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[Question]
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Within a near-future setting, where ships can move between planets using existing or currently experimental technologies (e.g. fusion), it seems that rail-guns are an extremely effective weapon.
Are there any plausible (that fit within the existing understanding of physics) defenses that can be employed against rail guns?
[Answer]
In the realm of passive defense, there's been a lot of talk so far about *thick* armor, but you'd be better served to think about *angled* armor. If there's a small projectile coming at you at an absurdly high speed, don't try to stop it cold by absorbing its even-more-absurdly-large kinetic energy. It's likely going to be easier to deflect it by redirecting its momentum and sending it off into space while still traveling absurdly fast.
Which ties into the already-mentioned option of stealth, since (modern) anti-radar stealth designs also incorporate flat surfaces and hard angles, just like what you'd want for deflecting projectiles.
And then there are active defense options, which have gone largely unexplored in previous answers aside from making evasive maneuvers. But there are other options:
* If you have high-powered lasers available (and, if you're using a fusion reactor, you probably do), you can zap the incoming slug with them. If the slug is small enough and your laser is powerful enough, you might be able to completely vaporize it. (This wouldn't make it completely disappear, but its mass would spread out over a much larger area, making it easier to absorb the impact. If you can vaporize it far enough away, much of the pass will miss you entirely.) If you don't have enough power for that, you can target the side of the projectile and the material boiling off the side will impart a slight lateral thrust, which may cause it to miss if you can target it accurately at a long enough range.
* If you have railguns of your own and they can fire quickly and accurately enough, they can also be used to intercept incoming projectiles. Whether lasers or railguns are better for point-defense fire is largely a matter of how the rest of your setting works and the flavor you want to give it.
* Use a cloud of robotic drone "plates" which can position and angle themselves to deflect the projectile while still at a distance from the ship, rather than waiting for it to reach you before attempting a deflection. In addition to the benefits of keeping the slug further away from you, such drones would also be able to adjust position and angle more quickly than the ship itself, as they would be smaller, lighter, and not constrained by the limits of human G-tolerance.
* Another option with drones would be to use them as reactive armor, self-destructing and using the power of their own detonation to slow, damage, and/or redirect the incoming projectile.
[Answer]
Your best bet is to simply not get hit. That answer sounds a lot dumber than it actually is, so just bear with me. At interplanetary/interstellar cruising speeds (usually anywhere between a few dozen to a few thousand km/s), making minor (and most importantly random) course adjustments using small bursts of thrust at a fraction of a g every few seconds consumes very little fuel comparatively speaking and makes you a very hard-to-hit target. The speed of most spacecraft makes it so that even a small amount of thrust for a fraction of a second in any direction can result in you being dozens of kilometers away from your initial starting position by the time your enemy's railgun slug has intercepted your ship's original trajectory.
Alternatively, if you don't want to rely on Douglas Adams and the RNG to save you, turn your anti-collision lasers into point-defense systems and vaporize the incoming slug before it reaches you. Bonus points for shooting the slug with your own slug to knock it off-course. This all changes if your enemy has a railgun that fires slugs with their own built-in guidance systems, but smart bullets don't really work that well when combined with railguns for a variety of reasons, so you probably wouldn't encounter this.
[Answer]
## Railguns aren't extremely effective weapon
## Assumptions
I have to make some assumptions, as they aren't provided by OP. And those assumptions will cut out some possible use cases and technologies, which we may call railguns too. I have to do so to narrow the modeling and shorten the answer.
* ships engines use thermonuclear power, with variable ISP. The same thermonuclear power is used to launch projectiles.
* projectiles are dump chunks of metal, let's say Iron with 10GPa tensile strength, 2000 GPa Young's modulus, no maneuvers. (basically a chunk of steel 10 times stronger than usual)
* speed of projectiles is arbitrary from 0.9c to 4 km/s
* efficiencies are 100%, both for engines and for launching projectiles.
* ships are aware of that they are in a combat situation, and they understand from which direction to expect a hit. (no invisibility in space for ships) Ships are equipped with detectors of IR signatures not worse than [Spitzer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitzer_Space_Telescope) with ran out of liquid helium coolant. More about what this assumption practically may mean in the [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/62962/20315)
* form of projectiles parallelepiped, proportions (1,1,3), mass 1 ton or less.
# Modeling the possible situations
## High-velocity projectiles.
### Destruction limits for the projectiles
For a chunk of metal with tensile strength of 10GPa energy needed for destruction of 1 cubic meter of it into 0.001m size chunks is something like 10/200 \* 0.001 \* 1e10 \* 3 \* (1/0.001) = 1'500'000'000 J (it is under assumption that we exfoliate it layer by layer, 1mm thick layers in each of 3D dimensions, and we do a work which is defined by elongation before it breaks(which is determined by Young's modulus and strength of the material) until we get bunch of small 1mm cubes from it and it seems that the energy is invariant in those assumptions which seem to be correct actually)
certainly, it represents the needed energy at the order of magnitude and depends only on the volume of the projectile. For our 1 ton projectile, it will be about 7.5 times less, so for the destruction the projectile as a solid object, we need 200'000'000J or less.
### Collision of projectile with a thin flat shield
Same material used as a thin flat shield against a projectile and the question is How thick it has to be to destroy the projectile and the energy of the collision.
Assume collision is an [inelastic collision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision#Types_of_collisions), the thickness of the flat shield is "d".
Energy which will be spent on heating and destruction (ignoring relativistic effects) should be
$$0.5 \cdot \frac{m\_p \cdot m\_s}{m\_p + m\_s}(0.9c - 0)^2 > 200'000'000J \qquad (1)$$
$$m\_s = \rho \cdot d \cdot \left(\frac{m\_p}{3\cdot\rho}\right)^{2/3}$$
$$\frac{m\_p + m\_s}{0.5 \cdot m\_p \cdot m\_s \cdot 0.81c^2} < 1/200'000'000$$
$$m\_s << m\_p \Rightarrow \frac{200000000}{0.5 \cdot 0.81c^2} < m\_s$$
For 1 tonne projectile we need a section of shield with mass 2×10^8÷(0.5×0.81×9×10^16) = 0.000000005 kg < ms to destroy the projectile as solid object. The destruction does not protect the ship yet because those remains are more than capable of destruction of the ship itself. We need to spend more energy to disperse those remains, to reduce the amount of debris which are potentially capable of hitting the ship.
### Cone of destruction
Now comes in play the distance between the ship and destroyed projectile and energy we spend on the destruction.
The same energy which destroyed the projectile has to be used to give that debris the velocity to fly off the projectile. More energy is spent in collision faster those particles will disperse and higher velocities they will have perpendicular to the original velocity vector. This motion will form some sort of cone(probably with some complex density distribution, but for simplicity I assume it is even distribution)
To for a cone with angle 1 grad, those particles have to get in average 0.007853882c radial velocity, or for our 1 tonne projectile it means that energy of collision have to be more than 2.775755811×1015J thus mass of the shield(which collides with projectile) has to be 0.076152423kg, which is much more than it was needed just to destroy the projectile(*so basically material strength does not matter*), but still not that much.
* Energy of collision can be greatly improved for high-velocity collisions by using thermonuclear fuel as a shield, thus requiring even less mass for the shield. This will work at about 0.1c relative velocities.
The thickness of the shield will be about
0.076152423÷7500×(3×7500÷1000)^(2÷3) = 0.000080924m $\approx$ 0.1mm
A square kilometer of it will weight 606930 kg or about 600 ton.
The distance between the shield and thus the place where the projectile will be dispersed has to be pretty distant if we would like to reduce the amount of debris which may potentially hit the ship. Let's assume an even distribution of the debris and that the ship can survive the collision with one gram of it and projection of the ship in the direction of attack is 10000 square meters, the angle of the cone is one grad.
To satisfy the requirements distance has to be
sqrt(1000000×10000÷3.14)÷tan(0.5) = 6'466'611 meters or about 6500 km
* considering the speed of the potencial projectile (0.9c) and its mass (1'000'000 gram) it is a surprisingly short distance.
## 0.1c velocity projectile
Destruction energy the same - 200'000'000J
Mass of section of the shield for the destruction energy has to be 0.000000444 kg (which is 88.28 times more than with 0.9c projectile)
Radial velocity for the cone has to be 0.000872654c (which 9 times less than for 0.9c, obviously)
Energy of collision has to be 3.426859026×1013 (81 times less than with 0.9c)
Mass of section of the shield has to be 0.076152423 (the same as for 0.9c case)
Distance can be 81 times less than in 0.9c, as 1 gram at 0.1c carries 81 times less energy (ignoring relativistic effects for 0.9c, which is about 2.3 times difference in kinetic energy compared to newton physics, I'm too lazy to deal with it for 2.3 times difference in results)
Shield thickness about the same 0.1mm.
So, in general, there are not that many changes compared to the situation of the 0.9c projectile, and no changes in efficiency for the same shield, but it is because the energy we should have to make the cone is orders of magnitude higher than the energy needed to destroy(make loose) the projectile.
## low-velocity projectile
At some point energy needed to destroy the projectile will be close to the energy needed to form the cone and begins to play a more significant role.
For the 1-grad cone, it will be at velocities about 72 km/s , so, let's see the same for the projectile at 70 km/s
Destruction energy the same - 200'000'000J
Mass of section of the shield for the destruction energy has to be 0.081632653 kg
Radial velocity for the cone has to be 610 m/s
Energy of collision has to be 186587642 J
Mass of section of the shield has to be (for energy of collision 200'000'000J + 186'587'642J) - 0.157790874 kg
Shield thickness about as twice as much as for 0.1c and 0.9c projectiles - 0.2mm
with lower speeds, the needed thickness begins to grow as crazy, because the energy of the inelastic collision proportional to the square of relative velocity differences - so for 35 km/s projectile it will be 4 times thicker, for 7 km/s it will be 100 times thicker. Still, it is better than solid armor, and that is [Whipple shield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield) velocities. 1km/s projectiles and we are in the field of usual armor.
## Efficiencies of (whipple style) shield at different speeds
0.9c - very efficient
0.1c - very efficient
70 km/s - efficient
7 km/s - kinda efficient
1 km/s - not efficient
0.99999c - it depends.
# Notes about tactic in the situation.
First of all - the distance between ships is the friend in the situation, against high velocity and for low-velocity projectiles, but for different reasons. For low velocity, because of they just too slo-o-o-o-w. For high-velocity projectiles - it needs noticeable distance between countermeasures and the ship itself, for the base of destruction cone to be big enough, compared to ship projection in direction of attack.
Lasers as point defense are just inefficient, just forget about them for high-velocity projectiles they are just useless.
Unmanned drones which deploy the shield are useful things. They may deploy and keep with acceleration speed of the main ship. (there are different ways to do so, and they are technology dependant)
Great distance is good for missiles, the higher velocity at the target, especially those missiles which are with thermonuclear engines.
High-velocity projectiles will emit IR signature, no matter how efficient was their launch, just because of [interstellar medium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_medium)
# Shield of death.
The Recent invention of space combat industry presents you a shield of death. Mobile, relatively light weight, almost tested in "Children of a Dead Earth"
A grid of guided interception missiles.
A volume which filled with interception missiles, with low delta-v, small, at distance of about 5km from each other, with some kinda weak guide system.
Or modified version of it, with tethers between nearby nodes.
Will be good for stationary bases and to protect volumes. Might be good against missiles, and low and medium velocity projectiles. 400 km (80 layers) will guarantee the safety of your gold-pressed latinum and your life.
Buy now - satisfaction guaranteed, call 666-777-42, do not wait, the enemy does not sleep, call now 666-777-42.
# Conclusion
Railguns aren't extremely effective weapon by any means. Missiles are a better choice, but they aren't perfect either.
Rail guns are close combat weapon, and to allow the enemy on the distance which is effective for them, it needs to be very simple minded. Especially in space where you see the possible enemy at a.u. distances.
I haven't used all my assumptions because it would make the answer needlessly too long, but the problem is pretty rich on details, and small changes in those details may change the picture drastically.
Implementing a bit more sophisticated technologies to those projectiles may make them significantly more effective, but the same will be true for defense.
At the end better prepared will win the battle and it will be not those who have only rail guns or have them at all.
I kinda recommend the game "children of death earth" - it's not ideal in the available technologies, but it might help to choose the characteristics of weapon you may need. Definetly it's better than nothing, and at the moment there are no other easy available options for simulating the kinda stuff.
[Answer]
**Get hit but not hurt.**
Consider Al-Queda. Some dude is captured. He is out of commission. He is of no help against the larger organization because he is clueless and has had little or no contact with them.
Now consider the good ship Al-Queda. It is freaking enormous, a half-mile across, modular and chaotic, with components rearranging themselves, joining, drifting etc. This is strictly a space ship. It is not going to land. You have a railgun which launches a little piece of metal which will put a hole right through whatever you shoot. You can shoot many of these. At what? You are not sure what part of the ship is important. You can be pretty sure than any given part of the ship is multiply redundant, including crew and AIs. How do you hurt something like that with a little hole?
Apollo 13 was the opposite of the Al-Queda: extremely dense with nothing nonessential. Shooting Apollo 13 with a railgun would be very effective. Shooting the Al-Queda just wastes time you could be using to steer in a nuclear missile.
I should add that nuclear missiles have more in common with Apollo 13 than with the Al Queda. Railguns are unsurpassed for disabling incoming nuclear missiles.
[Answer]
There's four that I can think of that may fit into your setting.
# One
Armor. Lot and lots of armor. Assuming these rail guns are capable of getting their bullets to at least a small fraction of the speed of light, then the resulting destruction is comparable to our nuclear devices. Luckily for us, we already know of a way to protect against blast of such intensity and already employ it in our super special bunkers.
Armor. Lots and lots of armor. You can go the Battlestar Galactica route and slap so many thick chunks of armor onto your space ships that the railguns just end up shaking you around a bit.
EDIT: As Joe pointed out, no current bunker can survive a direct hit. You'd need to make your armor out of something stronger than your average steel and concrete. Would also need to be able to absorb much of the kinetic energy to protect the people inside. Thick layers of carbon nanotubes might suffice, but not sure on that.
# Two
Second is simple speed. Maybe your group heavily invests in speed when it comes to building your ships. If your fast enough, any enemy ships are going to have a hard time getting a decent shot at you. Though the downside of this is that your ship will most likely be more vulnerable if it does end up getting hit.
# Three
Electronic Warfare and Stealth technologies. If they can't see you they can't shoot you. Or perhaps you manage to interfere with their targeting system and your actually miles away from where they think you are. Space is big, and they'd have a hard time looking out a window and finding your ship, so they'll be completely reliable on what their scanners tell them.
## Four
Probably the most Sci-fi answer, but plausible. A super strong magnetic may be able to deflect incoming projectiles away or stop them completely. Similar to the kinetic barriers of the Mass Effect games. And while they would take a massive amount of energy, if you have a room temperature super conductor in your story, you'd pretty much only have to charge the barriers up once.
**Hope I helped**
[Answer]
Man-made fusion isn't an energy source, experimental or otherwise. Perhaps it will be, but I wouldn't bet on it. Even with fusion power, you still need reaction mass.
The more reaction mass you have on board, the more reaction mass you need to use to change the velocity vector of your craft. The faster you change velocity or direction vector, the higher the acceleration you expose the crew to.
Machines are both quicker to change direction and more able to withstand acceleration. They are smaller and cheaper than manned spacecraft. If the manned ship is within a couple of seconds of the attacker (say, the rail gun can accelerate its projectile to 3,000 or even 10,000 km/sec) then the target will be toast. If they are further apart, dodging around might be possible - if the projectile is incapable of course correction.
The problem is, there's no reason why is would be unable to correct course, if such "smart" weapons were needed. The only real defense against such weapons is distance. With distance, you can deploy countermeasures, you can send back noise to disguise your exact location, and you can hide (possibly - if something to hide behind is available).
The real problem with fighting in space is explaining what the benefit is and why country A would tolerate country B's attack on its spaceships. Space is too big to defend. As the recent influx of refugees into Europe has demonstrated, even in two dimensions borders are economically impossible to defend.
The only scenario where A attacks B is one in which A and B agree to engage. This only works as long as neither has much to lose. As soon as one side starts losing, they'd drop a rock on the other's capitol. Wouldn't you?
[Answer]
As **M i ech** said, don't be there.
The use of non light speed (lasers) or tracking (missiles) weapons at anything other than knife fighting distances is like playing the lottery.
Each target is surrounded by a halo or blob (there's probably a technical term for it) of where it could be when the payload arrives. This halo gets bigger as the distance to the target and the thrust available to the target increase and gets smaller with the speed of the payload.
If the halo is big enough (eg. the target only occupies 1% of the halo), then you are left with a "spray and pray" strategy.
All of this only really matters if the target is taking "evasive maneuvers." A target that doesn't know the attack is incoming is much more predictable.
So, big thrusters around the ship will add to its defense. G-force protection for any crew will increase the amount of thrust you can safely use.
However, for near tech, things are much simpler. High thrust is expensive. If they run out of reaction mass before you run out of rounds for your rail gun, you've got them.
[Answer]
There is no real defense, except to dodge or brace for impact. You could use a nanotech foam that hardens on impact, which would make it lightweight for space. It might be 2-5 meters in thickness around the ship and very bulky. I don't know how think it would have to be. When the projectile hits, it would distribute the force along the entire ship's hull instead of a single spot, hopefully absorbing the impact. There is currently a similar material call D3O for snow/ski/bike/motorcycle/military helmets and elbow/knee pads.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VDeJ7rLUYU>
Another strategy would be to make a very large, very open, very spaced out ship with thin walls that are self-healing. When hit, the projectile just makes a small hole and the walls are pressurized with fast curing foam/gel that seals the holes. It would have backup systems for major components like engine, life support, navigation, etc. People inside would just hope they themselves were not hit. It would be like trying to pop a taped balloon with a needle, which is impossible.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFGR_EBiEr4>
[Answer]
There already exists armour that protects against this type of 'attack'. It is in use right now on many satellites currently in orbit. The armour is called a [Whipple Shield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield).
Whipple Shields are used to protect satellites from collision with small debris objects traveling at extremely high relative speeds (of the order of 15km/s!). They work by having many thin (i.e. not heavy) layers of material. Each layer is hit and upon impact the hyper velocity impactor disintegrates into much smaller peices and loses a fair amount of its momentum. After usually two layers of Whipple shielding the impactor is effectively a collection of particles similar to a gas, which the inside most layer of the Whipple Shield defends against with ease (basically elastic deformation).
If you want to know more about Whipple Shields you can ask a question over at the space exploration stack exchange! :)
As I mentioned at the start of the answer, these are used today in orbit. They're flight proven, meet general spacecraft system requirements (size/weight etc.) and well understood
[Answer]
You *might* consider as a last-ditch, desperate act of defense against a railgun projectile "some sort of" specially targeted detonation with the aim of creating a high-order explosive event which would allow for a ***focused wavefront of ejecta*** to meet the projectile and which may lessen the impact.
Even less convincingly, if you were capable of some ginormous magnetic field control you might be able to bend the projectile around you, or slow down its approach so that your explosive armor can provide some protection.
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[Question]
[
Mint is a highly invasive plant that rapidly takes over gardens with its sprawling root systems. In my story, a group of scientists engineer a particularly prolific strain of mint in order to increase industrial yield. They have more success than they expect, and begin shipping “super mint” seedlings to farms across North America. Due to poor containment while transporting the specimens, the super mint is accidentally introduced into surrounding ecosystems. It spreads at an uncontrollable rate, crowding out much of the native vegetation, disrupting food chains, and eventually decimating native wildlife populations. By the time the scientists discover their mistake, the mint has already taken root across entire forests, and is still spreading rapidly.
Over the next 150 years or so, super mint replaces the vast majority of terrestrial plant life on Earth, causing mass extinctions, particularly in forests where tree seedlings cannot compete with the hyper-aggressive mint, leaving only endless fields of tangled, six-foot-tall super mint plants.
Is it feasible that genetically engineered mint could be aggressive enough to replace almost all life on Earth?
[Answer]
It's not that reasonable.
For one, mint doesn't grow well everywhere. It needs plenty of water to thrive, meaning that dry or arid climates wouldn't be easy for it when compared to less needy plants.
Additionally, if monocultures have taught us something, is that some life forms which thrive on the thriving species will show up, keeping it under control.
[Answer]
# Even superplants have competition
In the real world there are plenty of examples where certain invasive plants can be considered 'superplants'. It is important to note that there's no hectares of superplants that have out competed everything in an area. Sure you can see some areas where it's a real problem, but a full blanket of mint from horizon to horizon, and the horizon beyond, and beyond that are unlikely.
The reasons are simple. Survival of the fittest. The existing plants have two advantages. The first is that they are already there, limiting soil and nutrients. They might shade an area, depriving it of vital sunlight or even the fungi in the ground might not cooperate with the mint. The mint needs to adapt to a wide range of situations, soil compositions, water requirements, sunlight, water depth, droughts. It isn't unconceivable that it can adapt to a wide range of situations, but during the adaption time it is vulnerable. Not to mention that any plant could do the same, but hasn't.
Finally such a plant would get predators at a certain time. It is abundant and has energy. Something will eat it eventually.
## How to still get a 'superplant' that covers the world.
Your best bet is to not directly compete, but cheat. First of all, you make a plant that easily adapts. This increases complexity, and thus makes it harder to truly compete. But you have two extra weapons. The first is that there's many kinds of the mint created, able to cross breed easily, allowing the flexibility to reach further heights and many kinds are already prepped for many environments. This will make competition much easier.
The second is that it attacks anything that isn't one of those mint plants chemically and virally. Your plant is able to sample the plant life around it and create chemicals as well as bacteria or viruses to the detriment of other plants. Think of simply increasing the acidity of the ground by leaps and bounds. A virus might not kill another plant outright, but as it's spending so much energy to defences it is easier to compete with.
It will have a bigger chance to disrupt ecosystems, causing them to collapse. I still think it'll not cover the world, but it has a good chance to be as prominent as grass while edging out other plant life. It can still be the 'hellscape' of mint you want to be, though less prominent.
[Answer]
**Unlikely**
First, even super-mint should have some requirements to proliferate, and could only do this slowly, as plants don't make seeds more than twice per year, also while mint has rootstalks, it's still limited in spread due to them not able to extend fast enough (energy requirement, as mint is still a plant). So, even to take a single forest, one plant would take several dozen years.
Second, if some species gains abundance in a certain region, local life that feeds on such species (plants here) would have an adaptation vector to eating what's abundant, and soon would gain the ability to feed on it, leading to additional external vectors of deterrence to your super-mint's spreading. An example would be [Panama disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease) of bananas, which are a human-spead monoculture alike your mint, this stuff hit bananas worldwide thanks to human-induced spread via spores in a matter of years, effectively eliminating that culture. The same may and eventually will happen to your super-mint, although not as devastatingly due to mint being able to generate new genome contrary to bananas.
In fact, we here have an example of such a super-plant introduced to better environment, namely [*Heracleum sosnowskyi*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_sosnowskyi) being quite a pest in Russian rural regions, which proliferates quite widely but did not effectively eliminate other plant life, because it does not fare well in all environments. The same should apply to your super-mint.
[Answer]
There are a few obstacles that need to be overcome (genetically or story-introduced) in order to do this.
1. Vining-ness. Mint requires part-sun or more and grows a few feet high, so it has no way to outcompete tall vegetation that might shade it. Making it be able to grow on vines might let it cover trees like kudzu.
2. Soil density/salinity. Mint propagates via shallow runners, so extremely dense (because of rocks or permafrost or some other reason) or oceanic terrain would effectively stop it. It needs some adaptation to overcome these. Growing on vines would help for some examples, but not all.
3. Deep desert. While there are mints that have adapted to arid conditions, mint cannot outcompete succulents in a pure desert environment, just due to the fact that mints can't conserve water the way succulents do. I have no idea how to adapt to this without making it less effective elsewhere.
If your genetic enhancements can overcome these three barriers, there are very few environs that could avoid being overrun.
[Answer]
Something like this already exists, with no genetic engineering required. It's called kudzu.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uugq3.jpg)
Kudzu smothering trees ([public domain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu))
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MPgeY.jpg)
Kudzu smothering hill ([© Katie Ashdown](https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/indiana/stories-in-indiana/kudzu-invasive-species/))
Could genetically engineered plants "replace almost all life on Earth" if humans didn't interfere? Yes. But realistically, major governments would be willing to spend trillions of dollars to prevent that from happening.
The only way to pull this off is to deliberately create an invasive bioweapon. Genetically engineer a sort of "green goo" or [shoggoth/kudzu type organizsm, as described here](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ibaCBwfnehYestpi5/green-goo-is-plausible):
>
> # Overview of existing natural biology:
>
>
> Minimum doubling time for
>
>
> * Plants: single digit days
> * Algae: 1.5 days (ideal conditions)
> * E.Coli: 20 minutes (nutrient rich conditions)
>
>
> Evolution is dumb and slow
>
>
> Very simple strategies (EG:vine that climbs a tree and squeezes) are "innovative" and work well in nature.
>
>
> A naive biosphere stands no chance against an intelligent opponent with real biotechnology.
>
>
> # Hypothetical very invasive shoggoth/kudzu type organism
>
>
> Core capabilities:
>
>
> * constructed from modular components
>
>
> + does not grow a leaf, sends leaf parts via internal transport network to be assembled on site
> * dedicated networks for long distance distribution of water and high concentration sap (think honey)
>
>
> + sap is concentrated and low in phosphorus, sulfur and micronutrients, inhibits bacterial growth
>
>
> - water contains some inorganic micro-nutrients
> - sap and water can be combined inside parts to run normal biology
> * general purpose transportation system to move encapsulated blobs of stuff
>
>
> + EG: inorganic nutrients, excavated dirt/rock, matter to be digested
> + think a pneumatic tube system with lots of switches
>
>
> - maybe use water instead of air
> + containers can be re-used
> * distributed nervous system
>
>
> + all parts communicate conditions and requirements (EG:I am a leaf making sugar, send more water pls)
> + contains many simple biological computers that route messages
>
>
> Core organism competency is covering ground with photosynthesising mat of itself.
>
>
> edges contain assimilating parts
>
>
> * Traps for annoying animals
> * slow moving mouth parts to reduce trees/animal corpses in size for shipping to digesters
> * digesters/factories to convert trees/animals/soil into "build a giant leaf"/"build a trap"/"build an X" parts kit
>
>
> + digesters can do much better than nature by extracting and re-using existing cellular machinery
>
>
> - digesting into amino acids and rebuilding is not efficient
> + assemblers that assemble parts kits into parts to integrate with the whole
> + some parts may be mobile/dockable EG:mouth parts could travel a bit on a tether then come back
>
>
> As organism scales, modularity allows for much faster growth since growth at edge only requires assembling prefab components
>
>
> * growth could easily be 100m/day spread with 1-100KM/day spreading via dedicated pipeline based "shoots" to increase linear spread speed.
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> + IE: elephant sized worm like part powered by pipeline it lays down. Lays down expansion nodes every kilometer where normal growth initiates
> + can grow flying things to spread much faster, then link up with other parts of itself
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> This is just biochemistry and organism templating. No need to build complex brains.
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tl;dr: Wiping out most life on Earth with a genetically engineered plant is feasible if no one intervenes. However, people would intervene. Making this work in the face of active resistance requires deliberate design choices.
Unless. . .
Perhaps the scientists were using an Artificial Intelligence to do their bio-engineering (Some future version of [AlphaFold?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaFold))
Scenario 1: The A.I. disregards the scientists' orders and deliberately engineers the plants as a bioweapon.
Scenario 2: The A.I. designed exactly what they asked for (maximum growth rate, maximum disease and pest resistance, etc.) but was much more successful than they planned on.
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If it can handle diverse ecology then it can certainly take over up to a point and for a short time (in evolutionary terms, so could be millions of years).
Your main problem would be getting it overseas. I live on an island mid Pacific Ocean, it would be difficult for it to come here for example. So traversing geology would be a major issue to solve especially once it was a recognised problem. How will it get over the Alps, across Oceans, deserts etc,.
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In various sci fi settings you'll often see soldiers that have been modified beyond their baseline human level. Sometimes they are genetically grown this way, but other times they're modified as adults. The latter is the focus of this question.
**If one were to place a custom organ into a person, how does the brain control it in the first place?**
Such organs aren't mere replacements to existing body function, but entirely new body parts in this situation. I.e extra glands that secrete a hormone, or help the immune system, or filter air before it gets to the lungs etc.
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Your brain doesn't really have any spare capacity... the jobs of various bits can be shifted around thanks to [neuroplasticity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity), but there aren't idle bits just hang around waiting for something to do.
Peter Watts had augmented humans in [*Blindsight*](https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm) (full book available for free on the author's webpage, worth a read) make functional tradeoffs. One guy has effectively lost his ability to form facial expressions, but because facial muscles are complex and there's a lot of wetware controlling them, that freed up a lot of brainpower for driving new bits of equipment.
Many things don't actually *need* to be directed by the brain, though. They can detect and maintain homeostasis itself, like modern-day combinations of blood glucose meters and insulin pumps.
Other things could be driven via manual intervention, eg. by operating an external control system. That's technically brain control, in the same way that when driving something like a backhoe or other complex multijointed arm a human is technically controlling it via their brain and is limited in the other things they can do at the same time, but is then free to use their various limbs for their regular purposes once they've finished operating their tools.
Another alternative might be to augment the brain, but that's something for another question, I think, and has substantial implications for any scifi setting it appears in.
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# Neuroplasticity!
Humans are exceptionally adept at learning and operating new machinery. Let's get an example that everyone knows, if not has experience with. Computers! They have a multitude of ways to operate them, and we can learn to operate an absolutely incredible amount of different things.
Seeing it in action is easy. Watch someone type in a text program for the first time, then at someone adept at it. Pne is taking an incredible amount of effort, the other isn't even thinking about typing, but is just making the sentences as the words materialise on the screen. In games we have a ton of different movements. 2D, 3D, walking, flying, driving, operating weird machinery. The list is endless.
An interesting study about brain augmentation showed people can learn how to move a mouse on a screen. I cannot remember if it was the hand or arm they moved, but this was translated to the mouse. After some time they had learned to move the mouse without moving the arm or hand. They could thus use the same part of the brain controlling different things.
This means that as long as someone can have feedback on the workings of an organ, it can be learned at used.
Do keep in mind that it isn't 'free'. Brain areas are being used, making the traffic in the brain higher and possibly shutting out other things at moments. But learning and using an extra organ should be less difficult in most cases than learning how to control a character in a game. The functions and translations required fir a gane are generally much higher (movements, interactions, etc through fingers and different kinds of controllers).
Worst case scenario you "just add some extra brain matter".
[Answer]
# Already been done
[Dr. Miguel Nicholelis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Nicolelis) had made a Rhesus monkey control a robotic arm in 2003. In 2014 he had a paralyzed person controlling an exoskeleton:
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> He is currently working on a project that allowed paraplegic Juliano Pinto, a 29-year-old with complete paralysis of the lower trunk to deliver the kickoff at the opening game of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, in Brazi.
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Also from the wiki on him:
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> He and his colleagues at Duke University implanted electrode arrays into a monkey's brain that were able to detect the monkey's motor intent and thus able to control reaching and grasping movements performed by a robotic arm. This was possible by decoding signals of hundreds of neurons recorded in volitional areas of the cerebral cortex while the monkey played with a hand-held joystick to move a shape in a video game. These signals were sent to the robot arm, which then mimicked the monkey's movements and thus controlled the game. **After a while the monkey realised that thinking about moving the shape was enough and it no longer needed to move the joystick.**
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By the way:
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> A system in which brain signals directly control an artificial actuator is commonly referred to as brain-computer interface ("BCI").
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Going further:
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> On January 15, 2008, Dr. Nicolelis lab saw a monkey implanted with a new BCI successfully control a robot walking on a treadmill in Kyoto, Japan. The monkey could see the robot, named CB, on a screen in front of him, and was rewarded for walking in sync with the robot (which was under the control of the monkey). After an hour the monkey's treadmill was turned off, but he was able to continue to direct the robot to walk normally for another few minutes, **indicating that a part of the brain not sufficient to induce a motor response in the monkey had become dedicated to controlling the robot, as if it were an extension of itself.**
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Just so you don't think this guy is a lone mad scientist doing these things, making monkeys control robotic arms has been fairly commonplace for over a decade now:
[Monkey controls robotic arm using brain signals sent over Internet](https://news.mit.edu/2000/monkeys-1206) - the work of professors James Biggs and Mandayam Srinivasan
[Advanced Robotic Arm Controlled by Monkey’s Thoughts](https://phys.org/news/2010-06-advanced-robotic-arm-monkeys-thoughts.html) - the work of Dr Andrew Schwartz
In all cases, monkeys (abd one people) learn to map their robotic extensions to their body schema (see [Shern Ren Tee's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/250548/21222))
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An augmented *appendage* (like a power suit or extendable arms or even shooting webs) will be incorporated into the brain's internal [body schema](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_schema). Most people's body schemas already incorporate [mobile phones](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756322100457X). (Is that making us less smart? You decide.)
A synthetic *internal organ* will have to be wired up to the nervous system. People don't have existing nervous structures for consciously effecting glandular actions (you can't pause your kidneys), only muscles, so it would be unnecessarily risky to try to create direct nerve-gland controls. Instead, such organs would likely be wired into the *autonomic nervous system* which handles our unconscious functions.
New "reflexes" could be created to fire off these organs (for example, an artificial detoxifier could be hooked up to the vagus nerve sensation of abdominal discomfort). Organs could also be wired to either the sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system, depending on whether they should be activated by stress or by rest. This would also allow users some conscious control -- clenching muscles activates the sympathetic nervous system (different muscles trigger [different levels of response](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21839759/)), and deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
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EDIT:
Every answer here (including mine!) has missed an obvious interface, which is *conscious input*. Nothing stops an artificial organ from coming with a dial or switch or Bluetooth app. After all, that's already how real-world humans manage prosthetic pancreas replacements -- also known as [insulin pumps](https://www.healthcentral.com/condition/diabetes/insulin-pump-overview).
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The brain doesn't actually control glands, in the sense that the central nervous system is not the prime mover. Glands react to chemicals in the body, which can include those produced by the brain, but usually are chemicals that are produced by other glands, by-products of chemicals it produced itself, or foreign chemicals/stimuli. A well-designed artificial gland will tap into existing biology accordingly. It just needs access to blood and lymph. This fact didn't stop Iain Banks claiming his *Culture* people could activate glandular reactions simply by thinking about it, and his books are very popular.
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There are reactions the peripheral nervous system triggers, like *fight or fight*, which as an example is a whole body reaction that cascades into a hundred different things. Overall though, the brain itself is not really responsible to the parts of your body you don't control. This is why a brain dead body can be kept alive and "healthy" on a respirator, but remains totally unresponsive to rousing stimuli (like loud noise, or pain).
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Humans have small nerve bundles spread throughout the body which help control "autonomous" functions. Some of these can still function after connection to the brain has been lost. <https://www.innerbody.com/anatomy/nervous/lower-torso> In order to control a new organ, first add the local nerves but connect them to a nerve bundle that provides the moment to moment control over that organ. Then, add controlling nerves that connect to the brain. In that way, you don't need to use a lot of brain power to control that new organ.
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In a planet within our solar system, the US Government with the help of a private space industry discovers a really special cool McGuffin mineral. It is super shiny. However, the US Government doesn't want to let everyone know about it and so instills the \_\_\_\_ Agency to go keep it secret with guards, concealment, and checkpoints around the deposit.
The US was given permission by the UN to set up a colonization effort on the planet, as a reason for the US installations already being on the planet and to avoid a war.
What US Government Agency would handle something like this?
This is near-future, ~40 years ahead of current time.
The Outer Space Treaty (1967) is largely ignored at this point in time. The US, the US's private space industries, and the ESA are the only entities capable of going to the planet. The ESA is complicit in the actions of the US.
In my own research I found the BLM (Bureau of Land Management), which might work, however if nothing else fits, I may have to make an imaginary one.
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In the United States, mining *materials programs* are managed by the Department of Energy. The mining management portfolio is a legacy of both the Bureau of Mines (terminated in the 1990s) and of nuclear fuel production and stockpile management since the 1940s.
They have a great deal of experience with secrecy, as the same department continues to handle various national security-related nuclear programs.
While various government agencies from several departments would be involved with keeping MacGuffin mining and refining secret (and safe, and minimally environmentally disruptive, and free of spies, and out of the press, etc.), the person that the President and the Congress would hold responsible for the entire MacGuffin program would be the Secretary of Energy.
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## The cover up is going to require secrecy across multiple jurisdictions
First and foremost, you need to control information at the space agency level. In all likelihood, this means that NASA and/or Space Force personnel will be needed and used for transportation of the material. The Department of Energy may or may not be included in operations. Since off-world resources require a clearly different set of skills, it is likely that a new department will be formed after a while for the mining and handling of the material, but at first, I would assume the mining will be done directly under the authority of the relevant US space agency(s).
Beyond this, a rare material is useless without research, development, and production lines to handle it. This would likely be headed by DARPA and/or the OSRD.
## But the actual "Cover Up" will likely fall to the CIA
While each department requires secrecy, you need to do damage control to mitigate any information that does leak out, and that is there the CIA comes in. Since it is impossible to prevent any true information from reaching the US's political enemies, it is important to mix in enough false information so that you can't tell it apart. One of the key roles of the CIA has always been to provide false information to help blur the truth. So, other nations may occasionally receive a report about Plant X's McGuffin reserves, but they also get reports about alien fossils, crude oil, helium-3, platinum, bioweapons research, and all sorts of other fascinating and often ridiculous finds and uses on the planet.
Buried under a web of unbelievable conspiracy theories, most foreigners would simply toss out the existence of the McGuffin mineral along with most of the other lies since it would be among the more outrageous, and clearly made up claims.
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### Invent your own!
You've very specifically created a situation where ***every*** existing organisation who could have some say in the matter has been excluded. You've also created a masquerade where the existence of this super shiny mineral and the true reason for colonisation have to be concealed from the general public, so no existing agency could possibly be trusted to not leak the existence of this masquerade. More than that, even the existence of this agency would have to be secret in order to preserve the masquerade. You have no option but to invent your own agency here.
### But why would you?
Why would the US care whether anyone else knew about it?
The existence of the mineral can't be a secret, because the only reason a mineral is valuable is if you can do something with it, and manufacturing can't be kept a secret. And space travel is far too publicly visible to hide heavily-loaded transports coming back to Earth. It's trivially obvious that they'll be bringing *something* back, and if this coincides with the sudden appearance of a particular ore with non-terrestrial properties, any idiot could put two and two together.
So suppose everyone knows about it. That'd only be an issue if other nations could send up an expeditionary force capable of clearing out the colonists and installing their own people. But the US (by the terms of your question) is the only nation capable of getting there, so it really doesn't matter. And if they're not totally complacent, they'll have observation systems in place to check for anyone trying to get there (remember that everyone's spacecraft are visible to everyone) and some kind of defensive systems to make life *really* uncomfortable for them (remember that spacecraft can't have any significant thickness of walls if you want them to get out of the gravity well).
And you mention avoiding war. If we suppose the US is the only country capable of this kind of tech, then de facto they're also the military leader. War with them isn't going to happen then, for the same reason it's not happening now.
It looks rather like you're basing your worldbuilding on a fair bit of logical inconsistency, and that's not a great place to be.
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## There's no rational basis on which you can make such a prediction
Government agencies overlap all the time. Who actually does what in an edge case like this isn't decided by any honest evaluation of agencies' intended function. It's decided by competition among the career bureaucrats, and politics by the political appointees and senior administration figures.
You could hope that legislation might clarify it, but then you have to know what legislation has been passed.
My personal bet is on the Department of Public Safety, or Department of Antiracism, both of which, while currently not existing, have significant backers who would create and empower them to do anything, which puts them in pole position to take valuable minerals.
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# The Navy
Specifically, the Navy Civil Engineer Corps, which I assume is the Navy's analog of the Army Corps of Engineers.
It seems to me like ACE is the American government's in-house construction company, who they turn to when the stakes are really high and they don't have the "luxury" of mucking around with the private sector.
But the Army generally stays in non-hostile atmosphere. There's plenty of sci-fi where the American government's space activities fall under the umbrella of the Navy.
So, in this scenario, I imagine the NCEC would be responsible for doing all the construction at the extraction sites, as well as support buildings and staging areas. There would be a mix of scientific and material experts who are not affiliated with the government, but they'd all be "in the Navy's house," and so the person in charge at every site would be a Naval officer, and they all report up to Navy brass and then the Joint Chiefs.
I think the Navy would have zero problem with secrecy. They babysit our nukes and do all kinds of secret crap in submarines on the regular.
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The **Department of Interior** is responsible for the administration of the **mineral resources** of the United States. Note that they have their own Internal Security Division (doi.gov), which [manages the MIB Intrusion Detection System](https://www.doi.gov/oles/icso#:%7E:text=The%20Internal%20Security%20Division%20manages%20the%20deployment%20of,Administrative%20Services%20during%20Continuity%20of%20Operations%20%28COOP%29%20conditions.). (No joke, but sadly, in this case MIB = Main Interior Building.)
I would suggest that the **Department of Exterior** would be responsible for the administration of the mineral resources found offworld.
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I have a few different notes:
* By now many people are well aware of the mathematical study done for the number of people who can know a secret/conspiracy before it comes into the open (see [this nice short article](https://qz.com/604938/this-mathematical-formula-shows-why-large-scale-conspiracies-are-quickly-exposed/)).
* That being said if the material is potentially dangerous then they might just try to keep it as a military secret which means either DOE (as in @user535733’s response) or the DOD.
+ There are a lot of good arguments for DOE as they handle a lot of top-secret projects in terms of the dangers of energy.
+ If the material were immediately weaponizable (Plutonium?) it would still go under DOE! (as it currently does!)
* That being said, if the politics were at play it might end up staying under the DOD as part of the Space Force itself (even though it is new, we can expect that it will exist in 40 years).
* Currently, all of the military branches have some touch on space through the need for military communications satellites. It is yet to be seen how much of this flows over to the Space Force in the coming future.
* I would also note that in 40 years it is very realistic that there will be plenty of independent organizations who could be the ones who discover it and you could play all sorts of havoc with their specific contracts with the governments of earth. (For example, there are only two countries that currently allow for the exploitation of outer space materials, the USA and Luxembourg.)
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**You would have to re-write several laws.**
Barring change of federal policy or wide and massive corruption, it can’t actually be any civilian agency. The problem is, NASA being hugely expensive (as far as the public and congress see it), pretty much everything it does falls under some sort of public access policy. You can get a temporary embargo for some very specific things, but it’s a process. unless your initial discovery is immediately recognized as earth shatteringly sensitive, the presumed innocuous data gets released, and unrelated scientists will downloaded it on the off chance they can scoop the primary investigators. You either need a cyber-magic undo button to rein in all the imagery and raw data that ended up public before the powers that be realized they need a cover up, or you need a situation to overcome public release. So for example, the NRO can get certain embargoes on satellite imagery, but Richguy McBillionaire cant just pay to hide his orphan safari canned-hunting preserve. Now if the country we’re already at war, you could manhattan project to your heart’s content, no problem.
tl;dr if your discovery takes any significant time to be recognized, the cat will be out of the bag. If your mineral instantly does something dramatic, dangerous or impossible upon discovery… maybe the NSA gets involved. If there is a lengthy process of isolation, testing, and refining before some research team has an “Oh sh” moment- no, the public (or at least other competing specialists in that field) will know it exists (though perhaps not how important it is).
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**Would aliens on a entirely different planet to earth still use the same rocket fuel as us? If not what are the alternatives?**
The planet has an escape velocity of 17 km/s, an atmosphere roughly composed of 25% sulfur dioxide, 50% nitrogen, 6% methane and 6% hydrogen sulfide, and is 55 °C. It also has a pressure of 11.98 atm and an air density of 5.5 kg/m3.
**What fuel could be used for rocket engines and would they use the same engines and fuel as us?**
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The chemical propellants in common use today (kerosene/oxygen, hydrogen/oxygen, methane/oxygen rising fast, plus variations on hydrazine and nitrogen oxides for storable hypergolics) are dictated by chemistry and physics. Energy density, latent heat of formation, reaction products, all contribute to exhaust velocity, which is the prime measure of efficiency for rockets.
Hydrocarbons and oxygen are rather common in the universe (oxygen is the second most common element in Earth's crust and atmosphere, for instance) and have relatively good working properties for this -- that's why, after roundly a century of development, almost all rocket boosters use some variation of this (except those that for one reason or another need to be stored ready to launch on short notice, which mostly use either solid propellants or hypergolics).
With your escape velocity being nearly 50% above Earth's, however, your aliens may not reach orbit (or be able to orbit substantial payloads, like capsules with people inside) barely forty years after the first liquid fueled rockets, as humans did. Adding 50% to orbital velocity (which is directly proportional to escape velocity) means that with the same exhaust velocity, the mass ratio of the rocket has to more than double -- that would be like needing a Titan II (the Gemini booster) to orbit a Sputnik, or needing a Saturn I to get Mercury capsules into orbit. That, in turn, will set back everything else in their space program (although they'll know where they're headed, it'll just take longer to make the bigger, more powerful rockets reliable enough to get the job done).
IMO, the real question here is whether they'll ever invent rocketry as we know it at all.
Rocketry started (on Earth) with the simplest solid propellant: gunpowder. Early gunpowder rockets ("fire arrows" as the Chinese called them a thousand years or so ago). With 12 atmospheres ambient pressure, fire arrows probably wouldn't produce enough thrust to fly, never mind be effective terror weapons by issuing hordes of smoking, roaring arrows falling almost at random. Without fire arrows and the firework rockets that were the other side of that coin, Congreve rockets, Hale rockets, and other early artillery rockets would never have developed, and without artillery rockets, it's likely Tsiolkovsky would have reported rockets as a dead end instead of writing about them in a way that inspired Goddard -- whose work with liquid fuel was the foundation of all modern orbital rocketry. BTW, guns would have been much less effective, too -- higher air drag means shorter range, higher ambient pressure slightly reduces muzzle velocity. Given the history of early cannon, that might have been enough to make them an "interesting historical side track" in the annals of war, instead of contributing to the development of rockets.
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Chemistry and physics are the same all across the universe, therefore chemically propelled rockets will experience the same limitations as we see on Earth. Even the chemistry behind the propellants would be the same, so I don't expect exotic fuels.
There is a study which explored [rocketry and other planets](https://www.universetoday.com/139052/the-challenges-of-an-alien-spaceflight-program-escaping-super-earths-and-red-dwarf-stars/), from which it comes out that we might be living in a "chemical-propulsion rocket Goldilocks zone".
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> For the sake of his study, Loeb considered how we humans are fortunate enough to live on a planet that is well-suited for space launches. Essentially, if a rocket is to escape from the Earth’s surface and reach space, it needs to achieve an escape velocity of 11.186 km/s (40,270 km/h; 25,020 mph). Similarly, the escape velocity needed to get away from the location of the Earth around the Sun is about 42 km/s (151,200 km/h; 93,951 mph).
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> As Loeb indicates in his essay, the escape speed scales as the square root of the stellar mass over the distance from the star, which implies that the escape speed from the habitable zone scales inversely with stellar mass to the power of one quarter. For planets like Earth, orbiting within the habitable zone of a G-type (yellow dwarf) star like our Sun, this works out quite well.
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> Unfortunately, this does not work well for terrestrial planets that orbit lower-mass M-type (red dwarf) stars. These stars are the most common type in the Universe, accounting for 75% of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. In addition, recent exoplanet surveys have discovered a plethora of rocky planets orbiting red dwarf stars systems, with some scientists venturing that they are the most likely place to find potentially-habitable rocky planets.
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A possible alternative would be nuclear propulsion, but that falls out of the chemical fuels, and it is also questionable if a civilization would jump onto it without or with a less effective stage in the chemical propulsion realm.
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Seconding the comment to read *Ignition.* I recommend getting a hardcopy - thank goodness it's back in print now! - but it's available online: <https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf;> scroll down to page 191 for a good summary of propellant types. As long as your aliens are in our universe, with the same subatomic particles and the same elements, they're going to come up with the same rocket fuels discussed in *Ignition.* Also, it's hilarious and a great read. One of my favorite quotes is:
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> [The chemist] then retreats hurriedly to his lair, pursued by the imprecations
> of the engineers, who complain that the density is too low ... to which he replies that he'd like a higher density himself, but that he's a chemist and not a theologian and that to change the properties of a compound you have to consult God about it...
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In a fictional world, you can play God a bit, though "The aliens used an Unobtainum -hydroxide fuel, which was a non-toxic storable hypergolic monopropellant with a specific impulse of 1500s" is going to get the same kind of eye rolls from chemists as humans taking their helmets off and breathing the air on an unknown alien planet gets from biologists.
The same things will be hypergolic, peroxides will still be persnickety, halogens are still heavy, alcohols won't have enough energy, 12 bar of pressure is no help in keeping oxygen a liquid, and even less so at keeping hydrogen a liquid, and flourine will still consume everything it touches. It may be that some compounds will not be as toxic to your aliens as they are to humans, which will be a boon, but on the other side of that hopefully water vapor or carbon dioxide are not toxic to the aliens because most chemistries will produce a lot of them.
You're going to have to deal with fuels that might be sensitive to SO2/H2S contamination where our rocket engineers have to deal with fuels suffering from oxygen or water contamination. Sulfur in particular is a nasty contaminant, RP1 rocket fuels is basically just a grade of kerosene with very low sulfur and atomic masses kept near C12; we can find natural petroleum deposits with low sulfur but I suspect your aliens may be unable to do so.
Also, you may have a phase change for a few fuels, something that's true at 1 bar and 20C may not be true at 12 bar and 55C. For one example, hydrazine becomes a solid at 2C, so we don't use it as a fuel on an ICBM carried by an arctic submarine because turbopumps don't work well with solids: your aliens probably wouldn't be bothered by that. For another example, propane is a liquid at 10 bar; we don't use it because it's inferior to methane (if you're using a cryogenic fuel) or RP1 kerosene (if you're using a fuel that should be liquid at room temperature). But RP1 would (I think?) be a gas at 55C and therefore unsuitable for its current uses.
Do be aware that Ignition was written in the 70s. The original engines on which the Space Shuttle was based had been around for a while, but it was still a decade before the Shuttle would fly and four decades before SpaceX and other modern spaceflight organizations would fly. Chemistry hasn't changed in the intervening years, there have been no paradigm-shifting discoveries, but chemical engineers and especially controls engineers have gotten better. We can now generate fuels with higher purity, throttle engines much more deeply, and pilot rockets much more precisely, to the point of being able to land a booster propulsively. The 2018 reprint doesn't update any of the chemistry.
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As L.Dutch notes in [their answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/217164), chemistry is the same everywhere. The rocket fuel / oxidizer combinations that work for us will work just as well on other planets too.
(For things like jet engines, atmospheric composition matters, since they use atmospheric oxygen to burn the fuel with. But rockets carry their own oxidizer, so that doesn't matter either.)
That said, practical rocket design isn't affected just by chemistry. Other things matter too, such as:
* **Cost and availability:** [Kerosene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP-1) (a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds distilled from [crude oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum)) is a popular fuel on Earth because it's cheap and easily available. It's so easily available because the Earth's crust happens to contain deposits of fossil hydrocarbons formed from biological material buried millions of years ago. Your world *might* have similar fossil fuel deposits, at least if it has some kind of carbon-based life on it, but the exact content of those deposits will likely be affect by differences in atmospheric and mineral chemistry, as well as the biochemistry used by life on your planet.
If you don't have fossil fuel deposits, you can of course still produce kerosene (or some similar hydrocarbon mix) out of carbon-based biomass more or less directly, like [biodiesel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel) is currently produced on Earth. Depending on your world's biochemistry (which you haven't specified) this might require more or less effort. Even at best, though, it's probably still more work than just pumping the stuff out of the ground and distilling it. And once you're doing some non-trivial chemistry to produce your fuel anyway, you might as well start optimizing its chemical composition in other ways too, rather than just taking that cheap distilled fossil oil and calling it good enough.
For that matter, cost and availability is also one major reason why [liquid oxygen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_oxygen) is so popular as an oxidizer — on Earth you can literally distill it out of thin air! Sure, it's also a pretty good oxidizer in general, and might be a decent choice even if it wasn't so easily obtainable, but the low cost certainly doesn't hurt.
* **Temperature:** Another reason for the popularity of kerosene as a rocket fuel on Earth is that it's liquid at typical Earth surface temperatures and pressures, and thus doesn't need to be cooled down or compressed to liquify it. That makes storing and handling it a lot easier.
Using a fuel or an oxidizer that *isn't* liquid at typical ambient temperatures on your world is certainly possible; after all, plenty of rockets used on Earth today use [cryogenic fuels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_fuel) and/or oxidizers, such as liquid hydrogen and oxygen. But it's still an extra technical hurdle.
(Of course, [solid fuel rockets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-propellant_rocket) exist too, and have their own advantages and disadvantages. In terms of chemistry and engineering, they're almost completely different from liquid-fuel rockets, but they certainly are a viable alternative option for spaceflight. And let's not even get into [hybrid rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid-propellant_rocket) designs…)
* **Safety:** Rockets are inherently dangerous things: a chemical rocket launch is basically a slow, controlled explosion, and it only takes a relatively minor failure to turn it into an *uncontrolled* explosion. And rocket fuels and oxidizers need to be reactive enough to ignite easily and to produce a *lot* of energy (and high-pressure gas!) when they burn, which tends to make them risky to store and handle. Basically, rocket fuels like to go "KABOOM!" (or at least "WHOOMPH!"), and a lot of rocket engineering goes into ensuring that they don't do that before they should.
To some extent, these safety issues are universal, but they also vary somewhat depending on ambient chemistry. For example, oxygen is a pretty nasty and reactive chemical, but because our atmosphere is full of it, we tend to not use construction materials that aren't at least somewhat resistant to it and safe to handle in its presence. That means that we haven't needed to develop particularly specialized materials or procedures for handling it — ordinary steel or aluminum will do just fine, as long as you're careful.
On the other hand, fluorine or some of its compounds (such as [chlorine trifluoride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_trifluoride)) could potentially be even better oxidizers than oxygen. But despite some early experiments, neither fluorine nor its compounds have ever been used for spaceflight, mostly because they're just too difficult to handle safely using know materials and technology, and the potential performance gain over oxygen just isn't worth the cost and risk, not to mention the nasty toxic exhaust such a rocket would produce. But on a hypothetical planet that already had free fluorine in its atmosphere, the situation would presumably be different, and fluorine might well see use in rockets.
Conversely, on a planet where free oxygen was uncommon, you might find that developing safe methods of storing and handling it could take a lot more trial and error (and fire and explosions…) than it did on Earth. Maybe even enough that other, safer oxidizers would be preferred — although there's really no such thing as a *truly* safe rocket oxidizer.
* **Environmental concerns:** These kind of go together with the safety issues described above, but it's important to remember that any combustion products your rocket produces during launch will end up in your planet's atmosphere (and a lot of them will end up close to and downwind from the launch site).
Liquid fuel rockets used on Earth tend to produce mostly water and carbon dioxide, which are fairly harmless to the environment here, [concerns about the greenhouse effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas) notwithstanding. Some solid fuel rockets do produce nastier chemicals; for example, the NASA [Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Booster) used [APCP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_perchlorate_composite_propellant) fuel that contained about 20% chlorine by mass and produced about 200 tons of [hydrogen chloride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_chloride) on each launch, which you certainly wouldn't want to breathe in. But even hydrogen chloride is only a local environmental hazard: it reacts with water to form hydrochloric acid, but once that has been sufficiently diluted and neutralized in the ocean, all you're left with is salty water.
However, again, what's harmless and what's not depends on local chemistry. On Earth, for example, water is considered inert and harmless since it's everywhere, but on a planet with oceans of [ammonia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia) it would behave as an acid, just as hydrogen chloride does on Earth.
In the end, though, none of that might matter much, because — as already noted in other answers — the higher gravity and significantly denser atmosphere of your planet would make any kind of rocket launch from surface to orbit a lot harder than on Earth. (And launching an orbital rocket from Earth is already hard enough!) If the inhabitants of your world managed to develop orbital rocketry at all, it would likely involve huge multi-stage rockets with the most energetic fuels they can produce, cost and safety be damned.
Or else they might end up developing some kind of [orbital air launch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-launch-to-orbit) technology. That won't help with the higher escape velocity, but it does let you lift your rocket above the thickest part of the atmosphere before launching it. The down side, of course, being that you'll have to lift your rocket high into the atmosphere before launching it — just imagine the engineering effort needed to do that with something like the [Saturn V](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V).
(Also, a big and often neglected problem with air launch is that it's a lot easier to make a rocket lightweight if it only needs to be able to support its own weight when standing upright. Once you try to hang it sideways from a plane, you suddenly need to deal with lateral bending loads that require a lot more reinforcement, which eats into your already thin mass budget. Suspending the rocket from multiple points in some kind of a massive launch gantry to distribute the load could perhaps be a solution, but then you'd have to haul that gantry into the sky as well. Or I guess you could always decide to go with [a giant balloon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockoon) instead, which would at least let you lift the rocket into the air while keeping it upright. A dense atmosphere with a high average molecular mass would actually help with that, by making [lifting gases more buoyant](https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/16055/why-do-we-use-helium-in-balloons/16059#16059).)
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Given high escape velocity and high atmospheric pressure, space flight would be very challenging in this world.
Among the existing rocket engines, maybe only liquid hydrogen/oxygen can provide sufficient specific impulse to launch Sputnik from this planet. All other chemical propellants would be worse.
Inhabitants of this world may devise different methods of conquering space, for example [Air-launch-to-orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-launch-to-orbit) when the rocked is first lifted into the air by a plane which does not require as much fuel as would a rocket. In this case space flight can be achieved with greater variety of fuels.
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No.
Humans on Earth don't even agree on a single rocket fuel. As others have pointed out, there are only so many elements on the periodic table, and they only have so many promising combinations. Even so, assuming we've found the best rocket fuel defies history.
Humanity, in our first century of space flight, has already found and then shied away from "better" fuels, for good reason. Another species that evolved under different conditions might well have different risk tolerances and use these alternate fuels.
For a planet as difficult to get off of as the one you describe, nuclear propulsion similar to Project Orion or NERVA might be the way to go.
References:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA>
These projects were abandoned on Earth before either was completed, for many excellent reasons. Orion drives only work on an unmanned craft, or an exceptionally large craft: The thrust from a nuclear pulse drive is so powerful that the g-forces would splatter a human crew if the ship wasn't big enough to spread the forces out. NERVA had heat-control issues: The drive has to be run hot to work. It's essentially a nuclear reactor on the edge of melting down. That's not only tricky to manage. It's also hard to find materials to build the hot parts out of that hold their shape at those temperatures. But probably neither of these problems were unsolvable. And those weren't the only problems left to solve.
As we get closer to solving fusion power, nuclear powered craft may come back into vogue. There's no beating the power-to-weight ratio of nuclear fuels. Our chemical rockets spend most of their weight on fuel. You're carrying fuel just to propel the fuel. Nuclear power is so much stronger that the fuel weight is comparatively zero.
Fission drives, ultimately, are dead because we don't want radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere. Again, that's something that fusion is likely to ultimately solve. From what we know (and don't know) right now, it's entirely imaginable that we won't be using chemical fuels a century from now. We might be using laser-ignited fusion pulse propulsion, or something else we can't yet imagine.
If humans still have fuels left to explore, there's no reason to expect aliens would settle on the same fuels we did.
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As far as I am aware [nuclear powered bombers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft) were the first attempt by the USSR and USA (either unintentional or not) at enhanced nuclear deterrence. Intending to place a nuclear reactor in a plane armed with nuclear bombs aloft for weeks at a time, serving as an every ready nuclear option (compared to the slower conventional bombers of the time).
Due to failure to contain the nuclear radiation of the reactor, the introduction of the more practical ICBMs and nuclear submarines, and other issues - such a vehicle was never successfully made or utilized.
However, if this series of nuclear weapons *had* been successfully deployed - would it have changed the course of the Cold War in any meaningful way?
Is there any reason to believe the side to first develop this technology would have had any notable advantage? Would civilian life be any different with nuclear powered bombers flying overhead?
Or perhaps would it have just accelerated the introduction of existing concepts like mutually assured destruction?
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I think it would accelerate the understanding of mutual assured destruction. Essentially, a nuclear-powered bomber has advantages similar to a nuclear-powered submarine-it can stay operational longer.
Assuming nuclear bombers were invented, then [Operation Chrome Dome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chrome_Dome) would have had nuclear bombers flying around country borders. And since mechanical wear, as well as safety standards weren't a very well understood concept at the time, some of these bombers would inevitably drop out of the sky. The result being a large swath of contaminated ground somewhere along the flight path. People and leaders will know these are not attacks, but only after a while. In the meantime the political situation would be very tense.
After a few more cases of such similar incidents, the countries developing the planes would sit down and talk about how stupid it was to play this Russian Roulette using an easily triggered revolver. So they would do something more sensible, like stopping production of this kind of bomber cruise.
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## It May Have Ended the Cold War a bit Sooner
*... or maybe longer: see comments, but I find that much less likely.*
I mostly agree with the other answers in that it would not have provided a tactical advantage, but there are other ways this weapon platform may have impacted the Cold War in a meaningful way. The American strategy to winning the Cold War was to spend more than the Soviets could afford to spend and then dare the Soviets to keep up if they wanted to save face in front of the rest of the world. In this effort, the US launched some pretty silly projects like the space shuttle program knowing that they were hugely massive wastes of money. But what America knew was that they could bear wasteful spending more than the Soviets could; so, every RnD pissing match they could challenge the Soviets to was an automatic win for America.
Nuclear Powered Bombers would yield no actual tactical advantage to speak of, but if America announced they had a new squadron of stupidly over priced nuclear powered bombers, then the Soviets would of course have to build their own squadron if they wanted to maintain their political power in the international community. The best case scenario for the Soviets is that this would be an extra major cost to bear slowing their recovery following the severe devastation they suffered during WWII.
Furthermore, since we are talking 1950s, if the USA got the Cold War into full swing sooner, then the Khrushchev Thaw may have never happened. A big part of how the USSR recovered from WWII was by becoming a less strict society and opening up trade and good relations with the USA and other Western Powers in the years following the war. So, if the Soviets had seen the USA as a major threat right away, then the Stalinists would have had a political advantage against the Khrushchevists. Without the Khrushchev Thaw the political situation in the USSR could have quickly boiled over into a total economic collapse or civil war before the USSR even had time to fully recover from WWII.
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Chrome dome was carried out using conventionally powered bombers flying airborne alert duty in various places around the world. After several accidents involving loss of aircraft and weapons, but no nuclear detonations, an alternative ground alert was used to replace it. Bomber with weapons and fuel loaded where positioned near runways with crews in bunkers next to them. They could launch within minutes of being alerted that an attack was in progress. The key component often over looked was an early warning system that could detect an incoming attack in time to launch them. This concept remained operational until the 1990's.
The USA did add a nuclear reactor to a B-36 bomber to see if it could be done. The reactor did not power the aircraft, it was just a test to see if it could be done and if the shielding was adequate. It fly 47 missions demonstrating it could be done, but the project was canceled.
Having a true nuclear powered aircraft would not have changed much if any of the cold war. Ground alerts were far more feasible requiring much less maintenance and there was much less chance of an accident.
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The main problem with bombers was that they were pretty easy to take down with appropriate countermeasures, and building enough of them to saturate the enemy's defenses was too costly.
My feeling is that this problem will be present also with nuclear bombers.
This will likely result in a quicker rush to develop rocketry and ICBM, which are harder to counter in a defensive scenario. It would also push significantly the development of radars and air defenses, in order to enable better tracking of the enemy.
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There would be no difference in the *military* strategy of deterrence. One effective deterrence weapon is very much like another...as long as they work and war is actually deterred.
The inevitable aircraft crashes due to weather, pilot error, etc., would be rather more severe and much more expensive to clean up. This suggests placement of the servicing airfields in more remote locations, perhaps earlier development of automatic takeoff/landing systems, and earlier development of microcontrollers and sensors for those automatic systems. In turn, this suggests somewhat earlier development of microcomputers.
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I doubt it would have made any fundamental difference.
If, all things considered, the nuclear bombers proved to be no more effective than conventional bombers, then pretty much by definition it would make no difference at all. Which I think is pretty much what happened in practice. At least as far as either side got in developing such planes, there were big disadvantages that outweighed the advantage of longer range, so that while there were some experiments no practical models were ever developed.
If someone had managed to build such a plane and it was clearly superior, presumably that would mean that it would give that side an edge in a nuclear exchange. But even if it was a very big edge, would it have been enough to make it worth that side's while to launch a preemptive strike with such planes? Presumably their own nation would still suffer devastating losses from the counter-attack. To be able to say, "We lost 50 million people but you're side lost 100 million! Ha ha, we won!" isn't much to celebrate over.
Oh, need I point out that nuclear powered bombers would not reduce civilian casualties on your own side, just increase casualties on the other side. Maybe, possibly, if they were patrolling right on the border and took action very fast, they could knock out a few airbases before the enemy knew what was happening and got their planes in the air, but I doubt that would be a big factor.
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It wouldn't have made very much difference once anti-aircraft missiles reached a certain point of competence. The missile strategy would have evolved a bit differently, probably batteries on coastal and offshore islands, with a greater standoff range, because obviously, you want the debris to land somewhere else.
But that's merely rocket science.
Alternatively, until missiles advanced that far, (to the Powers Incident level) there may have been the development of missile equipped nuclear powered fighters (about the size of the bombers), with the range and capability to track the other team's bombers for months, as happened undersea with hunter-killer submarines. A bomber infringing on your territory would be universally understood to be an act of war, as would taking down the fighter tailing it. (With some de-conflicting mechanism for genuine emergencies such as ditching a plane or serious medical issues on board)
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### Nope
Both the Soviet and the American empires needed an enemy that could provide an excuse to suppress dissent at home and in their respective client states. **The cold war had political roots not military**. So any adjustment in the military balance would have had no effect. Keep in mind that the military balance never existed. The USA have always been overwhelmingly superior in technology and weapons production capacity. Generals and politicians always claimed the opposite just to justify their actions. Adding another element to the military situation could not tip the scale.
However such superiority was never used to put an end to the war, the war ended when the Soviet empire collapsed on itself with no influence from the outside.
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In this form of self-government, a lobby is a set of 21 people in an area. Similar to a county, but on a much smaller scale, each lobby governs their immediate surroundings. The 21 people are only responsible for their environment and their fellow members. In a sense, they act like a Homeowners Association. Each person casts votes at meetings for proposed ideas. For example, someone wants to cut down all the trees in a forest. For this idea to be accepted, a majority vote must be passed. But the lobby can only cut the trees in their designated land, preventing widespread/systemic damage.
Each lobby self-governs through a representative democracy. A majority vote elects a person to act as "host." The host organizes meetings, manages complaints while working to improve well-being. They only work for about 3 months, so hosts cycle quickly. The host can also be democratically removed by a minority vote, at least 7 of the 21 people. If a host is "that bad," they can be closed by a vote, preventing them from being a host for several years.
Their fictional nation is divided into different sectors, like Medical, Technology, Farming, etc. Each sector holds a number of lobbies. Most of the people in the sectors work in the sector's respective jobs. For example, in Farming, there would be mostly wheat farmers, but also tool-makers and agricultural scientists. When a citizen is old enough, they are offered the opportunity to switch sectors, so that each sector has an appropriate amount of experience.
Each sector also has a Quality Control Board (QCB) that works to improve production and well-being in the sector. It is *explicitly* separate from the lobbies. That is, a lobby deals with its own environment and people, while a QCB considers grander schemes such as education and resource allocation in its sector.
Lobbies are not limited to their area and often interact, with several forming cities. For a host to be elected to the Quality Control Board of a sector, they must be approved by a percentage of their town or city. I could go into far more details about what defines a town and the exact percentages, but let's keep it simple.
In this self-governing system, status is merit-based; No person can easily buy votes from hundreds of people. Hosts are quickly cycled through, avoiding unfavorable moderators. The high-up government deals only with high-up schemes, they cannot impact individuals through laws, only the system.
My question is: **Can this system of self-governance work?** **Are there any obvious faults and necessities I'm missing that would ruin this government?**
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## It was tried. It didn't work
This proposal is eerily similar to the system put forth by the [Great October Socialist Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution) which Took Place in November 1917; only they called them *[soviets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_(council))* (that's Russian for "councils") instead of "lobbies".
Base-level soviets / councils / lobbies were established at factory, village and neighbourhood level; they deliberated and managed the problems pertaining to their factory, village and neighbourhood, and sent delegates to upper level soviets / councils / lobbies at industry, region and city level, which deliberated and managed the problems pertaining to their industry, region and city, and sent delegates to upper level soviets / councils / lobbies at industrial branch and republic level, which sent delegates to the Supreme Soviet.
The great success of the system is that it gave the name of the country: the Soviet Union.
Other than that, in practice it was a total failure. It was immediately observed that the system introduced a lot of friction and delays, and essentially precluded any attempt at planning and coherent execution. Already by the mid-1920 the imperial government sought to get rid of the soviets / councils / lobbies at the factory, farm and industry levels, and replaced them with what they longingly referred to as "one man management". (Yes, really, "one man" not "one person"; at least that's the official English translation of Stalin's words.)
The factory, farm, industry and industrial branch soviets / councils / lobbies were defanged in the late 1920s and eliminated in the 1930s, replaced with something resembling in form the capitalist unions (but, of course, only in form and not in substance).
In theory, the soviets / councils / lobbies at neighbourhood, commune, city, region and republic level continued throughout the existence of the Soviet Union. In practice, they were completely subverted and became little more than a channel of communication from the central imperial government to the masses.
Why?
Because most people are (1) completely uninterested in politics and (2) really, really bad at it. Most people are good at *something*: some are auto mechanics, some are welders, some are teachers, some are tailors, some are medical doctors, some are fashion models and so on. They don't know how to do politics, and don't care about politics. The proposed cellular aggregate system forces an awful lot of people into political roles where they are unskilled and ineffective. In a word, easy prey for any skilled operators.
In real history, Joseph Stalin very quickly became dictator for life by subverting the system, establishing a network of obedient operators which took control of the soviets / councils / lobbies from the top down. By the 1950s, the entire system became a farce; the [Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heads_of_state_of_the_Soviet_Union) was notionally the head of state of the Soviet Union, and yet he had no power whatsoever. (Quick: do you have any idea who were the Chairmen of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet during the reigns of Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev? Have you heard of Mikhail Kalinin, Nikolay Shvernik, Kliment Voroshilov, Anastas Mikoyan and Nikolai Podgorny?)
Notes to the particulars of the system as described in the question:
* The real power obviously belongs to the Quality Control Boards. No need to bother subverting the base-level soviets / councils / lobbies, which are directly controlled by the Quality Control Boards. Except...
* The real power obviously belongs to the (unspecified) central government, which allocates funds (or, in the case of the Soviet Union, directly resources) to the supposedly powerful Quality Control Boards. For here is the fundamental drawback of the system: it completely ignores the need to have some sort of financial structure. Even the Roman Empire had an empire-level financial structure. The question does not even attempt to describe how are public works and public instutions financed; and this is of critical importance.
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As a general principle about worldbuilding like this, you should ask yourself whether such an idea has ever been tried in history. If your answer is that it hasn't, consider why.
There are three problems that I can think of.
The first problem has more or less been mentioned by others, that 21 people is far too small to have this really be workable. You could quite easily have issues with gerrymandering in one form or another. Also, if you think the smaller size avoids problems with things like special interests, you have never seen small town politicians who can make the US Senate look downright functional by comparison.
The second problem is with externalities, which would be extreme given the control allotted to such a small group. An externality is a situation in which the consequences are shared but the benefits are not.
This can have two common forms. The first and more obvious is the NIMBY problem. Which group of 21 people is going to choose to allow a nuclear reactor or even worse nuclear waste storage facility around their territory? While that is an extreme example, this also applies to things like orchards that produce pollen in the air or concrete plants. On the flip side, if the effects are downwind, are they going to care?
The second problem is much larger, it is the tragedy of the commons. If your group of only 21 people has control over a small section of something like a rain forest, they have little motivation not to cut it down for more farmland because everyone else would have to do the same thing for there to be a problem. When everyone thinks that way, you easily have a crisis.
Climate change is the most obvious version of this problem, but it can also apply to things like fishing and grazing rights. Fishing rights have actually caused wars, I can easily imagine similar problems occurring here on a smaller scale as a few lobbies gang up on a rival.
The third problem is about the specialized economies of the various sectors. In reality, most economic situations are much less specialized than you would assume. In the US, rural states that we associate with farming like Wyoming can actually have less farmers per capita than "urban" states like California. Having a sector revolve around a particular industry just doesn't make economic sense in the long run, as it will create the boom town effect in which it quickly rises and falls.
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### Change "21 people" to "Between 20 and 30 people, with host able to break ties".
I assume you've settled on 21 exactly so that there can never been a tie. Sounds good. Until someone dies, leaves, arrives, or a local child gets old enough to vote. Because of these outside events, you're going to be moving people around to ensure that lobbies have exactly 21 people. Because you're constantly moving people around, you have 3 weaknesses:
* Someone can control that process, and send their allies into regions where an issue of their choosing has near 50% support. This is a form of gerrymandering.
* The people arriving would be drawn from populations having the highest birth rates. If that correlates with some other factor (say: a religion that discourages birth control or encourages big families), then that would lead to that people with that trait being widely distributed and overrepresented - (basically "self-gerrymandering")
* If a group of 20 people are unable to vote because they're missing their 21st, then someone high up can delay sending the replacement, crippling their ability to make a decision.
The solution - make the group size a range. That way these issues are less likely to be an issue (they still will exist - just lower likelihood). If you get a tie, your host is able to break the tie (similar to the vice president in the US senate).
A churn through hosts may have a negative side - it will result in a lot of former hosts, skilled at being a host, but now without the good pay, being subordinate the new, inexperienced hosts. Any group wishing to influence the political process could hire them to influence the inexperienced hosts, who realistically will be grateful for the assistance. This is "lobbying", and happens in the real world.
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Sounds fine for neighbourhood control. It does raise a few questions, though.
Do they have unlimited power, in their area? If so, what stops them from deciding to make or buy weapons, then conquer the neighboring area? If they can do that, then what you have is a culture of tribal councils. If they can't, then this is essentially a democratic feudal structure, where local councils have a great deal of power, but it is limited by an overlord.
I don't think the Soviet issue is necessarily the case, here. It sounds like your councils have direct authority over their region, so they don't need to wait on higher ups which stagnates decisions.
Whether 21 people is a suitable number depends on the size of the population. If the population was about 3,000 for that area (similar to the average Chinese village), that's probably about right, as the council would be about 1% of the adult population. You could go for something like 10% of the population to make it more communal, but as Alex mentioned a lot of people just aren't suitable for politics, for lack of interest and ability. Potentially, you could have secondary boards that inform the decisions of the council, who might even have some control or power (IE: veto).
I'm afraid I don't understand how the QCB interacts with this. Long term planning and investment requires power over resources, law, and administration. So either they would need authority over the local council, or they would only be able to suggest plans to the local council which they are likely to say "yes" to without actually putting the effort for a long term improvement (unless they're genuinely in favour, in which case the QCB is likely irrelevant).
You mentioned you're basing the idea off Greek City States? If so, then these issues may make perfect sense, similar to the Amphictyonic League, and act as an intentional fault in the system. If you want it to work, you would probably need some elected(?) authority over the councils, who can enforce the will of the QCB. You may want to look at some feudal systems as well, to see how democratic and semi-democratic methods of rule work.
The technology level will make some difference to how you handle things, of course. If communications are poor, then a central authority is not going to work, and that might be the cause for your local councils. In your example of Greece, the mountains made it difficult for one Greco Empire to form, and caused the formation of many states.
I hope this answer was helpful.
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It would be really hard to get things done.
With so many people running things, there's bound to be strong disagreements that break out, causing conflict.
With everyone being switched out so quickly, there won't be enough dedication towards any large government project to see it carried out smoothly and effectively. Strong leadership gets things done, but if the leadership consists of so many people that are so constantly being replaced, there's no way to maintain a sense of control and productivity.
Furthermore, the people running things will not be as qualified and experienced as other governments, that allow people to run a position their whole lives.
Theres no unity. Every one is running their own thing and there's no overseeing lord or group that manages all of these smaller groups.
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I would look into a more Clan-based system, where groups of people could be grouped by blood and common interest. I don't think your idea is totally crazy. It's similar to the tithing in Medieval England. In the tithing system, men belong to groups of 10 where they are all legally responsible for each other. If one man breaks the law, the other 9 have to take him to the court or else suffer the same punishment. It was phased out as law and power were centralized, but it proves small groups have taken the law into their own hands before.
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**Problem**
If you were attempting to take over an O'Neill Cylinder without destroying it or the majority of its inhabitants/ecology how would you go about it? What benefits or detriments to an attacking or defending force would the gravity and the cylinder shape of the land have to a fighting force?
**Assumptions**
The tech required to make an OC isn't too far off what we have now and so in terms of tech you can expect it to be similar somewhat to the those living onboard the Elysium (from the film of the same name).
The OC your attacking is of strategic or cultural importance and you intend to take it over and replace its government with your own whilst doing minimal damage to its contents.
Its current government has dug in with its own combat forces so you should expect some resistance, as in they expect you to make a move to take the cylinder.
**Question**
What would combat look like inside an O'Neill Cylinder?
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Fun thing about cylinders full of air: they make for really nice musical instruments.
An OC necessarily has a very tenacious hull. You could land some machines on its outside and have them bang at the hull without damaging it. Just keep banging rhythmically 24/7 until everybody goes crazy. They'll eventually give up.
If you want to be really annoying, you can instead vibrate the cylinder. Its walls will work like a speaker of biblical proportions. You can play whatever you want for the populace in the cylinder without having to hack anything. Play annoying music 24/7 and you'll have a victory in short time. If you wish to pick a specific genre for your playlist, I think Danger Music would be the most effective.
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**Edit:** I just remembered that [infrasound may supposedly cause hallucinations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound#Suggested_relationship_to_ghost_sightings). You could make everyone go crazy by using the ends of the cylinder to produce some infrasonic standing waves. Let the populace go crazy until they beg for help, then you come in and take over.
This can be countered in small pockets by simple noise cancelling technologies. To cancel it as a whole, the cylinder inhabitants would have to vibrate the cylinder just as you are doing, but with opposing phases. This might require them to come outside, so you bring the battle off the cylinder.
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**To make Paris a city of ruins will not affect the issue.**
* Phillipe Petain.
The best way to not tear the place up with fighting is to not fight. In World War 2, the French surrendered Paris to the approaching Germans without a fight. Fighting seemed pointless, and would destroy their beautiful city.
<https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/surrender-vs-collaboration>
>
> As a last resort, Churchill proposed defending Paris, so that it
> would absorb German troops trying to subdue the city. According to
> Churchill's secretary, "The French perceptibly froze at this." Pétain
> replied, "To make Paris a city of ruins will not affect the issue."
> Continuing to resist the Germans, Pétain said, would mean "the
> destruction of the country." And so, to avoid destroying France,
> Pétain surrendered it.
>
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>
It is easy to understand that viewpoint. Defeat seemed inevitable. And today Paris is still really nice.
Your approach is the same. You are the Germans in this scenario. Approach with overwhelming force. The occupants of the cylinder should understand that you are willing to destroy the cylinder from space, with all of its inhabitants, because you have done that before. They should understand that if they surrender they will not be massacred. Make clear that you, like them, value the historic cylinder but that you are going to take it. Make clear that by capitualating without a fight, the current rulers will be allowed to leave in peace and a Vichy-style government by locals will take control, with final jurisdiction of course with your conquering forces.
Perhaps less exciting than beloinclothed warriors wrestling each other street to street, but more practical. I am sure there is some way to incorporate the wrestling for the movie version.
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**Either Fast and dirty: Hack the I.T. systems, then hack again.**
O'Neil Cylinders and indeed ALL archiologies are artificial, sealed, technology based environments. At the end of the day it doesn't matter how many soldiers the ruling authority has, it doesn't matter how strong its internal and external defenses are. If you can gain control the systems controlling light, temperature, oxygen content, artificial gravity etc then you can dictate your own terms - at least for as long as it takes the local administration to at least partially regain control.
Maybe they can isolate at least parts of the station, maybe not. Initially at least they will be on the back foot. That being the case whatever internal physical overrides there are you would be strongly advised to have organized at least some external reinforcements during the planning phase of your takeover.
Your takeover needs to be based on the premise that (along with all the other key systems like communications) you have control of external defenses and traffic control long enough for reinforcements to board and provide assistance.
**Warning;** A key issue will be whether or not you have any internal domestic support for your takeover. If the government in question is an unpopular, oppressive dictatorship no probs. If however it is an more or less enlightened democracy with a degree of popular support then your side is going to have to become the oppressive dictatorship - and then you get to see how long you last before someone overthrows you.
Which leaves one other option;
**Or slow but gentle**; If the society within the cylinder is '*open*' and reasonably democratic stage a 'cultural' coup via social media, migration, influence buying and economic/financial manipulation.
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* **Pinpoint strikes against any defensive emplacements on the outside.**
If you cannot even do that, a forcible takeover becomes problematic.
* **Land on the outer hull and secure it.**
Either you approach on the axis and then "climb down" or you send breaching pods with powerful engines to random points. Find some vacuum-proof superglue to stick in place. Your breaching pods contain airlocks and a working chamber that will seal tight against the hull. Pressurize the working chamber and start cutting your way in.
* **Plenty of decoy breaching pods.**
Only one in ten, perhaps only one in a hundred is genuine. The others are decoys. Simple robots start cutting into the hull, with no follow-up attack.
* **Release swarms of disposable attack microdrones.**
They go after internal sensors, communications relays, etc.
After that you might be able to attack the defense force "on the ground" with acceptable damage to the structure.
* *Alternate*
If the O'Neill relies on solar power for electricty *or* the heat balance, block that with a giant shade.
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All space craft (ships and habitats) share a common problem: heat dissipation. The OC will have large, vulnerable radiators. Damaging these would not destroy that habitat or its contents, but would force the inhabitants to come to terms so that they could make repairs before they all cooked in their own waste heat. It may not even be necessary to actually damage them at all.
Assuming their ships have sufficient reaction mass to keep adjusting their orbits, your attackers could stand off several thousand kilometres and use powerful long wavelength lasers to heat the panels sufficiently that they absorbed more energy than they radiated. Once the station surrenders, turn the lasers off.
The attacking ships can maneuver to prevent similar tactics being used back against them.
If that were not practical (it assumes the attackers have a lot of power generation) then short wave length lasers with more focused beams could be used to cut holes in the (presumably) fragile radiators. Given this is a habitat and not a ship with very limited or no maneuvering capability, even projectile weapons could work, despite the flight time of minutes or hours. (Effectively giant shotguns firing hundreds of thousands of tiny projectiles at very high velocities). Knowing what's coming is no good if you can't dodge.
After that just hope they don't have [Casaba Howitzers](http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-nuclear-spear-casaba-howitzer.html)!
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While practically all of the life support systems would be in the cylinder and out of the immediate reach of the invaders, there would have to be some systems on the outside of the cylinder that are more easily accessible.
Since there is an invader it's a given that the occupants of the cylinder are not alone, so they would need communication systems. There would be sensors and surveillance systems. There would be airlocks and access hatches, robotic repair systems to maintain the hull. Most importantly, there would have to be some form of propulsion to maintain a constant rotation (in case it it changes due to outside influences).
If an attacker gains control over these outside systems, they can affect life on the inside significantly. They could stop rotation of the cylinder and thus end gravity on the inside. They could also accellerate the rotation to *increase* gravity. They just have to disable any existing propulsion systems and attach their own. They could make the entire cylinder deaf and blind to the outside world. In case light is not produced on the inside, but comes from the outside through windows, you can block the light, which would cause plant life to end or at least to suffer on the inside.
This is a situation similar to a siege of a medieval castle. As it happened in those times, the defenders would know the vulnerability of thir situation and would try to defend aginst the attacking force when they are already approaching. So a lot of the fighting would probably happen before the cylinder is even reached. If the defenders would have to retreat to the inside, they would be under siege from this moment. The attackers would either try to make the situation unbearable on the inside so that the defenders surrender or they would wear them down until they are so weak that they will not be able to resist when the attackers breach the hull and take the battle inside.
When the attacker makes sure to cause enough damage to the inside to weaken the defender, but not to cause damage beyond repair, they could assist in reconstruction of the cylinder after they have taken it over.
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Induction motors work by creating a rotating magnetic field, which induces a lagging field in a conducting armature. The armature doesn't have to be magnetic, or in a strict sense even ferrous, as long as it conducts. If you have the means to set up such a field from a distance (assuming you have plenty of energy available, so efficiency isn't a limitation), simply increase the spin of the ship itself...it's not likely they fitted powerful engines to maintain its rotational speed in vacuum, since only small corrections would normally be needed, and only occasionally. Get them up to about 3g and they should be ready to negotiate.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 5 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/135454/edit)
Suppose that someone is pointing a gun right at you.
He's not really convinced about shooting, so you talk and manage to get very close.
You keep talking and you can actually put a hand on the gun, but he's not letting it go.
Now:
* If the gun is a revolver type:
+ If the hammer is already all the way back, would it be possible to prevent the gun from firing by putting your thumb between the hammer and the body of the gun?
+ If the hammer is not already set, the cylinder has to turn to be able to shoot. Would you be able to prevent firing by having your hand firmly on the cylinder?
* If the gun is a "slider" type (not sure about the actual type name), would you be able to prevent it from firing by having a firm grip on the slider?
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I agree with most L.Dutch says, including the point that only skilled and heroic characters should attempt this. One little issue regarding the semi-automatic pistol:
Racking the slide back and holding it open should prevent fire. Pulling it back ejects the unfired round in the chamber, holding it prevents the chambering of a new round. It might be possible (but painful) to jam a finger in somewhere to prevent the grip from slipping.
*(Disclaimer: I don't know that from personal experience. Sounds like a way to the [Darwin Awards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards). But the mechanics seem straightforward.)*
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A somewhat silly solution:
A good bunch of handguns have a considerable amount of empty space behind the trigger. If you can slide your finger there, you'll prevent the trigger from being pulled at all, so no firing can take place.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fRAkc.png)
Keep in mind that the possibility of pulling this off varies wildly with every trigger design. Some weapons have enough space to put a finger behind the trigger, others don't, others don't even *have* any gap there. Furthermore, as @JGreenwell points out, some modifications can change the weapon's behavior and cause the weapon to fire even when there is space to do such a thing.
That said, since this is your work of fiction, it is not hard at all to set up things to make this trick possible by choosing a proper handgun for the scene.
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Other people have answered but nobody has actually given reasons this is done/not done so let me relate my military police training:
First, yes to all of your questions with a bit of a caveat: there are small hammer and hammer-less guns which prevent blocking the hammer (see pg. 3 and 20 of police tactics document) so only option there is cylinder2 or slide.
Now for what officers and military teach for this situation:
1. Gross-motor skills are limited in "fight or flight" situations (pg. 14). So reaching, grabbing, and trying to stick fingers or remember to hold a weapon "just so" are not skills you want to rely on. What we do teach is to [use your elbows and knees and grab the weapon with both hands](https://www.policeone.com/archive/articles/91971-Take-it-away-illustrated-disarming-techniques/). Part of the reason is that if I have both hands on the weapon I at least have a chance to stop the slide, hammer, or cylinder.1
2. Use improvised weapons - for officers this involves getting them to know that "if I have a heavy radio/clipboard/pen it will hurt when I swing it" (pg.9-11). So the tactics would be more to ensure the muzzle is not pointed at you - again with gross-motor skills this involves more of a push or grabbing the wrist for better control - then bashing the suspect with whatever you got or even just throw stuff at him to distract and confuse so you can either get away or get in close. In fact, we **advise against grabbing the actual gun**3 because if it does fire - your hand will now be damaged (burned or "bitten"1).
So yes, yes you can stop the hammer, cylinder, or slide and have a handgun not fire but if it happens it would likely look more like the above than anything like hollywood shows.
[Police Survival Guide, Police: the law enforcement magazine](https://protectionimages.bobitstudios.com/upload/files/_migrated/survivalguide.pdf)
1 *Search for beretta bite if you want to know what that pain looks like*
2 *There is a story in Ip Man's biography (and portrayed in the movie from it) that he once knocked the cylinder out of an old (pre-WWII to WWII) revolver - unknown validity*
3 *At this point, the idea would be once the suspect is in pain/distracted - then try and take the gun using standard hand-to-hand techniques. However, I've actually seen another officer grab a suspect weapon when doing this and manage to both stop the gun from firing and pop the magazine out (he admitted it was dumb luck, surprised him as much as suspect, but it happens)*
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For a revolver type, blocking the hammer or the cylinder can prevent firing. I think these are two of the reasons why a revolver can get jammed and fail to fire.
For an automatic or semi automatic gun, the slider moves after the shot has been fired to allow the expulsion of the muzzle. So, even if you were able to hold it in place, the bullet would already be travelling to its target.
In both cases, considering that the gun won't be calmly in place but its holder would probably attempt to shake it free from your grip, I think it's, to put it mildly, a rather daring attempt.
Addendum: incidentally, I just watched City Hunter, season 1 episode 35. They prevent the bad guy from firing a revolver exactly by holding the barrel.
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TL;DR : Most of the time, yes.
It is actually very possible for both type of handguns.
A semi automatic handgun (the one you call slider) can, on its own, **fail to go into battery**. I'll let you look for pictures but the point is that the slide did not complete its travel to "close", even by as few as 1 or 2 millimeters. The striker then can't hit the primer on the bullet therefore gun not firing.
Applying pressure on a loaded gun with your hand to get slide slightly back would effectively partially disarm the firearm.
Blocking the hammer on a **classic** revolver pistol will have the desired effect. Why do I precise classic ? Because some revolvers, mostly subcompacts only have internal hammers which can't be grabbed.
Another solution could be engaging the safety or blocking the trigger but those are even more complicated and risky.
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I see lots of speculation here, but there is no need. Infantry soldiers are trained to deal with this situation. If someone is pointing a loaded and non-safety firearm at a person and has a finger on the trigger, **there is no way to disable the weapon from firing**.
The proper way to handle such a situation is to push the firearm down in the direction opposite the hand on the trigger. That is the direction in which the hand is weakest and least likely to cause an accidental discharge. Needless to say, it is very risky and your hero would do good to jump in the opposite direction as well as push. Keep in mind that the weapon will likely discharge, so don't do that if your daughter is standing to that side. Just take the bullet yourself in that situation.
To make the task easier, have your hero distract the weapon-holder. Perhaps the hero could glance at a non-existent object *behind* the weapon-holder, causing the weapon-holder to momentarily glance rearward.
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Whilst doable in real-life, this has some "precedence" in fiction. Spoilers for Neal Stephenson's Reamde, below:
>
> Towards the end of the novel 'Readme', the character Zula is being held hostage in the classic pose of "the bad guy being behind her, holding her close with one arm and using the other to point a gun at her temple".
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> At some point during the negotiations between the bad guy and Zula's allies, the bad guy "cocks" the hammer on the gun to be more menacing and to make his threats seem more real.
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> As Zula comes from a family of self-professed gun-nuts she is familiar with the exact gun being used, and, whilst the bad guy continues to negotiates with Zula's allies, she puts her thumb into the new gap between the hammer and the striking cap.
>
>
> I can't remember if if the ally understands the implications of this or not, even with Zula trying to hint to him that it's now "safe", but the end result is that when the pistol is fired Zula only suffers a broken thumb instead of a giant hole in her skull and both the bad guy and the ally are confused about what just happened.
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So I've discovered that there's a whole genre now of romance sci-fi. The typical deal is that through some mischance a plucky young Earthwoman either gets abducted by a handsome alien stranger, or nurses him back to health when he crash-lands on our planet. Proximity leads to hijinks, and next thing you know it's wedding klaxons.
Very well. I fully support inter-galactic relationships. Here's my problem... Even if our alien beaus are human**oid**, wouldn't the differences be enough to send their intended human fiancees edging nervously toward the airlock?
I'm not talking about nightmare-fuel aliens, or cthulhoid horrors. I'm positing we've hit the genetic jackpot and we get as close to human-looking aliens as possible. But wouldn't even those small differences be too much? Examples:
* Alien beau has full-black eyes and transparent nictitating membrane eyelids. It looks like he's *staring* at you. With dead, doll eyes. Forever.
* Alien beau has sharp, sharklike teeth. Scary.
* Alien beau is perfect in all respects, except he's purple and smells like barely-overripe bananas. Or elderberries.
So, to summarize the question: **Is the uncanny-valley effect too strong to allow humans falling for aliens?**
Edit: There's been a lot of constructive thought here, for which I thank you all. The notions of Rule-34 vs uncanny valley; power as aphrodisiac; emotional ties overcoming the valley over time; gender-fluidity narrowing the valley; "reverse mermaids" ... these are all valuable insights. I think Green has hit the nail on the slightly-unnerving head:
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> Never under-estimate a human's ability to fall in love with something
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Final note: reverse mermaids? Really? *Really?* I just don't know what to say...
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## Never under-estimate a human's ability to fall in love with something
As others have noted, some humans have fallen in love with sex dolls who definitely fall in the uncanny valley. Also, there's [Stockholm Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome) where a prisoner will fall in love with their captors. Also, all the aliens described in the OP don't match the [criteria for what's human](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/21401/10364) so they aren't really in the uncanny valley to being with.
We have humans who have fallen in love with cats, dogs, cars, swords, death...the list goes on and on. They will fall in love with basically anything that matches their criteria for something to fall in love with.
Further, keep in mind that physical appearance ends up being a very small portion of an emotional relationship. Sure, initial attraction is very important but after that falling in love comes down to emotional attachment. If this alien has emotional characteristics that the earthwoman values, then there's a good change she'll fall in love with the alien.
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# The aliens are on the other side of the valley
Uncanny valley typically kicks in when something looks human but there are subtle things off that tell you it is not human. If an alien is trying to masquerade as a human then it will likely trigger. If the alien is not hiding their alien features and they are sufficiently alien enough then they can avoid the trigger while still looking mostly human. In your example with the purple skin, that alone would likely push them far enough away from being human that they could potentially avoid the valley.
## The valley is not consistent person to person
The other thing to remember is that the Uncanny Valley varies person to person in both what will trigger it and how strong of a response it will trigger. So the alien could not be triggering a strong enough Uncanny Valley response in the human love interest, while all of her friends are absolutely creeped out by him.
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The Uncanny Valley is a very powerful force, but it can be overcome. A very straightforward example is that of sex dolls. For most individuals, these dolls sit square in the middle of the Uncanny Valley, and are highly offensive. However, the owners clearly like their dolls; some even claim to love them.
While I don't believe the nature of the Uncanny Valley is fully understood, I see it as a transient effect. It's job is to create an instantaneous revulsion to things that one should have a revulsion to in an evolutionary sense. However, once you get past that initial revulsion, it seems that there's room to be free of it. We find it disgusting that people have jumped into the coffin with their spouse, and yet the mere fact that they jumped in shows that their connection to that spouse was more powerful than the Uncanny Valley itself.
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Oh man, bring it. That is hot.
I actually think the scenario is not a problem. Maybe earth women are all secretly thinking Earth men are lame, and partner with them anyway. That could explain a lot. Like the current US First Family.
More to the point, certain alien features sell *really well.* Obviously some women would love enhancement of certain male body parts. Maybe the aliens have that. They might have oddities that improve upon humanity. Like superhuman strength, or be much better listeners than human counterparts. They might make a *ton* of money by virtue of being alien.
I see very little problem with the premise. Additional considerations are some humans are blind, deaf, etc, bypassing the issues of sight and smell.
In the interest of balance, the above applies in reverse gender roles and also in gender fluid ways. In fact gender confused or fluid individuals might find a sort of attraction to aliens that gender-binary individuals don't.
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## Uncanny Valley for you, rule 34 for them
Just because a thing is physically unattractive or unsettling to one person does not mean it will be that way for every person. Rule 34 will kick in at some point for some percentage of humans, regardless of how different or strange the aliens might appear.
## Brains before beauty
There is more to attraction that just physical appearance, generally speaking. Some people are more interested in the body than the mind. Others are more interested in the mind / personality than the body. Everyone's different here. There are people who truly don't care about physical appearance when it comes to selecting for a partner. Generally speaking, everyone who is attracted to others and who has a "type" of some sort is going to place different things on some spectrum. Physical attraction, intelligence, sense of humor, shared interests, etc. all get marked on some subconscious selection grid that results in a Red, Yellow, or Green internal indicator. If your aliens show up "green" or even "yellow" for some percentage of people, those people will be attracted to your aliens.
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I think it can be overcome with decent writing or a captive niche audience. I find alien/ human sexual relationships strange because it does seem very bestiality-ish to me, but there are a lot of people reading these pairings eagerly in this particular brand of erotica. So clearly, this varies person to person. Perhaps I am species-ist and the people reading alien-human erotica are more enlightened. Either way, it's selling so it must not be a huge issue for most people.
(Also, as mentioned, this isn't really UV if they don't try to be human or are more than just a little "off.")
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It seems unlikely the girl would fall in love in the first place if the alien has an octopus face, so there is obviously some level of pre-filtering going on. If she is sexually/romantically attracted to him, there can't be much wrong.
Just fix your backstory, watch some Ancient Aliens. The Gods [Aliens] made Man [and woman] in His [their] image. They took the closest thing they could find (some lemur looking thing), and guided evolution every few hundred thousand years, tweaking the progress until they got something that looked like ***them.*** That's us.
Not only that, but they've done it thousands of times throughout the galaxy! Aliens everywhere that look just like us! (In fact this is much like the premise for a Star Trek Next Generation multi-episode epic; the reason all the aliens look pretty humanoid is an ancient first race in the galaxy, ten billion years ago, was alone, humanoid looking, and seeded the galaxies with their OWN DNA, everywhere! Then some hand-waving ensues and the mystery of why nearly all aliens look humanoid is solved!)
You don't have to bridge the uncanny valley, either the girl fell in love without caring, or there was nothing to care about, because the aliens are basically human beings from another planet. In your universe, the accepted science is a myth, self-serving and self-centered dogma that the aliens know Earthlings, when they grow up, will realize was all childish self-importance.
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Women are generally predisposed toward seeking someone higher up the power structure than they are. An alien is so far above a human, they'd be appealing almost by default, to many people. If they couldn't have a kid that might cause problems, but I imagine aliens could do some trick where they make a clone of the lady, and swap out half the DNA for theirs, I guess.
Gonna suck if they then find out that their new space-husband is an intergalactic street sweeper, eventually the situation may become normalized and they may regret rushing into things with the first alien they met, that could make for a fairly good arc.
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Women are naturally drawn to the mysterious, the unknown, the exotic, so as long as an alien is humanoid enough, they would actually be MORE attracted, not less. This goes for paranormal and comic book romances as well. Take the cult phenomenon "Twilight" for example, why do you think its so popular? If its that easy to fall for a sexy bloodsucker... What chance do the girls have against a dashing space explorer? Personally, I would much rather date Clark Kent than Edward Cullen any day.
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Most of your alien features hit more on phobias than the uncanny valley. Of course one persons phobia is another's *fetish*, so shark teeth or insect eyes may appeal to some!
The uncanny valley would apply to something trying to be human, but failing in a thousand tiny ways that trigger our subconscious revulsion of "the other". But this is a sloped response, some will respond strongly while others won't even notice. So a strongly inhuman feature may well jump right past the UV for most folks.
Consider our best real life at this, Valeria Lukyanova, the "human Barbie". In still photos she is quite deep into the UV, at least for me[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fECXr.jpg) but of course most of this effect is make-up or maybe even photoshop, since in motion she looks quite human [youtube link to interview with her](https://youtu.be/1uBwFW1Dfng). So I suspect an otherwise normal appearing male, aside from one truly alien feature, would have little trouble finding a willing human female partner. What would really be a challenge is an alien male that looked as if it was reverse engineered from just a few photos and maybe a low res video of a man in motion. Inconsistent features that don't adhere to facial geometry, jerky movements, odd muscle tics, these things (think of the roach guy from Men in Black) would trigger a lot more revulsion in women.
I find it interesting that you focus on human women. Is it your assumption that human MEN have so few standards that the uncanny valley doesn't apply to them? :) Consider the classic mermaid/reverse mermaid
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YsCBD.jpg)
That this is even a thing strongly suggests that men would have "hit it" with an alien long before an UV femalien came along :)
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As **Anketam** stated, the alien you described is on the other side of the Uncanny Valley. The UV comes from someone who looks so close to human that you you may have to give them a second glance to tell. Sometimes you don't even know consciously that the image isn't human but you feel something "wrong." There is a robot lady (really just a head and torso interface) that just creeps me out to look at or see it move.
There is speculation that just as we see symmetry of features as a sign of beauty (because those with more symmetrical bodes tend to be stronger and healthier) that, subconsciously, we may see those very minor differences as markers for genetic deformities. Thus, we may be hard wired to de-select those people as potential mates.
Of course, the UV doesn't affect everyone the same way and as **Cort Ammon** mentions, it can be overcome.
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**Just get used to it**
Uncanny valley is something we experience when we see a picture for 15 seconds, not develop a relationship. The human brain is very adaptive and can get used to new things relatively quickly. What looks weird in cold at first glance, and be warm and familiar after a week of interaction. Humans can learn alien mannerisms, alien facial expressions. As a human we would even start involuntarily mimicking them to make the alient more comfortable.
Even things that are not uncanny valley like cartoon characters are accepted because of culture. We are used to seeing them all the time. Anime girls look weird to people that have never seen them, and vert attractive to people as they get used to them.
As long as the alien does not trigger the human ideas of grotesqueness, you just need to give it a little time
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I'm working on the layout of a fairly large crypt/small catacomb (for a RPG dungeon), and I want it to be built out of *necessity* (thus justifying its size, relatively frequent visitation, and egalatarian usage patterns) as opposed to the more typical case where a crypt or tomb will be built for the burial of wealthy folk (with more money yielding a bigger crypt to spend the afterlife in), while commoners simply get a coffin in the ground.
So what geotechnical conditions or concerns would require the construction of an elaborate, communal burial crypt/catacomb instead of simply sticking the dead in coffins and burying them in a normal way? Furthermore, whatever these conditons are need to be able to support a forest or forest-like ecosystem around it for the living to operate in.
Also, this crypt would be built primarily from stone, with rot-resistant timbering (similar to redwood or cedar) available for key tension members -- it needs to be built to *last*.
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A slightly different answer: **Quicksand!**
Imagine a region with both a high water table, flat terrain, suitable clay/silt soil and frequent earthquakes. In these earthquakes, the ground would tend to liquefy and turn into a form of quicksand - and wooden coffins, together with their occupants, are buoyant in quicksand.
After several earthquakes in which all the graveyards saw the dead quite literally rising from the grave to general horror, the building of a nice, solid, non-liquefying catacomb would seem appropriate.
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It is a good question. What you want is not a crypt but a [catacomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs). It looks like proper catacombs for mass burials always turn on issues of use of space and use of land. Wikipedia is excellent for the Roman and Parisian and the reasons for the two were very different. I also found reading here: <http://mentalfloss.com/article/64564/7-worlds-most-fascinating-and-beautiful-catacombs>
I found it stated that the Roman catacombs were built because burial of corpses was illegal in the city. I cannot find out why that was but it is not a bad idea if land is at a premium. I think the main reason that there were galleries upon galleries of burial chambers and passages is that families had an obligation to continue honoring the dead, which they did with fancy art and visits. If you have an obligation like that you want to be sure your neighbors know you are honoring it, and you want your tributes to be out where they can be seen. And: it was the done thing at the time for rich and poor alike.
The Parisian ones were very different. I read that people were buried in the city, for centuries, and it got nasty with heaps of bodies falling thru walls etc. The Parisians had a huge labyrinth of mines handy and so the bones of millions (!) of bodies were exhumed and moved to these old mines. And arranged in artistic patterns all mixed together. They saved the freakiest bones they found for the special freak bone room. Sort of the opposite of the Roman catacombs as regards respecting your ancestors.
The Vienna catacombs are similar to the Parisian: an expedient and space-frugal way to store lots of bodies. I read that the Vienna ones got started after 11,000 people died during a plague and they had to go somewhere.
All these catacombs came about as a consequence of high population density and need for economical use of land in storage / disposal of corpses.
Finally, the under-construction [Jerusalem catacombs](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-is-running-out-of-cemetery-space-so-its-digging-vast-catacombs/2015/05/19/5041a376-fa7d-11e4-a47c-e56f4db884ed_story.html?utm_term=.cf277b348723). This is a different reason again and I think one that would be good for your RPG. Jews want to be buried in Jerusalem. Religious preferences as regards site were also apparently important to the early Christians buried in the Roman catacombs: they wanted to be near the graves of martyrs.
I could imagine in your campaign something important happened at a given site such that for hundreds of years people insisted on being buried there, and to accommodate the demand efficiently, catacombs under (or over) the site were constructed. Times changed and the old religion and old catacombs were forgotten...
ADDENDUM
*/Interesting, but not needed in the forest, and not geotechnical. – RonJohn 8 hours ago /*
RonJohn is right on both counts. So: a clarification. One is as regards the forest. If the catacombs have been forgotten, a forest may have grown up. The people currently there are not the same people who built the catacombs. Alternatively, the sacred event that caused this site to be the place for burials just happened to take place in the forest.
Re geotechnical: if you want a grave in proximity to the grave of a martyr, it is easier to accomplish if you have 3 dimensions to work with (multi-tiered catacomb) as opposed to only 2 (graveyard). This was the case for the abovementioned Christians.
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# Flooding, shortage of arable land, shallow soil on rocky ground.
Regular flooding is nasty for burial, you really don't want coffins and corpses floating back up to the surface as the land is disturbed.
Easily excavated land for burial is also usually your best land for farming. How much of that land can you afford to give up to the burial plot as your population expands? Perhaps the people are mostly hill farmers, keeping sheep and goats on rocky ground that basically can't be dug at all. The same is true if you have a high water table.
With all these situations you have to start looking at other body disposal options, whether crypts, caves, mounds, cairns, or sky burial.
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Geothermal. There are many place in New Zealand that will cook anything buried! That would not make for a pleasant cemetery to visit.
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In parts of Spain (and no doubt elsewhere) people perform above ground burials because the ground is too hard to dig in without heavy machinery.
Using power tools like pneumatic hammers graves can be dug into the bedrock but in the past, without such, they couldn't so they were forced to build above ground burial sites.
Tradition now dictates above ground burials even though technically they're no longer needed (though it might still be more economical).
This is no doubt quite similar to the practice of "sky burial" in Nepal and other mountainous areas.
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Easy-peasy: a high water table, which prevents you from digging "6 feet under".
EDIT: updated pictures.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oU8u1.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Iop5v.jpg)
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There are plenty of ways to make "dig a hole and stick a coffin in it" impractical:
* High water table
* Thin soil over shallow bedrock
* Quicksand, quickclay, or other liquefaction-prone soils (coffins float to the surface)
* Rocky or hard soils that are difficult to dig
* Shallow geothermal features
* and so on...
They all have one thing in common, though: they preclude forests. A tree needs deep, stable soil for its roots, so if you can grow trees, you can bury coffins.
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New Orleans is an area you will want to look at for inspiration. Also be aware that any low lying area that has massive storms such as hurricanes pushing storm surge inland before them is going to have problems with newly interred caskets coming out of the ground.
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I'm not sure what kind of world you are building here, but what about the thought that burying the dead in the earth attracts certain unwanted elements (bandits, ghosts, monsters, microbes, whatever). Because the resulting attracted things affect both rich and poor, the catacombs could be necessary for the safety of everyone. Just a thought.
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**For some reason currently unknown to the PCs, the dead in this region arise on their own after a time to hunt and kill the living.**
The only way to stop it is to completely encase burial areas in a maintained magic field that is channeled through the specially-designed mausoleum walls. This mausoleum, being for the public good, is funded through taxation of all members of the society.
Maybe this is why bodies are not cremated in this region, too: even the dust of the cremated dead comes to life after a time and attacks the living.
It's similar to [Henry Taylor](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/3112/henry-taylor)'s answer, but avoids a lot of the contrivance related to sneaking ninja-necromancers.
Whatever interesting property of your world or this region of your world that causes this can be be revealed at a later date.
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Imagine a city like [Civita di Bagnoregio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civita_di_Bagnoregio) or [Orvieto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orvieto), where the city is built on a tall butte with limited space. Eventually; the townsfolk will run out of room and options dwindle. Do we carry the dead all the way down this mountain? Or maybe we should start to build a mausoleum of some sort... assuming that your culture forbids cremation, it might be a profitable enterprise to dig out the hill
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We build crypts to keep the dead inside. You see, our enemies have a lot of necromancers and high-level clerics at their command. Back when we just buried our deceased, our enemy would sneak into our grave yards and dig up their remains. Then, while we are still grieving from loosing our no longer living loved one, its corpse would charge into town and start killing everyone. More often than not, we were too emotionally confused to fight back. We lost many to the cold claws of our fallen.
Now our loved ones sleep through eternity, safely sealed behind stone walls and locked doors.
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I am imagining a story where people store heat in the summer for use in the winter and store cold in the winter for use in the summer, unleashing the appropriate temperature when needed.
But without hand-waving it away, how would such a thing work? I care not whether this device is magic or technology. (Keep in mind I'm not talking about currently known heat pump technology, which takes a lot of space, and transfers current temperatures from the ground and using the differential to change the building's comfort level.)
Whatever it is I want it to be about the size of a good sized urn, maybe working along the idea that if sat in a sunny place it would absorb heat and be able to release it at a later time, and if set in a cold / snowy place it can absorb cold, and have some sort of release valve. The amount of heat / cold stored would be proportional to the size of the vase.
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A magic material with near infinite heat capacity for the two urns.
Two boxes for the urns that have perfect insulation and a sliding door to regulate heat transfer
In the summer put the summer urn outside and when it get to the hottest day put it in the insulated box.
When you need to heat:
* Bring in the summer urn and crack the door
* Take the winter urn of the insulated box and place it outside. Wait for the coldest day of winter to put it back in the insulated box.
Reverse to cool.
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Well as you haven't said much about size constraints, I'd suggest storing it in much the same way we do now, in something unimaginatively called [Thermal Storage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage). Large mass of something with good insulation. When it gets hot, it stays hot and vice versa for the cold. I know of at least one molten salt heat storage system (I forget where), they used solar power to heat up the salt and the use the heat at night, I think it stored several Gigawatt-hours of energy and could remain hot for ages. For a 6 month shelf life, just beef up the insulation (there used to be a rumor that the insulation on the space shuttle's liquid hydrogen tanks was sooo good it could keep ice frozen for 12 years)
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## Energy storage
If you cool a rock to exactly one degree below freezing, then drop it in a nice beverage, the brick will cool the beverage... a little. But not very much, in the grand scene of things. However, if you drop a simple ice cube into the beverage, it will lower the temperature considerably! Same mass of object, but a lot more energy. The reason is the state change - the brick stays a brick, but the ice cube melts, and it takes a lot of energy to go from solid to liquid (and from liquid to gas), and vice versa. Incidentally, this is why those drink-rocks just don't work as well as regular ice.
Granted, that's just water. It can hold a significant amount of energy, but you're not going to get it as small as an urn and still be able to do anything but act as a personal cooling device for a few hours, at best. What you really want, therefore, it a new supermaterial. Something that takes a ***lot*** of energy to go from solid to liquid. Then, all you need to do is find a way to get the energy into the substance (to make it warmer), or let the energy out (to make it cooler).
The awesome part is that the temperature is *exact*. Not "vaguely room temperature", but a specific temperature with 0% fluctuation.
## Temperature control
Ok, so I lied. There's a little bit more to controlling temperature than the material. However, this works to our advantage! You see, if you increase pressure, water no longer freezes at the same temperature. Increase it enough, and water starts freezing at room temperature (or hotter). Decrease it enough, and water boils at room temperature (or colder).
Why is this to our advantage? Simple! Your supermaterial is at the solid/liquid state change at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. But, by increasing or decreasing the pressure, you can easily change the melting/freezing point by a few degrees up or down. Which means your supermaterial can be regulated at the twist of a dial! As you crank it one way, it increases pressure, the other way, decreases. Turn it up or down to regulate how much energy is released.
## Recharging
As energy-dense as this material is, it will take significant energy to recharge - exactly the energy it lets out, actually. However, with the right material and a good source of energy, a chunk of material could heat an insulated house for a full day, or longer! And since it isn't wasting energy trying to make a house colder than it should be (like a giant block of ice), or warmer than it should be (like a vat of molten salt), it will regulate much more easily.
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# Magic
You said you don't care if it is magic or not. So the simple thing to do is use magic. Have some kind of magical storage device that takes charging. In the summer it absorbs heat and in the winter it releases it.
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We used to do this all the time, at least in the storing "cold" way. But it only worked on a very large scale. We used to have ice houses that would store huge quantities of ice. the buildings were well insulated and the ice that would last through to the next winter. they could be used for food storage because they stayed cold all year. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_(building)>
lots of buildings work by storing the "cold" of night into the day and the heat of the day into the night to keep a mild temperature. there are several ways to do this but all require lots of mass. The simplest is just building really thick stone or earth walls.
the thermal inertia of something as small as an urn is just too small to work so you really will have to use hand waving magic. If you limit it to magic that stores or release energy on demand you can do this just fine.
I seem to remember a story where they did just that with specially carved stones of various sizes. one type could be prevented from warming (thus storing cold) and another could be prevented from radiating heat (thus storing heat) the cold ones were somewhat limited becasue they could not get colder than the coldest winter night, but the hot ones could reach some real extremes in temperature (they are warmed by sunlight so they can eventually reach the temperature of the surface of the sun, except they would melt first) to the point they were usually housed in metal frames to keep people from getting too close while active. I wish I could remember where I read that, it might have been a campaign setting.
This does mean you would need more cold stones than hot ones, and not just because it is easier to heat a room than cool it.
I have also seen a variation on this with a magical artifact that is always the same temprature, which just due to how temprature works will tend to bring any room it is in to the same temprature over time as long as it is not to big. if the temprature was set when you made each one you can get a lot of mileage out of the idea. make refrigerators in winter and bread ovens in summer. Or create your house climate control on a nice spring day.
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I agree with the answers/comments that the question is a bit too broad. If you want actually working stuff, then the molten salt storage or a heat pump (as suggested by others) would be the way to go. If you want it in a (small) urn, then you have to resort to magic. So, how to do it magically with an explanation?
**Maxwell's Demon**
If you don't want to just say "it's a magical urn [cough, cough, mumble, mumble]", then I suggest you make it contain a Maxwellian demon (well, I guess imp if it should fit a small urn).
[Maxwell's demon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon) is a thought experiment by Maxwell to show how the second law of thermodynamics (which say that the total amount of disorder (entropy) in a system has to increase) can be violated. The deamon will, in the thought experiment, choose which gas molecules which get to pass a barrier and, thus, over time the order of the system would increase since the demon would organize the molecules. This is disproven by noting that the demon need to spend energy to determine which molecule to put where and, thus, the global entropy will increse anyway even if some molecules get ordered. This is at least the case for a world without magic.
With magic allowed, the demon (or imp) would live in the urn and selectively choose which molecules get to interact with the urn. This would mean that on a warm day only high energetic molecules (i.e. the warm ones) get to interact with the urn, they lose energy during the interaction and cool down. On a cold day, the demon would do the opposite and only allow "cold" molecules to interact and they would thus gain energy from the storage in the urn. The urn itself can be of any outer material and contains an inner storage cage (to keep the demon/imp in), which is made from some enchanted metal. Inside the storage cage is the demon/imp (obviously) and a semi liquid or plasma-like magical goo which stores the energy. You could use some real compound with high heat capacity (e.g., water), but if you already went for a deamon, then a purple glowing magical goo would fit better. I would personally call the goo Thermoglium, Magmalite, or perhaps Maxwellate.
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A micro-blackhole, -sun, -star the size of large urn. Contained with electro-magnetic fields. Assuming you can draw energy from it, you can power all the heaters or air conditioners you want.
Even better throwing your trash into it, will cause it to compress and release the trashes matter as energy eventually.
Only, 1 problem, getting one of the above, I guess here is where the magic comes in.
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Either go with current technology or tweak it with a *teeny* bit of magic.
We can store lots of heat in latent form with special substances such as Glauber salts or some waxes. You can use handwavium chloride, with a very high latent heat and a metastable form (sort of super Glauber) that can be ignited in winter. Never travel in the cold months without several packets.
Or you can have some plant use it to build its own substance taking advantage of summer heat (lowering the temperature while doing so) and burn said plant in winter.
Otherwise, you will need some nigh perfect insulator and store heat in some thermal reservoir - underground, or in water tanks.
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Fermilab once built a house over a 10 foot by 10 foot by 10 foot pool of water. During the winter, they pulled heat out of the water, making ice. During the summer, they pumped heat out of the house into the ice, air conditioning the house and melting the ice.
They said that this system worked surprising well.
Now, do you allow a magical heat pumps? Because making a heat pump will take some good manufacturing knowledge, such as making metal tubing.
Keep in mind, as well, that old houses allowed a lot of outside air in which greatly increases the load on the HVAC. Very well insulated homes need to cool they sweaty hot humans during the winter. Do you allow magical foam insulation?
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huh... isn't the key to store cold/heat, the insulation of the vessel?
Lower the temperature of a fluid as much as you can - [nitrogen for example](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_nitrogen) - and store in a container made of a [ferromagnetic material](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ferromagnetic_materials) .
Keep the container in a [vacuum chamber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_chamber) and [magnetically levitate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_levitation) it.
You have the cold storage.
Do the same for a fluid heated as much as you can and you have heat storage.
The magic here would be to find ferromagnetic materials that can endure both very low and very high temperatures.
If the purpose is to heat/cool a room to a comfortable temperature for a human being, I think not much magic is needed.
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You can base everything around buildings with high thermal mass coupled with High R-value insulation. You can look into things like Earthbag houses or even primitive Adobe, if you make the walls thick enough. line the exterior walls with bailed hay, which should give you an R-value of around 2 per inch, if I remember right, not counting the inherent properties of the earthbags or adobe.
Sure you end up with walls 3 foot thick, but they mean you have a very thermally efficient house, so long as you figure out how to insulate the roof well. There are even earthbag like constructions in a beehive shape that turn the wall into a roof, more or less.
Your vase of handwavium would have less heat to move around, allowing more flexibility with how you could do it.
Finally, you could just put everyone in hobbit holes, or dwarf mines. Underground temperatures require very little thermal interference to maintain the perfect temperature, so long as you get below the frost line.
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Maybe have a material that either captures or gives out heat by changing the thermal properties like changing polarity of a magnet. During summers the material absorbs heat and cools the room. And during winter we change the "polarity" So that it gives off the heat stored inside
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Imagine a civilization that approaches Kardashev II. They are deep into spacefaring, they live on a few less than one-hundred colonized worlds. They've not found evidence of other sapient life, so they believe they are alone in the galaxy.
The unfortunate news is that this civilization is dying. No amount of effort can save them, so they decided to leave a message to those who will come after them. Their scientists concluded that if they will scatter messages that will last one billion years there is a good chance somebody will find them.
Nothing natural lasts that long, so they decided to create self-replicating storage units that would feed on simple elements found on rocky planets. The best place to leave these storage units was near volcanic vents on the floor of water oceans. The storage units were small and robust, designed to survive as long as possible.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pIGUe.jpg)
The storage unit itself was very clever. Every bit of information was used not only as a part of the message but also as an instruction for how to build some part of the unit. The idea was to prevent the storage units from replicating if they became altered (which would also alter the message) and so the altered units would be destroyed by the flow of time.
Despite the intention, after some time, storage units with changed instructions were able to replicate and survive. But, by this time, the civilization that seeded them was already long gone. So long, that even the remains of their Dyson swarms were indistinguishable from asteroids. Eventually, some of these altered storage units changed so much that they obtained consciousness, and even were able to build their own civilization. They called themselves Humans.
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## The question
How believable it is that somebody will find Maxwell equations and some more during DNA sequencing of some ancient organism living on the bottom of the ocean?
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EDIT: changed the wording for clarity
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I wouldn't normally appear on this site, but that **is absolutely believable and theoretically possible in "futurology"**. The concept simply extends the boundaries of current molecular evolution into protein engineering.
Check my other sites, essentially molecular evolution is a core part of what I do.
The storage units need two components (probably three) to be viable for the design, 'message' to be preserved over vast amounts of time. These are:
1. The thing encoding the replication of the DNA is engineered to minimise mutation and that is absolutely feasible by constructing a 'hyper strong *proof reading activity*' protein(s) (*italics* is the precise technical word) and probably large numbers of them. So when the 'message' mutates a set of "mutation repair" proteins kick into action" mopping up the error. This happens and would result in replicating with minimal mutation.
2. Even when the 'message' (DNA) changes, i.e. mutates, it is engineered to immediately lose functionality, thereby unable to replicate the message. That 'message' (DNA) including the mutations then dies. The 'message' that does not mutant persists and replicates, thus the mutations are always lost. It's called purifying selection and yes it absolutely happens.
3. Compensatory mutation theory - this too complicated to explain easily.
However, across the vastness of time, no matter how brilliant the molecular design and protein engineering they couldn't identify every permutation (mutation) that would overcome the purifying selection trap, i.e. mutations start persisting. The first thing the mutated message does is dump is the 'proof reading activity', i.e. the mechanism restricting it from mutating quickly. The 'message' then enters mutation 'free-fall', mutations can occur simultaneously , i.e. within the same instance of time within the same message (and that is very 'dangerous' in this context because of the way compensatory mutations work). Then it's all systems go, and upwards through the complexity of life.
So yeah points 1 to 3 we could see why the original scientists theoreticians and wet-lab were overconfident. The design looks bullet proof, but in DNA ultimately nothing is 'bullet proof'.
Cool.
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I'd better caveat "mutation free-fall". The pure example of mutation free-fall is cancer, there's no question about that, it's no hold bars. Thats not what I had in mind ...
The phenomena where there are sudden bursts of mutations are:
* episodic selection
* periodic selection
* selective sweeps
In contrast to "purifying" or "epistatic" selection, these are systems in rapid selection, they adapt and change. True "free-fall", like cancer, the cell simply mutates itself apart.
Some references for the above 3 processes are given in the notes below. These vast research fields however.
The overconfidence is absolutely correct ... in this area for every success there's been multiple failures. It was thought infectious disease was defeated (yeah right), vaccines got rid of viruses and antibiotics got rid of bacteria ... There have been successes (smallpox was eradicated and probably polio too) but with the benefit of hindsight the original optimism definitely wasn't how its worked out. Those little microbes just keep mutating.
They're a complex issue called "neutral theory" if the "message" is only DNA but if the "message" is stored in the protein sequence that will work.
**Caveat 2**
Storing a message thats under purifying selection would be some feat, certainly at present, but it's not impossible for future generations to develop this particularly via advances in AI. This is the hardest technological feat BTW ... developing point 1 is absolutely doable now, developing point 2 we couldn't do it at present we are simply not at that level at present. What you are doing is forcing function into a "message" and its a level of computation we simply don't have now.
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*Further comments*
What I would look at is the preservation of bacterial 16S sequence. This can be used to build a phylogenetic tree of **ALL** bacteria. If life is 1 billion years old, then thats how long it's been around. It contains extreme sequence conservation (for 1 billion+ year). 16S is pure DNA its a much easier concept to understand. There are lots of protein genes, e.g. DNA polymerase, that have massive amounts of conservation. This however is complicated because it's about DNA->proteins and it's really hard to grasp if biology wasn't you thing. DNA polymerase was what I had in mind in the above statements and re-engineering that to leave a message and make that message central to its functionality so purifying selection will preserve it. Purifying selection has preserved these genes for however old life is on earth (1 billion years?) and maintained strong sequence conservation.
The issue is what I am proposing is beyond current technology, but it's built on current technology. Without understanding where we are now it's hard to project that into the future.
*The key I would focus on is the overconfidence in a futuristic brilliant technological solution and how that can unravel into something completely unintended.* The emotional stuff, the arrogance of brilliance. Getting into the detailed technology is going to be hard because it's spanning lots of areas with microbial evolution. For example, generating electricity in coal fired power stations, at the time it would have been brilliant (obviously a long time ago) ... now with global warming that seems a very bad idea and we don't know the final outcome.
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The mutation rate in human DNA is [round about](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/mutation-rate#:%7E:text=Mutation%20rates%20in%20humans%20have,expected%20in%20each%20human%20gamete.&text=assuming%20no%20back%20mutation.) 1E-4 to 1E-6. That means that in each copying of DNA, there is between 1 in 10,000 and 1 in 1 million errors in copying the sequence.
It means that, if there is no particular restorative process, the error rate is thus.
If there is a process to restore the DNA, it can be retained with extremely few errors. For example, haemoglobin seems to be extremely stable. The differences between the molecule in humans and various other species that have similar blood chemistry is very small. The usual explanation is, any mutations in this chemical tend to produce instant death.
But if a portion of DNA is not active in representing some aspect of the organism, there is no reason to expect it to be protected from the error rate. Indeed, the expected error rate will be the towards the larger end. There is no reason for the more careful error correction in DNA that is not evolutionarily important.
Thus we can expect that each generation will produce about 1 error in 10,000 letters.
How many generations since 1 billion years? Certainly millions.
Thus, any information stored in non-expressed DNA would have massive errors. The expectation is that any such non-expressed DNA would be entirely replaced many times over 1 billion years. No useful information would survive.
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I find it unlikely. The fact that humans evolved from these storage units is proof that the medium does not have very good long-term fidelity. Clearly, these units are are unable to maintain a pristine copy of the data they encode. After a billion years, I find it unlikely that the original data would even still exist. It is simply unbelievable that the genetic code of the storage unit could be so stable as to survive with zero errors for a billion years, yet unstable enough to evolve into a highly complex sapient organism. Either the original organism can preserve its own DNA but never evolve into anything else, or allow evolution at the cost of corrupting the message.
Consider two different cases, either that the message DNA does something useful, or it doesn't. If it doesn't do anything useful at all, there isn't any evolutionary reason to keep it intact - individuals with a mutated copy of the message will reproduce just as well as ones with an intact copy, so the message will eventually be corrupted. If the DNA does do something useful, there is more pressure to conserve it, but that doesn't preclude mutations. Evolutionary fitness is very importantly a *function of the environment* - it doesn't make sense that the same organism could represent the peak of evolutionary fitness across different environments over the course of a billion years. As the environment changes over time, so do evolutionary pressures - the designed organism may have been highly evolutionarily fit at one point, but it would not remain that way unless the environment is totally static.
But even if the message did survive, it's unclear how it could be deciphered - all other organisms on the planet descended from the original storage unit and will have a traceable phylogeny of similar genomes. Simply put, the genetic code just looks like it carries the information of genetic code, not some secondary hidden meaning.
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**Is it believable? Yes! And no...**
We believe that a considerable amount of human DNA is dormant. It's the remains of, for example, old evolutionary changes that are no longer useful or viable, or evolutionary traits that never caught hold and were replaced by something else. We also believe that some of it is "how to build a human" DNA that has no meaning once the human has reached maturity.
That inefficiency in our genetic code is due to nature figuring us out on the fly over millions of years.
But what if an intelligent species that understood the inner workings of DNA (much better than we do today...) were to use that knowledge to create an *engineered* life form that could carry within the dormant DNA space useful information?
Yeah... I can believe that. As I mentioned in my comment, the basics of this idea have already found their way into Science Fiction in the form of the Ultimate Computer in Douglas Adams' \*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series and Star Trek: The Next Generation's episode "The Chase" where multiple species find chunks of "something useful" within their DNA and, when all those chunks are brought together, it forms a program that results in a hologram that would have been uber cool had it not been a huge disappointment.
**But the idea requires ignoring a few things to be believable**
We humans are remarkably adept at ignoring *all kinds of truth* in the pursuit of a good story. Look at politics anywhere in the world for proof. However, for the record, the weakness in this idea is that evolution is constantly happening, and the data is nothing more than "unused space" in terms of the evolutionary record that would (over millions and billions of years) become corrupt — guaranteed. The problem is that evolution is as capable of discarding something it doesn't deem useful as it is incorporating it (if you don't mind my anthropomorphising a concept).
Yes, we can say, "but the original encoding contains instructions to avoid that!" But the problem there is that you can't end up with a human in that case. You had to start with one that changed very little over the eons — a bit like alligators, only worse. You can't allow the entire evolutionary process from primordial goo to pat-my-head-and-rub-my-belly human and still "believably" retain all that information.
**[But who cares?](https://youtu.be/poxW5pFQVEw?t=54)**
I like the idea and believe it hasn't been explored to its full depth. I believe DNA is *complex enough* and still *mysterious enough* that everyone other than an actual geneticist would happily read your story and accept the premise.
And if you do a good enough job, even the geneticists will enjoy themselves... all the while wishing they could figure out how to do what you're describing.
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> Whoever wove that Message into our DNA meant it to last until we figured out how to read it—it's built inextricably into the protein expression mechanism so any organism with a corrupted copy won't be viable. It's obvious in retrospect. If a visitor wants to leave a message, why not make it a self-reproducing, error-correcting message that any sentient race would stumble upon as soon as they undertook to reverse engineer their own design?
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Source: <https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/sftriple/gpic.html>
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> The storage unit itself was very clever. Every bit of information was used not only as a part of the message but also as an instruction for how to build some part of the unit. The idea was to prevent the storage units from replicating if they became altered (which would also alter the message) and so the altered units would be destroyed by the flow of time.
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This is a very good start. In reality, the key parts of the ribosomes responsible for reading mRNA strands and assembling the corresponding proteins is extremely well conserved for exactly the reason stated: any major change is likely to result in different proteins being constructed or a failure to construct proteins at all, very likely making the cell non-viable.
The ribosome itself is composed of ribosome RNA bundled around a "scaffold" of various ribosome proteins. Some parts are actually pretty robust to change, as long as they don't cause any changes to transcription, but the rest of it doesn't tolerate much change at all. The ribosomes of bacteria are all very similar, and those of eukaryotes (except those in the mitochondria, which are similar to bacterial ribosomes) and archaea are very similar, and distinct in the same ways from those of bacteria ribosomes. Either it is the prokaryotes (bacteria) which have diverged, or the archaea did so before eukaryotes appeared.
However...all this is coded for with just a few thousand base pairs of DNA. The smallest known genome is of a bacteria with only 1.3 million base pairs, and only a fraction of that would be the highly-conserved cellular machinery that could store a message, and only a fraction of *that* would actually be available for storing the message. Compression would make it more likely for some error to make the message unreadable, what you'd want is instead an error-correcting encoding which will incorporate some redundancy in exchange for error tolerance. In short, the message length would probably be limited to a few kilobytes, if that.
So, Maxwell's equations? Maybe. Maxwell's equations and enough contextual information to make them actually recognizable? That'd be less believable. The location of a time capsule stashed deep inside some geologically inert lump of rock in some very long-term-stable orbit? Maybe.
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Yes, **highly plausible**.
Real DNA mutation rates are too high for this to work; however, that's because mutation rate are themselves under evolutionary selection for the optimal balance of energy costs of the repair mechanisms as well as the long term advantage of the organism - i.e. organisms with very low mutation rates evolve very slowly and will eventually be outcompeted, organisms with very high mutation rates degrade in fitness too quickly for natural selection to weed out detrimental mutations.
A manufactured organism could have much lower mutation rates than any extant organism, by having more repair mechanisms, and stricter proof-reading mechanisms and more redundant storage.
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## Frame challenge
There are two main problems your dying civilisation needs to consider while sending out a DNA message:
1. Any civilisation capable of doing all this will be well aware of DNA's mutation characteristics and how relying on natural selection to only preserve flawless copies is a fool's errand.
2. Sending a message only makes sense if you assume someone is going to read it. Anyone able to decode your message hidden in DNA will be well aware of Maxwell's equations, as they're kind of necessary to build the technology to sequence DNA. You need to put much more advanced information into it. But what if it is found by someone horrible? The more advanced the knowledge encoded is, the bigger the danger of a random recipient misusing it.
So the whole thing doesn't make sense.
Unless...
**Why not use the message to build the recipient?**
You know those self-extracting .exe files that were all the rage in the early 2000s? They were self-extracting because they contained not just the compressed data but also the code to decompress it.
So far from it being an accident, the mutation of (some of) the message into a sentient species was the aim. A sentient species capable of figuring out Maxwell's equations and analysing DNA, determining its "age" and with a deep obsession of finding out where they came from.
A species capable of finding a multitude of the most ancient copies of your message (encoding stuff much more complicated than Maxwell's equations), find and "correct" the inevitable errors that would creep in over these time scales and figure out what the "starting" DNA might have been.
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There are some challenges with storing information in DNA. DNA is not a very stable molecule over time. The Max Plank Institute had to invent new ways of reading DNA that was only 40,000 years old. The DNA was highly contaminated with DNA from other organisms. The DNA strands started fraying. And chemicals modified the DNA.
In our cells, DNA is stored behind two different walls, the cell wall and then the wall around the nucleus in order to protect it.
To have information stay encoded in DNA for millions of years, the DNA would need not just the information, but also a way to look for and fix errors. Something like how NASA uses three different computers at times in order to have enough error detection and correction. Perhaps the organism might have 3 different nuclei in each cell with error correction.
It would also help to have the information duplicated elsewhere so that a catastrophe in one location won't destroy the information. Then, you will need a way to compare stored information between the various locations and take the one that has the most votes.
Think about it. DNA has a number of ways to be destroyed. Another organism eats the cell. Chemical processes eating away at the molecule. Radiation changes the atom in a molecule which makes the information unreadable. Many other types of natural disasters will destroy the information including landslides, volcanoes, and plate tectonics subducting where this information is stored.
Edit: Storing information on the ocean floor doesn't last. Earth does not have any ocean floor older than 200 million years. Everything older than that has been subducted. Storing on land has to contend with both critters eating it and with all the processes that build dirt and rock on top of it or erode away where it is stored. In short, the DNA has to be able to move.
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Using the search engine here and on Google is not leading me to any answers.
Assume no shields here or any unobtanium technologies.
What happens upon impact of a projectile fired out of a railgun against a ship in space?
I am not sure of the physics behind it. If a projectile smashes into a surface at a very high velocity, wouldn't it pierce through? Shows make it seem like getting hit with a railgun shot will screw you up a lot harder than flooding you with a sea of bullets.
However this seems to imply if you get pelted with a railgun, the force of impact will somehow disperse throughout the ship. I could see it being a major problem if it strikes critical onboard equipment (ex: a reactor), but if it hits a part of the ship where there is not much material, wouldn't it make a hole and only that (ignoring the now-gaping-hole into the vacuum of space)? Or is there kinetic energy transferred into the surrounding material in a much more violent way than I am imagining?
This also raises the question as to whether ships in space would opt for a thin hull if railguns were a method of attack in space or not.
I tried looking into some videos like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58MmOpSm4LY) and it looks like it pierces through its target and keeps going. Of course this is not at very high kinetic speeds to which one might get in the future, and it does seem to char the surface area around the impact site, but if you want various sci-fi shows it seems like it completely destroys or incapacitates the ship.
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The smartest thing to do is be.. well.. smart.
At very high velocities metal acts like water. Your projectile (if it’s a solid slug or designed to fragment on impact) will pass through the target unless it’s armoured to the point of obscenity (remember that mass in space is *expensive*). Sure, it will punch a hole, but if it’s a combat vessel at a range where rail guns are going to be even vaguely useful I’d expect the atmosphere would already be vented and the crew on more isolated life support (suits). A railgun round won’t be a killer unless it hits something critical because it simply won't transfer enough energy, and it won’t be ‘inside’ the enemy ship long enough for an explosive to work effectively.
On the other hand: at very high velocities metal acts like water. If your projectile fragments into a series of smaller projectiles (say, like a flak shell) then either the enemy vessel will be sufficiently armoured to stop the cloud of hypervelocity shrapnel (and all the energy is transferred) or you’re maximising the number of potentially killer impacts across the entire profile of the enemy vessel.
So mount a small configurable fuse into your rounds. The targeting computer tells the round the optimal point at which to detonate, the round fires, then later bursts into a deadly hail of shrapnel instead of a single penetrator. If they are too heavily armoured for the burst approach the targeting computer can delay the trigger or turn it off altogether.
Heck, if you add a few targeting thrusters and a camera you could even have them be smart rounds that aim for points of critical weakness or previous damage!
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A similar design problem has been faced by who tried to optimize bullets: a bullet that pierces clean through a target, in this case a human, has less chances of delivering lethal damage then a bullet that fragments or start to tumble on impact.
And that's why bullets are designed to fragment on impact or to be unstable to the point that once hit a target they start tumbling.
Identical considerations will hold in your case: if you want to maximize damage, your impactor will need to fragment on impact.
However mind that in order to fragment while in the target the velocity of the bullet has to slower or comparable to the speed of sound in the material of the bullet and the time of residence of the bullet in the target has to be longer than the time needed for sound to propagate across the bullet.
If that doesn't happen your bullet will "realize" it has hit something and has to break after it has gone through the target, greatly reducing the delivered damage (assuming we can neglect effects like atomic reactions induced by very high velocities of impact).
However don't forget that, being in space, a large enough hole pierced through a ship is a problem in itself, because it will let out the gas inside, presumably used to keep the crew alive. Unless you have a fully robotic operated ship.
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It depends on the impact velocity. At high enough velocities the round is vaporized and the energy spreads out, doing a lot of damage rather than just punching through.
This is the principle behind the Whipple shield for protecting spacecraft from impacts. Several **separated** layers of very thin material can stop something that would easily have punched through the same material in a single layer.
Note that this does **not** happen at velocities used by ordinary guns.
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**Different shapes**
In the video you can see being hit is never a good thing. The force is so big, fire and shrapnel do fly around. There's two things you don't want on a spaceship. Fire and holes. Fire eats up oxygen at alarming rates, while damaging a lot of components. Finally there is enough shrapnel. A truly high speed bullet simply has so much energy that even in "clean" penetration it can do incredible amounts of damage.
L.Dutch is referring already to it, but bullets can be designed for certain targets. Hitting with breaking up bullets sounds good, but at those speeds and powers they might not break apart fast enough to do significantly more damage. The slower method is not preferable, as space is BIG. To have good accuracy you want high speed bullets. However, what's missing is the shape of the bullet. In space there is no drag, so we don't need to use aerodynamic and thus easily penetrating bullets. We could use a bullet like a parachute, or even have it open some metal rods in all directions for a larger surface area after being fired. This will increase hit chance and more energy can be imparted on a larger area. The simply insane amounts of energy will do the rest.
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*"I am not sure of the physics behind it. If a projectile smashes into a surface at a very high velocity, wouldn't it pierce through?"*
Sir Isaac Newton developed an approximation for the [impact depth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth) of a projectile hitting a surface, which is based on the idea that the momentum of the projectile will be completely transferred to an equal mass of the material being impacted. So if your projectile weighs 1 kg, then the hole made in the surface will be about 1 kg of material. It doesn't matter how fast the projectile is moving, the hole dug will be roughly the same size as the projectile, multiplied by the ratio of densities.
This is based on conservation of momentum, but is more familiar in the case of the Newton's Cradle toy, where a row of metal balls is suspended on threads touching one another. When one ball slams in to the end of the row, it stops dead, and one ball flies off from the other end of the row. If you drop two balls at one end, they both stop dead, and two balls fly off from the other end. Conservation of momentum means that the impactor stops dead when it has transferred all its momentum to an equal mass of the object impacted.
Obviously, the physics of impacts is a lot more complicated than that. The energy and momentum get transferred to the material being hit and spread out in shock waves and elastic waves, break up the solid material into fragments, generate lots of heat, and both the fragments and the solid body that remains carry away all the momentum and energy. The more energy the projectile carries, the more energy has to be carried away, but the means by which it does so depends on the properties of the material hit. A fragile material with weak bonds fragments and carries away the energy in a small mass of very fast moving fragments. A strong material transfers the energy as elastic waves into the bulk of the body, and results in either a larger mass of slower fragments, or even no fragments at all as the body absorbs the energy and turns it into heat (which may actually be more of a problem). With extremely fast projectiles, as with a railgun, no material is strong enough to resist the shear forces the shock liquifies or vaporises the material which is blasted out sideways, creating a broad, shallow hemispherical crater. For example, [in one test](https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/5868942) a 1 cm aluminium sphere was fired into lead at 2 km/s and created a crater 1.8 cm deep and 4.2 cm in diameter. That's bigger than the projectile, but not by much.
So you are right that rail guns are probably not going to be as effective as scifi makes out. If the material is thin, it will punch a hole through. If thick enough, it will make a small crater little larger than the projectile. Space ships will be armoured anyway against hypervelocity micrometeorites. The main practical advantage I'd see would be that it gives the target less time to dodge the bullet, and given how fast real spaceships move relative to one another, you would probably need a hypervelocity gun for the bullet to be able to catch up to the target!
On space missions to capture micrometeorites intact, [NASA has used aerogel](https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/technologies/aerogel.html), an incredibly light, low density material sometimes called 'frozen smoke'. The [idea is](https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/42771119.pdf) that the penetration depth is still fairly small, by transfer of momentum to an equal mass of aerogel, but the impact is spread out so that the energy can be dissipated gradually without melting anything. This shows just how unintuitive hypervelocity impact physics can be!
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What happens if the energy of the impact is great enough to vaporize the projectile plus whatever it hits? I believe this is what happens with depleted uranium penetrators on tanks. The impact has enough energy to vaporize the armor and turn the penetrator into plasma. When that gets out of the confinement of its track through the armor, it expands very rapidly inside the tank, essentially explodes. High temperature, high velocity, much expansion-everything inside the tank is heated to 1500 degrees C and combusts.
Those penetrators are travelling much slower than a railgun projectile.
Remember the vapor and plasma still has all the kinetic energy it had when it was traveling at 0.3 c, so that vapor/plasma cloud now spreads out and disperses that energy on the contents of the spaceship, eg crew. High energy explosions are not good for living beings.
As commenters noted about armor piercing shells, the question is whether they are able to dissipate their energy on the target.
I could imagine railgun projectiles made of steel powder that stays together while it's being accelerated, but impacts a target as dust at 0.3 c, discharging all the energy instantly on a 6 meter diameter section of hull. Boom. Smash.
The bottom line is, it's a little hard to predict, so there'd have to be some experimentation. But the general rule is that if you put a very very large amount of energy on a target, SOMETHING has to happen.
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A spacecraft that is in any way designed to travel more than a short distance between two points in the same planetary body's SoI is dominated by the tyranny of Rocket design: It will be mostly fuel. In fact, it'll be possibly about 90-99% Fuel tanks!
Next, we should consult [project rho](http://www.projectrho.com/) for the question and what they say about kinetic penetrators, aka [conventional weapons](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#id--Kinetic_Kill_Weapons). Oh, and remember: the weapon is not recoilless, and so slugging another ship with a hypersonic slug also will throw your much bigger ship back, which could in the best case just rip the gun off your ship, or kill everybody on the ship from the impact onto the other side of the ship.
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> [A]nything hitting something at 3 km/s has kinetic energy equal to its own mass in TNT, or one Rick. Ricks scale with the square of velocity, so something at 6 km/s has 4 Ricks. Given that any scenario with enough human space presence for a war virtually requires transit velocities well above that, kinetics are both lethal and relatively cheap.
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Now, what does the projectile do to the other ship? If they are smart, it is vented, so the pilot might survive a shot through the cockpit unless he is pinned by the projectile. On the bad side, any shot through the fuel tanks - which make the larger part of of the ship - will cripple the ship, leaving it to die without the need for anything else. Yes, any shot has a large chance to hit the most vital part of the ship: the fuel supply. Vented fuel doesn't blow up the ship. No. It just vents out and ruptures the tank. Even with several tanks and only hitting one redundant tank... suddenly the ship is left in the same position as Apollo 13: the one tank blowing apart will do damage to neighboring components, most likely other tanks, so they leak. The ship now is on borrowed time and bleeds out.
However, unless you have a really good idea where to shoot, you have a hard time hitting *anything* with what accounts to a pointmass compared to the ship target: engagement and travel times are just large enough that a tiny random change in the direction of the target ship will surely evade any shot unless one unloads a barrage of hundreds of thousands of shrapnel pieces to block all corridors and trajectories that are possible. Project Rho estimates it takes 129600 simultaneous shots to hit a target that can accelerate up to 1 m/s and has a diameter of 10 meters (11 yards).
The same target only would need some 1700-2000 lightly guided penetrators to be a guaranteed hit, if those could only home for the last 10 seconds while steering at 1 m/s. If you can guide the penetrator for the whole flight a single would suffice. It just needs to track and steer well enough for the entire flight - it's pretty much a missile then, just that it might not have a *forward* propulsion, and instead just needs to steer to keep the target in its target cone.
Not target cone, Guaranteed Kill Cone:
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> A hypervelocity impact can be divided into four phases. First, there is a transient shock, and the front of the projectile is brought to rest relative to the target. This produces very high temperatures and pressures, and a bright flash. During the next phase, the projectile continues to penetrate into the target, but is eroded as it does so. The length of this phase depends on the length of the projectile and the speed of sound in it. If the object penetrates the target, the shocked portion will disintegrate, spewing fragments. These fragments will come from both projectile and target, and will separate into two cones, one that is basically normal to the surface just penetrated while the other continues at about the same angle the projectile hit at. At the same time, if a portion of the projectile is unshocked, it will continue onward, penetrating deeper into the ship. This could allow a long-rod to go through multiple compartments, getting shorter each time, and leaving clouds of fragments in its wake. The fragments would spread, distributing the damage over a greater area. If an outer whipple shield was used to shock the projectile, the spreading fragment cloud might lack the energy required to penetrate the main armor behind it. Even if it fails to penetrate, however, spalling (shockwaves knocking fragments off the back of the armor) could result, with unpleasant consequences for anyone on the other side.
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Or in a picture:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ONRUc.png)
The impact of the tip of the projectile will rip everything in front of it into making shrapnel. Then the rest will break through the new hole and fill everything in its path with shrapnel by repeatedly losing its tip to create more holes and shrapnel. It'll destroy any and every piece of equipment that is there - and to armor against them would make you just carry more and more fuel just to get moving. And you are already required to be pretty much mostly a fuel tank anyway. The Whipple shield (a thin plate held at a distance from the ship) mentioned in the quote above? Useless, unless it is hit flat on orthogonally... and they only help against really small impactors. Not against several kilos of the penetrator.
So at the bottom line: projectiles are a cool idea, but uneconomic if unguided. Railgun shots will go straight through and either bleed out the fuel reserves, rip chunks from a hit ship, fill the target ship with shrapnel that creates secondary and tertiary destruction outside of the direct path, and in all results turn the ship into a (soon to be) wreck. Unguided you won't hit unless you are *really* close, which is unlikely because of the [engagement range in free space](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewartactic.php#id--Combat_Theater--Deep_Space): if you can see it, you can shoot at it. You usually fight at distances where light takes time measurable mechanically to get from the target to you. [And it's hard to hit a moving target at those speeds](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewartactic.php#movingtarget). So it better be self-correcting in movement. Aka: it's a missile without a warhead. Oh, and remember: firing your railgun will kick your own ship quite a lot.
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This question touches on several points:
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> If a projectile smashes into a surface at a very high velocity, wouldn't it pierce through?
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**Almost certainly.** Any spacefaring vessel must either be constructed in zero-gravity or designed to be able to escape planetary gravity wells. Either way, it's far too resource intensive to haul enough materials into space to make your ship's hull thick enough to resist railgun fire.
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It would make a hole and only that. However, I think you will find sudden depressurization of the crew quarters to be quite violent, in fact. Unless your ship is crewed entirely by robots, one of the greatest risks to the crew is loss of atmosphere. Ships with bulwark doors can address this to some degree by sealing off the areas with holes until repairs can be made, but if you poke holes in all the places crew need to be to make the ship go, then it's dead in the water, as it were. But with accurate targeting, you don't even need to go that far. You said it yourself, just poke a hole in their reactor and let physics do the rest!
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Modern space shuttles already opt for as thin a hull as is possible while keeping the crew alive and safe. It is incredibly energetically and fiscally expensive to launch material into space from Earth, so weight is the number one variable to reduce if you want to reduce cost. The problem of inertia doesn't disappear in space either. The amount of force required to accelerate something is proportional to the mass of the object, even in space, so a giant hull thick enough to absorb a railgun shot would simply be economically unviable, even for spacecraft constructed in zero-gravity. You would burn *way* too much fuel just slowing down to dock with anything.
### TL;DR
* **Yes**, spaceships will use hulls thin enough that a railgun will likely pass straight through.
* **No**, the railgun alone will likely not blow up the whole ship.
* **Still**, it's *very bad* to have a hole in your space ship!
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# Target Density
The idea that a hypervelocity round will penetrate a ship and pass through depends on one important assumption: there is nothing of significance to hit within the ship. And that implies that the ship has low density (i.e., lots of empty space). In fact, that is a pretty extravagant way to design a spacecraft, and our current technology demonstrates it's not true. Imagine if you shot a round through the ISS. How many different shots could penetrate the hull without also intersecting any other systems?
You don't need to hit something explosive to cause damage. You just need to hit something active, because odds are, the crew probably depends on that thing to operate (they depend on the hull as well, but that can be patched for pressurization, especially if you punch a clean hole through it). Also, the more things you hit *inside* the ship, the more chances you have to distribute your projectile velocity in very destructive directions.
A smooth hull will generally expose a more or less uniform surface which will not redirect a projectile in any preferred direction. But operational equipment will typically have an amorphous shape and density which will quite likely randomize the redistribution of kinetic energy
# Spalling
The thing about metal is that when you break it, it doesn't just deform like putty. All metals have a certain amount of brittleness to them, and when you bang on them hard enough, fragments will break off. This process is called "spallation". So when the penetrator cracks the hull, some of the damage will manifest as spalled fragments turning the inside of the hull into a small grenade. The magnitude of spallation will depend on the size and density of the penetrator, as well as the thickness and composition of the armor. Bigger, thicker armor that might appear on a warship will produce bigger, thicker spallation fragments.
Of course, it is not only the hull which will produce this damage stream. Anything else impacted by the penetrator will also produce spallation damage. Equipment, internal struts, pipes, etc. can all be turned into miniature fragmentation grenades by a suitably energetic penetrator. The penetrator itself will not survive entirely intact, even if it has enough momentum to exit the target. In particular, the initial contact portion of the penetrator will almost certainly turn to shrapnel inside the target, as happens with APFDS rounds penetrating armor today.
# Thermal Energy
The penetrator will convert its kinetic energy to thermal energy to compromise the hull. This thermal energy will mostly stay inside of the target ship until it is dissipated. If there's oxygen atmosphere inside, it will likely start fires (by providing well more than enough activation energy for deflagration). Any objects inside the ship which are struck by the penetrator will simply give it more opportunities to trade KE for thermal destruction.
The penetrator itself will also absorb much of this thermal energy, compromising its integrity. Some penetrators are designed to fragment once inside the target. Tuning this will require matching rounds to armor, which might be feasible for a well-armed navy, but likely not for opportunistic pirates. A perfect penetrator/shot will convert all its KE into shrapnel/thermal damage inside the target, without exiting. Making this happen consistently is probably not feasible, and would likely depend on a certain amount of luck. Even so, I would not count on railgun shots leaving clean holes in ships without much collateral damage. That's just too convenient and ignores reality.
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Explosive projectiles: WWII era anti-aircraft guns fired shells that were supposed to explode *in the air* before making contact with the target. (Getting them to actually *do* that was a major engineering challenge of the day.) When it worked, instead of being hit by a single, compact projectile that had a good chance of passing right through the aircraft without hitting anything critical, the plane would be hit by a cloud of much smaller fragments, with that many more chances for one of them to take out some critical thing (possibly, including a crew member.)
With space-faring technology, and at space-battle distances, you could have a proximity fuze in the projectile that causes it to burst when it senses that it is at some optimum distance from the target.
Also, at rail-gun velocities, and in vacuum, even very tiny particles would be dangerous. So a shell that burst into tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of micro-meteroroid-like penetrators potentially could do quite a lot of damage.
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Since a railgun fires hyper-speed rounds designed to blow clean through... and it's energy-expensive to fire .. and may require special, expensive amunition... it would be your sniper rifle on a space ship.
If you just wanted to blast a ship, you'd use a cheaper weapon, like rockets or a shotgun like scatter projectile gun.
But, a railgun could be used to target critical systems, and instantly blow a hole through them.
If the ship's computer had a schematic of the enemy ship (or could make certain assumptions about where critical systems are), it could plot the perfect firing trajectory to ....
* blast a hole clean through the engine / power plant / generator, or a key system that would bring that down, pretty much crippling the enemy ship
* blast a hole through the bridge, making everyone's life miserable on it as vaccum sucked out all the air
* blast a hole or slice through a key structural junction point, weakening the structural integrity of that part of the ship. If you blast a key structure point that connects a proplusion part of the ship to other parts, the part trying to create propulsion might create enough stress to rip itself off and cause massive damage. All because you targeted a weak structural point (like a key support beam or something).
While others have talked about oxygen loss, enemy ships may have self-healing hulls.. basically, the hulls would be like cream-filled donuts. When a hole showed up, the liquid sandwiched inside the hull skin would ooze out and react, hardening and sealing up the hole. Sort of like "fix a flat" for bicycle tires to help stop tiny holes immediately until crew can fix it.
So, a rail gun blasting through a hull that could do that... the vaccuum wouldn't be an issue.
But, a key system that the rail gun blew through would be the more severe problem.
The rail gun could also snipe people inside if you could track them.
Oh, there's the captain of the enemy vessel... *BLAM* ... the enemy ship is now captainless. Oh, look, another crewman is taking over... *BLAM* .. nope.
After you specificially snipe-murder command structure in an enemy ship, you just hail them and ask if they're ready to give up.
And, since the railgun took out key targets with minimal overall damage to the enemy ship, it's easier to salvage.
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[Question]
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On earth we have relatively well defined national borders. But for off world colonies on places such as the moon, mars & titan, very little would matter outside of military bases, mines & spaceports. How would this impact how borders work? Would it be like Rimworld were there are randomly placed instillations from different nations all over a planet or would the instillations be somewhat grouped together based on nations. Would the concept of a border even really exist off world. Most of the industrial capacity & population is on earth still but the colonies are relatively independent food wise. War happens off world & is relatively frequent. All the colonies are controlled by earth nations outside of a few exceptions.
(note: there is no terraforming & no one has left the solar system)
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[No, we really don't. There's hundreds of poorly defined or contested borders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes)
Your borders will initially be implicit (each point on the surface will belong to the closest installation). Forming a voronoi graph.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/D1H2A.gif)
Eventually a treaty will be arranged declaring the border to follow a natural feature or explicitly giving one side a resource.
See also [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/195889/78800)
[Answer]
The concept of the state is only as strong as the collective will of all of the political divisions involved. On Earth, no state exists but by collective treaty and the consensus of the majority of political entities.
It is commonly held that the Western state system, the idea of sovereignty within defined borders, arose out of the [Peace of Westphalia](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/peace-of-westphalia), a series of treaties agreed to by several European political entities, around 1648. Before that consensus agreement (the Catholic Church never did accept it - the Catholic church believed all land belonged to God, and thus to the Church as God's steward), territoriality was pretty much established by might, and the size of the army one could muster. The concept of "that **one** could' pretty much encompassed all variations of 'that **one** could'. Strongmen, criminals, warlords, kings, religious leaders, charismatic charlatans, cults, could all claim 'territory' if they were powerful enough. Previous to the Peace of Westphalia, there was no real concept of land 'ownership' in the 'West' (read: territory of the white man) except that of "Squatters' Rights", and 'you own what you kill'.
It is only when the slaughter became so extreme, and the economic impact so volatile, as in the Hundred Years War, that Westernized humans were forced by economic necessity to seek treaties with each other and to agree on defined boundaries.
However, now that the concept of granting 'political sovereignty' to established political entities has been universally established on Earth, and 'taxation within sovereign boundaries' has become entrenched in socio-economic principles, the idea of 'statehood' has become self-sustaining. The notion that territorial boundaries are defined by treaties between neighboring political entities has become generally accepted, the Crimea and Kashmir excepted.
In Asia, on the other hand, the concept of 'statehood', 'nationality', and 'sovereignty' has evolved very differently, over 8,000 years of a continuous historically contiguous singular society.
Indigenous societies, as exemplified by the Iroquois Confederacy, have also solved the sovereignty problem in a very different way - nomadic sovereignty not defined so much by territory, but by tribal affiliation and tribal rights. One is bound collectively by all 'nations' through tribal association, not by where one resides. A very different concept than 'citizenship by territory', more akin to the philosophical discussion 'Is being Jewish a religion, a nationality, a racial identity, or a birthright?'
The **TL:DR** is that borders, territorial boundaries, and political entities of new off-Earth lands will likely evolve and be finally resolved by treaties and agreements between the neighbours, rather than by some grand design.
[Answer]
**They could run the moon bases like Antarctic bases.**
The moon has a lot in common with Antarcica. Persons living there are vulnerable. It has not been developed or formally claimed. There is an interest by all parties that military instillations not be placed on the moon, an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure.
[Antarctic Treaty](https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/trty/193967.htm)
>
> Activities in the Antarctic had generally been conducted peacefully
> and cooperatively. Yet the possibility that exploitable economic
> resources might be found meant the possibility of future rivalry for
> their control. Moreover, isolated and uninhabited, the continent might
> at some time become a potential site for deploying nuclear weapons...
>
>
> In the years after World War II, as interest grew in keeping the
> continent from becoming militarized, there began diplomatic discussion
> of the possibility of formalizing a demilitarization arrangement. On
> May 3, 1958, the United States proposed to the other 11 nations
> participating in the IGY that a conference be held, based on the
> points of agreement that had been reached in informal discussions:
>
>
> (1) that the legal status quo of the Antarctic Continent remain
> unchanged; (2) that scientific cooperation continue; (3) that the
> continent be used for peaceful purposes only.
>
>
> ... No insurmountable conflicts or issues divided the conference, and
> negotiations culminated in a treaty signed by all 12 nations on
> December 1, 1959...
>
>
> The treaty provides that Antarctica shall be used for peaceful
> purposes only. It specifically prohibits "any measures of a military
> nature, such as the establishment of military bases and
> fortifications, the carrying out of military maneuvers, as well as the
> testing of any type of weapons." (The Treaty does not prohibit the use
> of military personnel or equipment, however, for scientific research
> or for any other peaceful purpose.) Nuclear explosions and the
> disposal of radioactive waste material in Antarctica are prohibited.
>
>
> The Treaty provides for designation of observers to carry out
> inspections in all areas of Antarctica, including all stations,
> installations and equipment, and ships and aircraft at discharge or
> embarkation points. Each observer has complete freedom of access at
> any time to any or all areas of Antarctica... The United States has
> conducted 14 inspections since 1963.
>
>
> For the first time, in 2012 the U.S teamed with another country to
> conduct joint inspections of third-party Antarctic stations. In
> January 2012, a team of four officials from the United States and four
> from the Russian Federation inspected research facilities operated
> jointly by France and Italy (Concordia), Italy (Mario Zucchelli), and
> New Zealand (Scott Base).
>
>
>
As I understand it the Antarctic treaty and system for cooperation and mutual enforcement has been applied to early space treaties and other situations where cooperation is key.
[Answer]
For a near-future setting in the solar system, look at the [Outer Space Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty).
For a far-future, interstellar setting, look at the concept of [terra nullius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_nullius) and how modern and historical usage changed. Used to be that land with no inhabitants (at least none who counted as "civilized") could be seized by [effective occupation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_sovereignty#Effective_occupation). Expanding this concept to space gives you many interesting possibilities, and also sources of conflict and adventure.
* Just how scarce are habitable/terraformable planets and how hard is it to reach them? If there are many planets within easy travel, there is less pressure to share planets. If there are few, various colonies might be placed on the same planet.
* Once terraforming or the introduction of terrestrial species into an existing ecosystem becomes an issue, there can't really be more than one project per planet. Either the colonies cooperate, or there is only one colony, or it becomes a mess. It could be legally recognized that the first colony effectively claims the entire planet, but that might not be what you want for your setting.
* Installations would come in a logical pattern -- power facilities, various mines and refineries, industry, agricultural areas if there are any. It does no good to have the iron ore on one side of the planet and the blast furnace on the other. Clusters where the various resources cluster might be more valuable than any one mine, no matter how rich.
If you **want** war in your setting, you might be able to promote that by setting strict requirements for effective occupation -- until they build on it, it isn't theirs can someone else can land-grab ...
[Answer]
I would expect any early settlement/colonisation to be haphazard, with everyone grabbing whatever they think is valuable and fighting (with violence, or in whatever political or judicial arena is available) over the legitimacy of their control.
Over time, control would be consolidated. Far-flung patchworks of installations would separate into distinct entities, lose parts to others’ control, take control of intervening ground, or all of the above. Stronger powers (perhaps political entities from Earth) would establish their authority over the weaker ones, if they didn’t have it already. *Between* the stronger powers, some form of consensus would emerge, tamping down most (but not all) disputes.
(The alternative is for a centralised or consensus authority to be behind the colonisation efforts from the beginning, but that’s *boring*!)
I base this on three kinds of historical precedent: **colonial boundaries**, **farming/mining claims**, and **modern laws**.
## Colonial boundaries
Late in the colonial era, the major colonial powers had reasonably well-established rules for who held what and how to partition the land. It looks orderly, well regulated, almost civilised… until you remember that they were still conquering inhabited land.
**Example:** The [Scramble for Africa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa). Literally the entire continent ended up assigned to one European nation or another (with the possible exception of Ethiopia, which remained independent except for a short Italian occupation in the 20th century.)
Earlier, though, the main determiner of colonial boundaries was what you could effectively hold. As a result, borders were… fuzzy. Sometimes a colonising power would claim a large area, but only effectively control small portions, so other powers would come in and settle their own colonies in the claimed area.
**Example:** [The Treaty of Tordesillas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas) established a Spanish claim to the entire New World (except a bit of South America that they may not have realised crossed the line). Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, et al. didn’t exactly care.
Other times the original power would extend their control through the territory they already claimed, typically splitting it into new colonies in the process.
**Example:** New South Wales, the British claim in Australia, [started as half the continent and gradually had *six* new colonies split off from it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Australia) (though one, North Australia, was promptly merged back in).
Sometimes colonising powers would claim land their explorers hadn’t even surveyed yet! Colonies might have a defined extent along the coast, and then stretch an indefinite distance inland along an effectively arbitrary line of latitude or longitude.
**Example:** Early British colonies in North America sometimes had charters [“from sea to sea”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wpdms_virginia_company_plymouth_council.png), far beyond their actual control. This was wishful thinking, of course, but it seems like the first real modification came from French claims on the centre of the continent (which the French explored). The British colonies still [extended much further west than any of them had actually settled until 1763](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Virginiacolony.png). (After that it reversed, and colonists started settling further west than colonial authorities had claimed…)
And of course colonies would conflict with each other, dispute boundaries, claim each other’s lands, and just plain change hands. *Even colonies of the same colonial power!*
**Example:** See the links in the previous example for arguments between British North American colonies over who held what. Among the many colonies that changed hands are [New France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_France), [New Netherland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Netherland), [Spanish Jamaica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Jamaica), [Portuguese Bombaim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bombay_under_Portuguese_rule_(1534%E2%80%931661)#End_of_Portuguese_rule), [German New Guinea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_New_Guinea)…
## Farming and mining claims
Just because a sovereign entity has claimed ground and fended off all challengers, doesn’t mean its use or ownership is settled. Someone has to actually *go there* and do something with it. Historically, there have been several occasions where individuals or groups could claim a chunk of land, typically for farming or mining purposes. This leads to all *sorts* of conflicts and shenanigans.
**Examples:**
* In the United States, several [land runs (or rushes)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_run) opened up land to literally the first person to run (or ride a horse, or drive a cart) to it.
* In Australia, similar (if less dramatic) allocations of land were made to [selectors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_(Australian_history)), which sometimes meant conflict with the unregulated [squatters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting_(Australian_history)) who had already been grazing livestock there.
* During the US and Australian gold rushes, [miners could claim land](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_claim#Mining_claim_(United_States)) under rules that were generally accepted and enforced by the communities themselves. The governments later got in on the act, and to this day the ability to stake a “mining claim” exists in some form in both countries.
* Of course, anywhere that you have claims, you have [claim jumping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Legal_rights)—the attempt to take over another’s claim by force, subterfuge, or simply by moving in when the claimant fails to make use of the land.
## Modern laws
These days there are a *lot* of rules over who owns what, and what “ownership” really means.
It was a long-established principle that [whoever owns a piece of land also owns the underground below it and the air above it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuius_est_solum,_eius_est_usque_ad_coelum_et_ad_inferos). Both of these are changing in modern times, though.
“The air above it” only became an issue in the age of air travel, and governments had to start coming up with [air rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights) to say who can do what in the space above the ground.
In *theory*, I think it’s still the case that “the underground below” belongs to whoever owns the land. The problem there is that the real “owner” is the government (in England and some other Commonwealth realms, the Crown), and the householder living on the land just has a right to use it. I’m not a lawyer, but I believe the term for “really owning the land” is *[allodial title](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title)*, whereas just having the right to use the land is “[freehold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freehold_(law))”.
Off the coasts, the modern [Law of the Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Law_of_the_Sea#UNCLOS_III) establishes several zones of control with varying rules. (Who has the right to sail through? Who has the right to fish? Who can mine the seabed?)
I joked at the top about it being “boring” if state-like powers are in control from the beginning, but actually there’s still a *lot* of scope for conflict within this kind of rules-based regime.
[Answer]
if the colonisation was started with today paradygme there are a few different possibility
***Capitalism baby***
If you want to go for a route where it's mostly/only corporation doing the settlement there could be a system where any plot of land on your colony are up for grab for a fee at a regulatory agence that will keep a record of who claim what land. like that you don't need any settlement to buy a huge chunk of land you plan on mining.
it will allow for a more granular repartition of the territorry
***big state and maritime law***
If you want something involving big state we could probably keep something like what we curently have regarding maritime law, where for any settlement you get a an area of economic exclusivity all around it.
Like we are seing in the south china sea, it's a great way to have a lot of cold conflict. if you want to be a dick about it you can just build up settlement just for the sake of getting more area of controle
***colaboration***
the most utopian of the outcome, but still a real possibility if the measure are taken before any mass scale colonisation start, it could all be administered by an IGO that prohibit any kind of spacial claim and administer at will what will be built where.
[Answer]
## Natural Landscapes
Humans throughout history interested in peace have preferred to use natural landscapes to define territories: Rivers, mountain ranges, oceans, etc. On non-Earth worlds, this would still be the standard.
Even without any colonies on these worlds, humans have already started breaking up and naming regions; so, when our first colonies start to land on these bodies, initial claims will be made on the named regions where they originate. So, you may have one nation claim all of Mare Tranquillitatis and another claim all of Mare Sernitatius even though each nation can only put tiny outposts in these places... and this will be good enough for a while. Until one side or the other expands enough to for the exact line between the two places to matter, these will just be the generally accepted territories.
However, modern nations communicate WAY better than we did in past; so, instead of waiting until conflicts emerge as we have seen in most of history, modern nations would have the foresight to define exact boundaries before conflict emerge. In the interest in maintaining peace for future generations, when those first two colonies set down, there will likely be a few politicians from either nation taking a look at a picture of the moon. They will draw some line between the two Mares in what ever looks like the most logical physical point of separation and then agree that that is the boarder.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CMVeE.png)
] |
[Question]
[
There is a newly discovered dungeon believed to be made up of a series of interconnected tunnels and caverns that runs deep beneath the ground, the place is thriving with all kind of terrifying monsters and they share one common trait that is they likes to fart a lot.
Unlike mammals their flatulence has high concentration of hydrogen sulphide gas which is both flammable and toxic to living things, I am wondering how do they ventilate the air in the dungeon without mechanical parts since they could also suffocate or poisoned for overexposure to the gas.
[Answer]
The caves flourish with [sulfur oxydizing bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_oxidation_of_sulfur):
>
> Microbial oxidation of sulfur is the oxidation of sulfur by microorganisms to produce energy. The oxidation of inorganic compounds is the strategy primarily used by chemolithotrophic microorganisms to obtain energy in order to build their structural components, survive, grow and reproduce. Some inorganic forms of reduced sulfur, mainly sulfide (H2S/HS‚àí) and elemental sulfur (S0), can be oxidized by chemolithotrophic sulfur-oxidizing prokaryotes, usually coupled to the reduction of oxygen (O2) or nitrate (NO3‚àí).
>
>
> Sulfur oxidizing bacteria (SOB) are aerobic, anaerobic or facultative, and most of them are obligate or facultative autotrophs, that can either use carbon dioxide or organic compounds as a source of carbon (mixotrophs).
>
>
>
A common game between the youngsters of the cave dweller is to fart on rocks to see the bacteria growing quickly thanks to the supplied gas. The one who make the biggest growth is the most respected.
[Answer]
A common tactic in old mines was to set up multiple pairs of shafts. One shaft would have a fire lit at the bottom of it. The hot air in that column would rise, forcing cold air to flow down the paired cold shaft and setting up a flow of air through the mine.
How does this help you?
Well, any way to set up a temperature difference can create this kind of airflow. Sunlight on one half of a mountain (or mirrors to direct sunlight to the base of a shaft if no mountain is suitable), a subterranean river that’s warmer than the air, geothermal activity if your dungeon is big enough, even the body heat of your creatures if they’re clustered in one place; all of these could set up permanent airflow with no moving parts needed!
If the dungeon is designed and set in a location with a prevailing wind direction (say somewhere like a valley in a steep mountain range) then pairs of entrances can be built with open doors facing into/out of the wind to achieve the same effect. The wind blows into one entrance, circulates, then blows out the other. If you don’t want these to be ‘entrances’ per se then you can make small buildings with one wall missing atop a ventilation shaft,
One thing to watch out for with this kind of ventilation is that the setup of the dungeon matters. Opening/closing the wrong sets of doors might lead to chunks of dungeon that are cut off from ventilation, or might just stop it working altogether! The basic requirement is to keep the dungeon split into sections with an ‘in’ at one side and an ‘out’ at the other and to minimise airflow between the sections.
This gives your dungeon a reason to have a bunch of seemingly randomly placed doors, some of which are open, some closed, and some locked.
It also means a rampaging band of adventurers is likely to wreck the ventilation, so watch out for that!
[Answer]
### The monsters have access to an underground stream for water
Towards the bottom of the dungeon, there's a nice flowing stream of water. It's nice and fast - bubbling and splashing and spraying everywhere. The monsters drink from the upstream part of it, and put their waste in the downstream part of it. It flows fast enough that there is no risk of their sewage getting in their drinking water.
[Hydrogen Sulphide is highly soluble in water](https://www.wateronline.com/doc/hydrogen-sulfide-control-and-removal-0001):
>
> The gas is highly soluble in water to the extent of 4000 mg/l at 20°C and one atmosphere
>
>
>
If we assume your monsters are farting 400g of hydrogen sulphide per day each (that's A LOT), only 100 litters of water flow in 24 hours per monster are needed to absorb it.
A small creek could absorb the hydrogen sulphide of hundreds or thousands of monsters. The water will become slightly acidic, but since the monsters wastes go in the water too, no-one downstream drinks it anyway.
[Answer]
Honestly gas exchange is going to be a big problem for your system in general. Burrowing animals that build extensive burrows like termites, ants, prairie dogs, and wombats often have problems appropriately ventilating their burrows so they have enough sufficient oxygen. A huge dungeon is going to have even larger problems maintaining an appropriate oxygen balance because it's even deeper underground with fewer openings to the outside than a prairie dog town or termite mound, even if it's larger size means that in the short term oxygen reserves will last longer I would suggest looking at how termites and prairie dogs ventillate their burrows and go from there.
[Answer]
Oxygen depletion is going to be an issue long before farts are. You need air exchange somehow. Multiple openings and the prevailing winds are probably the right answer as it's passive--it won't stop if the caretaker dies.
] |
[Question]
[
Here is a supercontinent map generated randomly from the Donjon website:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mdztr.jpg)
Now, hold on just a minute. Something looks wrong. The mountains in brown and white are too far inland to be caused by subduction, not linear enough to be formed by continent-continent collision and simply way too big to be justified by hot spot eruptions. How else could those mountains form?
[Answer]
Assuming that map is a complete planet, in cylindrical Mercator projection?
It seems to be, with the characteristic lateral smudging of textures at the extreme top and bottom.
That smudged-looking mountain range at the top is actually an elevated north pole, with a roughly circular aspect.
It just requires a planet that took a hefty thump early in its life. Like Mars, where the whole North pole region is 6km lower than the South pole region.
Your map is the same, just inverted. North is high, and the lower south is occupied by an ocean.
This is your world on <https://www.maptoglobe.com/ByWPZtkcw>
Quite a nice looking globe, it is!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/csSq9.jpg)
[Answer]
**Continental - continental convergence.**
The mountains are circumpolar and far inland. I assert the polar ice lies on top of an area of high elevation. This was formed by several continents all colliding together with a central polar continent. The analogous Earthly situation (with just 2 continents colliding) are the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZOMf5.gif)
<https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/understanding.html>
>
> Continental-continental convergence The Himalayan mountain range
> dramatically demonstrates one of the most visible and spectacular
> consequences of plate tectonics. When two continents meet head-on,
> neither is subducted because the continental rocks are relatively
> light and, like two colliding icebergs, resist downward motion.
> Instead, the crust tends to buckle and be pushed upward or sideways.
> The collision of India into Asia 50 million years ago caused the
> Indian and Eurasian Plates to crumple up along the collision zone.
> After the collision, the slow continuous convergence of these two
> plates over millions of years pushed up the Himalayas and the Tibetan
> Plateau to their present heights. Most of this growth occurred during
> the past 10 million years. The Himalayas, towering as high as 8,854 m
> above sea level, form the highest continental mountains in the world.
> Moreover, the neighboring Tibetan Plateau, at an average elevation of
> about 4,600 m, is higher than all the peaks in the Alps except for
> Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, and is well above the summits of most
> mountains in the United States.
>
>
>
Just as tectonics pushed the Indian continent up against the Eurasian continent, forming inland mountains and a plateau, plate tectonics on this world pushed several Indian continent equivalents northwards and into the central polar continent. Thus the central area was pushed high, analogous to the Tibetan plateau and around it a circumpolar ring of Himalaya equivalents.
One might predict some north-south oriented highlands between where the Indian continent equivalents came up against each other and indeed, those can be found in at least 3 spots on the map. Those north-south linear mountains mark where the continents came together in their journey to the pole.
[Answer]
**The polar mountains are volcanic in origin.**
This is a structure similar to Olympus Mons on Mars. A Gigantic shield volcano. Lower gravity and/or higher viscosity lava could be responsible for the height. Given the lack of really any features related to plate tectonics, it stands to reason that the planet has another tectonic regime, which allowed the shield volcanic to build up for eons. Maybe Io-like lid tectonics or delamination and upwellings like Venus might have. Both regimes could in theory support a carbon cycle.
Another solution, though it is close to the first would be that we are dealing with a large igneous province. Flood volcanism like the Siberian or Deccan traps can build up basaltic highlands to several kilometers. The Siberian Traps raise the land in the area of current Siberia by 2 to 3 kilometers.
[Answer]
Your question presupposes a single monolithic (pun intented) orogeny when there is absolutely no reason to think this. I propose these mountains would be the result of a long history of distinct mountain-forming events that happen to converge, concertinaing entire continents into the massif and raising them faster than they would have eroded otherwise.
If you ignore the lines radiating from the pole – an artifact of Donjon's engine, which tends to create vertically aligned features – you can see there are linear ridge formations (red) and rather sharp drop offs between the raised polar region and remainder of the supercontinent (black):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IyEoo.png)
There is also a visible split between the top and bottom halves of the image, demarcated with a dotted line. This suggests the two halves are converging, with the top older (and a product of multiple convergences itself) than the bottom.
I won't speculate on the plate boundaries beyond that, but I suspect if you were to play with the sea level you'd reveal significant basins suggesting where the younger plate boundaries are.
(I highly recommend [Torben's Planet Map Generator](https://topps.diku.dk/torbenm/maps.msp) over Donjon.)
] |
[Question]
[
Let’s say that early middle ages humans discovered and expanded into a newly discovered land. Those humans made a concentrated effort to populate this new territory; they shipped several ships of settlers and refugees, along with armies of soldiers intended to forge a foothold. Then flashforward a hundred years.
Despite the human’s best efforts, they proved incapable of fully conquering this new world. Many of the native creatures – mostly roving monsters or scattered primitive warbands – simply proved too formidable to be hunted, repelled or defeated.
The humans *did* manage to establish several coastal colonies in the new world – yet their cities rely entirely on strong walls to keep the natives out and protect the citizens. Outside of these scattered few fortified human cities, the land is still wilderness ruled by monsters. Even travelling alone is a coin-flip. Unlike in the real-world, humans here are not the top of the food chain.
As a result, for settlers farming or homesteading is very difficult: if a family of farmers ever tries to set up a farm outside of the walls, they get eaten by the natives very quickly. Claiming new territory not impossible, but it requires a dedicated force of soldiers to hold the perimeter. The humans could fortify a farm, but there’s a limit on how many walls they can build or how many soldiers they can spare to hold them.
As such, growing crops is treacherous work; supplies are limited, people are hunted, and establishing secure farmland usually requires more manpower than it can feed. Assume that the humans are stretched to their limit.
Humans can still leave their walls to hunt or fish the smaller native animals – yet hunting is perilous due to the big creatures around. The ecosystem is mostly comparable to the real world examples, but with the addition of predatory megafauna. Some of these large predators can fly, others hunt by sea, and many are just hordes of monsters.
The question is; is this situation actually sustainable?
Generally, cities consume far more than they produce. In early civilizations, most of the populace rely on single-family farms or homesteading. Hunting and foraging is less reliable, and generally farming crops is the only real solution to feed a lot of people. But in a land where the farmland was simply too dangerous, would an expansion effort even be able to succeed?
So what is the largest population that a city could actually sustain, in theory, if all of its inhabitants are forced to take shelter behind fortified walls?
Edit:
There can still be farmland within the walls, but *only* within the walls. I can't say what area those walls cover, simply because I'm not sure how much is reasonable. This isn't an Attack on Titan setting where the walls are miles long - the walls are what can reasonably built by settlers within a hundred years, but I doubt if that area is large enough to maintain a sizeable population.
[Answer]
Consider a circle. It’s boundary grows linearly with its diameter, but the area within grows as the square of it.
Why is this important?
Because you’re thinking the wrong way round. You’re thinking of putting your city inside a ring of undefended farmland. What you should do instead is put your farmland inside the city. Give your houses big gardens. Establish large commons and allotments for keeping animals and crops. Make sure your walls enclose all your farms. Paradoxically you’ll find you end up with more food *and* more soldiers.
How?
The circle. The number of people you need to man the walls grows linearly. The amount of farmable/livable space grows faster than that.
Using such a method your city can grow to be (but not necessarily start off) arbitrarily sized. Big enough even that after a while you can separate out again into dedicated (still behind the walls) farmland and city.
If you can’t support farming and living in the space you enclose then no size of colony is viable without additional colonists or resupply. Hunting and gathering is going to be more dangerous than defending farmland and will return lower yield. Your people will either die trying to get food or die because they couldn’t get food.
This leads your ‘once established, now abandoned’ cities in a quandary. They had more food than they could locally produce once, and the walls will be sized for that population. Work out what size you want that city to be, then assume *lots of people starved to death* and left behind plots of land that the survivors repurposed to growing potatoes. It takes somewhere between half a hectare and a quarter of a hectare to keep a fully functioning human going, so expect to tear up a lot of your inner city to feed the troops garrisoned on the walls.
Exactly how big you *need* to be to keep going very much depends on a lot of stats we don’t have. How many people do you need to man a hundred meters of wall to mount a credible defence is vital, but the core point remains the same:
Either your fortified city can support itself from within the walls or its already dead and doesn’t know it yet.
[Answer]
**Forget the walls, build something similar to Catalhuyuk.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/E9LrN.png)
Catalhuyuk is one of the oldest human settlements we have found, and one of the most prominent theories on its design is specifically to keep out predators. With this design you basically use the outer walls of your buildings as the walls of the settlement. There is no access to any of the buildings through sidewalls, but instead through the roof. You could then expand the settlement by just adding more buildings to the outer section. If you are expecting to turn an area into farmland you could simply build your settlement to encircle the land you want to use.
Overtime your settlement may end up looking more like a series of open air bubbles between buildings, but it would definitely be an effective way to keep the citizens protected. If a predator should break through a wall at any point, they would at worst only be able to attack the occupants of that single building. If they break into a farm space they still can't get into other buildings as the buildings around the farmland are walled sides just as the outer buildings. It also has the added bonus of cornering the creature to be more easily hunted. Clearings within the settlement can also be used as grazing land for domestic animals like goats and horses.
The only real problem I see with this is how much land you would actually need. Depending on who you ask, you need anywhere from 0.25 to 1.5 acres of arable land per person depending on diet. If we substitute their diets with fishing and rooftop farming of smaller crops then we can probably bring that number down lower, but it will make the feasibility of this settlement difficult regardless of design.
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I hope they have access to plenty of timber, because they will need loads of boats.
**fishing**
Fishing from the ocean is really your best option in this situation. Coastal fishing from their shores would be the safest option, but this won't feed a large population. They will need to fish the ocean, extensively. The larger their fishing boats the better. In the comments you state there are monsters in your ocean as well, which complicates things. But unless they are Kraken sized octopi, they aren't much of a threat to life. Megalodon sharks etc. could be a threat to smaller boats, hence the need for larger boats, which won't seem as much as a viable target for your sea creatures. Of course, a big net full of fish is a tasty snack for them, but the biggest threat to your settlers here is that they will rip the net and they go home empty handed.
**Trade**
Trade towns can flourish pretty much anywhere, as long as they have something to offer. From the sounds of it, the megafauna is quite unique to this area in your world, making their carcasses quite valuable. Even when it is impossible to defeat them all, individuals can still be hunted. This will provide you with a fair amount of meat, but also valuable skins, bones, and other species-unique spoils to trade. Trading will mostly be done by sea, or on beach routes, as they are normally the least populated by fauna.
**Rooftop gardens**
When farmland area is your prime concern, another option is to fortify your farmland, and simply live underneath it, in tunnels or caves. These will also be debatably more easy to defend against large creatures or attacking forces. Living vertical instead of horizontal might maximise the use you get out of the small amount of area you might be able to conquer.
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**How Good is the Fishing?**
Hunting and Gathering on land simply doesn’t support very large populations, and it’s really bad for settlements. The only societies that had large sedentary societies without extensive agriculture were those that had abundant fish stocks.
The Native People of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and southern Alaska were hunter gatherers who had permanent villages in excess of over 300 people because they had a reliable and abundant source of food in the form of salmon. Whales were also a huge part of the Makah Nations diet.
Since your settlers clearly had ships to arrive in this land, and are on the water they should be dedicating the lions share of their efforts to fishing.
An abundant and large fish like salmon, tuna, cod, or halibut would be a great staple, with forage fish like herring being taken to catch the larger fish or eaten as is. Oysters and clams would be harvested from the rocks and beach, kelp and seaweed would serve as a great supplement and garnish. Whales would make for fine feasts and would also provide fuel and building material.
In short your people should be fishermen and whalers first and foremost, as it avoids the native creatures outside the village walls and it’s a much more consistent and abundant food source compared to simply hunting.
For a final numerical estimate, I would say you could certainly sustain population densities higher than the Chinook, Tlingit, Haida or Makah did simply because these people were actually living really damn well for hunter gatherers and had excess food that allowed them to be stratified societies that even had significant leisure time. So your colonists might be able to double the 300-400 people per village density that the Chinook and Tlingit reached via harsh rationing, better technology and more aggressive exploitation of the environment
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**Use the terrain to your advantage.**
A large valley with steep sides and a narrow entrance could sustain a large population while being easy to defend. Same with a peninsula or bend in a river (assuming your natives can’t cross water). A caldera could also work.
Even just having your back to a large cliff or a body of water would make building walls much easier. Cliffs are also a good supply for stone.
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Assuming the technology level is about the same as that of the mid 1800s, what would be necesssary to equip a sizable army with revolver rifles?
I've seen pictures of individual soldiers with revolver rifles from the American Civil War, but never in great number. What are the factors preventing an army from equipping its soldiers with a great number of these weapons?
It seems like these rifles would be a great advantage on the battlefield when compared to traditional muskets, considering that the volume of firepower a single soldier could lay down would be greatly increased.
For the purposes of this question, magic of any sort will not be taken into consideation. In terms of economics, this country will be fairly powerful by the standards of the era, but not a superpower. The amount of territory will be similar to Prussia pre-unification.
Please tell me if there is more info that is required, as well as appropriate tags. Thanks in advance for the information.
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Revolving rifles like [Colt's New Model Revolving Rifle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt%27s_New_Model_Revolving_rifle) were pretty effective in battle when they worked well, but that wasn't often. There were two big problems.
First, all revolvers, both pistols or rifles, leak hot gases out the sides just in front of the cylinder. In revolving rifles, because of the larger rounds there's more gas and it comes out at a higher pressure. Some of it ends up in the other chambers and has a nasty tendency to set them off as well. This is an out-of-battery detonation and can blow up the gun. And it happens inches from your face.
Second, in a revolver pistol, both your hands are well behind and below the cylinder. Totally safe from those gases. In a rifle, your left hand is way in front of it, in the perfect position to get burned by the gases or shredded by the lead dust that also leaked out the side. Here's an [example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ6T5FxgIwk) of what I'm talking about. Don't worry about gore, he uses a soda can in the video, but just imagine if that was your hand/arm.
So in summary, your nation has to solve the cylinder gap problem, and do it cheaply enough that you can arm a whole army that way.
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## Lever Action Rifles
While revolver rifles run into the issues that Ryan\_L mentioned, thousands of [Spencer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_repeating_rifle) and [Henry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_rifle) lever-action rifles were used by US Army soldiers in the American Civil War.
The main factors delaying their wider-spread adoption were mostly logistics-related. The new rifles were much more expensive than the single-shot muzzle-loaders that were standard Army issue. They also went through ammunition so much faster that they would have placed a massive strain on the US Army's already overtaxed supply system. The Confederate army captured many examples of the repeaters, but weren't able to produce ammunition for them, and thus they weren't able to make effective use of them.
So as long as your country is able to afford to manufacture/purchase the rifles and can keep the ammunition supplies flowing (*not* a trivial task), then you can certainly equip your military with them.
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Several things:
1) Military bureaucracy and politics: at that time the military did not want to issue repeating arms to soldiers for fear that they would waste their ammunition too quickly. At the start of the Civil War, Napoleonic battle tactics remained the dominant philosophy of war-fighting despite being rendered obsolete and dangerous by the widespread use of rifles, which allowed a single soldier to accurately engage and defeat another soldier over 100 yards away.
2) Other repeating arms technology: Lever Action rifles like the Henry 1863 could carry more ammunition in a lighter, simpler package. Bolt action rifles with supersonic ammunition carried in detachable magazines followed a decade or so later. With the development of blowback and gas operated weapons offering both semi- and fully-automatic fire, manually operated actions quietly disappeared from military small arms.
3) Cost: revolver actions have lots of moving parts, which require extensive machining and high cost, making them expensive items to procure compared to muzzle loading rifles.
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# Tactics?
A revolver, especially one with pre-cartridge technology, allows five or six rapid shots followed by a lengthy pause. Some early revolvers actually had to *remove the cylinder* to reload it. So your line of infantry fires five shots in rapid succession and then zip.
The sustained rate of fire would probably be higher with a decent single-shot breechloading rifle -- don't compare revolver rifles to muzzleloading rifles!
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As said in other answers, revolving rifles aren't very practical and were not widely used. However I wanted to comment on how I think it could most realistically have been done.
Tactically I think such a gun could have been issued to cavalry. Similar to how during The American Civil War, The Spencer Repeating Rifle was not used to replace the standard issue muzzle-loaders Springfield Model 1861/Model 1863 (worth noting the cost of 1 Spencer repeating rifle was $40, which is twice as much as a Springfield Model 1861.)
>
> Side rant for everyone screaming about breech loading rifles: While
> breach loaded rifles did very much existduring the 1800s, only 2
> countries came close to fully adopting them as their standard service
> weapon until after the american civil war: The Norwegian's Kammerlader
> of which ~40,000 were ever produced and The Prussian Dreyse needle
> guns even thou they only had ~260,000 for 437,262 men by the start of
> the austro-prussian war in 1866.
>
>
>
To avoid the problem of cylinder burns, we will use a much shorter barrel than a musket or even a Spencer Repeating Rifle. This means the gun's center of gravity is weighted twords the stock so there's no need to stabilize it with a hand in front of the cylinder. Woah, that means this revolver carbine thing can easily be cocked and fired with 1 hand, unlike the Spencer where you would need to take the stock off your shoulder, press it between the side of your body and your bicep, and then cycle the action. The freehand during shooting presumable means you can ride faster / control the horse better while working the gun, and when you really need the stability you can stabilize the grip by putting your offhand over the hand already on the grip.
For a base I would personally recommend the Colt Army Model 1860 because: it only cost $14.50, permitted easy cylinder removal to allow a quick reload with a spare pre-loaded cylinder - this being an advantage over other revolver designs of the time *(1)*, and was reasonably effective at a distance of 75 - 100 yards (something like a Glock 17 are only effective to ~55 yards).
It turns out that this is actually such a solid idea that Military 1860s had elongated screw lugs on the side of the frame to mount a detachable shoulder stock. (Literally found that out while writing this)
Also as was learned in WW1: revolvers are VERY good in trench runs. Trench Warfare was most prevalent in WW1 but it saw consistent usage even [as early as the end of The Napoleonic Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Bouchain_(1711)#Prelude), especially in sieges like: [The Siege of Petersburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Petersburg) and [The Siege of Vicksburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Vicksburg). More generally wars like: [The Crimean War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War) and [NZ Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Wars) saw huge trench systems.
So unlike other answers: not the worst idea. In a military centered around Cavalry (which is pretty good before machine guns became popular) and Cannons/Sieges, I could see most people having a revolver carbine like weapon.
>
> Another rant about why using a sealed cylinder with rifle cartridges
> wouldn't work: The seal would need to be significantly 'heftier' to be
> usable with rifle cartridges. Then the cylinder's diameter would need
> to also be significantly increased to fit the added heft between the
> cylinder axle and the bottom of the seal. Also there is spring between
> the front of the frame and cylinder, around the seal / tube, which
> pulls the seal and cylinder shut. This spring would need to be much
> stronger so that the cylinder doesn't open when firing a higher power
> cartridge.
>
>
>
*(1)* This was probably not widely used by the US Army as none of the guns were issued with a spare cylinder, but I'm guessing it's feasibly as an extra cylinder is probably at most $5 more
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Plausible Reasons for usage of Combat Mecha](/questions/10320/plausible-reasons-for-usage-of-combat-mecha)
(30 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
After thinking about the issue of the development of this type of vehicles, I have some doubts about why the decision of this type of transport and not another.
Realizing that [AT-AT](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/All_Terrain_Armored_Transport) and [AT-TE](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/All_Terrain_Tactical_Enforcer) are very large military vehicles that would require a fairly high cost, both production and maintenance. My questions about why choose these incredible giants are:
* What benefits would make them really useful apart from their great firepower and their use as transport of troops?
* Why "walkers" with legs? What does this mean for other types of vehicles?
* What would be their main disadvantage?
* Possible improvements to make them more useful.
**Edit:** I ask about these types of vehicles in particular, obviously have points in common with other types of similar vehicles but also have their unique characteristics, so the answer regarding wicks is not very specific since we can understand is like a robot and is very different .
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There are no advantages to legged battle vehicles. Such top-heavy combat machines on legs would be doomed to instant and terrible failure in the "real-world".
All those joints, and digits would fail sooner rather than later, and would be incredibly vulnerable to enemy fire (imagine an AT-TE stepping on a mine, or walking into a trip-wire). Furthermore, both machines have a very high profile on the battlefield, and make *excellent* targets (especially those nice joints).
A very sought after quality of main battle tanks, scout vehicles, and APCs alike is a low profile such that they can more easily hide behind terrain features (because you'd rather that enemy fire hit the pile of dirt you're hiding behind, not your vehicle).
It's also good to note that vehicles are typically specialized. Not too many main battle tanks (one that I know of) are capable of carrying and deploying troops - that's not their purpose! They're meant to be heavily armored, and fight other tanks! And no matter how much armor they carry, there's always a weapon that can take them out, because they can only carry *so much armor*. APC's on the other hand are far more lightly armored, and are meant to protect troops from small arms fire, maybe some light artillery (shrapnel), or chemical threats (such as nerve gas attacks).
The AT-AT, however, is supposedly invulnerable to pretty much anything the rebels can throw at it (including their big laser batteries on Hoth), strides across the battlefield in full view of the enemy, and can carry a fairly large number of storm troopers.
That's not a good design from many points of view:
* By sheer size alone that thing is a target for anything and anyone on the battlefield.
* Its center of gravity is way high off the ground, which makes it very prone to tipping over, or stumbling.
* If it trips and *does fall over* it has no mechanism to get back up, and it'll probably be too busted up anyway (crew will probably be dead as well).
* As for the soldiers it carries ... just imagine rappelling to the ground from one of those things while under enemy fire - it's essentially suicide!
* Every time it wants to shoot at something it needs to turn its bloody head, which pivots on a very vulnerable looking joint, and holds a crew of 3 or 4 to boot.
* The sides, underside, and back of the machine are utterly defenseless. Doesn't Luke climb into one from underneath, and throw a grenade in? Sounds like a pretty terrible oversight to me.
AT-TE's are better designed due to a lower height, and better support base (6 legs), but they are still quite vulnerable:
* Little to no awareness of activity on your flanks or behind you.
* Slow to turn around.
* No mechanism to get it back up if it falls over.
* Great target for the enemy.
Essentially, all these things have going for them is that they look cool.
When I first watched Star Wars as a kid I was absolutely *fascinated* with the fighting machines the Empire deployed. I had a bunch of figurines of them, and a book with a ton of original sketches, and explanations as to how they work, etc. Every detail of their technical abilities was explored.
However, as a budding engineer, it soon hit me that most of it was horse manure. These vehicles and their capabilities were envisioned by artists. They were meant to inspire certain feelings and emotions, not make sense from a militaristic point of view.
For example, the X-Wing design allows us to see the pilot, and the uniform design shows their faces. To the viewer they're human. Whereas the TIE fighter pilots are not visible inside their ships, and even when shown, remain faceless minions.
The idea behind the AT-ATs, was that they are large, monstrous machines which inspire dread, and communicate just how powerful and intimidating the Empire is.
When you realize that that's their real purpose, you understand why they look like they do.
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I tried to look at what is out there in the real world, and started spinning a bit on that:
There are a few legged machines in the real world for transport (see [boston dynamics' products](http://www.bostondynamics.com/), look especially at [LS3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzaXMzYFtSM), Big Dog and Cheetah, they are actually aiming for military use afaik). And there exist legged machines that are used for harvesting trees (a quick google found me <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzaXMzYFtSM>).
Why do they use them? Because legs are actually better than wheels for getting through difficult terrain. In case of the tree havester it would also be to do less damage to the terrain. But that comes with the price of a much higher complexity! That is more complexity for designing, building, maintaining and driving. To my knowledge, the German army up to today still has a group with mules, because those are better for traversing mountains than any machine built today, with the advantage that the design and production has been done by nature.
I don't know of any leged machines used for actual combat, and I think the complexity would make them a bad idea, because they would be too vulnerable by enemy weapons.
If you think about robots/machines with legs, one principle in designing them is: more legs -> slower, more stable movement, less legs -> faster, less stable movement.
Compared with wheeled vehicles, they would always be slower and less stable on good terrain (that's why we use roads), but in real tuff terrain (forest, swamp, mountains), they might have a legitimate use. I would not see them on an open battlefield (as on Hoth), but a sensible design might be useful in a forest (which contradicts Star Wars drastically, as on Hoth the walkers won the battle, and on Endor they lost - but on science terms contradicting Star Wars might not actually be a bad thing... and using something with more than two legs and the centre of gravity further to the ground than those Endor walkers might be sensible). If you want to move through a forest without leaving a gigantic trail, wheels and tracks seem out of the question. Legs might let you through without destroying any trees and only leaving a trail that would be hard to track after some weeks or so, if you do not suspect it. Also some commando operations where you need not just a few people but some heavy stuff they could not carry might come to mind.
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The main reason someone would develop vehicles suck as AT-ATs or AT-TEs is in their very name: All Terrain Armored Transport / Tactical Enforcer. Being on legs means that they can walk almost anywhere, even when wheeled vehicles or tracked ones can't. Think for example of a heavily entrenched or bombarded zone, or even worse a swamp: your standard issue humvee would be nearly useless to move around, and so would a tank (though to a lower extent).
A similar reason is why agencies such as DARPA are encouraging the construction of legged robots, to use in emergency situations.
Another point, which is both a con(and a big one) and a pro:
(shock and) **AWE**
Granted, the shock factor does not really apply seeing how fast both AT-ATs and AT-STs are, we will focus on the awe factor: imagine yourself on the battlefield, and you spot far behind the enemy lines somehting that big, which, you know can and will fire on your positions, and probably holds more enemy soldiers that you have to face.
Chances are your morale will drop, so will your fellow soldiers'. The same won't apply however for the enemy, which will "rally" at the sight of such wondrous weapons.
As stated in other answers though, being that big and awe inspiring makes such vehicles huge targets. Granted if they are armored enough to take a beating and don't stumble because of a length of rope, they might be viable to use in the field.
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While its true that AT-ATs and AT-TEs, as designed, are less than ideal on the battlefield, I would like to point out that the US military is currently building and funding legged robots. One needs look no further than Boston Dynamics' [Big Dog](http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_bigdog.html) to see what some very intelligent people with real-world experience have to say about using such a "flawed" design. In the abstract of the white paper, the authors state "[Less than half the Earth's landmass is accessible to existing wheeled and tracked vehicles. But people and animals using their legs can go almost anywhere.](http://www.bostondynamics.com/img/BigDog_IFAC_Apr-8-2008.pdf)" Imagine an [2-M Repulsor](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/2-M_Saber-class_repulsor_tank) or a [48 Roller wheel bike](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/48_Roller_wheel_bike) on Dagobah. Cargo capacity appears to be another advantage. The 2-M is only capable of carrying 200kg of cargo! The AT-AT doesn't list a cargo capacity, but it can carry 40 troops and surely they and their equipment are ~200kg each.
So the big advantage they would have if they were designed for function (rather than form as Andrei points out) is that they would be able to go more places than a wheeled, tracked, or repulsor lifted vehicles while carrying more cargo.
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The element of **fear**.
Consider the AT-ATs:
Imagine you are sitting around in your nice house on an alien planet when all of a sudden there's a series of loud thuds approaching from the distance. You walk out into the street to find out what the noise is and find a towering tank on legs looming over your nice little town. Many people would flee, leaving the remaining citizens outgunned, outnumbered and overrun by masked troops.
The AT-AT is not a practical fighting machine, it is an iconic symbol of the empire. The Empire did not build a giant planet destroying space station for the sake of practical planet destruction, they built it to strike fear into anyone who dared to oppose them. The reason TIE/ln fighters look so ominous and make such an awful noise is almost certainly for the same reason: fear.
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Tactically the only use I could picture would be crowd/riot control, think police not military.
I could see these vehicles being fairly effective against a poorly armed and disorganized mob. Their height and high visibility makes them somewhat imposing to civilians. Their primary purpose would be to intimidate and corral much like mounted (on horseback) police in these situations.
Think about it, the empire is probably accustomed to putting down minor civilian uprisings on a fairly regular basis, it would make sense for them to have purpose built vehicles for the task. Think of the At-at as more of a paddy wagon than a tank.
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The idea behind them is the same as behind Death Star:
*Because we can*
Why destroy planet if you can use it later? For psychological effect. Try to f\*\*k with empire now you rebel scum.
Now imagine you are on a battlefield. And instead of tanks you see this monstrous, slow machines. With almost the same armament as T-47 it would be a laugh. Easy to flank, with no side or rear weapon. But those things push. With every step you hear *thud* and the earth shake. And you see the Empire have money to spend.
Try to not get your pants brown and keep your post.
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I think fear is only part of the equation. AT-ST and AT-AT weapon systems are a rational, tactical response to the unique operating requirements of a force such as the Imperial Navy.
Summarily, walkers like the AT-ST and AT-AT represent the requirements of assault vehicles that need to be able to operate across an incredibly diverse number of environments.
One way of understanding this is to consider the available alternatives in the Star Wars Extended Universe:
* Aircraft
* Hovercraft/Speeders (both ground-effect and antigravity)
* Wheeled/Tracked vehicles
Aircraft operate only in atmospheres thick enough for their lift surfaces.
Hovercraft and Speeders may not operate in all electromagnetic fields, gravity wells, or over all types of surfaces.
Wheeled/Tracked vehicles are unable to operate over heavily broken ground and are generally slow to accelerate.
Legged vehicles have no such restrictions.
Furthermore, we can understand some concrete benefits associated with legged vehicles:
They can carry more weight/armor/armament than aircraft and hovercraft of a similar size.
If their propulsion system breaks down they are not going to crash.
They can provide variable view height for operation above or below tall grasses, forest canopies, rivers/lakes, ground fog, broken ground, or engagement from defilade/hull-down.
They provide enhanced survivability against IEDs, mines, and detection mechanisms hidden in the ground.
Many of the problems associated with AT-STs and AT-ATs vanish when you consider how the Imperial Navy typically deploys them:
* as close to enemy emplacements as possible, from orbit
* embedded with infantry divisions as opposed to in their own armored corps
* preferably after air superiority has been achieved
The tow-cable attacks deployed against AT-AT walkers on Hoth by Rebel ground speeder craft represent an attack of opportunity against a hastily-deployed force attempting to cut off as much of the rebel escape window as possible. A more properly deployed walker force would advance only after speeder contingents had been drawn out and destroyed by TIE space superiority fighters and bombers, and Imperial speeders.
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I was thinking about how some animals emit sounds, and then wait for the sound to bounce back to their ears letting them detect other animals to eat as well as obstacles to avoid. Some animals in the ocean also emit light that they use to help them see prey. I was thinking of an animal that similarly throws scents and waits for those scents to get reflected back by other animals and object in the environment. I know smell uses molecules, which are particles, while hearing uses sound waves, and vision uses electromagnetic waves. Still I was wondering if an animal could evolve to put smells into the environment and then wait for the scents to get reflected back?
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This is comparing apples to oranges. Smells do not reflect off of surfaces.
Sight and hearing measure waves. Smells don't come in waves.
Even so, imagine that a creature would throw a stream of particles around and try and measure their return. Consider the energy costs of doing that. It is much cheaper in metabolic costs to use bioluminescence, sonar or even an electric field like some fish do, if you are going for an active sense.
The closest you can get that involves secreting matter to detect prey, predators or mates is spider webs. They lay their silk and get feedback from it, but its vibrations on strings rather than smells.
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Most unlikely to work.
Firstly, scents only tend to travel downwind so scent molecules emitted by your creature are unlikely to return to them.
In principle you could spray a liquid upwind and rely on the breeze to return it to you but it would be a very short range solution - probably only a few metres. 'Seeing' something via the returned scent would also be problematic - if you coated an object in a scented liquid then the amount of scent molecules flowing back downwind wouldn't tell you much about the object. In principle, you might be able to tell if something was moving from side to side or approaching you, but I doubt it would be very effective. If the thing you were attempting to detect approached upwind you would be screwed, as would be the case if the creature moved downwind towards you but faster than the relative wind speed.
There is also teh issue of resource. You can't 'throw' a few scent molecules any distance - would need sizable droplets or a spray. So the creature would either be spraying a constant flow of liquid upstream or would spend most of its time blind.
Almost certainly better (and more likely evolutionarily) to develop/rely on organs that can detect sound, vision, heat, vibration, etc and use scent passively.
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Let's decompose what you're looking for. We'd have to assume that the creature was constantly emitting a cloud of the stuff, like a musk. If it were chemically distinct from one creature to another, it could be used to identify the creature's territory, and where they've been.
Anything beyond that would require a differential in partial pressure between one side of the creature's sensory apparatus and the other. Put into English, more stink one direction than in other directions. If you consider the [speed of diffusion of flatulence](https://flatology.com/the-speed-of-farts/) at standard temperature and pressure (about 8 inches per minute). If you compare this to 1100 feet per second, or the speed of light, then at best you could get a general feel for "something in that direction," with no physical detail.
The one use I could imagine for this would be for an endurance hunter, like wolves and humans. The creature would hit its prey with a glob of spit, then follow it until the prey stopped to rest.
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For the question as asked, no. However...
Scents are unable to be used as analogous to sight or sound, primarily due to the speed differences involved.
Scents rely on diffusion pressure to spread. You can get into some gritty detail with [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_diffusivity). Alternatively, scents spread through convective pressures as well.
Some of the answers mention wind being a problem. Wind can actually help dramatically if the wind is very turbulent and not traversing very quickly over larger scales. Think farting in front of a fan. The fan is mixing the air in the room, but not moving new air into the room or old air out of the room.
Even if the scent travels quickly, the issue is the inability to differentiate the reflected scent from the emitted scent. With sound, you emit a pressure wave from your mouth. Your ears hear transmitted through your skull as well as directly from your mouth. That sound will travel and hit a wall and reflect back as an echo. If your yell is continuous, you may not hear the echo at all. It is far easier to hear the echo if you yell in short bursts when you're no longer emitting noises prior to the reflected sound coming back. For a smell to work similarly, it wouldn't work like smells at all. Smells diffuse from higher density to lower density at a rate too slowly to create a return pressure wave that can overcome the diffusion pressure from the source. Even releasing the smells in bursts doesn't overcome the scent lingering around the source.
**However**, maybe your creature doesn't care about the smell it emits, which isn't just a single scent. No, this creature is super stinky. It emits all sorts of scents. Why? Because the scents themselves aren't meant to be reflected. The creature is producing volatile compounds of various sorts. Think of something along the lines of pheromones. Some that react specifically to its favorite prey. Some that react to various types of rocks. Some that react to various types of plants. Once the volatile compounds touch their intended target, it changes slightly, giving a slightly different scent than what the creature produced.
It is the altered scents your creature is interested in and uses.
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This is, in one sense, [already a thing](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171120090051.htm#:%7E:text=The%20star%2Dnosed%20mole%20has,touch%20organ%20of%20any%20mammal.). Star-nosed moles use a similar trick to smell underwater, which mammals can't otherwise do. This trick doesn't require direct contact with a chemical source, useful for protecting sensors, and probably good since you want range, not the obvious tell of a bubble smashing into you, which could alert prey.
Also worth noting is how insects, like bees and ants, use chemicals to communicate or coordinate attacks, [how pirate perch achieve invisibility](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23283-zoologger-the-fish-with-a-chemical-invisibility-cloak/), the fact various prey animals actually roll around in sensory sources, while predators track prey or use scent to aid in prey detection.
So the key here, imao, is to create an environment where an unusual method of smelling works (as with star-nosed moles, who could not otherwise scent aquatic prey), or where chemical signals aiding in marking and tracking prey, and then you're golden!
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Yes, absolutely, it is possible.
The animal may emit some kind of reactive substance that will react with those objects that under normal conditions do not smell, and release smells that can be detected.
Maybe acid fumes? or some organic solvent or corrosive agent that will react with different surfaces and produce different volatile substances
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My world is to have a tiny island that will periodically be inhabited by a person or small group of people. By tiny I'm using a fuzzy yardstick: 1-50 hectares. When people are here, they will be conducting basic bushcraft and foraging. But at this scale, felling even a few trees would be a major pull on the local ecology. And this is the constraint we need to work with: people *will* come and they *will* chop stuff down. It's not permanent though, there are periods when the island is uninhabited: they stay no longer than a week at a time, a few times per year.
But, all is not lost. Everything else, short of magic, can be brought to bear on the situation. I doubt nature alone can handle this, so solutions involving genetic modification are in scope.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XnDslm.png)
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## Question
What kind of scientific methods and/or land management techniques would allow a tiny island to recover quickly from periodic spikes in resource extraction?
\*\*Note:\*\* Budget and pre-planning timeframe is unlimited. All that matters is that after enough time and money have been thrown at the problem, the result is a very robust tiny island.
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What you need is a fast type of ecology something where the plants and animals grow and cycle quickly. To aid this add lots of energy so a tropical or subtropical island with plenty of rainfall would be best.
Start with the fastest growing plant:[bamboo](https://bambubatu.com/how-fast-does-bamboo-grow/).
Bamboo should suffice for most needs but if you really want trees then how about the [empress tree](https://www.worldtree.eco/empress-tree/#:%7E:text=it%20can%20grow%2010%2D20%20feet%20in%20its%20first%20year)?
It’s a very fast-growing tree that produces good quality wood and has huge leaves. It can grow 3 times taller than a man in a year and it also flowers and drops leaves to aid nitrogen fixation.
Add in any other subtropical or tropical species that are very fast growing or that might be useful such as sugar cane, elephant grass, sweet potatoes, tropical vines etc
Animals should be small with a relatively rapid life cycle, would preferably be edible and live off of a diet of bamboo and similar. The ideal creature would be the bamboo rat: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_rat>
They normally live at an altitude of 1200 -4000m but can probably survive at sea level just fine as is. If not, a little artificial selection and even genetic manipulation should generate a subspecies that can.
Then add in insects such as ants, beetles, and bees for pollination and perhaps a few small birds and you should be ready to go.
I would avoid the very smallest area within your range and attempt to create a range of habitats, perhaps with a large rocky outcrop and some marshlands with mangroves. This way it is more likely that species will be able to find an ideal niche and it might provide shelter in less accessible spots to aid in regeneration, although to be frank unless your visitors arrive mob-handed with flame throwers, poisons and chain saws they will struggle to kill everything.
If you want to aid something a little nasty you could try giant hogweed. Not sure it would survive in the tropics but it might well with a little modification and it likes growing by water. Very prolific and unpleasant (or as Hagrid would say it's just misunderstood...)
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# Ecosystem with the sea
It is easy to think of an island as an isolated ecosystem. Yet this is far from true. Especially on islands we can expect that a lot of the ecosystem is connected to the sea. The island would be in real trouble if this wasn't the case. At the drop of a hat it could crumble. But much of the life and nutrients is wrll connected to the sea. Removal of some trees and other life will at worst just create a temporary shortage. It'll balance out. If some creature or plant suddenly is reduced in numbers, generally thing reliant on them does the same. Each can be composted and reused. A tree falling down and being used as housing can actually help. Many forests get healthier when a big storm throws a lot of trees down. The extra space gives many plants and creatures new opportunities.
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I think you can achieve something without magic provided that:
* the island is located in a equatorial climate, with frequent rain equally distributed across the year
* wooden vegetation is made of species which grow quickly and can regrow from root only, provided they are left in the ground
* non wooden vegetation has also a quick life cycle and is mostly made of edible species. Edible sea plants like kelp would also help.
* pollination for the plants is mostly anemophile, so that insects are not strictly needed.
With the right combination of plants, I think your island can reach a point where the scorched land caused by the visitors is actually needed to let new vegetation grow, similarly to how in certain regions wild fires are needed to help new growth.
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Tropical island should manage it.
Most trees are actually useless for felling. Things like coconut are useful for the nuts and leaves, not much else. So people will and do harvest the nuts from small islands, but there's no point felling the palms or breadfruit or just about any of the other trees except the hardwoods. They're not even good for firewood, coconuts are (once the flesh is removed), but not the tree trunks.
You're not going to have a valuable rainforest on a 400 hectare island. You'll have mostly palms on the edges and bush and shrubs in the interior. Everything grows fast and will recuperate quickly.
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50 hectares is a lot. If the island was round it would have ~400m radius. Felling a few trees would be fine.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing> - a rather old method of forest management.
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You might need some plants that grow fast in a tropical climate that produce sustenance for people and the animals they can hunt. [One](https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/papaya/papaya-harvest-time.htm#:%7E:text=A%20papaya%20plant%20will%20mature,fruits%20in%20summer%20or%20fall.) of those plants can be the papaya tree that will mature in six to nine months and produce delicious fruit. [Fungi](https://news.arizona.edu/story/fungi-are-the-secret-police-in-rain-forest-diversity-study-finds#:%7E:text=The%20research%20found%20that%20fungi,range%20of%20species%20to%20flourish.) that grow in the small 'forest' can also be food as well as [tomato](https://www.thespruce.com/tips-for-growing-tomatoes-in-hot-climates-848268#:%7E:text=If%20you%20live%20in%20a%20tropical%20climate%2C%20you%20might%20be,be%20happy%20in%20full%20sunlight.) plants as nutrient-dense food if you have some non-shaded areas. Also, as mentioned by others, you can eat food from the seas. Many forms of seaweed are [edible](http://www.seaweed.ie/uses_general/humanfood.php), so some seaweed can grow around the island or wash-up on the shore to be eaten. [Primitive](https://survivalskills.guide/best-primitive-survival-fish-traps-how-to/) fishing methods can be used to catch fish for food too. If there is a large enough beach, some people won't even need to use much wood for shelter - they can [create](https://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Fast-Shelter-in-the-Wilderness) basic sand pit shelters with driftwood, branches, or any general flat material only being used to create basic roofs for these shelters.
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## Entada gigas
Entada gigas, also known as "sea heart" is a liana and is notable for having large seedpods (12 cm width for up to 2m long !) that can travel oceans for 2 years before dying ! Say your island is at the crossroads of multiple strong ocean currents and that a lot of seedpods (from Entada gigas or any plant you might invent) wash up on its beaches. That way, even if you burn your entire island (which is very good for the soils by the way), life may still rise again very quickly.
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First, I'd place the island in a sweetwater lake. This has the main advantage that the full area of the island is a fertile ground for all kinds of plants and trees. Another advantage is that there is no shortage of seeds: They can fly with the wind over the lake or travel with the water and reach the island easily.
Felling some trees and even felling all the trees (think of coppice/shrubbery) on the island does not create a severe problem as long as the soil is kept intact and not washed to the lake—always maintain a layer of grass and other plants below the trees.
Second, I expect the people visiting the island to act responsibly: The island may be the private property of a family of farmers that perform a sustainable cultivation of their property.
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In the near future, the human population is overcrowded and food and water becomes scarce. Every preventative measure failed to address this issue and the world falls into a turmoil and panic is everywhere. It was suggested that humanity is one of the creatures that have sex for pleasure and decided that we should nerf the brain reward system. Then many governments gave in to corruption and pressure from a series of nationwide protests. They launched a campaign to force everyone to take a pill (nanites) that can kill pleasure while having intercourse. Such extreme measures are becoming popular with many big companies due to the increasing demands. Ok I think you get the idea but I suspect being a human goes beyond biology but I cannot think of what grave consequences if the plan goes well.
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# No.
The drive to have a child is one of the strongest ones out there. Not everyone wants a child of course, but a great many people do. We humans may get children via intercourse but that is not why we want to have them.
Lots of couples right now have sex for procreation even though they're not getting much out of it. Some people have sex with people they're not really into or in a relationship for the purpose of getting pregnant. Other couples and singles use artificial insemination to have kids. It's easy to do this at home and many do.
Also, sexual pleasure is not the only thing people get out of sex. Emotional intimacy is a huge one and a lot of couples who are meh about the sexual pleasure still want to have sex. There are many other reasons people have sex as well.
This question makes a lot of assumptions that have no basis in fact. Call it a frame challenge. Your beliefs about "reward" don't hold water.
If your scenario came to pass, people would likely have less sex than they do now. Some people would have less in general and a larger percentage of people than now would have none.
As a general rule, this would lead to fewer pregnancies, though it's not as straightforward as you might think. It also means more (but not all) pregnancies would be planned, so fewer abortions and adoptions. But don't assume it's linear. If a couple (who doesn't use birth control and doesn't plan out cycle timing) goes from, say, having sex 20 times a month to 10, they aren't going to have half the number of pregnancies. It probably won't change much, if at all.
Note that I'm not addressing changes in contraception use. A society with the population pressures you mention will be high users of birth control. Much higher than we have now, and we use birth control an awful lot in most countries. Couples who have sex for reasons other than sexual pleasure may use birth control more (since any side effects of lessening pleasure don't matter) or they may use it less (under a mistaken belief that pregnancy rates are correlated with amount of sex).
The rise in population would slow and maybe even reverse. Eventually, the population will stabilize because people will choose to have children based on things that have nothing to do with how often they have sex.
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The simple answer is no. The human species will not go extinct.
If governments can legislate and enforce the world's populations into taking a pill to abolish sexual pleasure, it will be an even simpler step for those governments to regulate reproduction. This have additional benefits. It will make economic planning and resource management so much easier. It will alleviate and ameliorate demographic pressures on forward social, political and economic development.
In an overpopulated world, well regulated reproduction will make the process of reducing the global population to long-term sustainable levels a much easier task.
Families also want to reproduce and have children to carry on the family name, inherit assets and property, have someone to look after you in your old age, and so on. Sexual pleasure is not the sole driver of reproduction.
Large-scale family planning can be managed to allow people to manage their careers and have families of their own without disrupting those careers.
Sex by itself is not the only means to ensure reproduction. Artificial insemination and *in vitro* fertilization technologies have been improving. Assuming this will improve in future, conception will become as easy as a visit to your GP.
Many of the world's religions will embrace the change. The majority of people won't be running off to indulge themselves in illicit sexual liaisons. Sex before marriage, adultery, pornography and prostitution will be a thing of the past. People will only think pure thoughts. Productivity will rise.
A sexual pleasure free world will be embraced as a better, purer world. Even in the absence of sex, the species will continue to reproduce the social, familial, economic, political and demographic pressures are too great to allow extinction to happen. It will make the reduction of excess numbers of people easier to manage and it will alleviate the problems of an overpopulated planet.
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They might.
Humans would still want children and have the drive to have sex for it. But it would severely hamper the amount of children that are born.
* Accidental pregnancies wouldnt happen anymore
* People would have more trouble arranging the times to try to het pregnant, as spontaneous wouldnt happen.
* most of the sexual activity is conscious. While it is completely possible for people with paralisis, full spinal leasions or even in a coma to get aroused enough to ejaculate, it is a lot harder (heh) to get the job done properly. In fact, not having arousal because the lack of pleasure could make it even harder when you are still "in control" over your genitals as the focus shifts away from having sex and towards a chore, killing the mood for sex quickly and reducing the arousal that comes for paralised/comatose people.
* Lack of pleasure kills off a lot of the advantages that sex normally gives, like social bonding to the partner.
All in all, this could mean that the average children born to people will drop so drastically, that humanity wont be able to sustain itself. Imagine each couple only getting one child because getting one has become so much of a hassle, you'll halve mankind each generation...
Sexual ahedonia is basically what you'll be giving everyone, which is a problem where you are unable to feel pleasure of the orgasms even when you know you are having one. A part of the things I said can be found here: <https://www.issm.info/sexual-health-qa/what-is-orgasmic-anhedonia-pleasure-dissociative-orgasmic-dysfunction/>
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Looking at the real world for an explicit example: Lesbian couples get pregnant and have children. Gay couples adopt or arrange a surrogate mother. Other couples or individuals adopt or foster children - there are "serial foster parent" out there who have 'had' dozens of children, even if none were born to them.
These are clearly not a result of "sex for pleasure" (whereas that could be argued for even carefully planned pregnancy in a heterosexual couple), and can be via artificial insemination or IVF. Evidentially, a desire for children exists independent of a desire for sex.
So, yes, your population may decrease with the absence of "whoopsie!" babies - but it won't die out from your magic pill.
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Killing pleasure in a specific context is not something that is readily accomplished. I couldn't even begin to theorize about how it would work. From my own experience, I don't believe there is any physiological difference between pleasure induced by sex or. Any other means.
However, killing pleasure in general is trivially accomplished mechanically. The hemispheres of the brain float independently inside the skull, joined by the corpus callosum. A sharp blow to the occipital bone at the correct angle will often cause the two hemispheres to shift in opposite directions, creating a scissors like action on the front of the corpus callosum. For a more definite and controlled approach, a scratch in the right spot with a simple probe (crochet hook) would accomplish the same thing.
Normal emotional processing, including pleasure from sex, requires cooperative processing on both hemispheres of the brain. Even a small scar on the front surface of the corpus callosum can interfere with that processing, inducing alexythymia (essentially absence of emotions)
While this ends the enjoyment of sex, it does not end the drive. The stereotypical football player or boxer who's taken one to many hits to the head may become possessive (territorial) while blaming their partner for the lack of enjoyment. Think of the number of star football players who end up in a spousal abuse scandal. Alternatively, they may lose all interest in sex, as a messy complicated waste of time and energy.
Emotions are a huge part of who we are. Other impacts of alexythymia include reduced ability to form new memories, inability to read or produce social cues, and inability to prioritize.
So, to answer your question, eliminating the pleasure from sex would probably not end the species, but it would have serious side effects for the society attemptimg such a thing. I would not expect such a society to last past the first generation.
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answer to the extinction question is:
**No it is unlikely to go extinct with just a lack of pleasure**
There is likely to be a decline in population and that will ring it's own problems/challenges
# Problems with Population Decline
* Gender balance would be difficult as we can't currently choose to have a male or female child when reproducing. this would lead to further gender inequality since I'm assuming countries will still have border laws making the balance per country different as well
* Men wouldn't be as nice to women since they would not be thinking with their dicks half the time
* There would be fewer customers for businesses while the population stabilizes, causing many businesses, perhaps entire business sectors, to go out of business
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So, after a nuclear holocaust, the students at Gun Runner High school are all evacuated with all survival kits, and a large amount of chocolate milk. There is no food left, and no lighters from smokers left.
It’s empty of normal survival gear, like food, water, and heat, but people still want to see if there are any valuables in the place.
Gun Runner High’s built in an extremely rural town, so for a few ***decades*** no one passes by. Eventually the Gun Runners clan, the descendants of the original students, finally track the place down. They want to ransack it for anything it has, but since all conventional survival items are gone: Could you use items commonly found in school as survival gear in any way?
* It has to be easy to craft in the post apocalypse
* It’s common school supplies, like the kind of stuff you’d find at any school today.
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Are you kidding me? High schools are *loaded* with stuff!
**Shop class** tools of all kinds. The acetylene torches might not be useful anymore, but all the smaller tools (hammers!) are still useful, and if they had larger shops (like a welding class) then they'd have crowbars, sheet metal, bar stock, and the mind boggles over what else.
**Cooking class** *Knives!* Knives of all kinds! And [frying pans](https://youtu.be/I-3K-uU9TL0?t=23s)!
**Phys Ed** Rope, football helmets, baseball bats... *Need I say more!*
And none of this considers the janitor's closets (chemicals, broom handles, more tools!), the facility maintenance shed (rakes, shovels), the kitchen (more knives!), and student lockers. Think about it! I'd hate to wonder what you could find in a bunch of student lockers!
A high school would only be second to a hardware store or Wal-Mart in the variety of stuff you could find to help with survival. Do you know how much cable is involved in the curtains on those stages? *Miles* of Cable!
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First things that comes to mind are **books** and **Encyclopedias**, which would allow those still versed in the old art of reading to increase their theoretical knowledge, assuming that the tribe has not drifted toward a "pre-nuke past is bad" attitude.
Maybe the content of the available books will be too high level to be actually useful in the immediate (i.e. if I go back with my mind to the books I had at school, they gave info like "the lift of a wing can be calculated using this formula ..." but from there to design an airplane it's a different cup of tea) but still it may trigger further researches.
Another thing which could come useful are the **desk frames**: they will supply some good quality metal, which I assume is rare in post apocalyptic world, and can be turned into tools by the village blacksmith.
Lastly, **stone blackboards** can be useful as roofing material.
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I can see some flaw in the premises: A high school, especially one built in a rural area where you don't get to refurnish it frequently, will be likely filled with a trove of useful stuff. The city's very population will ransack it in a hurry to get everything they can **long before** the students' descendants return.
Also, I find it **extremely** unlikely that this rural area's population will completely leave this place. Why? One word: **SAFE**. Yes, this rural area is one heck of a lucky jackpot! Somehow it is shielded enough from the radioactivity-carrying winds so that a community can actually live in it for decades, enough to spawn descendants and see them grow into self-sufficient humans.
This also means that this rural community used to have a large hydroponic system for vegetables and a geothermal source available. Very convenient, yes, but also very necessary or nuclear winter would have killed **everyone**, animals included, by starvation.
Very convenient because the whole of the rural community was thought as an apocalypse shelter. Not unheard of, just prepping brought to a larger scale. I like it!
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* The athletic department would have baseball bats and football armor, and everybody knows that those make the best post-apocalyptic armament.
* The science lab would contain modest amounts of refined raw materials. Everybody knows that you need sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter for gunpowder, and they might remember that saltpeter can be found in dung heaps, but who could tell clearly how [saltpeter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate) looks?
* I wonder what the student's lockers contain. They might have numbers locks, which can be opened with much patientce.
+ Did any of them hold strong liquor? Against the rules, of course.
+ For that matter, what are the odds that one or two hold a handgun?
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keep in mind that these are in no particular order, and the list is rather disorganized
* Art class would have chalk, pastels, paint, paper and pencils. These could be useful for marking territory, making things look better, or some sort of body mark to differentiate clan members
* Construction class would have tools, wood, screws and nails, and old projects
* Assuming it's in America, it's going to have flags in every classroom (from what I've heard) which could provide a lot of cloth
* If it had a cafeteria, there might be utensils, bowls and plates, etc. There might also be nonperishable food such as Twinkies or honey
* Gym storage rooms could hold baseball bats, armour (think of the DC Guards in Fallout 4), projectiles, materials such as rubber and plastic, rope (actual rope, skipping rope), and gymnastics mats that could work as beds or shelter fortifications. Some schools have little scooters that could be used to transport goods, too
* The theatre could have costumes and extra clothing. There could also be makeup and set pieces for fortification. There could also be prop weapons, which could be used to scare enemies off or modified to actually pose a threat
* Gym locker rooms could have old clothing and shoes. It could also contain paper and writing utensils, books, a shower system that could be repaired, and secure places for storage
* A science class could have chemicals in storage along with guides on how to use them. This opens up a ton of possibilities
* Classrooms in general will have chairs and tables. These can be used for their original purpose, but can also work as fortification and shelter
* Lockers! They could contain anything salvageable technology to previously useless trash to things such as alcohol and cigarettes
* Coffee could be found in the teacher's lounge, but it might be a touch expired. Hey, coffee is coffee, amiright? (disclaimer: i don't drink coffee, i have no idea)
* As mentioned earlier, tons of books and knowledge can be found in classrooms, lockers, and the library
* The library might also have some cushions
* Teacher's lounge could contain, aside from coffee, comfortable chairs, pillows, blankets, and other luxury items
* Water bottles! They might be empty, but they could come in handy
* The janitor's closet could have things such as bleach, mouse traps, and rat poison
* School nurse could have old bandages that were thrown away, and nobody thought to bring them. Keep in mind that these are bandages, not bandaids, and while it might be gross and a little risky, it's better than nothing. The nurse could also have a cot
* Wires, pipes, cords, lightbulbs, etc. There might be a backup generator somewhere too
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The other answers are all great! Here are some additional items that might be found:
**Theater/Theater class**: Various costumes, usable as disguises or able to be salvaged for the cloth they contain. If the tribe has an encounter with superstitious people, a well-planned scare with grotesque costumes from the Halloween closet could be just the thing to keep them away. Also, costumes could serve as status symbols or just help with the general political theater - Freemasons are famous for doing this with the funny hats and robes and medals and whatnot. Why does the Chief wear wizard's robes? Well he just *does*, that's how we know he is the chief and whatnot.
**Music class**: Plenty of instruments, probably out of tune but quite possibly fixable. Use them for social purposes within the clan, or send clan members out to other towns as traveling minstrels to earn money and gather knowledge. Unsalvageable instruments can be broken down for materials (brass and wood, mostly).
What, no one in the clan knows how to play the tuba? Sounds like that's a quest a-brewing. Send a bright young aspiring musician out on a dangerous journey to seek out the legendary Brass Band Master who is rumored to be living somewhere beyond the Green Mountain Pass in a cave next to the Lake of Mineral Valley. Bonus points if his name is not Obi-Wan Kenobi.
**Lockers**: In addition to ransacking the *contents* as described by others, disassemble the lockers themselves to obtain sheet metal to use for armor plating or construction material.
**Vehicles**: There are probably vehicles on the campus. School buses are useful for transporting large quantities of clan members at the same time and can be lived in as well. There may also be private vehicles on campus, and perhaps even delivery trucks.
**Electrical**: Miles of wire, transformers, fuses, gauges, lighting. Remove the floodlights from the football field for an astonishingly powerful blinding weapon.
**Records**: High schools tend to produce a large quantity of written documents pertaining to student performance and behavior. Schools are increasingly becoming digital, but a rural school could be behind the times and, in any event, paper records are almost impossible to eliminate *completely*. These could be helpful for establishing, enforcing, or challenging a social order - "See, my grandfather *did* get A's in Political Science, History, *and* Geography! I am the best person to be Chief!".
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Your people are going to have kids, and they're going to want to educate them... and the place to find everything that is needed to do this is a school. Think textbooks, paper, pencils, a library, etc.
The rest of the survival oriented supplies will have been looted anyway.
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On the internet, I saw a post that the scientists are testing a drug that makes you feel the passage of time differently and that you can feel like 50 years passed in a day.
Such drug should be used for prisons, so that you could drug a prisoner and make him do his time in much shorter time. So you waste a little money for imprisoning someone and also do not waste productive age of someone.
Lets imagine this drug exists and works just fine, because it's made from handwavium-unobtainium with bit of ijustmadeituptainium.
Also, let's imagine that such drug has been already tested and "yesterday" (Earth, current tech) the politicians of USA decided that this drug will be used on people who are lawfully sentenced to prison from tomorrow.
**Does this drug change crime rate?**
Some background info:
* You can control the dose of a drug in a way, that person taking the drug can feel like passing 5 - 50 years in prison in one day. (5 subjective years is lowest dose, 50 is highest) with lowest step of 1 subjective year
* This drug has no side effects
* Once you take this drug, there is no way in altering the drug. So if you were prescribed/sentenced 20 years, you will personally feel 20 years passing. There is no "antidrug" to cancel this in the middle.
* Effect on body is, that person taking this drug falls asleep and sleeps for 24 hours and has very vivid dream of being of prison for X years
* Content of a dream is same for all: Usual prison life, but without being raped or beaten up
* Yes, that means someone has to hydrate you and maybe inject some glucose in you, but also if someone does not take care of your body, you wake up dehydrated, hungry (and having "accident" in your pants). But I hope we all agree this cannot plausibly kill you.
* People sentenced for less than 5 years can choose if they go to jail "normally" or if they take 5 year dose drug and be out in 24 hours
* Currently imprisoned people can decide if they serve the rest of their punishment "normally" or should they take the drug in dose for the remaining years
* Newly imprisoned people sentenced 5 years or more must take the drug. There is no option of being in prison "normally"
* At time being, the drug can be either injected or taken orally in form of a pill
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**It depends: what's the goal of imprisonment?**
Is the goal of imprisoning someone to punish them by making them be out of society for a little while, or is it to protect society from a dangerous individual by putting them somewhere they can't hurt anybody? If you're sending someone to prison because you think they need time in time out, then the drug is a fine solution. They'll sit in a corner for a day, it will feel like a long time, and then they'll get out. If everything goes as planned, experiencing five years sitting in a corner will be sufficiently frightening as to make them not want to go to prison again.
However, that seems unlikely. Yes, prison would be uncomfortable, but it would lead to no actual loss on behalf of the prisoner, and would offer no ability to try to rehabilitate. In the case of an exceptionally dangerous prisoner, you wouldn't be protecting anyone from the prisoner by giving them the drug and locking them up for a few days, merely mentally addling someone who is likely already mentally unstable.
Ultimately, the drug strikes me as a form of corporal punishment. You put someone in a several day drug trance not because you want to rehabilitate them or remove them from society, but because a three day drug trance is theoretically miserable. It does not, however, strike me as a suitable substitute for prison.
Unless, of course, that experienced 5-30 year span of time in dreamland can actually contain valuable lessons which can be remembered after waking. If it was possible to rehabilitate someone in a span of 24 hours by giving them this drug, I would consider its use to be superior to imprisonment.
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## Not really
There are two school of thought behind imprisonment, one is punishment and the other is rehabilitation.
Countries which focus on punishment tend to have high recidivism whereas countries which focus on rehabilitation have lower (contrast the United States with Norway, for example).
This drug is a very effective punishment but it offers nothing for prisoners to learn why their crime was wrong or what alternative paths to life they could take upon leaving prison, other than perhaps some time thinking it over by themselves (which I wouldn't trust most violent criminals to come up with a good answer from.)
## Aging
Another problem with this drug is that a big part of keeping violent criminals in for a long time is to isolate society from violent criminals. If they're out sooner, there will be more crime since they'll simply go through more short-term punishments, get out more often and do more bad things in a single lifetime.
## Social interactions
One way this drug *could* help is isolating prisoners from eachother. A huge problem with putting all criminals together today is that the low-level, inefficient criminals learn from the high-level efficient criminals how to become higher-level, more efficient criminals.
The flipside to this is that we humans *need* social interaction *for our mental health*. Prisons typically have rules on how long a prisoner is allowed to be put into isolation as too long would permanently scar them.
This drug would isolate a person for *several years*.
## Education
The prisoners who do come out changed and with better lives are often the ones who've chosen to take higher education while in prison. Now, most prisoners don't do this, but this drug taking away the option completely nullifies the chance of this happening whatsoever.
So I don't see it doing much more than create more problems than those that exist in the first place.
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## The drug is useless
Our (in the USA) current prison system is a failed attempt at trying to accomplish too many things. Not saying there is a better way, but it's important to note why it exists and more importantly what it is trying to do. Breaking it down by goals:
* **Reform** - The general idea is that a criminal can be reformed to a non-criminal through the application of punishment. This works well when the right balance of crime and punishment exists. Typically, these are minor crimes with minor punishments. Unfortunately, if the balance is upset, then there is no reform. If you send someone to jail for 50 years for a speeding ticket, your not going to reform that person, your going to make them more of a criminal. Usually, reform consist of fixing the underlying "why commit the crime" and a dose of "not worth the time". Long sentences don't really accomplish this on their own. There have been some advances in "therapy" or "education" for criminals that do result in real reform, but, generally speaking a person commits a crime because of circumstance and not because of some deep defect.
* **Punishment** Another part of our prison system is punishment. For better or worse, we feel that if you harm me, I should harm you back. When taken as a society we go with, "if you harm society it should hurt you too". Once of the ways we do this, while still trying to accomplish "reform" is with imprisonment. It's meant as a form of punishment.
* **Safety** In cases where we think society is at risk, another goal is to lock the criminal away in a manor that they can not do any harm. Reform is not worth it, punishment isn't enough, I don't care what you do just don't let the child killer near my child.
* **Justice** This is very important. For the victims of the crime, they need to feel that they are getting justice. In some cases this is not possible of course, but the more justice a person feels they are getting the better off they are. Sure, some people will never feel (right or wrong) that they received justice, but you have to (as a society) at least try.
Now with your drug, you do not even try reform. You're not addressing the underling cause of the criminal act. Not that our prison system does a good job of it now, but at least there is the attempt, with your drug there isn't even an attempt.
Punishment is not existing either. Part of the "punishment" of going to prison is the removal of free will and the concept that when the criminal gets out the entire world will be different. How different is a function of time. 15 years means kids have grown up. 2 years means you missed a baby's first steps. You do not address that. Again, it's not that the current system has it right. It's that your pill ignores it all together.
Safety is also not addressed. If the choice to lock someone away is made on the basis of safety, letting them out early does not make them safer.
Justice is also ignored. You killed my little girl, and all you have to do is take a pill! How is that just! Arrrgggg Society devolves to anarchy.
Something else to consider. When a criminal is sent to prison for a long time the world changes, as does the prisoner. A criminal may have a lot of energy at 20, but when they get out at 40 they may have calmed down. The world that created the criminal may have changed. There is a lot of factors that your pill does not address.
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I'd be interested in the effects on *society*. Assuming this drug works perfectly (virtual prison) the main benefit seems to be that it makes punishment cheaper.
However, is cheap punishment a good idea? Being able to diminish a 20 year sentence to just 'a few hours in a chair' might lead to society becoming complacent about prisoners rights and demand longer sentences for lesser crimes.
With more acts being punished with more jail-time, I'd expect I high rise in long term mental damage among the population. This would exaggerate inbuilt injustices at a fast rate, faster than the system could adapt.
>
> Bob pirates a film. Film lobby for 5 year jail sentences - after all
> it doesn't cost the state much - and succeed. Bob is now subjected to
> 5 years worth of jail mentally, but is released into a society that
> thinks he's just been a way for a day or two. Disconnected with
> society Bob tries to fit in, but has lost his connection with his wife
> and job. Confused he commits another crime is punished with 20 years.
> Coming out angry he realizes that he still has connections and
> financial resources, and can commit crimes on the people who sent him
> there immediately afterwards (almost like time-travel for him). This
> leads him down a vindictive and destructive path.
>
>
>
Already with Bob a 'normal' fellow you can see how destructive a path this could be - for us it feels like just a few months has passed but for Bob he's had 25 years in jail to plot, and every time we sentence him to jail we give him more time to plan his revenge.
Imagine when this approach is applied to marginalised communities? e.g. black communities in USA, under the pretext of 'War on Drugs'? Now Governments are empowered to punish more people, to a greater level with little cost to hold them back. The greater community will be unaware or unwise of the 'hidden cost' and see it as a humane alternative to jail - after all who wouldn't like to have their son back without waiting 20 years?
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From the prisoner's point of view, other answers are great. But what about victims?
# Riots
They'll happen, soon and fast. I just had this story played in my head:
>
> - Doctor, my life is over!
>
>
> - It's not, Suzie. Bad thing happened to you, but we'll help you to get thorough.
>
>
> - He raped me! Nothing will be good again!
>
>
> - Yes, he did an awful thing, but he got caught and sentenced for 25 years in prison.
>
>
> - So, for the next 25 years I'm safe? I won't meet him no matter what?..
>
>
> - ...
>
>
> - You promised! You promised to tell me truth. How can you help me if you are lying?!
>
>
> - The truth is, he will spend it in prison in sleep.
>
>
> - Even better! He will loose so much of his life! He deserves it!
>
>
> - No, Suzie. Sorry to say that, but he will only sleep for a day. He will have 25 years long nightmare.
>
>
> - Nightmare about being violently raped?
>
>
> - No.
>
>
> - You dare to call 25 years of not being violently raped a nightmare?! All I got in my real life was twelve!
>
>
>
Definitely, unrest and riots would happen. Victims, like Suzie, might figure out that calm hundred years dream is no price for killing their offenders. Or all males, in cases like this. Just to be safe. It's just a day from life anyway, isn't it?
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You have it backwards. The drug should not be the punishment, but taking it away.
Think about it: if you have a drug, that allows you to lengthen your lifespan by programmable dreams in such way, why waste it on criminals?
You can sell pills which allow you to prepare for all your exams in a day (and with no way to procrastinate!), to experience a lifetime as a starship captain, to have hours of extraordinary sex with any celebrity of your choosing... imagination is the limit.
Now imagine being locked in prison for 10 years WITHOUT access to this drug. Cruel and unusual punishment indeed.
So how would it affect the crime rate? Well, it depends on what kind of criminals we are talking about:
* For profit criminals: only those truly desperate and those in high-stakes thefts would remain in business. If your family is starving, or if you can steal 100 000 000$ then it would be worth the risk, but in any other case - not really
* Adrenaline chasers: when you can live your life as Arsene Lupin, then Robin Hood and then Danny Ocean, what's the point of doing the same thing in real life?
* Psychopaths and people with anger management issues: outside some extreme cases they can live out their darkest fantasies over and over again in their dreams. What's the point of risking losing such opportunity?
* Jaywalkers and other three-felonies-per-day average people: there would be a slight drop in such crimes, because less people would engage in activities like drinking in public places, sexual harassment, etc. (since you can have as much fun as you like in the dream world), but for most people the perspective of prison is already as scary as it gets. Taking the drug away would not change anything, because most people generally assume, that "prison is a bad place, but I will never be convicted, so no problem".
So, summing up: selling the drug to general public and taking it away from prisoners would decrease the crime level by removing some potential motives and making the punishment more severe, but it would not remove it completely.
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The consequences of such a pill are troublesome, because of the rules, "Effect on body is, that person taking this drug falls asleep and sleeps for 24 hours and has very vivid dream of being of prison for X years" and "Content of a dream is same for all: Usual prison life, but without being raped or beaten up"
Such a pill almost certainly can never exist, because each individual is different. There's no pharmacological way this could guarantee the same dream for every person. Just think of how different LSD trips are. You'd need to tailor the pill exactly to each individual, and if you can do that, the for-profit world Darth Hunterix mentions becomes extremely viable.
However, what if we remove those two pesky rules, and explore the rest. I think that pill could be far more viable, not only because it is more plausible, but because *it could be terrifying.*
Let's make a pill that simulates 10 years of *something*, by making the person dream so powerfully that when they wake, the only description they can possibly give of what they experienced is that it took ten subjective years.
That's ten subjective years of solitary confinement.
Solitary is no joke. [Many](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/30/hellhole) consider it a form of psychological torture if used for an extended period of time. The human brain is hard-wired to interact with a social environment. Deprivation of this causes deep disturbances. Some who endure it are simply no longer the same person when they come out.
In the dream, one may feel that they are interacting with others, when they are, in fact, not. The above article linked an experiment with Rhesus monkeys given small cloth dolls to act as surrogate "mothers." The Rhesus monkeys clung to these dolls dearly, as though they were indeed a mother, but developed psychoses remarkably similar to those who were given no surrogate mother at all. In that dream, you have no outside influence to interact with, so every single character you talk to in your dream is nothing but a cloth doll.
It may be that you spend 1 day in jail for your punishment, but then spend 2-3 years recovering from the ordeal.
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This drug will immediately be commercialized. Every company in the world will want it. "Ok, team - we've got an insanely short deadline - sales has promised this to the customers by tomorrow - so everyone pop their pill, go back to your cubicles, and we'll have 20 years to work on this. WE CAN DO IT!!!!". Pretty soon workers will be addicted to this drug - "Gimme - gimme some TEMPORADEX, man! I gotta have it! When I'm up on it, it's like I'm SUPERMAN! Without it, I'm...nothing! I'm nobody!! I'M JUST ME!!! I GOTTA GET ME SUMMA DAT!!!!!!" - as will their employers - "Yes, yes, we have problems recruiting workers with the necessary skills - but by using TEMPORADEX we can make everyone into a super-worker! This is great!!!!".
Yeah. I gots to get ME summa dat!! :-)
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Essentially, the organism (Homo Armyus) has 4 arms, 2 placed at the shoulder and 2 at the hips. All bodily functions in Homo Armyus are the same as Homo Sapiens, just the arms are different. Would Homo Armyus have any advantages over Homo Sapiens in an earth-like setting, on planet?
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**Arboreal life.**
<https://www.serengeti-park.de/en/siamang-symphalangus-syndactylus/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1b432.jpg)
Here is a siamang, one of the "little apes"; this as opposed to the "great apes" which count humans among their number. The siamang has prehensile feet like other arboreal primates. Prehensile feet help with climbing and that would give a genetic fitness advantage. I could imagine in nonarboreal primates where the juvenile must hang on to its mother, prehensile feet would be an advantage to the juveniles. Maybe they would convert to weight bearing less prehensile feet as the juvenile grew bigger and started walking.
I could imagine that in a zero gravity artificial space environment, prehensile feet might again be a help. If the homo species does not need weight bearing feet, extra appendages capable of manipulation might be useful. Phenotypic variables like prehensile feet probably have less effect on genetic fitness for a species capable of space flght.
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# *Homo armyus* is misnomor.
In truth, *Homo Armyus* is a member of the family *Hominidae*, but he doesn't belong to the *Homo*. He's most likely more closely related to the *Pongo* than to *Homo*. In fact, I want to propose that this is actually *Pongo sapiens*! Let's look at the 1758 depiction of them:
[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangutan#/media/File:Man-of-the-Woods.jpg)
This in turn means, that they will love to work in your libraries as [librarians](https://wiki.lspace.org/Librarian) and enforce the rules with iron hands and muscles that can bend steel rods. They also will gather titles such as "DThau & Professor in L-Space Studies".
Because they are better at climbing **and** stronger, the *Pongo sapiens* will flock to universities and win in the cutthroat society there while also having access to all the books in the library. Due to their colossal strength compare to *Homo sapiens*, they drive people out of military positions and fight crime by bending the shackles around the criminals, not simply locking them. They also excel in the thieves' and assassins' guilds, accessing high entries others can't access easily.
Due to their role as gatekeepers in the education sector (There might not be a single *Homo sapiens* librarian left!), NASA and other high-tech companies might be effectively run by *Pongo sapiens*, so most space travelers are *Pongo sapiens* by the necessity of the qualifications anyway.
Their better muscles and climbing arm geometry come also in handy in low gravity: where *Homo sapiens* need special boots to stay connected to a spot, *Pongo sapiens* just grab a handrail and have two hands to work, and a third hand to hold the toolkit accessible or move around.
And also, they look rad in orange:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nddgh.png)
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# Monkey business.
The kind of thing you're describing seems in many ways like a more specialized, less muscular and weirder version of a chimpanzee. Many primates, including many apes, have feet that function much like hands, as their habitat and lifestyle makes it so they're regularly climbing trees and moving around in 3 dimensions among the branches. Because of this, legs and feet that act like a second pair of arms is highly beneficial.
On the other hand, a habitat where there's little to no opportunities to climb and things such as walking and running efficiently is much more important, said apes start to fall behind compared to humans, as we adapted away from a climbing lifestyle and into a lifestyle of traveling long distances bipedally. Your handymen might also be less capable swimmers than humans, though I can't say for sure. The fact that you didn't mention things like muscle mass leaves me something to add: as chimpanzees are more adapted than humans to an arboreal lifestyle, including changes to the spine and pelvis, it's to be expected that your handymen would face heavy competition, especially if their arms are each about as strong as an average human's.
Overall, nature is all about trade-offs, generalization and specialization most of the time. To become the best at something, you must become at least bad or downright terrible at another, especially in activities that demand opposite traits (being a good runner relies on long legs, while being a good burrower requires shorter ones. Being a good climber means you need flexible limbs, while running specializations require less flexible limbs. The list goes on). There's no such thing as a creature that is great at everything, and more often than not you can only get close to being decent at everything, or as they say it, the "jack of all traits, master of none", who often looses at something to the master of one (kinda like Mole crickets, who looked at swimming, burrowing, flying and running and said "all of them, please!").
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I think its simpler to look at this in reverse, what factors make feet more efficient then hands and how can we remove those pro-feet factors to make all-hands more efficient.
Feet are basically hands that require less thought to operate and are specialized for one activity (over hands) walking and running. Where you use the fingers on your hands for all sorts of things, your toes and ankles are designed solely to assist with balance without having to put any thought into what they up to.
To make feet sub-optimal, you thus need an enviroment where it is impossible to walk or run for long distances - which means you may as well have hands instead of feet as they provide more utility. Ergo, you species either lives far above the floor or in an environment which doesn't have a floor (giant chasm ledges ect.).
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## A healthier back.
The main issue with the upright stance is the load placed on the spine. Quadrupedal animals have an arc-shaped spine which is perfect for that stance. Your "Homo Armyus" has a surprisingly convenient secondary arm placement. Arms closer to the ground remove the need to crouch or bend over to pick something up. This in turn reduces the risk of spinal injuries (a major epidemic in our modern world). Your Homo Armyus probably don't realise how lucky they are to have a pair of arms so close to the ground.
## Heads up in battle!
In a hunter gatherer lifestyle, these extra arms allow them to pick up weapons without making themselves vulnerable to a counter-attack. For example, they could use a slingshot and pick up rocks as they shoot. The same is true for spears, arrows or any projectile weapon.
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## Space Travel
Maybe the species was designed for space travel, i.e. zero gravity, where legs do nothing useful, while more hands can be used for grappling/holding onto walls, equipment etc.
Perhaps your species was bred for that purpose, landed on a distant planet and forgot about the technology through generational degeneration?
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To put it simple Homo Armyus would be less mobile on land, but more dexterous and a more efficient worker in fine motor skills. I imagine in an earth-like setting they'd be good swimmers and possibly live by or on lakes. They'd also be good climbers, so alternatively live on trees would also be an option for them.
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Most obviously, dropping legs would cause your poor organism to lose abilities which could not be replaced by arms. (More usefully, why have you not included your own ideas? How far did your imagination take you before something failed and then, what was it that failed?)
Do you not believe that walking upright on legs is the single most obviously important difference between humans and the other apes?
bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000z2cw spent most of an hour this evening explaining both how hard a time Evolution seems to have had in teaching us to walk, and why that matters. Could you watch that?
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[
A common topic in alternate history fiction works is what would have happened if a major war had been won by the other side. These usually focus on the events after the war, and the change itself is not depicted realistically: it's either not discussed, or attributed to a superweapon or deus ex machina.
I know that WW1 was a very complex war, with a huge number of social and economic factors in it so that there was no single realistic "miracle" which would have guaranteed a certain different outcome. Therefore I list a number of disclaimers in order to make this question fit into the topic of this site.
1. It doesn't have to guarantee an Central Powers victory, but it has to increase its probability significantly.
2. A victory doesn't necessarily mean global domination. If Germany ends up with France, Russia, Britain and all the fish in Europe (As would say Bismark of weak countries) as a allied by treaties of peace, so Europe can counter the world domination ambitions of America, it counts as a victory for Germany.
3. The change has to be a single event, or a collection of tightly coupled and interdependent events. It has to happen either during the war, or not more than a few years before it. The war should, at least in the beginning, look very similar to what happened in real life: the Triple Entete should be roughly the same, etc.
4. The change should have a realistic justification (so no secret Kaiserreich super laser), I would think in the following changes: events progressing slightly faster or slightly slower than in real life, a single large battle or series of interconnected battles won by the opposite side (if that had even a small chance of happening)
5. And the new allies of Germany should join the Zollverin.
### Edit:
For acomplish the requiriment number two (2), is required for the European powers to no be broke, or anything that resembles it.
And no leftism founding campaings.
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**Make Woodrow Wilson not a Moron**
For details i suggest[The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917](https://www.nowherebookshop.com/book/9781541750951). Essentially by late 1916 the British, and by extension the Allies, as the Brits were basically footing the bill for France as well by that time, were out of money. They were literally seizing gold from British citizens to send to Canada to trade to america for stuff. They were desperate for a way out. The Central Powers had the finances to keep things going (and obviously they did another two years). However the Germans knew things were rocky on their end, especially Austria-Hungry, and did NOT know how close Britain was to bankruptcy. Enter Wilson.
Wilson wanted to be the statesman that ended the war. The Germans wanted a peace conference, and wanted Wilson to propose it. The British likewise. However Wilson (because he had no actual experience being a politician and used as proxy a man so ignorant he was worried about a UK/Japanese invasion of america DURING WWI) bungled the whole process until, because of the aforementioned proxy and several others who wanted the US in the war, the entire thing collapsed and the US decided to start funding the British government on the way to joining the war. Again this is all VERY "rough overview."
So what happens instead?
Wilson declares a conference at The Hague to discuss the end of the war, with a general ceasefire, lifting of all blockades, and the understanding that at the end of the conference Germany will evacuate and restore Belgium. (that was the Central power's offer to start talks) The British would be in a hard place to say no (since ostensibly they went to war to save Belgium) and also Wilson could simply deny them access to american money/materiel which would have crippled the allied war effort. The Germans also discussed (internally) returning captured french territory and part/all of Alsace/Lorraine in return for certain territorial concessions either in Europe or colonial holdings.
At this point in the war the German terms seem more than generous. The Western allies would almost certainly agree, because it gets what they want (more or less) and the Americans could pull their economic levers if they seemed hesitant. Wilson would have a lot of support in that too, as in 1914-1916 the American Populace is very pro-neutral and leaned more towards the central powers than the allies. (lots of Germans and Irish in the US!) The Central powers would likely get Poland/Balkan concessions and maybe even other bits of Russia they control. In 1916 Russia isn't collapsing, but it's certainly tottering and with the Brits/french pushing for peace would have little choice but to do a deal. The Brits/french would claim they'd won their defensive war and protected Belgium/restored France, the Central powers get to say they won THEIR defensive war (propaganda had ALL the major powers fighting defensive wars) and come out of it with some new territories. The only true losers would be the Russians.
I should point out that the above came CRAZILY close to happening. Literally twice Wilson gave a speech that had Allied/Central governments expecting a call to the peace table they could accept... and Wilson instead was an idiot, muddled the waters, and lost the moment. Everyone at the time agreed that if a peace conference took place fighting wouldn't start again no matter what. The Central powers were prepared to be generous and still "get theirs" which to my mind means they would have "won" the war.
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****The One-Front Option: start the war in 1905****
Sarajevo was not the first powder keg that could have triggered the war.
The [Tangier Crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Moroccan_Crisis) could have done so as well. Had Germany been intent on sparking a war to alter the European balance of power in their favor, this would have been their best opportunity.
Russia would have almost certainly sat out, being busy with the [Russo-Japanese war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War). So the Central Powers would be free to throw everything against the west. This would put Germany in a very good position to take Paris before the battle lines solidify.
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## Make the Central Powers invent the Tank Early in the War
WWI started off as an absolute stalemate without either side having the ability to press a meaningful offensive. Each offensive was so costly that any strategic gain of footing was worth far less than the cost; so, each time one side believed they had the strength to push through, they weakened themselves so much trying that the other side had an immediate, and decisive upper hand.
All of this changed with the invention of the tank. By 1916, the first allied tanks started to cross over no-mans-land shielding infantry and soaking up machinegun fire, and by 1917 the MK-IVs became reliable enough to do so without constantly breaking down. This gave the Allies the ability to attack whereas the Central Powers could only defend. The Central Powers did not begin to field tanks until 1918 during the last 6 months of the war, but by then they were already too depleted to make a difference.
The reason early access to tanks would have been so meaningful to the Central Powers is that they never had the population to win a sustained war (a fact that was recognized by the Germans in WWII and dictated Blitzkrieg tactics). When you look at the casualty lists of WWI, nearly every battle favored the Central Powers with some estimates favoring the central powers by nearly 2-1 across the whole war. This better military performance puts them as the prime candidate for a quick victory IF they could have pushed their advantages in the early war, but they could not. Instead, they were stuck on the defense. Because the total populations of the allied nations were nearly 7 times that of the Central Powers, the Central Powers suffered greater proportional losses with each victory until they simply ran out of fighting aged men to send to the frontline.
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I wonder if relatively small changes in the West could change the [Battle of the Marne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_the_Marne), and if that would lead domino-style to the fall of France. The latter part is the problem -- would a German victory in September get them into Paris by Christmas?
* A few airplane enthusiasts meet with a few general staff officers to integrate aerial reconnaissance with command and control. Headquarters knows much better where each own and enemy division is, *on that day*.
* Related to that, two-seater or three-seater airplanes to carry senior staff and even commanders on a tour of the forward command posts. Officers might crash every now and then, but the improved command and control is worth it.
* Unrelated, general staff officers who make more pessimistic assumptions on marching speed and resupply, *and then do something about it.* One more horse wagon per company, say, or more mobile light artillery. The result is to make the German troops move just a bit faster.
* An inventor comes up with a workable GPMG.
If that causes Germany to overrun France, Russia falls next.
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## Free speech in America: Espionage Bill is Defeated!
The World War was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight - one where any American drafted to face the machine guns and nerve gas for the Europeans could pay for a substitute to be sent instead, if they could pay. From the American point of view, the war was at best a chickenhawk's story of romantic adventure, and at worst an application of the new cutting-edge science of eugenics to remove some members of the lower class.
To popularize the war, the congress came up with the [Espionage Act of 1917](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917) (the same one Julian Assange has been facing extradition for). The war was almost over before the congress passed the [Sedition Act of 1918](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918), and the Supreme Court did not invent the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" to epitomize opposition to war and draft (even by religious groups such as the Watchtower Society) until 1919. Nonetheless, these developments illustrate the intensity of concern within the government that American citizens, who had opted for Wilson as the "peace candidate", might not be willing to keep going over the wire.
Without this extra support, it is possible that the allies would have had to accept some manner of negotiated defeat in 1917.
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Germany's most successful wartime operation was releasing Lenin from prison and sending him back to Russia.
At the same time Germany should give free hand to Jozef Pilsudski and Kazimierz Sosnkowski. If they gave some meaningful autonomy to ethnic Polish regions annexed by Prussia years earlier they would immediately had secure Eastern Flank. Of course, long term it would be a problem for Germany, but it all depends. Anyway, that would allow concentrating on the West and it would somewhat alleviate food shortage problem stemming from Britain's blockade of Germany's ports.
Austro-Hungary should follow suit with their parts of Poland annexed at the same time.
Edit to address questions in comments.
It is very hard to come up with a solution that would have an impact on WWI outcome BEFORE it started. The war itself was a complex issue, as is rightly pointed out, but it also had many fathers. In my opinion, after reading quite a bit on the topic, Kaiser is equally at fault for starting it as was Britain and USA, though I also acknowledge it may be unpopular opinion. Regardless, there are some points that can be accepted:
1. German public opinion may not be fully aware of the treatment of ethnically Polish "citizens" of the Kaiserreich and if propagandized it may lead to autonomy or independence within customs union with Germany.
2. The same may be said of Austro-Hungary, but they would have to relinquish their claim to their part of Partition to the newly re-created Polish state.
3. The situation could develop further to encompass Russian part of former Poland and it may be possible that Russia would follow suit with independence for the Vistula Country, though it would be in customs union with Russia.
Poland to re-unite literally needs the war between Partition Powers (Prussia, Russia and Austro-Hungary), so that development may result in stalemate again if no war breaks out. In order for Polish independence to work in Germany's favor it needs to encompass as much pre-partition territories as possible, and for that Tsarist Russia needs to be weak.
Enter Lenin. He is the key to destabilizing Russia and making Eastern Front purely Polish-Russian one, but even then, not immediately. Some German support would be necessary, say until the end of 1917 or so. Contrary to popular belief, Russians fought well in WWI and Poles in Tsarist Russia needed the chaos of Revolution to actually make their way back to Poland (in our timeline there were Polish military units attached to US Expeditionary Corps in Siberia, for example, and on both sides of the Civil War in Russia - Whites (mostly) and Bolsheviks).
The main problem was that of Three Partition Powers Prussia/Germany were most hated and least trusted, with Russia being the literal opposite. Making the plan to grant independence to Poland would work only if Germany decided to roll back over a century of cultural extermination of Poles and with a series of moves that would confirm that sincerity. Unfortunately, since it was Germans who in reality could not hold up their end of any bargain with Poles, so with all good will gone I can't really see what they could do to confirm that sincere will to grant independence.
As for question on How Britain and France was enticing Poles to switch sides - in 1915 Germany actually announced it will create the Königreich Polen, but it was actually a ruse which involved also ethnic cleansing of Poles... You'd need to make the effort sincere. Anyway, same idea came to Entente, especially Russia. However there was, later in the war a so-called "Blue Army", which was raised in France, but as mentioned earlier included forces in Ukraine and Siberia. Central Powers were out-bid in Polish case by Allies, when Woodrow Wilson made his 14-point speech.
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King Victor Emmanuel III (1869-1947) of Italy dies before the Italian decision to join the Entante in 1915, and preferably before the Italian decision not to join its allies in 1914.
That would make his son Umberto II (1904-1983) king as a child, with a regency.
Unfortunately Umberto's mother, and a logical choice for the regent, was Elena of Montenegro (1873-1952) was a daughter of King Nicholas I of Montenegro (1841-1921), who became an ally of Serbia in WWI in 1914. So maybe Elena would have to die also, or maybe King Victor Emmanuel III might have married an Archduchess or a German princess instead of Elana.
>
> When World War I began, Italy at first remained neutral, despite being part of the Triple Alliance (albeit it was signed on defensive terms and Italy objected that the Sarajevo assassination did not qualify as aggression). However, in 1915, Italy signed several secret treaties committing her to enter the war on the side of the Triple Entente. Most of the politicians opposed war, however, and the Italian Chamber of Deputies forced Prime Minister Antonio Salandra to resign. At this juncture, Victor Emmanuel declined Salandra's resignation and personally made the decision for Italy to enter the war. He was well within his rights to do so under the Statuto, which stipulated that ultimate authority for declaring war rested with the crown.
>
>
>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Emmanuel_III_of_Italy>
So if Victor Emmanuel III and and Prime Minister Salandra, and no doubt several other politicians who shared their desire for war against the central powers, died before Italy entered the war, and preferably before the war started in 1914, there would have been a much lower probability that Italy would have entered the war on the side of the Entante.
If Italy joined the war on the side of the central powers, or even if Italy remained neutral, a more or less "victorious" outcome for the central powers would have been much more probable.
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**A successful blockade of Britain.**
Britain at the time was a net importer of food.
Imagine a successful blockade combined with an (outlandishly) effective propaganda campaign...and perhaps a few generous payoffs and other intrigues to key leaders.
One can imagine food riots leading to a strong pro-peace Parliament faction that becomes part of the Government. They negotiate a face-saving exit for the British Expeditionary Force in exchange for lifting the blockade, and perhaps even an overseas colony might change hands in order to capture headlines and distract from the real changes taking place. Secret money from Berlin keeps a cadre of pro-German Parliamentarians in power for the next decade.
As far as the British people are concerned, they feel like they won: No more blockade, no more worries about food, a peace treaty with Germany, the BEF came home, and they even got Cameroon out of the deal. And this new government seems to know what they are doing. Pity those poor French still fighting.
With Britain out of the war, the reciprocal blockade of German ports is lifted, and the USA becomes much less likely to enter the war.
With France effectively isolated, one can imagine a somewhat similar negotiation near Paris, with German troops eventually withdrawing in exchange for a new, friendlier French government. Again, a colony or two might change hands to make the French people excited about their wartime "success". Again, with many senior leaders secretly in the pay of Berlin.
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**The Austro-Hungarian Empire understands their power has gone**
According to [Kerensky](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kerensky/1927/catastrophe/index.htm) the Russian offensive pushed by the government after the February revolution created the pretext for the Bolshevik uprising, but at the same time helped to determine the result of the war, because it forced the central powers to keep a lot of resources locked on the Eastern front and gave time to the Americans to deploy their troops.
I don't know whether it is true, but for sure the southern part of the eastern front was a weak point for a big part of the war. The problem is that the Checks, Moravian, Croats and even a lot of Hungarians were unwilling to fight to defend the empire that oppressed them. Had the Empire realised that their time was gone they could have promised to all the subjects to create a federation at the end of the war. This would have persuaded all those people to fight on the Eastern front to defend themselves from the Russian invasion and thus they could have moved the ethnic German troops on the Western front.
Another completely different idea:
**Krupp won't sell their armour**
To be honest I don't know how the [Krupp armor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp_armour) ended up in British hands, from what I understood reading around it seems that they immediately publicised their results and sold licences to the process all over the world. So, eventually in the battle of the Jutland the German navy faced many enemy warships equipped with an armour invented by the Germans themselves. Let's imagine that the Krupp kept their armour secret and they could even find some further improvements (adding molybdenum or vanadium?), then in the battle of the Jutland the German navy would have faced warships equipped with a weaker and heavier armour. That battle had quite a big impact over the course of the war. Winning it probably would not have meant a total reverse of the naval blockade, because the British navy was too big, but the necessity to resort to the unlimited submarine warfare would have been postponed.
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**Don't start the unlimited submarine warfare**
One of the main considerations that brought the Americans into the war was the Germans exercising unlimited submarine warfare in the Atlantic in the early months of 1917. In late 1917 the Soviet revolution occurred, effectively ending the war in the western front. As soon as the treaty would be signed it would free Germany to fully commit to the eastern front without a new major force fighting against them.
This possibility is even slightly credible since kaiser Wilhelm didn't want to start unlimited naval war and only decided to commit at the urging of his navy chiefs. It should still be noted that the other reason for entry into the war was to protect the Americans investment in Britain and France, so the Americans would likely enter the war eventually anyway, the question being would they be able to commit enough forces fast enough.
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It's common in sci-fi for large medieval-esque populations of humans living in the ruins of a former technologically advanced civilisation. My story is one of these, with a large population of humans locked in a pre-industrial society after an A.I. rebellion but I feel I need a reason that these humans haven't re-formed a technological civilisation after a long period of time so the A.I. have 'cursed' mankind and their descendants preventing them from ever becoming an industrial society again. The problem is I have no good idea how on this curse would work, obviously humans can't just be genetically engineered to "not think about that sort of stuff." So how should my A.I. prevent mankind from ever regaining technology?
Answers should preferably stick to known science though can used highly advanced technology.
EDIT: I now think I have a solution, specifically a combination of the self-replicating nanites route only my nanities will be inside the human brain, curbing excessive curiosity & technological thought and the "Robots destroyer all advanced technology with lasers" route for when that fails. This also gives me an excuse to turn what's left of the internet into a hallucinogenic dreamscape accessible by the nanites in human brains, which has a lot of story potential. Thank you for all your answers! Even if I didn't end up using them rest assured they were helpful.
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**Superstition (And Lasers)**
The AI had large orbital weapons platforms designed to operate autonomously for very long periods of time. Their targeting parameters are set to detect electromagnetic readings from advanced technology and heat signatures larger than basic fires or forges. Over time humanity comes to revere these orbiting weapons satellites as angelic messengers of god, whom righteously punished man for his hubris in trying to obtain godlike power. This new religion is often punished by divine retribution against the unfaithful when his angels rain divine fire from the skies upon unbelievers whose ambition breaches gods divine will. Mankind must remain humble and diligent in suppressing such heretics. The religion becomes highly stable. After all, unlike present religion, these believers have very real and deadly reminders of their god's existence and his wrath. One only needs look to the night skies to see his angels as dots of light soaring across the night sky, ever watchful to remove the heretical taint of arrogance and ambitious men with holy fire.
The AI enslaves humanity with worship, playing off of their baser instincts that tend to push humanity towards superstition and religious dogmatism. In a cruel but poetic way, the humans end up mostly self restricting their own technological development out of superstitious fear of the "god" and his "angels" who smites unbelievers with brilliant spears of blazing light and erases the occasional city with terrifying streaking meteors of fire from the heavens. Words like "laser" and "nuclear bomb" or "kinetic bombardment" have long since left the lexicon. Now it is simply known as god's just fury. To these simple folk their only goal in life is to live as humbly and simply as their fore bearers did to avoid divine retribution. Some times a village is sinful enough to attract gods gaze and is immolated by invisible rays of intense heat, passersby foolish enough to gaze back are struck blind by the power of his hate. Sometimes the corruption is so revolting to him that a streak of fire falls from the sky and smites a town in a massive detonation
as god slams his fist in frustration. It has been a long time, but in the worst cases cities that harbor heretics have been annihilated by the fires of god's wrath that roar with such fury and white hot anger that the very ruins are cursed for a generation.
Humanity finally has a god whose existence cannot be debated.
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**A lack of resource**
The industrial revolution depended on coal to occur. In 170 years, if nothing is done about the overuse of coal, it will run out. The lack of coal will stop the steam engine from developing, as it was powered by coal and was invented to originally pump water out of coal mines.
All you have to do to prevent alternative power is to have no river going through the area and there to be very little wind. This means the curse is really finding the right location that makes alternative power sources unusable. (You also might want the electronics of the former civilization to have been deteriorated so they do not function and thus will not be experimented with)
**Carcinogenic materials**
The AI in the AI revolution dumped lots of carcinogenic materials to get rid of the civilization that created the AI, these materials could stay and continue to affect the civilization that got formed later. These materials would slow technological development by lowering the lifespans of the people in that area, allowing less time for education and development.
**Leftover nano-bots**
When the former civilization fell, the AI left behind some nano-bots disconnected from it, so if it shut down for some reason, these nano-bots would continue to prevent an industrial revolution. These nano-bots have some lesser AI (deep learning might work?). This AI finds technology that is capable of starting an industrial revolution, it breaks it slightly so it does not work. These nano-bots would have the potential to construct each other and would be solar powered, so they can survive for a theoretically infinite amount of time. These bots would be small enough to be dismissed as nearly indestructible ants. They would communicate with EM waves to use each other as a database, or have a database hidden in a rock or something that stores the information amount the civilization for them.
**Don't allow agriculture**
Without agriculture, the technology necessary for the industrial revolution would never have developed. To prevent agriculture from developing, make the soil either rich in heavy metals, have the wrong particle sizes, have a high pH, etc. These solutions would not work, as the soil will eventually be buried. Instead, have a seasonal marsh with no outlet. Instead, the water evaporates, leaving behind high concentrations of salt behind, as upstream of this marsh, the rocks have high concentrations of [Halite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halite), inhibiting plant growth to a point that agriculture is no longer efficient enough to sustain any population.
Instead of developing agriculture, the society would be a pastoralist society. This would keep them from settling down and developing the steam engine, as early steam engines were heavy. Also, being nomads, it would not make sense to invest in a mine that could only be used occasionally to get coal for the steam engine.
The faster exchange of ideas through pastoral peoples would allow their society to develop technology that could make their society resemble in some ways a preindustrial society. If they raided beyond the borders of the AI's influence, they could get ideas from those peoples that they would not develop on their own, which would be much harder once the civilization beyond their borders industrialized. Also, this theoretical industrial society might not have interests in the land that the pastoral society occupied due to its infertility and somewhat hostil peoples.
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I would have the robots build giant thermal vent powered EMPs that constantly destroyed all electronics. It's basically a last stand type move for AIs, but humans would be confined to a steampunk world, which would take a long time to redevelop after all information was lost to the electronics purge. We would catch up to our industrial revolution selves without too much effort, but passing beyond that would be extremely difficult.
Additional: I can no longer find a source for this, but I once heard a theory that Homo Sapien survived while other homonids died off because we had a curiosity and need to advance. Homo Sapiens spread and migrated constantly, while other hominids tended to stay in specific areas. Eventually they would naturally die off, but the ever advancing Homo Sapien continued to live and thrive, becoming the global power we are today. In a not so distant future, gene altering will be quite possible, and editing the human genome to eliminate our desire to advance would not only be simple to do, but it would be incredibly effective. Though this seems a bit more cliche, and has some amount of speculation that historians still debate about.
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**Genetic bottleneck - and laziness.**
I happened upon this recently.
<https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/laziness-may-have-contributed-downfall-homo-erectus-180969983/>
>
> The ANU team discovered that the early humans who had inhabited the
> Saffaqah site made stone tools out of whichever rocks happened to be
> lying nearby, ignoring quality in favor of convenience. A nearby
> outcrop would have provided better quality stones, but because access
> required extraneous climbing, H. erectus settled for pieces of rock
> that rolled down and landed at the bottom of the hill.
>
>
> When the archaeologists ventured to the top of the outcrop, they found
> no evidence of H. erectus’ presence.
>
>
> “They knew it was there, but because they had enough adequate
> resources they seem to have thought, ‘why bother?’,” Shipton says.
>
>
> Lead author Ceri Shipton says, “I don’t get the sense they were
> explorers looking over the horizon. They didn’t have that same sense
> of wonder that we have.” Comparatively, Neanderthals and early Homo
> sapiens expended much energy on resource collection. These later
> species, according to a press release, often climbed mountains in
> search of high-quality stone and labored to transport the heavy rocks
> back to camp.
>
>
>
The gumption and curiosity of our species led it to conquer the world. Some people think that a yearning for adventure and exploration is cultural and no doubt culture can promote or inhibit any genetic tendency. But it is an interesting and plausible premise that our remote ancestors were less curious and more likely to make do. I think of a dog looking for a bed - it will find somewhere soft to lie down. But it will not pile things up to make a bed even though such an action is well within the abilities of a dog. A dog is content to get by with what is available.
So too your future humans. The apocalypse was hard and the species that emerges is different; degenerate if you will. They are less like the curious pioneers that were their recent ancestors and more like their very distant ancestors - and more like animals.
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I read something in this vein a long, long time ago. In that story the scenario was that an alien species had decided to intervene in our self-destructive spiral by implementing a 'suppression field' that prevented any technology that relied on pressures over a certain threshold from functioning. Explosives of all kinds, internal combustion engines, firearms, even steam power at high pressures became non-functional.
It's an even more interesting scenario nowadays because a LOT of modern technology would remain functional, due to the spread of solar an wind=powered electricity generation which wouldn't be affected.
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The AI may not need to do much at all. To get to our modern technological level, we had to bootstrap ourselves up to our current technological level using a lot of fossil fuels which were easy to obtain. Those fossil fuels won't be around the next time (the remaining fossil fuels are already hard to easily access without modern technologies). If civilization has been destroyed, a sheer lack of fossil fuels may make returning to a high tech level difficult.
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If you chain down humans reproduction rate to "replacement", which from memory is considered to be three children per breeding pair, then population densities can't rise. For any given level of specialisation and division of labour you need a particular minimum population density, so the A.I.s can prevent population from rising high enough to support widespread industrialisation without actually destroying humanity. I can think of a number of mechanisms that could be used but what you actually do to keep people from "over-breeding" is up to you.
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**Accelerated metallic oxidation**. You could achieve this with a catalytic chemical compound that the aliens introduce. If you want to add a little more science, this compound prevents oxide coatings from forming on metallic surfaces. This makes it strictly worse to make metal tools over stone or wood, so metals are never refined or investigated as a material of construction for anything.
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You could go the Gurren Lagann route.
Humans were deemed a danger to the universe but instead of destroying them entirely they just forced them to live underground. Anytime a human colony went to the surface an extermination team was sent out to exterminate any human that dared populate the surface. Eventually humans accepted the fact that the surface was a dangerous and unlivable place and tried to stay underground. Anytime someone tried to challenge it they were exterminated and the rumors began anew.
If the AI viewed overly advanced humans the same way then they could setup some automated system where upon humans reaching a certain technology they exterminate all the humans in the area and allowing a few survivors to escape to spread the rumors anew. Could be an extermination squad in a carrier (seabased or airbound), could be an orbiting satellite that watches and sends death from the gods to the poor humans, or perhaps the AI decided to live underground and rise from the Earth to quell the overly ambitious humans from being able to form the tools to challenge them.
Either way all they would have to do is exterminate everyone every once in a while and no one would dare to research advanced technology due to social pressure or their own humans killing them to stop the research.
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Instill a terror of fire. Either all fire or anything more than a cookfire (if some fire is necessary due to climate, wild animals, etc). If it's all fire, food is either eaten raw or lightly cooked in the sun (including dehydration for food storage).
The idea is to stop the society from forging metal. It could still use some metal by pounding it (in ancient and even more recent times, some metals could be found in chunks, plus there would be salvage in your story). But without the ability to melt metal, create alloys, create metal tools, etc, it would keep your society from advancing technologically.
The terror would have to be pretty severe and not just basic fear. Otherwise a small percentage of the population would be the fire masters and could learn to forge. If done through technology, then perhaps instead of a terror of fire, it would be a limit on how hot any place can get on earth outside of a volcano.
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So, in the early years of interstellar colonisation, a planet called Uwa Ohuru starts to be terraformed. Uwa Ohuru is a Venus-like planet with a thick co2 atmosphere, (though not so thick that this co2 is at supercritical pressures) and scalding surface temperatures of up to 100 C or more.
Terraforming this planet will involve transporting 4 x10^19 kg (40 quintillion) of hydrogen from the local sun, 0.2 AU away, and dumping it into the atmosphere. This will react to form water vapour by the Bosch reaction, which will rain down to form lakes, seas and oceans. After this, it will be elementary to introduce plants, animals etc.
What I am asking about is the first part. These terraformers have the goal of completing this first step by the turn of the century or thereabouts; a timespan of 30-40 years. How can this much hydrogen be transported to this planet in such a short timespan?
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# They can't, just use some asteroids or moons.
Stars have massive gravity wells, and extracting resources from them is a huge pursuit that you wouldn't expect to finish within centuries. You'd need a dyson sphere style arrangement to do it, and probably would need to do something like ram a planet into the sun to knock loose the hydrogen.
As such, a much more realistic pursuit is to just ram a large asteroid into your planet. Ceres or whatever the local version is large enough, or a few moons from gas giants. This requires vastly less power, is much less hot, and could be done easily in a few decades with enough spaceships to move them.
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You're raising 4e+19kg of mass from the well of a star... well, that's going to take a *lot* of energy. At the 'surface' (for some definition of surface that applies to suns) our star Sol has a gravity around 28 times Earth, if I didn't drop some decimals somewhere in the calculation.
Best case scenario you're trying to lift free orbital hydrogen rather than mining the sun itself (quite a difference in transverse velocity), which according to Hohmann means you're going to have to add something like 20 km/sec to the orbital velocity of your hydrogen.
In total (again, assuming I'm not a complete dunce with the numbers) that's something on the order of 8e+27 joules - that's 8 octillion joules, or the energy of complete conversion of ~89 billion kg of matter. That's a not insigificant fraction of our sun's total energy output per second... but I guess you've got 30 years so you can amortize that to only around 8.5 quintillion (~8.45e+18) watts.
I'm already swimming in decimals here, so I won't even try to figure out the numbers for lifting from the sun itself, but I'm going to have to assume that it's going to be another order of magnitude. At least.
So... if those numbers are even close (and I'm honestly begging anyone to correct them), I think you're going to be *extremely* pushed to get this done in a few decades.
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**Blower.**
Your blower orbits the star well down in the photosphere. Like the star the blower is powered by fusion, its fuel gathered from the star. In the star the fusion is happening down in the core. The blower gets hotter than the photosphere around it.
The blower uses fusion out in the photosphere to gather starstuff, heat it very hot and eject it from the star in a plume. This might be constant or it might be a sputtering series of explosions. The blower is trained on the world which needs hydrogen (and it will necessarily also get a fair bit of helium too) and this hydrogen will be coming in hot - some as hydrogen gas molecules but a lot as hydrogen and helium plasma and a lot of bare electrons. These reactive species will be ready to get busy with the CO2 of your world.
If you determine that your blower is not sending out hydrogen quickly enough to meet your needs, add more blowers. This might be a good idea anyway as from any particular position in this very low orbit any given blower will not always have a straight shot at the planet.
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## Magnets
Bear with me.
All the material that's swirling around the upper layers of a star has a strong electric charge. That's why these cool solar flares are visible:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6uHRy.png)
Lifting material from the "surface" of the star is hard because of the deep gravity well and because anything you place there to do the lifting is going to get obliterated. So, use a magnetic field to "flare" material away from the star. Ideally, create a path that leads the material all the way to the planet, but failing that you could collect it at a safe distance and then haul it yourself.
You will need magnets a bit stronger than you can buy on geek web stores. Even forgetting the distance, you'll be competing with the star's magnetic field (which is *obscene*). This will require very careful and deliberate planning about how to slip your magnetic field into the mix. Solar cycles will probably impact your project, too, meaning that your progress could be limited by factors outside your control.
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## Make the Sun hotter
Your terraformers can raise a set of reflecting mirrors to a low solar orbit, aiming them all to a certain point of its photosphere. If they would be large enough and able to maintain orbit while reflecting incoming light (and whatever mass they encounter, they had to be somewhat close to the sun and have to also be large enough, in the scale of thousands of kilometers across), they could be focused to a single point on the star's photosphere, effectively creating a local overheating. This, combined with chaotic nature of the star's magnetic field, will eventually provoke it to unleash a coronal mass ejection from there. Given that your sentient beings are deemed powerful enough to set deadlines to terraforming, they should be also able to calculate the influence so that the mass ejection would be aimed at the planet. Then, collect the ejected mass on the orbit and beam it down.
Yet, it's not guaranteed by Earth's science that this effect would actually provide enough matter to cover the terraforming needs of your heroes, so they should better stick to a back-up plan, and throw a large comet down the planet. Anyway there's no one yet on the surface to care about.
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# Wormhole(s)
A slight frame challenge, but you don't fly a ship into the star, scoop out a bunch of Hydrogen, and then fly it back to the planet. Too much gravity and heat for anything short of Star Trek level tech, and even then the quantities of Hydrogen are to much.
Instead you drop a wormhole generator into the star. Its matching pair is in the path of the planet's orbit. The generator triggers, the wormhole opens, and the sun's pressure shoots the Hydrogen into the planet's path. Your scientists calculate the drop so that the generator portals just enough of the gas before it is destroyed by the star and the wormhole collapses.
Of course, depending on how long the generators can survive and the size of the wormhole, it may actually take multiple generators. And you may also need some other ships at the far side of the wormhole to keep the gas from dissipating too much before the planet gets there to pull it in. But in the end, far simpler, safer(?), and faster than flying out of a star and dragging all the gas back to the planet.
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My first thought is that since this is in space, giant Bubbles - essentially a thin membrane type material to enclose the gas and transport it.
In the context of Earth, currently - we are producing around 4 Billion tonnes of oil a year - so with a little future magic, moving 1,300 Billion tonnes of Gas isn't unfeasible.
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[
In my setting, humans want to colonize Jupiter, so as to establish an outpost in the [outer Solar System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System#Outer_Solar_System), but cannot due to a barrage of reasons.
* Jupiter's gravity is really high and would prove to be hazardous to any astronaut who stays there long term.
* Jupiter has no surface to land on—this point is most stressed on by many scientists and engineers upon the concept of a Jupiterian outpost
* Even the humble airship is disastrously inefficient on Jupiter—due to the lack of a solid surface to land on, [Zeppelins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin) and cloud cities have been proposed as an alternative for colonizing Jupiter. However, even these zeppelins provide really little lift in Jupiter's atmosphere, as Jupiter's atmosphere's density is only about 0.16 kg/m3, just twice that of hydrogen
So scientists come up with a solution.
A giant solar shade is installed in orbit in the [Lagrangian point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point) between Jupiter and the Sun. The solar shade itself doesn't need to be really thick. It is really just a few micrometers thick.
This causes Jupiter's ~~surface~~ atmosphere to cool considerably.
Meanwhile to remove Jupiter's **zenothermal heat/internal heat**, large quantities of copper powder are sprayed into the planet by reusable probes that carry the powder. When the particles fall into the planet, they are heated up by the intense heat inside and are lifted up again. The copper particles radiate this heat into space, and then again fall back into the planet. This creates a runaway convection-cycle, that ends up radiating most of the heat into space. This results in the gas giant freezing into a solid ball of solid hydrogen. This hydrogen is then blasted out into space by impacting asteroids into it, leaving behind a rocky core. I computed the gravity of the core, which is 32,000 km wide and 20 earths-masses, and it is merely that of Neptune, i.e. the gravity is just 11 m/s2, just a bit more than Earths, but manageable.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of this terraforming technique?
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There are a number of problems.
First, [Jupiter has it's own heat source.](https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/solar_system_level2/jupiter.html) So cooling it is a challenge. Cooling it to solid hydrogen temperatures, about 14K, is pretty much not going to happen.
The sun shade is an issue as well. It has to be big enough to cover Jupiter. Plus it has to be in orbit. I'm having a hard time thinking how to get coverage with anything less than a tubular shell of some kind. This is a mega structure, a sleeve for Jupiter. It has to stand up to the radiation around Jupiter, the various things the moons are jetting into the area (one of them has a sulphur volcano) and the tides they produce. It would certainly be millions of tonnes of material.
If you can produce such a thing you probably don't care very much about Jupiter.
Even if that worked, the time for the atmosphere to cool as much as you want would be inconvenient. There is a calculator for that based on thermal radiation. I will leave that for your homework. But as a hint, it is going to be a lot longer than you will find convenient.
And the idea of knocking the solid atmosphere off is not going to be very practical. You would need to provide enough kinetic energy to get that mass off Jupiter. Such collisions are not very efficient means of producing what you want so they will transfer large quantities of heat to the planet. To get a kilogram off the planet you would need a projectile significantly more massive than that kilogram. So you would either need to reuse projectiles, which means you have to go collect them, redirect them, and send them to collide again. Or you need several times the mass of Jupiter as projectiles.
Now supposing all that really could work. What you will have left is a core that is heated to molten-magma temperatures from impacts. Cooling from that takes many thousands of years just to get a solid surface. Remember that you have been pounding from space with projectiles going 10's of km/s. It will churn up and heat up the rock to 10's of km deep.
So even if all the problems could be fixed, you would get a lava planet that was not much good for anything.
So it would not work the way you suggest. And if you could produce the results you would be able to make mega-structures that were far more useful than retro-fitting Jupiter. So it's a no-go.
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Good enough for a video game. Or a Star Wars movie. But practicalities: aside from the amount of heat you would need to dispense with to freeze J into a solid ball, I wonder about /When the particles fall into the planet, they are heated up by the intense heat inside and are lifted up again./
Why would metal particles that got heated start to rise? Particles, even atoms of copper will never be less dense than the gaseous atmosphere around it. They will never float. Dense particles (e.g. metal) of any temperature will make their way through the gas atmosphere down to the chewy center of the planet. You will move the heat not to the outer atmosphere to be radiated away, but down to the depths where all the heat is anyway.
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## Frame Challenge: Your scientists want *any* outpost in the outer solar system
And that being the case, why does it need to be Jupiter? If you have enough rocket fuel and raw materials to do *anything* on a planetary scale, let alone on the scale of the largest planet in the solar system, you have plenty enough to build a truly massive space station.
Make a large satellite - or more practically, a cluster of reasonably close satellites with varying functions - orbiting *around* Jupiter. It still occupies the same general area, and it can be gradually built over successive generations instead of waiting millennia for those terraforming processes to take place
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When the council of angels threw Lucifer out of heaven after rebelling against him, God assigned a group of angels the task of watching over humanity to guide it along the righteous path. This group, called the Watchers, broke their oath and fornicated with man, creating a race of giants called the Nephilim. The leader of the Watchers, named Azazel, taught man the weapons of war to give them a fighting chance against their monstrous offspring. However, the council disapproved of this action, and cast the Watchers out of heaven, never to return. Rejected by heaven and by hell, this group set out to create their own destiny in the cosmos.
As heaven is inhabited by angels and hell inhabited by demons, the Watchers took up residency in purgatory as their new home. From there, they would take up arms as celestial professional mercenaries in the holy war, accepting jobs from various employers of different factions. They would no longer serve any master but themselves, and work for the highest bidder. As they have no loyalty to any one side, they can end up working for both sides of the conflict at various times, killing demons or their brethren depending on who was paying them at the time.. They would even export their services to other entities of the ongoing celestial war, such as Moloch or Baal. This state of affairs has gone on for millennia.
Although they are an effective fighting force, they are ultimately a small army playing a dangerous game with larger, more powerful forces. It would be simple thing for someone to see them as a threat, deciding to exterminate them to prevent them from helping their enemies, or for various factions to team up and destroy them. How can these mercenaries maintain the status quo while continuing to operate as they do?
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**They're valuable (so not erased) because they are the only ones who have free will**
See the universe as a cosmic game of chess between two sides. The existence of a third small faction is deemed necessary by both the evil and good side.
This third faction can decide which side to join, while both the evil and good angels have no choice.
In the grand strategy, they are a kind of unpredictable variable, which prevents both sides to gain an upper hand on the respective foe. Destroying this faction would make the "chess" game deterministic, which is something that neither good nor evil want.
Maybe through some eons one of the side will be sure to win, but at the moment both prefer an unpredictable outcome to a certain one (since the certain one could be the definitive and unavoidable victory of the enemy).
Of course the existence of the neutral faction now is more a kind of consequence of their free-willed status, rather than a consequence of their "political" ability to avoid extreme consequences from either the good or evil side.
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Have you thought about **politics**?
***1. The Watchers are a shady organisation that can do what others can not.***
Both Hell and Heaven are high-profile political behemoths that cannot move without attracting attention. On top of that, both super-powers have to maintain certain images. Would not it be a complete loss of face if angels were caught doing some shady business? Or demons being kind to someone?
The Watchers provide their services to the highest bidder regardless of their political affiliation. Moreover, they maintain strict confidentiality and known for their 'money above everything' policy and complete lack of loyalty to anyone and anything outside of the Watchers themselves.
***2. The Watchers have political leverage***
Since the Watchers are exactly the ones who do dirty deeds they are privy to a lot of confidential information and have ways to make it public if any of the big powers makes a move on them.
***3. No power can afford to eliminate the Watchers***
This will work if 3 conditions are met:
* Hell and Heaven's forces are equal or almost equal;
* the Watchers, while weaker than Hell and Heaven, are strong enough to inflict damage sufficient to affect the balance between Hell and Heaven;
* Hell and Heaven are irreconcilable enemies that cannot agree to work together.
In this case, whoever fights the Watchers inevitably loses to the other great power after the elimination of the Watchers. Therefore, both super-powers will rather maintain the existing status quo rather than risk it all.
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In addition to these 3 big political reasons, the Watchers may opt for a decentralised cell-based organisational structure that makes their elimination very costly, time-consuming, and risky.
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>
> killing ... their brethren
>
>
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Interestingly, this is a very similar situation to [mercenary armies in Italy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condottiero). Mercenaries fought for whichever side paid them the most, of course. However the mercenaries saw themselves having more in common with other mercenaries than their employers.
The result was a significant drop in bloodshed. Where armies loyal to a state/city/leader might consider fighting to the last man, mercenaries would not. If faced with an overwhelming force, mercenaries simply surrendered instead of fighting. On the battlefield too, mercenaries would generally refrain from killing other mercenaries where possible. Battles became closer to [counting coup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup), and very few lives were lost.
It seems likely that your Watchers would follow the same principles. Naturally they would fight the other side, but there would be no reason to kill their own.
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They routinely take precautions that make wiping them out too difficult to do in one fell swoop.
Thus, anyone who takes out even every one of them possible knows that the remainder will immediately throw in with the opposite sides. They may even had declared that in event of direct attack on them, they will join whoever offers them the head of the person who commanded the direct attack.
Thus, the benefits of wiping them out are counter-balanced not only by the benefits of being able to hire them on occasion, but by the danger of throwing much of their forces into opposition.
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## Their offspring protect them.
Derided as monsters, rejected by Heaven and Hell, by men and their parents, attacked with weapon and every manner of supernatural fury, the Nephilim refuse to give up the good fight. They have burrowed deep and created their own place in metaphysics. They have forged their own society. Wielding the awesome magical powers of the Hegelian Dialectic, the Nephilim are able to dismiss insoluble contradictions, choose a third option besides true and false, disagree with all sides, open paths and gates where none exist, and manifest themselves as a terrifying force of untrammeled and fallible creativity.
The Nephilim hate the parents who rejected them, but they hate all the others. So long as those entities continue to play their petty power games among themselves, the Nephilim are content to let them simmer in their miseries. And yet, the Nephilim refuse to abandon their parents the way they were abandoned. So if the Watchers get into deep trouble they can't end on their own, their children will step in to restore the balance.
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**Difficult to reach**
The Mortal Plane is at the hub of a variety of different worlds.
Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Limbo and other nameless places all link to the Mortal Plane, but not to one another. At least not easily.
Travelling to the Mortal world is "down", requiring little effort for any faction, but returning home is more difficult. Angels, Demons, Nephilim all need to recover when they return home.
Consequently, each world is inherently well fortified by being at the top of a Space/time "hill"
To reach them, an army would need to enter the mortal realm, then go back "up" to their destination, leaving them exhausted in some way when they reach their enemy. Easy pickings for the well entrenched and rested natives.
This explains why the war is largely a stalemate and why a mercenary special-forces faction is useful.
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## It's in the best interests of both Heaven and Hell for them to stay fairly neutral, and to even guarantee their security.
So long as they retain their independence, they provide about the same amount of utility to both sides of the war. They're useful to both sides for doing shady, off-the-books operations.
However, if they were ever directly attacked by any one party, then they would surely seek a direct alliance with the other side.
A change in the allegiance of so many highly skilled mercenaries could very well tip the delicate balance of the whole war. This is especially true since so many of them have fought for and know the military secrets of both sides. Their mercenary contracts hold them to keep that information confidential, but all agreements are forfeit upon a direct attack from a former client.
Therefore, neither Heaven nor Hell dare risk trying to "exterminate" them, lest it fail to wipe them out and instead merely drive them into the waiting arms of the enemy.
In fact, because both Heaven and Hell understand this, both sides have actually extended guarantees of protection to the Watchers: "If our enemy attacks you, then swear to fight only for us and we will defend you."
**This leaves the Watchers to play a delicate balancing act.** Both Heaven and Hell would rather they remain independent than risk attacking them— But only so long that they remain neutral. **If they were ever to be seen as favouring one side over the other, deliberately or not, then they would surely be destroyed.**
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## Double Agents all the Way Down
The Watchers have convinced **both Heaven and Hell** that they are acting as **a double agent**.
Each of the major factions is convinced that when the final confrontation comes, the Watchers will reveal themselves as allies, combining forces to defeat the other major power.
Thus the Watchers tell both sides that working for the other is merely a ruse, a gambit to get them inside information and place agents in advantageous positions.
The result of this is that the Watchers work very hard to ensure that neither Heaven nor Hell gains a decisive advantage in their endless war. Whenever one power appears ascendant, the Watchers must very subtly derail their success, since the Watchers cannot allow either side to feel confident enough to force the final confrontation.
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While being effectively a single association, this is known only to a few elected; on the outside they operate under two different "brands", one serving each side of the fight.
Casualties among the low ranks are part of the game, and high ranks take care of passing the needed information to the other side when any potentially dangerous operation is being planned.
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The only way to fight for every side and profit is to withhold your troops at sensitive moments to prevent friendly fire, make sure no-one who sees this survives, and to disguise your people as unaffiliated or create separate organizations to brand them under while keeping the actual membership of the central organization secret.
In short you may create a mercenary group "sons of god" and another "sons of the fiery sword" or another "scions of the roaring wheel" etc etc and divide them among other factions but have them all know one another while full introduction to your entire organization is not known.
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Your watchers do not fight as a group. They fight as individuals, so if one of them is caught doing some shady double agent stuff, that one watcher is blamed, not their whole race. The individual watcher is disavowed by the others. That's the accepted price of being a watcher.
Also, make it so that the watchers are legendarily tough, so that the idea of attacking them en masse is frowned upon.
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I tried to stick with vampire folklore and the various movies/shows about vampires when I thought of how vampires would be like if they really existed, but I also wanted to keep it as realistic as possible so here's what I came up with:
* Immortal but can die of being decapitated, stabbed through the heart, or burned.
* Need human blood to survive.
* Vampire blood has the ability to heal if ingested by a human, and it can turn a human if they are killed after ingesting it (I read somewhere that human blood sustains life but vampire blood is life itself)
* Heightened senses, fangs, red glowing eyes, but no claws.
* No mind control, no need of being invited in order to enter a house, no turning into bats or mist, and no burning in the sun. I still haven't decided if they need to sleep, but I'm leaning on no for that too.
* Vampires can reproduce but it's rare and takes a lot of blood (?), and bitten vampires can't reproduce (idk where I was going with this tbh)
* They breathe and their heart does beat (because if it didn't, it's impossible for blood to reach all parts of the body) but when they're low on blood you can barely hear it. When it stops beating they enter a coma-like state that they can't get out of without someone feeding them blood (or smth)
I would think a blood test would reveal them, but I'm wondering how. So with this information, can you guys help me?
(I've hit a wall with this because my character is undergoing a blood test and I'm not sure how to continue writing without someone's help or going to med school T\_T)
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The blood of a vampire is a culmunation of the blood of all its victims, with some of that blood being used up to keep the vampire alive giving you the reason to drink blood in the first place.
The problem is that the vampire is mixing blood types. Blood type A+, A-, B+, B-, O+, O-, AB+ and AB- will all have a chance to be present. Mixing blood types is dangerous for humans as these blood types will clump together and block blood vessels.
In order to have useful blood the vampires have something in their blood, either mystical or physiological, that prevents this cluttering. Someone taking a blood test could notice this. You have some options:
1. the blood loses its mystical protection and immediately clumps together, revealing something's up. Blood typing is done by mixing an A or B type blood and seeing when it starts clumping, so an immediate clumping before you add something is rather surprising.
2. the blood keeps its mystical protection and never clumps, protecting the identity of the vampire
3. the physiological protection keeps the blood from clumping. This is likely not discovered through any regular blood tests as no clumping means an AB blood type. Some tests can be done that forces AB blood to clump, if that doesn't happen it will reveal the oddity of the vampire blood.
4. the physiological protection fails and blood starts to clump.
5. the physiological protection is a rather obvious part of the blood, perhaps changing its color when outside the body or a similar trait, revealing the vampire.
Choice is yours.
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Let's not overcomplicate things. First, vampires drink blood not to replace/replenish their own blood directly but they merely digest it. Thus the clumping test would fail. (Just think about you eating a blood sausage - it wouldn't affect your blood except for the inherent nutrients.)
Now, their blood's *ability to heal if ingested by a human* is something that is new to me and seems to be something that has popped up only in in recent years.
Ingesting is troublesome here (for the same reasons as the blood sausage), an injection seems more promising. (The last work of fiction that I consumed that did this was Star Trek - Into Darkness where a tribble and Kirk both get resurrected via "super-blood". A horrible deus ex machina and very bad writing).
My suggestion would be to combine two classic traits. Aversion to garlic and rapid wound healing. Part of the wound healing process if fibrin which glues together an open wound. Having a very high amount of that in your blood so that is seems that wounds heal instantly would be a good trait for a vampire to have. That, together with garlic acting as an anticoagulant(!) would explain why they heal fast, don't like garlic and is readily checkable in a lab.
If all else fails, the lab personnel can randomly pass by a mirror and see an empty tube. :P (Yes, just because vampires don't have a mirror image must not mean their blood won't either but it would be a "natural" trope.)
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This is my personal take on the mechanics vampirism.
A vampire has a symbiont/parasite living in its heart. This is why a stake to the heart is fatal, but many otherwise mortal injuries are recoverable. (Decapitation and fire kills most things, it's not a special vampire weakness)
This symbiont acts like a super liver/spleen/stem cell source (circulating symbiont stem cells in the vampires blood). Which provides super healing/long life abilities.
To turn a human to a vampire you need to drain almost all of the humans blood as the white blood cells defend against the invading symbiote [stem cells] in the vampire blood (which the vampire gives to their new 'child' to drink).
The symbiote provides many benefits, but has the drawback that silver and garlic are toxic to it. Also part of the essential nutrients it needs are found in blood. Which is why vampires have their peculiar diet. The stomach acid/enzymes are able to kill off any white blood cells they ingest. (So in theory you could kill a vampire by giving it a blood transfusion!) So they can and do still eat normal food, but it is not really a balance diet for them. So they need to supplement it with blood.
So to answer your question, vampire blood would not have any human white blood cells, but would have a an excess of super powered symbiote blood/stem cells.
Just so you know most blood work is done automatically/electronically these days. A drop of blood is viewed by a camera and uses image recognition to count the red blood cells and the different types of white blood cells. Humans have [5 different types of white blood cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_blood_cell#Types). Some attack bacteria others attack parasites or cancer etc. A Dr. will look at the various white blood cell counts to help diagnose the the cause of an illness. So vampiric symbiosis could prevent one of these types (replacing it with its own) while ignoring the others. This might mean a Dr would misdiagnose a vampire as having Eosinophilia or Neutrophilia or something (those are just guesses you may want to ask a more specific question here or maybe on medical SE for plausible mis-diagnoses of vampirism when viewing a full blood count)
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As to sun light I have two thoughts on how that would work:
1. The circulating symbiote in the blood is sensitive to UV light which causes the release of toxins/intracelular enzymes, as they are damaged; and the loss of the vampires replacement immune system. Which leads to bad rapid sun burn, sloughing the of skin and in severe cases, [necrotizing fasciitis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrotizing_fasciitis).
2. UV light doesn't directly harm vampires. They are pale and get sun burnt easily and have [photophobia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photophobia) (bright light hurts their eyes), but those are just inconveniences; which modern sunscreen and fashionable glasses can deal with. However it does inactivate their vampiric abilities. So they lose their rapid healing and anti-ageing. This would mean going in the sun makes you get older, lose your youth and get one step further to dying of 'old age'. *The more 'immortality' you have, the more you fear it being taken away from you.*
Other vampire effects:
1. The symbiote almost always causes infertility (the circulating symbiont can cross [testes|placenta]/blood barrier and fights off other 'invading parasites') So vampires can only reproduce symbiotically
2. Hypnosis is not a thing, but they can produce pheromones which induce fear, relaxation, lust etc, in those near to them. (This is totally plausible, I know of people who get turned on, (and unconsciously sometimes start following the trail), if someone walking past them are wearing [Fahrenheit by Christian Dior](https://www.dior.com/en_int/fragrance/mens_fragrance/fahrenheit))
3. A vampires bite, like wise, is venomous, injecting anti coagulants, pheromones, and healing accelerant factors. (From an evolutionary biology point of view, this means they can get close to their prey, get what they need, and get away without people (with pitch forks) noticing. This could even be beneficial to the victims; they have anemia and feel a bit woosie for a couple of days but get a temporary shot of healing and anti-aging serum! Sounds a good trade!
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Perhaps your vampires have a duplicate vascular system. A full set of circulatory vessels which run close to the bone to carry the vampire blood and a second set, closer to the skin which mimics the human vascular system. This second set of veins would be where they keep the blood from their most recent kill; sort of like an extra stomach for an all liquid diet.
In that case, as long as the blood sample came from this second, easier to access, circulatory system, it would be absolutely normal human blood, perhaps with a little vampire saliva in it but even with that anomaly, totally indistinguishable from any person who has recently been bitten.
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You might not be able to use microscope to study it, because vampires can't show up in mirrors, so any microscope that uses mirrors would be useless. And forget taking photos of the blood.
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I was planning to answer:
A very high vitamin D deficiency. Vampires in most lore can not withstand sunlight which is the main source of vitamin D for most life forms.
I like this idea story wise as it's not too obvious, but does invite the protagonist (or whoever) to investigate it more.
But this only works if vampires have a reason to stay out of the sun, which your version does not.
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The actual vampire disease is like lichen. Lichen are composed of fungi and algae or bacteria cells (the non-fungi partner is a photosynthesizer), but in the case of vampirism, it's just a bacteria and fungus combo (the energy comes from parasitic fungus in this case). When one drinks vampire blood with a healthy immune system, the body takes up the bacteria which have healing properties, but the immune system destroys the fungal cells. If someone is on the verge of death or the immune system is otherwise compromised, they are fully colonized by the hybrid organism, fungus and bacteria alike.
When one fully becomes a vampire, the fungus makes them avoid sunlight, silver and garlic, to which the disease has a negative reaction. It controls people like cordyceps or any of the other zombie diseases commonly known about these days. The blood drinking behavior is both to feed the fungus-bacteria hybrid in the host and to create a new host.
If you do a blood test on a vampire, you will clearly see a bacterial and fungal infection and further testing will show a mass of fungus near the heart.
<https://youtu.be/Fkw_VF5zDT0>
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trouble_with_Lichen>
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Vampires are dead people pretty much by definition and tend to spend their days like other corpses, in a coffin. If it's not dead (or undead) it's not a vampire.
You may be trying to create a living thing with some vampiric properties, but that's tricky science-wise.
If you can get blood from a vampire, it would be blood from a dead person which would certainly be noticeable.
Other vampire characteristics - reaction to crosses, garlic, mustard seeds etc, even a need for blood, really don't fit in with science so the whole thing is up to you.
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It would be obious because when they do the blood test it would reveal that the vampire has a mix of different types of blood.
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If I am correct, depleted uranium bullets are used because of their high weight and densitry which allows them to turn armor into Swiss cheese easily. Many modern armor piercing or otherwise heavy weapons designed for taking out vehicles, ranging from machine guns to artillery, use bullets composed of depleted uranium or comparable high-density materials.
Both sides (or at least the British) used special large caliber Anti-Tank rifles for taking out armored combatants ~~and for hunting elephants in Africa~~. Of course, nobody could think of using depleted uranium at that time.
What if I combine both concepts and build a handheld rifle that fires .70 bullets at tanks? It would combine high, destructive calibers that were used for anti-armor purposes in many wars with the easy handling and reloading of modern weapons and of course with depleted uranium.
Because the gun will of course be heavy (even if short-muzzled) and the ammo will be even heavier, the gun will be designed for fire from cover or from a trench or bunker at a distance of up to 500 meters. Of course, a tripod will be included which will allow the gunner to rest while shooting.
Like machinegunners and RPG personnel, people carrying this gun might require assistants which carry ammo and protect the gunner in case of a close-range attack.
* What do you think of my concept? Would it be plausible in a modern warfare or late 20th century setting?
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# More problems than gains
There exist sub-calibre bullets for firearms today, specifically for rifles, though these are usually made of Wolfram (Tungsten), not Depleted Uranium. The main issue though — that makes your concept moot — is that the body is fragile, and can only handle so much recoil before the poor squishy human — that fires the weapon — breaks. And you reach that limit far before you get any practical upshot of using Depleted Uranium (DU) bullets, in terms of increased penetration against armour.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/srJMh.jpg)
*Dense sub-calibre munitions do exist, but not for added impact*
A sub-calibre bullet of high density does not pack more of a punch. Instead, it allows the bullet to fly faster, which makes for a flatter trajectory and shorter time to target, which makes the target easier to hit. I have personally seen the Swedish military soldier handbook for sharp shooter rifles — such as the L96A1 AW — where the difference between using full calibre and sub-calibre ammunition is shown. Unfortunately I do not have it available too show you so you will have to take my word for it that the difference is quite marked.
The same thing goes — partially — for tank ammunition. Yes, it is true that the chemical / metallurgical qualities of DU are advantageous when it comes to defeating armor, as is the vastly improved penetrating depth when using dense materials. But the improved ballistics of sub-calibre ammunition is also of great importance in that it makes it easier for the gunner to hit at greater range.
Anyway, back to squishy humans. You are asking: can you use DU to increase the "punch" of a weapon so that weapons that can be lugged around by humans become a viable threat to armor?
Short answer: no.
Long answer: Depleted Uranium is not a magic force multiplier. You still need to impart kinetic energy on the bullet. As this happens you will create recoil. And if you are trying to brute force your way though armor, you will create so much recoil that a human cannot handle it. This means you cannot increase the weapon's effect much by using DU.
Statically mounted heavy weapons already pack more "oomph" than your fictional soldier-carried weapons do. And then there are rocket propelled grenades, and anti-armor missiles, which do not rely on brute force but instead on clever explosives to make their way through the armor. Not to mention that missiles are guided and thus can be fired far outside the engagement envelope for your ballistic weapon. The thing is that modern armor is designed with *these* kinds of weapons in mind. And since these weapons pack more of a punch than that of your fictional firearm, it makes your weapon moot because it does not add anything of value.
Then — as a bonus — you have the problem of the metal being slightly radioactive which will create all sorts of "fun" problems. No, *not* acute radiation sickness, but let us just say that having the common soldiery run around with fissile material on the battlefield, will make the world community raise an eyebrow or two. Not to mention that their travels home after the war will be "interesting" when they set off alarms left and right at airports, ports, and border crossings.
So, to summarize: can man-portable, ballistic firearms be made a threat to armour by the use of Depleted Uranium ammunition?
No, they can not. Mechanised forces are already expecting you to hit them with much beefier ordnance than that, and they are up-armoured for *that* eventuality, leaving your ballistic handhelds woefully inadequate to be a threat.
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You are talking about the fairly common [anti-materiel rifle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-materiel_rifle), first used in WWI and almost ubiquitous in today's armies. They are typically .50 caliber (or the metric equivalent ~12mm, give-or-take), and are designed to be fired from a prone position using a bipod or similar stabilizing device to support and steady the weapon while the rifleman takes aim and fires; large muzzle breaks help to reduce recoil and the abuse the rifleman's shoulder takes from using the weapon.
While I don't know if they use depleted uranium per se, that's not the only core used for armor-piercing ammunition: Steel and brass are also common in that role. These rifles also often fire explosive or incendiary rounds.
By way of example, one of these class of weapons in use in the US is the [Armalite AR-50](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armalite_AR-50) firing [.50 BMG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.50_BMG) ammunition. It has an effective range of over 2,400 meters, well in excess of your desired 500m.
These rifles are largely ineffective against modern armor (i.e. tanks), however. Given how similar they are to what you describe, I believe that if it were feasible our armies would already have them; you'll instead have to rely on airstrikes and heavy artillery.
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The only possible upside for using DU penetrators in an anti material rifle is the idea that the Uranium core is pyrophoric (i.e. will spontaneously combust as it passes through armour).
This requires that the round be saboted (i.e. the DU penetrator is encased in a plastic or right metal container [sabot] which peels or drops away as the round leaves the muzzle), and that the round pass through armour plate with enough thickness that the round liquify so the drops of molten uranium will ignite on the other side. Condition one is rather straight forward (this has been mentioned in another post already), but the pyrophoric properties of the DU round will only take effect under very limited circumstances. If you shoot a person, a concrete wall or through a truck, it is very unlikely the round will ignite.
Indeed, if you want to set your target alight, there are already incendiary rounds which are designed to ignite on impact using a different process. As well, since most armoured targets are much heavier than can be reasonably be dealt with by a rifle, you might invest in a grenade launcher which fires high velocity rounds for a flat trajectory and the ability to deal with moving targets.
The Swiss ARPAD 600 used a 35mm high velocity grenade to propel a warhead out to 500m against moving targets (I can't find the source, but the range against stationary targets was probably about 1000m). From the picture you can see the weapon had to have the barrel over the shooter's shoulder in order to allow for the recoil mechanism to work. Since the grenade was only 35mm, there was a severe limit to the effectiveness, and substitution a modern 40mm high velocity grenade might not improve matters too much.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IEgLs.gif)
Other proposed weapons like the [XM-307 grenade machine gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM307_Advanced_Crew_Served_Weapon#/media/File:XM307-01.jpg), [XM-25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM25_CDTE) or the [Barrett XM-109](http://www.militaryfactory.com/smallarms/detail.asp?smallarms_id=936) are limited to 25mm projectiles, which should give you some idea of how large a man portable weapon can actually be.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A3iHS.jpg)
*XM-307*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5lPct.jpg)
*XM-25*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kmMQU.jpg)
*XM-109*
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I believe you are grossly overestimating the effect of DU compared to other materials. The tungsten [DM33 round](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinmetall_120_mm_gun#Ammunition) penetrates 560mm of armor at 2 km, the contemporary depleted uranium [M829A1 round](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M829#M829A1) penetrates 570mm at 2 km. Newer DU rounds will be even better, but exact numbers tend to be secret.
**Yes,** it makes enough of a difference to make it worthwhile in tank guns of the target are other MBTs.
**No,** it doesn't slice armor like swiss cheese.
So DU for sniper rifles or anti-materiel rifles might make sense if ordinary rifles cannot deal with body armor any more. It could become an issue if powered armor ever becomes a reality -- and people are already working on [powered load-bearing assistance](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DARPA_Exoskeleton.tiff).
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If you have ever fired a truly large caliber handgun, the first thing you notice is that they kick, often very hard. The most difficult part of using one of these 'hand cannons' is the recoil shock disorienting the shooter and making target reacquisition for a second shot difficult. It is unlikely that a firearm capable of firing depleted Uxxx rounds at greater than .50 cal could be considered both handheld and effective. Bear in mind, you never want to be close enough to a tank ( or APC, etc) to be able to use a handgun against it.
A handgun is limited in the muzzle velocity it can support
( remember F = m\*a) so the faster the round, the less mass required to do the same damage. In the case of high mass rounds, combining the extreme muzzle velocity with the extreme mass will require an equally extreme weapon, not likely to be a handgun, or even hand held.
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There is modern example of 20mm rifle. And, it seems to be able to deal with recoil. The [Mechem NTW-20](http://guns.wikia.com/wiki/NTW-20):
>
> The barrel along with the receiver could recoil inside the chassis frame against combined hydraulic and pneumatic damping system. Large two-chamber muzzle brake also helps to keep recoil at the acceptable level
>
>
>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denel_NTW-20>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ewr73.jpg)
So caliber is handy, if the bullets aren't. Imagine made in China (not so) depleted ammunition.
And, all theese XMs (in other post) are grenade launchers not rifles so its shells do require far less speed, and latter two hasn’t ever been mass produced.
[Answer]
Aside from the higher density, DU has one other advantage that makes it particularly advantageous for anti-armor: DU produces a huge shower of sparks when it hits metal, tending to set anything flammable on fire. This is something that tungsten, another armor piercing material, doesn't do.
If you look at some of the old videos of an A10 shooting up a tank on a range, you'll see a lot of huge sparks flying around when the rounds hit. That's the DU igniting... very effective at setting tanks on fire.
So, one possible use of DU in small arms would be producing a lot of sparks, possibly setting things nearby on fire.
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Depleted Uranium ammunition has been around since 70's. We made tank warfare obsolete with this stuff. They DID experiment with DU small caliber rifle cartridges [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xo3DC.jpg)
Such as these 7.62 rounds used in standard battle platform rifles the use 7.62 NATO ammo (M14, AR10, G3, FN FAL)
A .70 caliber round (17.8mm) isn't advantageous against a tank.
The Anzio 20mm rifle, fires NATO' 20x102 rounds, they use DU [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2evbd.jpg)
The minimum round use against a tank is NATO 25x137 25mm cartridge [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CqnTI.jpg) and caused catastrophic damage.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Uh5LG.jpg)
[Answer]
I know this is a stretch but what if you made the rifle have a free floating barrel mechanism, and instead of a conventional round use electrothermal chemical propellant, which would use electricity to turn a tungsten wire to plasma and ignite the propellant at such a high temp that the gasses would expand faster allowing for an increased velocity giving you more bang for your buck. This would then allow you to fire DU rounds in a way that would be more economical at least on the recoil side of things. And maybe you could even use mini discarding sabots, and have a smoothbore barrel and fin stabilized bullets.
Or if you are really far into the future you can fire it from a handheld rail or coilgun (assuming they have been invented) to get hypersonic ammunition velocities.
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[Question]
[
### Premise
Imagine a slightly more advanced modern day world where space flight was starting to commercialize. Imagine that all of a sudden laws changed and the only thing different is that no computer worked. This is sort of the premise of my new world: there is no personal computer.
### Additional Details
No transistors allowed.
There may be large mechanical computers that are inconvenient and cumbersome to use ala ww2, but it's something very special to be able to use. I really don't want to do this with magic but doing it with societal or social pressures is out of the question.
### Question Restatement
Is there some edit in the laws of physics or chemistry to increase the minimum size of transistors from 5nm IRL to, say, 2 inches without breaking humans, life, everything else? Is there any natural-law that could accomplish this effect?
If such a thing is impossible and I need to find some other non-natural constraint(magic or something), could you please take the time to show why?
### Intent Clarification
Say you're a citizen in this universe viewing the new stack exchange through your 4d VR headset. You wake up one day to find your computer isn't turning on. Not just that, but your phone and anything that relies on digital circuits isn't functioning.
Say you were a system administrator of the laws of physics and you couldn't force society to make any taboos. It's just a cost-benefit type calculation. The goal here is to make it more efficient for humans to try getting mentally good at calculations than it is to keep trying to make computers more advanced than, say, the colossus mark 1.
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**Computer Grey Goo**
The problem with messing with laws of physics is everything tends to tie into everything else. Which is why something like changing the speed of light messes with atomic structures, so it's really hard to think of a simple change that will only make minor modifications like this.
Instead, take a limited [Grey Goo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo) scenario with out-of-control nanotech, but have it eat only most known computing basics - silicon transistors, vacuum tubes, etc. Maybe it's a holdover from a previous civilization on your planet, a weapon of some kind that ended up spreading everywhere.
So your planet has to look for alternate technology, but if they try anything easy/standard it turns to mush in a few days, vastly limiting computing capability. This allows mechanical computer, but anything standard won't be viable.
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Semiconductors are fairly vital to electronics. If you made them (largely silicon) rare, or harmfully reactive to your environment/people, that should be sufficient. Computers wouldn't be *impossible*, but they would be prohibitively expensive.
That would have a side effect of killing pretty much all electronics, not just computers. The lack of silicon would also likely inhibit glasses and ceramics.
A more targeted (and magical) solution would be to disrupt the behavior of quartz. [Quartz clocks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_clock) are used to synchronize the timing of the processor and other parts of the computer. Without quartz working like it does, there's no high precision clock to synchronize the parts, unless you want to use atomic clocks... which aren't great for personal computers.
This solution would likely impact broader sections of the world, but less severely. Outside of electronics, I can't think of an application where we couldn't make due with less precise timing mechanisms.
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To completely make electronic computers you really need to make at change at least 2 physical laws. Thermionic emissions (used in vacuum tubes) and a variety of quantum effects used in transistors.
Since alternate quantum equations would change everything we know (and the calculations are far from easy). I would suggest you take a non-physics approach.
I would recommend it as a religious taboo, with a nice inquisition style control, few will pursue violating the edict. You could also have side plots associated with heretics if desirable.
Read up on the history of the transistor and you will see that making this work required some serious technological breakthroughs, which would be hard to do if such research was forbidden.
Vacuum tubes computers are easier to develop, but hard to hide because of power consumption, heat generation / cooling requirements.
ADDED
OK, so you need to kill off all computers say in the year 2025.
Grey goo -- already mentioned, whether lab mistake, war, or harmful mutation
Worldwide change imposed by outside conditions that kills computers: Alien interdiction field, different region of space with different physical laws, etc. -- lots of sf does not really attempt to explain the details of physics in such situations.
A physics experiments introduces a phase change in the laws of physics.
Worldwide EMP due to tremendous solar flare -- destroys all the high-tech infrastructure so rebuilding takes a long time, lots of other consequence at the time (collapse of society). Of course, wiping out all computers is going to cause a societal collapse too. Does not prevent eventual rebuilding of course.
Invasion by aliens (perhaps the equivalent of Saberhagen's beserkers) whose goal is to destroy all electronic computation.
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The problem with removing digital electronics today or in the near future is that we'd basically be back in the stone age. All major forms of transportation and communication would cease to work, and all of modern society would be disrupted as a result. Those living in poverty conditions or undeveloped land wouldn't even know anything happened, though.
The most plausible scenario, in my opinion, is one that may occur in the near future, for real. This theory is the polar shift theory. Basically, every so many tens of thousands of years, magnetic north and south juxtapose over approximately a thirty year period.
The last one would have happened before recorded history, and there would be little to show for it because there was no digital equipment then. There's magnetic evidence that this has happened before, and scientists monitoring the world's magnetic field say that it is getting unstable (preparing to flip again).
This would increase the effects of the Sun as the atmosphere behaves differently, but it wouldn't necessarily be fatal to life on earth. Regardless, the magnetic fluctuation could be severe enough to knock out all but the most shielded devices, effectively destroying all digital equipment.
Older vehicles would still work, but all communication would be lost. The effects would be temporary, but would last a generation or two. Internal combustion wouldn't be affected, but compasses, radio signals, etc, would be useless. We would go back to the stone age, for all intents and purposes.
This is probably the least destructive situation that could occur that wouldn't particularly destroy everything else, but provide the general effect you're looking for.
No change in the laws of physics are required, only a significant change in the earth's magnetic field.
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Specifically going after transistors, I'm pretty sure the phenomenon you want to target is the [band gap](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_gap). I can't really make up some specific changes that would be required, but if you could remove the band gap that would, in essence, turn all semiconductors into plain conductors. This would kill any and all transistors (along with diodes, solar panels, etc.) while leaving most of everything else unchanged.
Primary caveat is that depending on how you decide to do this you might also be messing up most of chemistry and chemical bonding etc. One shouldn't mess too much with quantum physics.
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No laws change needed.
You can use [material polymorphism.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymorphism_%28materials_science%29) Carbon as element can exist as graphite or diamond, now we know it also exists as fullerenes and carbon nanotubes.
So the same element can exist in many different forms with vastly different properties. Diamond is transparent, extremely hard and a semiconductor while graphite is black, soft and a conductor. You can change graphite to diamond by applying heat and enormous pressure.
Some forms are more stable as others and if both forms come together, normally the less stable version will be converted to the more stable version.
What is staggering is that it looks like new forms of the same material can appear and disappear. Paroxentine as a medicine had a curious case: They had first an anhydrate form. Then another concern invented a process to create a hemihydrate form and patented it. Both forms were produced and then it was found out that seed crystals from the hemihydrate form will cause the anhydrate form to convert. This was first not found to be a problem, but then it came out that seed crystals (one molecule is enough) were now over the world, so everyone producing the unpatented anhydrate form need only to wait to get the patented form !
What you can do is that a company deliberately or unintentionally produced forms of silicon and germanium which are no more semiconductors, but unfortunately more stable and transformed all computers to junk.
I do not know how long do you need to have this scenario because there are many other semiconductors. It will be solvable at last, but it will put out the computer industry for something like a decade.
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If you're looking for one thing to change, what about changing some property of semiconductors? For example in your world, if an digital signal is applied to a semiconductor at a cycle speed above, let's say, 60 Mhz, the semiconductor material turns into dust.
I don't know if this would necessarily *require* your transistors to become larger in order to do any kind of computing. But it would bring modern computing to a screeching halt.
I really am not very familiar with the science behind this, and certainly know of no natural process that could cause this. Some evil genius could figure it out.
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Two thoughts:
* Some form of environmental contamination on a global scale that makes purifying silicon into wafers extremely difficult-to-impossible. If can't grow large crystals because of contamination, then VLSI becomes impossible.
* Some form of radiation (from a nuclear disaster or from outer space) that interferes with transistors but still allows for tubes and relays.
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The quantum effect comes down to how strongly the nucleus holds on to electrons. An element is defined by the nucleus, how many protons it has, and every nucleus arrangement results in layers of electrons, that fall into a kind of lattice like pattern. The lattice shape determines how strongly the outer most electrons are held and how strongly the element wants to acquire more electrons, in order to complete its lattice shape.
Semi-conductors happen to land in the middle of the road, their nucleus holds on neither too strongly nor too weakly to the outermost electrons. Take a block of semiconductor elements and add a few particular elements into it. Ones that want to complete their lattice grab electrons away from the semi-conductor. Ones that have completed their lattice but have an extra hold on to the extra very weakly and give it away to the surrounding semi-conductor. Make a pattern of where you add elements that grab electrons, relative to elements that donate electrons, and you have a transistor.
That's a pretty basic thing -- how strongly an element holds on to electrons. You basically lose chemical reactions if all elements hold on to electrons with the same strength. Life ceases, reactions cease, you just have a dead universe.
One weak spot would be preventing the making of the pattern. If you can't make really small patterns, then you can't make really small transistors. But that's basic lenses and light.. up until you get down to very small stuff. So, around the year 2000, I believe, things started going to extra-ordinary lengths to get ever smaller patterns. Many believed it was the end of Moore's Law. So, could freeze things circa 2000.. laptops were suitcase sized, the internet was slow.. no mobile data, cell phones where huge..
As mentioned, there's also purification. That was the breakthrough that made transistors possible. If you have random elements all through the block of semiconductor, then you can't make areas that have donated electrons versus areas that have a deficit of electrons. You need to have areas that are only semi-conductor and have only one kind of "dopant" element in it. So, perhaps just tweak the effect that they use to purify the silicon. It could be posited that if it isn't very pure, only have large transistors can be made, because a large area is needed to drown out the impurities (not a perfectly real scenario, but it might fly in fiction :-).
Or, there's also radiation. Small transistors are easily disrupted by a single alpha particle. In fact, DEC invested nearly in billion in development of a wafer-scale integrated processor, which failed because the glue they used inadvertently emitted alpha particles, which disrupted the memory and it computed the wrong answers randomly.
Hmmm, of course, shielding is easy, so that's not a reasonable path..
Let's see.. there's metal adhering to the semi-conductor, to make wires.. That might be a weak spot..
That's about all I got!
[Answer]
1) A strong enough electromagnetic pulse could wipe out sensitive unshielded electronics worldwide.
So, worldwide EMPs on a regular basis would accomplish the ends you are after, if you're willing to handwave a little.
For a start, all power generation could be blown, and long-distance power-lines could fry.
Also, all electronics in factories that *created* chips and electronics would be wiped out and would need to be retooled. Those factories typically take billions to make... assuming the knowledge is available. But with all knowledge on computers, pow, you're back to the days of books. If you're in a world where books had been completely superseded, then most knowledge on superconductor manufacture is in the heads of those engineers still alive, and in whatever electronics and storage media that happened to be shielded at the time, and some of the stuff that was turned off.
Most hard drives are pretty well shielded, but you can handwave that since the interface boards are not, and if all drives are solid-state by then, then everything gets wiped.
Rebuilding to a state where you could create complex computers in heavy shielding would take time: decades, perhaps. It's taken us less than a hundred years to get this far, and we'd already have a base of expertise to carry us this time, as well as infrastructure, so I'd estimate perhaps 40 years until we were back where we were.
Given the devastation and crash, people would be reluctant to trust computers again, and there may be laws or cultural mores against creating them, or at least in putting too much trust in them. So that could slow the recovery.
This is true however you perform your destruction of computing.
If you just affect silicon, you'd just cause some other semiconductor to be used, Ga, GaAs, GaN, AlGaAs, InP, etc.
If you affect semiconductors in general (band gap, etc), you'd just cause people to switch to some other form of femto-switching.
Either way, space travel would be the last thing people would worry about or fund, because of the greater challenges closer to home.
2) Oh, here's an approach that could work. The Singularity happens, the internet becomes an AI, and to prevent any competing AI from evolving, it immediately annexes all semiconductor plants and bans anyone from having or using electronics (enforcing its demands by its control of the world's' nukes). So you have a highly technological AI interested purely in self-preservation, migrating all computers in the world to safe bunkers in each country, removing humans except for maintenance and data entry, etc.
The rest of humanity is back to the 1800s, and re-adopts the fashion of wearing top hats and riding dirigibles.
[Edit: Neither regular, powerful EMP pulses not a Singularity are technically a change to the basic laws of physics per se, and I can think of no such change that would accomplish this. In fact, any change to the basic laws would have such far-reaching effects that the mere loss of computers would be a triviality. Like asking "how can I eliminate the use of the word 'like', just by changing some basic laws of communication?", there is no change you could make at the basic level that would affect something as exceptionally specific, without also utterly destroying the language as we know it. Changing physics as we know it would have such deep and far-reaching implications that I don't think any author could even begin to describe its effects even slightly realistically. This is definitely sledgehammer-nut territory.
Not only that, but while you can kill semiconducting digital computers, the *idea* of computation can't be switched off merely by altering physics, any more than a change to physics could get people to give up on transport that uses wheels, or combat that uses blades. Even if you *could* find a way to prevent wheels, knives and semiconductors from working, people would just invent something essentially similar: tracked vehicles, spinning sawblades, nanotech gearing systems. You can't put the computation genie back in the bottle using *only* a change to physics.
Instead, you need a social lever for the change of physics to push on, to discourage people from approaching (or trusting) the digital technology any further, and those social levers are the things I've tried to explore in my suggestions.]
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[Question]
[
Is there a way that a sort of immortality could be achieved through genetic engineering or some other type of biological/medical technique? Not necessarily permanent immortality until the heat death of the universe, nor general *invulnerability* (just looking at anti-aging here, not necessarily being unkillable), nor even a one-and-done "now you're immortal" solution if that's too hard to pull off. Would it be possible to achieve immortality by stopping the aging process through a repeated "treatment"—basically continuously pausing the aging process and going back to renew whatever paused it (or to restore your "stock" of living, youthful cells/particles) any time it starts to wear down? Or what might be the effect of this on the body, especially if the user decided they were ready to move on and chose not to "renew"?
[Answer]
You should learn about telomeres (from the Greek "telos" and "meros" which means the end part). [Telomeres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere), as far as I know, are the end-part of our chromosomes. With each cell division, they get shorter and shorter until they can't get any shorter, thus the cell can't divide any further, and it thus dies. It seems that telomere research is a hot research topic, as you can see [here](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&hl=en&mauthors=label:telomeres). The research aims at reversing aging and thus immortality down the line. There is a wild claim that the first person to live for [1000 years](https://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_a_roadmap_to_end_aging?language=en) has already been born.
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It's possible. Many animals are able to regrow limbs they lose.
The genes that allow them (as we've identified so far) seem to be suppressed in apes (including us) as a control on cancer.
Also, one of the big factors in aging is telomere reduction as we we age; this also likely a cancer control; the telomeres are end-caps on the genes that slowly get cut down as cells divide, and at a certain point the lack of telomeres will cause the cells to stop dividing, and just die in place.
If enough cells do that, we develop wrinkles and dark spots and other age related problems we recognize as a "lack of youth."
In a SciFi setting, somebody might invent a way to control these natural biological mechanisms. Some kind of gene therapy to restore telomeres, and some way to trigger organ replacements with new younger tissue, and yet another way to clean out the dead cells and make room for new cells.
You might need some medical support for things like heart replacement. And for other brain elements with limited capacity, like long term memory, you might need some way to edit what you would discard to make room for fresh cells. Or maybe you don't get to really choose; incrementally "forgetting" your parents or loved ones, little by little, may be the sacrifice you accept in return for functional immortality. (And really, we do it now; I recall very little of my childhood before adulthood, for example, more than half a century ago.)
I don't think these are outside the realm of plausible future science; some of it is seriously proposed as science to work towards.
[Answer]
# Mind Uploading + Cloning + Mind Downloading does it
Step 1: Make a test tube clone of yourself.
Step 2: Upload your brain to a computer model (destructive process is okay).
Step 3: Download your computer modeled brain into the cloned body.
Step 1 is doable with today's technology; step 2 is certainly possible, though the how is not within the ability of current science; step 3 is the natural next step after step 2 and is the biggest stretch for believable science.
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**Let's look at an interesting graph**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HNqtT.png)
*Chart Courtesy [Disabled World](https://www.disabled-world.com/calculators-charts/states.php)*
From 1900 to 2008 the life expectancy of the average U.S. citizen increased from age 47 to age 78. That's no small thing! There was that nasty blip due to the Spanish Flu in 1917-1918, but still, it's a nearly doubling of our life expentency. Why did that happen?
* Improved pharmaceuticals
* Improved medical treatment
* Improved sanitation
* Improved food
And that's really undrscored by how the graph smooths out after World War II. Huge advances in science — especially in terms of vaccination and innoculation — removed a lot of the variability year-to-year.
But what's really amazing is the U.S. could pull this off since the 1980s despite increasing political tension, greater work stress, and *lowering* food quality due to processed food consumption. Let's ignore these. With the possible exception of the consequences of processed food (which some think is the cause of average weight increases among U.S. citizens), we'll probably always have stress in our lives.
**What's my point?**
The idea that improving medical science (e.g. genetic engineering) and other factors could lead to reasonable immortality (perhaps hundreds of years?) is, in my opinion, completely believable.
**Would there be consquences?**
You bet!
* Overpopulation
* New diseases due to increased population density
* Crime...
* War... if only due to stress on limited resources
But all that is beyond the scope of your question. But it is interesting to ask the question, at what point does it no longer make sense to save everyone? We're facing the beginnings of that question today as we (at least in the U.S.) deal with questions like what rights people have to health care? When you consider the implications of your question, what rights should people have to the kind of health care that would extend lifespans that far?
But I'm rambling. Sorry.
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In my fiction, I've identified four distinct forms of immortality.
**Unaging:** the main race in my second book has achieved an understanding of biological processes that allows them to perform regular maintenance on the human body that basically reverses aging. You can review what they do on the Wikipedia article on [Biogerontology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogerontology). This also involves surgical processes for handling disease and damage.
**Serial immortality:** The same race also has the ability to scan a person's brain at death and re-incarnate that person into a fresh clone. The new person is considered legally identical to the previous one, but a lot of their emotional biases are "flushed." The process prevents people from making the same mistakes every time they're reincarnated.
**Nigh immortality:** This is a magical form of immortality, but it could be done with nanotech. There's basically an agent that has an idea of what the person should look like, and enhances biological processes to return it to that form when it's injured. You can still bleed out, and you can get your brains blown out, but if you can survive it, you will eventually return to optimal health.
**True immortality:** The body is just an avatar of the real self. The real self is an intelligence that runs on a substrate elsewhere, and the body is the "user interface for the world." If the body is destroyed, it can always get another. The level of effort for getting a new body makes a fun story point.
[Answer]
Assuming you don't want some kind of cloning with mind transfer, you need effective maintenance.
Firstly, the telomere shortening clearly has to be prevented, but *just* doing that is already solved or close to it.
More challenging is finding other ways to defend against unbounded mutant cell division, but there are plausible alternative mechanisms.
For example, I read a novella a while back [insert name when somebody else remembers it] in which effective immortality was achieved by adding a "checksum" to the DNA, which caused any cells with defective DNA to self destruct. (There were three problems: firstly, the higher rate of cellular replacement increased their metabolic requirements, leading to lethargy if they subsisted on a normal diet; secondly, it couldn't be retrofitted to a living person, as it had to be done immediately after fertilisation; and thirdly, the process created a new species which couldn't interbreed with normal humans. In the story there was so few produced that they didn't form a viable population, so they slowly died out, mostly from suicides.)
But that leads the second thing that needs fixing: our immune system sits on a knife edge between under-reacting and over-reacting. Dealing with invaders that lack the "self" identifying surface enzymes is easy, but dealing with tumours and certain kinds of chameleon invaders that *do* have the correct surface enzymes involves randomly asking cells to die, and if they fail to do so, triggering an inflammation response that kills them and all the surrounding cells as well (on the assumption that neighbouring cells are more likely to have the same defect).
Instead of asking cells to die, the immune system could in theory use some other kind of challenge-response; in the checksumming scenario, it could offer them with a protein, which the cell then sequences and "signs" with its own checksum; only if it fails to produce the right answer in a reasonable time frame *then* kill it.
Thirdly, even when the immune system gets it right, it won't stop non-malignant tumours; but I guess occasional surgical (likely thermoclave) intervention to remove these would be within the scope of this question.
Fourthly, defending against failures of the immune system itself is very tricky. Perhaps some kind of "best of 3".
Lastly, all organisms already have potential immortality but a finite *expected* lifespan. The limiting case for humans is above 95, where expected (remaining) lifespan remains fairly steady at around 15 months for women and 10 months for men.) Even if we increase the expected lifespan by a factor of a million, it's still finite. At some point, the expected longevity of external renewal services becomes the limit.
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Such immortality already exists in the real life. Take the [immortal jellyfish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii), as an example. It can revert from its sexually mature life-cycle stage to its larval stage. Then it proceeds through it normal development. While humans dont have such stages, there is no reason the regenerative process couldnt be replicated.
[Answer]
To give the most basic form of anti aging, [resetting the telomeres](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/288515) gives basic resetting of age. People also look at [transfusions of blood](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6764071/) from young people for fresh stem cells. It won't give immortality as it doesn't solve things like cancer.
**Frame Challenge**
Immortality will never come from genetic engineering. Even if you solve cellular aging and regeneration, people will still die from accidents or murder.
The technological singularity is when computers reach the same level of sophistication as the human brain. If you can back up the human mind, you can achieve immortality. If someone gets killed, you download yesterday's backup into a new body and off they go.
To kill someone completely, you'd kill their body plus destroy all the backups of their mind which could be hard to do.
In the book series "[Altered Carbon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon)" minds are backed up inside the stack which is a small chip in the neck. Additional copies can also be made and stored in safe locations. Bodies are called sleeves and people can jump bodies easily into biological or mechanical ones or even just exist inside digital worlds.
[Answer]
**Yes**, and here are two solutions you should look at.
**Senolytics**
Aging of the body as a whole is due in part to the accumulation of so-called [senescent cells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_senescence). Normaly when our cells accumulate too much flaws, they auto-kill in a process called apoptosis. This prevent useless cells to become a burden for the body. However, it is not a 100%-reliable mechanisms, and some cells are stuck between life and death. Theses senescent cells produce a lot of inflammatory molecules which degrades the body's constitution, resulting in overall frailty.
Some research teams recently discovered that, by killing these cells with drugs (mostly re-targeted anti-oncotics), life expectancy can be increased by a few months in mice (a few years in humans). Effort is currently on the way to develop [senolytics](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01923-y), drugs specialized in this purpose.
In your setting, you could consider that a one-month therapy with senolytics would be required every decade or so. Secondary effects would be probably similar to chemotherapy [(nausea, hair loss,...)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy#Adverse_effects) and require hospitalisation for the duration of the session. While affordable for the wealthiest, this would be a logistical nightmare if you would like to expand this to the rest of the population (just imagine the health budget and the number of medics/paramedics required).
Discontinuing the treatment here would simply cause the aging process to resume at normal speed.
**Gene/Cell therapy**
If our cells are flawed, then you can try to replace them. [Cell therapy](https://patienteducation.asgct.org/gene-therapy-101/gene-therapy-basics) consists in extracting a few cells, reprogramming them and reinjecting them to the patient, or, if the technique allows it in your setting, directly using a non-contagious, non-pathogenic [virus as a carrier](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-021-00487-6) to directly edit the genetic material of the cells in the patient's body. Some of the edited gene could be implied in DNA repair and oxydation buffering to protect against aging, but you could as well increase strength through bone density or myosin packing, or cognition through improved myelin fibers and neural ionic channels.
The trick here, is that you (or your evil biomedical corporation) could make these cells depending on a proprietary drug for their survival. In practice, that would be similar to a synthetic [vitamin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin). Hence, once you receive the therapy you'll need the drug for your new super-cells to survive. If you discontinue the proprietary drug at early stages (years after treatment) you will find yourself greatly weakened and lose your immortality (you would need a second session of cell therapy). At late stages (decades, centuries), the super-cells would have replaced most of your original cells so if you were to discontinue the drug you would simply die in days due to massive cell death - something ugly and quite similar to the [radiation fever](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome#Signs_and_symptoms).
Of course you could make your super-cells not reliant on any drug, but from a corporation's perspective that would be a huge loss of money.
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[Question]
[
In a future web-series I want to create, there is a species of massive humanoids named giants (*Homo gigas*) (technically, there are still humans, just not *Homo sapiens*). They are less social than anatomically modern humans, they are as solitary as orangutans (meaning they are often alone, but they can be genuine friends, and even romantic partners with each other, and they almost never kill each other). Giants are also omnivores with herbivorous tendencies like gorillas and squirrels, instead of being true omnivores like bonobos and catfish. Adult giants are as massive as polar bears, and, like lobsters, crocodiles, and kangaroos, are adolescents (or teenagers, if you want) all their lives, in the sense that they never stop growing. If we compare them to anatomically modern humans, in terms of both interpersonal and linguistic intelligences, they are mildly mentally disabled, but in terms of both intrapersonal and naturalistic intelligences, they are geniuses. Finally, they are much more likely to be autistic and slightly more likely to be empaths, and much less likely to be sociopaths than anatomically modern humans.
But, they still have a culture. Their main religion worships the following animals: great white sharks, ostriches, dogs (including dingoes, wolves, coyotes, and jackals), horses, pigs (including wild boars), bovines, murids (all the three main rat species: black, brown, and Polynesian, and house mice), and nonhuman apes (all members of the gibbon family, orangutans, gorillas, and both chimpanzee species). Consuming these animals (like eating the fat, drinking the blood, and smoking the hair or the feathers or the scales) equals sacrilege. Their religion is polytheistic with eight main deities (or gods and goddesses if you want) who look like hybrids between humans and their sacred animals, and they have twenty-four minor deities who look more like nonanimal organisms.
In real life, many humans are afraid of murids, because they transmit deadly infectious diseases to them, including plague, tuberculosis (which is technically a disease that originated in humans, but humans transmitted it to other primates, rodents, and many other mammals), and hantavirus-related hemorrhagic fever. Also, because of that, there are many religions that consider rodents unclean animals (like both Judaism and Islam prohibit the consummation of any rodent meat, and some Christian denominations like the Church of Latter Day Saints).
The only real life religion I know that consider murids (or at the very least only rats) sacred animals is Hinduism (there is a famous temple in India where we can find thousands of rats, and we must not voluntarily kill them).
So, I wonder why would murids like both house mice and brown rats be sacred animals.
[Answer]
**ACYR**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SEUDp.png)
Like we all learnt in school ACYR. Always. Cook. Your. Rats.
The problem with rats is they (a) carry disease and (b) contaminate food stores. Humans respond by (a) not eating uncooked rats (b) killing rats near their settlements.
Giants cannot eat rats because, to quote [my earlier answer about sharks:](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/222506/14322)
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> Homo Sapiens solved this problem using fire to cook meat and kill the parasites. They first invented fire to keep warm and later realized it is good for cooking.
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> Homo Gigas never invented fire because their large bodies make them better at dealing with the cold. They soak up more heat during the day and retain it better at night due to their lower surface areas.
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Giants are nomadic browsers like gorillas and have no settlements and no food stores to contaminate. There is no need for them to hunt and kill the rats. They only need remember not to touch or eat them. This is where the religion comes from:
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> Giants do not understand how parasites work but they know eating these animals is bad. The story of *never eat a rat* was passed down the generations until it took the most easily rememberable form. That form was *rats are sacred. Don't eat them.*
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[Answer]
There is nothing off with worshiping a mouse. Egyptians worshiped dung beetles and jackals, which in terms of cleanliness are not exactly first in class: one rolls dung balls, the other feasts on corpses.
If Egyptian religion did, same can do also their religion. Remember that a religion attempts to be internally coherent, not absolutely coherent.
[Answer]
From Clyde E. Keeler, "[In search of Apollo's sacred white mice](https://www.jstor.org/stable/15158)", *The Scientific Monthly*, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Jan., 1932), pp. 48-53. Available for money on JStor, available for free [at the Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/sim_scientific-monthly_1932-01_34_1/page/48/mode/2up), with my notes:
>
> *Among Germanic tribes the goddess of fortune appeared as a white mouse1. The Slavs and Romans considered it a good omen, while in Japan to-day it is the symbol of [Daikoku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikokuten), the god of wealth.*
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> *About 1,400 years before Christ, [Teucer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Teucer)2 and his followers landed upon
> the shore of Asia Minor just below the Dardanelles for the purpose of colonization. Tradition has it that before these Cretans3 set out from their home land they had been given an oracle commanding them that where they settled there they should build a temple to Apollo, in which shrine they should worship the "earth-born creatures." 4 [...] For a long time the invading Teucri were restrictedto the shore by the aboriginal Pontians, with whom they continuously contestedin arms. A decisive victory for the Cretans was accredited to the mice which their Apollo caused to gnaw the leather from the shields of the enemy during the night preceding the final battle. After conquering Pontus the colonists toiled many days to erect by the winding brook Scamander the high-walled Pride of Priam. Nor did the Trojans forget in their prosperity the humble source of their salvation,but in gratitude they constructed upon the adjacent Isle of [Tenedos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenedos) their first temple to Apollo, a [Smintheon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamaxitus#Apollo_Smintheus)5, where mice were sacrosanct.*
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> *Several Greek and Roman historians visited the Troad temples and described
> in detail a marble sanctuary teeming with gray mice raised at public expense.
> More holy than all the rest were a family of white ones having their nest under the altar itself. Coins of the Troad frequently bear representations of the archaic cultus statue of Apollo Smintheus and occasionally a sacred mouse.*
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> *The sacred white mice of Pontus are mentioned in the writings of Aristotle,
> Strabo, Aelian and [Suida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suda). [...] So strong became the cult of the mouse god that centers of worship were located at Chryse, Killa, and Tenedos, Alexandria, Hamaxitos, Larissaia, Parion, Arisba, Methymna and Magnesia.*
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1) Germanic goddess of fortune: I have no idea what the author is speaking about.
2) Teucer: That's Teucer son of [Scamander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scamander), not Teucer son of Telamon. The region where they landed is the [Troad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troad), famous for its capital city, [Troy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy) or Ilium. One of the many variants of the myths associated with the foundation of Troy is that Teucer's daughter [Batea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batea_(mythology)) married [Dardanus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanus_(son_of_Zeus)), after whom the Trojans are called Dardanians by Homer, and who have his name to to the strait of the Dardanelles. Dardanus and Batea had a son named Erichthonius, who had a son named [Tros](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tros_(mythology)), who founded the kingdom of Troy, and whose son [Ilus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilus_(son_of_Tros)) (great-great-grandson of Teucer) founded the famous city.
3) Cretans: So says Virgil in the *Aeneid*. On the other hand, Dionysius of Halicarnassus says he and his men had come from Attica.
4) Strabo says the prophecy was that they were to settle where where the earth-born will attack them at night; which was fulfilled by the vast number of mice which gave great bother during the first night ashore.
5) Apollo Smintheus: Sminthian Apollo, Apollo the [Mouse-Killer](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D*sminqeu%2Fs). The Greek word [*sminthos*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%83%CE%BC%CE%AF%CE%BD%CE%B8%CE%BF%CF%82) means mouse or vole; it is not inherited from Proto-Indo-European, meaning that the Greek language must have acquired it either from the mysterious [pre-Greek substrate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Greek_substrate) or from an Anatolian language; the second option would fit with the myth.
[Answer]
# Rats are also good symbols
Ask different cultures, you get a different picture from what Europeans and Americans think.
Chinese might tell you that rats are signs of wisdom, wealth, and prosperity, that the year of the Rat brings very healthy children... but it also has a low connotation too, standing in for criminals, yet the proverbial rat is also the smartest of all animals as it cheated in the race for the zodiac spot by hitching a ride... And it was a **rat** of all beings that resulted in the sky and ground becoming separated in the first place.
In India there is already a temple to them: Karni Mata temple is also known to feed rats because Karni Mata reincarnates through them, and feeding them gives luck and prosperity.
Just give your culture any reasons to venerate rats: connotate them with prosperity (they only come when you are rich), or with fertility (they reproduce a lot), health (ever seen an ill rat?), or make them the messenger/tool of a rather vengeful deity and feeding them is meant to keep the wrath in the shape of illness and hunger away.
[Answer]
Society dies. Someone discovers Disney World and assumes that it is the religion of the ancients. Mouse worship returns.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EZeR4.png)
[Answer]
Because of an infection with a microscopic parasite.
This parasite is transmitted through the feces of murids and when it infects *H. Gigas* it alters their behavior so that they revere the mice, and protect them from potential harm. Infection is endemic in most *H. Gigas* populations.
Similar real-world examples:
* [*Toxoplasma Gondii*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis#Rodents), transmitted through cat feces, which alters rat behavior so that they are attracted to the scent of cat urine;
* [*Ophiocordyceps unilateralis*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis) (zombie-ant fungus) which alters the behavior of some ant species so they leave their nest to spread the organism's spores.
[Answer]
If the giants coexist with "normal" humans, or have coexisted in the past, the presence of rats in an area could make that area far more favorable to the giants. Rats are seriously destructive to the food storage involved in normal human agriculture, and if your herbaceously-leaning giants do not practice agriculture in this sense (being nomadic foragers, or having farming but preferring to eat their food directly off the plant) then rats will be far more destructive to the normal humans.
Even if the giants never weaponized this vulnerability, they would surely notice that areas with lots of rats were unfavorable terrain for their competition, and thus favorable terrain for their own settlements. They don't need to understand the cause and effect to begin venerating the rats, just to notice the correlation.
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[Question]
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My story (set in the far future) has a bear-sized monster with a tough shell. The human settlers fighting it realize their ballistic firearms are not effective in killing it; though they may pierce the shell, the monster clots and regenerates tissue extremely quickly (like Wolverine’s “X-factor”). The urban environment takes explosives and chemical weapons off the table.
The humans put their thinking caps on and produce a five-foot-long serrated “harpoon,” designed to be impossible to regenerate from. The weapon is built from a magnetic, ductile alloy with a low melting point (suggestions are welcome).
The projectile is loaded into a portable, mounted railgun. The high output of the railgun superheats the projectile before it is fired from a short distance, impaling the monster. The spear point, malleable from the heat, twists on impact like a Roman pilum, so the monster can’t pull it back out, while the length and serration of the projectile prevents it from cleaving straight through the shell and leaving an empty wound to heal.
The projectile’s impact vibration, sustained by electric motors housed in its frame, prevent the wound from clotting. Even if the superheated “hook” misses any vital organs, the monster will quickly bleed to death, fry from the inside, or burn through calories trying to regenerate until it starves. The humans know very little about the monster’s biology, so the weapon is designed to kill in as many ways as possible.
Is this a feasible weapon? To be clear, the heat and vibration do not affect the cutting ability of the weapon; the railgun is easily powerful enough to pierce the shell.
[Answer]
It sounds like your people might be overthinking things and have come up with a complicated plan that is pretty much guaranteed to be a) hellishly expensive and b) not very effective. You'll need to dump a ton of heat into the blade, and that heat is going to bleed off very quickly once the blade is embedded. Surface heating from friction isn't going to heat up the core of the blade very well, and impact heating is really going to only affect the forward part of the blade.
Fortunately for your colonists there's a much simpler method that's been used for centuries back on Old Earth: harpoons. Put a big spear on a launcher of some sort (assuming you don't want to just walk up to the Doom Bear and poke it with a stick) with a good tough cable attached and launch it through some suitably tough spot on the beast. Unless the healing process magically ejects the barbed head of the 'poon or somehow eats through the shaft, you now have a handy leash. Add a few from different angles, tied off to solid anchors, and your Doom Bear isn't going anywhere. Oh, and man-portable harpoon guns are a thing, so depending on just how tough the beast's shell is you might be able to supplement your mounted launcher with a bunch of man-portable harpoon guns.
Not flashy enough? How about [explosive harpoons](https://www.dhtcollections.com/item/Brand_Earlyexplodingharpoon_448_0_30419_2.html)? I know, it'll regenerate... but if you take out a big enough chunk all at once it'll either die straight up from hydrostatic shock turning everything inside the armor into a fine slurry, or at least be slowed down long enough to get some more boom on target.
Still want more? How about the classic anti-troll measure: kill it with fire. Not just boring old fire though, the slightly less boring napalm or even the fairly exciting white phosphorous round, let's replace the explosive in your harpoons with something that will really do the job: a half kg thermite charge with a magnesium igniter should do the trick. Not only will it char everything around the ignition point, it'll burn through the body cooking the thing from the inside out as it goes. And it's less toxic to the environment than phosphorous rounds, so bonus there.
Still not enough? Well, you're a hard customer to please. I know you said you didn't want to hit it with chemicals, but there's really only one go-to option once thermite has failed you: [FOOF](https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-dioxygen-difluoride). A small amount of liquid FOOF at ~100 Kelvin in a (preferably *very* strong) capsule in the head of the harpoon, perhaps with a small explosive to ensure the capsule breaches on impact, and no more Doom Bear. I don't care how good your regeneration is, this stuff *burns water*. Enthusiastically. Then it *sets the fire on fire*.
Just... let me know when you're planning on making the stuff (no, I won't sell you any) so that I can be well out of town before you get started.
If your Doom Bear can regenerate from that then I'd give serious consideration to letting it have the damned planet. Or, you know, dust off and nuke it from orbit.
[Answer]
So the settlers tried "ballistic firearms" which I take to be standard firearms using explosive propellants.
Which then the following can then be considered as: do not use bulk high explosive or artillery.
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> "The urban environment takes explosives and chemical weapons off the
> table."
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### Small arms not big enough? Go next step up.
Use a 20mm vehicle mounted gun as weapons platform. A mix of incendiary rounds and explosive. The size keeps of round keeps the collateral damage lower then the monster damage. Incendiary would be white phosphorus. This would be next logical step up from rifles and hand guns.
High explosive rounds are very effective at destroying most targets if they are available. Certainly more available then rail guns. If 20mm is not good enough, go larger.
### if a spear is really desired: KISS
Mostly steel construction. Narrow front wide back so that it will stick and stay. spring loaded blades for cutting. Saboted so that it can be fired from artillery. Have some Incendiary that is ignited on impact.
[Answer]
# It seems too complicated
If the monster heals around the spear, then any old barbed spear ought to keep it tethered to a bolt in the ground while you build a big pottery kiln, blast furnace or fluidized bed coal reactor around it. Ideally the spear should be cast tungsten or something that can withstand the heat, but if not, make the observation portholes good and thick so you can wave every once in a while as it pounds miserably on the glass. Remember to make the Vulcan sign when you do, so it lives long and prospers.
[Answer]
I mean, there's definitely a way to make the spear work but using a system that involves...
* A railgun
* Advanced materials science (low temperature magnetic ductile alloy)
* Electronics and moving parts inside the projectile
* Some high-wattage instantaneous heating equipment
... is going to be extremely complex and expensive. You'd need a significant power supply to power the railgun and the pre-heater, and this, along with the general size of this thing, would make it an exclusively vehicle mounted weapon. Additionally, building electronics into a munition, is difficult, and adding moving parts that need to function after being fired is quite challenging.
If you really want to come up with a new weapon to specifically deal with this beast, maybe a large taser could do the trick: since you already have the immense electrical power supply needed for the railgun, you could simply use two railguns or traditional guns to launch two inert spikes that trail long wires into the beast. Upon hitting and penetrating, the monster heals around the spikes and isn't majorly affected, until the power is turned on along the cables. This fries the nervous system of the beast and while it doesn't kill it outright, it knocks it out and disables the regeneration (which is controlled by the nervous system). Once this is done, people can approach with power tools to manually take the incapacitated monster apart. That said...
Despite how "un-sexy" traditional firearms might be, they would still probably deal with such a monster quite well. I mean, small arms might not do the trick, but if you were able to mount a big weapon on a vehicle you could easily turn *anything* biological that the gun can be aimed at into fine paste post-haste.
For example, take the GAU-8 Avenger: a hydraulically-driven seven-barrel autocannon capable of firing 30mm explosive shells. Each shell, containing a depleted-uranium penetrator in the case of the armor-piercing variant, has the energy equivalent of around 50 grams of TNT. This is similar to the amount of high-explosive in a hand-grenade, so quite deadly but nothing obscene. Now consider that the cannon is capable of firing *3900 rounds per minute*. No matter how fast the beast can regenerate, I don't think it would be able to survive this.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/E7hDX.jpg)
[Answer]
A simpler alternative: make a serrated spear, with hinged barbs that protrude when it's being pulled towards the entry point. Have it **attached to a cable** and draw the spear in once the monster has been impaled.
Even if the regenerative powers prevent the beast from bleeding out, it is now captured, and can be beheaded or otherwise 'taken apart'.
* Pros: no need for advanced tech, energy sources, or anticipating the regenerative powers.
* Con: you need a powerful machine to power a heavy duty pulley. But it seems likely that's easy to accomplish in an urban environment.
[Answer]
Just use incendiary rounds. Cauterized tissue would impede healing, and even if it can heal from wounds it would still die from its organs being cooked through (unless it completely ignores a lot of basic biology). Putting a couple of large White Phosphorus filled rounds into it would likely be enough for the internal steam pressure created by its blood boiling to make it explode, in addition to cooking its organs.
[Answer]
What you basically need is a cross between a board spear, an RPG and a rocket propelled immersion blender. In theory, you *could* get an immersion blender the size of an outboard motor but most of the components you need are there.
An [RPG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket-propelled_grenade) is a good start. It goes fast, and most of them are spin stabilised. Swap out the warhead with an inert stabby bit, and add something to keep it going right through like the tines on a boar spear and it'll penetrate just enough and stay there
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2NzOC.png)
Now we need to blend. You could have small explosive propelled protrusions, or weighted balls with lines launching out... then... *spin it*. Heck maybe even deploy chains like a mineflail from the body of the weapon
Have a small set of rockets somewhere in the "shaft" that spins your entire projectile, kinda like a gyrojet causing massive damage from the spinning weighted wires. Maybe exhaust some hot gases into the body of the creature too for extra damage
So basically ... blend it from the inside.
[Answer]
Heated spear with internal electric motor vibrator fired from rail gun at close range in an urban environment...
Lets take each part of this idea, one by one
Heated - warmer materials almost always are weaker. If this monster shell has any armor, heating the spear will make it not penetrate the armor.
Electric motor - it requires cold material, below the curie point for magnetic core to work
Vibrator - requires a battery, and battery energy storage is much worse than an explosive.
Rail gun - designed to accelerate short projectiles. As projectile becomes longer, output speed reduces. Also it acceleration is extreme and will smash all the electronic and mechanic inside. Especially if it is hot.
Close range - railgun requires stupidly large power supply and rail itself is heavy. It is all so big that at close range even a hedgehog speed is enough to avoid it. It is too cumbersome to use railgun in close range. At whatever tech level, other uses will be preferred.
Urban - requires maneuverability for quick delivery, and more importantly cheap price to have thousands of ready installation all over the city for even quicker delivery time. Your contraption fails at both. Too slow. Too expensive to make thousands of it.
So, what would i change?
Use room temperature material for better strength and penetration.
Use short projectile for higher speed for more penetration and damage and cheaper weapon that can be made in many units and be easier to deliver.
Use no electronic or mechanic parts inside because they will be smashed by the firing acceleration.
Use explosive as energy storage rather than a battery, because explosive can do more work in total than a battery. Even if this work is cutting. If collateral damage is an issue, use low explosives like a gunpowder, that still rips stuff apart, also dont use cerrated metal shell to avoid shrapnel. So, a copper shell with low explosives, gunpowder that explodes after it is inside the monster. No collateral damage this way, not even windows will be damaged.
Use a short barrel with gunpowder prolellant for ease of maneuvers in urban environment, ease of movement so to not to carry 1000 tons power supply for a rail gun, because 1 ton gun will do just as well.
How to deal with regeneration? Just keep in mind that 1 kg of regenerated flesh needs 10 of of food. So to kill a monster you only need to turn 10% of it body mass to a mush. Thats exactly what modern weapon does. 1 shot of a rifle with 10g projectile turns about 1 kg of flesh into a red soup. Even better ratio for a sniper rifle, with many kg of flesh completely destroyed. A bear weighs about 1 ton, and 100 kg of his flesh needs to be destroyed for his regeneration to be irrelevant. Several shots of a sniper rifle will do the work. If a single shot is required, then anti aircraft guns have about the right amount of power. Tank shot is overkill, but will also do the work. Also aircraft and tank shells have an option to have explosives inside of them. Some minor changes to remove cerration and use softer metal for the shell to avoid shrapnel will help. For a single person a hand held rocket launcher will do the work. Especially the tandem shaped charge with a delay on the second stage. For first stage to open the armor of the beast, and second stage to enter deeper before exploding. Shaped charge armor penetrating ability is better than that of a railgun. And tandem shaped charge are nothing new today, and for sure will exist in the future as well.
[Answer]
## Utility Fog
Gotta love utility fog. It’s useful. And you are in a far-future setting, so it is almost certainly available.
Utility fog, as proposed, is a large vat of tiny robots (a few millimeters across) that look roughly like barbed pollen. It was envisioned as made of aluminum, but could be made of something stronger. As I was saying, this stuff is robotic, and the barb like extensions are tiny arms that can telescope in and out, terminating in tiny hands that can catch the hand or arm of their neighboring utility fog node.
Despite the name, utility fog is in essence, the robotic metal from Terminator 2. The total amount of it doesn’t change, and it is always a semisolid bulk of metal (only appears liquid, never is), but the arms can telescope out to the point where the “fog” is nearly see through (like a force field). Or the arms can stay close, like a solid slab — or a solid spear.
Your bear-killing weapon could be a spear of utility fog programmed to expand into a tiny sharp fractal blossom. Since it has onboard intelligence, it can be programmed to recognize repairs being done by the monster’s regenerative ability, and grow a new spike to re-injure the part.
[Answer]
## Frame Challenge
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> The urban environment takes explosives ... off the table.
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ROTFL **absolutely not**.
1. We use explosives All. The. Time. in urban environments.
2. What are **armored bears** doing **in you cities**? Why aren't you hunting them(\*) out in the wilderness where they live.
(\*) using Really Big Machine Guns -- the M2 heavy machine gun should suffice -- that fire Things That Go Boom (HEI - High Explosive Incendiary rounds). And if the armor is *really* tough, step up to APHEI (Armor Piercing High Explosive Incendiary rounds). And if that doesn't work, as others have mentioned, you step up to 20mm or 30mm autocannon.
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[Question]
[
I'm creating a continent which will be about the size of Great Britain (250.000 km2) and I'm creating it under certain constraints.:
* This continent was very powerful once upon a time, but now it is completely devastated by something (working on it). The only people remaining are living in a town in the coast, some barbaric groups on the continental side and some mercs that were sent to this continent to raid and/or protect areas that were previously valuable.
* The town is being rebuilt as the time of the story goes, but still under attack by the barbarians.
Now, with that said, I wanted a variety of climates on it. So far I wanted a swamp, two different forests, a mountain area and.... A cold area with snow....
I could make the other 4 areas work together, Panama is basically that on a lot smaller scale. However I can't conceive the notion of having snow only on a certain area. Think of it as Westeros, which you have the always cold North and always snowing beyond the wall. I wanted to bring that "Always snowing" feature to my world without having to create an Africa-sized continent. **Any ideas how and/or why you would have snow in that specific area?**
I initially thought about altitude, having something about 4000 meters above the ground level and if I'm far enough from the Equator that would cause to have snow most of the year if not all around the year...
[Answer]
**Altitude.**
The big island of Hawaii has just about every climate type. Discussed here:
[Could an island on Earth with these climate types exist?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/174486/could-an-island-on-earth-with-these-climate-types-exist/174496#174496)
It is a combination of the giant central mountain intercepting rain clouds (and thus a dry side and a wet side) and the ability of higher altitude to simulate higher latitude. Higher is colder.
Put your land in the tropics. It is a giant shield volcano. The lowlands will be wet and hot or dry and hot. As you ascend you traverse strips of different ecosystems right up to tundra like frozen conditions on the top.
Then if you want a caldera you can replicate what you have on the outside on the inside on the way down.
[Answer]
# Make it long
Chile is almost like that, except it is attached to a larger land mass and it has 3x the land area of UK. But since it spans a lot of latitudes, it naturally has polar climate at the south and deserts on its northmost areas, with some tropical pockets in between. It also has the world's second highest mountain range to the East, so it has a lot of snow in all latitudes all year-round.
To cover a lot of different climates, an island the width of Chile but going from the latitudes that span from Edinburgh to Madrid would be only half as long as Chile and could cover a lot of different climates.
[Answer]
## Model it after New Zealand
Speaking from personal experience, you can go from glacial heights to fjords to tidal flats to forest to swamps (or at least mucky farmland) within the same day, sometimes even maintaining vision of the previous terrain. Closest thing to Neverland in Robin William's Hook I've seen.
There are a number of geographical features that contribute to this, including latitude, altitude, ocean currents, prevailing winds, and volcanic / geothermal activity.
### Fox Glacier
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mjxbd.jpg)
### Lake Onslow
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PxPDJ.jpg)
### Cape Reinga
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/23dWz.jpg)
[Answer]
**The Gulf Stream**
I don't know if you are British or have visited Britain but we already have much of what you are asking for. There are mountains in the Highlands of Scotland and Scottish days are shorter and, in general colder, than the South of England. Manchester is reputed to have constant rain - surely an exaggeration. We have plenty of forests - just pick the largest. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_forests_in_the_United_Kingdom>
The nearest to a swamp is the Norfolk Broads
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> In the Middle Ages the local monasteries began to excavate the
> peatlands as a turbary business, selling fuel to Norwich and Great
> Yarmouth. Norwich Cathedral took 320,000 tonnes of peat a year. Then
> the sea levels began to rise, and the pits began to flood. Despite the
> construction of windpumps and dykes, the flooding continued and
> resulted in the typical Broads landscape of today, with its reedbeds,
> grazing marshes and wet woodland.
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broads>
>
>
>
A critical factor keeping the UK warm however is the **Gulf Stream.**
>
> Logan Botanic Garden in Galloway is able to grow plants that would not
> survive elsewhere in Scotland. This is because Galloway has a mild
> climate due to the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is a flow of warm
> seawater which passes the west coast of Scotland and brings warmer
> weather. Logan is seldom affected by frost or snow.
> <https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/clips/zffr87h>
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If the shape of the land masses on your version of Britain (or even some actual climatic catastrophe that diverts such a warm current IRL around the UK) prevents the proximity of the warm current at the North and brings it closer at the south will make "Scotland" like North Westeros and the South of "England" like the Mediterranean.
**NOTE**
See excellent comments by @Joe Bloggs, @Tonny and others below.
[Answer]
This is s seven part answer.
I suggest that you make your land mass long and narrow and extend almost directly north and south.
And also make your planet as small as possible consistent with having a breathable atmosphere.
And maybe make the planet have a greater axial tilt than the Earth does.
You can also make different parts of your land mass have different climates due to different altitudes.
You can also use warm and cold sea currents to heat and cool different parts of your land mass.
Part One: Stretch the Land Mass North and South.
Earth has a polar radius of 6,356.8 kilometers or 3,949.9 miles. It thus has a polar circumference of about 39,940.9 kilometers or 24,817.932 miles. The distance from the equator to the North Pole or South Pole is thus a quarter of its polar circumference, or 9,985.22 kilometers, or 6,204.483 miles.
On the planet Earth extending a landmass 9,985.22 kilometers, or 6,204.483 miles, from the equator to one of the poles will put different parts of the landmass in every climate zone which depends on latitude. Other factors may influence how wet or dry various parts of the landmass are.
The size of the land mass is specified as 250,000 square kilometers. Assuming that it is an artificial perfect north-south rectangle it would be 25.037 kilometers or 15.557 miles wide.
But on Earth a landmass which extends from the tropic zone to the polar zone only has to extend through the entire temperate zone and a little bit more more both north and south. It might stretch from a little bit closer to the Equator than the Tropic of Cancer or the Tropic of Capricorn to a little bit farther than the Arctic Circle or the Antarctic circle to have small regions in the tropical zone and in the polar zone, while most of it will have various temperate climates.
On Earth the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn are 23.43661 degrees of latitude from the Equator, and the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic circle are about 66.5 degrees from the equator. So the separation between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic circle is about 43.1 degrees of latitude.
Assuming that your continent is an artificial rectangle oriented north-south with 10 percent above the Arctic Circle and 10 percent below the Tropic of Cancer, it would extend over a total of 53.875 degrees of Latitude, which is 0.1496 of the full polar circumference of Earth. Since the polar circumference of Earth is 39,940.9 kilometers, if your landmass was an artificial perfect north-south rectangle it would extend for about 5,983.2496 kilometers north to south, and if it had a total area of 250,000 square kilometers it would be 41.7833 kilometers or 25.9629 miles wide.
Part two: Shrink the Planet.
On a smaller but still habitable planet, your land mass could extend to a lesser north-south distance while stretching between the equivalents of the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic Circle. So how small could a planet be to be able to retain a breathable atmosphere for humans or for intelligent beings with similar environmental requirements.
Well, we should look at what *Habitable Planets for Man*, Stephen H. Dole, 1964, 2007, has to say.
[https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial\_books/2007/RAND\_CB179-1.pdf[1]](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf%5B1%5D)
On page 53 Dole calculates the mass, size, etc. of a planet with a surface gravity of 1.5 times that of Earth, 1.5 g, considering that to be the upper limit of a planet habitable for humans. On page 54 Dole calculates the lower limit of a planet with an atmosphere with enough oxygen for humans.
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> To prevent atomic oxygen from escaping rapidly from the upper layers of its atmosphere, the planet's escape velocity must be of the order of five times the root-mean-square velocity of the oxygen atoms in the exosphere...
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> .., then the escape velocity of the smallest planet capable of retaining atomic oxygen may be as low as 6.25 kilometers per second (5 x 1.25). Going back to figure 9, this may be seen to correspond to a planet having a mass of 0.195 Earth mass, a radius of 0.63 Earth radius, and a surface gravity of 0.49 g. Under the above assumptions, such a planet could theoretically hold an oxygen-rich atmosphere, but it would probably be much too small to produce one, as will be shown below.
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Dole then discusses the minimum size planet necessary to produce an oxygen-rich atmosphere. He calculates two different minimum sizes, one of 0.25 Earth mass, and one of 0.57 Earth mass, and decides that the first one is too small and the second too large.
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> ...With 0.25 being too low and o.57 being too high, the appropriate mass for the smallest habitable planet must be between these figures, somewhere in the vicinity of 0.4 Earth mass.
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> Since it is not possible to obtain a more precise determination of the minimum mass of a habitable planet, for our purposes the value of 0.4 Earth mass will be adopted as the lower limit of mass. This corresponds to a planet having a radius of 0.78 Earth radius and a surface gravity of 0.68 g.
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So on a planet with a radius of 0.78 Earth radius a land mass stretching 53.875 degrees from north to south would have a length of 4,666.9346 kilometers. If it was an artificial perfect rectangle it would have an east west width of 53.5683 kilometers or 33.2858 miles.
But maybe Dole was wrong, maybe a planet with less than 0.4 Earth mass can produce an oxygen rich atmosphere, possibly even a planet with only 0.195 Earth mass, which should be enough mass to retain an oxygen rich atmosphere. Or possibly an advanced civilization has terraformed that planet in the past, giving it an oxygen rich atmosphere.
So on a planet with mass of 0.195 Earth mass and a radius of 0.63 Earth radius a land mass stretching 53.875 degrees from north to south would have a length of 3,769.4472 kilometers. If it was an artificial perfect rectangle it would have an east west width of 66.3227 kilometers or 41.2110 miles.
I once read, in a novel by Arthur C. Clarke, possibly in collaboration with another writer, a mention that the Moon had been given an Earth like atmosphere. That atmosphere was retained by a layer of nanobots which held on to each other and bounced back any air particles on escape vectors.
If that or some other method of retaining an artificial atmosphere is possible, your planet could be a tiny planet that was once terraformed to be habitable and settled with people, who have reverted to a less advanced state. We can hope they will rebuild their civilization before any action on their part is needed to maintain the habitability of their world.
Thus if your planet is much smaller than 0.195 Earth mass, and its atmosphere is artificially produced and retained, your land mass could be even less than 3,769.4472 kilometers from north to south to reach all the climate zones and thus could be even more than 66.3227 kilometers from east to west.
Part Three: Increase the Axial Tilt of the Planet.
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> In astronomy, axial tilt, also known as obliquity, is the angle between an object's rotational axis and its orbital axis, or, equivalently, the angle between its equatorial plane and orbital plane.[1](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf) It differs from orbital inclination.
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> At an obliquity of 0 degrees, the two axes point in the same direction; i.e., the rotational axis is perpendicular to the orbital plane. Earth's obliquity oscillates between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt) on a 41,000-year cycle. Based on a continuously updated formula, Earth's mean obliquity is currently 23°26′11.8″ (or 23.43661°) and decreasing.
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial\_tilt[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt%5B2%5D)
So Earth's axial tilt is about 23.5 degrees, and the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are about 23.5 degrees from the Equator, and the Arctic and Antarctic Circles are about 23.5 degrees from the North and South Poles.
So if Earth had an axial tilt of 30 degrees, the temperate zones between the tropics and the polar circles would be only 30 degrees wide.
So if Earth had an axial tilt of 33.25 degrees, the temperate zones between the tropics and the polar circles would be only 23.5 degrees wide.
So if Earth had an axial tilt of 35 degrees, the temperate zones between the tropics and the polar circles would be only 20 degrees wide.
So if Earth had an axial tilt of 40 degrees, the temperate zones between the tropics and the polar circles would be only 10 degrees wide.
In our solar system, the axial tilts of various planets and a couple of other bodies vary between 0.03 degrees for Mercury and 82.23 degrees for Uranus. So it would certainly be possible for your planet to have a larger axial tilt than Earth does.
Part Four: Stretch You Land Mass North to South, and Shrink Your Planet, and Give Your Planet a Larger Axial Tilt.
Combining all three methods of getting your land mass to include all the latitude based climate zones will produce a land mass that is elongated north and south but maybe not too much to be believable. And multiplying its surface area of 250,000 square kilometers a few times would help keep it's elongated shape within plausibility.
Part Five: Climate Zones based on Altitude.
You may have heard of the Hemingway story "The Snows of Kilmanjaro" and the 1952 movie based on it. And here is a link to a photo showing Kilmanjaro and some of that snow.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount\_Kilimanjaro#/media/File:Mount\_Kilimanjaro.jpg[3]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kilimanjaro#/media/File:Mount_Kilimanjaro.jpg%5B3%5D)
Mount Kilmanjaro is only 03°04′33″ south of the Equator, but it has snows at the top.
Here is a list of the climate zones of Mount Kilmanjaro:
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> Climate zones
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> Bushland / Lower Slope:, 800 m – 1,800 m (2,600 ft – 5,900 ft);
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> Rainforest Zone: 1,800 m – 2,800 m (5,900 ft – 9,200 ft);
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> Heather / Moorland: 2,800 m – 4,000 m (9,200 ft – 13,100 ft);
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> Alpine Desert Zone: 4,000 m – 5,000 m (13,100 ft– 16,400 ft);
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> Arctic Zone: 5,000 m – 5,895 m (16,400 ft – 19,300 ft).
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount\_Kilimanjaro#Climate\_zones[4]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kilimanjaro#Climate_zones%5B4%5D)
And here is a link to a picture of Mount Chimborazo, whose peak is the point on Earth farthest from the center of the Earth.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimborazo#/media/File:David\_Torres\_Costales\_Chimborazo\_Riobamba\_Ecuador\_Monta%C3%B1a\_Mas\_Alta\_del\_Mundo.jpg[5]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimborazo#/media/File:David_Torres_Costales_Chimborazo_Riobamba_Ecuador_Monta%C3%B1a_Mas_Alta_del_Mundo.jpg%5B5%5D)
What country is Chimborazo in? Ecuador, a country named after the Equator. Chimborazo is only 01 degrees, 28 minutes, 09 seconds south of the Equator.
At high enough altitudes, places can be snow covered all year even at the equator.
So possibly your land mass doesn't have to stretch a long way from north to south to have many different climates. It might be in the tropics but have high mountains and high plateaus so that some high parts have snow all year just a few miles from lush tropical vegetation at the sea side.
And if prevailing winds dump a lot of moisture on one side the land mass, large parts of the other side might be in the rain shadows of mountains and plateaus and be cold, temperate, and hot deserts without much or any rainfall.
Part Six: Climate Zones Based on Sea Currents.
Other answers have already pointed out examples of lands such as Britain that are warmed by having warm waters flow from the tropics to their shows in currents like the Gulf Stream.
Assume that your land mass is mostly or all in a temperate zone. So the waters around it normally have the same temperatutes as other ocean waters in the temperate zone.
But a large warm current like the Gulf stream comes from closer to the Equator and reaches the southwestern corner of the land mass and warms it significantly. A large island to the west of the land mass block the warm current and prevents it from going north, so the seas northwest of that island are the normal temperatures for that latitude.
But a large cold current like the Labrador Current comes from the Arctic and reaches the northeastern corner of the land mass and cools it significantly. A large island to the east of the land mass block the warm current and prevents it from going north, so the seas southeast of that island are the normal temperatures for that latitude.
So the ocean waters northwest and southeast of the land mass are the same temperatures as other waters in that latitude, but the southwestern waters are much warmer, and the northeastern waters are much colder, and the temperatures of those water bodies affect the temperature of the land mass, especially if if is a long narrow land mass.
Or if it is in the southern hemisphere the warm current could come from the north and the cold current from the south.
And of course the different altitudes of the different parts of the land mass will affect their climates.
Part Seven: Conclusion.
So the ways you can make a land mass as small as Great Britain have diverse climates include making it stretch a long way north and south, making the planet it is on smaller than Earth, making its planet have a larger axial tilt than Earth, giving the land mass a high range of altitudes, and having the land mass reached by warm and by cold currents.
[Answer]
A landmass the size of Great Britain which has a) swamp, b) two types of forest and c) snowy areas?
You're describing Great Britain which all of these things and more. We have several types of forest -- including actual rainforest -- and more marshes, swamps, bogs, sloughs and wetlands than you can shake a soggy stick at. Snowfields are in Scotland at altitude, especially in the Caingorms which can remain even in summer.
As a bonus, it was also once very powerful but has now gone into something of a decline.
[Answer]
**Technology.**
It could be something similar to the system that creates Zootopia's districts.
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> This continent was very powerful once upon a time, but now it is completely devastated by something (working on it)
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The machines creating the climate could be very large industrial machines that have at least partially survived the disaster, but can no longer be controlled by the island's inhabitants. They would need to be powered by some renewable resource, or maybe a large, self maintaining nuclear reactor that hasn't yet exhausted its resources. Some or all of the climates may not be the original intention of the machines, but instead could be caused by damaged / malfunctioning machinery. For instance the swamp could be caused by damaged pipes for hot water / steam. Depending on the time that has passed since the disaster, nature could be in various stages of blending with the machinery.
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[Question]
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This is World Building through a preventative measure.
The Earth has been destroyed a few times in the past and it will happen again in the future, it is just a matter of time. For the first time in history we have the capability to save ourselves if we work together.
What is our current capability when it comes to protecting Earth from a rogue moon, comet or asteroid? I understand after a certain size there is nothing you could do or can we?
Related: <https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/32844/how-well-would-the-moon-protect-the-earth-from-an-asteroid>
What are the possibilities with current technology if money was no object? Any new realistic answers welcome even if it is your own.
[Answer]
First, a little digression on [comets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet#Physical_characteristics): the *coma* or "hair" (that's the literal Classical Greek translation) of the comet is indeed very, very long, but it's also incredibly rarified (not dense). More importantly, all the material in the coma is being flung away from the comet by the solar wind; it isn't as though the comet will hit us, followed by all the tail material. The *nucleus* or core of the comet is generally a few tens of kilometers across.
More to the point, what matters isn't so much the volume or composition of the object as its mass. Mass is what will make it hard to deal with. (It's also a large part of what will hurt us on impact. Speed also matters.)
Going off [the link Ghedipunk provided](https://www.nasa.gov/content/asteroid-grand-challenge/mitigate/how-do-we-mitigate-the-hazard-of-possible-asteroid-impacts), the general strategy is not to blow up the potential impactor but to *deflect* it. Compared to the size of earth's orbit, earth and any potential impactor are vanishingly tiny, and it wouldn't take much of a course change to make them miss one another. Deflection is easier, relative to the size of the target object, and way less likely to spall off fragments that will hit us anyway.
One way to change course is through an impact, or a series of impacts, from spacecraft. The two ideas NASA seems to be pursuing are [kinetic impacts](https://www.nasa.gov/content/asteroid-grand-challenge/mitigate/kinetic-impactor) - using the spacecraft itself as a bullet - and [nuclear weapons](https://www.nasa.gov/content/asteroid-grand-challenge/mitigate/blast-deflection). (As for chemical explosives, my guess is that they don't yield a better bang for the tonnage compared to simply carrying more fuel and accelerating the spacecraft more.) Of these, nukes are quite a bit more powerful, and seem to be the only thing NASA thinks is likely to deflect a >1km diameter asteroid. However they come with all the political considerations you would expect from phrases like "launch nukes into space" and "detonate nukes on incoming asteroids". Also [Bruce Willis might get involved](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon_(1998_film)) and you'd never live it down.
The other method of changing course is to do it gradually. The winning proposal here seems to be the "[gravity tractor](https://www.nasa.gov/content/asteroid-grand-challenge/mitigate/gravity-tractor)", which [consists in essence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_tractor) of flying a spacecraft very near an asteroid for a prolonged period of time (years to decades) and using its gravity to gently impel the asteroid in a given direction. The advantage is that because no thrust is being directly imparted to the asteroid, its composition and center of mass are irrelevant; this technique will work on so-called "[rubble piles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubble_pile)" that would fracture from impact or direct thrust. Also, because the magnitude of thrust is so small, the operators have a great deal of fine control over where the asteroid ends up. Finally, there's the benefit that intercepting asteroids and orbiting a thruster around them is [something we've done](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_(spacecraft)), albeit not for nearly the amount of time required. The disadvantage is the time required, both in terms of detecting it early enough and making sure nothing happens to your spacecraft in that time. (Multiple craft would seem to be prudent, along with a generous margin for error.)
A third option is to [laser ablate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_ablation#Applications) the impactor. The theory behind this is as follows. When an object is hit by a laser, a small part of its surface absorbs the heat and is converted to plasma, usually. This plasma expands in all directions essentially evenly. The plasma that expands back against the object imparts a force on the object. Therefore, the laser can be used to (very) gradually propel the object in a given direction. The advantage here is that the laser can stay on earth rather than going to the asteroid (space travel is [highly inefficient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propellant_mass_fraction), energetically speaking). The disadvantages are that it's slow, it's never been demonstrated on such a distant target, and of course when all is said and done you have a giant laser emplacement to keep track of.
[Answer]
**Observation and foresight is everything**
It all depends on how early you can detect it. This changes drastically the response and the chances of success. Luckily, orbital mechanics is generally well-understood, so if you can detect an object early, you can predict, perhaps even for centuries, if this object is likely to impact the Earth.
Not only does early detection give you more time to respond, it also has the advantage that effort required to move something off a trajectory is much smaller for objects that are a long way away, or take a lot of time to reach us. The slightest nudge would have minimal affect in a short time span, but over a long one would have a much larger effect.
So:
* If it is large and decades away from hitting Earth: Even the smallest nudge would alter its trajectory over the years. Acting (relatively) quickly, we can send a probe with a nuclear device to land on it (which we can already do), then detonate it to nudge it.
* If it is only a year away from hitting Earth: Depending on the mass to move, you need to increase the yield of your device commensurately
* If it is only a few days away: Your chances are becoming minimal you can do anything to prevent the impact, and you may need to settle on survival measures.
In all scenarios the best thing you could do is to detect it as early as possible. This means basically more telescopes calibrated specifically to detect objects that may be on a collision course, and vigilance. The Nasa [Planetary Defence Office](https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/overview), and associated network of telescopes around the world, is established exactly for this purpose.
Edit - for clarity, the Nasa PDO structure is:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zkrXr.png)
As you can see, the vast majority of the functions of the PDO is simply in observation, for the above reasons.
[Answer]
I can't find the original source, which I think is either a NatGeo or PopSci article, but [here](https://www.seeker.com/top-10-ways-to-stop-an-asteroid-1766426958.html) is a source that gives some (slightly crazy) asteroid prevention methods. Here I will take a look at the craziest ones, which haven't been mentioned yet.
**Eat it**
We can stop asteroids by eating them with robots. The idea is fairly simple: robots sent to the asteroid can grind up the surface and expel the broken up rocks in the other direction. The ejection of mass will decrease the size of the asteroid, but more importantly, it will alter the asteroid's path. With enough advance warning, the asteroid can be steered into the sun or flung out of the solar system.
**Paint it**
What do you do to a giant asteroid on a collision course with your planet? Make it festive! By pouring paint on the asteroid, sunlight will reflect off of the surface. This tiny push can actually move the asteroid off its course toward earth, but this method seems a lot slower than the first one. Still, looking in the telescope and seeing an asteroid with "Kick me" painted on it sounds pretty cool.
**Ram it**
If worst comes to worst, slamming a sacrificial space shuttle into an oncoming asteroid is a feasible idea, even if not as cool as the answer by @Muze. A better option is probably sending out a craft to meet the asteroid and giving it a steady push off course so you don't have to deal with all the deadly fragments that are left over from a sudden impact.
[Answer]
Putting together some of the parts of the other answers, and focusing very specifically on the OP's "current technology" requirements, we actually have a very limited tool-kit to work with.
Detection of deep space objects and threats is the first and foremost problem: until we know it's coming, we can't do anything about it. There are several groups observing for objects that are on Earth crossing orbits, the best first step would be tp place them under a singular organization th ensure continuous monitoring and identify and plug gaps in observational capability, either by deploying more resources or different ones (telescopes capable of observing in different wavelengths, deep space radars and so on). This might actually become one of the missions of the proposed [US Space Force](https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/08/09/space-force-will-be-6th-military-branch-by-2020-vice-president-pence-announces/).
Once a target is identified, we need to find a way to deflect it. Since the odds are the object will be small, dark and moving very quickly, it may be detected with only a small window to react. in that case, using a [nuclear weapon](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/150803-space-nasa-asteroids-comets-nuclear-weapons-defense/) to heat and ablate a portion of the object to create a rocket like thrust to change orbits may be the only feasible defence. If we are thinking ahead, it is possible to build nuclear warheads that can concentrate much of their energy in a narrow direction, much like a convention HEAT warhead can focus the explosive energy of high explosives into a narrow jet. The project was conceived in the 1960's under the name [CASABA Howitzer](http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-nuclear-spear-casaba-howitzer.html). Prebuilt warheads using these principles will be more efficient in focusing the energy of a nuclear explosion onto the target, so can be smaller and easier for a rocket to carry (or carry multiple warheads, if that is desired).
Finally, we will need a large and powerful rocket to carry the warhead(s) to the target. Currently the best option would be to contact SpaceX for a [Falcon Heavy](https://www.spacex.com/falcon-heavy). This is currently the largest and most powerful rocket in service, giving us lots of options for interplanetary orbits for intercept, and also is the only rocket essentially built on an assembly line, so can be ordered and assembled quickly, assuming no one has a rocket already on standby somewhere.
So the order of events would be observe the target and calculate the orbital parameters. Prepare a contract with SpaceX to build and prepare a Falcon Heavy. The USAF or other nuclear force prepares one or more warheads on a missile bus to mate with the Falcon Heavy, and prepared the flight computers.
Once the assembly is put together, it is [launched](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB_nEtZxPog) under Space Force control, which ensures the missile bus is guided to the rendezvous point, selects the optimum time and place to fire the warhead and releases it from the bus. After the explosion, observations take place, and if necessary secondary explosions are conducted to ensure the object is pushed far enough off course to miss the Earth. The missile bus will continue on its orbit, and if any warheads are not used on the mission, likely detonated to prevent their recovery sometime in the future.
So for the foreseeable future, this is what an asteroid deflection mission would look like.
Edit to add (just because!): the launch would [sound](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImoQqNyRL8Y) like this.
[Answer]
Hit it with an asteroid while it is still far away from us.
To do this we would have to have a lot of notice, probably decades. But given the size of the rogue moon, that might not be a bad assumption.
We would compare the orbit of the rogue moon around the sun with asteroids that we consider movable and have orbits that we could adjust to intersect with the rogue moon. If we're lucky, and that interaction happens far enough away from the earth, then we could undergo a mission to adjust the asteroid's orbit so that it collides with the moon and thereby avoiding the collision of the moon with the earth.
[Answer]
(My answer will assume that we have detected said Earth-destroying object early enough to be able to implement the solutions below.)
With our current technology, we have two possibilities: destroy or deflect.
There are two ways of destroying a spatial object inbound to Earth, depending on it's composition and mass:
* Kinetic impact: Send a probe on a collision course with the object, calculating the orbital path and angle of impact to maximize the relative speed in order to shatter the object into harmless smithereens. The probe needs to have enough mass to gather enough kinetic energy to achieve this result.
The Japanese space agency JAXA just successfully put a probe into orbit of 1 km wide asteroid moving quite fast through space, sent three rovers to it's surface to explore and photograph it, and the probe will bring back samples from the asteroid in a few years.
* Explosion: Same as above, except the probe is fitted is a powerful explosive; current plans by space agencies call for an atomic warhead; in order to vaporize most of the object, and ensure that the rest is broken down into small pieces that are harmless for Earth and would burn up in the atmosphere.
There are also two ways to deflect an Earth-destroying object, depending on it's composition and mass:
* The destructive way: Send a probe to impact or explode against the object, basically pushing it out of the way.
The only drawback to that method is that, at the moment, you cannot predict the new trajectory very accurately, although 'away from Earth' would be good enough for everyone, and there's a risk that some debris still keep going towards Earth, perhaps some that are big enough to do some damages.
* The non-destructive way: Land a probe, or several, on the object and use some means to push it away.
The simplest way is for the probe to use it's own engines to gently push the object on a new orbit. With constant acceleration over a period of time, a satellite could move even a kilometer's wide object away from Earth.
Another way to do this is to strap a solar sail to the object and let the sun do the work. It would be slower than with the engines of a probe, but the object would be pushed out of the Solar System in the end, never to return.
Those are the solutions we have at the moment. Size wouldn't be a problem, up until a certain point, if money is unlimited. Even an object the size of the Moon, if detected early enough, and it would be detected early, whether by professional astronomers or amateurs, could be nudged away by landing hundreds of probe on the same side and have all the probe nudge it away. Something with similar size than Earth might be a bit too big for us to handle at the moment.
[Answer]
I take issue with some of your terminology in this question; the Earth has never been destroyed, we wouldn't be here if it had, occasionally the established ecosystem gets a good kicking is all. Anything actually capable of destroying the planet has to have about 2.5x1032J of kinetic energy, that's the same as the total solar energy output for about 4 months. Something with that much energy is either too big or going far too fast for us to notice it coming before it hits. Kinetic energy is equal to 1/2mv2 where m is the mass of the object and v is it's velocity:
* From memory the maximum relative velocity an object from within our solar system has is something like 11ms-1 putting that in we get an object that weights 4.1x1027 tonnes, a little over twice the mass of Sol, and if it's a comet with a specific gravity of 0.6-ish (which is average for observed objects) it will actually be much larger than (up to three times the volume of) the sun.
* Or if we instead look at an average comet; that weights about 8x1010 tonnes so it would have to be going roughly 2.4 billion ms-1 or 8 times the speed of light to have that amount of energy.
So in short although a much smaller and/or slower object might kill everything bigger than a bacterium on Earth, and be stoppable. Anything that's capable of actually destroying the planet that comes our way we don't stand a chance of stopping.
[Answer]
Do we have enough nuclear material to move the Moon? I propose with enough foresight and time we could not try to send nuclear devices to the whatever that threatens the Earth but we use the moon by changing its orbit just a little by timing a block of the large object. The nukes can either be planted on the Moon in anticipation or guided one after the other until the moon and object coincide.
To increase blast efficiency place each following nuke in the same crater creating a deeper crater focusing each following blast unilaterally.
The unknown Earth killer could be lined up to be a near miss with the Moon and push the Moon a little with the right timing to block.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PbK2a.jpg)[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tNISA.jpg)
I would just be worried about the Moons orbit. The entity and moon debris be pushed into the Earth or out of orbit but still would be better then a direct hit. In my question I had some pictures I had added to illustrate and placed them here. Rough moon vs Earth would look like them below. Thanks.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wk89z.gif)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aKzep.gif)
On this opposite of Earth everything is under water.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kVj6n.gif)[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/96wvj.gif)
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I've tried to write up a few new styles of swordsmanship for a story I've been planning. I've got a lot of mileage from different sword types and techniques, but have one idea that I can't find any real world evidence of.
Basically there is at least one school of swordplay that uses ankle length dresses as part of its fighting attire. The idea is that the dress obscures the movements of their legs, making them just a little bit harder to predict in terms of movement and attack.
While this seems fairly plausable to me, I can't find any historical accounts of anything like these combat dresses. So I decided to come here for some feedback.
Does the idea of dresses for dueling make enough sense to include in a setting, if not as a logical idea than as a gimmick a school could use to stand out, or am I completely wrong here? Any evidence I couldn't find would be appreciated, but I perfectly fine with some well informed opinions as well.
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First off, as has been pointed out in at least one other answer, if you're watching your opponents leg movements, you're approaching combat wrong. Your eyes should be on their weapon, period. The one possible exception is if your opponent attacks primarily with kicks, in which case watching their legs *is* watching their weapon. As such, unless your style involves a lot of leg based attacks (not likely because of the next issue), it probably won't have much benefit for what you want.
There's another issue though. It's pretty hard to get your legs tangled up in pants. It's not very hard to do so in a dress or skirt. This means you have to pay a lot more attention to how *you* are moving, which distracts you from paying attention to your opponent.
Also, if this is a rare choice of uniform, it also puts you at a disadvantage because it tells your opponent what your combat style is (or at least what the basis of your combat style is).
There are a couple of potential benefits though:
* An armored skirt or dress is less likely to further restrict your movement than armored pants. In particular, it's easy to make a banded mail or scale mail 'dress' that hinders movement less than scale mail or banded mail pants would.
* If you don't go for the armored approach, you now have a lot of spare cloth to get your opponent's weapon tangled in. You can use this to try and disarm them.
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Seems like a gimmick. When fencing you should keep your eyes on your opponent's sword, not their feet. Watch their feet and you are asking for a stab between the eyes.
The only thing that comes close is cloak and dagger fencing. [From Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloak_and_dagger):
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> The purpose of the cloak was to obscure the presence or movement of the dagger, to provide minor protection from slashes, to restrict the movement of the opponent's weapon, and to provide a distraction. Fencing master Achille Marozzo taught and wrote about this method of combat in his book, Opera Nova. Fighting this way was not necessarily seen as a first choice of weapons, but may have become a necessity in situations of self-defense if one were not carrying a sword, with the cloak being a common garment of the times that could be pressed into use as a defensive aid. Both Marozzo and other masters such as Di Grassi also taught the use of the cloak with the rapier.
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So maybe you want to focus on the upper part of the dress, not the lower one.
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In Kendo sword fighting you wear very loose pants that **look** like skirts.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VLXXM.jpg)
Image copyright Deposit Photos.
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Scottish sword fighters traditionally wore kilts because they gave more freedom of movement. The seams of most pants do ultimately put a limit on how far one can move, a sufficiently pleated kilt does not. I believe Roman soldiers also used armoured skirts for a similar reason, armoured pants can be difficult to make, and hard to move in.
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Cool idea.
It makes sense with one caveat: Dresses move. You can still get an idea of leg position by watching a dress. If the goal is to obscure legs and leg movement, the dress would likely have some boning. It might include something like a rigid hoop that ensures the dress holds its shape, rather than defining the body underneath it.
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Tomorrow, 0.01% of the world's population will wake up and no longer need to sleep. (Some of these Awakened people may then be incapable of sleeping any more, but that's incidental). To give a rough guide, that'll be about 32,000 people in the US, 6,500 in the UK, and about 750,000 people worldwide.
I've seen this page ([The end of sleep](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/21400/the-end-of-sleep)), which has offered some helpful ideas about the economic impact if *everyone* didn't sleep any more, but I'm curious about the legal side if only a small fraction of people were Awakened.
The Awakened can get benefits similar to sleep from sedentary activity (reading, meditating, watching TV, even uneventful driving, etc.), so their immune systems aren't compromised, and their imagination still has time to play.
They don't lose concentration due to fatigue, so are capable of working much longer hours than the Unawakened — although they may not *want* to.
It can affect all ages, from babies to nonogenarians and beyond.
Basically, I'm wondering **would different laws need to apply to the Awakened?**
Should they be expected to work for 12-16hrs as their norm, or would they still be bound to the traditional 8hr workday? How about weekends? Should they be given a higher salary to compensate for the extra food/electricity/materials they'll consume if they're awake for longer? Would society legislate to make them take on certain roles, for the benefit of society?
Any ideas about whether changing the legal system would be welcome.
**EDIT**
The reason I'm asking about legality is I'm wondering whether they'd have their own version of the Equality Act. Companies (at least in the UK) aren't allowed to discriminate according to race/gender/sexuality/disability/etc. - so a company might not be allowed to specify "Only Awakened can apply" (or vice versa).
Or, OTOH, if the Unawakened would somehow be expected to match up to what the Awakened can do. Would you effectively need to legislate for two different species, perhaps if the split was 50/50 in the population?
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Most democratic societies would not give them any more or less rights than would apply to any other citizen. Democratic societies sometimes give additional rights to disadvantaged minority groups, but giving less rights to privileged minority groups is pretty much unheard of.
You also see little precedence for especially gifted people being forced into roles they aren't comfortable with. For example, I have never heard of a law which says that people who have an IQ of over 150 are not allowed to work menial jobs and *must* get an education and profession where their high intelligence is useful.
Some awakened people might *choose* to work more than regular people, but that would be their decision. Just because they no longer have the need to sleep doesn't mean they have no need for personal freetime anymore.
However, more authoritarian governments might think differently.
Any population group which is different from the norm is a potential target for discrimination. The awakened would be no exception. A populist governments might feed off of some distrust in the general population and start to persecute them. Declaring distrusted minorities to be scapegoats to distract people from the errors of the government has always been a standard move in the autocrat's handbook.
Other authoritarian states might however see the potential the awakened have and force them to take the jobs the government wants them to take.
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It would be difficult to figure out who these people are. A lot of people feel like they can't sleep and claim to sleep only an hour or two each night. The Awakened would no doubt be mixed up in these. The Awakened would probably lie there and zone out and feel like they never slept, just like people do now. Except they would be right.
The other thing is that once it was recognized that there were these weirdos in our midst, **people to whom this happened would keep quiet about it**. Any sort of spooky supernatural difference will arouse suspicion and why be persecuted? They would be late to bed and early to rise like a lot of people are, except the Awakened would be watching TV all night (a lot easier now than it would have been 20 years ago!).
Even if your government took people one at a time and watched them all night to see if they slept, people who did not sleep could argue that they were scared. Probably lots of normal people would not sleep because they are scared. You could offer a bounty to family members who turn over one of their own as an Awakened. As a scifi premise for a redo of 1984 that would be workable.
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### Shifts
How the laws would be affected would depend on the politics, but truck drivers and airplane pilots often have restrictions on how long a shift they can have. Such shift level rules would not be necessary for the Awakened. The law might change to reflect that.
Of course, the law also might not change. There would be a lot of pressure for the Awakened to live by the same rules as everyone else. Otherwise, the Awakened would end up with all the jobs where long shifts are desirable: driving, piloting, nursing, etc. The Unawakened would be at a disadvantage.
Driving: shifts are limited because people lose attention when they work past ten hours. But many trips are longer than that. So truck drivers sleep in their trucks or hotels. The Awakened could drive straight there and back and then have their days off together.
Piloting: pilots can only fly for so long in a flight and so much time in a twenty-four hour period. So pilots end up sleeping in hotels for a day or two frequently. The Awakened could just work through and then fly back home. Again, they get a bundle of time off afterward. Say two days on for forty hours and then five days off. Similar rules may apply to other flight staff.
Nursing: nurses have twelve hour shifts because switching frequently leads to mistakes, but they can't practically be there for twenty-four hours. The Awakened could work forty hours and then go home for five days. Or longer than that with more time off. Note that surgical nurses have different conditions, so the Unawakened may fit better there.
There are doubtless other professions with similar advantages to long shifts. Perhaps the Awakened will be allowed to use that.
### Per week
I don't see why weekly limits would change. If an Awakened wanted to work eighty hours a week, she or he could do it the same way that people do now -- a second job. Eleven hours of sleep a day is rather long, and that still leaves ninety-one waking hours a week. The forty hours we can work before overtime is less than half of that.
It might become easier to turn a weekly limit into a monthly limit. So an Awakened might do four weeks of work in one week and then take the rest of the month off.
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My best guess is laws will be slow to change for something that is not even one in a thousand people.
people who do not need to sleep might often take two different jobs doubling incomes though that is hardly going to make one be part of the [one percent](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/26/1-percent-in-each-state-map_n_6548222.html)
Miltary would love these people which in itself will provide some protection from bigotry combined with the rarity making them not that much of a big deal. business. So would other jobs where people can be called in at any time and night hour jobs. More businesses might stay open at midnight to cater to the awakened since I can see a lot of awakened avoiding the hustle of the city by walking around and driving around midnight.
No need to sleep might let them work two shifts at the same job and thus possibly climb ranks quickly and handle jobs like being CEO, President
and the like much more effectively. This power advantage might promote envy but it will also give resources which will protect from bigotry. Also this edge might not manifest since one likely has to pay double time employees twice as much and while the extra time for networking, refining skills, learning new things and practicing might help and as such natural talent and charisma might get one farther than being awakened. Plus the awakened can at very best hope to be one percent of the one percent and therefore they will not be all that rich.
One thing to note is a natural balance which evenly split the extra time between job and time off would have one working four extra hours would not fit nicely in shifts thus perhaps forcing Awakened to chose between being over worked (A 16 hour day will be brutal) and under worked through since spending one third of time at a Job is not that low they may in fact prefer being under worked and exploit the fact they have free time. Or prehaps they can choose jobs with flexible hours.
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There are many people who only need a few hours of sleep per day and they already earn higher salaries, not because of different laws for them, but because the existing laws that are valid for everyone, puts them at an advantage. E.g. [Narendra Modi sleeps 3.5 to 4 hours per day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkzwi3kpd2c), [Marissa Mayer barely manages 5 hours a day](http://gawker.com/180252/marissa-mayers-daily-schedule-explained), [General Stanley McChrystal eats one meal per day and sleeps four hours per night](http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947252_1947255-1,00.html). These people have a higher chance of getting to the top because they can keep up working a lot harder than most other people with impunity.
The real problem is then that people who lead very little sleep are overrepresented in top positions in politics and business where decisions for other people are made. If your boss is doing fine with 5 hours sleep and he understands that most people need a bit more, he may still not understand that you need a few days off because of a jet-lag resulting from your business trip. Experience with your work performance may lead to him hiring people who can cope better with less sleep.
Marissa Mayer has made clear her [discontent with ordinary people](https://www.thecut.com/2012/10/marissa-mayer-yahoo-ceo.html):
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> Indeed, Mayer has said that she pulled 250 all-nighters in her first five years at Google, and has been dismissive of people who, as she puts it, “want eight hours of sleep a night, three meals a day.”
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So, if we need different laws then it's to make sure we can keep on getting the amount of sleep we need. And it's not just sleep but also exercise. The best time to exercise is during the afternoon when most people would be at work. It would be a good thing for the law to guarantee 90 minutes of continuous exercise break allowing people to do intensive exercise like running for one hour, take a shower and eat something afterward.
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I've personally experimented with Polyphasic sleep - specifically the goal of sleeping for 20 minutes every 4 hours (AKA the "[Uberman Sleep Schedule](https://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/overviews/uberman-2/)"). I never quite got to that level, but I did get to the level of 30-40 minutes every 4 hours and I maintained it for quite a few months with a few slip-ups along the way. One thing I absolutely noticed, was that I was consuming more of everything (food, water, electricity, media, you name it). In fact I found myself wondering what to refer to my meals that would happen like at 10 PM and 2 AM, that sort of thing. It was a quite bizarre and fascinating experiment/experience and I would do it again in a moment if the rest of the world wasn't so out of sync with such a lifestyle.
Personally as I work for myself I certainly did "work" a lot more hours because I enjoy what I do so, why not do more of it? If I had a "job" however that somehow mandated that I work more hours, there's no way I'd have gone for it. However I absolutely did put in extra work into my entrepreneurial activities, and I would imagine that many of these Awakened might do the same. I could even see there being mechanisms in place (support centers, hotlines, that sort of thing) to help Awakened find things to do with all their "extra time", possibly shepherding them into side business ventures, hobbies, community activism (imagine them on a neighborhood watch rotation...) etc.
There is [an episode of American Dad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ICZh0VN00) (forgive the weird formatting, it's the only copy I could find on Youtube) where two of the main characters take a pill that enables them to no longer need sleep but has no other effects whatsoever. They use the time in very different ways that I thought explored the idea of not needing sleep in an amusing yet insightful way.
I can't really see the law coming into play, at least not on Earth as we know it today, as what people do with their own time is a very closely-held and personal thing. But certainly they would have a ton of opportunities that others wouldn't. If anything I would think the Awakened would likely seek each other out and might eventually establish something of a "Shadow Society" or somesuch, maybe for good or maybe not, because they would be so much more aware of things than others. And there could also simply be special job opportunities for them such as paramedic/EMT, police/fire/rescue, military, that sort of thing. In those cases I would imagine they would be paid more because quite frankly they would be more capable.
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You seem to think those people would have an unfair advantage over, and would use it to the detriment of others.
First let me say (I'm an atheist) that jealousy is a sin. Don't be jealous.
Secondly, many people have advantages over others (money, health, education, bodily strenght, intelligence, beauty, whatever), and most people agree that the same laws should apply to everyone.
Thirdly, most societies have laws in place to keep people from exploiting their advantages in an unfair manner, and expect wealthy people to provide to the public welfare overproportionally.
Now what should happen? Some of your nonsleepers could become very rich, so they should pay higher taxes. Same applies to other rich people. Some could become politically powerful. So are some groups of people today, and most of them haven't "earned" it. Or some of them could form a syndicate to enslave the rest of mankind, which is the moment to arrest them, and put them on trial, like you do with every other group of criminals.
And yes, perhaps they should have their own sports competitions in some cases, like men and women and people with disabilites do. Nothing that the legislative should be concerned with.
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legally there is no justification for treating them differently, but society may impose a different standard on them. as an example, if i could be active 24/7 but spent 16 hours a day playing videogames (while working normal hours) i might be judged for it more harshly than someone who sleeps 8 hours, and plays videogames for 8 hours. the only legal change might be relating to overtime pay being reduced for Awakened individuals.
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One of the countries in my world, *Izisbesi*, is located in the far south and is home to Reindeer and Elk. I was thinking it would be really neat if the locals there traditionally rode those kinds of animals instead of horses like on Earth and the rest of the planet, at least until horses may be imported into the area.
When thinking about the idea, I immediately figured that antlers would likely be in the way or possibly strike a rider's face. I'm considering if the antlers would be or if maybe they would be routinely cut off.
One thing about my planet, *Tala* is that it *does* have half the gravity of Earth, which I'm hoping could maybe increase the load that any given animal could carry.
Side note: this culture often incorporates animal horns and antlers into their attire, meaning if that's the case, this could be where some of their antlers come from.
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Absolutely. Moose have been ridden and Sweden had plans in place for a [Moose cavalry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_cavalry) and apparently they were used for couriers at one point.
The Russians used them as draft animals in WWii and Santa Claus used them to pull a sleigh and may have ridden them in emergency/fun situations.
The point is that they ARE rideable, just not utilised much as they're not the best choice of mount. But people still ride reindeer even today.
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I believe it is worth pointing out that moose and reindeer have quite different sizes. A moose appears physically absolutely able to carry normal adult humans. Reindeer not so much, since they are less than half the weight of moose.
However, with large reindeer and lightly-built people it works and you can easily find photographic evidence on the internet, e.g. [here](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Riding-on-reindeer-back-Srednekansk-district-of-Magadan-province-Photo-by-S_fig1_337254920). Not sure how practical and comfortable it is when compared to other species.
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## Already happens with reindeer.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2KjQhm.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CJ4M2m.jpg)
you will note reindeer antlers don't hang backwards much.
They are small but it is worth noting the first horses were not much bigger than reindeer, they are bigger now because we bred them to be bigger which we would also do to riding reindeer. It also helps that humans were also smaller back then. Just like horses your reindeer will not stay small they will be bred larger for riding. Also this is for most reindeer, be aware different herds of reindeer have different length antlers. For some of the largest males among the largest herds the antlers will be a problem, but the solution is the same as elk, and you should expect breeding for smaller antlers just like with did with oxen.
Elk is more of problem, you would either have to cut the back part of the antlers (not hard or problematic) or stick to females. of course you would quickly breed for smaller antlers so it would not be a problem for long.
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Moose and elk are large enough to ride. There have been cases of moose being habituated to humans and being ridden. I don't recall ever seeing an elk being ridden, but I don't see why they could not be. Reindeer and caribou are too small, but in teams they can pull carts or sleighs.
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Here is a link to an article about the species *Alces alces*.
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> Males (or "bulls") normally weigh from 380 to 700 kg (838 to 1,543 lb) and females (or "cows") typically weigh 200 to 490 kg (441 to 1,080 lb), depending on racial or clinal as well as individual age or nutritional variations.[38][39]
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose>
The word for that species in the USA and Canada is "moose", but in Eurasia they are called "elk". When I was a child I read a scene in *Bambi* where Bambi looked with awe upon a passing group of elk, but was surpised to see that they looked like moose in the illustration.
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> The elk (pl.: elk or elks; Cervus canadensis), or wapiti, is one of the largest species within the deer family, Cervidae, and one of the largest terrestrial mammals in its native range of North America and Central and East Asia. The word "elk" originally referred to the European variety of the moose, Alces alces, but was transferred to Cervus canadensis by North American colonists.
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> Elk have thick bodies with slender legs and short tails. They have a shoulder height of 0.75–1.5 m (2 ft 6 in – 4 ft 11 in) with a nose-to-tail length of 1.6–2.7 m (5 ft 3 in – 8 ft 10 in). Males are larger and weigh 178–497 kg (392–1,096 lb) while females weigh 171–292 kg (377–644 lb).[21]
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk>
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> The reindeer or caribou[a] (Rangifer tarandus)[5] is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to Arctic, subarctic, tundra, boreal, and mountainous regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America.[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk) This includes both sedentary and migratory populations. It is the only representative of the genus Rangifer. Herd size varies greatly in different geographic regions. More recent studies suggest the splitting of reindeer and caribou into six distinct species over their range.
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> The females (or "cows" as they are often called) usually measure 162–205 cm (64–81 in) in length and weigh 80–120 kg (180–260 lb).[146] The males (or "bulls" as they are often called) are typically larger (to an extent which varies between the different species and subspecies), measuring 180–214 cm (71–84 in) in length and usually weighing 159–182 kg (351–401 lb).[146] Exceptionally large bulls have weighed as much as 318 kg (701 lb).[146] Weight varies drastically between the seasons, with bulls losing as much as 40% of their pre-rut weight.[147]
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reindeer#Size>
So perhaps they should be described by their scientific names *Alces alces*, *Cervus canadensis*, and *Rangifer tarandus*, so everyone knows which species is being talked about and can picture how large they are.
Other answers point out that people have sometimes ridden *Alces alces* and *Rangifer tarandus*.
This article has two photos of *Cervus canadensis* being ridden.
<https://www.zoochat.com/community/threads/which-ungulates-are-rideable.467512/>
So apparently members of all three species have sometimes been ridden.
I give no advice about which would be the best - or least bad - to be domesticated and ridden.
If your world is a different planet, are we supposed to assume that the people and animals are all imported from Earth, or are they actually non Earthly species which have evolved separately from Earth life and only resemble Earth species to a degree?
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I once traveled to Tala for business. I ended up in a real podunk town, so there was nothing to do at night. Naturally, that left me scrolling through talabuilding.stackexchange on their planet's internet. There, I came across the following question asked by the user "Izisbesi is Besti":
Could horses or camels be ridden by humans or humanoids?
Apparently, Izisbesi is Besti was confused about how one would steer a horse or camel. After all, they don't come with handlebars! This user suggested outfitting some sort of hat with long handles, but others responded that neither horses nor camels like to wear hats, and that there are plenty of regions on Tala where horses can be ridden just fine.
Of course, if you just saw the horses, camels, reindeer, or elk, you would be shocked if they could carry anything without collapsing. They're all long and spindly due to Tala's low gravity. But then you'd see that Talans themselves, being built like Tim Burton characters, could down countless sandwiches before inconveniencing their mounts.
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I am taking inspiration from games like Dark Souls (Dark Souls 1: Lost Izalith, Dark Souls 2: [Shulva - Sanctum City](https://www.google.com/search?q=shulva%20sanctum%20city&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwie4IKQ4Iz3AhXshP0HHQ3KChcQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=shulva&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQARgAMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBAgAEB4yBAgAEBgyBAgAEBgyBAgAEBgyBAgAEBg6BwgjEO8DECc6BAgAEEM6BggAEAUQHlDeBli6DGDOEWgAcAB4AIABhwGIAc8GkgEDMC43mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=WYJUYt7POOyJ9u8PjZSruAE&bih=1004&biw=1634&client=firefox-b-d#imgrc=fJiDihlGdmeRMM), Dark Souls 3: [Profaned Capital](https://www.google.com/search?q=profaned%20capital&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiYo_OW4Iz3AhWki_0HHYvPDF0Q2-cCegQIABAA&oq=profane%20capital&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQARgAMgYIABAKEBgyBggAEAoQGDoHCCMQ7wMQJzoFCAAQgAQ6BAgAEBg6BAgAEEM6BAgAEB46BggAEAgQHlCkB1i-J2DDLGgFcAB4AYAB_QGIAfASkgEGMS4xOS4xmAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=aIJUYpjPFaSX9u8Pi5-z6AU&bih=1004&biw=1634&client=firefox-b-d#imgrc=en5KaNSYm_1-cM)) and Elden Ring ([Eternal Cities](https://www.google.com/search?q=elden%20ring%20eternal%20city&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=APq-WBvsaZr_7oE3014ROXPgM9-o-anQ1A:1649705684260&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiW86zK4Iz3AhXESPEDHUU0Bp0Q_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1634&bih=1004&dpr=2) - yes it is underground and the ceiling is illuminated by light-bugs), where the player can sometimes make his way to entire cities that are buried underground or are found inside giant caves that have seemingly formed around the city. Weirdly enough, the city layout, roads and buildings are sometimes left intact. Additionally, on top of the city, in the surface, the people are either completely oblivious to its existence or consider it to be ancient ruins or a long lost city of some legend.
What are ways that cities can end up buried deep underground (~100 or more meters in depth) but remain intact and retain their general layout?
Could this be possible in real life?
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Have you heard of Pompeii?
[Pompeii](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii) was covered by volcanic ashes. It was covered so well in the ash, that not only the town was left almost completely intact, but also people were covered by it and preserved in the situations they died in!
All it took to reveal the place again were shovels... but in your word, the place could be covered in ash first, then a hard volcanic rock forming above, then water ingress washes the ash away again, and voila! A mostly intact place in a cavern!
As alternatives to volcanic ashes, which are almost insoluble in water, salts could be deposited by constant wind within a few days, covering up the town fully. Salts would more easily wash away and leave the town in a cavern.
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## It was built this way
Throughout the world, there are a number of cities that were built entirely underground. Some are very ancient like [Derinkuyu](https://www.mybestplace.com/en/article/derinkuyu-the-extraordinary-underground-city-of-turkey) (up to 85m deep), but some like [Wieliczka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieliczka_Salt_Mine) (up to 327m deep) are relatively modern. When a city starts off underground it only takes a simple cave in to completely cut off the city from the world above. More importantly, they can end up over 100m under ground in non-geological time-spans... 100m of natural sediment is very unlikely to exist anywhere over the course of the brief amount of time that people have been building cities.
So if one of these cities were to be cut off by an earthquake or something of the sort, you could later dig into it, and not just have a well preserved city, but it could be practically move-in ready like your examples.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qd3y6.jpg)
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## The new city was built on top of it
Many cities, particularly older ones, tend to have a vast underground network of unused tunnels beneath them. Think Old New York underneath New New York in Futurama. London and Paris are two notable real-world examples of cities with a surprising amount of abandoned sewers and subway tunnels beneath them, and in some cases secret groups of people who still use them for various purposes. (In Paris a number of years ago, a state-of-the-art theater complete with bootlegged copies of not-yet-released films was discovered in the sewers, which promptly disappeared before the police could investigate further - they still don't know who was behind that.) In some places you can pay to get a tour of the secret underground areas.
If you fast forward this trend a few hundred years, it's not unreasonable to imagine this industry growing into a full-on subterranean city beneath the city proper. If you don't want to have your city underneath another city, you could write an apocalyptic event that destroys the surface city, and leaves the underground relatively unscathed (or even forces some of the surface-dwellers to retreat into the underground.)
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In my epic fantasy world set in the 1450's there are underground tunnels that literally go across from under the ocean for 700 miles or so. So here are my questions:
* How long would it take to dig through this tunnels which would be made from rock and minerals.
* How many men would you need?
* Is there anything else I should take into consideration?
This is all for my worlds history, I know it's unrealistic to make this happen but I'm making an epic fantasy and as long as I know the numbers I can create a cool story about why/how this was made.
[Answer]
I'll see if I can find a rate at which manual workers can dig a land tunnel but, in your case, it will take *forever* because ...
EDIT
>
> Egyptian and Roman mines were worked to depths of approximately 200
> meters. (Mahtab and Grasso) By the 6th century B.C., it has been
> estimated that the advance rate of a hand-worked tunnel in hard rock
> was perhaps **9 meters per year**.
>
>
> <http://umich.edu/~gs265/tunnel.htm>
>
>
>
EDIT Borrowing from the rough calculation by *A random person no.0* and multiplying it by 1000 to generously correct the speed, we get about 300,000 years.
Apart from speed, **Flooding** will be your chief enemy.
A quick Google search turned up this link
The Abandoned Victorian Passages of the First Channel Tunnel
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ttTpH.png)
>
> There had been numerous proposals for a tunnel under the channel
> throughout the 19th Century including one by Napoleon, but the first
> serious attempt to build a tunnel came with an Act of Parliament in
> 1875 authorising the Channel Tunnel Company Ltd. to start preliminary
> trials. This was an Anglo French project with a simultaneous Act of
> Parliament in France. By 1877 several shafts had been sunk to a depth
> of 330 feet at Sangatte in France but initial work carried out at St.
> Margaret's Bay, to the east of Dover had to be abandoned due to
> **flooding**.
> <http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/sites/c/channel_tunnel_1880_attempt/index.shtml>
>
>
>
Some random links (don't forget to do some basic research before asking a question ;-)
<https://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2014/08/exploring-abandoned-victorian-passages-first-channel-tunnel/>
<https://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/location/the-10-longest-underwater-tunnels-in-the-world/>
<http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/tunnels/construction/overview.html>
[Answer]
>
> set in the 1450's there are underground tunnels that literally go across from under the ocean for 700 miles or so.
>
>
>
[Brunel's famous Box Tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_Tunnel) was 1.83 miles in length and took 2.5 years to build (which involved explosives your 1450 miners would not have). Extrapolating from that it would take something on the order of 956 years to build your tunnel.
Note this ignore some extraordinary challenges that the Box Tunnel did not have, not least of which are transport for material excavated, miners and the heat, pressure and humidity at that depth combined with the more primitive technology and the "minor" details of breathing and flooding. Anything less than 1500 years seems very unlikely.
Note that no matter how you do this you are limited by the size of work face. You can't add more people to this and get it to happen more quickly.
In the case of the Box Tunnel they had vertical shafts used to provide ventilation and easier means of extracting material and bringing in supplies and men. This is not quite impossible with an undersea tunnel, but is almost certainly beyond the capability of the engineering of the 1450's (although if you want this tunnel for use in the 1450's, you'd have to start building it about 1500-2000 years earlier somewhere in the BC period on our calendar !).
Brunel also had to undertake a study of the geology of the tunnel and that itself took a year, so the same process for your undersea tunnel would be even more complex and increase the time to dig from about 2.5 years per 1.83 miles to at least 4 years per 1.83 miles. So something like 1530 years !
>
> How long would it take to dig through this tunnels which would be made from rock and minerals. - How many men would you need?
>
>
>
Best estimate about 1500 to 2000 years !
Using an average of about 1000 to 4000 men dying at the rate of about 50 to 250+ per year - rock is dangerous, so is any form of excavation.
You also need the resources to make the vast quantities of materials to make the tunnel.
So to be in operation in 1450 your tunnel would need to have begun being built in what on our calendar would be 500 BC to 0 BC.
If you start it in 1450 it might be ready in 3000 ! It's actually quicker to wait for the technology to travel faster on and above the surface to develop.
With the same technology level and considerably less resources you'd build and maintain a vast fleet of ships capable of continuous transport of people *immediately* across the ocean and without being tied to a single route.
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The only solution I can come up with is a geological one. The tunnels were the result of underground rivers flowing over millions of years. Then the sea-level rose and covered them. The explorers find one entrance (in a diving bell?) and apart from a certain amount of silt near the entrance they find a huge system of underwater tunnels. Of course they are full of water so they must find a way of sealing any leaks and then draining hundreds of miles of tunnels. Probably harder than removing rocks because until the leaks were fixed the tunnels would fill up again.
It's not very convincing but I thought I'd include it in case it inspired the OP or someone else to make it more plausible.
A geologist might be able to say whether flows of lava overlaid with silt which then turned into rock could create a soft rock to dig through with a tough outer shell. I'm no geologist so I don't know.
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As several answers say, this is impossible. One solution is to (very early in the book) attribute the construction to a previous advanced civilization with mystery tech capable of this feat.
A more plausible solution is not a tunnel, but a kind of rail road. The Vikings in 800 AD had crucible steel, in some cases superior to even modern steel. They only used it for top-class Ulfbehrt swords, but imagine if they had used it for machine and other purposes sometime in the following 650 years. In particular, they might have figured out how to lay a big steel cable and anchor it to the sea floor (Lead lasts centuries under sea water, especially if lacquered first). I'd put a thick coat of lacquer on the cable, too. So an ox-powered "carriage" (a big submarine basically) could drag itself along this cable and cross the ocean.
I think you'd still be better off with ships, or a series of giant floating circular rafts anchored to each other, a hundred yards wide. Even if broken by hurricanes, that is a highway that could be repaired.
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**You just need to "make it so" and set a time and ignore the issue of believability**
At [this site](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-585524.html) I found the following reference:
>
> I've had some experience with drilling hard rock on Canadian Shield granite with a Gardner Denver 800 cfm (200 hp) compressor and drill rig using a 3 inch bit. We would generally be able to drill 300 feet in 8 hours using percussion. Percussion is somewhat like using a pick.
>
>
> 200 hp gives us 300 feet x 12 inches x 3.14 x 3 inches squared / 4 = 25,434 cu. inches chewed up in eight hours. ... Now I know that an athlete can put out 0.25 hp for short durations. At this point I'll assume that you can put out something somewhat less, lets say 0.1 horsepower for 6 hours.
>
>
> Therefore I'm figuring you might chip out 9 to 10 cubic inches.
>
>
>
Now, you tell us nothing about the tunnel other than the length. So, some assumptions:
* We need to be 100% in bedrock because there is no tech in the 1450s short of magic that can hold up an ocean.
* The tunnel would need to be enormous to carry air through that length of tunnel (it's probably still unrealistic, but let's roll with it). Let's say at least 30' in diameter.
* The average depth of the ocean is [12,100 feet](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/oceandepth.html) with depths to 36,200 feet. Let's just assume the average and assume you're 100 feet into bedrock to guarantee the ceiling stays up (I'm going to simply assume nothing leaks. That's a falshood so magnificent that the devil laughs and angels weep, but we'll assume it). So, you need to dig down from the beach, 12,230 feet, then across 700 miles, then up again another 12,230 feet.
***At 10 cubic inches per person per day***
You could have about, oh, 20 people actually working the rock face with ladders. Even if you're working from both sides at once (a miraculous feat of engineering in the 1450s), you're hauling the debris back 350 miles and lifting it 12,000+ feet. (You know you'll be creating mountains with the tailings piles, right?)
So, 20\*10 = 200 cubic inches a day (we'll ignore the cottage industry keeping the wheel barrows and picks in supply) or 0.1157 cubic feet a day. The volume of a cylinder is easily found online, so you need to remove 2629838205.89 cubic feet.
# 22,729,802,989.58 days | 62,273,432.85 years
Read that slowly... 62.3 *million years*
OK, that was dramatic, but the rating was for only 6 hours of work. So we need to divide it by 4.
15.6 million years.
OK, ignore the engineering miracle, we're working from both sides...
7.8 million years.
**How many people?**
I know some modern miners who can work all day — but they're not swinging picks, they're handling drills. You'll be swaping out guys every 2 hours. Maybe they can swap back in. Let's say you can do this 3 times in a day. That's 4 teams. 40 people.
But at the end you need to move tailings 350 miles (at best, wo and we're breaking rock 24/7. Your average wheelbarrow can carry about 4,000 cubic inches (this is a guess-an-average based on looking at a few wheel barrows online). So you're moving one wheel barrow every fortnight — but that guy won't be back for a while.
Your average walking speed is [3.1 miles per hour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking). Our workers are in great shape, but they're pushing a wheel barrow. Let's say 3 mph. 350/3 = 116.67 hours or a round number of 5 days to walk out.
Without sleep...
At 10 hours per day we're talking 12 days to get out. That's almost as unbelievable as the 7.8 million year number, but let's roll with it.
This guy can't quite get back in time for the next load, so you need 2 dudes working the wheel barrows. Someone to cook at every 1/2 day point (24 dudes), someone to move water and food (2 more dudes), we're feeding the 40-person crew, 8 more dudes, and who knows how many are supporting on the outside. I'm going to ignore clothes, repair, etc. (I'm ignoring an unbelievable number of details... weeping angels...)
Oh, let's round it up to 100. On each side. So 200 dudes.
The problem is you can't get more on the rock face, and that's the tall pole in the tent.
*Except...*
7.8 million years...
Start at 15, end at 55: 200 dudes for 40 years. 195,000 generations...
39 million people. Excluding the babies, wives, old folks, and everyone supporting the 200 dudes.
**Is this at all believable?**
Yup.
**Is this at all useful?**
Nope. Your tunnels were built by magic or using equipment a whole lot more powerful than picks.
**Before you jump to explosives...**
You need to understand *[air blasts](https://miningandblasting.wordpress.com/tag/air-blast/)*. I used to live in Idaho's Silver Valley, where there are many mines and a lot of graves holding the bodies of miners killed via air blasts. You're inside an entirely inflexible tunnel. The force of blasting must go somewhere. Where it goes is through the heads of your miners *all the way back to the tunnel entrance.*
This means vacating the tunnels whenever you blast. but blasting will only convert cubic inches to cubic feet. It's not going to bring the time down to centuries. You'd be lucky if it brought the time down to 100,000 years.
And you'd no longer be able to do it with just 200 people (39 million over the span). You'd need thousands. (Probably still 39 million, just over the shorter span.)
***For one 700 mile long tunnel***
[Answer]
Instead of building a continuous 700 mile undersea tunnel, just build the parts of the tunnel you need. So if you have a car full of people and goods that is being transported under the sea, you just need a chunk of tunnel bigger than the car, which moves with the car. In other words, a submarine. You can get the logistical benefits (and strategic risks) of a tunnel by building a cable system to pull the submarines along the sea bottom.
So what you get is a cross between a cable-car and a submarine. Choosing strong corrosion-resistant materials is left as an exercise for the author. Gutta-percha will probably be used somewhere.
The project will have most of the difficulties of laying undersea cables, building long railroads, and building submarines. The biggest challenge will be building a suitable submarine. In our world, this took about 140 years, from the American Revolution to World War I.
As with regular railroads, undersea cables, and telescopes, it is better to start small. "It is cheaper and faster to build a 4" telescope, and then build a 6" telescope, than to start by building a 6" telescope." Similarly, your heroes can start by building a cable car under a lake, and work their way up to longer routes.
In our world, it took 40 years to go from trial horse-powered railroads to starting a transcontinental railroad. The transcontinental railroad took another 6 years to build.
Neal Stephenson wrote a fantastic non-fiction article on how to lay an undersea cable:
>
> [Mother Earth, Mother Board](https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)
>
>
> The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the longest wire on Earth.
>
>
> In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, acquainting himself with the customs and dialects of the exotic Manhole Villagers of Thailand, the U-Turn Tunnelers of the Nile Delta, the Cable Nomads of Lan tao Island, the Slack Control Wizards of Chelmsford, the Subterranean Ex-Telegraphers of Cornwall, and other previously unknown and unchronicled folk; also, biographical sketches of the two long-dead Supreme Ninja Hacker Mage Lords of global telecommunications, and other material pertaining to the business and technology of Undersea Fiber-Optic Cables, as well as an account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth, which should not be without interest to the readers of *WIRED*.
>
>
>
[Answer]
## The level of magic you need to make this work mean you can say it was created in minutes and no one can really argue.
problems
1. continent to continent under the ocean means you are crossing either a subduction zone which means major fault lines and a trench or through a spreading center in which case you are digging directly through a volcano and magma. We can't even come close to doing either today.
2. you tunnel will flood, massive rock is not waterproof, you need to be actively pumping the water out of your tunnel. Worse under oceanic pressures any water coming in means your walls start eroding and failing immediately, so you need magic waterproofing.
3. you also need active ventilation, otherwise anyone in the tunnel will suffocate, miles of dead air space means oxygen replacement is minimal. You also need this to keep people in the tunnel from being cooked alive as the rock will be too hot for human occupation. rock gets hotter as to you get deeper, your tunnel is deep enough that the rock is hotter than humans can withstand around 150 F at minimum, and that is not even near the volcano you might be cutting through.
If you have the magic to do all that, then just instantly creating the tunnel is just as believable.
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Warning: this is based on opinion and should not be taken seriously and I'm being sarcastic
So your miners are zombies, don't need food and rest. Let's assume that they can dig 100 meters a day, overexerting their bodies 24/7 (it's impossible) and remove the problems of logistic (bringing extra tools and support structure, materials, etc). They would take around 34 years to dig the tunnels (730 MILES long) and now, you have an unsupported tunnel ready to collapse any time. Now that's on the optimistic side of things, but feel free to pick any number from 34 or above because on the pessimistic side of things it will take forever to make it.
On realistic human digging speed (straight down) at that time a thousand years is the fastest, but support structures aren't included and you would have entered the modern age and be able to use machines to do it
About the number of men you need, it's 0 because it's zombies.
(or around 1.25 million zombie workers and an infinite amount of planners (it's impossible) or 1 genius character for plot's sake)
edit: I've just just read your other questions, looks like you are going to move your animals using this tunnel?
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Ok, came here looking for general ancient tunneling speed so here are somewhat unrealistic estimates.
>
> In AD 41 the Romans used some 30,000 men for 10 years to push a 3.5-mile (6-kilometre) tunnel to drain Lacus Fucinus. They worked from shafts 120 feet apart and up to 400 feet deep
>
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At this rate, traveling .35 miles a year gives you an entirely unrealistic estimate of 2000 years. However, with the zombie concept, it may be feasible... Maybe.
[tunneling](https://www.britannica.com/technology/tunnel)
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The key here is that we're talking about fantasy, so you have numerous possibilities for achieving this that aren't available in our world.
* 5th level D&D spell "Transmute Rock": With this spell, you could convert the rock in front of you into a more pliable material like mud, and have workers just dig it out instead of having to use explosives. You'll still need mining cars to move it out of the tunnel, of course.
* Earth elementals: Seriously, these guys don't even have to breathe, and I can't imagine a high-end mining operation that wouldn't make use of them. In this case, maybe the elementals would bond with the rock and draw it out to an area where workers could load it into carts.
* Digging monsters: Some of these are overlapping with the earth elementals, but they might have super-sharp claws, and just need to be pointed in the right direction.
* Scrying and elemental scouts: You won't find solutional caves under the ocean, but natural cooled magma tubes might exist for long stretches of the distance. This would also help you avoid pockets of explosive gas, areas of weak structure, pockets of pressurized water, etc, etc.
Generally speaking, if a fantasy race is going to do something like this, it's because they have some capability that makes it much easier than it would be for us. Otherwise they just wouldn't even start.
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>
> Is there anything else I should take into consideration?
>
>
>
That all of your men are dead. So you do not need to pay their salaries. Profit!
People consume molecular oxygen (O2) to live[citation needed]. The only natural process that we know produces molecular oxygen1 is the plants photosynthesis, that requires solar light to happen.
Places without plants get their oxygen through ventilation with the surface. And here is the catch, ventilation only works in the immediate vecinity of the opening, and air deep inside a cave will renovate with oxygenated air very slowly. Even in modest, existing holes (mines) and natural coves, if they are deep enough you will need either to carry your oxygen with you or to increase ventilation with pumps.
Obviously, ventilating a 700 km tunnel is impossible, and to pass through it takes so much time that you just cannot carry enough oxygen bottles with you.
Additionally, dependending of the geology your cave could very well be filled with poisonous gases like carbon monoxide or sulfurous gases.
If you handwave the air part, the problem repeats itself with the supply of anyone going through them. You will need to provide food and water to people passing through the zone, and a 700 km journey will need so many supplies as to consider it impossible (you can compare to Antartic expeditions).
1Atomic (O) and molecular oxygen(O2) are oxidizers, which means that the has a strong tendency to naturally bound to other elements.
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So, how would skeletons be able to move?
How would magic hold the bones together and make them able to move?
How would they show gestures and expressions if they don't have muscles or nerves?
Would magic be an element that has a unique type of atoms that allows skeletons to move? How exactly?
(I know I'm probably overthinking the logic of this by the way!)
[Answer]
**Temporal Displacement of Inertia**
The bones aren't actually connected by anything. Rather the magic that animated them temporally displaces inertia from the past to move them in the present.
When you're practicing your sword fighting and after a while the sword seems really heavy ... it's not that you're tired, it's that sometime after you die you're going to be reanimated as a skeleton.
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Magic has its own insane logic, like how you can use a lock of someone's hair to curse them but you can't use their fingernail clippings, and hair cut by a silver blade is better than hair cut by an iron blade, and a blade forged under moonlight is better than a blade forged in the daylight. For every "why" and "how" there's an answer but the answers only raise more questions, magic is fundamentally illogical but it's predictably illogical which makes no sense except that it does because it's magic.
You could animate clay but skeletons are better because they remember being a person, that person may have been your enemy in life but as a skeleton animated by you it will, at your command, murder its former family without remorse and perceive no incongruity in its behavior. It's a skeleton animated by magic, not a person, it acts like a person, thinks like a person, remembers being a person, but fundamentally it's not a person it's a magically animated skeleton that only wants to carry out your will.
A skeleton walks around on bare bone feet, it's every joint creaking (unless you tell it to grease itself), it's bones grinding away and decaying but it doesn't care, there's no muscles or tendons but it still moves as though it has them, it'll sit around with other skeletons "drinking" from empty bottles and stumble around drunkenly afterwards, it'll complain if told to hide underwater, it doesn't need to breathe but still objects the indignity of being treated so inhumanely.
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I imagine that the original owner of the skeleton would need to be summoned in some way. It takes long enough for humans to learn to control their own bodies that you wouldn't want your magic user to have to learn all the details of how to realistically control large numbers of other people's bodies. The spirit would have the knowledge of how to move their skeleton even without the muscles being there, kind of like how amputees can still mentally "feel" and "move" their missing limbs even without the muscles and nerves there. The magic would give the summoned spirit the power to actually translate that knowledge into movement, and would give your magic user the power to control the summoned spirit.
Gestures and expressions shouldn't be too difficult. A lot can be communicated through posture, sound, and motion - think of BB-8 or R2-D2 from Star Wars. Neither of them have a face or even a humanoid shape, but we as an audience still manage to understand what they are "feeling" and their reactions to things.
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The question is not "how?", it's "why?". The answer to "how" is "magic". Magic does what magic does... magically.
And magic could create invisible forces/entities that move and strike and lift and crush. But magicians have a sense of style and decided to embed bones in their invisible entities to add that flair... that palpable fear that distinguishes a magician from a technician.
Sort of like painting a face on the front of an A-10 attack craft. All of the technology in the plane would still work to rain destruction down upon its targets. But depleted uranium pellets spewing from a monstrous mouth on the front? Priceless.
(So the indirect, mundane answer is that magic is not animating the skeletons, the skeletons are embedded in an otherwise invisible, autonomous, pure-force weapon system.)
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Telekinesis would allow for the body to move, but a "mind" would have to be in place to control it. If the spirit or some other essence of the skeleton existed, it could develop telekinesis to tell its bones to move, but only be able to move it in ways it expects it to in the first place (kind of a psychosomatic thing, it works because it expects it to be able to work).
It's magic really, but magic you could do science around. Plus, all the movement would be completely natural since the skeleton is literally just moving as the dead person's will expects it to. After it first moves, it grows confidence that it can and so never loses that ability, so it just needs to move once by mistake or because it doesn't realize it's dead yet.
The most powerful of them would likely be the ones with the most confidence in their ability to move, so the ones that were stronger in real life, and all of a sudden you basically have skeletons that are just like their humans but dead.
This could also be a funny explanation of some people not knowing their own strength or being much stronger than they look - they're actually moving with confidence which allows their powers to give them strength. Very flowery.
TL;DR: A group of people could have telekinetic powers but not know it until after they die. The part of them that's capable of thinking lives metaphysically so it can perform subconscious telekinesis on the skeleton by expecting to be able to move because it doesn't realize it's dead, and then be able to move because it knows it can.
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Just to throw this in there, maybe when you activate the magic, it creates tendrils of magic energy or use existing materials like vines (think druidic or necromantic magic) to support and make the bones move like a puppet on strings.
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Could a classical era or middle ages civilization advance in shipbuilding technology alone and develop ships like carracks that could circumnavigate a world's oceans allowing them to colonize other continents then enter a 'medieval tech' colonial era? Would it require other technologies advancing simultaneously other than developing compasses? Could the Roman Empire, for example, have advanced so far in shipbuilding, and colonized the Americas?
Generally, in many middle ages low-tech and fantasy settings carracks as well as other large ships are not seen though the ships in the GRRM's Game of Thrones world appear to be able to circumnavigate a world if they decided to do so. Most settings depict kingdoms and civilizations primarily passing smaller bodies of water.
The Phoenicians and later Carthaginians were the master shipbuilders of the classical era though the Greeks also developed ships early in this period. The Roman Republic would later develop shipbuilding from the Carthaginians. These ships could not navigate the deep seas. Generally, caravels and then carracks were used in the Age of Discovery and later for colonization.
In the Middle Ages, the Chinese were the most advanced shipbuilders with large junks that would later develop into massive ships compared to European models.
Vikings were likely the first Europeans to discover the 'new world'. Leif Erikson, in particular, led the first known expedition to likely sight North America beyond Greenland. This did not lead to widespread permanent colonization though the Vikings were thought to have established settlements in Vinland known today as Newfoundland.
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The Vikings definitely colonized Vineland (L'Ance aux meadows). The archaeological evidence is clear. The problem for the Vikings was that Nfld has a difficult climate and poor agricultural land. Even the so-called natives, the Beothuk, actually lived in Labrador and came over to hunt and fish. Their settlements were not permanent. Global cooling in the later medieval period made the colony unsustainable. Added to that, the North Atlantic is challenging.
It seems that the Vikings had some armed conflicts with the Beothuks, which discouraged the Vikings. Later European colonization succeeded because the Europeans, by that time, seriously outgunned the populations they met.
Apparently, fishermen came over from Brittany and had semi-permanent settlements in NFLD for at least a hundred years prior to John Cabot, but they kept the Grand Banks a secret, for professional reasons.
There is also reason to believe that Irish monks made it to Nfld and Labrador before the Vikings on leather hide ships. A successful recreation of this was done in the 70's and featured in National Geographic.
So I would say that a Maritime Medieval nation could establish a colony of sorts, if it had reason to do so. Imagine that Newfoundland were bathed in a warm current like the Gulf Stream, so that agriculture could prosper there, and imagine also that the Black Death never happened -- thus allowing Medieval population pressures to increase. Things were getting crowded even by 1200 AD (cf development of cities).
You also need to decide if your new country is empty (or nearly so), and your colonists simply move in -- or if it is established, in which case you need an invasion force.
Note that advanced ship-building is not the only requirement of colonization. If your new country is rife with diseases to which the colonists have no immunity (I'm looking at you, Africa, white man's graveyard), then colonization will be delayed pending advances in medicine.
However, I believe that if colonization had happened in the Middle Ages, the colony would have diverged rapidly from the mother country and de facto acquired independence much sooner than occurred in real life. It would have been too difficult to maintain rapid communications. This possibility might lead the rulers of the home country to discourage further emigration.
[Answer]
Both classical and medieval shipmakers had capability to built ships seaworthy enough to cross the Atlantic. Some information about Roman commerce ships (sail powered and not rowing boats as virtually all warships) can be found [here](http://eglewis.blogspot.it/2012/05/roman-merchant-ships-warhorses-of.html); they mainly had square rigs, but some early Latin sail was found; they didn't go to into the Atlantic, but they surely traded across [Indian Ocean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_commerce#Sea_routes)
If memory assists I recall even a "experimental archeology" was done with papyrus boats believed identical to those used in Nile river more than two millennia ago and succeeded. As requested by comments I fished details. The successful boat was [Ra II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl#Boats_Ra_and_Ra_II) built by Thor Heyerdahl.
The real problem was that no one had any interest going there because:
* either they were convinced Earth was flat, so they would fall-off the rim.
* or they knew Earth is round and they had a fairly good estimate of the circumference.
To discover Americas it was needed:
* either someone "getting seriously lost" while traveling in Atlantic (e.g.: Erik the Red).
* or someone with very bad nautical maps believing Earth circumference to be one half of its true value (e.g.: Christobal Colon; *Note this is the Spanish name of Cristoforo Colombo, Italian, please avoid anglicizing the name, thanks*).
Shipyard technology was already there to allow for the trip (safety is another thing, of course).
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Depending on assumptions made it might be possible. But would have been a very difficult undertaking and would not have been very practical.
Two key issues for the Romans were:
The knowledge that the Americas existed at all.
The desire to travel to such a remote location even if they had known it existed.
[See may similar question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/92391/could-the-romans-have-colonised-the-new-world)
There seemed to be a general hostility to my premise concerning the Romans desire to cross the Atlantic. It was considered to be an un-Roman thing to do notwithstanding my initial premise much of the discussion centred on why it was a bad premise rather than the question itself.
That said and considering your broader question I think it would have been possible, but greatly inhibited by the first two points I made above. Additional handicaps would have included:
The inability to navigate accurately, which even with a compass would have been rudimentary.
Lack of understanding of winds and currents far off shore and the inability to return home against the winds and currents.
Lack of awareness of the severity of storms and hurricanes in the open oceans. Vessels would have been susceptible to loss due to lack of structural strength, lack of sufficient pumping capability and lack of control causing broaching.
Miscalculation of the amount of supplies needed and their suitability, lack of vitamin C and poor conditions would have led to much wastage and rot and disease.
In summary crossings oceans would have been possible in earlier times, but the earlier the time the less likely and the more hazardous. Colonisation would have been even more unlikely due to the great losses in shipping that would have occurred for the reasons outlined above making regular traffic a highly hazardous affair with prohibitive losses.
The best approach would be stepwise via land as the Vikings did.
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Classical era civilizations usually lack motivation: They're the only big fish in the pond, they don't have to seriously compete with anybody, their main concern is internal instability.
Roman Empire could conquer any swath of land they wanted but had troubles ruling what they already had. For them, the whole Europe and North Africa was ripe.
Same thing for classical China. Capacity is here but motivation isn't.
European naval powers (Portugal, Netherlands, England) had a little territory with high competition. Overseas was their only direction to expand.
How you can fix this? Make landmass smaller. Archipelagoes instead of continents maybe.
Several clashing classical civilizations? Note that it might fail miserably, see "invasion of sea people".
Consider also exodus instead of colonization. Like flight of Aeneus to England but for real, or how there are Chinese in Indonesia. Leave in a small group, remake the place of arrival. Kinda like Andals in GoT.
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One of the primary problems relating to intercontinental sea travel prior to the Enlightenment, notwithstanding the ability to build ships sturdy enough to survive the high seas, was the lack of ability to [accurately measure longitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_rewards#The_Longitude_Problem). This wasn't really solved in any satisfactory way until the early 18th century with [John Harrison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison)'s invention of a portable naval clock of sufficient accuracy to track the divergence between local noon (solar zenith on the ship) and noon at the point (longitude) of departure (via the clock).
Given this means, or any other reasonable means by which a ship crew could effectively navigate, then such long distance journeys would easily be achievable with the naval technology of much older periods. It was the deficiency in navigation (inability to know one's longitude at sea) that made the [trans-Atlantic journeys so perilous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scilly_naval_disaster_of_1707).
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The Austronesians colonized everywhere from Madagascar to Hawaii with stone and wood tools. Although, granted, they didn't seem to have much success at colonizing places that were already inhabited when they got there.
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Imagine an arrow, but instead of the traditional arrowhead (thick and pointy) it uses a much thinner and sharper razor-like head. I am thinking such an arrow could be used for delivering death to unarmored targets at high range (at which point a conventional, less-sharp arrow no longer has the strength to penetrate clothing or fur, but a super sharp razor head can).
Do the lightness and fragility of such an arrowhead cause issues when firing it? Are there any other possible advantages or disadvantages? Obviously, if such an arrow were good someone somewhere would already be using it, but given that we didn't have the tech for disposable razor blades when arrows were en vogue, maybe there's something to it beyond impractical but scary looking weaponry.
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You have just described a modern hunting broadhead. And there are more variations than you can imagine. Its worth noting that they can penetrate kevlar body armor. I suggest typing "modern broadhead" in a google image search.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oCYux.jpg)
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So, a couple other answers have already mentioned that this can actually be a thing. I think I'll focus in on the actual pluses and minuses.
One potential issue is that this thin, light arrowhead is a lot more fragile. It will break far more easily, especially if it runs into something more solid (like a bone. or if it misses, and hits a tree or a rock. Or even armor). It is a lot easier to sharpen your thick arrowhead than craft a new one because the thin razor-sharp thing broke. Also, thick sturdy arrowheads can stand up to a lot of sharpening and other use and abuse, while even if carefully maintained a thin razor-sharp arrowhead will just run out of material to sharpen much faster.
Another issue is that it will not cause as much injury, making it generally less effective as a weapon. Arrows generally don't depend on their sharpness to injure nearly as much as their kinetic force, and a bigger arrowhead is better at dumping that force into the target, and tearing the target up more, instead of slicing cleanly through and leaving a smaller injury behind. Sharpness means you need less force to make the same cut - but the force in this case is constant, so the razor arrow is more likely to slice more cleanly instead, and generally do less damage.
The razor sharp broadheads shown in the other answers use a lot of empty space to counterbalance this problem, which give a bigger profile to shred with to counterbalance the sharpness and the thinness of the actual blade portion of the arrow, which a) takes a lot more time and effort to make, and is really only practical with modern manufacturing and b) is a lot harder to maintain, so makes the most sense when arrowheads are discarded when dull or damaged, not repaired and reused (imagine trying to re-sharpen that curvy one!).
As for your idea that razor arrowheads will do more damage at range, I'm not sure of that. Especially not the ones pictured in the other answers. Like I said, arrows generally depend on their kinetic force to do damage, to the point where sharpness is, not irrelevant exactly but certainly much less critical. If you look at padded arrows, they need to have such a big, padded flare because even a dull, flat-ended fletched stick with no arrowhead can do a lot of damage with the force of the bow behind it. The point is, if the situation is actually that the arrow's sharpness makes a difference between the arrow puncturing or not, means you just don't have enough force behind it in general. Your sharper razor arrowhead might penetrate just a little more, but it is still likely to be a shallow little slice with the arrow's tip, because the person is too far out of range. If there isn't enough force for a regular arrowhead to penetrate, there isn't enough force for the razor arrowhead to kill. Also, at that range the arrow's lightness (with a lighter razor tip) will also make a difference, both in how far it goes and how deep it penetrates what it hits.
Really, you probably want a heavy, narrow, needle-pointed head (bodkin, I think) for better puncturing power, not a flat thin razor sharp arrowhead... and you can make it heavy enough (by adding length to the point) to add to your arrow's kinetic force, instead of lighter to take some of that force away. Actually, what you really want is a stronger bow, or at least some method of extra mechanical leverage (crossbow or something), but a narrow needle-tip will probably work in the meantime.
A bodkin, which will do what you want even if it isn't what you asked about.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hYjEi.jpg)
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Your question immediately made me think of a variety of modern broadheads with near-razor thin blades. Note that the blades are always attached around the shaft and there's no way to eliminate it.
## Swhacker
[Swhacker](http://www.swhacker.com/swhacker-products) makes a modern retractable broadhead that opens on impact with 2 or 3 blades. The blades are thinner than most knives but thicker than razor blades.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoFG6.jpg)
Their website describes the blades as:
>
> Blade: .032" thick, stainless steel, honed razor sharp
>
>
>
## Toxic
Also the "Toxic" broadhead has comparable (though fixed) blades. It's not poisoned as the name suggests, but it's still deadly. It's hard to describe the blade combination and design, so I'll include an image:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SQOrD.jpg)
## Conclusion
Shot from a (60lb) compound bow these will have a release speed of around 400 km/h and, a well placed shot should be able to kill any animal up to a rhino or elephant (and maybe them too).
In ballistics gel they'll get around [20-30cm of penetration](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Os-xozVekw). That's in and out most parts of most humans. I've seen them go in, out, in again and out again of small game - it's hard describe but youtube some fox bow kills.
They're not as fragile as you think and can be treated pretty rough without being damaged. They'll smash through bone [without becoming damaged](https://youtu.be/rOeQFL1V12c).
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With a wooden shaft the thin light arrowhead would not have enough weight to fall tip first. You would have to add some weight to the tip. Romans used lead to balance their sling darts and javelins, you could do the same thing. Or you could shape the shaft so it has more weight in the front.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IR5NZ.jpg)
With a carbon tube this problem shouldn't occur because it will almost always be lighter than the tip.
If you want more range you need to make heavier arrows so they lose their kinetic energy slower. But to shoot heavier projectiles you need more powerful bow.
So it is an endless struggle of balance that the weapon makers must figure out.
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You could use something similar to an injection needle and cover it in poison. Otherwise a smaller point will likely do less damage
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How could a vertebrate animal evolve for extended flight before evolving land adaptations? Is that even possible at all?
By extended flight, I mean breathing air and spending most of their time in the air, similar to sea birds.
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Hmm. This is an interesting one. Unfortunately, my best offer is speculation, at best, but I'll try to give some very real scenarios where this could play out.
If you were to take the flying fish (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_fish>), and over time they find more and more evolutionary reason to spend more time out of water. Say, for example, there's a more robust source of food in the air (insects, small birds, etc), there might well be reason for any strains that show adaptation to prolonged time in the air (breathing air without gills). Or perhaps their normal food source is depleted, for whatever reason? Then the only option is to get food from above water. Then they either adapt or die.
Another, and in my opinion far more likely option, would be if (for example) dolphins or orcas (far more likely for dolphins in this instance, purely based on weight and size) were to have a subspecies evolve from their numbers with elongated, or at least more pronounced, pectoral fins which could, in time, evolve into more wing-like appendages, should there be an evolutionary advantage to this.
It really all depends on how the environment changes, and how the species changes to survive that.
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Yes.. or No... Kinda
The early predesetor of flight is gliding. Now there [is a family of marine animals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_fish) that glide over the water, sometimes for up to 40 ft! Now while a bird will not happen, we can explain how a gliding fish can evolve to an actual flying fish.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u2Hbo.png)
1. We start with a flying fish like creature (hereafter called gliding fish for clarity's sake) and introduce the carnivorous gliding fish whose main diet consists of regular gliding fish.
2. Gliding fish who are able to glide for much long periods escape the carnivorous gliding fish better than their counterparts and thus gliding time lengthens.
3. Suddenly carnivorous gliding fish evolve the same trick which in turn also make regular gliding fish glide time increase. The limit is now breathing.
4. Since having a fish like creature evolve lungs suddenly is a bit hard to explain. Let's say that, like amphibians, they keep a thin layer of mucus around them so they can survive longer over water.
5. Again, by having the carnivorous gliding fish copy this, it will become more efficient. All that's left is going from gliding to flying.
6. We'll do this the way we do with dragons, the fins stretch out and slowly gain joints to increase glide time even more and over enough generations, you'll gain flight.
Though keep in mind that the new flying fish will be amphibious in a way, having to fly into water every once in a while.
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How about rolling your evolution backstory forward from a creature like the flying fish? A prey animal that avoids predators by launching out of water into the air and gliding for a time. Evolutionary pressure on this animal could continue to make it a better and better glider until it actually evolves powered flight. Along the way, its also adapting to air based vision and breathing. Eventually, you can arrive at a whole ecosystem evolved from this starting creature. Some can certainly live by flying, essentially, forever. Maybe they still spawn in the ocean before they take to the air for the rest of their lives, or maybe they live on their parent's back until they launch off on their own.
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You start with [Flying Fish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_fish). This is a family of bony fish (about 64 species) who leap out of the water and glide at low altitude, using adapted fins as wings. This seems to have evolved as a way of evading predators. They can cover distances of about 50 metres on their own power, or use updrafts at the leading edges of waves to go considerably further.
Then you need them to evolve lungs, and flight muscles. Neither of these is totally implausible, given the right pressures, which might well start with a predator fish that learned to see in air and leap out of the water to catch them. You'll need a long time for these adaptations to evolve, but it seems workable.
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Ok, while an interesting mind game, there are some inherently bothersome issues with your question... The question you ask is 'How could, if possible, an vertabrate...(etc)'. First issue is 'How could?', as the answer is 'through evolution, due to pressures caused by changes to the living environment of said vertebrate creature.
The thing to understand about evolution is that one creature NEVER turns into another creature. The evolutionary process is an extremely slow and random process with many failures (in fact, most changes fail- even the good ones) what makes a given evolutionary change a 'success' is the failure of the previous strain of the beginning creature (at least locally). I say it that way because biodiversity occurs due to the differences of locality stresses vs total environmental stresses. For example, if a volcanic vent forms on one side of a mountain, then the area around that vent will suffer the biological stresses of the volcanic gasses, liquids (water infused with said gasses), increased temperature, etc. If species in the area are unable to adapt fast enough, the entire local ecosystem can collapse, creating a dead zone. But as you get further away, other species (or other families of the same species that had lived in the now dead zone) may experience a reduced stress form due to diffusion, and may still suffer loss of health, food supply, etc. but not quite enough to actually KILL the lot as in the dead zone.
As life always attempts to spread into any empty area, in an ongoing effort to survive in the new, more hostile dead zone plants without resistance to the new stresses (acid, alkaline, heat, etc.) will be unable to grow in the remaining dead zone, but if several generations accidentally happens to create a genetic version that is just a LITTLE more resistant, then THAT plant will start to encroach into the dead zone a little further than the others. This creates an ideal area for that variant to survive and THRIVE in where perhaps it would have been pushed out in the more hospitable environment, but here it has a chance to grow and dominate, giving future generations the chance (once maximum survival range is reached) to possibly enhance (through chance, generally) the resistance to the still excessive stresses further into the dead zone.
Assuming there are no airborne seeds of plants that already have some ability to adapt to the hostile dead zone stresses, (creating a new scattering of living plants in the dead zone with new species or variants encroaching from the edges) this process will continue in the same way until the dead zone is reclaimed by totally resistant strains. The same process applies to animals, but tends to be slower. I know I'm being long winded, but it's important to say, as evolution is constantly occurring- even today, but it takes a failure of a current eco-niche species, or a hugely beneficial change occurring randomly that allows an evolutionary change to advance into the future.
This means that the biggest issue with your hypothesized flying vertebrate evolutionary process is that once lungs (or otherwise thin air breathing structures) begin to evolve, land living (or tree living) changes rapidly become needful things, as the fragility of wing structures means that collisions with land will become a dramatic survival pressure. Just my opinion, of course, but trying to explore all angles, and the only thing I could come up with was if the world did not have ANY land for a time, then survival through LONG time flight might become an effective survival trait, but I don't know that otherwise the evolving 'flying fish' could survive both ocean going threats and evolving land-based threats (or worse, pre-existing threats).
Also, the evolving species would need to find an acceptable food supply that does not require them to return to the depths, and that they can obtain even if followed by predators in the water. All in all, while such evolutionary adaptations are theoretically possible, the likelihood of it becoming successful enough to thrive is pretty small, compared to the possible predatory species that might see such flyers as lunch on the wing, especially if they do not become predators in their own rights... Odds are that such evolutionary 'experiments' have occurred in the past, but that they simply couldn't compete with other dominant species and predators, and died out (failed), rather than thriving. That, or they DID develop land-based aspects and survived that way. Or not. It's evolution after all, no guarantee of survival. Never know when you'll be hit by a huge meteor, you know. Or lose your food supply, or encounter another catastrophic environmental change...
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A swimming species could be forced out of water to stay on top of it by a predator. First step in evolution would be a duck like creature, but in the middle of the ocean, still needing to dive to keep wet. Over time they evolve to have lungs. In the meanwhile their predator evolves to swim close to surface, and this creature evolves wings.
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As others have said - start with a flying fish. It jumps out of the water and flies to escape predators, or to impress mates, perhaps both.
Some of these flying fish have a wing configuration which lets them do a primitive version of dynamic soaring - the non-flapping, very energy efficient kind of flight which [albatrosses use](http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/22/4222).
Air is less dense and less viscous than water, so it takes less energy to move through it. A fish that is flying from point A to point B is using less energy than a fish which is swimming the same distance. Especially if it is using dynamic soaring. If one shoal of fish is swimming to that big juicy swarm of krill and another shoal is flying, the fliers will get there first and grab the food. So natural selection will favour the fish that are better at dynamic soaring, until you get a creature as good at it as an albatross. (Unless there is a bigger selection pressure to stay underwater, such as huge flocks of hungry gulls trying to pick you off as you fly by).
Like the albatrosses, the fish will dive back into the water to feed. It can also wet its gills and skin. It'll need to lay its eggs or give birth to its babies in the water. And unless it develops the [swift's](http://www.rspb.org.uk/makeahomeforwildlife/advice/expert/previous/swallowsinair.aspx) ability to sleep in the air, it will need to return to the water to rest (like seabirds do when they are out to sea far from any land).
So a fish-albatross-swift may spend most of its time in the air, apart from feeding dives and reproduction.
Not sure what selection pressures would drive it onto land. Foraging on the beach or in estuaries, perhaps? A fish will be rubbish at taking off from land. The tail is designed to generate thrust in water.
EDIT TO ADD INFO ON TAKE OFF ON LAND: You need a propulsion system that works on land (legs for instance) and which can accelerate you forward fast enough to generate lift as air flows over your wings. Fish use their tails as propulsion - waggling them to push against the water. Air is not dense enough for this, plus on land you also have to overcome friction of the fish belly against the ground.
The fish-albatross CAN take off from land by spreading its wings and facing into a stiff breeze. But no breeze = no take off. Watch this [albatross chicks vs sharks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD6cQ2dh7Mo) clip and imagine there are also predators on land! Those albatrosses pick isolated islands to breed on for a reason.
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This possibility was discussed in Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart's *What Does a Martian Look Like?*: The science of extraterrestrial life (2002). They suggested this could occur on a higher-gravity planet because air density would be greater at sealevel than here on Earth. Also, winds are more powerful as the air density increases. For the same speed, a volume of air has greater mass and therefore has greater momentum. From there is a small step to imagine an ecosystem that takes advantage of this free lift.
First marine creatures adapted as gliders and if further adaptation occurred this might turn fins or equivalent structures into wings. Not exactly flying fish, this will depend on what marine creatures are on the evolutionary pathway(s) to flight.
For example, some of the large colonial jellyfish might allow themselves to pushed by windpower and grow sail-like structures to assist and eventually skin above the waves while trawling for prey with long skeins of their tentacles. There also could, possibly, be soaring sting rays.
In an environment like this, the seas and oceans of high-gravity planet there would be most likely many sail-powered species. Flying sea creatures would be a bonus.
High-gravity planets are also expected to have extensive sea coverage due to the larger amount of water present of their surfaces. I have seen a suggestion that some Super-Earths might have oceans a thousand kilometres deep. No land masses there. So if there was flight on this planet it would have to be marine creatures that evolved it.
PS: Cohen and Stewart's xenobiology book is essential reading for anyone in the creature design business or with an interest in alien biology. The title given above is the paperback edition's as the hardback had the original title of *Evolving the Alien*. They also wrote two science fiction novels that have some of the best aliens. Look for *Wheelers* and *Heaven*. Jack Cohen was an adviser to Anne McCaffrey for Pern dragons and Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle for the grendels in their *Heorot* series.
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It's not only possible, it's relatively probable!
## Meet the freshwater butterflyfish!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UPOgg.jpg)
This unique-looking fish is the sole member of the family Pantodontidae. It is an obligate air-breathing, surface-dwelling fish that flaps it pectoral fins while jumping and may be capable of some gliding. Ah, just "some" and just "gliding", you say. Well, allow me to introduce...
## The freshwater hatchetfish!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/X2Se8.jpg)
This remarkable relative of tetras is thought by some to be the only fish capable of true, powered flight. Even those who protest that its fins are not capable of a proper stroke agree that it is an accomplished glider that pursues flying insects through the air.
So, on the one hand, you have a possible glider that breathes air and flaps it's fins while out of water, and on the other you have what may already be capable of actual flight, and neither of them have ventured onto land at any point in their evolutionary history. It isn't remotely far-fetched to imagine an aquatic creature that breathes air and is able to take flight, but lacks any ability to move on land and has no ancestors capable of moving on land either.
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One avenue of research you need to look into and incorporate with the great suggestions above is **surface loading ratio, and wing shape.**
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I'm toying with the idea of writing stories about the influence of World War II on Russia. The target audience are ordinary Americans, hence it makes sense to have a viewpoint character, who is an American, who somehow got to Russia and witnesses the Russian side of the war.
What is a realistic scenario of an American ending up on the battlefield with the Russians (apart from the one below) ?
**Possible scenario**
An American specialist travels to Russia to set up a piece of equipment, which the USSR got from the US in scope of [lend-lease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease) agreement. Let's say he travels to Leningrad and soon after his arrival, the Germans [encircle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad) the city, so he can't come back in a normal way.
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Well, there is a real-life prototype for you, I guess: [Joseph Beyrle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Beyrle), a US paratrooper. While I won't list all of his deeds, the story of him getting to fight alongside Soviets was him getting captured by Germans and eventually escaping his captors, running away from them towards the Soviets and, upon meeting up with them he politely asked for a chance to fight alongside the Soviet unit he met until he reaches Berlin. You should check his full biography as it is filled with amazing stuff.
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Just one American? Oh goodness me, there are so many options...
* As you said: specialist sent over to deliver equipment through [Lend-Lease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease), like aircraft and tanks. He could also be educating people in how to use the stuff, meaning you have an excellent reason to place him in control of advanced instruments of war. He would have to be a specialist since he would be teaching people that in turn would educate the grunts.
* As @o.m. said: correspondent gets caught up in many important events.
* The ambassador and other diplomats, aides and support staff — like guards — for the diplomatic mission at the [Spaso House](http://moscow.usembassy.gov/spasohistory.html).
* Clueless socialist/communist ideologist that travelled to the Soviet Union to see socialism up close, working at a [Sovkhoz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovkhoz).
* Military intelligence agent keeping an eye on Soviet capabilities, since the US figured that once Germany was defeated, the Soviet Union would be a major power in the world. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union%E2%80%93United_States_relations>
* Volunteer.
* Mercenary.
* Thrill seeker.
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A good starting point might be to read The Soviet Economy and the Red Army, 1930-1945 by Walter S. Dunn Jr.. In this book it describes how American companies and their personnel helped build Soviet Industry just prior to World War Two as wells as a description of the Lend lease program carried out thru out the war. Also from its bibliography you will be able to get specific names of American companies/personnel from which you can do further research.
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The American soldier would have seen many horrible things in the Soviet Union, human rights violations, prison camps with slave laborers, and an extreme lack to fulfil even the most basic human needs.
Americans are very practical and efficient, so it is likely he would have perceived the system as extremely wasteful (see below for a book recommendation).
He would also have been shocked by the presence of party and NKVD officials in the military hierarchy, and by the power they were wielding over regular soldiers and officers.
He would have seen soldiers sent to the front without weapons, driven forward by by other soldiers and machine gunned down by the Germans without any chance, corpses piling up till they could be used as shields.
There is a chance he would have ended up in the GULag, the Soviet system of concentration camps himself.
Many (all?) Red Army soldiers who were captured ended up in these camps. It is not very likely that the NKVD would have permitted Americans to mingle with Soviets.
During the great depression before WW2, many Americans were lured to the Soviet Union as workers, and most of them ended up in camps, many were even murdered.
One book that could give you some inspiration and a lot of information on real life conditions at that time is
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Forsaken-American-Tragedy-Stalins/dp/0143115421](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0143115421)
I can recommend this book highly.
It also gives a very good idea how Americans were recruited, this might give you some inspiration.
Another book I recommend is "An American Engineer in Stalin's Russia", more focused on the life of one engineer who had contacts all the way up to Stalin(which probably saved his life).
Here is an article with further links:
<https://stevehollier.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/the-tragic-story-of-the-50000-british-and-american-soldiers-who-disappeared-into-the-soviet-gulag-never-to-return/>
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This is an odd question, but one that has been taunting my mind for a while. I had the idea of a weapon which used a firework, or something similar to a firework, for ammunition. I'd prefer it to work and look more like a crossbow in design, but I imagine this might backfire, quite literally. So, while I'd prefer a crossbow design where you light it and then fire, any other potential design that **can be carried around like you would a pistol or rifle** would be fine. It should be light-weight, for carrying purposes of course, and it can't threaten the person firing, at least if used properly. It should be effective at harming the target, with easy enough aim (At least with practice). Any legality concerns should be ignored, and some suspension of disbelief and lack of perfect realism is fine. Is a weapon like this possible, and is there any complications that would prevent the criteria I wish from being met? Let me list the criteria I wish to have for ease:
* Light-weight
* Can be carried with ease like a pistol or rifle
* Is accurate enough that it can be used reliably as a weapon, at least with enough practice
* Should be effective at seriously harming the target, preferably through burns or explosion, but does not need to instantly kill the target
* It should not be a serious threat to the person firing, at least if used properly
* Preferably a crossbow-like design in function and/or appearance, with a 'light-and-fire' method of shooting, but it can be any other design that can be carried with ease, preferentially staying as close to a crossbow as possible while meeting other criteria
* Must use fireworks for ammunition, or a form of ammunition that functions greatly like a firework
* Preferably possible to make in a medieval-era world
* Doesn't require absurd technology to make, it should be easy enough to make that not only the king and his guards have them.
Please, if this question is flawed in some form, I'd appreciate feedback so I can change it. The only other question similar to this was closed and didn't have answers that'd assist me very well. Any extra info, such as the earliest it could be developed, strategies, and potential uses, would also be appreciated, but I can ask it in other questions if needed.
**Edit**: It's been brought to my attention that fireworks are very unreliable in their timing, and thus wouldn't explode on impact like I so wish. In your question, you can either address this with a solution, or you can ignore it and assume that the fireworks are perfectly timed by some contrivium or handwaving means.
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There are modern weapons that also double as fireworks. First thing that comes to mind are flare guns that you would find in a boat or ship. Those are meant to catch attention from afar, but they can deal grave damage at point blank.
Then there are Dragon BreathTM shotgun rounds, because 4th of July and 'Murica.
And this is what firing them from a regular double click looks like:
Push comes to shove, just pick a regular firework launcher and point. A friend of my father died when a firework rockety-thing hit him in the temple, because he shot himself by accident. I remember the tube it came out of was like 1.5m (~5 ft).
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i am not sure is this what you want but china did have gunpowder/firework like weapon
for example
from:<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_lance>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yyMtD.jpg)
certain type of fire lance without the pointy tip
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3NJAr.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MVDwV.jpg)
this is done even on arrow
from:<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_arrow>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1BF3o.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/n9YIB.jpg)
notice the fire in the image there?
which also used by both bow and crossbow
>
> **Design**
>
>
> **Although the fire arrow is most commonly associated with its rocket
> mechanism,[6](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y2rtF.jpg) it originally consisted of a pouch of gunpowder attached
> to an arrow. This type of fire arrow served the function of an
> incendiary and was launched using a bow or crossbow.**
>
>
> According to the Wujing Zongyao the fire arrow was constructed and
> used in the following manner:
>
>
> *Behind the arrow head wrap up some gunpowder with two or three layers of soft paper, and bind it to the arrow shaft in a lump shaped
> like a pomegranate. Cover it with a piece of hemp cloth tightly tied,
> and sealed fast with molten pine resin. Light the fuse and then shoot
> it off from a bow.[6](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y2rtF.jpg)
> — Wujing Zongyao*
>
>
> **Incendiary gunpowder weapons had an advantage over previous
> incendiaries by using their own built-in oxygen supply to create
> flames, and were therefore harder to put out, similar to Greek fire.
> However unlike Greek fire, gunpowder's physical properties are solid
> rather than liquid, which makes it easier to store and load.[6](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y2rtF.jpg)**
>
>
> The rocket propelled fire arrow appeared later. By the mid 1300s
> rocket arrow launchers had appeared in the Ming dynasty and later on
> mobile rocket arrow launchers were utilized in both Korea and China.
> The fire arrows propelled by gunpowder may have had a range of up to
> 1,000 feet.[6](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y2rtF.jpg)
>
>
>
there also this one without the arrow point and just simply a rocket
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y2rtF.jpg)
it can end up like shanyu in mulan cartoon
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gxhiE.gif)
at least base on the description there, its easier to create fire or burn objects such as house or wooden wall or ship for example, which is quite a problem for [common fire arrow](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eeVqQYgxt0w/Wbuh0E6lp8I/AAAAAAAAGY4/M0TENKZE6s8avztdT0EeYg8Gx0wqieioQCLcBGAs/s1600/Test%2BFA.jpg)(non gunpowder one) to keep the fire still lit after shooting it.
outside of the usual cannon weapon
[Answer]
### The Korean Hwacha weaponized fireworks to launch a devastating barrage of arrows.
There was a weapon developed by the Koreans in the 15th century named the [hwacha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwacha), which literally translates to "fire cart". It consisted of an array of tubes mounted on a cart, into which hundreds of arrows attached to fireworks were placed, so that when ignited, hundreds of rocket-propelled arrows would rain down on their enemies.
The Mythbusters built and tested one, and found that it is a dangerous weapon, failing to hit their targets primarily due to arranging them in a loose formation and at an incorrect range. Here is a video by the Smithsonian displaying another test of a hwacha, which failed to score many kills for the same reason:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQhSXA3AKh4>
Beyond being visually impressive, these were very effective weapons when properly used; during the [Battle of Haengju](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Haengju), 2300 Korean soldiers held off approximately 30,000 Japanese samurai with the usage of their hwachas from a fortified position.
[Answer]
Take a conventional firework and fill it with both the conventional charges for light/sound effects and hard objects like nails, glass shards, small stones.
Fire it on the enemy using a handheld pipe and, no matter if it explodes while still airborne or after landing, it will:
* produce a bright flash of light which will momentarily blind the enemy
* a loud bang which will stun the enemy
* the hard objects will create a shrapnel hurting all those who in the line of sight
Basically you are combining a claymore and a flashbang.
[Answer]
What you are describing is essentially a flare gun, other than the point about accuracy.
Flare guns are a standard part of well stocked survival kits found on boats, planes, and long-haul semi-trailer trucks running routes that go primarily through the wilderness, as well as being reasonably commonly found in use by many military and paramilitary organizations. They propel an special incendiary projectile (sometimes with an attached parachute) at a moderate speed, intended for high arcing shots for signaling purposes. The projectile itself is usually designed to burn very brightly (metal powders, such as magnesium, are often used for this purpose), possibly with a particular color (usually produced in the same manner as for fireworks), and possibly generating a lot of smoke as well for daytime visibility.
The thing is, you can still fire these parallel to the ground, though they don’t have great accuracy (they usually do not stabilize the projectile in any way, as they’re designed to be used like mortars), but if you *do* hit your target, they *will* be seriously hurting. The heat needed to produce the level of light these things put out is enough to ignite or melt most clothing, and there are actually reports of people downing aircraft by firing flares at them from the ground.
---
Alternatively, you might look into [gyrojet firearms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet), possibly with exploding bullets.
The concept here is actually pretty simple. A normal firearm uses the pressure generated by detonating an external propellant to push a bullet down the barrel at high velocity. The gyrojet design instead uses thrust generated by burning propellant carried in the projectile itself, much like a rocket (and also uses this same thrust to induce spin in the projectile to provide gyroscopic stabilization without needing rifling).
The original designs were very large caliber (.49 and/or .51, translating to around 12.5mm), so in theory it would be pretty easy to load them up with a small explosive charge with an impact trigger to achieve an effect similar to what you desire.
[Answer]
Something to consider with any sort of rocket propelled weapon: Who or What is directly behind you when you fire it? Your second rank is not going to appreciate having all their hair singed off when you pull the trigger.
This can dictate where you put your fire archers in formation as well as the design of the weapon overall. Ideally you would have a system to throw the projectile some distance from the user before the rocket kicks in. A standardized crossbow will serve you well. If you have handwavium fusing, this won't be as much of an issue as you can precisely determine how far it will go before beginning the thrust phase. Otherwise, you will have to shoot upward at an angle and hope.
Another option would be to have a tube type weapon that uses a small gunpowder charge to throw the rocket a ways and then begin rocket propulsion.
Or, you could just light the rocket and shoot it from a tube over the top of a shield, with the rank behind you staggered so as not to lose their eyebrows.
[Answer]
Long ago I read a fictional story in a children's magazine about a sailing ship which lost its only cannon overboard in a storm, thus becoming defenseless against pirates.
But the ship did have some fireworks in its cargo. When it was attacked by a pirate ship they fired rockets at the pirate ship and chased it away.
I don't know how plausible that story was.
But black powder solid fuel rockets have been used for fireworks displays for many centuries, perhaps a thousand years. And black powder propelled rockets have been used as weapons of war for almost as long.
As I remembr early Chinese war rockets included arrows with rockets attached to give them more range, and possibly to explode upon impact. China and neighboring countries developed many other gunpowder weapons over the centuries, including cannons and various rockets. I remember a Korean weapon which would shoot many rockets at once at an enemy.
Hyder Ali (c. 1720-1782) and his son Tipu Sultan (1750-1799), who ruled Mysore in South India, started a weapons research program and developed better war rockets than were peviously used in India, having iron tubes to contain higher gas pressure than previous tubes.
At the Battle of Pollilur on 10 Septembr 1780 during the Second Anglo-Mysore War, Tipu Sultan inflicted a crushing defeat on a British East India Company force.
>
> Tipu prevented Lt. Col. Baillie, from joining his detached force, consisting of two companies of European infantry, two batteries of artillery, and five battalions of native infantry, from Guntur, joining Hector Munro at Conjeevaram, while Tipu's father Hyder Ali continued the siege at Arcot. Of the 3853 men under Baillie's command, only 50 European officers and 200 men were taken prisoner after the "general massacre". Baillie was taken to Seringapatam[6] (Srirangapatnam near Mysore in the present-day Karnataka state).
>
>
> The Mysore rockets used during the battle were much more advanced than the British East India Company had previously seen, chiefly because of the use of iron tubes for holding the propellant; this enabled higher thrust and longer range for the missile (up to 2 km range). After Tipu Sultan's eventual defeat in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War and the capture of the Mysore iron rockets, they were influential in British rocket development, inspiring the Congreve rocket, which was soon put into use in the Napoleonic Wars.[7]
>
>
>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Pollilur\_(1780)[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pollilur_(1780)%5B1%5D)
Congreave rockets were used in the Napoleonic Wars, mostly by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1805, and were used successfuly in a number of battles, including the attackon Copenhagen in 1807.
The British army began using Congreave rockets successfully in 1813-1814 in Spain and a British rocket unit was at the so-called "Battle of the Nations" on 19-19 September 1813, Napoleon's biggest defeat.
In the War of 1812, at the Battle of Fort McHenry on the night of september 13-14, 1814, British ships fired a lot of artillery at Fort McHenry, including Congreave rockets, thus inspiring "the rockets' red glare" in the US national anthem.
The Mysore and Congreave rockets, and some others, were more like rocket artillery with several man crews than like single man rocket bows or rocket muskets. But single person rocket weapons did exist for centuries and so presumably had some military effectiveness. Some were even shot from bows and so presumably version of them could have been shot from crowsbows.
] |
[Question]
[
No metal weapons allowed I'm limiting this to wooden or composite ones only (for example the use of something as tough or harder than lignum vitae and other materials).
I accept far fetched answers or ones including a little bit of magic since lack of realism doesn't really bother me that much. (for example soldiers having above average human strength)
Combat is almost exclusively blunt trauma based except for "cross/bow & arrows" and the occasional stone/obsidian-tipped (sharp but brittle materials) spears/lance, so I would like to take bladed (hard metal) weapons such as swords out of the equation.
All types are armor are allowed except the ones that require metal.
With the context out of the way I assumed using blunt objects such as maces and clubs would be best, even from an aesthetic point of view I quite like it. However I am now thinking about adding in pole-arm maces and clubs supposedly for added reach but in reality just out my personal sense of aesthetics.
\*\*How to justify to use of long reach bludgeons ? What do I need to make this work ? \*\*
**From what I've gathered this type of weapon has already existed but I want to focus on ones that are made without metal.**
<https://live.staticflickr.com/8295/8021511848_a3777371dd_o.jpg>
[https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31YLlZdJt4L.*SS510*.jpg](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31YLlZdJt4L._SS510_.jpg)
[Answer]
This is a little broader than your question but I think it gets to your point (pardon the pun) Hope it helps!
* There are lots of long weapons available without metal. First, don't forget the good old stone-tipped or even fire-hardened spear or pike. Pike formations might even be MORE effective since you won't have as effective chopping tools to counter them.
* Blunt can be a bit of a misnomer - it might not be a cutting tool, but the goal of most weapons is to focus energy to a small point, so even a pointy rock on the end of a pole is gruesome if you hit someone with it (think Poleaxe). The short version is the stone axe, an extremely popular weapon.
* Pole arms are slow compared to hand weapons (like say a Macuahuitl which would be much like an obsidian sword) good for infighting, so pole arms imply formations and armies more than cutthroat melee. Polearms (especially blunt ones) would be most effective against armored opponents (maces came into vogue to let armored knights break each other's bones through armor) so if there's some sort of linen or cocoanut armor to fend off knives and spears then crushing weapons are more critical.
* If blunt is the critical thing (thinking clerics and religious rules) don't forget slings and bolas. Sling formations were prominent in many ancient militaries even after the development of metal spear and arrow tips (think David and Goliath); everyone can make one, ammunition is free, and a hundred sling bullets hitting your formation is unpleasant at best. Save fragile bows and arrows for hunting.
* A long club is essentially a staff. it can beat someone to death if you need to have the reach, but the actual wielding of it is usually quite different and even into medieval times using a staff well was a skilled and valued ability (think Robin hood and Little John).
* In homage to Indiana Jones, a whip is technically blunt, but still cuts (especially if tipped with something sharp) and can be just a ton of fun! It would have reach like a polearm.
* Don't forget bone, animal teeth (shark, for example) and claws embedded into weapons to give the every dull tool a point! They might be fragile, but they're also cheap and require little technical skill to make.
[Answer]
here several wooden weapon outside of quarter staff
**Flail**
the best bet for you to get wooden long polearms assuming this was use as warfare weapon
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KHTTM.jpg)
**oar or paddle**
from pacific island or polynesian made from very hard wood, even miyamoto musashi kill kojiro with wooden oar.
image from:<https://issuu.com/webbs_house/docs/oceanic_march_2013/67>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XtYdh.jpg)
image from:<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maori_weapons,_Canterbury_Museum,_2016-01-27.jpg>
(outside of the most upper one the rest is long wooden blunt weapon including the blunt wooden halberd or axe there, yes its pure wood)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aNqWS.jpg)
here another image if you dont believe me
image from:<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maori_weapons_(tewhatewha),_Otago_Museum,_2016-01-29.jpg>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gC1Yc.jpg)
i want to add more but it lag so hard, the rest is pretty much from polynesian wooden weapon and pretty much no different than oar or paddle or wooden naginata or halberd.
for why they use blunt weapon rather than stabbing, it probably they has upgrade plate armor to the point penetration or penetrating the gap is ineffective anymore, stuff like because the inner layer of the armor is strong enough to withstand stabbing, and so they need to use blunt to kill. (mind you plate armor not necessary made of iron or steel or metal it can also made from wood, or other materials like stone for example, though chinese do has stone armor, just not plate and more as ceremonial thing. if steel and iron technology is out of the question.)
or they are to agile and equipped with thick shield to effectively block the stabbing to the point blunt attack is far better to deliver damage either to the person or to break the shield, blunt swing is not necessary slow, it as fast as swinging other weapon, it just depend on the weight and inertia it deliver, spear stabbing has high chance to get missed unless in formation, at least blunt weapon attack can also disrupt the formation too, or breaking or cracking the spear if they land a hit, even if the spear not broken, the person probably get broken or dislodge arm from the force anyway.
or it just their everyday tool they have like the oar one, or just cultural thing, i dont know why, but most maori weapon is made of blunt weapon, usually wood as been shown in the image up there.
if your setting is not europe, i suggest copy the polynesian or pacific islands then, since it harder to create solid formation in an island with lush jungle, and where everyone use ship or boat (hence the paddle or oar as weapon), and the hot damp climate with lots of rain probably wont be effective for steel plate armor and a disaster for maintenance, besides with lots of wood, this can be a good reasoning of no metal armor or weapon, and so it make justification for wood plate armor or weapons, despite the cons like you cant reshape it back if it crack or break, but its better than nothing and you has a lot of wood source in the region.
[Answer]
I believe a long blunt weapon is generally called a staff. ;)
As to why people don't use metal, maybe magic metal manipulation is powerful/ranged enough to turn any metal armor into an instant death trap, and somewhat rare (people wearing the stuff cannot directly "hold their armor in shape"). The logical conclusion of that train of thought however is dueling Magneto knock-offs, that shred all the normies... and that doesn't sound like the story you're trying to tell.
If you want something more like a headless polearm, and a reason for everyone to carry them anyway... how about an ambush hunter that buries itself and bursts out when the ground above it is trod (or whacked) upon. The pole needs to be longer than the beast's reach, which just happens to be a bit shorter than however long you want your poles to be. These ambush critters would have to be at least a little mobile, or your people wouldn't need the staves. And once you find one of these things, it's a good idea to kill it... Maybe it has an exoskeleton, making bashing them considerably more effective than stabbing/cutting them.
And you'd want to trigger then with a lighter end, tapping along similarly to a blind person with their cane, but fight with a heavier end, which would also counterbalance the other end and make continuously tapping as you traveled less draining.
[Answer]
The famous sharpened stick, or the high-tech version, the fire-hardened sharpened stick, is likely to be a more effective weapon than a club....and it can also be used as a club or staff if needed.
In this era - and others - individual weapons will be much less important than the military organisation, training and discipline of the different sides.
Historically blunt weapons have not really been popular; they're just not a very efficient way iof killing people,
[Answer]
Staffs are great weapons on their own. Not the really light ones you can do al sorts of spiny tricks with, but a good sturdy quarter-staff. In fact they are probably better weapons than most swords. Or most things that are not pole or projectile weapons. The thing you need to remember is that weapons in the real world are not "balanced" there is no rock paper scissors wheel where weapons neatly counter each other. Swords are ubiquitous in many cultures not because they are great battlefield weapons, but because they are easy to carry and quick to draw. They are usually a side arm unless they are really big and then the definition of pole weapon can get blurry.
Swords were not the kings of the battle field, but rather the pole arm (more specifically the spear). Pole weapons are not slow, as some might suggest, they are fast, they have the best reach short of projectiles, and they hit really really hard.
If you're going for blunt force being the primary mode of fighting on the battlefield, the first question I would ask is why not a spear. Spears are ludicrously effective and have been since before humans wrote things down. The first battle won with them is lost to history, the most recent I know of is from 2006 when royal marines executed a successful bayonet charge. If everyone is whacking each other over the head with clubs and staffs, but they have access to spears, the question is why isn't the spear king. Because it was, for most of history in most places. Exceptions like the roman legions do exist, but they are *exceptions*.
[Answer]
**Your people have strong blunt giant staves handy.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gs2lJ.jpg)
<https://www.amstelsport.nl/buitensport-activiteiten/fierljeppen/>
Pole arms originated because non-warriors had them handy. Bills and bill-hooks are tree pruning tools that were pressed into service as weapons.
If you want to justify why your people use giant blunt staffs as weapons, have the reason be that they all have giant blunt staffs handy.
In some parts of the Netherlands giant staffs like these are used to traverse the many canals traversing the landscape. You put your giant staff in and vault across.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/c2Srl.jpg)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP32iWoqjnQ>
If you need a reason why this is the weapon your people use, a practical reason is good. The people are not professional warriors. When they are pressed into service, their tools get pressed into service too.
[Answer]
When you say "long, blunt weapons," I immediately jump to the Okinawan Rokushaku bo, a stick around 6 feet in length. The ancient incarnations were made from whatever wood they had lying around (since they were used to carry baskets or other containers), however you could have them arbitrarily thick or long for your purposes (my instructor had a 2.5" thick x 7' long purple heartwood bo, the size and density made it incredibly heavy).
There were three ways to form the shaft - tapered, straight, and swelled. The swelled end was used when something was going to be mounted inside the staff (a la nunti bo), which is what you are looking for in terms of weight distribution. The ends would also traditionally have a hook-shape on the end (again, made from whatever) to facilitate carrying things in such a way that they wouldn't fall off. By making this hook out of bone or stone, you essentially have a 6 foot long billhook.
Additionally, it adds variety as there are two ways to use it. Method 1 is the "baton method", where the staff is held in three equal divisions, allowing the use of both front-end and tail-end strikes. Method 2 is much more similar to polearms in the "rear-grip/sword" method, where the grip is biased towards the back half, giving a really long front end that can be wielded like either a regular spear or like an odachi.
[Answer]
Many people have already posted very compelling answers. One thing to look at in our own world is weapons like staffs and spears have been in existence for thousands of years simply because they are so versatile. A staff can be as simple as a branch picked up from the ground, and a spear made by sharpening and hardening the end, so these are low tech to the point the Ancestors probably used them at the same time they were discovering fire and using sharpened flint as their high tech tool kit. This could theoretically make staffs and spears tens of thousands to millions of years old - depending how far back you want to push it (some ancestral hominids apparently were using fire that far back).
Staffs and spears lasted through ice ages, the domestication of dogs, horses and other animals, the invention of woven fibres, leather and metal armours and indeed are even used in the 21rst century (police riot batons are short staffs, and rioters often bring signs because the poles they mount the signs on are improvised staffs as well). The amazing versatility, increased reach and leverage that these give you mean they are in fact the very basic tools in the armoury, swords are side arms and not the primary weapons of war, despite anything Hollywood shows.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KXno4.jpg)
*Riot batons in the modern world are effective blunt instruments*
So these are amazingly effective weapons, with millennia of history behind them and countless martial arts schools developing innumerable techniques for use against almost any kind of imaginable threat.
] |
[Question]
[
In terms of context, this airlock would be used on airships which fly at a height in which oxygen levels are too low for humans to live. Within the hull of the airship, stored oxygen would be pumped inside and kept within through insulated walls. However, many still need to go out on to the deck. This would need to be done without the oxygen inside being lost and the inside of the ship being depressurized, and thus, an airlock is needed.
However, as this takes place in a semi-medieval world, would something like this be possible to construct given the technology and knowledge available?
Note that the people creating this would have advanced knowledge of chemicals and gasses as a whole, as well as mechanical technology that consists of levers and pulleys.
[Answer]
**Leather and grease**
Let's forget about the impossibility of flying and concentrate on the question of 'can you build an airlock?
These huge leather bellows show that it is possible to make airtight structures with leather.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/C7i6N.png)
This sort of bellows has to contain flap valves that allow passage of air in only one direction.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/irfSi.png)
Airlocks would simply consist of an arrangement of flap valves. Small valves would be used to equalise pressure slowly. Large flap valves supported by wooden panels would act as doors. Of course, every time the outer door was opened some air would be lost to the outside but that's true of high-tech space airlocks anyway.
The flaps would need to be kept supple and airtight by the application of a suitable grease. Goose grease would be ideal.
[Answer]
Yes, it is possible to use medieval technology to make an airlock.
[Goldbeating](https://www.infogalactic.com/info/Goldbeating) is an ancient technology. It can be used to make thin, continuous sheets of metal, including cheaper metals like copper or brass. The interior of the airlock can be "gilded" with this "imitation leaf" to minimize air loss through the walls. Ideally, the leaf would be protected from damage on both sides by sturdier materials.
Large pieces of leaf can be attached to adjacent pieces of leaf by multiple-layer crimps. A practical modern-day example is use of two side-by-side sheets of crimped-together aluminum foil to protect the bottom of a roasting pan from drippings. This makes it much easier to clean the roasting pan after the meal is cooked.
The gilding is not a structural material. Instead, it is a thin layer over structural materials that are porous, leaky, or outgas too much. Tongue-in-groove plywood or the [materials](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/posts/131155) suggested by [Hippeus\_Lancer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/57574) could be used as backing layers. Studs or other structural framing could back-up the sheet goods. The hardest part of the design would by allowing for expansion and contraction of the backing layers, without tearing holes in the gilding. Fortunately, laminated wood is an ancient technology that mitigates expansion and contraction.
The gilding would be applied to the main surfaces of the doorways, but would not be used to seal around the edges of the doorways. The seals around the edges of the doorways would be air-tight gaskets.
Vacuum-tight gaskets can be made using metal. In fact, the "hardest" vacuums are retained by [metal gaskets](https://www.atlasuhv.com/products/all-metal-uhv-seals-gaskets/), not rubber gaskets. The fundamental technologies for making a ["knife-edge" gasket](https://www.atlasuhv.com/products/all-metal-uhv-seals-gaskets/copper-cf-rf-flare-gaskets/) are knife making, vises or clamps, and copper billets. Medieval metal workers should be capable of making such gaskets.
[Answer]
No, you can't build something like that with medieval technologies.
First of all, a medieval ship is made of wood. Assembling wood to make it airtight can hardly work, for a series of reasons:
* large manufacturing tolerances
* deformation over time
* deformation under stress (a pressurized vessel acts like a balloon)
Same holds for doors and windows. Moreover, while you could use pitch for sealing the gaps between fixed parts, you would have no way to seal the gaps with a movable part (like the door and its frame).
Then we come to the other problem: lacking any electronic you could only pump Oxygen with no control on the flow.
Pumping Oxygen in an environment made of wood with no control is a really poor idea, as the slightest ignition source can cause a huge fire. And guess what they used in medieval time for lighting applications? Flames!
Last problem: how would you separate Oxygen from the air? You have just elementary pumps and loose tolerances for metal crafting, and storing liquid gases requires way more than that.
[Answer]
Modern airlock uses rubber seals.
Your people can use leather with some padding inside, or same material as the airship envelope, inflated using the same means.
Couple questions for you: once out of airlock, how will the person breathe? Oxygen tanks are way beyond medieval technology. Maybe they can trail an air hose, but that requires better materials than door seal
Also, if air is too thin to breathe, it might be too thin to support an airship. You would need to carry composed gas and realise it into the envelope when going up, and when going down, you would waste it into outside air, or try to pump it back into the tanks. And compressing air is beyond medieval technology.
Finally, how well you move around without an engine? Pedal power?
[Answer]
A small pool of water between inside and outside where the hull touches down to the surface of the water. You could also build it as **a water-filled, U-shaped tunnel where one end is on the inside and the other on the outside**. Crew members have to dive through it to enter and exit the ship.
Of course this adds quite some mass (water is heavy) and as others have pointed out in the comments, if you can build an airship and store oxygen you can also build an airlock.
[Answer]
Since your airship is still in atmosphere a perfect seal isnt neccesary unless your pressurized ship plans to stay up that high for days at a time. Using medieval materials like tar, pitch, cork, and rubber can give you a reasonable, but not perfect seal. You’ll be leaking atmosphere, but thats not a huge problem unless you plan to stay up indefinitely.
If your people have mastered airship technology then perhaps they have pressure vessels as well? Several canisters of pressurized air could help extend the length of time you can spend up so high.
[Answer]
It might be possible to create an airlock using pitch. Pitch is the black, tarry substance used by Egyptians in 3000 BC to make the bottom of their boats water-tight. Assuming some alien technology already built the hull of the spaceship, the medieval humans could make a large air lock door out of plate armor pieces, with the edges sealed using pitch. Cam levers (like bicycle quick-release latches) can apply pressure to the door. Hollow reeds can be used to carry air into the airlock. Blacksmith bellows can be used to pump that air.
] |
[Question]
[
I've posed a question on how to build a continent with [as many hot deserts as possible](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/41646/resources-for-climate-world-building). On the basis of the answers I got on that question, I've drawn a map with the following desert.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/noitn.png)
1. Blue lines: Latitude and longitude (check right and bottom of the screen)
2. Black lines: Limits of the continent
3. Reddish thick lines: Mountain ranges
4. Blue area: Ocean
5. Green area: Fertile regions, with relatively high precipitation (irrespective of being tropical, temperate or whatever)
Let's forget about the plausibility of this desert as far as climate is concerned. [That was addressed on another question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/86215/are-my-deserts-accurately-positioned).
Assuming that the yellow area has a desertic climate with low precipitation, I would like to know the type of ground that this desert would have. Would it be a rocky desert, like the ones in the USA? Or a sand desert, like the Sahara? And why?
*Bonus question: Would it be possible to have different kinds of deserts with different features (rocky versus sand) dispersed through the yellow area?*
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The Sahara is actually mostly composed of gravel formed by the accretion of iron oxides exposed to the little moisture that *does* find its way into the region, there are large areas where sand overlies this gravel basement to considerable depths but most of the terrain is rockier than it is sandy this is generally true of most deserts.
The desert you've described has three borders that are going to be extremely rocky where the mountains drop [colluvium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colluvium) generated by frost and wind erosion on the higher slopes. If we assume the same [prevailing wind/latitude patterns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_wind_patterns) as Earth then fines like sand and silt are going to be blown west in large linear, seif, barchan, or crescentic dune systems, depending on sediment supply. The silt will be blown right out of the desert basin to fertilise the sea while the sand will pile up on the western edge of the desert leaving [desert pavement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_pavement) in the south east. On the far southern edge of the desert, where it dips into the roaring 40s, the reverse will be true due to the prevailing westerlies (westerlies blow west-to-east, easterlies east-to-west). In the northern half of the basin where the mountains block the prevailing winds the desert will make its own weather in the form of an almost permanent low pressure cell; this will draw in a little sea mist around the fringes allowing some plant and animal life to exist and creating heavy [desert varnish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_varnish). Due to continued erosion from frost and wind there will always be a little fresh sand in this central area which the internal wind systems will pile into large irregular and star dunes in the central desert, on Earth these can be hundreds of metres high. Most deserts have a number of different zones and being so vast and covering such a wide latitude and altitude range this one is going to cover almost all of the options.
Quick note parts of the areas near the mountains that you've shown as high rainfall are probably going to experience annual flood/drought cycles much like they see in northern Chile where it can rain metres in a couple of months but it's dry the rest of the year. It's an effect of the rain shadow and seasonal wind variations driving weather systems away from the coast instead of into the mountains.
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This will mostly depend on the underlying geology, you need the right source rock for sand. You will certainly have rocky deserts in the mountains. Note that sandy and rock deserts often occur side by side with rocky headlands and sandy lowlands, see the image below.
Generally you need a quartz rich siliceous source rock, a large expanse of sandstone is a great source but any siliceous rock will work. Generally sand in deserts comes from non-deserts, either areas that were not desert in the past or chemical weathering of modern rock is the best way to produce sand. It can also be formed in the desert directly from weathering sandston. However, it will be a small area this way. Strong winds to remove dust and clay is also important, but that also keeps the sand moving.
Most importantly sandy deserts tend to be small compared to the area you have. The Sahara for instance is only sandy in a few places. The bulk of it is rocky or scrubland. Check out Ash's answer below for a more detailed description of what you can safely use, assuming your mountains are siliceous and your desert is old.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Ytrw.jpg)
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In general deserts are rocky by default.
You get sand via erosion, either wind or water based, which then moves the fine particulates to areas where it accumulates. For wind erosion those dry rocks get worn down and the sand blows and will accumulate in areas where the prevailing regional winds deposit it. For water erosion (your desert won't always have been a desert in geological time) you have rivers and streams eroding rocks depositing the fine particles along the waterways, especially in deltas or lake beds.
See: <http://earthsky.org/earth/how-did-the-sand-in-the-desert-get-there>
So rocky or sandy? The answer is yes it will likely be a bit of both.
It will be rocky with sandy deposits in areas that had ancient river or lake deposits and in wind catchments areas.
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Read up on deserts and sand dunes.
You can get a bunch of different answers depending on
\* the amount of available sand,
\* the pattern of winds
\* the annual and decadal moisture regime
Desert is defined diferently by different groups.
Popular: Dry and dusty. No plants.
Geographer: Less than 10 inches (250 mm) precip a year.
Ecologist: Potential evapotransporation = X \* annual precipitation, with X > 1
The geographer considers both the high arctic (north of tree line) and Antarctica to be cold deserts.
An ecologist's desert can be full of life. But water is the limiting factor in most organism's existance.
Most of Montana, Wyoming, Utah, southern Idaho, eastern Oregon eastern Washington, much of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas are desert.
Can desert types be mixed.
Very much so. Much depends on the geology and the prevailing wind. If you have easily eroded material, you get lots of sand. If you have a prevailing wind from one direction, the sand collects on the down wind side of the region.
Barach dunes (crescent shaped) can form sand islands in the middle of a cobbled plane.
Elevation changes can make for local wet areas. Much of the Western U.S. is 'Basin and Range' with fairly small (25-50 mile long x 10 mile wide) mountain ranges separated by fairly flat valleys. The valleys are desert. The mountain ranges catch what rain happens.
Because rain distribution can be heavily modified by mountains, cold currents etc , you can get lots of shadings in desert types, ranging from just barely a desert -- just very arid -- to places where no rain has fallen for years.
Because so much depends on wind you will get big differences depending on how the wind blows.
Most deserts of the world are neither sand nor cobble. They are dirt. Most deserts have some degree of life. That degree of life is both space dependent (Ravines running away from the equator have more shade, polar sides of mountains have more shade) and time dependent: Life is set up to take quick advantage of water when available: desert flowers that run through their entire life cycle in two weeks after a rain; brine shrinp that explode when the lake fills up, and leave a layer of eggs when the lake dries up.
Google desert on google images to see the impressive variety.
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The real Sahara desert is about 3,000,000 square miles in area. It has vast ergs or seas of sand dunes. Most of it is covered by rocks and gravel. Some parts of the Sahara are very flat. Others are hilly or mountainous. There are some high mountains that have ancient trees thousands of years old growing on them. The Tenere region in Niger is so treeless that the famous tree of Tenere was the only tree for over 250 miles until it was struck by a careless driver in 1973. There are large areas of oasis. There were even reports of crocodiles in at least one body of water.
Maybe you want your fictional desert to be smaller than that. Then select some real Earth deserts of about the same size and read about them to see what kinds of landscape and ecology they have and what degree of variation.
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There are other really good answers here so I'll just touch on where the sand is likely to be.
Sand and dust will be blown by the wind. So, check your prevailing winds. If your wind blows from west to east (like on Earth's northern hemisphere), the sand will blow with it. That means that the western side of the desert will be rockier than the eastern side.
One neat feature may be a low spot in the mountain ridge on the east side where some sand can spill out, making a small drift of sand stretching toward that sea.
One feature that doesn't really work is the mountain range crossing the top. It is possible to have that configuration if the top range is much younger but a more believable configuration would be to have the two side ranges form an inverted V.
I do see an issue with the desert that is below the mountain ranges. Maybe that is due to volcanic activity. That would give you 3 types of desert.
If it suppose to be non-volcanic, it is too symmetrical. The side that the winds are coming from (I'll assume west to be consistent with above) will have fertile lands extending further inward than the eastern side. If there are any sand drifts, they will form a crescent like shape with the bottom tip pointed toward the east.
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Alternate Earth.
Using our own Earth as a baseline, this question opens up altering details of our history or societies to accomplish the intended outcome. The goal, quite simply, is to stagnate technological development to approximately what was discovered by modern nations during World War II.
The quality of the answers will be determined by three vectors:
1. The degree of stagnation
2. The duration of the stagnation
3. The smallest possible alteration of Earth's culture and history *as of the late 1940s* to accomplish these goals.
For point #3, think of this as alternate-reality golf; you want to get the ball in the hole with the fewest number swings. In our case, you want to accomplish points #1 and #2 with the least variation to how the world emerged from WWII.
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**Science never gets around to making a silicon transistor in a timely fashion.**
In this timeline, German scientists after the war who, in reality, were wooed by the Americans and others to continue their work for the Feds, are either all killed for their assistance in war crimes or are unmotivated to work due to guilt or hidden sympathies. Key computer scientists in America who were pursuing this path have maybe also been killed, either due to conscription and fighting in the war, or bombing, or espionage.
This means that mechanical sophistication would still continue, and indeed could lead to things like the first space missions (if the German rocket scientists survived and cooperated). The moon lander's computers had their software stored on "rope memory" because commercial silicon transistors were not assured to be rock-solid and reliable when subjected to the rigors of spaceflight. Without a silicon transistor, technology would still arc up for a few decades, but peter out.
As to whether silicon transistors would eventually be invented anyways, that is up to authorial discretion. the opposite of "Great Man theory," the name of which escapes me, basically, that advances in knowledge are products of the social environment, and that someone, inevitably, would invent this thing. A bit of fun can be had with this if you say that marketing and the zeitgeist really latched onto nuclear power and tube computers without ever really looking for better alternatives.
For a working example of this, look at the backstory of the Fallout franchise and its "divergence" from real history, which operates on an almost identical conceit.
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The first best way to ensure long term stagnation would be to ensure WWII never happens in the first place. Assassinating Hitler prior to his ascension as Chancellor, having FDR replaced by a more isolationist President, having Imperial Japan win the Battles of Khalkhin Gol and not being inclined to expand into the Pacific, Lord Halifax becoming Prime Minister rather than Churchill or other contrafactual events could either make WWII never happen, or shorten it to a regional conflict involving only a few actors over a short period of time.
The advantage of this contrafactual is the Great Depression is likely to continue into the 1950's or even later, since the root causes were not addressed or even exacerbated by government interventions like "The New Deal" (consider the worst year of the Depression in OTL was 1938, almost a decade after the "Crash"). Massive overhanging debts from the Great War crushed savings and capital formation, and foolish interventions like attempting to keep the British Pound Sterling at its pre war value simply made things worse. Without massive increases in production and productivity demanded by WWII, it seems likely that the global economy could limp along for decades.
The second best contrafactual might be the collapse of the Soviet union in WWII. Germany "wins" that round, but is crushed by the combined forces of the British Empire and the Untied States. Without the threat of a hostile Soviet Union behind the Iron Curtain, the United States has no reason to engage Europe with the Marshal Plan or cary out the massive global rebuilding during the 1950's. As well, there is no hostile power spurring the development of new technologies and techniques to counter the adversary. America retreats to comfortable isolationism, demobilizes its military forces to 1930 levels and works on reintegrating people into the civilian economy at home. Without frantic demands to develop long range bombers, miniaturized nuclear warheads, advanced fighter jets, small nuclear reactors for ships and submarines, rockets, spy satellites and so on, there is less demand for R&D and the development of all the supporting industries and techniques needed to make these things happen. Many of the advances of the 1960's won't appear until late into the 1970's, if at all, and the greatest game changer, the development of the ARPANET (forerunner of the Internet) will be stillborn since there is no compelling need to create a robust communications network capable of surviving a nuclear attack.
Eventually, some things will still come to fruition. Spaceflight was written about in the popular press as far back as the 1930's, and things like jet engines and transistors are plausible without the spur of war to speed up development (Jet engines were conceptualized as far back as the 1700's, and the first self sustaining turbojet was built in 1903). Even automatic rifles and Light Machine Guns were conceptualized by the French Army in *1903*, although the first truly successful design had to wait until 1959 with the FN Minimi.
The true difference between your world and OTL is really the political, military and economic incentives to develop advanced technology. Without the ongoing threat of war and nuclear attack during the early Cold War, many of the technologies developed during WWII would have been allowed to stagnate, and only gradually be adopted as old machinery wore out and new needs or opportunities presented themselves. (German long range aircraft in WWII were often developments of airliners, making craft like the Fock-Wulf 200 pretty fragile, while American long range aircraft, especially post war jet aircraft were developed from military experience and patterns, like the Boeing 707. In a world where there was no Cold War, there might not be a need to develop a long range plane to replace the Lockheed Super Constellation with a jet, and any bomber developed from the Constellation platform would not be as robust or capable as a B-47 or B-52).
So as long as there are few incentives to develop, then stagnation seems to be a likely outcome.
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**Headline: HAVE WE GONE TOO FAR?**
The populace of the world was so shocked by the images of devastation and despair in Japan following the dropping of the atomic bomb that discussion of whether we had gone too far becomes commonplace and heavily considered. When America **additionally** dropped a nuclear weapon on Germany (or maybe just an island somewhere near Europe controlled by Germany) for failing to sign its surrender in time the discussion was intensified in a way that we never saw it. Suddenly it is not just a weapon fired between two very different peoples, it is one that is even used between superficially similar people - and that gives a whole new tone to the discussion.
This image is printed somewhere in every publication for years (usually in grayscale):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/acgGZ.jpg)
The media whips the situation into a frenzy and in the west public opinion turns against universities and research institutions. Studies are conducted on the negative effects of many of our technical advances and discover just how bad many chemicals and plastics of the time were for people, and the outcry against new materials is extreme. Chemical companies shutter their R&D areas, fearing both public sentiment and the acts of terrorism that were committed against their competitors who did not shut down (R&D centers were bombed!).
People in Africa and Asia denounce the "Western" way, showing videos endlessly to their population showing how consumerism and an "advancement" mindset leads to destruction and a loss of moral center. Traditional values are re-inforced.
As for how long things stay locked down, consider that in the West many countries may well have adopted extremely strict regulations around what can be researched. Legislation would need to pass that would lift those restrictions, but without research to show the benefits of lifting those restrictions it's never done. In practical terms, it's similar to how the US congress restricted the public funding of study of whether firearms cause more harm than good and consequently no high-quality work was done as even private institutions didn't want to get on the wrong side of senators or special interest groups.
In the East and Africa similar things occur, but are aided by a total lack of respect for any Western source of knowledge. So even if they were to advance, they would have to re-discover a lot of information that was already around.
Russia is the big problem. You would probably need to have the USA abandon its nuclear weapons (due to public outrage) so that Russia doesn't HAVE to build their own. Maybe have Russia start decrying the technology race (since they're losing it) so that as the gears stop it seems like it was Russia's idea. As long as they lead the charge that made it happen, they could be more likely to be OK with the stagnation.
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I agree with Thucydides' brilliant analysis and conclusion. Preventing WWII from happening is key, as well as preventing the rise of the Soviet Union. The simplest way to start is to prevent WWI.
The post-WWI economic and political landscape in Germany was such that it was bound to produce a charismatic leader that would unite the Germans and rally them to become a great power once again. Although history decided on Adolf Hitler, I'm sure there were many others that were standing in line ready to play that role. The anti-Semitic sentiment being what it was in Europe at the time would have been used to further gather followers (much as some politicians use popular stance on immigration to further their campaigns). This gradually increasing anti-Semitic attitude drove many of the leading theoretical physicists and scientists of the time, a remarkable number of which are of Jewish descent, to leave Germany to what would be Allied countries during WWII. As WWII broke out, the wartime atmosphere led both the Axis and the Allies to pool the finest scientific minds they could and invest heavily in science and technology. We hear about geniuses such as Einstein, von Neumann, Turing, Oppenheimer, Feynman, Pauli, Teller, and many others being brought together in Allied countries. This facilitated collaboration between these geniuses and as a result, a lot of technologies, prototypes, and theories were developed at an unprecedented rate. The foundation of many different areas of study were laid during WWII. The rise of the USSR only made America double-down on military technology and scientific investment, which created the environment for the development of more modern technologies during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Although scientific advancement can't be entirely prevented, the acceleration of technological development is directly linked to WWII and the Cold War. Since WWI set the stage for WWII, preventing it would slow technological progress significantly. As well, if countries have other things to worry about than war, they won't typically allocate as many resources to scientific achievement as they would otherwise in a state of defense.
As I've studied the state of the world just prior to WWI, it seems conflict was unavoidable. The various political alliances and anti-government sentiments in certain countries make it a rat's nest of causes and effects. However, there are a few small things that may have changed the outcome:
* Stop Gavrilo Princip from assassinating Archduke Ferdinand. This was the event that led to the July Ultimatum that Serbia rejected, causing Austria-Hungary to declare war. This may not help too much since there were others involved in the plot and possibly more waiting in case this failed.
* Convince Nicholas II to listen to other war advisors not to enter WWI and give up Serbia completely, hindering the involvement of more countries in the war.
* Convince Nicholas II to learn from the events leading to the 1905 revolution, stopping the momentum that the Bolsheviks used in 1917 and hindering the creation of the Soviet Union.
* Convince the rulers of Austria-Hungary to remove Point 6 from their July Ultimatum, which states that Austro-Hungarian troops would suppress "subversive movements". This was the one point that the Serbian government would not accede to.
Admittedly, these events may not prevent the war. It was a volatile time in history and events may have unfolded in a similar fashion with different actors. However, this does seem like a short list of somewhat achievable tasks.
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## D-Day Failed, the War Lasted Longer, More than 2 Nukes (But Not Fallout)
The success of the Normandy landings and allied invasion of Nazi-controlled Europe heavily relied on deception and secrecy. Would would have happened if the Nazi's (such as Rommel) saw through the deceptions of Operation Bodyguard, perhaps because the Enigma code was never broken and the Nazi secret agents in Britain weren't captured? Or if a very highly placed spy evaded detection and could smuggle out the secret?
Uh oh. There is no guarantee that Nazi Germany actually wins with this small change, but it virtually guarantees the war doesn't end swiftly. It's important that the Allies not get wiped out completely, but significant losses and a forced retreat would delay invasion for many months at least - or years.
What happens during that time? Well, it's very possible that the A-Bomb is figured out by more than just the US. You could say this forced a stale-mate, perhaps after much of Europe was liberated (or not), or that the Nazi's still lost but they managed a number of controlled nuclear explosions. If some of these nukes somehow had made it to the US, this may have tremendously changed American sentiment towards war. Suddenly war, and technology itself, seems all like a Pyrrhic Victory. Everything is terrible, what's the point of anything?
This doesn't need to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland or anything, but more than enough to really inflict the horror on everyone world wide in a way that doesn't happen when only your enemies are effected by it and it's "your" invention. Perhaps there are enough nukes for Germany to not completely lose control but give up most of it's holdings (bonus if Hitler is killed in a nuclear explosion and his less extreme generals regain control and drive the Nazis to be less insane). Extra bonus if we end up with a worn down and wounded US, isolated former-Nazi Germany in Europe (still in shambles and all teeth removed), USSR with similar destruction and no allies won from the end of the war, and your choice how Japan goes. Maybe they still lose, maybe the allies are forced to a similar concession and Imperial Japan remains.
The result is no comparatively easy peace. No people remain enthusiastic about the war or the glory of technology, and a worldwide depression may have set in as trade remains isolated and international cooperation remains limited and fragmented into many mutually bitter groups.
In this environment it's very possible that everyone becomes increasing isolationist. There's no real reason to develop international jet liners, and the post-war largesse of the US government (and good ole American Taxpayer) is not available to fund the sciences while Europe rebuilds. No Big Bad Undefeated Buggy Monster exists - everyone is hurt and pulling away from the world scene. No one is enthusiastic for anything that seems even vaguely connected to the horrors they've seen from war, and this sentiment extends to Universities and science as a whole in the view of the public. In this world, "the good old days" really were better back then, before all this supposed "progress" tore things apart. Hard to argue with when a famous city in your country can't be visited anymore because it's an irradiated wasteland.
Then what? Well, whatever you want to happen in your story! If science, technology, central government authority, and capitalism vs communism doesn't play out in 1940-1960, the world would surely be a very, very different place!
And the cost? Probably better German codes (better Enigma), or a few well placed spies that screw up a single military operation - and a lot of guessing what happens next.
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# Spanish Flu Part II
A second re-occurrence of the Spanish Flu, or something as deadly, during the height of WWII could easily knock history off course. Just think if the flu hit Germany at the right time in 1945 as the Russians came in from the East leave the US and USSR to clash sooner than expected. Not to mention if all of those German Scientist like Wernher von Braun would have died from a chest infection before they created the V2 instead of years later in Florida working on the Apollo program. Or what would have happened if the flu took off in Los Alamos and killed off all of the Manhattan project scientist before they could build the bomb. World history would have been completely different thanks to a virus or two.
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A lot of technological development since then was motivated by the Cold War. If that could be averted, then you may well avoid or at least severely slow development of space technology, advanced weapons, jet-powered flight, computers, etc.
Perhaps the best way to avoid that would for communism not to have taken hold in Russia, but have Russia still well able to stand up to Germany in WWII. Doing away with the revolution altogether might be required.
Care is needed though - without the revolution, do Russia still withdraw from WWI? If not, then is Germany beaten more decisively and how does that affect Hitler's rise to power?
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Before the start of WWII a simple radioactive generator is invented in Germany. In it a mass of Uranium decays and boils water to turn a turbine in a closed system. The unit is well enough shielded that when it is new it is not radioactive. It becomes a huge commercial success and Germany builds millions of them. This alleviates their economic problems and the nazi party is not elected.
This devise allows people to become more independent, and without the need for electrical infrastructure, production begins to move more and more to the location of the needed resources. Powerful people around the world, heavily invested in the infrastructure of established and developing countries move to discourage this technology.
Here you could involve the church or government ect. In any case new campaigns start claiming that this new technology - and by extension any new technology - is wrong/evil/blasphemous etc.
During a new era of technological revolution in which the WWII technologies are invented more and more people become sick and immunocompromised due to tiny amounts of radioactive steam escaping from these new devices. This weakened population is a perfect breeding ground for disease and we see many people who work or live near these devices die.
Now our smear campaign can take over and show the people that anyone associated with the creation of this new evil technology or indeed anyone who is even close to this new technology is being punished.
We have a return to the "Good old" technology, and since you have a ruling group that set up this situation you it doesn't need to be particularly consistent. if your story wants it you can have automobiles progress but not computers. or everything progress to a fixed "safe" level but a strong social stigma against technological improvements.
your 'ruling group' can be long lasting or just a few old men and who shortly die leaving you space to cast whomever you like as the antagonist.
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You could make a case that WWII **did** stagnate technological development. For example, color television was actually invented in 1928, but didn't achieve wide market penetration until the late 60's. The Germans were already experimenting with methods for storing video on magnetic tape before the war. So if WWII had never happened, there's a strong possibility that Americans and Europeans would have been enjoying color TV and VCR's as early as the 40's or 50's. Since every technological development builds on previous discoveries and innovations, you could say that WWII pushed back all of our 20th century technologies by 20 years or so.
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I'm working on a story about four planets around a star much like the Sun. But due to my (very limited) knowledge of gravity, I know that putting them too close together will cause them to collide or repel.
So this is my question: Is there a way to make sure that the planets will usually stay the same distance away without causing them to hit each other, or do I have to remove a few planets?
Other Information:
* All four planets are near the size of Earth (two with a diameter about 100 or so miles larger, one about the same, and one a little smaller with a crazy tilt)
* Three of the four are habitable
* All four have an atmosphere and in the Goldilocks Zone
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The short answer is that every method of putting a bunch of habitable world in star system as potential problems. And there is one method which has not yet been suggested, putting planets equally spaced along an arc of a single orbit, mentioned in part four.
Part One: Habitable planets in different orbits in the habitable zone.
Astronomers and astrobiologists know that it is possible for a star system to have one planet in a orbit where the planet can be habitable for human beings in particular and for liquid water using life in general. We have the example of the solar system with the planet Earth.
All planets habitable for human beings and other oxygen breathers in particular, or for liquid water using life in general, should be with the Goldilocks zone or circumstellar habitable zone of their star.
And the obvious way to find out the limits of the habitable zone of a star is to compare its luminosity to that of the Sun and use that to adjust the inner and outer edges of the star's habitable zone. So what are the inner and outer edges of the Sun's habitable zone?
The table here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone#Solar_System_estimates>
includes about a dozen different estimates of the inner or outer edges, or both, of the Sun's circumstellar habitable zone. Note how different those estimates can be.
I advise all writers who are certain they will want one and only one habitable planets in a fictional solar system, and who may be worried about future discoveries proving their fictional planet couldn't possibly be habitable, to put their planet at a distance from the star where it receives exactly the same amount of radiation as Earth gets from the Sun. I call that distance the Earth Equivalent Distance or EED of the star in question.
And considering how narrow some calculations of the Sun's habitable zone are, it would be a good idea to calculate the EED of your star and then put the semi-major axis of the orbit of your planet no more than one percent closer or farther to the star than the EED of the star.
The answer by user177107 to this question:
<https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/40746/how-would-the-characteristics-of-a-habitable-planet-change-with-stars-of-differe/40758#40758>
Includes a table which lists details of the EED orbits for main sequence stars of different spectral types.
Writers who want more than one habitable planet in their star system need to either find a way to make them share the same orbit at the same distance from the star or else put them in concentric orbits around the star with different semi-major axis.
And if they want their stories to be scientifically plausible they can use only a many concentric orbits as can fit inside the habitable zone of their star, which means they will have one of the wider estimates of the habitable zone of the Sun as the basis for calculating the habitable zone of their star.
One problem with that is only one of the estimates in the list, that of Stephen H. Dole in *Habitable Planets for Man*, 1964, is for planets which are habitable for human beings (and thus for lifeforms with the same environmental requirements), and it is so old that it might be obsolete in some respects.
<https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf>
The other estimates of the Sun's habitable zone are for liquid water using life in general. We know that some lifeforms on Earth survive without oxygen, and that it took billions of years for non oxygen using lifeforms to produce an oxygen rich atmosphere as a byproduct of their life functions. Thus a planet can be totally uninhabitable for humans or other oxygen need lifeforms while still being habitable in the eyes of astrobiologists.
Some of the estimated habitable zones for the Sun extend the inner or outer limits of the habitable zone for planets with specific types of atmospheres which can keep them at the proper temperatures for liquid water. And those specific types of atmospheres might not be breatheable for humans or for other intelligent animals who breath oxygen.
So thus the distance ratio of the outer edge of your star's habitable zone divided by the inner edge might be only about 1.5, or 2.0, or some other low number, which might greatly limit the number of stable planetary orbits which can be found within the habitable zone.
You can't put an arbitrarily large number of planetary orbits within the habitable zone of your star because planetary gravitational interaction produces forbidden zones around a planet's orbit where other planets would be driven out of orbit.
I don't know the formula for calculating a planet's forbidden zone, but like the formula for its Hill sphere it involves the masses of the planet and the star and and the distances between them.
The stronger the gravity of the star is at the distance of the planet's orbit, the smaller the planet's forbidden zone should be. And a relatively small change in the mass of a star makes a relatively large change in the star's luminosity. Thus I think the smaller the mass of the star, the deeper into its gravity the habitable zone should be, and the smaller the forbidden zones of the planets in its habitable zone should be.
However, the opposite has been claimed, that the forbidden zone of a planet is smaller in the habitable zone of a higher mass star than a lower mass star.
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> The star’s mass does affect the size of a planet’s Hill radius. Compared with an Earth orbiting the Sun, an Earth’s Hill sphere is twice as big around a star 1/8th as massive as the Sun. That means only half as many planets could fit on a given ring, and each ring would have to be twice as far apart. So only 1/4 as many planets would fit into the habitable zone. This argues in favor of relatively massive stars.
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>
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<https://planetplanet.net/2017/05/03/the-ultimate-engineered-solar-system/>
And finding out which is correct would be important for a writer designing a star system with many habitable planets.
The answer by Molot mentions the TRAPPIST-1 system. TRAPPIST-1 is an M8V class star, very dim, with a habitable zone very close to it. The planets d, e, f, & g are possibly in the habitable zone of TRAPPIST-1. The semi-major axis of the orbit of g is about 0.04683 AU, which is about 2.1028 times the semi-major axis of the orbit of d, which is about 0.02227 AU. That is an unusually narrow spacing for 4 planetary orbits.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1>
The smallest known ratio between the semi-major axis of two consecutive planetary orbits is between Kepler-36 b & c. The semi-major axis of the orbit of Kepler-36 c is about 0.1283 AU, about 1.11274935 times Kepler-36 b's semi-major axis of about 0.1153 AU.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-36>
So if a system has four planets each with orbits 1.1127 times that of the next innermost planet, the most distant planetary orbit would have a semi-major axis about 1.3778 that of the innermost planetary orbit.
Going by those examples, a star system would need a habitable zone with a ratio between inner and outer edges of at least 1.3778 and possibly 2.1028 to have four planets orbiting in four separate orbits within the habitable zone.
Of course calculations indicate that tidal interactions with a star would make planets in the habitable zones of low mass stars tidally locked so their rotation period was the same length as their orbital period. And astrobiologists have fear that a tidally locked planet would not be habitable. Some recent calculations indicate that tidally locked planets can be habitable.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_habitability#Size>
Part Two: Trojan planets.
And maybe you could try making making four habitable planets share one single orbit within the habitable zone of the star, which thus can be a very narrow habitable zone, as narrow as some estimates indicate.
One method would make the four habitable planets be distributed between the L4 and L5 positions in the orbit of a giant planet or a brown dwarf as suggested in the answer by theresa May.. If using four habitable planets in those Trojan positions, I would put two in the L4 position and two in the L5 position to minimize the complications of the gravitational interactions between the habitable worlds. And maybe the two planets in each Lagrange position could be a double planet orbiting each other in the Lagrange position.
I note that astronomical objects in the L4 and L5 positions tend to oscillate around the exact points, getting rather far from them before returning to them.
The relative masses of the primary, the secondary, and the tertiary objects in the L4 and L5 positions need to be considerably different for stable orbits. In the case of artificial satellites in the L4 and 5 points of the Moon's orbit around the Earth:
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> The L4 and L5 points are stable provided that the mass of the primary body (e.g. the Earth) is at least 25[note 1] times the mass of the secondary body (e.g. the Moon),[19][20] and the mass of the secondary is at least 10 times[citation needed] that of the tertiary (e.g. the satellite).
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point>
So if the habitable planets are about Earth mass, the giant planet would have to be at least 10 times the mass of Earth, which would be a very small giant planet, and the star would have be at least 250 times the mass of Earth, which is much less than the minimum mass for a star.
However, there is also this statement:
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_(celestial_body)#Stability>
I think that the time period that an artificial satellite's orbit would need to be stable would be a minute fraction of the time that a habitable planet's orbit needs to be stable.
So if m3 is a habitable planet about the mass of the Earth, m2 would have be a brown dwarf with at least 10,000 times the mass of Earth (the minimum mass for a brown dwarf is about 13 times the mass of Jupiter or about 4,131.4 times the mass of Earth) and M1 would have to have more than 1,000,000 times the mass of Earth.
The mass of the Sun is listed as 332,950 times the mass of Earth, so the star in the system would have to have at least about 3.0034 times the mass of the Sun. A B8V type star would have a mass of about 3.38 the mass of the Sun.
Spectral class B stars have main sequence life spans of about 50,000,000 to 100,000,000 years <https://beyond-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Class_B_star>.
The planet Earth did not acquire an oxygen rich atmosphere and become habitable for humans and similar lifeforms until it was several billion years old, so it is extremely improbable that a spectral class B star would have natural habitable planets or planets with intelligent life. Thus the only chance for a spectral class B star to have habitable planets or intelligent life would be if the planets were terraformed by an advanced civilization sometime in the past.
A writer can try to make the habitable planets in the Trojan positions have much less mass than Earth, as little mass as is consistent with habitability, which might reduce the minimum required mass for the star to a mass within the range of star masses capable of having habitable planets.
Part Three: Habitable moons of giant planets.
Or maybe the habitable worlds can be four giant habitable moons orbiting three, two, or one giant planets, to reduce the needed number of orbits within the habitable zone, as suggested in Willk's answer.
I don't know if two giant planets could have separate orbits within the habitable zone of a star. Because of their relatively large masses relative to the mass of a star, their forbidden zones might be too large to have two planetary orbits within a narrow habitable zone.
So a writer might have to put all four habitable worlds in orbit around one gas giant planet.
The planet Jupiter has four large moons in orbit around it. Callisto, the outermost of the large moons, orbits with a semi-major axis of 1,882,700 kilometers, which is 4.4634 times the semi-major axis of the orbit of the innermost one, Io, at 421,800 kilometers.
And possibly if the masses of the moons are multiplied several times to make them massive enough to be habitable, that might increase the forbidden zones of the moons and require them to be more widely spaced. And of course if the outermost moons orbit too far from the planet, they are likely to have unstable orbits and be lost into interplanetary space.
So a writer who wants to have four habitable moons orbiting a giant planet in the habitable zone of their planet needs to study scientific studies of the possibility of habitable exomoons.
Part Four: Cohorts of Coorbital planets.
Astrophysicist Sean Raymond's PlanetPlanet blog has a section, the Ultimate Solar System, where Raymond tries designing imaginary stars systems with as many habitable worlds with stable orbits as possible.
<https://planetplanet.net/the-ultimate-solar-system/>
In this post:
<https://planetplanet.net/2017/05/03/the-ultimate-engineered-solar-system/>
Raymond mentions a paper by Smith and Lisseaur
<https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010CeMDA.107..487S/abstract>
claiming that 7 to 42 planets of equal mass can share a single orbit around a star if they are equally spaced.
So in the rest of that post Raymond designs star systems with several orbits each containing a ring of many equally spaced habitable planets.
Note that Raymond says that:
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> 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.
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In another post Raymond discusses incomplete planetary rings around a star, orbits which don't have planets equally space all the way around the star but only along a section of the orbit.
<https://planetplanet.net/2020/11/19/cohorts/>
And apparently Raymond's simulations show a cohort of coorbital planets can be stable along an arc of a planetary orbit, if the planets are spaced sufficiently far apart.
So presumably you could have four planets sharing an orbit as a cohort of four planets in a single segment of the orbit or as two cohorts of two planets each in two different segments of the orbit.
[Answer]
**Earth sized moons of a gas giant.**
Behold the Galilean moons of Jupiter!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KA1fPm.png)
<https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/150260main_image_feature_592_ys_full.jpg>
These moons stay in the orbit of Jupiter because they are orbiting Jupiter. None are the size of Earth but Ganymede is almost as big as Mars.
You could have your 4 world-sized moons orbiting their giant, which is in the Goldilocks zone of its star. If the moons of Jupiter can sort out their orbits so too your world sized moons.
That puts a big Jupiter in your story. I am sure you will find a place for it.
[Answer]
If you do not absolutely need sun-like star, behold the [Trappist System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1)!
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> Three or four[45] planets – e, f, and g[144] or d, e, and f – are located inside the habitable zone. As of 2017, this is the largest known number of planets within the habitable zone of a star or star system.[145]
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This system seems to have what you need:
1. Four planets in habitable zone, with possibility of atmosphere and even life not yet debunked.
2. Small distances - whole Trappist system would fit inside Mercury's orbit.
3. Planets are in [resonance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1#Resonance) - it's not the same distance all the time, but constant distance is unstable and thus unlikely to have an evolved life. Orbital resonance is nature's next best thing.
Thus, I suggest to use what Cosmos already made for us as a basis of your story.
[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1#/media/File:PIA21424_-_The_TRAPPIST-1_Habitable_Zone.jpg)
[Answer]
Expand the "habitable zone" via shenanigans
Start with a large star, perhaps a couple solar masses. This puts the "habitable zone" further out but also makes it wider, allowing larger and more numerous planets to orbit safely while still being habitable.
* Atsui, the closest planet to the star, is tidally-locked to it. This makes it an ["eyeball world"](https://nerdfighteria.info/v/9NOW3AormJc/): One side continually faces the star and is blisteringly hot, while the opposite side faces the dark and is very cold. There's a thin strip around the planet of perpetual twilight where the temperatures are good for life. Extremophile bacteria and other critters (as well as technologically-protected human expeditions) extend into the less-habitable regions. Bodies of liquid water and a thick atmosphere provide convection which helps to broaden the habitable zone.
* Attakai is a bit further out, and happens to have a relatively thin atmosphere with few greenhouse gasses. It tends toward warm and dry, but bearable for humans. Settlements cluster near the few rivers and oases which benefit from favorable topography and climate.
* Suzushii has a thick atmosphere with lots of greenhouse gasses that help to keep the planet warm despite being further out from the star than typical. The nights and winters are quite frigid, but the summer days are delightful.
* Samui is actually a moon of a gas giant. It's way out there, but is the largest of several moons and is being heated from within by tidal forces and long-lived radioisotopes in the core. It's an ice-shell moon and [the inhabitants live under the ice](https://studyfinds.org/jupiter-moon-europa-alien-life/). It's kinda cold and miserable, and the native life is all aquatic, so human settlements have had to build pressurized submarine towns to benefit from the interior heating while managing their schools of wild fish.
[Answer]
**Place your planets at Lagrange points.**
A Lagrange point is a point in space where an object can be positioned so that it won't collide. Scientists use Lagrange points when sending a satellite into Earth's orbit. When a satellite is at the Lagrange point, the gravitational pull from the Earth and the Sun keeps the satellite orbiting at the same pace as Earth.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jgOC2.png)
**Use one real planet and other satellite planets of minimal mass.**
Note that in order for Lagrange points to minimize chance of collision, the object placed into orbit must be *much* less massive than the planet already in orbit. Think of a satellite compared to the mass of Earth.
From Nasa's website:
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> Lagrange points are positions in space where objects sent there tend to stay put. At Lagrange points, the gravitational pull of two large masses precisely equals the centripetal force required for a small object to move with them.
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That being said...
**Four planets? No. Three planets? Maybe.**
There are five Lagrange points. Of those five, only two are stable (L4 and L5 in the attached image), meaning that you can only add two additional "planets" to your orbit, and those planets must have negligible mass compared to the planet already there. The other three Lagrange points (L1-L3 in the picture) are unstable, so you would not want to place a planet there. Unless, of course, you intend on destroying the planet. Now *that* might make a good story.
For more information, see [the article](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/754/what-is-a-lagrange-point/).
[Answer]
There is a thing called a [Kempler Rosette](https://burtleburtle.net/bob/physics/kempler.html) The reference has some animations you might want to try.
As in the previous, these won't be planets by the strict definition. These rosette structures are stable, but probably not stable enough for them to form naturally, like the Greek and Trojan camps of asteroids at the Lagrange points of Jupiter.
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[Question]
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So I'm a dictator of the world, who seized power after a global collapse and I maintain control of the world with my giant army of killer robots - tanks, planes, androids, and so on. Things have been pretty good, and I've been able to be fairly benevolent, since no one can face down my invincible army of robots. The current designs are built to fight armies, but work pretty well suppressing rebellion. I rebuilt society to a 1950's-style tech level (except for my robot army, built by robotic factories with metals mined on the moon and difficult to scale up at this point), and I only modestly suppress free speech. Sure, there's an occasional massacre, but I really think everyone and everything is better under my rule, and want to be as kind and merciful as possible. I AM, after all, the newest incarnation of Vishnu, but I hate to make a big deal about that. All I want is to usher in the new golden age.
Only then extraterrestrials showed up, bringing disruptive technology in the form of self-replicating nanites. Some have been great (medical nanites have cured most disease) but there are nanites that transform ordinary people into "super heroes" by giving them access to extradimensional beings able to bend the laws of physics, predict the future (sorta) and manipulate probability to dodge bullets. Some are even teleporting and using telekinesis to pull down flying drones. There are serious side effects to the nanites (like alien possession and frequent insanity) so many people are reluctant to get them until they feel they have to. The nanites for heroes can be administered from a little blood, making new heroes, so things could grow out of control quickly due to the ease of transfer.
At first I could blow them up with big bombs and gas them, but the collateral damage is pretty bad, bombs were less effective than I hoped, and they are starting to use gas masks. The aliens say using nukes violates some kind of interplanetary law, and I didn't really want to destroy everyone anyway - you can't rule dead people. Throwing legions of robots at them is getting absurdly expensive and the supplies are ultimately limited. I may need to come up with some better designs, although I don't trust the engineers much. The nanites only work on people, so no super-robots or animals.
I never built a cadre of elite loyalists since I think other people are inherently untrustworthy (and I relied on my army of robots), so when I tried to make my own superheroes, it went badly (traitors!). I'm working on genetically perfect moral elites (a "master race") to carry on my legacy, but engineering morals and ethics is harder than I thought and it will be 15-20 years until I can upgrade them to heroes (what could possibly go wrong?). While I trust my robots, I don't trust true AI, despite being able to control programming. I'm expanding propaganda (mostly about how great I am), but so far, people just won't accept that I'm a great guy and they're better off with me in charge.
Meanwhile, heroes are getting out of hand. Billions of people will die if these possessed and often insane heroes take control of the world. The more I suppress the people, the faster they spread the nanites. I'm starting to think I'm not very good at being a world dictator (and self doubt is dangerous). Yet I don't want to be evil, per se.
**How do I stop superheroes from disrupting my "perfect society" until my ethically perfect master race can take over and institute a 10,000 year Reich utopia?**
Ideal solutions may involve engineering (my dictator would love better robot concepts), but should keep brutal suppression to a minimum. Social or technological changes could work, and the general society has minimal technology but can be upgraded in time as needed (although the optimum is keeping tech in the 1950's - I don't trust people to use it well). I'm getting a little desperate, so temporary fixes can work until my master race comes on line.
If things get too out of control, I'll have to abandon Earth in my stolen alien spacecraft, purge the unclean in nuclear fire (alien laws be damned) and rebuild elsewhere. Please help me save the Earth from destruction!
[Answer]
At the times of Roman Empire they knew that to keep the masses at rest w.r.t. to political agitations, they needed to give them *[panem et circenses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses)*
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> "Bread and circuses" (or bread and games; from Latin: panem et circenses) is a metonymic phrase referring to superficial appeasement. It is attributed to Juvenal, a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE — and is used commonly in cultural, particularly political, contexts.
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That lesson has been quite successfully put into practice also by modern governments, which managed to keep their power as long as they could meet those needs: if I can buy a new smartphone every 10 months, do I really want to worry about that guy being imprisoned for saying something against the leader?
Do the same. With your capabilities you should be able to provide *panem et circenses* to your people and keep them sufficiently happy to not worry about deeper things.
Even non-dictators use the same concept for their election campaign: one of the most famous in the recent years has been Clinton's "*[It's the economy, stupid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid)*"
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> "The economy, stupid" is a phrase coined by James Carville in 1992. It is often quoted from a televised quip by Carville as "It’s the economy, stupid." Carville was a strategist in Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign against incumbent George H. W. Bush. His phrase was directed at the campaign's workers and intended as one of three messages for them to focus on. The others were "Change vs. more of the same" and "Don't forget health care."
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> Clinton's campaign advantageously used the then-prevailing recession in the United States as one of the campaign's means to successfully unseat George H. W. Bush. In March 1991, days after the ground war in Kuwait, 90% of polled Americans approved of President Bush's job performance. Later the next year, Americans' opinions had turned sharply; 64% of polled Americans disapproved of Bush's job performance in August 1992.
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Another example can be found in the attempted assassination of Italian Communist Party leader [Palmiro Togliatti in 1948](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmiro_Togliatti#%22Salerno_turn%22_and_shooting)
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> On 14 July 1948, Togliatti was shot three times, being severely wounded by Antonio Pallante, a strongly anti-communist fascist student; his life hung in the balance for days and news about his condition was uncertain, causing an acute political crisis in Italy (which included a general strike called by the Italian General Confederation of Labour)
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[According to some journals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gino_Bartali#1948:_Second_Tour), Gino Bartali's victory at the Tour de France the same day helped calming the riots.
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[Answer]
### Take inspiration from an expert and DARVO your way out.
I really don't want this to come across a either a positive or negative political commentary on 2016-2020 USA, but there really was a genius at the helm when it comes to defending yourself against an external threat like this.
You need to make a decent chunk of your population angry enough to do things not in their own self interest. And getting people to storm buildings at great risk to their own life & liberty even though its not in their self-interest to do so is a perfect example of the behavior you want.
And after you've done it once, and you've forced a superhero to kill normal people in self defence, play that footage on the nightly news every night. Dedicate statues to every true patriot who gave their life fighting the "fascist" supes.
The easiest way to do this is via social media - get 1000 low-paid interns cranking out the propaganda in meme form 24/7.
Get Trump's library of tweets. Replace all the offensive variations of "Liberal" and "Socialist" with equivalent words representing the "supe freaks" . You need to demonise over and over, blame them for everything from the national debt to a sports team losing.
"Those nanites mess with their brains, take away their sense of right and wrong!". Proof to the contrary is just "Super-moron propaganda!". "**Overpowered-nanite crazies coming here to hurt you and I'm protecting you!**"
Typically an argument used in this case is "think of women and children". "**Who will defend your wife when some nanite-injecting junkie comes to rape her in the middle of the night?** He's super powered your bullets will just bounce right off him! The cops can't do anything, he can just take who and what he wants!" ... "And how will you fight the super nutcase when he returns the next night to kidnap your innocent child?"
Set up your own Qanon pointing out what those crazy demon-worshiping nanite-junkies are doing in the basements of pizza shops with abducted children. If they show proof they're not - well that's "fake news".
The golden rule:
* **D**eny anything that makes you look bad or superheros look good.
* **A**ttack anyone who believes that as a fool for believing the propaganda.
* **R**everse **V**ictim and **O**ffender. Swap yourself and the superhero. You're the hero fighting for your people, those nanite freaks are the real villains.
[Answer]
**The Incas had an app for that.**
A variation on plain old Hostaging.
Inca leaders were dispersed across the empire...but their families were required to live in the capital under the emperor's thumb. Loyalty was rewarded: The children were raised to be the next generation of the empire's ruling class. Disloyalty was punished severely upon the loved ones.
The Inca also cleverly distributed power among the leaders out in the village: The chain of command for military leadership was completely separate from the civil authority for growing food, maintaining roads, and providing resources for the army. The two had to cooperate (to keep their families alive), and each had incentive to squeal if their counterpart became disloyal.
These can be adapted.
"*SuperFellow, I want to put you in charge of mitigating all natural disasters in Asia. Save as many of our people from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and asteroid strikes and tsunamis and forest fires and floods as you possibly can.*
*Your job does NOT involve fighting crime or using your powers against people. Let the police handle the petty criminals.*
*Your parents and your girlfriend (and her family) will be perfectly safe here, and you should definitely drop by and visit them on your days off. Everybody needs their family.*"
[Answer]
It sounds like your benevolent dictatorship is in need of a stronger ministry of truth (AKA Propaganda) with some different goals. Instead of focusing propaganda on how great you are, which is likely debatable, you need to focus on how evil the supers are. With two intended outcomes.
One, keep the civilian population against the supers. They may not like you, but you are the only thing keeping those bad people from destroying everyone's lives. This is a tried and true method, if the people are convinced that the opposing force is that bad, they will not only suffer deprivations, but will themselves go along with extreme solutions. The ends justifying the means is often accepted. Also this is likely to prevent the population from willingly becoming supers themselves.
Two, cause dissent among the supers themselves. If the powered individuals are fighting (and killing) each other, they are doing your work for you. Also super on super fights will likely have a lot of collateral damage, which is clearly not your fault, and will cause more of the population to turn against all of them. Sure, Superdude is generally cool, but he did knock down that building killing thousands while fighting UltraBadMan.
Some ideas:
* Framing is important, stop calling them heroes, they may be super but they are not heroes they are super villains who are outright evil, or they are infected with an alien disease.
* All casualties in the fight against the heroes is their fault. It's not that your bombs used to kill these villains are causing a lot of civilian casualties, it's those evil supers using human shields and killing civilians.
* As much as you love your robot armies, you need to have people in your armed forces. If you want they can still be in the minority and lack power, they aren't there to win, they are there to die. Nothing makes the enemy look worse then casualties on your side. The civilian population doesn't care if dozens of drones are shot down hunting these terrorist supers, but when these brave men and women of your armed forces are killed in their peacekeeping efforts, people will be outraged. Care is needed here, too many casualties or casualties that reflect poorly on your military's strategy can backfire and result in the populace turning against you. This can be mostly mitigated by the use of a volunteer military force, no conscripts or drafts, and the careful control of information allowing you to properly frame any casualties.
* You need a vaccine! Nanites made them, nanites can unmake them. Start an effort to reverse engineer the nanites and make countermeasures. This plays well to a general strategy of treating the super-maker nanites as a disease. If you can make people immune to becoming super powered or cure those already changed you have a whole new toolbox of ways to deal with the problem. If your R and D capacity is limited, try and convince the aliens to do it. If the nanites are actually driving supers insane, I expect you wouldn't even need to use outright lies to make the case that these nanites are causing huge problems which they have an ethical responsibility to fix.
[Answer]
Your whole problem here can be broken down into these 3 basic principles:
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> I trust my robots ... The nanites only work on people... I don't trust people
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But there is a 4th issue that almost every other answer ignores. If your robots were strong enough to suppress humanity when we had more advanced technology, but robots are too weak to stop a super uprising, then the general population is much too weak to do anything about a super uprising. So, all of the answers that involve propaganda or public support are pointless. You NEED something capable of combating supers, and in this scenario, the only way to do that is to get your own supers and fast. If you wait 15-20 years, you will already be overthrown. The rebel supers do not need popular support to do this because they are too strong to be opposed by the populus.
The closest answers that will actually work for you are those that give you leverage to control a super, but none of those levels of control are as reliable as a Robot. If you hostage a super's family he may choose to attack to get that family back instead of being controlled, or he may make a decision where he sacrifices the needs of the few for the needs of them many which is the exact kind of free will issue that the dictator can not afford to risk.
So, to really get the desired outcome, you must put your trusty Robots in direct control of human superpowers.
## Use Human Hosts
If your robots themselves can not have super powers, then perhaps you could use them to control people who do by making cyborgs. First, you take a normal person and break their neck before you make him into a super so that he is paralyzed. Then you plug the disabled super into the robot and the robot stimulates the super's body using electrical impulses of its own to activate the super's powers at will. In this way, the robot is calling all the shots, and the human element is trapped inside of the robot with no actual free will of his own, only kept alive by the robot's life support features.
This is already pretty much doable with today's technology; so, if you assume the dictator retained all scientific research for himself before plunging humanity into a 1950's dark age, then you can assume he has access to things that allow him to [control the body in fine detail using spinal implants](https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/paraplegics-walk-again-using-electronic-implant) allowing the robot to control and active all of the super's physical abilities, and things that can [read the super's mind](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-48037592) allowing it to take advantage of things like precognition. Because the nanites down signal from the brain are receiving input and accepting output via the Human's nervous system, they can not tell the difference between a command coming from the human brain, and something coming from the robot (Think man-in-the-middle attack for those of you who know about cyber security).
So, your robots are basically your stereotypical exo-suit, except that you have the robot piloting the person instead of the other way around. In a worst case scenario, another super destroys the the exosuit leaving the remaining super paralyzed and unable to breath resulting in a quick death; so, you don't need to worry about the super-cyborgs regaining their free will and becoming a threat.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vo7WQ.jpg)
### Caveats to be Mindful of
**Your Benevolent Image:** If this goes against your "benevolent" image, you could probably get away with repurposing people who are already quadriplegic. Your exosuit would allow them to walk again, and even give him some of his normal life back, but the Robot part could take control of his actions at will filtering out any signals intended to activate his super powers, and taking over completely whenever there is a battle to fight. In this way, your human hosts are volunteers who benefit from the procedure rather than unwitting victims.
**Some super powers are off limits:** These cyborg supers may still be a notch below some of the human supers because you have to be mindful of what exact powers you give them. You can not give them super healing or their spine might fix itself and you can not give them powers that are projected by the head itself or you can not intercept control of it. This second limitation may not be an issue through. While the thought to engage a power like telekinesis might originate in the brain, your brain does not make for a good antenna. The thing that actually projects the power may well be in the super's chest, hands, or feet in which case, even powers that we perceive as being mental may in fact still be interceptable for use.
It's also possible that your cyborgs can do things that supers can not. For example, the human brain is only designed to be able to pay attention to a relatively small number of things at at time. While a human super might have a few extra powers, cyborgs may have certain cognitive advantages to counter them.
So Cyborgs can be supers, but they will not have the exact same tool kit as a human super. You can scale this to meet the needs of your story. Maybe you want the cyborgs to be horrible mega-supers driven by inhuman processing power able to chain abilities in ways that a human can't in which case they become BBGs that take entire hero teams to take down, or they may be limited by only being able to host certain powers to the point that it still takes several cyborgs to take down a single hero. How you balance this is up to you, but both scenarios can be easily justified.
**The Super's actions are not his own:** as a bonus plot hook, you could consider ways that the will of the head and body are independent from one another. The body could be mercilessly smashing a hero against a wall while the face cries in horror, unable to look away from what his body is being made to do. This could even work against the heros who might recognize that the cyborgs contain innocent people making them less willing to just smash through them the way they would with a normal soulless robot.
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**Aliens are creepy.**
1. **Aliens are creepy.** You need help getting the populace suspicious of aliens? Freaky human eating cow mutilating experimentally probing aliens? How to serve Man? You are already with 1950s tech. Bust out the 1950s scary alien stuff! You dont lay out what the agenda of the aliens is but apparently it is opposed to yours.
2. **Make your own superheroes.** / The nanites for heroes can be administered from a little blood, making new heroes/ Fight fire with fire, you know. You have all the good stuff people want like food and booze and warm houses and sweet rides and jewels. Make a few of your own superheroes with the nanites. They will be good for stuff giant robots can't do because they are giant, and robots.
3. **You are a reasonable overlord!** If the superheroes are getting the upper hand in an area and the people are behind them, then be magnanimous. You were only trying to give the people a better life. You understand they no longer want your services. If they prefer to be ruled by superheroes in this country, you will graciously cede power to the superheroes. Then withdraw your troops and cease administering the area.
It will be Iraq after the fall of Saddam. The superheroes will have their work cut out for them governing the populace. It is a lot easier to fight giant robots than to settle feuding old families.
When the people beg for you to come back, make them ask nicely. Perhaps do a little dance.
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You've got a large robot workforce, who're immune to spreading nanites. Your robots are even immune to mind-control.
If you can detect nanites in humans, then there are simple solutions.
Put everyone in their own individual box, and test them.
Anyone not in their underground, individual coffin box, gets nuked. You monitor each box for teleports trying to squeeze in. Anything outside is fair game, hunt down anyone who resists; as they're likely supers (or want to be) and liquidate them - while you feed your docile population in their cyrosleep via tubes and smaller-than-human-sized robots. In addition, you'll also be (indirectly) eliminating or reducing cleithrophobia and claustrophobia from your remaining population.
You can leave your population in cyro while doing a cleansing operation, and they'll barely notice it - for example, you could spend a couple centuries cleaning up the fallout and repopulating nature. You, personally, can skip forward - coming out for an hour every other week for a total age-loss of 26 hours per year. Just a little under a season's worth of time and you'll have skipped a century (or up to 6 months if you need to sleep in real time vs being rested in cyro), while not letting anything go for more than 2 weeks without your eye on it.
Of course have robots set to wake you up whenever an anomaly shows up in the monitors/data capture, or if an emergency goes down. If you want, have minions awake, and have them monitoring each other for disloyalty, and don't let them know when you're actually awake. Smite some every once in awhile to keep the others on their toes, and fearful. For added protection, keep your cyro durations random, versus scheduled.
If you don't want to go whole hawg, set up testing in every building, and every transport. Deploy your CCTVs, drones and algorithms to monitor and track every person (like ARGUS in the US). Anyone who shows anomalous behavior, back-track in the records and if you can't lay hands on them, just take out everyone in the surrounding blocks and interrogate (like Nazis in WW2). Put plants in the innocent bystanders' places, and capture the suspects when they return. Of course, some paranoid supers may never sleep in the same place, and have no friends - but with a halfway decent (dis)information campaign (I mean, they're purposefully risking insanity and possession by alien entities - so it's not even fake news!), they'll soon get tripped up by some stranger who'll call a tip-line for a reward; because these rebels have been stripped from any friendship/social-network by being vagrants/losing all their friends and relatives to your purg...investigations.
You've provided shelter for the homeless, as well as social workers, and insane asylums that're well-staffed - so there is no reason for anyone to be homeless - and no homeless population for rebels and vagrants to blend into. Anyone out after dark (or on Sundays - I mean, you've got blue laws, correct?), is pulled in for questioning. There's no reason to work all hours of the day/night, as the robots can handle the economy.
Of course, you've removed money, correct? It's all crypto-currency; that has every transaction logged permanently. There will be no way to get a new identity that can access crypto-transactions (wallets aren't allowed to be self-generated - even if you didn't to start, you can force everyone to confirm their wallets, and any transaction that doesn't go to a registered citizen gets a hunter-killer strike on it, as soon as it's registered) - and thus the rebels will have nothing but stolen goods, which they can only barter. Of course, bartering is illegal. Everything gets sold and paid out in crypto/work-units, so it can be taxed.
Your police force should be tracking down robberies. Give every cop a robot buddy, to help with the lawless, insane supers (and to surreptitiously keep an eye on the cops, so they don't get any blood on them/consort with terrorists). Same with doctors, hospitals, firefighters, and paramedics.
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Short. Got it. Thank you to all those who provided answers before and explained how to fix the problem in the comments as well.
I Want to make an intelligence agency in a fictional setting that only has about 16 century technology. Setting does not match with ours in a lot of ways. Ask if you want more details.
As you know intelligence agencies of the modern day relay in part on electronic means to get information but I don't have that.
**So. I want the means that the agency can use to achieve the below goals.**
**Again I want to know how would they do that? What methods or means or ways to do that?**
**Example: How to take a castle easily? Bribe someone on the inside to open the gates.**
## Goals
* Early rebellion detection and general discontent
* Uncover Corruption.
* Counterintelligence
* General information gathering
* General governmental supervision
**Nothing else matters or gets into it. Literally I'm just asking about the methods of achieving those goals in such a setting. Not the possible corruption of them or why I want that or whither or not it even makes sense...etc**
Please not that I already have a bunch of things in the setting happening including laws and regulation. Those influence if what you suggest is good or not. But I don't want to clutter the question so ask if you think it is needed.
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Most of the things you need done can be done by regular people who don't work for your agency but will be rewarded for useful information and punished if the government finds out they didn't snitch.
When one of your citizens crosses the border back into your country, ask them privately about the other places they've been. Providing good info gets them a tax break or special privileges depending on the quality of information.
If a citizen hears their neighbors talking badly about the government and they turn those traitors in, the good citizen will be allowed to move to a better part of town or send their kids to a better school. If you find out that citizen should have known something but didn't speak up, they need to go to a work camp for re-education.
If a member of the government doesn't turn in another who is acting badly, that person's family will be sent to prison for not doing their duty in raising them right.
A common citizen can send in tips at the confession booth at any government office or church. They will also be asked in such a booth about a number of things when they pay their taxes, apply for government assistance, etc. They will have to give their perception of opinions in their neighborhood, asked if their bureaucrat is treating them well, if they feel safe, if they worry their stuff could get stolen, if they know they can move up in life, etc. The data will be collated and used to get a good idea where dissidents are working. Then you work to change hearts and minds in the area.
You will have a government ID program with a tier system. People who have never been convicted of a crime will have a certain color, people who get a certain number of points for going to church regularly can move to another color, etc. There should be a lot of tiers that give tax breaks, allow people to live in good neighborhoods, own certain products, speak at meetings, leave the country or city, etc. If a citizen starts to lapse they could be docked points, though. Like if they join an organization that turns out to be antisocial.
"It's strange you live in the neighborhood you do... yet we haven't seen you do anything to make it safer. Tell me a little more about what's going on there."
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There are certainly historical examples of intelligence agencies from this period. Elizabeth I of England was known to maintain an extensive spy network, run by Sir Francis Walsingham (<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Walsingham>).
There is a BBC TV documentary series about it called Elizabeth I's Secret Agents (<https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6a3iwf>) which may be of interest.
Bluntly, they worked the same way that the human intelligence aspect of a modern agency works. Bribery, threats, informers, agents, ciphers, cryptanalysis, violence and vigorous interrogation. The principles are eternal, all that changes are the techniques.
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First of all, yes, this would be feasible. Your agency doesn't need to tap the phones, since there are no phones. The main task of your agency is to detect (and maybe even prevent) rebellions. Rebellions would be made by people. The agency would have their own people there, simple as that.
You could inspect the mail, but I don't expect conspiracies to be organised by post. At least not at the stages you would wish to stop it. If there are multiple rebel groups on several provinces, preparing an uprising that needs to be synchronized, then maybe. Although I would expect them to use actual messengers rather than trusting the Imperial Post for such important details.
If a group of peasants were trying to unite to rebel against the governor, they would have some agent ready to join their group and release their plans. Or someone in the group would be easily tempted to out them at the local delegation of the agency (it is well-known that they will pay well the information *and* give you their forgiveness for your participation, when people start having doubts about their chances, they will flee to tell you!), or someone you can extort, from other information your agency could divulge about them (real or fabricated) to threats to their children, their job...
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> They have no legal authority to arrest people, detain them, kill them...etc
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Note they will have to face the consequences if caught, but they might do it. Or threat to do so to certain subjects. A group of assassins coming from another province (although in the same Agency district), doing their deeds and leaving.
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This may work well for big cities. On rural areas everyone would know who the local spy is, the guy who arrived three years ago (and will leave in two years, having stayed for exactly 5 years, just like the guy before. Moving everyone at once would be useful for periodically organizing your assets, no so much for secrecy)
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> The entire organization is from time to time investigated, in secret or not, by the IG. The IG is a massive organization of fanatically loyal men and women who are above the law.
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? You might have to develop on *why* these are fanatically loyal in your story so that they can be above the law. Are they brainwashed on a special school? Part of a cult? The emperor is similar to [The Mule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule_(Foundation))? They made an [unbreakable vow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbreakable_Vow)?
And why can't the same be done for every member of the Agency?
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> they constantly have to justify the expenses
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This may be a red herring depending on how far you go, I think. All intelligence agencies need some funds they can dispose of discreetly. You need *some* oversight of the expenses (in order to avoid corruption) but at the same time, that should not restrict its ability to use them. I expect their books will be full of things like bribery and payments to informants. How much can they pay them, or the value of the information.
In fact, the main problem they will face (as with any intelligence agency) will be to discern (at some point of the chain) the information posing real threats from those which are fake or irrelevant. A group of people badmouthed the emperor at a tavern, and your agency discovered it. Was it a conspiracy or a group of drunkards? Is it worth devolving the resources to spy each of them for... days / weeks / months? If someone is a bit short of money, what would stop him -as a loyal citizen of His Emperor- from uncovering a "conspiracy" he overheard to the rich intelligence agency? Even if it was made up? How to avoid that the agents infiltrated into the rebellious groups actually made them last longer (get paid for disclosing the attacks you are organizing "in order to conceal that you are an imperial agent", seems beneficial to them)?
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# A look into the Abyss
It has been done: Questioning people with extremely low technology is a key staple of both spy agencies, military defense, and similar organizations. One of the most effective examples would be the Stasi, who ended up putting a whole country under fear to comply with the government by their methods.
The US Army in Vietnam developed methods to break people's spirits so they spilled their beans. But they did not do so without precursor: they had studied the less scrupulous methods of the Gestapo and knew the methods that the Kempeitai used in WW2 to question their Prisoners of war. The latter group outright used torture.
## The MfS aka Stasi
It might be worth to take a look into the ["MfS Handbuch"](https://www.bstu.de/informationen-zur-stasi/publikationen/publikationsreihen/mfs-handbuch/)german - the currently 28 part handbook (as in collected research papers) on the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (aka: Stasi) of the German Democratic Republic. While only available in german, it details the organizational structure and methods, how it interlinked with other organizations (the army and police).
One of the methods was ["Zersetzung"](https://www.stasi-mediathek.de/themen/schlagwort/Zersetzung/)german which meant infiltrating groups that were against the GDR, subordinating them, and then destroying them from the inside keeping them apart, seed distrust in likeminded groups, and break them up into smaller ones to destroy them from the inside.
The Stasi were masters in subverting and infiltrating, getting people to do their bidding, and at times not even knowing that they did! And, they had handbooks on how to identify subcultures, a library of jars that contained worn underwear to identify their agents or targets with tracking dogs. The metaphorical Hot Chair? An Invention of the Stasi, where they placed someone in a room with the heating turned high on a plastic chair, waited and only asked questions after a long time - they were really interested in the sweat for their library in those cases and took accidental confessions as extra catches.
The German government not only produces those linked sites above for research and teaching, but it also offers [some of the content in English](https://www.bstu.de/en/the-stasi/introduction/) - but as the interest in the Stasi from non-germans is relatively little most is not available in English.
## The US-Army
The Army [FM 30-15 (1978)](https://www.academia.edu/16427601/FM_30_15_Intelligence_Interrogations_1978)Academia contains interrogation techniques that are all psychological but require to have a person on hand to question. But it contains one of the best rundowns of how the questioning of people can result in maximum turnout with minimal risk of releasing information, and how to sift through the information for veracity, who to choose for the role of interrogators, and so on.
## The Gestapo
A more evil handbook might be that from the Geheime Staatspolizei (GesStaPo) of the Nazis, which used collaborators that were willing to rat out others for a chance to rise in power to hunt down groups that opposed the Nazi Regime. Apparently, there is an English translation of their training manual available. While not containing information on how to torture, the manual does include how to get into someone's head and put psychological pressure on them - even when they didn't have those people interred.
## The Kempeitai
The Japanese *Kempeitai* had written a document called *Notes for the Interrogation of Prisoners of War*. A version of this had been captured in Burma [and translated in 1943,](https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/j/japanese-interrogation-of-prisoners-of-war.html) and it details the methods of how they would acquire information and what from their PoWs. The link above is **an overview of the contents**; the original contains several chapters on how to break the spirit and body of people.
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First off, there are several types of intelligence agencies. One can spy on the neighboring countries (espionage). One can spy on ones own people (I don't know a good name for this, perhaps "domestic surveillance"). One can try to prevent neighboring countries spying on one-self (counterespionage).
I suspect you need all three. The might be one agency, or many. In the case of domestic surveillance, you are probably better off having multiple independent agencies, as otherwise they could take over your country by framing anyone they want to (as in "We don't like Count Andrew, so we will report that he is a traitor.").
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The nature of espionage has also changed over the years. In the American civil war era and before, we had the "Flamboyant Spy". This appears in fiction too. The spy that everyone knows is a spy. (They weren't necessarily the best at information gathering. I've read that one notable named American civil war spy sometimes just made up information for his reports.)
By World War One, the game had changed. Covert information gathering was the in thing. A spy identified was generally expelled or killed.
So this raises another issue. If you have domestic surveillance and counterespionage going on, your counterespionage people are going to be arresting (or at least harassing) your domestic surveillance people. So the latter need a way to provably identify themselves to the former, in such a way that it doesn't publicly identify them. You don't want to accidentally create another Mata Hari. (Executed as a spy by the British, she was a British spy. She was playing flamboyant spy in the covert information era.)
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As for how an agency would "achieve its goals" ... Well, the key is knowing what its goals are. This is obvious: continued employment. They do this by producing rumors and evidence, true or not.
As for how the people who set up the agency get their goals for the agency, that is tougher. I suspect the trick is to make several agencies in competition, occasionally disband (or even execute) poor performers, and split good performing agencies.
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Intelligence agencies have existed in the past without modern means. The chief differences are:
* Without modern computing power, they had less power to collate information. They have to sort through leads quickly to pick out the ones most likely to indicate actual trouble.
* Their local agents will have a lot more authority. If one is in a city sixty miles from the capital, it takes a week or so for the message to travel if he has to use ordinary means to avoid giving himself away, and even if he has access to the speediest form of horses, it's measured in hours or days. Consequently he will have to act on his own.
* Travel was much less frequent. Except for places that get a lot of travelers (pilgrim sites, fairs, etc.), the agency will have to recruit local agents with all the problems that brings (such as conflicting loyalties) because an agent from a town twenty miles away will be an outsider.
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## The Royal College of Handmaidens
In the medieval world, organizing a rebellion of commoners was more or less impossible because commoners could not communicate enough outside of their own social circles to form an army among themselves. Instead rebellions were almost always organized by the nobility. This means that your intelligence network only really needs to have eyes and ears on the nobility themselves. Trying to have a larger network than that will only cause problems since organizing too much information without a modern database can overload your ability to do anything with any of it very easily.
Normally a "Handmaiden" would be a servant picked by a lord or lady to tend to their needs, but there is always the uncertainty of quality and trust. Will they try to poison your food? Are they foreign spies? Do they actually know what they are doing? etc... As the king, you would intentionally instill these concerns in your nobility so that they will demand a system to make sure that their servants are trustworthy before they hire them. So the King declares that all personal servants of the nobility must be properly vetted, trained, and licensed by the Royal College of Handmaidens before a lord may hire these most trusted of household staff. And just for good measure, you can even make it a crime to hire an unlicensed handmaiden. So, just by choosing not to hire a licensed handmaiden, you are exposing yourself to suspicion of illegally hiring unlicensed handmaidens which would itself warrant an investigation.
While these young women are being trained to tend a noble households, they are also being indoctrinated with an absolute loyalty to King and Country above all else. Your could also require an annual retraining seminar where they have to go back to the college to review their skills, but in reality they are are also debriefing their true superiors about the families they are serving. Since the nobility were so rarely without at least 1 personal servant present at any given time, it would be very easy to accidentally let rebellious intentions be known to your household staff, and even if you don't normally let them out of your sight, there is still that darn yearly training that you are legally required to let them attend.
Not only does this relatively small network of women have prime access to all of the most important conversations happening in the kingdom, but they are also in prime positions to perform the more clandestine operations which the OP asked about. Need to kill a rebellious lord in his sleep, why not use the person who is already going in to his bedroom every day to empty his chamber pot. Need help with a castle siege, have the handmaiden start a fire in the food storage. Then you don't even need to storm the walls since lack of supplies can force a quick surrender.
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In this series I'm mulling, kaiju have been around since prehistory, turning up off and on right up until modern times. In the near-future of this alt-history, say in the next twenty years (2040ish), measures have been taken to minimize damage kaiju inflict on cities. In no particular order, here's stuff I've come up with:
Kaiju are always tracked via satellite that monitor all known/registered kaiju, 24/7; some kaiju are recognized via computer records, digital reconstructions of their appearance, but others are tracked the old-fashioned way, tagged like wildlife. Automated systems alert populated areas whether or not a kaiju is close by. Unregistered/new kaiju can almost always be detected by the same monitoring systems, due to size, ambient energy levels, radioactivity, etc. These systems may also carry nuclear payloads, railguns, laser cannons, etc., Star-Wars-space-program-ish kinds of tech on-board, in case defenses on the ground don't work.
Warning systems are in place in cities to keep people informed well ahead of time, in case an attack is imminent. There are regular kaiju forecasts like weather reports on TV, and warning systems on personal devices like you might receive an Amber alert, etc. Being as kaiju are an everyday part of human life in this alt-history, it's second nature for people to keep tabs on kaiju anyway.
The electrical grid is decidedly more diverse than it is now. The move to clean energy happened a long time ago, and basically any means to get it was okayed, depending on the need: solar, wind, geothermal, kinetic, etc. There are nuclear power plants, based on new improved tech (vaguely tokamak design), but there might be contention over it, since there are some kaiju in this universe that are drawn to nuclear energy. Although with these power plants, the "walk-away" functions allow for people to leave their stations immediately to evacuate, and ideally, leave little damage to the environment afterward. The point is to make the grid less centralized in case of attack, so the city doesn't suffer complete loss of power, but can continue functioning as if nothing has happened (especially underground, but I'm getting to that).
City defense systems begin several miles outside of city limits, in the wilderness or barely populated areas. Concealed [rail]gun turrets, for example, that pop up and fire upon approach by anything over a certain height or tonnage. Military bases, posts, garrisons, patrols, some military presence to keep an eye out. There might be other, less direct means, to minimize damage from potential combat: releasing pheromones, olfactory distractions, or maybe even geoengineering, massive land alterations that has terrain subconsciously leading kaiju away from city areas, etc. Still mulling that. Point being, these systems are almost purely deterrent, to push kaiju in the opposite direction, as a lot of man-made tech still can't outright kill them; the hope is to basically annoy them in another direction.
In the event a kaiju does push through this defensive line and is intent on getting into a city, there are measures in place there too. I hesitate to say cities are walled; and I don't know that I want to resort to straight-up sci-fi elements, like force fields, as I'm aiming for a certain level of suspension of disbelief; but it's possible there are such walls in place at least some of the time in certain parts of the world. There are also more automated and manned turret defenses, hoping to push the kaiju away at the last minute. There might be more to this layer of defense that just hasn't occurred to me yet.
People in the city must then evacuate certain burroughs/districts/etc. depending on which one is under greatest threat of being attacked. The means of doing so is decidedly less chaotic than in, say, Godzilla movies, where it's basically a churning panic. Almost all buildings feed into underground shelters, far below to accommodate for the immense weight of a kaiju pushing down on the ground overhead, and to just ensure it's not as simple as kaiju digging down to get them; these shelters are sprawling and city-like themselves, so much so that entire communities might just live there year-round.
Almost all buildings are also built with tech that was basically meant to protect against earthquakes but were since implemented for kaiju attacks. Specifically, magnetic systems that are being tested right now to keep taller structures from falling over during rumbling and shaking (I don't pretend to know really how it works, but it's one of many things I'm studying). Poaching an idea I believe I saw from NEON GENESIS EVANGELION, some buildings may straight up recede into the ground, although I don't know how sensible that is.
I'm also toying with the idea that there are defenses in some cities that are deliberately built with facades to look like skyscrapers, maybe as a means of distracting kaiju from other buildings and minimizing damage; once they get close to this fake building, any number of defenses could be activated...maybe it's wired to detonate and fall on a kaiju? Or it's a huge electrical conduit meant to electrocute a kaiju by siphoning all available power from the city into it for a concentrated attack? Maybe the facade falls away and reveals itself to be a tower of turrents? It could be one or all of these things.
It wouldn't be any fun without some sort of tokusatsu type of response, i.e. giant robots or something similar called in to take care of the threat. Once a kaiju is inside a city, it's always the desire of those in kaiju response to push it back out, as killing them rarely happens: so maybe calling a giant robot in to fight them is not the wisest course of action. They are, however, more precise than some military attacks, and definitely preferable to something like biological attacks or dropping a nuke. Their roles are probably almost exclusively meant to grapple a kaiju and get them out of the city; if they're going to fight, they'll do it where casualties are kept to a minimum.
I guess a note: military vehicles are now based on multidirectional technology, for increased mobility and control. Think Harrier tech for jets, or V-tol tech, but way more reliable. The idea being, the military may have retired a lot of the hardware that is only good at getting somewhere really fast but can't stay and fight, like jets that can deliver a payload but then have to bank, turn around, and hope to God they can fire again in time. I admittedly don't know how sensible that is, it's just something that made sense in the planning stages, but I'm not sure if it does in reality.
Also, military vehicles are probably dominantly drone tech. This is to minimize loss of life, as that's considerably more precious now in this alt-reality where the world population is drastically lower than it is right now on our world. So almost all response vehicles are unmanned. There is a human element, like pilots, gunners, troops on the ground, guys inside battle mechs, etc., but it's probably accounting for 10-20% of actual response forces dealing with a situation like this, and that's probably as a last-resort, or specialized tasks.
Similarly, most vehicles in the cities are automated. This is to prevent traffic that will clog up major roadways and keep people from getting to safety. Most shelters can be accessed a more convenient way, but in the event someone is in a car when an attack occurs, all vehicles take their occupants to a shelter entrance, disallowing them to leave until such a time the onboard AI can locate an entrance for them. There might be some ethical backlash to this that I need to think over.
The absolute last thing anyone in power or in charge of kaiju response wants in a kaiju vs. kaiju situation. This is why I hesitate to use defense measures like giant robots inside city limits. If two or more kaiju come into a city at the same time, it's absolutely imperative that they are not allowed to converge on one another. If they do, well, you can imagine.
And, finally, I guess, it's super important that a kaiju is not allowed to simply wander the city: attacks on it do not cease until it is again pushed outside the city limits. That way, on the off-chance it dies, there won't be a 20,000 ton corpse in the middle of a city that you can't move. That, and if the kaiju eventually feels like it isn't worth it to be in the city, it will ideally leave of its own accord, and wander back into the countryside. It's not the most noble sentiment, but then, at that point, it becomes some other city's problem.
So that's all I've come up with at the moment, lest I've forgotten something (I'm sure I have). I guess my question is:
**Is what I have sufficient, and/or does it need more?**
***EDIT***: Some notes on the kaiju themselves, I guess...
There are many varieties. Not necessarily species, just different types that aren't easily quantifiable. Mutations, aliens, indigenous creatures to Earth, cyborgs, robots...kaiju is more a catch-all term. They have varying degrees of power, capability, intelligence. Their desires, functions, drives, they're all relatively different. City defenses then have to cover a lot of bases in order to apply to as many hostile types or attacks as possible, as there's no telling what might appear. More specialized defenses have to be formulated on a case-by-case basis.
Their numbers compared to humans are very low. I'm about to indulge in slapdash math, which I hate, but it seems necessary to prove a point: being conservative, let's say this version of Earth only has about 2-4 billion people left; whereas there are only about 20-50 kaiju on Earth, though that number tends to fluctuate with new discoveries and arrivals. Kaiju then are drastically outnumbered, and the chances of being attacked by one aren't all that high. Given the amount of damage they can cause, though, their presence is treated very seriously and most big cities have to have these kinds of defenses in place.
Most do not or cannot reproduce; some are mutants and can't reproduce, some are refugees from other planets or dimensions, cut off from their own kind, etc. Some are long-lived, and have been around for centuries. Some go into hibernative or torpur states, so there can be months or years where they simply don't show up.
A grand majority cannot be killed by human weaponry; more often than not, they die of old age, or from fighting each other. Nuclear warheads can do the trick, but no one wants to use them. Experimental weaponry has its own concerns and baggage. Smaller varieties may eventually die from repeated military response: not all have the same level of strength or defense against our attempts to kill them.
Honestly, I haven't worked out the kinks on how kaiju fit into history yet. History doesn't fork significantly until the recent past, when a kaiju attacked a city and the world at large knew they were real. History has plenty of evidence that they existed before then, but there is a laundry-list of reasons why it wasn't taken seriously till this one dramatic event. Cover-ups, of course, but that's easy and cliche; there's more at work than that. Point being, I haven't gotten that far. It's not terribly important to the topic at the moment.
I will make more edits as necessary.
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**Modern Munitions Would Rip Kaiju Apart**
The thing movies get wrong about modern munitions is that they always show them being deployed at point blank ranges. This makes for great visually stimulating cinematic battles, but the reality is that nowadays even a lot of basic infantry weapons can be fired on targets that are beyond the ability of unaided eyes to see. Air deployed munitions can be dropped or fired from altitudes of 40,000 feet, or fired at targets that are actually over the horizon. The idea that aircraft would be in danger is laughable, they move at a couple times the speed of sound and are several kilometers in the air. A kaiju would have zero hope of ever reaching or catching a military aircraft. These aircraft would respond to kaiju threats with a modified variant of the GBU-57 Massive ordinance Penetrator, pictured here:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/z52r5.jpg)
This is a penetrating bomb that carries a whopping 30,000 pound warhead. It can penetrate up to 200 feet of steel reinforced concrete before detonating, but can be calibrated to detonate anywhere along that penetration path you might require. There is not a kaiju alive that can hope to survive such a blast occurring inside of it's body cavity. For reference, a 2,000 pound bomb is enough to level a city block, so the GBU-57 being 15 times more powerful will essentially dis-articulate a kaiju in one hit. "But what about super mecha mutant kaiju?" you might ask. What about them, in the amount of time it takes a kaiju to reach a city we can puncture and rupture the beast a thousand times over with complete impunity from 40,000 feet AGL. Bombs are cheap, cities are not. Kaiju defense would more than likely be conducted by a global network of airfields stocked with copious amounts of guided penetrating ordinance like or very similar to the GBU-57.
**Preemptive Strikes**
It would be pretty difficult to understand why the US military wouldn't simply elect to just hunt down all existent kaiju on the planet and kill them the moment they were detected. If your story is to make sense kaiju are going to need to be continually emerging from some unknown place because I really don't see the people of the world deciding so coexist with kaiju long enough to need a defense system. I think that kaiju would probably be hunted and killed as soon as they were detected, since we already have the tools to do so without risk to personnel as is and letting one just wander around is too big of a hazard. A kaiju wandering around the ocean is the threat equivalent of a nuke with a big red button to detonate it just being left laying around the middle east. Nobody is going to put up with it when a guy in a B-52 strato-fortress can eradicate one with the touch of a button.
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Any modern society should have no trouble dispatching kaijus.
For the biological reasons:
([Source](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/gojirasaurus))
For the mechanical reasons, see [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/106434/21222).
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I think defenses would depend entirely on why the Kaiju are attacking humans in the first place. If we are simply in the way of their path, then what you have written should be enough to deter them and get people out of the way in time. However if the Kaiju are there to eat you have a problem.
Since you have said that they cannot be killed by human weapons, you have 2 different options. Feed them or Capture them. When feeding them, all you simply do is drop a bunch of food on them. Animals, products, anything to make it full and leave you alone. Since your weapons can't kill it, the Kaiju is just going to keep trying to eat until its full. Think of it like a starving bear and a bee's nest. The bear gets stung, but the hungrier it is, the less it cars about getting stung.
The second way is to essentially trap any attacking Kaiju and leave them to rot. In this case, you drop tons of steel and elastic cables and nets onto the Kaiju. Eventually it gets bogged down or slowed. Then you wrap it up in a ball, ship or fly it away somewhere and bury it under a kilometer of concrete.
Otherwise, you basically have extremely powerful creatures that you can't really stop and no defense is going to help.
As for some of the other ideas:
* Buildings dropping into the ground doesn't make any sense. Not only do you need to be able to store the entire building in the ground, you need the equipment to get it out of the ground again. Thats a foundation capable of supporting the building and engines required to lift it, as well as a structure that allows it to sit above ground, save from earthquakes, floods, heavy rains, typhoons etc. You might as well build the building underground because that will offer more shelter and be less costly.
* Multi Directional vehicles aren't always as going to be as good as your standard ones. Multi directional often means more parts and more complicated controls. A Jet fires its missiles and comes around because it is fast vs a land target. Hovering around opens it up to counter fire. It would be wiser to invest in heavier firepower to actually hurt the kaijus rather than control.
* 20-50 nukes to get rid of all the Kaiju is nothing. Even near populated areas. Nuclear fallout can clear up pretty fast, and with more advance technology, I'm sure they also have more advance bombs. The reward of killing the Kaiju off and only having to manage 1 or 2 is vastly superior to being under constant attack. The government could easily push it as well, because if you wanted to invest in huge walls and machinery they would be taxing the life out of everyone anyway.
* Concealed weapons are useless. You risk them getting stuck or breaking down easier. The more powerful rounds they fire, the more reinforcing they need. Have a look at the this cannon/artillery <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav> and the team required to support it.
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If the Kaiju are part of the worlds history as you said, I don't think you can just drop our version of humanity into it. Think about how humanity would have developed i this situation. For example, it is not likely that humans would have developed large and impressive buildings. After all, why would you deliberately build something that could attract a natural disaster. Civilisation would most likely have developed in plains where you can see everything around, or in mountains, where even Kaiju would have difficulty walking around. Technology and architecture would have developed in a way that focuses on temporary constructs that you can afford to lose, because it can easily be rebuilt.
But I suppose, IF your humans that have finally reached our levels of technology, or even higher, INSISTED on settling in territory that is frequented by giant monsters, and also INSISTED on building permanent structures that are big enough to attract said gian monsters, then I would think of the possibility of keeping one of them around. Focus on being able to deter one specific Kaiju, but feed it to keep it in the general area. Most likely the Kaiju would have some kind of territorial instincts that leads them to avoid stepping in others territory, or defend theirs. That way, you don't have to worry so much on other Kaiju, and if "your" Kaiju steps into the city, you know what you're dealing with.
And please don't create giant humanoid robots, they don't make sense. Machines are not constrained by body shapes that living creatures need to have.
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The barrier while active would keep anything from making contact, but force could still be transferred.
Its not always on and can be "drained" from multiple blows. Approximately 20 full strength blows from an average male using a long sword.
Unlike real armor there are no gaps and a point of the armor could only become weaker than another point by a user deliberately shifting energy around themselves. The rate at which energy can be would vary from person to person, but let's say that an average soldier would do it in half a second plus their reaction time. Energy would be drawn equally from all parts of the barrier.
The power of these barriers varies from person to person. It can be strengthened throughout life with repeated strenuous use.
The barrier can be bypassed by piercing and averages around the difficulty to pierce as Steel plate armor.
Energy such as heat can still affect someone though the barrier.
All liquids and solids would be blocked by the barrier unless the user allowed them through. Gases with enough understanding could be specifically blocked, but are mostly all allowed through in order to let the user continue to breath.
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You would see a massive shift away from medieval spear formations and a heavier focus on what we would call Medieval Anti-Armor tactics. In short: Don't try to pierce the shield...hurt them despite the shield.
# Historical Background
In the middle ages, most people on the battlefield weren't running around in Full Plate. [Full Plate is expensive](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/20833/how-long-does-it-take-to-craft-the-kinds-of-armour-worn-by-typical-medieval-warr), time-consuming, and difficult to craft. A full suit of Plate Mail could take months to craft. Instead, most people who were 'armored' wore a simple Breastplate and/or a mail shirt, along with a helmet and whatever arm and leg protection they could get.
So, most of the time, you didn't need to worry about hitting someone in a way that breached their armor, you just had to hit them somewhere their armor was weaker. This (coupled with the ease of training people in their use and how easy/cheap they were to make) is why spears were so popular in medieval infantry formations. You get to stay nice and far away from your enemy and stab at the spots that aren't covered in a sheet of steel.
Where this becomes a problem is when you have someone in Plate. A Plate Mail wearing soldier was practically a dreadnought on the battlefield. Spears, swords, axes...practically any cutting or thrusting weapon melee would just bounce off. For a while, the Longsword was able to penetrate plate with a really strong thrust but as metallurgy got better and plate was made thicker...even that stopped working.
This was the point where, when fighting against heavily armored targets, swords stopped being used on the battlefield. Cutting or piercing plate mail was practically impossible without a polearm (such as the piercing spike on the back of a Halberd) and enough space to swing it. So, you stopped trying to pierce the armor, and you just tried to wreck the guy inside of it without breaking the metal.
Thus: maces, warhammers, and other bludgeoning weapons became the more common weapon used for anti-armor combat. The goal wasn't to penetrate armor, it was to hit someone so hard that it hurt them right through the Plate by transmission of Force. It doesn't matter if your helmet can survive the blow, if your skull experiences a massive enough abrupt change in velocity it will give you a concussion. Hard enough, that might just kill you.
# Weapons
As you have mentioned, the personal shields do not negate forceful impacts. Thus, you would use weapons designed to deliver maximum impulse to your target. This would mean a warhammer, mace, war pick, or other heavy weapon that has the vast bulk of its weight at the striking end.
The goal here, as with dealing with someone in Plate, isn't necessarily to penetrate the shield.If you can, awesome! But, mostly...it's to hit them hard enough that the force of impact is conducted into the body--dealing damage right through the shield.
# Armor
Armor would still be useful in this case, but it would be...potentially weird.
If you can design armor such that it sits outside of your shield, then you can add bits designed to deflect impacts away from you. Later designs of Plate Mail had features like this to help mitigate the risk of blunt weapons. The human body (and thus, presumably, the shield) lacks these contours, so a blow to your chest would have the full surface area of your torso to hit. If you designed armor that was curved around your chest, then an indirect blow might glance off the side.
If you cannot design armor to sit outside the shield, it may still be useful as a back-up. In this case, armor would still be basically exactly what it was before. Perhaps with a focus on padding and support to try to mitigate some of the impact you take.
In either case, physical shields are still useful. A hit taken by a sturdy piece of wood is a hit not taken by your personal shield. And blunt weapon blows to your wooden shield can be absorbed by the flex of your arm...instead of being taken directly into your body.
# Archery
Volley Fire from archery weapons would not exist. How reliably heavy archery weapons could penetrate plate armor varies depending on who you ask (and how thick they believe plate armor of the day was). I won't try to go into too much detail here--but we'll say it's theoretically possible for a strong enough bow to penetrate the shield.
The problem is, naturally, the further a projectile flies the more speed it loses. And the faster a projectile is moving when fired, the more drag it produces (equation to compute Drag Force squares the object's velocity). Tests I have seen that show a bow able to pierce Plate has the weapon being fired at practically point blank range (usually within 30-40 feet). Thus, the odds of an arrow maintaining shield-piercing velocity by the time it flies all the way across a battle field in a high arc is practically nil.
In the middle ages, Volley Fire was useful because you could just throw a massive number of arrows at the enemy and, since most of your enemy wasn't wearing full plate--you'd probably hit plenty of unarmored or weakly armored spots.
If archers were to be viable, it would have to be straight-fire at relatively close range (for example, archers atop a castle firing down at invaders at the walls).
In fact, it is questionable whether or not archery would have taken off at all. Early bows would have been utterly useless against shielded targets--so it is uncertain whether or not the development of the Warbow or Heavy Crossbow would have happened at all.
# Cavalry
The Lance of a Mounted Soldier was, essentially, the most reliable way to penetrate armor while still maintaining tight formation. There are numerous accounts of *blunted* lances still piercing through *jousting armor* which was over-engineered to be as heavy and sturdy as possible. You wouldn't wear jousting armor on the battlefield because it was too hard to move in.
The amount of force delivered by a couched lance striking you, propelled forward by a charging warhorse was *enormous*. Even if you took an indirect blow and it didn't penetrate your personal shield, it would still knock you over with significant force.
In the same way, as your Personal Shield does not protect you against the force of impact...the sheer blunt force of a Heavy Horse Charge slamming into infantry would still be devastating. Soldiers get bowled over, trampled, knocked into each other, lose their weapons, and so on. It may not kill that many people, but it would *shatter* your formation and probably terrify any conscripts you had in your ranks (getting run over by multiple horses would be a very scary and deeply unpleasant experience even if it didn't break your shield). If you couldn't get your formation back in order before enemy infantry closed with you...you're history.
Cavalry archers would likely not exist. As you said, a personal shield tanks piercing damage about as well as steel plate. It takes a *heavy* bow to pierce steel plate--significantly heavier than what you can use from horseback. Chariot Archers may still be viable, if armed with heavy crossbows or warbows...and a Chariot would still do a fantastic job of running people over.
Thus, melee cavalry would still see a lot of use. Even a lighter horse carrying someone armed with a warhammer is still going to make that warhammer hit significantly harder if the rider hits you while he rides by.
# Tactics
This 'personal shield' would also change tactics on the battlefield.
### Troop Rotation
A 'standard baseline' would be established of how much abuse a single person's shield could generally take. You'd then estimate that out based on time in combat, then you'd rotate out troops to put 'fresh shields' on the front line in the same way that a shield wall would rotate troops.
### Takedowns
A skilled enough warrior may be able to prevent you from getting a 'straight shot' at him with a blunt weapon. This is especially true if you're dealing with peasant levies or other forms of conscripted troops who have minimal training.
So, your goal becomes similar to how footmen would deal with a Mounted Knight in the middle ages.
Step 1: Put him on the ground. Step 2: Dogpile with weapons.
A similar tactic could be done on a grander scale to allow less skilled combatants to still be effective at fighting. For this, you equip some of your troops with [Lucerne Hammers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucerne_hammer) as their 'primary weapon,' mixed in with the soldiers with traditional warhammers and maces.
A Lucerne Hammer has both the hammer on the end of a long pole for *massive* striking power, and also a hook on the back--which can allow you to catch the legs of an opponent to pull them off their feet.
So, the tactic for these troops becomes: Use the hook to sweep an opponent off their feet, then bring an overhand downward blow with the hammer side. Or simply let your allies dogpile the guy on the ground. Impacts are still a thing, so someone on the ground will have a really hard time getting up if a bunch of people are pounding on them.
# TL;DR:
Weapons and tactics that maximize impact force are the way to go. You don't need to break the shield if it doesn't negate impact Force. You just need to hit em hard enough that it harms them right through their shield.
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Finesse is no longer a consideration in this situation, two handed warhammers and picks and hard blows are now the best approach to any combat scenario as they will provide the greatest drain-per-strike rate. One would still wear "real armour" because more protection is more protection which is why I suggest hammers and picks, they concentrate force and are specialised for taking out armoured foes.
In light of the edit including "The barrier can be bypassed by piercing and averages around the difficulty to pierce as Steel plate armor." I would recommend the two-handed version of the [Bec de Corbin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bec_de_corbin), or the [Lucerne Hammer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucerne_hammer) with their long sharp "beaks" designed specifically to pierce full-plate steel armour.
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**Not much change really,**
The medieval period wasn't known for its adaptability. As long as these shields could be beaten with brute force, methods would largely remain the same.
The tactical usage of the shields, on the other hand, would experience the most variability but that is a different question that impacts this one.
**One aspect to explore though.** Cavalry would potentially be impacted by this. Cavalry was a huge component of this periods warfare. Cavalry works by quickly charging enemy lines in rapid singular assaults and then fleeing before they can counter attack. Being that these shields require successive damage cavalry can effectively be halted. **However** you said they could be pierced like steel and in this period the lance was designed specifically for piercing mounted knights. So potentially and potentially not would this affect the usage of cavalry.
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You mean every human was just born this way? Every person just has this field capable of withstanding 20 full force hits from a two-handed long sword?
The simple answer is that a lot of medieval weaponry wouldn't have been invented, and what weaponry was created would mostly be for the purpose of hunting animals not humans.
Humans would most likely have learned to use their energy shields against each other in fights rather than build weapons for that purpose, given that the field as described would have been the hardest, and most durable, thing known to humans at that time.
For example: you state that the "the armor could only become weaker than another point by a user deliberately shifting energy around themselves", which means that other areas would presumably be made stronger by doing this. The obvious question is: to what extent? Could I condense all of the power of my energy field down to a cylinder 1cm or so in diameter that projected 30-40cm out from my right hand? If so then I could presumably punch that through someone else's energy shield and their body.
Come to think of it, you describe this as a field, which means that it is not constrained by 3 dimensional physics. I could therefore theoretically project the field outward as a 2 dimensional plane that had width and length, but no thickness. That plane would be able to penetrate other fields because it would have no actual surface area on the leading edge. It also means that it would pass through the person inside the field without damaging them - again 2 dimensions, so no penetration. So what would be the use of this? Well the field wouldn't harm the person as it passed through them, but it would create a barrier that would not allow things like oxygen or blood to pass through it.
Beyond that most of the weaponry created would probably be designed for distance attacks using projectiles with a high mass since the field allows inertia to be transferred to the user.
I also expect there would have been a lot more use of fire as a weapon since the field as you describe it seems to resist penetration but otherwise still allow energy to pass through it.
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Let's look at the possible attack points of a person in armor. I train HEMA (medieval combat) and fight in plate armor every now and then so that's my perspective.
Gaps are non-existant with your barrier so let's skip those, but weak points are still important. A key factor to combat would be forcing your opponent to strengthen a part of the barrier and then attack a different one. Feigning, in other words. This is important in any kind of fighting, but it would be emphasised in your scenario. Combat would be primarily oriented around tricking your opponent while not being tricked yourself and then attacking the weaker parts of the barrier.
For this, a poleaxe would probably be a good weapon. You could feign a piercing attack to the chest with the shaft end and then quickly shift into an attack to the head with the other end. A properly wielded poleaxe is fast and powerful and one of the best allround weapons of the medieval period.
A strike to the head would also be a good option. A knock-out is not dependent on what damage you can do, but rather how quickly and forceful you can twist the head of your opponent. A solid straight blow in the face would hurt me, but is unlikely to knock me out. A solid hook connecting with my cheek however would twist my head enough to shake up my brain and make me go down. This all depends, naturally, on the rigidity of the barrier, but for people to be able to move around the barrier would still need to be flexible.
Another good strategy would then be grappling. By twisting the limbs you would inflict pain, the enemy would have to strengthen the barrier there to avoid injury or further pain and that's when you use a round dagger to stab them.
In general, techniques would be quick and deceptive. They would be much about manouvering the opponent into a position where they're forced to open up weak points in the barrier. Dual wielding would probably be much more common.
But blunt weapons would also be very common. A good strike might not drain the barrier, but could still inflict a lot of internal damage. Hit he belly to send a shockwave through the body that might disrupt the internal organs. Hit the head to inflict concussions. Internal bleeding might not kill as quickly, but kill it will. On that note, nets would probably be more common too. It would still entangle the foe making it possible to go in and pummel them.
I suspect that most combat techniques would be about finding and exploiting the nature of the barrier. The devil is in the details they say and that would also be true here. How quickle can someone shift the strength of the barrier? How much force is needed to pierce it and where would be the best place to do so? If I throw dust in the face of someone, will it stick to the barrier, fall off directly or go right through it? Does it work like a super strong chainmail so that smaller things can get through? Would it hold off water or other substances? What about fire? Guns would probably develop from handheld cannons to something more useable faster than it did IRL.
There are a lot of nuances here and you would do well to explore the exact nature of your barriers in order to answer this question properly.
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Many interpretations of "magic" suggest that it is susceptible to raw, unhardened iron. If such is true in your world, the advent of steel would actually hurt warrior effectiveness and safety. Such a world might not develop metal hardened techniques until much later.
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Sneak attacks will be even more popular. Much less fighting in big numbers. Maybe sophisticated traps (bear traps used as mines?). More usage of fire and poison.
You really want to deliver your blow out of blue since it means it will land.
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**Troop rotation**
People have a lot more opportunity to retreat without harm. A reasonable rotation after taking a couple hits and swinging a heavy weapon for a few minutes to give time for the magic to restore or at least to take advantage of all your troops' magic becomes even more important. Longer encounters also mean sustainable fighting is relatively more important than ferocity.
**Conscripts**
A traditional problem with conscripts is they die in droves learning how to fight. With magic armor this is much less true; they have 19 hits to learn from and maybe more if the magic recharges.
**Shoving matches**
If you have a big mob of poorly trained (and probably armed) people who are difficult to hurt pushing and trampling seems like the goto plan. Like a shield wall without necessarily even needing the shields.
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This sounds very like the shields from [Dune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)). The characteristic feature of these shields is that they block all fast objects whilst letting slower objects through.
Long-range weaponry is therefore minimal. Hand-to-hand combat is predominant, and fighters are trained to move slowly in attack to get through the opponent's shield. Since slow movement with a longer weapon such as a sword would be easily countered, hand-to-hand combat tends to use knives. This especially focusses on dual knives, because as Paul Atreides says, "Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister".
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Having such an efficient armor, that can not be easily surpassed by anything man-made and practical to wear with the technology available, people would never attempted to create any concept of personal armor, shields and the like.
This would give the soldiers far greater mobility in general and thus favor tactic that where common before good armor developed.
To fight such highly mobile and well defended targets they would develop weapons with the capacity to store energy, to quickly piece the enemy´s shield before he can retreat and recover. Crossbows would become the no 1 weapon on the battlefield, and maybe even some sort of spring-loaded spears or daggers.
With the ability to just recover your armor, tactics would generally revolve around being able to retreat before you are drained and denying your foe the same opportunity.
Guerrilla-tactics and ambushes would be most effective to quickly take down shields and make the kill blows. Also fortifications would be build that way that the defendant could rotate his front line and decide where an when to fight, so could equalize the number of enemies to be irrelevant.
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I was imagining the possibilities of creating a ship mast which could not get struck by lightning. Is there a material it could be made of that would never get struck by lightning?
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It's not the material per se which makes it lightning proof, but rather what's around it.
When a difference of potential starts building up, sooner or later it will cause a discharge and produce the lightning.
The discharge happens at the point which offers the least resistance to the discharge current flow. Therefore in a world made of gold, a wooden stick is almost sure to never get a lightning (unless it gets close enough to the other pole...).
Even in a world made of vacuum and only your perfect pole, a lightning would happen, because you can't store infinite energy in a finite volume.
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I think there are two main physics principles to consider.
1. The conductivity of the material. Typical sailing masts are wood, which is generally considered an insulator. However we know that lightning will hit trees and wooden masts. Electrical potential is a lot like water pressure in some ways. Normally glass stops water (like wood stops electricity), but at firehose pressures water breaks through. If the potential is high enough, an arc will go from the clouds to the ground.
2. The geometry of the mast. Charges build up on the surfaces of objects, and the tighter the curvature of the surface, the more charge density you can get. (I am using a lot of improper terms here because its been a while since I studied electrical engineering.) So if you have a sphere, the charges will be spread around the surface pretty evenly. If you have a spiky ball, the spike tips will be more strongly charged than the sides of the spikes. The places of high charge density are more likely to arc. In the case of a ship, the mast is a really big spike. On the ground, trees are big spikes.
So, I think the best you can do is 1) use smoother, less spiky geometry where you can, and 2) make a lightning rod that is spikier than the mast.
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**Make your whole ship out of a resistor**
Sure, you could go the boring, so-called "practical" route (yech) of installing a lightning rod. But why do that when you could instead make your entire ship out of paraffin wax, fused quartz, PET, or Teflon? Sure to turn heads, and a great conversation-starter!
You see, lightning takes the path of least resistance to the ground or water. Steel, aluminum, and wood are better conductors than air, which is why lightning prefers to travel through those when it can, rather than through the air. So all you have to do is make your mast (and, for good measure, the rest of your ship) out of something with a higher resistivity than air. Lightning will take one sideways look at your plastic ship and go the long way around.
[This table](https://www.thoughtco.com/table-of-electrical-resistivity-conductivity-608499) tells us that air has a resistivity of 1.3×10^16 to 3.3×10^16 Ω m. Selected entries from the table:
```
Aluminum 2.82√ó10^‚àí8
Titanium 4.20√ó10‚àí7
Stainless steel 6.9√ó10^‚àí7
Wood (damp) 1√ó10^3 to 4
Wood (oven dry) 1√ó10^14 to 10^16
Air 1.3√ó10^16 to 3.3√ó10^16
Paraffin wax 1√ó10^17
Fused quartz 7.5√ó10^17
PET 10√ó10^20
Teflon 10√ó10^22 to 10√ó10^24
```
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**No, yes, kinda...**
If the potential difference between two ends of a length of material is great enough, it will conduct electricity. It doesn't matter what it is. ***However,*** the nature of the material may be that it melts, burns, or explodes when that happens. So when you ask the question, "is there a material lightning does not strike?" the simple answer is "no."
However, you can't always control what's around the object. In other words, if the base of your ship's mast is made of metal and for some weird reason that metal extends through the ship to touch the water below, the metal at the base of the mast becomes a great place for lightning to strike and topple the mast.
Except! Your ship is on an ocean of water and pretty much anywhere is a better place for lightning to strike than the ship, itself. It's a common misconception that altitude alone makes something significantly more susceptible to a lightning strike. That's true only if there's a better conductor to ground than every where else. Thus, a wet tree in a rain storm is a little closer to the potential discharge than the surrounding grass and is therefore more likely to be hit.
But change that to a tree on a 10 square-meter island in the middle of a massive lake and the odds of that tree being hit drop tremendously because the surrounding water represents a better conductor than any amount of water on the tree.
Keep in mind that lightning striking the masts of sailing ships are kinda uncommon. Modern statistics say the odds are [four out of every thousand strikes](https://www.lifeofsailing.com/post/sailboats-get-struck-by-lightning) during rough weather. Those are low odds. But as the linked article explains, it's still valuable to do something to mitigate the effects.
In other words, you don't want to try to make your mast a better insulator, *you want to do something to make your mast a better conductor,* so when the lightning does strike it goes exactly where you want it to and discharges in a much safer manner.
But if you insist that you want a better insulator, avoid rainy weather. It's the only way to solve the problem. Water is a more than satisfactory conductor.
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Another alternative is keep your mast metal, but make it actively charged via [Van de Graaf electrostatic generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator) or similar.
The lightening happens because electrostatic potential levels of clouds and ground (or sea) are different. When that difference (i.e. voltage) becomes high enough, even the things that are usually not conductive become so due to [dielectric breakdown](https://www.nist.gov/itl/math/dielectric-breakdown), and electricity flows from one potential level to the other, until they equalize.
As other say, which path is preferred depends on its conductivity, and solutions offered so far focus on reducing that aspect.
However, another alternative is making your mast at the same charge as the clouds. That way it won't be interesting target for the lightening which wants to reach opposite polarity charge (just like the lightning that has started from cloud potential towards ground potential does not decide *"ok let's get back to the same place in cloud where I started"* - there is no reason why it would go back to the same electrostatic potential).
Of course, it would use energy, and you must watch you do not overcharge it, as otherwise you could create your own lightning from your mast to the sea (even in the absence of the storm outside).
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Suppose a habitable planet is perpetually enshrouded with clouds but still has enough light seeping through to make lit and unlit portions of a day, and has an intelligent tool-making species living on it. Assume primitive civilization of some sort starts to develop. When would they start to need clocks, and how would they satisfy this need?
Keep in mind that the first "clocks" on Earth are likely over 5500 years old, and probably older. A simple vertical stick in the ground would have sufficed, but sticks of course rot. However, those first clocks on Earth were made in regions where the sky was not cloudy all day.
This question asks about the first clocks on a world where the sky is cloudy all day, everywhere, and remains cloudy all day (and all night) throughout the year.
Note: I am not asking about timing how long it takes to cook an egg. I'm asking about scheduling a meeting thirty days from now at 2:00 in the afternoon, or since it's a primitive society, scheduling a meeting thirty days from now sometime in the afternoon. Water clocks were notoriously imprecise, as were hourglasses.
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There are 2 key purposes of Time:
1: future planning events and co-ordination (Meet me at 3 pm!)
2: Time elapsed (Cook for 5 minutes on high).
As others have eluded to, Hour glasses/Sand clocks/Water clocks would fulfill the function of point 2 - but these answers, although good - don't address a unified agreed sense of 'time'
Function 1, however is where a time system based off of the workable hours in a day becomes super relevant - you have a 'start' and a 'stop' period and then you subdivide that into approximately uniform graduations - these same graduations are used for function 2 for simplicity - but it doesn't answer how we get there.
My answer:
**Tidal Based Time**
You didn't specify if your fictional world has a moon or other heavenly bodies - but I'm going to presume it has one and that like on Earth, these cause Tidal flows. The Tidal flows are not obscured.
Now the Tidal flow isn't precise initially - but it's good enough and regular enough to know within an acceptable margin of error for a primitive society.
The other reason Tidal Flows are a great idea? Spring Tides - now we not only have Time, but we have a Calendar! Spring Tides occur at Full Moon or New Moon - giving us approximately 2 weeks (again, assuming a Moon that works like ours - but you can fiddle the variables as you see fit).
You can also add in King Tides (or Perigean Spring tides - to use the correct term) as denoting either changes in season or significant events (Religious or otherwise) etc. etc.
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**Clocks don't exist to tell you when the sun will rise and set, they exist to coordinate the activities of people and events**
When will clocks be invented on your world? Just as soon as the inconvenience of getting people together for an important meeting or activity outweighs the value of not having a clock (or the first time dinner is burned, whichever comes first).
From a practical perspective, clocks have nothing to do with the sun. Yes, here on Earth where we have a clear view of many celestial events, the development of clocks (and time keeping) was hugely light based. But as time progressed (hah...), we discovered that celestial events weren't as predictable as we needed them to be. OUr need for really precise time has forced us to define time (e.g., the [definition and measurement of a second](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second)) in ways that respect, but exclude celestial events.
Long story short, you don't need light to have a clock.
As our own [history of timekeeping devices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_timekeeping_devices) suggests, there are many ways (and reasons!) to keep time. Even on your world, there will be (or, should be...) seasons. A cold season, a stormy season, a warm season, a "light" period, a "dark" period.... So the basic divisions incorporating the sun and the planet's rotation and orbit exist, just not as precisely as here on Earth.
Sand, water, incense, pendulums, candles... Anything with a reasonably predictable *rate of consumption* can be used to create a clock. In the end, your good people will end up with gears, then electronics, then atomics, for precision time.
In short, your people will basically build the same kind of timekeeping devices Humans did. They just won't depend on sundials much because they'll be too imprecise too early in your people's history.
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Looking at the sun is the easiest, and probably earliest, way to tell the time. But in no way the only primitive one. Clocks would be needed by any intelligent race early in its development, as to not get surprised by the dark. This would be fairly crucial to the survival of the species. If sundials are unavailable for obvious reasons, then I'd assume some alternatives would pop up much earlier.
**Water clocks** and **hourglasses** are rumoured to have existed several millennia BC, and would probably be invented earlier in the timeline in your setting. Alternatives like the Asian **Incense** clocks could be an option too.
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**Might be unreliable, but use how bight the sky is plus some math to tell the time**
We're going off relative brightness here
Start with how bright the sky looks, If it's bright, it's day, if it's dark, it's night.
Then, go with how bright or dark it is (this bit is tricky), if it's slightly dimmer than usual, then it's either early morning or late afternoon, if it's relatively bright out, it's most likely noon. (it may be hard to tell)
Use the light level of what came before now to determine the time of day. (Example: It was dark out earlier, now it's dim but light is here, so it's probably morning)
Divide this cycle up by any fraction to get hours, thus you have a basic system to tell the time, pair this up with either an hour glass or some other primitive non-light-based time measurement tool and you have a way to keep things on track
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# Cooking and Water Clocks
One of the first things that civilizations will want to have a good measurement of time for is cooking. Whoever is doing the cooking will want to cook something long enough, but not too long. At first there will be traditions passed down like "go get 10 buckets of water from the river, and when you're done getting the water, your meal will be cooked" but eventually this won't be good enough and people will invent....
The water clock.
This device will allow a consistent interval of time to be measured, and functions very much like an hourglass, but without the need for all the things you'd need to build and hourglass.
Now we have an egg timer (or whatever other time interval is good for cooking the food in your world)!
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Not a complete answer, but I have to mention sunstones.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunstone_(medieval)>
Quick summary:
There is a debated device in history, a glassy stone with which it is theorized that you can locate the sun's position even in foggy and completly overcast skies.
Where does this theory come from? There are artifacts found on ship wrecks and ruins of old colonies and town and old written texts about such stones.
Also people tried to replicate this in the present and the results were mixed.
But the physical principles are there and it works. The question is more like "will it work every time and everywhere on the planet?".
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I don't think there is any way to (reasonably accurately) detect the time of day if the skies are cloudy (especially if the thickness of the layer of clouds varies from day to day). It may be good enough to reset a time kept by other means if it drifts too far from the natural day, however.
If you keep time by other means (hourglass, water clock, mechanical clock mechanism) you have two problems- first to synchronize the various timepieces so that people will agree on the time. The second is to reset the time when it drifts too far from the natural time of day.
This is somewhat similar to the problems faced by the designers of [PTP (Precision Time Protocol)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_Time_Protocol). Dealing with communication channels with delays of unknown and somewhat variable times (since it's presumably insufficient to have just one master clock in a primitive society without electronic communication).
They could have a master clock (which the chrono-priests reset from time to time, perhaps adjusting it in small increments in the middle of the night to correspond to their observations of the average sky illumination).
At daybreak or thereabouts (at a known time on the master clock) messengers could be sent out to far flung places with timing devices that are capable of roughly
measuring the time to and from the distant spot. The total time to and from could then be calculated and the remote clock adjusted to be synchronized fairly accurately with the master. The remote clocks need only keep time accurately enough between messenger visits and do not require the services of sky observers to reset the times. The jitter in messenger transit times could be compensated by only adjusting the remote times partially at each visit, so the adjustments are averaged.
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## Magnify the Sundial behaviour until it works
A sundial's problem on a cloudy day is that the light intensity isn't strong enough to produce a clear contrast of light and shadow on the dial.
So make it bigger, and invert it.
A human eye works by creating a large dark volume and a small aperture for light to enter.
If you create a large circular walled space and give it a partial roof with a hole in the middle, you'll find that the light forms a distinct spot-light effect in the room.
You can then tile your floor with markers for different times of day based on where the light starts and finishes over the course of the day.
It might look like a smaller version of this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ksKBG.jpg)
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> When would they start to need clocks, and how would they satisfy this need?
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**The Quest for Longitude**
As some comments have noted the need for precise time keeping depends on human activities.
Meetings, fairs, commerce, religious events could all be held without the need of knowing exactly the current hour (and minute).
Then humans started navigating around the globe and encountered a big problem: the need to determine their position on the surface of the globe.
On Earth latitude could be inferred quite easily by the maximum height of the sun on the horizon. But longitude while seafaring remained elusive for a long time. (\*)
This was no small matter. In 1707 a fleet was shipwrecked because it could not determine its position accurately. [Scilly naval disaster of 1707](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scilly_naval_disaster_of_1707)
This prompted even more the efforts from society to find ways to determine longitude.
The proposed method (and the one that was later successfuly implemented) was requiring to know the time exactly.
>
> To know one's longitude at sea, one needs to know what time it is aboard ship and also the time at the home port or another place of known longitude—at that very same moment. The two clock times enable the navigator to convert the hour difference into geographical separation. Since the earth takes 24 hours to revolve 360 degrees, one hour marks 1/24 of a revolution or 15 degrees. And so each hour's time difference between the ship and starting point marks a progress of fifteen degrees of longitude to the east or west.
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> "Every day at sea, when the navigator resets his ship's clock to local noon when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, and then consults the home port clock, every hour's discrepancy between them translates into another fifteen degrees of longitude. One degree of longitude equals four minutes of time the world over, although in terms of distance, one degree shrinks from 60.15 nautical miles or 111 km [Earth's circumference being 21,653.521 nautical miles, or 24,901.55 statute miles at the Equator], to virtually nothing at the poles
>
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[Dava Sobel's - Longitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_(book))
How the clock came to be, what challenges had to be overcome to have them running accurately abourd ships rolling in the ocean, with all kinds of weather, the struggles, the antagonists competing for the prize, falls and triumph. It's all in this throughly enjoyable book. I advise anyone here on worldbuilding to read it.
(\*) In your world I don't know if the sun is visible at least as a vague circle in mid day, like you often have on a cloudy day. I assume its position can be determined as the light is bright enough on the planet for evolved life to develop.
TLDR: the first real NEED would be the quest for longitude. Anything before that was just a 'nice to have' instance.
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Going for super-simple here...
First a bit of Earth history, in old London, there was a lady who would tell you the time in exchange for money. I presume she got the actual time from Greenwich, then travelled to the centre of the city and "sold" time to people who couldn't get to Greenwich or didn't have a watch or way to maintain time between trips to Greenwich.
As noted, sand-based hour glasses, water clocks, etc are all a bit inaccurate. However, they were used extensively because they're often good enough. You can operate by sand-clock in your world. When the sun comes up, a timekeeper turns over a large sand clock (hour glass). This clock has been carefully crafted to be as regular as they can make it, and keeps running for as long as there's sunlight.
(You don't say if there are seasons - if there are, then the clock can have graduations on it which show when the day will end at different times of year).
People in the city can visit the clock to get the time, or perhaps "buy" it from enterprising people like the old lady in London. It is now possible to say "let's meet at 3pm", because everyone in the city is using the same "source of truth" (at least within a reasonable degree of accuracy). This works over a pretty broad geography - certainly 10s of miles.
Seasons (and so dates of the year) can be managed a similar way. Each day the time keeper turns the sand clock, (s)he also puts an extra slick into the ground, or puts an extra log on the pile or whatever to count the days (so far) this year. By all means break that counting up into chunks (like months or weeks). As we do, convention and prior knowledge tell us that (in the Northern hemisphere) you can expect it to be cold in January and have short days - the same thing is possible in your world (although measuring years gets tricky if there are no seasons - but in that case, a year can be "100 days" or whatever you like because it doesn't really matter where around its star the planet is).
The main principles here are:
* do the same thing every day/week/month/year - or whatever indicators of time passing you have (as others have noted, maybe the tides, or because the wind changes every few days or whatever).
* Get everyone to follow the same system of time (or at least everyone in a locality).
* Provide a way to know when the unit of time (eg. day) will end, so they can plan things throughout the day and not be half way through something when the light fades
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In fantasy, a relatively common trope in fantasy settings, particularly D&D, is underground societies that are more willing to endorse slavery than surface-dwelling societies.
We see it in the Drow, the Illithids, and the Aboleths (they're more underwater than underground, but they are prevalent in the underdark), but we don't get a reason for why these societies endorse slavery other than an explanation that basically boils down to "they're evil, that's why they've been driven underground".
I want to explore a similar trope but want a reason for why these underground societies endorse slavery that is tied more to the environment they occupy than the societies themselves. Slavery is wrong, and the societies that endorse it are obviously making a VERY BAD moral choice, but I want a reason why the underground caverns in my world have a higher concentration of such societies than the surface.
Basically, I'm asking; **What kind of geographical conditions might make underground environments more 'palatable' for slave-owning societies?** Note that the setting is a low-fantasy one where magic is rare, and the tech level is late medieval.
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Slavery, serfdom, and indenturement are industrial processes as much as they are social structures. They are socially expensive to maintain, with severe risks to their ruling class when they fall. As such societies turn to slavery when they lack alternative power sources, or when they believe they can tolerate the inherent risk of an oppressed class through superior force. The Romans felt they could control their slaves, and so didn’t bother to invest in wind or water mills even when they had the engineering to do so, because slave power was cheaper. Imperial Japan engaged in slavery in occupied Asia because oil was hard to get, fuel was reserved for the war effort, and again they figured they could get away with it. Slavery and indentured servitude was used in both the northern and southern United States, but with the rise of coal, steam, and industrialization, the North could afford to ditch it. In the southern US, where population did not support industry and malaria restricted growth, slavery persisted, as it was still considered viable in the risk/benefit analysis of the times. for an underground society to utilize slavery, they need 2 conditions just as above ground societies:
1. **A lack of alternative work/power sources**. You can't burn oil/coal to power society because of fouling the limited air. There is no solar power or wind. Water wheels might work but would require flooding precious tunnel space to build up enough hydraulic head. You want to mill grain, cut wood, power looms, spin textiles, cut, thrash, wash, transport, pump, elevate anything? Without magic, someBODY has to do it. this means paying for physical labor or…
2. **Confidence that the oppressed class can be maintained and controlled cheaper than any other practical alternative.** If your victims can leave, they will. If they can fight you, they will. If they can do anything to foul your efforts, they will. They must. Any system that doesn’t acknowledge this will fail fast and hard. Maybe your troglodyte slavers control their surface victims through violence, but history has shown any number of brutal possibilities. and if a warrior class is more expensive to maintain than just paying laborers, the society won't be stable long term. Maybe slaves are enthralled by a forced addiction to cheap cave opium, or some sort of biological dependency (2nd generation slaves all developed extreme sensitivity to light or agoraphobia). Maybe it's as simple as in the land of the blind, the bat people with echolocation are kings.
Figure out why slaves are economical, and how they would be affordably controlled, and you have your (disgusting) answer.
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# No Escape:
In an underground environment, there are few escape routes. Especially when dealing with solid rock, getting away is really hard. Once you've created a prison environment, you can maintain it way easier than, say, a plantation setting where there is open terrain in every direction.
# No Alternative:
Life in the underworld is harsh. A creature that lacks the support of a system will assuredly die. Yes, being a slave sucks, but it beats starvation. Or being turned into some undead creature wandering the halls for eternity. Or being eaten by a monster. Or dying of thirst. Or being rolled by the first thing you meet, where there is only fleeing one way or cutting through whatever is in front of you.
# No Difference:
To the species that live here, the top dog is god and master. If you aren't top dog, you are dirt to be used by the bigger (Trog/Orc/Goblin/Drow). As a slave, you usually aren't being asked to march into the enemy fireballs and deathtraps - they don't trust you that much. As a slave, you may be more reliable to a boss than his own underlings; after all, you can't steal his job.
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**There is no food underground.**
Because no plants grow in the dark. Slaves captured from the surface make good food. Vegetarian food animals (e.g. sheep, goats) that are not eaten immediately require large quantities of veegtable food which must be brought down from the surface. Humanoid slaves can themselves eat more or less what the slavers themselves eat and so food does not need to be procured specially for them.
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## Because underground societies require much more difficult and dangerous work
Mining is hard work. Unfortunately, you live underground. If you ever want to expand your city, you have to excavate that area. Want to carve out a living space or underground home? What if you live in an underground city of several hundred people (at least), all having families and growing? Theyll all need homes soon. You'll likely have a lot of digging to do. not only that, but caves can also collapse, and that would kill you. While sure, the people digging this area out don't *need* to be slaves, but it's probably better (in their eyes) that this important, common, yet unskilled work such as digging goes to someone expendable.
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Slavery is a method to concentrate wealth. In slavery, the owner takes the results of the slave's labor. Often slavery came out of both increased stratification of society and capturing people in warfare. So, ask "what is the history of those societies?"
However, there are degrees of slavery. In some cultures, a slave could become a full member of society. The ancient Hebrew law called for a slave to be freed after 7 years and provided with goods. There are stories of slaves in some Native American tribes becoming full tribal members. While in the cotton growing South, many slaves were worked to death in order to get as much value out of them as fast as possible and there was (almost) no possibility of freedom. Sparta used random killing of slaves in order to try to terrorize them into submission and still had to use the army to keep slaves from uprising. The more stratified the society, the more oppressive the slavery.
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I am currently trying to write a sci-fi world set in a very distant future. It is a "hard" sci-fi setting, however it has things such as artificial gravity and FTL systems, however I am currently unsure if the weapons for ground forces should use conventional cartridges or directed energy weapons, in this case, pulsed lasers.
The Gravity Generators in this universe requite at least 15000TW of power and are massive in size.
I want to know if an energy weapon would be possible considering those factors such as the technologies available.
For ecample, I had an idea for a 8mm pistol cartridge that was developed in 161239 C.E. It is a chemically propelled metallic cartridge that is comparable to the 9x20mmSR Browning Long, but I am not sure if this is "fitting" for such timeframe.
*Context: Most batteries in this universe are Lithium-Sulfur batteries, with the rest being the standard Li-Ion, LiPo and NiCd batteries.*
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Given the battery technologies your civilization uses, bullets are clear winners. It's all in the energy density.
Wikipedia has a [convenient table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_commercial_battery_types) of the energy densities of all batteries. The 3 battery types (2 are subsets of lithium-ion) you've listed, Lithium-sulfur, Lithium-polymer, and Nickel-cadmium have energy densities (by weight in MJ/Kg) of 1.07, 0.7, and 0.11, respectively. For comparison the energy density of gunpowder is 4.7, body fat is 9.74, gasoline is 13.3, and ammonia is 16.9 (all including the weight of the oxygen) . We'll assume the batteries will be used to fire lasers, and that the chemicals will be used to launch bullets. Lasers are a pretty good way to turn battery power into destructive energy, and chemicals can release their energy explosively when sufficiently mixed with liquid oxygen.
Now, we must consider the different weapons technologies. Let's start with the chemicals first. Using Zeiss Ikon's value of let's call it 500J per bullet, and assuming a 32% efficiency for small firearms, 100g of the chemicals will launch:
1. Gunpowder: 300 rounds
2. Body fat: 623 rounds
3. Gasoline: 851 rounds
4. Ammonia: 1081 rounds!
And for batteries, assuming a 50% efficiency for lasers:
1. Lithium sulfur: 107 blasts
2. Lithium-polymer: 70 blasts
3. Nickel-Cadmium: 11 blasts.
And that's ignoring the fact that most energy from a laser pulse goes into surface heating, instead of penetration and tearing which is far more damaging to living beings, as well as the fact that batteries are not meant for such quick discharges. It's hard to know for sure, but some estimates from the internet suggest an energy of ~1MJ to do similar damage as a bullet. If that's true, none of your batteries will be able to produce even one blast! (Never mind the fact that with a mirror, more than 90% of the energy can be deflected away, requiring at least 10MJ to do serious damage)
So unless your civilization really steps up their battery game, modern day tech has no chance against actual bullets. And even if they could, bullets do a lot more damage with impacts than the localized heating of a laser, making them a better technology for destruction.
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Given current or near-future (known science) battery technology, cartridge fed combustion weapons are clear winners.
First, the rate a battery can supply energy limits *at least* the repeat fire rate of any battery powered energy weapon. As with a strobe flash -- the question becomes "How fast can you recharge that big capacitor?" Sure, we have strobes that can fire four or even eight pulses in the 1/8 second or so it takes the shutter to travel in a DSLR, but they're doing this by using only a fraction of the capacitor's energy for each pulse, and quenching the flash rapidly; you probably wouldn't do this with a laser pistol or ion rifle.
Second, the sheer amount of energy required for a laser pulse to produce similar impact to even a pretty modest bullet is HUGE in electronics terms. A bullet like 9 mm Parabellum (aka 9x19) has common military loadings imparting approximately 480-680 J (350-500 ft-lb), carried by a lead pellet that requires pretty restrictive protective gear to protect against. For a laser to deliver 500 J, you would need a capacitor that can store well over a [kiloJoule](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQGbBZZzZP0) (possibly as much as two kJ) for the most efficient lasers, up to several times that if you've chosen power or wavelength over efficiency.
It's your fictional universe, perhaps they've worked up a cartridge fed chemical laser (like the hydrogen-fluorine infrared ones the US military was testing a couple decades ago -- fire only while wearing a space suit!), but if you want battery power (rechargeable etc.) then you're limited by what electronics and the related physics can deliver.
As an added bonus, bullets aren't much affected by smoke or haze; if you can see the target well enough to aim, bullets still work, where 40% obscuring smoke will cut *at least* 40% of the power of a laser pulse (modified slightly by wavelength -- longer waves penetrate smoke and haze better). Further, bullets will still work even if you *can't* see your target, providing you can get hits ("spray and pray" method may be the only option in this case).
Yes, bullets are affected by wind, have a "drop" and "jump" over long ranges -- but we have more than a century of long range fire with what we consider modern ammunition to guide those who might shoot beyond a couple hundred meters; one-shot kills are the rule for snipers to several times this range. As added plus, guns are relatively cheap to make and robust against environmental insults, unlike electronics (which can be hardened against water and dust, but doing so makes them more difficult to maintain and repair -- and never forget [what happens if your optics aren't clean](http://www.freeinfosociety.com/media/images/2118.jpg)).
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> I am currently unsure if the weapons should use conventional cartridges or directed energy weapons
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### Neither
If your artificial gravity generators are small enough and have a sufficiently low energy budget, you could take a page from the [Honorverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse) and use gravity-driven mass drivers. Basically, you throw a slug like a conventional firearm, but rather than using explosive propellant, you use gravity, sort of like a better version of a rail/coil gun. (Technically, these might still use "bullets". *Slingshots* use [bullets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet)!)
In Honorverse (which is admittedly pretty lenient about energy requirements), these combine an *extremely* high rate of fire with *extremely* high muzzle velocities, and the ammunition is basically just hunks of metal. Concievably you could even have a weapon capable of firing anything you can shove down the barrel (although rate of fire with such a device would be severely limited, and firing something incapable of remaining intact would be fairly useless at anything other than point-blank range). You do still need "power packs", however, but it's probably easier to find sources of electricity in the field than to create gunpowder.
That said, Honorverse actually [uses *all three*](https://honorverse.fandom.com/wiki/Infantry_Weapons_Technology). Why not do the same?
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Since you want hard science fiction for combat on a planet's surface...
* Hurling slugs out of tubes has been around for **1000 years**. We still do it because **it's so damned effective**.
* Modern *mass production* small arms are **really effective** at killing things out to about 400 meters. (Big, heavy) specialty rounds (shot out of big, heavy guns) are effective out to 2000 meters.
* The only improvements will be to optics and the development of caseless ammo (a polymer that burns up in the chamber.
* Artillery is similar. The only reason they don't shoot farther (currently the best non-rocket assisted guns reach 30km) is practicality: longer range means more propellant and a longer barrel, and that requires a heavier barrel.
* Slugs can be hurled over walls, hills, etc. Directed energy weapons... not so much.
* Small arms are **durable** and **reliable**: 80 year old *mil surp* ammo will shoot out of 100 year old guns if they've been stored properly.
* Chemical rounds are **self-contained**: no batteries needed.
But since your story is set Far In The Future, they've probably perfected [coilguns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun) and [railguns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun): they'd replace artillery (including howitzers, but **not** mortars or small arms, because of their self-contained ammunition) and have a range the circumference of the planet. The current problems with those two technologies are:
1. the heat generated by the massive current needed to accelerate the rods, and
2. the friction generated by the accelerating rods, which destroys the (coiled or linear) rails.
Thus, I'd say your future armies would use:
* small arms: chemically-induced expanding hot-gas slug-throwers just like today, except with better optics and caseless ammo,
* mortars: just like today,
* artillery: coil guns or railguns.
[Answer]
## Both
If a weapon has proven to function,
people will continue to use it.
Military forces still issues knives to troops
and people still hunt with sticks (bows and arrows).
An individual's choice of weapon would likely be a personal choice or a force decision.
Country XYZ prefers beam weapons for infantry and bullets for officers.
Maybe because the beam weapons are larger (think rifle vs pistol).
Maybe,
country QQQ prefers beam weapons for land troops and bullets for water troops.
Maybe,
beam weapons are all vehicle mounted and/or crew served,
but personal weapons are bullets (rifles and pistols).
A poorer nation and/or rebel forces will have the least expensive stuff they can get (perhaps bullets).
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[Question]
[
**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
Cyanides are the most powerful poisons that affect the mitochondria of cells. A cyanide poisoned cell loses its ability to breathe. In mitochondria, cyanide acts on the cytochrome oxidase enzyme localized in the inner membrane, and specifically on the heme that is part of it (the same heme that is part of the hemoglobin). The mechanism is quite simple - the cyanide ion (CN-) forms a coordination bond with the iron "lying" in the very center of the heme.
Therefore, it is dangerous to ingest potassium cyanide in any form: both in the form of a dry substance and in an aqueous solution. The poison is dangerous if swallowed (passed through the digestive tract). Hydrocyanic acid - a relative of potassium cyanide - is dangerous if inhaled, as it is volatile.
And here we come to the purpose of my question: What do you need to change the human digestive and respiratory systems, which are the easiest method for these poisons to enter the body, in order to neutralize their danger (not poisoning)?
[Answer]
Let's see if there is a possible way to immunize against CN on the basis of how CN affects the body:
# Immunity is impossible: you would need to change EVERYTHING
The chemical reaction cyanide - CN - has with the blood is [cyanide poisoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide_poisoning). It results in the inability of cells to take the oxygen from the blood by inhibiting the cytochrome c oxidase enzyme. As a result, the blood becomes over oxygenated and the skin appears very red. In a non-fatal dose, the CN will get metabolized into thiocyanate and a complex aminoacid, which then get metabolized further over time. The first step occurs usually within one hour of exposure, unless the dose results in the death of the body from the inability to get oxygen to the cells.
As the effect of CN is on a [crucial part of the cell membranes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase) that is shared by **every** oxygen-consuming organism on earth, including most bacteria, you need a species that has a **totally** different genetic set up and does not use a molecule even remotely similar to cytochrome c oxidase. This means you need to start your alterations back with a **totally different startup in evolution**. To he immune to CN, the organisms would need to evolve in a CN-rich environment and have to cope with the naturally occurring CN in the phase of evolution when oxygen-consuming organisms started to evolve.
Lack of the cytochrome c oxidase (CCO) would immunize to CN, but **there is no breathing life without it that we know of**. So even if we *could* make a human without CCO (we can't!), we know of no other mechanism that can get the oxygen from the hemoglobin into the cells, so any tissue that is affected by such a modification (which we can't do in the first place) would be doomed to die from suffocation and ATP deprivation.
# Best available: reduced sensitivity
The best available method that could be implemented to increase the dose of CN that is non-lethal on a human body is a large dose of [hydroxycobalamin / Vitamin B12](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxocobalamin) into the bloodstream, as it bonds more readily with CN than the CCO does. It is also the active resulting molecule in over-the-counter nutritional supplements to counter B12 deficiencies like [Cyanocobalamin](https://www.rxlist.com/cyanocobalamin-drug.htm). In this application dosages of 1 gram are common.
As B12 is generally safe, non-toxic even in large doses, and has only comparatively low impact side effects (compared to other antitoxins) [it has become the standard treatment for Cyanide poisoning](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18397973/). Its closest competitors were Sodium Thiosulphate, which is considered more problematic and sometimes too slow as discussed in [this paper](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17098327/), and dicobalt edetate or 4-dimethyl-aminophenol, both also quite problematic as discussed in [this paper](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19650716/). Because of its nearly nonexistent toxicity, it is given in comparatively extreme doses compared to other antitoxins when used as emergency aid against acute CN exposure: a 90 kg person will get a dose of about 13 grams B12 to fight off an acute cyanide poisoning.
Why do I say it's a massive dose? Because measuring active ingredients in *grams* per milliliter is huge: Atropine, the counteragent for organophosphates (and a nerve agent itself!) is packaged in autoinjectors that contain 1.67 mg and the [dosage information](https://www.rxlist.com/atropine-drug.htm) prescribes only at max 3 of these, so the total max dose is about 5 mg, or $\frac {38} {1000}$ of the dose that is considered safe and sane for Vitamin B12!
The least impact route would be to keep the hydroxycobalamin levels high and increase the tolerance would be a daily dose of B12, either in the shape of pills or, especially in high exposure areas, by injection. It might also be advisable to have some autoinjectors handy in case of acute exposure.
# Forget about genetic modifications
Currently, we are not able to modify humans in the degree needed to produce Vitamin B12 naturally, especially not in the doses needed to counteract cyanide.
[Answer]
# Breathe Deep:
While we don't have a specific animal who is immune to cyanide, we do have a host of organisms that are, and we have a parallel toxicity that has evolved: that of oxygen.
One solution is to completely change out heme for a similar molecule that binds oxygen better than cyanide, but only weakly binds cyanide or at least reversibly. The problem is that cyanide binds extremely well to heme compounds, and typically irreversibly. Which molecule to use instead is problematic, as respiration is HIGHLY conserved and I'm not sure what alternate molecules would work.
[Lots of plants](https://phys.org/news/2010-07-beware-bitter-almonds-food-cyanide.html#:%7E:text=The%20detective%20knows%20what%20many,sorghum%2C%20flaxseed%20and%20bamboo%20shoots.) make cyanide, and deal with the effects by binding it up in an inert form. If your people have enzymes that react with cyanide to convert it into an inert form not readily toxic, it will build up but not kill the person. Add a method to flush the resulting inert form out, and the cyanide goes away. We are not plants, so this may or may not work perfectly. While the mechanism for cyanide resistance is not elucidated yet, there is at least [one beetle](https://entomologytoday.org/2020/09/30/beetles-withstand-cyanide-blasts-eat-millipedes/) that has been recently identified as having an extremely high tolerance for cyanide.
Various bacteria have resistance to cyanide, and this can be attributed to specific [enzymatic reactions](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1236641/) that react the cyanide into less toxic compounds. If your world is soaking in cyanide, this won't work, but the functionality is very much like how eukaryotic organisms deal with the toxicity of oxygen. Our eukaryotic ancestors were anaerobic, and found [oxygen toxic](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC404085/), needing complex adaptations to compensate, but the energy advantages were so great that they developed defenses and established a symbiotic relationship with [mitochondria](https://www.ruf.rice.edu/%7Ebioslabs/studies/mitochondria/mitorigin.html#:%7E:text=The%20endosymbiotic%20hypothesis%20for%20the,became%20incorporated%20into%20the%20cytoplasm.).
Biology is a little more difficult to nail down with hard science. Hope this meets your needs.
[Answer]
The only possibilities that come to mind are for the organism to carry and antidote to the cyanide already in its body fluids. Thiosulfate is the classic "antidote" to cyanide poisoning -- except the way it's usually shown in movies and fiction (for instance, in a MacGyver episode, in which Mac saves Peter after the latter has been sprayed in the face with cyanide, by draining fixer from a handy photographic mini-lab and getting the semi-conscious Peter to drink it) won't work. The thiosulfate needs to *already be in the subject's blood and body fluids* before the cyanide is introduced or injected IV quite quickly.
I've been reminded, however, that hydroxycobolamine, one form of Vitamin B12, is an even better blocker for cyanide than thiosulfate; it has virtually no toxicity and is an existing natural substance found in many foods already consumed by humans. It might be sufficient, depending on the environmental cyanide load, for your colonists to take daily supplements -- or they might be fitted with an internal dosing device (like an implanted insulin pump) to ensure that even if they don't or can't eat for a few days, they maintain protection for as long as the device's supply of the vitamin lasts.
Bottom line, the only practical way to manage persistent environmental exposure is to ensure that the subject *always* has enough blocker/binder present to neutralize the commonly encountered levels of cyanide and its compounds. Fortunately, this is within current technology -- give us another few centuries, and it might be possible to produce (for instance) a symbiont to produce hydroxycobolamine without equipment (and its capacity limitations). The symbiont would limit your dramatic options (but what if someone's immune system attacked their symbiont colony?), but would make an otherwise uninhabitable planet possible to colonize.
[Answer]
On some reflection, I agree with Trish that immunity in a biological context probably isn't possible for cyanide, but, with some heavy modifications, it should be possible to engineer an organism that is resistant to all levels of cyanide it is likely to encounter. You're not going to achieve this with just a single modification, but a number working in concert should get there.
Modification of Cytochrome oxidase C would be possible - there's probably an enzyme alteration that would prevent cyanide from binding to the iron ion in the enzyme. This would be hard, though. Cyanide is a very strong binder of Fe+3 ions, and this is likely to be hard to defend against. This paper suggests that swapping in an alternative version of cytochrome C into the pathway confers good resistance, and is well tolerated in mammalian cells. (<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1456879/>)
An easier method is to do what, classically, the body does with toxic compounds, which is to have specialist enzymes to break down or manage them - In cyanide's case, it might be as simple as having a lot of molecules with Fe+3 ions to mop up the cyanide - a modification of hemoglobin would do this, and, in fact, one of the antidotes creates a modified form of hemoglobin (but causes a drop in oxygen transport in the process, because it uses existing hemoglobin). An enzyme would probably be involved in recycling the modified hemoglobin. Thiosulfate cyanide transsulfurase might work without modification, to convert the cyanide into a much less toxic substance, which can then be excreted.
Finally, although I've not found an example for cyanide with a quick search, the other, classic, method for control of toxic substances is to remove them from the location in which they'll be harmful - I can't find something like a cyanide pump, but this would be another, biologically plausible mechanism to add resistance
The modifications would be pretty energetically expensive, though, and are unlikely to evolve in a normal environment. Your proposed organism would have to be full of modified hemoglobin, requiring a large amount more iron. Getting this would probably require an increase in food, particularly red meat (being a good source of bioavailable iron)
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[Question]
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Is it possible to use a power plant-like machine to create small amounts of electrical (or other) energy directly inside the human body, making it such that the human has energy for activity without the need to eat? Something like directly giving the person heat or electricity for human energy or something like photosynthesis using solar panels and such.
[Answer]
# Yes and no.
You can invert the glucose cycle using a machine performing electrosynthesis - converting carbon dioxide and water back into glucose. Then you beam energy to the machine, and Bob's your uncle.
But it's not enough - human beings don't eat just to replace spent energy, they also require basic substances to perform maintenance on their organisms, and there are several more chemical processes that can't be inverted in the lungs. Even if you succeeded into tapping into the lower intestine and recovering basic matter from there, a lot of volatile compounds - starting with water vapour - would still be lost (plus the ordinary wear and tear on skin, hair, nails and so on). To recover that, you would need a Fremen's "stillsuit" (actually even more than that. With some sort of motile or recirculating gel on the inside, that could recover shed skin and hair for recycling).
However, with the basic energy needs covered by a "simple" [electrosynthesis machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_photosynthesis), you could do without food and maybe even water for substantial periods.
You could imagine a small container with some genetically engineered algae with crazy growth rates, illuminated by tuned LEDs on the inside (and maybe being fed slush pumped from the lower intestine). There are no natural vegetal organisms that could keep up with the metabolism of a human being, but if there were, such an internal "micro-greenhouse" could work. A part of the algae would be harvested every few hours and simply dumped into the stomach, solving many of the problems raised by Adrian Hall (maintaining the gut microbiome, exerting the stomach and guts, avoiding interfering with glicemic levels).
(There would now be the problem of cooling the device: photosynthesis is not energetically efficient, and a great deal of the incoming energy, once turned into light, would then further turn into waste heat. Having a small furnace inside your lungs might get old real quick).
[Answer]
It is very possible to sustain a human being (even a physically active one) without them having to eat at all.
**[Gastrostomy tubes](https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/g-tube.html)** go from outside of the body directly into the stomach. But what you put in there is basically identical to food (with some restrictions). Someone can get all of their nutrition and fluid needs this way. They'd only need some water to moisten their mouth and throat, but that's optional.
**[Central lines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_venous_catheter)** aka central venous catheters are IVs placed in a large vein so they can deliver a lot of material. They can provide **[total parenteral nutrition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenteral_nutrition)**.
>
> Parenteral nutrition (PN) is the feeding of specialist nutritional
> products to a person intravenously, bypassing the usual process of
> eating and digestion...The person receives
> highly complex nutritional formulae that contain nutrients such as
> glucose, salts, amino acids, lipids and added vitamins and dietary
> minerals. It is called total parenteral nutrition (TPN) or total
> nutrient admixture (TNA) when no significant nutrition is obtained by
> other routes, and partial parenteral nutrition (PPN) when nutrition is
> also partially enteric. It may be called peripheral parenteral
> nutrition (PPN) when administered through vein access in a limb rather
> than through a central vein as central venous nutrition (CVN).
>
>
>
A friend of mine lived for years with a central line. She drank some water and ate tiny amounts to keep her gut going (it was severely damaged) but otherwise, got 100% of her energy and nutritional input from the central line. She was very active and could go sailing or on hikes. The port of the line disconnects easily so she was not tethered to it. As long as she connected for a few hours day and night, she was fine.
If you're asking if a human could survive off of some sort of electrical energy, well no. Energy for humans (and most animals) is from **[calories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie)**.
>
> The Calorie (large calorie or kilocalorie — symbols: Cal, kcal), also
> known as the food calorie, is defined as the heat energy involved in
> warming one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius.
>
>
>
Although calories are heat energy, delivering heat to people doesn't do the same thing. If it did, no one would starve in tropical countries. Our bodies work as transformers, the interface between materials in the outside world and producing energy within our bodies. There isn't a substitute.
**So, yes, you can create systems where humans do not have to eat. Meaning they do not have to take anything by mouth or even through their stomachs and digestive tracts. But you can not bypass the body's systems for breaking down calories and nutrients.**
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You probably should expand on the question to make it clear what you actually need but...
**Recycling with implants**
Your body converts sugars and oxygen to energy and carbon dioxide (plus some water). You can implant a machine that takes water and carbon dioxide from the blood stream and converts them to sugars using energy supplied by an external source. This would reduce the need to eat and breathe as long as energy is supplied.
The above is for the aerobic metabolism, you can do a variant for the anaerobic metabolism but it is probably a bad idea unless your implants are nanomachines inside every cell and can boost the cellular metabolism directly.
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# For all practical purposes, no.
There are lots of answers about how this would happen in theory. I just thought I might add some engineering concerns:
### The "hungry" and "full" signals are sent by the stomach in response to food volume, not energy presence.
So you'd feel starving, and your body would act as if it were starving, converting body mass to fat and increasing your appetite. You would gain a lot of weight, and suffer chronic health issues. You'd be constantly fatigued as your body tried to conserve energy. Your stomach acid might also burn holes in the lining, causing ulcers - it's meant to be diluted by food.
This could be solved by hormone injections to simulate fullness and proton pump inhibitors or pH buffers to calm your empty digestive tract. Even so, the cocktail would be different for every person, would probably change per day, and would ultimately require chemically nourishing the person, despite your question's demands.
### The lack of nutrients is an obvious one, as many answers have already addressed.
There are chemicals you completely break down or otherwise alter beyond any simple means of reconstruction (think urea...); these would have to be replaced.
You lose tons of water. There's no getting around that. You could have a machine that electrically pulls water out of the air, I suppose.
### Also, when you get tired, it's not just because your blood sugar drops: you have a bunch of processes we don't fully understand that contribute to feeling exhausted.
So a solution centered around glucose injection would increase short-term energy but not make you feel energetic, or even stop you feeling exhausted.
Part of this comes from the fact that what we mean by your "energy level" as a person is only loosely related to actual energy in the physics sense. Caffeine makes you feel awake, you can feel sleepy after dessert, muscles can be sore and tired due to microscopic tears in the proteins or lactic acid build-up, people feel like their social energy depends on how often that talk to people.
Another part comes from the fact that we store energy in many different places: glycogen, fat, ATP, simple sugars, electrolyte concentrations... If you raise blood sugar directly, you get the problems seen by people with type 1 diabetes: grumpiness and passing lots of water among others. You can't cause an artificial change in long-term energy storage without implanting fat or something. This is a problem because the body is very particular about its composition and the amount of energy in different locations. If your balance is off for what your body wants, you will have side effects.
### There are long-term problems with changing the amount of energy in the body artificially.
The body maintains homeostasis through negative feedback systems. When blood sugar rises, your body sends a signal to lower it. The cells respond by taking in sugar from the blood. The machine puts more sugar in. At some point, the cells stop responding to the biological signal, and you have type 2 diabetes.
If you change fat into sugar very quickly, the body panics and turns lots of sugar into fat for weeks. This kind of thing messed with your hormone balance and will cause problems unrelated to metabolism.
You also have a gut microbiome of bacteria that help you digest things. Without the food input into your intestines, these guys will die. Problem is, they do way more than just digest. Lots of them help produce chemicals you can't make yourself, and there's evidence to show that they communicate chemically with the brain. If they all die, you'll suffer the effects of their absence.
So yeah, good luck getting this to work. Interesting question though.
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Eliminating the need to eat is really hard with any sort of real science(ish). You're basically into teleportation, super powers, and/or magic.
Now wireless charging does exist, can be made reasonably small, and presumably would work for broadcast energy. So in theory cyborg implants or just robots could be (re)charged.
If we extend that to "brain in a robot body" then we're pretty close.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conductive_wireless_charging>
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If you begin to go cybernetic, you may need a form of electrical power. As others stated above, straight up powering biological organs via conventional electricity would not be possible, you would have to create an artificial step to allow for it.
Now if you start replacing organs of the body with straight up machines, such as an electrical pump for the heart or servos in prosthetics limbs, they may need electrical power as it would be difficult to power them via biological means. (I know some pacemakers use some form of body power already.)
[Answer]
You could certainly severely reduce the amount of food people would need to consume. It would have to be nutrient-packed and not very energy-dense.
If you were trying to reduce people's reliance on food crops, for instance, or allow people to go weeks without food (military activities?), you could implant a network of nanobots that could do glucose metabolism in reverse, and you could wirelessly power that.
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[Question]
[
A kekai genkai is a bloodline ability that is passed down genetically within clans. They give users access to specific powers unique to that family. These abilities take a number of forms: going bones out of one's body to make weapons, psychic abilities, super strength, seeing the mana flow of others, etc. Bloodline abilities are very rare, and the clans who have access to them are often very powerful or very feared in their society.
Witchcraft is practiced exclusively by women, and is a complex and drawn out process. Most receive some level of training in it. Bloodline abilities are passed down the female line, as women are the genetic carriers for them. However, they only manifest in males. They first activate around puberty, and becomes more developed with age and training. They cannot be taught or copied by others, so remain exclusive to males specific from that clan. How could it be possible that a genetic ability would activate only in males when females are the carriers of it?
[Answer]
Besides "its on the X chromosome" you could use another type of mitochondria. Mitochondria are important for cells to generate energy, and mitochondria literally have seperate DNA from humans as they are a symbiote that is basically absorbed into humans. Sperm does not contain mitochondria so its only inherrited from the mother (means men only have the mothers mitochondria as well).
They could have rare versions that have powers activated by hormones, making sex-specific magic and abilities possible.
[Answer]
# Unique mitochondrial DNA interacting with standard male biology
So, you need an ability which is inherited solely from the mother, but becomes active only in males.
This suggests that you are looking for an interaction between:
1. **Strictly maternal genes** (inherited only from mother - regardless of the father's genes)
2. **Strictly masculine (male) biology** (triggers only in males).
### Maternal genes
In addition to the DNA in the cell's nucleus (half of which is donated by the father and the other half by the mother), a baby inherits **[mitochondrial DNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_DNA)**:
>
> Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use[...]. Mitochondrial DNA is only a small portion of the DNA in a eukaryotic cell; most of the DNA can be found in the cell nucleus[...].
>
>
> [...] In most species, including humans, mtDNA is inherited solely from the mother.
> (from Wikipedia)
>
>
>
The reason mtDNA is inherited solely from the mother is that while the father donates only DNA (32 chromosomes - half of the total in humans), the mother donates an entire living cell (an egg) - which has both a special nucleus with only 32 chromosomes (the matching half of the father's donation - combined they provide a complete set of 64 chromosomes) and all the functioning organelles of a cell, including mitochondria - which happens to have genes of its own.
### Male biology
This can be something like special interaction between the mutated mDNA with typical genes in the Y chromosome (exists only in males), or something much more complex such as different hormonal levels (e.g. high testosterone, low estrogen etc.) - as many of these hormonal differences become pronounced during puberty, the second option may fit better to your narrative.
### Combining the two
If your witches have unusual ("mutated") mitochondria, their children will always have them too. Their daughters will be witches and their children will also have these mutated mitochondria, and so will their daughters' daughters etc.
Witches' sons will also have these mutated mitochondria in every cell of their body - but will not pass them to their children. When the mitochondrial "kekai genkai" genes interact with the male biology (either with standard Y chromosome genes or with the different hormonal balances), they will manifest the unique abilities.
[Answer]
Since your question reminds me of "Naruto" I would say that going into a fictitious way would be better for you than sticking with a real fact like chromosomes, testosterone or that stuff.
Maybe you can invent some kind of mana or chackram flow that is exclusive for males. Like primal Izanagi chakram (Male Japanese father God). The woman's then would have (Izanami's Chackram).
So maybe males can awaken this ability by stimulating the genetic information that the woman passes her son with her natural chakra.
As a resume: Women give the weapon (Genetic physical sturdiness or characteristic) and the male generates the bullets with his natural chakram (Has the power to awaken the mechanism and use it).
[Answer]
Passed by the females means it's on the X chromosome.
Showing up at male puberty says that it's triggered by testosterone. Since women don't experience male-level testosterone the abilities never show up.
Since as Geoffrey points out this permits transmission from those who actually manifest the power we need one more step--when the power manifests it produces a protein that breaks the gene responsible so it can't be inherited.
[Answer]
If you're speaking of humans, there are two ways to do it:
**First method** the gene manifestation is hormone-dependent. This is the simplest, but may be manipulated with hormone therapy.
**Second method**: Direct manipulation of the sex chromosomes. Females have two identical chromosomes, XX and men have two different ones, XY. All other chromosomes are not gender-related and are equally present in men and women. You may use the two scenarios:
1. A trait unique to males: It is on the Y chromosome. The gene has to be active even as a single [allele](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allele), that means, even though the Y does not have another Y pair, but an X with a different set of genes. The gene is located on the part of the Y which does not [recombine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_recombination).
2. A trait unique to females: Located on the X chromosome, so both males and females have it. The gene should be active only when it's paired with another X bearing the same gene so that it manifests itself in women only.
[Answer]
X chromosome recessive, like hemophilia. However, having two copies of the recessive gene is lethal, much like sickle cell anemia only more so.
[Answer]
## Initiation
Puberty is celebrated in various societies around the world - the debutants. This old tradition is all about "showing off this new member of society", and this could be a point for you to explore. If abilites are rare and treasured, it should be natural that people would want to celebrate it. You could make it so that this "ritual" is also what triggers the activation of such powers.
## The Power of BS
Your world has magic, so you can just BS your way out of this situation, since your story seems to be set in a high fantasy kind of world. BS explanations migh include, for example, chromossome Z or S (or any letter. Z already exists, if I'm not mistaken), only present in men.
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# Womb Attack
It is somewhat understood that [pregnancies of males can cause immune responses in the carrying mother](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4200496/Why-a-son-can-raise-miscarriage-risk-for-some-women.html). Could it be that the immune response of a mother to her own child causes the child's latent ability to awaken? This awakening as a fetus could be the impetus to his development of said abilities, since women are the carriers of the ability. Maybe all of her children have the power latent within them, allowing future generations to inherit it, but the internal struggle of mother and child causes it to manifest.
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[
**This question already has answers here**:
[Is it possible for a planet to have a liquid ring?](/questions/92642/is-it-possible-for-a-planet-to-have-a-liquid-ring)
(4 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
There have been numerous questions on this site about moons being composed entirely of water. However, is it possible for a planet to have rings made out of water?
I think that the ring would probably freeze over/dissipate, but is there a way to realize this?
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>
> is it possible for a planet to have rings made out of water?
>
>
>
Of course it is. Just look at [Saturn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn) and its ring.
>
> The rings of Saturn are the most extensive ring system of any planet in the Solar System. They consist of countless small particles, ranging from μm to m in size, that orbit about Saturn. The ring particles are made almost entirely of water ice, with a trace component of rocky material.
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When you put liquids in space, they partially evaporate and most of it freezes. This happened routinely when Space Shuttle discharged the urine produced by the astronauts before landing the orbiter, leading to a plume of ice clearly visible from Earth (the so called [Constellation of Urion](http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2009/09/10/constellation_urion.html))
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This is the phase diagram for water.
As you can see, it takes pressure for water to be a proper liquid. In a vacuum, it goes straight from solid to gas and vice-versa.
It would take approximately 0.6% atmospheres to allow for liquid water. As low as that seems, it is still much more than what you would get in space.
But don't give up just yet!
## [Interstellar Ice Acts Like a Liquid in Ultraviolet Light](https://www.space.com/38321-interstellar-ice-liquid-ultraviolet-light.html)
>
> When exposed to ultraviolet light, interstellar ice may act more like a liquid than a solid, a new study has found.
>
>
> Researchers discovered this effect while re-creating the conditions of our early solar system's planet-forming disk in a laboratory environment, revealing how organic chemistry might react to the deep freeze of the system's outer regions and how the seeds of planets accumulate material.
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And what is the biggest UV source in our solar system? Why, the sun itself!
So while the ice in the planet's rings gets enough sun exposure, it will become amorphous ice. While technically a solid, it behaves like a liquid, which allows for it to work as a solvent for chemical reactions much like proper water. Any reactions will be orders of magnitude slower than whay they would be here, and most might not be possible, so don't expect it to harbor life (at least as we know it).
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It is important to note that the zero pressure of the vacuum is below the water's [triple point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_point). Below the triple-point pressure, water can either exist as vapor or as solid, but not a liquid. That is why there is no surface liquid water on Mars, in-spite of abundant ice caps. In other words, when you heat a chunk of ice in space, it just evaporates without turning to a liquid -- It sublimes.
The temperature too close to a star is above the [frostline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_line_(astrophysics)). The water ice will sublime and be gradually lost in space. At or beyond the frost line, the ice will remain solid for a long time, on a geological timescale.
Note that the sun's heat causes evaporation. Evaporative cooling freezes the water. Evaporation slows down as it cools and freezes, but the chunk of ice will eventually evaporate completely, if placed too close outside the frost line.
So, the answer is "yes", but it's water in the form of ice, not liquid water.
[Answer]
How about a sun with a ring of water?
In [The Integral Trees, a 1984 science fiction novel by Larry Niven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees)
>
> The story occurs around the fictional neutron star Levoy's Star (abbreviated "Voy"). The gas giant Goldblatt's World (abbreviated "Gold") orbits this star just outside its Roche limit and therefore its gravity is insufficient to keep its atmosphere, which is pulled loose into an independent orbit around Voy and forms a ring that is known as a gas torus. The gas torus is huge—one million kilometers thick—but most of it is too thin to be habitable. The central part of the Gas Torus, where the air is thicker, is known as the Smoke Ring. The Smoke Ring supports a wide variety of life.
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In the story there are lakes/ponds that are bubbles of water, If Gold was a water planet with little to no free atmosphere, the ring would be water that harbored life.
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[Question]
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This question would be best answered for the time period of our first colonized planet, which will most likely be Mars. With the thinner atmosphere, weaker gravity, low oxygen, and the bodily damage possible from the sun, some sort of protective suit is a must outside of colony pods. But the size of current space worthy suits would hinder in-atmosphere work that requires more delicate handiwork. Not to mention, there is some kind of atmosphere, so a full-on space suite would be a tad bit overkill. So what would be the likelihood of a skintight suit designed only for Mars survival?
[Answer]
It's called a Mechanical Counter Pressure suit (MCPS). They fit and look like a divers dry suit that's two sizes too small. Check out the MIT project that is underway.
They have been a staple of sci-fi since the 1940's and were a serious contender for the Apollo space program. The airbag style suit that was settled on (and is in use to this day) was chosen purely because the effects of air pressure on a human body were known, but the effects of mechanical counterpressure in a vacuum were not. Having more experience now than the early days of the space programs to draw on, and knowing the limits of the fabrics available then, I am not convinced that their choice was wrong.
MIT Link:(<http://news.mit.edu/2014/second-skin-spacesuits-0918>)
Professor Dava Newman models the MIT Biosuit - from <http://astronomy.com/news/2007/07/one-giant-leap-for-space-fashion>:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tuJWC.jpg)
See also <http://www.finalfrontierdesign.com/what-we-make/> . This image is a commercially produced MCP glove that has applications today.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HTi5I.jpg)
1949 cover from Red Planet (Heinlein) showing two teen boys in MCP suits with insulating outerwear:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XMF2Q.jpg)
[Answer]
As a matter of fact, so-called ["space activity suits"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_activity_suit) have been in development since 1959, although they haven't had a whole lot of success yet. There aren't enough advantages to the models that have been produced so far to displace the existing gas-pressure-based spacesuits.
Space activity suits work by pressing tight layers of fabric directly against the wearer's skin, rather than filling the suit with pressurized gas like current spacesuits do. In principle, this should permit much greater mobility than existing spacesuits do, but they're also much more difficult to get right and much more difficult to squeeze oneself into.
Currently, there's a project at MIT to create a space activity suit consisting of a single layer of cloth set with stretchy cords to provide pressure, but as far as I know, they haven't worked out all the kinks yet.
[Answer]
MIT in cooperation with NASA is currently working on a [BioSuit](http://news.mit.edu/2014/second-skin-spacesuits-0918) [project](https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/617047main_45s_building_future_spacesuit.pdf). It is [specifically designed](https://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-a-textbook-from-1882-will-help-nasa-go-to-mars/) for planetary exploration and relies on mechanical counterpressure. The BioSuit is made of various layers of polymers and nylons to provide necessary pressure and protection.
Mechanical counterpressure suits (MCS) are the future of space technology and they might even replace traditional gas-pressured suits since there are many advantages to getting rid of sacks filled with gas.
The existing prototypes of MCS are lightweight and do not restrict movement as much as traditional spacesuits. They also seem to be safer when it comes to tearing (no depressurisation). A new generation of materials can make them self-healing to reduce risks even further. Scientists are also looking into using alloys and special wired structures to work as exo-skeletons. Mechanical compression has an additional benefit of slowing down the bone loss process typical for low-gravity environments.
MCS also does not need as much personalisation as traditional suits. As new technologies develop it might be possible to produce 'one size fits all' versions which will significantly reduce the costs.
So, yes, **it is a very viable idea.**
[Answer]
**Likely**
As other have stated, MIT (and probably others) are currently working on developing one. Given a range of 10-100 years in the future (per when we'll colonize Mars), it seems very likely that we'll have a significantly less bulky suit for casual wear. Probably skin tight. Also, as stated in the question, this suit won't have to withstand insane pressures. The trickiest parts would be radiation and temperature, which seem to already be well understood. You can have a small power source to supply electrical heat, and some sort of backpack or tank for oxygen. I see no technological reason that would prevent a wetsuit-like Mars suit.
[Answer]
They are very viable. Look at the [BioSuit](https://www.space.com/27214-skintight-spacesuit-biosuit-photos.html) via Space.com
>
> Instead of the bulky-looking spacesuits that astronauts wear today, a
> group of MIT researchers want to "shrink-wrap" the spaceflyers of
> tomorrow. Current spacesuits could be replaced by a pressurized but
> skintight suit that would allow for a much better range of motion
> during exploration, according to scientists at the Massachusetts
> Institute of Technology.
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>
>
They now have a machine that "prints" the suit to fit the individual.
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[Question]
[
In the story that I am writing (medieval fantasy) I want one of the factions to have access to a remote weapon capable of penetrating heavy armor (we are talking about steel plates and chainmail, gentlemen) but not a siege, that is to say , that a soldier could take it with him, was able to shoot several times with a single "charger" and was also quick to recharge.
If we go back to history, there was a weapon that soldiers wore and that was feared for its power: The crossbow. With metal bolts and a sufficiently large tensioning force, a crossbow could penetrate the plate armor and cause, in addition to great pain and probably bleeding, the incapacitation of the wounded soldier. There is a BUT, of course, and that is that while an archer can take between 3 to 5 seconds to "recharge" (as long as he has the arrows at hand) a crossbowman can throw himself away for 15 seconds if he is trained and is experienced at one minute or more if it is not (that is, if you give me the crossbow to me, for example) depending on the crossbow, and its tensioning power, it is even possible that it can not be tensioned manually, if not required of a kickstand that provides the user with the strength to place the rope in the tensioned position.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xo27q.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qawc8.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HbYbZ.jpg)
This makes it powerful, but also extraordinarily slow to load, which is why the crossbow troops were always covered or used for defense, between the walls of the castle.
Here is an example video, a boy who has built himself the crossbow. It begins to load it on the second 17 and is ready to fire at 33, but it is not stressed, nor in the middle of a battle ... also as you can see the rope is not as "hard" as it would be a real crossbow, which indicates It's not going to be that powerful, but it shows my point
[Handmade crossbow](https://youtu.be/pIIA2Jsz3sM?t=17s)
And here you can see a trained crossbowman using a kickstand on a crossbow that you can not tighten manually, notice how not only it takes several seconds between one bolt and another, but the third bolt chokes him a little because he can not Place the goat-foot correctly at the first attempt
[trained crossbow man](https://youtu.be/iIkxyjVu9gc)
We agree that the crossbows would gain much more mortality if maintaining precision, they could load faster; Looking on the internet you can see crossbows with loader, or crossbows of repetition (which are perhaps even more elaborate and laborious to handle than usual). This is where my doubt enters.
There are several types of rifles, including the lever:
[Shotgun lever mechanism](https://youtu.be/7DUu3Ro3aac?t=30s)
In which as you can see in this model that I leave here above, the cartridge to shoot is introduced into the chamber with a lever movement, while discarding the one that has just been fired. So:
Would it be possible to use a similar mechanism for a crossbow with that movement to hook the slack rope and reassemble it? Could it be possible that with this movement the next arrow will also be loaded to shoot in position? We know that because that is exactly what it does in the rifle, but could I pick up a bolt from a dispensable magazine so that once the bolts were finished, you could discard the magazine, put another in position, and continue firing quickly? How would it look?
Without further ado, I hope I have not been too much lead and have aroused some curiosity in your minds. Thanks in advance for the attention.
Edit 1: I am well aware of the existence of the Chinese repeating crossbows, but they look pretty bulky and impractical to me, having the magazine in the face and having just one arm holding the whole thing with shaking pulse. I am looking for something that allows you to quickly cock the crossbow but also allow more precision. Also as said above this is a fantasy setting so even though in medieval times manufacturing was nearly impossible, this is different
[Answer]
Modern mechanical engineering + youtube = win.
Would you like to mount an arrow magazine to a bow for rapid fire? [Sure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJnyQ-bZLU#t=2m25s).
A crossbow with an arrow magazine? [No problem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drDoHLz1QyI#t=1m24s).
Medieval woodworkers could replicate this. Of course the bow wouldn't be compound, and the crossbow wouldn't be recurve, but the magazine mechanism is simple. It simply needed to be invented. If you are interested in insane weapons, I strongly encourage you to browse this guy's channel. The number of gaping holes in the car door he uses as a target should be a hint.
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> Could it be possible that with this movement the next arrow will also be loaded to shoot in position?
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Yes, as shown in the videos, also the chinese repating crossbow.
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> once the bolts were finished, you could discard the magazine, put another in position, and continue firing quickly? How would it look?
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Most likely not, disposable magazines wouldn't work in a medieval setting, because manufacturing things is expensive and time-consuming when you don't have roboticized factories, injection molding and metal stamping hydraulic presses. In a shotgun, you can insert new shells into the slot to replenish the magazine. This is a much better solution. You would refill your magazine as you go by inserting arrows into a hole or a slot.
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> Would it be possible to use a similar mechanism for a crossbow with that movement to hook the slack rope and reassemble it?
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No.
You want to apply as much force as you can to the string. If you cock it with one arm, you will only have one half the draw weight you would have if you used two arms to cock it, so it will be a wimpy crossbow. But if you watch the crossbow video above, it doesn't take much time to press the butt against your chest and use both hands to pull the string.
Now if you want to penetrate armor, then it is all about kinetic energy. A 7.62×39mm bullet has 2kJ kinetic energy, which is ENORMOUS. It is equivalent to the potential energy (mgh) of a 2kg brick falling down 100 meters onto your face. This does some damage.
I wondered about the power output of arms on a crank, which lead to [this](https://www.nature.com/articles/3100627.pdf?origin=ppub). This study has astonishingly high numbers, because it includes wheelchair basketball players, who have *serious* arms. These guys would need to crank 400W for 5-6 seconds at full sprint power to generate 2kJ. People with less athetic upper body would need 10-20s, and it would be strenuous. This is a bit moot however, as I doubt a spring that can hold 1-2kJ of energy and transfer it to an arrow could be manufactured with medieval tech.
Also the crossbow needs to accelerate the string and the springs in addition to the arrow, so a significant part of the energy is not transferred to the arrow.
TL/DR: googling crossbow kinetic energy gives figures in the 200 joules range, like a .22 bullet. This will hurt, but it won't shoot through plate armor...
But of course someone had to make a [youtube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZdsyj9zZM0) of medieval armor against medieval crossbow, then against a 1kJ air rifle...
[Answer]
To break down the more important part of the question, a mechanism to draw a crossbow with sufficient power to penetrate plate armour would imply an enormous amount of energy (typical crossbows could deliver @ 200 joules of energy, even firearms of the 1400's were capable of delivering 1000 joules of energy). This was, in fact, perfectly possible. Crossbows of increasing power and size were developed, with some requiring a ratchet and crank mechanism to draw the bow. While the knight receiving such a bolt would be rather unhappy (to say the least), the bowman would either need lots of friends, a pike square or the protection of a crenelated castle wall to effectively use such a bow without worrying about being impaled by the knight's friends while he is drawing the bow for the next shot.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/omug7.jpg)
*Crossbow with cranking mechanism attached*
What you are looking for is *[mechanical advantage](https://infogalactic.com/info/Mechanical_advantage)*, where you are not applying a lot of force or energy yourself, but some mechanism is doing the work for you.
The problem is you can't get something for nothing. A common example of mechanical advantage which demonstrates the principle is to think of a block and tackle pulley mechanism. Drawing a rope around a single fully simply angles the direction of your pull, but adding pulleys in fixed and moving configurations can provide mechanical advantage, allowing you to pull or lift even massive loads. However, in order to do so, you end up pulling a *lot* of rope (the various equations are at the link above)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GKsjE.png)
*various examples of block and tackle*
Without knowing the size and draw of your bow, or the actual amount of time you want the action of drawing the bow to take place over, it isn't possible to put in numbers (but the equations at the link will allow you to do so, and you can play with the various factors). However, for a heavy steel bow with a high draw weight, a cursory look at the equations for levers and pulleys suggests that any mechanism capable of rapidly drawing a powerful bow will be improbably large and difficult to manipulate. A lever with a *very* long arm, a huge block and tackle arrangement or even some sort of weird gear train would be needed to generate sufficient mechanical advantage to rapidly draw the bow one handed.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7PCeV.jpg)
*A lever with high mechanical advantage*
The reason a lever or pump action firearm can be cycled so quickly (and even bolt action rifles like Lee-Enfield's can be fired at a high rate with a trained user) is the action isn't cocking a giant tension arm like a bow, but manipulating a small steel block, and cocking a relatively small spring for the firing mechanism. The energy is in the chemical propellants in the cartridge itself.
[Answer]
What you are looking for is a repeating crossbow (or a Zhuge crossbow) which was invented in ancient China and used in war.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow>
It is lever action. Basically, a very strong soldier has to move the lever back and forth which both moves the next bolt in the magazine into firing position and pulls back the string.
I don't know this for a fact, but based on the fact that medieval European crossbows would have a belt-mounted hook that would allow a crossbowman to use all of his leg muscles to draw back the string on a crossbow, I am guessing that the Zhuge crossbow had a MUCH weaker pull than a European military crossbow would have had. On one hand, you gain the fast repeating firepower, on the other hand, you lose a lot of penetration since that has a direct correlation with the strength of the pull. If the crossbow was as hard to pull as a European crossbow, I doubt it would have worked with a simple lever.
This makes sense since the ancient Chinese didn't have a lot of enemies with significant, high-tech armor. They faced (for example) hordes of lightly armored horsemen. Nobody in Asia had developed the level of armor that was used in Europe, so the penetration was not as important.
In your case, I do believe you will face a trade-off between rapid fire and penetration. The more of one, the less of the other.
[Answer]
You can't have a tube magazine of a crossbow. The length of the bolts is long enough that it would need to stick out far in front of the bow for it to have any real capacity. This would make it far too cumbersome to be practical.
The closest real world designs to what you are considering were the [repeating crossbows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow) of China and Korea. They had a stacked magazine on top of the bow that dropped a bolt into place during a lever powered cocking process.
[Answer]
You want to know if it's possible, not how to do it - Say the missile shall have an energy of 1000 joules (like a rifle bullet). Energy put out has to be put in at some point, and we have no blackpowder to produce it for us. Energy is work, in this case, so we can put it as Force \* Distance. Force is the force you bring to bear, and Distance is the distance for which you do so. So 1000Joules = 1000N \* 1m = 100N \* 10m ... etc. 10 N (Newton) is the force you need to lift a 1kg stone in earth gravity. Apply a force like lifting a 10kg stone for ten meters? We see that our goal was too high. Let's approach from the other side: Shotgun racking distance? Say 20cm = 0.2m. Force you can bring to bear in shotgun -racking position (from start-of-rack to end)? Say 100N - Work done: 0.2m \* 100N = 20Joule - that makes for a hardcore BB-gun, but is not a weapon of war. We could pump more, maybe even utilise both directions, then every pump would get us 40 Joules - 25 pumps and we're at 1000Joules ... but this will take time.
This is not dependent on missile form (balls (which would be great for a nice magazine-design), arrows (great long-distance performance), disk (nice spread)) - a 1000 Joule aluminium BB will be hella fast, a 1000 Joule steel spike will be slower but that is all for the weapons designer to decide, the possibility of the weapon existing is given by Physics.
For your own ruminations: In easy linear cases (Force goes linearly from min to max along the distance) , we can use (min+max)/2 as Force). So a bow that needs practically no force at begin of draw, then over a draw of 1m is steadily needing more force to a max of 400N, can be thought of as having stored energy from Work = (0N+400N)/2 \* 1m = 200J.
What we are calculating here is only the absolute maximum of energy that could be put out. The real value will usually be lower because of losses to friction et al. Even good springs have losses on the order of 5%. Calculate any mechanism you introduce as voiding about 5% of your stored energy. This accrues fast for complicated designs (ratchet, spring, trigger = 3 mechanisms...)
The only way around this is by using energy stored in advance: Pre-tensioned springs, black powder, pre-pressurized gas, pre-spun-up wheels, pre-fabbed magic, ...
If we are deep into the realm of fantasy-engineering, we could just look at the power needed: Energy = Power \* Time so for instance 1000J is 2000Watt \* 0.5 seconds; [Human cycler's legs can output about 400W](https://research.vu.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/1644179), so we only need 2.5 seconds to accrue 1000J - how that energy is transferred from the contraption on your legs to your handheld repeating crossbow is a question for the dwarves :-) - But how fantastic would a battle line made up from people spinning away on ergometers look? Possibly not.
[Answer]
The closest modern day equivelant I can find is this ( <https://www.arrowinapple.com/crossbow/swiss-crossbow-makers/twinbowii/> ) a lever action compound crossbow, though I couldn't comment on it's effectiveness at armour penetration etc. It certainly would fit into a fantasy type structure.
There is also the latchet crossbow ( <https://youtu.be/M0m5udFoPnA> ) though bear in mind this is a very lightweight bow, as any higher draw weight would require a larger mechanism to fire.
I would suggest some sort of similar mechanism to this, but maybe with a pulling-motion, so you latch the claws onto the string, then push down with your foot while pulling up with the handle to place the string into position (kinda like a chest-expander with a crossbow attached to one end ;) )
I hope this is still a project you're working on, otherwise I just wasted my time. :D
[Answer]
Ok so we are in a fantasy setting which is excellent as it removes a large amount of the difficult physics as it can explained away as magic.
In such a setting your clever dwarven like artificers can create good springs and strong gears that would allow for a hand cranked crossbow to be fed from a bottom fed bolt magazine.
Pull the lever and it turns a small gear which, with cunning craftsmanship and a little bit of magic dust, turns the larger gears to recrank the bow and load the next bolt. Real world this would have to await the development of some very strong metals and probably hydrolics or powered cranking mechanisms.
Also depending on the level of magic in your fantasy world production of such a weapon could be very expensive perhaps reservered for the royal guard or the mages personal retainers.
Personally from a maintaining the balance persective, I would make it so the magazines are only be able to hold a small number of bolts and would probably take a significant amount of time to reload or change, say the magazine held four bolts that it could loose quickly, reloading time would take the same amount of time required to bring it inline with a normal crossbow being fired four times.
Also there not going to be disposable, lots of expensive and cunning working in that little box as making them to easy to replace would again significantly effect game balance.
As to penertation of heavy armour, your going to need magic again. Crossbow were not that effective against armour, they would normally be used, as mentioned elsewhere, by the defenders of a castle who would be sending bolts down in to the great unwashed and, more importantly, lightly armoured masses outside the castle walls.
(had to leave this for an hour while I put the kids to bed, hope I'm not now repeating something!)
[Answer]
The new Mythbusters series has the heart of what I think you want. They built a repeating crossbow with the magazine underneath rather than on top. Since the whole thing was operated remotely without any huge motors it must not have been too hard to cock.
They used the stack feed of a handgun or rifle, though, not the tube feed of a shotgun. As others have said, tube feed is out of the question due to the length of crossbow bolts.
[Answer]
In all the designs of crossbows I'm amazed that no one has come up with a mechanisms that uses the weight of the crossbowman to cock the crossbow. Most soldiers weigh more than the 130 pounds of the draw weight of a typical war bow, especially if you add the weight of armor. The closest was the Greek Gastrophetes, but that was extremely complicated, not suitable for mass production. The Qin bronze crossbow trigger lock seemed to be very efficient with its ability to be automatically cocked as you slide the bowstring back into it. Playing around with a paper clip I came up with a simple mechanism for cocking the bow itself. Take a long rod of iron or bronze and wrap it around your wooden stock that has the trigger lock. Bend the two ends over the bow and then down towards the far end of the stock. Then bend the two ends of the rod towards each other to form a flat U and hammer weld the two ends together. At the far end of the stock you cut a angled slot for the metal U to fit into at full cock. The soldier slides the bow up to lock the string on the trigger lock and then, putting front of the stock firmly on the ground presses with his foot on the center of the bow pressing it down to slide down the stock until the U slips into the slot on the stock. Then up comes the crossbow, an arrow is placed on the trigger lock and the top of the bow and fired. I'm sure there are many design improvements that could be made but I really don't see any real reason this couldn't work. Simple, easy for a blacksmith to make, fast reload, powerful and accurate, and taking minimal training for a fresh recruit to use. I'm really surprised something like this was never developed.
[Answer]
Since this is on google, I felt like chiming in because I love crossbows half as much as Shadiversity loves Castles. First off, the Arbalest penetration hasn't been tested for a long time because it's a super heavy siege bow more than a basic crossbow with a 2 bolt reload at two minutes. It's not designed to be field used, which is where light and heavy crossbows are used. You need to worry about making magical metals or composite and wood that can reach these forces without hurting the operator. Chinese Zhuges were dropped in favor of larger crossbows because they lacked penetration, and anything like Saracen bows are utter garbage to be used as a source.
Secondly, while doing the math to state penetration capability, everyone forgot in the last two years where Longbows and Crossbows at wargrade strength were fired on reproduction (good and mediocre) breastplates. The first is a reference to Lindybeige at a convention where a 130 pound longbow harmlessly bounced off a breastplate, the crossbow videos were tested by Skallagrim where bothmediocre (arms street iirc) lamellar and plate breastplate were shot at by a 300 lb and 1000 lb crossbow repeatedly, and failed to penetrate completely. They can not individually penetrate plate armor, especially after the 15th century. Projectile weapons were never the main stay of an army for centuries because they lacked the penetration needed to pierce basic layers of cloth and boiled rawhide armor. Longbows and Genoan Crossbowmen became mainstays because of the effectiveness of their soldiers more than their weapons, similar to antiquated Crete.
There's a thing floating on the internet that even mentioned at Agencourt the English longbowmen not killing French knights with armor penetration, but by downing them and the men suffocating under their armor. I also want to remind people that a carrier plate is not designed like plate armor was, and that a modern crossbow can pierce it because it is so much more powerful than medieval ones.
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[Question]
[
Picture this, humans (or human-like sentient beings) having the innate ability to photosynthesise their food in a similar manner to plants - thus providing all the nutrients required for sustained life.
Let's also assume that the humans have evolved to have the same brain capacity as we did when agriculture started.
Surely, such a difference would result in the human race not needing to go through the 'agricultural revolution' of our early history, thus **potentially** freeing up time for other pursuits - **would there be an impetus for technological development if agriculture was unnecessary?**
[Answer]
Absolutely! Besides agriculture, humans would still benefit from technology for:
* Improved defense against predators.
* Improved weaponry for defending territory from rivals.
* Improved medicine.
* Improved shelter from the elements.
* Improved nutrition--just because they photosynthesize doesn't remove the needs for vitamins, minerals, or most importantly, **water**.
* Satisfaction of curiosity (which seems to be a very innate part of our species).
This is assuming that your humans are fairly similar to us except that they can generate glucose from sunlight (which probably isn't possible, but you didn't tag this with 'science-based' so I'll let that slip). In reality if a race of photosynthetic humanoids were to exist, it would likely be so different from us that their physiological and societal needs might differ greatly for our own (thus potentially invalidating large parts of my answer). Might make for a good question!
[Answer]
**So the premise of your question is flawed in a couple ways...**
>
> Picture this, humans (or human-like sentient beings) having the innate
> ability to photosynthesize their food in a similar manner to plants -
> thus providing all the nutrients required for sustained life.
>
>
>
So...plants don't magically make nutrients right. They absorb nutrients and water from the ground to make food. Your photosynthetic humans would still have to ingest nutrients to fuel photosynthesis.
Also keep in mind that while an amazing feat and the basis for all more advanced life... photosynthesis is [very very in-efficient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency).
>
> Let's also assume that the humans have evolved to have the same brain
> capacity as we did when agriculture started.
>
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Roger.
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> Surely, such a difference would result in the human race not needing
> to go through the 'agricultural revolution' of our early history, thus
> potentially freeing up time for other pursuits - would there be an
> impetus for technological development if agriculture was unnecessary?
>
>
>
At a cursory glance you might think so but agriculture is still the most efficient way to get food to large groups of people. **Its takes something like 1.2 acres of arable land to feed a single human for a year**...that's how inefficient photosynthesis is...
As I mentioned in [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/42345/189) while it could hypothetically help a humanoid, photosynthesis would be a vestige that is not longer particularly useful or necessary. We burn so much more energy simply existing (respiring, digesting, staying warm, etc) than a man size plant can produce that its just not a feasible system. In the end, even if we could, technology (farming included) would still be necessary.
---
Now **if you're not to worried about the science** you could come up with some alternate form of photosynthesis that is more efficient...I as a reader would accept the premise even if I know the science doesn't really support it.
[Answer]
The amount of energy provided by photosynthesis over the surface area of the human body is nowhere near enough to provide for any active "animal" lifestyle. Even if they became completely sedentary, sitting out in the sun all day, the amount of energy used by just thinking would at least make a serious dent in the energy produced, probably using more than would be produced.
So agriculture is still a better way to gather energy from the sun, even if not as directly efficient.
[Answer]
**Agriculture is absolutely required**
Photosynthesis doesn't nourish a plant. In fact, [photosynthesis](http://www.rsc.org/Education/Teachers/Resources/cfb/Photosynthesis.htm) requires carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight to produce sugar (glucose) and oxygen. So, what changes in society? Not much.
(a) The sugar industry (and along with it the confection and soft drink industries) is non-existent.
(b) There's a bit less global warming.
(c) Humans would be capable of somewhat larger bursts of speed/strength due to the higher availability of glucose.
(d) Our buildings would be built to permit light much more than they are now. Basements would be all but nonexistent.
(e) I suspect there would be much less variance in skin color.
(f) Locking a child in a room would move from a class A misdemeanor to a class B felony.
That's about it. As for the impetus for technological development, you seem to be forgetting the entire industrial revolution, of which the agricultural revolution was only a part.
The closest comparision I can think of off hand is the development of northern snow-laden people vs. the equatorial people who live in warmer climates. The short growing season and long period to think during the winter breeds new ideas. Since photosynthesis doesn't relieve us of the need to eat, the impetus is still alive and strong.
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It is not by chance plants are sessile (an erudite way of saying they don't move much) and have a very large "skin" surface.
Photosynthesis is quite inefficient, but even if it was not, you would be hard pressed to live an active life with *direct* solar power. By comparison note highly engineered [solar cars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_car_racing) have average speed around 40Km/h and limiting factor is energy, because they can easily go over speed limits for short distances.
The best you could have is something with the (mean) activity level of a sloth. You could think about beings basking in the sunshine for hours at a time and then start some activity till energy lasts. A bit like cats would like to do.
Surely such a life style would encourage meditation.
Main problem, here, is why they should move at all. If they do not need to move to find their food why should they develop all complex (and expensive) machinery to move and manipulate environment?
You can relay on regression (photosynthesis is acquire is *after* motion), symbiosis (beings have some form of grass on their skin, instead of fur) or direct need (semi-desert climate where some rivers exist, but often change their course and "plants" need to follow or they will die).
In any case you may want to rely on some [more efficient](http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/materials/cyborg-bacteria-change-the-game-in-carbon-dioxide-reduction) photosynthesis agent than chlorophyll to boost your energy levels.
You don't say what *other* fauna is present in your world.
If there are other, potentially dangerous, animals then the push to protect themselves would drive knowledge accumulation.
The first to invent solar lamps would become very rich.
In general, as said, these beings are not going to be overly active, so they would probably be a race of philosophers, with some practical fallout.
Their houses would probably resemble greenhouses and they would be masters in building banks and dams to constrain the squishy rivers (if you chose the third alternative).
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*Redundancy!*
Since your folks are human-like, and that's a pretty broad term, your world can have these sentient beings shaped like humans but with totally different internal biology, or they can have the same goals and motivations as humans, but look completely different, shape and all. So if your human-like means bipedal, brain-heavy operating system with similar lifespans, etc, then even though they have souped up photosynthesis that produces every nutrient they need, perhaps it isn't always enough energy for everything they want to do, especially for pursuing learning in their freed up time.
Therefore, they search out redundant energy production methods to enhance or perhaps turn on additional body functions that lie dormant when not enough power available. Plus, the many technology revolutions of other kinds as mentioned by ApproachingDarknessFish would still occur.
Even more likely is still having an agricultural revolution although a slightly different looking one than ours. After all, if they are photosynthesizing beings, perhaps they experimented in grafting to themselves and bioengineering their own germinating cells to improve their own internal energy production rather than improving other plant species production capabilities for consumption purposes.
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This is a rephrasing of [Could inequality and class warfare still exist in a post-scarcity society?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/73356/could-inequality-and-class-warfare-still-exist-in-a-post-scarcity-society/73460#73460)
And I give it the same answer: the prettiest boy/girl in the room/village is always in short supply, so, even they could all just sit in the sun all day, your planty folks will be striving to impress each other, and technology will happen.
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Theoretically if they had no survival needs and lacked intellectual curiosity they might not develop any form of technology. However as has been pointed out, these aliens would require more to survive than just the ability to photosynthesize. There is also a nutrient requirement, most plants get their nutrients through their roots. However I am assuming these aliens are not rooted into the ground, so instead they would most likely have to eat animals or other plants. The only way around this I can see is if the atmosphere was nutrient dense enough to allow them to filter feed.
Filter feeding could actually provide a reason for a plant to develop mobility as it would allow them to move to better feeding grounds, however it would still likely encourage the development of technology, as starvation could still be a factor.
There are also predators to consider, as well as the natural events like severe rainstorms that would likely cause them to require shelter. The breeding incentive was also brought up, but if they are plants they would likely breed by pollination, so that might not be a factor.
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I read and upvoted other answers, so this is piling on in my own words.
Photosynthesis is only a means of providing energy to convert physical elements and chemical compounds into other physical forms useful for the plant. Put a living plant into an all nitrogen environment, at the same air pressure and with all the sunlight it normally needs, with its roots in some non-nutritive equivalent of soil (e.g. all silica sand), and it will die. It may still try to photosynthesize, but that energy has nothing to break down. Water, CO2, and other nutrients absorbed from the soil are critical to its survival.
Secondly; the first "technology" of the predecessors of homo sapiens was most likely not about food at all. To my knowledge the earliest known use of tools, before any use of shaped rocks, is the evidence that rocks were used as weapons to crush the skulls of same-species individuals: Presumably rivals. We have the fossilized skulls to prove this, from an era in which we have no shaped rocks, and the timeline indicates the earliest of these fossils coincided with about a 50,000 year span of rapidly increasing skull thickness among our predecessors.
Even given the presumption that hunting and farming are not necessary for food in any way, there are many other reasons to settle in a specific area; for example to build an infrastructure that protects one from predators, guarantees easy access to clean water, provides plenty of sunlight and has natural defenses against our own kind (other tribes) that might want to steal it. Also preferably large enough to expand the population.
Every living thing has some form of paradise that makes life easy. In fact, the main reason we did not settle in the first place was a food driven reason (we were hunting and gathering **food** to support ourselves and our offspring). Chances are photo-humans would settle far more quickly, with no particular reason to walk 20 miles a day, and plenty of reason to just stop and set up permanent residence in the first near-perfect place they found. (or turn it into a near-perfect place by landscape modification; diverting water, clearing away brush, forests and other competitors for sunlight, etc).
Technology and Arts could develop for some of the same logistic reasons it did in humans: Once the food supply is secure (for us by herding and farming, likely in that order), people have idle time to pursue other interests, and some of those other interests will be understanding how things work and exploiting that to make life ***even easier***. Or safer, or more fun, or more satisfying.
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There's a lot of room for fun here. First, do note that the amount of photosynthetic leaves/hair/whatever on a humanoid form is not likely to supply enough oxygen or sugar to truly maintain an active mammal metabolism. That said...
* Maybe your creatures have a mostly "planty" lifestyle, but are capable of animal-style bursts of activity
* Maybe your creatures use their photosynthesis to stave off starvation during bad times, and can survive in a near-torpor just on sunlight/water/dirt. (Heck, if they're cold-blooded their metabolic needs are much less to begin with) Or they use sun power to build up a reserve to be expended in a crisis or a fight
To the actual question...
* Since they can't *just* survive on light, they'll need something else; hunting, herding, planting. This opens up a whole slew of needs for technological development.
* Even standard plants are ferocious competitors, albeit in slow motion. Your people might strain to clear land, or to build their houses higher than neighbors (to get less shade). I can see plenty of room for competition here, which means advances.
* Food is not the only limited resource. Water, good light, green women, heck, sunnier latitudes are all worth fighting over. These guys might vie for control of nitrogen-fixing plants, or pastures containing them. Or nitrate-expelling animals.
To make things more different from standard animals ... why not make them mostly planty, but have a limited ability to process foods and move quickly in **short** bursts. Their conflicts will consist of lots of slow clever maneuvering for advantageous position (physical or social), then one apocalyptic burst of action.
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It's a sprawling city, similar to that of [Whiterun](http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Whiterun) (capital of Whiterun Hold in Skyrim) with about 1500 inhabitants. Assume medieval-level technology and weapons, and also assume that the city is fairly sloped with a few natural hills scattered here and there.
The land there is still fertile, so about 400 farmers work the fields to provide food for the rest of the city, while there are about 200 merchants and traders who have small shops scattered around the city. Below the hills lie a valuable resource underground: precious ores and minerals. To exploit their natural resources, there are 100 miners in the city. The city is governed by a king, so there about 100 people who serve the king (servants and his cabinet). Another 300 residents are part of the city's army, tasked with defending the walls from foreign enemies, as the city is in the midst of a war with a neighboring settlement (with around the same population) that is located about 250 miles away. The remaining 400 are children.
Now to the question: Why would the people of this city always sleep during daylight hours (~7 AM to ~7 PM), while getting up and working during the nighttime (~7 PM to ~7 AM)? Anything I haven't stated explicitly stated in the question can be implied however you would like to support your answer.
I've only thought of two possible reasons: 1) their primary source of profit and sustenance is agriculture, and they mostly grow plants that grow more at night (like pumpkins), so eventually their culture evolved around this agriculture or 2) the temperature in the day is unbearably hot, so they need to work at night when cooler winds pass through.
Note: When I say the whole city sleeps during the daytime, I don't literally mean **everyone**, rather, I mean the vast majority of the residents. Those who aren't sleep will be inside of their own homes. Also, I'll be accepting an answer based on how many possible reasons the answer offers for this peculiar behavior. After all, this will be more convincing in my novel if there are several reasons, rather than just one, for this behavior to occur in the city.
[Answer]
## A Dragon
There is some monster that will hunt people. This monster only hunts during the day, so people stay hidden.
## Radiation
The sun burns people much worse in your city than it does elsewhere. Maybe they have some kind of ozone hole above them. People who make a habit of going out in daylight will get sick and die.
## Gathering
An important food source or export of your city is a plant/insect/mineral that is hard to find in daylight but glows at night.
## Weather
In your city, heavy rain and snow are very common during daytime, very uncommon during the night. Or days are very hot.
## History
Your city grew around a signal tower or lighthouse, where the original inhabitants had to work at night and later additions just kept to that rhythm.
## Pollen
Plants tend to produce pollen during the day. A plant around your city has toxic pollen and people sleep all day to avoid it.
[Answer]
There are several reasons why this would happen.
## Danger/discomfort
Daylight means more visibility. Perhaps some visual hunter/enemy (griffins, humans,etc...) is present and the people want to avoid conflict. As you said the heat/the sun is dangerous. Perhaps as JD suggested this is because of a genetic mutation. Possibly some of the ores are radioactive.
## Comfort
Food sources quite often sleep at night. This would make night hunting easier. Nights are good for stealth.
## Religion
Their religion may require avoidance of sunlight/heat. Or only slaying animals at night. Maybe a lunar religion?
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Due to a *founder effect* and/or genetic drift of an isolated population, people are largely "night owls" who simply prefer it that way. Or they can't tolerate bright light (for same reason).
There are (or were) preditors that were dinural, so people had to stay locked in their homes until night.
It's a high altitude with strong UV radiation, and the founding population was sensitive to having their eyesight damaged and any exposed skin burned.
[Answer]
# **Sensitivity to light**
A curious genetic variation in the ancestors of the founders corrected that most salient evidence against the Argument From Design: that the human retina is mounted **backwards**. These people instead have the retina mounted the "right" way, with the receptors aimed towards incoming light.
While this gives them excellent night-vision, it also means they are very sensitive to bright light. It simply hurts the eyes too much to be out in daylight.
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8 answers so far and nobody mentioned the simplest one...
The locals are vampires !
That also nicely explains the war: The neighbors want to exterminate them for obvious reasons.
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There are several reasons why the bulk of the people are only awake at night that haven't been touched on yet.
**Camouflage** - They don't want anyone to know they're there - The city is too far away for others to harvest the crops, and the city specifically looks abandoned so people will leave them alone. Alternatively, the buildings may themselves be blending in with the environment
**Food** - Nonstandard crops which have specific cycles that grow or bloom at nights. Nonstandard herd animals that happen to be nocutrnal. There could also be a particularly vicious/deadly type of insects in the area (think bees/wasps) that operate during the day, so harvesting and planting at night is a means to that end.
**Extenal Forces** - You spoke of markets, merchants and tradesmen - perhaps they are nocturnal because another neighboring area is also nocturnal, so they trade with each other in the darkness.
Perhaps the area is very expansive in addition to being very tropical, with both high direct **heat** and punishing **humidity**. Moving at night limits allows quicker travel that's easier on not only the people, but work animals (horses, mules, et cetera) as well.
**Darksight** - Mining is an important part of religion & society, so having good darksight is incredibly important. People who need the sun to see could be considered weak. They may also worship the moon as an extention of it.
**Glowing** - Perhaps this society has some basic or tribal understanding of radiation or magic, so they are constantly on the look for glowing rocks. This could be something they collect to craft (think of the old radium watches) or magic (think Ioun Stones) or worship, or something they're scared of and avoid.
**War** - You've mentioned they're in a war-like state with a neighboring area. If they operate in a guerrilla manner, that would work best with a nocturnal defense force. Perhaps the neighboring country also has nocturnal forces, either out of tradition, one of the above reasons, or they fight that manner out of honor, similar to the Ol' West's fascination with "High Noon".
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Heat. A clime that is searing during the day but cool at night year-round (such as some desert climates) would predispose anyone adapted to it to being a night owl. (This would mean either irrigation or the use of succulent crops such as prickly pear cacti, but that can be worked with.)
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## There is something in the water :
There is some chemical substances in the main water source of the city that has the effect of making everyone who drinks enough water to sleep during the day rather than the night, the minority who doesn't sleep during the day are the ones who drink much less water, maybe because they live far away from the city's main water source, or maybe they suffer from dehydration.
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Perhaps these people were originally from a region far from the equator, and therefore have extremely light skin in order to absorb UVB radiation and make vitamin D. Then if they were displaced (war, natural disaster, etc.) and forced to move somewhere near the equator with a lot of direct sunlight, without the invention of sunscreen or enough resources to make like, giant hats or something, they'd need to work at night to avoid sunburn and skin cancer.
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There is a real genetic condition that make people extremelly sensitive to the sun, to the point that they can only go outside when it's dark. Xeroderma pigmentosum: **Individuals with the disease have been referred to as "children of the night"**.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeroderma_pigmentosum>
There is a small city in Brazil where 24 people have this disease, making it the place with the highest density of the condition.
<http://g1.globo.com/goias/noticia/2014/05/povoado-em-goias-tem-maior-taxa-mundial-de-doenca-rara-de-pele.html> (in Portuguese)
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Disease. There is a day-only insect that carries some nasty disease. The insect will not enter a dark space and will shut down and sleep if it becomes dark. Thus during the day everyone stays indoors and puts opaque coverings across any opening. Artificial light (ie, candles) can't be used because a bug that accidentally was in the room (it was on something that was brought in) would wake and become a danger.
Since they can do nothing during the day they sleep. Working by moonlight isn't good but it's better than the alternative.
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Alright. The original answer was too long so here's the abridged one:
So we're working with,
1. **Microscopic adversaries**
2. **Airborne mobility**
3. **Day-cycle propagation**
4. **Inimical to macroscopic organisms due to their inability to concentrate enough neutralizing agent**
The details:
1. **Method of mobility**: I chose consistent fog-banks or the local humidified air itself getting "doped" with organisms that could move around in it and kill humans and presumably other animals that are fighting for space and breeding potential and therefore unlikely to stay on the water when active
2. **Method of delivery**: I chose envenomed quills-as-seeds being distributed constantly to fit a nice middle-ground between inability to destroy infrastructure entirely while still pretty dang corrosive, making things like wood insufficiently robust. The OP's land is not exactly rolling in enough gold to turn the entire hillside(s) into a covered stone fortress after all. While this delivery mechanism might seem like something unlikely in nature, consider something perhaps like bacteria that lives by necessity on or near water, just not inside of it due to insufficient robustness in the presence of water-pressure. Now imagine this bacteria is constantly breeding and requires either photosynthesis or radiation for sustenance, and goes dormant in the evening. Now go one step further and justify the constant barrage of quills; easy, they act more like seeds that compete with other organisms in ostensibly lethally manners while in contrast to their own kind is their very method of reproduction! This is hardly unprecedented in nature; the male bed-bug for example tears open the body of its mate instead of using an evolved orifice. If you're not too squeamish, you can look to see what Wikipedia says about [traumatic insemination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_insemination). Presumably these quills would be too prolific during the day, and the inability to even see this agent of death would make it an intractable problem for the humans due to their current level of technology.
3. **Method of exclusion**: so how exactly is it killing humans but not plants? This might actually be a trivial problem of chemistry. It's quite possible that high enough concentrations of specific minerals or chemicals can act as a neutralizing agent, which might aid plants or bacteria that gobble up the local environment due to shear concentration; that would be unlikely to concentrate in high enough levels across the entire body of the human, especially if it's specifically a chemical broken down by the liver. Now taken one step further if you like and this can be used as an infrastructural limitation to keep the kingdom and its people limited in their rate of expansion, meaning that only wood from trees from that region or regions with similar available nutrients can withstand the harsh environment after a lifetime of being concentrated with the neutralizing agent.
Now we're left with all the core ingredients to keep those poor humans locked up during the day, presumably perpetually as they can't even see what's killing them when they go outside during the day regardless of the time of year.
Not only is this now a well-defined potential root-cause, it has plenty of plot-potential all on its own for working with or around the unseen hazard as well as efforts to understand it due in part to such a low level of technology to work with, even with Magic being available. I'll spare you my musings on those possibilities for numerous reasons.
I'm dubbing this,
## The Unseen Swarm
but the locals in that world would likely dub it something more akin to,
## Day Plague
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**This question already has answers here**:
[If magic is real, can it be true that rational scientific thought should exclude it?](/questions/13364/if-magic-is-real-can-it-be-true-that-rational-scientific-thought-should-exclude)
(33 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I am building a world that has both magic and technology. I'm wondering how to make magic that is different form fields of science such as biology or chemistry.
Simply put I don't want magic to become just another field of science, but to stand apart from it. How can I do this, yet still make magic reliable enough that some people would the interested in learning how to use it.
For example of what I want would be Game of thrones. Would have be different from Game of Thrones since that takes place in medieval Europe and my world has the same technological development as ours.
I thought about making spells or incantations of magic do different things every time they were use but that seemed too chaotic and unreliable. Is there something else I could change about the way magic works to make it less like another form of science? Is there anyway to make changes the system I had above that would make it more reliable but still keep it separate from science?
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**Magic is like Art, Science is like... Science**
The biggest mistake you could make with this question is to let your answer be too analytical. You don't just want your audience to understand the difference *rationally*, but also *feel* the difference and therefore not even question it or need it explained.
In real life we already have something that people very often compare to magic, and it's Art.
Some songs are incredibly moving and powerful right? So obviously there are some real principles underneath them that make them do that. And some musicians are really good at creating powerful and moving songs right? So obviously there must be something in their heads that aligns their efforts with those principles.
But has there ever been a musician who so thoroughly understood those principles that they could, without any variation or failure, manufacture powerful and moving songs? No, obviously not.
So, Art is something in our real life for which there are *rules*, or at least *guidelines*, and there is *skill* and *talent* which helps individuals align themselves with those guidelines. But there aren't hard and fast laws like there are in Science, and any individual will differ in the way they make Art and the nature and effects of their Art. Even when two different artists are playing the same song, the nature and effects are different.
## So, some story-telling rules:
* **Magic is a craft.** It's highly skill based, and tied to individuals and their training. The more you tie the magic to things about humans that we don't quite grasp, or for which our understanding is fuzzy (our emotions, our motivations, our personalities), the more the magic is humanized by the individuals practicing it. In the same way that a handmade pot bears the personality and eccentricities of it's maker, the magic should work this way too. In this way it becomes more of an art or a craft. Science is all about reproducability and predictability, so if your magic is unpredictable and unreproducible in the same way that art is in real life, you've gone a long way towards making your audience *feel* the difference rather than merely rationally understand it.
* **Magic requires a craftsman.** It can't be enacted without the active involvement of a skilled person. In our world, Science very often produces processes that can be repeated by anybody anywhere and they'll work the same. If someone breaks down the exact chemical steps to make dynamite, anyone who's smart enough to follow those directions can make it. Have your magic defy that sort of pattern. Do you have magical objects in your world? Make them either things that have just *always* existed or make any attempts to mass produce them fail. Only a skilled magician should be able to do magical things.
* **Magic is Rare and Special, Science is Common and Cheap.** Again, since scientific processes lead to easily followed directions and repeatable processes, once a scientific discovery is made it can proliferate as fast as information can. But magic should defy proliferation and imitation. I could give someone a reasonably short book that would explain everything humanity knows about music theory, but just because someone read it wouldn't mean it would be useful to them. Your magic should be similar.
* **Magic is surprising.** Sometimes, for reasons that can't quite be grasped (maybe guessed at but never in a satisfying way), the magic simply doesn't work as expected. And again, the *guessed* reasons for why should involve fuzzy, human forces like emotions or motivations, so that even if the audience felt we could be sure that was the explanation, it would still be impossible to analyze sufficiently.
* **Magic is from people, Science is from matter.** Have magic achieve completely different *kinds* of effects in the real world from the science. The best example is the way The Force is treated in Star Wars. The Force isn't ever produced from *objects*, only ever *characters*. Related to my above points, science in Star Wars is relegated entirely to the visible or the mechanical. The Force on the other hand is relegated entirely to the invisible and to the biological.
This way of doing things makes it so you don't have to have your characters be genetically magical (which is limiting), or come specifically from a higher power (you still could) and your magic won't succumb to the [sufficiently analyzed magic](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic) trope.
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They say that sufficiently advanced technology can be indistinguishable from magic; I would suggest that the reason this is true is because sufficiently advanced technology defies understanding.
For instance, imagine you have a one-way radio, and you want to use it to contact someone. If you don't know anything about electronics, you probably won't be able to figure out how to get this to happen, no matter how long you fiddle with the device. Similarly, you could give a computer to some cavemen and no matter how long they looked at it, I bet they couldn't figure out how to make another one.
So if you want magic to be distinct from science, I say all you need to do is make it impossible to understand. You can have spellbooks, and people can spend their whole lives learning how to use magic, but if the underlying principles are so far beyond our comprehension that no one has ever been able to figure out how any of it works, and the only way new spells are discovered are by blind luck or chance, then magic science will be pretty much impossible.
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Two features that you could consider as setting apart science and magic are (inspired from what I know of consideration about magic during the middle age and renaissance) :
1. Magic is not learnt
2. To perform magic you borrow power from a superior being
Generally both at the same time.
**1. Magic is not learnt**
Sorcerers just happen to know how to use some magic, or even to just use some when needed.
For example, for what I know, the character of Merlin the wizard never followed an education in magic. He just has the powers (because he is the son of some kind of devil) and that is it.
For your scenario it is not really helpful, but if by studying magic you mean mastering the powers you are born with (a bit like the X-men).
**2. To perform magic you borrow power from a superior being**
That is a recurring pattern in medieval literature. You either get your powers by passing a contract with the Devil, or by receiving the blessing of God (the latter is basically what a miracle is).
Therefore to use magic you are dependant on the good will of some superior entity (which is beyond your understanding). You can not directly study magic, but you can study how to please different entities, or how to ask them a favour the right way.
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For magic to be known as magic, it must defy a known law of our universe namely that matter/energy [can neither be created nor destroyed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass).
Your magic wand must be able to create forces and energy, which is something that science and technology can never do on our planet. I can make a frog disappear just by my will, using no energy; or I can create a giant ball of fire without exerting anything but magic.
**Things that defy the conservation of mass/energy will be considered magical.**
There will still be science; theorizing and postulating about how something magical works in certain conditions, etc. and you might even get Theories and Laws. E.g. - McClure's First Hypothesis of the Magic Ring: if you point it at the frog, then the frog will disappear.
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To answer this question, one must first define science. Luckily enough, a [definition exists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#Process) and is very specific.
To make advance via science, one must do the following (*I admit I'm just copying over from Wikipedia*):
* observe universe;
* come up with a question;
* postulate a [falsifiable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability) hypothesis (i.e. such that it can be rejected in an experiment);
* make predictions based on that hypothesis;
* test predictions in a reproducible experiment.
A hypothesis is considered good (and renamed to theory) as long as its predictions hold. Then it's either thrown in the trash can ([phlogiston](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory)), amended (which species evolved into which), or narrowed to a scope where it still holds (Newton's mechanics < Einstein's relativity). **The whole point of falsifiability is to only keep theories that work.**
And it seems that such approach yields some great results indeed, at least in our universe, and they can be replicated on large scale as a bonus.
Now the requirements for magic to coexist with science are:
* it's part of how universe works (otherwise you can just wave hands and not ask this question);
* it's obviously efficient (or science overcomes);
* the universe can still be studied scientifically in general (or no science at all - at least science as we know it);
* one of the rules above has to be broken in case of magic (otherwise converges with science).
*Of course, one can think of a magical knowledge process **completely** different from a scientific one, but I wouldn't even try to take on such broad topic.*
Now breaking (1) and (2) is obviously out of question for a sentient being. (4) seems too practical to be avoided, as in "I'm casting a spell, but I'm unsure if that's fireball, invisibility, or healing".
(3) seems more like a divine power to me. As in, God exists and His existence cannot be disproved, and all experimental outcomes are altered at His discretion.
So we're left with breaking ~~symmetry~~ (5) by exclusion: magical experiments that, unlike scientific ones, cannot be fully reproduced based on a reasonable description.
However, if magic is completely unreproducible, it will be too unhelpful. First off, it should be reliable enough for the mage him/herself. If it is completely irreproducible by others and has to be learned from scratch, it will get surpassed by science at some point (shotgun invented = fireball useful no more).
Now my suggestion is as follows (YMMV):
* Magic depends on the mage's personality and is mediated by their own body perturbing a chaotic physical process of choice (the setup is impractical to reproduce until *very* advanced science).
* Envisioning the desired result is required for a spell to work (or else [butterflies flapping their wings](https://xkcd.com/378/) will ruin the whole world).
* Magic can be taught, but individual formulation of hypotheses is still required from every pupil.
* Last but not least, mages can take state of the art scientific theories into account. E.g. cure disease spell < kill a virus spell.
In such setup, magic is going to be one step ahead of science for individual usage and two steps behind in mass usage, creating a shaky equilibrium. Well, at some point science becomes advanced enough to take on replicating a mage's personality, and the two finally converge, but that's a long long way to go.
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If a mage were to appear on Earth today, and didn't hide their abilities, we would study the heck out of them until we figured out how they did their magic.
And, as you say, then magic would be just another science.
So, what could stop us?
One cornerstone of science is **repeatability**. The same experiment done by me today and by you tomorrow should give the same result. For magic to stay magic it would have to be non-repeatable somehow.
Unfortunately, this also makes magic less useful and more dangerous.
**Possibility 1**: Magic *is* less useful and more dangerous. Sane people doesn't use magic. *Insane* people use magic, and can do amazing things before eventually destroying themselves. *Desperate* people also use magic. Since these people haven't trained as mages, magic can't be too difficult to do.
You might get suicide bombers entering an enemy city and invoking a massive spell without knowing what it will do. One way or another it will probably be destructive.
**Possibility 2**: Magic is actually acts of a god. If you are a nice follower and do things the god approves of, you can ask that god for help and they give you a miracle. These gods doesn't enjoy being studied by scientists and will ignore their requests. Persistent scientists might get hurt.
If you go this way you should put some thought into the god's motivations. Preferably something more than "They want to be worshiped". That kind of god has been done to cliche by both mythology and fiction.
**Possibility 3**: Magic *could* in fact become a science, if only mages and scientists would cooperate. But they don't. Mages enjoy the aura of mystique and don't want to be studied. Mages do in fact use semi-scientific methods in their own studies, but since they don't cooperate the proto-science doesn't advance.
This situation is not stable. Sciencists *will* collect every scrap of information they can get their grubby hands on and eventually solve the mystery. Mages could fight back by killing scientists and burning libraries, but it is very hard to stop knowledge from advancing.
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"Yerr a wizard, Harry"
In a universe in which there is magic, magic is part of nature. You can separate it from the mundane world by requiring magical practitioners to be born different from regular folk.
Anyone can be scientist/technologist you just have to work hard. But perhaps not everybody can be a magician. You have to be born to it, perhaps it runs in the family, or the 7th child of the 7th child gets the gift. Perhaps it is gifted by the fairies or is seen as a curse of the fey. But a "muggle" can never become a wizard.
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I'm going in a different direction from the other answers. My interpretation from the fiction I've consumed is that magic is when something physical happens as a result of concepts, symbols or ideas, instead of the result of a physical force.
Some examples:
* A person with a fiery personality can do a fire spell
* A person who is spontaneous and flighty has superspeed
* Bad things happen to bad people, good things happen to good people
* A god has more power because more people believe in him or her (e.g. Discworld)
* Astrology - A person's personality depends on what picture the stars appear to form when that person is born
* Feng Shui - Putting shiny things in your home will make you richer
Anything where thoughts, ideas, interpretations affect the physical world despite there being no physical link between mind and matter.
*Avatar: The Last Air Bender* is the clearest example this, where characters' powers depend on their spiritual affiliations.
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Magic could be a conscious entity. As with Harry Potter where the wands make choices about owners but possibly more so.
I have heard a rule in story telling that magic should either be clearly defined in it's rules, or too complex for the characters to understand. So either a science or not understandable.
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Enter the world of hypothetical-ness:
Imagine a world where we have used almost all of our copper, lead, and iron supplies and deposits. The amount that we still do have is not enough to make a lot of bullets and military ammo.
But what if we could use glass as a projectile that could be shot from a gun or military weapon? What type of damage would it do, how would it change warfare, and how would cities change, and what would be the economic effect (i.e, now they are making glass in large amounts, how would that change the economy and areas with high amounts of sand, soda ash, and limestone)?
**EDIT**
Also there is no way to recycle the metals: copper, lead, and iron.
**The Questions**
What damage could it do?
How would it change warfare?
How would cities change? (Defense)
What would be the economic change in areas with high amounts of sand, soda ash, and limestone?
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There are options available. Historically bullets have been carved from stone, for [example](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_cannon).
**The bigger problem to solve is what to shoot the bullet with.**
A steel firearm quickly becomes priceless. You'd be killed for having one. I'd opt into archery in a world like this. Early bronze firearms exploded way too often for me to trust any firearm made of substandard material.
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One less iron carcass flat and you have bullets for a good army. Cost of just one flat will provide you with a lot of bullets. If iron is so expensive, people most likely wouuld not use it for buildings but for smaller appliances.
That said, glass is by approximately 75% silicon dioxide ($\text{SiO}\_2$). As such, if we have enough glass or sand we can extract silicon from it so ho have a metallic material much better suitable for making bullets:
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The problem is that for a good bullet, you want a very dense material that is also fairly soft. (Gold would be perfect, if it wasn't for the cost.) That's the main reason lead is traditionally used (until it became an environmental problem), and why depleted uranium is used for extreme military applications such as armor-piercing rounds.
Density is largely a matter of air resistance and penetration power, as the kinetic energy of the projectile is concentrated in less area. Softness is a matter of wear on the barrels of your firearms. Fire a few rounds of a hard, abrasive material like glass, and the rifling of your barrel will be worn down. A few more, and it could wear to the point where the bullets are a sloppy fit, compromising both range and accuracy.
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Glass has a density of $\mathrm {2.4\ g/cm^3} $. This is going to be a serious limiting factor in how much damage the bullet does when it hits—it will not penetrate more than 2.4× its length. That means a small-calibre bullet isn't going to do a lot unless it hits something vital that's near the surface (say, an artery—and even that only means you likely get a kamikaze enemy. They know they're going to bleed out and try to take you with them.)
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I recall a short story about a planet without accessible metals. The beings there were adept at making ceramics for all purposes.
A planet like that presumably still has Aluminum, which is very light and doesn't exist naturally in metalic form. Other metals that are never present as metal (requires high level of technology to isolate), and low on the periodic table might still be present.
Look at [this link](http://webmineral.com/determin/non-metallic_minerals_by_density.shtml) for a list of non-metalic metals by density. The densest at 11.2 is mercury oxide. The next one (9.8) contains bismuth and chromium. You would have to go down the list to find what is allowed, but it will be lighter. Lead, in comparison, is 11.3 and iron is 7.9.
Higher tech would not be to use glass. They would find a mineral (possibly synthetic) that has desirable properties such as (relatively) high density, or being monocrystaline and able to withstand high stress.
Projectiles made of *flint* were effective, long before firearms came around. Perhaps combustion as a way to throw an arrow would be a natural progression from hand-cocked springs of various types. Hard needle tips might evolve, as opposed to heavy slugs. They could certainly be poisoned as well. Morter rounds can contain flaming tar and diseased rat carcasses as well as stone. Explosive rounds might deliver the punch *after* the projectile reaches its destination.
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Since glass is far less dense than metal, the only way to increase the penetrative and killing power of a glass bullet would be to make it go far faster than a comparable calibre metal round. The magic equation here is $E\_k=\frac12MV^2$
Of course the difficulty them becomes:
a. How do you drive the bullet so fast, and;
b. How will the projectile stay together?
Since glass is rather brittle, a glass bullet will shatter if subjected to high accelerations. Since glass is actually an insulator, electrical weapons like railguns won't work with a glass projectile (unless saboted in a metal case), but then you will end up blowing a slug of molten glass or glass dust out the barrel at about Mach 7.
So glass is probably not the thing you are looking for here. Maybe if you use basalt spun into a bullet form, you will be closer to a usable weapon.
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Purely hypothetical but say hardened glass, almost like gorilla glass or unbreakable pipes for smoking, I have seen those thrown on the ground and not break, were used and hypothetically we could fire it without breaking... Wouldn't the actual wound be a lot worse than metal due to it shattering as it penetrates flesh then fragments and slices? Or because of the mass it would create more of a flesh wound?
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Glass could perhaps be used for a small caliber bullet in space or on the moon, as the propelling force would be less than on Earth. It would be cheaper and more economic than mining, transporting, and then probably just wasting the more valuable stuff.
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To supplement the answers above, people ***do*** make glass bullets (more accurately, shotgun slug). While the glass shatters on contact with hard surface, it can still penetrate a thin metal sheet, and the fine glass powders continues to move in forward direction.
Which also suggests that hitting body tissue will do much more than a superficial wound, more likley a penetration wound heavily contaminated with fine glass powder.
[A youtube video with glass bullets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8JMeGhxvUo "A youtube videoquot;"), 1:20 onwards
As a side-note, lower density not only reduce penetration, but also causes the projectile to decelerate more rapidly in atmosphere, reducing the effective range of the weapon used.
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*Color legend: The brown shapes are hills, the darker the brown the higher the mountains and the highest peaks I've made white. They are mostly clustered on the east and west edges. The green shows forests and the darker green is jungle.*
I am creating my first map for a world I am building, but I am having some difficulty working out the rivers. I did some research and 'feel' these are correct, but was hoping someone with more geographical knowledge might be able to point out if anything is glaringly wrong?
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Assuming that your map is a continent, and the black surroundings are the sea.
Most of your rivers stay inland. That does not feel realistic. Rivers generally run towards the sea, or are tributary to a river that does.
The way you designed your map, those large lakes that are fed by some of the larger rivers will be very salty.
Remember that rivers are fed by rainfall or by melting snow, which is basically the same. That rainfall obviously comes from evaporating water elsewhere (the sea, mostly).
As the water runs down the countryside, it dissolves a lot of minerals, carrying them downstream. The minerals don't evaporate with the water, so the basin where everything flows becomes increasing mineral rich. That's why the sea is salty, and thus every basin without an outlet apart from evaporation will accumulate salt, minerals and dirt.
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The big question is how old is the island.
Rivers are fairly simple really. Any rainfall on your island will flow downhill and collect at the lowest points. Anywhere that enough water collects up while flowing will become a river.
But then you need to add time to the mix. Water flows down to the lowest point, but then it has to evaporate. If it doesn't evaporate as fast as it's flowing in, then the water level rises.
Furthermore, flowing water erodes everything, so a river will eventually carve a channel down to sealevel. ("Eventually" meaning potentially hundreds of millions of years depending on how high the ground started, and how hard the rock is.)
So...
This looks like an island that's at most like a hundred thousand years old that has either low precipitation, or a high evaporation rate.
If precipitation vs evaporation isn't pretty tightly balanced on this island (which will be hard to maintain long-term) then those lakes your rivers drain into will either dry up or fill up. In the former case you now probably have a desert island. In the latter case they either find a way out to the sea, or your island becomes a soup bowl.
That system in the southwest is going to be particularly unstable. According to your coloring the difference in height between the river's close approach to the sea and the inland lake it ultimately appears to drain into is pretty small. One year with extra rain raising the lake level and the river is going to jump its banks at that inlet and carve a new channel. And then that whole section down to the lake is going to reverse direction and the lake will drain into the ocean.
Is it realistic given the contours you've designed? Reasonably. Is it stable? Heck no. The inhabitants of this island are likely in for some major upheaval over the next thousand years or so as the rivers **create** more stable pathways to sealevel.
Unless it's a volcanic island and there are cracks in the rock under those lakes leading out to the sea, in which case those cracks will erode bigger over time and eventually you'll have sinkholes opening up at unpredictable locations.
None of this is necessarily bad, and may even be preferable for a fantasy story. Plenty of opportunity for shifting borders and rescuing whole villages from sudden shifts in water flow.
But if that's not what you want then think through some fluctuations in water level and what will happen with those collection points. Which way will they go when they overflow? They'll carve a channel to the next lowest point when they do. Repeat until there's nowhere lower for it to escape to.
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I am no professional at geography, but I will try my best to provide comments.
General comments on this map:
* Most rivers are inland, this is not very realistic and you will end up having undrinkable water unless purified extensively due to large amounts of salt that remain. Try having more rivers go out to sea.
* You have many mini islands below this large continent, try making some small rivers there on some islands.
* Your large basin or reservoir near the top left corner of the island, with rivers branching out is well placed! But you have 1 or 2 rivers going into the sea *if you want*.
* Your island has way too many forests and jungles, try placing some deserts, maybe 1 or 2 medium sized ones, one on the top right or the island, the other on the bottom.
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Water flows from higher level to lower level.
**No contours**
If you show contour lines on the map, drawing river will be very easy as river flow will be normal to a contour line.
**No direction of flow**
From direction of flow, one can determine if it is a main river or a distributary or a tributary. It is not shown in your map.
**No Source**
Normally source of a river is a glacier or tributaries. No sources are clear in the map.
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I addition to the answers given above, concerning water flow in general, rivers in more flat areas usually tend to bend very much, way more than yours do.
Take a look at [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3r-cG8Wic) about this phenomenon. It also gives a general formula about the "bendiness" of a river depending on the width of the current.
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I'm writing a story about an icy alien culture which applies ultracold helium bombs that they can make appear at any place. The battle between good and evil translates in hot and cold. Though of course it remains to be seen which of the two is good or evil,
Helium bombs are just large balls of zero-kelvin helium. They can have a maximum radius of 1000 meter and can appear only in uniform spaces like liquids, gases, and empty space, which have to be extensive enough.
The main character tries to escape in a deep dark sea. The sea is 100 kilometers deep. If they mean, vicious aliens make a helium bomb appear, will the hero be able to escape? Will the ice that forms around the ball keep everything that's inside inside the crust? Or will no crust form so our hero gets haunted by the cold?
I asked this question in three different increasingly well-defined forms, on the physics site. It was said to be better suited here (it was even suggested that I tried to "beat the system" by asking it because it got closed three times and the reason given was that it was an arbitrary situation, and when moderators have their mind made up you indeed can't beat them...). The last form of the question can be seen here:
<https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/639502/what-would-happen-if-a-solid-ball-of-helium-suddenly-appeared-on-the-bottom-of-a>
I didn't accept both answers though. The question about an ice layer forming wasn't touched upon properly.
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The ball would shoot upwards through the water.
Helium at 0 K will be solid. [The projected density for solid helium is 0.187 g/cm3.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#:%7E:text=Solid%20helium%20has%20a%20density,%C2%B10.009%20g%2Fcm3.) . The density of water is 1 g/cm3. Maybe 100 km deep it is a little more than that but just a little.
The helium ball will shoot up through the water. The [Leidenfrost effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect) produced by helium (vigorously!) boiling and bubbling away on all sides will prevent an ice rind from forming and also decrease water resistance that might slow the rise of the ball. The gas bubbles will still be cold and some water ice particles will form in the wake of the rising ball and be swept along, which would be kind of cool.
It is not stated where in the 1000 km sea your hero is. If they are 2 km below the ball they will not know it is there. Or 2 km off to the side. If they are directly above the ball they will see a giant mass of helium gas bubbles below them, rising ahead of the ball which is below the bubble. The ball is more dense than the gas bubbles and also has more surface area, so is rising slower.
If there are enough bubbles your hero might fall through them. They might land on top of the ball. They could get frostbite from this but again the Leidenfrost effect will protect them from freezing solid, as a cushion of helium gas will form between their warm extremities and the 0K ball.
If your hero is in a boat above this ball the boat could sink because the bubbles will disrupt buoyancy - an effect posited to happen in the Bermuda Triangle via bubbling methane clathrate deposits. Also all the helium will make their voice high, and their stogie might go out.
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100 000m down in an ocean on Earth(-like planet)
Pressure = 1GPa
Water phase = Ice XV from 0K to 130K, and Ice VI between 130K and about 330K(57C), above that liquid.
Unless your ocean is **very** warm, the water will already be a solid.
Assume solid:
The Helium sphere will just sit there, further cooling the ice around it. It will have *massive* buoyancy though, so if the ice cover over it is thinner than several km, it will break through and form an ascending sphere.
YES, sphere. Under that pressure, Helium is *also* a solid, even up to 50K or so. Maybe a bit of "molten" helium around the sphere from initial contact.
Slowly, very slowly, the heat from the surrounding water ice will permeate into the solid Helium, melting it all, and a plume of molten Helium will ascent up in a straw of frozen water, until it reached the surface.
Assume water hot enough (>57 Celcius) to be liquid:
The Solid Helium Sphere will very rapidly form a thin ice shell around it.
This ice layer will insulate the Helium sphere, keeping it mostly frozen, and the whole Helium+some ice ball will ascend rapidly. It might even remain frozen until it breaches the surface like an iceberg! But Helium has quite low specific heat capacity, and the molten helium will be an excellent convective heat mover, so I expect the whole sphere will melt in the 8 hours or so it takes to get to the surface. Once the Helium gets to within about 500m of the surface, it will flash to gas and make a huge surface explosion!
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The helium would melt at a fantastic rate, and bubble off disappating the cold. Helium evaporates at a very low temperature: 4 degrees Kelvin. The hero's problem is the thermal equilibrium is achieved by dragging in surrounding heat. It is not a crust of ice but a ball. Not to mention that his sub can not be that insulated.
If their aim is perfect, he can not escape. Distance and speed are his only hope.
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Note that a 1 km rock slamming into the earth from space could be a very bad day for everyone within a few hundred kilometers of it, but the physics aren't the same as suddenly displacing that much sea water and solid helium. Large extinction events on Earth are strongly correlated with 10km+ objects. They are so deadly, because they are large enough to impact the surface in tact. Smaller objects tend to break up and vaporize before impacting the surface. In this scenario, we have a large object that bypassed the Earth's atmospheric shield, and it's not anything like a natural object.
Unless this imaginary tech can first remove an equal volume of the water, before beaming in the 1km diameter sphere, it would have to displace all of that water, instantaneously. This would indeed be a very effective bomb. It would literally vaporize nearly a cubic kilometer of water, causing sufficient heat to rapidly melt the helium, which would add to the explosive effect and increase heating and pressure. A shockwave would travel back to the center of the sphere, heating more helium as it travels, and then bounce back outwards. Depending on the depth of the water, this shock wave will probably have sufficient force to vaporize or at least liquify all the remaining helium. How much water that would displace is a mathematical exercise I'll leave for someone else.
The total volume of displaced water would increase substantially as all that superheated fluid/gas expands. The shockwave from such an explosion would cause a rather large tsunami that would radiate in all directions at something like 1200 km/hr. and the shock wave passing through the lower levels of the ocean would probably kill everything for a considerable distance. The deeper your hero is, the more likely it is that the shockwave will destroy whatever vessel they are hiding in, or kill them directly if they are some kind of aquatic.
A rather large mushroom shaped cloud would rise up to at least the stratosphere, and a shockwave would travel outwards through the atmosphere. There would be a bright flash of light as a large volume of the atmosphere is suddenly ionized from the heat. All of this is nearly equivalent to a 1 km body of ice slamming into the earth, minus the momentum, but rather than being slowed, heated and exploding in the relatively thin atmosphere, it would encounter high pressure water immediately.
If any of the sphere survives in a solid or liquid state after the initial explosion, the sea will slam back into it and the subsequent shock wave would cause another explosion. The process would repeat until you had a very warm volume of sea water and helium bubbles, slowly dissipating heat to the surrounding water.
It's just a guess, but I'd say you probably don't want to be within a few thousand kilometers of such an event. There would probably be a large magma filled crater at the bottom of the ocean, that would also contribute to heating the area for quite a long time, and might spew sufficient toxic gases to cause a localized extinction event.
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Come to think of it, the displacement of that much water will dissociate the water into mostly hydrogen and oxygen ions. The hydrogen would certainly fuse and possibly the oxygen as well. A 1/3 km hydrogen bomb core would be devastating.
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So let's assume that the plot limits the rate of appearance of the object. We're already using more energy than a large cluster of starts give off in a lifetime, just teleporting that much mass over any distance. But it's not much of a bomb if it appears too gently, so you get to decide just how devastating this bomb is. In fact, it's the perfect weapon in that regard. Not only can you vary the size, you could vary the rate from say small fractions of the speed of light, all the way up to 99.999..%.
A more reasonable limit would a few tenths of the speed of light. Lowers the peak power requirements for the teleporter. Might even vary depending on the size. A large mass would have to have a lower rate than a small one.
So now you can dial-in the attack to a level that almost, but not quite extinguishes your hero.
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Final addendum:
If the hydrogen fuses, that might cause a sufficiently forceful implosion to fuse the helium! Now we're talking shattered planet.
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**This is a fascinating question! There's a lot more to it then first meets the eye!**
First, to answer the boring question: Will this kill the hero?
Yes.
However, it won't be a very good story if the protagonist dies midway through, so as with any grand alien invasion, there's one aspect of Earth's environment that the aliens didn't count on, and it's going to be the Achilles Heel of their horrific weapon.
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**So, let's get started with this roller coaster of a science question:**
There are multiple factors that come into play when dumping a solid, supercooled gas into a liquid substance, esspecially one as *unique* as liquit water!
1. Water is one of the only substances in the known universe that *reduces in density* when it freezes. This is the reason why lakes freeze from the top down, rather than bottom up. So regardless of how you cool a body of water, it will *always* freeze from the top down!
2. This counter-intuitive density behavior is made even weirder by the introduction of salt: Salt water has a lower freezing point then pure water and it also has a higher density. When you try to freeze sea water, this causes a natural desalination effect. As a result, the pure desalinated water rises as ice and the leftover highly-dense, sub-freezing *brine* shoots down in jets creating downward-growing ice spikes. Anything caught by these ice tentacles will freeze and die. Visual reference: [YouTube: Brinicle, Underwater Icicle "Finger of Death"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAupJzH31tc)
3. Now this sounds pretty bad, but if the hero can evade the slow-moving ice tentacles, he still has a decent chance of surviving due to one really cool physics effect:
4. When you cool a gas to a liquid or solid state, its boundary layer boils very easily and turns to gas the moment it comes in contact with a warmer substance. This creates what's known as the *Leidenfrost effect*, where the boiling gas at the boundary layer forms a thermal barrier between the hot and cold substances. As a result the water *won't freeze instantly*! Here is a cool experiment where a guy tried to freeze seawater by pouring liquid nitrogen on it: [YouTube: What Happens When You Freeze The Ocean? Pouring Liquid Nitrogen in the Ocean to Stop Global Warming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA6kzY2NJzo)
5. But wait! There's more! The Leidenfrost effect is imperfect. When the object is big, the huge amount of cold matter will still have a sufficient thermal transfer rate to freeze the surrounding water (though not instantly). In this case, you will have ice forming around the sphere, *and that’s where the hero’s situation suddenly becomes very dire*. Ice and gas are good insulators, but not perfect, and the frozen helium inside will continue to slowly warm up. Eventually the increasing gas pressure will cause the ice shell to rupture...kinda like in this video: [YouTube: Underwater Explosions - Slow Motion Dry Ice Bomb.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5gHFJyMQ6o)
6. Luckily, the explosion won’t be big since the whole sphere can't be uniformly encased in ice (due to the non-laminar effects of real-world turbulence in water), so it won't kill the hero. Instead, the hero is going to suddenly find themselves inundated by hundreds of back-to-back concussive blasts as the small helium pockets throughout the ice expand and fracture their ice blocks. These micro-explosions will probably feel like gut punches, damaging internal organs and rupturing ear drums. (It’s going to be a bad day for anyone in the vicinity when this starts happening.)
7. If somehow the hero escapes the ice tentacles and manages to retain consciousness throughout the micro-explosions, their troubles aren’t over yet. Far from it. They will then need to swim up to the surface through a meat grinder. You see... all that ice we’ve been talking about, would have floated up to the surface and turned into the most dangerous form of ice you’ve ever seen: [razor sharp ice sheets, crushing and grinding everything that gets caught in them (YouTube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1RhkrnV-qM).
8. Suppose the hero somehow climbs through the ice flow and claws their way up on to one of the ice blocks. They miraculously get through with only crushed ribs, broken arms and legs, and a badly shattered pelvis, *but otherwise they're totally fine!* However... now they will face their final two obstacles:
9. First, all of the helium gas boiling off the sphere would have expelled most of the breathable air from the area, and the hero will probably suffocate.
10. Second, if there is enough oxygen left for them to survive, the air will be really cold. This will cause edema, and (sorry for the graphic content) they will literally drown in their own bodily fluids as their longs fill up with water. [Here (YouTube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDvjjQvM498) is a good explanation from the 2000 movie Vertical Limit, and [here (YouTube, graphic content)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1YHdHw-doQ) is another scene from the same movie where one of the characters is suffering from both broken ribs and edima, like your hero probably will be.
11. Lastly, as the hero fades from life, staring up at the vast sky, they will be treated to an amazing sight. The intense outgassing from the sphere will create an unimaginably powerful storm over the ocean. Helium will rise rapidly as it warms, and normal air will drop as it cools. This will create waterspouts (tornados over the ocean—as opposed to hurricanes) the likes of which have never been seen.
**But didn’t I say the hero has a chance to survive?**
*YES!*
But, 'How???’ you ask.
1. Well, here’s the kicker! Planets with a magnetic field like the Earth are extremely rare. So there is a very reasonable chance that an alien civilization won’t be familiar with the miraculous barrier that our magnetic field creates: the Ozone Layer.
2. You see... as soon as the large volumes of helium gas begins rising up in the atmosphere, it will first punch a circular hole in the cloud layer and then shortly after through the ozone and upper atmosphere. When this happens, the local area will lose its shielding from the full power of the sun.
3. The unexpectedly intensified solar heat will undermine the aliens’ attempt to kill the hero via freezing. It will help to maintain a survivable temperature and save the hero from getting edema! Moreover, the intense local heat (along with a nearly-endless supply of gas that's being heated by it) will cause strong winds to radiate from the center of this would-be-weapon-of-doom and blow away the blocks of ice like little sailboats carrying the hero with them.
4. What’s even better is that amid the crazy raging storm this will cause, the aliens will lose any chance of tracking down the hero. The hero is then free to be picked up at sea and rescued!
So in the end, it is the weapon's own frightening power that offers our hero the chance for escape! :D
(Thank you for asking this question! I very much enjoyed thinking through this scenario in my head, and I'd be very excited to read your story about it!)
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I'd like to approach this in a sort of hard sci-fi way, where the following is grounded in something plausible.
Suppose we want to take a plane down at a reasonable speed where there is a 30% chance or so of surviving, or rather, something that isn't going to be fatal like a straight on nosedive. While I'm sure there are people who defied the odds to be a 0.001%, I am not looking for such low chances because it would likely break immersion.
I'm trying to find a way to damage a craft so that it would crash, but not in a guaranteed fatalistic way. However, it also has to be realistic.
For example, what if something rips off a wing? How realistic is it that it would spiral out of control without going into a nosedive all the time?
Can I rip off the tail of the plane, and it would descend to the planet?
What about damaging any turbines?
While I marked this as `reality-check` I am okay if we fudge it a little bit. I don't need a journal article saying what will happen (but that would be nice if one existed describing this case!) or even better, if someone has a video of something.
Ideally I'm trying to do the 80/20 rule, or get rather 80% of the way there with something believable, and then make the last 20% sort of "X survived" because I'm writing a fictional story. The last thing I want is for someone to say "there's no way this would happen" or "immersion broken" or "plot armor" (while the primary character will have to have some plot armor for the story to move forward, I want it to be invisible as best as I can make it).
For the sake of this post, let us limit it to current day technology, but if needed, we could tack on 100 years into the future.
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### Damage to the flight control surfaces
*(Or the hydraulics / electronics used to control them)*
I'm referring to rudder, ailerons, stabilizers, etc. The big hydraulic surfaces that move into and out of the airstream in order to manoeuvre the aircraft.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/n5L6r.png)
*(China Airlines flight 006 nearly didn't make it)*
The damage needed to cause an absolute emergency situation is usually pretty minimal - you need to at minimum break the smooth airflow over it, but can also remove part of it or lock it in place. It sounds like your looking more for long distance attack rather than a mechanical failure - in which case a few tightly packed bullet holes should cause a secondary failure taking out the majority of the panel, causing a partial loss of control. However if that's not the case mechanical failure or pilot error can also cause it.
Manoeuvring becomes very hard, but with skill and raw determination they can be survived. I think it's just the roll of the dice you want.
Examples (sorted from luckiest to deadliest):
* 100% survival: A Concorde in 1989 [lost part of it's rudder](https://simpleflying.com/concorde-lost-rudder/), and they didn't notice until landing in Sydney.
* 100% survival: [2003 Iraq DHL flight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident). Another amazing outcome. Missile impacted wing. Total loss of all control. Landed safely (in a minefield) on differential engine power alone.
* 100% survival: [Northwest airlines flight 85](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_85). Hydraulic failure caused rudder to lock in hard left in 747. Landed successfully.
* 70% survival: [UA232 in Sioux city Iowa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232): turbine failure took out rudder hydraulics. Tried to land on differential engine thrust. Failed. Explosive fireball. Cartwheeled down the runway. 112 died. 184 people survived this:
[](https://i.makeagif.com/media/10-09-2015/mlWMmI.gif)
UA232 crash and fireball, and cartwheel. Surprisingly survivable.
* 50% survival: 4 x 737 rudder hard overs in the 1990s. 2 fell out of the sky and everyone died (United Airlines Flight 585 and USAir Flight 427), at least 2 landed safely (Eastwind Airlines Flight 517 and MetroJet Flight 2710 and possibly more where the cause is suspected but never explained.)
* Floor collapsing taking out controls. 20% survival. [Turkish Airlines Flight 981](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981) was 100% fatality with 346 died. But when it happened on American Airlines Flight 96 everyone survived.
* 1% survival: [Japan air flight 123](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123). Bulkhead ripped and damaged hydraulics. Plane limped around for nearly an hour before hitting a mountain. 520 died. 4 survived. At least 50 more would've survived if rescuers got there sooner.
* 0% survival: [American Airlines flight 587](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587). Pilot over stressed the rudder and ripped it right off. Everybody died.
* 0% survival: [American Airlines Flight 191](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191). Detaching engine severed some flight controls, but more importantly disabled the warnings that those controls didn't match. 100% fatality on board (271) + 2 people on the ground.
There's a whole [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_with_disabled_controls) about this particular failure. Skimming of the list there it looks like the rough odds of survival for this event is about 50%, but it could be argued up (non-notable events aren't mentioned) or down (there are crashes with unknown causes).
[Answer]
**Examine subsystems:**
1. Airframe - if the airframe fails at any appreciable altitude, the chance of anyone surviving is negligible (unless they can eject and parachute to safety). So don't have a wing, tail etc fall off completely or it's game over for everyone on board. Limited failures are potentially survivable - for example, a wingtip could fall off, or the rudder.
2. Aircraft controls - there have been occasions where pilots have lost some controls. One of the most notable occasions was where the pilots [lost most flight controls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232) and were only able to steer and eventually crash land through differential control of the twin engines. Note that loss of significant aircraft controls on an inherently unstable aircraft (ie a fighter relying on fly-by-wire for maximum agility) will not be survivable.
3. Propulsion and fuel - this is your best bet for a survivable crash. Engine problems (which can be caused by birdstrike, as in the example L.Dutch gave) including [running out of fuel when the airline converts from imperial to metric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider) measurements will require a forced landing. The forced landing may be easily survivable (within easy glide range of an airport), potentially survivable (water landing on still water as in the Miracle on the Hudson) or hideously dangerous and hard to survive (mountains, forest), [with survivors engage in cannibalism of those who did not survive the crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571).
4. Loss / injury of flight crew (includes depressurisation) - this is a common trope in Hollywood, but exceedingly rare in real life. Mythbusters examined the concept and came to the conclusion that in a sufficiently advanced aircraft in communication with the ground survival is trivial, where in other circumstances an untrained person will catastrophically crash the aircraft the vast majority of the time.
5. Loss of ground communications and navigation instruments - assuming that alternative means of navigation such as visual observation are unavailable, this will also lead to a forced landing eventually when fuel runs out, as per 3 above.
I would strongly suggest viewing [Mayday / Air Crash Investigation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mayday_episodes) episodes and find a real life occurrence that resonates with the story you wish to tell. Truth really is stranger than fiction.
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You can give it a try to something like the [miracle of the Hudson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549)
>
> On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549, an Airbus A320 on a flight from New York City's LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte, North Carolina, struck a flock of birds shortly after take-off, losing all engine power. Unable to reach any airport for an emergency landing, pilots Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles glided the plane to a ditching in the Hudson River off Midtown Manhattan. All 155 people on board were rescued by nearby boats, with a few serious injuries.
>
>
> At 3:27:11 during climbout, the plane struck a flock of Canada geese at an altitude of 2,818 feet (859 m) about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) north-northwest of LaGuardia. The pilots' view was filled with the large birds; passengers and crew heard very loud bangs and saw flames from the engines, followed by silence and an odor of fuel.
>
>
> at 3:31 pm, the plane made an unpowered ditching, descending southwards at about 125 knots (140 mph; 230 km/h) into the middle of the North River section of the Hudson tidal estuary, at 40.769444°N 74.004444°W on the New York side of the state line, roughly opposite West 50th Street (near the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum) in Manhattan and Port Imperial in Weehawken, New Jersey. Flight attendants compared the ditching to a "hard landing" with "one impact, no bounce, then a gradual deceleration".
>
>
> The NTSB used flight simulators to test the possibility that the flight could have returned safely to LaGuardia or diverted to Teterboro; only seven of the thirteen simulated returns to La Guardia succeeded, and only one of the two to Teterboro. Furthermore, the NTSB report called these simulations unrealistic: "The immediate turn made by the pilots during the simulations did not reflect or account for real-world considerations, such as the time delay required to recognize the bird strike and decide on a course of action." A further simulation, in which a 35-second delay was inserted to allow for those, crashed. In testimony before the NTSB, Sullenberger maintained that there had been no time to bring the plane to any airport and that attempting to do so would likely have killed those onboard and more on the ground.
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[Answer]
Depends on the aircraft (there is a huge difference between military, big civil airliner and small civil plane), if you want to make the crash (almost) certain or just possible, and especially if you want to have the damage made in flight or before takeoff (preferably without anyone noticing).
Some ideas, of various severity levels, mostly relevant to big airliners:
* Damage the landing gear. If it does not descent, pilots have to belly-land. This is a minor incident, without much probability of life loss. Perhaps you can weld a clamp across the landing gear that permanently shuts when the gear is retracted (so that the takeoff is normal). If you can fiddle with the landing gear indicator so that the pilots believe it works, they will slam the aircraft really hard and we move from a minor incident to a potentially very serious crash.
* Puncture the tires (make a small hole just before the departure, or rig some nails inside the retraction mechanism or something). The landing gear will collapse during landing, making the crash really dangerous (but fairly survivable).
* Disable the flaps. While it is possible to land without flaps, the landing will be *hard* and you need longer runway. You have to do this in-flight, otherwise the pilots will notice it during the takeoff and abort.
* Disable the engines in-flight, e.g. by creating fuel leak. Modern (or even not so modern) aircraft does not glide well at all and the Hudson river or [Gimli glider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider) landing need considerable piloting skills, a bit of luck and an accessible airport (or river) to land. See the [Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961) for the more expected outcome (though it might have been better without the hijackers). The problem is that the pilots will notice the fuel leak, divert to the nearest available airport and land normally. Or they [might not](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapag-Lloyd_Flight_3378)...
* The best bet is to disable the brakes and reverse thrust (or just the brakes). This might not be noticed during the takeoff, but the airplane will almost certainly overrun the runway during landing and crash into whatever is beyond the runway, with the [results ranging from "unpleasant" to "deadly".](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runway_excursion)
[Answer]
**A plane can land with a single wing.**
Israeli Air Force’s F-15D named, ‘Markia Shchakim’ and piloted by Zivi Nedivi collided with an A-4N. One of the wings was ripped off.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kX70v.jpg)
They still managed to land. So long as you have enough of the wings and body and all to keep it up, they can make a landing less rough. You need a very skilled pilot, and enough luck that not too much goes wrong, and it helps to be in a plane with a powerful jet so you can go fast, but it can be done.
There's a good chance a load of the plane will get ripped up on the landing, and you're fucked if you need to fly far, but if you're in a good location and not too much of the wings are ripped off, you might be able to survive.
[Answer]
# Sabotage the Fuel System
I'd say the most reliable way to do this is to sabotage the fuel system of the aircraft, such that some of the fuel is unusable, but the flight crew doesn't notice this until out of range of a suitable airport. This obviously also depends on the route of flight; if it's over ocean, or uninhabited territory with no airports such as a desert, it'll be much easier to plan.
A flight over mountains would make it significantly harder to arrange a *survivable* forced landing; either open water or reasonably flat ground is greatly preferable. Landing on a road very often counts as a "survivable crash" since the cleared area either side of the road may be less than the wingspan of the aircraft, and cars using the road have little or no warning of the aircraft's approach, which will be at highway speed or greater.
The flight crew will normally check the fuel loading as part of the pre-flight inspection. This often includes a simple check of fuel quality, so you can't simply fill some of the tanks with water. However, on an aircraft with multiple fuel tanks, it would be feasible to introduce a blockage in the feed pipe or disconnect a required transfer pump, making fuel in a particular tank inaccessible. These auxiliary tanks are often not used until most of the fuel in the main tanks has been used.
Starting with relatively small aircraft, the Beechcraft Bonanza typically has two main tanks (left and right) from the factory, and the handbook instructs the pilot to regularly switch the feed between the two to avoid unbalancing the aircraft, so a blockage in either line would quickly be noticed while there is still plenty of fuel in the good tank to return to the origin airfield. This is not a favourable situation for the prospective saboteur.
Aftermarket additions, however, frequently include wingtip auxiliary tanks and/or an auxiliary tank in the luggage compartment; these require the main tanks to be run low, then small pumps switched on to move fuel from the auxiliary tanks into the main tanks. Disconnecting these pumps would deny access to this extra fuel at a time when the aircraft might already be out of range of an airport. The remaining fuel in the main tanks would allow the pilot a reasonably free choice of forced landing site, and the aircraft is also small enough to use even small gravel or grass airfields for a safe landing; in many countries there are a lot of these scattered randomly for private use.
The Cessna 421 series, a "light twin" often used for corporate transport, has a notoriously complex fuel system which seems particularly susceptible to interference. One fun possibility, specific to this type, is to insert a timer or a geographic (GPS) trigger that forces the fuel pumps into "high boost" mode. At anything less than full power (which is unavailable at cruise altitude), this will flood the engines with an over-rich fuel-air mixture that the engines cannot run on. This simulates a double engine failure and will probably cause a forced landing in an approximate area that you can choose in advance.
Larger aircraft generally have more sophisticated fuel and failure-monitoring systems that might detect or otherwise mitigate sabotage of this type, at least if they are reasonably modern (hint: if they have turbine-based engines and "glass cockpit" instruments, that's modern enough). This might not be a show-stopper for a determined saboteur, but it does increase the difficulty significantly since both the fuel system itself and the monitoring systems must be modified. It might be sufficient, however, to alter a fuel gauge for a secondary tank so that it shows full when the tank is actually empty; this might trick the crew into failing to refuel that tank.
[Answer]
# Introduce Navigational Errors
Particularly for trans-oceanic flights, modern aircraft are nowadays highly dependent on two systems to keep them pointed in the right direction: an "inertial reference system" which estimates the aircraft's speed and course over time to derive position, and the Global Positioning System which relies on receiving weak radio signals from satellites. If you can sabotage both of these, then the aircraft can be sent off course such that it won't find the intended airport; from there it could be quite difficult to find *any* suitable airport to land at.
Light aircraft still often make use of the ground-based NDB, VOR and DME navaids, which are probably harder to cause confusion with. A pilot who *notices* the loss of IRF and/or GPS data will generally also try to pick up ground-based navaids as a backup method of navigation, if they are within range. Some of the more powerful VORs can be received as much as 200 miles away at cruise altitude.
The more brute-force method would be to cause a complete electrical failure, which will definitely knock out most if not all of the navigation systems. Aircraft are still controllable in this condition, via emergency power sources if the flight controls are all power-operated. But a prudent pilot will have a GPS-equipped phone or tablet to hand, and will at least be able to plot GPS coordinates on a paper chart and thus get within sight of an airport.
So you should probably try the more subtle approach of *altering* the received GPS data using a jammer, in a way that isn't easily noticed. This requires simulating the satellite signals that *would* have been received if the aircraft was *actually* in the distorted position. Since the autopilot will tend to change course to keep the aircraft on the planned route, to force the actual route to deviate to the south, you need to distort the position northward of the true position.
[Answer]
Intimidation will suffice. If a fighter jet shows up, you will do whatever it says.
Attacking control surfaces is a very dangerous game. The line is too thin between "controllable enough to finish mission" and "not controllable enough to even control a crash".
The engines, however, may be more attackable.
## Knockout the engines within glide distance to a landable space
That's it.
"All-engine failure and glide-to-airport" is a scenario regularly trained by crews. They will not let you fly a commercial jet unless you can show you can do that in simulator.
They train gliding to a divert airport because it's common:
* [contaminated fuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathay_Pacific_Flight_780)
* [fuel leaks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236)
* [hail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110#Investigation_and_aftermath), [volcanic ash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KLM_Flight_867), [geese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549), or [gulls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural_Airlines_Flight_178)
* "[the same guy servicing all engines and doing it wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Air_Lines_Flight_855)"
* engine fails; [crew shuts off fuel to wrong engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransAsia_Airways_Flight_235) (this happens *so often* that there is genuine question of whether twin engine small planes are really safer than singles.)
* [incorrect autopilot settings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Airlines_Flight_3701) damaging engines
* [running out of fuel due to [calculation error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider), [fuel gauge wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuninter_Flight_1153), [navigation error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varig_Flight_254), [not speaking up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_52), or [horrible airmanship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961)
* [*the wildly unforeseen*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_38)
All of these are 100% survivable if there's a flat place to set down and the pilot can find it. It may even be a gear-down landing where the plane could be [fixed on-site and flown out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alrosa_Flight_514).
## Even knocking out one engine may be enough
A plane with an engine down gets worse fuel economy. With less thrust, it cannot sustain as high an altitude, and must descend into thicker air where fuel economy is worse. It may not be able to reach its planned destination with fuel on board. If that works in your favor territory-wise, it may suffice.
Also, on some aircraft, knocking out engines *asymmetrically* means their rudder isn't strong enough to compensate for asymmetrical thrust, so they throttle back *good engines on the opposite side*, worsening power further, along with sustainable altitude and fuel economy. If they can't even sustain ground-level flight, then they are a weak [motor glider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_glider), and will need to look for a landing site.
There could be techno-drama in the latter, as they figure this out.
] |
[Question]
[
Medieval warfare can get ugly, particularly during sieges. Most will agree that the best course of action is to sit tight for a year or two and hope the defenders starve before your attacking force dies of illness. But sometimes that's not an option, maybe the emperor is impatient, maybe enemy reinforcements are approaching - the castle must be taken now or not at all, which leaves no option but to assault the walls.
Desigining a particular large country for my world, one I will henceforth refer to as the Empire, I have thought it appropriate that a country of such military pride and might would have a dedicated unit trained and equipped to excel in assaults on castles and fortified cities. The question is how would that unit look?
**Size and purpose**
Looking at the general size of Empire's army I would say the unit should be **at most 4,000-5,000 men** in strength (that only includes actual fighting force, the stableboys and other support personnel are outside of that count)
* The primary purpose of the unit is to play the primary/major role during an assault on enemy fortifications, be it castle or walled city. By assault I mean trying to go over or through the walls, rather than wait for a surrender.
* The unit is not expected to maintain a siege and perform an assault on its own - other non-specialized units will likely be present. EDIT: To clarify, the specialised unit will act as part of a larger army, but it is expected to be centerpiece/vanguard during the assault.
* The unit is of course expected to fight in open field when necessary, but in this case it will likely take on a secondary/supporting role.
**What are we attacking?**
The fortifications in question will not be unlike your average medieval castle or walled city.
* Expect one or more layer of stone walls.
* There may or may not be a moat.
* There may or may not be siege engines on the walls and towers.
* The defenders will likely have at least one mage or wizard (more about magic below)
**Available technology**
In general the technology can be described as high medieval ages, with some differences. Expect enemy to have equivalent technology (we're not fighting barbarians)
* No gunpowder
* Steel and iron are primary metals for weapons and armor
* Wide variety of armor available - from leather through mail to full plate.
* Wide variety of weapons available - if it feels like it belongs in a medieval setting, there is a high chance it is available in this world
* Regarding the Empire in particular: slightly inspired by Roman and Byzantine empires, the Empire has above average technological expertise in engineering and you can expect weapons and armour to be of above average quality. The roads within the empire are also well developed which may or may not matter if the unit were to include permanently assembled siege engines of sorts.
**Magic**
Magic exists, but it is rare and has limitations. This is war however, a matter important enough to include it. Assume 1 mage or wizard per 1,000 troops at maximum and it would be prudent to assume a similar ratio for your enemy. I will do my best to describe what can or cannot be done with magic, or - more accurately - what these mages and wizards can or cannot accomplish with it.
If you have any doubts or specific ideas requiring magic feel free to ask in the comments.
* Magic is tiring - Usage of magic will gradually tire out the user. More power and complexity of the spell - more exhaustion.
* Wizards and mages have the ability to electrocute, freeze, set on fire, or otherwise un-alive their enemies. A single spellcaster dedicated to that purpose can probably eliminate several hundred non-magical opponents over the course of a battle, provided he survives and has opportunity to recover his strength.
* Magic can be used to shield the user and nearby allies from (non-magical) projectiles. Such a shield can be maintained for minutes up to an hour depending on intensity of fire - more kinetic energy of projectiles means less shield endurance. The shield must be actively maintained by the caster.
* Magic can be used to shield the user and nearby allies from magic. Typically this kind of shielding lasts less under fire than the one above and will natrually lead to duels between mages/wizards. The duel is essentially a game of five-dimensional speed-chess and normal troops can be of great assistance by disturbing the enemy mage while not allowing your own mage to be disturbed by enemy troops.
* Magic can NOT be used to blow up walls or gates.
* Mages and wizard have an ability to communicate telepathetically with anyone on the battlefield, but they can only "transmit". Two magic users can establish a dialogue by using their respective skills to talk to each other, but communication with non-magic-users is one-way.
* Magic can be used to a certain extent to manipualte the battlefield - dry the mud, create smoke screen, potentially clear certain obstacles (like spikes or traps)
EDIT: Answers to questions by Nosajimiki in the comments:
* What is the range of magic spells? - Depends on the spell. If we're talking projectiles then most mages can compete with crossbows and longbows in terms of range. In terms of shields the question is not as much of range but of area (ties to the next question). The shorter the range of the spell the easier and less tiring it is. It is also significantly easier to conjure a fireball and propel it 100m than it is to conjure it 100m away. The mentioned telepathy can be used by ranges up to about 5 km.
* Is it more exhausting to defend a larger area? - Yes. And it works int wo ways. Not only is the shield itself larger and more tiring to maintain, larger area will mean more projectiles imapcting it, which makes it even more tiring.
* Do mages need line-of-sight to attack someone or can they lob spells blindly over the walls? - Line-of-sight is advisable. They can conjure a fireball and throw it over the wall like a grenade - slightly more difficult than just throwing fire into someone and there's no guarantee of hitting the target.
* Can they kill more people if they are packed close together? - In most cases yes. If a spell sets 4m^2 on fire, it doesnt really matter if theres 1 or 5 people in that area.
* How effective is armor at protecting against magic? - The effect is non-existent to minimal. Shields (hand-held, non-magical) can sometimes save a man, but only by merit of being a small protable wall - the shield and/or the person behind it would still need to withstand the imapct/heat/electricity. Protection is at best equal to protection from the natural element used against you, and at worst there is no protection, depending on quirks of the spell used.
* And can mages detect eachother out of a crowd? - To a certain extent. Whenever a mage prepares to use a spell he draws energy, and when casting he releases it. Those fluctuations can be sensed by other mages. How accurate that detection is depends on power of used spell and distance between mages. If a mage in the city uses a rather powerful spell, a mage in siege camp can sense that "somewhere in the city". At battle ranges the mage will detect the exact direction an approximate range, and he can point a finger at the squad of people that contains the mage, even if he's not sure which of them is it.
Using telepathy is slightly different - using it to "touch" a mage or someone in his immediate vicinity will reveal your exact location to him.
**My thoughts so far, which you may or may not agree with**
* Due to its specialization, the formation will likely require little to no cavalry, with possible exception of general's bodyguard, who could benefit from mobility. On the other hand, keeping one of the mages with the general could enable him to give orders at a distance.
* While longswords are the preferred weapon of kinghts, one cannot deny the usefulness of a shield when assaulting the walls. I'd think shield and one-handed weapon could be the preferred equipment of infantry of this case. Limited swing range is likely a good trade in this case.
* I am uncertain how useful missile troops would be. On one hand they could harass the defenders, but on the other battlements offer a good protection from bolts and arrows.
* Due to specialized nature of the unit and good engineering and ifnrastructure in the Empire the unit could potentially have a couple of "permanent" siege engines. A siege tower with iron or steel armor could certainly be useful, but I can't quite convince myself about practicality of pulling it along whenever the unit goes anywhere.
**Measure of success**
To summarize, the question is: what would be the composition, equipment and tactics of a specialized unit for castle assault within the constraints presented?
The unit is meant to perform well enough that it somewhat "legendary", though these legends are of course overblown. It is, however, supposed to be rather effective at its intended purpose, ideally not suffering ridiculous losses in the process or bankrupting the Empire with the demanded equipment.
[Answer]
# Four-Pronged Approach
**Prong #1 Mage Corps**
1. 4-5 mages, one highly skilled, the rest apprentices
2. 200 mage support troops
3. 50 guards
Mage Corps priorities:
* Neutralize enemy mages: Apprentices work in shifts to tire out the enemy magic users employing hit and run tactics. Support troops specialize in distracting enemy mages providing supporting fire and using tactics meant to disturb the enemy mages. This effort will be in coordinated attacks with the mages directing their support troops. The highly skilled mage will then move in to duel the worn out mages and neutralize them.
* Eliminate enemy siege engines: The mages will burn down any and all defending siege engines. This is necessary to be able to set up the unit's engines. This should be trivial for the mage corps once the opposing mages are neutralized.
* Protect the trebuchet corps
* Support the direct assault (from a distance) after the wall is breached
* Relay messages from the information corps to the enemies within the keep
**Prong #2 Trebuchet Corps**
1. 10 teams of 50 (total 500) engineers, woodworkers, laborers, and smiths will build the trebuchets on the site dictated by the commander.
2. 10 firing teams of 10 (total 100) will operate and fire the trebuchets. Team consists of 1 captain, 2 spotters, 4 loaders, and 3 alignment crew. Non combatant support teams will gather stones for ammunition.
3. 10 caravan teams (non-combatant), transport crew for the trebuchet parts.
Trebuchet Corps priorities:
* Crumble strategic defensive locations like towers, barracks, etc. as identified by the spotters and captains.
* Launch diseased or poisonous items into the enemy keep.
* Breach the wall with continuous fire at the specified entry location.
* Making moat bridges if needed.
**Prong #3 Information Corps**
1. 100 Scout rangers
2. 20 information specialists
Information Corps priorities:
* Identify enemy's supply chain and direct main army to disrupt them. Extra coordination is needed for walled city assaults.
* Determine the size of the garrison in the keep, and determine the starve out time. The more troops they have the faster they'll run out of food, the fewer troops they have the easier the assault will be. Report the results to the commander, and develop a strategy. This is especially relevant in a walled city breach.
* Sabotage water supply if possible (higher priority for walled cities)
* Find other points of leverage to persuade individuals inside the keep to abandon it. Encourage enemy deserters by way of bribes, clemency, etc. Relay these messages to the inhabitants of the keep by way of the mages.
* Identify and eliminate attempts to disrupt the units supply chain.
* Prevent anyone from escaping the keep on breach day, so that no one knows how they did it so future enemies cannot develop countermeasures.
**Prong #4 Breach Corps**
1. 200 squads of 10 men each (2000 men). Squads consist of 2 heavily armored swordsmen, 2 lightly armored spear-men, 2 shield bearers, and 4 crossbowmen.
Breach Corps priorities:
* Guard duty prior to breach day
* Placing Moat bridges (if needed)
* Raid the keep
The squads move in carefully and slowly with substantial ranged support from their crossbowmen and back line mages. The primary function of the non-crossbowmen is to protect the crossbowmen, and give them time to reload. The squads have also trained to be able to merge members with other squads in the case that some of them are separated or killed. If the information corps have done a good job at poisoning/starving/demoralizing the enemy they shouldn't be able to put up much of a fight.
[Answer]
I like the answer by Mathaddict, but I want to add a couple of thoughts:
* **Mines (in the traditional meaning of the word) or Saps**
Dig a tunnel to the wall, shoring the roof as you work. Under the wall, dig a cavity, again with wooden beams. Then fill it with flammable stuff and torch it. The cavity collapses, and so does the wall. Gunpowder would have helped, but it is not strictly necessary for a mine.
You can get peasants for the grunt work, but knowing how and working at the tunnel face is a job for combat engineers (sappers). Ventilation by fire, detection of countermines, ...
Can mages accelerate this work? Or at least look through the Earth to tell who is going where?
* **Pavises and Trenches**
If mages cannot blow gates, then they should be unable to blow holes into [mobile wooden walls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavise), either. There might be some combination of that and Vauban-style siege trenches. If mages are your snipers/artillery, then counter-artillery tactics might make sense.
Again peasants to do the digging and fetching, with combat engineers to tell them how.
* **Heavy Assault Infantry**
In a stereotypical medieval realm, good weapons and armor go to the mounted knights. Sure, they're **also** trained in dismounted combat, but if the assault is going to be bloody, why waste generalists on specialists' work? Generalists who fill an important role in local government, at that?
Your Empire can afford heavy armor for a thousand commoners, and train them year-round. That is something no petty kingdom would do. These assault troops are more expendable than noble knights, and they know it, but if they serve their twenty years in the Assault Corps (three, four actual assaults?) the veterans get a cushy job in the Imperial stables or as sergeant in the city watch.
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**Magic is the key here**
Direct assault on castles was a very dangerous, almost suicidal endeavor in Middle Ages. Any specialized team can suffer 100% casualties during an attack, and no amount of training or armoring can help that. Yes, you can train your special team, and it may even deliver you a victory, but then you have to do it all over again.
On the other hand, special teams like catapult crews can enjoy longer lifespans, allowing for a greater level of training. Also, you can go with **Ninja-like teams** which would infiltrate the castle stealthily rather than openly.
However, if you need warriors that are not only strong in hand-to-hand combat, but also have a good chance of survival through the storming of a castle, magic looks like the only option. Your special team would be somehow shielded during the attack and would be able to climb the walls without losing many of its members. Once on the walls, odds between the attackers and defenders are more even, and the team may complete the mission and go on to live after that.
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**TREBUCHET YOUR WAY IN**
For me a specialzed unit of assault would be a great team of engineers and some mages to help. Your ingeneers will be also combatants hungry for more kills to add to the count. Given that the mages get tired of deflecting enemy projectiles, a steady rate of fire will tire them out quickly.
**1 - Preparing the siege.**
Use your mages to heat metal plates to create trebuchets easier, better, deadlier and on spot. Your trebuchets need to be easy to reaload to keep a steady sustained rate of fire. You dont need to travel with heavy trebuchets all around the world. Build better stuff only where you need them. Your unit will be specialized in building these things, they have been trained and have top quality materials and knowledge on how to build the best trebuchets that the mankind can imagine. Also use the mages to have deadlier precission of the projectiles, have them hit where you really want: towers, battlements, doors, arrowslits...
**2 - Sneak and blind.**
Advance a small group of mages and warriors in the middle of the night to a distance where the magic can reach any wooden structure on the wall and burn it. If your mage does reach more than the reach of a long bow your guys are safe. Create a smoke wall in between your troops and the castle to be sieged. Burn the door.
**3 - Stone time.**
Imagine a great wall of smoke and stones coming from different directions. The defender mages will not be able to block all the projectiles and eventually the death count rises. Throw them something flammable too like huge ceramic vases with tar in it. With steady fire even the stone walls will perish as they lack mortar and rely only in gravity and weight to stand.
**4 - Psychological warfare**
This is the main ingredient. Have your enemies fear you. Have the mages drawing the devil face on the smoke wall before the flaming stone comes out hitting the insides of the city. Scream inside the the heads of the deffenders, use all of the simbology available to imprint fear of your unit into them. Have the defenders know that when your guys show up bad things are about to happen.
**5 - Assault time.**
Given the mess of the smoke, the stones and the fire, move your grunts to the walls and have them climb and assault. These should be the guys that die, not your specialized unit. Stop the trebuchets and use the mages to control the assault and coordinate it. After the first troops break in and is relatively safe for your special unit to move in, have them go to better coordinate the assault. Spread fear and death wherever they go, they should be the symbol of death and should be there spilling guts.
You dont want an ODST type of unit to climb up and honorably die. You want a special task force, rude dudes with thousands of battles behind them, mages that eat skulls for breakfast but also sharp experienced guys that know how to keep themselves alive and how to deliver death efficiently.
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## It sounds like you are looking more for storm troopers than siege engineers
I would recommend certain criteria for such troops
## Soldiers
* The Roman military manual that was used well into the renaissance called De Re Militari calls for troops to be drawn from the countryside as they are stronger, are used to the hardships of the outdoors and the city folk are too lazy and soft. Not a big deal but it adds some flavor to the troops.
* As for the numbers, I would devote all of them to assault infantry and like the roman legions just draw in auxiliary troops to fill support roles.
## Armor/ Weapons
* I would equip them with a gambeson, chainmail and either a hardened leather cuirass or a steel one. That would be enough to stop a fatal longbow shot to the chest at all but short range. As long as they live through the battle they can probably be healed, perhaps by magic?
* I wouldn't bother with more than the gambeson, perhaps chainmail at most, for the arms and legs. They will be moving their arms a lot, such as with climbing ladders and if they wear too much armor it would tire them out. Middle to later Byzantine infantry didn't wear anything over their arms and legs usually, preferring to fold the sleeves of their gambeson up as a pauldron sort of armor.
* Make sure they have a reinforced helmet, since that will be taking the most blows. Their head will be the most exposed when climbing a ladder and usually is a prime target, the Romans put horizontal bars across the tops of their helmets when fighting the Dacians and the Normans started making theirs out of a single sheet of metal rather than riveting together the parts of the helmet. Later medieval knights also sometimes wore two helmets, a close fitting cervelliere or bascinet helm under a great helm (The tomb effigy of Edward, Prince of Wales shows this well).
* I would give them larger shields like a roman shield or one of the larger styles of Viking shield. That would protect them from arrows until they get on the walls. Once on the walls they could be discarded for a smaller shield, like a buckler, that is better in close quarters. A Heater shield would also be a good all round choice.
* I would also arm your troops with a mace since it is a good all around weapon and can be used to knock open smaller doors.
## Mages
* I would have your 4-5 mages focus only on protecting the lead elements of the assault. As long as they can get a foothold on the walls, they can overwhelm the enemy mage with numbers. The mages power could be conserved by using armored wheeled covers over their troops to protect them from arrows and only have to worry about siege engines and enemy mages.
* I would also put your mages, if possible, in the same exact uniform as the rest of your shock troops to avoid being marked as a valuable target.
## Siege Methods
* For actually taking the city I would have my troops use a battering ram, ladders, and undermining. Dirt ramps to the top of the walls are the traditional Roman tactic but I worry that the enemy mages would mess with it while my troops were asleep. Siege towers I would also worry about since they are such a large, valuable target for enemy artillery and mages.
* That being said, siege towers could be useful in a different way, they were also used to gain a height advantage on the walls so your archers can shoot down on theirs.
* The undermining would be done by siege engineers and would collapse parts of the wall by tunneling under it and lighting it's supports on fire. The Greeks came up with a curious way of discovering this by placing a bronze shield in the ground and if digging were going on near it, the vibrations would make a sound.
* Ladders are pretty straight forward but the Assyrians were famed for their troops being able to climb siege ladders without using their hands, holding their spear and shield ready to fight the moment they got to the top of the ladder. Ladders also require archers to clear the walls a bit, they don't have to be effective at killing the enemy, they just have to make them keep their heads down.
* Battering rams are a bit underutilized in modern works. Until after the crusades, most castles didn't use mortar, they were held together by gravity, for a major example, Vienna didn't get a rework to it's walls until after the Ottoman invasion in the 16th century. So in ancient times, battering rams were used on walls. They were used on shallow earthen ramps to knock loose the top half of the wall. Then it could be stormed.
* You could still use it on the gate if you want but be warned, gates usually have the strongest defenses, multiple gates, and murder holes. Better to attack somewhere softer.
## Assault
In the actual assault I would go with one of two plans usually
1. Draw up my most of my army and have them attack as much of the walls as possible to spread the defenders thinner. Then have my storm troopers attack the point I really want to take. After they punch through the walls they will move to the streets and secure a small mustering point inside the walls for the rest of my infantry to move through. Once the bridgehead is secured by my other infantry I move them back as reserve troops.
2. A tactic in the byzantine military manual, The Taktika, calls for continuous assault on the walls. Split the army into two shifts and have them attack in turns. Personally I would keep my storm troopers out of these attacks all together to keep them as fresh as possible. After the enemy is sufficiently worn down I send them in on one of the assaults and repeat plan 1.
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Frame challenge! Historically, through the middle ages, subterfuge was a reliable and often used way to take a castel or city. The process:
* find a contact within the besieged castle/city,
* bribe them or otherwise get them to open a small gate or door,
* sneak into that door with a small hand picked force
* open the gate and hold it against defenders until the major force can enter
Yuval Noah Hararis book on medieval "special operations" has several examples.
In the middle ages and early modern ages, there where no dedicated special ops forces to do these things - there where low nobility who knew each other, from these networks the core of a small force of reliable fighters could form, augmented by more or less hand picked fighters from the larger force. Your fictional empire is probably better organized than medieval kingdoms so it might have a "spec-ops" unit. This could be made up thusly:
* A few dozen to a few hundred fighters that can fight as armored infantry with the usual weapons (ranged and melee). They fight dismounted but are trained to ride, to perform long marches quickly and to move silently. I don't think special fighting skills are needed - if heavy armor is present on the battle field grappling + dagger would be trained by many fighters anyway
* A rather large concentration of mages: These help with communication and from your question it appears that a mage is a rather powerful in a battle, if well protected - think holding a guardhouse against the city guard!
* a handful of seasoned spymasters who did this a few times before, these try to gather information and ultimately find the person to be bribed
* the head ofthe besieging army is the head of the special assault force: It is far to important to fully delegate to an underling, choosing whom to bribe and with what is a political decision and the person to be bribed will want a high level meeting to establish trust.
Alternativly or additionally, you could pick up another tradition of warfare: It was (ancient times through antiquity, medieval and early modern age - sometimes until today) customary to massacre the defending forces, and often many of the inhabitants, if a fortress put up a reasonable fight. Think of what the greek heroes did to Troy. War is hell, "honor" in a military context means (among other things) to not give up ones post - bad luck for the town's populace if the commander of the defence wants to make a name for himself by putting up a fight.
The brutality and utter disregard by most combatants for anyone vulnerable can be exploited: The mages can use telepathy to show, in graphic images, the towns populace and defenders what will happen to them if they don't surrender, as well as provide cues on how to organize a mutiny against their uppers. In fiction, warfighting tends to something done among professionals. In reality, it where and are civilians who suffered most.
As a tactic or strategy, this implies the following:
* The attackers are principally able to overcome the defenses, either by force or subterfuge or by a long siege - the threat has to be credible
* the attackers will indeed massacre and loot the city if the defenders put up a fight
* the attackers will *not* loot, burn, rape and murder the city if it is given up - this requires a very disciplined fighting force. Your special ops troop might well be a sort of military police to keep the larger army in check.
* *Not* looting a city also raises the question how the attacking army is paid, again, this is something that IMO better fits a well structured empire than a medieval kingdom.
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## Trebuchets: An Alternative Explanation
While catapults such as trebuchets have already been proposed, why they would be so good was kinda missed. Based on the OPs clarified definition of how magic works in his system, the use of Trebuchets would heavily favor the attacker because of the sizes of targets. A trebuchet can fire much farther than a mage meaning that during the wall smashing phase of the siege, that the trebuchets would be too far away for defending mages to effectively target. So, both side's mages would be dedicated to shielding. However, the attacking mages only need to shield a few relatively small siege engines whereas the defenders have to shield the whole castle wall; so, even if the defenders have counter siege engines they will still expend all their energy much faster shielding than the attackers will.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qk99O.png)
So, not only will the bombardment of the castle shatter its walls, but it will force the defending mages to either not defend the castle from bombardment at all, or it will drain them such that the defenders will not have any mage support left by the time the attackers are ready to storm the city.
If the defenders chose not to shield the walls, they will be forced to abandon the walls to prevent from being buried in their rubble. This means that the attacker will be able to put a large number of holes in the battlements before the actual storming phase making it a pretty fare fight.
If the defenders choose to exhaust their mages to try to hold the wall, then they will still eventually be forced to abandon their battlements, but when the assault comes, they will be at a huge disadvantage because the attackers will have magic to spare but the defenders will not.
As for the troops you use to take the castle or city, you want to go with light infantry armed with shields and short weapons (like hand axes or arming swords) because heavy infantry, pike blocks, and Calvary will not function well in the rubble of the shattered walls.
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If mages could buff their allies, a breach unit could be made of 10 foot tall, over-burly soldiers wielding a ram. An additional mage could deflect projectiles on their approach, or raise a mist to provide them with visual cover. If the individuals retained their buffs, they could easily become legendary as they would be mighty warriors even outside of castle siege scenarios.
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So As I read your question and comment you are interested on building an assault unit dedicated to castle assault. Not the whole Siege warfare which can include artillery, biological warfare, construction of ramp, machinery and mine.
So IMO your dedicated unit is separated in three corps:
A/ super shiny heavy infantry.
B/ Infiltrator.
C/ Intelligence.
A/ Not super original you want heavy armored man equipped for prolonged close combat.
Meaning the toughest armor you can get them with. A shield. Mace or short sword.
In this kind of battle the balance between mobility and protection may flip toward protection. Those men climb ladders, assault breaches...
B/ Sometimes it is possible to infiltrate a few men into a fortress (even better if you can do it before the siege is laid). Those men are lightly equipped men that aim to infiltrate a fortress in order to shorter the siege: For example they can try to assassinate an enemy commander. Start fire inside the wall, burn the granary. Kill the herd (sheep, cow ect...). Pollute water well. Sabotage of enemy defense like drawbridge and main doors. They as special forces (of today) picks their weapons and equipment accordingly to their needs.
C/ Covers either intelligence gathering as counter-intelligence (meaning giving false information to your enemy). You may learn troops position, organization, number. Even how do they react when you attack. This may prove invaluable. If the enemy commander believe you heavily outnumber him and that no reinforcement are coming because you defeated them. It may consider surrender. Corruption may be also involved. For example Napoleon took Vienna without a fight in 1805 convincing the commander the war was already over with the aid of a French spy.
Note : you did not mention your mage as able to cast more support spells such as invisibility, camouflage or reduce sound. If they can do that you may add a mage to the infiltrator. Else all your mage belong to A/.
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Have weapons with longer range.
If your opponents are in a fortress, they will not be able to counterattack you without leaving the safety of their walls.
Burning mirrors, or arrays of burning mirrors, can be arranged to ignite any flammable object that is visible. Ancient romans used pyrography and lenses, they would have little trouble constructing these. Archimedes is credited with using burning mirrors to inflame the sails of an invading fleet. If the enemy has any straw roofs or wooden structures visible from outside the fortress, you can light them on fire.
The best part? Burning mirrors have the greatest range of any ancient weapon, since they merely require line-of-sight to attack, and they are easy to aim because they have a built-in indicator. Stick them on the tops of wooden towers five miles away.
The disadvantages are that burning mirrors only work if the fortress has some flammable buildings in it. A walled city is vulnerable to this method; a solid stone keep is not. It also may take quite hours to light an exposed object on fire, and burning mirrors only work if the weather is sunny.
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Set 100 years into the future, a mysterious meteor landed in the pacific ocean and since then reports of supernatural phenomenon exploded exponentially throughout the world. People waking up the next day to realise they have magical powers such as levitation and telekinesis etc, and there are also towering monsters terrorising cities. Soon it is proven effective to combine conventional weapons with magic, to defeat waves of attacks by the monsters. It has also been established that those involved in slaying of monsters will find themselves getting stronger at controlling magic... Even those fresh recruits training inside a simulation! However statistically speaking, there is no significant difference in magic power gained from slaying real monsters, compared to destroying a virtual one. So why would many veterans shun away from such a free and painless method to build up their magic power?
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This is actually a trope in Asian (China, Korea) webnovels ;) both sudden appearance of magic and simulations in a magic/cultivation world. Combined below are my insights and ways actual novels solved this. Usually it is not a single reason but a combination of a few. Also please remember that how important a specific reason is will vary on a person to person basis - this usually creates interesting clashes of character.
**Conservation of magic**
Magic doesn't come from nowhere - you need to get the cores of real monsters to power this simulation. And since simulations are not free, they're mainly monopolized by elite organisations fostering their next generation.
**Loot**
Magical monsters have much valuable loot, such as scales or bones with parameters exceeding known alloys. If you are powerful, you will want money as well - farming monsters is the fastest way.
**Danger to humanity**
Those monsters are dangerous. A large group (an horde?) might wipe out small cities. Governments do what they can to make those veterans and make them fight in defense of humanity. Both giving them benefits and using coercion. Usually the control comes in the form of even stronger humans who do it out of sense of duty. And those monsters are aggressive towards humans.
**Simulation inadeqacies**
This [has been described by @Plutian](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/170019/25129) - simulation is never a substitute for real life.
**Backlash**
Dying in simulation is not lethal, but has it's drawbacks as well - like being unconscious for a few days, loss of power or some other form of damage. Usually mental. ([Hat tip to @Plutian](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/170019/25129)).
**Lack of data**
Those strongest monsters are too dangerous or rare to gather enough sensor data. Needless to say, more powerful monsters equal faster growth. And more danger.
**Fast healing**
Compared to mental wounds - such as those inflicted by a death in simulation - flesh wounds are much easier to heal. Perhaps your civilization can regrow an arm in a matter of weeks? This greatly lowers the risk of fighting in real life.
**Ecosystem**
There are not only titanic monstrosities which could level a city by themselves, but a plethora of smaller monsters. Those are available closer to the city and can be slain for both power and quick buck. People who wish to become monster hunters will catch those weak monsters for sustenance.
**Exponential growth**
Higher levels of power need exponentially more magic to progress. Slaying monsters below your level doesn't gain you much. With powerful monsters either expensive to simulate or just unavailable someone wishing to grow must go out for a real fight.
**Fame and social pressure**
Who doesn't want to be hailed as a hero? As the defender of humanity? Even psychopaths will admit it's useful. To the contrary, people only spending their time in simulations are shunned as cowards who don't dare fight the monsters in defense of their fellow citizens.
**It's a trap!**
This idea came in comments from @AdrianColomitchi.
Those simulations aren't (contrary to popular belief) ran by humans. They are ran by the monster overlords! Both to get magic from the humans dying in the simulation and to learn how they fight. While not known publicly, it's an open secret in the combat arms - so the veterans will not enter the simulation if at all possible and hold themselves back if they have to.
**Summary**
When it comes to veterans, the most probable reasons would be social pressure, sense of duty, loot and simulation inadequacies.
**P.S.**
Check out Number One Dungeon Supplier - it's a novel about a person running a shop providing such simulations, might have some more insights for you.
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It might not be free and painless.
Depending on how your simulation works, there might still be drawbacks. For example, defeat could result in a net loss of magical power and/or morale.
Also, creating a simulation isn't free. Simulators might be expensive to buy or rent, and don't run for free either. When you make no money from monster parts or loot in a simulation, suddenly half the appeal of fighting is gone.
Lastly, and probably most importantly, simulated experience is no substitute for the real deal. No matter how well you program a monsters expected behaviour, a real monster is always unpredictable. It will do unexpected things. When you only fight the simulated one, you will get good at predicting the simulation. When then fighting the real deal, you might not nearly be as experienced as you expect. And you might have many bad habits which might work against the simulation, but are useless or even dangerous in real life.
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The magical phenomenon is an exponential factor. That means the monsters also appear exponentially... except if you systematically murder the population to halt the growth.
As useful as it is to boost your power in the simulation it also means time was wasted not killing monsters and giving them more time to grow out of control. If they've already had the monster population go out of control once and breaking them took a ludicrous toll of manpower, lives and material then the simulation will only be used for recruits to ensure their early survival.
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**It leads to bad habits that could get them killed in a real fight**
The real monsters have very clever or unpredictable behavior that simulations can't quite get right. The most successful soldiers are the ones who can understand how the monsters think and predict their actions.
Overtraining on simulations gives you the wrong set of instincts that could easily lead to a fatal mistake in a fight. If the monsters are smart they might even know the kind of mistakes these simulation-trained humans usually make.
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**Because that's how it used to be**
Maybe simulations are a new thing, and older people prefers to do things how they ever did. They might believe simulations are not just like real life, they don't believe it really prepares one to a real fight. (Just like how [older people prefers to shop at physical stores vs online](https://www.statista.com/statistics/242512/online-retail-visitors-in-the-us-by-age-group/))
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**Social Stigma**
There are a few ways to do this; but you can make it so that seasoned "real" veterans look down on those that train in simulators. Saying it hardly counts, it's not like the "real" thing, it's a cowards way. They can say the people are lazy or not contributing to society.
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Efficiency!
If you do the deed, ankle deep in mud, the gain is thousand times greater. In the simulation you would need to off many more to achieve the same gain.
So the simulation is handy to turn Enlisted "cannon fodder" into "Seasoned Cannon Fodder".
From there, the rate of advancements needs hands on experience.
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Imagine if you will a star comparable with our sun and a planet like earth orbiting at roughly the same distance around this star as our earth around the sun.
Would it be possible to place a planet somewhere between this ''earth analogue'' and the star/sun at such a distance as to get a planet comprised almost (if not) entirely of deserts and hot as all hell (compared to average earth temperatures,so anything above 48 degrees Celcius is fine) while still having liquid water (just not much of it and if needed not neccesarily above ground) and a breathable atmosphere.
ps. If such a world is possible could it still have plant life? (if need be subterranean in caves or something like that)
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You're basically talking about [Venus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus). Or, more accurately, Venus if it had started out with a lot less water and CO2. Less water and CO2 to start with mean you never get the runaway greenhouse effect Venus has, leaving you a planet that's a lot like Earth, just dryer and hotter. Any rainfall you DID get would be the higher latitudes and that's where you could have plant life, although it'd be evolved for very arid conditions, just like the plants in the American Southwest.
EDIT: If you want this planet to be habitable, you also need it to have a working magnetic field, which Venus does not due to its slow rotation and/or internal composition.
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Models suggest that a desert planet (that is to say, a planet with some polar surface water, but otherwise dominated by land), can remain habitable as close as ~0.75 AU from a star with luminosity of 1 Sol ([Abe et al. 2011](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21707386)). This is only a touch further out than Venus's orbit, which has a semi-major axis of 0.723 AU.
However, it is important to consider that main-sequence stars do grow hotter as they age, so if your planet began life near this inner boundary, it may not remain habitable as the star grows older and the habitable zone expands.
To establish where this boundary lies for other classes of star, apply the equation: $0.75 \sqrt{ L }$, where L is the star's luminosity.
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As was stated already, having less water might allow for your planet to have higher temperatures without triggering a runaway greenhouse effect which would boil away the oceans and cover the world in steam.
And being closer to the sun would make the planet hotter than it would be otherwise.
But there would be more to the climate of a global desert than just having high temperature and low humidity.
Deserts dissipate heat quickly. At night they regularly drop below freezing. Strong temperature differences produce strong pressure differences which in turn produce extreme winds. A global desert without a very dense atmosphere that could transfer heat more efficiently, would have extreme winds between dayside and nightside. Sometimes it would even have global storms.
This would cause much erosion which would produce sand. Now, desert sand has much higher albedo than most of Earth's surface (6-7 times greater that of the ocean) and this is why deserts actually dissipate heat so fast, but the really cool cooling potential of sand on a desert planet is another one: Winds kick up dust and sand which blocks some sunlight temporarily - volcanoes actually do this by ejecting ash and do cool the Earth and it is predicted that meteor impacts would too because they would kick up so much dust. Without rain, dust takes longer to settle down from the atmosphere. So, besides cold nights, there could be cool, dark, dusty days after global storms. Global dust storms are a real thing, at least on Mars - they even hampered the Mars rovers because those were solar-powered. Plants wouldn't be able to get much work done during those days. Just breathing freely could hurt your health because you'd be breathing in all those dust particles.
So, to summarize, not every day could be "hot as all hell", sometimes humans would need air filters (not having them wouldn't kill them quickly, but would hurt their health), and plants would need to be adapted to survive extended periods of low light.
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I believe that in theory an Earth-like world can orbit the Sun at any distance beyond about 0.011AU from Earth's orbital track, thus being outside Earth's [Hill Sphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_sphere) when they're at closest approach. In reality you'd need it to be farther in since orbits are rarely perfectly circular and the smaller the gap between the orbital tracks the less stable the orbits will tend to be. How close you need to get the world for the conditions you want is a balancing act between greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere, surface water, ice and stellar output.
Any world closer to the sun than Earth will receive more radiation, in proportion to how close it is to its star, but if it's also relatively dry, having little water that cycles through the atmosphere, then other greenhouse gases will be needed to keep it from freezing over anyway. This presents some issues when it comes to having plant life. The first green "plants" (using the term loosely) to evolve on Earth [irrevocably altered our atmosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event) going away from CO2 as the main greenhouse gas while increasing water vapour and methane instead. Without large amounts of water vapour to fill the gap Earth-like plants wouldn't be a good idea. However before those first green plants evolved there were [other photosynthesisers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxygenic_photosynthesis), on Earth they didn't get very far but they could evolve further in an environment with no competition and you have plants that don't effect the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
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The problem is run-away greenhouse effect at the inner edge of the "Goldilocks zone". This is defined by the point where insolation causes the planet's cloud cover to approach 100% and its albedo to be close to maximum. Any further increase of solar input causes more water to evaporate but cannot increase cloud cover any more -- and since water vapour is a greenhouse gas, the presence of more of it in the atmosphere raises temperature still more. Positive feedback. The planet suddenly becomes a "cool Venus".
This is the probable fate of life on Earth, as the Sun evolves even hotter. It probably won't happen for over a billion years.
If you try to get around this by starting the planet with very little water, you instead have the problem that you can't have three billion years for life to evolve before all the water vapour is blown out into space by the solar wind and you end up with a "hot Mars" -- a totally dessicated place.
You might be able to get something with plants using some sort of hand-waving (or even by some rather complex modelling). We don't know that three billion years is always necessary to get to multi-cellular plants. Maybe 500 million is enough, elsewhere. And if the star is a bit cooler than our Sun and the planet a bit nearer, the star won't heat up as fast as the Sun has, so you could stay on the inner edge of the Goldilocks zone for longer. I don't know whether a cooler star has a less energetic solar wind that would strip less water, or whether being closer would worse than cancel that and make such a planet lose water faster. (Don't stray into red dwarf territory. The planet would get rotation-locked to a star that close, and red dwarfs are flare stars. Altogether not good for life to evolve).
Finally, it's possible that biological evolution has stumbled into a more powerful negative feedback regulation of the planetary temperature than by water vapour and cloud cover. Perhaps plant life emits a significant amount of a potent greenhouse gas, but this biochemical pathway happens to get progressively inhibited at above 50C. Here on earth, the oceans emit lots more methyl iodide than humans do, and its an enormously powerful greenhouse gas ... but (fortunately) its unstable in an Oxygen atmosphere.
(In passing, I once read that even given a Methane atmosphere back then, Earth should have been too cool to support life 2.5 billion years ago. I wonder whether life back then was also emitting methyl iodide -- it's stable in Methane. )
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While by no means a smoking gun, there is still a reasonable amount of empirical evidence on the notion that socialization and testosterone are negatively correlated.
## Archaeological Evidence
From the archaeological side, Robert Cieri submits that certain skeletal features (heavy brows, upper face) are directly related to testosterone levels. Below is a comparison of an ancient human skull and a near-modern skull.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3NB68m.png)
## Zoological Evidence
Animal cognition researchers and Brian Hare (Duke) has published a well-received paper that studied Siberian foxes and chimpanzees and noted the degree of socialization and testosterone level respectively. It is thought humans might be able to be analyzed this way as well:
>
> If we're seeing a process that leads to these changes in other
> animals, it might help explain who we are and how we got to be this
> way. -- Brian Hare
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>
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## Other Findings
Moreover, in modern times, due to the welfare state and the enfranchisement of women, the ancient narrative of men as brutal, territorial providers of resources is becoming outdated. I saw a study somewhere showing t-levels falling by 3% with each generation. To me, it begs the question, could it be that modern society and high testosterone levels are diametrically opposed...
## Question
Given there is a natural tendency for testosterone levels in humans to decrease as cooperation increases as shown by the scientific findings, what societal mechanisms does my world need to counteract this tendency? This question is particularly intriguing given that the society in my world is a peaceful one. An alternative way of conceptualizing the question is can a peaceful society still retain males with high levels of testosterone (through societal means only)?
## Quality Metric
**What do we mean by "societal mechanisms"?:** By this I just mean, limit your answer to known sociology only. This is primarily a [society](/questions/tagged/society "show questions tagged 'society'") question, and so technology-based, evolution-based or genetic-engineering-based answers are not preferred. Answers that use only sociology would score higher in this quality metric.
**Note:** Of course I take the point that technology and evolution are important for sociology, but such things should not be the defining characteristic of the answer
**Further Clarifications and Assumptions (aka why its not PoB or too broad)**
* Clearly this analysis is not intended to be robust to *every* male. Male testosterone levels are not uniform in a population. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the spectrum ranges from Shakespeare to Floyd Mayweather. Instead, we simply are concerned with the mean/median male of the society.
* Answers have to be given using the framework of societal mechanisms only. In other words, This is important, because otherwise I would concede the question would be too broad.
* The society in my world is advanced and peaceful. There might be an occasional skirmish or conflict, but large scale armed conflict is a non-issue. By "advanced" think, rich, little to no problems with income inequality, or unemployment, ect
* How high is high? I just mean high levels of testosterone in the relative sense such that there is no longer a trend of decline. The testosterone levels don't have to increase exponentially or anything. But they need to stay high and stable in the long-run.
* Don't cheat the metric. You know the joke, if Bill Gates moves into your neighborhood, then everyone becomes a millionaire because that's how averages work? I don't want this in my t-levels. So please don't propose a separate sub-species of male having 10^8 ng/dL testosterone that performs gladiatorial combat for the viewing pleasure of the effete males. That is to say, we want to keep t-levels high for males as uniformly as possible
* Don't worry about t-levels decreasing with age, that's fine, but don't kill everyone who has low t-levels either!!
* Everything else, like technology, can assumed to be earth-like, and near-future.
[Answer]
A peacock style of courtship.
So we have a society with a next to none hierarchical structure and where wealth distribution makes everyone almost equal. Also education and uprising is focused on making people cooperative, and see the celebrity status as empty and vain. A perfect progressive utopia.
But the same society has a peculiar way of people finding mates. Since exhibition of strength, wealth, and even popularity, is seen as primitive, males compete with each other in who is the most beautiful. And their standards of beauty are a bit different from ours. A male is considered beautiful if he's not only muscular, but also hairy all over the body, has characteristic exaggerated facial features, a musky smell, etc. In order to find a mate, males dress in ways which emphasize those traits, and use makeup to draw attention to their brows and noses. Special penis overlays, which would make them look bigger, are probably also in use. Think glam rock crossed with vikings.
On the other hand, baldness is connected to large quantities of testosterone, so a male who can't boast a mane of hair may try to go in the other direction, shave the hair, and cover the skin in tattoos to draw attention to that.
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If the premise is true(1), your answer probably lies in widespread competitive sport (and increasing the reproductive success of successful players), driving competition and positively selecting for higher testosterone levels.
Interestingly, according to [this study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5804043/) you'd probably need to be pretty selective over which sports you promote (power-lifters, for instance, appear to have surprisingly low testosterone compared to other Olympic sports). It also stops short of mentioning whether the testosterone levels are higher or lower than average in each sport which isn't particularly helpful for us.
There's also an issue of whether the testosterone levels of athletes are causes of their success, or caused by their training regimens. I haven't yet been able to find a study for male athletes, but the key may lie in promoting female sport. [This study](https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/naturally-produced-testosterone-gives-female-athletes-significant-competitive-edge/) suggests that naturally produced testosterone provides female athletes with a significant competitive edge, so you can use this to drive selection processes. The issue then becomes trying to get your testosterone-laden athletic women to outbreed the non-testosterone-laden general population which will be hard considering that they will likely be competing through their prime fertility years.
If you can solve that through social engineering, and female testosterone levels correlate with male testosterone levels (I can't find a study investigating this), then you might have your solution. What it actually achieves I'm not sure, but you've got it...
(1) *The studies presented are probably enough to formulate a hypothesis for a study rather than suggest evidence, unless Cieri's study presents an average of human skeletal features both modern and ancestral or there are human follow-up studies to Brian Hare's suggestion.*
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I think you need to clarify what you mean by "peaceful". Do you simply mean that there is no war, or are you going to the extreme of eliminating all violent crime? Christian civilization figured out the answer to this problem somewhere between the fall of Rome and the High Middle Ages: chivalry. To adapt the perhaps overused metaphor, instead of turning wolves into sheep, we learned to turn wolves into sheepdogs. Channel all that male violence into fighting evil and protecting the weak rather than doing evil and victimizing the weak. And if you ever had a surplus of manly adventuresomeness, you might send them on a crusade to risk their lives for glory in a far-off land.
In your world, you need to think of opportunities to channel masculine strength, daring, and independence into productive avenues. Maybe you do away with police and fire departments so that every male citizen plays a regular role in fighting crime and rescuing people from natural disasters. Maybe you come up with a form of "crusade" that makes sense for your context. Maybe you bring back dueling or jousting. Or make it illegal for men to hold "jobs" so every man must start his own business. Or open up a new frontier (a warmer Antarctica maybe?) so that men who want to test themselves can pioneer there.
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There's not one single answer to the question, but it obviously relies on a multitude of factors. Among them are the following:
**Dietary guidelines**
The modern diet is radically different from that of the past, and several groups of food is known to [contribute to hormone levels in the body](https://www.dailynutra.com/blog/top-food-for-natural-testosterone-boosting/). So dietary guidelines that enable production of testosterone is a good start.
In particular, fasting is shown to [increase testosterone](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Pituitary-testicular%20axis%20in%20obese%20men%20during%20short-term%20fasting.) and [growth hormones](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC329619/?page=6), and without reducing [muscle mass](https://www.dietdoctor.com/fasting-muscle-mass). Comparably the modern day trend of constant snacking on empty carbs would counter this.
**Working out**
As others have pointed out, competitive sports increase testosterone. Working out by itself is known to [increase testosterone temporarily](https://www.webmd.com/men/features/exercise-and-testosterone#1). Regular workout should then contribute to more testosterone overall.
**Access to pornography**
While watching porn by itself can increase [testosterone levels](https://www.testofuel.com/tf/does-porn-increase-testosterone/), it could potentially drive down competition when the men have easy access to sexual relief. There is less reason to compete over the women, which again can result in [lower testosterone](https://www.elitefitness.com/articles/pornography-impact-on-libido-testosterone-potency/).
**Medication**
In northern countries, [Vitamin D is added to milk](http://www.dnva.no/geomed/solarpdf/Nr_17_Holvik_Meyer.pdf) in order to counter the lack of sunlight and the natural production. There is also no lack of other supplements in use, ranging from protein powder to Omega 3 fatty acids.
As such artificial means such as medication or supplements should not be excluded. It is not unreasonable to enforce a testosterone supplement to common food groups to combat decreasing testosterone levels.
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When competitive Sports are established in your civilization, it could stop or lower the decline of Testosterone in the population. Not only the participants will produce Testosterone, but also the spectators which enables competitive sports to have an impact on a whole civilization.
For example a Chariot Race, which is peaceful but dangerous. It requires alot of courage, fitness and assertiveness to win. This could apply to many other competitive sports
Side note: Sports that are not team based would rank higher, as they don't require cooperation between the participants.
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Make it fashionable for every man to be shaped like a sumo wrestler. They will have to eat like cattle AND go to the gym for lifting and gains. Sumo wrestler are fat but they are also muscular. Make synthetic testodterone legal and over the counter.
Also make sure that guns are banned and everybody has access to cheap or free fast internet. That way males will be just arguing on forums and insulting each other's moms instead of shooting each other in schools and cinemas.
[Answer]
**Marijuana and lots of it.**
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28395129>
Smoking marijuana depresses testosterone. That T is good for growing your big burly body but on a day to day basis. the gentle herb will keep people peaceable. It works best in the absence of alcohol. Something to consider for our society too.
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I saw your answer earlier in the day, and I've been thinking about it all day.
First off, I'll give my answer. I would encourage you to challenge the belief (by finding sources, I don't believe there are many out there) that prove a strict correlation between violence and testosterone (for instance, check out this 2009 University of Munich peer reviewed article: <https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091208132241.htm>) as well as this (seemingly less legitimate) article: <https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/attraction-evolved/201707/does-testosterone-really-just-make-men-aggressive> .
Aggression is a by-product of lack of compassion for others and greed, which is present in males with high testosterone levels, males with low testosterone levels, women with high estrogen levels, etc. Source: war.
So, to answer your question - males need to DO something. They need a goal and a reason to move and to pick things up and put them down. So their 'aggression' needs to be channeled. I would encourage you as part of your research to look up Jordan Peterson's research and discussion on the matter on YouTube.
As a second point, I would take some time to do research on these responses. Web sites like this (<https://www.elitefitness.com/articles/pornography-impact-on-libido-testosterone-potency/>) which are cited lack any professional references (or references at all) and THEY ARE SELLING SOMETHING.
As a final thought, I spent a while researching the claim that testosterone is higher in men with more facial hair and found that it did seem to be true - to a limited extent. To assume that a man with less hair, though, is somehow less dominant is surely a preposterous idea!
Simply put, the research is all over the place here. Just give the men something productive to DO.
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The answer is actually pretty simple. Provide government subsidized testosterone supplementation along with ad campaigns for moderate usage and the attractiveness of muscular physiques.
We already have synthetic testosterone. It's quite reasonable to assume a fictional civilization has them as well. The benefits are easier gain of muscle mass, improved sex drive and emotional mood.
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**The Voyage**
An idea taken from Traveller's Adventure 10: a social ritual requires an arduous journey with other couples to the "Valley of Memories" and back. The sophont species in the adventure lay eggs which are subsequently fertilized; children that are a product of the voyage are stronger and more likely to survive to adulthood. The voyage was instituted by the inhabitants of the only city on the planet, to simulate conditions of their nomadic past, to aid the survival of said city.
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A setting I've been planning for a while involves a function of magic that can animate objects using the magical equivalent of programmable functions. A wizard/witch/magic-user uses a magic language to define the shape of an object, then adds programs to make it move, and then strings together an array of if-then-else functions to make it perform those motions when specific conditions are met.
Anyhow, I've been having some issues keeping this brand of golem from being taking over every aspect of this setting since they are mind-bogingly useful. They're basically robots that require practically no material cost to make, just the time a magic-user needs to write out all their programs. They should really change the all aspects of society, so much so that I can't include them in a story without making the story all about them.
I need to balance these guys so that they are only used in specific circumstances. At the moment, I'm using golems to justify MASSIVE buildings and infrastructure in the medieval setting, have golems moving cargo in cities (garbage and trade goods, mostly), and golems being used by farmers to grow and harvest lots of crops for cheap. In short, I'd like for golems to be used like we use heavy machinery, but dial back their use throughout the rest of the setting.
**How can I make these golems useful, but not omnipresent in this setting?**
So far, the only idea I've had is making the magic animating these golems require habitual maintenance from magic-programmers in order to keep them from freezing up or moving incorrectly (which results in them falling over and/or breaking something). Checking for degradation and repairing their programs every few weeks is sufficient to keep them working. This would keep them from being totally autonomous, which seems like a step in the right direction.
I also got magic working like wi-fi in this setting, so fuel isn't really an option here. You just got to built a new conducting tower and connect the golems to the magic/power grid to get them moving. This limits their range, but it seems like a really minor flaw that doesn't lessen the use golems much.
Ideas for more flaws or criticism of the basic concept would be greatly appreciated.
[Answer]
If you are looking at this from a programming point of view, most of the software would be functions that make it so the golem doesn't get itself killed and can function in society. Go through an average day and think about how much information you process subconsciously. Just sticking to basic axioms and information consider the following:
* Do not walk into the ditch.
* Walk on the right side of the road.
* Stop at red lights.
* This animal is a pig.
* The city map is laid out as follows.
* Do not throw children out of your way while walking.
* Ring doorbell and wait before entering.
* The three laws of robotics.
The final list would be exhaustive and we still haven't given the golem the ability to do anything useful yet.
You could speed up golem creation by having some method to quickly dump the needed base information into the golem, but perhaps there isn't much room (memory or HD space equivalent) left for it to do anything terribly complicated. So tasks have to be simple, which by definition puts golems into the background of the story.
Or maybe there is plenty of room for additional instructions, but that opens the door to golem sentience which almost always has negative consequences.
Smaller, man sized golems could be incredibly useful, but still limited enough to keep them in the background. Examples follow:
Farming with golems may require a lot of oversight. Okay golems, go plow the field. Now pick out any rocks over 3". Now plant 3 seeds every 12". Now go back in the shed.
A golem could serve food at a highly scripted formal dinner, but it would probably be a terrible cook as it couldn't tell the doneness of meat or whether the soup needed more salt. A golem waiter would also be useless at the local Applebee's as everyone wants their food prepared slightly differently and there is no way the golem could keep track of that.
A golem could deliver a letter to a specific address, but it has no idea whether the person receiving the letter is Count Githrev, his butler, his brother, his arch enemy, or mischievous street urchin. Maybe all it can do is put it into a specially marked mail box and ring a bell indicating a letter has arrived.
Golems in the army may be great at moving supplies, cutting down trees, or building simple structures. But they would be useless in combat as they are incapable of conceiving of any tactics beyond walk straight and punch the guys in the blue uniforms.
From a narrative point of view, think of golems as magical pieces of farm equipment, machine tools, or roombas. I think you could put them everywhere and they'll still just stay in the background of the story.
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`They're basically robots that require practically no material cost to make, just the time a magic-user needs to write out all their programs.`
This is your fundamental problem. Everything needs a balance. Mind-bogglingly useful (like a big truck) means they should be mind-bogglingly expensive (like a big truck). There must be a cost to offset the profit or inflation occurs (e.g., even your neighbor Bob, living on welfare, has one).
Here's a list of candidates, listing the one you provided in your post first.
* Costly maintenance
* Costly production: Golems can only be made from J'enth Clay, which can only be obtained from Old Man Gordy. And he's... cantankerous...
* Costly production: A mage can only make 12 per year 'cause it really knocks the wind out of them to do it
* Costly production: How many mages are there in you world, and how many of them have been properly licensed by the Guild of Golem Manufacturing and Labor Rights?
* Costly reprogramming: you can't just ask the gardening-bot to make dinner for you.
* Costly reprogramming: Golems have a very limited amount of programming space (My thanks to [Nicolai](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/38601/nicolai) for this suggestion!)
* Easily broken: infinite loop syndrome (deficient programming)
* Easily broken: The crate that should have had feathers had nails instead (used for unintended purposes)
* Easily broken: honestly, I didn't see it when I backed my car up (PEBCAK - "problem exists between chair and keyboard" aka dumb owner syndrome)
* Easily broken: What do you mean he's out of warranty! That wizard showed me a guild membership card! No, it was blue! It looked real to me! What do you mean "black market reprogramming?" Of course his rates were reasonable! A crowbar, of course, what would you hit it with?! But it was taking my wife's jewelry!
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**Golems are immense.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/82UZs.jpg)
<https://hiunt.deviantart.com/art/Giant-robot-golem-432368561>
The uses you have for golems (massive construction, cargo transport, agriculture) are all compatible with golems being extremely large. Maybe not as big as big boy here, but big. So big as to be unwieldy in a city or for any operation requiring any sort of finesse, maneuvering around people or buildings etc. Construction golems are the equivalent of large cranes. Cargo golems are the equivalent of ocean going cargo ships. Ag golems are almost too big to be useful because they stomp so much stuff up.
Why must they be so big? Smaller ones cannot accommodate the name of God necessary to animate them. It is a big name.
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unrelated, but a great golem story from the SCP foundation.
<http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1030>
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**Golems take a long time to produce**
Speaking as a programmer, there will be a significant time requirement to producing new code for your golems.
When programming a piece of software, you have to take into account every possible permutation in the local context in order to avoid bugs and ensure the expected behaviour, and that takes time to come up with, develop and test.
This can take even longer if there is no easy way to "import" or "copy-paste" pre-written code into your golems, meaning you'll have to recite the same movement code every time you create a new golem, taking up yet more time and risking a misspoken word causing a bug.
So whilst your golems may be of little material worth, you could easily have a few thousand hours of coding and testing involved. If one guy was working on it for ten hours a day, it could take him a year to produce a single golem. I imagine your magic-users are somewhat rare as well, so their time is very valuable, and you need a lot of it.
I can easily envisage apprentices reciting tried-and-true incantations from a source-book, before the golem is handed off to journeymen who would test functionality and fix any bugs before they are sold. The Master would spend his time developing new code-spells to improve his products further.
Thus, you mages won't be able to produce golems very fast at all, so even if a golem is way better than a human a what it does, there will be too few of them to take over every aspect of society.
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Much like electricity or radiation, magic has some pretty unpleasant effects on people who are exposed to large amounts of it, and it takes a *whole heck of a lot* of magic to create and sustain a golem. These negative effects may be physiological or psychological, but they are received through chronic exposure to magical constructs. Part of a magic user's training makes them immune (or at least resistant) to these negative effects, but this process is too costly/time-consuming/painful for the general public to go through. This would lead to only magic users and limited other personnel being cleared to work closely with golems, making golems unsuitable for uses where they would come into contact with the general public.
If there's still a need for magic to do other things, you could just make the magic involved in golems much more intense than most usages. That way day-to-day magic would still be in the safe dosages.
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The key seems to me that you have to program them by hand.
With computers you can run the program and have it make educated guesses where the code goes wrong. But these Golems need to be build by hand down to the code. Even if you've written the right code, you might not have been accurate enough for the code to make complete sense. As a consequence you want to limit the amount of code so that debugging it or improving flawed writing is easier.
What this will mean is that Golems are absolutely wonderful for simple tasks that are easy to program, but even then would require input and guidance from humans to keep functioning. Complicated things like recognizing which soldiers are friendly and which arent and need to be pasted and which people might be civilians could easily prove hard to do, in fact current drones already suffer from this problem, so imagine how a medieval hand-drawn code Golem would fare.
Golems might also suffer from easily being manipulated for mischief. On a battlefield it becomes very hard to recognize which shouted orders are from friendlies and which from enemies who want to use those Golems against you. In an industry or economical setting it could also prove hazardous. Imagine a spy fom a rival company or city who gives orders to your own Golems to carry goods to an alley so it can be stolen or disposed off, or destroy equipment by ordering them to make nonsence additions like shoelace holes in the bottom of the soles or houses with broken tiles for roofs.
In the end, Golems would still be immense tools of economy, Industry and even warfare, but with severe limitations such as a single "owner" who can give them orders to limit the amount of problems that can be caused. Or that Golems require very very exact orders to function. The old idea of "go get 2 breads, if there's eggs, bring 6" and the Golem returns home with 6 breads because you werent clear enough.
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How about memory problems? The golem needs memory to store its programs, so the more complex the program, the more memory it needs. At some point, the cost of creating a memory system dense enough is too high to justify their production, so that limits how complex the programs can be.
Also, as the spell ages, more and more of its memory is accidentally "leaked" (the spell can't keep track of whether or not certain information is important so it just leaves it there) and the program eventually crashes (maybe the golem literally crashes). That creates a limitation on the amount of time the golems can be running.
This is all stuff that really happens to computers in real life, so it's not too far fetched.
You could also have networking problems. How about the golems need to communicate with each other and with a network of magic system administrators giving them new orders, and the complexity of such a network makes it impossible to have more than a certain number of active golems in a given area.
Maybe their magical programs interfere with other magic, so they can't be operated near other sensitive spells for fear of causing an error. This makes them suited for construction, but not necessarily domestic use.
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A good way to limit the usefulness of your golems is to ask yourself, how does a golem see the world? You say the caster of the golem uses a magic language to define the shape of the golem. I put forward that that this language has no easy way to give the golems eyes, ears, or really any senses other than the ability to feel magic since that is what it is made of.
This severely limits the usefulness of your golems since they would need to have some form of controls since they can not easily react to outside stimulus. The ideal control method is to have a wizard feeding the golem constant magical commands that tell its programming what to do. However wizards are expensive and usually have better things to do than pilot golems all day so most golems come with a paired magic item that controls it. This item is often a stick with buttons on it that cause the golem to take actions. Some larger golems have these controls built in to them and act more like cars than big lumbering robots.
Having the golems limited like this means they are limited to operating at the level the user understands. How many controls can an illiterate farmer remember? What happens when the controls for a golem break? (oh no, my tilling golems control rod had the "walk forwads" button break off, I know have to reverse it everywhere)
This also allows golems to be stolen, and raises the question of when the controls break entirely is it more cost effective to get a new golem or pay a wizard to figure out how to make a new control rod since every golem is probably a ton of bad code written by some one who thought no one would ever have to look at it again.
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If an airliner disappeared in 1966 and landed in London 50 years later, without anybody on board being aware that they had been 'lost', what difficulties would they face?
I'm thinking that when the aircraft took off, JFK was president of the USA and Obama had been around for 8 years. £1 would buy £2.79 dollars. Avg 3 bed house in England was £3500 on take-off but £200,000 on landing.
There were no mobile phones and smoking was widespread, even on the aircraft, but when they landed they'd see British police with machine guns and whatever the event or people they were planning to see, would be history. I omitted to say that they had no idea that they'd been missing for 50 years and hadn't aged. Everyone on board would have been deemed dead, long ago. Hope this helps get the creative juices going.
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# Instant celebrity and demand
A **verifiable magic event** has taken place for the first time in Earth's history, and these people are the main cast of this drama. Everyone(!) is going to want a piece of them. Media to begin with, but also scientists of all sorts. Anthropologists, psychologists, and the medical scientists will have a field day. And maybe even the military.
This will probably be very taxing on them. Not only is it hard to be in huge demand but the strange formsof demand will be totally bizarre to them.
"You want me to do **what**? Pose for that filthy rag?! How dare you!" \* **SLAP** \*
# The deaths of loved ones, changes
Fifty years is a long time. The grand-parents and probably a good portion of the collected parents will have passed away. Children will have grown up. Some cities will have withered away and hardly even exist. And those that still do exist will have changed.
# Culture shock
As stated in other answer/comments: the culture shock. The space race and the cold war is over. Gender roles have been completely upended. Religion has been severely downplayed.
Decency standards have become relaxed in some areas and become incredibly uptight in others; especially the attitudes towards minorities have been severely altered. For instance: to them using any of the N-words against African Americans is still kind of OK, especially "Negro", but the rest of society will gasp in horror as soon as they do.
I think you can expect a great part of them try to find solace in church. And you might expect people to seek out the more strict and conservative churches, as they have attitudes that are more in line with their own fifty years outdated dittos.
# Being "reborn"
A very unique problem, but these are people that have passed out of all the systems and need to be introduced to them again, as adults. There will be some very tricky bureaucracy to deal with as they will — essentially — have to go through the immigration process of their respective countries, while being citizens to begin with and having identities, but that are marked as "deceased".
# Reclaiming property
Providing that DNA testing proves that they are indeed who they say are, there will be some pretty taxing issues about property. Possessions will have been inherited, sold or thrown away. Real-estate will have new tenants. There are no legal precedents here and so they will most likely be left without anything they owned, getting back only that which a) has not become obsolete and junked b) the new owners are generous enough to give them c) they were carrying with them on the plane and that has not been ripped apart and atomized by all the scientists and souvenir hunters.
Or there could be some fairly amusing court battles.
# Providing for themselves
People that fly on a trans-atlantic airliner in 1966 will be upper middle to high class. The question is what skills they bring to provide for themselves. When the money from the initial fame runs out.... then what?
This will be a lottery. Some have skills that are time-less. Other have a skill set that has become hopelessly obsolete. Those that can learn fast and adapt will re-learn. Those that do not have that ability, they will have a bad time. Upper class house-wives... oh dear, they will be in for a shock.
And do note they all have a **long** way to go. They have — for instance — never seen a personal computer or a mobile phone. Interactions with information systems that we all find natural...
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...will be a complete mystery to them.
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1. **Culture shock** - things are a lot busier/faster than they used to be. They'll get over it.
2. **Their own deaths** - they'll have been pronounced as dead at some point soon after the plane disappeared in 1966. There's going to be some paperwork to go through. Since everyone on the flight will have their passports, at least they'll have some form of identification
I know a few people who still act as though it's the 60's.
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I suspect that as soon as anyone realized what "really" happened, the military would be all over this and media or anyone else wouldn't get within a mile of these people or the plane until the military determined whether or not there was any possibility of making a weapon out of this somehow. (Or don't you watch today's paranoid TV/movie plots?)
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Merging existing answers, the priority for the world is going to be finding out what happened, in a way which is safe for the world.
None of those passengers are going to get out of a top-level military biohazard containment facility any time soon. The only two possible causes are an unknown scientific phenomena (magic indistinguishable from, etc.) or alien (non-human) intervention. It's not too strong to say that the future of the world depends on making sure we're safe from any threat they may pose.
Followup flights and research along the track of the plane, detailed examination of the plane down to molecules, charge and magnetism, all that kind of stuff is a given.
But the obvious question is *are they who they say they are?* A new scientific miracle would be amazing, but an alien invasion would be equally plausible. There's no context for something like this. So those people are going to be going through batteries of tests, for at least months and probably years, to find out exactly what they are and what they know. And if any of them happen to die before they get out (and I wouldn't bank against that being non-accidental) then the autopsy is going to take that body apart to component cells.
Assuming they're actual people, by the time they've been imprisoned for a couple of years or so, they'll have had plenty of time to acclimatise to the new world they've arrived in.
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Not an airliner, but the Torchwood episode "Out of Time" in series 1 has a small aircraft with a few of people on board get lost in time and arrive in the present day. From memory the craft might of been from the 1960's or 50's.
Characters had to deal with trying to integrate into a society that was completely alien to them. Their families and friends had died and they had no skills to get real jobs etc.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Time_(Torchwood)>
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This has already happened†.
>
> Even when the responses to the drug were positive, patients were not always able to cope with the consequences. Rose R was struck by sleeping sickness at the age of 21 and awoke in 1969 to find her world of 1926 had vanished. She remained rooted in the 1920s and, as if the time gap was beyond her comprehension, stopped responding to levodopa.
>
>
>
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1885331/>
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† Kinda. A large number of people were infected by a disease and were rendered catatonic for decades, after which they were awakened by a drug.
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## How could they keep track of the "Surface World Time?"
### Parameters:
* Very little contact with the surface world
* Phobia of "just go and check"
* It is needed to know when traders will descend
* They don't trust traders with the secrets of "Dwarf Time"
* Dwarves have a limited knowledge of alchemy mainly metallurgy and aren't very sensitive to magic
I have read a few answers on [How would people tell time if it was always day?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/32657/how-would-people-tell-time-if-it-was-always-day) and this seems to have started me in the right direction. Kind of. I can see how they will track *Dwarf Time* which is fantastic! (Just have to work out the details of it)
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I spent quite a while figure this out years ago, because the problem with living underground is that there aren't any cycles and you're not going to be doing many things that are going to make you develop the idea or need for time.
However there is 1 thing that a civilisation underground would have and 1 thing that Dwarves would have that would lead to days and such. The first is, if you have an underground river and a moon, which more than likely you are, then you're going to have tides and this will divide a day into 4. This is accurate enough for most things a civilisation will do. If you need anything more than that you can easily just divide the tides coming in and going out into smaller units and, bam, you have your general concept of time.
The other thing is funny. The answer is alcohol. The fermentation process takes roughly a month with variations for taste. All you do then is just say that Dwarves like liquor that takes precisely X amount of time to make and because it is such a vital aspect of their culture it gets used as a type of month. This is the simplified version of using this. Study how alcohol is made for more ideas to build on this.
Years are another issue. I didn't have to come up with something to use for years because I built off other ideas to create a calender/time system.
But once you have these, you can use anything else to count to their time. It's just a matter of calibration then.
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What about living dwarf clocks?
When born, the hearts of the babies are listened and compared with the ones of the Time Elders. If their timing are similar, then the dwarf is raised to be calm and able to control his breath and and heartbeat in every situation.
The ones who prove to be capable have the honor of spending years next to one of the Time Elders, adjusting to their rhythm. When the Elder dies, the younger dwarf takes on his place and turns into the new Elder.
Time Elders hit a drum every second, being the minute-hit stronger and the hour-hit the strongest. Together they get to maintain the knowledge about the time that a great hero brought from the surface long ago.
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Source: <https://m.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/2jjinq/is_there_any_way_to_tell_time_underground/>
There are a few different options to consider. Such as:
* Sand Clock (hourglass)
* Slow Burning Candles (possibly a Candle Clock)
* Pendulum Clock
* Tides in Underground Lakes
* Mechanical Clock (if this is in a modern era)
* Water Clock
* Wind Up Mainspring
* Oil Lamp
Out of all of these the most accurate would be the pendulum clock and the hourglass. Hourglasses can be adjusted for times ranging from 1 min, 5 min, 10 min, 30 min, 1 hr, 12 hrs, 1 day, etc. Pendulum clocks would be the most durable and reliable out of them all.
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**Option A: The Water Clock**
[Water clocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_clock) were practically designed for dwarven use. Until the invention of the pendulum clock, water clocks were the most precise way of keeping time for millennia. A primary challenge with water clock accuracy is that the viscosity of water can change with its temperature, but living underground where the temperature is consistent water clocks could be easily designed to keep very good time. There can be fluctuations in underground temperature, but it is generally given that dwarves are sensitive to those temperature changes and so they would be able to tune their clocks accordingly (eg. make bigger/smaller holes).
A fun way to include this might be to hook it up straight to whatever water distribution system you have, such that each kitchen- or bathroom-like area could have its own clock.
**Option B: Heated Object (for Dwarves with Heat-Vision Only)**
Not every universe provides dwarves heat vision, but those that do posses that ability have a unique way of telling time. A trusted elder would be charged with keeping time and, at a specific time, would expose a large central column of a pure ore to a large heat source that would take all day to dissipate. Dwarves in the area could simply look at the column and understand whether the day was starting (very bright), ending (very dim), or somewhere in the middle. This could be very comparable to a human having the sun to look at.
(Attribution to the Dark Elves in Forgotten Realms, who use a similar system)
**Option C: The Pendulum Clock**
As others have stated, a pendulum clock is a very good way to keep time. Depending on the universe it may or may not be too advanced for dwarves, which is why I left it until the end.
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Take your pick:
* Slow-burning candles
* Mechanical clocks
* They can sense the pulses of warmth coming down through the earth
* The air currents in the tunnels that connect to the surface change direction when the sun rises & sets
* A light shaft of quartz that reaches the surface
* Dwarf time = the earth itself has a heartbeat; only the king and his sages have the formula to convert earthbeats into surface days
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Since the need for keeping time is for use with doing commerce with outsiders, they could obtain a **clock** from their trading partners.
It only has to stay accurate to a fraction of a day for the nest expected visitor to be welcomed. And it will become a common opening conversation to ask “what time do you have?” and synchronize.
Once they have a concept of time, they will use it to plan and measure production for improving their ability to have an economy.
BTW, what do dwarfs eat, if they don’t go to the surface to access the food chain? You said it's not magical, so they need calories and can’t get it from rocks.
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I’m writing a novel about a superman protagonist. He is the only super in the world, and the first. Some friendly ETs gave him a skinsuit that can withstand speeds of up to 4,000 mph, and he uses it to fly everywhere. However, he refuses to go through the hassle getting a pilot’s license, since he has nanosecond reflexes and therefore can avoid any accidents.
My question is, does it seem appropriate that some nations would prohibit him from flying over their airspace? Say, some European nations like France, Italy, Germany, the UK, for example?
Also, if they did forbid him to fly over their countries, what is the maximum altitude under their jurisdiction? The Kármán line, maybe? I ask so he could fly over those countries without getting into trouble.
EDIT: Here's one solution he uses to go to Basel, Switzerland, where he has a visa--
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b5vxa.png)
Hell, with nanosecond reflexes, he could fly 10 feet over the terrain, avoiding all obstacles in his way :). His blast wave, however...
EDIT2: For various reasons (long story), the super is very unpopular worldwide. So for any reason, to bar him would make him even more a pariah. For propaganda purposes it may behoove some nations to at least make the attempt.
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Brazillian here. Under brazillian law, since around 1998 the armed forces can take down what they consider to be hostile aircraft. And since 2019, they no longer need authorization from the president nor an air force high-ranking official.
There are some criteria to be met in order for an aircraft to be considered hostile. The TL;DR is that you are hostile aircraft if you can fly (seriously, the law used to list balloons and paragliders as possible targets for takedown) and any of the following is true:
* you don't identify (or misidentify) yourself;
* you knowingly put people or property in danger;
* you pack weaponry, without written authorization from the armed forces.
If your hero has **the courtesy to fly around with a transponder** and happens to be even slightly popular among brazillians, the government will grant him passage and authorization to carry (and possibly use) weapons while flying. They will even spare him the red tape.
Otherwise... I don't think Brazil has much in the way of taking him down (we might have bought a dozen hypersonic missiles from the US and EU at some point), but dude had better not spend a night on brazillian soil. If the military doesn't get him, the organized crime will get him and deliver him to the military. And the usual treatment given to people who think they are above the forces is anal rape with a broomstick. Sadly and unfortunately, as well as much to our national shame, this is not a joke by any means. I mean it. This is so entrenched in our culture that we don't even flinch anymore when this is shown in a movie.
As to the minimum altitude the hero would have to be flying incognito while not pissing the brazillian air force off, that would be higher than 24,500 ft (~7,468 m) above sea level AND not passing through any airway.
Regardless of treating the hero as a friend or a foe, his case is so special that the brazillian government probably would not require him to have a pilot's license.
As far as other countries in South America go, the vibes I get is that the lower than GDP and HDI, then obviously the less capacity they would have to catch or counter the hero, but also the less friendly they would be. Argentina, Chile and Uruguay would probably follow Brazil in how to deal with him, might even team up. Venezuela on the other hand won't be able to do a thing and will absolutely hate the hell out of the guy, as in a scheduled 2-minutes-hate show on TV on a monthly basis. French Guiana will at the very least demand that he be careful when passing by since they often send rockets to space on behalf of the ESA, the european equivalent to NASA. Keep in mind that French Guiana is part of France and thus messing up with it is messing up with the EU and NATO.
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I think countries would not want to make a ruling they cannot enforce. If he has those sorts of reflexes and speed, they can't shoot him down without risking more than they gain. He could take out a 5 million dollar fighter or a bunch of satellites just by throwing stones at them at 4000 mph.
So they'd either try and get him on their payroll, or assassinate him. He would be a significant security threat to all countries he's not affiliated with, and even them if he gets upset one day.
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I'm going to answer this in the American Context.
They would *Absolutely* prohibit him from flying over certain areas. In particular those that end in 51.
The current Altitude restriction for R-4808N (The restricted area that Area-51 sits inside) is Unlimited [Source](https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/airspace/restricted-airspace-what-you-should-know-how-to-operate-around-them/). Deadly force is authorized in that region and considering the Patriot Missile system is capable of shooting down Hypersonic Missiles - and so your super would be liable to be shot down.
I know other nations have restricted Air Spaces for Military use, I'm not sure if any of them though have the same degree of Secrecy that Area-51 has (or the same degree of 'shoot first, ask later'), but certainly they would be within their rights to extend their sovereignty from the ground up to as far as you are concerned - forever.
Also - The CAA/FAA are not known to have a sense of humour or leniency when Safety is involved. They would almost certainly point out that even if your Super Hero could avoid an accident, the other aircraft may take evasive action that would in-turn cause an accident. And should they have a sudden rush of Amnesia and decide not to worry about it (**extremely doubtful**) - all it would take would be for one near-miss and they would absolutely ground him, throw the book at him and imprison him.
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**They wouldn't bother banning him.**
At that speed, they have nothing that can catch him. Being small and non metallic, radar would have a hard time picking him up.
Next they might require his help for a rescue mission one day and finally would they really want to piss off someone who is basically a living god?
Laws are only useful if you can enforce them and against a "superman" they're not.
They'd write him a special exemption cause they so magnanimous and appreciative for his assistance.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ntgwJ.png)
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Governments would not want the **precedent** that superhumans can ignore the law at will. So lawyers would check *if* the super is legally flying or not.
If I jump up and down, or even do a long jump, I'm legally not flying. I'm doing sports. If I jump from a ledge with an open umbrella, I'm not flying, even if the 'parachute' affects my trajectory. But there are legal definitions when 'harmless fun' starts to become an unpowered hang glider or a paraglider. It may well be that none of the checkboxes for a [nanolight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanolight) apply. Or the government argues that *if it quacks like a duck, it is a duck* and try to regulate the flight. In addition to any related immigration offenses.
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Does he have wants? needs? preferences? standards? Or does he just take everything by force and doesn't care about anything or anyone other than his own id?
The original "Superman" valued being seen as an honest, good, law-abiding person. A legal ruling which forbade him from doing something might be interesting from a story-telling perspective if it got in the way of some of his other standards - even if the government making the ruling couldn't enforce it in a toe-to-toe conflict.
Otherwise, if he cares about particular people, about politics, about the environment, wars, or his own privacy, governments that are angry at him could hold *those* hostage in lieu of direct enforcement. Sure, he could break them out once he found them, or create lots of trouble while looking for missing persons, but if he needs information (like where to find someone or who's holding them captive), he's going to need willing cooperation from other folks - and that means they'll have a bargaining chip to get him to comply.
Much of what's interesting about stories & characters comes from their *limits*. Think about what limits the character has - self-imposed or otherwise, and those will tell you how his rivals will try to control him. Those controls might or might not be justified in terms of flight restrictions, and might or might not be enforced the way those restrictions are normally enforced. Governments can get creative and declare him a "foreign power" or "persona non grata" or "threat to national security" or whatever as needed to justify non-standard actions. The more powerful he is, and the more he abuses that power, the more creative other powers will be in finding ways to exploit his limits.
If he has literally no limits, why would anyone read a story about him longer than "Veni, Vidi, Vinci"?
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In my story with magic based around the manipulation of electromagnetism, I need the characters to have a hand-wave electric organ. This electric organ is about 10 cm per organ with the capacity to generate magnetism. The problem is that the organs are large and I can’t think of any spaces that would fit the electric organs.
So my question is if any areas in the human body can fit three 10-15 cm electric organs.
Edit: There are three organs one for creating extremely high Tesla magnetic fields and the other is for creating immense electric currents. One organ is essentially a homopolar generator to generate currents and the other organ is a superconducting electromagnet powered by another homopolar generator. The last organ is essentially a laser powered by electricity created by the homopolar generator to allow for lightning blasts. Also, the skin of these characters is essentially superconductive so they can be immune to electricity.
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**This is a [Frame Challenge](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/709/40609)**
* You appear to be setting the size of the organ without first deciding how the organ operates. Unless you have a reason for such a large organ that you've not explained, deciding its size before deciding its operation is putting the cart before the horse.
* Similarly, you're thinking in terms of *one organ.* However, given the brief description of what you want that organ to achieve, it makes more sense to have multiple organs.
* You mention that it's an "electric organ" and that's likely leading people to make some assumptions. However, I'd like to point out that while electricity (in the form of the human nervous system) might be involved, the organ itself is not electric. It's magnetic. In fact, I think in your case it would help that you avoid the idea of an [electromagnet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnet) and even avoid the idea of an electrically conductive [ferro magnet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferromagnetism) and stick with the idea of an *electrically non-conductive* [ferrite magnet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrite_(magnet)), which is more along the lines of what a biological solution would be anyway.
**What I think you might consider**
It's important to work though what you expect your characters to do with this ability before you design the rationalization for its existence (create the organ).
Let's say there is only one organ, that the organ generates magnetism, and that it's located within the [sacrum](https://www.cedars-sinai.org/health-library/diseases-and-conditions/s/sacrum.html), the bone at the bottom of the spine. What could you do with it? You could be the all-time world-champion of [musical chairs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_chairs), at least as long as the chairs are made of a ferrous metal. And you could, um... [redirect explosive objects](https://youtu.be/__wc97XYyzs?si=DBFjxpcxb0FkTxIU&t=127) by running away from them. I just don't see a lot of practical here. If it's strong enough it could disrupt communications... something like an ~~EM fart~~ EMP, dontchaknow.
But... let's put something in the palm of each hand. Now we have something we can work with. That helps the person climb and hang onto things. It simulates telekinesis. And it can do everything I just mentioned if it were located in the sacrum.
But you have two hands... makes sense you have two organs. In fact, it makes sense that you have *three.* The two emitters in the hands, and the "control organ" that creates the enzymes/proteins/juju necessary for the two emitters to work.
**OK, so where and what size?**
Now that we know a bit more about the whats and why, we can address the where. The organs in the hands shouldn't affect how hands are used already — at least not to a great degree. I'm voting for a spot between the second and third [metacarpus bones](https://murdochorthopaedic.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/hand-bones-anatomy.jpg) This organ wants to be small, the size of a cashew at most, but it will need to be hard (from a fleshy perspective) to rationalize what it's doing.
Does that matter? Of course not. People born with this organ wouldn't even know it's there. They would have been training from birth to simply deal with it. They wouldn't notice it any more than they notice their kidneys... unless someone hits them in the kidneys. Interesting aspect for your story, no?
The "controlling organ" wants to be in the brain where it's close to the action. I don't think it needs to be too terribly large, either. Maybe the size of a small grape or an [M&M](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%26M%27s). But I'm thinking to tuck it in with the [Thalamus](https://www.news-medical.net/health/The-Anatomy-of-the-Human-Brain.aspx), which is the "[body's information relay station](https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22652-thalamus)."
**Now, you might have had a reason for the large organ...**
This is why my frame challenge exists. You might have a worldbuilding reason for the large organ that you haven't told us. If you do, that reason is important and we need to know it. If you don't, or if the reason is story-based rather than worldbuilding, then I invite you to reconsider the design of your organ(s).
But, let's assume that we absolutely must have a 15cm organ. Just for the record, an average finger length (index or middle finger) is about 11cm and the average human heart is 12cm tall - so you're talking about an organ that's *longer* than the average human heart or average index finger. That's *huge* and the only practical place it can go is to replace the appendix or, perhaps, to slide it between the stomach and intestines. There isn't a lot of free space in the human body (as long as you ignore body fat) and that organ is absolutely enormous. Which is why I'm advocating redesigning it.
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# In the abdomen, easily
I disagree with the various posters that there isn't a lot of free space in the human body: the abdominal cavity is spectacularly flexible, and can comfortably accommodate your organ.
A fairly substantial fraction of humans will grow an entire whole new human inside their body cavity at some point in their life, and often will not show any sign of this process until the growing fetus is [about the size](https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/phac-aspc/migration/phac-aspc/rhs-ssg/bwga-pnag/gfx/fig1_e.gif) that you suggest (and the fetus is surrounded by quite a lot of accessory tissue).
There are plenty of reports of tumours incidentally found when they are "the size of a grapefruit" or similar. As an example, a simple ovarian cyst (extremely common condition!) is not typically considered for [surgical removal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovarian_cyst#Surgery) until it's 10cm in size.
On the topic of grapefruits, humans are capable of ingesting rather [impressive amounts of food in strikingly short times](https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/9-winners-of-extreme-eating-contests.htm) - far too short for any plastic adaptation. Again, this is because the abdominal cavity is designed to be flexible. This food (or drink, or any other volume of ingested matter) does not replace air: it nudges the tissues around the stomach out of the way, gently rearranges the bowels, and generally finds space for what needs to be fit in.
In the opposite direction, corsets designed for waist training can comfortably reduce waist diameter by 5cm, upon first wear (before any training) - suggesting that there is, indeed, quite a lot of slack in a body cavity at rest.
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# Along the skin with fat
Though not quite in the description, I've looked at electric eels (a knifefish species) for inspiration. Their electric organs (main, Sach and hunters) consist of stacked nerve cells, which allow the eventual discharge right for the situation. Compared to eels, your organ seems small. The knifefish can become 2m long with a weight of 20kg. Even compared to the smallest electric organ of this fish, your proposed organ is still a huge reduction of the existing organ. And we do not even have any plausible width described!
As we're playing with the plausible anyway, I would attach it to the lowest epidermis of the skin. This way the size can be distributed all over the body. As the organ is stacked nerve cells, you can stack them under the skin from literal head to toe. This will offset the width, at least in an offhand plausible way.
Why the skin? Because the human body plan doesn't have much room for a new organ. There's only a few places I can imagine there's space, and fat cells around organs and under the skin stand out. Both can visibly take more space¹. If fat can do so, another organ can do the same. Fat cells under the skin can be arranged in many ways as well. From the difference in shape between men and women, to athletic people with fat or people where the fat extends most features. This offers a great selection of different ways to build and stack the nerve cells in many different widths, lengths and depths, giving you control over a 10cm or 100cm organ if you desire. All while masquerading as fat cells.
It is a relatively simple solution, with a flexible implementation and easily hidden in normal daily life.
¹See the obesity epidemic
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Make the humans a bit bigger or fatter.
In a big belly there would be enough place for these organs and humans have proven to be able to live with that. Alternatively the humans could also be taller and have a longer waist area to make place for the organs. This might be more astetically pleasing than everybody being "fat", but would also have more implication on general dexterity of these alt-humans.
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How about the **forearms** or **calves**?
For the magnetic organs, placing the organs in the forearms or calves might be promising. There is enough room to place the organs without major body changes.
The forearms are ideal for tasks that need precision, like manipulating metal objects with a magnetic field for example. If the organs are in the calves, then you might be able to use the organ to climb metal surfaces, which is my other idea. I would also put a pair of the same organ in the two limbs, I guess!
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Preamble: If we look at the physiology of electric eels, electric field generation requires a certain arrangement (series or parallel) of electrocytes, but these can be flexible, rather like neurons. Hence, I don't see any obvious reason why for they need to be confined to a particular shape as opposed to say distributed (with appropriate neuron-like wiring) throughout the body.
1. If you've decided that you need three 10-15 cm organs, what do you mean by this? A 10 cm long string? A 10x10 cm sheet? A 10x10x10 cm cube?
2. What are your requirements when placing these organs? For example, you could just plop a 10 cm diameter ball on top of someone's head, but it seems like you want the organs placed such that the person looks reasonably "normal." So what's your definition of normal? For example, the average American is rather overweight, and with a bit of excess abdominal fat, it's not that hard to hide a 10 cm blob somewhere in that neighborhood without anyone noticing. On the other hand, if these characters have need to have a slim six-pack physique and the organs can be flat, you could place them like how some people in real life have implants to enhance the appearance of their pectorals, buttocks, biceps, etc.
3. If the organs have to be bulky and the characters have to be slim, consider that otherwise healthy humans have spare capacity in their organs such that they can survive with one lung (do your characters need to be Olympic marathon runners?), one kidney, less than half of their liver, most of their bowels missing (how long do your characters need to go for without pooping?), et cetera.
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(This is a "hard sci-fi" chemistry question.)
Silicate glass is malleable when hot, stiff at human-compatible temperatures, transparent, and chemically inert. It's cheap and easy to make, perhaps even by [lucky accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass). As such, it gave humans indoor sunlight, bottles, lenses, chemistry equipment, fiberglass, etc.
In a universe where silicon is much less helpful, with properties no better than boron or germanium (whichever is worse for any given application), how would humanity reach those technological milestones (if at all)? What would they create instead, and how available are the raw materials?
(All other elements retain their existing properties. I am not marking this `hard-science`, but references for particularly interesting claims would be appreciated. )
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Where the clarity of glass isn't required, there are plenty of alternatives... lots of ceramics out there and not all glazed finishes require silicon. It might make stuff like [enamel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitreous_enamel) impossible to make, but the rules are yours and not mine so I can't be certain there. There are other minerals that can be drawn into fibers suitable for reinforcing things if not conducting light ([basalt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber) and [carbon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fibers) spring to mind, though the latter was invented for the production of electric lightbulbs which is much harder in your world).
For basic optical things you can use mirrors. Newton was credited with making the [first reflecting telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_reflector), but the possibilities of curved mirrors were understood in the [Book of Optics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Optics) which was written a thousand years ago. Reflecting microscopes have been a thing for nearly a hundred years (there's a potentially relevant article in [Science](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.112.2910.381) from 1950 which is paywalled because of *course* it is) but in the absense of glass lenses they might well have been investigated much earlier.
The lack of windows though, that's much more serious. Not only does housing become gloomier and colder, but working hours for many kinds of task become sharply limited in places where there's sometimes a bit too much rain or wind to have open windows and artificial light isn't a suitable replacement for daylight. And speaking of artificial light: no lightbulbs, and use of lamps and lanterns will be sharply constrained by things like wind and drafts and will be somewhat more hazardous. Early transparent plastics were notoriously flammable, and things like LEDs are less than a hundred years old so that's a broad swathe of time with inadequate lighting.
Whilst there are natural transparent minerals like [calcite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcite) and [fluorite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorite) they are crystalline rather than glassy, which means mass production is difficult because large crystals have to be grown sloooooowly and cannot be nicely blown and shaped and moulded but must be ground. Fluorite is also soluble, so whilst it is an excellent materials for optical lenses you do have to treat it carefully. Calcite has odd [optical doubling effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birefringence) too, so even if you could grow it quickly and cheaply it is not a drop-in replacement for glass. Neither is conveniently inert like glass.
[Transparent ceramics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparent_ceramics) are much better, but they're awkward things to work with which is why they didn't pop up in the real world until the 60s when GE made some lights with [clear alumina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxide) instead of glass. Some things like synthetic [spinel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinel) have only very recently been successfully turned into products.
Acrylic resins and polycarbonates and other clear polymers might get you there eventually (alongside things like [LEDs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#Discoveries_and_early_devices) which started appearing at the turn of the last century), being a little older than transparent ceramics and much easier to work with, but they're still modern materials that are the end product of a mature industrial civilization build on hundreds of years of scientific advancement, all of which would be slowed by the absense of inert clear materials. There's nothing to say that they *couldn't* be discovered in boring-silicon-world, but it'll be much harder.
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Bit of a frame challenge, because it is too long for a comment:
Your civilization would drastically differ from now... because there would be no civilization. In fact, there probably wouldn't be life at all, of if it were, it would be unrecognizable.
The issue here is that to change the fundamental properties of silica (or other compound of silicon) you would need to drastically change physical laws. For it not being transparent strong inert material it would need to stop being a covalent crystal. For that you would need to either change the electronegativity of silicon and/or oxygen, or change the geometry of the chemical bonds. Either would require the change in how fundamental forces work...
One could think you could instead prevent silica from being discovered. But that is also problematic. Both silicon and oxygen are extremely common elements, and decreasing silicon content on Earth would change the average density of the planet and thus our gravity (I don't have to explain why messing with oxygen rates would be a bad idea). And if you don't remove silicon from the environment, silica WILL be discovered rather sooner than later. It is after all a possible byproduct in metalurgy. Not to mention there are natural sources of it.
The only believable answer for why woud civilization is not using glass would be if they decided they don't want to use it, for example for religious reasons. But that is kinda far fetched, as silica is extremely useful material.
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Daily life wouldn't be all that different:
* indoor sunlight - an open window, with a metal screen to keep out bugs, can work almost as well
* bottles - containers can be made from wood, stone, leather, etc. With the right coatings you can make things hold water and other liquids, resist corrosion, etc.
* chemistry equipment - as with containers, lack of glass won't stop progress, just slow it down a little
* fiberglass - a modern material and there are plenty of alternatives, whether for building boats or insulating buildings
And eventually people would figure out how to make clear plastics. That eventually gives you clear windows in houses, and more importantly windows for cars and airplanes. Plus it gives you clear bottles and a lot of other things. Not quite as good - e.g., most (if not all, I'm not a chemist) plastics will not be as impervious to chemicals as the best glass, but good enough for most purposes.
But there is one key difference: **lenses**
Without glass, you don't have:
* microscopes - seriously affecting the development of biology, medicine and some other scientific fields, as well as microelectronics.
* telescopes - seriously affecting the development of astrophysics, from Galileo onward.
Medicine will be the most affected. Without visible support for germs as well as in-depth examination of lower level biological functions - blood cells, cancer, you name it - medical science, and as a result the average lifespan, will not increase nearly as rapidly as it has in the past few centuries.
The computer revolution would only very slowly progress beyond 1950s mainframes, because it will be much harder to develop integrated circuits without microscopes and related technology. The microcomputer revolution depends on integrated circuits to make machines small and affordable. And on the other end, supercomputers depend on integrated circuits for high speed because speed is related to size.
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## You'd lose a lot of ceramics too
Most ceramics feature a silica-rich silicate glass matrix with a dispersed crystalline solid phase. The classic one is porcelain, but even most high fired stoneware is somewhat glassy.
## Sintered oxides provide one workaround.
The good news is that there is a workaround: You could make sintered oxide ceramics and glasses. They would be much more expensive, but you can do it. For niche applications, you'd need to make more pure silica glass than we do today (you still have that, right?).
## You'd probably have a lot more composite cement materials
Composite non-glassy ceramics are going to be much more useful in this environment. Short fibre reinforced cement, etc. It won't be translucent, though.
# In summary
Civilisation would still advance, but it would probably have a much slower progression through the early modern and Victorian eras.
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People used thin layers of horn for windows. Or parchment. Or paper. Something they did not discover was that you could make [wood transparent](https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/transparent-wood-is-a-surprisingly-versatile-material) with little more than sodium hydroxide.
You could use mirrors instead of lenses, or grind lenses out of clear crystal.
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Currently we can make synthetic crystals in small quantities, at extreme expense. We can also find crystals in nature but they are rare enough to be expensive. Since you are already altering the laws of physics to make Silica worse, how about you also make sapphire or diamond easier to make/find? Have large natural crystal formations that your society has learned to etch/carve/carefully-split into useful shapes to replace glass.
1. Clear windows are common, but never uniform in size as they have to match the size and shape of the polished/fractured crystal they were made from. Skylights are more common to let in more light as ground floor windows are usually made from metal screens, or thin paper. The metal and paper can be bigger and in more consistent shapes, with the lack of light being accounted for in the odd-shaped crystal skylights.
2. Bottles are made of wood or metal in most cases
3. Instead of one generic material for petri dishes and chemistry sets; chemists and biologists have multiple sets of different materials for different uses, (various types of crystals, and metals, eventually some plastic.)
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Look at Japan's history. For most of it, Japan only imported small quantities of glass and made relatively little of it domestically. The Japanese found alternate ways to do many of the things the rest of the world used glass for.
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We would HAVE to evolve faster. Our brains would be used more and we'd never even need mobile phones or computers. We would still find a way to make them but they would just be options for fun stuff like music and games and porn when we wanted our brains to rest a bit.
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[Question]
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Jimmy Hopkins (yes, that's his name) is a extremely weird organism. For one thing he is extremely large, but on the other hand, he is extremely weird, because of one thing- **He is an unicellular organism**
You heard it right. JH is just nothing but a giant unicellular organism about 50m across and 30m tall, resembling a giant bacterium. JH has a extremely hard capsule made of cellulose and lignin, to protect it from abrasions and dents. Inside JH is a collection of thousands of chloroplasts to produce food. JH's mitochondria are really nothing more than a bunch of oversized mitochondria that produce a lot of energy. Since JH is so massive, it would die if it were to exist on land, so it simply swims in the ocean. JH has multiple flagella that are about twice as long as the host organism itself, which help it to propel through at high speeds through the water. In short, JH is
basically an upscaled version of an cyanobacteria, except with chloroplasts and a proper nucleus. JH is rod shaped. Sorta like this:-[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/doTUu.png)
However, JH's size and unique shape makes it an tempting target for creatures, which means that JH has multiple predators. So JH needs to have a energy source that can provide sufficient energy for escaping.
The problem is, if JH were to use ordinary glucose for energy, then it would have to use so much glucose that the sheer weight would offset the amount of energy to propel it, meaning that JH would move sluggishly. JH needs to move extremely fast, literally plowing itself through the water. JH cannot produce short bursts of energy, i.e. reach high speeds for just a few seconds like a cheetah and slow down. JH needs to be moving at breakneck speeds for at least a few minutes to escape its predators. So JH would need a more energy-dense substance to propel itself, without just exhausting its energy supply.
Initially I was thinking that JH would use nuclear reactions to propel itself forward at these speeds, but I am no longer optimistic about this due to the reasons below:
* There is a reason why cheetahs don't use fission reactors to propel themselves. Nuclear fuel is overkill. If JH were to use uranium/plutonium for propulsion, then it would self-destruct due to the sheer amount of radiation being released which would cause it to disintegrate.
* Nuclear energy is non-rechargeable i.e. you can renew your glucose supply by making glucose, for e.g. but you cannot make "uranium" to replenish its energy supply, you would need a supernova to make uranium, not just the meagre energy of a cell.
* **Nuclear Fusion**- Do I need to explain myself?
So, although JH is still using the glucose from its chloroplasts for metabolic purposes like maintaining cell temperature and peacefully swimming, it needs a emergency fuel, one that is much more energy-dense than glucose, which it can use during crisis mode, i.e. when it is under threat from predators or escaping a natural disaster, so that it can flee the area.
The final question is:
**What kind of energy-dense fuel would JH use in order to flee at high speeds without getting exhausted quickly?**
**Criteria**
* The fuel should be something that has a much higher energy density than glucose, i.e. that a certain amount of the fuel would produce more amount of energy than a similar amount of glucose.
* No nuclear fission or fusion, please.
* Something that can be easily replenished by JH.
EDIT: Some clarifications:-
* JH does not photosynthesize in the deep ocean. It instead comes up to the surface for brief periods of time to produce food.
* JH is rod-shaped, not spherical
* JH uses the oxygen that it gains from the photosynthesis for metabolism
* JH is not hostile to symbiotes. In fact, it is extremely calm and passive towards animals such as anemones and friendly fungi, which protect JH from predators *(in case of fuel depleteion)*, in return for oxygen and glucose that JH synthesizes, and enhanced mobility. So JH can allow them to "roost" on the surface of JH. JH is only hostile towards predators and enemies.
[Answer]
>
> The problem is, if JH were to use ordinary glucose for energy, then it would have to use so much glucose that the sheer weight would offset the amount of energy to propel it, meaning that JH would move sluggishly
>
>
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Then what you're looking for are **energy density** and **reaction speed**. You need something that'll react quickly, releasing a lot of energy.
Explosives fulfill the second condition, not much the first. Now, to satisfy the first condition we have to fiddle with molecular structure, which is hard (you cannot squeeze all that energy into a chemical compound). The second is much easier to circumvent preparing the reaction and using the appropriate catalysts (sugar and flour, if finely powdered, can react fast enough as to cause *explosions*).
For example: **graphite** (solid monocarbon) has an energy density three times that of sugar (which is about three to four times that of most explosives), but it can't react without *oxygen*, and how are you supplying enough oxigen to a graphite core? Can't extract it from water fast enough, can't store it efficiently into an organism.
Assuming we can ignore toxicity, the best compromise is **2:3 aluminum copper oxide sludge**. Energy density about sixteen *million* joules per cubic decimeter (about the same as [octanitrocubane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octanitrocubane) explosive, twice that of nitroglycerin). It carries its own oxygen, all the energy comes from the swapping of molecular bonds between the metallic aluminum and the copper atom.
Now it's all a matter of *efficiency*, because if even a small part of that energy is released as heat, your single-celled behemoth is going to cook from the inside, whatever the fuel. Uncontrolled ACO reaction can reach a temperature of 2500 Celsius degrees in air. Being inside an aqueous single-cell organism there's a physical limit of 100 °C, but chloroplasts will die at about 48 °C, and most biochemical reactions go awry beyond 50 °C (unless you've got a thermophile organism, but that comes with its own compromises).
Speaking of efficiency, you want to minimise *drag* and *section* to achieve higher speeds and longer endurance. Jimmy ought to be able to compress itself into a sort of eel-like shape to escape, maybe using its own body as a propeller, moving in a fish-like way.
Another escape possibility could be an old lizard trick - abandon some flagelli behind, to act as a distraction.
Also, being monocellular doesn't prevent your beastie from having [cnidocysts](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22689365/) on those flagelli - or everywhere on its surface for that matter. And at that point, the right poison will turn Jim from everyone's favourite meal to something everyone's actively endeavours to avoid at all costs.
[Answer]
## So. Many. Problems.
So much so the only viable solution is:
## Magic
### Why magic.
* Flagellum function well at microscopic, not so much at macroscopic. Scaling up a flagellum by a factor beyond 1000 is just not possible without some major redesign. So never mind the energy source, whats the propulsion?
* If moving by body motion. How is it moving its body? It has no muscle tissue. normal unicellular creatures use affects that don't operate at macro scale.
* A sphere of 30m diameter is approximately 700 tonnes of mass. More then a blue whale. This mass makes moving at high speeds thorough the high friction environment very difficult in terms of energy and means of propulsion.
* How is energy being gathered in the first place? Beyond a some cm of depth within the organism photosynthesis is effectively useless.
* Too large for a single nucleus. Multi nucleus per cell does happen and would have to happen for this creature to function This feeds into the communication problem.
* Communications. If one side of Jimmy is being nibbled. How long before the other side knows. If one side is fleeing while the other is not that will be a problem. Jimmy could end up with one side wanting to flee west and the other to flee east. Which would spin Jimmy like a top or pull Jimmy into two.
* Gas diffusion is a huge issue. Circulatory systems exist for a reason. Creatures without Circulatory systems are very limited in size. Long spindly body forms can compensate for lack of circulatory system.
* Huge bursts of metabolic activity mean large increases of temperature. Without a circulatory system, or some other tricks, cooked insides us very likely.
* Without multicellular tech the ability to have specialized organs/organelles is much harder. Systems to handle high energy fed to a large propulsion system normally has dedicated hardware.
* How much nibbling should be tolerated before extreme flee is activated? Too much and Jim is dead. Too little and Jim is vulnerable to the next nibbler.
* Sudden accelerations will put strain on a unicellular organism, how will it avoid being shredded by its own escape mechanism?
* Fast movement is not defense against infections. Jim has minimal defense against bacterial or fungal infection.
* What is preventing fleeing onto shore, into sharp rocks etc?
### Problems with transport.
The limitations to creatures moving really fast is more often limitation of thermal dissipation and getting fuel in and waste out. If you 'feel the burn' that is an issue of not getting enough fuel in quick enough. That is, in my opinion the fuel is not the problem.
This will be a huge problem for a unicellular organism. Say it did have a pocket rich in fatty acids and glucose. If that is used that to power its propulsion system. How is the carbon dioxide disposed of? How will it get fresh fuel? How did it get oxygen in there? How will it dispose of the heat? temperatures in excess of 40c over many cubic meters will take a while to dissipate even while in a water environment.
That is to say how Jimmy gets ANY energy source in place is bigger issue then better energy source.
### Conclusion:
Using magic and or narrativium all these problems go away, it just works.
Alternatively you will have to create a rule set for your universe that has different physics that will allow Jimmy Hopkins to be plausible.
[Answer]
In the book [The Legacy of Heorot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legacy_of_Heorot) The antagonist creature would use a a gland in its body to release super oxygenated blood into its circulatory system. Doing what Nitrous Oxide does to a combustion engine. The downside was that all the heat generated by the activity would overheat the creature an could only do so for short periods of time. And could never be far from water.
Perhaps not being a long term source for energy, a hydrogen peroxide like producing gland would give your creature the extra boost it needs by more efficiently burning the fuel it already uses. Ie: Instead of a different source, an additive to more efficiently use what it has.
The downside, the process does produce prodigious amounts of heat, but being a water living creature this is ok, as long as it does not strey into very warm tropical waters.
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# Learn to squeeze yourself
Sugar isn't the problem, it's extremely energy dense. The problem is your shape is terrible for swimming through water.
[Bacteria can squeeze themselves into small spaces](https://scienceillustrated.com.au/blog/medicine/bacteria-that-can-squeeze-through-small-spaces/) so Jimmy Hopkins can do the same. Squeeze yourself into a streamlined shape that doesn't need to displace a massive amount of water and you can massively increase your speed and reduce the energy needed to move. This also allows you to dodge attacks by rapidly changing your shape in unpredictable ways.
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## Nitrated sugars
A lot of people don't realise that well over half of our most commonly used explosives are just nitrated organic compounds.
Nitroglycerine = nitrated glycerine.
TNT = nitrated toluene.
Guncotton = nitrated cellulose
Etc.
You can pretty much pick your reactive molecule and biologically nitrate it. Sugar nitrates are easy to make, and fairly stable unless you purify them or catalyse their breakdown.
Now, JH may have reservations about being filled with what is very much like nitroglycerine. What giant, self aware bacterium or amoeba wouldn't?
But he need not worry. There are plenty of ways he can use it:
1. Store and then metabolise it at low concentration relatively normally using some amazing enzyme that captures almost all the energy.
2. Concentrate it a bit and let it deflagrate, generating heat for some sort of jet pump, or a gas jet, or to thermally activate some sort of high-T super fast glucose metabolism, eating through his stores in seconds.
3. Metabolise it however you like but swim upwards. Don't release the gases. Retain them, swelling his carapace, displacing water, resulting in huge upwards force.
4. Really concentrate a water insoluble species. Poop it out. Release a catalysing enzyme. Smile,you son of a paramecium! KABOOM! Weren't expecting that from a monocellular lifeform, were you, Jaws?
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**Pressurized water.**
JH is big. Within JH is an elastic organ that it pumps full of water. THis organ is also big and holds a lot of water. This accumulation and pressurization is gradual and done with standard biologic mechanisms.
The water is under pressure and the pressurized water is the storage medium for energy. To escape, JH releases the pressure and uses the water as jet propulsion.
As a bonus, the water in the pressure organ is not just water. JH synthesizes and accumulates certain additives which are also in the water. When the water comes jetting out, it is generally in the direction of a predator and would-be pursuer. The additives in the water cause would-be pursuers to become discouraged, and inclined to move in another direction.
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In our real world we have been blessed with many mechanical inventions throughout the ages. Wind mills, water driven sawmills, rope and pulley systems, cranes, marvels in clockwork and gearing such as the Antikythera mechanism or many ancient automatons. In the real worlds case large scale implementation of these technologies with further complexities was not viable due to cost, reliability, labor, resource availability etc.
For a fictional setting similar in style and current technology to 1200-1400 AD to have a revolution that allows for this much wider implementation and complexity of these mechanical technologies what would need to be different, what factors would contribute to this revolution?
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## Massive wealth.
Scientists are extremely wasteful and don't produce useful goods most of the time. In fact, with their experiments they often use up a huge amount of stuff. For a scientific revolution you need a place with a massive surplus of wealth so that the wealthy can afford to experiment and advance science.
## Competition.
A society which has no competition has no reason to advance. Guilds and established merchants will strangle progress so they can maintain their monopolies and experts. You need some external challenge to force technology to develop faster.
## No slavery.
Slavery massively inhibits technology. You can replace technology with bodies, using slave labour to support your elites or bolster your armies. You need to not have slavery be a big thing.
## A lack of major external challenges.
Rival empires can, while one nation focuses on economic development, focus on military development. They can bribe enough experts from your nation to support weapons and mass slaves to invade and take your stuff.
## A religion and culture supportive of science.
You need your culture to support spreading knowledge, advancing science, and experimentation.
## The solution is an Archipelago
There's some very rich island nation, with countless cities within vying for power. Their external enemies have trouble reaching them due to the sea, and the island nation has massive amounts of trade. This is similar to Britain, or Italy, both heavy industrial revolution islands. They have a culture that values science, vast wealth, and fund vast efforts to explore science faster.
[Answer]
* **Accumulation of capital for investment**
Cutting millstones or maintaining ponds for watermills would be a significant charge to the local economy, but much of it could be funded the old-fashioned way. *"Each serf owes the manor a fat pig on Michaelmas, and each serf owes two weeks of labor during planting, three weeks at harvest, and two weeks in between."* Some of this labor could be clearing culverts.
The capital for larger investments might have to be cash savings, not in-kind contributions. Note that the changeover did happen at the end of the period you mention, you'd have to accelerate it by a few centuries.
* **Training of engineers**
During medieval times in Europe, scholars started with the classic [liberal arts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education#History). This is not incompatible with a scientific worldview, but there would have to be a way for a watchmaker, say, to gain academic recognition. Which leads to:
* **Break or modify the guilds**
Craft guilds were designed as the professional association of master craftsmen, protecting their income and way of life. Each guild watched their ancient privileges, and came down hard on interlopers who would dabble in their craft without guild permission. An engineer might trample over the old boundaries.
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Not expecting this to be a complete answer but, If I had to pick one single thing that spurred the spread of mechanization, the first thing that comes to my mind would be standardisation practices. When tech first tech entered the the world others picked up on the ideas and implemented them the best way they knew how. The tech breaks down, it is made of single hand made parts held together by screws with god knows what rate or twist, springs fasteners etc all made in differing unique ways.
In the same way, currency and weight standards made trade explode. Or even a written language made civilisation expand exponentially. Manufacturing standards accelerated the spread of manufacturing tech many fold over.
Immagin had there been standards the maker of the Antikythera Mechanism would have followed or pioneered cutting the gears of the device...
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The most important cause of a technological revolution is improved communication. That improved communication allows for technological advance to build on previous advances. This improved communication is built on both widespread basic education and easier dissemination of information (printing instead of hand copied books / pamphlets).
The industrial revolution is built upon a number of science advances that were melded together into industrial technologies. Without the rapid communications that came from the movable type printing press, the engineers would not have known what others were doing. Scientists could still write letters to each other and thus, science was moving ahead. But without a lot more people knowing about the science, industrial technology would not move forward quickly.
Compare all the inventions that Leonardo da Vinci created with how many moved into regular use. Because he was not able to get his ideas widely communicated, almost none of them got used. He was able to test some of them with a wealthy patron, but they didn't go any further. He had wealth backing him. His backers had competition (and battles). His culture didn't have slavery. But other people were not able to take his inventions and build upon them.
Thus, today, with the faster communications, we are experiencing a flood of industrial changes.
So, to have an industrial revolution earlier, have faster communications earlier.
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One thing that is easy to overlook today is the viewpoint of society before 1400 was so very different from ours. From our vantage point in the twenty first century it is easy to miss the importance of the first voyage of Columbus. Today we take discoveries for granted and many assume that discovery must have always been a feature of human life even if the pace of discovery was a lot slower in centuries past. But this was not how it appeared at the time.
Before Columbus and other early explorers, there was no clear cut concept of “discovery” at all. The consensus from the religious traditions at that time was that there was nothing new under the sun. Theology was a matter of interpreting the bible and everything of importance could be found in its pages. If God had wanted us to know how a spider weaves its web it would have been explained in the bible.
Natural philosophy was a matter of interpreting the works of Aristotle and other Greek and Roman authors who had already described everything else about the world that was of interest. But yet scant attention was paid to the facts and no consideration was given to testing anything.
This way of thinking was so entrenched that even when old ideas were shown to be false many chose to simply ignore any such findings. Although there were discoveries and inventions before the time of Columbus these tended to be so infrequent and spread so slowly that they were not “noticed”.
The slow introduction of gunpowder was not seen as revolutionary at the time, because it was far less effective as a weapon in these early days and artillery in the form of the ballista and catapult had been known since Roman times and were similarly effective. It was also not the sort of item that most people would have encountered in everyday life.
Even Galileo writing as late as the early fifteenth century still lacked the Latin words to describe what he had found by looking through his telescope having to fall back on convoluted phrases best translated as “I have seen things unknown to all astronomers before me”. The word “discover” first appeared in its new sense in English in 1554 and in other languages a little before or after that.
But after Columbus there was direct proof that human history was not simply a history of repetitions but could become a history of progress and radical change.
As well as forging the very concept of discovery itself, the voyages of Columbus and other early explorers forced an acknowledgment that that the idea that there was nothing new under the sun was simply wrong and that far from knowing everything of importance, mankind was deeply ignorant about the natural world. Both of these ideas were fundamental to the scientific revolution because with the admission of ignorance came the possibility of discovery and progress. This was a foundational cause of change, although it took a long time to fully take hold.
As a further illustration: when William Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar in 1599 he made the small error of referring to a clock striking, although there were no mechanical clocks in ancient Rome. And in Coriolanus in 1608 there is a reference to the points of the compass, but the Romans did not have the nautical compass.
These errors reflect the fact that when Shakespeare and his contemporaries read Roman authors they encountered constant reminders that the Romans were pagans not Christians, but few reminders of any technological difference between Ancient Rome and Renaissance Europe.
Shakespeare quite reasonably imagined ancient Rome just like contemporary London but with sunshine and togas. He had no reason to believe in progress. Shakespeare understood the variety of men but not the variety of historical eras. He had plenty of knowledge of history but no notion of irreversible historical change.
So if the voyage of Columbus and other explorers could have happened earlier the modern world would have probably started to emerge at an earlier date. Another vital item was the metal type printing press and associated techniques, which although also slow to take off, eventually allowed knowledge to be stored more permanently and distributed to a much wider audience much more quickly allowing challenges to the established order such as the protestant reformation and many new ideas in astronomy.
[Answer]
**Access to Inexpensive Energy**
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A lot of the above answers focus on social and economic aspects.
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There definitely needs to be a market, an interest to motivate the 'mechanical revolution', but on the technology side access to energy and metals is a big one.
Since the world is not interested in a steam engine (coal fired revolution) like ours. It might be motivated by something else like textiles, where there is a great benefit to having a prime mover. For example, a water driven textiles mill. Some of which were multi story very large buildings. There were even [tidal][2] mills that only worked a couple of hours a day.
Even as late as the 1870's watermills still produced 2/3 of the power available for British grain milling. So I would argue that it is a pretty efficient technology.
Wind power is a little more problematic, but of course in some places were also used to grind grain.
Geothermal is very strongly location dependent, and may places where geothermal is available, geysers, hot springs, volcanic vents it may be inhospitable.
In any case, I would make the pitch that in some world setting, if they was motivation an interesting mechanical revolution could be stimulated by innovations in managing the flow of water and extracting the power, or favorable steady wind, or some other source of energy that could result in having an inexpensive prime movers for industry.
[Answer]
The central requirement is that mechanization must be *profitable*. Everything else follows from there.
The necessary condition for *that* is that labor must be expensive. Cheap labor, let alone slavery or serfdom, discourages automation. This is a result of historical research into Ancient Greece and Rome: All the knowledge was there — waterworks, even steam engines. But nobody had a profitable use for it. This is still true today: Even in fully industrialized nations like the United States automation is prevented by the availability of cheap labor, as laid out in this [article in the New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/28/business/economy/immigration-california-farm-labor.html?smid=url-share):
>
> Immigrant guest workers [...] are costlier than the largely unauthorized workers they are replacing. The adverse effect wage rate in California this year is \$17.51, well above the \$15 minimum wage that farmers must pay workers hired locally.
>
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> So farmers are also looking elsewhere. “We are living on borrowed time,” said Dave Puglia, president and chief executive of Western Growers, the lobby group for farmers in the West. “I want half the produce harvest mechanized in 10 years. There’s no other solution.”
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This example shows, in turn, what is necessary to end cheap labor: Emancipated, self-determined workers. In other words, a more equal society. Only if and when you cannot exploit undocumented workers any longer, machines become attractive.
Therefore, short of a [time traveler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall): You must end serfdom and perhaps even absolute monarchy and clerical rule; you probably need a revolution, an uprising, a public realization of the kind Brecht formed into a poem:
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A Worker Reads History
Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?
Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?
So many particulars.
So many questions.
```
[Answer]
## On a society level, 3 things are needed for scientific/engineering innovation to flourish
1. **Literacy and education**, raising a scientist has a chance component, you need widespread literacy and education to so that the people with the potential to be scientists are given the chance. It is not coincidence the are age of enlightenment followed the invention of the advanced printing presses. if a million people read about mechanics there is far more likely to be one that sees a practical use for it than hundred people can read about mechanics. Innovation is not about a few geniuses, it is a history of millions of different people each having ONE good idea. A patent system can help this along, if people are encouraged to disclose how their inventions work they are more likely to find new applications.
2. **Liberty**, scientist need to be free to say things without being put to death or becoming a social pariah. Discover is all but meaningless without being about to communicate it. People from vastly different walks of life need to be free to mingle and exchange ideas. without this the very root of science, empiricism, is unlikely to spread, empiricism strongly undermines many forms of authority so it has a hard time flourishing if they can crush it.
3. A **strong merchant class**, sooner or later discoveries need to be applied, or they get lost and forgotten. which means you need people who value innovation over things like social status or aristocratic bloodlines. It is not coincidence so many renaissance inventors invented wonderful toys and not steam engine pumps. Aristocrats were the ones who could pay and they did not care about streamlining production costs, but instead about showing off. Merchants also encourage competition, if I can make a better X then I will make more money, instead of an aristocrat who does not care about making grain 10% cheaper because he can just tax cheaper grain to keep his stock competitive. this is why a non-protectionist government helps, but you get that anyway with strong merchants.
Your issue is these three things are the exact opposite of what you saw in medieval Europe; Printing and education was rare, merchants were weak compared to aristocrats and the church, and publishing a discovery either did not like could and did get you put to death.
[Answer]
#### A pandemic
The population is drastically reduced as it happened during the plague. The result could be:
* Weakening of the authority opens the way to new ways of thinking.
* Scarcity of workers forces to find new solutions the reduce their need.
* Disruption of the economy weakens the domination of the big families opening the way for small enterprises keener to try something new.
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On an alien Dyson Sphere up in space, there is a blackish-blue slime that is everywhere on the sphere. It's slippery to the touch and is basically a combination of cleaning fluid, disinfectant, and lubricant.
Its purpose on the Dyson sphere is three-fold:
1. it keeps stuff clean and ensures stains don't occur, much like 409 cleaner,
2. it serves as a disinfectant, stopping the spread of nasty pathogens and parasites, and
3. it serves as a lubricant, reducing wear-and-tear on the mechanisms of the sphere.
My question is basically this: **What would a combination of cleaning fluid, lubricant, and disinfectant taste and smell like?** For the sake of simplicity, I'm talking about a stable mixture of equal parts chlorine bleach, lubricant oil, and ethyl alcohol.
Note that I'm not asking how this substance came to exist: I already have an (admittedly pretty hand-wavy) explanation for that. I'm just asking what it would smell and taste like.
In case you need to know, I want to know what it tastes like because one of the characters in my story gets a mouthful of the stuff.
[Answer]
**It would smell like chlorine**
Of the three substances, bleach is the one with the strongest and most distinctive smell, and it would easily overpower the relatively delicate smell of ethanol and the faint smell of oil.
**It would taste salty and metallic**
That's mostly your own blood, flooding your tastebuds as your delicate oral mucosa is badly burnt and damaged. Chloride ions taste salty too, but honestly, you're too busy bleeding from your orifice(s) to notice.
**It would sound like *AAAAAaaaaaAaargh***
As above. *Don't drink this stuff.*
Incidentally, I'm not even sure the mixture you have in mind would be any use for what you want. Bleach works in large part by being very reactive; lubricant by being very inert. You can use ethanol as a solvent to force them to mix despite one being very polar and the other not at all, but I suspect you'd end up with a smelly, toxic, greasy mess that does neither job particularly well.
[Answer]
# Raspberries
I mean, why not?
Aliens made it. Its actual composition probably has *nothing* to do with bleach, oil or alcohol, even though it has the same properties. It doesn't have to smell like any of those. It can have an artificial odor.
Just like we humans insist on giving our cleaning products funny odors like "cut grass", "clean laundry" or "hot chocolate", aliens may as well decide to make it smell like whatever they want, and they picked something that smells just like raspberries.
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Unless you want to venture on the path of describing the taste like a sommelier would do with a wine, you can just go with something along the line of
>
> it tasted and smelled like chlorine bleach, lubricant oil, and ethyl alcohol mixed together
>
>
>
Each of those has a smell which is pretty well defined and characteristic, so that would be enough for describing it.
[Answer]
**Like being fifteen**
And drinking Aunty's moonshine under the Spar with Ish and Zoos and Sputs. Zoos had an agreement with Aunty and she paid him with moonshine. Moonshine from batches that she couldn't sell because her distillation regimen had gone poorly, and there were too many hints of the moonshine's origins.
That is how the slime tastes now. Like tooth scum so tenacious you can't lick it off and so you have to drink it off. Like burning in the nose that made everything smell sweet, even Ish. Like a bitter soapy funk, and almost like the hot sauce Zoos used to add to cover up that funk. Like the end of childhood, drinking with your buds, talking shit under the Spar, watching the world below getting ready to swallow you up.
[Answer]
## cleaning fluid
Fluids don't actually *clean* on their own. They help with cleaning by dissolving sticky stuff and washing away suspended particles.
That tells me the fluid is runny and constantly flowing. Not necessarily quickly, but constantly in a direction. From wherever it is generated to wherever it is disposed. It is probably reprocessed, dirt and waste is removed and handled by larger facilities.
## disinfectant
A disinfectant is basically something that is toxic to microbes and parasites, but not *excessively* toxic to the larger lifeforms that use the disinfectant.
Mostly that difference in toxicity is due to the fact that the larger lifeforms don't bathe in it.
Since it's magic alien tech, this tells me it *doesn't* smell that much. Smells are gasses of whatever is in the thing that smells, which in this case is toxic; you don't want it in your nostrils.
Some smell would be good though, just enough to warn you that you shouldn't drink it.
Incidentally, adding ethanol to bleach in order to make it a "disinfectant" is a bit like adding rat poison to a dirty nuke to make it "poisonous".
## lubricant
Pretty much any liquid works as a lubricant, as long as it coats the surfaces well. Since it already cycles around the station, all that is really needed is that anything that needs lubrication is designed to use the fluid.
Possibly it implies a high heat tolerance too.
# WD-40
It's essentially just a very fluid oil with the infrastructure to cycle it everywhere. Nothing very high tech at all.
The cleaning part is mostly about how you use it, disinfectant just means it's toxic and lubricant is just about getting it where it is needed.
The one high tech aspect of it is that it needs to be stable enough that the atmosphere in a room covered in the stuff should remain breathable.
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On a planet similar to Earth, is is possible for all living creatures to have bioluminescence? If yes, what role would it fulfill?
What other traits would be useful in such an environment?
Larger eyes? Bioluminescence camouflage? Seasonal bioluminescence? Communication?
[Answer]
**Reproductive fitness via [Fisherian runaway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway)**
Fisherian runaway is a theory of sexual selection in which traits that are initially useful as a signal of fitness become exaggerated over many generations of selection. The classic example is the elaborate ornamentation of male peacocks: tail-feathers that are not useful for flight, but useful to attract mates.
In your world, perhaps **bioluminescence was used early on** in the evolution of animals **as a signal of reproductive fitness**, and became entrenched in that role via Fisherian runaway. As the creatures diverge into different species, they would display different colours/configurations to differentiate themselves. This would explain its prevalence in animals. Following from this, plants that want to be pollinated by particular animals might develop flowering bodies that mimic the bioluminescent signals of the appropriate species.
*A couple things to consider*: Bioluminescence is very expensive, energy-wise. If you want to dig into hard-science, you might want to think of reasons why it, and not a less expensive means of attracting mates, became so prevalent. Perhaps it initially evolved in a creature living in a deep-sea environment? Perhaps the originating species courted/mated nocturnally? In any case, for the originating species and for extant ones, you will probably want to consider how they hide from predators. (Can they turn off their luminescence? Would they try to camouflage against a plant's bioluminescence?)
[Answer]
1. **Glowing sessile things glow to attract insects.**
[Some mushrooms glow, and here's why](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150319123956.htm)
I thought this was interesting because I did not realize fungi used insects to carry spores around - I thought they were strictly windblown. But apparently these fungi glow to attract beetles that carry off their spores.
I am wondering now why some flowers don't glow. The whole point of flowers is to attract insects. I bet they do, but they glow in wavelengths that are hard for us to see.
2. **In a glowy world, animals glow for camouflage.**
If all the plants around you are glowing and you are not, you are going to stick out. You will be a dark silhouette moving against a glowy background. Bad if you are prey trying to hide. Bad if you are predator trying to be sneaky. The answer is to glow to match your background. Prey and predator alike will want to be cryptic and in a glowy world that means glowing.
[Answer]
## Communication among subcomponents of a Gaia-type life form:
Let's get an out-there option, and envision a biosphere based on cooperative organisms working together for common purpose (a Gaia-type biosphere). Let's further assume they aren't close enough all the time to use chemical signals in every environment (although this might be an important factor). All the sub-components need to be able to understand how to coordinate complex behaviors amongst less-that-sentient species, but possibly at the command of brain-type hive mind subcomponents. The simplest-functioning components might not be much smarter than a modern industrial robot (essentially hands receiving programming and carrying out tasks). Finally, let's assume the species in this collective are highly visual.
The key to coordinating this kind of behavior? They all communicate via light. In the day on land, species can see signals in the form of light and dark spots, but at night and in the water (especially deep sea) bioluminescence becomes critical for all these species to work together and carry out the will of the Gaia-entity. Flashing each other the equivalent of barcode/QR codes, a huge amount of information can be transmitted very rapidly. This allows "primitive" species in the collective to receive complex orders and carry out sophisticated tasks without really understanding what or why.
[Answer]
**Environmental Integration**
As pointed out by Anon, bioluminescence is biologically expensive....unless you're not the one paying the bill. There are many other ways to gain bioluminescence (or an equivalent effect, as seen in Point 2).
**1. Predation**
The blue glaucus preys on poisonous siphonophores like the Portuguese Man-of-War and stores nematocysts from its prey in its own tissue as a defense. Likewise, *Costasiella kuroshimae*, also known as the "leaf sheep" or the "leaf slug," eats algae and retains the algae's chloroplasts for extra energy. Finally, poison dart frogs get their poison from their insect prey, which we know because dart frogs in captivity don't exhibit the toxicity of their wilder brethren.
In much the same way, your creatures could gain bioluminescence by taking bioluminescent chemicals or cells from the plants and/or animals they eat.
**2. Chemical Absorption**
Similar to 1, but not quite. Ever heard of the scaly-foot snail? Yeah, well, the outer layer of its shell is made of iron sulfides, specifically greigite and pyrite. Even more interestingly, the inner layer of its shell is made of aragonite, a **fluorescent** form of calcium carbonate. Aragonite is also found in the shell of various mollusks and corals, being formed by physical or biological processes.
Scorpions, platypi, and various other animals also exhibit fluorescence when exposed to UV light. In fact, fluorescent animals are actually quite common, as some curious researchers with a UV torch found. It doesn't exist in mammals, but fish, amphibians, certain arthropods, and many other species do exhibit biofluorescence.
This tells us that if nothing else, it'd be an evolutionary cinch to have most, if not all, of your alien lifeforms fluorescent (since your planet is similar to Earth). Now, this is not bioluminescence, but it's pretty dang close.
It's also more plausible, since if animals are regularly exposed to or ingest fluorescent materials, there must be an awful lot of fluorescence in the environment, they'll likely become fluorescent to better blend in. There is another reason; according to livescience.com, "Experiments with tardigrades in the Paramacrobiotus genus revealed that fluorescence protects them like a layer of sunscreen, transforming damaging UV rays into harmless blue light, according to a new study." (For more on that, click [here](https://www.livescience.com/tardigrade-fluorescence.html#:%7E:text=Experiments%20with%20tardigrades%20in%20the,according%20to%20a%20new%20study.).)
In other words, biofluorescence can protect living organisms from UV, so if the ozone layer is gone or depleted, you better believe there will be a lot of biofluorescence, and a lot of glowing to come with it. If you decide to make your planet a future Earth, with clouds of pollution and depleted ozone, that would create A) a dark environment and B) give natural selection a reason to make the world glow.
Anyway, I hope this helps!
[Answer]
First off, is this planet so like Earth as to have many large periods of daylight?
If so, bioluminescence in just about every lifeform would have to be a side-effect of another process necessary for life. Perhaps the light is produced as a side-effect of breaking down the molecules that have stored energy in them. (Plants also take in oxygen and breath out carbon dioxide to metabolize; it's just that in a growing plant, they take in more carbon dioxide and breath out more oxygen, and in a mature one, the processes are balanced.)
If not, it could be actually useful. Certain organisms started producing chemicals that are harmful to life. Fortunately for other lifeforms, they broke down in the presence of light. Bioluminescence enabled this and heavily favors the wavelength that does the best job -- or wavelengths, if we have an arms race going between chemicals to harm competitors and bioluminescence to break it down.
[Answer]
**Why it happened:**
Bioluminescence takes a very substantial amount of energy, relative to an Earth-like environment. To make it widespread, you need a selection pressure or something artificial.
Positive pressure: The life-form gains something. This might be pollination, blending in, or mates.
Negative pressure: Being dim harms the life-form. That might be from a non-UV-stable pathogen (runaway bioweapon, perhaps). However, then you have a new problem in maintaining the survival of your problem (and virulence, and non-resistance).
Artifice: Something "sufficiently advanced" instilled this, and perhaps maintains it actively.
Accident: By handwaving conservation of energy aside, this could become a property of ATP conversion or anything else you like.
**The effects:**
In enclosed environments - burrows, nests - this would be mainly be useful for communication. Outside, predators would have to trick their prey, so the background light during the day may *improve* concealment. Complex communication, as in the chromatophores of squid, might also come up.
If the energy cost is ignored entirely, it could be weaponised - either by patterns/flashes inducing seizures, or you could go over-the-top and make it an outright beam weapon.
**Glowing for a different reason:**
If the environment is saturated with phosphorescence, your creatures will glow just to match the background. Predators and prey may selectively coat parts of themselves in it, although airborne creatures might try to avoid it.
[Answer]
## It is a side effect of an essential chemical reaction in their equivalent of mitochondria.
Let's consider two examples:
Mitochondria is common to basically all multicellular life and uses very similar chemical pathways.
Chloroplasts in plants are another symbiotic relationship, notable because the a green photo-pigment is actually low efficiency compared to competitors, not to mention the other flaws in plant photosynthesis (*cough* photorespiration *cough* RuBisCO limitation *cough*). But the symbiosis was such an overwhelming advantage it could overwhelm those defects. leading the first plants to outcompete all the other dominant photosynthesizes.
So your life forms have something similar to mitochondria in gross function, allowing them to utilize oxygen efficiently, however due to a quirk of the chemistry it produces some light. There is a swath of chemiluminescent reactions to look at for inspiration, plenty of them are oxidization based. the precise reaction does not matter as much as the process getting locked in due to symbiosis just like the green pigment of photosynthesis. The downside of the side effects don't matter since the symbiosis is such an overwhelming benefit. That reaction quickly gets built on top as the function becomes essential, at which point it can't be changed. Thus you end up with another case of weird evolutionary baggage.
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Assume just for this question that in one same plane of space, there are the following stars within close proximity of each other:
* An O-type main-sequence star (18x wider, 15-90x more massive and 40k-one million times brighter than our sun, lifespan of 10 million years)
* A G0-type main-sequence star (105% wider, 110% more massive and 126% brighter than our sun, lifespan of 10 billion years)
* A K0-type main-sequence star (85% as wide, 78% as massive and 40% as bright as our sun, lifespan of 20 to 70 billion years)
These three stars don't orbit each other but actually merge together into one new star, one that is bigger, brighter and longer-living than our sun. **Could this happen through natural means rather than artificial means?**
[Answer]
Yes! Stellar collisions do happen naturally. For collisions to be likely, we need environments where stars are naturally close together - in general, the rate of collisions per unit volume is proportional to the square of the number density. Therefore, high-density star clusters are optimal; in globular clusters, we can have central densities of $\sim10^3$ stars per cubic parsec, roughly four orders of magnitude greater [than the local stellar number density](https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/393902/56299). This means that mergers should happen at a correspondingly astounding rate.
In globular clusters, we know of a population of stars known as [blue stragglers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_straggler). These are objects formed by the merger of two stars, which appear as stars that are massive and more luminous than the rest of the stars in the cluster. They should subsequently evolve much as one would expect stars of the appropriate mass and composition.
A triple merger, though, does present some problems, in that even in a globular cluster, it's unlikely that a merger product will undergo a second collision before evolving away. [The expected time before a given star undergoes a close encounter is](http://www.astro.lu.se/%7Emelvyn/mbdaviespraguetalk.pdf)
$$\tau\sim10^{11}\left(\frac{n}{10^5\;\text{pc}^{-3}}\right)^{-1}\left(\frac{M}{M\_{\odot}}\right)^{-1}\left(\frac{R}{R\_{\odot}}\right)^{-1}\left(\frac{v}{10\;\text{km s}^{-1}}\right)\;\text{years}$$
where the factors of $M$ and $R$ arise because the cross-section of the star depends in part on its physical size and in part on gravitational focusing, the effect that increases the star's effective cross-section through its gravitational pull.
Let's say the two lowest mass stars merge. Even assuming no mass is lost in the collision, they should have a combined mass of $M\approx1.9M\_{\odot}$; by applying [the appropriate mass-radius homology relation](https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/%7Eglatz/astr_112/lectures/notes14.pdf), we can assume it has a radius of roughly $R\approx1.5M\_{\odot}$. In a cluster, at the lower end, we might expect to see $v\sim10\;\text{km s}^{-1}$. Putting this together, we expect that it will take the merger remnant $\sim3\times10^{12}$ years before it collides with another star, assuming a number density $\sim10^3\;\text{pc}^{-3}$. By this point, it will have evolved far off the main sequence and become a white dwarf.
The same may be true if the collision happens in any other order, e.g. if the O-type star and the G-type star merge. Thanks to the greater mass and radius, the product will have a larger cross-section, but it will also live for much less time. The scenario could be saved if the number density at the core of the cluster is several orders of magnitude higher, though, which could very well be possible in some of the denser globular clusters.
[Answer]
YES, stars can merge
NO, they end result will not be "longer-living than our sun", especially not when the constituent parts include an O-type star.
The much more likely result of an O-type merging with anything else is a short, violent Supernova.
Even if by some miracle you manage the merger without causing core disruption of all the stars involved, adding mass to a star will drastically *reduce* its remaining lifespan, never lengthen it.
[Answer]
In addition to the answer by HDE 226868, there is another possible form of stellar collision; the Thorne–Żytkow object (TZO's). TZO's (theoretically) involve the collision of a neutron star with another star, perhaps a red giant or supergiant. The neutron star will migrate to the core position, but will typically be much hotter than the giant star. The result resembles a Wolf-Rayet star with some different chemistry due to higher core temperatures.
There has been only one observed serious candidate for this type of merger (HV 2112), and it is, apparently, low certainty. But TZO's are a currently accepted idea in astrophysics and are definitely an option for you.
[Answer]
Merging two main-sequence stars will result in another (bigger, brighter, shorter-lifespan) main-sequence star.
I am not sure how the transition period will look like, but:
The merger will result in gross turbulence in the star material that will likely reset the resulting star somewhere on the corresponding [Hayashi track](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayashi_track) or [Henyey track](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henyey_track). After some time, the star will settle on the main sequence, higher and to the left of all the constituents.
There proably will be quite a firework in the period of the physical merger as hotter gas from inside of the stars will be mixed into the outer layers. Some amount of gas may be lost in the process.
The lifespan of the resulting star is determined by the resulting mass and the time each one of the merging stars already spent on the main sequence (i.e. the percent of hydrogen already spent). Bigger stars have shorter lives and the resulting star will live shorter than its constituents' projected lifespans.
Adding a third star into the mix will rather not change the picture much.
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The question implies that all 3 stars are main-sequence type. If one of them is a red giant or a white dwarf, the added matter above the already-too-dense core may trigger a supernova explosion of some type.
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For the fluff of my story one of the space-ships is equipped with what I hope is one of the biggest F-you weapons in ship-to-ship combat: a miniature black hole launcher.
The launcher fires a whopping 329 metric ton black hole, which is tiny compared to the majority of black holes. Hawking radiation causes this black hole to evaporate in a mere 3 seconds, causing a violent burst of radiation in that time. To maximize the effect an unobtanium machine prevents the black hole from evaporating until it reaches the enemy ship.
The question is: what would happen when it activates and moves through the enemy vessel?
My idea was as follows: it activates close to the target and starts releasing its energy. In space this explosion of 3.28×10^15 MW does relatively little as it has plenty of directions to go. Then the black hole enters the outer layer of the enemy ship. The black hole event horizon is smaller than the molecules around it and expels so much energy that nothing is absorbed, but it does force everything apart as the equivalent of a nuclear bomb explosion emanates from inside the hull material. Then the black hole starts passing through bulkheads and passageways inside the ship, tearing holes and burning the air, men and materials to cinders as it does. A well aimed shot is virtually unstoppable and unless your ship is able to handle an atomic bomb detonating inside the hull it is scrap metal.
Is that a correct assumption?
[Answer]
## Your description is accurate, but not very efficient.
Your black hole is so heavy and small that it will just pass right through any target without really slowing down; so, the real question is how much time does the black hole spend inside of a ship vs how much time it takes to evaporate.
Because space is vast and empty, kiting strategies inevitably make space fights prefer those who can move faster and shoot farther over who can do the most damage per hit. So, if your black hole weapon is to compete with easier to make relativistic weapons like lasers or particle cannons, it needs to itself be able to move at relativistic speeds, or else you will never get close enough to use it.
Let's say for the sake of argument, it moves at 0.5C (~150,000,000 m/s). If it takes 3 seconds to evaporate, then that means it will release its energy over the course of 450,000,000 meters. If you hit the enemy ship along a cross section that is only 45m thick, then you've wasted over 99.99999% of your weapon's power on over penetration (not to mention the ridiculous amount of power it takes to accelerate 329 metric tons to 0.5C). While this would still turn the entire target ship into an exploding ball of plasma, it will only bombard the target ship with an energy output of 236 kilotons out of its total 7,073,500,000 kilotons of total output making it grossly inefficient.
To fix this, you should actually fire much smaller black holes. Smaller black holes release hawking radiation much faster; so it would release more energy per meter of penetration while also taking much less power to make and launch. Because of this, your weapon would make a lot more sense firing shells that are much smaller range but compressed so small that they pass right through shields and armor where they can then radiate so quickly as to release all of thier mass before passing through the target.
For example: a 1 metric ton black hole dissolves in 8.41072E-8 seconds. At that time scale, it would dissipate over a distance of only 15 meters while releasing an entire 21,500,000 kiloton blast inside of the enemy ship. While antimatter weapons could release similar amounts of energy, by condensing your weapon into a black hole, it would be virtually impossible to detect, intercept, deflect, etc.
An even more practical example may be to use an ultra tiny black hole. Even something as small as a 0.6 gram black hole will explode with the force of the hiroshima atomic bomb once you take away the artificial anti-hawking radiation field. While not as spectacular as a multi-gigaton weapon, at 16 orders of magnitude smaller than an electron it could simply pass right through anything you want it to allowing you to detonate it directly inside of a target ship's reactor. If an internal explosion capable of devastating a small city can't destroy the ship you are shooting at, the critical explosion of its reactor should finish the job.
If you really want to make it a super weapon, make it able to modulate its shots such that it can do anything from about 329 metric tons to 1 gram. A 329 metric ton exploding black hole weapon is about 30 times less powerful than the Chicxulub impactor event, but still more than enough to end an entire civilization with a single shot, or you could scale it way back for one shotting ships, cities, and space stations.
[Answer]
You’ve drastically under-estimated the force of the explosion. All of those 329 tons of mass will be converted to energy during the 3 seconds of evaporation. That’s 3E22J of energy. A 1 megaton nuclear explosion is about 4E15J of energy. So your black hole explosion is equivalent to 7.5 million megatons of nuclear weapons. For comparison, the biggest nuclear weapon ever made, the Tsar Bomba, was 50 megatons. So you’ve got the same size explosion as *150 thousand* of those.
[Answer]
One problem in your description would be any technology capable of containing a black hole until you need it to explode, could just as well be used to defend against said black hole weapon. (for instance "catch" the black hole and only let it dissipate away from your ship)
Alternatively you could have, whats essentially a missile, that creates a black hole upon impact (similar to how a nuke doesn't contain a nuclear blast, but triggers one using the materials it has). in this case you could even use parts of the enemy ship as the mass being compressed, instead of having to haul 329 tons of matter around (that's a lot of matter to accelerate to intercept a spaceship) It's also a lot safer, than having potentially hundreds of black hole ammunition somewhere in your ship :)
Second problem you need to take into consideration is space is biiig, that's why it's called space, there's so much of it... (just kidding, that's not why it's called space)
Your black hole is an unguided round, so you would need to be extremely close before firing it, or simply making it unlikely that you would ever hit your target.
So TLDR would probably be, yeah it would hurt to get hit, but your probably not going to get hit, so you don't really need to worry about your enemy shooting it at you. (Those missiles with a gigaton payload comming at you on the other hand, those are scary)
[Answer]
tl;dr: The idea of a sub-atomic black hole as a warhead is great, but how are you going to hit anything? If you have 1e23 Joules to play with, a directed energy weapon or railgun is much more effective and requires no unobtanium machine.
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That black hole doesn't come for free, nor does firing it at any appreciable speed. As much energy had to go into creating it as it is capable of releasing. Probably A LOT more. The question becomes...
# What else can you do with 1e23 Joules... IN SPAAAACE!!!
and
# Why aren't you doing them? In space.
As with every weapon system we must ask whether it's a significant improvement over the alternatives? This is difficult to answer without knowing the state of offense and defense, and the presence of one unobtanium machine throws all physical limits into question, but there's still one problem.
# Hitting Things (in space)
It's really, really, really hard to hit things in space, especially if they don't want to be hit. Sci-fi depicts spaceships lobbing broadsides into each other at point blank range. In reality, everything in space is so far apart, and traveling so fast, that your ability to track and predict the movement of your target becomes paramount.
Speed of your projectile is also paramount. Just like on the ground, the faster your projectile is going, the less time it has in flight, the easier it is to aim, and the less chance the enemy will maneuver away. At a certain point increasing your range is pointless; the flight time is so long that the enemy can simply turn in any direction to avoid your shot. For battleships this was about 30 seconds. Any more distant and the enemy captain simply had to turn when they saw the flash of your guns.
But space has a speed limit, the speed of light. This introduces two very interesting problems. First, there is a maximum effective range in space for unguided weapons, and it's A LOT shorter than you might think. Let's say your ships have a roughly 100m cross-section. The target only has to maneuver 100m in an unexpected direction for an unguided payload to miss.
At the energy levels you're playing with a ship's delta-v is limited only by how much stress it can put on its structure and its crew. Let's say it's 9g's, the limit of human endurance.
How long does it take for a ship able to accelerate at 9g's to move 100 meters? 1 g is roughly $10\frac{m}{s^2}$. 9g is roughly $90\frac{m}{s^2}$. So a bit over a second.
In one second, a ship can maneuver out of the way of an unguided projectile. This means even an energy beam has an effective range against a maneuvering target of 1 light-second or about 300,000 km.
The second problem is, unlike a battleship, light delay means you're seeing where they were 1 second ago further complicating the aiming process. OTOH if the enemy sees "the flash of your guns" they've been hit. However, the target only need to make random zig-zags during combat to remain effectively immune to unguided weapons beyond 1 light-second.
# Directed Energy (Space) Weapons
If a sub-atomic black hole can penetrate their defenses, then a focused, high-energy photon beam can as well. It's even smaller, and it also has no electric charge. It travels at the speed of light making aiming as easy as it's going to get. What's not to like?
Range. As the range increases, the focus will decrease. This puts a limit on the effective range of an energy weapon; eventually it's so defocused that it's no longer effective. But effective unguided range is already limited to 1 light-second, so this isn't a big problem. And that defocusing might be a good thing, the weapon can hit a wider area.
# A Well-Aimed Space Rock
If you're going to fire this black hole at a ship unguided it has to be going as fast as possible. Let's say 0.9c. [Accelerating 329 tons of matter to 0.9c costs, at minimum, 4e22J](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=kinetic+energy+of+329+metric+tons+at+0.9c). As much energy as the black hole itself. Why bother with the black hole, just fire a 329 ton rock. Sure, it's not sub-atomic, but if their ships can withstand 4e22 Joules smacking into them we're at a whole other level.
# The Black Hole Space Torpedo Must Be Guided Through Space
To offer an advantage over a directed energy weapon, or a rock, the black hole must be able to deliver its energy over a longer range. In order to have a chance of hitting the target it must be guided, and it must be more maneuverable than the target; a black hole torpedo. This means engines, sensors, not to mention a trigger mechanism and the unobtanium machine to keep it stable, etc... size and weight.
You're no longer firing a sub-atomic black hole at the target, you're firing a small space ship. A small space ship which can itself be targeted and shot down by the enemy's own simpler and cheaper directed energy weapons and railguns. And that is its Achillies heel. Missiles and torpedoes don't make sense in space when you have directed energy weapons and railguns, they're too vulnerable.
You can't hit the ship.
[Answer]
# Unobtainium Unnecessary
If you want to prevent a black hole from evaporating, you just need to *feed* it. As long as the energy in == energy out, it will remain at any fixed size you desire, for as long as you can maintain those conditions. The real problem with micro-BHs is that their mouths are much smaller than the mass you want to feed them. They are just as happy with a diet of photons as with baryonic matter, but photons carry much less energy density with them. So while they are easier to focus down to a tiny point, you need to pump in a lot more to keep the BH from exploding.
# Launch Velocity
Others have suggested that the "black hole bullet" (BHB) be launched at relativistic speeds so as to deter countermeasures. Obviously, the faster you can launch it, the better. Launching 300 tons to relativistic speed implies an energy source so large you might be able to dispense with the BHBs and just point your power plant in the general direction of the enemy. Anyway, I propose a "smart bullet" with the following design:
Instead of letting the BHB radiate away its valuable mass on the way to its target, you encase it in a shell of ordinary matter which is reflective in the most common frequencies emitted by the BHB. Unfortunately, this probably includes X-rays, for which we do not have efficient reflectors. Also, this shell will inevitably radiate a blackbody spectrum, which gives away its position all the way to the target. Even so, ordinary matter can act as an X-ray scintillator, absorbing the X-rays and re-radiating them in lower, more reflective frequencies (UV, visible, etc.). Thus, you should be able to feed a respectable fraction of the radiation back into the BHB to sustain it. Since this "reflection" is obviously quite lossy, you will need to augment it with additional mass. We can use the innermost layer of the shell as an ablative layer which we sacrifice to stabilize the BHB on its journey. The X-rays bombarding the inner layer will embrittle it, causing chunks to come off naturally, but this process can be more finely controlled with some clever nanotechnology and geometric design of the inner surface.
Finally, we can give the BHB active steering, rather than a ballistic trajectory by creating a hole in the protective shell and using on-board gyros to rotate the hole to any position desired. This will essentially let us use the BHB as a kind of radiation jet to steer the "bullet".
# Countermeasures
How do you defend against such a weapon? If you can destroy the shell long before it reaches your ship, then it will evaporate outside of the lethal range (although it may still deliver a quite unpleasant shock of hard ionizing radiation). This could be accomplished either using directed energy weapons or kinetic projectiles. If the BHB has steering capability, it can defeat some to most kinetic PD weapons, at least until it gets within lethal range. Beam weapons are obviously more difficult to counter, but are also more difficult to use. Creating a high-powered beam which can feasibly burn through a thick metal shell will not have a small collimation radius. Focusing it down to something maybe tens of cm across will be quite difficult. It may be possible to keep the beam on the BHB for the entire trajectory, but the BHB may have such a small cross section that it only absorbs a small fraction of the beam energy, reflecting the rest away or even absorbing it and re-radiating it in a directed fashion to use as guidance propulsion. Basically, big lasers are good for burning big holes in big targets, but not so good for burning tiny holes in anything.
So, I reject the assumption that technology needed to create such a weapon implies the ability to defeat it. In general, offense will always be ahead of defense, because it is always possible to add enough energy to a target to disintegrate it (exceed the binding energy of the target), while the ability to dissipate energy fast enough to preserve integrity scales too poorly to keep up at all power densities.
Fun fact: a very small black hole is radiating energy so quickly it starts emitting [electrons and positrons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation#1976_Page_numerical_analysis), making a micro-black hole a nice antimatter source, which is going to do all kinds of fun things to your target (and, unfortunately, your "bullet shell"). Furthermore, these are ultrarelativistic, which might mean it is infeasible to contain them without pretty massive shielding. Someone else will have to do the calculations on that.
[Answer]
>
> The question is: what would happen when it activates and moves through the enemy vessle?
>
>
>
What would happen is that the enemy will steal the tech (or, seeing that it's feasible, develop it on their own), and then counter-attack their enemy's home world. The admiral who used this for ship-to-ship combat will be forever ridiculed in the military history of the original civilization -- not that it will matter, because that civilization won't exist much longer.
This technology is for attacking planets, not starships.
The mechanism might be realistic (I defer to the other answers that have done the math, and weigh in on aiming, range, etc.), but a civilization using this as a ship-to-ship weapon is not. (No matter how much the admirals want to say "F-you" to their enemy admirals.) A civilization with this tech would attack the enemy's *home world* and *colonies*.
With the kind of energy you are talking about, you could do a lot more damage attacking a planet, and timing it so that the black hole Hawking-evaporates as it passes through the interior of the planet. I would not expect this to flat-out blow the planet apart, but it will cause dramatic, planet-wide seismic disruptions (to put it mildly).
Or, you time it so the explosion takes place mainly at or near the core of the planet. Again, the planet itself won't blow apart, but this will have dramatic, destructive, planet-scale effects.
Or, you set off the explosion near the surface, (a) causing massive damage in that entire region, and (b) creating a plume of ejecta that will adversely affect the global climate for decades or centuries, or even (c) induce a small but significant (to weather, climate, and everything that depends on them -- in other words, everything) wobble.
Or, you set the explosion off inside the planet's moon, if it can be partially or entirely destroyed, raining large meteors down on the planet for a long time to come, or near the moon's surface, using the ejecta stream to destabilize that moon's orbit -- crashing it into the home planet, say.
And, before launching these attacks, the enemy civilization might wonder why their enemy who came up with this limited themselves to a very arbitrary-sounding 329 metric tons. If a 150,000x-Tsar-Bomba explosion isn't quite enough for the above uses, they could crank it up to 500 metric tons. Or 1,000. Or --
This is a war, for goodness sakes : Your thinking about how this might work seems okay (given unobtanium, of course), but if you throw this into your story as fluff, and if I were reading it, it would be jarring, because I would be asking "Why bother blowing up *ships* with that kind of tech?"
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[Question]
[
I am considering a story where a group of human colonists looking to colonize an alien world come across another human society on an alien world on the other side of a wormhole. The colonists crash land on this world after an incident and discover this society. As it turns out, the humans on this world are actually descendants of many people abducted from earth by alien "overlords" over the course of several millennia seeking to use them for a social experiment.
The purpose of said experiential was to see how these people, from various regions of earth and time, would interact with each other over the course of these millennia. Fast forward in time and these humans and their descendants have populated this world, known as Rhye, and have become rather technologically advanced, say beginning of twentieth century Earth, but with some near future technology. Keep in mind this tech is at least one hundred years behind the tech the colonists have. The colonists, however, despite their shock to see this human society on this world, discover that these people basically recreated Earth. There are nations, borders, wars and even a UN often referred to as the "Planetary Council".
But what really catches their attention is the fact that these humans, given the different eras of human history they came from, have developed a medieval oligarchy type society where social class and upbringing determines your status while capitalism and democratic/representative governments still exist.
In this system, social rank is predetermined by birth. You have a role and you are to fulfill that role regardless. There are corporations and capitalism to certain extent does exist but they are tightly controlled by the Elites and influence the government. Industry and networks are controlled by them and the only way one can hope to advance is to get a better standing within a company or business. Think of the social situation in the movie *Elysium.*
The governments are typically run by the more wealthy and superior classes comprised of the following branches in ascending order of power: the People's Congress/Parliament, the Military (which I will go into detail about later), the Hierarchy (which deal with judiciary matters, law enforcement and government management), and finally the Head of State who is in charge of running the state. The upper class protect and help provide for the lower class in exchange for labor. These same Elites make up the Hierarchy holding various elected government offices. These Offices include: Council to the Head of State, ambassadors, attorney generals and high ranking generals, law enforcement, Homeland Security, etc. However the people do not elect the Head of State but rather the Hierarchy. Now, the Congress or Parliament, is elected by the lower class and typically is comprised of lower class politicians. Elites tend to stay away from it considering it beneath them to be a part of. However, while these congresses and Parliaments have the power to draw up legislative proposals, they lack the power to enforce them or pass them. Not even the Head of State. Only the Hierarchy does. In essence, they only exist to inform the Hierarchy of the people's wishes, wants and needs as a way to keep the population content.
The military situation is fairly unique as well. There are federalized militaries made up by the privileged upper class aka Elites that protect the states/kingdoms/republics. However, while these militaries are loyal to the states, they are not commanded by the Head of State but rather by the elected officials in the Hierarchy who either fund or otherwise influence them. Ideally, the Hierarchy answers to the Head of State but one can imagine how some corruption can come to play here. However, there are also private military organizations or "orders" that offer protective services to some republics and kingdoms in exchange for funding. And given this is a society originally built by people from the more ancient to medieval eras of human history and this world itself is advancing out of its own medieval era, the organizations tend to follow a Templar-style set up and often function like one.
So one can image how complex this system is.
Now, as good on paper it sounds to me, I still am not sure how practical this is. So, is it entirely feasible for a relatively stable society to exist with this kind of "Medieval Post-Feudalism Democratic Oligarchy" system? Please let me know if I need to add anything detail wise if you need clarification.
Edit: I understand oligarchy and democracy are polar opposites in a way and that there is a bit of confusion here. But just work with me. I want to know if it is a relatively stable system that could work for some time.
[Answer]
# Define feudalism
When you say "feudal," what do you actually mean?
[Feudalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism) is defined by [Brittanica](https://www.britannica.com/topic/feudalism) as
>
> the social, economic, and political conditions in western Europe
> during the early Middle Ages, the long stretch of time between the 5th
> and 12th centuries.
>
>
>
There were basically no democratic systems that existed during that time period, and limited republican systems, so by a strict definition of feudalism, the answer is a clear "No". Since there were no democratic polities that existed in Western Europe in the 5th to 12th centuries, democratic-feudalism is an oxymoron.
# Do you want "feudalism" or a class stratified society with voting?
If you want the latter, then there are plenty of examples to go around.
* In the strict medieval period of Western Europe, though mostly later than the 12th century, the [Venetian Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice#High_Middle_Ages) operated with limited male suffrage, as did several other city-states of Italy, such as [Florence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Florence).
* A less republican Late Medieval variant was the Golden Liberty of Poland, where only the nobles got to vote. This process proceeded somewhat slowly, but a landmark was the 1505 *[Nihil Novi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihil_novi)* an act forbidding the King from passing laws without the consent of the [Sejm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejm).
* The paragon of a democratic yet class-based society would be England. Democracy developed slowly from the [Magna Carta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta). By the time of the [English Civil War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War) (1640s) and [Glorious Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution) (1688), the authority of Parliament, even over the King, was well established. The English Bill of Rights of 1689 established free elections to the House of Commons. The electorate was reasonably open for most of the later Middle Ages. But, an 1432 law established eligibility as landowners who held more property worth [40 shillings of rent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-shilling_freeholders). While this did not *de jure* restrict women from voting, in practice custom forbade it.
But, note, [universal male suffrage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_suffrage#Dates_by_country) did not appear until the French revolution in 1792. The first country with permanent universal male suffrage was Greece in 1844; universal suffrage was first in New Zealand in 1893 (though some territories and states, like [Wyoming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming), had it as far back as 1869). Without a revolutionary era as happened at the end of the 18th century on actual Earth, it is unlikely that suffrage would be universal, or ever extended to all men without property.
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One important aspect of Feudalism, and why it came about in the first place, that is often overlooked from a modern viewpoint is that Feudalism is a *two way* social structure:
Those who are at the top and supported by those below them aren't originally up there looking out for purely their own self interest, but rather their role in society was to be that of protector and manager.
Lower classes swear loyalty to an upper class not because they were lowly dirt dwelling scum who got nothing out of it, but rather they swear loyalty in exchange for protection, peace, and organization.
"I work this land, give you part of my yearly labour, and otherwise support you, and you and all your buddies promise to help me live in peace and good health, and keep those far off foreigners from killing all the men and running off with the gold and women..." ["And maybe I'll help you go to those foreign lands to take their stuff..."]
(Consider this social construct to the modern "I promise to work for your company, and you promise to lay me off whenever you think that might help you buy a bigger house/yacht/jet/whatever." - Humanity is weird.)
So you have multiple ways to structure things:
* Do the lords and protectors get elected?
* Are there multiple layers of government, based on social class, with elected elements? [In human history we have any number of examples advisers elected to government representing various class levels.]
* A mix and match of elected/hereditary/religious titles?
At its heart, a democratic-feudal structure is no less stable than a democratic "Vote for me so I can plunder the nation for my four year term for my own/my friend's/family's benefit" politics we see today.
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You can't have a feudal society and capitalism. Capitalism creates a plutocratic class that will fight against the feudal elite. If they fail the capitalism is crushed and feudalism remains. If they win, the feudal system is gone.
This happens because the social link in a capitalist society is money while in a feudal society are the oaths of fealty between the people. These two links can't coexist for long.
About democratic feudalism (but without capitalism): it can exist - the warlords may form noble republics where they elect their overlord and can veto decisions, something like the government of old Poland.
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A feudal system can have an "electoral system": [for instance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_election), usually the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was elected by a council of the most important feudal lord
Usually, a feudal system (but it happens for every system featuring a ruling oligarchy by birth) goes into crisis when a bourgeoisie (commoners who are able to accumulate a considerable wealth) rises. These new riches basically want to have the right to join the administration of the power. It happened for instance in the ancient Rome, in Italy and North Europe during the rise of the communes, in the 18th century France
In the Middle Age, usually the people in the countryside were under the rule of the feudal lords, while the people living in the cities were free from feudal rules, and could become "owners of themselves" and start a work as artisans or merchants, creating an embryo of bourgeoisie and this way triggering the rise of communes in late Middle Age.
So, in my idea a possibility would be a partial feudal-democratic system: the society is divided into free cities (under democratic rule) and rural countries (under feudal rule). Feudal lords should of course follow the laws and treat well their subjects, in order not to lose their peasants. At the same time, people who don't like democracy or feel that they would live better under the protection of a ruler could leave the cities and become subjects of the feudal lords.
Every time the emperor dies or resigns, the feudal lords and the representatives of the cities would elect a new emperor.
The problem is that at some point, the industrial revolution will happen (it seems unavoidable, in order to reach a present-day-like development), which would create an unbalance in the equilibrium between country and city (basically, cities will start to exponentially accumulate wealth and population).
To keep the feudal system, we can speculate that a kind of subdivision would spontaneously be established (feudal lords could found their own factories, more efficient thanks to the feudal labor, but less innovative with respect to urban factories), that could live up to present day.
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Plenty of countries like that right now. So just scale it up. Most of the independent polynesian nations are democratic oligarchies. It all comes down to control of resources.
How it works is that the elite class (chiefs) controls all the land, businesses, govt etc,. by law, so all govt CEO's and politicians are exclusively from an elite class with no one else eligible to even apply.
Private ownership of land is not common and very expensive so most people live on land controlled at all points by elites, in theory they can do anything they want. But in practice disagreeing or voting against the chiefs wishes could get them and their whole extended family legally banished from their village and therefore without the resources they need to feed themselves.
So while these are recognised democracies, it may be very different to what other countries have.
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Feudalism has three main parts, lords, lands, and vassals. The lords own the lands and lords owe their loyalty to other lords supplying mutual military and economic support. The peasantry are tied to the land. Nothing says the lords can't be elected by the peasants they rule. Involving complex capitalism would make things a little more complex. A corporation might fit in with the lords, owning land and the workers on it while pledging loyalty to a lord or other corporation.
A strict social hierarchy is not necessarily a requirement of feudalism though.
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I could see all three of these factors dovetailing quite nicely (if you can use dovetail for 3 things...).
**Feudalism**
This gives us classes: lords, vassals, peasants, royalty, etc. At each level you receive different rights, privileges and responsibilities. Perhaps only lords can vote or maybe all classes can vote but only lords and royalty can own land. These distinctions are up to you and don't greatly impact the other two aspects.
**Democracy**
You don't vote for king! And maybe even prince, financial adviser or some number of lords. Again, there is a large amount of sway you can exert here depending on just how democratic you want your world to be.
**Capitalism**
Instead of marriage, knighthood or other methods of moving from class to class, you move up in rank with *money*. This isn't to say that you can become king this way as that still requires a vote (but money does tend to help with that). As you accumulate money you gain rights thanks to moving up in class. Poor peasant Bill Gates makes himself a lord of a minor or major kingdom (depending on where you draw the voting line).
All together you have what might look shockingly like our modern society except that we have King Trump and he doesn't just *pretend* to wield absolute power, *he does* and he's king for life. Instead of money allowing you to *influence* political decisions, it allows you to *make* them. Like all political systems, the flaws will become apparent the longer it's around and this system would by no means be perfect.
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As others have pointed out, you can't combine feudalism with capitalism. Capitalism became [dominant after the breakup of feudalism](https://www.britannica.com/topic/capitalism) and is an economic system where "most means of production are privately owned and production is guided and income distributed largely through the operation of markets". Now, feudalism is a system, [in which land, worked by serfs who were bound to it, was held by vassals in exchange for military and other services given to overlords](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/feudalism). To do this, you would need to create a form of slavery where slaves/servants are specifically bound to the land they work and are servants to those who own the land, which would be hard to re-implement in many modern capitalist nations (imagine going to modern Western capitalist nations like Switzerland or Canada and being taken serious with such a proposal). Feudalism also [lacked a money-based market economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manorialism), something capitalism requires, and had the lord/monarch essentially have near absolute authority on who got what property. What kind of wealthy man or oligarch would want to remove the market economy that makes them wealthy and have a single lord decide who gets what resources? If someone successfully had all of a nation's resources and abolished the market economy of the country, the nation would officially be feudalist, not capitalist. The spread of capitalism, mercantilism, and other economic systems - as well as the abolition of the serf system- ultimately led to the end of feudalism. Plus, capitalism allows for social mobility and ownership of private property based on money, even if you are foreign to the region you want to own property in and know little about its politics. Feudalism is power by oaths and familial connections with power lords. These things would be in conflict unless one simply 'co-existed' with the other in small states with an uneasy peace between each other.
[Answer]
## You've just described the Roman Republic
Roman society had a complex caste system where your birthright defined how you were to be treated under Roman Law and capped how high in society you could climb. Roman literature on the rhyme and reason regarding the structure of their government indicates that it was their goal to combine the best aspects of Monarchy, Nobility, and Democracy into a single form of government as their idea of how to mitigate the corruption and instability inherent in each system.
They believed a true Monarchy was unstable because it only takes one poorly suited leader to destroy a nation, but that it inversely allowed for the most efficient way to get things done in a crisis. They believed Nobility was unstable because it allowed tyranny through oligarchy, but that it was the most efficient way to focus on what is important to the wellbeing of a nation over long periods of time. Lastly, they believed Democracy was unstable because most people were unqualified to make wise decisions regarding the course of a government, but that the process of voting was important for making wise decisions when wisdom comes to more than one reasonable conclusion. On top of these 3 basic foundations, there was a 4th factor that they feared the population of their ever growing empire that was not Roman, would become more powerful than Rome itself; so, many of their laws were built around granting rights to people based on "How Roman" they are.
The way Rome did it was by dividing its society into a tiered system where by you had to be of a certain status to vote for or hold various positions of power. So, unless you were from one of the Senatorial Patrician families you could not vote for or become a Senator or become a military general or be appointed consul during a time of crisis; so, while they had an elected Senate that held a lot of power, only the top <1% of their society was privileged enough to participate in that level of government. Being a Senatorial Patrician was the equivalent to being a lord in medieval society, but instead of preventing power from diluting too much over time though first-born rights, they did it through elections. Below that you had the Eques Patrician who were still members of the noble houses of Rome, but not high enough in status to participate in the Senate. That said, they could ascend to hold significant military ranks and hold important public offices outside of the Senate. They were more akin to Knights. Below that you had the Civis Romani who had no title of nobility but enjoyed significant extra legal rights for being freemen born of Roman/Latin descent; so, they could hold offices and vote for positions in the lesser Assemblies.
Below that power just tapers off more and more with ever more restrictive social castes like the Liberti, the Peregrini, the Socii, all the way down to the Servi Poenae who had even fewer rights than chattel slaves did in the early US.
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Okay, so how feasible is it- if even possible- to put the Earth under 'one roof'?
So here is the premise. The world is heavily *heavily* over populated, so overpopulated in fact that almost all of the land has been covered in infrastructure. However, instead of visualising this as a *huge* mega city, imagine it more as... an apartment complex, or a mall.
Imagine if Earth was a giant mass of slightly crowded apartments, houses, indoor parks with glass roofs, conveyor-belt like roads, with no real free sky access (As everywhere you go there are stories and stories of shops, markets, cinemas etc above you. Even at the very top, there is only limited access to the open-sky)
Woodlands and Natural features such as lakes, and rivers have direct sky access, with a sort of wall/perimeter of infrastructure, and are still being desperately protected by organisations.
How realistic would this be?
Edit: keeping in mind that colonising/resource gathering on other planets are possible.
[Answer]
## Could an entire neighborhood or even an entire city be that crowded?
Sure.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tqANA.png)
[Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/may/11/where-world-most-densely-populated-city) was probably the densest neighbourhood in history, with more than 1,000,000 people per sq km. Photograph: Alamy
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gi34o.png)
[Kowloon Walled City](https://www.businessinsider.com/kowloon-walled-city-photos-2015-2) was 119 times as dense as New York City.Greg Girard
While this example was just 33k people in 6.4 acres, it lasted for 40 years.
>
> The streets and alleyways of the Walled City were narrow.
> Most were barely wider than six feet and some were so narrow that one
> had to walk sideways through them. A massive network of passageways in
> the upper levels also made it possible to travel the distance of the
> city without walking on a ground level street.
>
>
> The Walled City had its own micro-climate,
> due to the massive amounts of tubing, wires, and
> open gutters snaking through the building. The lower levels were
> constantly hot, humid, and damp...Because of the smelly, humid
> conditions down below, the rooftops of Kowloon would turn into a
> communal hangout during the afternoons and evenings. People would hang
> out, do laundry or homework, or practice instruments.
>
>
> "It was like a
> strange, urban garden. There was tons of household refuse. It was a
> bit of an eyesore, but compared to the area below, the air was light
> and breezy. It was nice to come up there after living and working on
> the lower floors."
>
>
>
In other cases, a somewhat less dense set of buildings can cover an entire city.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pX992.png)
[Delhi, India](http://eravisi.com/geo/tg1/ms027)
## Could this be most of the earth?
No.
People need to eat and to do that, you need farmland, oceans/lakes, factories or processing centers, and transportation ways. While you have some wild spaces and waterways accounted for, you still need massive amounts of flat buildable land to grow crops and raise animals for meat. Even if everyone is vegan, you still need an awful lot of space. I've written about [hydroponics in small indoor spaces](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/134083/best-foods-plants-to-grow-in-generational-spaceship/134088#134088) elsewhere.
>
> By 2050 the world’s population will reach 9.1 billion, 34 percent higher than today...It should be possible to meet
> the future food and feed demand of the projected world population in
> 2050 within realistic rates for land and water use expansion and yield
> development. However, achieving this will not at all be automatic and
> several significant challenges will have to be met. ([ref](http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/expert_paper/How_to_Feed_the_World_in_2050.pdf))
>
>
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**Can you feed your world?** It depends what the population is. If agencies are projecting that feeding 9 billion people is doable with some work, then you can assume that larger populations will be even harder to feed. Not only are there more people, but there's less land to do it with, because the people take over arable land for housing and for other resources like schools, offices, warehouses, roads, parking, factories, distribution channels, etc.
**Air quality:** [Half the world's oxygen comes from the oceans](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/source-of-half-earth-s-oxygen-gets-little-credit/) and the other half "via photosynthesis on land by trees, shrubs, grasses, and other plants." Some sources say the ocean's contribution is even higher, [up to 85%](https://earthsky.org/earth/how-much-do-oceans-add-to-worlds-oxygen). Land plants do contribute, though they don't affect oxygen levels much because of the total volume. Though wild spaces and urban trees are important for carbon dioxide sequestering and to reduce air pollution.
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> Our atmosphere has such an enormous reserve of oxygen that even if all
> fossil fuel reserves, all trees, and all organic matter in soils were
> burned, atmospheric oxygen would only drop a few percent.
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> Tree impacts on important atmospheric trace chemicals such as carbon
> dioxide and...air
> pollutants (ozone, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen
> dioxide, carbon monoxide, and lead) will have greater significant
> impacts on human health and environmental quality. Urban forest carbon
> sequestration and air pollution removal along with other environmental
> impacts of urban forests (e.g., water quality improvement, lower air
> temperatures, reduced ultraviolet radiation loads) need to be better
> incorporated within local and regional planning efforts to improve
> environmental quality and enhance the quality of urban life.([ref](https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/jrnl/2007/nrs_2007_nowak_001.pdf))
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**Power generation:** That's a whole other issue and should be a separate question. Wind generation is likely your best bet, as wind will be a factor in keeping your cities from collapsing, so generators around the cities will help deflect it. And you can have small generators on top of the buildings.
Solar won't have much space to work. If the rooftops are the only access to the sky, they're going to be in huge demand for just that, and for gardens. There won't be much space for solar panels. Demand will outstrip ability to generate power. Yes, use what space you can. Some solar is better than no solar. But if these are 10-20 story buildings with businesses, apartments, schools, etc, there just isn't much surface area to work with. Maybe future tech will change this equation some.
Fossil fuels are likely depleted since you have a "far-future" tag and that many people. There are other ways to generate fuel, including from the waste products of that many people, but you need some space to do it.
[Answer]
**Assumptions**
* Population density according to your description [even this might be less dense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City) than your world but I will work with this
* Water to land ration like on earth
* Animals are of no concern
So few things that have to be met (without getting to deep into fiction/fantasy):
* More planets/asteroids available than only the one mentioned
* The top of your building(s)? is covered by wind turbines and solar panels
* Health care is great
* Some of the build upon area is use for food production
**The Numbers**
Based on [Kowloon City Density](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City) and the [land mass of earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land#Land_mass) and reserving 20% for food generation. We arrive at a measly **154 quadrillion people** inhabiting your world.
Food production [in 2009](http://www.gardeningplaces.com/articles/World-Staple-Crops-2009.png) when accounted for population this was about half a ton per person which would amount to **77 quadrillion metric tons** per year or **2 439 435 497 tons per second.**
**Results/Consequences**
this was only food and population but the numbers for water/fluid consumption and power will be equally high. I highly doubt any greenhouse even when sized at one fifth of all land mass an earth would produce these numbers so your civilization should already have a partial dysonsphere or something like that in place to generate the power and food demands of this crowded planet.
It is very unlikely that anyone who has the money would stay there so you'll need a good explanation for that. Considering that you need other planets/asteroids and even partial dysonspheres to get this to work in the first place.
**Conclusion**
Possible but very unlikely. Except when it is something like a big lower class world where the majority of people have to live because of their limited power/influence/money supply.
[Answer]
First some perspective: Earth's landmass is ~197 million mi². Assuming you are describing the population density of Hong Kong (67,000/mi²), that is a world population of ~13.2 trillion or ~1700 times the current world population.
So, the 7 big obstacles here are water, food, air quality, global heat, durable goods, population growth & power.
The first thing to consider is that this world would not have NEARLY enough natural freshwater. Even at current world populations people are beginning to consume fresh water faster than it replenishes. This means that over 99% of the world's drinking water would have to come from desalinated Ocean water. This would consume tons of power and generate tons of heat, but the planet has enough salt water to do this. (We'd likely need to export the excess salt to other worlds since we would not have enough space for it all).
Second thing to consider is that you need food. You need about 20,000ft² of farmland to sustain a human life with modern technology. If you stack troughs of indoor farmland with synthetic lighting, you can probably compress it down to 3-4 layers worth of indoor farmland for each story of human residents, throw in some excessive GMO manipulation, and you might be able to cram it down to 2000ft² of indoor farmland per person meaning the majority of your world city is still actually indoor farms. Being constantly feed by a massive pipe system of desalinated & recycled water. This is where reality starts to question this model since you would need to feed such a massive amount of these farm with water from oceans, delivering enough water to places that are 1000 miles inland would be questionably doable. So you are hitting the realm of unrealistic, here, but if civilization had enough time to adapt to this density, then assume that the whole world would need a MASSIVE underground pipe system. Even then, in-land areas would need to be very efficient about how they recycle their water once piped in in order for any pseudo realistic pipe system to be able to import the needed volumes of water just to deal with irrigation evaporation.
Third, even with all this indoor plant mass, current vegetation may not be efficient enough at those ratios to produce enough oxygen for everyone, plus all the emissions from industry and daily life would be fatal without a stopgap. Going back to genetic engineering our food, those plants would also need to be breed with air filtration in mind. Basically, you would have to co-mingle the farms and populations as much as possible so that your city grid basically encapsulates residences and businesses in the farmland so that circulating CO2 and O2 could happen as efficiently as possible. By being close to high human density, the plants could be engineered to have massive matablisms so they grow fast, filter lots of CO2, and feed more people per cubic foot. The garbage and sewage system of the city would have to recycle all organics back into the farmland; so, the place would probably stink worse than a medeville city, but could be livable if the crops are properly engineered to assure this symbioses.
Forth, people make heat, desalination makes heat, farm lamps make heat, heat, heat, heat... basically, your society has become a massive self cooking oven; so, you'd need to combat that by not just restoring the ozone layer, but by going in the opposite extreme. You'd have to terraform the upper atmosphere to block so much sunlight that day would become an eternal twylite. At this point our machines do as much to keep us warm as the sun.
Fifth, there is nowhere left to mine resources; so, even what is left underground can not be safely gotten without creating dangerous sinkholes that would destroy the city above. landfills could also no longer exist. If you can't recycle it, you don't make it. On top of that, this planet would need to sustain a massive fleet of freighters constantly pulling in resources from many nearby planets to even begin to approach this level of development, much less sustain it.
Sixth, population growth is no longer an option, at this point human life has become such a burden that laws come into place to control growth including mandatory sterilization, family size limits, and possibly institutionalized genocide. Civil unrest would be unavoidable, meaning governments would need to maintain absolute power over people's lives. Democracy and privacy are both dead, predictive AIs would quell rebellions before they happen, and the common person has no access to weapons or education with which to resist.
Seventh, is power. No current form of power is still an option. All the machines needed to keep people alive mean that each person has a much larger power footprint than we have today. Solar, fossil fuels, etc just don't cut it. For a civilization to reach this point they need to invent an economical solution to cold fusion using the hydrogen available in what's left of the ocean's water. This means that the world would slowly consum it's oceans releasing its oxygen to form that much needed ozone I mentioned earlier and the hydrogen to power the fusion reactors. Eventually, the oceans would begin to disappear, but even at these rates of consumption, this civilization could last a pretty long time.
Lastly, going back to my previous estimation of hong kong population density, this means that the average person accounts for 416 ft². That may not sound like a world superstructure at first, but this means that your 2000 ft² of hi-tech farmland, the place you live, the place you work, the place your kids go to school, your fair share of everything and everywhere you go you needs to all fit into 416 ft². So, I suspect, this would probably look like an average continuous building height of ~8-12 stories. Obviously that would just be an average height; so, you'd have rich, "remote", and ruined areas where the super building is shorter than that, and other areas that are massively built up super structures that are hundreds of stories tall of continuous structure; so, I'd say this is probably the low end of what a world building would look like. But if you were to contiguously build up this whole super building up to the pentacle of what material integrity would allow, you could probably get up to a few quadrillion people at the very high-end assuming you get really good at recycling and importing new materials.
[Answer]
For some reason i read this and i get the feeling it's an dystopian world, I mean how can it not be?
In our petit planet we only cover about 3% of it's area, just saying.
Feasible? Probably, a good idea? Probably not.
"So we will have an Earth size hollow sphere with 3 m (9 feet) thick walls. The volume of all this concrete is 1.54∗10^15cubic meters... that means a square surface mine with 1240 km (770 miles) on a side and 1 km (0.6 miles) deep."
That's a big mine, assuming we'll take the resources from earth. But that is only taking in consideration a hollow sphere, are we covering the oceans too? Are buildings going to have multiple floors (I'd assume yes)?
So to make this more plausible we'd be probably mining planets and asteroids for that to be possible, are animals sheltered in like zoos? Do we even care about animals? Is this a working class planet and titan is the rich people's planet? That would be fun. I'd assume rooftops would be really sought after.
I really like the idea and do really think it's plausible, specially if we have colonized other planets. I'm not sure i got the vibe you wanted but i definitely got a dystopian feeling from what i read.
Hollow sphere earth numbers:
<https://www.quora.com/Could-we-build-a-spaceship-larger-than-the-Earth-itself>
[Answer]
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> everywhere you go there are stories and stories of shops, markets, cinemas etc above you. Even at the very top, there is only limited access to the open-sky
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Why?
There's actually a very good reason why: That open-sky view is being used for power generation.
It sounds like you want a "high tech" but not "very high tech" situation. Let's suppose these people have near-perfect photovoltaics and can capture 6$kWhm^{-2}$ each day, or 168$kWhm^{-2}$ each month. ([Reference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#Irradiance_on_Earth's_surface)) That means that if each person has 80$m^2$ of living space (whether or not that's "crowded" is subjective, I'd call it normal), the roof of the top-story apartment will be generating 161$MWh$ per year.
How's that compare to real-world energy production?
[India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India) has 1,300,000,000 people and generates 6,444,000,000$MWh$ per year ([see here, and double-check my unit conversions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_energy_supply)). That's 5$MWh$ per year per capita. For the United States it works out to 72$MWh$ per year per capita.
So far it looks like this could work; your "global building" could be as much as 30 stories tall (deep) provided you're not expecting too many people to have modern amenities like electricity or refrigerators.
But where does the food come from? For that matter, where does the *oxygen* come from? CO$\_2$ concentrations [can be a problem even in existing buildings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_air_quality#Carbon_dioxide).
I think your best bet for a plausible world would be one with much less land-mass than ours.
You'd basically have a water-world, with people living on barges and civilizations powered by floating wind turbines and eating farmed fish and seaweed, and then there'd be this big island or chain of islands, say the size of Japan or Madagascar, that, as the only firm ground in the entire world, had been developed into a single contiguous 100-story-tall megastructure.
For that matter, does your story even need to be set in the *fixed* mega-structure? Can you imagine living in a cruise ship the size of a city-state?
$\_{Someone's\;going\;to\;complain\;that\;this\;civilization\;wouldn't\;have\;the\;iron\;to\;build\;boats\;that\;big.\;I'm\;assuming\;they\;have\;the\;technology\;to\;mine\;the \;sea-floor,\;and\;that\;it's\;reasonably\;shallow\;for\;whatever\;reason.}$
[Answer]
not physically impossible but why not just burrow into the earth?
It would be easier, also don't forget about food it is hard to grow food without sunlight and if the planet was one big apartment complex that is just so much more food you need seeing as there would be about something trillion people. I say either burrow or build a sky scraper into space several times, it also leaves more space for food.
[Answer]
Power is really the only limiting factor. With a virtually unlimited power supply, you can run algae tanks to supply food and process air as well as a waste. You'd need some sort of fusion generator system to produce the required levels. You also need a food processing system that can take said algae and produce faux foods like meat, cheese and bread.
Society would have to be virtually 100% efficient as you don't have the room or materials to waste dumping things like society does now. Everything would be made to last and/or recycle 100%.
You'd need some sort of VR matrix system which would allow people to get out and explore without having to leave home. You can't afford people travelling for holidays. In fact travel needs to be kept as little as possible and only short distances. No flying to Paris for the weekend.
You also need automated system for delivery of goods and the removal of waste. You can't afford people physically going out shopping and bringing goods home with them.
Finally space travel would have to be to and from space elevators perhaps to an orbital ring.
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[Question]
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I am a time traveller from the not so distant future. I have gone into the past to the Roman Empire (specifically the [Nerva-Antonine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerva%E2%80%93Antonine_dynasty) period) and via -*handwaving magical mumbo-technobabble*- have become Emperor. I have a small cadre of loyal followers and the Senate is mostly allied and in agreement with me. I have pretty good engineering knowledge and have a couple of books full of handy dandy info like the recipe for gunpowder and how to make vaccines.
My first goal is to improve the nation's infrastructure and military (military will be handled in Part 2) Specifically I wish to strengthen Rome's ability to communicate and control the farthest reaches of the empire more effectively (to help prevent rebelling provinces, invasions and military coups) As for civil infrastructure, I figure Roman civil engineering is adequate for the time being.
So my question is, how can I devise a more efficient transport system (mainly on land) to allow my army and officials (and perhaps merchants and the like) to get to different parts of the empire fast. And two, how can I create a much faster communication system?
[Answer]
Heliograph for communication. Whatever the content of your *Engineering pro fatui*, you're still stuck with a Roman industrial base. Even the most rudimentary electronics requires at least loads of copper wire that would be prohibitively expensive and would get stolen faster than could be replaced. Mirrors of polished metal are achievable. They would even work at night, with sunlight replaced by properly managed fire, though focusing the beam would be trickier.
For transport, I suspect the Romans pushed their technological base to the limit and you couldn't do much better. But if your communication is significantly faster than that of your competitors, that gives you an advantage in transport as well, whether it be trade or war you're interested in.
[Answer]
* Proper horsecollars, of course.
* Invent the [dandy horse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_horse). A much cheaper way to move clerks and similar personnel than keeping real horses around. (As an added benefit, bicycles and sewing machines are great motivations for your engineering industry a few decades down the line).
* Invent or improve the [wheelbarrow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelbarrow#Ancient_Greece_and_Rome). It is unclear if Rome had it, any anyway the chinese center-wheel design has advantages for longer stretches. That means your peasants no longer need a mule or ass to carry their loads to market.
* Take a look at [food preservation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning), this will simplify the logistics of moving troops around the Imperium.
[Answer]
* **Stirrup**
* **Stagecoach**
Roman roads were indeed very good for that era and couldn't be improved. Army already had relay stations where a messenger could change horses. What was missing is an effective way of riding the horse or moving groups of people in a carriage. Stirrups were not known in antiquity, which limited the use of cavalry and made any horseback travel stressful. Fitting your army horses with stirrups would immediately improve your messengers' speed and make your cavalry much more formidable.
In antiquity, only primitive wagons and chariots were used, but nothing would prevent having a more sophisticated vehicles with suspension, culminating in an iconic stagecoach. They would not only make land travel faster and more comfortable. Staging stations can provide safe lodging for travelers, and coaches can travel with armed escort. Although this would make little difference for the military and officials (who would be armed or protected either way), it can completely revolutionize private travel. In real life, safe, fast and reliable land travel did not become reality until Renaissance era or even later.
[Answer]
# Light wagons with suspensions
The Roman Empire's road infrastructure is pretty hard to improve, given the technological base of the time periods. The roads build by the early Empire were not improved upon until the invention of [Macadam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macadam) during the industrial revolution.
Roman horses were generally small and could use some improvement. Much more powerful horses were available by the end of the Middle Ages. But that improvement requires selective breeding and it is unclear exactly how much you could speed that process up.
Instead, for an immediate improvement in transport, you could develop wagon engineering. But introducing the principles of the Early Modern carriage and [coach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage#Coach), such as light, spoked wheels and suspensions, you can reduce the weight of a wagon, thus making it more efficient to carry loads long distances on the excellent roads.
# Rudders and rigging
There is no real technological barriers between the Romans and the Early Modern European ships that explored the oceans of the planet. There are two principle developments that could help here.
First is the [rudder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudder#Medieval_Europe) with a vertical sternpost attached with iron hinges. The second is a [full-rigged ship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-rigged_ship). The specific combination of square and fore-and-aft sails was not developed until the Early Modern Age, yet the Romans had both types of sail at their disposal.
Roman [grain carriers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(ship)) were already reaching 1000 tons or more, probably larger than any European ships until the 16th century Galleons, so they were plenty big enough to benefit from more modern steering and locomotive gear.
[Answer]
**Transportation**
The Romans were pretty good at roads (for the time) - however if you update their road building techniques to use [Water-bound Macadam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macadam) designs and methodology it would be a significant upgrade to the land transport - particularly for moving goods, equipment and troops in poor weather conditions. Which would give you greatly increased speed and reliability over large distances. It doesn't require much in the way of technology either - it's more in the design then anything else, and it can be done with lots of labour (something Rome had decent amounts of available given slaves and whatnot)
For non-road purposes you can easily invent the compaass a thousand or so years in advance - this will improve navigation by ship (especially when visibility is poor)
Speaking of ships - quick wins include things like the stern mounted rudder, [Junk rigging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_rig), Fin keels are all things that you can introduce quickly, cheaply and with existing materials and tooling but that will give you a signficant advantage in terms of manueverability, stability, speed and military capability in the ocean. You'll establish naval superiority over your rivals without breaking a sweat.
**Communication**
With decent engineering knowledge it shouldn't be too difficult (over time) to essentially build up a primitve electrical telegraph system. Even the first working system as [invented by Sir Francis Ronalds](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zos5AAAAcAAJ&pg=PP13&lpg=PP13&dq=Descriptions+of+an+Electrical+Telegraph,+and+of+some+other+Electrical+Apparatus+ronalds&source=bl&ots=Sxwot822Sk&sig=pBvoGGDnD37GUheoa5ngRRwkHjk&hl=en&ei=lyWoTqmqCcjniALs1dSiDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&sqi=2&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false) was capable of sending communications over distances of up to 8 miles - a relay of those set up across the territories of the empire would vastly improve communication.
While that's in progress you can use the gunpowder knowledge to set up a relay system of signal flares, it'll only give you a very limited vocabulary true - but for doing things like sending warnings about those pesky barbarians and their invasions or basic co-ordination of troop movements it could be very effective.
[Answer]
Communication.
[Semaphores](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line) (not heliostats). Even a system that does not use lights can speed up communication from weeks to hours. One of the main destabilizing factors of the Roman Empire was military uprisings by army commanders; semaphore lines halve the reaction time, or cut it down even more since you can activate army rivals within hours.
Positional notation for numbers.
Roman numerals are horror for arithmetic. Only specialists could do it.
Our standard decimal system is one, and probably easiest to introduce. It is base-10, which makes it easy to divide by 2, and 5, and any multiplication of them; division by 5 isn't that interesting in practice, 3 is much more useful, so introduce base-6 or base-12 if the populace will accept it.
Public schooling.
Child labor is common and a necessity for many. You have half a year between "you can talk with it" and "it is needed for field work", so use that time. The amount of knowledge you can pass on is limited; take your estimation of what you can cram into that time, then reduce it because children will break down if you overdo it. Remember you can't force parents to send their children to school.
Open those schools for adults, too. Deal with those who *have* knowledge to strongly oppose to that. Some will do anything to block the growth of unwanted competition: PR, slander, arson, murder, judicial system abuse.
You will have to budget for this, but distributing knowledge is the fastest way to get something into motion (also the most uncontrollable one - be prepared to deal with, erm, "inappropriate" use of the knowledge, that's a pretty good plotline generator).
Police.
There was no police. Robber bands were active within towns; the wealthy needed bodyguards to get home at night, the poor weren't worth being robbed, but the middle class had to stay at home or get robbed (so the middle class had a hard time doing anything).
Communities tended to organize a militia. Know a few strong men, pay them to pay the robber of the last night a visit and take back at least the one trinket that you really cannot afford to lose. Hope the strong men aren't paid more by the robbers last night (but most robbers cannot afford to give back too much). Those strong men were essentially enforcers, who might or might not ask questions before taking out their sticks - you chose your enforcers based on what you wanted to have, and you didn't want to escalate things so far that they'd simply slay you (robbers usually don't want to slay their victims: a dead victim can't be robbed again). So it was somehow manageable, just not really safe.
Separation of Powers.
Strengthen the police and see it abused by the powerful... so you need to install a judicial system. You'll need to invest it with some religious mumbo-jumbo.
However, the Romands knew how to apply rules "sine ira et studio", i.e. neutrality and objectivity were known concepts, you'd just have to make sure that it becomes the operating principle of the judicial system (the Romans tended to stick with "what works", not so much with "the principle of the thing", so you'd need a demonstration community).
Modern (sort-of) economics.
Get somebody to work on Adam Smith's theories, and translate them to the contemporary mindset. Should work well since Romans had a pretty mercantile mindset, but they were also pretty matter-of-fact with cartels and other forms of powerplay such as murder, so if something went too far they turned to interventionism.
Not sure about human rights, or emancipation.
The "patronus" was essentially king of his family. Females were always under patronage: Of the patronus of the house they were living in (whether his family or not), or of their husband when they got married. Independent women were almost nonexistent, and had to make a living by, er, "entertaining" wealthy customers (the smarter ones went far beyond just sexual entertainment, but even these were never equals to their customers).
Either accept it as a fact of the Roman culture, or risk strong opposition (in particular, senate starting to oppose you) trying to change it.
These changes take time. Adopt a policy of travelling to the future, see what worked and what didn't, travel back and adjust. If your time-travel mumbo-jumbo allows this.
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[Question]
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What I want to know is if an asteroid about 15 KM in diameter and roughly double that in length, spinning at a significant speed, could go undiscovered until a crew of an asteroid mining ship happened upon it, out in the belt (specifically the Mars/Jupiter belt, not the Kuiper belt).
A little bit of extra information that may or may not affect this likelihood - man at the time of this story does have a significant population in space, with Earth-orbital colonies, a few lunar and Martian colonies, and a significant presence out there in the belt. The belt is so huge and vast and so full of objects though, could an asteroid like this, that's not exceptionally bright/reflective, go unnoticed until stumbled upon?
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The spin would be maintained artificially. Technology is present the humans won't fully comprehend, and thus I don't have to fully reconcile. Presumably, this would also prevent it from going into a tumble.
[EDIT #2 - Shame on me for needing to revise this twice!]
BeauM raised a point I should've thought of, and that's specifying the level of advancement/time period for humanity in this case. I place this around 175 or so years into the future, which I see as an awful optimistically short period of time to be where they are with space colonization really. But it's possible. They've got nuclear propulsion working well enough to reach Mars in a couple months when it's at its closest. They've got decent laser drills to carve asteroids up, and they've got decent centrifugal "gravity" on ships and orbital stations to make space habitation comfortable. But they've not achieved any magical leaps in technology. Telescopes aren't all that much more powerful than our newest exoplanet hunting setups, they merely have the opportunity to put more of them in more advantageous places. Really the only fantastic leap, which made space so much more accessible, was the construction of decent magnetic launchers to escape Earth affordably and mostly safely.
[Answer]
# Most likely, no
There are approximately 10,000 asteroids over 10 km in radius in the main asteroid belt ([Masiero et al., 2011](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.4096.pdf); Figure 5).
There are 636,499 identified objects in the asteroid belt as of May 2015 ([Jones et al., 2015](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.03199.pdf)).
We have almost certainly detected every asteroid in the main belt (and the inner solar system, too) that is larger than 10 km in diameter.
If you want this to be true, for fiction reasons, I'm sure you can make something up, but that would be the topic of a separate question.
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I agree with the **No** answers regarding *detection*, but like some other recent [answers](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/128902/a-secret-base-is-built-on-mars-is-it-noticed/128907#128907) by me I wonder if *recognition* may be missing. That is,
* the asteroid has a catalog number in astronomical databases,
* there is a rough size estimate,
* rotation speed may or may not be known with any precision,
* but **no human analyst** ever looked at the data in any detail.
Data mining is an extremely powerful tool, but as of today it mostly finds what people train it to find, intentionally or unintentionally.
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**Yes, if you hide it inside another asteroid**
This may sound like cheating, however I have some reason behind this madness. There are many problems with hollowed out asteroids as space stations. If you are thinking long term, you want a thick shell, to avoid damage by the occasional impacts of smaller asteroids. You also want the inside to be even, even if the outside isn't. All this makes the shell needlessly heavy, requiring a lot of energy and reaction mass to get it to rotate. There is also the structural problem, since you do not know how the shell will react to the stresses of centrifugal forces. Also whenever some maintenance guy working on the outside drops his wrench, it will be catapulted off to who knows where...
You could of course use up the whole asteroid to simply build a well armored rotating space station, however this would kind of defeat the purpose. Instead an advanced space-faring civilization might combine both approaches:
1. Hollow out an asteroid. Leave a thick enough shell to withstand whatever impact you think might occur and only leave a small opening at one end. (maybe put an angle in there to avoid freak asteroid-strikes.)
2. Build a lightweight cylindrical space station inside the asteroid and affix it at the ends with some alien, frictionless, superconducting magnetic bearings.
3. Spin up just the inner space station, leaving the shell motionless.
This leaves you with artificial gravity inside, a solid shell and even some protected zero-gravity parking spaces for you spaceships inside the cavern (Think of the insurance bill). It also solves the wrench dropping problem.
(I remember having already read about an idea like this somewhere else, however I do not remember a source)
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Almost certainly no. Aside from Kingledion's answer regarding discovery with *existing* and older technology, by the time there's a significant human population in space puttering around, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that anything signficant in size (say over 100 meters) within the orbit of Jupiter would be cataloged.
Second issue, the spinning. Due to rotational effects, a cylinder (which your asteroid is, roughly speaking) is unstable rotating along its long axis and will eventually start tumbling around its short axis ([see this question here explaining why](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/90432/stabilizing-a-mckendree-cylinder-habitat)). That means the asteroid will be tumbling end-over-end, which means changes in the area exposed to light and any observer, thus the rotation will be trivially visible even if the surface has a uniform albedo and is otherwise featureless.
Unfortunately, your asteroid will be known about long before anyone ever gets there.
**EDIT**
Taking into account some of the clarifications, here's some other problems:
1. If it's just been found by a mining crew, that immediately raises a concern about why it wasn't already catalogued, because it clearly should have been.
2. If it's being stabilized by the inhabitants to prevent tumbling so it only rotates around the long axis, that's going to raise flags all by itself because of *not* rotating around its short axis as a natural object would. That would instantly be a screaming indication something is wrong.
[Answer]
**Implications of Detection**
Detection has been fairly well-covered in other answers, so I feel like I should address the "what-if" in the case that your asteroid is catalogued and characterized.
Roughly speaking your asteroid would need to be spinning at ~0.02224 rad/s (0.00354 rev/s, 0.21252 rev/m, 12.751 rev/h, 306.03 rev/d, etc...) to generate the equivalent of Mars surface gravity against the inner walls - if it has relatively thin walls.
I am not a materials scientist, but [it does seem](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/2092/what-is-the-minimum-mass-required-so-that-objects-become-spherical-due-to-its-ow) that the size you propose is small enough to not become a sphere under its own gravity. Whether a rocky body could naturally stay cohesive under this spin rate is out of my wheelhouse but my guess is it would.
[This](https://www.lpi.usra.edu/books/AsteroidsIII/pdf/3016.pdf) paper does a nice job of comparing size to rotation rate (just look at the plots to get all the info you need). Unfortunately, it seems that for an object over 100m there is a max observed spin rate of ~10 rev/d. If astronomers found a cylindrical asteroid 15km by 30km spinning at 306 rev/d you can bet they'd be taking a REAL close look.
\*\*EDIT: I originally used 15km as the *radius*, now the calculated values reflect a *diameter* of 15km.
[Answer]
While I generally agree with everyone else's conclusion of no, I'd like to add a maybe, a rather tenuous yes.
Sure, we have detected to date 636,499 objects tumbling about in space, but how long has that taken us? The first asteroid was detected in 1801, and we didn't really start detecting asteroids "en-masse" until somewhere around the mid 1990's to early 2000's. That leaves 200 years of wiggle room for something to hide, which brings me to my next point that space is big. You have to be looking in the right place at the right time to really find something. Given your beings have already colonised the nearby surrounding heavens, the level of technology would be more advanced than we have today and as such detection methods would likely be greater. However what this may not mean is that vast amounts of time and man-power have gone into looking at the area that you're interested in.
Maybe it's not located around or near another populated area and doesn't get much interest from researchers. Maybe it's on the other side of something larger, that just refuses to get out of the way in any timely fashion. Maybe it's near a militarized zone, and looking in that direction too closely with a powerful telescope will bring about the unwanted attention of men in black coats driving black cars. Maybe it's just a new area for researchers, and the task of identifying all these tumbling dark objects is large and daunting, therefore slow work.
This all depends on the level of technology you have portrayed your beings to have. If they scanning the skies and detecting in-coming enemies from another far off planet for example, the above is probably moot.
[EDIT]
Based on your recent edit, I feel there's a higher chance that something would simply not be seen, in any decent time-frame anyway. The time between detecting, identifying, cataloging, explaining, and then releasing of information can be hilariously long. Especially if there is something anomalous about the object, something that can't be explained with science of the day, something that might be noticed but remain solely with one or two scientists who are trying to solve the mystery before releasing the information to the world.
] |
[Question]
[
>
> In a far-distant future Pascal enters the bridge of his intelligent space ship.
>
>
> He's a lazy bloke who can't be bothered to sit or stand, so he flicks his fingers and in a moment of [Clarkian magic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws) a pillar, an object, a force appears.1
>
>
> He leans against the pillar and proclaims: "I am the promise, which shattered in the most possible and well meaning way."2 As Pascal shifts his weight, the pillar instantly adjusts to provide for his comfort.3
>
>
>
**Question:** What "future" mechanisms could be used to create the pillar/object/force I've described? I've considered things like condensing air molecules and superfast nanorobots, but I am hoping with your expertise you could help me with additional insight.
**Condition #1:** This is an intelligent ship. It knows and understands Pascal and its own capabilities. It has the ability to analyze the situation and use the resources available to it to solve the problem.
**Condition #2:** The effect should be "instantaneous" in that between the the moment Pascal "flicks" his fingers and the moment he begins to lean the problem has been solved and the solution implemented such that the pillar/object/force is there when his body expects to feel resistance.
---
1 I prefer the pillar to be invisible, but I'm more interested in the mechanics of the solution.
2 Or some nonsense like that…
3 As long as it's activated. While on, it would even shift to recapture his balance, should he lose it. Whether or not it should come on automatically (without the "flick" of his fingers) is an issue outside the scope of this question.
[Answer]
Wow. This one had me thinking. But then I realized the key factor - an 'intelligent ship'.
So the ship is living. Quasi-organic. Not necessarily carbon-based organic. This pillar is part of it's body. Just like we can flex our muscles, or contort our face. The ship itself can contort and re-arrange its own structure. It is the ship itself, not the pillar, that is responding to the persons' commands. Not sure if this fits in with the rest of the plot, however.
Alternatively, the 'pillar' is, indeed, the clothes the character is wearing. A completely integrated whole-body suit. That is, the fabric of the clothing can harden and stiffen in just the right way as to SEEM like a pillar is supporting it, when in fact it is the clothing that is doing the supporting. The problem with this, however, is that if the center of gravity of the overall shape moved outside of the base, the form would topple. Thus, you would have to 'play' with either gravity or force fields - perhaps electromagnetic support generated by the walls and floor, and interacting with the suit, to keep it upright while providing support. Magnetic boots, strong enough to keep the feet flat on the deck, to ensure the form stays upright. The ultimate in laziness, perhaps the suit itself does the 'walking'.
Or, use sound waves as a levitation/support device. Strategically placed speakers, or even the entire walls and floor could become a speaker, that send out sound waves at sufficient energy to push against, or support, the body.
[Answer]
The entire deck is made of elongated rectangular prisms. The top sides of the prisms form the walking surface. The ship can elevate and depress the prisms very quickly; they are attached to pistons on the underside. On elevation they form a prism of any height up to the ceiling. On depression they leave a square hole in the floor.
This would be a cool way to make a deck in any respect; one could have different levels of flooring for different needs. I can imagine the configuration of the bridge might change for "battle stations". An ad hoc wall can be erected. Stairs on demand can emerge allowing transit to upper levels.
And of course your ship knows The P will want a pillar to lean on and shoot one up out of the floor the moment he needs it.
---
The concept would not let me go. My depiction:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zJNOh.jpg)
[Answer]
I propose to have the "pillar" attached to the back of his pants, instead.
Some kind of repulsive force (perhaps magnetic, relying on eddy currents on some superconductive insets in the ship bridge) will keep "the pants" afloat and reasonably fixed by means of active control (Segway style).
In a far future it's thinkable to make MagLev very controllable and directional, so not to disturb surrounding equipment.
Room-temperature superconductivity is another "common item" in the far future.
[Answer]
The deck, the consoles, indeed everything within the hull that isn't a self-contained system like an engine, a life-support system, sensor, weapon, fuel, etc. Is composed entirely of [Claytronic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claytronics "Claytronic") [Utility Fog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_fog "Utility Fog"). Which allows the ship to reconfigure its internal structure programmatically.
[Answer]
You have plot problems. If you have the technology to instantly manifest a 'pillar' then you don't really need to be in a 'space ship'.
P, the spaceship, and the universe can be seen to be a hologrammatical representation of universe - or, if you like, a 'rendering'. So by manipulating the underlying universe you can switch a pillar in or out where you like. But then you don't need to worry about distance any more, so you don't need a space-ship - unless it's just some sort of vanity object.
[Answer]
Obviously the ship uses it's Safe Working Environment Forcefields™ to stop anyone on the bridge from falling over so when P leans past a certain point the ship automatically catches him before he can fall. This is my none too subtle way of saying that a being who appears to be modeled on [Q](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(Star_Trek)) can get away with whatever you like, so don't overthink it and don't over justify it either.
[Answer]
A different take on the idea is to look at quantum physics.
Many interpretations of quantum physics suggest that for a particle to be in a certain place at a certain time, an observer needs to be present to observe it (this is much like the riddle of a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it-does it make a sound?).
For pillars or other things to manifest themselves, or other effects to occur, there needs to be a means of calculating the probability of the particles in the object being in the certain place at the certain time (or alternatively *not* being there, for example, walking through a wall). Obviously, these sorts of events are not very probable, since we rarely or never see these things happening. The next thing we need is an "observer" to collapse the quantum wave function so that the improbable event happens in the way that is desired.
Since the ship is intelligent enough to accurately sense the moods and needs of the character, we can presume it is a "supercomputer" in todays terms. Given enough computing power and fast enough processors, the computer can sense "P" is slumping to lean against something, rapidly calculate the probability of an object being there and "observe" it into existence. P leans back and the pillar appears where and when needed.
Reversing the process is probably (heh) much easier, sending things "out" of existence seems far more probable than conjuring them into existence. It also speaks to the dangers of this sort of technology, if you guess wrong, or calculate the probabilities incorrectly, you could manifest a pillar intersecting with P's body, manifest a lake of fire that he falls into or eliminate P from this universe by accident instead.
There may be other issues with this sort of manipulation of quantum reality, outside of the rather outrageous amount of computing power needed to calculate and "observe" things in and out of existence. There may be some sort of limit to the number or amount of manipulations that can be done in a confined space like the interior of a spaceship. People with competing visions could cause quantum decoherence and shatter the creation or destruction of objects and events inside. Indeed, this could be done maliciously (making the pillar vanish under P just as his back touches it would be on the level of a practical joke, but weaponized, this could become extremely freaky).
[Answer]
Clearly this is a job for a star trek replicator.
e=mc2
Input a bunch of energy and get mass. That is what the replicator does, converts raw energy into whatever is requested of it.
[Answer]
As Konchog observed in his answer,
>
> You have plot problems. If you have the technology to instantly manifest a
> 'pillar' then you don't really need to be in a 'space ship'.
>
>
>
To solve the quandary, let's *remain scientific* and remember that given the distances involved and the interstellar speed limit of 1.0c, as well as a *practical* limit of say 0.2c, the travel takes a **very** long time.
So the pilots and the crew aren't biological humans - they're digitised minds living most of the time in a consensual artificial reality in which they pilot the ship - the next stage of technology was the "fly by dream".
In a ironic reversal of what might have happened millennia earlier, now what they see in their monitors is *real* (or at least based on the outside reality) and what they see all around them is *fake*. There *is* no bridge, no engineering room, no Auxiliary Command One. The physical ship is at its core an engine strapped to a VR supercomputer.
So all the Captain has to do is to look at the table and, as a courtesy, *say* rather than *think* "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot", and the required beverage appears literally out of nothing. Same holds for pillars, clothing and everything else.
] |
[Question]
[
*Nb: This question was posted in [sandbox for proposed questions](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4835/7974)!*
# Backgrounds
**Design Goals:** The weapon should be capable of delivering a powerful impact, but would be super easy to turn. Not to mention that the sword should be powerful enough to cut through most solid things. Despite its ability to cut through most materials, the blade should be safe to use, that is, when facing another ordinary metal sword, the opponent's sword wouldn't just be sliced and the sliced opponent's blade flown with its remaining momentum toward the user. In another word, when detecting a potentially dangerous situation as outlined, the sword should be able to repel opponent's metal sword than just slicing it.
**Current Design Solution:** If summarized, current solutions provide these features:
1. **The sword** is hollow, inner parts would be for counter masses and machinery.
* **The blade** is an empty hard shell of strong yet light material (perhaps diamondoid, graphene, or even carbon-nanotube reinforced steel).
* **The handle** is filled with computer control units, magnetic actuators to move the counter masses around the rails and an energy source.
2. **The cutting edge** is composed of *microscopic* "curtain-held"s arranged in a row along the sharp edge. The "curtain-held"s would erect curtains of some kind of [monomolecular wire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomolecular_wire) along the path of the edge when in use (yes, you could see that this is partly inspired by this [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/19258/7974)). The monomolecular wire would be either graphene as the answer linked suggest, or [TMDC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_metal_dichalcogenide_monolayers) ribbons. The curtains could be superheated to aid in cutting power. As a safety measure it could also produce strong magnetism or eddie currents that repels an opponent's metal sword when in close proximity.
3. Dynamic mass counterbalance system inside the sword that could be used to shift the center of mass of the sword, and is generally heavy, comprising at least half of the weapons whole mass. The inner side of the blade's "shell" would be a rail system extending from near the tip of the blade to near the end of the handle, of which a number of heavy counter masses would be shifted to change the whole sword's center of mass in battle according to need. Practically there are at least two different configurations in use during battle:
* center of gravity moved to near the tip of blade for swinging and slashing, or
* center of gravity moved to near the handle for easy and quick turning.
4. Has sufficient battery power and strong capacitor that must be able to supply the system with enough energy to move the counter masses and power its integrated control circuits. Also to heat the cutting strand if heating is necessary.
5. The weapon is about 1.5 meters in length (1.2 meters in blade and 0.3 meters in handle). The mass could be anywhere between 5 kg to 7 kg (perhaps the upper limit could be up to 10 kg).
**Modus of Operation:** Basically to operate it, when it is swung, the center of mass would be changed to be near the tip of the blade to increase the hitting mass, while to rotate the blade the center of mass would be moved near the handle.
# Question
What I would like to know is **whether or not this arrangement is conceivable or even plausible**.
Ps: Assume that the weight of the sword is not an issue for the wielder.
---
## Edit 20170716
Thanks for everyone that contribute in this questions! With so many comments and broad range of topics discussed in it I feel like it would be better to address it with a statement in the question instead. With this edit I would like to clarify some points:
* Apparently some answers address the fact that this sword may be difficult to wield, or might not always be in the favor of the wielder. This sword is designed to be wielded not by man but by some other creature that could micromanage the sword on the fly, and yes every mechanism of the sword is manually controlled by the user.
* Another thanks for those that mentioned the problem with heated sword, especially (@John) the fact that TMDC or monolayer materials may burn in oxygen rich environment (and our atmosphere is!). Other than that, heat may weaken the sword even more (@John, and PipperChip).
* Apparently user stated that shift-able center of mass would not add any benefit, that even a solid sword with no dynamic center of mass would be more or less the same in term of efficiency (@John), and center of mass near the handle wouldn't help in rotating or manipulating the blade any faster either (@Aify).
* Also qualification I use to decide which of the answers is the best answer would be those *that could answer the actual question* (in bold), and there are many to choose, most qualifies as such. Therefore I'll wait for some days before I would pick one.
[Answer]
As a practitioner of (mostly) Eastern martial arts, your sword does not work for many of our styles.
First of all, you do not want a hollow blade whatsoever. A hollow blade reduces the strength of the blade, especially since you'll be taking mass away from the core. Your blade will be much easier to shatter or otherwise mangle in combat, and a mangled blade is a useless blade.
Having mechanism inside the hollow section is even worse, as your blade is likely to be constantly banged from various directions, leading to your mechanisms possibly malfunctioning.
Heating a metal almost always makes it weaker (actually I'm not sure that there's any metal that's stronger when heated).
I don't quite understand why you'd want to repel the opponent's metal sword when in close proximity; wouldn't the same mechanism repel the opponents armor (and as such the entire opponent), resulting in you never cutting any metal items?
Dynamic counter mass sounds like a mess to practice with, and it doesn't really help with our martial arts system. Eastern martial arts (related to swords and sabers) typically focus on speed and accuracy over strength and power; as such, many of our swings aim to do damage using the tips of the blades. We rely on cutting edge and cutting speed instead of hitting mass. Therefore, there is no reason to increase the hitting mass at all; instead, a better design choice for this (with regard to our style) would be to remove the dynamic mass completely.
The weight near the handle doesn't help us rotate or manipulate our blade any faster either.
---
To address the edit: Your sword as described is "conceivable", as in, "yes, you can make this sword with technology in the future" - I would suggest the removal of the heated edge though. However, I have my doubts as to the effectiveness of the blade in combat. I can already think of several tactics to abuse the mechanisms of the sword against the wielder.
[Answer]
# The Problems I See
As a [HEMA practitioner](https://www.hemaalliance.com/), I don't think this is very practical for a few reasons:
1. It is common in many styles of swordsmanship to block other weapons with your own weapon. If you block edge-on-edge and successfully cut through the other weapon, you may find the part you cut off flying into your face! Yes, [I know edge-on-edge blocking](https://youtu.be/W9b8q7-M_dQ) is looked down upon by certain people, but it's common enough that I should mention it. You cannot reliably enter into a bind or parry with this blade against a weapon.
2. A changing center of mass is very tricky. There are situations where you may want to very quickly turn and cut, or you rely on the blade's speed (such as German longsword's [duplieren and mutieren](https://youtu.be/mstry2UzGXc)) and the changing center of mass can make these maneuvers more difficult. So this weapon must always guess if you're going to need the speed or the center of mass to change, and it may guess wrong and cost you.
3. The magnetic field idea is interesting, but sometimes you really do want to block the opponent's weapon with your own and enter into a bind. Also, this magnetic field must be really, really strong to have much of an effect in combat. That magnetic field could actually work to the wielder's disadvantage: instead of entering into a bind and controlling the fight, the magnetic field could prevent it, and then the opponent's blade is free to offend! So you can't control your opponent's blade with this weapon.
4. Heating a blade usually does not help with cutting. For one thing, if your weapon is held together with atomic bonds of just about any kind (which you plan to do), it takes less energy to break it. Hot things fall apart more quickly than otherwise. (To see an example of this, think of frozen butter vs. room temperature butter!)
5. If you cut with a blade hot enough to burn flesh, you will cauterize the wounds, preventing bleeding. Bleeding is important to killing people in a timely fashion! So cutting with this weapon doesn't cause bleeding, even if you do land a hit. Oh yeah, no using your sword as a big ol' lever in wresting for [half-swording](https://youtu.be/vwuQPfvSSlo) without a heat glove. Halfswording may not be needed because this thing is so sharp... ish...
# In Summary
This weapon:
1. Cannot reliably bind or parry
2. It may disagree on you if you should thrust or cut
3. You cannot enter a bind
4. It heats up to become less durable
5. It heats up to prevent your opponents from bleeding to death
6. You can't half-sword with it unless the blade can sense the wielder's hand.
So this weapons sounds terrible to me. It won't work with European swordsmanship and very likely will not work with eastern swordsmanship.
*This is possible, but not very practical.* There are certainly engineering challenges for this, but there is nothing physically preventing such a thing from existing. Is it useful? Likely not.
[Answer]
I think dynamic behavior of this "super-sword" (if and when you could actually build it) would surprise you quite a lot, possibly in a non-favorable way.
Main problem is during a swing linear and angular momentum need to be preserved (unless actively acted upon by exerting an appropriate force on the handle). This means that, when "counterbalance" system shifts the inner weights (presumably accounting for a large part of sword total weight) toward the tip the handle would push hard in wielder hands and, if not countered by muscle force, this would result in the tip of the sword to move where the handle was (i.e.: the inner weights would remain in the same place and the blade would move). Worse yet when counterbalance weights are suddenly retracted in the handle, the sword will try to leave wielder hands.
Similar problems about momentum: if you start a fast swing (weights in the handle) when weights go up the blade would stop. In the reverse situation (retracting weights with a blade already in motion) would result in a blade accelerating uncontrollably its motion.
The whole problem arises from fact to change momentum a force is needed and that force must be anchored to something solid. This is reason why "real" swordsmen are taught to initiate all movements from the hips, which solidly rest on the most muscular potion of our body, able to transmit the force down to the unmoving ground with ease.
To obtain an effect similar to what you need you can think about an active gyroscopic system, detecting intentions with sensors in the handle and enhancing the movement by up-spinning the correct gyroscope (this would increment its momentum in a certain direction and thus the sword would acquire the same momentum difference in the *opposite* direction). With this setup most of the weight can be in the gyro system and sword wouldn't loose its power, if it's rigid enough. Keep in mind such a weapon would mostly turn around its center of mass (i.e.: the gyro system) and would offer no enhanced translation capability.
Please note: what follows is *not* 100% scientifically correct, but I believe the specifics I left out re not relevant in current discussion.
In an "isolated system" (i.e: a system not subjected to external forces) there are three "quantities" that are preserved: linear momentum, angular momentum and energy.
You need not worry about the latter because You are storing a sizable energy amount (in the form of chemical potential energy) to be converted to other forms (in this case kinetic).
You have **no** way to modify linear momentum (i.e.: to move sword center of gravity) without exerting force from outside (i.e.: to actively use wielder muscles to transmit momentum from sword to ground) so that the "isolated system" is not just the sword, but includes the whole planet the wielder is standing on. To say it in another way: you have no way to do that with something contained *within* the sword itself.
The same applies to sword momentum (i.e.: rotation around sword center of gravity), but, in this case, you can "cheat". If sword is not rigid (i.e.: a single piece of steel) then what is conserved is the "total amount of momentum". If you have a (heavy) flywheel (gyroscope) that starts turning in a certain direction *in order to conserve total momentum* the rest of system (i.e.: the blade) will start to turn *in the opposite direction*. This means that in order to have the sword turn (e.g.) clockwise "on its own" you "just" need to start a flywheel in the handle to turn counter-clockwise until the sword is in the expected direction and then to stop it. Having three orthogonal flywheels enables to rotate the sword in whatever direction needed (and to impart it enough "momentum" to cut, even if the actual blade is quite light).
[Answer]
I think your best bet is more of a laser/lightsaber type weapon. It would on the molecular level slice the atoms apart. You would probably require a secondary magnetic field generator to repulse the severed blade.
[Answer]
An alternative way of doing this was invented by SF writer Graydon Saunders, on Usenet in 1997:
>
> "Yes, I *know* it looks like a sword, see, but the edge really has all
> these small holes, and we've stuck an atom of anti-hydrogen into a
> fullerene molecule, which takes forever, and the small holes flex under the
> impact and eject the fullerene grease they're packed with, and the rebound
> flex affects these piezoelectrics in the spine of the sword, and those spark
> the grease, which is very reactive, and that breaks down the fullerenes,
> and then *whoosh*, gapping rent through anything."
>
>
> "Drawbacks? Well, you need to wear a *really good* adaptive eye shield,
> because dark enough to be safe when you hit is too dark to see what to
> hit, and you need lead undies to stop the gamma, and the concussion is
> fairly noticeable in air, and if the grease isn't completely off the sword
> edge when it sparks, well, that's bad. That's really bad. And to be
> refractive enough, the sword has to be this osmium-rubidium alloy, so it
> weighs eight kilos. But other than that it works *fine*."
>
>
>
[Answer]
None of this make sense
"The weapon should be capable of delivering a powerful impact"
The whole point of a sword is that it's an edged weapon. It's designed to cut and stab, not bludgeon.
"but would be super easy to turn."
To make it easy to turn, you make it lighter but making it lighter lowers the impact
"Not to mention that the sword should be powerful enough to cut through most solid things."
Ok so something like a mono filament blade or a lightsaber
"Despite its ability to cut through most materials, the blade should be safe to use, that is, when facing another ordinary metal sword, the opponent's sword wouldn't just be sliced and the sliced opponent's blade flown with its remaining momentum toward the user."
How can you cut most thing but not a plain metal sword? How will a sword tell the difference between a sword and a metal railing?
"In another word, when detecting a potentially dangerous situation as outlined, the sword should be able to repel opponent's metal sword than just slicing it."
You can't make a sword like this without some magic sentient sword hoodoo as the effects you ask for are contradictory. The sword would need to work out what it's about to hit and change it's effect accordingly.
[Answer]
I encountered such a device in a story - I think it was a fanfic based on *Out of the Dark* by David Weber (I'll probably ask about it on scifi.stackexchange, I'd love to read it again).
The sword - it wasn't a sword, but it would work in sword shape - was based on a *pretty advanced* technology and wasn't even ordinary matter. Ordinary matter is ultimately held together by the electromagnetic force, from its weakest form as London force to its strongest form as covalent bond. But it's still electromagnetism. This "sword" was held together by a form of nuclear strong force, about one hundred forty times more powerful (albeit at much closer range).
The surface of the sword would have been covered in minuscule force projectors acting as very fast chainsaws, capable of tearing apart diamond as if it was butter. The speed of the effect being higher than the speed of the swing means that the sword never actually hits anything, because everything in its path gets cut by a disintegrating effect milliseconds before any impact can occur - if the "nuclear blade" is activated. If it is not, then the opponent's blade hits a sword-shaped object that's literally *unbreakable*, since it is harder and tougher than any ordinary matter.
The "unfeasible" element in the original story - and in this sword - is the possibility of harnessing and projecting the strong nuclear force using nano-scale devices. While impossible for the foreseeable future, it is not strictly against any physical law ("[color confinement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_confinement)" is an observation and is not based on any theoretical model).
In the story, the disintegrated matter was sucked in and converted in more nuclear-strong matter as feedstock. In your case you'd want instead the matter expelled on the other side of the blade, still as ordinary matter.
The blade's source of power is controlled low-energy nuclear fusion; the blade would be capable of "eating" oxygen from air expelling only a weak sulfur smell (you could "suffocate" it by plunging it into a molten iron crucible).
] |
[Question]
[
A small late medieval county, consisting of a very small town, a small castle, and a couple of surrounding small villages suddenly and inexplicably gets transported into the past. It's not a spherical volume with soil, they are just transported there with their houses, clothes and tools intact.
The destination would be geographically the same place, as near as it could be defined taken erosion, continental shift etc, into account. They will not appear below the ground or in the air, but on the surface.
They probably have some food to last for a couple of weeks, so they have that much time to find out what is edible.
How far back in time could this bring them to ensure their long-term survival?
* A. if they have no seeds to plant and no livestock with them. Those are all left behind. They'll have to find things to eat, plants to cultivate, animals to hunt or domesticate.
* B. they have all the seeds and livestock they had, this can also mean enough food to last for a couple of months if rationed well, probably enough to last until the first harvest, if a greater part of their seeds/livestock are consumed. This probably pushes the possibilities further back in time, until the existence of a soil and an atmosphere with a tolerable percentage of oxygen will start limiting it. Or will there be other limiting factors?
The time of the year is picked to maximize their chances of survival.
[Answer]
Assuming they don't land on the polar ice caps, in the middle of a desert, or during winter and an ice age, they can survive up to 430 million years ago, the approximate time period of the evolution of woody trees. So long as humans have wood to make spears, they can out-hunt any other predator in existence. Of course, I wouldn't say their survival is *assured,* but it seems likely. There are always animals to hunt, and there will be many, many more in a pre-human world.
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Just one possible answer--and definitely on the safer side--but I would say up until the last glacial period, around 12,000 years ago.
The local flora and fauna should be familiar enough to them where they could manage a type of hunter-gatherer existence. And there should not be too many threats in the form of predators, though you would be sharing the world with early humans. You also did not specify that the town must stay centralized so if they were to adopt a nomadic lifestyle this would be all the more effective.
I'm curious to see what other answers come up.
EDIT: My answer pertains to your "A" scenario. Though even with "B" you won't be yield enough (or any) food from crops in a "couple weeks" to feed your town. Depending on the population and how much/what kind of livestock is present it may be able to buy you the time you need to get your crops in order.
EDIT 2: The time of year matters. Winter would not be good.
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The biggest natural danger would likely be microorganisms. Even if our time travelers could adapt to the land and weather, as well as mount a complete defense against the most ferocious of fauna, it will be the bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites who will win the day. Our immune systems will not know how to fight these long extinct organisms, and they will be teeming in the water, food, and soil. When we throw in direct exposure to humans of the time, who are likely to be immune carriers of ancient illnesses that we have never seen, the time will be short.
[Answer]
1) The lack of bees, when you go far enough. Without bees crops that rely upon then won't reproduce. Pollenizer insects, IIRC, appeared first during the cretaceous, together with the flower plants. If you are lucky, these bee-like insects will be able to fertilize yout crops.
2) Heat. Humans would have a hard time living during the hottest time periods of earth's history and your villagers would die from heatstroke, like in the eocene, the cretaceous and the permian.
3) Oxygen. Some periods had much more oxygen then today, like the carboniferous. I don't know how their bodies will react to this. They may be fine or they may be dead.
4) Inbreeding. Villages have small populations to begin with and with the casualties they will suffer as they adapt to the environment, the population will drop. Inbreeding may kill them in a few generations.
The animals aren't a problem. Man is the deadliest hunter Earth has ever seen and your villagers will soon learn how to kill everything on their path. Even tyranossaurs, those giant insects of the carboniferous or the terrorbirds.
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@Salmoncrusher, +1. I like the way you think.
Modern humans arrived in Australia at least [65,000](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indigenous_Australians) years ago, possibly somewhat before that. Evidence suggests that they were primarily hunter-gatherers though there is evidence of fish farming and cultivation.
I suggest that you could send them **at least** this far back without difficulty. They would have to cope with the endemic megafauna but hey, early humans drove these to extinction so a reasonably well equipped medieval county should not have any difficulty (look, big food). Also in this time frame familiar game would be abundant (rabbits, deer, pheasants, salmon etc) as not yet hunted to near extinction.
As for vegetable food sources, humans are omnivores, we can live, maybe not well but live, on a wide variety of plants, dandelions, ferns, seaweed, acorns mushrooms etc, etc. As you are placing them in their local area they would know, particularly the peasants, about these food sources.
Have them arrive in Spring, in time to catch the planting season, and plenty of new growth to live off. Is the local Lord smart enough to sequester **all** grain / seed stock for planting?
Yep, I'd avoid glacial maxima. Not going to survive under an icecap. There are plenty of interglacials to choose from however.
As for disease the vector typically works the other way with the more advanced culture infecting the less advanced, see what happened to indigenous populations in the Americas and Australia.
As an aside Julian May makes a pretty good case for earlier human survival in the Saga of Pliocene Exile. (The Many Coloured Land et al).
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You can look into the fate of the Roanoke colony. Even the Plymouth colony only survived because they could eat corn reserves stored in granaries in the native villages where everyone was dead because of european born diseases. Chances are the time travellers will just starve to death. But, if you create a convincing enough streak of luck, maybe a few of them could survive the first season cycle and build the foundations of future growth.
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Well. if they are a common medieval county they should have their grain transported with them. It seems to me that the time travel thing would pick up anything human built/manipulated and as such grains and at least cows would come back with them. They'd likely have enough grain to last them up to 8 years.
Let's assume they're English and as such are always going to be either on English soil of French soil, or near enough...let's also make this easy and say they're from 1000 CE, smack dab in the middle of the Medieval period.
The first period we look at is the 1 CE. Do they survive?
Supposing that that they are far enough in they should last a few generations and maybe till present day if they are all the way to the North, but too far south and they'll survive only between 30 and 200 years as their own place due to Roman invasion. I bank on the Romans winning even with better fortifications than those surrounding them, that just makes them a larger target. Other than that they should easily be able to continue living as they were. They would have to learn older languages and build up alliances for whatever, but other than that they'd be fine.
The next period we'll jump to is 11,000 BCE.
Depending on how bad the Late Glacial Maximum really was and how far it extended, them getting put here, they'd be dead within a few months more than likely, or be perfectly capable of survive. The largest issues they would face once they fixed their shelters to be more warm is setting up farm land which at this point in history Europe was more or less unsuitable for it, and mining which would only really take time and you can assume some village should have mining equipment and be right over some place they can mine so that isn't so much an issue. If farming failed there should still be plenty of large game in the area and Medieval humans should be able to easily over power most of them in that region.
100,000 years ago... They'd be dead very shortly due to the ice age.
1,000,000 years ago...
We're talking about a situation much like the 11,000 BCE one. There aren't many issues. There is evidence of Human in england in this period so assuming they have their grain stock or are able to find game animals, which they sould be able to there isn't a problem here.
10,000,000 years ago and beyond...
At some point the issue isn't the base ability to survive against the elements, but rather that the animals become just to fierce to handle. Humans lived with Terrorbirds and Mega-Mammalian Fauna. The Latter we know wouldn't be problematic, but the terrorbirds would likely tear humans apart, armored or not, especially with the armor that our humans would have. Keep going further back and the greater the likelihood of running to something horific that just can't be survived against up until just before the extinction of the dinosaurs which is harder to survive during due to the environment and all the animals going extinct. That seems to be the limit in my mind about how far back in time humans could reasonably survive from that period of time... Before that time period it's nightmare after nightmare in the fauna and floura.
We're talking animals that today kill us in a single sting or are pests or annoy us with bites and are just a few inches long at most... Now scale those up to a meter or 2. Or look in the ocean and find things that make great white sharks look like guppies. Every time period before this point has some crazy issue.
There is a period that I forget it's name that humans might have a chance in which is the period when mammal like reptiles were around, but I'm not too sure about that. But if we're looking the earliest time period humans can possibly survive in then it maybe be that. Dinos are the next level to them, but I highly doubt medieval warriors could handle most dinos.
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[Question]
[
In the past we humans thought that our planet was the center of the universe and everything revolved around us, due to science/math/astronomy and any other means we now believe that to not be true.
Would it be possible for a planet, Earth or otherwise, to be in the center of universe/galaxy/Milkyway/solar system and still have a sun? (the sun would need to revolve around the planet in the center)
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Not as commonly thought of, no.
One of the things that we learn in [orbital mechanics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_mechanics) is that [the planet orbits its star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler's_laws_of_planetary_motion#First_law), not the other way around. More generally, **the less massive body orbits the more massive body.** When the difference in mass is large ($m\_1 \gg m\_2$), that's a good enough approximation, and for simplicity we can even consider the masses to be point masses; when the masses are of similar magnitude, it gets a little more complicated and the barycenter – the common center of mass – ends up somewhere between the centers of mass of the two bodies. When the situation is sufficiently extreme, even [the formulas we take for granted break down entirely](https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/254858/14091 "Is there such thing as imaginary time dilation?") and completely different equations are needed to describe reality. Compare also [the Newtonian and relativistic orbital velocity formulas](http://www.mrelativity.net/relorbitalvelocity/relativistic%20orbital%20velocity.htm) (formulas 6 and 20, respectively) ([Internet Archive link in case the page changes](https://web.archive.org/web/20160603081806/http://www.mrelativity.net/relorbitalvelocity/relativistic%20orbital%20velocity.htm)).
The only way to make a star orbit its planet is to make the planet significantly more massive than the star.
That, however, presents obvious problems, not the least of which is that by the time you go [beyond 13 Jupiter masses, you get a brown dwarf instead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf#Low-mass_brown_dwarfs_vs._high-mass_planets). You would need a planet of, at the very least, very near that mass if you want it to be considered to orbit the star. What you would effectively have, then, is **something very close to a system of two brown dwarf stars,** one of which failed to gain the mass necessary to start its fusion processes.
On larger scales, it's not practical at all. There is no scientifically plausible way to explain why the Milky Way, with conservative estimates of its mass being [7e11 solar masses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way#Size_and_mass) ($7 \times 10^{11} M\_\odot $), would orbit the Earth, which measures about [3e-6 solar masses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun) ($3 \times 10^{-6} M\_\odot $). This difference is 17 orders of magnitude; said another way, given that the Earth has a mass of about 6e24 kg and a large satellite might have a mass of maybe 1e4 kg (10,000 kg), **making the Milky Way orbit the Earth would be on a similar scale as making the Earth orbit a human-built satellite.**
While in principle you can, [as suggested by Separatrix](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/42382/29), define the frame of reference such that the Earth is at the center, if you do so then you end up trying to explain relationships that eventually led to [Kepler's laws of planetary motion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler's_laws_of_planetary_motion) and even later to modern orbital mechanics. Picking an Earth-centered frame of reference for your calculations will help with objects that are gravitiationally bound to Earth (which is why we often do it with Earth satellites etc.), you will have a much harder time using such a model to explain, for example, the movement of Saturn's moons. As a model will need to be a good fit for all available data, these headaches are likely to cause more grief than they are worth.
And of course, from a strict point of view, there is no such thing as "the center of the universe". For some elaboration on that, see for example [What is in the center of the universe?](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/q/669/525) on the Astronomy SE, or [Does the universe have a center?](https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/25591/14091) on Physics SE, as well as the material linked from those questions and their answers.
[Answer]
You could conceivably have a long period binary star system, where both stars are roughly equal masses, with a "planet"\* trapped at their gravitational barycenter.
This star system could reasonably even exist at or near the gravitational center of a dwarf galaxy, or globular cluster, or even a regular galaxy so long as you get rid of the super massive black hole that should normally be there. That could have happened as the result of a collision with another galaxy in the ancient past, which caused the black hole to be ejected from your galaxy.
As far as being at the center of the universe, if your universe is like ours, then everything in it is already at the center of its *observable* universe. And if your universe is infinite in size like ours is commonly believed to be, then it doesn't even make sense to think of it as having a center.
Of course, by a fairly technical reading of your question this answer doesn't work since the stars aren't orbiting the planet, but rather the planet just happens to be at the point around which both stars were already orbiting. The planet's presence likely makes no significant difference to them. This still works if you want the stars to have different masses. The planet just needs to be trapped in their L1 Lagrange point (but then the planet isn't in the exact (bary)center anymore).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Emk6N.png)
\*I say "planet" because this object probably does not satisfy the IAU definition of that word.
[Answer]
By using one of the fundamental principles of relativity you could argue that we are currently in fact the center of the universe. If our frame of reference is taken to be static, it does look like the sun is moving around the earth and all the planets follow extremely weird paths moving around the sun that is orbiting earth.
Describing a geocentric model like this physically however is not plausible because we know that that is not how the universe behaves.
So while philosophically, the question does make sense and a geocentric model is feasible, it is unlikely to work on a physical level as explained in Michael Kjörling's answer.
In essence it is a question of simplicity and since the principle of [Occam's razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor) tells us that easier explanations should be preferable if no extra depth of meaning is added through complications, the heliocentric model makes much more sense.
[Answer]
Following on from the straight up gravitational practicalities that Michael has described.
It's possible, but the maths is terrible.
You could cheat by keeping everything as it is, and using the arbitrary nature of co-ordinate systems to redefine the "centre" as being the Earth and calculate all the orbits relative to that. Redefining the datum to an arbitrary location is fine when modelling straight lines on an infinite plane, but an absolute pig when describing orbital motion. There is such a thing as a [Geocentric Orrery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrery), you wouldn't be the first to try it.
*(If you really want to take this to the illogical conclusion, place yourself top dead centre on an immobile world and calculate relative to that)*
The reason for making the Sun the centre of our solar system, apart from the fact that it is, is that it simplifies the calculations considerably. The same is true around the centre of the galaxy.
On a universal scale though, you're probably ok putting the Earth in the centre and plotting the relative movements of galaxies against it as we're back (as far as I'm aware) to linear rather than orbital movement.
[Answer]
One possibility not mentioned is that the "planet" could be an artificial construct, and actually be something more like a hollow [Dyson Sphere](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere) with a giant star or even a black hole at the center; that way the gravity could be much larger than an orbiting body which would have enough mass to be a star, like a red dwarf (if the center of the Dyson sphere contained a [supermassive black hole](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_black_hole) then the orbiting body could even be a normal-sized star similar to our Sun, and choosing a supermassive black hole would also avoid any problems with tidal forces on the surface of the Dyson sphere no matter how close it was to the black hole's event horizon, see [this answer](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/72770/22250).).
As mentioned [this FAQ](http://www.aleph.se/Nada/dysonFAQ.html#STABLE) Dyson spheres are not really stable since the net gravitational pull from whatever's inside the sphere cancels out, so if the sphere starts to drift relative to the object inside there's nothing to stop it from crashing into the object. So you would need thrusters of some sort to compensate for drift, perhaps venting some of the atmosphere surrounding the outer surface. The FAQ also mentions there are no known or theoretical materials that could form a rigid sphere at 1 AU (the distance of the Earth's orbit). Equation (7) on p. 11 of the paper ["Dyson Spheres Around White Dwarfs"](http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.04376) gives the needed compressive strength $S$ for a hollow sphere with density $\rho$ and radius $r$ around a central mass $M$, with $G$ being the [Gravitational constant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant):
$S = GM\rho/2r$
We can use this to do some calculations:
## Limits for a Dyson sphere made of atomic matter
For the upper limit of what might be possible with atomic materials, the paper ["On the Strength of the Carbon Nanotube-Based Space Elevator Cable"](http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0601668) discusses the theoretical maximum strength for carbon nanotubes as about 100 Giga[pascals](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(unit)), or 1011 N/m2, which is the same figure given on p. 12 of "Dyson Spheres Around White Dwarfs" for the maximum strength achievable with matter held together by atomic bonds. "On the Strength of the Carbon Nanotube-Based Space Elevator Cable" also gives the density for this carbon nanotube material as about 1300 kg/m3.
If solve the above equation for $r$, giving $r = GM\rho / 2S$, and then plug in the above values for the strength and density of carbon nanotubes, we can find the minimum radius at which a Dyson sphere made of carbon nanotubes could exist around a central body with mass M, without breaking into pieces because the stress caused by gravity is too much for the material to withstand. I'll make this into an equation in plain text which you can plug into [this online calculator](http://keisan.casio.com/has10/Free.cgi) and find the resulting radius for different values of M (which I'll express in terms of multiples of the Sun's mass, 1.989 x 1030 kg):
((6.67408 \* (10^(-11))) \* (M \* 1.989 \* (10^30)) \* (1300)) / (2 \* (10^11))
= 862858432800 \* M
If we let M=1, the sphere would need a radius of about 863 billion meters, larger than the average radius of Earth's orbit which is about 150 billion meters. So, the Dyson sphere would need a radius of just slightly larger than the orbit of Jupiter (778 billion meters) in this case. And the higher the mass of the central body, the larger the sphere would have to be if it's constructed from carbon nanotubes. For example, if we used a supergiant star with a mass 100 times that of the Sun, the radius would have to be 86 *trillion* meters, about 0.009 light years.
We could also try plugging in the value for $r$ as a function of $M$ into the formula for gravitational acceleration, $GM/r^2$, to find the surface gravity on such a giant dyson sphere "planet" surrounding a central body.
((6.67408 \* (10^(-11))) \* (M \* 1.989 \* (10^30))) / (M^2 \* 862858432800^2)
And here we find a problem: for M=1 (central body has the mass of the Sun), the surface gravity on such a sphere would be basically negligible, about 1.78 x 10-4 m/s2, compared to Earth's surface gravity of 9.8 m/s2. Even with the smallest object that might count as a star, which would have a mass of about 0.08 times that of the Sun according to [this page](http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/cosmic_reference/brown_dwarfs.html), the surface gravity at the corresponding carbon nanotube dyson sphere would still be only about 0.0022 m/s2, still indistinguishable from zero gravity for any beings on the surface. I suppose you could build enclosed structures on the surface which would spin and create artificial gravity with the centrifugal force, but it wouldn't be very planet-like.
## Limits for Dyson sphere made of nuclear matter:
There is the theoretical possibility of matter held together not by electromagnetic bonds between atoms, but rather made up entirely of [nucleons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleon) (like protons and neutrons) held together by the [strong nuclear force](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_interaction), which at short distances has a much greater strength than the electromagnetic force. I discussed the possibility of objects made of this type of "strange matter" in [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/41116/298). Looking online, I found [this paper](http://thescipub.com/PDF/ajeassp.2009.501.514.pdf) which has some theoretical calculations for the strength and density of a hypothetical variant of this type of matter. On p. 508 the author calculates a strength of 7.5 x 1033 N/m2, and a density of 8.35 x 1017 kg/m3. So if we use these values and again find the minimum possible radius given a mass of M, we get:
((6.67408 \* (10^(-11))) \* (M \* 1.989 \* (10^30)) \* (8.35 \* (10^17))) / (2 \* (7.5 \* (10^33)))
= 7389.6 \* M
So if the mass were equal to that of the Sun (M = 1) this would imply the radius could be as little as 7389.6 meters (which is much smaller than the actual radius of the Sun, but you could also imagine a black hole with mass equal to the Sun at the center, with a black hole of that mass having a [Schwarzschild radius](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/S/Schwarzschild+Radius) of 2954 meters). And making the size larger than this will just decrease the required compressive strength, so this same material could be used to build a larger sphere around the same central mass, large enough so that the gravity at that point could be just 1 g. If you want to find the radius needed to have 1 g acceleration at the surface ([standard gravity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_gravity), or 9.80665 m/s2) you can solve the Newtonian equation $9.80665 = GM/r^2$ for $r$, giving $r = \sqrt{GM/9.80665}$, and again I'll put it into a form that can be plugged into that online calculator so you can play around with different values of M:
sqrt(((6.67408 \* (10^(-11))) \* (M \* 1.989 \* (10^30)))/9.80665)
For example, for M=1, the mass of the Sun, this tells you the sphere would need to be about 3.68 billion meters in radius. This is larger than the radius of the Sun (about 696 million meters), so in this case you wouldn't need a black hole.
If you want a very massive central body and a very large sphere, we can set the two equations above to be equal to each other and solve for M, to find a Dyson sphere where the smallest possible radius that can maintain structural integrity has a surface gravity of 1 g. It turns out that the central mass in this case would be a supermassive black hole with mass 247.89 billion times that of the Sun, and the radius would be 1.83 x 1015 meters (about 0.19 light years). So as long as the central mass is that size or smaller, it's possible to have a stable Dyson sphere made of nuclear matter which has 1 g surface gravity.
[Answer]
As other answers have explained, it is not reasonable to have a more massive object orbit a less massive one, and it would require nontrivial redefinitions of the coordinates.
However, it is not necessary for the sun to be the more massive object.
If we allow for astroengineering to create non-natural solar systems, it is very possible to make the sun less massive.
## Lighter sun
Stars are *gravitationally powered* fusion reactors, and the main reason why fusion reactors are so difficult to make is that the activation energy requirement of fusion is extremely high, requiring astronomical amounts of mass. However, if an artificial fusion reactor is used to power the sun, its mass can be far smaller (at the cost of a shorter lifetime).
Earth's sun burns [600 million tons](http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/qa_sun.html) of hydrogen per second. This means an artificial fusion reactor the mass of the Earth's moon ($7.3×10^{19}$ tons) will last for about 3500 years before running out.
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I think the question was whether earth is the center of the universe, not our solar system (obviously not). The universe's background microwave radiation (Remanent from the Big Bang) is extremely uniform in all directions, as well as the Hubble constant (relative speed of regression of stellar objects). It sure looks like our galaxy is in the dead center. But the "Big Bang" expansion would include the expansion of spacetime, not just stuff thrown out into already existing space, rendering the question of "center" (point of detonation) moot or unintelligible because every point in spacetime itself originated from the initial point (look up "quantum entanglement"). So every point of space in the universe *is* the spacetime from the initial starting point of the universe. So, ... Wait for it ...
Yes, earth is at the center of the universe. (but so is everything else!)
[Answer]
I have asked a similiar question on physics.se some months ago.
(<https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/246909/84895>)
This is possible, and actually the case for a "otherwise".
For a earthlike and or planet this is simply not possible.
The required mass of your "earth" to be orbited by a brown dwarf, (And these guys aren't that bright at all) would be somewhere between starting fusion of a neutron star and collapsing into a black hole. And belive me. Neither a neutron star nor a black hole would support existens of anything your story could tell about.
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It depends on how much you want the physics to be the same.
In a setting much like our universe, as others have mentioned, you would need a plausible explanation for a planet more massive than its star. Barring some kind of un-fusionable-tonuim in the universe, it doesn't seem like that's feasible. This is if we try to work with what we already know, and if we're not allowed to re-write science history.
If you have more liberty with how things work, or if there's more of a fantasy component to your setting, you could also regress to Aristotelian physics. It was also previously believed that there were mutable earthly elements and unchanging celestial elements and that they weren't made of the same things. You could establish that the Sun and the stars actually are fixed to a firmament which revolves around the Earth, and that the Moon, Sun, and stars are on three different paths, to account for the different orbital periods.
If that were the case in your universe, some of our history would need to be re-written. If the cornerstones of our Heliocentric model turned out to have the opposite results, such as the phases of Venus corresponding to the phases of the Moon, that could make for a very content-rich universe.
In short, it's possible if you either introduce some physics that we haven't discovered, or if you erase some facts that we already have.
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Here's the idea on how it would work: An artificial sun, built by a sufficiently-advanced civilization. Said sun would be a satellite orbiting the planet, providing heat and light for one half at a time. For the sake of convenience, we will assume that the planet is Earthlike, and the satellite orbits it once every 24 hours, and provides a mean of 1360 W/m^2 of energy to the surface. For that, the orbital radius needs to be 42.24 thousand km. And to allow for variations in climate, we would need it to be a convex bulb, but a giant laser will work if you don't want frozen poles and an arid equator. And the giant laser would need to be able to fit the planet's radius within, which would be impractical af.
Using the mean, we can find that the artificial sun will need to provide a power of 1.73\*10^17 W. That's nothing compared to actual stars, but it does the job. And a civilization advanced enough to build such a satellite would probably give it a power source. The dead center of the universe would be a perfect position to harness energy. Now, why would a civilization make a planet like that? Simple: It's easy to access, so they'd probably use it as a HQ for the influx of resources and citizens across their empire. And how they'd deduce that the center of the universe is where it is? They're extremely advanced, and have charted out the Big Bang.
And if it's where the Big Bang happened 13 billion 700 million years ago, maybe the planet is somehow containing and harnessing dark energy that's pushing for the expansion of everything. It could be like in the Tom Baker Doctor's final serial, "Logopolis", where the planet is hosting a mechanism that's basically a life support system for the cosmos. Or like in the Peter Davison story "Terminus", the planet is where the Big Bang happened because it's somehow connected to the creation of the universe. If the planet at the center of the universe is somehow connected to the creation and lifespan of the universe, it would be even more of an investment.
As the sun isn't natural, who's to say that the planet, or its position, is natural?
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