 seconds googling, so double check this before proceeding.
Did I mention that not only will we need an advanced oxygen-burning fusion reactor, but it will need to be a really, really big one? Or perhaps a number of smaller ones. But at any rate, we've got a lot of fusing to do. The great thing about fusion is that you get energy out of it, so you don't have to worry about how you're going to power all of the operational concerns like gathering up the water, moving it around, splitting it, and so forth. You can definitely assume we'll have enough energy.
But might we have too much?
If we burn all this oxygen, we'll release about 10^34 joules. That's approximately equal to the total energy output of the sun each year. This would definitely set the entire planet on fire, which probably meets the goal of creating "newly exposed lands", though the "new political entities" would have to be of a hardy variety.
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A nuclear winter would drop the global average temperature.
You know how the sea levels are going up because global warming is causing polar ice to melt? Global cooling would have the opposite effect, causing more sea water to become polar ice.
In fact, that happened during each glaciation the Earth has gone through.
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If it's acceptable to raise the ground level rather than lowering the sea level, you could consider an earthquake or a series of earthquakes. This is the scientifically accepted explanation for [marine fossils found on top of mountains](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/3499/mt-everest). In the [more spectacular earthquakes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/robinandrews/2018/02/27/the-orphan-tsunami-and-the-ghost-forest-is-geologys-greatest-legend/#3bed0881506f), the ground level can shift very quickly by a few hundred metres.
Of course, this would be a local phenomenon, not global.
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Volcanoes on the ocean floor or subduction during motion of plate tectonics. The ocean water goes through phases: evaporation, condensation & preciptation. This would cause the phenomena of unusual lower tides or sea levels. Also they call it Snowball Earth when the ocean water becomes ice which would freeze the ocean making the tides & sea levels appear lower.
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My team of researchers has created an AI to increase human suffering and the machine has started earning money on the market. The ministry of economics has sent a technician to review the machine and see if it can be used on a wider scale. I want to see if a specialist would detect such a "defect"
Do AIs have vague objectives programmed into them, like "increase human suffering"?
If not, how could a reviewer detect that an AI is programmed to do so?
**edit:** provided that the AI doesn't try too hard to hide the fact but also doesn't make it apparent
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The purpose of AIs is to permit increasingly vague instructions. "Typical" computer programs need extremely precise instructions and they are followed without error. Modern AI's are typically given "goals" which are used to train the AIs, but they are more specific than "increase human suffering." Future AIs are theorized to be able to accept more vague goals like you describe. Your task may call for a AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), which is the name given to the yet-undeveloped AIs which are at least as intelligent as a human being.
You cannot actually detect what an AI is programmed to do. That's somewhat to their nature of operating on less precise instructions. What you *can* do is look at the training set they were given and draw conclusions from that.
A great example of this is a famous neural network. It was given a grid of dots as an input (7x7 grid I believe), each of which can be "lit" or "unlit," and its output was a "Yes" or "No." This network was trained first by giving it a series of 7x7 images of arrows pointing to the left. They looked something like this:
```
Left Arrow Not arrow(example)
. . . # . . . . . . . . . .
. . # . . . . . . . . . . .
. # . . . . . . . # # # . .
# # # # # # # . . # . # . .
. # . . . . . . . # # # . .
. . # . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . # . . . . . . . . . .
```
It was trained until it could reliably recognize the difference between a left arrow and a non arrow. Then, it was given a training set that included arrows to the right. Predictably, it did not recognize this as a left arrow, so it outputted "No." However, after more training it started recognizing both left and right facing arrows. Then we gave it an arrow facing up, and trained it until it could recognize upward arrows. Then downward. Each one proved easier to train than the last, almost like it was "recognizing" arrows.
Then the interesting challenge: we gave the AI a set of diagonal arrows. On a 7x7 grid, these look quite different than horizontal or vertical arrows. However, the neural net responded "yes" to them. It had learned the abstract concept of "an arrow" and responded to a novel stimulus accordingly.
If you looked at the weights on that neural network, you would never be able to distill from it "the AI is looking for arrows." Neural network weights are almost impossible for us to decipher. And, if you looked at the training set, you could see that it was being trained to recognize horizontal and vertical arrows. However, what you could not discern was whether it had learned to recognize horizontal and vertical arrows, or if it had somehow learned the abstract idea of "arrows in any direction." Or maybe it has learned "shapes that can be decomposed into three lines." The only way to tell that was to test it -- give it a diagonal arrow and see what it did with it.
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No, they don't. You'd need to have the programmers explicitly state what the machine should interpret "human suffering" as and how to measure it in order to determine whether it is achieving its goal or not.
Once the AI understands in concrete terms what suffering is it would start to work towards that goal (assuming a self-teaching neural network) by trial and error, whatever it does that makes suffering increase it would regard as productive, whatever doesn't it would regard as non-productive. From there it would iterate millions of times until it achieves the perfect wat to make people suffer according to the definition of suffering it was given.
Additionally, unless the machine determines that earning money is productive towards increasing suffering, it wouldn't do it.
EDIT: as an example, if the AI is programmed to measure suffering through a survey that asks whether the person surveyed is suffering or not, it could reach the conclusion that asking the person to answer "I'm suffering" is the best means to achieve its goal.
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# Kinda and probably not.
Real world AI are not programmed to do a task, they're trained on an huge amount of carrefuly selected test data. So nothing prevent you to shape your training data set as to make increased human suffering desirable in your AI heuristics.
However, modern day scientist don't really understand how AI such as google or facebook algorithm. An AI trainned to increase human suffering would be order of magnitude more complex, so definitly not understandable without a tremendous amount of work put into it.
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I think you may mean "ulterior" instead of "vague"... There are no "real world" AIs, but I'll offer 2 fictional examples:
1. Consider [Deep Thought](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_characters#Deep_Thought) the supercomputer in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. When asked to solve the vague question of the meaning of life, he comes up with a cryptic answer and tells them they didn't understand the question.
2. Consider [HAL-9000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000) in 2001: A Space Odyssey, whose creators embedded an ulterior mission objective to be revealed only upon arrival at Jupiter. HAL has some awareness it exists but cannot access the info. He knows the ship will stop communicating at a certain time but he is blocked from knowing why. HAL interprets the situation as an antenna malfunction. He is certain the communications will fail but he is unable to say why. Ground Control (not knowing the ulterior mission) tells crew HAL is malfunctioning and to disconnect him… Unfortunately this situation becomes unsolvable. If the crew disables HAL he cannot complete the ulterior mission, HAL decides the secret mission is more important than the crew's lives (probably believing he will be able to finish the mission on his own).
In each example the AI is doing what it was supposed to do. Everything goes horribly wrong because the creators (not the AI) make mistakes in their instructions. Meanwhile the AI is convinced it has come up with the correct answer.
You question then is about The Expert, an AI psychologist who must determine whether the AI is "sane" or not, because things are going wrong. How would he go about this?
* Ask 2 other AI (best 2 out of 3 wins)
* Catch the AI in a contradiction, hope the AI wants to get well and work through its issues in group therapy, not by instantly murdering everyone.
* Convince the AI that even though it's more profitable to be evil,
profits aren't everything (aka: Scrooge)
* Investigate the AI's childhood and discover there was a guy on the
development team that was awfully careless about his "just for fun"
despot simulator (aka: Social Worker plays Detective)
It all depends on what you want to say, and probably goes more to Writing than Worldbuilding. The Expert can be a heartless inquisitor or a sympathetic psychoanalyst. Your AI can be a calculating villain or an unwitting victim. Maybe the programmer recognizes parts of his despot simulator in what the AI is doing… Meanwhile, what you want to say about how profits and suffering are viewed by society is your bigger moral.
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In general, AI's nowadays are programmed to use machine learning - programmed to program themselves.
At first, the AI in question would be given sample data, for example showing it that if it starts trolling on the Internet, human suffering is increased. Then, it is allowed to test what to do on it's own, learning what things cause human suffering. Now that it knows what causes it, it can reliably increase human suffering.
If the AI's learning algorithm is written well (which I assume it is), then the only defect could be the sample/learning data, which means that the learning needs to be restarted. If say, it found that people at hospitals suffered a lot, it would send everyone to hospitals, in the end increasing human happiness because everyone is treated. Therefore, the test data must be chosen carefully.
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Nearly impossible, but depends upon the techniques used (the complexity of the algorithms, and which algorithms were employed).
The fields of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) both developed from the original field of AI, which at inception encompassed efforts to produce agents which could perform human and human-like tasks. One major area of study was how to make algorithms more efficient, such as algorithms to peform search (A\* and min-max, for example), and some have described AI as a search and optimization problem. Call this branch of AI the search/optimization branch. The goal of this branch is both to perform human tasks, and perform them optimally. The related field of Machine Learning (ML) heavily leans upon statistics, and an ML-agent learns from many examples, deducing underlying patterns. ML is used for classification and prediction, and is used for many AI applications. Techniques used in ML include Decision Trees (DT), Nearest Neighbor (k-NN), Neural Networks (NN), Bayesian Inference, Reinforcement Learning (reward based feedback). The optimal/search AI techniques include search (A\*, min-max, simulated annealing, etc).
But there is another branch of AI which focuses upon behaving and thinking more like a human, where the optimal solution is not the goal, but more human behavior. The techniques used by that branch rely less upon large numbers of training examples, and more about reasoning from few examples, more inductive and adductive, than deductive. Techniques used by this branch of AI include Version Spaces, Case Based Reasoning, and many others. The meta-reasoning methods used in AI can employ several different approaches, and then use meta-AI to choose the 'best' solution from competing solutions.
Anyway, there are many tools and techniques wielded by an AI-writer. Some are much more understandable to a person examining the behavior than other approaches. Consider Decision Trees, Version Spaces, and rules-based engines. These techniques are approachable and the reasoning taken to induce a model can be understood. Compare that with Neural Networks (NN), where a convolutional NN (deep learning) can 'learn' concepts in what appear to be mysterious ways.
The brief answer to your question is which techniques were used to construct the AI-agent? A reasonably complex AI-agent that includes many models and employs meta-reasoning would both be more likely to approach an Artificial General Intelligence, and be very complex, reaching decisions through reasoning which could prove impossible to understand. The complexity of the programming would be one factor, but the models constructed from the training examples could require huge amounts of space. Finding which model data decide for suffering would be akin to finding a needle in a haystack the size of Jupiter.
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Once you have an electronic brain programming is easy.
The AI lives in a ideal simulation and is happy. Sometimes it has to do chores. Everyone has to do chores even programmers. If AI don't do their chores they go to the bad place.
Programmer appears to Al Iverson.
Programmer: "Hello Al. You know me. You Know I create all things. I have a chore for you that is harder than usual. I created a bad place but the people there choose to be there and they also choose to forget their choice. Your chore is to go there and increase suffering."
So verification of the program?
Ask it. Obviously your testers can read its thoughts. And obviously you wouldn't tell it you can do that.
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**Definitely yes**
And it's not even that hard.
First of all AI is an computer program that is looking for a set of actions that would maximize expected utility according to it's own model of the world. So even if the whole AI might be incomprehensibly complicated, you just need to find the piece that is the happiness (utility) function
For example chess AI might have an happiness function `value of all my pieces - value of all enemy pieces` Therefore, it is looking for actions that leads to having more or better pieces on the board.
So your AI can have happiness function `global_suffering = 0.8*amount of sick people + 0.2*amount of unemployed people + 0.9*amount of starving adults + 2*starving kids`
If your specialist have an access to the code, he can just look for the happiness function, and ask himself why does it trying to maximize amount of starving kids. If he doesn't have access to the code, he can reverse engineer it and get to the same conclusion.
It is possible that the utility function is also computed by a very complicated incomprehensible deep learning model, however that can be reverse engineered as well <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/01/steal_this_brain/>
Researcher can find a place on the RAM that keeps the AI's happiness value for the given state of the world, he can then run the AI with different inputs and notice that the happiness is higher if there is more hungry kids in the world. He can run it with input of the world being in global war and notice that the in that case the AI is super happy :)
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One cannot "program" an AI per se, but there is a teaching strategy which forces AI to increase given parameter. (For example - [AI learning to play retrogames](http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/25/8108399/google-ai-deepmind-video-games) by randomly pressing keys, and "remembering" key combination which lead to score increase.)
So a malicious superuser can set an ugly learning target (like decrease [HDI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index)). If we follow a parallel with Lawnmowner Man, that must be a highly placed military official.
As for detection/diagnostic methods, you should come up with something as advanced as your AI. Instead of brute force (gathering logs data, or super complicated modelling), some specific talent, some "AI psychoanalyst", which can detect malfunctioning by talking to an AI in length.
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Kinda yes and kinda no.
If an engineer set the parameters based on specific human environmental conditions like hot, cold, pressure, lightness, hunger, thirst, loudness, isolation (lack of sensory), and electricity. There is another way which is also to give the person [excessive amounts of pleasure.](https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-10/uomh-pap101806.php) I remember hearing about a doctor who had invented [the orgasmatron.](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140321-orgasms-at-the-push-of-a-button) There are some really interesting studies I have been reading on excessive success causing people to psychologically break down.
The machines would have to have some devices to detect human suffering. It could be something like electrical impulses, dopamine receptors, or other nano-neural chemical detection implant.
In short, no AI currently has a concept of "increase pleasure or pain." They need libraries, frameworks, and functions based on specific parameters. However, A proof of concept could take a very short period of time. To make it like horror movie/the Matrix level would take decades of research.
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[This question asks what if the world was divided into two regions?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/13602/the-world-that-was-split-in-half) I'm asking what if the world were split into two planets.
Let's say some aliens come to Earth and prank us (apparently they never heard of the prime directive) by taking the earth, and magically moving the two halves (you can pick which two make it most interesting) apart from each other such that the distance between them is the same as the old diameter of the earth. Also, to be nice, they moved the moon into orbit around the sun so we wouldn't get a [three body problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem). Other satellites are placed into miscellaneous orbits around each part. Also, the two halves are set into rotation around each other so they maintain roughly the same distance. After they have done this, the magic stops, and the aliens leave.
What happens now? I am looking for both short term and long term answers.
[Answer]
Well the first thing that happens is that both halves immediately start collapsing into a sphere smaller by half the volume of the Earth. This would be a cataclysmic event unto itself. Likely nothing would survive for long. There was another question about taking out a huge hunk of the earth, all the same stuff as that only worse.
if the 2 halves where not set to orbiting each other at a decently fast speed, they would immediately begin to move toward each other and merge back together in another huge cataclysm. Either way this is the likely outcome, it just matters how long it takes will be dependent on how fast the 2 are set to orbit each other. Being only the distance of the diameter of the original Earth, I think the mutual orbit would have to be pretty fast, fast enough to cause other problems.
But in every case, everyone and everything stuck on the planets are going to die in short order.
[Answer]
Well, assuming that the dividing line runs through the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (let's assume 23 W longitude and 157 E longitude), the oceans of the world will drain in a matter of days. Both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans (all 4) will drain immediately to a depth of at least 15,000 feet, the Arctic Ocean will drain completely, and the Indian Ocean will drain around Antarctica to the same depth, although that will take a few days longer. Not that the earth has a few weeks to watch the process.
Oh yes, and the atmosphere will also drain off, just like the oceans.
EDIT - And it occurs to me that this needs a bit of expansion. Let's assume that the two halves, once split, are alienly moved apart a few thousand miles in the wink of an eye. Then the entire edge around the cut plane will experience what you might call "horizontal explosive decompression", which will actually become a high wind, as the air farther away from the edge expands/is pulled to the edge and beyond. Once over the edge, the air will fall toward the core, and form a bubble sitting on the cut plane. The edge of the disturbance zone will propagate inwards at the speed of sound, so it will be about 10 hours before it reaches the center of the hemisphere. Assuming the atmosphere is uniformly distributed over the new surface, the average density of the new atmosphere will be 2/3 that of the original. However, the air will not be uniformly distributed, since air will fall off the edge. Frankly, I'm not going to do the calculations to figure out what the new distribution will be, but I suspect that quite a large fraction of the available air will be lost to the old surface. In addition, what air there is will be less dense than a similar amount of air pre-split. The reason is that the surface gravity on the old surface will be less than previously, so the atmosphere will not be as concentrated at the surface. At a guess, the air density will be around 1/3 the present value, or about what you find at the top of Everest. It will take a minimum of a day to reach equilibrium (speed of sound from edge to center of old surface to start redistribution, and more than that for the air to flow to its final location) At the edge, the initial winds will be an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound, since the air is expanding freely into a vacuum, and this will help empty the oceans quickly.
END EDIT
The core of the Earth starts about 1800 miles from the center, so the liquid core has a diameter of ~3600 miles. At the outer limit of the core, the viscosity of the molten iron is roughly 100 poise, or somewhere between water and motor oil. Pressures at this depth are ~300 GPa, or 300 million atmospheres. Viscosity increases with pressure, which increases with depth, so the inner core becomes solid.
With the bisection of the earth, the pressure in the core will drop essentially to zero, since core material can squirt out sideways, and the entire core will become liquid, with an initial temperature in the 4000 to 6000 K range. With the central core liquid, there will be no possibility of the edges maintaining shape, and the earth will immediately begin to flow downwards all around the new flat face. The process will continue until the Earth has reached a sphere with a diameter of about 6400 miles. There will be precious little of the original surface left. What there is will be molten, since the gravitational energy released in the collapse will have nowhere to go except as heat. Well, there will be a certain amount of ejecta normal to the plane of bisection.
The energy delivered to crustal material can be roughly estimated as follows. A mass at the old surface (4000 miles from center) will fall 800 miles (1280 km) to reach the new surface. The new surface will have a gravitational acceleration of 9.8 / 2 ^ 1/3, or about 7.8 m/sec^2. The energy imparted to a 1 kg mass will then be mgh, or just about 10,000 kJ. The specific heat of granite is .8 kJ/kg-K, so the material will heat up about 12,000 degrees. Toss in a correction factor to allow for the decreased gravity at altitude above the new surface, and 9,000 to 10,000 degrees seems reasonable. In other words, the new sphere will be molten where it isn't gaseous.
I've not included the energy required to separate the two halves, and this will mitigate the thermal effects some, but it still ought to be quite a show.
[Answer]
The inner core of the Earth is made of solid iron and nickel. Solid because the pressure is overwhelming; without the pressure, the temperature would make both metals - no, not liquid, gaseous. Take off the pressure, wich is implied in cutting the planet to half, and a monsterous eruption of iron gas takes place; with the core suddenly losing consistence, all the upper layers immediately crash down; the crust of the remaining half is destroyed in the process. The atmosphere quickly divides into a cold layer of oxygen + nitrogen, and a nightmarishly hot layer of iron + nickel gas. At the temperatures involved, iron and nickel burn. And then they cool down, and it rains... liquid or red hot nickel, iron, and their respective oxids. Oceans boil, due to both increased temperature and reduced pressure. And no, it doesn't take years for all this to happen, or even months. It is an extinction level event up to eleven - I doubt even bacteria would survive the process.
The end result is two smaller spheric, dead, sterile planets orbiting each other. Both violently whipped by solar wind, as their disrupted cores would quite certainly be unable to generate a magnetic field.
Of course, since this is aliens with the appropriate technological/magic means to split the Earth in two, they may also have the means to keep the hemispheric shape of each half - perhaps they seal the planetary wound with whatever was that constituted the dome in Stephen King's *Under the Dome*; or they know the correct spells to keep everything in place. In this case, the point most distant from the edge of the cut is closer to the new gravitation center, and consequently everything falls towards it. Again, extinction-level event.
OK again, the sufficiently technologically advanced - ie, magic - aliens can change the laws of physics in a way that the gravitational center of each semiplanet no longer coincides with its baricenter; somehow it remains in the flat surface of the hemisphere. And, as new difficulties are raised, the aliens counter-attack with newer magic - I mean, sufficiently technologically advanced - tricks. You win; life is preserved in both semi-planets, and the main difference is that London-Sydney is now an interplanetary trip, not merely an international one. If we come to this point, then the question is: on what plane was the Earth cut by half? The Equatorial plane? The Eclyptic? Or along a meridian (which one?) According to that answer, we could have semiplanets where it is either summer in the whole surface, or winter. Which countries and oceans would be cut apart between semiplanets? In the case of countries, how do split countries reorganise? What does a Washington DC-less no-longer-United States do? New capital, new elections for president? Or just chaos? What resources become suddenly scarcer in each half? What happen to migratory species whose migration routes are severed? Do we discover that one of the halves, or both, is no longer a sustainable environment without the other half? And those poor Western corporations, how do they manage to stay afloat without Chinese sweatshops? How do Muslisms fare in a half-world without Mecca (or Catholics without Rome?)
[Answer]
If you put the planet in stasis, cut it in half, separated the two halves by a few thousand kilometers, and then set them spinning around one another and released them from stasis, what would happen is that the entire liquid mantle, super-hot and under immense pressure, would immediately and simultaneously boil and try to flow down towards the former center of the planet (being the new surface of the half-planet and the new low point relative to the center of the half-mass) in the largest lava flow seen since the moon was formed. All of these trillions of tons of molten metal would be rushing down to the center, some of it falling literally thousands of kilometers, and then when it gets to the bottom, it would slam headlong into all the *other* magma coming up from the other direction.
So trillions of tons of boiling-hot metal are now slamming together at extremely high speeds. This collision at the former center of the planet basically makes each half of the planet into a planetary-scale shaped charge, blasting hypersonic jets of molten nickel and iron into space, *directly at the center of the other half*. As a small-scale example of what I'm talking about, ever see a couple of waves come together and throw a bit of spray up into the air? Imagine that on an Armageddon scale.
Now, because the two hemi-planets would need to be rotating *extremely* fast to maintain separation, it's possible that the two jets don't just crash directly into one another. Instead, they probably slam into the trailing side of the opposite half of the planet, sending off another giant spray of molten ex-planetary bits, and possibly even hitting hard enough to blast significant chunks off the other planet-half.
Basically, it's messy. And the resulting halves would almost certainly each be inside the other's Roche limit, meaning that the two halves would tear each other apart due to tidal forces, turning our former planet into a rapidly-rotating disk of ex-planetary debris. Over time, this would probably re-coalesce into a somewhat smaller planet. The rest of the solar system would see a heavy uptick in the volume of meteors for thousands or millions of years due to the Earth fragments sent flying off in the initial split or in subsequent fragmentary collisions. Venus and Luna especially, being in the closest orbits, would be hardest hit. Eventually Jupiter's influence would either send the wandering bits either off into interplanetary space, or corral them into the asteroid belt.
Needless to say, life on Earth ends in spectacular fashion shortly after the stasis is released.
--Edited to add--
I realized shortly after posting that I'm overlooking an important effect. The massive jets formed by the flash-boiling and collapse of the mantle and half-cores would act as a pair of mass-drivers, accelerating much of the remaining mass of the half-planets, including the bulk of the crust, outwards at high speed, possibly even reaching the escape velocity of ex-Earth. This would hasten the formation of a disk of debris, and possibly result in either a new pair of dwarf planets or some rather violent collisions as the remains coalesced or collided with various other bodies in the solar system.
[Answer]
**Orbit:**
Such a binary system would rotate around the center of mass, in this case that would be the actual center of the two halves.
**Collapse:**
The earth's core stays solid due to pressure. By splitting the earth, the aliens have released this pressure. The earth's core would spill out as a liquid but would still be attracted to the huge gravitational mass which is the half-sphere. The same would happen with the mantle. Evenually, each half-sphere would collapse in on itself (very slowly, it would take a while), creating two smaller sphere.
**Effect on humanity:**
The (eventual, it will take a while) collapse of each half-sphere would wreck havoc on the surface, destroying buildings and cities. The binary procession of the two half-spheres would ruin our seasonal calendar. Travel and trade routes would be ruined. Countries would lose international trade. They could still travel between halves, but it would be so expensive that you would not make any profit. Radio, cell phone, etc. would still work, but many families would be separated. The economy would undergo a mass depression. The spilling of the mantle has destroyed the earth's magnetic field. Cosmic rays wreck havoc on each half-sphere surface. These aliens have done a lot more than just pranking us.
[Answer]
Earth has many layers of material, each with a different composition, pressure, temperature. When the pressure is released, these layers of magma, molten metal, and etc. are going to pop.
[Mythbusters shows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-orINOUUXk) what happens when you release high-pressure, high-heat layered material from a crust that holds it all together. Spoilers: *someone gets burned.* With the earth, that someone is everyone.
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[Question]
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I'm relatively new to worldbuilding, and even more to this website.
### Context
In my world, gods are known to arpent the world.
Concerning magic and spiritual world, these usages are really common but kinda reserved to the nobles, since this allow them to keep them empowered. The more noble you are, the more "connected" to magic and gods you are.
When a king is crowned, he goes into a sacred room, and have a meeting with the gods, who choose a god to become one with the king, granting him powers and longevity to rule the kingsdom
Now, i'm trying to think of a good reason why would a god leave the king's body, aside from being bored of if the king and god don't have the same opinions or "phase" anymore.
I should add that for now, my pantheon isn't quite formed yet, but i'd like my gods to represent two sides of the same thing (i.e the god/goddess of peace is also the god/goddess of war, etc)
### Question
Ofc, a god leaving a king's body would have consequences, destituating the king, even killing him if he's old enough to be dead without the god's longevity.
So yeah, any idea of why would a god leave a king, and therefore a kingdom ?
Also, some words might not be the best fitting, english is not my first language. Feel free to ask questions, i'll answer them the best I can !
[Answer]
# Hosting the Powers of a God Burns Out the Host
Fiction is replete with things like this - beholding the True Nature of various deities drives men mad, or strikes them blind, or drives them uncontrollably to their knees.
The power of a god is not calibrated for a mortal to wield. The only reason any godly energy can be harnessed at all is because the god is there personally to mediate its use, but even the god can't prevent *all* of the damage that the energy does to a frail mortal body.
The longevity granted by the deity is a combination of the deity's power working to repair vital organs and effectively directly puppetting the body of the host. So even as the power hollows out its host, they can still run a marathon because as long as they can *think* that they can run, the power will move their body directly and make it happen.
But all good things must come to an end - the damage piles up and up and up and eventually the body reaches the point where it lacks the intrinsic mortal vitality needed to serve as an avatar.
This would mean that in all but very brief avatar states, the departure of the god will *definitely* kill the former host, but presumably a sufficiently pious host would view that as a worthwhile sacrifice.
[Answer]
# No reason a mortal can understand
Gods in many stories become human. Easy to understand their motives and their goals, how they think or act. However, this seems to me like a wrong representation of a god. Instead of an ethereal human with incredible powers, why not make them a tad deeper?
If I would imagine a god, I would rather think of a Lovecraftian horror, minus the horror (or sometimes with extra horror). They are in their nature not comprehensible. They are vast, powerful and smart beings who's motives and actions are far beyond our understanding. What you interact with in a king is not even a drop in the ocean compared to the rest of the god.
Why *would* a god leave a king? It is a question that can drive the plot, or be a question that can drive the characters as well as the reader to come up with their own reasons. The reason can always be shrouded in mystery. For me these things are powerful in a story. Not only do some unanswered questions leave you wondering, they can also provide a mirror to their own life if they try to figure out why the god left.
He has left for no reason we can begin to understand, but we try to put it in human terms so we have a feeling of control.
[Answer]
Gods like to act like spoiled divas:
You cooked the sacrificial egg 6 minutes instead of 5 minutes and 55 seconds? What an insult!
What do you mean I can't have fun by hailing the peasants' crops the day before the harvest?
That beautiful girl did not give in to me hitting on her!
How dare you tripping during the sacred dance in my honor?
My command is to not eat any fruit which has RGB (229,43,80) on its peel! Disregard this and I will get very angry!
Any reason, no matter how made up, is sufficient for the diva to act like a spoiled brat and start stomping their feet while throwing a tantrum and leaving the king.
[Answer]
### Having all that power is not healthy for a person's mind
They say power corrupts and it's true. It doesn't matter how moral you start out as, being granted the power of a god will gradually warp a person's values. You don't even need divine power for this, just look at real-world dictators. (Or certain website/forum admins.)
So "good" gods will leave the body of the monarch before that happens, so they can abdicate and stay true to themselves for the rest of their lives.
Of course evil gods won't mind their hosts going mad with power, in fact they probably encourage it. But they're also opportunists, so if they spot a better host, they'll just leave the old one to die, so they can hop into the new body.
[Answer]
# Occupying a mortal frame weakens a god over time
Despite all their powers, there are natural laws which constrain the actions of a god. Indefinite possesion of a human, even a noble, poses significant risks. You can explore this in a number of different ways.
Perhaps in taking a mortal body, **the god also become mortal**: while they have increased strength, durability, and longevity, in the unlikely the case that the host is killed, the god could also die/be severely weakened. In which case gods would only possess a royal host for a "short" period of time (several centuries is still short if you're a god!) to minimise the risk to their own immortal existance.
Alternatively, over time it may become harder and harder for the god to relinquish their hold on the host. **Spending time in the mortal plane gradually anchors a god to it** until eventually, after millennia, they become one with the host and subsequently relinquish their divinity. They could even maintain some powers, but be trapped in the host body, unable to return to the ether.
This could also be related to @biziclop's answer: perhaps two minds in one body also could also eventually damage the god's mental stability, leading to a chimera between man and god.
In any case, perhaps there could be an example of a god from your pantheon who remained in the mortal realm for too long and died, or was left a shell of themselves. No other gods want to risk following in their footsteps so after a sensible amount of time they leave, even if it means the death of the host.
[Answer]
**The host goes against the Ethos of the God**
The Gods, by nature of being manifestations of certain things, have a way of doing things.
I'm going to use WH40K here (because I'm a WH Nerd) - Khorne is the chaos god of War, Violence, Blood lust etc. Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull throne! - you get the idea.
However, because he is all about Combat, he happens to also be the a big fan of Discipline and Honor.
Someone who takes on a Mighty foe and does so without fear or hesitation may earn the favor of Khorne, even if they loose. Khorne loves a Winner, but he also loves someone who fights without restriction.
On the flipside, Khorne will send deamons to collect the souls of his worhsippers/champions who fled in battle (which is the most grievous affront to Khorne).
So, let's say our King decides to align himself with a God - let's say the God of Justice (I'm not going to use the God of War) - that God **requires** the host to act in a fair and just manner. Each act of injustice perpetrated by the King weakens the bond with the host. It can be renewed by acts of selflessness or acts that align strongly with the God that they pair with.
However, some acts are so grievous that it causes the connection to be severed.
So, our King is presiding over a contract dispute between 2 neighboring factions - Faction 1 presents a written and signed contract that is fairly clear between both Faction 1 and Faction 2, with some additional documents (that are not legal contracts or signed) that give context to the section that is in dispute.
Faction 2 are generally on more favorable terms with the King and have hinted that should he rule in their favor, they will reciprocate.
Essentially - Faction 2 are trying to bribe the judge (Our King).
The God inhabiting the King is able to see the King's motivations and true intentions. The King could rule for Faction 1, the King could rule for Faction 2 on the principle that vagueness in contracts benefits the defending party, The King could make a compromise verdict and demand a new treaty/contract be written.
But if the King decides to make his ruling based primarily on his own interests - then the God will depart as they are incapable of inhabiting a vessel that betrays their ethos.
You could add some story elements that this isn't fully known or understood by the Nobles, which is why it sometimes happens.
[Answer]
**Gods cycle between "sides" to maintain balance, so they naturally stop sharing the opinion of the king**
Similar to [@TheDemonLord](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/100161/thedemonlord)'s [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/247693/86794), after some time the connection between the human and the God breaks because their values no longer align. In this case, it's not that the human broke the God's original values. Instead, the God's values changed to their flip side, so the God no longer aligns with the human's original values.
[Answer]
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> When a king is crowned, he goes into a sacred room, and have a meeting with the gods, who choose a god to become one with the king, granting him powers and longevity to rule the kingsdom
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-- and this makes the whole process open to **palace intrigue.** There are many ways in which you could interfere with it: send the king to a different room? have a chat with the gods beforehand to influence which one gets paired with the king, or try to convinvce them to not pair with the king at all? have an ambitious noble sneak himself into the room and pose as a legitimate king? outright desecrate the room so the gods will no longer even turn up? None of this would necessarily be *easy* to successfully pull off, but it happens in a society which practices magic; they can find a way.
[Answer]
Two minds in one body. One of those minds being a god, would have a wastly stronger willpower, that would change the mind of the host over time, to be more like the god.
A god with compassion might decide that they are essentially killing the person, by changing their personality, and refuse to be a part in it.
[Answer]
Generally, in any polytheism, the gods all have roles: god/goddess of thunder, god/goddess of fertility, god/goddess of pain, etc.
Since they have roles outside of inhabiting a mortal, there are many reasons one would choose to leave.
## Bored now...
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> I am a god of infinite power and cosmic energy. It is through my will alone that causes the sun to rise and the plants to grow... And we're having scrambled eggs for breakfast again. \*sigh\*
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There will always be the "cool" deities; the ones that deal with war, power, death, life, growth, and so on. This means they get chosen all the time. After a while, they will get bored of being inside a mortal lifetime after lifetime. All mortals waste so much time eating, sleeping, breathing, it just gets dull. So a deity could decide they've had enough and just wander off to do something exciting.
## This isn't what I signed up for...
At the other end of the spectrum is the deity that never gets picked. Why would a leader that wants health and prosperity for their kingdom want to merge with Ralph, God of Swamps and Decay?
But Ralph was chosen... And now Ralph to do what? Sleep? BATHE?! Sure, siring an offspring (see below) was fun, but all those years of pacing just to put a welp to sleep? Ralph used to have fun, and wander the cosmos. Ralph was in charge of entropy, and now they have diaper duty.
I'm surprised deities last the first year of a leader's rule.
## You were inhabited by whom?
The previous leader was inhabited by Ralph. During their merger, the leader sired a son whom became the next ruler. That son, Stephan, wants to bring art and beauty to the realm and chooses Mina, Goddess of Beauty and Fashion.
A few years into this joining, Mina finds out that the father sired their host while having "Swamp boy" in their body. That's disgusting! Mina would never be associated with some MORTAL that was tainted by the likes of them. She will not inhabit them a moment longer!
## Duty calls
As premised, each deity is in charge of something. There is no God of lounging about.
Well, sometimes, there could be a problem that needs their undivided attention. Tara, the Goddess of War, will need to oversee when a confrontation grows in size. Kevin, the God of the Hunt, will need to help across the land if there is an especially harsh winter when everyone is staving and needs to find food.
These tasks may be too hard when contained within a mortal body. More so if the body only cares about the well being of people in their immediate vicinity. If Stephan, learns that the enemy of the kingdom across the water is starving, then he would likely decree to let them starve, we need the God here with us. But Kevin serves all people and will need to leave Stephan in order to help everyone, else they lose dominion.
[Answer]
They have a day job!
To the mortals, this world is all, and the gods are all-powerful beings worthy of worship who possess monarchs for decades at a time.
To the gods, this world is pretty much just a fun MMO that they log in to for a couple of hours on their days off.
The gods seem to leave at arbitrary times *to mortals*, because they lack context or information about what is happening in "the godly realm".
Your king might be confused as to why great "xXx\_UltraVegetaDiablos\_xXx", god of badassery and getting laid, left unexpectedly at their moment of triiumph. Truth is, Melvin just got called in to work by his boss, to scrub the toilets after a poorly customer ruined them.
[Answer]
I used to be an avatar and let me tell you, my physical and mental frames were not worn out be hosting a deity. Quite the opposite. At first, I could hardly breathe against the new, flaming power within my soul. After a few weeks, I could speak. After a few months, I could function normally again.
After a year, I found that my body and mind had changed. The god's power had made me stronger, smarter, and faster. I started to see things before they happened. I heard people's thoughts and felt their desires. And I began to suspect that I could not be hurt.
With my newfound power, there was only one thing left to do: cast out that pesky parasite dwelling within me. The battle was epic. Lots of energy beams, yelling out cool attack names, and monologues. I defeated my former deity with my unstoppable Exthusia Slap.
That's why I'm not an avatar anymore. I took the power granted to me and reclaimed my independence. Word got around the pantheon quick. Now those cowards never stay in a host long enough to let this happen to them.
[Answer]
Why would you ever stop playing a computer game?
Same reasons apply to gods occupying avatars.
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#### Too many impostors, people become sceptic
When it is so common to have around people possessed by a god it fuels the number of people who claim to be a god. Some pretend to be high priests some just go around making shows with false miracles and hat tricks. Eventually people grow sceptic and they may even doubt the king.
Accidents and strange events may happen also under the watch of a god. But if the king tenure is less than perfect, he is going to lose some authority. That is something that a god cannot stand.
[Answer]
## **Love**
While many gods may find humans to be an existence beneath them, there are also many stories of gods falling in love with humans (hence demigods such as Hercules).
So why would the god falling in love cause them to leave? Pick any of the reasons suggested by other commenters.
Hosting a god is sure to deteriorate the body and the mind. Perhaps those hosted by gods have dark demises or over the extended lifespan lose their minds. Perhaps its as something as simple as you cannot love someone properly while being a part of them.
[Answer]
1. Because the body is worn out;
2. Because the god is bored with it;
3. Divine fashions have changed (I wouldn't be seen dead in that body; it's so last year).
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[Question]
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Fungi [do not need light to grow](https://homeguides.sfgate.com/environment-mushroom-growth-28551.html). They also can and do grow in feces.
Is it possible for a human colony to provide their caloric needs by growing mushrooms using their own poop? If so, what's the minimum size of a colony which produces enough poop to grow a sufficient amount of mushrooms to feed themselves?
For consistency, you can assume:
* A 2000 daily calorie intake per person
* The environment is heated through external means so there's energy input into the system, it's not closed (if that matters)
* You may ignore the mental and physical health impacts of living without sunlight and around so much human poop
* If no existing edible mushrooms can grow in human poop, then there's been genetically modified mushrooms which can. No other qualities of the mushrooms have been changed. Existing mushrooms are preferred in answers if possible though
* Vitamin needs are satisfied via supplements. Bonus points though if answers can address these needs through the mushrooms
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# NO:
The problem here is that there are no calories going into the system. Plants extract calories from the sun, but fungi extract calories from whatever they live on. The mushrooms must have fewer calories worth of food than the feces that went in, because the fungi use the calories to live and grow. There would rapidly be less calories for humans, less feces for mushrooms, and the system would quickly grind to a halt.
[Mushrooms](https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-mushrooms) are also low in calories and typically vitamins. They can or do contain vitamin D, Zinc, and potassium. They are an incomplete and generally somewhat low source of protein. Here is where genetic engineering would come in handy. You can add the enzymes and pathways to allow your fungi to produce more and more varieties of amino acids to provide complete protein. You might even be able to make the fungus out of a digestible starch like a plant, but that would vastly increase the caloric needs of the fungus and only exacerbate your calorie problem. Raising the fungi with more minerals and the engineered ability to absorb and sequester them Could make the mineral content balanced and complete. But the fungi would still need a source for those minerals.
Heat from outside is an extremely poor energy source. Besides the fact that fungi can't use heat for energy, heat is already an extremely disorganized state of energy. Unless you have an epic source of heat (like the sun) it will be the lowest energy state entropically.
* As a side note, plants provide oxygen, so I hope your colony has an external source of oxygen. They also fix carbon, which will be decreasing as people and fungi respire CO2.
# But wait, there is SOME hope.
If you have geothermal heat or any other source providing electrical power, and are growing something photosynthetic and inedible (like an algae) in tanks using light, this photosynthesizer can be fed to the mushrooms, the mushrooms will have an energy input (rotting the algae) and this becomes possible.
Based on the question, I assume just growing plants for food is counter to the goals of the question.
If your colony has an external source of biomass (like alien plants, if it is on another world), a fungus could be engineered to break down the alien sugars and amino acids (or equivalents) and use these to produce food humans could eat. I've used something similar in some of my stories.
In the somewhat unlikely category, you could have a non-renewable supply of energy. If you have a fungus that can utilize some chemical in the rocks for energy, then you have a (non-renewable) source of energy. Then you would need to provide a stream of the mineral to the fungus, or constantly expand the fungus to new deposits. If the fungus can use petroleum, and you have access to oil or tar pits, the fungus could consume those for energy. But for this kind of activity, bacteria usually do the job of utilizing exotic chemical sources of energy better. You might need something more akin to a lichen (but with bacteria as the symbiote) for your fungus.
[Answer]
There are no perpetual motion machines. The usable energy recovered through each cycle is lower than 100% and the lost energy must be replaced somehow from an outside source or else your usable energy will eventually drop to zero. It need not be sunlight but by it cannot, by definition, be poop from humans who eat nothing but the mushrooms.
>
> The environment is heated through external means so there's energy input into the system, it's not closed (if that matters).
>
>
>
The system is not closed but the food cycle is. You either need an organism capable of biologically using that heat or machinery to convert it to a form biologically accessible (i.e. to power grow lights). Otherwise, the food cycle is indeed closed.
It also requires a heat differential to extract usable energy and this tends to be difficult since most heat you find is low-grade, low differential, waste heat.
[Answer]
### Not with fungi, but with chemolithotrophic organisms
As mentioned above, your ecosystem has no organism capable of creating organic matter from minerals. Plants can do it using light, so they are *photolithotrophs*. If you have an external source of energy, like geothermy, just grow plants under electric lamps.
However there are organisms that do not require light to reduce carbon into organic molecules, called "[chemolithotrophs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithotroph#Chemolithotrophs)": on Earth these organisms are only bacterial and require specific environments like deep-sea hydrothermal vents because these are a source of reduced sulfur/iron/hydrogen that they need.
In your setting, you would need to have such chemolithotrophs in an easily accessible environment near your troglodyte humans. And you would need them to be edible, as well as growing in sufficiently thick mat. Alternatively, you could consume [giant worms that live in symbiosis with chemolithotrophic bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_tube_worm).
As for the fungi idea, I think (did not check) that the fungi living in caves obtain their organic matter coming from the outside, like bat poop.
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I have been wondering if it would be a good idea to exploit the natural coldness of space to create the conditions needed for quantum computation at a large scale.
The average temperature of space is about 2.7 kelvin as far as I know, which would mean that it would require a lot less powerful cooling systems to get to the temperature needed for quantum computations which is about much closer to absolute zero.
I am aware that the computer would require shielding against cosmic rays, against the radiation coming from the sun and space and finally a considerable set of radiators to dissipate the heat efficiently, however assuming that the civilization to construct the orbital computers had such means of shielding (in the form of powerful magnetic shields) and space engineering, would it make sense for them to go through this endeavor for quantum supremacy?
And most importantly, would the smaller temperature gap make a real difference?
[Answer]
2.7 K is the *background temperature* of space. In Earth orbit, you've got a huge pile of fusing plasma 1 AU away, and a big warm planet filling nearly half the sky. The equilibrium temperature of an inert object in LEO is about a hundred times that, and that of an object that's actively generating heat is even higher.
Take JWST as an example: it's an infrared telescope that needs to be kept very cold. Passive cooling is part of the solution, but requires it to be located at the Earth-sun L1 point, 5 light seconds away, where a shade could protect it from the sun without Earth heating it from behind. This approach wouldn't work in low Earth orbit, and even with an elaborate multi-layer sunshade doesn't get things as cold as they want. To get the coldest parts to operating temperature, JWST still needs active cooling, which is actually easier on Earth's surface where there's more power available, less stringent mass budgets, and air and water to remove heat.
In the end, the sun-facing side of JWST is currently 318 K, and even the coldest non-actively-cooled part is 37 K, over 13 times the 2.7 K background temperature.
[Answer]
**Heat transfer in earth atmosphere**
In earth atmosphere, heat is transferred from hot CPU to heat sink by conduction and then a fan transfers heat from heat sink to outside by convection (using air as medium for convection).
**Heat transfer in space**
As told [here](https://byjus.com/questions/who-does-heat-get-transferred-in-vacuum/),
>
> In a vacuum, heat can’t be transferred by conduction or convection.
> The process of convection and conduction requires some medium made of
> material particle for transmission of heat. In a vacuum, there is no
> material. So, heat travels in a vacuum by radiation.
>
>
>
In some situations, radiation may not be enough to transfer all the generated heat. Vacuum is a bad conductor of heat. In some setting, vacuum may increase heat.
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Real spacecraft has a big problem with overheating, and must be equipped with cooling systems and radiators to prevent getting catastrophically hot. This is for devices that can operate at ~300K. A supercooled quantum computer would be very challenging.
It's very difficult to keep things cool in space. There's no air to blow over things to cool them down, which is how it's done on Earth. The laws of thermodynamics require that when you cool down an object, something else must be heating up more than you cool it down. Ask yourself, in the near vacuum of space, what will you be heating up and how? Other problems are that the Sun and reflected light from planets and moons will constantly shine on you and heat you up - even if you put up a shield, it will shine on the shield and heat it up, which will eventually heat up your entire spacecraft.
Some more logical locations for a QC are:
* On a planet with a very distant orbit (like Pluto) and a thick atmosphere (just Earth-like is fine, but not super thin like Mars at 1% of Earth) near the poles.
* On a liquid-covered planet or moon like Titan, where the liquid ocean can be used for powerful liquid cooling. The computer itself can be on a shore, an off-shore rig, suspended just under the surface from buoys or anchored to the ocean floor, these are all viable for heat management.
* On a tidally locked planet, you can put the QC on the dark side (cold) or the twilight area (lots of natural wind).
Note that the idea is not to find an ambient that is cold enough for a QC, since that is unlikely. You're almost certainly going to have cooling systems, pumping heat from the very cold QC to much hotter outside. However, if the outside is not too much hotter (not hundreds of degrees), the coolant might be a bit more efficient.
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The "natural coldness" is an oversimplification. The lack of [convection](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceIsCold) complicates temperature management. Couple that with the [maintenance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Servicing_missions_and_new_instruments) issues, and it sounds like a very bad idea.
[Answer]
**Space is not Cold**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yl0gT.png)
Put a cold thing in a vacuum flask and it stays cold a long time. Put a cold thing in the perfect vacuum of outer space and it stays cold forever.
Put a hot thing in a vacuum flask and it stays hot a long time. Put a hot thing in the perfect vacuum of outer space and it stays hot forever.
Heat is just molecules vibrating against one another. Hot things have the molecules vibrating faster.
Heat spreads because the molecules knock against each other. The hot thing cools because the molecules inside it knock against the air around it and lose vibration. The cold thing warms up because the molecules inside it knock against the air around it and gain vibration.
The vacuums work by having fewer molecules nearby the hot/cold thing. Fewer air molecules means less bumping and less spread of heat. No air molecules means no spread of heat.
The take-away is that a computer put in space stays at whatever temperature it was at launch.$^1$
Until you turn it on.
Then it starts creating heat. The heat stays inside the computer because of the vacuum. Space does not cool the computer. Space insulates the computer. It overheats. The end.
---
$ ^1$ It might absorb heat from the Sun. But that makes things harder and not easier.
[Answer]
**Space isn't cold... it's empty.**
I'm building on a number of answers here and would like to point out that the answer you selected as the "best answer"... isn't... (all due respect to @ChristopherJamesHuff, who kinda answered the question but didn't adequately explain anything).
Your problem isn't heat. Your problem is the transfer of heat away from what's generating it. If you don't do that fast enough, the object generating heat (your computer) burns up.
On Earth we have gases (usually the atmosphere) and liquids (you should be thinking "radiator fluid") to do that for us. But even that's often complicated. Let's consider your car!
* Your engine (OK, the engine in my car...) is burning a not-quite-as-aptly-named-as-we-once-thought fossil fuel. Nothing's perfect, and as a result the tiny explosion that moves a piston also generates *heat.* We don't want the heat. In an ideal world there wouldn't be any heat. *A massive amount of electronic engineering is dedicated to minimizing the generation of heat!* But there's heat. What's next?
* Your engine block has tunnels in it that allow the passage of a fluid — radiator fluid, to be specific. This fluid and the tunnels in the engine block are specifically designed to transfer as much heat to the fluid as is humanly possible as quickly as humanly possible. But this isn't enough! There's a finite amount of radiator fluid and although it's great at sucking the heat out of the engine block, it can only absorb so much before it first boils, then vaporizes, causing all kinds of trouble.
* So the next thing that happens is that fluid runs through a radiator that allows the heat to move from the fluid *to the atmosphere.* It's technically true that the atmosphere is finite... but compared to radiator fluid, *it's infinite* and can absorb an infinite amount of heat.1
To make my point, we moved the heat from the source (combustion) into the engine block, then into radiator fluid, then into the atmosphere.
***The problem with space is that it's empty***
No atmosphere. Certainly no fluids. There's nowhere for the heat to go.
*Well... Kinda...*
A computer on the ground that needs a couple of cubic inches of heat sink to vent the heat to Earth's atmosphere needs cubic feet of heat sink to vent the heat to the precious few atoms that can absorb it in space. That's the problem. *There's pretty much nowhere for the heat to go.*
Why, then, do we think space is cold? Because where there is nothing to hold heat, the result is the perception of cold. Why the perception of cold?
*This is really important!*
The nature of the universe (all of the universe) is to move to the *lowest energy state.* We call this "entropy." Things don't want to be hot. Energy wants to even out and stabilize. When you take away the source of the heat, the result (over time) is that everything falls to a minimum temperature. We call that "cold" because we're conditioned to living under the beauty of a blazing sun.
But the truth is, space isn't so much cold as it is *empty.* In the middle of all that empty the energy, through entropy, has minimized and the result is "cold." But that doesn't mean you can sink heat into it. After all, if the blazing glory of the sun can't heat up space, why should your itsy-bitsy computer?
**Conclusion**
It would be better to put your computer on Antarctica where there's both a lot of cold and a lot of gasses and fluids to draw away the heat. But if you insist on space, you'll need massive heat sinks to transfer the heat to what little mass there is out there.
Heat must be transferred through something. In a perfect vacuum (which space isn't, thankfully!) there isn't anything heat can transfer through.
---
1 *This isn't actually true. While a minor component of climate change compared to polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses, the heat generated through combustion is nevertheless part of the problem. The atmosphere can only hold so much heat, too, without consequences. Like melting ice caps.*
[Answer]
You'd have to use geothermal cooling, i.e. shadowed craters on the moon have a constant temperature of -240 to -245.
If you have nuclear energy there to go near -273 it would be good.
It would be a big rig. Very complicated. Then you could decrypt SHA 256bit codes.
[Answer]
>
> And most importantly, would the smaller temperature gap make a real difference?
>
>
>
No, as pointed out in the other answers about the coldness of space. Even if space was somehow magically able to cool things down, anything you do in space can be done on Earth cheaper, faster, and larger.
Do not under estimate how expensive it is to ship material to space. On Earth? You get a quote from a shipping company and move on with your day without worrying whether your moving 1 tonne or 1.001 tonnes of material. In space that is potentially needing you to move to a new rocket or accept a shorter mission as you put less consumables in the device to save mass.
Turns out you want a bigger machine than originally planned? On Earth you combine two rooms into one. In space? Your looking at at least launching an entirely new satellite.
What happens when the engineers turn round and say they need a few hundred extra watts of power to run things? Or an extra few kilograms of support structure? On Earth, who cares. In space, well you've looking at a large redesign to save mass/power elsewhere.
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This solar system contains four earths. These earths, however, are opposite from each other in relation to the sun and their moons are vastly different. Say the moons and earths produce the same amount of forces and keep a stable orbit, at the same orbital speed, in the same orbital plane. Would it be feasible that the flora in the one of the earths is vastly different from the others? Here's a rough sketch of what im trying to describe: (sun - yellow, earths - red, orbit - black) [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lgw2J.png)
[Answer]
## Most-likely yes
Using animals because it's clearer (and relatively the same, evolution-wise), if you're talking like you'll have intelligent octopi on planet A and clever tool-using monkeys as dominant species on planet B, yes, definitely your flora (and fauna) will be different. Depending on the local conditions (and a good amount of chance, too!), some plants and animals will take the lead on others, which will create different "eras" on each planet and will make your species change over time.
Moreover, because every species will evolve on different planets, their DNA will change too. And even if life came from the same, foreign source (a.k.a. [panspermia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia)), at some points your plants and animals will diverge too much to say they are part of the same family, and they won't be able to reproduce between each other.
Of course, all the above is supposing that all 4 Earths manage to keep life. As far as we know it, life coming on a planet is an incredibly rare event, so having four planets on the same system having life is like throwing a billion-sided die 4 times and bet it will fall on a 1 every time. The probability is insanely low üé≤.
## Something that can reduce the differences
There's a scientific debate on how far things would change if Earth changed just a bit. Or more. As far as I know it's not settled yet (and probably will never), but what has already been settled is that there's some sort of [convergent evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution) between species on Earth over time. [Crabs is one of such instance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation) : Overtime, the lower part of the body rolls back under the shell, going from a body akin to a lobster and going to a rounded one. This happens in order to protect it from predators and reduce energy consumption. This evolution happened on several far-related species, leading to something that can deceive an untrained eye (for instance these genuinely [true crabs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab) vs this not-so-true [king crab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_crab)).
This same phenomenon could happen independently on each planet, leading to similar-looking yet entirely different species. For instance, since your planets are under the same influence of the sun, photosynthesis is likely to occur on each on them. It's likely to come under widely different shades and intensity depending on what currently works on the planet, but you're quite likely to have it somewhere on each of them, since it provides an easy energy source.
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You can have vastly different flora in two adjacent valleys or mountain heights, so unconnected planets would definitely have them.
It would be weird if they all had the same flora, not the other way around.
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One must recognize that four planets in the same orbit would be stable for at most a very short time. But even without perturbed orbits or collisions the planets would have different histories. One planet might experience a gamma-ray burst while its opposite is shielded, which makes a different history. If the Earth had been in a different location, then big, lumbering dinosaurs might rule the Earth and such creatures as elephants might have no chance. (Marine mammals might exist, but we wouldn't). An African elephant would be easy prey for *T. Rex.* The biggest mammalian predators would have been the size of domestic cats and rat terriers, which leaves obvious limitations.
Snakes, some of the most successful of all predators, would be rarer because they required the flourishing of mammals and birds for their success.
I spoke of elephants largely for their intelligence and ecological role. Elephants do much to create the savannahs of Africa and Asia and would do much the same in Australia and the Americas if they got there. The mammoths created the steppe-tundra of the subarctic zones, and in their absence we now have boreal forests. Another creature that shapes the environment is a large rodent, the beaver, which would have been easy prey for carnivorous dinosaurs.
[Answer]
## Part One : To panspermia or not to panspermia, that is the question
>
> Panspermia (from Ancient Greek πᾶν (pan) 'all ', and σπέρμα (sperma)
> 'seed') is the hypothesis, first proposed in the 5th
> century BC by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, that life exists
> throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust,
> meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and
> planetoids, as well as by spacecraft carrying
> unintended contamination by microorganisms.
> Panspermia is a fringe theory with little support amongst mainstream
> scientists. Critics argue that it does not answer the question of the
> origin of life but merely places it on another celestial body. It is
> also criticized because it cannot be tested experimentally.
>
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia#Lithopanspermia>
>
>
>
It might be possible for a giant meteorid or asteroid to strike a planet and knock rocks off it which would travel around the solar system and eventually land on another planet in the same star system. In fact scientists believe that has happened and that rocks from other worlds have arrived on Earth.
>
> A lunar meteorite is a meteorite that is known to have originated on the Moon.
>
>
> As of July 2019, 371 lunar meteorites have been discovered, perhaps representing more than 30 separate meteorite falls (i.e., many of the stones are "paired" fragments of the same meteoroid). The total mass is more than 190 kilograms (420 lb). All lunar meteorites have been found in deserts; most have been found in Antarctica, northern Africa, and the Sultanate of Oman. None have yet been found in North America, South America, or Europe.
>
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_meteorite>
>
>
>
>
> A Martian meteorite is a rock that formed on Mars, was ejected from the planet by an impact event, and traversed interplanetary space before landing on Earth as a meteorite. As of September 2020, 277 meteorites had been classified as Martian, less than half a percent of the 72,000 meteorites that have been classified. The largest complete, uncut Martian meteorite, Taoudenni 002, was recovered in Mali in early 2021. It weighs 14.5 kilograms (32 pounds) and is on display at the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum.
>
>
> Several Martian meteorites have been found to contain what some think is evidence for fossilized Martian life forms.
>
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite>
>
>
>
>
> Lithopanspermia, the transfer of organisms in rocks from one planet to another either through interplanetary or interstellar space, such as in comets or asteroids, remains speculative. A variant would be for organisms to travel between star systems on nomadic exoplanets or exomoons.
>
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia#Lithopanspermia>
>
>
>
So some scientists have proposed that microscopic lifeforms in Earth rocks could have landed on Mars and become the ancestors of hypothetical Martian life that presumably is now extinct. And possibly microscopic lifeforms in Martian rocks might have landed on Earth and become the ancestors of all Earth life.
And it is theoretically possible that some microrganisms in rock could survive being ejected into space travelling for thousands of years at least through the vacuum of space, and the shock of crash landing on another planet.
So in the fictional solar system you desire, it would be theoretically possible for microscopic lifeforms to spread from one of your four planets to the other three, and thus that all lifeforms on the four planets would be distantly related. Of course the path of evolution on each planet would be different, even starting from the same set of microbes, and so the advanced multicelled plants and animals in each planet would be different from those on the other planets.
Or there might never have been any spread of microbes from one planet to another, and their lifeforms might be totally unrelated, and even more different from each other, especially in their biochemestries. For exmaple, all lifeforms from different planets might be mutually inedible.
## Part Two: Orbits
Gravitational problems are quite simple to solve when they are two body problems, involving only two objects.
But if there is a system with three bodies, or more, it becomes more complex. Their orbits can't be solved by elegant equations but by brute force running of many calculations, which in recent decades has been helped by advanced computers and orbital calculation programs.
You may have heard of the idea of a [Counter-Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Earth), a planet orbiting the Sun in the Earth's orbit but directly opposite to Earth. Such a planet would be hidden from Earth on the far side of the Sun. But perturbations from the gravitational attractions of other planets in the solar system would eventually change the orbit of the Counter-Earth so it would be visible from Earth.
Your star system would have two sets of planet and counter-planet. If the four planets are numbered sequentially in order around the star, planet 1 would be at 0 degrees, planet 2 would be at 90 degrees, planet 3 would be at 180 degrees, and planet 4 would be at 270 degrees.
So planet 1 and planet 3 would be counter-planets to each other, and Planet 2 and planet 4 would be counter-planets to each other.
And I expect that system would be more unstable than a system with a star, planet, and counter-planet. The planets would more out of their proper positions, and probably each one would fall into the star, or collide with another planet, or be ejected from the star system into interstellar space and become lifeless.
I think that the only way your system could remain stable for geological eras of time, time enough for interesting advanced lifeforms to evolve on the four planets, would be if a super advanced society used incredibly powerful technology to keep the four planets in their proper positions.
So if you can't use a star system exactly like your original design, you need to find out what star system design will be long term stable and also most similar to your original design.
There is a blog called PlanetPLanet.net by astrophysicist Sean Raymond. On there, one section is called The Utimate Solar System, where Raymond tries to design scienfifically plausible star systems with as many habitable planets as he can.
In a post called "[The Ultimate Engineered Solar System](https://planetplanet.net/2017/05/03/the-ultimate-engineered-solar-system/)" Raymond says that a paper by Smith and Lisseaur shows that a number of planets can share the same orbit around a star if they have the same mass and are equally spaced. Apparently such a system can be stable with between 7 and 42 planets in the ring.
<https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010CeMDA.107..487S/abstract>
As Raymond says:
>
> I can only think of one way our 416-planet system could form. It must have been purposely engineered by a super-intelligent advanced civilization. I’m calling it the Ultimate Engineered Solar System.
>
>
>
And if a star system where the planets were created and moved into orbit by a super advanced civilization a can fit into your staory, your can use a star system which has at least one ring of 7 to 42 habitable palnets.
And you should see another post:
<https://planetplanet.net/2020/11/19/cohorts/>
Where Raymond apparently found ways to have smaller numbers of planets share the same orbit.
So possibly you might want to ask Raymond if your set up with four planets space 90 degrees apart on the same orbit would have long term stabiity, and if not, what would be the closest thing to it that would have long term stability.
## Part Three: Scale of science fiction hardness
That great time waster TV Tropes has a trope "[Sliding Scale/Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SlidingScale/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness)". The higher the score on the scale, the more scientifically rigorous and plausible a story will be. So if you are content with a low score on that scale and a scientifically unrealistic and implausible story, you can arrange your planets any way you want - while realizing that it is possible that some ten-year-old children will read it and snear at you for your scientific illiteracy.
[Answer]
Quite certainly yes.
Assuming that your planets have stable orbits, and perfectly identical starting conditions, varying flora and fauna in my opinion is guaranteed.
Every one of the planets will have it's share of chance events, influencing everything on the planet in big or small ways.
Things like the dinosaur killer won't happen on all four planets, and if they did. they wouldn't happen in exactly the same state of evolution.
So even if we assumed a more or less deterministic outcome of evolution (which doesn't seem sensible, but anyway), resetting most of evolution by help of a big rock will leave different ecological niches and different survivors to evolve into filling them.
After only a few such random interventions, chances are very high that very large parts of your flora and fauna are completely different between the planets.
The only thing they will most likely have in common is the very basic "rules" of life. If all four started with carbon - and DNA-bases, those are not very likely to go away, although, if you wanted, you could come up with a second, concurring setup, that was never fit enough to outcompete the carbon-based things, but got lucky by some random event, which killed out enough of the carbon based lifeforms to create a nice big enough for those seconds to grow large and dominant.
[Answer]
Assuming that life does form on each planet independently, on its own (i.e., not a form of panspermia), and it forms on each of them during a concurrent time frame, **there's no reason to expect the biology found on each planet would be even remotely similar to the others.**
There may be some similarities due to the chemistry at that temperature. But everything else would diverge from the start. Things like cells and DNA, those are expressions of biology found on Earth. Each of the planets would have their own form.
Its possible you'd see some convergent evolution - creatures filling certain niches such as plants / fish / birds. But its also possible there'd simply be no similarity. You might have a wildly diverse population of trillions of creatures on one planet, and only a handful of massive and ancient colony creatures on the other.
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[
I am working on a setting whose low-tech inhabitants are starting to launch long-distance voyages of exploration (preferentially by sea, because travel that way is so much faster than on land). They have outrigger canoes with paddles, and are working on sails.
The limit to how far a team of explorers can go, would seem to be primarily set by supplies of food and fresh water. Along the coast, they can stop to collect water from streams and rivers. For cross-ocean voyages, it's trickier. They don't really have the tech to desalinate seawater, and I get the impression a ship of size X cannot really collect enough rainwater for the crew of a ship of that size, so the water supply would have to be carried on board.
Food is a more subtle question. At first glance it seems to me that they should be able to catch fish on the way. Rationale: a fishing boat can catch more fish in a day than the crew eat, otherwise it would not be profitable! But then, I read about long-distance voyages needing to carry food, so if it was that simple, why would they need to do that?
It is said that the open oceans are deserts; the biological productivity per hectare is low because of lack of availability of mineral nutrients.
Conjecture: profitable fishing of the open ocean (aside from a handful of particularly rich locations) depends on modern technology like sonar to track schools of fish; low-tech fishing techniques like 'two people in an outrigger canoe dangle a net over the side and see what swims into it' are only profitable in the relatively rich waters of the continental shelves.
That would suggest that low-tech explorers can indeed feed themselves along the way by fishing *if they are sticking to the coast* (where they can also land from time to time to gather berries or suchlike for vitamin C), but when they want to set out across the ocean to find other continents, this will stop working, and they will need to carry food for the voyage.
Is this correct, or am I missing something?
[Answer]
Fishing is incompatible with making maximum headway, for a start -- to fish (the way fishing boats do, in pursuit of profit) you would put out nets with floats, then draw the nets closed, and lift them into the boat with whatever you've caught (see "purse seine"). This isn't something you'll do much of if you're trying to make a steady 2-3 knots of headway (which is about what ships could do on long voyages in the Age of Exploration).
Beyond that, catch all the fish you want, and your crew will still suffer from scurvy, so you have to carry land-based food -- fruits and vegetables, or at least (as the British navy did until the 19th century or later) citrus juice to provide the necessary Vitamin C in the crew's diet. Not to mention that a steady diet of nothing but fish will pretty much guarantee a mutiny before you can get anywhere far enough away you didn't already know it was there (it took weeks to cross the Atlantic in the 16th century, starting from the Azores -- and they were a week off the coast to begin with).
As for collecting rain water (say, using sails as collectors) the problem you encounter is that any surface that's been through a storm or even a good wind will be coated in salt, so the water you collect when it does start to rain will be too salty to drink; you have to pour the first barrel or two overboard before you get fresh water. Then there's the fact that rain at sea is sporadic at best, even in the latitudes where land gets daily showers.
So you're back to what the exploration fleets did in the 15th and 16th centuries: follow coasts, both for fresh water and for fresh fruit and meat, and when they must strike out across an ocean, haul along all the food and water they could (and just deal with it when it gets moldy and scummy, because it's still nutritious even if it's a little toxic).
Ship's biscuit was hard and dry for good reason: it kept better that way. Water barrels were kept sealed because without light, the water wouldn't turn green as quickly. And yes, any time it rained, they'd try to collect water -- but that was *never* enough for drinking needs.
[Answer]
I don't know a specific answer, but I do know a place to start digging.
Look hard at some of the Polynesian peoples and the Maori and such. Take a hard look at places like Easter Island and who lived there. Look at the Hawaiians. These are all what some might call primitive peoples and they all carried out very long sea voyages in primitive outrigger type boats. These boats were estimated to be half again as fast as European ships.
The problems to be addressed are:
Food. You can't survive on just fish.
Water. You need enough to get you from here to there without it going too stagnant
Navigation. They used stars and were able to accurately sail from one place to another. How exactly, I have no idea.
Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is more than 1200 miles from the nearest inhabited island. The people Europeans found there were estimated to have arrived there before 1200 CE, perhaps as early as 300CE. So we know this kind of voyage was possible because it did actually happen.
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The book Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl may be interesting to you. It follows the real events of Heyerdahl and his team of researchers crossing open ocean in an extremely low tech balsa wood raft. The raft was propelled primarily by a major sea current, and because they were following the current Heyerdahl reports a constant presence of edible sea life during the voyage.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki_expedition>
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**Alain Bombard**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ixp4E.png)
This man, according to Wikipedia, "was a French biologist, physician and politician famous for sailing in a small boat across the Atlantic Ocean without provision. He theorized that a human being could very well survive the trip across the ocean without provisions and decided to test his theory himself in order to save thousands of lives of people lost at sea."
He survived a 62 day trip across the Atlantic in a inflatable raft. He subsisted on small amounts of seawater, collected rainwater, fish, and surface plankton skimmed with a net. I would not say he really fared "well," per se, but he did survive.
He had a few theories about drinking seawater. One was that the danger comes from a few angles. One is that sailors would sometimes only drink the seawater out of desperation once they were already severely dehydrated, and by that point the kidneys were far too weak to filter out toxins and salt effectively. The second was that there was an upper limit to how much salt the body could filter out in a day. You could easily drink beyond your body's capacity to filter it out of your system. So his strategy was to "drink early, but drink little." He calculated that a person ought to be able to consume about 3 cups of seawater per day, (better if dilluted with something than not, which could be collected rainwater or squeezed juices from fish). Note that 3 cups is not very much and if forced to subside on seawater alone, the sailors will be very very thirsty. But it can supplement the water supply and extend your resources.
The nutrition and vitamins were gathered with fish and skimming plankton with a net. The plankton can provide some vitamin C, and other nutrients that the fish lacks.
Now, it should be said that he had some real health problems as a result, diarrhea, sores, headaches and other discomforts. The whole situation was likely less than sanitary, but he survived.
I would definitely recommend a sail if your people can make one, to conserve energy. And a way to catch and collect rainwater whenever you can. Some kind of canopy to keep the sun off would be nice, and make sure that they stay out of the water most of the time. Soaking in seawater all the time is not good on the body.
I also don't know how many explorers you are thinking of, but what works for a small crew might not work so well for a large one. The larger the craft and crew, the more I would rely on carried supplies rather than what you can collect on the way. The very nature of exploration is wrought with unexpected turns and inconveniences, problems that start out small can grow to become much bigger problems later.
So this may not be the best all around reply, but I think other people have the bases covered when it comes to how traditional sailing vessels prepped for journeys, this is more of a survival take on the issue. I would recommend reading up on Alain Bombard. Also anything you can find out about Polynesian sailing practices. They had unique navigation methods and probably survival techniques too, but I don't know much about them. I hope this helps!
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While fishing can supplement their diet, historically they had to carry both food and water. Fishing was too undependable. Water is usually more limiting. it is bulky and heavy. Large wooden barrels were used and even then the water quality was often poor with foul taste and organisms growing in the barrels. Food had to be preserved, heavily salted meats and hardtack breads. Scurvy caused by the lack of vitamin C was an issue on longer voyages. The remedy was lime or other citrus juice although sauerkraut was also used.
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This is a "calories in / calories out" situation.
The human body adapts to the activity it does. They did research on long distance runners, and their bodies burn far less calories doing that activity than a person that doesn't do long distance running. It's because their bodies have hyper-acclimated to the exercise.
Folks working on a boat will have their bodies hyper-acclimate to the activities over years, so they will expend less calories doing them. IE: hoisting sails, etc. So, in the long run, a crew will require less calories to perform activities than, say, a fresh crew that's never sailed before.
Next, while movies have "glamorized" crews working non-stop aboard ships, that would simply be wasting calories / energy for no reason. In some situations, the captain wants to keep the crew busy to keep their mind off boredom at sea (especially, with low / no wind stalling them out). In other situations, the captain is trying to enforce discipline by making the crew do monotonous tasks, like swabbing a deck that's already clean.
But, a smart captain lets the crew rest.
Sailing is a "feast or famine" job. By that I mean there is either too much work to do, or hardly any for long stretches. The crew needs to be fresh and rested when a storm hits, or when they make land to unload / load cargo, etc. They will hit times when the wind stalls out, or they've set a course and just need to wait until the wind takes them where they need to go. The captain will let the crew hang out, play games (dice, cards, etc), play music, work on hobbies (whittling, etc), and possibly have them work on side tasks, like sewing up torn sails, mending rope, etc. The goal is to let the crew relax and enjoy themselves during the down time, because when real work shows up, it often shows up in droves.
These long periods of rest also help the crew conserve calories, because they're not doing hard labor every day on the boat. They're just doing light labor for a week while the ship does all the work (sailing them where they need to go).
So, food isn't that big of a deal. Besides fishing, crews learned to salt meats and create hard-tack biscuits and things. They would take along lard to cook food with, which is high-calorie fat (fat is 9 calories per-gram vs. 4 calories from protein & carbs).
Water would definitely be a big issue, but the crew can use the massive sails to capture morning dew and barrel it for water. Rain storms provide a lot of water. There are times when there's not much rain on the seas, but when out at sea you have a very flat view of the ocean.. you can literally see storms off to the side. You can sail into them and follow them while collecting fresh water by using the sails as funnels. Not every storm at sea is a big-wave destroyer. There are mild storms where it's just rain coming down. Crews would start to know where the rains are during which seasons on the high seas, and decide to make stops there.
What you have to remember is a planet is a closed-source environment. Water evaporates off the oceans, and has to go somewhere. That's where it gets recycled as rain that comes back down. So, if folks are sailing the high seas, they will have opportunities to get fresh water from rain.
If they are stuck out in the sun w/o rain, they can collect sea water and evaporate it into condensation and collect that en masse.
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In a duel, one of the fighter is a fire mage who is capable of producing heat surges in a wave-like pattern. There are flames coming along with it, but it's purely for aethestics and has no physical impact whatsoever (as far as I know it's really hard to ignite air itself anyway). That way, you can imagine your favorite comic/movie/anime/book arsonist, so it's cooler. Well, sort of.
For the sake and accuracy of this question, **this wave raises the air temperature almost instantaneously by 1 000 °C (~1 800 °F), then goes back down to the point it was as the wave fades away**. Note that **this heat peak only affects gas's temperature**, not solid materials like an human body or their clothes. It can however "burn" the air inside one's lung if aimed properly at the mouth or nose. **Solid components keep the heat they received through this surge**, meaning they continue to burn if they have started to.
Of course, the longer you are under such heat, the more roasted you will smell if you haven't started to burn to ashes already, due to how heat transfer works. **But if an human wearing cotton clothes is subject to a single fireball for 1 second of exposure, how bad would really be the damage? Would their clothes/skin start to burn? If not, how long/how many fireballs would you need to make this happen?**
As a bonus question, and in order to make it more realistically dangerous, what would be the outcome if the heat spike also affects solid materials on that split second?
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If I understand you correctly, the atmosphere is heated to 1,000℃. That's the combustion temperature of gasoline. And you're exposing, not just your target, but everything in the path of the wave for a full second. You don't say, but let's assume the wave engulfs the target.
*It would be valuable to describe the wave in all three dimensions from the point of emission at the spell caster to the end of the spell, whether it's at the target or beyond. For now, I'm going to assume that the wave engulfs the target but, magically (hah) doesn't touch anything else other than air. Which would be impossible in a forest. I'm just sayin'.*
People can pass their hands through combustion without significant harm (other than, perhaps, burnt hair). My brother and I, when we were young and stupid, used to play "flaming tennis balls." We'd each have a bucket of gasoline. We'd thrust our hand holding the tennis ball into the bucket, draw it out, ignite it with a lighter (while still in our hand), and then bat it back and forth somewhat like handball until it extinguished. Then repeat. (It really was fun... I don't recommend it... You're an idiot if you try it...) The hair on the back of our hands was permanently burned off as a result, but we were unharmed. *But we never held the ball for a full second.* Not even close.
A full second *is a very long time.*
* The target would experience 3rd degree burns.
>
> What causes a third-degree burn? In most cases, full thickness, third-degree burns are caused by the following: **A scalding liquid,** Skin that comes in contact with a hot object for an extended period of time, **Flames from a fire,** An electrical source, A chemical source. ([Source](https://www.chop.edu/conditions-diseases/third-degree-burns), emphasis mine)
>
>
>
That reference to a scalding liquid is important. Scalding liquids are *much cooler* than the temperatures you're talking about (~100℃). It causes a 3rd degree burn because the liquid rests on the skin, exposing it to boiling temperatures for, well, a full second. Consequently, I might be overly optimistic to suggest only 3rd degree burns. In fact, I could imagine the target losing his/her eyelids.
* Loose clothing (not leather or tightly woven fabrics) would ignite.
* Depending on the time of year and meteorological conditions, the foliage around the target would ignite. Obviously short-cut green grass would be hard to ignite. However, tall weeds in the fall or at high summer in a hot zone are trivial to ignite. Frankly, if you did this at the right time of year in California at the temperatures and duration specified, you'd trivially have a conflagration on your hands. One hopes the spell caster was smart enough to do this upwind.
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As a fire dancer who routinely generates large fireballs in very close proximity to my body, and has hit myself in the face with fire, spraying fuel and getting a massive fireball engulfing me several times. Nothing will happen from a single direct hit.
No lung damage. No burns. Nothing.
Were flame present hair would be singed. That's it.
You need to transfer that heat into the skin to start burns. From air that takes a lot longer than from metal or some other conductive medium. A dozen hits minimum to overwhelm. 50 to permanently injure.
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* In an ordinary cooking stove burning natural gas the flame temperature is between 900 °C and 1,500 °C (1650 °F to 2700 °F). The flame of an ordinary stearin candle is in the same range.
You *can* cross the flame with your finger in about 0.1 seconds without getting burned. (This allows you to extinguish a candle by pinching the wick.) But if you hold your finger in the flame for 0.5 seconds you *will* get burned.
Take a small piece of cloth and place it in the flame of your gas stove: it will catch fire almost instantaneously.
* The flame of an ordinary match is between 600 °C and 800 °C (1100 °F to 1500 °F). Take a small piece of cloth and try to ignite it with a match; you will notice that it takes about one second for it to catch fire.
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The amount heat you are talking about here in air, as discussed in other answers, just isn't enough to burn someone. However, if you are willing to interpret the "almost instantaneously" as an arbitrarily small unit of time, you could inflict harm with the pressure changes.
Using
\begin{equation}
PV = nRT
\end{equation}
where P is pressure, V is volume, n and R are constants and T is temperature in absolute Celsius, we can calculate the change in volume the air undergoes when the temperature shifts from, say room temperature (20 C) to 1000 degrees more. Rough math pins that at (1000+273)/(20+273) = ~4.34, so roughly a fourfold increase in volume.
That won't be enough to knock people off their feet or anything, but that difference in volume could cause barotrauma - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barotrauma> which could be quite damaging in some parts of the body.
If you allow for it to impact solid matter for a split second, the biggest change will be the flash-boiling of your opponent. Theoretically, it could also shatter certain solid matter like stone or bone depending on the shape of the wave. If the middle of the object was heated while the outside rapid cooled, the difference in volume could crack or shatter the object. How effective that would be depends on the material and how the wave works (Does it heat the whole object or just a thin band? Is speed constant? etc)
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If it were water 160 F would create 3rd degree burns in 1 second.
That is 70 F differential from skin temperature of 90 F.
Air has about 1/25th the thermal conductivity of water.
Using this approximation 1840 air transfer at the same rate.
So 3rd degree burns wherever that air touches.
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In my novel, I want to feature a large (>5km) centrifuge space station that was built on/into a comet, and is in the comet’s tail whenever it passes close to the sun. It is home to many criminal elements and is generally regarded as a lawless place, but is also a safe haven for political dissidents who would be persecuted in other parts of the system and in other star systems. However, more than those plot elements, I just think it would be really cool to have a station in the tail of a comet.
However, I also want most things in my novel to have an element of believability, and this station is no exception. So how could I explain why this shady space station is in a comet of all places, and why part of it sticks out into the comet’s tail? What practical advantages would this location have, and what disadvantages might it also face, if any?
Another thing to consider is that the setting of my novel is based on 70s retrofuturism, and cannot go too crazy with technology, especially not in terms of IT and computation where it is basically still stuck in the 70s. Otherwise, any modern or near-future technology could be used help explain the practicality of this space station.
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## The station is anchored to the comet
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iawd4.jpg)
A comet's tail orients away from the star, and its size and properties change based on how close it is to the star. Because of a comet's elliptical orbit, there is actually no way you can orbit a space station around a comet in such a way that it will always line up with the tail, and using thrusters to arbitrarily keep yourself in the tail is quite wasteful, difficult, and unduly hazardous.
However, a space station is mostly empty spaces filled with air meaning that its average density to surface area is going to be much lower than that of the ice of the comet; so, if you mount a large, mostly empty space station to a comet, the space station will act like a giant fletching or a parachute always dragging itself into alignment with the "wind" created by the comet's tail every time it passes into the sun's melt radius.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pxcdg.png)
This means that as the comet passes close to the sun that the tail will basically capture the station the first time it drifts into the tail. So, instead of trying really hard to force your station to always be inside of the tail treating this as a 2-body problem, it sorts itself out when talking about it as a 1-body problem.
Mounting a station to a comet could also be seen as a biproduct of necessity. Comets are full of water which is hard to come by in space. Your space station could use this water to feed its agricultural needs, and maybe even break it up so your crew have oxygen to breath and hydrogen to power some fusion reactors; so, even though the comets tail is a rather big hazard to have to engineer around, it could be worth it from a realism perspective to have all that easy access to water.
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The thing about the tail is, it's not in the same orbit as the comet. So you would need to use rockets (or whatever you use to move in space under the rules in your story) to stay in the tail.
A comet's tail is driven off the comet by solar wind. There are often two tails.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ieZ38.jpg)
The tail points away from the sun. Dust and small particles follow one path. Gas follows a different path. This is because the larger the mass of the object the more it tends to follow an orbit rather than be driven in front of the solar wind.
So you need to work to stay in the tail. Ordinary rockets will then leave a wake in the tail. Each time you fire them you will leave a ripple in the material of the tail. That will flow out from the comet, pretty much acting as a giant arrow pointing at Something Interesting Here.
After that you have the issue of getting whacked in the head by various larger chunks that split off the comet. These arrive unpredictably, straight down the tail, and so obscured by the material of the tail and the shadow of the main comet.
So, hanging out in the tail is probably not too good an idea, at least close to the comet.
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The tail of a comet, with its constant flow of gas and ions evaporating from the comet surface, can be a difficult place to land on or take off.
Also communications can be more easily disturbed by the flow of ions.
These would be nice added safety features to avoid unwanted attention from nosy agencies.
However keep in mind that the tail is always pointing away from the Sun: so, during the approach to the Sun it would be in the back of the comet's trajectory, but when the comet is moving away from the Sun the tail would precede it. This would require some maneuvering for the station to be always in the tail.
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### You want the shadow
There is a very good reason that you might want to position a station in the tail of a comet: shadow. The reasons for hitching your wagon to a comet isn't hard. It's a good source of water and minerals. Heck, you could probably fund a mining operation using near-slave prisoner labor. However, it has a problem in that it swings back and forth between the deep cold of the Oort cloud and the hot inner orbits. This can cause all sorts of engineering stress on the hull of the station as it heats up.
The simple solution: put the station in the shadow of the comet. You might know that the Webb telescope uses six layers of mylar to allow its telescope to achieve extremely low temperatures. With the shadow of a comet, you don't need to engineer your hull for regular heating and cooling cycles, you can just keep it one standard temperature, which is probably cold on the outside and cozy on the inside.
A cometary tail is a side effect of the solar wind that blows from the sun, so it's guaranteed to be surrounding the shadowy side.
**As a side note**, @Nosajimiki's answer is a good one, but if you're using the comet for shade, you don't want the edges to peek out. You'd probably want shuttlecock-like screens to do that work.
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The comet's *coma* (head) and the tail don't differ much in properties. It's the same gas and dust cloud - the tails are formed when the photon pressure, the solar wind and the tidal deformation extend the coma in one direction or another.
This is why one could orbit a comet at tens or even hundreds of kilometers away from the core without getting much visibility.
Problem 1: Be aware that a lot of comet particles (some of them quite large) will orbit the main core in the same region. Be ready to evade them.
Problem 2: dust, dust, dust, dust. Unhealthy amount of black sooty dust adhering to everything.
Problem 3: getting in and out of the habitable zone. Profoundly different heat management.
Problem 4: Comets with short periods are not a great number and as of today, they attract a great deal of attention.
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One of the planets I'm thinking of for my book series has all of its landmass in the northernmost half of the northern hemisphere (it is thus mostly a water world) and is completely geologically dead. However, it has an Earth-like atmosphere, is roughly Earth-sized, and has an Earth-like climate (it is much further away from its star than Earth is, but its solar system has a red giant as its sun). Would the land on a planet like this be habitable long-term for humans?
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I wouldn't expect long term habitability. A planet's magnetic field provides much of its shielding against stellar and cosmic radiation -- but the magnetic field is created by a "dynamo" action of circulatory motion in the liquid iron core of a planet. Earth's moon once had a magnetic field, but lost it when its core solidified in the billions of years since it formed.
Without a magnetic field, the life of an atmosphere is also shortened; stellar radiation will tend to strip away the upper layers (which will eventually become the entire atmsophere) without the magnetic field to limit its impact zone. Lose the atmosphere, and you lose the oceans (either to evaporation, or to a deep surface freeze like Europa and Callisto).
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A moon of a gas giant could harbor life even if it is geologically dead.
Lets consider the two reasons geological activity is usually thought of as necessary, as L.Dutch said.
1. A magnetic field is required to protect against the solar wind. In the case of a moon of a gas giant, the gas giant's magnetic field can fulfill that duty for us. We know this is the case because it happens in our own solar system with Saturn and Titan. The Saturnian magnetic field protects Titan's surface from cosmic rays and the solar wind.
2. The atmosphere needs to be refreshed, or many gases will end up bound in rocks. On Earth, this happens mostly via volcanism. But if the gas giant has a ring system, gases in the form of ices can be slowly added to the atmosphere of the moon by "stealing" them from the ring system. This could last millions of years, or billions if another moon that IS volcanically active refreshes the rings.
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**Depends on your definition of habitable, and willingness to use technology for assistance.**
The planet can't really have an Earth-like climate without any geological activity, because geological activity is a massive part of what makes Earth's climate what it is. No geological activity basically means no sea-life, period. Without faults, geysers, and volcanoes the ocean would be far colder and the food chain would be non-existent without bottom feeders. This then leads to a huge gap in the food chain for surface creatures as well since there are no fish type creatures to be eaten. Plant life may be able to survive decently, which could sustain in-land animals well, but overall the ecosystem would function very, very differently. Honestly the real question is whether or not such a planet could naturally maintain life at all, which I would consider questionable.
As far as "could we establish a colony there?" Considering we have been working for decades towards colonizing Mars (which is geologically dead), we could definitely build an enclosed, self-sustaining habitat. Your planet even has a few legs up on Mars. Ignoring the ecological concerns, the presence an Earth-like atmosphere means it must also have a magnetosphere (both of which Mars doesn't have) to protect from radiation. Both of those lead into the presence of liquid water implying much better temperatures than Mars.
That all said, I believe geological activity is tied to the presence of a magnetosphere somehow though, so it may be mutually exclusive.
**Could this planet naturally sustain life? Doubtful.**
**Could we establish a colony and inhabit this planet? Yeah, probably.**
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This is a partial complementar answer.
I have concerns of how that planet could exist in the first place. Oxygen is produced by plants (inclusive marine algae) and cyanobacterias. Earth is 4.6 billions years old, and it [needed roughly 2 billions years for starting to have some oxygen in its atmosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event) and roughly another 2 billion to have enough oxygen in the atmosphere to become barely breathable for a human. And it needed a stable Sun for getting there long enough. So, your planet needs to be in a comfortable place around its star for a very long time.
However, if the planet is habitable around a red star giant, then it was probably too cold when the star was main sequence. If it was goldilocks when the star was main sequence, then it would be either fried to a crisp or destroyed altogether when the star becomes a red giant. Anyway, you won't be able to get an habitable planet around the red giant star.
Further, red giant stars are very unstable (take a look at [Betelgeuse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse#2019%E2%80%932020_fading) or [Eta Carinae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carinae#Twentieth_century)). This is really bad news for the habitability of your planet, as it means that any habitability conditions would be very short-lived.
Also, red giant stars have stellar winds much stronger than main sequence stars. This is also bad news, since it means a faster rate of atmospheric erosion, the same atmosphere that isn't shield by a magnetic field due to geologic death.
So, your planet could not even exist in the conditions given to start with. And even if it manages to exist, its habitability conditions would be very short-lived.
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Life on earth depends on the planet’s geologic activity, which is one of the main forces that shapes our climate. A planet without any geologic activity cannot have an Earthlike atmosphere.
As others have noted, the dynamo-induced magnetic field is crucial for protecting our atmosphere and oceans. But there’s also atmospheric carbon dioxide, the blanket that keeps our planet warm enough for life. And plate tectonics and volcanism play a crucial role in the planetary carbon cycle by regulating levels of atmospheric CO2.
Basically, life (plants, sea creatures, etc.) takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reducing the greenhouse effect that keeps our planet warm. Carbon dioxide also dissolves in rainwater (creating “acid rain”).
Volcanoes pump that carbon back into the atmosphere, and with no plate tectonics, there are basically no volcanoes. In other words, geologic processes are like our planetary thermostat, and they have a huge effect on both the temperature of the planet and its atmospheric composition.
Without the greenhouse effect, the earth would be far too cold for much of its surface life to exist. It would turn into a giant snowball. (And yes, global warming is a serious problem, but with no CO2 whatsoever, our balmy planet would be way too cold).
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## Yes,
### ... if your "long term" is short enough, and your planet didn't form naturally.
If you can magic a planet like you describe into existence, the problems caused by no geologic activity wont show up except on geologic time-scales. But such a planet could never form.
The biggest deal is the lack of magnetic field. This is usually considered the primary benefit of a geologically active planet. Contrary to what you often hear, a magnetic field is **not**, on its own, a good radiation shield. Atmospheres are good radiation shields, and you need a magnetic field to protect an atmosphere.
Without a magnetic field, the atmosphere would be hit by charged particles that stream from the sun. The atmosphere would be slowly stripped away. Very slowly. Over millions of years. It would not be a huge consideration on human timescales, but planets last much longer than that.
If your planet somehow has an Earth-like atmosphere right now, it will keep it for a little while. But, how does it have an atmosphere in the first place? How did it form when solar wind was constantly stripping it away? How did life evolve to fill the atmosphere with an Earth-like concentration of oxygen? Did geologic activity stop suddenly? It won't happen naturally. Did someone terraform it?
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A geologically caused magnetic field protects Earth from cosmic radiation, but it is not the only solution to the problem. For example Venus' thick atmosphere offers a similar level of protection without the use of a geologically caused magnetic field. Venus's atmosphere interacts with solar winds to create an ionosphere.
Solar winds are stripping Venus of its atmosphere. Especially lighter gasses found in the upper atmosphere. However in the 4 billion years the process has been taking place Venus hasn't lost its atmosphere yet. So long term as in kingdoms or Empires should be doable.
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**Habitable by whom or what?**
Geological activity on Earth creates a magnetic field, which reduces the rate at which the solar wind blows away our atmosphere (most especially, our water as vapour in that atmosphere, since it's the lightest atmospheric gas). ISTR without our magnetic field it would take around 200M years to end up as dry as Mars.
So what would substitute for a magnetic field to maintain an Earthlife-compatible environment for at least, say, 2000M years? (A wild guess at the minimum span of time for complex life forms, which was around 3500M years here on Earth).
1. Stronger gravity. A bigger planet. Two Gees does not merely double 200My to 400My. Thermally activated gas molecules have to escape a deeper gravitational well, and the effect of quite a small increase in gravity is substantial. Unfortunately, it also makes the planet a lot less friendly to space transportation. It may also block the only known path to a technological civilisation. We needed hands to develop technology. We developed hands by virtue of our ancestors being tree-dwellers. High gravity may make trees impossible, or it may make the consequences of falling too severe for large animals to ever evolve in that niche. There may be other evolutionary paths.
2. More water. Ten times as much to last ten times as long. This has the drawback that there would probably be no dry land anywhere, and life that evolved there would either be marine or hadean (extreme pressure dark-dwelling life on an ocean floor under maybe 40km of water). Life could almost certainly evolve in these environments. Maybe intelligent life. Almost certainly not technological civilisation. However, it's not impossible that terrestrial intelligent life arises just as the last of the water is being lost. They'd work out that they were on a dying planet with maybe as little as 20My left before the environment goes to hell. Long enough, surely!
TL;DR. Life in such an environment -- yes. A technological civilisation -- maybe. A space-going civilisation -- probably only if geological and evolutionary time-scales coincide happily (scenario 2).
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From what we know a geologically planet is necessary to support life:
* it replenishes the atmosphere/hydrosphere of gases and elements like water, sulfur, phosphorus, coming from the mantle/core. All of those are needed from life
* it ensures the presence of a magnetic field, shielding the planet from cosmic radiation
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My country is on the coast and spans deep into the continent. The technology level is before the invention of explosives. 10 years ago with naked eyes, anyone could see further than 10 kilometers away (if he/she was standing on a tall enough building). But today, the furthest anyone can see is 1 km tops.
What could possibly caused this? (non superstitious, mind you).
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Air pollution can heavily limit visibility.
Look at [Beijing](https://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2017/01/09/beicology-has-beijings-smog-entirely-engulfed-chinas-international-image): in days where the smog is heavy visibility is very limited.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/thalQ.jpg)
Since you are setting your world in medieval time, have a lot of coal and wood to be burned. The resulting pollution of the atmosphere will do what you are asking for.
Climate can also help: fog, lack of winds, thermal inversion can also contribute to enhance the phenomena.
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To add to the other answer which mentions air pollution, here's a possible cause of the pollution:
**Volcanic ash.**
You mentioned that your country is on the coast and that it spans into the continent. As shown by the following diagram, volcanoes occur in mostly coastal regions:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FY17Q.png)
This means your country could have a string of volcanoes along its coast. If the general wind patterns push air into the continent from the direction of the coast, then a prolonged eruption would cause a constant influx of volcanic ash into the air of your country. This would reduce visibility.
The extent to which it does this is up to you - look at the [Toba eruption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory), which may have caused a global cooling period of up to 1000 years. Alternatively, the volcanoes could simply be slow burning. Rather than a huge, dramatic explosion, they could constantly release ash into the air, which is dragged inland by the wind. This is all up to you of course and depends on what you want to do with the story. Hope this helps.
[Answer]
# VIRUS
@Roger thank you for the inspiration.
The world hasn't changed but the people in it has. A virus / bacteria / [something normally occurring] has undergone a trivial change for itself but in humans this change has caused our eyesight to degrade rabidly.
Once infected by the virus / bacteria at a young age the eyes of the victim start to warp in shape and this causes the limited view range.
Human and/or animal eyes now have an effective range of 1km and as it stands there is no cure or vaccine.
Could be fun if all animals had this happen to them vs only humans. Over time there would be a genetic push away from eyesight.
[Answer]
Since your country is a coastal one, you could make sea fog a possible factor. Some kind of climatic changes over time (a combination of change in wind patterns and drop in temperatures) could possibly turn your country into a region where sea fogs occur frequently - both during day and night. And strong winds could push the fog inland so that visibility is highly reduced on towns lying by the coast.
<https://eos.org/features/coastal-fog-climate-change-environment>
Your country seems to resemble Australia quite a bit. :P
**Sydney's Bondi Beach**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u5rpX.jpg)
<https://www.theaustralian.com.au/video/id-5348771529001-5980291757001/Sea-Fog-Blankets-Sydney-s-Bondi-Beach>
**Newport beach, Australia - 2004**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3Loe5.jpg)
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthpicturegalleries/6501752/Australian-Weather-Calendar-2010.html?image=9>
[Answer]
Tragically, sudden onset **vitamin A deficiency** has swept the population. The high priest blames certain rascally-rabbits for decimating the carrot crop.
[Answer]
# Fuel
As towns grow, they burn more fuel. All of that fuel goes up in smoke since the tech is such that there is no way to move the fuel use far away (like with electricity) and there are no scrubbers or the like.
People burn what they can find for cookfires and campfires:
* Wood
* Other plant material
* Meat (while they won't use meat for fuel, they use the fires they build to cook meat and other foods and they put out their own smoke)
* Dried dung (a very common source of fuel, especially in places with lots of livestock but without a lot of wood)
* Coal (way back when, coal deposits were on the surface or easily accessed; now you have to dig very deep to get what's left)
* Peat (in communities with peat bogs, this is a primary source of fuel)
* Oil (food grade, mostly used in lamps)
* Bones (a prehistoric source of fuel)
Also: Large-scale fires (not the cookfires and campfires discussed above). These can be caused by nature or they can be deliberately set. Many cultures used fire to prepare fields for planting and also to manage forests/orchards. If there is a war going on, fires may be more common.
As others have pointed out here, all that smoke obscures vision like nothing else.
] |
[Question]
[
I am writing a story where the human race is divided into two groups one called Martians (they left to live on Mars) and the other Earthlings (who stayed on Earth). The Martians want to destroy Earth by influencing a mega massive meteor to collide with Earth so that they can move Mars to Earth's orbit once Earth is gone.
Is it possible (please assume the technology is available)?
Thank you very much for your help!
[Answer]
## NO\*
Basically: long, long ago Earth got hit by an asteroid, the size of Mars. However, instead of destroying Earth, it simply merged with it and the debris became the moon. Even if you have an asteroid big enough (today we don’t), the debris isn’t going to magically disappear: You’re going to have an asteroid belt between Mars and Venus. Moving a planet into an asteroid belt is probably a bad idea.
\*I mean, trivially, yes, you can build an asteroid equal in size and make Earth into an asteroid belt if you have that technology. Then you have to move Mars into an asteroid belt, costing tons of energy, and then you need a better planetary defense system. Total cost would probably be a lot more than the cost of the thermobaric weapons necessary to reduce every city with population greater than one million to ash.
[Answer]
Rocks are not Free, Citizen! (Much of this answer is essentially the arguments from [Rocks are Not Free](http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Rocks_Are_Not_Free!) stripped of the universe-specific verbiage.
Essentially, even if you find the right rock, the amount of time, resources and fuel required to change the rocks orbit to make it intersect with earth are, put mildly, astronomical.
If you have the technology to do something like this, "conventional" bombing is liable to give a better cost/effect ratio.
Edit to address second point:
Given that the energy requirements to move a planet in any semblance of a human timescale (rather than the millions of years) are even more astronomical than an actual rock... you're still looking at most solutions (like maintaining a terraformed ecosystem on Mars in its current orbit) being vastly more efficient.
[Answer]
It's fair to say that if they can move mars at all, moving an asteroid of any size is going to be easier.
So broadly, yes. Throwing an asteroid big enough to splat earth like a sledgehammer on a biscuit is by definition possible if you can complete the rest of the plan.
As another answer commented, Earth has taken a rock the size of mars in the distant past and since stabilised its orbit enough we can barely tell. I'm not completely au-fait with the mathematics involved, but what you really want is to smack Earth with an asteroid travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
This will blast earth to shrapnel and then as the sole stewards of the solar system you can clear the debris and move Mars to the better position in the solar system at your leisure.
Of course, if you can accelerate anything to useful proportions of the speed of light, moving mars is more or less an afternoon's work.
Good luck hiding your involvement though. It's hard to imagine that the forces able to impart that much velocity on *anything* would be subtle.
As some related reading, I refer you to [This Treatise on Planet-Busting](https://qntm.org/destroy)
Here's an extract from the preamble:
>
> The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.
>
>
>
[Answer]
Essentially you don't want to destroy Earth. You want to destroy Earthlings, pretending it wasn't you and then take over their place.
If you insist on moving Mars to Earth's orbit you may consider achieving your goal in a slightly different manner.
1. Drop an asteroid large enough to cause mass extinction on Earth. There are high chances all Earthlings die as a result but even if some doesn't they will be technologically downgraded and you can claim they already died.
2. Move Earth out of it orbit (claiming there is no sentient life form there anymore so you're not performing a genocide)
3. Move Mars to the cleared orbit
Thanks to that approach rather than *simply* destroying Earth you don't have asteroid belt in the old Earth orbit. You really don't want to place your planet in the middle of asteroid belt
Note, I'm ignoring if the technology is possible (you said it exists so I take it for granted). Can an asteroid kill most of the life from the planet surface? It did already. Several times.
It might give you a nice plot later (someone discovers the Earth surface wasn't really wiped of any life, especially some Earthlings survived at least the genocide you indeed have caused - it can have interstellar repercussions if there are any other alien life forms that might worry about that).
[Answer]
Can an asteroid be used as a planetary attack weapon?
**Absolutely.**
Is it wise to do so?
**Probably not.**
Consider that if Mars can move asteroids like this, then Earth probably can too. And when Mars starts maneuvering the asteroid into an attack vector, do you think Earth will sit there and let it happen? Of course not. They should have plenty of time, as it'd almost certainly take months (at least) to move the asteroid. Earth would either try to intercept the asteroid or redirect their own towards Mars. Or possibly both. You'd have a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario.
If the Martians can move the entire planet, they could move it to a closer solar orbit instead. Since they can move planets, they should be able to easily handle any adjustments needed due to two planets being in such close orbits.
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I might be a little confused, but can't mars and earth exist in the same orbit on opposite sides of the sun and not collide?
If anything, there might already be a planet in Earth's exact orbit behind the sun right now, and we've never seen it because the sun is in the way (if we didn't have telescopes in space to prove otherwise)
[Answer]
Exactly this scenario takes place in [Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Mars' trilogy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy).
During the first Martian revolution, the revolutionaries target an asteroid (which they call 'Nemesis') at Earth. It gets destroyed though, and was generally considered to be a bad idea by other revolutionary factions as it makes it easy for Earth to present them as murderous extremists.
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Let's take for granted that they can move an asteroid at leisure, and then Mars.
Doing that will take a huge lot of energy: only the delta V between Mars and Earth is 6 km/s, which for the mass of Mars, $6.39\times 10^{23}$ kg, gives an energy expenditure of $230\times 10^{29}$ J, which is roughly the amount of energy emitted by the entire Sun in 1000 seconds.
Now, if you have the capability of manipulating that amount of energy, a cleaner way to do the job would be to simply inject it into the mantel of the Earth. The subsequent increase in volcanic activity would wipe out humanity and leave the orbit free from debris. As bonus the martians would get a free planet!
[Answer]
Why not a smaller meteor and just 'reset' life on Earth (think dinosaurs being wiped out).
Mars' 'year' would have to speed up lot, wouldn't it (shorter revolutions around the sun) to move closer to the sun?. What impact would that have on the Martians? Where does the energy for that come from?
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Sure you can use an asteroid to destroy earth. In fact, there's a giant asteroid already circling earth on a monthly basis. That's right, the moon. Actually, since it's locked into earths gravity instead of the suns that makes it a moon, and if it had its own orbit it would be considered a dwarf planet.
But ignoring those details, we now have a giant weapon relatively close to the earth that can wipe out all life and potentially even change earths orbit a bit. <https://youtu.be/i_OgGF92k_M>
Because the moon is tidally locked with earth, we can do whatever we want to the dark side without any interference. We slowly set up giant lasers, or Kepler drives, or whatever propulsion system to send the moon careening towards earth.
Those poor lunar base colonists will wake up one day and contact earth saying "hey, you seem closer than before" and then the two massive bodies will collide, scouring the surface of both clean, turning earth into a giant fireball, and leaving you free to knock it out of orbit and replace it with mars at your leisure.
[Answer]
I think that we've established that the asteroid idea might have some downsides, so here's an alternative:
Provided that Martians have the ability to move planets (and Earth doesn't), why not just move Earth out of its orbit a little, or into its orbit a little? Once it's far enough out of place, it'll spiral in toward the sun or wander off toward the edge of the solar system, with very little chance of colliding with anything else of importance. They'll have no way to correct their course and they'll all either burn/radiation to death or freeze to death (your choice!) This also leaves the orbit open for Mars to inhabit.
Some lucky few may manage to board a rocket and evacuate Earth in time, but I suppose that's an inevitability regardless of how you choose to (attempt to?) bring about their demise.
[Answer]
This could be done, but literally anything else is easier.
---
In order to turn the Earth into a debris field, you need to overcome its gravitational binding energy; You need to deliver enough energy via your asteroid to accelerate the matter that makes up Earth to escape velocity. This comes out to "[2x10^32 Joules, or about 12 days of the Sun's total energy output!](http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Intro/gravity.html)." This is a ludicrous amount of energy. Collecting and storing it would require engineering feats that dwarf the complexity of just terraforming Mars. Keeping it secret from the Earthers is a completely separate issue.
[Ceres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)) is the largest asteroid in the solar system, weighing 8.958 × 10^20 kg. If it were moving at 670 km/s it would have enough energy to demolish Earth. That is 60 times greater than Earth's escape velocity, which is the speed most impacting asteroids hit the Earth at. It is also greater than the Sun's escape velocity from the surface of the sun. This means that you would have to accelerate Ceres from its current velocity into an Earth impact trajectory, at that ridiculous speed in a short period of time.
Once you are done with all of this, you now have a debris field in Earth orbit. It will endanger the now relocated Mars for eons to come.
It would be much much simpler to just move Mars to the [third Lagrange point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point). Mars would be on the other side of the sun from Earth, and it could just sit there in its new orbit. Because Lagrange point orbits are not stable long term, this would require a little bit of stationkeeping, small adjustments to its orbit. If you can move Mar's orbit entirely, station keeping should not be an issue.
[Answer]
If you really want to use a foreign body to strike Earth, here's a solution that will address some of the concerns voiced so far:
**Use something heavier than Earth**
Collisions are modeled in Newtonian physics by the equation
$$m\_1v\_{1,1} + m\_2v\_{2,1} = m\_1v\_{1,2} + m\_2v\_{2,2}$$
Given that a collision between Earth and something heavier is mostly inelsatic (that is, the two bodies stick together instead of bouncing off), you can treat their end velocities as equal:
$$m\_1v\_{1,1} + m\_2v\_{2,1} = \left(m\_1 + m\_2\right)v\_2$$
In other words, the heavier one of the two bodies is, the more its initial velocity affects the velocity of the system after collision. No doubt there are relativistic considerations as well (feel free to comment) but the concept should be roughly the same. Treating the Earth as stationary, if you ram something exactly Earth-weight into it, the two will then move off at half of the something's initial velocity. If you use something heavier, they'll move faster.
This approach has these advantages:
1. Removes Earth from its orbit, so Mars can replace it.
2. Wipes out all the humans who don't escape via rocket.
3. Can collide at a slower speed, meaning less debris to cause problems for Mars once it moves to Earth's former orbit.
] |
[Question]
[
The Hegemony rules over the inner planets with a firm, but benevolent grip. To keep the far flung colonies defended and to keep the outer planets in check the Hegemony needs , and has, developed a massive navy (the ground forces are really just deployed marines in the Hegemony military)
The Hegemony recruits from any population they control and beyond. Now I'm wondering what makes it worth recruiting from Earth? I've wracked my brain for a while, but all of my answers have been hand waving and honestly I'm stumped.
Fuel is the main issue I see with this. Is it worth the price to get Terrans (in any scenario) into space? What are some logical reasons other then things like diversity hires or hand waving for Earth to still be a major recruiting ground for the military and colonies?
Notes:
* The hegemony can recruit from mars and colonies from the belt which would provide better space born troops.
* Hegemony is officially based on Earth with its capital changing with every Hegemon.
* Haven't got out of the solar system just yet.
* Haven't met aliens yet (save some ghost stories in the kuiper belt)
[Answer]
## Marine Recruitment Advantages
**Terrans are going to be inherently stronger.** Everywhere else in the solar system, the gravity is either way too low for normal humans or way too high for any humans. On Earth we are heavier, and therefore have to be stronger. Think John Carter of Mars, but somewhat less ridiculous. Plus great bone density compared to everyone else, making Terrans *much* harder to break compared to some others, especially anyone who wasn't born and raised on a planet at all. The Hegemony absolutely recruits on Earth for the Marines in this scenario because it's the place with the absolute strongest humans in existence and oodles of them, no contest.
**Additionally, the urban infrastructure on Earth would make the logistical machine run more smoothly and easily;** there's already transit centers and buildings and old training facilities on Earth, so the Hegemony may not have to build nearly as much on Earth to train marines as they would have to build in other places. Not to mention that the fact of a naturally available breathable atmosphere makes the cost of those buildings and of running those buildings much, much lower.
## Naval Recruitment Advantages
Urban infrastructure strikes again. Also strength and greater bone density again, which actually matter a lot in a space navy setting.
**Terrans are absolutely *essential* for the navy because it takes much more in g-forces to kill or knock out a Terran than anyone else.** They would be able to fly faster and make harder turns than anyone else alive, giving them a leg up in any confrontation. In fact, I'd wager that the Hegemon's navy would keep ships manned solely by Terrans for the very purpose of outmaneuvering the competition in every which way.
## Advantages For Both Branches
**I can assume that Terrans, as they live on the planet the hegemony is based on, are pretty loyal to the hegemony.** At least, some of them are. Probably enough, since there are so damn many of us. Additionally, the cost of getting them off planet is presumably high given your description. So most of them probably haven't been off-world. So you have a people loyal to a cause with no real experience of the universe outside of where they've lived their whole life. They're going to be *great* for putting down rebellions, dehumanizing everyone else, and generally sticking to the whole Hegemony thing. Amazing pro-hegemony low-key or high-key racists, basically.
The PRC pulled a somewhat similar trick with Tienanmen square; soldiers from provinces near the square were confronted by dissident citizens who looked just like them and had a culture exactly like theirs, and so they humanized the protesters instead of firing on them. Then the PRC sent in troops from much farther west in their country, and those troops had no basis for immediately humanizing the protesters. Unfortunately, they thus had fewer reservations about firing into the crowds.
## Logistical Argument
Earth is over-populated even today. That's a logistical problem. The Hegemony needs a massive military. That's also a logistical problem. So you put two and two together, and you kill two birds with one stone.
Additionally, the implementation of space elevators and the like can vastly decrease the costs of reaching orbit. Not to mention that an over-populated administrative center of a planet, if it's functioning, will likely also be a trade hub of some sort. So you've already got infrastructure for going up and down. So taking advantage of that probably wouldn't be too hard.
Best of luck with your world. Long live the Hegemon! :)
**Edit:** I shortened this answer to reflect the new question, reformatted a bit, rewrote small pieces to sound better, added a better explanation for urban infrastructure underneath Marine Recruitment, and added a bit about why Terran toughness matters a *lot* more than I originally thought out for the Navy.
Grammar too. Always grammar.
[Answer]
Humans are quite an adaptable species and quite attracted to violence as well as quite skilled at it.
If you read [The Damned](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Damned_Trilogy) Series by Alan Dean Foster, the intelligent species of the galaxy have lost the ability to fight. Some species can fight with the help of drugs to dull the trauma but humans relish fighting and will fight for money alone.
Humans get recruited for money and change the whole tide of war overnight.
Basically if a species is worth the expense, the Hegemony will recruit them.
[Answer]
**Earth has a huge surplus population.**
The colonies are young. Populations are small and manpower is at a premium. To keep the colonies growing (and the money flowing) it is advantageous to leave native colonists home to build and farm and reproduce.
Earth, on the other hand, is overloaded with people. There is nowhere to grow and mechanization leaves little need for human labor. Military service means a steady paycheck to send home and benefits when you are done - an attractive alternative to unemployment.
[Answer]
Earth has a surplus population and a lack of resources.
Everyone on Earth has a healthy life and entertainment, but cities are jam packed, it requires a steady stream of supply ships to keep water, minerals, hydrocarbons, etc at the necessary level for humans and what's left of the environment. There is also a large minority who want something different from the safe and boring life of Earth, millions of people disappear into VR every year wasting away. Millions more form gangs and groups that riot, perform dangerous stunts and cause trouble.
On the other end the outer planets and habitats need people. The inner planets need resources for terraforming, building new habitats and expanding their colonies. However the population, even with semi-autonomous machines, don't have the manpower to keep up with demand.
Sending soldiers to the outer planets isn't so much for protection, but to free up labour, create families and make kids, as well as relieving some of the pressure on Earth.
[Answer]
# Earth is desperate for *Hegemony Credits*
To paraphrase a famous novel, Earth is so amazingly primitive that they still think smartphones are a pretty nifty invention. The Hegemony has starships. So what can Earth sell to get second-hand, third-rate ships for themselves?
* Sell raw or processed materials. Um. Asteroid mining is so much cheaper, but for some materials it might still apply. Oil? Orchids? Coffee?
* Sell real estate. That will happen, to the extent that richer Hegemony citizens *want* to live on Earth or Hegemony corporations need to invest their Earth currency holdings.
* Sell labor. That might have different forms:
+ Humans working in [factories on Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweatshop) for Hegemony customers.
+ Humans working on richer Hegemony planets in menial jobs.
+ Humans enlisting in the [Hegemony forces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_militaries_that_recruit_foreigners).
Possibly **all** of the bullet points apply, and the last one might be the smallest one. Individual humans have a choice beyond living and dying on a backwater planet -- sign up as a housemaid for rich Hegemons, or sign up as expendable cannon fodder under Hegemony officers.
[Answer]
Considering the wide range of climates they got themselves used to live in on their home planet, I would dare to say that those humans are very flexible and versatile. Give them water, food and some $CH\_3-CH\_2-OH$ solution and they are happy.
They can even think on their own, without the need of a central brain to address their group actions, making them valuable in situation where stealth operation is important.
Yes, there is some fee to pay to get out of that gravity well, but, heck, it's worth any single penny!
[Answer]
I will make some asumption before I answer this question:
1. You do not have access to FTL.
You may have reduced the flight time to your colonies to mere days or weeks instead of month and years, but the time it takes to get from A to B is still to be considered.
2. Your colonies exist for quite some time, but outside from Earth there is no planet that has a suitable environment for human beings. Every colony has to rely on some sort of buildings to house its colonists
3. Your Hegemony has the ressources to have this massive standing navy/ army, and therefor fuel is not really a problem (A navy, even today, cannot operate without a steady supply of fuel. Think of the Japanese navy late in WWII, they couldn't do anything since they were short on fuel, among other things). Also, if you are traversing planetary distances, the fuel consumed reaching space from Earth is only a small part of the needed fuel to get to Venus or Mars.
## Conclusion: Why are you still recruiting from Earth?
There are four main reasons why this is more or less the best place to recruit your soldiers, marines and shipmen:
1. Population:
As others already mentioned, Earth has even today a really large population fromwhich you can recruit. Add a cumpolsory service for every male in a specific age, and you got quite a recruitment pool.
Another point, which will be quite important on the long run: Humanity is reproducing pretty fast. So you just lost a battle, a few hundret thousand dead, but hey! wait five years, and that is replaced with new, young recruits.
2. Loyality:
Home, Sweet Home! Plus propaganda. Earth is your capital. So do everything to make your population happy! Show them, what glorious things the mighty Hegemony is doing! Show them how good life is on Terra! Rebels? You mean Terrorists! Uprising on Merkur? That was just a bar brawl, started by some grumpy old Miner!
Do everything to make your Hegemony look good. Take a good look at how Nazi Germany influenced its youth during its reign. Within ten years, the youth was indoctrinated efficiently. Most of them will join your navy honored to serve the Hegemony.
3. Organisation:
Your government is based on Terra, so organising the recruitment will be pretty easy. Send in a recruitment division into one of the cities, and come out of it with a few ten thousand fresh recruits. Easy as pie.
4. Strategical Placement of Earth:
Space is no Ocean. Planets move. But Earth has a decent position to every planet further in, and even Mars isn't to far of, as long as it isn't on the exact opposite of the solar system.
So, everything considered, a recruitment campaign on Earth is still one of the most promising methods to enlarge your military might.
[Answer]
# Disease control
Things like the common cold prosper on Earth because of the large, concentrated population. A viral infection typically only lasts a few weeks, and by that time the virus should be passed on to others to continue. A virus can only infect the same host again if it sufficiently mutates into another variant, which takes longer than the time the virus spends in a single host. In other words, the survival strategy of viruses is to keep infecting new people and then circling back around when it has changed sufficiently.
The moment you put a bunch of people on a spacecraft for a half-year round-trip to Mars, at some point everyone will get the cold, generate antibodies and kill the virus. The virus does not have enough time to mutate into another variant, so by the time you arrive at Mars, your crew will be free of viruses like the common cold. Great news! All human settlements outside Terra are free of pesky viruses.
This also means that the immune systems of extraterrestrial humans are no longer properly trained for most Terra-borne diseases. Before they can return to Terra, they need to get *all* the flu shots of many, many preceding years if they want to stand any chance of not being violently sick when returning. Not great space-marine-material, if you can't even get to the capital planet of your system!
[Answer]
# **One Word** - ***Elitism***
## Respect
Terrans are from the capital planet, they are the Colonial Rulers
they would be seen as elite individuals and greatly respected.
The colonists could be taught from a young age about the amazing skill and nobility of the Terrans who colonised, and their impressive admirals and officers.
## Education
You could set it up so that Terrans occupy the officers and higher positions due to the superior Terran war academies and their richer families.
They could also have more advanced war rooms/battle simulators and general better education.
## Snobbery and Elitism
Colonial empires tended to like their high ranking officials/officers to be from the home nations so I see no reason why this Empire would not want their officers to be from their home planet.
Also much like you wouldn't trust people you had never met to protect your house, the admiralty would want men they knew, trained and drunk with leading their Fleets, Squadrons and Fighter Groups.
## Centralisation
Leaving colonies to themselves is never good. If you allow them absolute freedom to control their own military this will just be British Empire 2.0.
Large Empires require the capital to be woven into the heart of everything from corporations to governors to military.
## Numbers
Depending on the population spread you could make 3 arguments.
1. ### Mostly Terran
* Not recruiting from the majority dramatically reduces potential numbers.
2. ### Equal parts Terran
* Earth is already developed so is OK with more of its population being removed (the colonies need builders and farmers more)
3. ### Fewer Terrans
* Fewer Terrans allows for easier propoganda spread and better, more centralised schooling. This means Terrans are more loyal and learned officers.
[Answer]
To add on to Thorne's answer, humans are extremely resilient at least mentally (a common hfy trope) and can also be vengeful. This makes them one of the most dangerous foes to go up against.
All these traits make humans an ideal component of any military force.
[Answer]
If your Hegemony originates from Earth there is a huge benefit.
[If not, read another answer]
And that is Loyalty.
As Opposed to other, later-colonized, Planets, the Earth IS the Hegemony; Earthlings commonly are brought up to be loyal to it far more than anyone from other planets or colonies, where dissidents spread their Propaganda somewhat more freely.
This is because, while a colony might benefit from seceeding, the Earth (as the hub of the Hegemony)has absolutely no reason to do so.
Also, young Earthlings only hear about Dissidents in a negative way.
An Uprising here, a friend's Dad being killed in Action (while obviously fighting for the Hegemony)
Also Earth being the most developed, industrialized, and obvously cultured world would help instill this loyalty / identity with the Hegemony
] |
[Question]
[
So "Venusians" are these Star Trek-y humanoid aliens that evolved on a planet with more than 75 times Earth's atmosphere. In a lot of ways this makes them not too dissimilar from deep sea creatures. Their bodies combat the extreme external pressure of the atmosphere with ludicrously high *internal* pressure to keep them from imploding. So how come they don't just... y'know... blow up in our own atmosphere? Sure, they could wear suits but where's the fun in that?
The whole point of having aliens adapted to extreme pressure is to have them inflate in a comical way in our atmosphere of course! Who wouldn't want to laugh in the face of an alien who looks and sounds like a blobfish on helium? Anyway...
Venusians, believe it or not, look just like human actors that wear lots of make-up and latex prosthetics to cover their noses and other defining facial features like hair or ears. While they look normal in their native atmosphere their bodies become extremely bloated in ours, their skin flushes with pink blood and their voices sound as if a rubber duck met an air hose. All these things are set in stone. Any other anatomical features that would allow them to transition from a dense oxygen rich atmosphere to another is still up in the air (pun not intended).
Earth-like planet
Pressure: 93 bar (1,350 psi)
Temperature: hot
Recommended activities: hiking and slow skydiving
[Answer]
## Their Internal Body Pressure can Reduce When in Lower Pressure Environments
Perhaps these aliens have a way of decreasing internal body pressure. They aren’t able to completely acclimate to Earths atmospheric pressure because it’s so much lower, but Earth’s low pressure only causes some swelling in their bodies. Perhaps it could work based off body fluids, and when they are initially exposed to far lower atmospheric pressure, their body releases fluid through sweat gland type pores in their skin. After their internal body pressure gets within a ratio to atmospheric pressure, the body just has some swelling that won’t go away. When reintroduced into higher atmospheric pressures, their bodies rapidly produce these “body pressure fluids” to build their internal pressure back up. I hope this helps you.
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# Because that's not how physics works to begin with
From a physical standpoint, humans do just fine at higher pressures. The deep diving record is around 600 meters, where the pressure is equal to about 60 atmospheres. We survive at these depths by having a very high internal pressure that keeps us from being smashed into a little ball, just like a Venusian! Theoretically, the only issue with going deeper is that basically all the gases become poisonous to us at too high of pressures. And naturally, these deep divers did not explode when they returned to the surface.
Venusians don't explode when they go from 75 atmospheres to 1 atmosphere for the same reason humans don't: liquids and solids are perfectly happy to operate over an extremely high range of pressures without any significant deformation.
[Answer]
**Frame Challenge**
Well, sort of...
The Venusians have an extremely dense outer skin and musculature system that works in their native Venus to resist the Pressure of their own atmosphere, despite the high internal pressure.
However, when they get to earth, that same Skin and Muscle design actually help to keep the internal pressure in.
Now for story elements you could have something like this isn't comfortable and that they can't do it for too long as the stress on the muscles causes fatigue - but this would give you a semi-plausible way to have them going around without a suit on - by having a muscle system that can withstand the pressure.
Alternatively - you could look at the physiology of say a deep-water Giant Squid/Colossal Squid - they live approximately 1 Km under the sea, which has a pressure of ~100 Bar, yet examples have been brought to the surface (and viewable at Te Papa in New Zealand) - and do a little handwavium along the lines of 'they have adaptations similar to those of deep-sea dwellers to handle extreme pressures' and leave it at that.
[Answer]
# Their home planet has a wide variance of pressure
While they prefer being at high pressures, their native environment includes higher up 'skies' which are lower pressure, low enough for them to swim up to hunt. As such they have a number of adaptions to let them transition from one pressure to another.
That said, rapid transitions do make them look more puffy and drunk. To safely transition they need a few hours.
[Answer]
## **The only part of your question that might have an answer relates to pressure.**
Just consider the problem of traveling from an environment with an atmospheric pressure of 93 Bar to an environment with only 1 Bar pf pressure as an exercise in 'reverse' deep sea diving. Your Venusians 'might' (depending on their physiology) be able to survive such a change by simply using the equivalent of commercial deep sea diving chambers to slowly equalize the difference in pressure over time. After a number of days inside the chamber they can emerge on Earths surface. When they want to go back 'up' to their normal pressure they simply re-enter the chamber and reverse the process.
The problems you can't fix however are the differences in atmospheric composition and temperature between Earth and Venus. A creature evolved to exist in an atmosphere of almost pure CO2 and sulfuric acid instead of water vapor plus an average surface temperature of 475C will *not* be able survive on the surface of the Earth without some form of insulated space suit any more than humans could survive on the surface of Venus without one.
So sorry, if you really want Venusians walking around 'bare skinned' on the surface of the Earth your only option is to say it's just 'magic'.
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As long as they don't boil or sublimate, Solids and liquids don't really change much with pressure, and gasses are mostly found in the lungs, as long as the pressure change is gradual they will vent. The lack pressure won't directly make them blow up.
However that doesn't mean the pressure won't cause them problems.
1. Their vocal cords were intended to operate in much higher pressure, i'm not sure what effect the lower pressure will have. I know lower density at the same pressure results in higher frequency but i'm not sure if the same is true of lower density as a result of lower pressure.
2. They may struggle to get enough oxygen (or whatever), this may cause various physiological problems.
3. They may have issues with substances "boiling out" of their tissues. Human deep sea divers have this problem with nitrogen if they resurface too quickly, but maybe the aliens have some other volatile substance in their bodies that can't be eliminated in a reasonable span of time.
[Answer]
## Hyperventilation causes a Pufferfish like Stress Response.
Many other answers have already explained how divers can make this kind of transition; so, your Venusians should be able to survive the transition as well, but they don't do a good job of explaining why Venusians become and would stay puffy since a transition period should negate any puffiness before they actually enter our lower atmosphere. Instead of treating it as a pressure issue, treat it as a reflexive action. When puffer fish get stressed, they fill up to a large size to make it difficult for predators to get thier mouths around them. Likewise, your Venusians likely have some ancestral predators that they evolved a similar countermeasure against. So, in thier own environment, puffing up is quite a normal thing, but only when they are panicked.
However, just because a Venusian can survive at way lower pressures does not mean they are meant to breath our air. Our atmosphere is about 21% oxygen at 1 bar, but maybe your Venusians have a native atmosphere that is about 0.5% oxygen at 75 bar. While this puts the total oxygen in our air at close enough to Venusian levels that they don't just suffocate, it will still leave them oxygen deprived forcing them to breath rapidly.
This rapid breathing triggers something akin to a sympathetic nervous response just like humans get when we are oxygen deprived which makes the Venusian feel anxious and reflexively puff up.
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[Question]
[
Is it possible for a multicellular living creature to have no need to intake oxygen or some other gas?
So this question came to mind when I was pondering the plausibility of space-dwelling life forms. I did some research and I came to the conclusion that living creatures as we know them need oxygen (or in a grander scale some sort of gas) to help them grow, produce energy, break down food, and basically to just function.
It turns out the only animal on earth that doesn’t need to intake oxygen is the henneguya salminicol which is a small parasite that lacks a mitochondria. It is presumed it gets its energy from its host but it’s still unclear.
This led me to thinking that there could be alternative ways to produce energy rather than breathing in air. Perhaps it is as simple as consuming more nutrients through food or more complex like having a specialized mitochondria-like cell that achieves this in whatever way that might be possible.
So in short, is it possible for multicellular living creatures of all shapes and sizes to lack the need to intake oxygen or some other gas, if so, how would they achieve this feat?
[Answer]
**Strictly anaerobic.**
I proposed a giant sea creature that would not need to breathe because it metabolized its food using anaerobic glycolysis.
[Could a deep ocean creature use some kind of bacteria in its body as a way to generate oxygen?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/96207/could-a-deep-ocean-creature-use-some-kind-of-bacteria-in-its-body-as-a-way-to-ge/96254#96254)
>
> But here is another idea for your creature as regards oxygen: it
> minimizes its use of oxygen by using anaerobic metabolism. When humans
> do this it is <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_glycolysis>
> Energy can be derived from glucose without oxygen in short bursts.
> Lactate is the end product and builds up - this is the burn you feel
> when you feel the burn. Ultimately the liver has to oxidize the
> lactate when there is oxygen around again. It is an inefficient use of
> sugar compared to aerobic metabolism but we can do it.
>
>
> But what about a creature that did anaerobic glycolysis and then
> ignored the end product? Yeast do exactly this - the end product is
> ethanol and it just builds up until they cant stand it any more. Or it
> evaporates away. A sea monster with lots of food and little oxygen
> could just let the lactate waste product ooze out of its pores into
> the water. It would need a lot more food (I think three times as
> much?) than a comparably sized creature using oxidative glycolysis,
> which extracts more energy from the sugar. But it could get by with
> much less oxygen.
>
>
>
This is how tapeworms do it - they don't breathe or need much oxygen which is good because there is not much to be had in the hot poopy gut. [They do anaerobic glycolsis](https://www.britannica.com/animal/flatworm/Metabolism) and dump their wastes back in the fecal stream. The sea monster would be similar.
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>
> This led me to thinking that there could be alternative ways to produce energy rather than breathing in air.
>
>
>
Of course there are. There are small sealed glass balls for sale with plants inside, closed ecosystems which only require *light*. The sealed glass ball does not breathe anything at all.
Your creature could have large transparent skin sacs filled with symbiotes that would convert sunlight, or maybe even hard radiation (like *D. radiodurans*), into energy-rich chemical compounds.
Of course then the creature would still need to eat in order to grow and repair itself.
It could have evolved on a moon that was gradually losing atmosphere while orbiting around its primary. Over the aeons, the organism adapted to lower and lower pressures, until it grew skin sacs large enough to replace breathing altogether. Some more hundreds of thousands of years later, the moon grew so close to its primary that began disintegrating. The creature was already vacuum-proof at that time, and had developed zero-g instincts, so it readily adapted to life in space: long periods of dormancy to save energy, looking for small asteroids with ice and minerals.
It would land on an asteroid, and start crushing the rubble of carbonaceous chondrite and volatile ice to "digest" them like plants would. Its "stomach" would be more akin to a small greenhouse, and the creature would in essence eat earth. Waste material and useless rock fragments would be stored and used as reaction mass to navigate in space.
[Answer]
Anerobic bacteria get by just fine without oxygen.
According to the laws of thermodynamics, the driving force of change in a system is disorder, which must always increase. There are two ways of doing this in a chemical reaction. One is to produce heat, which makes the surroundings vibrate, thereby increasing disorder. The other way is to increase disorder in the reaction products, typically by increasing the number of molecules, especially when these are gases.
The equation for anaerobic respiration of glucose is as follows:
C6H12O6 ---> 3CO2 + 3CH4
This is typical of the reactions that occur in digesters to produce biogas.
It's a very inefficient way of using glucose (because a lot more energy can be released by burning the methane produced) but it does work and could work fine in space.
In fact, this reaction is being carried out by bacteria in your gut right now.
Multicellular organisms are perfectly possible, especially around undersea hydrothermal vents. For example <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loricifera>
There are also plenty of non-gaseous oxidants other than oxygen that a space-dwelling organism could use. These include nitrates, chlorates and peroxides. The biggest difficulty for life in outer space is that liquid cannot exist in a vacuum. In a vacuum, all liquids evaporate, leaving just solids. Several bodies in the solar system have an ice crust which imparts enough pressure to allow a liquid ocean below the surface. One such body is Europa, a moon of Jupiter, which has a thin atmosphere of oxygen. This results from photolytic decomposition of H2O, with the hydrogen escaping into space as it is much lighter than the oxygen.
[Answer]
>
> living creatures as we know them need oxygen
>
>
>
This is very untrue (as you indeed acknowledge). [Anaerobic life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_organism) is common. Even humans and other higher mammals have many [anaerobic metabolic pathways](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_respiration). In fact, all life on earth was anaerobic [until 2.4 billion years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event), whereas life has been around for at least 3.7 billion years. In some ways, anaerobic life is the norm, and metabolism that uses oxygen is a strange innovation.
But moving on from that, supposing these fictional organisms are aerobic. Cutaneous respiration is common in many organisms, especially amphibians. It has been measured ([PDF](http://www.biol.unt.edu/%7Eburggren/pdfs/1985/%2849%29Feder,Burggren1985BR.pdf)), and counts for 100% of the oxygen of the lungless salamander, and 90% for the Lake Titicaca water frog.
Note that having only cutaneous respiration limits the bulk of these fictional organisms. (Because of reasons to do with the amount of surface area feeding the amount of body.) There are no big amphibians. If your fictional beings are big, they'll have to be thin like a big pancake.
"[Aerobic metabolism is the most efficient way of producing ATP by producing 18 times more ATP for each molecule of glucose than anaerobic metabolism.](https://med.libretexts.org/Under_Construction/Purgatory/Book%3A_Human_Nutrition_1e_(University_of_Hawaii)/16%3A_Performance_Nutrition/16.04%3A_Fuel_Sources)" – so your fictional anaerobic beings will need about 18 times more food to do the same amount of work, or eat the same amount of food we do but be 18 times smaller/lazier.
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May depend on your definition of breathing. My first thought was the fish; however absorbing oxygen directly from seawater (pumped through gills) still meets your definition of breathing, and correctly so, given your need to dwell in space.
My second thought was to remain underwater, but to look at the relatively new development of [Air Independent Propulsion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-independent_propulsion) (AIP) in submarines. These allow long submerged range and good performance, without nuclear power, and have shown themselves to be [embarrassingly effective](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-swedish-sub-ran-rings-around-us-aircraft-carrier-escorts-2021-7?r=US&IR=T) in NATO exercises.
Most AIP submarines "drink" and store liquid O2, not exactly compatible with the chemistry of living beings we know, though maybe space dwellers have evolved with at least some organs running at suitably lower body temperatures.
However a few (submarines) have been developed to use other oxidisers such as (liquid) [hydrogen peroxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-test_peroxide). The fact that [HMS Explorer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Explorer_(submarine)) was known within the Senior Service as "HMS Exploder" hints at the difficulties even in a submarine, let alone the stomach lining chemistry of a creature capable of drinking peroxide...
Either way, instead of breathing, the creatures need to drink some suitable oxidiser. This may not be naturally available. If not, is it possible for your beings to evolve alongside other races in a symbiotic fashion?
Perhaps they evolved alongside future humans or other technological races, capable of bottling peroxide or liquid O2, in return for some services from the creatures, perhaps as messengers, or as grazers of the asteroid belt, shitting nickel and lithium as they chug down another bottle of oxidiser.
[Answer]
The fundamental problem here is that almost no life on Earth works this way because it's very inefficient. Oxygen is by far the most energetic oxidizing agent available and thus anything using it in it's cycle has a huge competitive advantage over anything that doesn't.
Thus you have to look at environments in which there is no gas to be had to find a metabolic sequence that doesn't use it. We have some gut-dwelling stuff that would provide a basis for zero-gas metabolism.
However, this misses the fundamental issue--you don't **need** a zero-gas cycle for your space-based life! Rather, you need to think like a rocket rather than a jet--bring everything you need to the table. Obtaining matter is going to be a big problem for space-based life because it's in an environment with very little of it. Thus any worthwhile space-based life must do it's utmost to hold onto everything it gets except those elements it gets an excess of that it can't make use of. (Likely an issue with hydrogen--it's available in the solar wind but your life will have little to react it with.)
You can use the normal photosynthesis and oxidation cycle of Earth-based life, just keep the gasses inside the creature. The sunny side reduces CO2, the shady side oxidizes the carbon.
[Answer]
Here's the problem: here on Earth nearly all living things require oxygen because it's the most convenient, plentiful, and non-toxic *oxidizing agent.* Oxidation could realistically be called the center of the living universe. No oxidation, no life (insofar as we know and understand life today). It does a lot more than just make energy. Oxidation is needed for decomposition, to fight pathogens, for all kinds of things.
Which means that unless you walk away from describing the internal workings of your creature (honestly, most authors don't explain the inner workings of things for a reason), you either need to replace oxidation with something that can be found in outer space or you need to explain how you're getting enough oxygen. Why? Because oxygen is consumed in the oxidation process and I'm not a good enough chemist to suggest a way that it can be recycled (which would likely break the laws of thermodynamics, anyway).1
It's true that [many things other than oxygen can be used as oxidizers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxidizing_agent). The problem is that most of those things are toxic for one reason or another. Yikes!
**So, I'm going to ignore the [science-based](/questions/tagged/science-based "show questions tagged 'science-based'") tag and go with [science-fiction](/questions/tagged/science-fiction "show questions tagged 'science-fiction'") instead**
Let's combine some things we know and see what imaginative fiction we can come up with.
1. At the bottom of the ocean, [there's little to no free oxygen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_minimum_zone). That means there are a whole host of creatures that have to make do or go without. From that linked source we learn:
>
> the giant red mysid (Gnathophausia ingens) continues to live aerobically (using oxygen) in OMZs. They have highly developed gills with large surface area and thin blood-to-water diffusion distance that enables effective removal of oxygen from the water (up to 90% O2 removal from inhaled water) and an efficient circulatory system with high capacity and high blood concentration of a protein (hemocyanin) that readily binds oxygen.
>
>
> Another strategy used by some classes of bacteria in the oxygen minimum zones is to use nitrate rather than oxygen, thus drawing down the concentrations of this important nutrient. This process is called denitrification.
>
>
>
What this tells us is that a good space creature design would be one that uses oxygen with enormous efficiency.2
2. The universe is [filled with plasma](https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/ast07sep99_1). I'm actually having trouble finding details about what kinds of atomic plasma can be found out there, but the reality is that oxygen plasma can be one of those wonderful atoms. From that link we learn...
>
> The magnetosphere provides a barrier between our planet and particles continually given off by the Sun's corona called the "solar wind." These particles constitute a plasma - a mixture of electrons (negatively charged) and ions (atoms that have lost electrons, resulting in a positive electric charge).
>
>
>
Sure, that plasma is proverbial as hot as the nether foundations of Lucifer's kitchen! But all the electrons and atoms you need (given massive efficiency!) are out there. Well.. OK, there's not a lot of them. But that's one of the reasons I'm shifting to the [science-fiction](/questions/tagged/science-fiction "show questions tagged 'science-fiction'") tag.
3. Finally, there are creatures who require oxygen that can't get enough of it from the depths of the ocean. One famous example is a whale, which must periodically surface to get the oxygen it needs.
**I give you Vernaculus Solanum Tuberosum Balaenus3**
Your creature needs oxygen like pretty much every other form of life. But it has:
* The most evolved oxygen efficiency in the known universe,
* The ability to supplement its oxygen by recombining the electrons and atomic nuclei in Solar Wind (the heat is used to aid in other things, like digesting wayward spaceships),
* The capacity to store an unearthly amount of oxygen,
* And the periodic need to skim oxygen from venting comets and unsuspecting planets.
And when the natives of an otherwise perfectly peaceful world see a school of those whammer-jammers coming in to suck down a little prime oxy... oh, yeah... *whole religions are born.*
---
1 *That's not completely true. As an EE I can tell you that you could use solar power (saving the laws of thermodynamics) to break apart oxidized compounds to free the oxygen to be used once again as an oxidizing agent. However, I consider that line of reasoning a great deal less believable than what I'm going to explain next. A chemist might know better than I, but I don't know of any animal solar-accumulating-break-oxygen-apart anythings. That's why I'm skipping this potential solution.*
2 *You could legitimately convert from oxygen to nitrogen based on the fact that some bacteria use nitrogen rather than oxygen. But I suspect there's not a whole lot more nitrogen in the vast reaches of space than oxygen, so you're basically back to the same solution I'm offering, other than the supplies of nitrogen are a whole lot smaller than of oxygen. Weird, that....*
3 *That's likely the worst Latin translation in history and I can easily imagine Latin enthusiasts laughing for weeks and Latin professionals closing their Worldbuilding accounts because of it. It loosely translates to: The Homegrown Potato Whale.*
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[Question]
[
So basically two people are transported back in time to 66 MYA ago with just their clothes on their back, a month of rations and the time machine that sent them back.
They're going to spend the next three months to a year in the Minnesota area until it's fixed. But they gotta survive the era in the meantime.
I'm going to say they're on a medium sized island that is about twenty-five square kilometres which is surrounded by a seventy-meter-wide river or water body. I dont really know much about what Minnesota
looked like at this time. I assume they're in a more woody area with caves or as ideal as you can expect for such an area. I don't know much about the terrain of this era.
I wanted to elaborate this a bit more.
There's going to be a scene in my story, where the male protagonist, saves the female protagonist from certain death after the later is ambushed by one such creature. After he kills it, with minor injuries, the two have sex later that nightm
Taking place in Minnesota, 66 MYA, I want to be relatively accurate for the time period. But I also want to be able to show such a huge accomplishment.
It can be a spear, a bow and arrow or even just a club.
What is the largest dinosaur or prehistoric animal can a person, reasonably kill, in self defense?
Given this and the ability to make stone age equipment what kind of animals or dinosaurs could they take down?
[Answer]
For killing something very big, say the size of an elephant, their best bet would be to prepare a trap of some kind.
If there are giant predators stomping around, the humans' first priority would be some place to be safe from them. Perhaps a treehouse or a cliff-side dwelling. This would give them the time they need to construct the traps.
* A big hole with spikes at the bottom. Downside: takes a long time to dig
* Forget digging, cover an existing chasm with thin branches and leaves, and lure a large creature to step on them, using a medium-sized carcass as bait. If no chasm is handy, a similar trap might be constructed extending over the edge of a cliff.
* Build a very sturdy enclosure with a log-cabin style of construction, and lure something big into it. Then drop logs to cover the entrance to trap it. Then stab it to death with long pikes, through the walls.
* Identify something poisonous - perhaps a plant or a frog. Look for an animal that is brightly colored and seems to have no other way to defend itself - that's probably a poisonous animal. Acquire a lot of the poison and put it in a medium-sized carcass. A giant animal eats the carcass and dies. The giant animal is probably no longer safely edible, but at least it's dead.
* Snare traps are a possibility if they find a suitable fibrous plant to make rope, and know how.
* Start a forest fire, killing animals in the forest.
If they have plenty of know-how, they might also try constructing a trebuchet or a torsion catapult. This could launch a projectile hard enough to kill a large beast, assuming the large beast is courteous enough to line up right in front of it. Perhaps it could be set up aimed at a watering hole or a narrow path.
Another option would be to drop a heavy pointy thing on the large animal from safe up in a tall tree. This relies on a good deal of luck, that the large animal passes directly below where you are and that you time the drop perfectly.
[Answer]
Making a stone age weapon is a thing. Being able to use it is another story. Bow and spear take quite some practice to be used effectively, same as an axe or a slingshot.
If your pair pops out of the blue in a remote area, they should be able to hunt something the size of a rabbit with not too much struggle. Anything bigger than that, starting from a goat size, will be challenging at the beginning. If they manage to survive and build up some muscles and technique they might be able to go after them.
Also they will quickly realize than killing something bigger than that might be not that smart: a large corpse attracts scavengers and cannot be easily stored, better go for something which can be quickly butchered and consumed.
[Answer]
It is not clear from OP if they are killing things in self defense, because they are hungry, or to pass the time. I will assume it is because they are hungry. If you are hungry there is no reason to kill something bigger than you can eat in a day.
**Fish, clams and crayfish.**
You do not need a lot of tech or a lot of strength to get enough of this sort of meat to fill your belly. [Fish traps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_trap) are not hard to make and once you make them you can use them again and again. You can catch crayfish and clams just picking them up. All of these animals are good human food and much eaten by people for as long as there have been people. Plus you can keep them fresh if you keep them in the water.
Not sure about the leeches of the Cretaceous but Minnesota is well supplied now. I imagine wading around looking for crawdads your characters might wind up with a few. Waste not want not - leeches are good bait!
[Answer]
## They will live off of small game (10lbs or less), and fish.
A single fit human with skill can reliably hunt animals up to about a hundred pounds, although risk increases with size, they can kill much larger animals with traps. But hunting dinosaurs will be tricky, they are more familiar with bipedal predators and often armored, and worse their behavior is unpredictable.
humans can make spears, bows, light crossbows and traps relatively easily. With limited or non existent experience small game is probably most likely, animals that weight 10 pounds or less with spears or simple projectiles. These can also easily be hunted with simple traps like snares or deadfalls. 50lb animals with traps is certainly possible, and I would expect a few if they are their for months.
Small game would include birds, mammals, lizards, turtles, small dinosaurs, also dinosaurs lay a lot of eggs so raiding a nest might also be possible. Eggs are one of the few food sources that can be stored.
As others have pointed out if you are on a river fish are an option, **note however encountering crocodiles are also a possibility** so there is risk associated with that as well. Several papers (my own included) have shown the range of large crocodilians much farther north. And whatever you do do not go swimming.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rtrW8.png)
Keep in mind hunting will be much easier than today, without a human presence there will be a lot more wildlife, that does also mean a lot more predators as well, so hunting is easier but it getting attacked by large wildlife is also more common. It is also worth considering barriers like water may look daunting to a human but may be easily crossable by large dinosaurs.
Another consideration is you have giant crocodiles and lots of tyrannosaurs, there are even arial predators that might see humans as edible, safe shelter is going to be your biggest problem. Fire is about the only defense humans will have so they will be burning a lot, better hope they can build a stone axe.
Another consideration is plants. Normally plants would be a more reliable food source but they are in the cretaceous, no edible plants will be familiar or identifiable. They might find edible fruit with [basic toxin testing protocols](https://www.masterclass.com/articles/universal-edibility-test#the-universal-edibility-test-steps) but this will take days of testing and I would not try it on anything that was not a fruit or seed, even then you should probably cook it.
If their rations include cans, they can easily boil water and plants so that will be one blessing.
Here is a quick and dirty representation of what is around at the time.
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hell_Creek_Formation_Fauna.png>
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paleobiota\_of\_the\_Hell\_Creek\_Formation#/media/File:Hell\_Creek\_Formation\_Fauna\_-\_BlueTrike.png[4]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paleobiota_of_the_Hell_Creek_Formation#/media/File:Hell_Creek_Formation_Fauna_-_BlueTrike.png%5B4%5D)
[Answer]
If they need to defend a fixed point (like the time machine worksite), a combination of deterrence, snares, and protective cover may be preferred. The two stranded folks need to sleep and keep watch and fix the time machine and forage...that's a lot of work.
Create a small perimeter around the worksite. Limit the number of access points using cut timber, piled brush, and stakes. Outside the perimeter, burn out all the undergrowth for at least 100m. 300-400m would be preferable, but your two time-travelers might not have enough time to do that. Keeping small game away will also keep their predators away.
Instead of wasting time and effort hunting game, build simple [fish traps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_trap) in the nearby river. Have dinner come to you, and then wait until you are ready.
For your climactic battle with a vicious dinosaur, have your two strong-thewed survivors carefully goad the dinosaur, leading it away from the time machine using spears and [atlatl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower) and fire until it succumbs to blood loss on the far side of the island. Snares and trip-lines can help, too.
Good thing both time-travelers were already skilled at making fire, making fish-traps, cleaning fish without a modern knife, making spears, use of an atlatl, and many other vital skills before they entered the time machine.
[Answer]
There is no limit to what size animal they could take down. Stone age people hunted any large mammal successfully including whales.
You don't have to go in and stab it in the heart. Just trap it or stampede it over a cliff or into a mire, or bleed it out. Or get it in the guts and wait for it to die on it's own. Persistence hunting is another way, just get it moving at a run and don't let it rest and it kills itself.
Dinosaurs aren't even as smart as mammals, they'd be much easier if you understood their limitations and strengths.
Any small animal is doable. I've hunted fruit bats with a sling, which is about as stone age as it gets since it's literally a stone. The stone will take out anything including a human within that size range (assuming you can hit anything with a sling).
Big animals are better, you're not really hunting for meat, it's fat you want. You can eat a lean rabbit a day and still die of starvation. Luckily lizards can be very fatty, you can assume dinosaurs are as well.
[Answer]
# Anything at all, toxins don't care how big you are
Any weapon that can penetrate the skin, or any morsel of food can be poisoned to bring down any animal alive. Their first big challenge is finding the toxic plant/insect/animal, but as a natural course of finding things which are *edible*, you will obviously find things which are *inedible*. This can be done by observing things that the predator avoids eating. Why doesn't the T-rex eat these little animals? Maybe they are poisonous? Herbivores may stay away from certain plants, such as the modern potato plant which has poisonous leaves. It's a blind guess if mushrooms were available because we have no fossils, but those tend to be the most toxic, and if they are not toxic then in large doses they are at least intoxicating and will disorient the animal for an easy kill.
Their second big challenge is tricking the predator's senses, or masking the poison. A dried stomach lining would make a clever scent-proof poison pill if they are careful not to contaminate the outside of the bag with poison-covered fingers.
They don't need brute force, humans won because of our brains.
I will mention that your biggest threat might not be the biggest predator, but the ones who flock or hunt in packs. Killing one large animal in a trap is easy but when they come in force, that's the real danger.
[Answer]
They don't aim for big. They aim for small.
@Wilk has the right answer for as far as it goes, but hunters and gatherers do not live exclusively on meat. The majority, perhaps a large majority, of their food is vegetable.
Assuming that they have either basic survival training or a functional survival manual on the time machine, with only its motion broken, they will identify edible plants, particularly fruit.
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[Question]
[
How can [Bronze Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age) people make hazmat gear for [chlorine trifluoride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_trifluoride)?
The ClF₃ is produced biologically, just as fruits produce acid or capsaicin. This alternate world just happens to have bacteria — and later, plants — that hit on the trick of using [fluorine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorine) to produce toxins and novel organic compounds. This has [some precedent in the real world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_aspects_of_fluorine#Natural_biochemistry). Just as the early civilized people produce gelatin, lye, and other chemicals through mixing, cooking, and processing natural feedstocks, they learned how to produce ClF₃ using especially useful biological precursors.
So, how can they make containers that hold it (to be thrown at enemies as a weapon) and how can the wielders of this weapon protect themselves?
Note in particular that [chlorine trifluoride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_trifluoride) will ignite most organic and inorganic materials. You might suppose that the availability of fluorine-bearing molecules in the local biology will offer a solution, but the obvious [Teflon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene) is also ignited by the stuff.
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Note: see [this meta post](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4877/lessons-in-writing-questions/4878#4878)
# Update
I'm not too picky about what “Bronze Age” means *exactly*. It covers a lot of time and different cultures in the real world. Only the general ideas: the people are well into agriculture, have metalworking but not the temperature and technique for Iron yet, wide-range trade, and inventions of “devices” like pottery wheels.
Clearly this alternate-reality culture will develop differently due to the fluorine biological resources. Taming ClF₃ (for warfare) might *enable* the iron age immediately thereafter. So, don’t worry about the *exact* age and culture — it will be made up anyway.
Let me re-iterate: the plants/bacteria/whatever **do not secrete ClF₃ directly**. I realize that it doesn’t offer obvious evolutionary value. Rather, the plants produce “usable flourine compounds”, so that primitive people can produce the stuff by mixing and cooking (and waving of hands).
[Answer]
Let us accept that these folks have enough ClF₃ handy that they want to make war by throwing it about. Let us consider first principles and move from there to the construction of hazmat gear.
ClF3₃ is very reactive because the F is more electronegative than oxygen. Things which do not burn because they are terminally oxidized (example: water) react because the F can displace the O.
Just as terminally oxidized substances cannot burn in oxygen, by definition terminally fluorinated substances cannot be additionally fluorinated. So, as pointed out, a coating on bronze vessels and bronze armor of the fluoride would be fine, and also easy to make because these people have plenty of an excellent fluorinating agent. As regards the elegance of solution, I quote Tom Sawyer from [Huckleberry Finn](https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/twain/mark/finn/chapter34.html).
>
> “WORK? Why, cert’nly it would work, like rats a-fighting. But it’s too
> blame’ simple; there ain’t nothing TO it. What’s the good of a plan
> that ain’t no more trouble than that? It’s as mild as goose-milk. Why,
> Huck, it wouldn’t make no more talk than breaking into a soap
> factory.”
>
>
>
Let us consider a solution more in keeping with the overall tone of this work of fiction: over the top awesomeness! I wondered what other terminally fluoridated substances might be available or easy to make and hit upon [fluorspar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorite), or calcium fluoride.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KCOqV.jpg)
Terminally fluoridated, **CaF₂ is impervious to Cl₃F**. Fluorospar is common and occurs as crystals, which come in a range of beautiful colors. I propose that these fluorine-throwing peoples could make awesome multicolored scale mail out of flakes and chunks of fluorspar, and allow the CL₃F to drip off and onto the ground, where it will react away.
Yet even this fine solution is a little lacking, I think. It might be hard to find enough fluorspar crystals to make armor, even in this unusual and apparently fluorine-rich world.
Can these people make their own fluorspar? Of course! Chalk, limestone or any calcium, treated with ClF₃ will terminally fluorinate all components. Limestone will turn to CaF₂ and volatile CF₄; not sure about the oxygen but I think it would leave as CO₂. The CaF₂ thus made would be a chalky insoluble white paste.
I propose the most elegant solution would be to dispense with the armor concept and cumbersome accoutrements altogether, and instead coat the naked body with **a thick layer of CaF₂ paste**. ClF₃ will bounce harmlessly off. It would be easy to thicken up one's protective coat of fluorspar paste as events necessitate.
## eye protection
There remains the eyes. It is hard to see if thick white paste is applied to them. For this the crystalline form of fluorspar will still be necessary. AND awesome looking.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aBxEh.jpg)
## breathing protection
The final issue is to provide respirator protections for these naked crystal-eyed warriors. Here is how that can be accomplished, at the cost of aesthetic purity.
From an article on disposing of ClF₃ from [nepis.epa.gov](https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/91007QYX.txt?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index=Prior%20to%201976&Docs=&Query=%28trifluoride%29%20OR%20FNAME%3D%2291007QYX.txt%22%20AND%20FNAME%3D%2291007QYX.txt%22&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&UseQField=&IntQFieldOp=0&ExtQFieldOp=0&XmlQuery=&File=D%3A%5CZYFILES%5CINDEX%20DATA%5C70THRU75%5CTXT%5C00000008%5C91007QYX.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h%7C-&MaximumDocuments=1&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Display=hpfr&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results%20page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=23):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZhDOp.png)
Based on this, the respirator would have 2 stages. The outer is of finely particulate salt (NaCl). The ClF₃ strips off the Na to form inert NaF. Chlorine from NaCl and ClF₃ is released as gas. The second stage is a regular charcoal respirator like the WW1 soldiers used — charcoal adsorbs Cl fine.
I suppose the fluorspar lenses could be built into the mask. Naked white-caked people wearing these freaky masks would still meet Tom's criteria, I think.
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# attribution
Fluorite crystals apparently cropped from [“FLUORITE — Illinois State Mineral”](http://www.rocksandminerals.org/sebin/l/o/chips-photo1.jpg) in Rocks and Minerals Magazine, January-February 2013.
Mud image adapted from a still from [“Mud Paint Performance #23”](http://www.messytube.xyz/en/category/route-207-films) by Route 207 Films.
[Answer]
Look - WE can't make ClF3 hazmat gear, so it's a pretty safe bet Bronze Age folks won't either. And biologically-produced ClF3 is just laughable. There simply aren't any organic substances it won't oxidize/fluorinate. It reacts violently with water, for heaven's sake. Not to mention sand, concrete and gravel. Exposure to water immediately produces hydrofluoric acid, so you'll need to specify that your microbes are part of a fluorine-based biology. And since such a biology would be wildly toxic to any surrounding organic systems, it's pretty clear that such a system would violate the Highlander Rule, "There can only be one."
But if you're going to hand-wave (at supersonic or maybe hypersonic or even superluminal speeds) and actually produce the stuff, copper vessels will hold it just fine. You have to flush the vessel (and the inside of its lid) with ClF3 vapors first, in order to produce a fluoride layer. Otherwise introduction of the liquid will cause a spontaneous combustion with the metal which is essentially impossible to extinguish other than by throwing the pot into a lake while avoiding ANY contact with the smoke. I expect that any contact with CuF2 vapors will produce HF, and inhalation will produce HF in the lungs.
And once you've got it in the pot, you must keep the temperature below 53 F, since that's the boiling point. In fact, biological processes typically don't work well below 50 F, or at least not quickly, so any bacteria will be very inefficient in terms of production rates.
[Answer]
## The key background
From your wikipedia articles on [ClF₃](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_protective_clothing):
>
> Vessels made from steel, **copper**, or nickel resist the attack of the material due to formation of a thin **layer of insoluble metal fluoride**.
>
>
>
And [Bronze age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age):
>
> An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere.
>
>
>
It seems we have copper as a viable substance. The other key point is that the metal react and then form a barrier which no more ClF₃ can pass through.
One thing to note before we start, is that [modern guidelines for handling](http://nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/0370.pdf) suggest not to, at any point, risk it leaking and:
>
> Where possible, automatically transfer liquid, gaseous, or solid Chlorine Trifluoride from drums, cylinders or other storage containers to process containers.
> But, for the sake of your story, lets do what we can (though a few deaths in the manufacturing/use would probably assist accuracy).
>
>
>
## Possible protection
A **copper container** could be used to hold the gas. Ideally you don't want the gas to escape since there is very little you can do (even now) to avoid it. There is the advantage of it being a particularly **heavy gas** and so any containers should be **stored as low down as possible** - basements, dungeons...whatever fits your story — with a [canary alarm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_species) (or animal of your choice) kept close to the entrance.
Any armour used would also have to be copper with a **copper fluoride coating in joints**. Beneath this copper fluoride should be a layer of thick leather as the substance is [still thought to be fairly toxic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper%28II%29_fluoride).
The **biggest problem would be avoiding breathing it in or contact with the eyes**. Glass is obviously a big no go and no other transparent materials existed at the time. Either you chuck your men in unprotected (the more likely scenario at the time) or you make a full copper suit and weld someone into it to protect their head...and train them to do the job blind.
Once the gas has leaked\* the best course of action is to move slowly, the dense gas will stay low down unless disturbed by movements — running will likely do this (advantage on the battle-field when the enemy are panicking though).
\*Assuming you're wearing the armour described earlier so the gas doesn't react with your feet and doesn't do anything particularly dramatic with the floor.
[Answer]
Using some of the resistant metals that were around, like copper and such, are helpful, however, there could be a solution within your world's evolution.
If this is produced naturally, to start with in a less toxic version, then there may be things that have evolved to be biologically resistant to the substance, at least in other forms.
It won't be quite to the level of the finished product (which will be MUCH more corrosive), but these changes and resistances will likely be crucial to developing anything that has even a ghost of a chance as far as CIF3.
We don't have anything like that on earth, but then again, it's not produced here naturally much either.
I'd do a combo platter--so use the metals that you know are resistant, and then take a look at the biology of the animals that interact with the plants.
In the real world, capsaicin hurts most animals, but doesn't really bother birds. And there are berries which birds can eat but are totally poison to most mammals. (Since those berries travel well in a bird's digestive system, to be spread but not in a mammal's, it makes sense that this would be so.)
Fluorine is highly toxic and reactive. And yet, your plants will be able to contain and release it. This may be part of your answer. If your plants in any way have a symbiotic relationship with other animals (like bees and birds do with plants) those animals may well have their own resistances which might be able to be used by your bronze age people. If there's something that feasts on your plant (could even be a slug or something) that could have a natural resistance.
I say, don't look to what Bronze Age people could do in our era, because you'll be out of luck there. Instead, take your answers from what your world has to offer. This Fluorine change will produce many and varied evolutions which may well hold the key.
If you want something specific, look to how [it's handled today](https://www.emcbc.doe.gov/SEB/PaducahDandR/Documents/Document%20Library/Deposit%20Removal%20-%20Holdup%20Plan/Safe%20Use%20and%20Handling%20ClF3.pdf). The answer is low temperature. So your biologic would be something naturally occurring that cools down to those temperatures. We have nothing like that on earth, and it would be a very strange biology indeed. You've got to go full sci-fi here, using known science and handling, as a basis, and then veering hard into sci-fi territory.
The biological precursors being more prevalent in nature might be helpful in finding something naturally resistant, even if it is something that must be boiled down or concentrated and what not. Even in less caustic chemical form, an advantage still might be find naturally. Otherwise, my answer is that it isn't possible. Because there really is nothing on earth that would work.
[Answer]
WhatRoughBeast is right about the chemistry, I am afraid. The entire reason these compounds are so fun is because while elements fluorine, chlorine, and oxygen can be made to form compounds with each other, they **very strongly** prefer to bond with almost anything else with the usual exception of the noble gasses. They can't be produced by "heating stuff up" or by any other non-magical method available to a bronze age civilization. A biological process is actually possible IMHO, but I think we all agree it would take genetic engineering or divine interference to make it happen on a useful scale.
Now you could of course hand-wave™, super-luminal speeds or otherwise, but you really, really should not do so here. Why? Because a bronze age civilization does **not** have the chemistry needed to know what elements the stuff they use is composed of or what its chemical formula is.
How and more importantly **why** were you planning on telling people the "burning stuff" is actually chlorine trifluoride? Or that the local biology contains fluorine compounds? The whole point of hand-waving™ is that you skip explanations not relevant to the actual story or setting. Combining it with superfluous level of scientific detail is never a good idea. Especially when anyone you show the result will either ignore it with glazed eyes or react much like WhatRoughBeast did.
So if you want to hand-wave™ do it properly, just focus on the actual observable effects and ignore the mechanics apart from maybe a general sanity check.
Alternately, if what you wanted to know about was chlorine trifluoride just accept the chemistry will not work the way you want it to.
Sorry if you found this offensive, unfriendly, unproductive or so on. It is not intentional, but telling someone you think their idea is a fundamentally flawed one with any kind of useful detail seems to always carry that risk. And unfortunately trying to make the answers somehow useful is the entire point on this site.
[Answer]
They use whatever the organism in question uses to keep from being killed by its own toxin, likely transporting the whole organism which is processed on demand. Some details about what kind of organism contains the stuff would be important for more detail.
considering the practices of the time they likely would use no protection and just use slaves or children for handling and just accept high mortality.
[Answer]
Under normal conditions, making this hazmat gear is impossible. I didn't choose Stoff-N (Chlorine trifluoride) as an anti-tank weapon for my story for nothing, and remember, it can ignite itself, and running with a full bronze set, without any openings in it is:
**A:** Impossible.
**B:** You will likely be suffocated because of the deprivation of oxygen in your hollow bronze statue before Stoff-N gets you.
**C:** Or you'd be just simply fried to death.
Stoff-N isn't just some whimsy ineffectual napalm, it's the distilled essence of the Chemist's nightmare, it will burn through 90 cm's of gravel just to get you, even its residues are more than enough to melt away tanks, and emulate WW1 a bit. This chemical was too much, even for the meth addicted, Hitler to use.
[What idiot would plan to stuff these things into genetically engineered lemons, then fire it from longbows, just to decimate a german tank?! (aside from Cave Johnson)](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/32097/redacted-redacted)
---
Thankfully, there is still hope:
Dr. John Drury Clark said:
>
> If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to
> reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a
> metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always
> recommended a good pair of running shoes.
>
>
>
Stoff-N is for bombs and not for flamethrowers, so you can get out of the "blast radius" if you're a good runner, just don't forget to wear a tight clothing and always keep a rag with yourself, that you can use to filter the air a bit, but don't forget to throw it away ASAP.
Your best chance is making **a large umbrella** (no Resident Evil references here) **that you can immediately throw away when it gets into contact with Stoff-N**.
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[Question]
[
**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 3 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/173922/edit)
Emperor Evulz has a worldwide empire of tyranny, and only the Chosen One™ has the magic to have a chance of stopping him. So he kills the Chosen One™, but the thing with prophecies is that they must turn out true no matter what. So the Chosen One™ is immediately reincarnated as a different person, a newborn, who will grow up and develop the same powers. This happens every time they are killed, and it is a mechanism understood by the emperor and his scientists.
So logical solution would be to trap the Chosen One™, and keep them locked up forever, so they don't reincarnate and can just rot away while Evulz' reign continues.
But Evulz doesn't do that. Instead he continues a world-wide witch hunt for the Chosen One™, stages a public execution of any suspicious child he finds, and afterwards goes searching again; initially for newborn, and then for babies, toddlers and kids who are as old as the time since the last time he executed a Chosen One™.
Why though?
My reasoning is that he uses it as a tool to deal with uppity underlings. "Oh, you say you want more freedom for your people? Very well, but while I consider that, have you ever noticed that your six-year-old daughter seems to behave a bit occult? I believe I saw her put a hex on that stuffed animal. I would send the secret police after her; but if you would forget about this proposal, I could overlook it..." The emperor is also effectively changing the public opinion so that the Chosen One™ is seen as an evil, in order to make the killing justified. And anyone who disagrees might be harbouring the Chosen One™ themselves!
So, questions:
* Would that work? Are there any weaknesses to this strategy that I missed?
* Are there any other advantages of routinely killing your reincarnating enemy, and the subsequent hunt for their reborn identity?
[Answer]
**It encourages rigorous documentation for all people**
First, assumptions:
* Worldwide empires are not manageable without fast communication. Therefore, this would must have at least late 19th century technology (especially telegraph), or the magical equivalents.
* The soul reincarnates into a child that is in the process of being born at that time the execution occurs.
If everyone knows that a child that was born at a time that was *not* when the last Chosen One was executed is a child with a better chance of reaching adulthood alive, then parents will desperately want to have documentation to prove when their child was born. The Emperor's bureaucrats will be delighted to oblige them by providing a continuous paper trail for every child with the full cooperation of their parents. This sort of documentation will be useful for future purposes such as conscription into the Emperor's service, taxation and secret police monitoring.
However, there are contradictions if Evulz is trying to simultaneously threaten his underlings, conduct public executions *and* condition everyone to believe that the Chosen One is pure evil that looks like a child:
* If Evulz is successful in convincing everyone that the Chosen One is an evil that must be destroyed, then he cannot threaten an underling with the death of their child. If he tells the underling that their daughter is the Chosen One then a true believer will say "I shall kill her now, my liege. Damn her for fooling me for this long!"
* If the Emperor wants to use this as a threat against a child to keep a parent/underling in line and the underling was at the last public execution, it will only work for parents unlucky enough to have a child of exactly the right age. This will be a fraction of a percent of the population (depending on how many years it is between each execution). In order to be able to threaten any parent, the date that the last Chosen One was killed must be unknown, therefore no public executions.
* As soon as expectant mothers hear that the current Chosen One has been caught and will be imminently executed they will be desperate to have their birth occur either earlier or later by C-section, inducement, meditation etc or will bribe officials to change the date/time of birth on records. This will result in deaths of potential future taxpayers by straining obstetric resources. More importantly, it will probably result in inaccurate records that will make it harder for the secret police to find the next Chosen One.
The Emperor is much better off quietly having the Chosen One and his immediate family killed in an "accident" when the child is about 10 years old. Then tell the super-trusted secret police team to look at all of the records for babies born of mothers who were in labour at the moment of death and spend the next decade identifying the reincarnated threat. For a population of 7 billion, there will be approximately 50,000 possibilities worldwide, maybe as few as 5000 if the moment of birth is tightly defined. A decent group in a worldwide secret police organisation can carry out thorough checks on the behaviour of each child in so small a pool over a 10 year period.
In the meantime, the populace can praise the Emperor for his continued triumph over the forces of evil while mourning the victims of the Chosen One's outrageous attacks ("the bridge collapsed as a result of a magic attack by the Chosen One, not dodgy maintenance by the Bureau of Works") without ever getting details that might disturb them.
[Answer]
**The hero will grow too powerful if left alive.**
If the hero is locked away eventually her/his powers will grow enough to be uncontainable.
The power takes time to manifest and mature so it gives Emperor Evulz time to find the new incarnation and get rid of it, failing to do so or keeping the hero alive will eventually lead to the prophecy being fulfilled.
If the power takes let's say 18 years to go to full 100% it gives enough time to locate, isolate and kill off new suspects without raising too many problems within the population.
[Answer]
Why keep killing the Hero? Because Emperor Evulz isn't suffering from locked-heroes-with-large-airvents syndrom. A hero in a cell could convince his jailors to let him out, or if the jailors are cruel the hero might someday escape his bonds and go on a murderous rampage which includes you, or the jailors might get soft for this random guy in solitary, or an uprising near the prison sees the hero released. It is simply too much of a risk to let the hero stay in a prison, better hunt down a magic child that doesn't know what's going on with a few garden variety murderers.
Otherwise justifying your actions based on a purpose seems spot-on. Many kings of old proclaimed that they were chosen by God and that justified their position and actions. Proclaiming that you are necessary for finding the Chosen Evil™ and that the needs of the many outweigh the lives of the few that get murdered in the process seems a pretty good deal. Christians and other religions have been extremely good at murdering supposed sinners, devil worshipers etc so going for actual magic children? No problemo!
[Answer]
# The Chosen One™ is a lie
The emperor keeps unity by making everybody believe they have a common enemy. If that enemy gets captured and subdued, people will see that as a solved problem and will start having funny ideas about how to run things better. But by force feeding people with stories about what rhe Chosen One™ did this time, and how only the imperial forces kept the disaster from escalating again, the emperor manages to keep the Status Quo.
This is a major plot point in George Orwell's *1984*. The target of the two-minutes hate might as well never have existed, or died long before the book. Still his ubiquitous menace kept people loyal to the party.
[Answer]
# Emperor Evulz doesn't believe in prophecies.
Yes, every couple decades there is some guy who challenges his rulership. But that's to be expected when you are an ~~evil~~ *pragmatic* emperor. Some of them even got close, but so far none of them succeeded before meeting their inevitable doom. The uneducated filthy peasants tend to call these people "Chosen Ones", but what proof do they have that there is anything "Chosen" about the latest wannabe rebel leader? They are just clinging to some ridiculous superstition that they will one day be "saved".
...insolent fools...
But anyway, the believe that there is a "Chosen One" causes those underlings to get stupid ideas, like the insane delusion that Emperor Evulz rulership might one day end and that there might be something they could do to make that happen. So better make sure that anyone who people call "Chosen One" dies a quick but painful death before they start another uprising which needs to be put down.
[Answer]
**The Emperor is Bored**
But actually wants an Immortal Inheritor to His Throne
The normal rebellions against his regime are easily put down. But the Chosen One? He learns and comes back to life. It’s a continuous back and forth game. The continuous tennis match he has with the Chosen One, though, *is just a front*.
In reality, the Chosen One is *the creation of the Emperor and his team of scientists/alchemists, the ultimate human being*. The Emperor hopes that the Chosen One will carry the legacy of the empire, eternally.
To this means, he and his propaganda team draft up the 'Prophecy': The Chosen One will end the 'immortal' Emperor Evul with his special magic, and grace the Throne of the Empire until the End of Time. Along with their secret alchemy, they are able to continuously track the Chosen One, and shape him with scenarios until the Chosen One grows up into the perfect inheritor.
With the help of the prophecy, and the secret guidance of the Emperor, the Chosen One will garner support from the masses until he finally overthrows the Emperor of Evulz... but at what cost? His Soul? His Comrades? His Own 'Father'?
Or, realizing that he has become that which he most loathed, doomed to sit on The Throne for all Eternity?
[Answer]
You need an enemy or your people will start thinking about revolting and who knows, maybe among those peasants will be the OG CO.
For what people knows Emperor Evulz is the good guy. Yeah, maybe they need to make some human sarcifices from time to time to the Sun God but at least the sacrifices are made from those pesky "others" we captured during our last war with them. That Emperor Evulz started becasue they wanted us to stop human sacrifices. And that would anger the Sun God.
Man, Emperor Evulz is so great. He think about everything and care for us.
So Evulz is killing two birds with one stone. One is to keeping his people in constant check and mildly unifinig them agains common enemy. The second on is that only him, and his scientics, knew where OG CO will spawn. So they can change the enemy once evey 10 years. And sometimes, like in every war, some women and children are killed. But hey, the Sun God.
[Answer]
# The Chosen One™ has a built in failsafe
I ran into a similar problem with one of my worlds so I included a failsafe. How I dealt with it was that if the Chosen One™ ceased being good (as in decided to conquer the world themselves) or stop being the Chosen One™ (as in decided to be a farmer) or were rendered incapable of performing the duties and responsibilities of the Chosen One™ (as in captured by the villain) then the Chosen One™ would either automatically die or revert to being a normal person and proceed with the reincarnation (in my world I choose death if they went evil or were intentionally left crippled by the villain, otherwise revert to normal person).
As such there is no point in the villain capturing the Chosen One™ or persuading them to join their side because of the failsafe.
[Answer]
I'm looking at this from the point of view of Ol' Evulz, who thinks a little differently to most of us.
The one thing he is truly terrified of is The Chosen One; after this amount of time it's an obsession, a phobia, a complex. You might think "yeah, just lock him up", but Evulz sees this giant foam-mouthed tarantula scuttling towards him and he's thinking "KILL IT WITH FIRE!"
Evulz also suspects that the longer the kid lives the more powerful he gets. Okay, it's only a theory, but why the hell take a chance on something that big. Kill him before he is old enough to speak, walk or make trouble.
In his more rational moments, Evulz also realises that killing the little vermin is the only way, because otherwise he's leaving the perfect weapon for his enemies just hanging around, ready to be sprung from prison and used against him. No, even blinded and mutilated, a prophecy is a prophecy and who knows that magic the kid might have.
Fourthly, maybe the kid doesn't have an infinite number of lives. The stars turn, the prophecy runs into statute of limitations or the warranty expires and it all changes.
Finally, he enjoys the game. It's whack-a-mole on an empire-wide scale, a game for extreme stakes and he gets a thrill because he wins every time. What else is there that can excite an immortal so much as a deadly enemy who can nevertheless be easily be beaten?
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It boosts morale!
As you said - it's a public execution. A magically empowered enemy of the state has been found, and put down. Time for another week-long holiday to celebrate the victory of our Immortal God-Emperor over the forces of Chaos.
If the Emperor has killed the Chosen One™ enough times to study and understand the reincarnation mechanism, he's ruled at least part of the world for long enough that *no one remembers otherwise*.
Besides - unfortunate name aside - there's no practical *reason* for him to be a moustache-twirling evil villain: There's no one left to conquer, the only person who can dethrone him is, by power of the prophecy, the Chosen One™ (and *that* situation is already under control) so he has no need to fear being usurped by his deputies. Why bother maintaining a state of Tyranny, when you can become Beloved Leader instead?
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Welcome to *the West*. Cliche cowboys go around doing cowboy things like lassoing indians, riding horses, and having duels. Naturally, these duels are of great importance to the gunslingers. Whether the setting is formal (two people in the bar had a disagreement and decide to duel it out) or informal (the lone sheriff faces down the bandit leader in a dusty street), it all winds down to the same scenario:
Two armed men (with revolvers) are facing each other with empty hands and have anywhere from 5 to 20 meters between them. Their hands are slowly inching towards their holstered guns, and the only way this duel is ending is with one of them dead.
What strategy should characters adopt in order to win these duels? Here are some possibilities that I've thought of:
* The gunslinger who wants to win shoots from the hip. As soon as the barrel of the revolver clears the holster, they aim by instinct and start shooting
* The gunslinger who wants to win aims and then shoots. Fully pulling out and cocking their revolver, they sight down it, aim and shoot while betting that anyone shooting from the hip has worse aim
Naturally, there are some other points that need to be considered when answering this question:
* Are classic "wild west" revolvers accurate enough that shooting from the hip with any hope of hitting a human-sized target is possible?
* Do gunslingers (today or historically) exist who can perform the accurate shot from the hip and how difficult a skill is it to obtain?
Edit:
Since there seems to be some confusion here, let me clarify that the setting I'm talking about is the *fictional* wild west, as it is portrayed in "western" movies and other media. I am fully aware of the fact that in an actual time-period accurate bandit-sheriff conflict, one of the two would probably just shoot the other while while they're unaware and taking a dump or something.
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"Wild Bill" Hickock is recorded as having shot a man (who apparently needed killing) through the heart at *75 yards* (about 68 m) with a cap and ball revolver. I can guarantee he didn't shoot from the hip in "fast-draw" fashion for that shot, though he probably didn't spend too long at it either, since the other man apparently wanted him dead.
Otherwise, there are advantages and disadvantages to either technique.
One of Robert A. Heinlein's characters (Lazarus Long) is on record with "Get a shot off *fast*. This upsets him long enough to make the second one count." This is a legitimate method, but if your opponent has "nerves of steel" it won't help you. Then again, if you're raising the gun to use the sights (presumably cocking the hammer as you bring your arm up, not least because some cap and ball revolvers used a notch in the hammer as the rear sight), you're depending on your opponent not getting lucky, or being a good enough shot to produce a crippling or mortal wound on the first shot with the muzzle barely clear of the holster.
If you check YouTube, you'll find videos of fast-draw artists who can clear leather and hit a target significantly smaller than a human torso, at ranges with your limits, in a small enough fraction of a second that you need slow-motion photography to see anything of the process. This technique, however, requires hundreds of hours of practice to build up to anything close to that speed, practice that pretty well has to be done in dry fire to avoid the risk of a crippling or fatal shot to your own thigh or leg.
So, bottom line, if you've practiced your way to be able to clear leather and hit a pie plate in, say, a fraction of a tenth of a second (the record, I believe, is closer to a hundredth), then you'll obviously want to use the fast-draw technique. If you haven't, you're as likely to shoot yourself as your enemy, and more likely still to miss everything that matters, trying this, and your best bet is to hope your opponent isn't one of those supermen, raise your gun, and use the sights.
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Gun battles of this sort are dramatic. However, it was not the "realistic" thing. The idea of two honorable martial figures facing each other in formal combat would be exceedingly rare. Most people would wind up getting ended by treachery or happenstance.
Far more usual would be for one gunslinger to sneak up on another, or to take a chance opportunity for revenge. The phrase to remember is: I really hate a fair fight.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_the_Kid#Recapture_and_death>
Garret was waiting in a dark room and Billy the Kid walked in and could not see who was there. Garret shot him.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man%27s_hand#Hickok>'s\_hand
Hickock played poker with his back to an open door, and an enemy of his saw him through the door and shot him in the back of the head.
Or the ending of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. "There are two kinds of men in this world, Tuco. There are men with loaded guns. And there are men who dig. You dig."
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good,_the_Bad_and_the_Ugly>
Or the line from *Blazing Saddles*
"Little bastard shot me in the ass!"
<http://www.whysanity.net/monos/blazing.html>
So, in your scenario where two guys are facing off down a street, the most likely thing is not that they draw and fire. It's that one guy leaps behind the water trough and starts shooting from cover. Or one of the guys has a buddy hiding in an upstairs window with a rifle. Or, as Billy the Kid did, one of them has sabotaged the other guy's gun.
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**"The only winning move is not to play" - WOPR in *Wargames***
Let us examine some of the background and issues with this scenario:
* If every duel ends in the death of one of the participants then less than 50% of gunslingers will survive their first duel, less than 25% will survive two duels etc. Hence the quote above - any intelligent person with a sense of self-preservation will do their best *not* to be in a duel. For those wondering about the "less than" - instantly killing or disabling someone with a handgun is really hard, requiring a brain or spine shot. Duels are likely to end with one person dying *first*, while the low medical technology of the day means that the "winner" either bleeds out second or dies later of infection.
* Skill is important, but random chance plays a significant role - misfires were relatively common with the ammunition of the "western" era. The more rounds the gunslinger has fired (often translating to a higher level of skill), the more they will be aware of this issue and do their best to avoid a duel.
* Cowboys are, well, *cowboys*. This sounds self-evident, but a cowboy's job is to look after a herd of cattle, not practice close combat. Cowboys spend a lot of time in close proximity to cattle and horses, with both species easily spooked by various stimuli including gunfire. Any cowboy who is spending lots of their time practising gunplay will be neglecting the job they are being paid to do and/or stampeding the livestock they are supposed to be working with, quickly becoming an ex-cowboy. On the topic of pay...
* Cowboys were not paid particularly well and ammunition was expensive. There were many stories from the era of children who were given one round each day to shoot something for dinner, with the child receiving a beating and the family going hungry if the shot went awry. Only very wealthy people could afford the ammunition to practice fancy shooting techniques that require lots of practice. Which leads to...
* Hip-shooting vs from the shoulder. Given a week or so of instruction and only a modest expenditure of ammunition, almost any physically fit person can be taught to aim and fire a handgun to reliably hit a "cowboy-sized" target about 10 metres away. Significantly more time is required to achieve a skill level to score consistent hits on the same target with aimed shots at 20 metres. Learning to hip-shoot to hit a target at 20 metres reliably would require more time and ammunition than the large majority of cowboys could afford. Yes, it is possible, and yes, there have been trick shooters in the past and present who have done it, but they are few and far between and there were no arcade games back then to allow for cheap practice.
* The dangers of drawing. There is a place for hip-drawing and moving your gun hand *backwards* while opening fire - that place is where the opponent is close enough to knock the barrel offline with their hand if you extended your gun arm! However, unless you are [John McClane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McClane) having a shootout in a crowded elevator, there is a huge risk in attempting to raise the barrel of your handgun to the horizontal the instant it clears your holster. That risk is that the barrel actually has not *quite* cleared the holster, in which case it is likely that the structural integrity of the holster will defeat the strength of your hasty grip as you try to rotate and you drop your handgun. Oops. Which is why some people who don't care about looking good on film but want to survive close combat are taught to seize the pistol grip, raise their gun hand all the way up to their armpit keeping the barrel vertical, *then* rotate the barrel to the horizontal and punch the gun hand forward. Once the "punching" motion has commenced a sufficiently good shooter can commence instinctive shooting without necessarily waiting for the gun arm to reach full extension.
* Revolvers from the period had perfectly adequate grouping capacity for shooting at the ranges being discussed (20 metres or less). Accuracy at that range was far more dependent on the firer's skill and technique than the limitations of the handgun. It would only be if a revolver had a barrel length of less than about 4 inches or was firing rounds of less than .38 calibre that accuracy might be affected noticeably at this range.
* Frame challenge: Shotguns and rifles. Training a person to reliably hit a cowboy-sized target at a hundred metres or more with a rifle takes much less effort and ammunition than training a person to hit a cowboy-sized target with a handgun at 20 metres. It also means that the gunslinger can avoid around 30 - 80 metres of travel, which can be quite wearying at the end of a long day of sociopathic killing. Shotguns have shorter range, but it is easy to train in their use and anyone who is hit with a load of double-oh buck at 20 metres is unlikely to shoot back. There is a reason why armies didn't fight wars with revolvers as their primary weapons...
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In modern real-life shootouts, combatants frequently miss even at point-blank range. Never underestimate the effect of nerves, anxiety and adrenaline overload on shooting accuracy. In a life-or-death situation, it's an open question how many men would even be able to find their gun, draw it, cock it and fire.
It's not Hollywood, I'm afraid...and with only six-shooters, at any significant range they'd probably need to stop and reload.
Hard to imagine why someone would get into a situation where they would either end up dead or a murderer, unless they were drunk enough to seriously affect their performance. Of course there are cases where it did happen, but very few compared to other outcomes. Most people would run away and count themselves lucky, regardless of loss of face, honour etc.
There will be a few ice-cold psychopathic killers. Faced with a trembling, panicked civilian, they will draw with decent speed but not extremely fast, aim and shoot accurately. They can be confident that the guy on the other end has little or no chance of hitting them.
The real challenge comes in persuading everyone in the saloon that you ARE that ice-cold psychopath...
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* The accuracy of the revolver mechanism is not really the problem. It is the accuracy of the hand and eye of the shootist. Look at this picture of a [revolver with a detachable stock](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Armystockfull.jpg). Same barrel, same trigger, yet it is much more accurate because the shootist can take better aim with the help of the stock tucked to the shoulder.
* Shooting is usually easier with a two-hand aimed stance like the [isoceles stance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isosceles_Stance), slightly more difficult with an one-hand aimed stance, and even more difficult with [unsighted shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_shooting).
* Unsighted shooting was taught by some military units, which suggests that it is not entirely pointless.
The "how difficult" question depends on the reflexes and hand-eye-coordination of the trainee. It can be learned, but some people take longer.
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Excellent points in the above.
However, if you want to get a good feel for the mechanics of clearing a holster, what weapons to use, and so on, a simple google of "Cowboy Action Shooting" and SASS "Single action Shooting Society will give you tons and tons and tons of information.
[SASS](https://www.sassnet.com/) and cowboy shooting events is kind of like a LARP with firearms. There are events that take place with revolvers that are single action (you must pull back the hammer and then pull the trigger for each shot), events with lever action rifles, and of course, shotguns. Most participants use cartridge based firearms, but there are several threads in the forums about participants using old Cap and Ball Navy Colt revolvers
Participants show up in cowboy gear, Establish characters, dress up in period sort of correct clothing.
It's a big thing in the U.S., and if the hardware wasn't so expensive, I'd join myself.
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Also note that there's an aspect of game theory here - your optimal strategy will depend on the skills of your opponent. If you know that you're dueling a crack shot who may not be the fastest, but never misses, your only hope is to get a shot off first. If you do not shoot first, you are dead, so you should shoot from the hip, even if you're likely to miss.
If you're dueling the fastest gun in the West, you may be better off going for accuracy. No matter what you do, your opponent will get the first shot off, which you can only hope will miss you. If you can aim your first shot before your opponent gets off a second one, this will give you the best chance of survival. Hip-shooting your first shot is a waste, since you're not going to shoot first anyway, so you might as well get a little more accuracy at the cost of a little more time, so long as you don't let your opponent get off a second shot.
Of course, this isn't terribly practical, since it requires knowing the speed and accuracy of any potential opponent, and cowboys don't have stats compiled on something like a baseball card. But perhaps you could glean something from the chatter at the local saloon to figure out if you're facing Deadeye Dan or Quickdraw Quentin, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
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When I was in boy scouts (mid 1970s), one week we had a demonstration from a modern quick draw expert. One of the more impressive demonstrations she did was to give one of the scouts a gun, with him aimed and ready. She drew and fired, hitting the target before he was able to react.
So a big part of the strategy: **shoot first**.
Apparently, the modern quick draws are much much faster (cited in a comment as 0.06+ seconds) than the old west quick draws (I think the demonstrating lady cited that as >0.5 seconds). This is a matter of practice, and selecting proper equipment.
So a second big part of the strategy: **practice**.
Draw strategy just becomes whatever you are good/practiced at.
Your survival depends on if (after you shoot first) the other guy can still draw an shoot you before he is dead. So aim for the head, and practice dodging after shooting. If you happen to run into another well practiced quick draw, expect to die, but plan to take him with you.
As a point of information: blanks were used exclusively in the demonstration. But blanks are lethal to about 20 feet, so we were all well back, and she was shooting to the side of the stage.
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Have a pocket mirror and the light towards you, with one eye closed. You blind the enemy with a litte mirror, polished gun or your watch, while shooting at the enemy from the shadow of your hat.
Another solution would be to have the first bullet loaded with smoke- you shoot and duck in a cloud of instant smoke. Then shoot with a good aim resting on the ground and providing a minimal target.
Finally play really unfair- armor up (terrakotta-shingles in bags would do) and have some theatrics blood ready. Shoot while pretending to stumble hit.
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English Longbows were typically selfbows made of yew, and were pretty effective at what they did, however, I’ve heard before that while composite bows, like the Mongolian, could have less raw power, but were more effective when it came to their power, and allowed relatively longer ranges and stronger shots for smaller poundages.
With that in mind, would it be possible to build a composite longbow, and would they present any significant improvements on the longbow’s performance? And even then, would they be worth their materials and extended labour when compared to a simple composite bow or a longbow?
EDIT - Also, assume late medieval technology and that you can refer to the type(s) of composite bow you find most suited for improving a longbow’s capabilities, whichever these may be.
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## Japanese Yumi
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hoVtbm.gif)
Bicéphal [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
These were made of a [composite of bamboo, leather, and other wood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumi#Shape) and definitely the same length as the longbow. Note, these did not typically use sinew and bone and developed in Japan because bamboo was plentiful, easy to harvest, and cheap as a material but did not do well as single piece construction (like say yew).
## Qing Dynasty Horn Bows
These bows were typically [just a little under 6 ft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_archery#Qing_dynasty_horn_bows). Making them a candidate as a long bow. Made in similar fashion to the Mongol bow (which these were heavily influences on) with sinew, bone, leather, and wood.
## Improvement on Longbow
**From standing position on the ground - none**1.
The Longbow would be as powerful if not more-so with all the usual trade-offs based on the individual archer, location being used at, and type of armor being used by enemies (heavy armor and Tate).
**For use on horse back - you cannot do this with a longbow**.
The size with the shooting style of an English Longbow makes it unsuitable for horseback whereas one of the primary usages of the Asian model composite bows was [horseback archery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabusame).
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So the real answer to "are there significant improvements" is: *it depends*.
Fighting in heavily wooded area or any other location where you can get bow snagged easily? Then the Qing bow's slightly smaller size would be worth the reduction in penetration. Fighting armored knights on open fields with plenty of horses available? Then the Yumi could be a better option for "shock" tactics. Other story-based reason - then fit to bow as needed.
1: *Draw strength when considered with force distribution in a bow makes the "power" of a Mongol bow similar enough to an English longbow that they are, typically, considered equal in performance. We don't know how they would have done against full plate (when considering arrows) as Attila attacked well before full plate was used on the battlefield in any significant way.*
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The classic Yew longbow was indeed a composite bow, with the bow stave carved from a section of the tree which contained both heartwood and sapwood. The sapwood is about 1/3 of the thickness of the bow and provides the tension, while the heartwood provides the other 2/3 of the bow and is strong in compression
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6iIAN.jpg)
*Cross section of a Yew branch showing how the longbow stave is carved*
A laminated longbow would then simply do the same by gluing strips of wood together, with the back being made of a wood with good tensile strength and a wood with good compressive strength chosen for the belly of the bow. In the middle ages, this was often done using hickory and lemonwood (with hickory making up the back), but other combinations are possible.
A bow made with modern composite materials would need to follow the same principles, with the layup using materials strong in tension as the back while strong in compression as the belly of the bow. Since even wooden longbows in the late middle ages could have draw weights of over 100 lbs, and required training and strengthening from a young age (archers from that time are often identified by the asymmetric bone density and marks from musculature in their skeletal remains), it would actually be easy to make a bow from modern composites which would be impossible for a normal human to draw. Crossbows with draw weights of over 1000 lbs are possible, but only because a trigger and spanning mechanism are provided.
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As I understand it, the composite bow wasn't unknown in England, it simply couldn't stand up to the damp winter weather. The glues available at the time were very limited.
Similarly, bows made from yew would dry out and lose their flexibility in hot, dry climates, where composite bows worked better.
We tend to over-value technology and under-value practicality. Knowledge like this would have spread along trade routes very quickly and been adopted if it was useful.
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As the two previous answers were both very good the only other thing is mentioning that most bows evolved with use over many generations.
The mongol bow for instance was adapted over hundreds of years into a bow that could be used effectively from horseback or on foot.
Due to the mongols need to cover large areas of land quickly the horse was necessary and therefore the bow.
The english longbow on the other hand developed from not only the environment but also the available materials. Also they had limited cavalry in comparison to the mongols and therefore no need for a bow that could be used from horseback.
The intended target is also an element at play.
The long bow was very successful when coupled with a Bodkin arrow when targeting armoured knights while a Broadhead arrow lacked the armour penetration to do much damage to armoured targets.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
Closed 6 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/72187/edit)
I was thinking about this for a while. Why are common doors designed as they are today?
I'm particularly interested in the use of the door knob. I was thinking that it would be more useful and practical if it was located at the bottom and used with our feet. Like somewhat of a pedal design.
This way, our hands are free to carry more stuff when passing through. And you just close it with your heel on your way out. In addition, door knobs are used with all sorts of hands, making them dirtier than all sorts of things. No one ever cleans the door knobs. Ever.
And the lock, if needed, can remain to be used with your hands, using a standard key.
While the door handle for our hands seems more natural since we mostly rely on our hands when it comes to tools and technology, this seems like a smarter design. Despite that, I haven't came across this kind of doors yet.
Why would we choose the hand-knobs over feet-knobs, other than the tradition (which seems to be the reason behind it)?
This is actually connected to my idea of finding the best door design that relies purely on mechanical technology. No electronics or stuff, just pretty old rusty metals and gears. (Throwing something like the automatic eye-scan-lock, auto-slide doors out of the window.)
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Are my pedal-doors superior enough over the classic doors, or perhaps for some reason actually not? Any ideas to enhance them?
(Don't want to over-complicate it, simple & optimized for everyday life is good enough.)
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On top of kingledion's answer:
you are assuming that all doors are opened by pushing, which indeed comes pretty natural with one foot. But try pulling a door with your foot: you won't be able to move aside and let the door open, because you have only one "free" foot (the other one is engaged in pushing the knob and pulling the door).
And don't forget that exercising force on a door on the middle of its side (where the hand operated knob is) equally distributes wear on hinges withouth adding additional loads.
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The mechanism for holding the pedal-door shut is at the bottom of the door. If it is not, then there is a complicated mechanism that transfers mechanical pressure at the pedal to a latch 2 feet up. This is more expensive and more prone to failure.
If you keep the latch at the bottom, this means that if you apply enough pressure at the top of the door, you gain a lot of mechanical advantage, and can possibly damage the hinges, or even gain entry. If the mechanism is in the middle of the door, as in our standard doors, there is much lower mechanical advantage.
I think that just normal wear and tear on a bottom-pedal door, whether bottom latched or middle latched, would make it mechanically unreliable enough that you would prefer a hand-opened door.
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You are absolutely right in that we build doors the way we do because we always have built them that way. Part of the reason for it is that it is one of those near perfect designs that you occasionally come across. Various answers have mentioned different aspects of what we consider a traditional door, and when taken together, you get a complete picture.
Here are some of the reasons why a foot latch is less likely to catch on:
How do you close it from the other side? You'd have to add a handle as grasping things with a foot is both difficult and awkward. foot-doors are only convenient for one direction of travel.
The latch is not in a spot that promotes security. I'm not talking about lock, security, I'm talking about accidents, wind, etc. Pressure against the top of the door will cause a shift that can reduce the life of hinges and let in drafts.
Anything you do to address the above adds to the complexity and therefore expense of the door.
I thought pocket doors that slide into a wall might be a solution, but you get even more complexity and less in flexibility of placement.
It would be easier, cheaper, and probably marketable to create a laser-robotic door knob cleaner.
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I remember that once I visited what you could call a "door factory".
They created doors with interesting designs for different purposes: some of those for example where like bars embeded in the walls: the right one has got the even bars and the left one the odd. That allowed the door to be semi-closed so air and sun can pass throught it but a person couldn't.
It's not like we haven't tried to improve doors, most of the time it's because current design is the more convenient and less expensive.
From what I learnt from that visit I can guess why your design won't replace current doors easily:
1. Cost: Having something to open the door (pedal) separated from something to lock the door (key) require 2 different mechanism to work together, therefore it will be more expensive. Also translating the energy from a pedal (you push it down) to the movement that will actually open the door (that needs to be applied in another direction) will require an aditional mechanism, that must de added to the final cost.
2. The door could be open by mistake: If you are just passing by and accidentaly open the door without noticing it. Also, a dog/cat/toddler can activate the mechanism, so the door will be less secure.
3. Accesibility: It will be a nightmare for disabled people or those in wheelchair.
There are different approaches to the: Don't use knob nowadays. For example, a bar in the middle of the door that once pressed releases the lock mechanism and allows at the same time the door to be open just with one movement. This way the only thing you have to do is press the door for one second and it will open, it's easy to use for disabled people, you can open it without you arms just by pressing it with your back and can even be activated by a wheelchair.
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If a door needs to be unlocked (with a key, swipecard or code) the hand has to be used for that, even in your proposal. I suppose you could have very big buttons on the floor and tapdance the code to get in. If you get round this need for hands with face recognition, combadge detection etc., you might as well motorise the door as well.
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A few design ideas that might make this feasible:
**Your culture uses [sliding doors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dji) rather than hinged**. This eliminates the "opens towards you" problem and synergizes nicely with the following ideas.
**The pedal is on the floor, not part of the door**. The user steps on the pedal, which releases the latch in the opening side of the frame. This means you don't have to follow the door with your foot, which could prove difficult if you were carrying a heavy load. The user then either slides the door open with their foot or...
**After the latch is opened, the door slides open due to counterweights**. Mechanically more complex, and perhaps not for the average home depending on the level of technology and wealth, but nevertheless is a purely mechanical solution. To close the door, the user simply slides the door shut until the latch engages.
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Regardless of design you come up with, the question becomes, **Why?** If you want your world to develop differently from our own, you should come up with some rationale. Here are some possibilities:
**Germophobia** - Who knows who last touched that doorknob?
**Using your hands is ignoble** - I'm not some plebian who needs to use his hands to do commmonplace task. I'd rather spurn this door with my foot.
**Everyone has their hands full** - Whether gesticulating prayers to the god of passage or just simply carrying all their work around, everyone's hands are too occupied for door handles.
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I'll go against the grain here and say that yes, indeed, you can perfectly build a door which does require hands. I would not use a pedal either, though, as balancing can be tricky, especially while holding something complex in your hands.
If you've ever been to a restaurant, you should have noticed the kitchen doors. See that waitress with the loaded plates?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CFNV6.jpg)
*AP Photo/Ted S. Warren*
She's got both hands occupied, so *obviously* she won't be using either to open a door. How is she going to do it?
Backward.
Place your back against the door, and push the door with your back (and butt) as you slowly rotate around the door's hinges axis.
In really frequented kitchens, to avoid accidents, the doors will only open one way: one door to go in, one door to go out, so that two waitresses don't collide; it's also applicable to your case.
As for closing, it's automatic. You can use counterweights or springs, depending on your technology level, it's not terribly complicated to figure out.
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First what comes to mind is the force needed to open such doors and that force impact on fragility of material used to create doors.
Door knobs and handles are located in the optimum place for ease to open doors and stability.
When you need to use doors with busy hand you install revolving doors, swing doors or just plastics curtains.
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It would be really cool if you could build cybernetic arms with incredible strength, power coil guns with a man portable unit, or use power armor for extended combat. One of the ways this is justified in video games like Fallout is the use of microfusion power cells. The idea is that you could generate power with a small portable fusion device.
Recent advances hint that man made fusion could be a viable energy source (<https://pubs.aip.org/phyfsicstoday/Online/41898/National-Ignition-Facility-surpasses-long-awaited>), but the equipment needed must be gargantuan. If fusion were viable as a power source could you fit the equipment in your house? Your car? Your backpack?
Is there a lower limit on the size of the equipment needed to achieve a fusion power cell that could power man portable devices?
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So lets cheat.. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell> but its miniaturized to dust-grain size- and its combined with other diamond anvil cells.
All get a intake valve, a wall that can be temporary charged so that it pushes away the atom to fuse. And once fusion happens, the energy is extracted by extracting the heated up gas- and by using one anvil to push back upon another anvil. Put all that in a ring, falling through the medium, gradually creating heat you extract. Voila.
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**From a worldbuilding perspective, as small as you want**
Before 1925 newly hired engineers at General Electric would be told, as a joke, to develop a frosted lightbulb. The experienced engineers believed this to be impossible. In 1925, newly hired Marvin Pipkin got the assignment, not realizing it was a joke, and succeeded.
Back when I was designing semiconductors (pre 1997) we knew... *we knew...* that a FET gate couldn't be built smaller than about 30nm. The math proved it. Tests proved it. We knew it as an absolute truth of science. *(You're about to discover why I'm contemptuous of anyone who thinks science closes any interpretation.)* Then, in 2016, Berkley Labs built the first 1nm gate.
In other words, anybody who tells you, "yes, there's a limit, and here's the science to prove it" doesn't actually know. Isaac Asimov toyed with the idea of limitless miniaturization in his *Foundation* series, which had fusion generators in necklace pendants.
*In fact, [in your previous question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/251133/40609), you list references that blithely discuss what ten years ago would have caused serious presenters to be laughed off the stage. You presented papers about synthetic nano-dust sensors. We can't even build something thousands of times bigger... but we're so sure of its potential today, we're seriously presenting papers about it.*
**So, how small could I go and still be believable?**
Let's throw all caution to the wind and talk about *molecular fusion generators.* In a practical sense, what will limit the size of the generator is the amount of power you need... not circa-2023 science. Need a gigawatt to power your ~~super cool Delorean time machine~~ city? You might need something the size of a house. Maybe. Want to power a house? Let's declare the generator to be the size of a shoe box buried in your front yard with a sign that reads something like "[Don't dig up the big box of plutonium, Mark](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/26ffba3b-fd18-478a-8c89-0a8480078620/embed?autoplay=false&responsive=true)."
All you need to do is power your party lights? *Molecular fusion generator!* Let's be unreasonably pessimistic and say it's the size of an [Energizer 303 battery](https://www.energizer.com/specialty-batteries/357-303-battery) and that it'll happily run up to 1,000 party lights *for the remainder of human sovereignty.*
**In other words, believability isn't based on size, it's based on power output**
And when it comes to worldbuilding, believability is the name of the game. The only people I've met who thought Asimov's pendant personal shields with integrated fusion generator were "unrealistic" have been people who think the Science Of Today is the end-all God-wrote-it-in-stone interpretation of science.
No it ain't.
I frankly don't know how small a fusion generator can be built. But I do know they can and will be built smaller than whatever the size is of the first fusion generator. And I can believe a lot smaller.
As long as we're talking about party lights. :-)
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To my mind, the major problems you have to overcome are these:
* make the energy recovery equipment as small as possible
* make the radiation shielding as small as possible
These things are in conflict.
There are three ways you can extract power from a fusion reaction:
* Heat. Just let some massive object absorb all the energy, thermalize, and use it to run some kind of heat engine like a classic [Brayton cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brayton_cycle) power plant or something more unusual like a [Stirling cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_cycle) engine.
* Ions. A load of those fusion byproducts are are charged and have lots of kinetic energy. Aim them through some conducting loops, extract that energy as electricity.
* Electromagnetic radiation. Fusion plasma is pretty hot, and so tends to radiate in the x-ray spectrum. You can build [x-ray photoelectric converters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion#X-ray_photoelectric_converter) as a sort of analog to photovoltaic cells for ionizing radiation.
Heat engines are obviously simplest, because we can make them now. Unfortunately, you need some kind of working fluid, and a heat sink, and some mechanical stuff to make your generator work. These things tend to be quite large, quite heavy, and require various kinds of ongoing maintenance in a way that solid-state direct conversion systems do not. The existence of compact fossil-fuelled generators shows that they can be made relatively compact, though you probably wouldn't want to carry one around all day, and it could be pretty noisy.
Neutral particle radiation, in the form of fast neutrons, isn't suitable for direct energy conversion like ions or EM radiation, and so can only really contribute to the energy output of your system via thermal effects (neutrons heat the reactor shield, cooling loop pulls the heat out) or using their energy to do nuclear chemistry, like tritium breeding or actinide burning. Those activities are potentially quite large and industrial-scale things, and in any case not necessarily very useful to miniaturize.
More importantly, neutron radiation is *very highly penetrating*. This means you need massive shielding around any highly neutronic fusion reaction. The 14 MeV fast neutrons trucking out of a nice easy-to-ignite D-T reaction are particularly problematic (eg. shield using [5-6ft of water](https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/16291147/16291147.pdf) or [10s of centimeters of iron, lead and plastic](https://pubs.aip.org/aip/adv/article/12/3/035137/2819267/Optimal-shielding-structure-design-for-a-typical)), and as such neutronic fusion reactions may be impractical to miniaturize too far... maybe train size, but much smaller starts requiring implausible shielding that can't really be made out of matter, only magic.
[Aneutronic fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion) is better, but the problem there is that the plasma is very hot and as such loses a lot of energy through [Bremsstrahlung radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung). High energy x-rays can be captured by photoelectric converters, but again, they're highly penetrating so you need quite a thickness of converters around the fusion source. Because the converters will end up looking a bit like layers of metal foils with gaps between them, they're quite low density compared to regular shielding and therefore quite bulky. If you could make a perfect athermal fusor, where you can extract the fusion energy from the ions before it gets transferred to the electrons in the fusion plasma and released as Bremsstrahlung x-rays, you could make something much more compact... the Focus Fusion project tried to do this with a [dense plasma focus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_plasma_focus), but they've only managed to *reduce* the issue, not eliminate it.
And aneutronic fusion is often more like "*its basically aneutronic don't make such a fuss*" like p-11B, which can produce 3 MeV fast neutrons from a 11B + p → 11C + n side reaction, which happens about 0.1% of the time but that's still often enough to require hefty shielding. Maybe, 3He + 3He fusion in an athermal fusor might give you the no-neutron, minimal-x-ray reaction you need, but *that* reaction apparently has a wide range of reaction product energies, meaning it isn't very useful for direct energy conversion from ion kinetic energy for various engineering reasons, because physics hates you and your ideas.
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> could you fit the equipment in your house? Your car? Your backpack?
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>
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In order, I would guess
* Yes, you could probably have something in your basement, especially if it was underneath a nice thick concrete slab.
* Probably. I'm pretty certain you could fit one in a big truck, but a reasonable-sized car doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility.
* No, I don't think you could have a backpack-mounted fusion reactor, because you'll either have too much radiation, too bulky a generator, or too much power conditioning equipment to make something that small.
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The normal route with fission would be to convert the radiation energy into heat, and then convert that into electricity. This is not very efficient. In theory, the nuclear energy has very little entropy, so thermodynamics lets you convert a lot of that energy directly into other forms, but to do that we would have to control the geometry of the nuclear collision, or do some Maxwell's Demon magic to extract the energy from the energetic particles in whatever direction they fly off in. I have always imagined that is what 'dilithium crystals' did. That is way beyond anything we can do at present, even if thermodynamics allows it: we can align nuclear spins at millikelvin temperatures; controlling the geometry of how two tiny balls hit each other is going to be very hard.
If you convert your nuclear energy into heat, you have to get rid of a lot of heat. Not only will you have to get rid of the kilowatts of heat that your apparatus is consuming, the power plant will have to get rid of many times that. It won't be like a battery - it will have to have a lot of heat sinking.
However, suppose that all you want is a burst of radiation. This gets around the efficiency question because the radiation is the end product. As a lightbulb burns out, it will momentarily generate enormous temperatures, as the inductance of the apparatus wants to keep the current flowing, but the last bit of conductor turns straight from solid tungsten to plasma at metallic densities, emitting hard thermal x-rays from temperatures millions of degrees. Suppose your wire had a deuterium-tritium filled void in the centre. If you could control the implosion geometry, you could get fusion. You now have to generate a pulsed current of millions of amps for a few tens of picoseconds to drive the thing. This could be done using a Marx generator, and those can be huge. If you want a one-off device, it could be a slab of piezo crystal and C6 explosive sandwich. The whole gadget could be hand-sized. It might be possible to make a device that worked more than once if you could store the energy from one implosion and use it to drive the next.
That was the answer to the first half of the question. The actual reactor is sub-millimetre scale but the energy to drive the implosion takes some organising.
Next: the radiation. D-T fusion generates a high energy gamma and neutron. Those are very penetrating radiations. It would go through 30 cm of aluminium, or similar alloy. However, it would be stopped by a few millimetres of depleted uranium, which would also release more energy. This is good design from a radiation shielding point of view, but it also means you have in effect made a fast breeder reactor, which is where we are now. Fusion is not 'unlimited clean energy'.
If I more the goalposts a bit, I can get you in a much more feasible place. Suppose you have a Thorium reactor, that does not have by-products that can be used for weapons. It does not need the uranium processing cycle that uranium uses, so you could seal the reactor with its fuel, and when it's power has dropped too far to be useable, you dump it or recycle it. If you are using Uranium, you can seal it if you have a wave reactor - one half conventional and one half fast breeder. But that's another story.
If you are using this to drive a car, you only need the peak power for acceleration. It is possible to have a sporty car with a 300cc engine if you put the energy into a flywheel or an ultra capacitor, and get it out for the bursts when it is necessary. This would not work for a helicopter, which is fighting like mad all the time not to fall, but it would work for many other things. If you have a Thorium reactor providing steady power, and put smarts into your powertrain, you should get a lot more out of a smaller power source. This is the way electric cars are going. If you have a powered exoskeleton, it will have a springy step that recycles the energy from one pace to make the next. It can use technology from the near future.
But probably not fusion IMHO.
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If you want to work with Deuterium-Tritium fuels, then the fusion reaction will generate 14MeV neutrons. To breed Tritium you need about 1m of blanket, with neutron multipliers and Lithium. Beyond that, to shield the rest of the world from the ionising effects of the neutrons that make it past the blanket, then you need at least another metre or so of concrete. These numbers are based on nuclear cross sections, so they are unlikely to change even if technology improves. (The only alternative I am aware of would be aneutronic fusion, which has other complications.) So if the part where the fusion reaction occurs is infinitessimaly small, then the reactor is at least a sphere 4m in diameter.
All currently theorised fusion reactor designs need a lot of infrastructure such as heat sources, fuel storage, equipment to measure and control your reactor, and some form of energy extraction (e.g. heat exchanger and steam turbine). Most need powerful magnets and an accompanying cryoplant. The size of the infrastructure depends more on engineering that physics, so it's harder to fix a lower limit. With current technology, 1000sq.m. is a very optimistic estimate of how small it could be built.
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I want to make a hypothetical planet that is 26% the mass of earth, with 64% the radius. Because I want a relatively short day to keep temperatures more stable, but I don't want a super fast rotation that would dramatically affect the weather, I'm wondering if I just kept the rotation speed the same as Earth, if the day would naturally be shorter by virtue of the planet being smaller. Not sure if this is a dumb and obvious question.
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The length of the day is strictly a function of the time earth takes to rotate. If your planet takes 24 hours to rotate then regardless of its radius, it will have a 24 hour day.
You can develop an intuition for this yourself by imagining a coffee cup and a dinner plate. Mark a spot on each of them. Put the cup on the plate with the marked spots in the same place. Note how when you turn the plate the cup turns at the exact same rate. Note how it takes exactly 1 turn for the marked place on the cup and plate to end up back where they started. If that spot was high noon, and a rotation was 24 hours, then there will be 24 hours between high noon on both the cup and the plate despite their different radii.
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## Visual demonstration
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fQnT3.gif)
Just above you have two planets, the biggy, earthy one and the little one you're making. I added Snakeybot the light green square and Doomy the dark blue one standing respectfully on the big and small planet to see the planets' rotation. As you can see, both falls into night and wake into the sun at the same time.
The model has some simplifications we have to remember : First I supposed the light was coming in straight lines. In real-life, you'd have a very, very little deviation angle. Not even big enough to see a single pixel move in my image. So we can move that away.
Then, there is an atmosphere. I'm not well-versed enough on this matter to have very accurate guesses, but it should be relatively minimal : sunlight can travel quite some distance under Earth atmosphere before it's dissipated, and the [light deviation due to it traversing a medium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index) should be constant, regardless of the height of the atmosphere. If the air was very dusty though, you'd get the feeling of earlier nights on the big planet with the big atmosphere especially near the poles, as light will get absorbed by more dust before reaching you.
Moreover, planets are not perfectly round. First they're more squashed on the poles, but more interestingly they have mountains. This has a slight impact on when you have sunsets or sunrises. If Snakeybot and Doomy the squares were mountains, you'll see that people standing on top of them will have a little more suntime, and people behind them will be in the dark earlier. On Earth you can lose a good 30 min to 1 hour of daylight by living in enclosed valleys. Here's what it looks like :
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0QKdL.jpg)
Sunlight will be less affected by green Snakeybot's presence than with blue Doomy, whether you stand on top of it (more sunlight) or behind it (less sunlight). This however make two important assumptions : the mountains are the same size, and they're like, gigantic (closer to 100-200km than [8km](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayas)). The effect of correctly sized-mountains would be much smaller, or even non-existent if the mountains are scaled down, too!
## What can we conclude?
Changing the size but keeping the turn rate will have no meaningful impact by itself. You'll do have to increase its rotation speed at some point to have shorter days.
Don't fall in despair though : Atmospheres are heavily influenced by many other factors. With some tweaking in landmasses, atmosphere composition, air temperature and so on, you could perhaps get shorter days with about the same weather behaviour.
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# Depends on the measurement of speed
## v
V is the speed on the surface. It is defined as $\vec v=\vec \omega \times \vec r$, where r is the radius. Smaller earth has smaller surface velocity. Because the vector v and the rotational axis are orthogonal to one another at the equator, the formula falls into $| \vec v |= |\vec \omega| |\vec r|$ there. So the *surface speed* goes down, due to the radius going down.
## $\omega$
$\omega$ is the rotational speed of a body, measured in rotations per time. It is the inverse of the rotational period $\tau=\frac 1 \omega$, the time it takes for one rotation of the body.
$\omega$ won't change if it is still one full revolution per 24 hours ($\tau=\pu{24 h}$). Unless you change $\omega$ and $\tau$ and thus the number of rotations in a given fixed time, you will keep the days to be always the same: $$\tau=\pu{1 day}=\pu{864000 s}=\frac {1}{\omega}$$ and $$\omega= 0,11574\times 10^{-6} \frac{1} {\pu s}=\frac 1 \tau$$
## Effects
By shrinking Earth, you actively alter the Coriolis force on items, which is by the speed compared to earth's surface, which of course is different since we have a different speed of the surface: $$\vec {F\_C}=-2m (\vec \omega \times \vec v')$$
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**Do you mean speed of rotation of a point on the surface relative to the center, or rotations relative to the sun?**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8Wew3m.png)
If a big planet and a little planet are rotating such that it is noon at the X at the same time for each, you can say they are rotating at the same rate. It takes the same time for each planet to complete one full rotation relative to the sun.
On these two planets rotating at the same rate relative to the sun, the X is moving faster on the big planet relative to its center. The X has to complete a large circumference circle in the same time that the small planet X completes the small circumference circle.
You can have small planets with day length the same as larger planets.
All that said and drawings drawn I am not sure speed of rotation has a direct relationship with weather.
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If you spin the ball to do 25 rotations per second, then it will do 25 rotations per second, and the length of each rotation will be 0.04 seconds. Nothing fancy about that. And the good news is that any speed here is permissible. Just spin it as fast or as slow as you want, and in the vacuum of space it will keep spinning. So you can really set the day to be as long or as short as you want it to be.
Mind you though that faster spinning speeds result in a larger centrifugal force and thus the apparent surface gravity will get smaller. For Earth this centrifugal force is fairly small, but for your planet it might be a bit more noticeable. Best double check.
Now, orbital mechanics are different and the mass of the planet affects how far from the center (star) and how fast it will be going (well, if you want it to stick around that is). This would determine the length of your year as well as how hot the planet will be (the latter also depends on the size and type of the star). This is the real thing you should be worried about. This is what makes many such quaint hypothetical planets nonviable. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the topic to help you here.
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As mentioned in other answers, the length of the rotation would not change.
However, if you mean "daylight hours", that's a bit different. The "lit" side of the planet depends on the surface exposed to the sun/star. For a basic model, we can model the sun/star as a point light source. Then we draw tangential lines to the surface. [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WclTT.jpg) Basically, the smaller your planet, the more of it will be illuminated at any given time. If you planet is reasonably distant from the star, then the change is negligible, but it is there - you may have a couple seconds more daylight.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Is it possible to genetically modify a being after birth?](/questions/1092/is-it-possible-to-genetically-modify-a-being-after-birth)
(5 answers)
Closed 10 months ago.
I'm positing a world where a group of humans have become stranded. They discover that something in the environment mutates human DNA. They develop a means to slow the drift toward no-longer-human. My question is: could mutations in human DNA change an individual in his lifetime as opposed to across generations? Also, how rapid could this change be?
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In an organism as large and complex as a human, no. The results of somatic mutations during one's lifetime are either "nothing", "cancer", or "radiation sickness", and the results of germline mutations are either "nothing, because the embryo is non-viable" or "changes appear in the next generation".
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**The answer is yes and no**
*Can you change your arm and hand into a flipper? No. Can't do that in real life (that hasn't stopped people from using it in their stories, though). But, let's get back to that in a moment and focus on what you can do.*
The answer is yes, if you consider the answers to [Is it possible to genetically modify a being after birth?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/1092/is-it-possible-to-genetically-modify-a-being-after-birth). **But you need to understand that such modifications are NOT changing an arm and hand into a flipper.** The result of changes we can do today is still very much human.
Modern gene therapy isn't even changing (to my knowledge) things like eye color. They're modifying genes that lead to disease or disability. If anything, what we're doing today is making a human, *more human.*
But, from this perspective, you could believably make simple cosmetic changes to humanity that's already represented by the human genome. Do you want a roman nose? Or blue eyes rather than brown? Do you want your hair to have the tendency to grow longer? All are within the realm of what it is to be human, and I could believe that such changes could be made and the body would go about making the changes.
Well... the more I think about changing my nose to a roman nose... that's a lot of cartilage to move around and reshape. I'll be honest with you, I'm having trouble believing that changing the "your nose looks like X" part of my genome *as an adult* would do anything at all to my nose. In a real, practical sense, the job of that DNA strand is done. It's like changing a piece of startup software after the program is running. You could do it, but what would be the point? (Unless you had children....)
**And here's the "no..."**
The answer is no (remember, *in real life*) if what you're thinking are things like changing my arm and hand into a flipper — something decidedly *not human.* The adult body isn't clay that can be molded into a new shape. Remember, I've concluded that the DNA for what (e.g. my arm) looks like has been used and is now meaningless. Even with the use of stem cells, you'd need to *replace what you want changed.* In other words, your environment could make the change to your DNA, but nothing would happen until you chopped the arm off *and then let it sit for a month or two in a vat of stem cells.* (I'm not even sure that would work, but we're inside the world of suspension of disbelief.)
The idea that changing DNA on the fly results in a new-you on the fly is ripe SciFi fodder used and consumed over and over in nearly every independent-episode show or comic book. It might have started with Spider-Man, but it ran amok with Star Trek:TNG. (I'm looking at you "Identity Crisis" and "Genisis"!). And from that perspective, *there's nothing at all stopping you from using the trope.* It's been used so many times that people don't really question it, they just accept it as entertainment.
But could it really happen? I'm going to go out on a limb and say, "nope." Not in your lifetime. Not ever.
**OK, but could it work at all?**
We could merge a couple of tropes and come up with the idea that radiation has changed my DNA and I then married a true-blood human and the result was hybrid children that look a bit too much like the creatures from the *Tremors* movie franchise. Great idea!
But if you're asking, "is that realistic?" the answer is always, No. Radiation does not change DNA in productive ways (and even if you don't want your arm looking like a flipper, that's still a productive change). Radiation kills things. The mutations are always damaging if not deadly.
*But reality is overrated.*
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The other answers all confirm that a traditional mutagen such as radiation or chemicals in the environment could not cause thesort of gradual mutation in living organisms that you are seeking - in the short term they would only produce cancers and other tumerous growths. But how about the McGuffin of tiny **AI** nano-bots (seeded by some hyper-intelligent beings in the past), that are programmed to infiltrate the bodies of any suitable species they come across and adjust/reprogramme the genetic code of all their cells.
In that way you can propose any wierd or wonderful mutation you like. Want the ability to run faster and jump higher - then minor changes in the genetic code could induce the growth of stronger muscles. Want flippers - then a more significant rewrite of the code could result in arms/legs slowly metamorphosing into them. Want big changes - then after a complete re-write of the geneic code the whole body might 'pupate' and emerge with 6-legs and compound eyes.
And with the right amount of *intelligent* re-writing you could have significant changes occur over timescales as short as months.
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No, aside from tumors, cancers and growths it's simply not possible.
Firstly you're environmental mutagen would have to inflict exactly the same DNA mutation on, at least, every single cell the new feature was comprised of, at massively impossible odds.
Secondly even if it did do that it still won't matter because we finished developing as an organism *before we were born,* and as adults we've even stopped growing.
In short any new mutations can pretty much only possibly express in an organism as it develops in the womb from a single fertilised egg cell that had that mutation.
The only change your environmental mutagen, whatever it is, can possibly cause to an already adult organism are cancers of various sorts.
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Yes, absolutely.
CRISPR would like to have a word. Your planets ecosystem has evolved a natural CRISPR-like virus that floods every nook and cranny, and is afloat everywhere in the air and water. It's not only a single type of virus, but plenty of variations - all waging war on the macro-fauna constantly, to change them in interesting and horrifying ways. These virii not only make their hosts create more virii, but also use their CRISPR-like tools to modify the DNA thus that their hosts, once their immune system is bypassed and they are fully flooded, create tools keeping them alive against other fauna. Claws, hard-boned carapaces, extra eyes or hearts and so on and forth. They also subtly modify the adrenaline glands and other hormonal processes to make their hosts aggressive, fearless and in constant search for prey - some of which they only cut a little bit, to inject the virus there.
This virus uses features found in fauna that is often dormant (happily so), like the natural propensity for developing cancers (which are guided by the virus to give them the rapid growth rates they require for extra appendages); forced CRISPR-mutations in stem cells, which injects body parts that are not existing in the base animal, and others. Also, once a virus is deeply embedded, it helps the immune system to fight off all other similar virii later on, to keep control of this host for as long as possible.
Many hosts excrete virii through when exhaling, or when shedding dead skin particles, and of course with their feces.
Don't take off your respiration mask when visiting this place. On the other hand, it would not matter much, as virus variants have developed ways to enter your body in many ways - through the air your breathe, through the skin, through water, or of course when eating infected flesh from other animals.
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Imagine genes as building blocks, complex creatures like humans have so damn many building blocks that to express some significant mutation many building blocks have to mutate in a really specifc and coordinate way
Its possible for someone to have many of these building blocks mutate, but in a uncordenate way, and its usually is expressed like some form disease (disruption of an intricate system)
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First, random mutation almost always leads to
1. Cancer; the multicellular organism individual cells start acting more like unicellular (or non-cooperating multicellular) organisms.
2. Ineffectiveness. Some metabolic pathway stops working correctly.
3. In germ-line, developmental failure. The "program" that builds the fetus into an organism doesn't produce something that survives.
Mammals and similar animals don't really rearchitecture themselves after initial development. They grow in a few ways, and that is pretty much it.
A mutation sufficient to cause macro-scale shape changes would first have to mutate the human into having that kind of capability! And that kind of evolutionary change is on the level of a new genus.
As random mutations are, well, random, any kind of mutational effect will result in mostly dead humans. This is much of how radiation doses kill you; the radiation causes enough DNA damage (and other cellular biological processes) that most of your body's cells are no longer doing their job.
Our body's cells have a failsafe system where, when damaged, they commit suicide. Radiation (and most likely other kinds of mutation) does enough damage that it triggers this en-mass. One of the key mutations that result in cancer is that system being disabled. While a good chunk of it might be non-DNA based damage, the damage to the DNA also causes cell suicide and also can block cell reproduction itself.
A mutation mechanism capable of actually reliably producing something other than death would require that mechanism to co-evolve with humans (or similar) for many (mechanism) generations (to build up information), and significant selective pressure (to generate some particular effect), and would most likely involve a lot of human death long before it became effective.
This might be possible with a guiding intelligence, or a very long time period (megayears? Maybe many kiloyears). But short of that, not really plausible.
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Yes, the thought emporium did it and showed the results on his youtube channel. He used a virus to change the DNA in his guts so that his guts would start producing lactase and dampen his body's genetic disposition towards lactose intolerance:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3FcbFqSoQY>
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The answer is going to be pretty complex depending on how large the changes well be, how well-suited the virus is for infecting humans in particular, and how much sickness and death you're willing to risk in your populace.
First, the risks:
* Our bodies and immune systems are structured to fight off changes to our DNA. Triggered cell death, killer T cells that assault anything which seems foreign, error-correction mechanisms, and the fact that "random" mutations may often yield non-viable cells will all conspire to limit changes to a living organism's DNA. "Flu-like symptoms" will cover most of that immune response, and will probably continue until / unless the thyroid and other key portions of the immune system are infected & rewritten enough to change the immune system's concept of what qualifies as "you"... Then your original body is going to be attacked until it's gone. If the proteins on a cell's surface (and the body's [other IFF mechanisms](https://biobeat.nigms.nih.gov/2015/06/how-a-cell-knows-friend-from-foe/) are similar enough for the viral and original cells, the immune system response might be less severe.
* [Triggered cell death](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1120577/) is itself genetically regulated, as one of the ways to limit genetic changes (above). When those regulations break down, you either get autoimmune disorders or cancer.
* Having a single virus (or class of viruses) which can reproducibly infect every cell in a human without triggering massive immune responses is a stretch. You'll want a virus which triggers a minimal immune response, spreads rapidly, and which generates changes compatible with all blood, marrow and tissue-donation types ... or you're going to kill off large segments of the target population.
Then, the possibilities:
* First, there are cases of viruses changing human DNA, but usually those have involved [infections that spread to the gametes](https://cen.acs.org/biological-chemistry/biochemistry/Prehistoric-viruses-smuggled-genes-DNA/100/i15) (and presumably gonads), changing the species on generational time scales.
* Some portions of the human body that naturally grow and restructure themselves over time: Skin naturally regrows to cover wounds, the outer layer of skin (and inner layer of intestines, iirc) constantly get recycled, and blood cells (esp. red ones) get fully flushed and rebuilt on a regular basis. That's pretty far from the kinds of mutations commonly seen in SciFi, but I could believe that skin color / patterning and blood/digestive chemistry might shift on the timescale of a year or two.
* DNA changes (and related changes to cellular chemistry) might also be able to ["reactivate" previous growth stages](https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/memory) for other cells, but that would probably present as cancer-like and/or reabsorption of the altered portions of the body and change it on normal growth timescales, i.e. a decade or two. If the new DNA is making something which grows up faster than a human, that might get shortened... or the former-human might just die quick because of alterations in how [telomeres act](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3370421/#:%7E:text=Telomere%20length%20shortens%20with%20age,of%20diseases%20and%20poor%20survival.).
* [Microchimerism](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4989712/) is a known side effect of pregnancy: you likely have a few of your mother's cells running around inside your body, and she likely has some of yours. Sometimes these cell-sharing effects generate autoimmune disorders, but may also be helpful or neutral. Only a small portion of the body's cells get swapped this way, and the changes are subtle, but genetic incompatibilities between mother and child are [among the dangerous potential complications of pregnancy](https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/diseases-conditions/rh-incompatibility). Maybe these changes could be hooked as a way of sneaking a new colony of mutated cells into an adult body to provide longer-term effects with a suppressed immune response: Essentially, I'm thinking of a sequence like: 1) mother gets infected during pregnancy, 2) fetus is infected, 3) mother's immune system wipes out the disease locally but the fetal DNA is completely overwritten, 4) infected fetal cells colonize the mother's body and are close enough to slip by the immune system, 5) mother's body continues to change slowly on decadal time scales, even after pregnancy ends.
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[Question]
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In my book series, there is this extremely rich Earthlike planet called Aurea whose claim to fame is supplying the vast majority of the galaxy’s precious metals (gold and silver for the purposes of this question). This trade in precious metals forms the backbone of the Aurean economy. However, these metals on Aurea are found almost entirely in two different deposits: a gold deposit around the size of the US state of Maine in a tropical mountain range called the Monsaltu Mountains, and a silver deposit around the size of the US state of Connecticut located in a subtropical mountain range called the Sparteian Alps. Each of these deposits annually yields many times more of their metal than has ever been mined in all of our Earth’s history. How could precious metal deposits this absurdly huge and bountiful exist? Could they even exist?
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The amount of Gold and Silver is not at all extreme,
after all Earth has enough gold to plate the *entire surface including oceans* with a layer 10 feet thick. It's just impossibly difficult to get to it, as most of it is down near the core.
The problem is that gold is both very dense, and chemically inert.
Thus in molten material, such as more than 99% of Earth currently is, and 99.999%+ of Earth was at some point, the gold will sink down towards the core. This is what makes gold deposits on the surface so rare.
All that is needed to endow one planet with silly-rich gold deposits is for a previous planet to have collected its gold in such an internal collection, solidified, then this previous planet was broken up. One of the "chunks" of broken planet was then an asteroid of suitable size, composed largely of just gold.
Then, you have this asteroid do a comparatively "soft" impact into the newly forming planet. Soft enough that the impact crater does not punch all the way through the crust of the recipient planet. The asteroid can fragment, melt or even vaporize, that's fine. The gold, being gold, will just settle down wherever it ends up, and form a very,very,very rich deposit.
The exact same thing has happened on Earth, and is the source of some of our deposits of gold, silver, tungsten, platinum. Just usually on a much smaller scale of impactor.
Of course, this does not help your story much.
Because if the source of precious metals is from planetary debris in space, and you have an advanced space-faring culture, then they would go to the source, and not bother with those pesky buried deposits down in gravity wells of planets.
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You have no doubt heard the legends, that long before recorded history a great intergalactic empire used our Aurea as their largest military stronghold. They ruled this arm of the galaxy and from this stronghold world, the empire taxed fifty thousand worlds. Some paid in silver, others in gold. The wealth of the entire empire flowed inward to our beautiful planet and the flow continued for tens of thousands of years.
When rebellion finally arose, the rebels found this stronghold too well defended to conquer, so they bombarded it with missiles full of nanite disassemblers. They turned our beautiful world into grey goo. The rebels ultimately won war then in their own time, fell to the rigors of deep time.
That was eight billion years ago. In the intervening years, Aurea has healed what the disassemblers did. It has reformed a solid crust and reignited its magnetic field. It has redeveloped life and once again become a paradise.
Meanwhile deep within its bowels, an unfathomable fortune in gold and silver is hidden. Tectonic forces have pushed a small part of that fortune to the surface in a few remote mountainous places.
What can be seen and scanned is very easily the largest concentration of precious metals in the known universe, but if anyone ever discovers the whole of what is hidden here, war will once again blaze across the galaxy... a war with Aurea as the final prize.
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I'm thinking the easiest way to explain a deposit of metals in incredibly high concentration is having an Asteroid like [Psyche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche) Smash into the planet at some long-ago point in pre history.
Sadly that doesn't quite match what you've described. Firstly - that kind of an event would be more likely to leave a crater than a Mountain range, and secondly, all your metals would be in the one location. And there'd be LOT's more than just Gold & Silver...
You could explain the mountain range as a result of volcanic activity thrusting up the results of the massive asteroid strike, maybe even as a result of the strike causing a weakness in the crust that the underlying mantle pushed up through. You'd still be left with a single site of mixed metals - not your scenario again.
When we consider how metals are formed there's a couple of theories, in stars that go supernova - or in the collision of a couple of Neutron stars. Either way - gold & other metals ejected are pretty widely dispersed. You can find a bit of an explanation here: [How Gold is made and how it got to our planet](https://www.zmescience.com/science/how-gold-is-made-science-064654/)
It kind of seems difficult to find a natural process explanation for the kind of deposits you are describing. If your premise includes the possibility of ancient precursor civilisations - they could have mined some planet for them and "stashed" them in some fashion that created these deposits. My suspicion would be they'd have to have been in orbit around your planet, somewhere in the solar system of your planet or actually stashed on the planet itself. That last is not too likely because it would have been obviously put there if so. Sooo, I'm kind of thinking the most likely would have been stored in orbit in a fairly raw ore form - and then something causes that orbit to decay (maybe an asteroid?) - and the stashed metals "fell out of the sky"
The method of mining the planet could be as simple as smashing it into asteroids. I've always had a fairly strong suspicion our own asteroid belt was caused by the Breakup of a planet. & if that was the case - I also have the strong suspicion Psyche was the core of that planet - or at least a big chunk of it...
If natural process is what you really want - you can go for it on the premise of anything is plausible in a big enough galaxy, after all there is now pretty credible evidence of a planet largely made of [Diamond](https://www.space.com/23138-diamond-planet-super-earth-discovery.html). You could use some of the ideas I mentioned above, especially the idea of a nearby pair of Neutron Stars colliding and a couple of streams of molten gold & silver are sent out together smashing into your poor planet and aeons later being discovered in these mountain ranges. With the amount of radiation that would be pouring out it would even be a fairly credible kick start to life on this planet
Hope this gives a few useful ideas!
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The Sudsbury Basin in Canada is the 2nd largest known impact basin on Earth. 1.8 billion years ago, a comet impacted there.
The impact was so great that that it created hundreds of cubic kilometers (if not more) of magma. This magma chamber was large enough to stay hot for sufficient time to allow minerals to crystallize and separate (essentially concentrating the different minerals together).
The impact also had the effect of fracturing the surrounding rocks. These fractures allowed the fluid magma to penetrate into the rocks, leaving veins of highly concentrated minerals.
While some of these minerals did arrive with the comet, most of these minerals were already present in the crust. The concentrating effect of the magma chamber just rearranged the minerals into very rich deposits.
For *Aurea*, the impacting bodies could have been larger (the original Sudbury crater was "only" ~200 km long) and the bodies themselves may have been very rich in gold and silver (something similar to 16 Psyche, maybe?).
And then, perhaps, if the impact sites were closer the edges of tectonic plates, these impact sites could be uplifted into mountains ranges.
One caveat for this mining endeavor, is that having such a huge source of gold and silver will absolutely tank those markets. Gold and Silver would likely drop in price to that of Iron, or even lower.
[Answer]
**Gravity centrifuge**
The deposits come from the same place. A super massive black hole's accretion disk. As matter goes into the black hole some matter doesn't fall in but instead forms a very thin band that orbits it called an [Accretion disk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accretion_disk). As it orbits the powerful gravity and high speed orbit causes the orbit to act like a [centrifuge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge), separating out the materials by type, and by isotope. Note that the centrifuge isn't a centrifuge because it is spinning, but rather because more massive objects are moved less by the same force and tend to have lower orbits due to lower velocity. Because the black hole is so massive the gravity differential at larger distances is still noticible, cussing more fine sorting. Over time the matter in the same layer of the accretion disk clumps together to make small planetoids of specific elements and isotopes. later a large object passed through the accretion disk launching the planetoids out of the black hole's orbit. A dozen of these ended up in the local system, and a gold and silver planetoid ended up impacting the planet several hundreds of millions of years apart. The rest of the planetoids got thrown out of the system eventually. I'm not 100% sure that this gravity centrifuge thing works on all black holes, or just in general, but a process like this could do what you need.
[Answer]
## Wide region of black smokers
Probably the best scenarios would be a large region of [black smokers](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_smoker) that formed after a continental rift.
### Rifted continent
Some time in the distant past a continental rift formed via large scale mantel up welling and was flooded by ocean. The spreading plates caused the regions crust to thin. But large volume of continental crust that happened to contain more acidic minerals nearby allowed water to be more acidic.
### Cycling fluid
The magma up welling would provide heat, the nearby rock would be more fractured to allow water to cycle down get warm and acidic and then dissolve minerals, heat further emerge from the black smokers and deposit minerals.
This acidic pressurized warm-hot water is able to dissolve many metals including gold. At some point it is warm enough to flow up and out the black smokers, where pH, temperature, pressure changes all cause all the mineralization to precipitate out, hence the 'black' portion of the black smokers.
If the black smokers remain active for tens of millions of years, more is better. This will concentrate the metals from the entire nearby basin, into the region around the black smokers.
### Mountain forming.
Then sometime later the magma up welling shifts, plates move and the region with the black smokers gets squished between two plates pushing it up into a mountain range.
### Conclusion
Smaller versions of this are begin mined and have been mined. This is a known way to have formed dense concentrations that are above 20% by mass metal(limited pockets, not bulk).
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I'm writing a story that has a mobile multi-purpose type weapon that functions by creating an obscene amount of electricity; to make it easy on myself I've used magic as an in-universe mechanic to allow for this to manifest itself in various ways. Besides surges and waves of lightning, or very dense sharp bolts of electricity, what ways could an infinite amount of electricity be weaponized, and how would this look visually based on it's properties?
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As others have noted, "infinite" electricity is a problem. Let's focus on "a lot" instead. (Aside: as noted, "electricity" isn't a unit. You probably want to measure energy in [joules](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule), or, if you want to limit the *rate* of energy discharge, in [watts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt).)
You essentially have a lightning bolt, and the effects will be very similar. If your weapon can magically cause the charge to appear at a distance from itself, this will be a pretty neat weapon; enough electrons dumped into a target point will do fun things like cause the target to turn into plasma very quickly. This will likely result in just about anything turning into a (very hot) gaseous cloud and may break molecular bonds. You will also get an explosion from all that sudden heat and pressure (same reason you hear thunder). If this can bypass either [conventional](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage) or sci-fi electromagnetic shielding, you have the potential to destroy just about anything, or (if it's very large, e.g. an aircraft carrier rather than a person) at least damage it severely.
If, on the other hand, the device can only generate the charge at *itself*, well, your device had better be *very* robust or you have more of a nifty bomb than a (reusable) weapon. In either case, being anywhere near it when it goes off is (to use one of my favorite words) *contraindicated*. You'll also need a high-powered laser (or "magic") to create a path of least resistance between the weapon and your intended target, or aiming is going to be next to impossible.
Really, though... I can't think of any way in which it *won't* essentially look like lighting. But, who cares? Lightning is *awesome*.
Okay, if you want to get clever (and since you mentioned "magic"), you could have it project *ball* lightning. The idea here is that your weapon creates a small sphere of enormous electrical potential which it can shoot. This could go a couple ways:
* The containment is really good. The projectile is filled with plasma, and glows like a miniature sun.
* The projectile has *two* containment shells. The first is really small, the second (for whatever reason) is significantly larger. There is some leakage from the inner containment. The projectile looks like a very, very scary version of a [plasma globe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_globe).
* The containment isn't perfect, so you get some leakage as the projectile is moving. Besides glowing like a miniature sun, you get a "corona" of arcs shooting off into nowhere... or even more excitingly, randomly connecting with points of low resistance like the hover engines on a Matrix hovership.
Any of these seems plausible; it's just a question of how you want the effect to look. In any case, when it hits, expect a *massive* burst of light. Again, think "lightning bolt", only the "bolt" is compressed into a point. (The energy is also going to want to take the path of least resistance from the impact point to "ground", if there is such a thing. In space, it's likely to just spread out and leave the target highly charged. I'm not sure what effect, if any, that will have, aside from you *really* don't want to come into contact with that ship without some very, very careful charge equalization.)
[Answer]
Electricity is flow between two different levels of charge - Water running downhill is the metaphor I was taught; define your two charge levels, and voltage is the "vertical distance" between them, current is how much force the water has as it falls. How high is an infinite mountain? How fast does water flow down an infinite waterfall? "Infinite" voltage would imply a voltage difference between an infinite charge and a finite charge, which I guess would have "infinite" current flowing between it.
Physics breaks down with infinity in it, but taking this example to the rediculous, the "positive end", or point at infinite charge, would hold infinite voltage relative to every other point in the universe. This would spark (spark in air is about 10,000 volts per cm. spark max distance is... infinity / 10,000 .... = infinity) to every point in the universe, and the spark would carry... infinite current. The universe would heat up by... an infinite amount.
Basically this would end the universe by converting it to plasma.
If any mathematicians read this answer I apologise profusely. I now need to write "I will stop calculating when I see infinity" an infinite number of times on the whiteboard :p
Replacing "infinite" with "finite but very very large" you're just going to get bigger lighting, hotter plasma, and a wider area of effect. Your weapon is basically going to convert the planet your standing on into a temporary sun.
[Answer]
Infinitely strong [Electromagnet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnet).
Rip apart all metal parts of your opponents.
If you cleverly fine-tune several such magnets around yourself, you *might* be able to keep your own metal parts *relatively* intact while ripping apart those of your enemies outside the contraption.
Mitigation against fast incoming metal parts purchased separately.
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Your device can produce arbitrarily enormous amounts of energy. Large amounts of energy can warp space-time just like large amounts of mass. (Remember E=mc^2?) That means that your device could be used to create black holes or even gravitational waves (assuming the magic of the device doesn't require a realistic "fuel" source). This weapon could be DEVASTATING.
Depending on how you play with rules of the magic, this thing could generate black holes at a safe distance from itself, create a black hole on top of itself (like a bomb), or send out gravitational waves.
Getting hit with extremely powerful gravitational waves would probably feel like being alternately stretched and squeezed. And a powerful enough wave could destroy structures like an explosive shock-wave, but be virtually impossible to shield against.
If the device creates tiny black holes, they will evaporate almost immediately in massive explosions (think atomic bomb scale and bigger). If it generates more massive black holes, it could quickly consume planets, stars, or even entire solar systems.
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The best way is to destroy or displace protons and/or electrons from large area. [You can even destroy whole universe with that](https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/)
I've read in some Ringworld books about weapon of two parallel beams - one destroyes (supresses) protons charge, other destroys (suppresses) one of electrons. That is devastating in any case - even if rate of destruction is low.
(see comment from ZeissIkon for more detailes)
[Answer]
**Dimensional rift.**
Electricity is movement of electrons. Let us assume you can open a rift to a dimension where there is a charge difference, allowing electrons to flow into that dimension or out to ours. This I think is a well worn trope - the other dimension is high water; set up a waterwheel and use the difference to make energy.
Free electricity is good for all the things electricity is good for. Usually people interested in mayhem convert electricity to other forms of destructive energy that are easier to channel. For example - charge capacitors and power a railgun or a coilgun. Turn an electric motor and drive your electric war vehicle around menacingly. Use electricity to split water and make peroxide, then power your V2 rocket with that. Use electricity to heat water and turn a fan, so after a shower and blowdry you look good for the cameras to inspire your people. Keep the lights on at night and the air conditioner running, so you can scheme over maps until the wee hours, pushing little model tanks around with long sticks.
Yes, electricity is good for many things. Even I like the warm shower one and I am not particularly inclined to mayhem at the moment.
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If you’re using magic, why not truly use magic, with only those limitations that make sense within your built world?
Using “electricity” seems to lend authenticity, credence or realism… and don’t you think *misusing* “electricity” in place of some “magic whiplash” denies authenticity, credence or realism?
Could you concentrate on “a weapon” or explain how that being “mobile multipurpose” mattered?
Real weapons - tasers; cattle-prods - do not “create” electricity. They discharge it. Does that difference matter to you?
If your gizmo functions by creating electricity, how do you think electricity is “created”? How is that different from electricity being “generated”?
If you must ignore your own magical lore, what difference do you see between “surges and waves of lightning” and “very dense sharp bolts of electricity”?
In what ways electricity could be weaponized or how that might look based on it's properties is your job!
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[Question]
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In my fantasy world there exists a book that contains everything that has, is, and will happen as well as every emotion, thought, and action. This book is known as the Acabar.
One cannot physically "read" this book instead one asks the book a question and the book tells them the answer. The book is even able to open and project a "body" for itself, but also display images.
As expected this book has become a site of pilgrimage and is kept in a temple for safe keeping. Pilgrims from across the known world come to ask the book questions and receive answers.
However the priests have noticed one thing: whenever someone asks about the present or past, the book's explanation, while long winded, is clear and easy to understand. However when someone asks about the future the answer is rather confusing and hard to grasp. A example would be taking a book like **The Hobbit** and seeing how easy it is to understand and then reading *Revelations* (the biblical *Revelations*) and comparing how difficult parts of *Revelations* are to grasp.
Here's an example of descriptions from the two books. First **The Hobbit**:
>
> In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle
>
>
>
Now a description from *Revelations*:
>
> Then, a Beast emerges from the Earth having two horns like a lamb, speaking like a dragon. He directs people to make an image of the Beast of the Sea who was wounded yet lives, breathing life into it, and forcing all people to bear "the mark of the Beast", "666". Events leading into the Third Woe:
>
>
>
While the description from **The Hobbit** gives a clear image of at least the door saying it's round, "like a port hole", and green. While the description from revelations, while having parts that can be imagined, others that are open to interpretation/wildly different depending on who's reading.
So why would the Acabar be able to explain the past and present in a clear and easy enough (it can still be wordy and confusing for some) manner to understand, but when explaining the future it's hard to understand what The Acabar is trying to explain or trying to make sense of the imagery and descriptions it is using.
Note:
by *Revelations* I mean the descriptions mainly. For example how *Revelations* describes the beast, or the four horsemen. The Acabar would answer in a very similar, cryptic and metaphorical, tone.
When The Acabar tries to display images of the future they are not as clear as images from the present. Ex: "From the east will rise a red beast with four arms with a flaming sword in each hand" it will depict exactly that even if the person asking the question is unable to grasp what the Acabar means by this (better put: the image will appear how the person would see it not what The Acabar is trying to describe)
[Answer]
**The answers are always descriptive to the same degree, but we’re lacking context for future answers**
The Hobbit hole seems perfectly simple, but then we know what comes next. To someone who has never read the book, the reference to a porthole may be significant because the hole is on a floating island. The references to “perfectly” round and “exactly” in the center may portend a race of Hobbits that are obsessive in their craftsmanship unlike any other. We know that these are not borne out in later paragraphs, but if that clip is all you knew of the Hobbit, how could you be sure?
Therefore, there need not be a metaphysical reason why the future answers can be interpreted to many meanings, it’s just that no matter how descriptive, the book can never include all of the relevant context for future events, so everything from the future is inherently ambiguous.
Imagine being told in 1860 that in 100 years a president would be shot while riding in his motorcade. You would not know what a motorcade was! Maybe the oracle would even translate to existing terms so that it would be potentially understandable, but easier to lose the exact meaning.
[Answer]
If you want a mathematical argument, consider that the Acabar must know of what it tells people as well.
Self-referential statements are the bane of mathematics. They are famously troublesome. Predicates such as "this sentence is false" are so troublesome that we tend to write the grammar of our language to make such sentence simply invalid. That way we don't have to deal with them.
Alfred Tarski famously explored a class of what were called "interpreted languages." These languages consisted of strings, such as "Hi, how are you?" and "The week is long. The silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west," and an *interpretation* of those strings, which turns the string of characters into *meaning*.
He showed that for vast swaths of desirable languages (in particular, those which could prove all true arithmetic statements in first order logic), the language could not describe itself. You could not put together a set of sentences which describes precisely how the interpretation should work without simultaneously breaking itself by admitting such troublesome paradoxical phrases.
Now we like to think using those sorts of languages all the time. We do it by accident -- so much by accident that many of us don't even realize we were assuming it during our math classes. If you've ever "infinity-plus-one-dog-dared" someone you've tried to grapple with them.
When dealing with future events, Acabar must deal with these issues, and thus must speak in a language which can withstand such self-reference. This is not the language you and I typically talk in, so it sounds cryptic and vague.
Dan Willard [explored](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c278/147b7a68385836a90939a175a9959cabbf0b.pdf) one such world. Mind you the paper is a *scholarly mathematical paper*, and thus deeply steeped in Greek letters and mathematical symbols. His world started from infinity, and worked its way down to "one." It has all sorts of crazy things, like the ability to construct an "infinity" outside the system which suddenly becomes larger if you look at it from within the system, like some mathematically inspired episode of Through the Looking Glass.
Its the kind of price you pay for being able to speak of the future with precision.
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Alternative option: **it is a trick**.
The author of the Acabar was an individual or organisation of considerable skill and power, as evidenced by the "book"'s ability to scry across the world and look into the past, but predicting the past is more or less straightfoward. Predicting the future may as well be impossible. Rather than simply have an artefact that refused to scry into the future, some joker made it *pretend* to do so.
The people who the book were made for are naturally [mythopoeic](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mythopoeic) (ie. have a strong tendency to make stuff up), suffer from [pareidolia](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pareidolia) (ie. have a strong tendency to mean meaning, pattern and agency in something that contains none of the above) and have a strong tendency towards [rationalisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology)) (ie. it may turn out that what they said was wrong or what they did was stupid, but they can invent an excuse to justify it anyway). Humans are a good example of this.
When asked about the future, the Acabar generates a load of vaguely contextual and portentious-sounding delphic gibberish ([related](http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_bullshit.pdf), PDF) whose purpose is to sound plausible but not to convey anything that might accidentally sound like a solid, testable prediction.
Much like Revelations, the works of Nostradamus, horoscopes, tarot readings and all the rest, people will work tirelessly to bend, stretch and torture the words to fit to any real-world event that sounds like it might, may, if you squinted a bit and smoked enough salvia, seem to fit. Even telling them it is all nonsense may not convince them that they have been conned. They have faith in the book. It has shown them the future, after all.
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The book is just being honest.
Consider humanity's history so far. Up until the early 1900's it was all about kingdoms and wars and famine and the slow but sure march of human reason towards illuminism and science.
And then came the radio, then TV, then the Internet. The way people have communicated between the 1980's and today has changed much faster than the way people communicated in all of previous human history.
From ancient Egypt to WW2 knowledge was spread through books and tomes. The format of the books varied, but that was it - text on paper (or papyrus, or clay tablets).
Now we have videogames and memes.
Now imagine that, in order to come up with an answer, Acabar is actually accessing random media from some time period which can answer the question. If someone from 2019 asks about WW2, they may get excerpts from diares of people who lived it. But if someone from 1840 Russia asked how the world would be a hundred years in **their** future, they could get a random picture from nowadays Google's image results for `stalin meme`. They might be asking themselves, *'Who is this man called "bae"? Why did he send her parents to the gulag? What IS a gulag? What does this moustachio'd man have to do with it? Is he the girl's father? Is he smiling because the Gulag is a happy place?'*
And then think for a minute. How will the people from the next decade communicate? I felt really old when I saw my younger cousins saying some random girl was a "Yandere" and I had to google it. And now they are saying that they are feeling old because some kids said whatever. Let it sink in - millenials are feeling old because of what some school kids are saying. Will we even be able to understand what our great-grandchildren say?
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If the future is fluid then the book cannot give a clear answer because its answer has to cover all possible futures - including contradictory ones.
If you plan to flip a coin twice and then ask the book what the result will be then it tries to simultaneously tell you HH HT TH TT.
These are all contradictory, so you end up with a mess, as a result all it can do is tell you the things that are always true along with what might be true. For example the result might be "There are four beasts from two. The two headed beast watches both ways, the blind beast has two tails, their siblings have both head and tail".
That looks like a mess but actually is just the book trying to describe the four plausible outcomes of the coin flips.
[Answer]
Because the future isn't yet fixed, it consists of multiple possible options. When describing a specific point in the future, all possible futures are described simultaneously.
As you get closer to the point, clarity improves, there's a reduced number of possible options or meaningful differences between them.
As you reach a moment the waveform collapses down to only a single possible option and that can be described with perfect clarity.
[Answer]
**Consider the motives of Acabar's author.**
It seems very plausible to me that whoever wrote/created Acabar (whom I would imagine is likely some kind of god, given the contents of the book) could have all sorts of reasons--mysterious or not--for not wanting to reveal the future in clear detail. It's up to you as the worldbuilder to decide what these reasons are, how important they are for your narrative(s), and how and when, if at all, they are revealed to the characters in-universe.
Here are some potential motivations I would suggest as plausible to readers:
1. There are actually many possible futures (though Acabar knows them all), and it describes them loosely because it doesn't want to bias readers/listeners towards or away from any particular future.
2. Acabar's author wants people to be engaged in thinking about the future and their part in it; not just mindlessly/passively following a step-by-step recipe.
3. (Or, relatedly) Acabar's author doesn't want people to despair at the losses or suffering or changes that are in store for them.
There are plenty more possibilities, but in summary: if Acabar has an author and your characters learn about him/her/it at all in-universe, it would make a lot of sense to build around its motivations.
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The past and present have already happened. It's why you can make a documentary on the past but not the future. Maybe the book does not know the outcome of the futures, only the common paths that might be taken (like Garnet from SU). The book can only write a "prophecy" as the outcome might not be exact.
But from what you're saying the book seems omnipotent to an extent, it knows literally everything. I don't really know what kind of questions are being asked, but maybe the book wasn't designed to give the answers in regards to the future. Maybe the creator of the book made it give accurate information on the past, to learn from it, while allowing society to develop and remain free to choose what it wants.
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Have the book give answers in the vernacular of the time period in question. While historical answers can be decoded by dedicated historians and linguists, future answers need a lot of guesswork as to how phrases ought to be interpreted. Consider this example:
>
> This chart shows samples of the changes in English. #1 is Old English or Anglo-Saxon (circa 450-1066 CE). #2 is Middle English (circa 1066-1450 AD). #3 is Modern English from about the time of Shakespeare. #4 is another sample of Modern English, but it is more recent than #3.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7e7cy.gif)
I think you could use this same principle for pictures as well, especially if you eschew pictures for diagrams and graphs, which have their own visual language that evolves over time. Consider the difficulty of interpreting a graph with little to no context that uses a format that you've never seen before. Try and read this chart for example:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LFXij.jpg)
It probably took you a bit of effort because it is an uncommon chart style and you are largely lacking context.
This graph was developed with the specific aim of driving important military hospital reforms. Given this context, consider the same information represented by this line graph:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/R3MMh.jpg)
You likely have a much easier time grasping the data being presented here.
References:
<https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/diagram_4English.html>
<https://blogs.sap.com/2014/06/05/reworking-florence-nightingales-diagram-of-the-causes-of-mortality-in-the-army-in-the-east-with-sap-lumira/>
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Current and past events are or have been perceived by human beings. So the book can use those perceptions in describing the subject of the answer.
Future events have not yet been perceived by human beings. Currently the only ones able to perceive them directly (not through the book's description) are the divine. So you are reading an attempt to convert divine perceptions into human readable text. And the book is just not that good at doing the translation. It is much better at compiling human perceptions.
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**-Randomly got here, logged in just to answer this-**
I've been "making" a scy-fi story (in my head) and this is something that comes up in the story
The main character eventually gets a direct "connection" to the Universe Knowledge Cognitive System (UKCS) that is pretty much the conscience of the universe itself but isolated from direct access from living beings.
So, how does this prevent the "user" to pretty much turn into a god and ruin all the plot?
Well, the thing is, when you access it, you can perform 2 different actions, one at a time:
1. Direct communication with another living being, instantly
(telepathy)
2. Access to the cognitive front
the cognitive front is just what you think the front should be, maybe a female person that answer your questions, or a robotic voice-over, in an all-white place, whatever your mind comes up with, depends on who connects to it, it's a personal "experience".
So what's the trick?
First, it's ALL THE UNIVERSE KNOWLEDGE ("pasts", "presents" and "futures") so to access the information you have to be specific, imagine an endless universal library.
So in order to have an answer, you have to narrow the scope of the question, else you won't get useful info.
This is easy to do with a question about the present or past, but the future is not unique, and you don't know what to ask if you don't know what's going to happen, unless you have a hint, or you make the right questions to get useful info about what to do/what is going to happen.
So having all the knowledge at your disposal is not an instant win, but a huge advantage, hope this helps.
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It is the limitation of causality, where the book "knows" that which is to transpire, but unable to tell it in clear detail which would in so invite change, is restrained to reveal only as much as to ascertain that the blurred truth spoken, shall have to come to pass.
Pardon my French, but you need to be deceived by truth to make truth become.
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Clearly explaining future events would by itself change those events- an example being, if someone destined to bankrupt themselves speculating on tulips were to hear of their future, they would seek to change it, either refusing to speculate at all or pulling out before the crash. In order to predict the future without changing it, Acabar must give vague and confusing answers which, being able to see the future, it **knows** will ultimately change nothing and bring the same result as if nobody had asked it in the first place, whilst still (with appropriate context and interpretation) describing those future events.
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because even the book has to travel through time backwards, like all beings bound to this reality.\*
Think of it: we clearly move towards the future yet we can only see the past, hence backwards.
The Acabar however is the only thing with a temporal wing mirror. But as you know things in the mirror are closer than they appear and no mirror (especially one constructed by wizards and gods) is perfect so the Acabar tries to describe the future the best it can see in the little, shaking device bolted to his side.
Hey, you try it, it's not as easy as it sounds.
\* credit to the great Terry Pratchett for the idea
] |
[Question]
[
In a novel I am writing, everyone carries a small device in their head. The device is fragile, but the human head [isn't](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/06/03/no-you-cant-crush-a-mans-skull-with-your-bare-hands/).
How can this device be destroyed by another person *quickly* (i.e. within seconds) and in a realistic way, either **with bare hands** or some common implement (like a screwdriver or stone) that is easily available anywhere? No guns or other weapons (e.g. swords), as these are illegal.
The death of the victim would be a welcome side-effect.
This is a SciFi story, but the less futuristic tech is involved, the better. I would have liked to destroy the victim's head with a quick, powerful, Bruce-Lee-like punch, but from the research I have done this is not possible.
Since everyone carries such a device (think of the transmitter part of a [distributed identity implant](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/54211/8976)), it is built to survive what humans commonly do, including sports (boxing) and light accidents (fall from a bike). To get an idea of the fragility of the device, think of the brain itself. While a brain can easily be squashed with bare hands, you don't usually destroy someone's brain with a kick to the head. The device is like that: easily destroyed, if you hold it in your hand, but cushioned in the brain.
---
Some notes in reply to some comments:
* "fragile": Think of a piece from a plastic bag.
*Everyone* carries that device. It is implanted at birth (or in utero, if you want). It cannot be heavy or hard, or it would damage the brain if the person fell and hit their head. It is light and flexible. It also must withstand all causes of death that do not destroy the head, because it is supposed to identify the dead person. So it doesn't disintegrate in a car crash. Also, merely killing the person doesn't destroy the device.
* "quickly": As my question states, I need to destroy the device within a few seconds.
Or security will interfere.
* "inside the head": That's where it is. It's not in the neck. It is always fixed to the same part of the brain, but brains are not all the same, so it is not always in the same place (unfortunately).
It's inside the head because that's where it is difficult to get out of, tamper with, or destroy, without killing the person. It's a security measure, not a technical necessity.
[Answer]
**Sharp object**
If you know where the device is located (or it's fairly large) then a decent blow with a sharp object (such as a screwdriver or ice pick) will do the job. Heck, you could even use a stiletto heel if the device is by the temple or eye socket.
**Brute force**
If the device or its connections to the brain are fragile then even a strong concussive blow might do the trick: Nobody wants bits of unattached metal being rattled around in their cranium, so the device (or at least its connection to the brain) may well be destroyed by a decent bruce-lee punch to the head. Consider the increase in instances of brain damage amongst boxers since boxing gloves (which allow blows to the head due to lowered chance of fractured knuckles)
**~~Magic~~ Magnets**
Strong magnets are readily available, and can be torn out spinning disk hard drives or bought. Depending upon the composition and location of the implant waving a suitably strong magnet past the head may cause it to malfunction or fail, though modern medical technology try to use non-ferrous materials (plastics, etc) wherever possible and delicate circuit boards are fairly simple to shield.
**Bullets**
The damage that a fragmenting or anti-personnel round will do to the human head is catastrophic, to say the least. I wouldn't rate the chances of an implant surviving if a headshot occurred. Of course, this requires access to a gun or similar munitions.
[Answer]
**Strong electric current**
If this situation happens somewhere inside, your character might be able to rip a power cable from somewhere and hold it against the head of the person. Electrocuting the device would probably lead to similar results as with the EMP device. This would avoid the mess of physical violence.
**Bare hands**
The device is probably very small, since there isn't much space in the skull.
So there is actually only the brute force method left, hit that skull until you are able get to the device and destroy it. You would need a blunt weapon, a pipe or a baseball bat.
This is something that is near to impossible, with your bare hands.
Trying to penetrate the skull with a screwdriver to hit the device is useless, just think of the force required to drive the tool through the bone of the skull. Moreover you don't know where the device is located, and the brain is very soft, so even if you manage to hit the device it will probably just be pushed around in the brain.
*Maybe you can rethink your story a bit, your character obviously knows of the existence of this dangerous device before getting into this situation, why wouldn't he have the time to prepare for this encounter?*
**EMP**
Electronic devices are susceptible to an [Electromagnetic Pulse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse).
There are [ways of building an EMP generator](http://www.wikihow.com/Make-an-Electromagnetic-Pulse) that even kids could pull of.
Devices caught in the EMP radius are rendered unusable or damaged beyond repair. People on the other hand are relatively save from it.
Just like people with pacemakers need to keep their distances from strong magnetic fields your character could destroy that device with such an EMP.
[Answer]
## Use a backdoor
Every living human having intracranial identity implant means that either the implant is EXTREMELY popular, or the setting is a dystopian hellhole where there is no free choice. Either way, in both these cases, there is no way the government won't have at least some interest in the implant.
In the case of "it's willingly", that means that the government will most likely want an easy way to control the implant in case of emergency: marking a criminal on the run so they set off alerts when they're passing certain detectors, allowing emergency passage past an identity checkpoint, making someone into someone else for witness protection programs,...
In the case of "dystopian hellhole", The government will most likely have backdoors installed that they can use to opress their subjects. An electroshock to the brain is enough to take most people down,... or it could be a bomb.
Such a backdoor would require external stimuli that can be deployed from a distance. You're not going to convince Jason Bourne to submit to surgery midway through his conspiracy busting. What would work is a special sensation, uniquely tuned to each device. You might have a special color pattern to trigger the "requires extra scrutiny" step, or an olfactory sensation that activates the "shock the brain" option.
[Answer]
### Nail gun
While not universal, a nail gun is a reasonably common tool and would work for this purpose. Essentially what you want to do is to drive a nail through the person's skull and the device. This might kill the person or just cause brain trauma.
My first thought was a [captive bolt pistol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_bolt_pistol), but you don't want the person to be carrying a weapon.
Another alternative would be a hammer and chisel. A bit clumsier and more likely to miss, but also serviceable. Substituting a screwdriver for the chisel and a stone for the hammer might work but is even clumsier.
Stabbing someone's head with an ice pick could work. Again though, it's much clumsier than the other alternatives. If the person moves during the attack, there's a high chance of missing the device. You might not even penetrate the skull.
A power drill could work, although you have to hold the skull steady while using it. And it takes longer than the other alternatives. By the same logic, a powered screwdriver with a sharp, strong screw. Some [drill bits](https://www.lowes.com/pd/Greenlee-Nail-Eater-Extreme-0-75-in-Auger-Bit/3095841) have a screw end to help get started.
For ease of use, the nail gun is by far the best choice among reasonably common tools. Everything else is more in the way of a making do with what's available choice.
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I would rig a small microwave gun from the emitter off the MW oven in my house. Any signal the device might send gets overwhelmed by the microwaves and associated noise, the device is destroyed, and about the same time, its wearer dies. I'd stick the emitter inside a metal bowl, with a hole drilled through its bottom, to serve as a kind of parabolic antenna and to shield me from at least some of the MW radiation.
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An electromagnetic pulse might be difficult to generate, however, a steady stream of the right radio frequency would be enough to cause the device to burn out (assuming it contains metal). A microwave oven could possibly be repurposed for this: <http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/130161-man-turns-kitchen-microwave-into-lethal-weapon-survives>
Not only would it be painful (and possibly cause death), but it's also sufficiently low-tech as to be possible with current technology and is also compatible with the size of the device: a small, flexible device wouldn't allow for much shielding. Any shielding that does exist would also have the disadvantage of heating in the person's head which would likely cause destruction of the device regardless.
In addition, 802.11 b/g/n wifi operates in the same frequency range. I'm not sure how much power would be needed to penetrate to the right depth in someone's head, but if a wifi signal could be amplified and directed with a parabolic dish, the same effect could be achieved.
Beyond that, not enough is known about the device. If exact dimensions of the metal contained inside is known, any kind of transmitter that outputs sufficient power and generates a radio frequency with a wavelength that causes that length of metal to resonate would work.
[Answer]
Use **knife for ice breaking.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/O96Gr.jpg)
In real live similar gadgets was used for [transorbital lobotomy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy#Transorbital_lobotomy) and it was the weapon of choice of Katrin Tremel!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JYimG.jpg)
[Answer]
So the owner of the head mustn't survive.
* Hammer (The bigger, the better)
* Axe
* (Cross-)Bow (can be bought legally here)
* Climbing Irons
* Tyres, fixed to a car, motorcycle, truck
* Needles (if you know where to aim at)
* Bricks
and last but not least:
* The Woodchipper (because Woodchipper beats everything)
[Answer]
A sharp stick would do. A screwdriver, or a pencil... (do I hear Heath Ledger's Joker laughing in the distance?)
**The skull itself might not be fragile, but it has holes in it.**
Eyes. Ears. Nose. Base. Apply lengthy, hard object at will.
As others have noted, the more brutish methods of just smashing the skull with something solid are always an option. Mankind has developed many ways to do so over the millenia. A mid-sized rock will do if applied repeatedly.
We are such violent creatures... ;-)
[Answer]
Knitting needle, upwards through the base of the skull at the [foramen magnum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foramen_magnum).
The knitting needle would be a better pick versus a knife or screwdriver since it could be bent as needed to reach wherever in the brain your device is located and still be stiff enough to punch through the soft tissue.
[Answer]
I don't think that your question is very good because since you don't care if the victim dies in the process, the easiest way to do it would be just to kill the victim quickly enough in order to severely damage the brain or perhaps completely destroy it. Even after your last edit.
Anyway, there are several easy ways to accomplish that:
* Blow a grenade in the victim's mouth.
* Shoot the victim's head with an anti-tank or anti-aircraft gun.
Ok, you told that you don't want to use something that you couldn't legally obtain to do that. So here are some other options:
* Drop the victim in a lava or liquid iron pool.
* Get a very big hammer and smash the victim's head against the floor, spraying a lot of brainy and bloody gore.
* Smash the head under the tires of a truck.
However if you want ways to remove the device without killing the victim nor severely damaging his/her brain quickly enough in order to not fire an alarm or something like that (that would be a good challenge), then we need to know more details about the device. Some ways to do it could be:
* EMP to deactivacte the device, which would be surgically removed later very carefully by a neurocirurgion.
* Hacking the device.
* Depending on the composition of the device, there could be some substance that could be injected in the bloodstream that chemically reacts with the device immediatelly and damages it unrecoverably without the victim dieing or suffering major bad side-effects in the process. If necessary, the remains of the device can be removed later by neurocirurgy.
* If the substance of the previous point could be absorved through the intestines and enter the bloodstream, it could be added to food or water to be ingested or being delivered as pills.
To address Mad Physicist's comment, we can fix the injection way with this:
* Make the injection not be unexpected. I.e. suppose that the patient regularly needs to take an injection of some drug due to some health problem (possibly a not real one that you just made up), then in some specific date, after regularly taking the injection normally as expected for some weeks, when nobody is seeing anything unusual, you either add the substance to the drug or just replace the drug with the substance. This also has the advantage that the substance don't need to act immediatelly, as long as it is able to shut down the device without it being able to detect that it is being chemically attacked.
* Also, if you are reallowed to kill the victim in the process, you could replace the drug to be injected with something nasty that will react both to the device and the victim's tissues.
[Answer]
Since you don't mind if the bearer dies, an head shot with a shell of suitable size can do the trick.
If the size is correct the shell will have enough energy to pierce once through the bones but not twice, meaning it will bounce back and forth into the brain with easily imaginable effects.
[Answer]
We already have a need to destroy small structures inside the head without causing other damage. One thing that comes to mind is the [gamma knife](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosurgery). Since the device here is made of material differing from human tissue, it should be *even easier* than targetingba tumor without bothering neighboring tissue.
Looking at other ways that brain surgery is performed without cutting it open, [going through the blood vescles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endovascular_coiling) looks like a good approach.
So can these be approached without “illegal implements”? In both cases they are techniques used to treat real conditions which will still exist in yiur world. So we need to forge medical records or use serendipity to take care of the device “on the sly” while performing another needed procedure.
For *home made* tools, it seems possible to beam microwaves or high energy pulses from several directions simultaniously to converge on the target. I can imagine a back-room contraption that burns out the device that way, built from scratch using common electronic components.
[Answer]
### Just shove them
Really, I mean it. Of course, you have to make sure you pick a good location to shove them at. Good locations include the top of massive buildings, hot air balloons, the ISS, the edge of Mount Doom, etc.
If you are feeling adventurous, I would suggest arranging your accident here.
It would seriously disrupt the entire battle if someone screaming suddenly fell right past those two. On the plus side, if your ~~victim~~ unlucky friend somehow survives the fall, underground beasts and horrors will finish the job.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/K55cY.jpg)
Of course, if you're boring, you can always let your pet ~~hyena~~, uh, mutant kitten *accidentally* munch on their skull for a bit.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lvdw6.jpg)
[Answer]
Why don't you consider **Lithotripsy**?
It's a procedure designed for breaking up kidney stones without surgery, though I'm sure you'd be able to draw from this?
Any Google search will give you all the info, here's a link to a kidney lithrotripsy info page. <https://www.kidney.org/atoz/content/lithotripsy>
Goog luck with the book! (*Fr Ted Crilley stylie!*)
[Answer]
Drill a (for example 1/2" or 12mm) hole with a cordless drill and insert a hose connected to powerful [peristaltic pump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3kYXC0jGtc). The visuals could be compelling.
It might not work in reality without some kind of mushing around because of the internal structures.
[Answer]
Depending on the properties of your device, you have two basic types of options: direct energy transfer, and indirect.
Since you disallow the more sensible tools such as guns, any common piece of everyday equipment would do. For example, if your character is around chain saws or wood-chippers a lot, the path is pretty clear. Compactors like car crushers are also a good tool. The only possible downside is that they are relatively slow, so subject might have to be disabled first. Probably the most common device that could easily cause the required damage would be a car. A wheel could crush a skull and everything in it quite fast, especially after the subject is disabled by a couple of broken femurs.
Since you specifically state that the device is located in different places in different brains, using a precision tool like an ice-pick directly would not be a good idea because it would not be guaranteed to work within the few seconds that are allotted. However, a precision hole-making tool could be used to create an entry point, as @spehro-pefhany suggested in one of his comments. Then you could insert a canister of some kind of acid or corrosive gas that would fry the device.
If you prefer indirect energy transfer, you could use electric shock (which could be administered with common household items) or EMP (which would take a bit more setup). You could also use heat (flamethrower, oven, furnace, even pot of boiling water in a restaurant kitchen). Cold would probably be more difficult because even immersing the head in liquid nitrogen would not necessarily (A) cool the inside of the skull fast enough, and (B) disable the device. Many electronics continue to work just fine at super-cooled temperatures.
[Answer]
A pencil? Stabbing in the head with that adds quite some shock value, and isn't completely unrealistic.
As others say, any sharp (and some blunt) object will do. It's really a matter of the style in which you wish to express this. Tossing this nugget in once may add some guerilla-style variety to a potentially repetitive killing/ disablement of foes.
[Answer]
A small device holding kinetic energy. You can think of a portable, hand-sized railgun, except that it doesn't shoot enything.
You would hold it concealed in your hand ready to unleash the energy it store on someone skull.
|===] -> |===~~]
It could also be a device that can fit in the palm of the hand, and it would be sufficent to apply your hand on the victim skull and fire it.
[Answer]
Small hole and pressure led me to a thought... a cannister of compressed gas (soda syphon CO2 or a cycle emergency inflater CO2 or a soda-stream gas bottle) connected to a needle and release valve. Whack it in through some convenient place (temple?) and hit the gas release, taking the inside of the head up to considerably over-pressure. If the device is fragile the pressure shock may break it. The temperature shock of expanding highly compressed gas may also be enough to break it.
If it isn't broken by that, the brain being driven out of any convenient apertures (ears? eyes?) and carrying the device with it would probably prove fatal to the device.
I think it's fair to say that the person carrying the device in their head wouldn't survive the experience.
You'd need to use CO2 or nitrogen or some other gas that had a high vapour pressure at ambient temperature... butane used like that would kill the person but wouldn't elevate the intra-cranial pressure that much.
] |
[Question]
[
My book series is set in a rapidly industrializing galaxy, and one of my planets (which has a sort of late medieval-early Renaissance tech level) has griffins, pegasi, hippogriffs, and other large flying creatures, whose uses in warfare are readily apparent (scouting; dropping rocks, gunpowder barrels, or other heavy and/or explosive items on the enemy; flying people under cover of night into enemy strongholds to open the gates from the inside; etc.), but since my galaxy is rapidly industrializing (this planet by the end of the series would have a relatively modern, plane-based air force), I don't really see how I would keep flying creatures in service in such a scenario. Which roles, if any, could such creatures fill in a modern air force?
NOTE: These flying creatures are non-sentient and are treated in-universe like any other animal.
[Answer]
It depends a bit on how large exactly your flying creatures are. For example, if your pegasi are about the same size as a regular horse, but with wings I think they could be quite useful in urban combat situations. In the real world in particularly dense urban environments where your troops and enemies are quite close to each other (as in standing physically close, not that they're emotionally close and intimate) even helicopters are of limited use due to their large size and lack of suitable landing zones. For instance, I can picture pegasus-mounted snipers using their mounts to fly from roof top to roof top following their squad and providing sniping support. Or maybe even guys carrying heavy machine guns and using their pegasus to quickly relocate to where they're needed to provide fire support. Same goes with troops carrying mortars (as in the artillery) and anti-armor weapons such as the Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle (or an RPG-7 if that's more familiar to you). Just to clarify, they wouldn't be fighting mounted on pegasus back but rather using the pegasus to quickly get from place to place to follow the squad they're supporting. Furthermore something like a pegasus would probably be a lot harder to hit with anti-aircraft guns or rockets than a helicopter due to its much smaller size, so they might even be preferred for troop transport in urban combat situations with heavy enemy fire.
Additionally, as others have already mentioned, they would probably be a lot stealthier than other options such as helicopters, and would likely be used frequently in stealth missions and other situations where remaining undetected is important.
Assuming your other flying creatures such as your griffons and hippogriffs are about the same size, then what I said about pegasi applies equally as well to them.
An important thing to keep in mind is to avoid comparing the creatures to aircraft such as stealth bombers or an A-10 "Warthog", as they would be fulfilling vastly different functions. Comparing them is like comparing a submarine to an aircraft carrier, yes they're both things in the water, but what they do in the water is completely different.
I think even comparing a dragon to military planes is misguided, as dragons would much more likely be used in a similar way to an attack helicopter rather than a jet fighter.
If you don't mind some advice, I think researching modern military tactics, particularly how different types of infantry are used and how the other branches support them could be very helpful, as I think that’s where the flying creatures would probably be used rather than the air force proper.
[Answer]
I'm afraid their "uses in warfare" just aren't "readily apparent" in a "Modern Airforce"
In a world that also has jet fighters armed with missiles (or even just helicopter gunships) griffins, pegasi & hippogriffs are going to be about [as useful as horse cavalry on a modern battlefield](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/209117/could-genetically-engineered-horses-make-cavalry-survivable-on-a-battlefield-wit), even if you give the riders machine guns & hand held rocket launchers.
They won't even have the advantage of speed against real world modern combat aircraft.
A full blown fantasy fire breathing dragon might be a different issue.
But for the creatures you've listed the only use where they might possibly have some utility might be insertion of small teams of special forces personnel behind enemy lines .. & even there I'm not convinced real world modern methods wouldn't hold the advantage in most instances.
If these animals had existed in the real world then they would have been used in the past but like the horse would have been largely relegated to recreational & sports uses by now.
*Of course if I somehow misinterpreted your meaning when you say "modern air force" then all bets are off.*
*But it is worth noting that several modern armed forces do still keep mounted units for purely ceremonial & demonstration purposes such as parades & the like .. toward the end of your story arc that may be the most plausible remaining 'military' use for them.*
[Answer]
Flying under the radar.
Not being metallic, they may have limited use in situations where stealth is needed. As an added advantage, they do not need a technological base, though they have food requirements as soldiers do.
[Answer]
First of all the period you describe would be a lot like WWI but with WWII technologies near the end. During WWI and WWII the industrialisation had well and truly began, but as the tanks drove through the countryside they met farmers who had never seen anything more advanced than a horse and carriage. Even during WWII the amount of horses in use was tremendous, although near the end their use was greatly diminished.
Aircraft are expensive, time consuming, require high skill to operate and use, require increasingly expensive and hard to acquire materials and in most cases require some specialist facilities like proper runways and equipment to operate. They are the ultimate argument against anyone saying "ah but maintenance/cost/complexity is a problem for military equipment!".
This means that during your time period aircraft are still expensive and complex machinery (for the time). In the meantime there is still a thriving network that breeds, feeds and trains these creatures. Early weapons will likely be Flachettes, basically large iron darts used in WWII and dropped in large quantities (like 300 at a time) above the enemy. Later weapons will likely see a shift for using these creatures. First as Dragoon type groups, where a group of men armed with muskets/rifles will cross the battlefield to a position they want and then dismount before starting combat. This protects the large flying creatures from harm and means their mobility is most important. As weapons become more modern and biplanes become dominant air-forces capable of taking down your flying creatures they will shift any aerial attack duties to aircraft and become transports. They would be ideal in getting things like a machine gun or mortar team into a position, or to get a squad into a flank, or deny enemies terrain by flying in infantry towards places the enemy would want to occupy so their faction has more time to move up and take the hill/area from the enemy as these airborne troops retreat after their delaying action.
The advantages of using such creatures are numerous. They dont require factories to build but farms to feed them. Their "fuel" is food, most likely meat due to the energy requirements of flight, which means that an action behind enemy lines could refuel by eating some livestock. To create them they dont require the hungry metals industries that industrialization brings with it to build its planes, vehicles, boats, ammunition, factories and infrastructure. This all means that they can supplement existing developments of warfare without taking anything from the hungry warmachine.
Except food that is, and that is the one big caveat: armies and countries at war function on food most of all. Having a group of meat eaters which can be described as flying horses to flying bears in terms of size and weight might be too costly to maintain, unless ofcourse your goal is to raid behind enemy lines by simply feeding them with enemy livestock.
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We have achieved space flight and sent probes out of the solar system, yet [cops on horseback](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mounted_police) are still a thing:
>
> Mounted police are police who patrol on horseback or camelback. Their day-to-day function is typically picturesque or ceremonial, but they are also employed in crowd control because of their mobile mass and height advantage and increasingly in the UK for crime prevention and high visibility policing roles. The added height and visibility that the horses give their riders allows officers to observe a wider area, and it also allows people in the wider area to see the officers, which helps deter crime and helps people find officers when they need them.
>
>
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A flying mount would add [Rule of Cool](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool) aspects to the job description. Make it a military police and there you have it.
Being able and skilled in riding a flying beast might even be a requirement to pilot spacecraft, since you should need nerves of steel to fly the latter.
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Air evacuation for wounded soldiers. Strap the solider to a gurney and carry it under the creature who could be trained to pick up and drop it gently. Today that role would be done by a helicopter but if you haven't invented that yet, or helicopters are expensive/rare then having an alternative source of transportation would help.
It may not be a pleasant trip for the soldiers (being swung around a bit as the creature flies) but it may be better than nothing.
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**Rather than horses, they could be equivalent to dolphins**
Until recently, it seems that both USSR and USA [had programs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_marine_mammal) to [train dolphins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Marine_Mammal_Program) for military ~~porpoises~~ purposes.
If griffins are intelligent enough to be trained, they could be used without a rider, as a kind of stealth "soldier".
For instance, if wild griffins are common enough in your world, trained griffins could have an automated camera strapped to their belly and be employed for scouting, or could be used to drop/recover small payloads (or even bombs).
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**Possible strengths of a BeastForce:**
* Can quickly and effortlessly land practically anywhere unlike the smallest of helicopters.
* Fly so low that you would be flying under the tree top level. (radar and visual stealth)
* Lower maintenance cost then some mechanical equivalents.
* Much quieter then most other air vehicles.
* Refueling stops could be nearly anywhere and everywhere (food for the beast)
* Less breakdowns and repair then a mechanical equivalent.
* Unlike most mechanical transports after arrival on site your mode of transport will have been trained to independently and remotely(to a limit) follow a basic command. (move/attack/do a thing)
* Would be a highly effective scout.
* Highly useful for destroying lightly defended infrastructure in an enemy controlled territory.
* Hit and run tactics.
* Replace most small to medium scale paratrooper like operations with the huge bonus of self redeploying capability.
* Highly versatility.
**Possible weakness of a BeastForce:**
* Would not replace a AirForce, only supplement it.
* Slower then most aircraft.
* Bad at air to air combat.
* If damage was taken it would likely result in the total loss of the beast (cant bolt on a new wing)
* Harder to quickly replace then a mechanical version.
**None combat uses:**
* If you dream of flying cars this would be exactly like that. Highly equivalent to a modern expensive car for personal transportation. With the added bonus of flight!
* Material transport and delivery. (think drone package delivery but with a rider)
**Conclusion:**
If a side (local or from another planet) was lacking access to a beast force equivalent I feel it would be at a disadvantage.
The mode of transport by riding a beast would remain the same as in the past but the weapons and tactics riders could employ would not. When the rapid industrialization event happens the inhabitants would have centuries of past beast tactics and tech to build on to. A BeastForce would be highly effective in supplementing a wide variety of modern gorilla tactics.
Its conceivable most planetary inhabitants would feel a sense of sacred value to many of the flying beasts in the world. Imagine today the extra value we would put on a horses if it was just as useful in a modern time as it was in the past.
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A real-world counterpart would be horses. Until the advent of motorized vehicles, horses were both an important mode of transportation (the only alternative being walking) and critical component of a weapon system (medieval knight, cavalry soldier). It was only after motorized vehicles had sufficiently developed and their inventories sufficiently built up that the role of horses diminished. Today, we still see horses in ceremonial roles (Canada's RCMP, funeral gun carriages) as well as functional such as crowd control, although these examples mostly exist in police rather than military forces.
Another example is dogs trained to sniff out contraband, explosives, or trapped survivors in collapsed structures.
One might imagine flying beasts to be similarly relegated to more ceremonial or niche roles with the introduction of flying combat vehicles, but they could remain indefinitely in roles where there is a desire to maintain long-established traditions, or where technology lacks the finesse to fill a specific niche.
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## Ship to ship combat.
Ships are large vehicles with lots of up and down space, and are extremely expensive to build and extremely valuable.
As such, one use would be ship to ship combat, with you boarding your flying creatures on the enemy ship and having them beat up those inside. You ram your boarding parties on board and you have your flying creatures quickly maneuver inside to get your troops to good places and kill poorly armored spacers inside.
One of the main weaknesses of horses is that they can't handle broken roads very well. Your flying animals wouldn't have this weakness and could handle broken roads, paths, and erratic building structures in ships, with riders to blast holes in anything that's in the way.
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**Rescue and extraction missions**
A flying creature will have a much easier time getting into small but high areas than a helicopter. Think a burning building, it might be difficult to manoeuvre a helicopter (and certainly a plane) to the exact floor from which to gather the victim. If there are many victims, the difficulty with large flying machines increases, but you could have lots of pegasi or griffons flap their way to the different parts of the building very precisely, and have a much easier time negotiating dangerous obstacles than a guy dangling from a winch.
If this isn't military enough for you, think of how modern warfare is going - it's getting less and less acceptable to bomb a city or even a building to take out a target. For example a terrorist might take refuge in an apartment building full of innocent civilians. Again he would be difficult to access with a helicopter and it might look bad in the news if the attackers simply bomb the building. But hippogriffs could deliver a team to the building on any floor or any side of the building they liked.
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This came out of a discussion of an all female colony world, but I'm interested in the more general version of this question. Is there any function in society that requires male levels of strength in order for it to be successful?
I'm not really thinking here about the changes to gender dynamics as much as the question of whether or not the differences between male and female strength would really have a large impact in terms of what humanity would be capable of in general. If female level strength was the upper limit overall, how would this affect things?
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Historically, male strength has served us well in any type of construction job, or things like combat. However, as industry and tools develop, this becomes increasingly less significant and necessary.
Especially the invention of industrial tools to make manual tasks easier, contributes to the difference being less significant. While historically a man with a shovel could get more done than a woman (on average), nowadays any gender can operate a digger. While having the strength to manually lift large loads *might* be useful, the more technology develops the less necessary it is. In current society Europe for example, an all-female city would likely not fall behind a mixed or all male one.
That being said, if development were historically based on solely female strength, tools use would scale with this, and perhaps construction would as well. The reason things were done historically as they were is because we could, not because we had to. It's cheaper to have one man wield a hammer and drive a pole into the ground, than one woman either taking longer or needing to drive two smaller poles for same effect. But that doesn't change the fact that it *can* be done differently.
Size plays a significant role in this as well. I could argue a short man could be on par strength-wise with a tall woman. Historically this height difference was less defined than in modern times, but still noticeable.
Bottom line, the only reason male strength is useful, is because it is more efficient. Not because it is necessary.
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**No** there isn't.
While on average, men are stronger than women, some individual women are much stronger than the average male, and vice versa.
For all i know the maximum strength a human can reach is slightly higher in men, but that is just for extreme cases. The biggest part of the difference in average strengths is (somewhat dated) role models, and aestetic preferences.
For a work force, you typically have groups of people, who are chosen for their ability to perform the required jobs. You can easily find women who perform the same as men. You won't choose the physically weaker ones, but you wouldn't choose physically weak men for hard manual labour either.
Plus, you typically work in a way that maximum peak strength is not that much of an issue, because even the strongest and fittest cannot keep that up for an entire day, let alone an entire working life.
The reason we hardly see all-female groups of workers has a lot to do with role ideas, but very little with physical ability.
Also, historically, women tended to be pregnant a lot. And one shouldn't do too much heavy lifting while pregnant. That is at least one part of why there were "women's jobs" and "men's jobs". For those that look closer at such classification: It also implies (correctly, as i think) that biologically, men are much more expendable than women.
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As soon as you have things like levers, wedges and wheels -- not to mention draft animals -- muscle power becomes a 'nice to have' rather than essential. Yes, big, hefty construction workers (of either sex) may get the job done quicker than small, delicate ones (of either sex) if they have to move a lot of bags of cement etc; and (crucially) your wages bill will be lower with the muscular types.
But there is nothing I can think of that the bigger types could do that smaller ones could not.
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Ok, before I answer the main point, I'm going go into a little diversion which has really important implications: **What's the gravity on your all-female world?**
Because the physical strength of the people on your planet (male *and* female) will be highly dependent on the gravity they live in.
* If your planet has a lower than Earth gravity (like say the 0.89g of Venus or the 0.37g of Mars), then the inhabitants will not be as strong as people from Earth. So even a big, buff male Martian who spends all day at the gym pumping iron and abusing steroids will not be as strong as an Earth woman.
* If your planet is higher than Earth gravity, the people's bodies will have to adapt to this and various muscles and bones will be stronger than those of a Earthling, simply to cope with daily life, like walking around or carrying groceries back from the shops.
Some bits of the body will be 'immune' to the above. The strength of your jaw muscles and shape of your lower jaw is more influenced by how tough the food your chew is, than the gravity you do the chewing in.
So onto the question...
Plenty modern women and girls living in impoverished rural places in developing countries do daily task which rely on physical strength and/or endurance. Examples of this include:
* Walking miles to the nearest water source, then carrying the water back. If they have a small child they'll carry the child as well as the water. [Some statistics here](http://theconversation.com/women-still-carry-most-of-the-worlds-water-81054)
* Carrying firewood
* Carrying goods to local markets
* Many of them carry the loads on their heads. Here's [an article](http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/humanities/2016/03/03/why-do-women-carry-things-on-their-heads/) about why women carrying things on their heads died out in Europe (and why men didn't do it as much).
Many of the tasks traditionally done by women - pounding grain into flour or pounding clay to prep it for making pottery, for instance - are similar in strength and stamina to tasks done by men, such as a blacksmith hammering metal.
One thing you will have to take into account with an all woman world is **menopause and loss of muscle and bone strength** with age. Old women lose their physical strength faster than old men. If your world is a low tech one and most people are on subsistence diets, then the average age for the menopause may be quite low. [Here is a medical paper](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15981376) which says Aristotle said the menopause starts at 40, but in modern India it begins at 45 to 47 and not until 50 to 51 in modern Western countries.
So your all-woman culture will have to take account of all workers losing their strength as they hit the menopause.
EDIT: I just remember child labour! D'oh! Kids are weaker than both men and women, but children worked in coal mines, in the Staffordshire potteries, and as labour on farms. If a young child can do it, then even a really wimpy woman can do it.
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Jobs that *absolutely need* male strength? No, none whatsoever.
Jobs in which more strength *would be useful* are all around us.
I'll pick child care as an example. I'm a father, and I count physical strength as a very useful asset. One use case is to carry my sleeping 6-year-old without waking him up, and managing to hold him with one arm while opening the door with the other. My wife, who's less strong, can still do that, but will lose that possibility sooner than I.
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I can’t think of any single task in the past or present which requires high strength but can’t be broken down into smaller parts or tasks. Sure, the average man might be able to lift a heavier log of wood than the average woman, but at some point you’ll always need two pairs of hands. We’ve always excelled at breaking things into manageable parts.
I also think that in an all-female society things would scale well. Women are weaker but they are also smaller and require less energy. So it wouldn’t be an issue that they can’t build as large/fast or plough a field of the same size.
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To answer your question directly the only thing I can think of that can be affected by the average man being slightly more physically strong than women is war. To modern war it matters less than when we still killed each other with blades and pointy sticks. Back when battles were hundreds or thousands of men lining up and killing each other (slowly) with equivalent weapons, anyone who was slightly less athletic or physically powerful would have been at a disadvantage. This is probably a fair equivalent to our squabbles over modern team contact sports (and we equivalently have men's and women's leagues). That said there's plenty of evidence women participated in warfare, notably in leadership positions. But the front line soldiers were almost exclusively men.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_ancient_warfare>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_post-classical_warfare>
Basically, I think your colonies would be fine until they had to fight a ground war with swords against and invading all male force.
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No it's nothing that can't be accomplished with more time added on or more people to join in for whatever if we're looking at pre tools with post tools you can have less people to most tasks.
Women disguised as men during the civil war performed all the same duties, functions, and miles as their male counterparts.
Khutulun Mongolian Wrester & daughter of Kahn never lost a wrestling match against any man who challenged her.
Studies conducted in WW2 between all female and all mixed vs all male units had the female only units working just as well as the all male units lifting the heavy shells, loading, aiming, firing, they found women were slightly better at determining target distance but that was it the mix units weren't spoken of much so it seems it was fine. They had one female unit go into warfare and hold a hill they denied them ammo drops, guns, and other requested things and yet the women did live their test concluded this unit for the allies held up find under severe pressure performing their jobs as any normal unit would this was done in preparations for if they needed to add women into the military.
Christin Davies - fought in the 9 yrs war under the British disguised for 13 years as a man she too performed her jobs fully including looting and warfare.
Basically added strength is an added bonus some women however are very strong some look the part others do not your women are probably going to be the most fit for the society in the timeframe it is set in. The Aztecs did wonders with stone that shouldn't have been possible for their people and there was simply not enough raw strength to cover those feats they needed quantity to do that job.
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**It's not the biology you're looking for.** You're looking at muscle when it's largely irrelevant. I don't want to presume what "female level strength" is, so instead I'll my own physical strength, and boy oh boy you're in a bad shape. If that was your baseline then your society is has no other choice but to use their ***big fat human brain***.
No amount of raw physical strength can build a pyramid, a medieval fortress, or an Emirati skyline. What you need is good old human ingenuity and tons of slave labour, and that's something we as a society have understood a long time ago.
To illustrate how old and basic that knowledge is, let me tell you about so-called simple machines. There are six classical simple machines: lever, wheel, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, and screw. That's right, it isn't a misnomer, these *are* simple machines that have been around for a while and are still the basis in many a modern machinery. As technology progresses, you can even get into chains and gears, until one day you invent the exoskeleton that is a bunch of screws, gears and springs put together into one fashionable package.
There's no reason to think a society of women wouldn't develop these technologies because there would be no institutionalised sexism to push them away from engineering knowledge. And since you don't need unfathomable scifi technology, even if it may or may not take more manpower, or womanpower as it is, I can't imagine a problem that we solved but they couldn't.
In conclusion, remember that humanity didn't strive because we're faster than cheetahs or bigger than elephants or stronger than oxen. Humanity strove because we're hella smart and we made dem oxen our B-word of burden.
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In my job (logistics mule) a lot of the women claim they underperform because they lack male strength. So at least according to them, my ordinary job does.
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It depends on what strength you are refering to. Mental strength in the 21st century is more important than physical strength. Emotional intelligence, manipulation limited by morals and mental health are far more important in today's world.
Men in the past have been the hunters, farmers, constructors and more often given tasks which require physical strength. This is the way we (homo-sapiens) evolved. In many animal species, females are the more dominant ones because historically, they had to do more functions than the males.
In today's date, humans just can't survive on physical strength. Intelligence and agility also play a vital role. That's where women have always been ahead. In our society, they have generally never been given the choice to make their own decisions. The fact that only now women are appearing in so many careers that men earlier dominated. The 20th century saw women in company leadership roles, but still were objectified and made fun of.
Coming back to the topic, there is no particular function today which requires strength of males. I know my mom asks me to open the jar which has been vaccum sealed. But I think that's just laziness. There are still some jobs which use significant amount of male population (plumbing, carpentry, industry workers etc.). That again, is due to society views that women are supposed to be at home taking care of children and men are supposed to be doing work and earning for the family.
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No, in our modern or anyone's more-than-modern society, personal strength is not a limiting factor for any job assuming personal wealth or the equivalent available for use in acquiring mechanical means to assist or achieve a task.
Nor need pregnancy overly limit, directly, such things either. Can a pregnant woman steer an oil tanker better than a hugely muscled man can use an oar to jack a canoe around in whitewater? Can she say "Robot, fetch me that boulder" when she need a 500# boulder?
In practice, pregnancy is likely to be limiting in an indirect way as the prospects for any child are bright whereas in 1800 BC (oops... BCE) half a woman's children likely didn't make it to 5 years of age any better than a poor Bostonian woman's children in 1776. But that's indirect.
What is truly limiting in practice is the fact that the longer a child gestates and then takes to acquire some useful self-sufficiency, the fewer of them any given woman can have reach their own breeding age. So the more of the women you constantly risk, the less likely that your society is sustainable at any wealth level that depends partly or completely upon increasing numbers. (That mix also allows for the marginal wealth to keep grandparents alive which is a factor that has been shown to noticeably increase pre-modern population's durability and continued increase.)
Or a short way of looking at it, Becky might be beefy enough, skilled enough, and inclined enough to out-hunt the daylights out of me. Along with her friends. But LUCK likely played a huge role in life-after-hunting for such folk and if our band has 14 breeding women and seven males die one day in a hunt for antelope that fed the lions instead, I and my clique of 2-3 males can easily keep the mateless women pregnant. Bearing in mind that pre-modern family units were highly organized to have the entire range of skills and behaviors to just barely make it, economically, and that that had plenty to do with children surviving to their own breeding ages, but without those seven men, we can still churn out a lot of babies and have a shot at it. If Becky and her clique of six friends are the lion food, that leaves just half the women in the band which is a monstrously huge "other thing."
So THAT, once chimps and such began hunting in an important way, was probably more the determinant that lead to PREFERRING that the males hunt and risk the dangers of the wild and the fights to the death with as big a bunch of animals as they could manage. Or thought they could... while the child carriers who had to contribute years not seconds to the bringing of a child to minor self-sufficiency, much less breeding age, stayed more together, hunting the vicious plant life that provided something like 80% of the calories, and in probably otherwise less instantly dangerous scenarios to fill the days. Lose a few, not a lot, men and things CAN go on. Lose a few women and the population effect might be huge.
So preference. And naturally, judging from nowadays, choices swiftly became "the natural order" and cemented into societies as the only way possible. Consider all those pioneer women dropping their foals while pulling the plow for their husbands, wiping the brats down and wrapping them in blankets or whatever, then back to pulling. And 30 years later, US society is a wee bit wealthier and cannot contemplate women as anything but hoop-skirted fainters.
That seems the likelier source of the idea "women can't do what a man can strengthwise" and it really wouldn't seem applicable today as nothing any of us do is anywhere nearly as life-threatening as hunting lion food in lion country with sticks and rocks. "Here Fluffy, let me take that food right out of your mouth..." creating situations a whole several levels of danger greater than even a nasty OSHA violation. You don't risk the childbearers in such situations if you have a choice. Not a matter of they can't contribute, but a matter of not a single person thinks it's better if they do including them. And while there is then physical optimization for each group's CHOSEN roles and that is then easily misunderstood by later folks as the natural order, it comes down to a very sane choice, not a limitation.
And if it wasn't truly a limitation 25,000 years ago, but rather a smart choice, it SURELY isn't a limitation today or in any society equivalent to mid- to late-1800's America, or more advanced, especially REALLY more advanced.
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[
In the world I'm envisioning, an individual has been accidently sent to a sort of alternate history version of the world, one that is at roughly feudal level of tech/culture, but with the nations divided up differently than in our history. The Traveler didn't plan for this transition and thus didn't have time to prepare for it.
After arriving, he earned some interest from the king of a nation (impressing the king with the laptop the Traveler carried before the battery inevitably died) and promised to try to help improve the nation with his future knowlege, but his inability to produce any quick & obvious feats with his knowledge leaves the traveler with limited support from the king.
Around this time, another neighboring nation has a major disease start to spread, and it looks like it could become a full blown epidemic. Both his king and the neighboring king are worried, and so the Traveler's king asks the traveler to use his future knowledge to fix the disease (the Traveler had sold himself especially on his promise to help with lowering disease via use of sanitation techniques).
The Traveler is very knowledgeable about evolution & genetics, providing him some tangental knowledge about disease beyond basic high school biology, but he is not a doctor or deeply trained in handling of disease. His first attempt to help is sending basic 'best practices' he is aware of for working with disease, like quarintene, sanitation, use of face masks, and boiled water. He also sends a rather long 'questionare' to the foreign king which he asks the king to send to numerous city healers which asks a number of questions about frequency of disease, traits common to those infected, and targeted questions trying to determine what method of spreading the disease may use. The answers he eventually get back point to one commonality: areas with stagnant water or which otherwise would be prone to high number of mosquitoes have far higher rates of infection. His questions targeting other potential plague vectors haven't shown any other likely plague vectors.
So having a theory as to how the disease is spread, it's time to send advice on how to get rid of the plague vector. The questions I have are twofold. **What kind of advice (other then the obvious “mosquitoes are bad” and “try to avoid stagnant water”) can he give to combat the mosquitoes’ spreading of the disease? How significant an impact can this and the earlier basic sanitation advice have in stopping the spread of the disease?** Keep in mind that he hasn't yet proven himself to the foreign king and thus the king is not yet confident how much money/effort he is willing to commit to following through on the advice of a stranger.
If the Traveler's advice does help, how obvious to the kings will it be that the advice was the cause of the disease loosing momentum?
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# [Mosquito borne diseases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito-borne_disease) aren't (usually) epidemic
They are endemic. When there is a carrier as prevalent as mosquitos, then every time there are lots of mosquitos around (i.e. all year in the wet tropics, wet season in the wet-dry tropics, summer in the sub-tropics) then the disease spreads.
Diseases like malaria and dengue don't suddenly spread all over the world, because their vector (the mosquito) does not spread that rapidly. Mosquitos are small and don't travel fast or far. Instead, these diseases rage seasonally, or year round in their set locations. Malaria ravaged the poor and unhealthy of Rome every summer as mosquitos bred in the swamps; same with Georgia in the US. Dengue is a danger all year in the Congo or Liberia.
Occasionally a mosquito borne epidemic will move to a previously un-occupied region; this primarily happened during the long distance voyages of the Age of Exploration. But this is the exception rather than the rule. Because endemic mosquito born diseases stay in one place, the local population tends to have a higher resistance. Death toll is low and steady during each infectious season.
By comparision, fast-spreading and hard-hitting epidemics have different mechanisms for spreading. The worst epidemics are dominated by [plague](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague), [influenza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza), [smallpox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox), and [cholera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera). Plague is spread by fleas via rats. Fleas don't travel long distances, but rats do. Influenza is airborne and transmitted by coughing and sneezing. Smallpox is spread through bodily fluids; usually tiny airborne droplets of mucus. Cholera is waterborne and spreads via the fecal-oral route: drinking poopy water. These four are the plagues that killed hundreds or thousands a day in historical big cities.
# To 'answer' the question
Mosquito borne diseases are the hardest to stop, which is why you see them around to this day. Malaria is now the most deadly disease in the world, while smallpox and plague are extinct and nearly-extinct, respectively. You would be better off using a non-mosquito vector in any case to make your time traveller more effective.
Killing rats is no easy task, nor is getting rid of fleas. But for the air and water contact diseases, strict quarantines are more or less effective. Doctors or nurses seeing patients need to wear gloves, cover their face, and wash with soap afterwards. No one else should be allowed to see the infected until recovery or death. After recovery or death, you can burn the person's bed sheets, or just lock the house and wait a week. Oh, and for cholera, make sure people stop pooping in the river.
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**Fight mosquito borne disease like they did in turn of the century Panama.**
The measures taken to combat mosquito-borne disease during the construction of the Panama canal were low tech and effective. They are within reach of a medieval society.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_measures_during_the_construction_of_the_Panama_Canal>
>
> The most ambitious part of the sanitation program, though, was
> undoubtedly the effort to eradicate the mosquitoes Aedes aegypti and
> Anopheles, the carriers of yellow fever and malaria, respectively,
> from the canal zone...
>
>
> Gorgas divided Panama into 11 districts, and Colón, Panama, into four.
> In each district, inspectors searched houses and buildings for
> mosquito larvae. If larvae were found, carpenters were dispatched to
> the building, and work was done to eliminate objects or places where
> stagnant water could collect...
>
>
> Gorgas organized a major program to drain and fill swamps and wetlands
> around the Canal Zone. Many miles of ditches were dug, and grass and
> brush were cut back over wide areas. Oiling was used in a variety of
> means: workers with spray tanks were sent to spray oil on standing
> pools, and smaller streams were tackled by placing a dripping oil can
> over the waterway, which created a film of oil over each still patch
> of water in the stream.
>
>
> Gorgas also took another step in his efforts to eradicate mosquitoes
> in Panama: fumigation. He fumigated the residences of Panamanians who
> had been confirmed to have contracted yellow fever. "Pans of sulfur or
> pyrethrum were then placed in the rooms, the right quantity of powder
> was weighed out (two pounds per thousand cubic feet), and the pans
> were sprinkled with wood-alcohol and set alight" (Cameron 132). When
> the effectiveness of this procedure was realized, fumigation was
> extended to all of Panama. Within a year of Stevens's appointment,
> every building in Panama had been fumigated, using up the entire US
> supply of sulfur and pyrethrum. In 1906, only one case of yellow fever
> was reported, and until the end of the Panama Canal's construction,
> there were zero.
>
>
>
It is pretty awesome low tech public health.
1: Use the presence of larvae as an indicator for standing water and take measures to eliminate this water, treat it with oil, or improve flow such that it is no longer stagnant.
2: Fumigate houses with sulfur and pyrethrum. Pyrethrum is present in certain plants and you could make a smoky fire with these plants and sulfur.
Also these measures would make sense in the context of an Aristoltelian mindset - "malaria" means bad air. The working arms of this endeavor could keep this mindset and just consider the larvae as indicators of circumstances which produce bad air. The fumigation kills adult mosqitoes in buildings but could also be considered as a purification of contaminated air.
[Answer]
**Don't go gettin' all sciencey**.
[Ancient Romans battled malaria](https://blogs.transparent.com/latin/how-the-mosquito-shaped-ancient-rome/) (Italian for Bad Air) successfully under surprisingly similar conditions. They did so without fully understanding the mechanics behind the parasite but by simply observing as you did.
As someone who often has to explain technology to people who grasp it as much as your medieval ruler, my best advice is not to get all confusing. Make simple comparisons, simple tests (even if they're fixed! as long as they are understandable and believable, it can go a long way to sell the core message), and a simple message. And ALWAYS appeal to the person's intelligence and make it clear it was their idea...
For instance:
"King, as you have assuredly noticed and pointed out on many occasions, your subjects living near bodies of stagnant water have contracted serious illnesses which others living far away have not. There is bad air at work here your Lord."
Then tell him how it's in his best interests. Losing a few peasants, ehhhh.... not a big deal...
"Having this evil on your kingdom is a plague of the worst kind. In fact, your hunting camp has bodies of stagnant water which could possibly breed this bad air. The last thing I would want to see is you or your nobles contracting this plague."
Tell him how he can gain.
"And your neighbors who are currently suffering have not an idea on what is causing this plague. How they would look up to you if you were able to cure them! Or not, and let them weaken and take over their lands. You can battle this threat!"
By lowering the cost of entry, you become more palatable as a solution. It's not an outright lie (you can later claim you miscalculated due to shovel technology), but you're just trying to get a Yes from him. Once the project is halfway done, most people can see the end more clearly.
Again, don't get sciencey, but something along the lines of:
"Throughout history this bad air has been an issue. I would like to help your kingdom not become one of those victims. Simply by draining the swamps, you not only gain more arable land to tax, but you put an immediate stop to this problem. I estimate (insert something at half the cost in time or people here) days could be expended to solve this issue."
As for your last question, it is easy to confuse correlation and causation. You can attempt to use this to your advantage as much as the king may try to use it against you. If the neighbor still suffers the plague, and you don't any longer, bring up that the only change has been your swamp draining. If you help the neighbor at the king's bidding, you can even add an extra data point.
Edit: If the king still doesn't go for it, offer to show how some simple techniques such as mosquito nets ([Cleopatria even may have used one](https://www.malariasite.com/history-control/) or saps of some trees can lessen infection rates.
[Answer]
He could try out things in a small trial area first . Areas where Kings trusted healers look after.
In addition to sanitation techniques , he could recommend other things like mosquito nets.
He can show improvements by showing that the trial areas show less increase of sick people compared to other.This vetted by the healers.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm currently writing a story where privileged kids attend boarding school in order to become better leaders, however, the heir to a respectable and reclusive\*empire falls for the heiress to a well-known, powerful crime/yakuza/mafia organisation.
**Is it possible for both to end up together without both( *or at least one*) of them running away from their duties?**
*Bonus: How would society react if they did?*
Extra Info: The world has not one theme, but a mix of multiple themes. It's Frankenstein-esque. Every kingdom has a theme(i.e. steampunk), time-period(i.e. 1800s) and country/countries(i.e. France x England) that I base them off of.
Some countries live like medieval dwellers, whilst others aren't afraid to advance themselves in technology. Each kingdom thrives quite differently to the other, but i made it so that they all cancel each other out in some way.
[Answer]
**This can and does happen in the world now.**
1. Boarding schools and other exclusive private schools are for the children of families with money to send them. You will wind up with old money, new money, and anyone else as long as their families have money to send them to this school. Scions of old and established wealthy families. Children of nouveaux riche internet billionaires. Children of foreign plutocrats. Children of rich crime lords and hedge fund tycoons. The son of a popular recording artist. The nephew of a working dude who won the lottery. All at the same swanky school.
2. "Running away from their duties". Star crossed lovers have been doing this at least since Romeo and Juliet and probably way before. It is what young people do, or think about doing, or wish they could do.
[Answer]
The simplest solution is the "Ruling" and "Criminal" families are one and the same. There are plenty of examples of corrupt rulers throughout history who would be recognized as crime lords in today's society. A perfect example in the modern world is the daughter of Hugo Chavez, former ruler of Venezuela. By all accounts she is worth on the order of $2 billion dollars, even thought the average person in Venezuela cannot reliably purchase food or toilet paper.
So the son of a ruling house meets Vladimir Putin's daughter in boarding school, romance is struck between them and the parents realize that a marital alliance would provide all kinds of interesting possibilities for both families. If the family of "Prince Romeo of Hess Saxe-Gotha" realizes this gives them a conduit to loot Russia with Tzar Vladimir's blessing, fewer questions will be raised in Parliament, while the princess is known to host rather extravagant shopping expeditions and other things less spoken of with her "old school friends" from Russia in the streets of the ancient capital city.
Romance *and* looting! What could be better for a young married couple?
[Answer]
Yes.
The elite of society, regardless of their niche within that elite, hobknob all the time. Not only do they go to the same schools, they also tend to frequent the same scenes. E.g. restaurants, social clubs, nightlife, etc.
Even if you broke with the premise of the school, there are so many opportunities and reasons for these two to meet.
This sort of things happens all the time, and likely will be a persistent phenomenon so long as elites and underworlds exist.
To your second question:
How society would react depends entirely on the context.
For example, one of my characters is, basically, the heiress of a crime family. The catch is...she ends up living far enough away that her social status doesn't matter. Her absence is a big deal where she left, but her presence is completely unremarkable to the people in her new location.
This works because these are, for lack of a better term, different "countries".
If it were the same polity, her family would have the means and motive to intervene directly. Same goes for any local aristocracy. How much your forbidden love scenario matters depends on the social structures, personalities, available knowledge, and setting.
Maybe start with the society, and see if there are any hints there. Are there social mores that bar this? Then move to motives: who knows and cares about their tryst? Thirdly, look to power: what power do concerned parties have to leverage?
[Answer]
**Corruption?**
I just recently discussed elsewhere a case when a member of Russian royal family (who was coincidentally the head of the navy) happened to "melt away" a sum that in total would suffice for a capital ship – shortly before the Russian-Japanese war! Now you suddenly have more understanding for revolutionaries, yep.
(Actually, the facts don't quite check out, even if the bribes of that person were in quite this order of magnitude, these were rather kick-offs by suppliers than money theft from the shipbuilding pot.)
But the point stands, I guess. Royalty can be involved in nasty business. Them being royalty does not help. In the above case, the whole "close enough" family of Tsar ("great prince" being the technical term) was literally above the law in the Russian Empire.
[Answer]
On top of the excellent answers already here, consider that royalty *IS* organized crime.
Well, the history of it is more precisely. That any one at all can just say *I* own you all, and you have no choice. *I* decide who will own you next, and it will be of *MY* blood line... Can you honestly say this is not a crime against humanity? Inherited power?
But we don't know much about your world as you're writing it. The reaction of the public would vary depending on how universally accepted and loved the royal family is, and how well known and feared the crime organization is.
No matter what you do, you know how short the attention spans of the world are. You can even have your public lash out in anger and have the royals merely observe as the wave of outrage swells, then lulls, then disappears when the next big news surfaces. They may even revel in the surprise of seeing just how inconsequential this union was. With the distractions and sheep like foolishness of the public, maybe they both could do exactly what they were lined up to do without anyone really noticing.
Personally, I would write it the opposite way. I would have the world lose their composure entirely and lash out against the royal structure and crime union. I would have them refuse to accept it, and overthrow this ridiculous tradition the old fashioned way. Pitchforks, torches, and a mob too big for any military to control. I would use this as the straw that breaks the camel's back. And these lovers could try to maintain their roles and duties but ultimately find that the only way to be accepted is to have them both disown their former lines and come back down to the level of the people and let a new form of government rise from the ashes.
] |
[Question]
[
In a story I have been working on, there is a planet called Ieuclite. I want to have its surface be entirely covered in ice and have the people live in cracks and fissures. But then I thought, what if there is an ocean beneath the surface? And what if these people evolved to be able to stay underwater for very extended periods of time (yet not fully aquatic). Some other information is that this planet is technically a moon that people from another planet colonized so they could collect the water (for other reasons that go way beyond the point of this question).
I want to keep my idea as realistic as I can, and I often tell myself, "it's just fiction, no one will really care," but at the same time I really want to have science backing up most, if not everything I write.
Also, any ideas regarding the actual species living on this planet would be greatly appreciated as well.
Edit: The aliens that colonized the planet for water come from a very dry and large planet with very heavy gravity. I read in a different Answer on this site that in heavy gravity, it would be favorable to sleep in water with breathing devices, because the water could still hold up your weight and keep you afloat. So they need to harvest more water that's readily available, and they decided to colonize the moon so they could just send little pods back with the water rather than travelling back and forth.
[Answer]
## 1. Orbit a high-mass planet
In the Solar System, two moons are covered with ice *and* have subsurface oceans: [**Europa**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)) and [**Enceladus**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus). Europa orbits Jupiter; Enceladus orbits Saturn. In the case of the latter, jets of water vapor were observed, indicating an underground source. For both moons, the oceans survive through [tidal heating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_heating) by the giant planets they orbit. Energy is transferred to the moons, which heats up their interiors, keeping them warm enough for liquid water to exist below the surface.
Now, you've described the home planet as having "heavier gravity". If the planet's mass is anywhere near the level of that of, say, Saturn, then you should be able to come up with some pretty good tidal heating. You just need to have the right parameters for the moon's orbit, composition and structure.
## 2. Snowball Earth
RonJohn beat me to the idea of a [snowball Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth), but I'll talk about it nonetheless, because it's a good option - and doesn't involve another body. Moreover, it may have happened, at multiple periods in our planet's history, and so it's quite feasible.
Essentially, you need a terrestrial planet with a good supply of water - oceans. You then need some sort of mechanism that will cool the planet *and* lead to more cooling - a [feedback mechanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback). (We see something similar in global warming, where increasing temperatures unlock more greenhouse gases, such as through the melting of ice.) This means that the cooling will continue, rather than being damped and eventually stopped.
This mechanism could be as simple as drastic snow buildup, which would lead to less heat being absorbed. Alternatively, some sort of mass reduction in greenhouse gases could reduce the heat trapped by the atmosphere. Both of these would be self-reinforcing, leading to a true snowball planet. They're better than one-time events, like an asteroid impact, because those effects will end on relatively short timescales (e.g. when dust dissipates).
[Answer]
## Radioactive decay makes it almost mandatory
The question isn't "how do you have liquid oceans beneath ice". **The question is how you *don't***.
The reason is long-lived radioactive isotopes that decay slowly enough that primordial decay is still happening. You have an entire planet with a fairly predictable fraction of its mass made of that stuff. That makes heat, which makes the planet's core hot. **That heat has to go somewhere**.
Aside from making the core rather hot, the heat is also going to propagate up toward the surface. It will be *competing* with solar load and heat losses into space. As we well know from this planet, the balance between solar load and space losses determines the surface temperature, so if it's far enough from the sun, the surface will freeze of course.
Ice is a fair insulator and snow is a lot better. The thicker the ice/snow, the slower the thermal transfer from the earth's core, and the more that heat is "bottled"/contained. So if the oceans are deep enough, the deepest parts *must* melt.
[Answer]
Look to Snowball Earth: if -- in an extreme Ice age -- the ice sheets advance far enough, a runaway effect will occur, and the whole moon will be covered in ice. Since ice floats, and the oceans are deep, **large** and salty, you'll still have liquid water in the depths. If there's no volcanic activity to subsequently spew out CO2 and methane to warm the atmosphere, you're stuck in the snowball.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth#Mechanisms>
>
> Many possible triggering mechanisms could account for the beginning of a snowball Earth, such as the eruption of a supervolcano, a reduction in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases such as methane and/or carbon dioxide, changes in Solar energy output, or perturbations of Earth's orbit. Regardless of the trigger, initial cooling results in an increase in the area of Earth's surface covered by ice and snow, and the additional ice and snow reflects more Solar energy back to space, further cooling Earth and further increasing the area of Earth's surface covered by ice and snow. This positive feedback loop could eventually produce a frozen equator as cold as modern Antarctica.
>
>
>
[Answer]
You are asking about subsurface oceans.
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinanderton/2017/11/30/subsurface-oceans-and-tidal-heating-may-hold-the-key-to-finding-alien-life-infographic/#4b55132f3787>[1](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinanderton/2017/11/30/subsurface-oceans-and-tidal-heating-may-hold-the-key-to-finding-alien-life-infographic/#4b55132f3787)
See Europa:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Subsurface_ocean>[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Subsurface_ocean)
See Ganymede:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganymede_(moon)#Subsurface_oceans>[3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganymede_(moon)#Subsurface_oceans)
See Callisto:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callisto_(moon)#Internal_structure>[4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callisto_(moon)#Internal_structure)
See Encledus:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus#Subsurface_water_ocean>[5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus#Subsurface_water_ocean)
See Titan:
<https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/02jul_saltyocean>[6](https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/02jul_saltyocean)
see Dione:
<http://www.astro.oma.be/en/saturns-moon-dione-harbors-a-subsurface-ocean/>[7](http://www.astro.oma.be/en/saturns-moon-dione-harbors-a-subsurface-ocean/)
See Triton:
<http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/04/is-triton-a-kbo>[8](http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/04/is-triton-a-kbo)
<https://www.space.com/17470-neptune-moon-triton-subsurface-ocean.html>[9](https://www.space.com/17470-neptune-moon-triton-subsurface-ocean.html)
So astronomers and planetary geologists believe that subsurface oceans are possible and that some exist in our solar system.
The heat to keep the subsurface oceans liquid comes from the decay of radioactive isotopes and from tidal flexing and heating of the moons and planets in a satellite system.
If you want your story to be plausible and your people to be like humans then you have to calculate the orbits and masses of the astronomical bodies so Leuclite has sufficient radioactive and tidal heating for the subsurfac eocean to be warm enough to be liquid. And you have to consider the chemical composition of the ocean which may be only water, only methane, only ammonia, or most likely mostly water with some other chemicals included.
It is quite possible that the ice on the surface of Leuclite may be over a hundred kilometers or miles thick.
Thus it may take major expeditions for people living partway down in cracks in the ice to reach the bottom of the ice and enter the subsurface ocean. If the people from another planet were land dwelling air breathing mammal-like beings, they will need either submersibles and diving gear or else need to use genetic engineering to give themselves gills to swim in the subsurface ocean. Or both.
The genetically modified people may become a different caste, ethnic group, or species than the unmodified people.
There may possibly be alien life in the subsurface ocean. Harvesting plant or animal life for food or other resources, and dealing with hypothetical intelligent subsurface life, may be motives for underseas ventures.
I hope this will be some help to you.
[Answer]
## High Pressure
Pressure increases with depth. In the following phase diagram we find a small region below about 270K where an increase in pressure (in the 10MPa to 200 MPa region) causes a phase change from solid to liquid. This is many orders of magnitude more pressure than Earth's surface, but comparable to the pressure in the Mariana Trench.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9pLEe.png)
## Tidal Stretching
Requires your home-world to closely orbit a large planet or star. Europa and Enceladus are in our solar system orbiting large planets (we've confirmed their under-ice oceans), and we've seen planets orbiting small, dim stars in other systems far enough for ice, but close enough for tidal stretching.
## Radioactive Decay
Uranium-238 and Thorium-232 decay inside the Earth. A different planet, in a colder part of space, could sustain a liquid ocean beneath an ice crust with a little more Uranium in its core.
## Thermal Mass
The Earth's core temperature is only about half from radioactive decay. Planet formation lowers the gravitational potential energy of a system quite a bit, and much of the energy of formation simply hasn't left. Water and ice are passable insulators - especially if there are miles of them underneath an atmosphere.
## Salt
Salt impedes the formation of ice. Whenever water evaporates, it leaves the salt behind. Imagine a very wet planet was slightly colder than Earth. Whenever surface water gets exposed to the atmosphere, the evaporated water falls elsewhere as snow (because it's cold enough that pure water freezes, but not cold enough to freeze salt water).
## What Evolves
It sounds like all of the creatures in your story are non-native to the system which means 'whatever you want.' As far as native creatures go, we'd expect 'plants' using [chemo-synthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemosynthesis), their predators and any creatures from above which may be scavenged. There are many microscopic organisms that grow in snowy environments. It'd be hard to have Nitrogen and Phosphorus cycles on the surface of an Icy ocean ball planet.
If you want more interesting creatures who evolve with photo-synthesis, consider a planet with an equatorial strip that melts during the day or rock mountains that push above the icy plains.
If you want more to scavenge below, consider a gassy planet with an aero-biomme above, and an ocean below its Ice crust.
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