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[Question]
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So I have a world that has magic. Whether you can use magic is hereditary, and there's about a 1/4 chance of inheriting the "magic gene".
What I want to know is, will the percentage of magic users stay roughly the same, or will it change? And if it stays the same, will the percentage be near 25%, as there is a 1/4 chance of inheriting it, or will the population be different?
If it's relevant, the people on this world have two semi-closed off societies. One is of magic-users and one isn't, and at birth you generally get shipped off to the one that you are "supposed" to be in.
EDIT:
The gene is a recessive gene like the classic detached vs attached earlobes example in genetics.
[Answer]
This depends on whether the magic using gene gives you a competitive advantage.
If it does then you will tend to have more magic users breed and they will also become more likely to pass it on to their offspring.
In other words unless it also comes with a "penalty" you will end up with most of the population having it after time.
One way to prevent this would be to have it work a bit like sickle cell anemia. Having a few sets of "magic genes" is great and gives you magic. Having too many though gives you progressively worse and worse side effects.
This would keep the pressure balanced to give you an equilibrium between some people being magic but not so many people having the magic gene that their heads explode (or whatever happens that prevents you breeding when you have too many).
[Answer]
### The percentage having a *single* copy of the gene will shrink
>
> If it's relevant, the people on this world have two semi-closed off societies. One is of magic-users and one isn't, and at birth you generally get shipped off to the one that you are "supposed" to be in.
>
>
>
Because of this, all people with two copies of the gene are in one society (magic-users). The other society has a mix of people with one and zero copies of the gene. Let's assume that both societies have the same number of children per woman (and that women and men are equally likely to have the gene). As a simplifying assumption, there are no cross-society marriages or misclassified members.
### 25% magic-users
If everyone who has the gene has two copies, then this will be stable. Magic-users only breed with magic-users. Non-magic-users only breed with non-magic-users.
### 8% magic-users
75% without the gene. 17% with a single copy.
The 8% magic-users add an additional .78% in the next generation. This is based on there being a $17/92 \* 17/92$ chance that both parents have a single copy of the gene in the non-magic-user population and a 25% chance that the child will have two copies of the gene.
In the next generation, there are two ways to get single gene children. First, two single gene parents will have a single gene child 50% of the time. That's 1.56%. Second, there is a 50% chance that a single gene parent and a parent without the gene will have a single gene child. That's 13.9%. The total then is 15.5%. So the total with one or more copies of the gene is 24.3%.
### Arbitrary percentage
For an arbitrary percentage $p$ of the population having a single copy of the gene.
Chance of a magic-using child from the non-magic-using population:
$$ p^2 \* .25 $$
Chance of a carrier (single copy of the gene) from the non-magic-using population.
$$ p^2 \* .5 + p \* (1 - p) \* 2 \* .5 = p^2 \* .5 + p \* (1 - p) = p - .5 \* p^2 $$
Note that in the next generation,
$$ p - .5 \* p^2 + .25 \* p^2 = p - .25 \* p^2 < p$$
$$ \forall p > 0 $$
So that we can say that in these circumstances, the chance of having a copy of the gene will fall every generation.
### So, not stable unless
From this, we can say that the percentage of people carrying the magic-using gene will fall in each generation until it is eliminated from the non-magic-using population. At that point, the magic-using population will become stable at whatever percentage.
Occasionally mixing the two societies will help this, but I don't believe that it eliminates the basic issue. Removing the gene from one population will cause a steady deterioration until it is eliminated. Note that it may take a long time to get to zero. When the chance of a non-magic-user being a recessive carrier of the gene gets low, then there is little chance of the child having two carrier parents. So with occasional mixing, a practical chance might be something like 1%.
I think that starting from 8% and 17%, you would end up around 12% and 1%. But I'm not sure of my convergence math.
### Do non-magic-users have as many kids as magic-users?
Note that all this assumes that there isn't any reason that magic-users would have more children than non-magic-users. For example, if there is some reason why non-magic-users would prefer magic-users as sexual partners, this might not be true.
[Answer]
**The percentage of magicians will grow.**
Per the OP, the magic society and the non-magic society are separate. We can assume the birth rates are identical.
Magic parents only have the recessive "magic" gene, so they can only have magic babies. Therefore, the magic society will NEVER ship off any babies to the non-magic society.
On the other hand, 2 non-magic parents can have magical babies. Therefore, they will regularly ship off magical babies to the magic society.
Since the birth rates in the 2 societies are the same, but the non-magic society is transferring up to 1/4 of its offspring to the magic society, the percentage of magic people in the entire population will grow and grow.
[Answer]
If magic users have the same number of children as non-magic users:
**It will remain 25%**
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If magic users produce fewer children because of magic type commitments:
**It will be lower than 25%**
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If magic users produce more children because of magic type charms:
**It will be higher than 25%**
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If no one were to train the magic users and everyone walked around not casting fireballs (except LARPers), then for a sufficiently large population, the carriers will very closely match the probability of inheriting the gene. That is:
**It will remain 25%**
[Answer]
# If the 25% chance is based on population percent with the gene...
If the magic gene offers an advantage, the percentage will raise over time. If the magic gene offers a disadvantage, it will decrease. If the magic gene offers a net balance, nothing will necessarily happen either way; other variables will determine the course history takes.
...Oh? But the two segments of society are separated?
Let's say there are 1 million people. Exactly 25% (250,000) are Mages. 75% (750,000) are Mundanes. Let's use a [Population Calculator](http://www.metamorphosisalpha.com/ias/population.php) to see what the percentage will look like in 100 years, assuming a 1.2% growth rate for both.
>
> Mages: 824,121 (24.999992416%)
>
>
> Mundanes: 2,472,364 (75.000007583%)
>
>
> TOTAL: 3,296,485 (100%)
>
>
>
As you can see, unless an outside force affects that growth percentage, it will maintain 25/75 split. (I even tested for 1000 years later and it was still the same, I'm just sparing you the monstrous numbers.)
That said, this is a 25% chance a person will be born into the magical society, not a 25% chance that they will be born with the Mage genes. There's a clear distinction, but this does allow for the first to hold true... mostly. There's another caveat I didn't include: *This assumes that the population of Mundanes don't have the Mage gene at all.* If they do have the Mage gene, then the odds are going to be different based on who is breeding with who, as you can see in the next section.
# If the 25% chance is based on genetics...
*This only holds true if a mundane with the recessive magic gene breeds with another mundane with the recessive magic gene.*
As Mundanes breed together, there's a 50% chance that a given Mundane has the gene and a 50% chance they don't. There's a 25% chance that both Mundanes have the gene. If one has the gene, but the other doesn't, there's a 100% chance the child will be born Mundane. If both have the gene, there's a 75% chance the child will be born mundane and 25% chance the child will be born a mage. So, let's assume that two random Mundanes breed, assuming a truly equal distribution of Mundanes with and without the Mage gene. There would be a 6.25% chance that two Mundanes would have a Mage child.
## But Sora, where are you getting 6.25% from?
When you're calculating the odds of this event happening, you have to calculate it by looking at the likelihood of the events happening separately and then combining them. Let me clarify. There's a 50% chance that a given Mundane will have the gene. Since we need two Mundanes, that means we would consider the likelihood twice: 50% of 50% is 25%. So, with that, we now know there's a 25% chance that two Mundanes that both have the recessive gene will breed.
If you look at the following Punnett Square, you can see the odds of a Mage (mm) being born from 2 Mundanes with the Mage gene is 1 out of 4 or 25%.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LMIY1.png)
Since we're trying to see the odds of getting a mage from 2 random Mundanes, we know the odds of 2 Mundanes both having the right gene is 25% and now we know that the odds of a Mage being born from them is also 25%. So, we have to find out what 25% of 25% is: 1/16 or 6.25%.
If two Mages breed together or a Mundane without the recessive gene breeds with anyone, (Mage, Mundane, it doesn't matter,) you're guaranteed 100% outcome of Mage and 100% outcome of a Mundane, respectively.
*below: The odds of getting a Mage from 2 Mages... 100%*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I7TIa.png)
*below: The odds of getting a Mage from a Mage and a Mundane without the Mage gene... 0%*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vOTc0.png)
*above: The odds of getting a Mage from a Mundane with and a Mundane without the Mage gene... 0%*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/S59hA.png)
So, let's say we want to see what the odds are of a Mage being born under the following assumptions:
1. Equal Mage and Mundane Population
2. Equal chance a Mundane does or does NOT have the Mage gene
3. Mage gene is recessive
4. Societies are NOT segregated
5. There are no social barriers barring relationships
6. There is no genetic reason to prefer Mundane or Mage over the other
7. Our sample is all equally likely to be involved with someone else from the group
Well to test the odds of this, we have 4 males and 4 females. 2 males and 2 females are Mages. 1 male and 1 female are Mundanes with the Mage gene. 1 male and 1 female are Mundanes without the Mage gene. The outcomes we are testing for will be as follows:
1. Mundane born
* a) Mundane with Mage gene born
* b) Mundane without Mage gene born
2. Mage born
First, let's check the odds of an individual male winding up with an individual female... (or vice versa. The order here is irrelevant.) That means each male has a 25% chance of picking any given female (assuming no conflicts and fighting over choice of mate occur).
There's a 50% chance the male is a Mage and a 50% he's not a Mage.
Let's assume we grab one of the 2 male Mages. There's a 50% chance his mate will be a Mage and 50% chance she won't be a Mage. That brings the odds of a Mage being born to become 25%. We've been over this already.
But what about that 50% chance his mate is NOT a Mage? As we saw, if the female Mundane does NOT have the Mage gene, their children will NOT be born mages, but they *will* all have the Mage gene. If the female Mundane does have the Mage gene, we get something different.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FQPEF.png)
As you can see, there is now a 50% chance that the child will be born as a Mage or Mundane. I feel like you get the general idea, so instead of repeating the same song and dance, let's look at these percents so far:
>
> ## Odds Checker
>
>
> ### A: Pairing - Odds of Each Pairing
>
>
> *(Who selects who is irrelevant. For simplicitity I am using "Male X selects", but it could just as easily be "Female X selects".)*
>
>
> 1. Male Mage (50%) selects Female Mage (50%) - 25%
> 2. Male Mage (50%) selects Female Mundane with Mage Gene (25%) - 12.5%
> 3. Male Mage (50%) selects Female Mundane without Mage Gene (25%) - 12.5%
> 4. Male Mundane with Mage Gene (25%) selects Female Mage (50%) - 12.5%
> 5. Male Mundane with Mage Gene (25%) selects Female Mundane with Mage Gene (25%) - 6.25%
> 6. Male Mundane with Mage Gene (25%) selects Female Mundane W/O Mage Gene (25%) - 6.25%
> 7. Male Mundane W/O Mage Gene (25%) selects Female Mage (50%) - 12.5%
> 8. Male Mundane W/O Mage Gene (25%) selects Female Mundane with Mage Gene (25%) - 6.25%
> 9. Male Mundane W/O Mage Gene (25%) selects Female Mundane W/O Mage Gene (25%) - 6.25%
>
>
> ### B - Results of Each Possible Pairing
>
>
> \*(This is going to assume 4 children from each possible pair. Additionally, this will use Punnett Square notation. M - Mundane gene; m - Mage gene)
>
>
> * Male Mage 1 (mm) x Female Mage 1 (mm) - mm, mm, mm, mm (4 Mages)
> * Male Mage 1 (mm) x Female Mage 2 (mm) - mm, mm, mm, mm (4 Mages)
> * Male Mage 1 (mm) x Female Mundane W/ Gene (Mm) - Mm, Mm, mm, mm (2 Mages, 2 W/)
> * Male Mage 1 (mm) x Female Mundane W/O Gene (MM) - Mm, Mm, Mm, Mm (4 W/)
> * Male Mage 2 (mm) x Female Mage 1 (mm) - mm, mm, mm, mm (4 Mages)
> * Male Mage 2 (mm) x Female Mage 2 (mm) - mm, mm, mm, mm (4 Mages)
> * Male Mage 2 (mm) x Female Mundane W/ Gene (Mm) - Mm, Mm, mm, mm (2 Mages, 2 W/)
> * Male Mage 2 (mm) x Female Mundane W/O Gene (MM) - Mm, Mm, Mm, Mm (4 W/)
> * Male Mundane W/ Gene (Mm) x Female Mage 1 (mm) - Mm, Mm, mm, mm (2 Mages, 2 W/)
> * Male Mundane W/ Gene (Mm) x Female Mage 2 (mm) - Mm, Mm, mm, mm (2 Mages, 2 W/)
> * Male Mundane W/ Gene (Mm) x Female Mundane W/ Gene (Mm) - MM, Mm, mM, mm (1 Mage, 2 W/, 1 W/O)
> * Male Mundane W/ Gene (Mm) x Female Mundane W/O Gene (MM) - MM, MM, Mm, Mm (2 W/, 2 W/O)
> * Male Mundane W/O Gene (MM) x Female Mage 1 (mm) - Mm, Mm, Mm, Mm (4 W/)
> * Male Mundane W/O Gene (MM) x Female Mage 2 (mm) - Mm, Mm, Mm, Mm (4 W/)
> * Male Mundane W/O Gene (MM) x Female Mundane W/ Gene (Mm) - MM, MM, Mm, Mm (2 W/, 2 W/O)
> * Male Mundane W/O Gene (MM) x Female Mundane W/O Gene (MM) - MM, MM, MM, MM (4 W/O)
>
>
> Total Children born assuming 4 from every pairing:
> - 25 Mages
> - 30 Mundanes With the Gene
> - 9 Mundanes Without the Gene
> TOTAL: 64
>
>
> Odds of a Mage being born - 39.0625%
>
>
> Odds of a Mundane With the Gene being born - 46.8750%
>
>
> Odds of a Mundane Without the Gene being born - 14.0625%
>
>
>
>
> ---
>
>
> **B** shows that assuming our sample (Generation 1) resulting in a 50/50 split between Mages and Mundanes AND assuming they all have 4 children with each possible mate, you will get a decrease in the percentage of Mages, in Generation 2. In Generation 3, we see that, doing the same process results in the same percentage and ratio (as well as birth defects from in-breeding [/*AYO!*]).[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TPLui.png)
>
>
>
Of course, all of this is assuming specific circumstances. In reality, probability can't be assumed to go so clean-cut and clear. Environmental causes may very well cause Mages to swell or cull in numbers. You can't assume the statistic of what should happen in a controlled environment will always reflect what path reality takes.
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[Question]
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I have some forcefield shielding in my setting whereby particles act essentially as solid mass armor for all intents and purposes. Warheads grind themselves down against armor just like modern composite armor. As a result, most tanks in my setting use the shield as the main armor, with a backup layer of ERA (explosive reactive armor) and slightly thicker structural metal underneath it. However, these shields are much tougher. They can routinely shrug off multiple long rod penetrators. They also have the added benefit of detonating HEAT (high explosive anti tank) as soon as the round hits the edge of the forcefield since it acts as solid armor.
Somethings to note about HEAT:
1. It utilizes the Munroe effect to fire a superplastic round (usually a copper lining) to punch through a tanks armor.
2. It does NOT rely on temperature to melt armor.
3. Standoff distances matter, detonate to early and you cannot get a good enough jet.
4. As a superplastic jet travels, it breaks apart and stretches. Usually within two meters.
5. The velocity of the HEAT round has absolutely zero bearing on penetration. The velocity of the molten jet is usually hypersonic (fictional material can go higher if that helps the answer).
The large shielding capabilities of my force field means that I can get multiple meters of equivalent armor in a very compact particle field. Combined with active protection systems (on top of ERA) and there very quickly comes up a problem. Tanks can essentially push a region unimpeded unless facing equivalent armor.
I'm looking to give my infantry and lighter armed vehicles a fighting chance. In this case instead of copper, I am using a **fictional** material that retains its superplastic shape without breaking or stretching too much. Especially past the two-meter mark.
**What properties does this fictional material have such that my new HEAT rounds can penetrate through my particle shield and through my ERA blocks?**
Note it doesn't have to be surefire/guaranteed all the time to penetrate all the way through. Basically, I'm looking for a materials upgrade so that things become more even. An answer can approach from the assumption that the material already exists and make assumptions/observations about said material to achieve the goal.
By properties I mean characteristics such as density, thermal/specific heat indexes, elasticity, crystalline structure, behavior under heat etc etc. The answer doesn't have to answer all the above points but is just a frame for the type of answer I'm looking for, essentially the materials engineering.
[Answer]
**Anti-Shielding Rounds**
The enemy tanks have energy shielding. What kind of ammo is good against that? Why anti-shielding rounds of course! There are two flavours:
1. **Diamagnetic Rounds** The jet is made of a special metal that reflects the shield backwards across a thin layer on the outside. The outside of the jet is stopped by the shield but the inside punches straight through.
2. **Anti-Harmonic Rounds** Before firing, the charge is set to vibrate with the opposite frequency of the energy shield harmonics. This lets the projectile ignore the shield.
Diamagnetic rounds are more expensive. They are made of rare metal. But they work on any shields. Anti-harmonic rounds are less expensive. But you need to know the shield frequency before you fire.
Of course the above is word salad. But energy shields are word salad in the first place. So it's all good.
[Answer]
**Terror drone.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xF63f.png)
<https://www.deviantart.com/lizzuzci/art/Terror-Drone-272009744>
This is lifted from the Red Alert franchise. These are little spider bots. They scramble onto vehicles and get inside.
>
> Terror drones are very cheap, costing only 500 per unit or, if an
> Industrial Plant is built, a mere 375. They can be used to attack ore
> miners, the only downside being that they would exit a chrono miner
> when the latter chronoshifted back to the ore refinery.
>
>
> Due to the terror drone's extremely fast speed, it is very difficult
> to catch them before they reach their targets, but their lack of
> armour makes them easy to destroy.
>
>
>
Your tank armor is all designed to prevent fast moving explosives. The terror drones scramble along quickly but none of the hypervelocity stuff. They scramble up onto the vehicle and start scraping. [The particle fields work better against fast moving impactors because the velocity of the impactor induces a proportional response from the charged particles.](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/105767/getting-through-a-force-field/105775#105775) Explosive armor is moved aside by the drone. The scraping is a bad noise to hear from inside the tank.
Once the thing is on the tank and digging it needs to be dislodged by accompanying infantry or someone inside the tank who comes out and shoots it. If the tank sees one of these coming it can shoot it.
A lot of times no-one sees it coming - they position themselves and dig in, and then spring out to attack a passing vehicle.
Those using terror drones know that these will be addressed personally by opposing troops. Most are decorated with marker-drawn messages for the opposing troops. Messages and pictures purported to be of relatives of opposing troops.
[Answer]
# Stacked rounds
Two rounds fired at once. The second is in flight a couple of meters behind the first. The first round is a small HE round or perhaps DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) designed to dissipate the shield enough to allow the HEAT penetrate to the ERA.
Once the ERA has been hit a few time later rounds will penetrate the actual armor.
Combined with UV dye to allow subsequent shots to hit the already damaged location.
[Answer]
## Fuzzy slippers
The shield is composed of particles. What keeps those particles in position as the tank moves? What determines their position in the first place?
The particles move along the outer membrane of an EM field generated by an antenna on the tank.
Shield particles are strong against physical impact, but if an object that approaches the field has a powerful electrical charge, it can attract or repel the particles without contacting them.
Shield-penetrating rounds have a special metal casing that can hold a charge. The gun barrel has rifling but also some harsh fuzz, like a shag carpet of metal. When the round is fired, it acquires a strong static-electric charge from friction inside the barrel. When the round reaches the target, its charge repels the particles in the shield field, allowing the core of the round to pass through an empty region of the target shield and reach the target.
The good news is that the charge setup can theoretically be retrofit onto guns of just about any size (although handgun bullets are already so small that there's not much "core" to hit the shielded target with).
The bad news is that the barrel fuzz wears out pretty quickly, so the charge of successive shots diminishes. The fuzz treatment significantly reduces muzzle velocity, meaning you get less range. And the interaction between the incoming round and the shield is complex and random, meaning that the portion of the round that pierces the shield has a random deviation, and will impact the target in an unpredictable spot in a cone projecting from the point of shield entry. (An enemy can increase their shield radius in hopes of yielding a cone that might result in clean misses, although there is no guarantee.)
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[Question]
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Suppose in the future tanks are able mount higher velocity guns such as railguns or electro chemical technology (ETC) guns. Suppose these tanks slightly larger normal (no you can't mount a railgun on an M60). These cannon rounds are going to make mincemeat out of most armor systems, especially as they go beyond the prototype and first deployment phase. Simply slapping thicker armor isn't going to work eventually. Suppose we have these rounds being slung at us fragile humans inside our big metal tanks. In terms of the survival onion we are at the *Don't get penetrated* phase.
As a tank crewman, how do we survive. What active and passive defense systems could be employed so that we aren't turned into ground meat. Replacing the tanks with AI or remote control is off the table. Unlike missiles these kinetic weapons are coming incredibly fast but are unguided.
Time frame wise imagine that we have sufficient enough technology to mount a railgun on something slightly larger than the size of an M109 Paladin or M1A2 Abrams. The ETC guns are in a similar vein but aren't weighing down a tank as much.
Edit: Current tank rounds travel at around 1.8 km/s/. For ETC guns, if we're being semi realistic. Then around 4km/s or slightly more as the upper end.
[Answer]
I assume for this question that you specifically want a human crew to do everything in a WWII feel rather than the more modern hunter-killer idea where both gunner an commander can identify a target and a computer aims the gun & elevation for the shot while the commander and gunner find the next target. For that reason:
* electronic warfare, lots and lots of electronic warfare.
The current complexity of electronic warfare is already high, with bouncing, ever changing signals that have to be both specific and random to prevent interception or to ensure that you seem somewhere else. Just like today you don't really talk about it, just say that the onboard computers still have problems identifying targets due to all the electronic warfare that has come out. From realistic false IR/Radio signatures to false shapes and lasers that blind cameras meant to identify the shape of objects and stealth materials, all reduce the effectiveness of computers and increase the necessity of humans at the wheel.
* first defense: don't get hit.
This is the cheeky one and likely what you will be completely buried in. Stealth, camouflage and speed would be key components to avoiding getting accurately shot at. The MBT design is actually partially based on this, as its speed needs to be high enough to avoid getting hit while crossing the distance to an enemy position.
* second defense: whipple shield.
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield>
At high velocity impacts metals start acting like liquids. A whipple shield is used on space objects against high velocity impacts. The outer shield isn't designed to stop the projectile but to break it up so that the projectile spreads out over a larger surface area beneath the whipple shield. For your large and more designed high velocity projectiles your whipple shield will likely see some adaptations, like Explosive Reactive armor additions, more dense filling, thicker outer whipple shield etc.
* third defense: active defense system
This might be a harder sell due to the electronic warfare present, but an advanced active protection system could identify the projectile and fire its own projectile at it. At such high velocities you won't be changing the projectile's path much but you would essentially use the APS as an early whipple shield: the projectile is damaged or broken up and no longer flying tip-first into your tank.
* Fourth defense: metamaterials
You've got the future tech of high velocity projectiles, so why not some metamaterials? Synthetic spiderthread can be much stronger than even the strongest natural spiderthread, mass-producing that would help create many strong materials to intercept a projectile before it enters the crew compartment. Graphene and other molecularly perfect metamaterials at bulk production could offer an immense increase in the amount of armor available.
Diamene (<https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.graphene-info.com/new-graphene-material-called-diamene-switches-flexible-harder-diamond-upon-impact%3famp>), a form of Graphene with two layers of graphene on top of each other, could be mass produced with a third layer of another material at one end. That would mean you could start stacking diamene. A back of the envelope low estimate calculation would let you place 7250 layers of diamene per centimeter of armor, which would likely be a good boost to your armor. Pure Graphene layers would be 28.785 layers of Graphene per centimeter. Many such technologies together could help give the armor enough strength and still lightness to handle high velocity impacts.
[Answer]
There are a number of ways to defend against a 4+km/s long-rod penetrator (LRP), which is the most likely warhead to be fired from such a high velocity gun.
1. Active armour: By having the outer layer of armour seperate to the bulk of the armour, and on impact, propelling it sideways with high explosives, the projectile can effectively be made to penetrate a greater thickness of armour, and the lateral motion of the moving armour slab applies a torque to the projectile which makes it turn and effectively impact the armour side-on. As Newton's Impact Depth Approximation relies on a LRP to be long to penetrate thick armour, making the LRP impact mostly side-on makes it effectively very much shorter and very much less penetrating.
2. An emphasis on operating hull-down: Modern tanks have their crew in both the hull and the turret. A hit to either the tank's body or turret may result in fragments bouncing around inside the tank and causing crew injuries, due to the relatively large opening between body and turret. If the size of the turret ring was minimised by moving all crew into the body, and light armour was placed between the turret and body, then hits to the turret might disable the tank's weapons, but would be less likely to injure the crew. By emphasizing operating hull-down, protecting the tank's body by only exposing the turret to the enemy above crests in the landscape, most hits will occur to the turret. For the body to be hit would mean that a tactical error had been made.
3. Each crew position should be compartmentalized and seperated from one-another by armour and light energy absorbing materials. While a direct hit may kill one crew member, unless the shot is also aligned with another crew member, this internal baffling should catch any spall and protect the crew from injury in the event of a penetrating hit.
4. Emphasis on remote operation and automation: By loading and aiming the turreted main weapon remotely, it can be made smaller, and present a smaller target silhouette. Additionally, by separating the crew and having them perform other functions by wire rather than by viewports, fewer vulnerable points are created in the hull. By requiring fewer crew, the tank's body can be made smaller, and due to the square-cube law, the armour can be made thicker without adding as much weight.
5. Emphasis on smaller crew members: By requiring the necessary crew members to be physically small, less space need be allocated to them, also allowing the vehicle to be smaller and more readily armoured.
6. Greater armour slope: By making the vehicle as low as possible, and making the main armour sloped at as great an angle as possible, the flatter trajectory of higher-velocity shots means that deflection of the shot is more likely. Of course, even if the shot is deflected, there may still be spalling, but less energy will be delivered to the vehicle, and spalling is easier to mitigate.
It might seem logical that the higher the impact velocity, the higher the penetration, but once velocity gets high enough, both projectile and armour begin to behave as if they were liquids. [Newton's Impact Depth Approximation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth) shows that the impact depth is proportional to the length and density of the projectile vs the density of the armour. If densities are equal, impact depth is approximately the same as projectile length. So, the battle between projectile and armour boils down to density vs density and length vs thickness. However, transmitted energy is still a factor. Armor might stop or deflect the projectile, but the transmitted energy might still cause spalling. Computer or real-world modelling would be required.
[Answer]
What you're describing is basically how the APFSDS-T (also called, among other things, a sabot)projectiles work. They are sub-caliber projectiles, made from very dense and heavy material (depleted uranium, tungsten etc), which travel at high velocities to achieve kinetic kill.
Current variants do reach 1.8 km/s, as you mentioned. This allows them to achieve successful penetration of (at minimum) 850mm of RHA armor. That is a lot, but new ones, entering service now, have much more penetration. How much is yet unknown - numbers are unavailable. But they do it in one of two ways: increase velocity at the moment of strike and/or increase mass of the penetrator.
There are in development new types, where the increase is in speed. It is estimated that with all other factors staying the same, increase of velocity from current 1.6 km/s-1.8 km/s to desired 2 km/s adds a bit over 10% to penetration values. Though it may require different material of the penetrator. There's a reason why US is sticking with depleted uranium penetrator - where velocity is actually lowered, but mass is doubled, and ERA-defeating capabilities have been added... It has been found that there is a point where too fast is actually a thing.
So, if you plan to go up to 4 km/s of penetrator velocity, it means that this projectile will have anything between 2x and 10x increased lethality compared to defenders. Depending on the end of that scale it will at be at least enough or way more than enough, then. For example, latest US APFSDS produce on impact almost 11MJ of kinetic energy from 10.5 kg penetrator at 1.65 km/s velocity. If same projectile would travel at 4 km/s, then the energy yield is just around 80MJ. For comparison, 155mm HE projectile from current-tech howitzer explodes with about 55MJ of energy (though from 10.8 kg of TNT explosion), and it has been demonstrated that it will basically crush an M1 Abrams tank no problem. What an 80MJ kinetic penetrator does to a tank is pretty much the same, just bigger still.
Current defensive tech is basically what you described, as well: *don't get hit*. Of course, there are additions, like composite armor, reactive armor, shape of the armor (sloping and angling to increase chances of projectile bounce), which increase survivability - and it is worth noting that explosive reactive armor (ERA), while developed against high-explosive-anti-tank (HEAT) rounds, can be quite effective against some of the sabot penetrators (i.e. Kontakt-5 ERA uses the brittleness and rigidity of tungsten against itself, in effect shattering the penetrator and rendering it useless) but the tactics are basically *shoot and scoot*.
So if you look for something to increase survivability in the face of enemy with superior firepower you have two ways, one of which you already discarded (add more armor).
That leaves the other way: stealth. Make your vehicles smaller, add some stealth tech to them and basically adopt tank destroyers tactics across the board. Which is basically concentrated fire from ambush, and then retreat.
Alternatively, if enemy uses mostly kinetic-based firepower, then consider producing man-portable weapons and/or technicals in large numbers (where platform is civilian-market vehicle with added gun). Because in this case no armor is the best armor...
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**Guided redirection/deflection**
You might not be able to fully stop such a projectile, but you might be able to deflect it so that it either goes past you or causes less damage. Relying on passive deflection, even with the best armour designed to do so, can and will fail, so you're going to have to have some way to actively re-orient the armour to provide the least damaging/most perfect deflection on a per projectile's path basis.
If it were me I'd give each tank a 'shield arm', a powerful mechanical arm with a large, lengthy, and thick metal plate(probably made of spring steel) designed to not stop/block an incoming projectile but rather to redirect or deflect it. You can have this be guided by a soldier trained to handle the equipment, but you'd get much greater accuracy(a better angle for deflection) when you implement an AI behind the control of this arm.
Should an actual arm prove to flimsy an attachment for this(more than one joint/point of failure), you could design the hull of the tank itself to be adaptive to the path of incoming projectiles, like large scales that re-orient themselves. I personally still think an arm would be better though, as it'll give the projectile more time to be redirected and the action won't be happening so close to the tank itself(which houses your soldiers if you haven't gone the way of remote warfare)
The entire practice of a tank's deflection will be similar to how bullets can skip off of vehicles(despite most cars not having much to speak of in the way of armour), [video example,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NaNLwLMGKo) but being better at the whole thing due to actual armour being in place as well as the angle being adjusted for perfect or near-perfect deflection.
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I am working on a stirling engine powered train for a DnD game I am a part of, and am trying to figure out how the engine works. I have the basics of the engine done, but I can not figure out how a throttle would work with this kind of engine. I know there was an actual train built using a stirling engine, but I couldn't find any information on how the engine inside works. I should also mention I am still pretty new to engineering concepts like this, so if whatever information you all can provide could be kept as simple as possible it would be much appreciated.
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The general theme of a stirling engine is that you can't easily throttle it. However you can gear it instead. [Continuously variable transmission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuously_variable_transmission) was invented in 1879 for exactly this purpose, to allow an engine to operate at continuous speed while having speed control on the driven system.
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Shamelessly summarizing an physics SE answer on [how would a Stirling Engine's throttle work?](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/266410/how-would-a-stirling-engines-throttle-work)
* most efficient - vary the amount of working gas. Bleed (and store gas) from the high temp side to throttle down, inject (medium temp) gas into the cold side to throttle up
* less efficient - sabotage the temperature differential (like in bleed hot gas on purpose in the cold side)
If you fell the need to award ++ points, consider doing it on the original answer.
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Let's make it a series of steam loops that all feed into a cylinder, or a series of cylinders. Inside each steam pipe is a valve; since you don't necessarily want to be touching certain parts of this thing while it's active, each valve has magnets on its tips that can be controlled from the outside - through the wall of the pipe - with another magnet.
You can lock off steam loops by closing the valves associated with them with a powerful magnet on a stick. The more steam loops that are *open*, the more steam is available for the engine, and there's more of a heat difference. This means that there's more heat energy to convert to mechanical energy. The more that are *closed*, the less steam makes it to the cylinder/cylinders.
The train's engineer uses a "magic wand" to control the engine. In reality, it's a powerful magnet on a stick, but this is a DnD game, and the illusion of magic is an important thing for the sake of this. You can trick your players by having the engineer wave the "wand" over the Stirling engine in order to change its power output; if all you tell your group is that "the engineer waves the chunk of metal on a fancy stick over a massive, many-piped wall of glittering, shaking, steaming, dully-glowing metal", or something like that, the odds are that they'll think it's magic.
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Stirling engines require a very steep thermocline and good seals that don't degrade. You could do it with a sort of Ferris wheel arrangement of barrels and a heat source on one side; as the wheel rotates so do the barrels, the changing angle of the liquid relative to the barrels opening and closing gas-tight seals that don't wear.
If you're wondering where this is going, you could throttle this arrangement by adjusting the orientation of the barrels relative to the ground plane. It would give you subtle control of the length of the arc in which pressure is developed.
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In a setting where there is a multispecies Galactic Democracy with Proportional Representation that has expanded with the rule of giving one vote to any individual, how should they deal with a Machine Intelligence that controls an entire solar system and wishes to join? They have already enjoyed two decades of peace and close foreign relations, and both sides want to try to have a fair deal that do not undermine the Galactic Democracy's values.
Is it most likely that the Galactic Democracy would push for:
A. Give the entire AI a single vote.
B. Give the AI a set number of votes greater than 1.
C. Give the AI a number of votes based on a certain criteria (ex. Energy Production, Land Area, etc.)
D. Decide that their society is incompatible with the AI joining and try to pursue closer foreign relations.
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It depends on the population, or else the AI would argue based on the size of its "nation".
If the AI governs a population, then the AI would get as many votes as the population it represents. Unless ofcourse the AI tries to cheat by creating many small AI's and presenting them as persons.
If the AI is just itself across a solar system it would try to represent itself as a nation, and argue that its influence would need to be just as great as a similar sized nation. After all if the AI would represent just a single vote it would be vulnerable to politics of other nations/political groups in the GD. The AI would never join if at minimum it would not have the same political oomph as any nation or group of similar size, so that would be the minimal accepted. Any alterations would need to come from your idea of the political structure and cultures governing the GD.
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**The AI is a voting block, not an individual**
The AI has the combined output of the whole solar system, meaning in terms of what it can do and its value it is the same as a group of people who inhabit the solar system and do what it does. While it might not make sense to give it individual votes for a popular vote it makes sense to give it electoral votes, senators, and representatives. But how many votes should it get?
**No taxation without representation**
The reason we have representatives and senators is to balance the power of small states and large states. However, ultimately every state stays in the union because the political power it derives from representation and services from being in the union outweighs the costs of the being in the union. If a state lost some of its political power in terms of representatives then it might cause them to leave since their citizens' lack of agency in politics leaves them vulnerable. Therefore, the amount of votes the AI gets is equal to the minimum amount of votes you can give it without it threatening to withdraw from the Galactic democracy.
Start by taking a solar system of a similar size and give the AI that many votes. Anything less and the AI might reconsider joining.
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Political compromise based on proxies
The only workable compromise in the long run is one which gives the AI-controlled system political influence roughly in proportion to its contribution to the federation (so no grossly lopsided scenarios where the AI is limited to one vote, or can game the system by creating infinite bot-citizens). I suggest a very rough baseline for the votes it receives would be to use economic production as a proxy for population i.e. take the Gross National Product (or Gross System Product) of the AI, then divide it by the federation's average GNP per capita to generate a notional population figure for the AI's system. Further adjust it for the federation's average rate of enfranchisement (i.e. if 30% of the galactic population cannot vote because they are children/larvae/clone-serfs, knock 30% off the AI's vote total too), and give the AI that many votes.
Of course, this is a very crude approximation metric, and the final figure will be subject to political haggling based on a range of specific arguments (how directly comparable are different kinds of production in your futuristic economy? Is there another metric alongside economic production which better represents the federation's notion of value? How does the law treat lesser sentient AIs that already exist within federation member-states' territory? Etc etc). In particular, I expect federation negotiators will want to set the AI's vote total slightly lower than the raw population-proxy numbers will suggest, because it has a number of advantages which could otherwise give it disproportionate power. The AI is a single superintelligent consciousness with complete control over all its votes, so it can achieve a 100% turnout rate (which other systems presumably cannot) and tactically direct every single ballot to achieve maximum impact; this will need to be offset somehow.
The final compromise that emerges will thus depend on a vast range of political variables that I can't estimate based on the information provided, but I've suggested one plausible framework which could guide accession negotiations. The wider functioning of a galactic democracy will be built on such compromises, because 'one person, one vote' is tricky when future-tech and radical inter-species differences make 'person' a fluid and contested concept.
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No solution is perfect, but I'd argue in favor of one vote.
Here's the thing-- one vote can both represent the needs of an individual and state. On issues of morality or opinion, one vote is really all a single intelligent being should expect, regardless of power and position.
On the other hand, in issues regarding member states, having only one or two votes would probably be the norm anyway. Kind of like how the U.S. Senate only has two representatives of each state.
So yes, in general elections, the AI only deserves one vote (as one being); in legislative votes, the AI should get the same as every other member state receives (likely one vote).
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# None!
"How many votes" depends on what it gets to vote on. Analysis of that question reveals that all answers are absurd.
Consider the real-world U.S.: rank-and-file voters get to vote for people they send to the national Congress, but they *don't* get to vote on e.g. the For the People Act, or the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, or whether to hear witnesses and see evidence in either of Donald Trump's impeachment trials. Generally, they vote for representatives, not on specific questions faced by the government.
It is *absurd* to think that a massive AI that spans a solar system would vote for *a representative* of any kind: some crude meat puppet whose job it is to "speak on behalf of" the what is probably most intelligent entity in existence.
The AI would itself *be* its own Senators, Representatives -- permanently and not subject to the votes or wishes of any other political region within the democracy. And, if there is a President, it seems like the AI would need to be eligible to run for that office.
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>
> a multispecies Galactic Democracy with Proportional Representation
>
>
>
If the Galactic Democracy is to keep its status as a credible political entity, they should probably give the AI-state votes by the same rules they've given them to everyone else.
And especially since you specified it's a *multispecies* coalition, that probably isn't going to be one vote per individual, for multiple reasons. The member species are likely to be different, in their history and culture, governance within their planet/system/whatever but also in their biology. One species might be biologically smaller than another, and be able to support a greater population on a planet of a similar size and economic output. (Well, unless all your species are rubber-masked humanoids, of course.)
Regardless of biology, some planet might be more densely populated, while another is sparser. (Slaves might be a problem too, unless the GD has managed to outlaw that totally.) It's probably not a good idea for the GD to encourage the member species to overpopulate their planets to get more political oomph either, if it cares about the well-being of the individuals living down there.
Those kinds of things would make the "one biological entity, one vote" system problematic even before the AI comes into play, and it's far more likely that the GD would be set up more as a Galactic Federation, with some sort of representative democracy at the top level, with varying levels of voting power based on economic or political strength or such.
Note that, even just with humans in play, in the United Nations General Assembly, each country has just one vote, not one vote per citizen/inhabitant. (And then there's the Security Council.)
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This is a difficult question because it is very much *opinion-based*, with no clear answer. There is already one close vote as I write this. However, I do not vote to close myself because there are *some elements* of an answer which may be relevant:
* Presumably your galactic civilization has different, sentient species. How do they deal with different ages of majority/consent across species lines? There could be a species where only one gender, or only the very elderly, are allowed to vote.
One option would be to have a standardized test that is applied to *representatives of the species* to determine reasoning ability. *"At the age of 14.7 standard years, the [4th quintile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantile) of the sample population has reached the reasoning standards. Therefore members of this species are deemed adult at 14.7 standard years unless the individual has been judged incompetent by the legal authorities."*
How many subprocesses can the AI spawn at the same time that would pass the test? Each gets one vote.
* Or possibly there are precedents for a [hive mind](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HiveMind) in the confederation. Are drones allowed to vote if they have no free will?
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## Taxation for service.
They would be taxed based on the number of robots they can support with their intellect, with a necessity to have a certain number of a certain type of robots available for use.
Intelligent, well managed people are useful. The galactic nation has been able to call up it's voting population many times for war, producing large amounts of some valued good, or soldiers to crush an evil invader. They would negotiate for a while and come to a fair compromise over how many votes would be granted for each bit of computing power.
No doubt other nations have come upon the strategy of producing lots of people to get more votes. This AI system can do the same, but then it needs to be ready to contribute more soldiers or production robots and metal minds to necessary galaxy wide war efforts.
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# GD as Corporation
Make the members of the GD purchase their votes via shares. This is a practical way to implement Montefeltro's observation that political power should be proportional to a member's "contribution", which is generally understood to be related to their economic output. It also allows some systems to effectively opt out of participation, and allows other more enthusiastic systems to gain more than they otherwise would.
# IPO
Initially, all votes would need to be distributed to all systems in some person-agnostic manner. I would propose this be done on the basis of the blackbody temperature of the system. This measures the amount of energy available to the system, and indirectly, its mass. If the GD contains Kardashev Type I/II civilizations, then trying to measure anything less than this is futile and useless. If all the civs are < Type I, then I question how a GD is even possible, since they probably only have slow interstellar travel.
One the shares are allocated, they can then be traded on the open market. Of course, there should be more than one share per system during the IPO. A target should be something like 1,000 or 1,000,000 shares per system, average. This would allow members to adjust their share pool up or down by buying and selling a fraction of their representation (based partly on the level of their system exploitation...a a system with an energetic star but poorly habitable planets may decide that a more powerful civilization could better utilize its resources, and choose to sell many of its shares for a big economic bump, rather than trying to wield them all in galactic matters of only minor import to them).
# Monopoly
There is, of course, the incentive for one or a small number of members to hoard votes. But who would they hoard them from? They have to buy every vote *from someone else*, and the more they amass, the more the rest of the GD will bid up votes, just like in any market. It would be irrational for any star system to charge less than the total economic output of the galaxy to purchase the last share, or even the share which achieves majority, whatever threshold that is. Every star system will be eyeing every other which is buying up shares, trying to determine their motives, their ability, their aggression, etc. If any system is *able* to corner a significant portion of the market, then it will only be because the majority *voluntarily sold their shares*. This means they either trust the majoritarian, or they are so economically/militarily/politically weak that they would have been steamrolled in any other system of gov't as well.
# Power
All of this discussion is moot without knowing what individual members are capable of w.r.t. power projection across the galaxy. Is there FTL travel? FTL signalling? How is trade conducted? What goods do members consider valuable enough to trade *between stars*? There *must* be trade, or there is no incentive for the most powerful system to simply conquer all of its weaker rivals. Unless, of course, the weaker systems are collectively powerful enough to resist the powerful one. But holding such a coalition together without trade relies 100% on game theory, and is likely very unstable. If even a few of the members decide that they are better off siding with the big dog, then the coalition falls apart.
What are the military capabilities of the member states? Can they destroy planets? Blockade them? How can they interfere with trade, given that space is so big? Can they kill all the citizens on a planet while leaving the infrastructure? Are the species remotely biologically compatible, or are they a hodgepodge mix? Are they at least all carbon-based, with some organic compounds in common?
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One AI, one vote.
Otherwise you are arguing that the rich and powerful are entitled to more votes than the poor and weak. That can of worms would result in probable war and certain civil disorder.
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**Option A one vote**
I think the fundamental question here - actually *preceeding* the opening - is whether these "democratic galactic values" would include acceptance of AI beings as aware individuals with certain rights. It should meet certain criteria for that.. would the AI be able to shape (and refine) its own value system ? Develop its own opinions, independent of its designers ? If that would be the case, the AI system will be entitled to ONE vote, just because it is being acknowledged as an adult *individual*.
**Passive suffrage too**
When the AI would be assigned all democratic rights, it could also become a candidate people vote for. Suppose the AI has always been a peaceful and succesful entity "controlling the solar system", chance is, people in its solar system would be prepared to vote for it, in large numbers !
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Being a single AI, it can be expected to vote systematically to get as much influence from its voting power as possible.
If you want your democracy to remain stable, you should not give it too much power, obviously; Otherwise, the democracy might quickly
end up with some Caesar/Hitler/Palpatine too strong to be removed by democratic means, effectively turning the democracy into an AI-cracy.
Up to several % of the total voting pool should probably be safe, unless the AI can build that up by collaborating with other similar entities.
Inside the stability limit, I think the only criterion is to keep some vague sense of fairness, so the inhabitants do not tend to start a revolution.
Be it based on taxes, GDP, military service (Starship Troopers), or something arbitrary (USA). Maybe it's not such a bad idea to give the AI
just one vote, so nobody else feels offended. The AI may agree to that since it realizes there are other ways of power in a democracy
(like becoming a politician, or just contributing to economy, if we stick to completely legal ways). If not, try something else from the safe side. Make it one "elector", as in US presidential elections?
I don't think it really matters (better do not tell that to voters).
That being said, AI citizens will definitely need some legal protection, fundamental rights, etc. (unless their military or economical power is just
big enough...) Conspiracies will go both ways. People should not be able to decide that all AIs are slaves or something. Just voting against the anti-AI
party may not be enough here.
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Now, I have started working on a game called In The Flesh, and I have decided to use this site to work on it.
## The Game Itself
In any case, the main idea of In The Flesh is that it's a sci-fi automation game, but instead of using machines to do your work, you instead use biomachines: artificially created creatures with no free will, created entirely to do their creator's bidding. I've also came up with the species that use these things called the carofinxit, or "flesh molder."
## The Carnem Deus
The first thing that came to mind though was why they would prefer biomachines to regular technology. I am still figuring that out, but one of the things I came up with for this is the Carnem Deus, or "flesh god," a massive creature in a deep slumber the size of a planet. It normally idles, showing no evidence of life, however, it is still alive. Many of the resources found in the game are just various kinds of tissue. As a result, regular resources like copper, tin, iron, or what have you are inaccessible to the carofinxit, leading to biomachines. While this fits in perfectly with the theme, I got to wondering, "**is a creature of such monstrous proportions possible?**"
## The Biology
First of all, the name is a bit misleading, as while the carofinxit worship the Carnem Deus, it is far from it. While it is mostly alien in its biology, it still has organs resembling the functions of earthborn creatures, having organs similar to that of the heart and lung. It slumbers most of the time, but when it awakes, well, bad things happen. VERY bad things. When a Carnem Deus wakes up, it causes disaster for any who live on it. This event has come to be called "The Reckoning" by the carofinxit.
## The Reckoning
The Carnem Deus only wakes up every couple of centuries, or whenever it gets irritated to the point of stirring. During this time, it activates various functions throughout its massive body to clear itself of parasites. Unfortunately, that includes the carofinxit. At the end of a naturally occurring Reckoning, the Carem Deus jettisons components of itself into space to reproduce (Inspired by Willk).
## The Square Cube Law
To clear things up, disregard the square cube law. I know by now that the square cube law is best ignored in most cases. Although, I am open to any ideas about how the creature could overcome this.
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**Your planet sized creature lives in a gas giant.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tQBtv.jpg)
<https://www.universetoday.com/22710/jupiter-compared-to-earth/>
Your creature is not the mass of a planet but it is the size of a planet.
See that red thing on Jupiter? That is one. The planet beast floats in a gas giant, accumulating energy and resources, building its body. Perhaps it has organs to facilitate the movement of the substrate through itself, like a sponge moves water through its structure. There may be organs dedicated to collecting energy - molecules to undergo energy-producing reactions, or perhaps electrical energy harvested from planet-distant regions of the gas giant atmophere.
It is bad for things living on the surface when this creature "wakes up" because that is when it reproduces. Large components of the body are jettisoned into space, to seek out new worlds.
But first, the planet beasts DANCE!
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There will be many issues with a "living planet" sized organism, with gravity being the largest hurdle.
If the planet has a surface gravity similar to our Earth, then the structure of the creature has to support a truly incomprehensible weight. The pressures involved on Earth results in magma, and its hard to imagine a life-form that incorporates magma intentionally.
You could cheat a bit and say that the entire surface of the planet has been covered with a living mat.
Then you could have a single super-organism that would react to disturbances, once they got intense enough that is.
It could still use geothermal power by going down how ever deep it needs to in places.
Distributing resources around the entire planet sized surface will still very much be a challenge, but monumentally easier than trying to structure the entire mass of a planet.
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**Short answer yes**, but it depends a lot on your wording "**planet sized**".
For example both the glass in my window, and the spider web in front of it, are "window sized"..... I think you can see where I'm going with this.
You can't have the planet sized entity literally be solid and planet sized, for reasons other answers explain. But it could have fibres/roots/[mycelium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycelium). It could have body parts that spread thinly through the earth's crust, preferring shallower depths, where it can probably survive the temperatures and pressures, and find something more than molten rock to eat. It could be found wherever people look, and have ways to react over a massive area, if its sensory system was irritated.
I think that's the way to go.
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## You might want a fleshy [Dyson Tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_tree)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/72xtq.jpg)
Pick a [succulent plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succulent_plant) and adjust it's surface structures and its colors. This is how you get a "flesh" plant.
Here are a few links from the Orions Arm project. [Yggdrasil Bush, Yggy](https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/46e9d60061e78) [Dyson Trees](https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48472ab83cce0) [Canopy Plant](https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48472c6ab8511)
Pick any kind of Dyson Plant and adjust its optics. Do the same for the ecosystem.
Concering planet sized, you don't want an actual planet. You want an asteroid at the center and potentially a more streched out surface for better solar energy production and waste heat management. You could have low-gee flesh forests hundreds of kilometers deep.
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**Scientifically, no, that's not possible.**
According to National Geography, the most massive terrestrial planet ever found so far is [TOI-849b](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/bizarre-planet-largest-known-rocky-world-40-times-as-massive-as-earth), which has a Mass of 40 Earths.
(Normally, planets this massive should be gas giants, but this monster defies any theories scientiests currently known.)
But, "size" is NOT the key as to how big the creatures would grow, the "gravity" is.
(Note that the mass of the planet is not equal to its gravity, it also depended on its size. m ∝ gr². Which means, given the same mass, the lower the gravity, the bigger the planet is.)
With higher gravity, creatures would have to fight off its pull and stay steady and evolve into [flat-like creatures](https://io9.gizmodo.com/four-theories-about-creatures-from-high-gravity-worlds-325109), such as centipedes.
On the contrary, lower gravity will more likely to create colossal creatures.
But on the other hand, because these creatures live in a low-gravity world, it will make them "weak" in other worlds.
Regardless of their size, they will have big problem to even "stand up".
Now how do this weak creature, who can't even stand up, become a "god" of another world, not to mention "VERY BAD" things will happen if it wakes up, it's a brainteaser which probably beyond the scientific explanation.
But if this god was from the same planet, then everybody has the same footing to evolve, what make this Carnem Deus guy so special and evolve into an all-so-almighty-you-better-not-wake-me-up deity, that's beyond my ability to explain.
But hey! Wait! What if your planet is "very small"!? Then even a "human being" will be "as big as the planet"!?
Well, the current smallest planet ever found is [Kepler-37b](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-37b), but still, it's a little bit bigger than the Moon!
It still goes back to the problem stated above - In order to grow into enormous size, the gravity has to be lower, but the lower the gravity is, the weaker it will make the creature relatively.
So, in conclusion, I'm sorry that you're out of luck.
**Fictionally, well, everything is possible.**
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**Carnem Deus is a massive biological, organic version of Utility Fog**
Here's wiki's definition of a Utility Fog: *Utility fog (also referred to as foglets) is a hypothetical collection of tiny nanobots that can replicate a physical structure. As such, it is a form of self-reconfiguring modular robotics.*
But instead of quadrillion of little robots, it is made of quadrillions of living symbiotic creatures, cells if you will, that altogether add up to a massive monster.
It covers the entire planet, laying dormant most of the time.
But when it is awakened it can lift a head the size of a mountain, raise an arm the size of a peninsula like Florida, or open a monstrous mouth the size of the Grand Canyon.
It can take whatever shape it wants and whatever size it wants. So you can have the organs you want. In fact, any body parts you want (behave with that).
It will look like the countryside while it sleeps and lives off the planet it's on. It can be plant-like in its biological functions, feeding off the earth and sunlight and oceans. Various parts of it getting different kinds of nutrition, and then spreading it around.
When it gets angry it turns into a massive earthquake or avalanche or extends a city sized fist!
But you have to figure out how to kill it! lol
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Short answer, no. Even if the creature is idle it would need huge amounts of food/energy for it to even exist. Considering space is mostly just large amounts of gaps between systems with nothing in it, the creature would need an efficient way of getting good amounts of food and if they have a heart and something lung-like it would imply thos are constantly active wether or not you're doing anything.
Find a good way for it to exist without food (or a good way they get food) and how it moves for it and that would at least get rid of that problem.
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I don´t know if this will count but if your living planet is simple enough, the answer can be yes.
Think in the Physarum polycephalum or other species of the same family and add the capacities to do the Photosynthesis and to avoid the square cube law you can add the capacity to strategy suicide the old cells that are under the surface of the "planet".
So the "planet" will be the creature like crust and the others part of the planet will be the remaind of this creature + a couple meteorites + the original planet/planetoide/asteroide
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If you wish it to be something scientifically possible, no. It's not just the square cube law... Too many problems, and to start with a simple one: a planet-sized creature, with biology like that of an animal, would need a moon-sized meal here and there in order to sustain itself. The orbital mechanics of such a feast alone are enough to keep your local astrophysicist awake for many nights.
However, I think that more useful than nerding this out would be to list fictional planet-sized creatures so that you feel more comfortable writing this creature for your game.
* DC Comic's [Mogo](https://greenlantern.fandom.com/wiki/Mogo) is a sentient planet and also a Green Lantern.
* Marvel's [Ego](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Ego), a sentient planet from Marvel that has a literal brain at its core.
* Sid Meier's [Planet](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Planet_(SMAC)) - yes, that's what They're called. Not actually a planet but a fungal colony that covers most of the surface of a planet. It is therefore planet-sized in a way - it occupies the surface area of a planet without occupying the volume of a planet. Fungi also have organs like fruiting bodies, so...
* The [Brethren Moons](https://deadspace.fandom.com/wiki/Brethren_Moons) of the videogame series Dead Space are Moon-sized zombies.
* There are [at least seven sentient planets in the Doctor Who universe](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Sentient_planet).
Etc., etc.
By the way, intelligent planets are an example of a trope called [Genius Loci](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GeniusLoci). You may wish to read the TV Tropes article in the link.
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I've been thinking about how strong a human or humanoid would/could be on a planet with ten times lower gravity than Earth. After thinking about characters like [John Carter of Mars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carter_of_Mars), an Earth human that goes to a world with lower gravity and finds himself capable of giant leaps and can kill a martian with one blow, and conversely Superman, a humanoid whose species is adapted to a planet with higher gravity and is stronger on Earth where the gravity is weaker, I'm very curious as to the feats of strength and athleticism a human/humanoid could achieve.
Say we use the records set by Olympic athletes as the maximum average potential for a human/humanoid in Earth gravity - how does this change in lower gravity? Does ten times weaker gravity give someone "The Strength of Ten Men"?
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**Mass and Weight are Different**.
In zero gravity a punching bag is weightless. Still, you cannot punch it into the ceiling with a fingertip. This is because the bag is too *massive*. Mass is a body's ability to resist movement and doesn't change with gravity.
~~In ZG if you prod the bag with your fingertip millions of times it will reach the ceiling. This is because the bag stays in place between pokes. This won't work in gravity because the bag resets after each poke.~~
In ZG if you poke the bag enough it will eventually hit the ceiling. That's because each poke gives the bag a sliiiiiight momentum that is not cancelled by gravity. So poke the bag one and wait a year for it to hit the ceiling. Or poke it a few million times and watch it fly!
Now replace the punching bag with a Martian on Mars. You won't send them flying unless they are stick-thin and have little mass.
Likewise, your jump speed will not increase on Mars. What changes is the max height of the jump? It might still take a while to reach the top of that skyscraper.
Probably your top speed is lower on Mars. Your legs have the same mass so each stride uses the same energy. So you *could* make the same number of strides per minute. Only now with lower gravity each stride pushes you higher into the air so you take longer to land. So fewer strides and less speed.
Your heart can pump the blood from your feet to your head more easily. This might change endurance. I'm not sure exactly. It might cause other problems too, like unnaturally high blood pressure
**You're not stronger -- they're weaker.**
The usual story is that evolving in low gravity, the Martians did indeed evolve to be much less massive. For example, they can get away with lighter, weaker bones, and less muscle.
Let's say Martians weigh about 30kg. About are half the mass of a grown human. Depending on their biology, your fist might go straight through a Martian's chest, or you might stagger them a few feet. This probably depends on where you hit them. Hit near the top bit of the Martian they will move back further as they try to catch themselves.
From a scientific point of view, I find a huge difference in strength hard to believe. The skeleton is only 15%ish percent of the body weight. Perhaps a smaller heart to pump blood up to the head, but most of the body is not there to resist gravity. Remember there are other stresses. Such as the stresses caused by the body on itself when turning suddenly.
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Just want to add some data about swimming. From [*XKCD What If* #24](https://what-if.xkcd.com/124/):
>
> This(...) footnote contains some detail on the math behind a dolphin jump. Calculating the height a swimmer can jump out of the water requires taking several different things into account, but the bottom line is that a normal swimmer on the Moon could probably launch themselves a full meter out of the water, and Michael Phelps may well be able to manage 2 or 3.
>
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> The numbers get even more exciting when we introduce fins.
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> Swimmers wearing fins can go substantially faster than regular swimmers without them (although the fastest swimmer wearing flippers will still lose to a runner, even if the runner is also wearing flippers and jumping over hurdles).
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> Champion finswimmers can go almost 3.2 m/s wearing a monofin, which is fast enough for some pretty impressive jumps—even on Earth. Data on swimfin top speeds and thrusts suggest that on the Moon, a champion finswimmer could probably launch themselves as high as 4 or 5 meters into the air. In other words, on the Moon, you could conceivably do a high dive in reverse.
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There is a link to [this Youtube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z09RmuaPyVU) in the original text, I recommend you see it. A man wearing a monofin manages to leap out out the water. For an instant he is practically vertical and only the fin touches the water. In lunar gravity even someone with little practice might be able to do this feat, and people who do have a lot of experience might do the 5 meters (~15 feet) jump mentioned in the XKCD article.
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**Relatively stronger**
Gravity on a planet is incredibly important for the evolutionary paths. They determine if flight is possible and what kind, as well as how tall and strong creatures grow.
Differences most cited are:
* A planet with a higher gravity will have more stocky and less high animals.
* A low gravity one will be able to have taller, more slim animals.
This isn't fully true. The *restrictions and likely outcome* change. Slim animals would likely be crushed on a high gravity planet, but short stocky ones can live on a low gravity one (if things like deepsea sickness aren't afflicting them). They can evolve, although other designs are more likely to succeed. Heavy seeds that burrow on impact make sense in a high gravity situation, but are impractical in a low gravity one. Yet light seeds can be grown on a high gravity planet.
The reason your guy is likely stronger, is that creatures have grown in a way that doesn't waste energy they don't need. Not every creature is a bidy builder version for this reason. It wastes energy and time to get and maintain it, while it might be better not to eat everything around you just to keep those swoll legs.
Your guy lived on a higher gravity planet, so it required to get bigger muscles to do basic tasks. Thanks to the square cube law, he might actually be ten times stronger than the aliens, even if the gravity isn't ten times lower.
Jumping might not be one of them though. The bodies of the aliens might be better adapted and thanks to their build be able to go much further. Like a grasshopper can jump high and far in relative terms to humans. But the power behind the jump of your guy is stronger.
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**Gravity directly impacts weight.**
>
> Weight = mass \* gravity acceleration
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So, let's say an olympic weight lifter can lift up to 200kg which is
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> 20 MASS \* 10 gravity acceleration on earth = 200kg
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The effect you would have is that on a planet with 10 times less gravity acceleration is that the weight lifter can now lift heavier objects
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> 20 MASS \* 1 gravity acceleration = 20kg ( mass won't change over planets but gravity will )
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So, to lift the same weight as he could on Earth, he could lift 200kg as follows:
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> 200 MASS \* 1 gravity acceleration = 200kg
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**Conclusion:**
He won't be stronger but he will be able to lift 10 times more mass than he could on Earth because of lesser gravity forces but still he's maximum weight lifting will be 200kg.
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Unlike the other answers, I believe the OP is alluding to the body developing to be stronger under higher gravity than lower gravity. So it would be like you walking around all day with weights on so when you take them off you are stronger than everyone else whose body did not need to develop as much.
So the phrase shouldn't be "gives you the strength of ten men" as much as "gives you the strength of 10 martians". 10 times is too much though. Mars does not have 1/10th Earth's gravity. Mars has about half the graqvity.
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In my opinion, the mass would decrease 10 times. The result is that your weight also decreases by ten, but the mass is the same, therefore it weighs the same and you do not have the strength of 10 men.
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I know that vampire bites could be very...erotic in most fictions, mostly due to proximity and intimate nature; more so with a human partner and it's heavily empathised but I'm wanting to understand the psychology behind how the mood can shift, more so between two vampires feeding.
In general reality, vampire bites aren't going to be pleasant for the human being eaten (unless said vampire released a neurotoxin into their veins for their pleasure and compliance). No one enjoys being stabbed with two or more needles in a sensitive spot of the skin and having their veins drained but that shit would hurt too.
I'm writing a book that has a new vampire that is part of a clan so they hunt in numbers to sate their blood lust. They're new to the whole thing, the culture of being in a clan, to how they hunt and how the clan would function. They're introduced to their new world as they go, including feeding and what comes after.
Human's aren't going to live but the vampires feed in close enough proximity to cause the vampires to get hostile with a more instinctive mindset to keep their food theirs than have it stolen by competition but close enough that that could easily change get to each other quickly for other 'needs'.
Now, It's possible that the sudden feed could spike the vampires up into an erratic state of emotions, would blood-lust turn into sexual-lust in a sort of feeding-afterglow or that feedings could trigger *other* equally erratic behaviours such as violence, and/or a flight/fight after feeding too. If feeding does this, what causes it?
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This is actually complicated. So here is my own opinion.
First I will ignore magic. Though you do have vampires.
Second sexuality is really really complex. Why do we get turned on by the things we get turned on by?
You can't explain every single detail with waving your hand and saying: BIOLOGY! or an evolutionary reasons we will find later. Obviously we can argue but the thing about intelligent life is that we truly transcend our biology in a way or in certain actions and so on. But anyway take of that what you will.
Anyway we humans have weird tastes. I'm no vampire and I find blood very erotic.
People use and used pain to enhance their sexual experiences for a long time.
All this is not exactly new. So being turned on by blood or feeding could actually be a fetish or a trait passed down from the mother/father/whatever vampire to the rest.
It could also be social in a loop of sorts. See. First vampire says it's hot. New vampires are not convinced but first vampire enforces it's hot. You grow up thinking that's hot. So it actually becomes hot.
You can see this in many cultures who may think small feet or a large nose or whatever else is very erotic. So with time and as the later generations start practicing that thing it just becomes the norm. Culture controls a lot and with vampires in a clan I suppose the control of the main vampire is higher.
**My favorite answer:**
Feeding is not eating, it does not activate the eating circuits in the brain nor is it even close. Feeding is hunting, and feeding is domination.
This will take a darker turn but it's very close to what vampires are, at least the classical predator and night fiend.
You see much like how sex in prison is never about sex or that rape or sexual harassment is also never about sex.
Or you can argue levels of that, but point is that in all these cases what you get is the domination of the other person and the person doing the thing just being drunk on a form of power lust.
So it's the same here. Your vampire consider, or it's wired in their biology whatever, that hunting and feeding is really about being a strong alpha predator that hunts the prey then have his/her/its will with the prey.
It's domination so they get turned on by that. You can do whatever you want with that. Have their wiring all messing up so it is equally both, or whatever ratio.
This last point could also be used for many, but not all human.
Some people prefer to be dominated and find pain quite erotic.
Perhaps your vampire are actually more naturally inclined to hunt and and feed on those people.
I mean it does fit the predator description well.
You don't want a strong prey, you want the weakest of the heard as it will offer the least amount of resistance.
The experience is akin to religious or transformative ones.
I'm still ignoring magic. But a quick look on certain religious practices you can find that pain becomes a sort of a pleasure of it's own in the context of cleansing the soul or appeasing god or whatever else.
Beating yourself or starving yourself or going through a sort of hellish torment or something similar are all things people did/do.
So maybe your vampires activate this sort of feeling in them or in their prey or both. A vampire feeding is seen as a part of their duty to the clan or god or whatever. And the humans are also, maybe, feeling like this will turn them into an eternal creature? Perhaps new vampires are those that survive or let survive from the feeding. This will mean a shared power or magic or bond or whatever connection between vampire and prey that both experience once their fang is in.
It's like telepathy only using the fangs to have this vampire/prey connection.
Not magic mind you. It's just using what is hard coded in the premise and expanding it.
Clan/magic/vampire limitation on feeding.
So you know how a vampire can only enter if invited?
Well. Maybe a vamp can only feed if invited to "have" the persons body.
So the rules, whatever their origin, require the vampire to seduce the person in order to gain access to their body. Because you can't walk up to people and tell them you want to suck their blood.
So the **only** way to feed was to seduce the prey and have it completely hand control of their body to you, thus removing the limitation and allowing feeding.
**Overtime** you obviously see how the two are mixed in together.
The vampire have to seduce the prey and so they are thinking of them sexually and the prey is thinking of having sex. Heck. Maybe feeding does not even hurt that much.
Lastly, sorry couldn't resist, MAGIC!
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Well, humans already have what you can call a variation of that, since the act of eating already releases "feel good" or reward hormones, like dopamine, in the brain (and apparently [it happens twice during the feeding process](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181227111420.htm#:%7E:text=Summary%3A,the%20food%20reaches%20the%20stomach.)). Perhaps in addition to these hormones, the act of eating in your vampires could also cause the body to release hormones that affect sexual desire (like estrogen and testosterone) or that trigger a flight or fight response (like adrenaline) into the brain, resulting in the effects you desired. I couldn't find proper information on hormones which will suddenly cause a spike in aggressiveness, but it seems like [higher concentrations of testosterone and low concentrations of serotonin](http://www.opentextbooks.org.hk/ditatopic/17157) could potentially help your vampires to be easier to aggravate (perhaps these hormonal concentrations could begin to be established once they begin feeding and tend to reach the "proper" levels shortly after they've finished eating, slowly returning to normal? Note however that I am not nearly well versed enough in the deeper effects of hormonal concentrations in humans and other animals to say such an event could happen with certainty or that these hormones could cause drastic behavioral changes within the time period we're referring to).
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**Vampire physiology**
Vampire teeth are hollow. It is not generally known that, via a system of heart-like valves, the victim's blood does not enter stomach but goes directly into the vampire's bloodstream.
Of course a sudden influx of blood has to go somewhere and the vampire has various organs that can expand to accommodate it. One such organ is of course ...
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Hormones. No, seriously.
The vampires don't need blood to live, they need blood because they're junkies. The vampires inject a venom that acts an anesthetic, but they have conscious control over it, so they can cause the bite to seem painless and even euphoric, or withold it and be as painful as it really is. As a result the victim's body responds in kind, releasing hormones in response to what it feels like. The vampire gets a kick from the hormones in the blood. Some like the dopamine released from a more apparently sensual feeding, others like the kick of adrenaline and hormones released due to fear, and so on.
If they get the hit they need, the vampires become euphoric, and can become oversexed as a result, just as some humans will after entering an altered brain state.
The vampires, however, don't realize that they're addicts. They think they need the blood to survive.
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You're speaking of Non-humans using clearly human characteristics. Foods can be *sensuous*, but not *sensual* ( in most 'normal'types). I don't believe you can guage a fictional psychology against a non-fictional one. Perhaps instead of arousal (useless in the 'un-dead') they would crave sleep, or sports, or backgammon. The choice is yours in a world that is entirely your fantasy.
* Just my $0.02
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Set in the future where there is at least one 3D printer in every household, population demographics show aging in every part of the world. In this future, many elites have powerful AI nanobots running inside their brains to assist them with decision making as well as being informed about the relevant current event happening in the world right now. These tiny nanobots cannot replicate by themselves and have to be 3D printed. Usually people of higher social status are often manipulative and will try underhanded method such as involuntarily feeding their workers or slaves with nanobots to eavesdrop and monitor their daily activities so as to blackmail them in due time. There has been a rumor going around for sometime regarding the rich and powerful using AI nanobot to control the corporation, and even the entire nation. So what is stopping people from creating their own similar AI nanobots assuming 3D printer and materials cost are dirt cheap?
inspired by Roko's basilisk ;D
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**They lack the design. They lack the code. They lack the hardware.**
3D printing a nanobot is more than just hitting print. You firstly need the right hardware. 3d printers can be bought from supermarkets these days but there is a world of difference between a home printer and a commercial printer which costs many thousands of dollars more.
If you were to 3d print a gun on your home printer, chances are you'll blow your fingers/face off. A commercial printer can print a better quality gun that can be fired safely.
Next you need the design. The rich have design teams of engineers and can spend thousands of man hours and untold resources to build and test.
Finally you need the code. A nanobot needs programming as well as a body. The rich can afford to buy the best programmers and software. The poor can, at best, download some bootleg code at which they don't really know what it does or if it's loaded with malware.
The closest the poor can do to compete is with stolen hardware, designs and code which they tweak and hope for the best.
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## Forbidden by 3D printers
Take some money, and try to scan it or print it. Your machine will not let you do this. There are specific protection to prevent that, the most famous one being [EURion constellation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation). Your 3D printer will have similar protection, detecting that you try to print a nanobot.
## Lot of data to send and process
Think of self-driving cars. They collect tons of data, and need to process them, fast. They generate Terabytes of data. Brain is even more complex than a car, so it will be several magnitude higher. Your nanobots isn't fast enough to process that much data, they send it to a central computer, that process this data. But that can be detected, and therefor regulated
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Printer head size. A printer with a small enough head to properly handle nanoscale poduction isnt available to the public. Why would the corporations ever sell printers with such a small size? The public will rarely need that level of detail in their printer.
Printer head shape and functioning. The shape of the printer head (and the feeding tubes) as well as how it functions can limit what materials it can handle. These printers likely have dozens if not hundreds of different printerheads, and the one's with the right shape and functions to print (malicious) nanobots just happens to be missing or always a "production error".
Materials unavailable. Nanobots are more often specific molecules that are approaching biological functions. If the right materials arent sold to the public to build the advanced versions you cant build them.
Templates unavailable. 3D printers need a template to work off so they know what to build. Its kind of hard to design a working nanobot swarm capable of even a small task, let alone the magical complexity that requires dozens if not hundreds of nanobot variants in swarms to work.
Software+computer hardware limitations. Malicious nanobot construction causes deliberate errors, making it impossible to build them unless you can build your own computer software and hardware to fix the issues. How are you going to build it? Well you are likely dependend on this 3D printer that is giving you errors whenever you try to build the parts you want...
Software checks. All printers are connected to a central hub. They detect you making specific nanobots, you get a trip through the justice system.
Nanobot sabotage. The public 3D printers all come with nanobots installed that listen in on the 3D printer and its surroundings. They notice you build nanobots that arent cleared and they'll damage the 3D printer. If the bots dont alert authorities a mechanic will (although the mechanic might think he's just ordering a specific part).
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To begin with, printers that can actually print at atomic scale (as opposed to assembling existing macro-molecules) are incredibly expensive. Further, almost all printers of any type are restricted to pre-approved designs or high-level variations on those. Designs must have maker's ID watermarked, cannot contain any auto-replication except in very specific and severely vetted designs, and must contain a number of other security features intended to restrict misuse. A printer that can avoid or fake the security features is extremely illegal. The only legal "unbridled" models are those that actually create new printers, new low-level designs, weapons . . . These are controlled by the authorities at levels of paranoia that resemble today's methods for nuclear material and printing presses for paper money and identity documents.
I highly recommend reading Neal Stephenson's *The Diamond Age* for what I think may be a seminal view on this.
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In the game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, characters wear exoskeletons with an ability called "land assist", which allows them to slow down their fall using a jet of compressed air (or some specific gas). Would such a device be possible in real life? If so, would it be efficient enough for slowing down a high fall (e.g: from hundreds of thousands of feet)?
For those who don't know the game, here is an example of this fictional technology in action: <https://youtu.be/dOjyonpeXVk?t=368>
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Sure. They have **jet packs**.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAJM5L9hhBs>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HyHAZ.jpg)
Jet packs have been a sci fi staple since Flash Gordon. The land assist suits they have in Call of Duty are lifted straight from [Heinlein's Starship Troopers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers), 1958.
I pictured the jump units in Starship Troopers as big, but the marines were wearing full exosuits and so were not slowed down by the weight.
Depicted is a screenshot from a pretty sweet video of a real jetpack from way back in 2018. It is not that big and the guy is flying around very fast and most awesomely. Over water, which is smart. It is a gas turbine which uses exhaust gases and a fan to provide thrust.
You could scale it down or maybe use a near future battery and just the fan. The guys in Call of Duty don't look like they are carrying that much - maybe they have on the grandson of this thing.
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Apart from the other answers pointing out this is fairly possible with modern/future technology, I would like to point out another reason this is impractical and will probably not be developed further:
# Balance
Iron man seems to hold his own when boosted from the bottom, balancing himself with boosters on his hands. But in reality balancing on boosters from your feet is extremely tricky. Imagine balancing yourself on two long flexible poles stood upright. Only with extreme balance and strength you will be able to, but one slight muscle twitch and you'll find yourself doing the splits. And when the boosters are no longer pushing from underneath you, they will push in whatever other direction, sending you flailing randomly and going very much splat. Imagine blowing up a balloon and letting it go without tying it. It will boost randomly anywhere because it isn't balanced. Especially the higher up you fall from (meaning you need to reduce more speed) the longer the boost, and the rate of failure will increase significantly.
Of course, this will be different with jet packs, as they are more strapped to the centre of mass (back/sides). However this will still be tricky as you use your legs as stabilisers. The size of these compared to the body will be fairly big, meaning you will be able to carry significantly less gear. Even if an exoskeleton is used, the weight of the exoskeleton will add to the force needed to slow down, so the size will have to increase significantly to account for this.
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This is one of those ideas that is cool but extremely impractical at best, as you'll see in [this thread](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/163567/how-can-i-create-long-fall-boots/163595#163595) on [Portal's boots](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX9Sc88qreg) for some other ideas for achieving the same effect. The short version there is that it might be possible to find something, but it would be extremely hard to be effective in any kind of reasonably sized package.
While you're talking about thrust as a counter, this also has equally big problems. A jetpack like that shown above requires a great deal of strength to operate, and weighs enough that it would be extremely hard to carry on top of the hundred pounds of crap that soldiers already carry for such a limited role. Even with exoskeletons, it would be hard to make it work for such a niche role. I'm not actually sure the military is even seriously interested in the concept anymore.
With respect to the idea that soldiers would use such a system, there is another problem, that of stealth. The whole point of using infantry is that they are hard to detect, especially in urban environments. Instead of jumping down a building like that, take the stairs. If you must, rappel down the side instead. This is what actual paratroopers do when they are caught in trees.
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I have a large army, Let's say 100,000 male and female adolescent soldiers, my commanders are old veterans and they are few but they need a way to prevent pregnancies among my shieldmaidens.
How do I prevent this?
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Here are 9 recommendations:
1) Males are taught that rape is evil and that premarital sex is shameful.
2) Female shieldmaidens are supposed to be maidens until they retire from the corps and get married, and thus fear the loss of virginity and marriage value.
3) Whenever someone tries to enter the camp of the shield maidens they must pass through an outer ring of married male guards who brought their wives along on the campaign, and then an inner ring of guards from a unit formed from male lovers, like the Sacred Band of Thebes, and then an inner ring of fierce eunuch guards, and then an innermost ring of fierce shield maiden guards. Females who leave the female camp have escorts of fierce eunuchs.
4) The female camp followers may include a unit of prostitutes for the male warriors, who thus have less inclination to romance or rape the shield maidens.
5) Many enemy females (and some males) may be captured for the pleasure of the male soldiers, who thus have less inclination to romance or rape the shield maidens.
6) If a female warrior becomes pregnant, no big deal, she loses respect and has a lowered marriage desirability and goes on maternity leave among the female camp followers (who will have a number of babies with them anyway) and has her term of service increased to compensate for the time in maternity leave.
7) If a female warrior is raped by an enemy who thinks: "Hah, hah! if she's pregnant she will raise the child of her enemy." the comrades of the female warrior will think: "Hah, Hah! If she's pregnant she will raise the enemy's son or daughter to hate the enemy nation and fight for us against them in the future."
8) If this is a fantasy novel maybe magic spells are used to reduce the libidos of male and female warriors and/or turn it into violence against the enemy.
9) This society - or its warrior subculture - believes in marrying young, so the majority of warriors, even the teenage ones, are already married to other warriors in the campaign.
Here are some comments about the probability of a 100,000 person field army with units of female warriors in the middle ages.
If medieval means anywhere on Earth during roughly 500 AD to 1500 AD, then there were some armies of 100,000 persons in some places on Earth during some parts of the medieval era.
Especially since "army" has 2 possible meanings and you didn't specify which in your question. An army can be One, the total number of land-fighting warriors in the armed forces of a country, and Two, which was harder to achieve, the total number of warriors in a field army, a fighting force marching together in a campaign.
I believe that during several decades in and around the reign of Emperor Basil II (co Emperor 960, reigning emperor 963, ruling 976-1025) and his immediate successors the Roman or "Byzantine" army had an estimated total strength of about 110,000 men. That was when the population and the area of the empire were estimated to be about 12,000,000 people and 1,675,000 square kilometers in 1025.
Most of the soldiers were part time soldiers, who farmed land they held on condition of serving in the armies of the themes during emergencies, but who were more professional than western European feudal warriors, and several thousand soldiers served in totally professional standing units.
I read that in the later Tang Dynasty about the 9th century AD the total size of the Chinese Army was over 900,000 men. But that was because some of the provinces and army units were controlled by almost independent governors and the central government had to increase the size of the forces it actually controlled to guard against any repetition of the An Lushan Rebellion.
During part of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) the Chinese army had over 1,000,000 men, probably the first time in history.
Muhammed bin Tuqlug, Sultan of Delhi (r. 1325-1351) planned a war of conquest and recruited a vast army, possibly as large as 3,700,000 men, in 1329, but released them from service after a year without doing anything with them.
Of course, a single field army on a campaign would have only a fraction of the total army of its state. Thus there were probably only a few medieval field armies - even in Asia - with more than 100,000 warriors marching together on a single campaign.
It may be noted that throughout history most armies contained large proportions of more or less noncombatant more or less civilian persons, often including many women and children. These noncombatants and civilians often outnumbered the actual soldiers or warriors.
Many barbarian war groups actually included every member of the tribe as the entire tribe migrated together. The warriors would be outnumbered many times by women, old people, and children. The Mongols of Genghis Khan, for example, were unique among horse riding nomads because their warriors were highly trained and disciplined soldiers, and the hordes left their families behind when they went on campaign. Every other nomadic horde included the families of the warriors.
So a typical nomadic or another barbarian group on the warpath would include the families of the warriors. Thus married couples would have sex on occasion and unmarried people would have sex about as often as unmarried people in their society would have if staying in their homeland during peace - a rate which no doubt varied greatly between cultures. And if there were prostitutes in a barbarian culture there would probably be prostitutes accompanying the barbarian war group. And male barbarians who owned female slaves could take the slaves along and have sex with them when they wanted. And occasionally with male slaves too.
And as civilized societies developed professional armies of soldiers those armies were accompanied by many civilians on campaigns, civilians called "camp followers".
>
> Camp follower is a term used to identify civilians and their children who follow armies. There are two common types of camp followers; first, the wives and children of soldiers, who follow their spouse or parent's army from place to place; the second type of camp followers have historically been informal army service providers, servicing the needs of encamped soldiers, in particular selling goods or services that the military does not supply—these have included cooking, laundering, liquor, nursing, sexual services and cutlery.[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_follower)
>
>
>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_follower>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_follower)
And as the article says, camp followers often outnumbered the army itself.
In India, there was a long military tradition of armies having several times their numbers in camp followers, and the British East Indian Company and later the British government picked up that practice.
A British Indian army brigade retreated from Kabul toward Jalalabad 90 miles away with 690 British and 3,800 Indian soldiers and 14,000 British and Indian camp-followers including thousands of women and children and was ambushed and massacred from 6 January to 13 January 1842.
Surgeon William Brydon reached Jalalabad on 13 January, and a few dozen Indian soldiers later reached Jalalabad. Of the British taken prisoner, 32 officers, over 50 enlisted men, 21 children, and 12 women survived to be released in September. About 2,000 Indian soldiers and civilians were found in Kabul and returned to Indian. The other 16,500 soldiers and civilians, including women and children, died of the cold or were massacred by Afghan tribesmen.
Anyway, that shows that 19th century British Indian army campaigns were typically accompanied by many camp followers including women and children.
At the Battle of the Wabash, or St. Clair's Defeat, 4 November 1791, 52 US officers and 868 enlisted men in the regulars, the levies, and the Kentucky militia were present for duty, with 200 to 250 camp followers - wives, children, laundresses, and prostitutes. 632 soldiers were killed or captured for burning at the stake and 264 were wounded. When the surviving soldiers retreated, almost all of the camp followers, who couldn't run as fast as the men, were massacred.
In the days when the British navy consisted of "wooden ships and iron men" there were also sometimes a few women aboard naval vessels at sea. And as a result, there were a number of babies allegedly born on naval voyages and sometimes even during naval battles.
<http://www.nelsonandhisworld.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=689>[2](http://www.nelsonandhisworld.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=689)
In the US Civil War, the total strength of the Union and Rebel armies was often over 1,000,000 men and boys. And no doubt there were a lot of rapes committed by the soldiers. But from all, I have heard rapes by soldiers were comparatively rare, due probably to the majority of soldiers considering rape to be very wrong and to the usual availability of large numbers of prostitutes.
Thus women left without their men in territories where an enemy army - usually the Union army - was passing through were in only slight danger of rape, and female camp followers in an army would be in only slight danger of rape.
So I think that your fictional army should not have too much of a problem with soldiers trying to rape their female comrades if you establish some of the sociological and institutional safeguards against the rape of female camp followers that have been used by many armies throughout history.
The biggest problem you face would be making female warriors as opposed to camp followers plausible. I suggest that you make the female warriors a minority in your army and probably outnumbered by the females in the camp followers.
And I suggest that you make the majority of your female warriors or soldiers bow maidens instead of shield maidens, who fight the enemy at a distance instead of face to face. And to compensate for their inferior arm strength, some of the female archers could be equipped with crossbows they draw with their legs, or hand cranked crossbows. Or maybe you could invent repeating ballistae that have magazines of bolts that drop a bolt into the slider whenever the slider is drawn back. And instead of hand cranks to pull back the sliders the women could operate foot cranks like in a stationary bike.
And maybe a minority of your female warriors or soldiers could be shield maidens who fight face to face with their enemies with shields, spears, and swords. Your model for them might be the Dahomey Amazons. There were between 1,000 and 6,000 at a time in the mid 19th century. So if there are two to four female archers for every "Amazon" there would be 3,000 to 24,000 female warriors in your kingdom's entire army. And if there are two to four male warriors for every female warrior your kingdom's entire army would number 9,000 to 120,000 men and women (including some boys and girls). And if the civilian camp followers, including women and children, are between half and four times as numerous as the warriors or soldiers, the kingdom's camp followers would total 4,500 to 480,000 men, women, and children.
Of course, a field army on a campaign would be only a part of the kingdom's total army.
And of course, you can play around with those figures and multiply or divide to get a plausible small European field army of the middle ages or a vast medieval field army of a mighty Asian Empire.
[Answer]
OK, just to state some realism...
* In the year 1340 the [estimated population of London](http://www.demographia.com/dm-lon31.htm) was 50,000. Your army is twice that size. With medieval technology, you need to supply the army while marching and during siege. During the U.S. Civil War, a 100,000 man marching army would be a [column 10-20 ***miles*** long](http://www.transportation.army.mil/History/PDF/Peninsula%20Campaign/Rodney%20Lackey%20Article_1.pdf) with a following wagon train of approximately 1,000 wagons. (And that's with 1800s tech.) The logistics of supplying this army during the time period (a time when armies were often defined by the hundreds of men and a 5,000 man army was massive and brought thoughts of the apocalypse) verges on the unbelievable. The *cost* to support this army would likely bankrupt a nation.
* While medieval women saw combat, [most were individual cases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_post-classical_warfare). It doesn't appear there's much evidence that women served in great numbers at all.
* Any woman with the strength and tenacity to fight toe-to-toe with anybody during the medieval era probably doesn't need protecting and automatically has my vote for President.
* At that time you have no mass-produced prophylactics of any kind. Indeed, you really had no mass production of any kind at the time.
So, let's ignore everything and just answer the question on its merits. How do you do it?
1. March them to within an inch of their lives. Leave them no time nor energy in the evening for hanky-panky.
2. When they're not marching, you drill them. Drill, drill, drill.
3. You indoctrinate them with a religious fervor rarely seen among humanity that the cause they're fighting for is so great that the sacrifice of personal indulgences is a price well worth paying. Make sure you reward loyalty with regular medals and commendations to underscore the value of that sacrifice.
4. Brute punishment also never works as a deterrent, but you could also put the pregnant women to work with the cooks. They can't fight, but they can't leave, either. If the father can be identified, he becomes someone else's squire and loses rank and privilege.
And then you hope like crazy because the human sex drive is really hard to shut off and no one yet has come up with a way to effectively convince teens/young adults to wait (and probably never will).
[Answer]
I assume castrating all the males is a bit too radical?
And contraception is not an option? So we have to take a hard way:
**Separate camps** for different genders. Only officers can cross over, and only while escorted by multiple hosting officers.
**Severely punish** those caught in the wrong camp, along with everybody in the same tent, or same squad. For males, castration (with glowing hot pliers). Not sure about females, maybe amputate one breast? Forced abortion for pregnancy. All done publicly and brutally, to deter others. And demotion to cook or prostitute. The sex drive is an instinct, and you need to counter it with another instinct: fear.
**Reward** those who report violations. Punish those who could report but didn't. So you basically have people racing to report. This is bad for morale, though.
**Have prostitutes**, both male and female. I believe you can castrate males in a way that they can still maintain an erection, and enjoy sex, but cannot impregnate. Or provide female prostitutes with dildos.
An **ideology or religion** is a good idea. A fellow soldier is your sibling in Arms (or in Christ), and you do not \*\*\*\* with your siblings.
For women, can introduce Amazon-style ideology that only weaklings let males use them.
Have **deferred marriage**, i.e. the pair committed to each other, but cannot sleep together until the campaign is over, or one of them is promoted to officer. This way there is hope for "true love".
PS. Gengiz Khan did have more than 100,000 warriors in his empire:
<https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/21417/how-many-soldiers-did-ghengis-khan-field>
But I doubt he ever had them all in one place. And they all knew how to forage.
[Answer]
**Ritualised Erotic Play**.
Your soldiers want to have sex with each other and (presumably) don't want anyone getting pregnant. Embrace that fact. Pair them up and make *sex* a compulsory part of the work day.
Every morning before breakfast and every evening after dinner your soldiers fall into formation and perform oral or manual sex on each other. They release their sexual energy in a controlled and supervised manner.
There is no shame attached to this ritual. However vaginal penetration is forbidden. It is seen as unpatriotic as a pregnant woman is one less soldier fighting for the mother/fatherland.
Since everyone is having loads of sexy sex on a daily basis there is no need to sneak around behind their superiors' backs.
As a side note bisexual or homosexual soldiers should fit seamlessly into this system. They are still not allowed to sex each other outside of the designated sexing times. But having a same-sex partner might even be encouraged.
[Answer]
# Transexuality
Transgender people have been around [since, well, history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history#Ancient_history), maybe even before. So a medieval society may possibly embrace them.
If all your shieldmaidens are trans women rather than cis women, pregnancy will not be an issue.
And vice-versa. If all the non-shieldmaidens are trans men, they will not get the shieldmaidens pregnant either.
[Answer]
With the limited amount of information I can only give a limited answer - could you please let us know some more details of your world? Is this world in the grip of feudalism, ala our Europe? Is this an army in the sense of being one solid body of troops doing one thing, or is this the entire armed forces of your nation? You should probably also pick a century at least - medieval is too broad. Why does this army have a substantial number of women? Is your society highly urbanized, with a good currency based economy? How big is your nation? These are all going to inform a proper answer.
But here goes - first problem
**Army Size**
If your nation is made up of nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralists... well, problem solved. The entirety of their society could be their army and their logistical train is... them. All they need is space and grass.
Are they attacking an enemy? That also simplifies your logistics, because they can kill their enemy and steal their stuff. It's called foraging. That's how many armies functioned - it even works on your own people if they are oppressed enough!
As I said earlier, distribute them to lessen the impact - ten columns of ten thousand troops marching parallel will be easier to manage, also how these things were done back when.
Rivers/Coastlines - ships or barges can move food and supplies easier, so your forces could hug waterlines while moving/ bivouacking.
Just remember that even in a highly militarized society you need logistics - anywhere from one to three civilians following your combat soldiers just to get daily stuff done, plus guys to move all your supplies to the army itself. This can be done, but keep it in mind.
Here's a good write up on logistics and army sizes
<https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4r6d2m/how_large_were_armies_in_classical_antiquity/>
**Reproductive Issues**
Thornier problem. Any answers would mitigate, not prevent, but I'd go with strong religious indoctrination as JBH previously mentioned.
Castration is out, I presume?
[Answer]
**Magic!**
This is fantasy, so solve it with magic!
I mean, mages are commonly depicted shooting balls of fire, raising the dead, and many other acts that defy the very laws of nature, so why not have some form of magical contraceptive?
It would depend a lot on the level of magic you have around the setting, but you could have priests offering blessings that would make a soldier infertile for some time or even alchemists creating potions that would work better than moderm contraceptives.
[Answer]
The text of your question merely asks for preventing pregnancies, while the title suggests celibacy.
Enforce celibacy
* Harsh punishment for all involved
* Separate the men from the shield-maiden
Avoiding pregnancies
* Punish shield-maidens, who become pregnant while with the army
* Have prostitutes accompany your army, so the male soldiers can have sex. The shield-maidens should have motivation enough to remain non-pregnant, so they can participate in the fighting.
* As a bonus, for your shield-maidens, bring castrated, male prostitutes along.
[Answer]
Put soldiers into cryogenic stasis until battle starts. Oh, wait, you said medieval times. I think you’re screwed (pun intended). The only medicinal approach I could find was “chaste tree berry (Vitex agnus-castus).” Describes as: known as “monk’s pepper” and was purportedly used to dampen libido in the Middle Ages. Modern science has not done any rigorous studies that I could find to verify this claim. For your story, you could just assert that the claim is true.
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# Premise
The world in which this takes place is a realistic world set in the year 2040 where technology has advanced beyond where we are currently, and the government has grown more corrupt. Most of the working class has just accepted the fact that the government is watching over them, and is okay with it, sacrificing their own freedom for increased security. There are a few people in the city that don't agree with it though. All but one stays silent and won't do anything about it in fear of retribution. The government isn't a democracy as we have today, but is a complex bureaucratic dictatorship in which the government gained the approval of the people through tricking them into thinking that this is what's best for the society in an environment of social complacency.
# Protagonist
The protagonist's entire bloodline on his father’s side has had some history of disrupting technologies. He also was taught from a young age about hacking and taking apart computers and putting them back together. He doesn't know what he wants to do after he takes down the government, just that his goal is to take it down before the government takes control of the entire world and enslaves the world’s populations under the guise of safety.
# Government
The government has been planning to do what they have done currently for many years, since the year 2025. They took advantage of the fact that most of the population, while okay with the fact that there was crime, ultimately wanted no crime. This was their first foothold into getting the entire country on board, they then started implementing the surveillance into major cities, where crime was abundant, so that they could get other cities on board with data that showed that the way they do things actually lowers crime, not just theoretically. After about 10 years of pushing to new cities, the last of the small cities gave in and accepted the government's plan. With this newfound access to everyone's data, they started to abuse their power behind the scenes. Getting people fired by leaking info anonymously to employers, selling private data to big businesses outside of the country to better target products to people living in it. Some people started to catch onto the government as they did this, and like any other corrupt government, they put the loudmouths down to make a point. Pretty soon everyone who opposed the idea quieted down and went into hiding as to not paint a target on their back.
*EDIT* The government is a single country, that has ambition to become a world order.
# Plans
One plan is probably the most common and straight forward, which would be to get into the government’s network and start turning the computers "against" themselves. When I say "against", I mean getting them off the government network and setting up a secondary secure network just to get them out of the government’s control. Another plan is to sabotage some of the network stations in the city to get the government to come out to the site, then using force they gain their badges and clothing, and then infiltrates the site, taking out the dictator and putting an end to everything. If everything goes south and they needs a last ditch effort to take down everything, they have developed a worm that can bypass any form of firewall or security and start uploading files to cause a self-destruct of all the files relating to the program, including any backups.
# Question
Given the size of the government, and the level of integration into society, would any of the plans listed have any chance of success?
[Answer]
## No (unless it's a Hollywood movie)
So why not? Let's take a look at each plan.
## 1. Subverting the network
While this might work initially, the government has the approval of the populace, meaning there is probably a department of motivated counter-hackers in place. Some of these will be genius-level patriots keen to make a name for themselves taking down an enemy of the state. Any hacks will be resisted, reserve networks brought online, compromised networks taken off grid, etc.
After some initial success, the serious crimes task force (FBI or CIA equivalent) will be tracking him down.
## 2. Assassinating the dictator
This might be successful, but it wouldn't make any difference in the long run because the government is a bureaucratic dictatorship. Due to this, the next person down the ladder will take over, security will be improved, and the government will continue on its merry and corrupt way.
If this had been a cult-of-personality dictatorship with a single strongman at the top, then there might have been long-term success.
## 3. Taking down everything
Again, this may succeed at first. Taking down the electronic monetary system will cause serious chaos, for example. However, governments are forced to resist terrorism or face collapse. In this situation, the government will probably teeter at the brink before the strong support by the people restores it to power by hardening themselves during the near-disaster and embracing whatever new system is put in place.
Like all terrorists, the protagonist will end up with a huge bounty on his head, and every government security force and mercenary out there will be after it. Real-life situations such as 9-11 make this quite clear.
## Can the protagonist do anything worthwhile?
Well, the best bet is to target the competent but corrupt individuals in the government. Using his tech skills, he can investigate their serious foibles, expose them, and get them kicked out, then manipulate the system to get less competent but ambitious idiots to replace them. Over time, the government will become much less effective at running the country and hiding their corrupt practices.
Eventually, after years or decades, the government will lose popular support, then likely crackdown on any resistance from the people, leading to an environment ripe for an uprising.
[Answer]
The great Isaac Asimov seemed to think it was possible.
He wrote many short stories featuring [Multivac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivac),
the ultimate supercomputer that spans the globe — and more —
and slowly acquires control over everything,
encroaching on personal privacy and freedom.
In his story “The Life and Times of Multivac”,
one man analyzes Multivac’s structure and finds a weak point.
Then he physically attacks that point, triggering the downfall of the machine.
Resources:
* [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_and_Times_of_Multivac)
* [The story](https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=111) at [AtariArchives.org](https://www.atariarchives.org)
This is a series of HTML pages
that include a scanned image and an OCR (text) version.
Sometimes the scanned image is hard to read and the text version is helpful.
Other places the scanned image is easy to read and the text version is wrong.
The story spans pages 111-116.
You can navigate the pages by clicking `>> NEXT` or by adjusting the URL.
- [The story](https://eng101143marshallfall2010.wikispaces.com/file/view/the+life+and+times+of+multivac.pdf) at [Wikispaces](https://www.wikispaces.com)
* This is a low-quality scanned image (only) PDF.
* It appears to be scanned from a bound copy,
yielding two facing paper pages per file page
(e.g., pages 160 and 161 are page 2 of the file,
and pages 164 and 165 are page 3 of the file).
* So, as you can see, two pages are missing.
* On at least one page (161),
some of the characters at the right edge of the page are missing.
* Pages 3 and 4 are rotated.
* Oh, also, it appears that [Wikispaces is shutting down](http://blog.wikispaces.com) —
they don’t say when.
- [This page](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?44114) at the [The Internet Speculative Fiction Database](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi) —
I don’t know what good it is.
- [This page](http://asimov.wikia.com/wiki/The_Life_and_Times_of_Multivac) at [Asimov Wiki](http://asimov.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) — I don’t know what good it is.
[Answer]
## What would be the replacement system?
Your scenario proposes a way to disrupt the current system. However, it can only be considered "taken down" if it is replaced by something substantially different, so it's important to consider who and how would be ruling afterwards. In any society there are powerful individuals and groups that desire even more power, so they would be using it as their opportunity; and if the system is shaken, then every group/class/community that has some power, privileges and status (especially if they might be lost outside of the current system) would be immediately taking action to preserve *their* status quo.
The key problem is that your scenario as currently described wouldn't plausibly cause any meaningful changes in the relative power of the groups in charge.
Assassination of the dictator would likely result in someone from their inner circle taking charge, possibly with some small-scale infighting if there are competing factions. For example, look into death of Stalin or Mao. If the technocracy leadership has differing opinions, then this might mean that a different faction gains power, but it wouldn't mean any immediate major changes of policy.
Taking down many computing systems would cause a massive disruption and thus require extra coordination/cooperation throughout the society. This would favor (give power to) any organization that has a large number of coordinated representatives dispersed on-site. Depending on circumstances, this may be part of the government or the opposition - e.g. in places like USSR (and also your described system) the local bureaucracy would play this role, and thus would only entrench their power. But we can also see examples like trade unions e.g. [Solidarnosc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Polish_trade_union)) or church structures growing in power if they are capable of taking on the support role in a crisis like that.
## Results like that may be good for the government
The more interesting observation is that in the circumstances you describe (a working class that's mostly well off and desires stability) such an attack would cause the masses to consolidate around the government and its goals. Far from taking it down, the described actions are in line with what such a government might *intentionally* arrange to strengthen itself, gain national unity, and get support from the masses to do whatever the government finds necessary.
It wouldn't be surprising for your protagonist to get supported by someone from the government. E.g. if someone from the inner circle controlling some branch of security forces would get to know about the plans, they might avoid hampering them and ensuring that the plot to assassinate the dictator succeeds, since that might get themselves in power.
[Answer]
I think your Protagonists plan is very flawed, bringing down a government with hacking (in first world counties anyway) is hard very hard. Taking down the governments networks would hurt them but not cripple them, even killing the dictator would not do much (he would just be replaced) The best bet is for a revolution level event to take place maybe he takes down the networks that gives his compatriots an opening to take over the government or revels how corrupt they are to the public, even then it’s a tall order. just to point out that the Pentagon's digital assets get attacked 250,000 per year (most of them are failed attempts) so your Protagonists is far from the only one who have tried
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Fantasy tends to have several races that are shorter than humans. With Dwarves, the size is explainable by the fact that they're usually depicted as subterranean-dwelling, and height would be a disadvantage there, but what about races like goblins, halflings, hobbits, etc.? What would provide them an advantage significant enough to allow the small size trait to become fairly universal among the race, assuming that they live above-ground?
[Answer]
You don't need an advantage, hominids start very short (~3.5 ft tall), you just need height to not be an advantage.
That said if you need them to get shorter island living organisms are often much smaller than their mainland living relatives, shortages of food, water, and space give smaller animals an advantage in surviving bad times. Island mammoths (pygmy mammoths) for instance are only as tall as humans. Resource scarcity in general can favor smaller sizes. now once they discover how to make boats they can leave the island but they will be stuck with the small size for a long time.
For climbers size can be a double edged sword as well, especially in tree dwellers, the bigger you are the fewer branches will hold you, there is a reason chimps have not gotten any bigger while humans have.
We don't see island living humans getting short now because having boats removes the constraint, and the vast majority of humans whom have ever lived in islands got their by boat. But here were early hominids which were trapped on islands by rising sea levels.
[Answer]
**[Insular dwarfism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism)**
This is an actual term in biology and describes the decrese in median body size of a population confined to an island in comparison to a population of the same species on the mainland.
The mechanics aren't fully understood, but the availability (or scarcity) of resources like food and territory size are said to play into this. The 'breaking point' of a population is reached much earlier and smaller individuals with their reduced demand on resources have an evolutionary advantage.
**Limitations of height advantages**
On the other hand, taller hominids have the advantage of looking further than smaller ones to scout out resources and detect predators. Of course this only works in areas with clear lines of sight, like on a savannah. Place said population in a densely forested area and that advantage of height would be limited.
**So, how to keep them short?**
As said in another answer and together with this one, a rather isolated, densely forested closed region (tropical region for example) would be a good choice.
"Closed Region" could mean an island, but any structure which limits the area where the people can roam would suffice. A volcano or impact crater with limited access might be another good idea.
**Are there actual real world examples?**
The examples found in another answer - native people in rainforest regions, especially South East Asia - are one such example, and there is the [Flores Human](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis "Flores Human"), which does fit the whole bill (isolated population in forested region), though the jury is still out there if it is to be regarded as a separate human species or if they had been 'just' homo sapiens with genetic defects.
[Answer]
**When it is hot, smaller is cooler.**
In environments where ambient temperature are close to body temperatures, shedding excess heat becomes a big problem for exothermic animals. The linked Scientific American article discusses this in the context of hairlessness.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-naked-truth/>
>
> The largest terrestrial mammals—namely, elephants, rhinoceroses and
> hippopotamuses—also evolved naked skin because they are at constant
> risk of overheating. The larger an animal is, the less surface area it
> has relative to overall body mass and the harder it is for the
> creature to rid its body of excess heat. (On the flip side, mice and
> other small animals, which have a high surface-to-volume ratio, often
> struggle to retain sufficient heat.) During the Pleistocene epoch,
> which spans the time between two million and 10,000 years ago, the
> mammoths and other relatives of modern elephants and rhinoceroses were
> “woolly” because they lived in cold environments, and external
> insulation helped them conserve body heat and lower their food intake.
> But all of today's megaherbivores live in sweltering conditions, where
> a fur coat would be deadly for beasts of such immense proportions.
>
>
> Human hairlessness is not an evolutionary adaptation to living
> underground or in the water—the popular embrace of the so-called
> aquatic ape hypothesis notwithstanding [see box on page 26]. Neither
> is it the result of large body size. But our bare skin is related to
> staying cool, as our superior sweating abilities suggest.
>
>
>
Megaherbivores were stuck with their large size for other evolutionary reasons. But in hot Africa, in addition to hairlessness some human types also evolved small body size: the pygmies and the Khoi-San. Consider that heat must largely be shed at the interface between body and environment. As size increases, volume increases faster than surface area and the surface area:volume ratio decreases. It is harder to shed heat when you are big.
So too your small humanoids: they evolved in very hot climates and smaller is cooler. The converse is true - if you want to shed heat slowly is is better to be big than small, and larger body sizes are favored.
[Answer]
One way to achieve a small hominid race is to put them in a protein poor region.
Native people in rain forests, the Kalahari Desert and much of South East Asia until recently, range from being shorter than average to almost child size. Vietnamese and Indonesian males are on average 5.3ft (162cm), male Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert are an average of 5ft (152.4cm), and throughout the tropics traditional native people under 5ft are common, with the men of some tribes averaging 4.11ft (125.27cm).
When a larger diet with more protein is introduced the average height (and weight) tends to increase significantly.
So for a hominid race, having them evolve in a habitat with limited or poor protein (bugs, some fish, small animals, etc) but lots of carbs (rice, roots, grains, fruits, etc) to keep them healthy, without building up a lot of bone and muscle mass, would naturally be on the small size. If they're in a thick forest, jungle or swamp, being small would also help them crawl under the branches and vines, and climb trees where a larger body would get stuck or break the branches.
[Answer]
For a fantasy world, with fantasy races, any mystical explanation or creation myth will do. You don't even need to bother explaining that, if it is not important for your story setting... Many fantasy worlds such as GURPS Fantasy, Discworld, Neil Gaiman's Sandman stories, the Harry Potter series etc. have elves, gnomes and goblins of different sizes and shapes, and not one bothers to explain the reasons why they are shorter or taller or thinner or whatever.
Outside of fantasy, the average size for adults of a given species has to do with the evolutionary pressures that species has had to face in its history. There are many good reasons already in other answers, such as [insular dwarfism in Anonymous's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/102840/21222).
One reason I can think of, to add to the list, is that in a Fantasy setting you may expect to see a lot of epic combat, and long range warfare - facing magic, arrows, and magic arrows - is bound to be commonplace. Little people make for smaller targets. That makes you more fit to survive and breed.
Also usually among humanoids, the more magic-inclned folk tend to be very small. Only some humans are born sourcerors or become wizards, but every pixie, fairy and gnome is a natural caster. Perhaps, for humanoids, height interferes with magic. You could explain it as every humanoid having the same amount of magic energy, but the more mass you have, the less *enchantment* you have per kilogram of body weight. The effect of this is that along humanoid speciation, you would have a disruptive process... On one side, giants, orcs, humans etc. who rely less on magic and more on muscle. On the other hand, you have a plethora of creatures who rely on magic to survive. For those creatures, mutations that cause them to be taller are **deleterious**.
[Answer]
"Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus", a book by Olaus Magnus, a swedish writer and geographer, has been published in 1555: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Description_of_the_Northern_Peoples> .
The book contains a description of a race of pretty short people who live in Greenland. According to the book, the sky dome is located at such a low altitude over the ground in those northern lands, that only rather short people could stand and walk there at full height without hitting the sky with their heads: <http://runeberg.org/olmagnus/0157.html>
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[Question]
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Context: my protagonist is a single woman travelling on horseback with an all-male company, from whom she has reason to fear violence and would be strongly resistant to sharing sleeping quarters with them. They'll be on the road for a period of several weeks, and can't expect to reach an inn or a town every night. It's early spring in a temperate climate where rain is normal, so sleeping under the stars isn't really feasible.
**Edited to clarify:** she fears violence but doesn't have a choice about travelling with them, and isn't actually going to come under threat - of the six of them, two would actively defend her and only one wishes her harm, but can't act on said wish. I promise it makes sense in the story!
I wonder if it would be sensical in a medieval-ish fantasy setting for her to have her own small tent rather than have to bunk with them or sleep under the stars. I know that it's possible in the modern day to have a tent sized just for one person, of course, and given the limitations the setting puts on tech this tent might be sized for two people, I just wonder what such a thing would look like in the first place/how it would be constructed.
Can anyone speak to whether such a thing was/would be possible (especially something that would be portable on horseback), and if so what it might look like? I'm feeling a little unsure about arbitrarily sticking the detail in, and have been having trouble with the research myself. If you think it wouldn't make sense, any other suggestions as to how to deal with the situation, other than "she'll just have to share"?
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Yes, tents for one were usual since Roman times. They were made with big pieces of waxed wool-cloth and they could be transported folded:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tEb5R.jpg)
She can bring the sticks too and assemble it in a few minutes or get them on the road.
If your company expects to be several days on the road, they are bringing spare horses that carry a lot of food (big horses need more than just grass), water, blankets, spades, ropes...
She, adding her personal tent isn't a big deal. Some blankets can make it more intimate.
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If you mean violence as in rape, I would suggest she can tie herself into a kind of very loose sleeping bag blanket with her hands and arms free inside, with daggers. She can ensure her sleeping companions know it, and will wake in time to stab anybody trying to unlace her or cut through her blanket. Of course they might try to knock her out first!
Another idea is to just wear a poncho (again with daggers at the ready) and a very wide hat to protect the head from rain. The private tent (although historically accurate) is a bad idea, it prevents her from seeing others gather or approach.
I would see if she might be able to arrange ropes or netting up in a tree so she can sleep in it without worrying about falling out, again with a hat and waxed blanket to stay dry, and a dagger for self defense. On the ground she can be grappled and pinned or knocked out, I don't think men will try something twenty feet up in the air where a push or a slip might be lethal, and she could plausibly hear them coming and wake up.
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If she knows how to build a lean-to, or something as simple as that, she could pehaps sleep, albeit uneasy. If she has no skills in campcraft, it would probably not be a good trip for her. I imagine she would have to bunk with the man she trusted the most, and have a knife at the ready. Either way, it should make for great suspense.
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Tents of all sizes and descriptions have been around for a long time.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0PqQ4.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8h9xV.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PVE8C.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b7HTz.jpg)
A tent can be poleless (just canvas as rope), the canvas being stretched across a natural depression or between trees, or could rely on a single or two posts (all of which could fit on a horse).
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A one person tent is normally more than half the mass of a two person tent (something like a square/cube law). If you are set on traveling light bigger tents make sense. Generally also about as much trouble to erect and take down as a two person which can be extra bothersome if the user is less experienced or has no one to hold the other end of stuff.
A one person tent is generally less comfortable than a two person tent. If you are fighting the environment it probably makes sense to work together. Normally stoves don't fit in personal sized tents either which is a big factor if cold is a problem. Height is very helpful in keeping a tent cool, but tall tents with a small footprint are nearly as bulky as tall tents with a large footprint, and might be obnoxious to set up especially if there is any wind.
Tents are not armor. If something bigger than an insect is interested at getting inside it probably can. Against a serious threat tents are worse than sleeping under the stars, because they limit your senses and mobility. They might offer a moment warning as an attacker rips through it, but that isn't any better than setting tripwires or scattering dry twigs to snap under approaching feet.
If there is no need to make a defensible camp sleeping away from the others might be a better choice, it can be very hard to find a sleeping person (who doesn't snore) at night if you only have a vague idea where they are. In any kind of brush or not flat terrain you might walk within a few feet of a bivouac without noticing it. If she walks 100 meters from camp before laying down several men might search most of the night without finding her.
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**Premise**
(-*clears throat*-)
I'm imagining a world where financial systems are considerably centralized and the wealthy top few percent hold much sway, so to speak. In this world, it's not inconceivable for money to influence politics or for the special governmental / financial relationships to exhibit rent-seeking behavior.
This kind of institution frustrated some groups of people and some experimenting was carried out. A crypto-currency was developed (at least in part) to decentralize the finance system by taking the central banks out of the equation and allowing users to interact with each other comparatively freely. A limit of the number of the crypto-currency was set, to create scarcity and not allow for rent-seeking behavior or infinite money printing. While this crypto-currency had a modest adoption rate in terms of its user base, it's net-worth has already eclipsed some of the major investment-banks and other inner sanctum constituents of the financial elite. However the value of this crypto-currency is very volatile, ranging wildly, sometimes even from month to month. Still, some think this crypto-currency represents the future of finance, and to an extent the world as a whole. As this world has followed a trajectory of increasing decentralization with the advents of newer technologies. In the past this world had kings and emperors and religious elite, now democratic institutions are gaining momentum (or that's the rumor anyway).
The problem is, the powers that be in the existing financial system would surely not relinquish their grip on the financial system lightly. Maybe they leverage their political clout to ban it outright, or they launch a smear campaign to legitimize it. Or perhaps they could acquire enough stake in it so that they could embrace it. Whatever the existing financial elite do, it would have to benefit them both economically and strategically/politically. The financial system elite are mindful of how fine a line must be walked to avoid creating a "martyr" out of the currency. That is to say, can it be banned outright or would that create its own set of problems (over regulation, control state, suspicion, ect)? That is the crux of it.
To narrow the scope a bit, let's say diplomacy has failed and the two financial systems are at odds with each other. Even if the existing finance elite hold a large stake of the crypto-currency, the intrinsic scarcity of the crypto-currency will make it too challenging for the financial system elite to conduct rent-seeking that they look rather fondly on.
**Question**
What is the best (for the finance system) strategy for the financial system decision makers to defeat the afore-described crypto-currency?
**Clarifications**
* Setting: Near future
* Success metric: stop the rising adoption of the crypto-currency and keep the it on the fringe or completely non-existant
* Acquiring the crypto-currency is allowed (e.g. acquire and freeze), but it may not be used
* Must imagine you are on the panel of the finance system (what's best for the finance system, might not be best for mankind as a whole, ect)
* Timeframe: The faster the better
* Ethics: little to no concern (don't pull any punches)
* Doomsday scenarios: Ideally, the world would be left in-tact, nuclear war would be avoided and so forth, but if it really, really, truly calls for a doomsday solution, so be it, just explain why
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The current path is already aligned against crypto currencies, with many governments refusing to accept it as a form of tender (such as the United States).
While this makes for difficulties, what really happens is a parallel, underground economy is being created, and much of what the tax regulators, bank officials and people who make their money on fiat currency are trying to prevent is simply growing beneath their feet (so to speak). People are still going to use it as tender between themselves, or use underground exchanges to convert cryptocurrency into legal tender (underground, since they will probably have to avoid taxation in your scenario).
Some economic activity will also go offshore, as people who see the advantages of cryptocurrency choose to move to jurisdictions where there are fewer or no restrictions on the use of cryptocurrency, depriving many economies of tax revenues and investment dollars.
So the only real way to crush cryptocurrency is to impose draconian tax and regulatory schemes to track every single dollar in circulation and transaction in the economy. Ironically, this is somewhat like the underlying blockchain technology of bitcoins themselves, but without the built in ability to limit the amount of "currency" in circulation. In fact, this sets up the rather counterintuitive scenario where the United States or other polity creates the institutional backbone for a national cryptocurrency, once the political climate becomes right for the people and legislatures to choose to do so.
Edit to add: Since the underlying technology of Blockchains is poorly understood (even by me) here is the link to an article which may help understand: <https://townhall.com/columnists/lindsaymarie/2017/12/11/the-operational-revolution-behind-bitcoin-n2421122?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=>
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There should be a pretty simple and straight-forward approach:
you create a story where (name well-known evil terrorist group of your choice) allegedly uses said crypto-currency to buy (name horrible means of pursuing evil deeds as you seem fit). Spread that story. It will be hard to verify, but as long as you make sure your story is repeated over and over again people will believe it, no matter if there is the tiniest grain of truth.
They will believe it even if the opposite can be proven.
Then, for the sake of our security, banish the currency, and make sure the general public thinks of anyone even considering using this or a similar currency as being traitors, aides of terrorists, and generally really unpleasant people.
While you are at it, banish cash entirely. After all, monetary rtansactions that cannot be traced can only help terrorists, right? And no loyal citizen has anything to fear, right? Let people use credit cards only for any transaction.
That way not only do paranoid governments gain total traceability of every transaction of every citizen (not of the banks, though, who control those records), but also do the banks gain perfect control over anyone who wishes to live, since they need to be customers of those banks to even buy a loaf of bread.
Since the banks gain a lot from such a setup, you can be sure to have not only them support your scheme, but almost anybody who already depends on their services, lest their credit-worthiness be questionned...
Obviously, in a real world this could never work. No citizen in their right mind would ever vote for such a government, or pay a bank for providing services if that same bank didn't have a perfect record of conducting only morally sound business, so i guess this setup can only work in your fictional world. Thank goodness!
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The same way you crash any market: corner it.
Let's cut to the chase: assuming every Bitcoin is worth 17,000 USD (which it hit recently), there's only 280 billion USD worth of Bitcoin, total, right now. Since the number of Bitcoins is capped at 21 million, there's only 357 billion USD worth of Bitcoin possible (still assuming 17,000 USD for a single Bitcoin).
Even now, Bitcoin is only worth so much because it's the "hot new" investment thing, and most *real* transactions with it are illegal transactions where anonymity and untraceability are key. Most of the rest of Bitcoin is held by "investors" who are riding its wave of popularity, and miners who have "created" the Bitcoins and are looking to turn them into usable currency. This creates a serious problem for Bitcoin: without the ability of normal people to make normal transactions with Bitcoin, it will never have enough staying power to maintain a stable level of worth. As investors realize only criminals are using the currency as currency, the investors will start pulling out, which will likely cause the worth of the currency to crash.
So the question is, how do your financial institutions reduce Bitcoin's ability to be used as a currency? They can stage a hostile takeover of Bitcoin and just sit on it. We're talking about a currency with no intrinsic value. That means that it's only as useful as its purchasing power, and stockpiling it inflates its worth in the short-term, but reduces its purchasing usefulness in the long-term.
Merchants don't like accepting unstable currency. You can't plan your financial forecast if the money coming in is suddenly worth 1% of what it was yesterday, and tomorrow will be worth 1,000%. By destabilizing the currency by buying it all up, your financial institutions can [scare away merchants from accepting the currency](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/07/valve-steam-drops-bitcoin-support-cites-high-fees-volatility.html). As the purchasing ability of Bitcoin drops, so will its price, and you can buy a bunch more, riding this cycle until Bitcoin completely crashes.
[Answer]
Massive control and regulation over the internet:
* Think China
* Begin with something like 'Net Neutrality' to keep things 'free and fair',
for your 'benefit'.
* Track all Bitcoin transactions (note: using the term 'Bitcoin' to cover all crypto. Quicker to type, with understanding implied).
* Shut down all related sites.
False Flag EMP
* Crash and burn the internet
* Millions lose their Bitcoins
* Blame another country i.e. NK
Drive the cost of electricity high:
* Tax oil and coal production.
* Blame on Global Warming
Media Control:
* Constantly badger Bitcoin as not backed by anything.
* Report Bitcoin crashes, call it unstable and volitile.
* When Bitcoin goes up, call it a bubble.
* (Insert media fear tactics here)
Disable, destroy, and/or control the electric grid. [Project Stone Age]:
* Control: Gov run electric grid. Throttle amount for households (slow miners)
* Control: Monitor electricity usage. Raid houses, buildings. Jail miners.
* Destroy: (See EMP)
* Disable: (See Tax and Regulation)
AI intercept:
* Create new Gov Department of AI.
* Pour Billions of dollars into an AI program, with one goal. Destroy/disable/disrupt Bitcoin/Blockchain.
Population Control
* Expand current and develop new population control methods (be creative)
* WWIII go nuclear (also see Project Stone Age)
* Develop/release virus to wipe out population (you and friends have antidote)
* Keep all Bitcoin for yourself and friends.
* Repopulate the Earth in your own vision.
Build Deathstar [Project Vader]:
* Blowup Earth.
* Live in outer-space.
* Maybe regen Mars.
Ultimately, in my opinion, it would take some sort of massive top down, global centralized government effort, with long term vision and goals.
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Governments or at least the two richest ones (US and China) have significantly more money at their disposal than there are bitcoins in total. US with its form of democracy may have a hard time to pull this off, but China can do this VERY easily if they choose to.
This will be a multi-pronged attack:
The first stage to doing this will obviously be to make owning, mining or trading in crypto-currencies illegal. This would get all the regular people off the system and we'll only be left with the criminals. Now we can fuck them up.
1. The first thing to do would be to start buying and holding bitcoins.... TONS OF IT. With its current resources, China could buy all the bitcoins in existence and not even care (Not that they need to buy them all). Then once the market is right, dump it all in to sell. This will drive the value of Bitcoin to the Ground. The real reason why Bitcoins are so valuable right now is because it is used to hoard money. People hold bitcoins and usually don't trade them for money. A sudden surge in supply will hurt it bad. And seeing the value go down will make people nervous and may even have a cascade effect.
2. The second part will be much difficult and may even involve a bit of sci-fi. Bitcoins come into existence from what we call mining. And mining is nothing but the act of maintaining a ledger. Millions of miners worldwide use their computing power to try and be the first one to finish a block. To finish a block, one needs to record all the given transactions into the block, and then add a value to it such that the hash of the block contains a given number of zeros in the beginning. This task is VERY difficult and takes massive computational capabilities. A country could try using its own supercomputers and other infrastructure, optimise it and beat all the miners thereby driving the mining industry to the ground. This is easier said than done because most mining pools have mind-boggling computational power. One way to surely beat them all will be to use (sci fi) Quantum Computing to calculate the hashes instantly. This would give you the power to mess up the entire system and add in ANY transaction you want. You can now start stealing people's money and force them off.
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Fastest way and most effective is to ban the use and purchase of it and hit any one that uses/mines/buys/sells it as hard as legally possible.
You stated that in your depicted ecosystem the politics are corrupt(no difference to reality imo but still) so as a bank best bet is to bribe the politicians that can make cryptocurrencies illegal.
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Assuming that:
* Cost is no concern
* The bomb hits the planet
* The only effect involved is the explosion of the bomb.
Can a bomb be big enough to destroy Pluto?
The bomb Must Destroy half of the planet at least
[Answer]
**Yes**
The answer is [here](https://astroengine.com/2009/10/30/what-will-it-take-to-blow-up-pluto/). Only takes 25 Billion nukes the size of the [Tzar Bomba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba) to do it.
**The process**
To completely destroy a planet you need to impart more energy into it than its gravitational binding energy which is calculated using the following equation
$E = \frac{3GM^2}{5R}$
Filling in the universal gravitational constant, Mass and Radius of pluto; $6.67\times10^{-11} m^3kg^{-1}s^{-2}$, $1.3\times10^{22}kg$, $1.15\times10^6m$ respectivly. You get $5.9\times10^{27}$ joules of energy.
Which is ~25 billion times the energy in the Tzar Bomba
with only $2.4\times10^{17}$ joules.
[Answer]
**No**
It would take 25 billion nukes, each the size of the largest bomb ever tested on Earth to be simultaneously detonated. This is not feasible with modern technology, or any reasonable projection of future technology.
For example, There are about 5.5 million tonnes of extractable uranium on Earth. If all this were converted to fissionable plutonium (impossible but as an upper limit) and used as a nuclear trigger in a thermonuclear weapon you would need at least 10kg of plutonium per bomb (optimistic). That means there is not enough radioactive matter on Earth to make more than 500 million bombs. And practically you can't just convert Uranium to Plutonium. Tsar bomba probably used a lot more Plutonium (For some reason the detailed technical specification aren't available online). However you analyse it you end up way short of the required amount of energy.
No explosive device made with conceivable tech can destroy even the smallest (dwarf) planet.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
Closed 6 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/75291/edit)
In my SF story the protagonist needs to locate a star while exposed to space in the asteroid belt. What about the binoculars/monocular he needs to espy the star? Can your standard, off-the-shelf pair survive?
E.g., an expensive set of binoculars, like these--
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6lWqh.png)
Or a cheap monocular like this--
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1iX1Z.jpg)
[Answer]
"Nice" or more expensive binoculars are often airtight and filled with nitrogen (or more rarely argon) to keep them from fogging up. They will not handle vacuum well, especially the optical alignments. The liquid lubricants in the mechanism might cause problems as they will boil off or freeze depending.
A cheaper pair, which is not airtight and does not bother with lubricants, will handle it just fine.
However: a case to keep it out of the sunlight when not in use would be a good idea. Differential heating can mess with the focus. The fewer moving parts the better. A monocular might be a better choice.
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I think the binocular are not sealed air tight, therefore even assuming their are used during an EVA, the pressure change in the airlock will be slow enough to allow accomodation. The negligible change in refractive index between air and vacuum will not hamper the functionality.
The risk comes from the heat load on the body and its resistance to radiation.
The heat load is double fold:
* when close to a star, the absorbed light will heat up the body until the material functionality is compromised
* when exposed to the void, it will radiate efficiently its thermal energy, rapidly cooling the body. Below its glass transition temperature plastic is brittle, and this would make the binocular very sensitive to hits. Not mentioning that very likely the lenses will contract differently from the body, resulting at best in optical aberrations due to deformation, at worst in fracture of the lenses.
Not to forget that accidental glare from the Sun will be much more dangerous than what already is on Heart.
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My expertise is watching Mythbusters and Because Science with Kyle Hill, and as far as I've been able to gather, 1 atmospheric pressure is nothing. I mean, the dangers space poses to humans are the lack of oxygen (binoculars don't need to breathe), decompression sickness (basically, ditto) and evaporation of surface liquid, which doesn't matter to binoculars.
Also, as far as I've been able to gather, exposing the binoculars to space gives about the same pressure difference as putting them about 10 meters under water.
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I would be more concerned with the effect 0G has a lubricants. They get pretty squirrelly in 0G. They have a tendency to travel along surfaces and coat everything. So, the internal optics may get coated over. That happened to some of the first cameras sent into space. NASA has done a lot of research on effective lubricants for space.
If the binocs are made for space, you are good.
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The binocular you posted has no chance to work there.
In space all the plastic would join together because of a phenomena named "vacuum cementing", a kind of "cold welding" which happens in hard vacuum. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_cementing>
Until your binocular is not made of a very special material , it would be at least impossible to operate like we do on our planet. Maybe you should consider magnetic lenses, which have a lesser need of little parts moving while touching each others.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_lens>
Of course, your superhuman should be able to see electrons instead of photons, but since heavy particles and high energy particles are quite common in space, it maybe not that hard for your superhuman. ;)
Another alternative you have is to use a mirror-based telescope, which doesn't needs so many moving parts as the model you posted.
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In the early days of the Manhattan project, there was a brief scare, based on some calculations by Edward Teller, that an atomic bomb would ignite the atmosphere. They later redid the calculations and concluded that the probability was very small (something like one in three million).
What if we lived in the universe where that improbable event happened, and the Trinity test ignited the atmosphere in the way that Teller predicted?
* Could somebody in America get word out to the rest of the world, just before being incinerated?
* Would the wavefront of burning atmosphere move slowly enough that people in, say, India had enough time to pull together a few people, and put them somewhere where they might have a shot at survival (at least for more than a few days)? And what place could they use?
* Is there a reasonable scenario where they could survive for say a few months or a year, and use that time to figure out a way survive in the now absolutely barren Earth (would the atmosphere be gone, or just changed into something entirely different).
* If they could manage cling on to their miserable existence and generate offspring, is there some way they could restore the atmosphere, over many generations?
* If not, and humanity is doomed, would life survive on earth?
Since the poor souls in this universe were very unlucky, we can allow them some luck in the little time they have to save themselves: being in the right time at the right place, and so on. The odds are obviously against humanity, so they might catch a little break here and there, but we assume only one spectacular coincidence.
**EDIT:** I'm going to slightly move the goalposts here (with apologies to the authors of the existing answers), because we're getting into discussions about the nuclear physics, which I had hoped to avoid.
So let's add the following: the test causes a very, very slightly self sustaining nuclear reaction. Technically, this would increase exponentially, but the rate is so slow that the result looks more like the world being on fire than the world blowing up. Can some quick-thinking American get word to some quick thinking Indian, ahead of the wavefront of the fire?
Is there somewhere people with advanced warning can seal themselves off with a supply of oxygen and some plants? There's no need to make the point that survival is very unlikely, but given a little luck, is there a way that we could just pull through, or at least cling on for a few more weeks.
**EDIT2**: To be even more blunt: **this question is not about physics, it is about logistics**. The Trinity test just gives us a convenient point in time (ie. level of technology), and a basic mechanism to work off to set the parameters. The question is, if the atmosphere were on fire, would there be some way of surviving. How would we get the message out of America? How much time would people in Europe and Asia have? What structures existing in 1945 would allow one to survive until the atmosphere had burnt up. If you're in India, and you get word that the world will be in flames in an hour, what actions should you take?
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If it had ignited, it would have been a nuclear explosion that was, *at the absolute minimum*, self-sustaining.
If it was even *slightly* more than self-sustaining, it would be exponentially growing (in both the rhetorical sense of "fast" and the mathematical sense of repeatedly doubling in size in constant time) until it ran out of fuel.
In either case, there would be no survival of any life at all. In the bare minimum case — where it's *only just* self sustaining — it would be more like a permanent fire than an explosion, but even that would eventually convert all the nitrogen in the air into oxygen, leaving none left for plant life.
In the more extreme case, and given how quickly nuclear chain reactions tend to double in size, all the oceans would first boil, then ionise, then all the hydrogen (or at the very least the trace levels of deuterium) would fuse, and there wouldn't be any water left anywhere on the planet.
If it was sufficiently rapid, and if one of Stephen Hawking's comments in *A Brief History of Time* is correct, then the planet might even collapse into a black hole from the force of the explosion:
>
> Such conditions could occur in a very big hydrogen bomb: the
> physicist John Wheeler once calculated that if one took all the heavy water in all the oceans of the world, one could
> build a hydrogen bomb that would compress matter at the center so much that a black hole would be created. (Of
> course, there would be no one left to observe it!)
>
>
>
For extra fun, the discovery that even poorly-enriched Lithium enhanced fusion bombs was well after the Trinity test ([Castle Bravo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo) and [Castle Romeo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Romeo) were both more powerful than calculations beforehand predicted). They didn't know it, but if there had been a self-sustaining chain reaction in the atmosphere as extreme as feared, the trace levels of Lithium on their own would have had an effect similar to "the entire crust of the Earth is now made out of an explosive several times more powerful than the same mass of dynamite". That's, what, 5–70 kilometres deep?
**Edit because question was edited:**
Because it's a counterfactual scenario anyway, you can make the slow-burn scenario be as fast or as slow as you want it to be. You could even have people survive in a sealed greenhouse ([Biosphere 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2) style) built in the local state capital of Albuquerque, *after* the detonation, by making the nuclear "fire" "burn" so slowly the recirculation of nitrogen fuel is more relevant to the dying world than the advance of the flame.
Then you can have people stockpiling all the nitrogen-rich solids and liquids (e.g. ammonia-based fertilisers), and then, once the fire has burned out its own fuel, the protagonists can slowly start re-building the world that's now only slightly more habitable than Mars, one artificial biosphere at a time.
Or, if this is just an excuse for an apocalypse, you can make it exactly fast enough that only one remote science base in Kerala that *just happened to be* a Biosphere 2 clone, has time to seal itself off from the world.
**Edit 2 because of second question edit:**
Logistically:
* Getting word out would be easy (radio)
* Survival with purely things that *had* been invented in 1945 (rather than things that *could* be built if people had the imagination) was **not** possible. Long-term survival after any event that could be described as "the atmosphere ignited" would need either a Biosphere 2 (completed [September 1991](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2#Planning_and_construction)) or a nuclear submarine (first one launched for sea trials in [January 1955](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nautilus_(SSN-571)))
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"Ignite the atmosphere" worries concerned a chemical reaction not a nuclear one. The reaction of Nitrogen with Oxygen is exothermic, so in theory could be self-sustaining. However it has a very high activation energy, so it only happens at high temperatures (like in the cylinders of a car engine to a small extent). If the heat escapes faster than the reaction generates more heat, then this sort of fire dies out rather than propagating itself.
We've had some pretty large forest fires, and several non-nuclear explosions in the kilotonne range. No atmospheric ignition. There is also geological evidence of high-megatonne meteor impacts. Again no atmospheric ignition catastrophe. So they tested the bombs. It was about as risky (on that particular issue), as the more recent worries about the LHC. If it could happen it would already have happened and we would not be here.
Probably.
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The [paper](https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/00329010.pdf) in the [linked post](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/47424/how-to-ignite-the-atmosphere) by @Peter is relevant. It shows that nitrogen-nitrogen reactions cannot happen mostly by virtue of high Coulomb barrier: a 8.6 MeV thermal energy to overcome the barrier is equivalent to an absurd 100 billion K. Its just hard to get and keep particles at that temperature. Even stars undergoing silicon fusion the [day before](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon-burning_process) they supernova are only doing about 3 billion Kelvin.
At such high temperatures, temperature loss by any mechanism will be so extreme and so fast that there is a statistically zero chance for a chain reaction to occur.
Given this bit of nuclear science, your question doesn't make much sense. In order for a chain reaction to occur, one of three things must be true.
* I calculate that Little Boy (15 kT TNT, about the energy at Trinity) has enough energy to raise only 1 kg of water to 100 billion kelvin. So somehow you must contain the entire energy of an atomic bomb into 1 kg of water. That isn't really possible.
* The laws of physics are different, an the Coulomb barrier for N-N fusion, or the cross section for N-N fusion are different. This will certainly be more important in stellar physics than it will be in nuclear bombs, with unknown effects on the rest of the Universe. In which case, knowing if the world would survive an N-N chain reaction is less interesting than knowing if stars and planets could even form at all.
* There is no chain reaction.
Either way, there is no real way to answer your question. Just suffice to say that said chain reaction could not happen.
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There is a way this could happen: if the Earth had a small amount of hydrogen >4% in the upper atmosphere then the top of a sufficiently large nuclear explosion (eg Tsar Bomba 57MT) would have ignited it.
The effects would be very bad, global firestorm rivaling that from the K-T event, heating of the surface by over 100C in a few seconds, etc.
The good news is that the flash boiling of the oceans would help a bit here as the cooling would be quite rapid and thus some simple life might survive.
The loss of oxygen here would be about 10-20% for a minimal event which would be severe in the extreme and suffocate many lifeforms in a matter of hours.
In this case the alternate history would be that during the Earth's initial formation complex metal-hydrogen compounds got trapped in deep geological formations and were later heated up and the H2 vented eg during a series of massive underwater volcanic eruptions.
In fact we can see methane (CH4) clathrates so this isn't totally implausible as the volume needed could be quite low in real terms.
Multiplication effects ie nitrogen and oxygen combining into nitrites would also add to the damage but ironically this is just a scaled up version of what happens during lightning strikes anyway.
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The concept of a planet with several anthropomorphic sapient species (furries, if you will) is immensely popular. But would it actually make sense in the first place?
I am aware of the issue of "Carnivore Confusion" (the question of what would they eat besides each other) but that is not what this is necessarily about. This question pertains specifically to the possibility of how one could place possibly up to hundreds of sapient furry species on one planet without it being a ecological and evolutionary disaster.
Would there be an absolute limit to how many sapient species you could have? Would there be several versions of the same animal (rabbits, for example) based on area? Would they drive each other to extinction until one or two species are left?
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If you want to have lots of sapient species, in a variety of sizes, all existing at the same time, you have to abandon conventional evolution. It's implausible that they would all achieve sapience at pretty much the same time, rather than at different points in the life of their planet. That leaves you with several ways of achieving the scenario you want, including:
1. God(s) made all these species.
2. Some species with very advanced biological engineering made them. They might be from some other world, or universe; they might still be around, either keeping their capabilities secret or having lost them.
3. They aren't really separate species. They're one species that can develop in many different ways. The closest examples in Earthly mammals are dogs: all the different breeds are still the same species. They aren't genetically identical, but they are all closely related and capable of interbreeding. In plants, the same species, [*Brassica oleracea*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassica_oleracea), produces lots of different "cultivars", which we treat as distinct crops: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, savoy, kohlrabi and kai-lan. There isn't an obvious reason why animals can't do this: Earthly ones don't, but nothing keeps you from claiming that alien ones can. This one gives you interesting possibilities for social conflict as a child of rabbit-people decides she wants to grow up as a wolf, for example.
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I'd say it depends on the climate.
Remember, *Homo Neanderthalensis* and *Homo Sapiens* were able to coexist on the same planet for a long time before climate change forced/allowed the two groups to come into contact with one another. I suspect that, were it still an Ice Age, we'd still be at least able to live together.
Another possibility lies in a civilization from the old game Star Control 2: The Zoq-Fot-Pik.
(*Bear with me here, this is an old game, and some of its ideas are a bit...eccentric.*)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/B3pMx.jpg)
Long ago, in the distant past of their homeworld, four separate species were able to evolve sentience on the planet Alpha Tucanae b: The Zoq, the Fot, the Pik, and the Zebranky. While the Zoq, Fot, and Pik were quite content collecting raw nutrients from their environment, the Zebranky were carnivorous, and took a liking to devouring the other three. This pressure from an outside threat caused the three separate species to put aside their differences, and band together to form an alliance; eventually, their combined efforts were able to completely eradicate the Zebranky.
So what could happen is perhaps the civilizations could unify, and integrate into one society? Just some ideas.
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An interesting, albeit magical idea, would be to draw inspiration from mask culture; masks confer some of their likeness' essence onto the wearer. In this case, you could have different cultures revering different animals slowly mutate to resemble them as a consequence of generations of mask usage. This neatly handles a few issues:
* The diversity of species follows from how cultures such as the ancient Egyptians would revere even field mice
* Their contemporaneity is explained by the discovery and "rapid" proliferation of mask magic
* Their human-like intelligence comes from them having once been ordinary humans
* Their density within similar ecological niches is plausible given you only need a minimal breeding population for every race
* "Extinction" events are reversible so long as knowledge of the patron animal exists for mask makers to use
* Humans and anthros living side-by-side is inevitable if some cultures reject masks
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Humans are pretty good at *not* speciating. We're also somewhat good at cohabiting. If you assume these attributes also apply to sophonts in general...
Depending on how you define "species", there aren't nearly as many as you think. As an example, the difference between Bengal and Malayan tigers isn't entirely unlike the difference between Asian and European humans. The former are considered different species, but the latter aren't. Why? Because the former are geographically isolated, and thus wouldn't "naturally" interbreed. If you ignore those sorts of somewhat artificial distinctions and look only at varieties of animal that *can* interbreed... there aren't nearly as many different kinds of animals as you think. For instance, it's quite likely there are only one or two *actual* kinds of cats.
Why does this matter? Well, just like we don't consider different "races" (a term I hesitate to use, because it is another purely artificial distinction) of humans to be different species, in your setting, lions and tigers aren't different species. The distinction, rather, would be like humans with blond versus red hair.
Once you take this into account, there are a *lot* fewer *actual* species, assuming you're taking your inspiration from the real world. In fact, if you restrict yourself to mammals, there may be as little as *a few dozen* species. At the least, you can have a huge variety of people with only a dozen *actual species*. Heck, just look at how much variety you could have if you limited yourself solely to anthropomorphic versions of canis familiaris!
At the same time, regional variations are likely. Just as natives of America, Europe, Asia and Africa all tend to have distinctive features characteristic of those regions, anthropomorphic people will likely show similar tendencies, likely corresponding to their real world counterparts.
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The [Nanaue](http://www.to-hawaii.com/legends/nanaue.php) (there is no wiki link) is a Hawaiian creature of myth. It is a shark with arms and legs. It can live in both the ocean and on the land. So how do I create the monstrosity that is, the land shark?
A list of all of the Anatomically Correct questions can be found here
[Anatomically Correct Series](http://meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/2797/anatomically-correct-series/2798#2798)
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Seagong crocodiles exist, and there was a period where crocodilians were rapidly evolving to fill multiple vacant niches (dinosaurs and mammals just were better at it, so *we* won). So theoretically, an advanced saltwater crocodile *might* have the adaptations you want.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wYTm6.jpg)
The problem is that evolution favours adaptations that make the creature better able to function in a particular environment. A seagoing crocodile will become more like a seal or a real shark (notice the one who's legs have turned into paddles), while land going ones get longer legs, more ground clearance and beginning to look like dogs or even velociraptors. These one's are not going to do at all well in the water. Modern crocodiles are the way they are because the shallow waters near the edge of bodies of water are a specialized environment that they have adapted to so well the basic crocodilian body plan has survived since the Jurrasic period.
Evolution does not favour the creation of a natural "land shark" however.
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The way I see it, you have two options.
Option one, darwinism/evolution.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/v0IIC.jpg)
Or, you could go with an alligator. Alligators are similar to sharks, and they are amphibious. Perhaps these alligators adapted to be able to swim in ocean water, instead of freshwater. Then they discovered their love for human flesh... Anyway, I think this would be a more likely prospect.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sHiBn.jpg)
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**There are already 'fish' adaptations that meet this description** (so reptiles and amphibians need not be involved). They are just not all present in a single fish/shark species at the same time, or to the same extremes in the same fish species.
[Here is a **shark** that can already "live" out of the water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epaulette_shark)
[Here is a fish that can REALLY last a long time out of water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_catfish) (though, admitedly not a 'shark' specifically)
[This fish has legs](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fish-with-legs-new-zealand-bay-of-islands-a6823416.html) (again, not a shark, but still...)
There have been evolutionary pressures to cause not just any fish, but sharks specifically, to be able to leave the water, at least temporarily. There have been evolutionary pressures for fish to last a long time out of water, and grow what are functionally (if not by definition) legs.
It's not a big leap to think a shark could combine these, along with increased size, and that would match the description very well, especially if the "arms and legs" description is taken no more literally than absolutely necessary.
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For the purposes of this, [sharks *don't* have skeletons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark#Skeleton)! The Nanaue would need one to hold itself up on land.
Then there's the problem of it having gills instead of lungs. I don't know of any creatures that breath above and below water.
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The Nanaue could have evolved from a maniraptor that became semiaquatic. They might lose their feathers to reduce drag, similar to a seal. A mutation could lead to higher incidence of dicephalic parapagus twins. This would increase drag, and so they might evolve to have the heads fused into one. Their tail might increase in size, and gain a vertical tail fluke. In order to carry the larger tail, they may start to stand upright. Their arms and legs might become shorter, as they are less needed for swimming. Due to the gap in the back between the spinal columns, they might evolve to be able to snap the spines shut, to scare away predators. They may evolve sharpened ribs in this area, which would likely lead to the spines splitting as a normal part of their anatomy. They might evolve a layer of skin inside the spine-slit. This may evolve to evert as a dorsal fin. They might gain inflatable disply structures over their body. These might split from the respiratory system, to avoid the display structures filling with stagnant air. This could lead to them becoming able to be filled with water. The inflated form might become streamlined, with a pointed, shark-like head, and flipper-like arms and legs. They would evolve to pump in water rapidly to inflate their body to avoid deflation. Due to not needing to be skeletally streamlined, they might evolve to have a larger brain, and to become more intelligent. Their hands might become more dextrous to allow better tool use, until they appear relatively human in appearance. This creature would be quite like a Nanaue
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My thought is that the epaulette sharks were suddenly introduced to a bigger predator and had to use their ability to flee the water much more often and eventually evolve longer, stronger fins and spend more time on land than water. They would still not look like human limbs or walk upright but they couldn't do that without millions of years or genetic engineering, which probably couldn't make that big of a change and survive
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
Closed 7 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/25066/edit)
After watching the film minority report, (set in the future where crime can be accurately predicted and the criminals punished before the crime is committed) a thought struck me. If a crime has not been committed, are you a criminal? Even if the crime was certain to happen, if the criminal is detained before the crime does happen, then surely the person is not a criminal, but merely has criminal intent.
Furthermore, this method of catching criminals may also incorrectly predict a crime and thus an entirely innocent man may be arrested for a crime he had no intention to commit.
So, if you were to be punished in such a way, what sort of effect would it have on people if they thought that the law enforcement could see into their minds and detect intent for a felon, and would the majority of people view this as morally correct for such persecution?
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# Czech Republic
Yes. *Check* your own laws, though.
## Example
Say you hate this answer and want to take it down, big time. So you start getting people and material to get to Stack Exchange data center and blow it up. If police catches you while still in preparation, they can detain you.
Saying, "But I didn't blow anything up!" will not suffice.
There could be an exception that differs from Minority Report.
Consider murder. You hate this answer and this time plan to kill the authors. The "all-seeing" police detect your intentions and lock you up.
But (sadly for me), you would not be charged for a murder, but for *plotting* the murder.
# United States
No.
From [Justia](https://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/calcrim/500/600.html):
>
> A direct step requires more than merely planning or preparing to commit murder or obtaining or arranging for something needed to commit murder. A direct step is one that goes beyond planning or preparation and shows that a person is putting his or her plan into action. A direct step indicates a definite and unambiguous intent to kill. It is a direct movement toward the commission of the crime after preparations are made. It is an immediate step that puts the plan in motion so that the plan would have been completed if some circumstance outside the plan had not interrupted the attempt.
>
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>
From [Avvo](http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/is-planning-to-commit-a-crime-an-actual-crime--1774182.html):
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> Planning a crime is not illegal, but conspiracy to commit a crime is. If the planning involved more than one person, and any steps were taken toward carrying out the plan, a conspiracy exists.
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The concept of justice, and thus the justice system is predicated on the concept of freewill. Precognition challenges the notion of freewill, so justice will be challenged accordingly. Whether justice survives is not clear.
A test case I like to use is when an individual with Disassociative Identity Disorder is charged with a crime. Or is it two individuals? What if the personalities do not accept responsibility for each other. Where is the line of "individual" drawn? Is it "just" to jail an innocent personality for the acts of another? If so, is it valid to charge someone for crimes committed by a "them" that will never be given a chance to occur?
I think it is more likely that the concept of justice will go away as an artifact of the times. In the end, the philosophical rationalization for justice is never an excuse to go punish people. It's a way to further your own goals in by removing asocial behaviors. I would expect any technology that allowed for precognition of crimes could be used vastly better outside of the criminal justice system. The criminal pursuit approach for such technologies is rather ham handed, if you think about it. Simply arresting people before they commit the crime is a lazy solution. A more realistic approach would involve the higher powers (governments, religious leaders, etc.) using these technologies to try to identify the best way to further humanities goals (or, in the worst case, further their goals). Why send a chopper full of guys in black armor to go arrest someone, when you can arrange to have a phonecall from a friend delivered at an opportune time to sidestep the murder.
And like DaaaahWhoosh points out, there will be a great deal of control here, almost like a jail. If you are a particularly troublesome individual, you may find yourself pressed into more and more disadvantaged positions, as the system tries to restrain you as efficiently as possible. But, given that you are talking about starting from a premise that violates your own concept of agency, jail may be the least of your concerns.
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You can actually be arrested now, because plotting to commit a crime is in itself a crime.
In a larger sense, your question is about *Mens Rea*; the "Guilty Mind". In many jurisdictions there are two parts to a criminal act, the *Actus Reus*, or "Guilty Act", and the *Mens Rea* or "Guilty Mind". There are plenty of examples of actions which have adverse consequences, even including death, which are not criminally prosecuted since these acts were undertaken with innocent intent and the outcome was unanticipated (if there is prosecution, it is usually under negligence, or as a civil suit to recover damages).
On the other hand, should it be discovered or proven that the act was undertaken with the *intent* to cause adverse consequences, including death, then the law takes a much different view and prosecutions are ramped up accordingly. Your car rolling out of the driveway and killing someone because of a faulty parking brake could get you charged with negligent homicide at worst, but if you had intentionally sabotaged your brake system and then pushed the car out of the driveway (or otherwise arranged for the car to roll out at a particular time) then there is clear intent to do harm, and you will be charged with murder.
Incidentally, this is quite different from the issue of car insurance. There the rates are chosen based on statistical data (much like the actuarial tables which determine your premiums for life insurance), so while you might not be individually a greater risk, statistically you belong in a *group* which has a greater risk. Since there is no way to determine in advance how good or bad of a driver *you* are (or for that matter, determine in advance the date of your death), then you need to be grouped and charged accordingly.
As a BTW, this sort of statistical analysis is also the basis of "profiling" of communities for criminal behaviour. Civil libertarians hate it because it goes against the idea of *Mens Rea*, but it also works, so is a double edged sword.
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From a philosophical perspective, punishment for crimes is mainly used as a deterrent to further crimes. You don't cut off a thief's hands because they've been a bad boy, you do it so they don't steal again and so other people will be too afraid to steal at all. Now, whether such punishment actually lowers crime rates is debatable (not the hand-cutting part, I hear that works wonders, but things like prison), but I would say if we lived in a world where we knew who was going to do what, and when, punishment would be replaced by prevention.
Let's keep going with the hand-cutting analogy. Say someone is going to steal; instead of cutting his hands off after the fact, just put him in handcuffs *before* he does anything. Since you know what crimes are going to happen in the future, you just detain him until you know he's not going to steal any more, or until he appeals for release (because of 'minority reports', you're going to want to give the wrongfully accused a chance to go free). For more heinous crimes, you might have to keep the suspect detained for longer periods of time before their futures become bright enough to set them free (now this is beginning to remind me of the anime Psycho-pass). Perhaps the government can provide counseling for these suspects (remember, you're innocent until proven guilty, and you can't prove someone guilty when they haven't committed the crime), in the hopes that they will think better of their criminal plans faster.
I'd think that many of these cases will *look* like imprisonment, but won't *feel* like imprisonment. If the government knows about and can stop all crimes, no one will ever have the chance to become a hardened criminal; they'll simply get arrested at a young age, then released once they've learned the error of their ways. The only problem you run into is when people *need* to commit crimes, such as poor people who need to steal in order to survive. In these cases, though, if the people are in jail, getting food and shelter, and not surrounded by terrifying people, then maybe it'll actually be a pretty good solution to poverty.
The main problem I see with this is the public's reaction. If you can get this system up and running, people may end up being fine with it (oh, you think I'm too stressed out and about to kill my boss? You're going to take me away from my job for a few weeks, so I can rest up and reevaluate my life? Sounds great!), but the biggest problem is getting it started. There will be a lot of cases that appear to not make sense, where innocent people are incarcerated for seemingly no reason. Plus, there will still be really bad guys in the prisons, so it's possible what started as a preventative measure will turn decent people into even worse criminals. And since you know what people are going to do, someone you put in jail for thinking about stealing might end up staying in jail their entire life, as each day they think of a new way to kill you for holding them so long.
There's also the problem of giving the government so much power. If the technology behind it is sound and the people using it are very transparent about their methods, it might be okay, but people generally don't like it when the government knows things about them. Maybe if there is another large terrorist threat, people might give up some freedom in exchange for safety, but due to the problems I've already mentioned I don't think they would get used to the changes before deciding to abolish them.
So, long story short, the end result sounds pretty good to me, but I don't think it could ever get started without pretty much everyone opposing it.
**EDIT:** I would also like to point out the case of car insurance. People my age (early 20s) don't think it's fair that they get charged more just because they're more statistically likely to get into accidents. Insurance is a really great example of pre-crime-punishment in modern society, as people have to pay for things they may never actually do. And I think people's reaction to insurance is a pretty good indicator that this kind of crime prevention system wouldn't really work.
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In practice I'd question how such a thing would be possible. If the psychics can foresee that a person is going to commit a crime in the future, and the police then prevent the person from committing the crime, then the psychics' prediction is, in fact, wrong. The person never commits the crime. And if the police are 100% successful in preventing these crimes, then the psychics' predictions are 100% wrong. People are regularly being arrested and imprisoned for crimes they never committed, because someone said that this person would have committed a crime under some hypothetical set of circumstances that, in fact, never happened.
So ... why does anyone trust the psychics? How would we know that their predictions are accurate, and not just random, baseless accusations?
Even if people generally trust the psychics, wouldn't there be very good grounds to fear that the process could become corrupt? What if a politician decides to get rid of a political opponent by paying off the psychics to say that he was going to commit a crime? What if a psychic has a personal animosity toward someone -- the other person stole his girlfriend or cheated him in a business deal or whatever? (If more than one psychic is involved, perhaps he convinces the others to go along.) There'd be no way you could prove your innocence. The fact that you never committed the crime and never made any preparations to commit the crime would presumably be declared irrelevant, or the whole system would fall apart.
For the system to work, people would have to be convinced that the psychics were infallible and incorruptible. Whether that would happen would presumably depend on where these psychics come from and how their powers work.
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Forget psychics. Imagine that we invent a time machine that looks into the future. Quantum entanglement across time has already been proven, so one could imagine that messages could be transferred across time (although that is not how quantum entanglement works, the layman won't know the difference and the physicist will grant that if quantum entanglement across time is too weird for them to say something like this is not possible through some other quirk of quantum physics we have not yet discovered).
A police agency in the future is charged with sending messages to the past saying "so and so just killed so and so"... So now in the past we can change things to avoid that happening. Arrest the guy, warn him or warn the victim, take your pick. But then if that future is avoided, where did the message come from? The whole infinite universe thing, created by volitional branches, does not convince me. And what does this do to causality? Can we really arrest the guy and call it "justice". My sense is that a process could be devised that would attempt to change the course, but at some point it would be decided that the problem was insolvable short of locking up the accused. Given communication to the future, I can see such a process being devised, even if it was only one way (future to past) communication.
**EXCELLENT BOOK** that does a great job of presenting a possible view of time-space while telling a pretty good yarn about this very "what if": [Thrice Upon A Time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrice_Upon_a_Time)
You have to read that if this question interests you at all.
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**2234, April. Region 932 A.E.D.**
It's a hot day on Xenaas-891, and the fight isn't going well for our soldiers.
"Sarge, our exosuits are going to run out of oxegyn soon! There are 2 class 3 aliens coming in from the west, and a small squad of class 5's. What do you want us to do?"
Sarge curses under his breath, and takes a look around. "Stay calm, private! AT5522 - Take AT2342 and UT1121 and see if you can find a way to get behind the class 3's. Private and I here will hold down the class 5's."
"Yes sir!" The three troopers run to into the east, when suddenly, a class 7 alien jumps out from behind a rock and leaps at AT5522. *Hiss*
"AT5522 got his oxygen tank stabbed! Sarge, you better come look at this!"
"What in the mother of holy barbeques is happening to that bugger? Looks like he is.... what the heck? How am I supposed to describe that in my report!?"
**2234, May. Military Base 331 A.E.D.**
"Regiment MC331! Form up!"
The troops quickly fall in as a resource shuttle lands in the camp.
"Alright folks, our newest experimental weapon is here. BEHOLD! Cans of Perri-air!"
A wave of applause goes up as the bay doors of the shuttle open, and massive crates of Perri-air are rolled into the camp. Each soldier is distributed several cans to carry on his person at all times.
"Listen up! We've been getting massacred out there for the last year, since none of our weapons seem to work very effectively. However, thanks to AT5522 and his mishap, we've discovered a massive weakness in the alien biology! It turns out that these aliens use a cutaneous gas exchange system, and oxygen is both extremely corrosive and toxic to them. That brings us to the two ways we can use these cans! You can throw these pressurized hunks of metal at the enemy, and shoot the can! This will allow the oxygen to disperse and act as a grenade! You can also use it as a melee weapon, if you get jumped by a class 4 or lower alien! Just open the top of the can like you would a soda and let the air go free! You are not recommended to use this on class 3 or higher aliens! It does not contain enough air to stop you from getting squashed! **Am I understood?**"
"SIR! UNDERSTOOD, SIR!"
**2236, June. Research division on The WarDoctor A.E.D.**
It's been 2 years since the humans have finally gotten a fighting chance to survive on Xenaas-891. The scientists have finally developed our ultimate weapon.
"Tell me, Dr. Pepper. What exactly is this new weapon?"
"We call it the C.A.O.P.T. Once deployed, it produces enough oxygen to keep a 20 meter radius area class 3 and lower free for months. It takes about 5 minutes after deployment to flush out the area around it. You can use this to create barriers which the aliens cannot move through, or even as a zoning tool."
"It looks like a tree. What does C.A.O.P.T. stand for?"
"Ah, that's because it **is** a tree. A Copious Amounts of Oxygen Producing Tree, to be exact. A new breed, with thick bark for protection and quick growing roots for stability. There are some slight problems though - it doesn't handle impact from the roots very well. If we were to drop this tree in an upright position onto the ground from 3 meters up, it would shatter. Not only that, but the breed is extremely heavy. Too heavy for your largest shuttles to carry - they're close to 600 tons. We also can't manufacture these trees on the surface - we can only make them on some of our ships, namely The WarDoctor, The FrillyLizard, and The PepperoniStick. You'll have to find a way to get the trees from space to the surface."
"You mean to tell me that you don't have a method of delivery for this weapon? What the hell do we pay you for then?"
"I'm paid to develop the weapon, not the delivery system. Find someone else for that."
"You there!" *Finger points at you* "I have a job for you!. Design me a delivery system for this weapon!"
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# What delivery system do I design in order to safely deploy the C.A.O.P.T. weapon to the surface of the planet?
A quick summary:
* The tree must not hit the ground at high impact in its upright state.
* The tree will self-plant itself once it's in contact with the ground.
* You cannot fly the trees to the surface via shuttle/plane, as it's too heavy.
* You will not be able to move the tree once it's on the ground.
Extra information:
* You can assume that the ground of Xenaas-891 is similar to the ground of Earth; mostly dirt.
* The atmosphere is similar to that of Earth, with the exception of it containing no Oxygen.
* Gravity is a stifling 1.2 times that of Earth.
* The tree is flammable.
* A.E.D. stands for "After Earth's Destruction" - technology level is futuristic, but please remain within the bounds of known + predicted science.
* Aliens have an air force.
If there is any extra information required, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to provide.
[Answer]
**Parachutes... uh, sir.**
You've ruled out shuttling them to the surface and apparently whatever brings tanks to the surface won't work. Really big parachutes work well though. Drop them from space with a blast shield or not at orbital velocities. A blast shield, or [heat shield](http://www.space.com/11995-nasa-mars-science-laboratory-rover-heat-shield.html), is a standard piece of planetary lander equipment. The shield protects the tree during entry and falls away once the tree is at terminal velocity (with the drogue). It won't get in the way of rooting.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p2hdX.jpg)
If we can parachute vehicles to the surface we can do it for the trees. Adjusting the size will adjust the decent speed to whatever the tree can survive.
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EDIT:
To save the parachute from the newly invented alien air force. Use large compressed oxygen tanks to provide oxygen for thrust to help slow and steer the tree as well as poison the air, killing any flying aliens who try to get at it.
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Alternatively, if you want a more feasible solution than these weird trees which shatter with a slight impact but can support their own 600 tons without issue, you can simply drop water and perform electrolysis on it. You have a space faring civilization, it's likely that you can generate copious amounts of energy. If you're concerned about leaving canisters around then just build an electrolysis station and supply it with water drops from the shuttles. Each 60 ton load of water from a shuttle would produce 36,347,000 liters of O*2*. That would fill a cube 33 meters on a side with pure O*2*. Should be pretty effective. Just get the water from an asteroid if there isn't any on the planet.
[Answer]
Seeds.
They take a bit longer to deploy but they're easily portable, and a little engineering and [pink light](http://inhabitat.com/indoor-vertical-farm-pinkhouses-grow-plants-faster-with-less-energy/) should make them grow pretty quickly. They have the added bonus of being easily concealable and very tough until they're deployed. Then the window to kill them would be brief.
Drop them wrapped in a soil mat into the ocean (if applicable), let them grow, then send teams in to maneuver them into position.
You can also feed them to indigenous wildlife to infiltrate the enemy's camps.
You could even drop trillions of them on the homeworld from orbit - there'd be no way to find them all until it was too late. I used to work in a greenhouse. Ever dropped a packet of geranium seeds? [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vjbvv.jpg)
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If you want precision and quick deceleration you could go the route of the Mar's rover "Sky Crane Maneuver", seeing as we're deploying to another planet it's not too far fetched that this technology would be relatively standard fare(though probably still expensive) in the future. Here's a link: <http://www.space.com/16878-mars-rover-landing-sky-crane-guide.html>
Here's the doctored up infographic:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/X9Lc9.png)
Additional Facts:
1. It was developed for something moving at a velocity of 13,000 mph(21,000) kph to get down to 0 in the span of seven minutes.
2. There is a heat shield(obviously) that will take the friction of deceleration. It will glow white-hot because of the velocity and thus needs to be jettisoned on approach to land (in this case, not to set the trees on fire I suppose)
3. The chute created for the mars mission was the largest supersonic drogue chute ever created. A drogue parachute is simply a parachute designed to slow a fast moving object down.
4. Once the heat shield is jettisoned there is a radar that is used to find the ground and the sky crane( which is that sweet looking thing in the second picture) comes out of the aeroshell and is used to maneuver and lower the package away from the backshell and towards the mark.
5. After it touches down, the nylon ropes connecting from the sky crane to the package are automatically removed and the crane itself is moved away to prevent any collateral landing damage.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sLGtW.jpg)
Additional cool thing, if a tree was going to be developed to be dropped it might be a variant of the Baobab tree. It's bark is fire resistant, it's fruit is edible, and it is massive. <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-tallest-strongest-and-most-iconic-trees-in-the-world-759955/>
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Drop the trees, pre-planted into pots affixed onto pallets with shockabsorbing buffers. They will make oxygen fine without being planted into real dirt. When the aliens are cleared out of a region, you can land and plant them properly.
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**Use balloons.**
The [*Pathfinder*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Pathfinder#Entry.2C_descent_and_landing) mission used a combination of parachutes and balloons to land on the surface of Mars.
Here is a photo of a test inflation on Earth:
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Pathfinder_Air_Bags_-_GPN-2000-000484.jpg)
So, I propose to encircle the trees in a large envelope of balloons and release them from an aircraft - similar to [Samuel's idea](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/21840/we-finally-have-a-weapon-to-win-the-war-against-the-aliens-we-dont-know-how-to/21842#21842). There are some issues with the balloons, but they can be solved:
* **Accuracy:** This is an issue with all airdrops. Winds can take over and blow things off course. I think that the balloon setup is massive enough that it would take strong gusts to move it too far away. Could it bounce? Yes. Solution: Use some sort of harpoon system to secure it to the ground at initial impact. Then deflate the balloons. This harpoon system could also prevent bounces.
* **Being shot down:** This is an issue with parachute operations; in World War II, pilots parachuting out of aircraft were sometimes shot down (at least during the Battle of Britain). The balloons should be able to reach higher speeds than parachutes, though, taking less time to hit the ground.
* **Descent speed:** The balloons could hit the ground at high speed. They will clearly cushion the bounce, and that could be enough. If you want, you could add on a parachute at the very end, or use thrusters on the bottom.
The trees must be deployed from space. The solution is to create an even smoother analogy to the *Pathfinder* mission, and add in a heat shield and other necessary components.
[Answer]
From Oldcat's [answer](//worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/21846/11665):
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> Drop the trees, pre-planted into pots [...] They will make oxygen fine without being planted into real dirt. [...]
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Comment thread on Samuel's [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/21842/11665):
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> [...] the alien air force is made of aliens, the tree is producing oxygen, the flying aliens can't get close to it. It's streaming oxygen as it falls, preventing them from messing with the tree [...] – [Samuel](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/3202/samuel)
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> [...] the tree doesn't make oxygen until deployment is complete [...] - [Aify](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/6453/aify)
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Hmm...
This could avoid a **lot** of complications. Pre-plant the trees, and the aliens can't mess with them. Then remove the pot once it's on the ground.
[Answer]
Tree glider. Giant gliders were used during WW2 by the Germans.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gcvOh.jpg)
I found these gliders to be able to carry a cargo of 23 tons and so for a 600 ton tree they would need to be scaled up 3000%. Gliders containing trees would be dropped from orbit and so would need reentry shielding which can be jettisoned once through. They would then pull up and expend kinetic energy via air friction during lateral movement through the atmosphere, gradually getting lower. When glider and tree reach deposition site the glider would be very near the ground and moving just fast enough to stay airborne.
The glider then sharply pulls up to vertical, stalls and falls backwards a short distance. The breakaway tail of the glider absorbs some of the impact leaving the roots of the tree to gently contact the ground. Rear facing protrusions on the wings make sure the tree is oriented vertically.
Glider is then removed from around tree via the action of rain or large hoses; glider is composed of papier-mache which will break down when wet. Glider material contains tree fertilizer to ensure tree health.
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This is inspired by [*The Time Machine*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine), by H. G. Wells. In the book - in the far future - humans have split into two races, the Eloi, who live aboveground, and the Morlocks, who live underground. The two have become extremely different after living for a long time in different conditions.
Humans can obviously split at some points in time. After all, that's how evolution works. The story also takes place over 800,000 years in the future, when things are much different.
I'd like to know if this is possible in a time closer to our own - not the near future, but a bit beyond that, within about 500 years. The twist it that one group lives on Earth, while the other lives on Mars.
Given these conditions, could humanity split into two different species?
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In 500 years? Without genetic manipulation to help things along, not very likely. The aborigine of Australia were mostly cut off from the rest of humanity for 40,000 years, and while they have distinctive racial features and adapted to their environment, they are still very much human.
On top of that for a complete separate species to evolve even with gene therapy it would take much concerted effort of all involved to push that change for everyone. So unless there was a good environmental reason on a new planet to push gene changes for everyone's benefit, not likely in that time frame.
[Answer]
An option you may consider, though it may not be what you're thinking, is that one group of humans stay human, but another group *transcends their own humanity*. There is a movement called [Transhumanism](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism) that seeks to end many of the problems that some would say define us as human; many believe that in this century, we may cure disease, hunger, aging, and even stupidity. Not only that, but the threat of the [Singularity](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity) looms, bringing with it the possibility that humans may be replaced by a new mechanical form of life. Again, many people believe this will happen in the 21st century.
The synthesis of these ideas and your question is that one day, humans may transfer their minds into mechanical bodies. That way, they can live forever, expand their minds, and just generally be better in every conceivable way. The only problem is that these 'posthumans' won't be sexually compatible with old-fashioned humans, and thus cannot be considered the same species.
As far as I can tell, this is the fastest way to split humanity into two species. That said, it has many of its own problems, such as the myriad other ways the two species would no longer be compatible, and the fact that one species is no longer what you'd call 'natural'. Other than that, though, it's a viable option, and even though many people don't believe it'll happen in the 21st century, it's very plausible that it'd happen by the 26th.
[Answer]
As said, 500 years is just a blink in the eye for evolution; at least for a creature with life cycles as long as humans. It's generally too small to have any evolutionarily interesting changes.
However, to meet your answer, yes it is theoretically possible, though quite improbable. A species is defined as two creatures that can not reproduce with each other to create fertile offspring. If the two were incapable of reproducing they are a different species, even if they look identical in every other way. In theory as little as one mutation is all that is required to become a separate species.
In fact, that's the only reason humans are not the same species as the bonobo and the chimpanzee; two of our chromosomes merged together into a single larger one, causing a different number of chromosomes than the chimp or the bonobo had. If it wasn't for that one change it's possible we would still be able to interbreed with our closest genetic relatives.
Of course, the problem is having the entire population of Mars gain this gene, which is sort of impossible. Since they can only have children so fast, their genetics can only spread so quickly. One person with a mutation when they found Mars can not spread that mutation to a large percentage of the population in 500 years, unless, he, or one of his immediate descendents, started some truly extensive harem/breeding program to father all the next generation's population, or the population numbers were so absurdly low that inbreeding would almost certainly lead to death of the population.
This leads to improbable ways to technically create speciation. Both would only work if something made this mutation quite important, if not mandatory. In other words, your Martians would need to be facing extinction, or something close to it, that this one mutation can somehow fix. The most likely form of extinction would be that the Martians can't have children for some reason. Breeding issues, and this mutation, allowed them to get around whatever was preventing them from having children, by modifying the way they reproduced.
1. Intentional genetic mutation, the most likely. Facing an extinction level event on Mars, the Martians created a way to use a retrovirus, or controlled IVF, to get around the extinction level event, providing their children with a chance to survive. A side effect of this life saving treatment was to tweak their genetics in such a way to be incompatible with earth genetics; likely creating offspring that are infertile (that's still specization by definition).
2. Near-extinction. The colonists did not intentionally do anything to their genetics, or lacked a means to do so, and thus almost all of them died out. The ones that did survive managed to do so based off a random mutation that just *happened* to appear at the same time (note, I can't say how absurdly unlikely this is). This one person with the mutation spreads it to the much smaller martian population. Perhaps he is the only person capable of reliably fathering children due to some environmental radiation whatever and so by necessity is the father of all future children. Though I can't say how improbable this is; and ultimately a society like this would still be lowly dying to inbreeding.
In either case the two species would look and act almost identical. Their ability to reproduce being the only real distinction between the two. However, that is all it takes to technically be a new species.
Given more time this specialization could occur, but by more time we're talking tens of thousands of years at least, if science doesn't get involved to accelerate the process.
[Answer]
Frankly, it comes down to your definition. I know just yelling 'semantics' is impolite but the species problem is a very big issue for biologists.
Quite a lot of species are only separated geographically, some are only temporally separated. examples abound, check Wikipedia's Reproductive isolation page.
Using that definition of species: Putting a viable population on mars and then stopping interplanetary travel would be enough.
If you only accept species that can't even produce offspring in a lab that are both viable and fertile, then dsollen's answer is great.
If you go so far as to accept as species groups of entities that don't reproduce biologically, then DaaaahWhoosh has the best answer.
Another problem is your measuring method for speciation. How many generations do the populations have to be separated and effectively reproducing before you call them different species? The transhumanism answer can get very tricky here, do posthumans even have generations?
The bare minimum would be 3 generations:
You start measuring population 1 when they are no longer capable of reproducing with population 2(first generation).
You want to know if they have viable children (second generation).
You want to know if these children are fertile (third generation).
Of course you continually have to check if the new generations can crossbreed with population 2, the moment this happens you have to start all over.
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I'd say your scenario is more realistic than the time machine.
In the time machine, one of those species eats the other one to survive. This implies that they cannot be separated or else the food chain would break. But that is a contradiction. If they were never separated, then how did they evolve separately? If they were not separated then they would share a gene pool and evolve together.
If migration between earth and Mars was stopped, then the groups would evolve separately. If there was a dark age, then they would evolve faster as natural selection becomes more savage and they need to adapt to their different environments, rather than depending of medicine and technology. If there were exposure to radiation, then evolution would be even faster, as there would be a higher rate of mutations. However, even in a 'perfect storm' evolution would probably take longer than you'd expect.
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The problem with answering this question, especially with the short timeframe specified, is that evolution doesn't really give us clear points where one species becomes another. It's more a case of taking a point where we have one species, and another point where we have something that evolved from it, and arbitrarily calling them species, because that's what we're measuring. There are no clear boundaries, just lots of fuzzy transitions from one species to another, because we don't really deal with the idea of "becoming" anywhere near as well as "is"
We're already becoming a bunch of different species, most of which (if not all) will probably die out before they ever get a chance to be different enough for anyone to notice.
So, probably not two species different enough that you wouldn't call one of them human within just 500 years, but even genetic drift will make humans slightly different within 500 years. (Just not different enough that we'd notice)
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Evolution is like culture. Separate things, they change. Just look at Darwin's exploration. Different islands, different birds. The biggest variable here is time. 500 years won't prolly cut it, however, if one species is living on Mars, as you said, then they would probably want to adapt to Mars climate. More cold resistance could make reproduction different to a feasible degree. Lighter gravity means a lighter bone structure, and taller people. Given maybe 1000 years, they would almost certainly be different species. One would be redder, taller, more cold resistance, and more impact resistant, but only by a small amount. The other would be us. But they'd work together just fine for a long while.
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In a star wars or star trek-esque universe where FTL space travel is pretty bog standard and not that big of a deal anymore what would be the most valuable part of a space ship? I was thinking except obviously cargo and such things, maybe AI and computer systems would be sought after components especially in deep space where equipment is a bit more rare? anyway what are your thoughts? (this is for a novel I'm writing)
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*what would be the most valuable part of a space ship?*
It really depends upon what you mean by *"valuable."*
**Value as Plunder**
If you mean valuable from the point of view as plunder (one ship stealing from another), it constrains the part to be both relatively small and portable. If this is your definition than the computer core could very well be the most valuable portion of the ship.
**Value as Replacement**
Let's instead assume that some bit of the ship broke and you're wondering which bit would cost the most to repair. In that case, it would likely be the propulsion system. Space Opera spaceships require high thrust, high impulse engines which require extreme science and engineering. Unfortunately repairs won't be made by mechanics named Kaylee using a hammer (or for that matter by the ship's Captain by kicking it back into alignment!).
You'll never fix your drive system this way
*(but you might succeed in breaking it beyond anyone else's ability to repair it)*
Major repairs require shipyards with very specialized and expensive tools along with the skilled workers required to operate those tools. All of that costs money.
Crews with specialized training might be able to fly a ship with no ship's computer but no crew could fly a ship with a broken propulsion system.
Alternatively, you could probably fudge things and say that the computer was the most expensive components and that unlike the propulsion systems, the computers *can't* be repaired. Any damage to the computer requires replacing it with another computer.
**Other Stuff**
Depending upon specific situations, you could also make almost any component or supply on a ship the most important to a crew. For example, on a ship running out of oxygen for the crew, oxygen tanks become the most important parts.
This extends to almost any vital ship component or consumable:
* Air
* Power
* Water
* Food
* Fuel
* Propellant
* Colony supplies such as fertilized ovum
* Even radiation shielding
[Answer]
**The ships identity.**
If you can steal the computers and access its signing keys or what ever the ship uses to identify its self you could pretend to be the ship and do nefarious things.
Like people who steal number plates and then drive off with out paying for fuel. Or you could gain access to stations or planets you would otherwise be unable to.
You might be able to trade the identify on a black market to other space pirates to use as well. You would have to make sure that the original ship was not found or it would be known it had been stolen.
[Answer]
**Sensors?**
The hull is too heavy to steal. Computers and power plants have many uses in space stations and on colony worlds, so there could be a good supply of them. But technobabble sensors which allow ships to operate at warp speed could be expensive and scarce.
**CPUs?**
Not the entire computer system, just the main chips. Even for a large starship, they might fit into a single suitcase. Good value for the size.
**FTL computers?**
Integrating stardrives and navigation sensors at full speed could require very fast and specialized computers.
**Critical engine or reactor parts?**
The dilithium chamber or hyperdrive coils might wear out faster than other parts of the engine, but they *might* be relatively small and lightweight.
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In such a future as we understand today, nanotechnology will allow most "stuff" to be grown/printed/assembled as cheaply and trivially as anything else.
Some parts may need rare elements. But with FTL travel will any element be scarse?
Some substances may be slow and inefficient to build "cold" by nanoassembly of atoms (though that is possible) but is manufadtured under conditions of pressure and temperature using special equipment. That would be increasingly rare as most stuff uses general-purpose nano assemblers.
Parts of the FTL engine complex will necessarily involve novel physics. If it is *not* simply made of an arrangement of atoms, it needs novel ways to produce. Maybe micro-wormholes need conditions near a neutron star to produce. That would plausibility be rare and expensive even in a post-scarsity society.
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Probably not neccesarily sought after, or even having any kind of resale value, but most ships will probably have two systems that are the hardest to replace, because they aren't standardized but rather grow with the ship.
# The ship's AI
Because it's probably installed as a standard issue, but grows as the ship does. Many ships in space-opera settings go through a lot of crap and are changed for it. Every time you replace some component for a slightly-different version, every time you add a non-standard routine, every time you give repeated orders that aren't a part of the training course, every time you barely survive an encounter, your ship AI will know, learn and adapt how it reacts.
If you lose the AI, you lose everything it's learned. You can probably easily install a fresh one, but it probably needs a lot of time to scan and learn all the vessel's non-standard upgrades, it might not even recognize some of them, it will need to relearn how you issue orders and what the ship can do. Unless you can restore it from backup, anyway.
Related to that, the second most important part of the ship:
# The ship's crew
Mostly for the same reasons as the AI, above. Unless your ship is completely standard issue and produced in bulk (and come on, how often does a space-opera focus on a ship like that?) the active crew will be intimitaly familiar with it and (also very important) they'll be used to working together.
(Especially from an author's view the crew is the most important part; nobody wants to read about a cool ship, they want the people operating it. But from an in-universe perspective, it's most likely the same. The ship can be rebuilt, but the crew cannot be replaced expect by different people with less experience.)
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Most of what is in a spacecraft could be replicated or built by any outpost of the spacefaring civilization, with the more intricate parts needing more time, attention or greater connection to the supply chain.
So long as the outpost has access to the right tools and materials, then the spaceship can mostly be rebuilt virtually from scratch.
This means the real value in any spacecraft would be the energy source. If you have a spacecraft without energy then you simply have a hunk of expensive machinery sitting there. German fighting machines at the end of the second world war (tanks, submarines and jet aircraft) were generally superior to allied machines, yet totally useless since there was no fuel to power them.
Since spacecraft need a tremendous amount of energy to get around (even in the solar systems) whatever sort of energy system or source will be very powerful and concentrated. Some possibilities could include antimatter, or micro black holes, or even things that are not covered by conventional physics.
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Weapons. The ability to destroy your enemies is universally valued above most other treasures. The military mind seeks to pack as much destructive potential into the smallest possible space, to allow for diversity and redundancy within their arsenals. This quest for compact potency is also valued by merchants who want to pack as much value as possible into their holds.
Weapons are the ultimate currency...
Slaves and Rebels will buy them to kill their overlords.
Overlords will buy them to keep them away from their rebellious Slaves.
Warriors will buy them to use them.
Pacifists will buy them to destroy them.
The only person who would not buy any weapons you offered, is someone who already has better weapons; and if their weapons are that much better than yours, then trade is unlikely. They'll just take any valuables you offer them, without concern for trade.
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Let's say that this was a Star-Trek galaxy. First off, there's the technology an opposing race can hope to gain. Therefore, by plundering their shields, warp drives, weapons, etc. you can gain valuable intelligence on the enemy's capabilities in combat and adapt to them, as evidenced by the [theft of the USS Prometheus](http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Message_in_a_Bottle_(episode)) in Voyager. Take the computer systems too! Add to Memory Alpha!
After that, the hull will also come in handy. Why mine for more [Duranium](http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Duranium) when you can just rip it off an enemy ship, thereby crippling their hopes of getting that ship back? In the meantime, we might as well reuse those nice LCARS displays.
Finally, the crew would also be valuable. Whether as slaves or political leverage, taking the crew will also discourage others to sign up for the chance to explore strange new worlds. If they were used as slaves, they can sell them, or put them to work. Profit. Holding the captain/commanding officer hostage and asking for a ransom might work, if the other race is not as technologically advanced.
In the end, everything on the starship can be of use.
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Say there is a civilian ship going less than the speed of light, travelling from one star to the next. In the event that pirates board the ship (or some other dangerous situation, like a hull breach for example), what would be the standard procedure for a normal civilian to do in this situation? Because this civilian ship can hold lots of people, there aren't enough/any escape pods for level 1 civilians.
[Answer]
A lot depends on your assumptions about drive technology, etc. Some points to consider:
* Are escape pods making any sense at all? A spaceship won't "sink" when it is damaged, it just goes on. Escape pods would make sense if staying with the wreck is dangerous (reactors going critical? crashing into a planet?) and if the escape pod can maneuver.
* If escape pods make sense, wouldn't regulations require them for all passengers, plus some spares? A society where only some passengers get escape pods would be quite unfair by early 21st century standards.
Having said that, the procedure should be to go some designated safety area with reinforced bulkheads and emergency supplies. That way the (few) trained crew can supervise the (many) untrained passengers, and there is less risk of an injured passenger dying alone from a preventable mishap. For a large ship, perhaps multiple assembly areas.
[Answer]
Space between star systems is huge. Even the distance inside star systems is so big that you need months.
Let's play with the possibilities: The escape pods are deployed inside a star system. Without FTL they would still have to support the crew for possibly weeks, if not months. If ships have FTL: how close can you jump without endangering the pods?
Now let's say the escape pods are deployed between 2 star systems. As stated, this ship doesn't have any form of FTL-drives. That means that one trip takes several generations. Even if you can get into a pod, how long will it take to get to you? If no ship passes this spot in years, only a stasis system would make you survive. But can you build one into a small escape pod? How long can it last? What are the consequences of missing generations? If born on a ship for more than 1 generation, this could be more tolerable.
My personal opinion: Don't ever abandon your ship on high sea. Either you get things fixed or you die anyway.
Knowing that there won't be a pitstop for decades, ships need to be built to be capable of fixing everything on the go. Simple stuff like hull breaches could even be automated. Pirates will linger close to habitation, so you could guard the ships for the first year or so of travel if you encounter a high density of attacks.
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I don't see a whole lot of reason for escape pods in a space ship if there isn't FTL travel.
Let's take pirates. What good would it do you to run away and abandon ship? The ship is going to be well stocked and chances are you will outnumber the pirates, either give them what they want or run (the whole ship) or fight. If you run to an escape pod, you are not going anywhere fast, you have to worry about supplies since it won't be big enough to produce them for you (unlike a large ship with gardens etc). You'll need oxygen too for a long trip. On top of that you are going to be sitting ducks that can be picked off at leisure by the pirates if there is still anything they want from you.
Hull breach. The ship is still the safest place to be. Bulkheads will close to reduce the loss of air, like a large ocean ship will close off sections when they spring a leak. There can even be special space suits to have an emergency air supply to help those in the damaged area get to an intact bulkhead. Then emergency response suits up, helps those that still need it and close the breaches. Spreading out in escape pods you would pretty much need to have a very serious problem on the ship, be on a very heavily traveled route and have lots of supplies to survive.
There is generally a reason our space ships are not going to be the size of luxury yachts, because they wouldn't be able to have the ability to transport large groups over vast distances. And having enough escape pods to would be a huge waste of resources that could be used to supply the ship and keep it running.
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I think this is a close analogy to the question "In the event that hijackers attempt to take over an aeroplane in flight, what would be the standard procedure for a normal civilian to do in this situation?" So, this probably works as an answer to your question, with "airline" swapped for "spaceship" and "hijacker" swapped for "pirate". <http://www.nationalterroralert.com/hijacking_survival/>
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Given the vastness of space, an escape pod wold have to be as capable of the spaceship itself in order to be of any use. Considering with current and near term technology it will take about six months just to reach a nearby planet like Mars, travelling at STL speeds to the stars will take centuries to millennia. (indeed, the most "feasible" means of reaching Alpha Centauri using a manned craft involves making a very close pass by the Sun while unfurling a solar sail; the projected flight time is @ 1000 years).
Instead of abandoning the ship, the ship itself needs to be made into thousands of interconnected yet independent "bubble" ecosystems. If one were to fail for any reason, it could be isolated and (depending on the emergency) sealed from the rest of the ship or the crew on board removed and placed in a different bubble. If each bubble can be isolated, then invading pirates, infectious disease or computer malware and other threats can be contained. In the worst case, they might even be ejected from the ship and cast into space.
Ships built like this will be large, possibly created from a cored out asteroid or built like the 1980 era "Island 3" space colonies but filled with bubbles, rather than a vast open area. Spaceships might be huge on the outside, but pretty claustrophobic inside.
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Today we have associated so much love with our nationalities that we have little of it left for humanity. Billions if not Trillions of dollars every year, are dedicated to defense budget's of countries around the globe. Third world countries spend more on buying arms to protect lines on a map then spending on health and education. Politicians are able to manipulate people into killing others all in the name of Nationalism.
I don't think religion/race/culture etc are issues. The problem in my opinion stems from lack of education. Case in point, if you take a number of highly educated and enlightened people and observe their interactions (case in point any popular tourist destination), most people are cordial and tolerant towards each other. If the resources, currently being spent on nuclear missile silos, were used to educate the masses and equipping everyone equally with means to move forward, wouldn't humans fare better? Especially when instead of focusing on hating each other, we can focus on common problems such as access to clean water and cancer etc?
What could be potential pitfalls of creating a world without nations or one world for all humanity?
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Nationalism was certainly a primary issue in engendering conflict for a long time, generally from colonial times through probably the second world war. **Unfortunately your hypothesis that this is the problem today is out of date.**
In our current era, problems of nationalism have been eclipsed by more general concepts. The most famous author on the subject is Huntington. [The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1451628978) (Arguably at least).
He posits that where we used to see conflict between nations we now see conflicts between ideas and cultures which almost always span national boundaries.
Some examples include freedom vs control, communism vs capitalism, Islamism vs the West and there are many many others. To explain I will go through a couple.
**The West**
The west mainly refers to the United States, Canada, Australia (doesn't fit the geography admittedly), and Western Europe. This example most illustrates the fall of nationalism. European nations/tribes etc waged war on each other for...well basically ever, culminating in WWII. *Since WWII no Western European nations have gone to war with one another* (this includes the US/Canada/Australia). Interestingly we may be seeing a swing back to nationalism in Europe as demonstrated by anti-immigration protests, and the election of Syriza, and anti-EU sentiment.
**Freedom vs Control**
I think the best example of this is in the news right now. Russia vs Nato... Putin controls and manipulates his government and people, (I will caveat this with...yes there is manipulation in the west as well but Russia is at a whole different level). The ability to freely dissent doesn't exist in Russia. When two groups have differing understandings of a fundamental concept it leads to conflict (watch the news for proof on this...)
**Trans-national Ethnic/Cultural Groups**
This has become a huge source of conflict. From the Kurds in Turkey/Syria/Iraq and Iran to tribal uprisings in the middle east and south west asia this has become a major source of conflict. When there is a shared antagonistic history it is easy to motivate downtrodden people to blame and then attack a group they hate. (Hitler anyone...) **Read the General notes section for more.**
**General Notes**
* Dehumanizing opponents. One of the reasons I believe that this transition has come to pass is that it is much more difficult to dehumanize neighboring countries than it used to be (at least in the more "modern" parts of the world). This is mainly due to the ease of travelling and communication. The better you know someone the less likely it is that a political figure can convince you that they are evil and a threat.
* Relative Deprivation. This is an interesting concept. The idea is that my view of my group's power and influence and affluence is gauged on how well another group is doing. *I may be far less prosperous than I was 20 years ago but I am still better than they are.* We see this in the continued existence of Middle Eastern regimes who supports one powerful faction and keeps them at the top of the heap...even as the system goes to hell around them. Keeping a faction happy is not necessarily based on overall wealth but rather my power/resources compared to others. Assad is a master of this. A logical person from his group should be able to say that the whole country going downhill is bad for everyone including us, but as long as Assad keeps them on top he continues to have support.
* Education. To your point on education. Yes. Absolutely. Money we spend on defense would be far better spent on education and cultural awareness. First hand experience is the way to go. I'd wager that if nations took their defense spending they could pay for every 18 year old to travel the globe for 6 months. Visit every region on the planet, meet people, learn how the rest of the world works. Understanding engenders empathy.
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> I don't think religion/race/culture etc are issues. The problem in my
> opinion stems from lack of education.
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These are somewhat combine but religion race and culture are common concepts that leaders can use to motivate the masses. Its a simple matter of them versus us and nothing motivates the uneducated masses faster than threats to their way of life...even if that means hating another person's way of life...which is so painfully ironic. It is not simply education, though the best counter to the vile idiocy out there is certainly to teach.
* What would happen if nations went away...that is a tough one and I don't know that we can effectively answer it. While national conflicts have become fewer, a nation is far more than a war waging machine. The legal constructs on which our world works are all based on the power of the nation-state. I don't know that humanity could look at a globe and not label it in some way or another. We as creatures simply lack the ability to think about all that is required to get past the nation concept...or at least the labeling concept. We have to generalize and organize...our brains can't managing things any other way.
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Very nice answer @James
I'd use a simplified answer,
Humans are tribal by nature. We form tribes based upon common interests (family, clan, town, city, state, nation, profession, hobbies, sports, sports teams, race, sexual orientation, etc.).
Recent research indicates that [forming tribal groups may be hard wired into the human brain.](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-flexibility-of-racial-bias/) Humans will even form tribes for things trivial and arbitrary like a coin flip. And so, for the foreseeable future, humans will retain their desire for tribal affinity and fear of "the other" (outside the tribe).
I imagine that we'll only overcome our nature is to use our world tribal affinity against some external tribe (aliens, off-world colonies, etc.) At least I think this is more likely in the short term than any sort of "growing out of it."
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*"What could be potential pitfalls of creating a world without nations or one world for all humanity?"*
The main pitfall of having humanity under one political jurisdiction would be the same pitfall as comes from relying on one staple crop: if that crop fails, it is disaster for everyone. In contrast if many different crops are grown they are unlikely all to fail at once.
This is analogous to the situation of a world of many nations - they won't all fall under a tyrannical ideology at once; there is always somewhere to escape to. Most of the time things are not so grim, but it is still the case that separate nations provide scope for trying out diverse political and economic policies on something less than the whole world.
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I don't know if you'd care to hear a nationalist's input on the subject, but here goes.
First of all, the principal objection to pacifism applies here: either everyone becomes a pacifist at once, or the non-pacifists win without contest. Similarly, you will have to put a lot of resources and effort (and by "effort" I mean a degree of ideological coercion that will sometimes appear controversial to say the least) not only into initially establishing your nationless world, but also into maintaining it. A world like that won't run itself without constantly trying to spiral back to its original state. And the catalysts for neo-nationalism will come from two opposite ends of the spectrum: on the one hand, those who straight-up refuse to be affected by the ideology; and on the other hand, those who create a narrative successfully rationalising *effective* nationalism while seemingly not contradicting the ideology. And a single pocket of nationalism is enough for a domino effect combining opposition and imitation.
Secondly, I have doubts about your "lack of education" hypothesis, and those doubts stem from my personal experience. My multicultural, multi-lingual education, and the corresponding general environment of my formative years, is what eventually made me a nationalist; it's not something I would have contemplated earlier. It's not that it was a negative experience — it wasn't; it's not that I have a problem being equally cordial and tolerant to everyone; but I discovered at some point that my national identity is a core part of who I am, and there's little I could or would want to do about it. No offence, but "human" is just a bland thing to be — unless and until we're invaded by space aliens. In fact, not necessarily invaded; contact would be enough. For now, being human is just a trivial given, and you can't make it into anything greater than that without artificial indoctrination that's as intrusive as it is brittle.
A nation is basically a super-extended family. Very few people would believe that their parents, spouse, or child are *literally* better than anyone else in the world; but the vast majority of people certainly feels this way. Or to be more precise: most people would enjoy the occasions when reality accidentally seems to confirm this illusion of superiority (which most people would recognise for an illusion even if they don't admit it, which however does nothing to dispel it). Then again, like I said, this is the ultimate *extended* family, and as such, it's virtually guaranteed to include people you dislike and don't particularly respect, but whom you nonetheless continue to think of as your kin, and to whom you would accordingly extend some degree of preferential treatment.
Now I do agree that this model is dysfunctional on many levels, but would abolishing families really accomplish anything? Not to mention that it would certainly be dishonest to reduce all family ties to "hating" other families — even though we have Romeo and Juliet and a myriad of lesser dramas playing out in our everyday life. Admittedly, in an urbanised society, the importance of familial identity has faded a lot; it's worth to note that this happened without any guidance — what's more, *in spite* of numerous attempts to reaffirm "family values". At some point in the future, nations may be succeeded by some even more abstract identity constructs — perhaps with barely any potention for divisiveness. I don't think we're there yet, or that rushing into post-nationalism would get us anywhere.
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You ask about pitfalls.
I'm reminded of the compromise used in setting up the congress of the United States: one house is based on equal representation for equal population, and the other is based on geographic region regardless of population.
People objected to the pure population approach, because different areas have different needs.
Everybody being dealt with "the same" will give rise to de-optimizations due to inherent differences, which can be due to geography, climate, and natural resources even if you postulate that there is no difference (or at least no intolerance) for human tribal reasons.
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Nationalism as such is, contrary to some comments, not a natural trait in humans, although it may seem so.
Humans tend to simplify (since otherwise we could never grasp any thought, if we always tried to consider every micro-and macrocosmological aspect of it).
Also, we evolved in groups, as social animals.
Yet, people can typically remember something like 120 other people. If one tries to stay in contact with more than that, and tries to remember more than just some very basic facts, that requires quite some work.
The nation of course is a more or less synthetic construction, which was first created as kingdom or empire, and only later was "redefined" as a nation.
If you take a closer look at any state in existence, you soon notice that the different regions have more or less different language, are associated with different behaviour and whatnot.
Thus, the nation and subsequently nationalism are synthetic constructs, used to unite those different parts of the population of a country. Unfortunately, typically they are used to unite the people *against* some other group. The reasons are typically any kind of greed. Be it that the people employing the nation and invoking nationalist thoughts and feelings want to urge people into war (with an interesting aside: it's allways *the people*, but never the "brave leaders" that are supposed to have themselves shot), or to explain why it should be okay to treat *those others* in any bad way.
Say, we want to exploit those pesty foreigners (to get cheaper labour), then it helps a lot if those are deprived of the basic rights, and even more, to avoid them uprising, or simply refusing to be exploited.
If now one would provoque a situation where those one wants to exploit (the foreigners, in the first place) would be held down by the rest of the population (who in turn are given a cheap target for their own aggressions should they notice that somebody else is pinching the beef), then you could much more easily pursue your own greed, without too much fear of the torches and pitchforks.
So, after that long introduction, to answer your question:
Of course it would be a good idea to stop buying more and more weapons to (at least threaten to) shoot one another, and invest in education.
Of course that would make a much ebtter world.
Unfortunately, though, there is a small but extremely rich minority who don't have the slightest interest in that, because they can become richer in the current setup, and they might face quite some trouble if it changed.
And subsequently, they will use their money and resulting power to make sure that this won't happen.
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The main pitfall here is that it is very easy to rise to power using "us vs them." Your "utopia" will last until someone figures out that they can gain power by pitting one group against another. Then, it might not be "nationalism" but only if the "them" is defined in terms other than a nation.
Look at your typical high school. The kids form tribes and often harass kids from other "tribes."
Anything that you are thinking of will be an unstable equilibrium that can't last without constant maintenance.
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I have Merfolk with tails that are just 2 legs they hold together in the water. What I want to know is that by giving them legs(and making them able to walk on land) did I make them more susceptible to other species of water based animals? For the following reasons:
* The legs make them slower?
* They can't manuever as well.
Also, If they are more susceptible is there any way to combat this? Without having them leave the water?
My reasons being that I want them to survive in the water for at least 2 centuries(because of my plot) and I don't want them to have any evolutionary changes.
My Merfolk are very smart with IQ's of at least 200(Genius level) which means that maybe they could invent something. But the "what" they could invent is beyond me?
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There are really two questions here: 'will this make them worse at swimming?' and 'will this be *enough* of a problem to kill them all off?'
**The answer to the second one is easy: *no, it won't.***
Humans aren't exactly helpless in the water, after all, and your merfolk are both quite a lot smarter and (presumably) better swimmers than we are. Working together would make a huge difference, as would a few simple inventions: [fin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swimfin), [spear](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear), [fishing sling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_sling).
If they're smart enough and technologically advanced enough there's no end to the fancy tricks that are available, but they don't *need* anything like that at all - a long pointy stick does a lot to level the playing field all on its own.
**The first question is where things get interesting.**
Having a tail made up of two parts instead of one isn't *necessarily* going to slow them down at all, but there are a few places where there are potential costs to the arrangement (and at least one potential benefit).
**If they don't have flukes or something similar, they'll lose quite a lot of speed and control.** This is the major issue. Whether it's their feet, flaps of skin on the ankles, or something else, they need to be able to duplicate the shape of a whale or dolphin's tail. (Or a seal's hind legs.) That broad, flat area plays a very important role in both propelling them forward and in letting them manoeuvre - it's effectively a combination propeller and rudder. If they don't have it, they're at a major disadvantage.
**If water can pass between their legs as they're swimming, they lose power.** If there's a gap where water can pass between their legs, they've effectively got two smaller 'tails' instead of one big one - and two half-sized tails don't add up to the same power as one full-sized one would have. If they can stop the water passing between their legs by pressing them together they get the power back, but it will mean they have to use extra energy while swimming and might tire more quickly. A monofin helps, as does wrapping the legs together.
**If they have long leg bones instead of a spinal cord in the 'tail', they lose some effectiveness.** A whale's tail can flex at any point along the length, and can bend in any direction. If you replace that with a single knee joint that only bends in one direction it costs you a tiny bit of efficiency for swimming forward, and a bit more for manoeuvring. (On the other hand, a rigid leg bone *might* be easier to brace to make sharp turns at top speed)
**Being able to move their legs independently could make them more manoeuvrable.** Being able to separate their legs gives them two independent control surfaces, instead of just one. While a single larger surface is more effective for simple turns (as noted above), it's not implausible that there are some complex manoeuvres that two legs can perform but a single tail couldn't.
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I am fairly certain that highly intelligent people could handle predators by grouping together and killing the predators. This has been generally successful on land and should work in water as well. There might be occasional failures, but overall population grew before we began actually exterminating predators.
That said, there's no reason why merfolk couldn't invent open submarines that travel through water. That would allow them to travel much faster than normal. These would be easier than real submarines, as they wouldn't need to be air/water tight. Your merfolk can extract oxygen from water, right?
If you need them to start out primitive, you could start with something pedal driven. Properly geared that should give good bursts of speed and the structure could help protect against large predators.
That should be enough to handle Earth predators. If your world is more difficult, then you'll need to tell us more about what makes it challenging.
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Your concern regarding evolution is irrelevant. Assuming your merfolk have a lifespan on the same order of magnitude as humans, or any known animal, two centuries is negligible in relation to an evolutionary timescale. It would seem strange for them to have adapted any aquatic favoring appendages without significant time in the water previous to this two century span. What is their history in this respect?
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You already gave the answer in your question - intelligence.
With intelligence comes the power to change themselves and their environment. Their supreme adaptability (access to both sea and land) is also a very strong benefit, expect them to live in coastal areas and access resources of both terrain types. For example harvesting wood from the land for spears that are used to hunt fish in the sea.
For swimming they would need at the minimum flippers, whether these are natural and can fold up to move on land or are artificial is really an artistic decision either would work perfectly well.
They may well develop some sort of "skirt" made of flexible elastic material that they wrap around their legs for underwater work. This will turn their legs into a single tail without needing muscle strength to do so. Alternatively they may evolve webbing between their upper legs combined with feet that can grasp onto each other. When they enter water the feet grab each other to lock together, the same action releasing flukes that spread out and allow them to swim far better than a human.
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It is not too reasonable to try to predict what a large group of extreme geniuses would come up with when their lives are at stake. While it's nice to begin the train of thought, please know that even the result of the hardest work by everyone on Stackexchange would at best be cute in comparison.
The IQ is, and has now been for a while, defined by mapping test scores to a normal distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15.
## You want your typical specimen to be in the top $10^{-10}$ of human intelligence?
Over 6.5 Sigma! *Over 6.5 Sigma!* I don't like the way IQ is measured, but in *this* case it really doesn't matter. **The average of these beings is probably smarter than any of the 7'000'000'000 humans alive!**
Seriously, I have no idea what this folk would do, but I'm pretty convinced that the US military would be terrified not to upset them.
This will come down entirely to the beginning of their civilization and their lack of hands. They'll be weak for a brief period: until they figured out how to manipulate their surroundings and made tools for it. Then, they'll ramp up to extreme levels of organization and technology, without any of the pointless set-backs human society had.
* These creatures will quickly develop mathematics and the scientific principle. You don't reach "genius level" without these.
* They will quickly agree on laws that heed game theory. Their laws will be written and used by people who are at least on the level of a good economist today; the population will understand their merits and consequences, and cooperate to enforce them.
* They will know the value of information and teaching it. Any set-backs will be but experience for future endeavors.
We've just broken through the limiting factors of human society, before even inventing any serious technology.
Nobody in this thread is qualified to say what these people can do. Widespread intelligence is an extreme game changer, and it's hard to predict what it can do by its very nature. Virtually anything crumbles before higher intelligence, anyone who denies that hasn't been looking.
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**Conditions:**
* The civilization is in a galaxy which is *not* the Milky Way. For the purposes of this question, assume the target galaxy is 0.5 [Mpc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec#Megaparsecs_and_gigaparsecs) away.
* The civilization has elected, for whatever reason and regardless of practicality, to build full Dyson spheres. Assume for the purpose of the question that they had all the necessary mass within their galaxy to do this.
* The Dyson spheres absorb 100% of all energy emitted from the stars and do not emit any heat. From the perspective of our understanding of science, that's probably impossible, but for the purpose of the question, please assume it's true.
* The civilization has elected, for whatever reason and regardless of practicality, to enclose *each and every energy-emitting source in their galaxy* with the exception of black holes.
From a certain point of view, the galaxy is dark, with no visible-spectrum light emitted. This question does not embrace the effects of Dark Matter (we can't detect it today anyway). All the mass is there, but all the stellar-emitted light is gone.
*It is my recommendation that unless you're absolutely sure about your answer that you give this question a half-day before answering for people to ask for clarifications. I'm expecting the requests.*
**Question:** How could Earth, 2023, detect such a galaxy?
* Do not worry about how long this might take. In other words, if it just so happens that some aspect of the James Webb telescope could do this, assume that serendipitously it just happened to sweep across the galaxy's location last night and explain how it succeeded.
* I am *not* asking that we discover the presence of the Dyson spheres. I am only asking about detecting the presence of the galaxy. As in some lucky astronomer sending out a Tweet along the lines of, "we can't see it, but we know it's there, and we know it's the size of a galaxy."
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One of my favorite things about galaxies is their gas. It's a major source of baryonic matter; while the amount of gas varies between galaxies, in some cases it can be comparable to or greater than the stellar mass (see e.g. [Magdis et al. 2012](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012ApJ...760....6M/abstract)). While the Dyson spheres mean stars in the galaxy won't affect its emission, the gas absolutely will -- and there's a nice little loophole.
There are lots of ways to detect gas. Some of the more common or interesting examples:
* Much of it is in the form of neutral hydrogen (HI), which forms the [21 cm line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_line). 21 cm emission is easily detectable much further than 0.5 Mpc, up to a redshift of $z\approx0.3$ (see section 3.2.2 of [Fabian et al. 2020](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020ApJ...902..111W/abstract)), i.e. roughly 800 Mpc -- not high-redshift by most cosmologists' standards, but far enough! Beyond $z\approx0.3$, you can use [Lyman-alpha lines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman-alpha_line) to find neutral hydrogen.
* Another common component is molecular hydrogen, H2. It's harder to find, but we can use a proxy, carbon monoxide (CO) -- the second most abundant gas component after HI. CO emits light through rotational transitions and can easily be found as far as $z\approx3$, or about 1.5 Gpc ([Riechers et al. 2020](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020ApJ...896L..21R/abstract)).
* If you don't want to detect the gas itself, you can look for its effects on background objects. Andromeda's massive gas halo was found by looking at how it creates silicon absorption lines from quasars far beyond it ([Lehner et al. 2015](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015ApJ...804...79L/abstract)).
So . . . how would this galaxy end up being detected? It would likely be found in an all-sky survey looking for HI or CO emission. Many such surveys specifically target high-redshift galaxies far, far beyond 0.5 Mpc (e.g. [VLASPECS](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020ApJ...896L..21R/abstract)), but lower-redshift candidates, like our camouflaged galaxy, inevitably sneak in. There would then be targeted follow-up observations looking for other emission or absorption lines. You don't even need JWST; ground-based surveys should be able to do the job. They can detect much fainter galaxies farther away; this one should be no problem.
This galaxy would appear to be full of gas but with no stars. It might be possible to calculate its mass by looking at the [rotation curves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_rotation_curve) from sets of HI regions in the galaxy. This would make it clear that there's additional, unseen matter beyond the gas. Much of that would be chalked up to dark matter, but astronomers would see that the matter distribution was inconsistent with a typical dark matter halo. At some point, someone would propose a non-dark-matter dark component.
I don't know whether we'd ever stumble upon the truth -- it's just too wacky. We astronomers tend to be very cautious about making big claims. Since there's so much we don't know about the universe (and dark matter in particular), theories would probably spring up trying to explain how the rotation curves could be created using just dark matter. We're (mostly) modest enough to attribute weird phenomena to our lack of understanding of complex processes, rather than aliens.
But -- getting back to your actual question -- regardless of what explanation the astronomy community settled on, we'd definitely detect the galaxy. It would be one more mystery in a very mysterious universe.
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## Gravity.
Dyson spheres can’t hide that. Clear gravitational lensing would be observed at that weirdly dark spot.
Energy isn’t the only thing galaxies emit.
Why isn’t it just a blob of “dark matter?” Because unlike dark matter, stuff behind it is also black. The galaxy is made of opaque stuff.
# Not worrying about how long it takes:
It takes several observations spanning a long time during different points along our elliptic. Likely a few years would show us there’s a gravitational anomaly that isn’t dark matter. But the timeframe isn’t relevant.
# It’s a galaxy
because the mass can be measured by the lensing of candle points behind it (everything in the visible universe has something behind it).
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short answer for limited time. If this galaxy interposed itself between us and another galaxy it would create a gravitational lense. Obviously it would present as an anomaly since the measured mass would not match the observable mass, thus inviting closer scrutiny. How we could possibly determine it was a galaxy full of dyson spheres at intergalactic distances.... that would be the true puzzle.
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Mars has a gravitational binding energy of ~5x10^30 jouleS. If a bomb went off on mars that released that much energy, how much danger would the earth be in. Additionally, would debris striking earth be a major concern?
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The only danger for Earth from such an event would be related to bombardment caused by the fragments resulting from it.
However, how big would these fragments be? Well, if you are releasing that much energy in a single shot, I doubt you would be getting anything bigger than dust/pebbles.
Of them, there would be a small fraction on a direct trajectory toward Earth, another fraction which would end up hitting Earth after a few swings around the Sun and other planets and what I suspect would be the largest fraction which will never make it to Earth. Considering that even the parts hitting Earth would not get here in a single go, I don't think we should worry too much.
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## Life on Earth would be significantly disrupted, but might recover within a few hundred million years.
Assuming the mass of what used to be Mars is spread evenly over the interior of a sphere with the same radius as what used to be its orbit, Earth would sweep out a volume of debris with a mass of 3\*10^15 kg each year. **This represents a billionfold increase over the amount of space dust that currently lands per year.** Or, alternatively, it's three times the mass of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs - but landing as a continual sandblasting over a year, rather than one big hit.
By colliding with the atmosphere at Earth escape velocity, the Mars dust would heat it up somewhat; an average of **36 watts per square meter** over Earth's leading hemisphere, day and night, strongest at sunrise. This is quite a bit less than solar irradiance, which is 1380 W/m^2 when the sun is overhead, but would be noticeable and would increase global temperatures.
Depending on the distribution of particle sizes, quite a few would make it to the surface, causing damage to crops, buildings and vehicles, starting forest fires, and killing people and animals. Death by meteorite would go from a freak occurrence to an everyday event. Life at altitude would carry significant hazards, stratospheric flight would become intensely hazardous, and **spaceflight all but impossible**; no more satellites for communication or Earth sensing.
The amount of Mars dust landing - **6kg per square meter per year**, mainly composed of iron and nickel - would cause significant disruption to ecosystems. Worse, it would oxidize in the atmosphere, removing oxygen; this would not be noticeable at first, but within 1000 years vertebrate life would be in severe difficulty. One large unknown is the extent to which aerosols would form in the troposphere, and the resulting dimming and cooling effect; this could cause a "volcanic winter" style disruption to plant life, again similar to the K-T impact event.
As time went by, impact events would worsen significantly, initially from asteroids liberated from the asteroid belt by the absence of Mars's shepherding influence and by disruption caused by frictional braking from Mars dust, then later by asteroids accreted from Mars dust itself. More impactors would make it through to the Earth's surface, causing localized damage and global aerosol cooling. **Terrestrial life would be all but wiped out**, but life would continue in the oceans.
Eventually the skies would clear and life could move back onto the land... but it had better hurry, because in a billion years the Sun will become too bright for Earth to remain habitable.
[Answer]
Here is a link to a similar question about what would happen to Earth if Pluto exploded.
[Aliens blew up Pluto so we would stop debating whether or not to call it a planet, what happens to Earth?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/151398/aliens-blew-up-pluto-so-we-would-stop-debating-whether-or-not-to-call-it-a-plane)
In my answer I conclude that:
>
> So exactly how the aliens get rid of Pluto could determine whether nobody on Earth notices it for weeks or months at one extreme, or all life on Earth dies out within a few months on the other extreme.
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The mass of Mars is about 0.107 Earth masses, and the mass of Pluto is about 0.00218 Earth masses, so Mars has about 49.08 times the mass of Pluto. The average distance between Pluto and Earth is about 39.482 AU, while the average distnce between Mars and Earth is about 1.523 AU, so Pluto is about 25.923 times as far from Earth.
Thus when the cloud of expanding debris from Mars reaches Earth it should be about 25.923 cubed, or 17,420.306 times as dense as the debris cloud from an exploding Pluto, times 49.08 for the greater mass of Mars, for a total of 854,988.6188 times as dense as the debris cloud of Pluto.
But Mars sometimes is only 0.3727 AU from Earth, making Pluto about 105.935 times farther. So a Martian debris cloud expanded far enough for Earth to pass through it at the closest opposition of Mars would be (105.935 X 105.935 X 105.935 X 49.08), or 58,347,595.95 as dense as a Pluto debris cloud reaching Earth.
So if there is any possibility of a Pluto debris cloud harming Earth there would be a much greater probabiilty of a Mars debris cloud harming Earth.
There is an Endor Holocaust theory, claiming that the explosion of the second Death Star would probably wipe out all life on Endor in a relatively short time.
<https://www.businessinsider.com/endor-holocaust-star-wars-science-physics-2015-12#but-many-of-saxtons-various-measurements-are-open-to-interpretation-since-depictions-of-the-death-star-endor-and-other-details-are-inconsistent-from-one-scene-to-the-next-6>
And someone might also have a Yavin Holocaust Theory, speculating whether all life on the moon of Yavin would have been destroyed by the explosion of the first Death Star.
My answer at this thread:
<https://moviechat.org/tt0076759/Star-Wars/5c198ce4a1901237571cff72/How-Close-Was-The-Death-Star-To-the-Planets-It-Destroyed>
speculates about the distance between the Death Star and Yavin when it was about to fire on Yavin.
And maybe someone should think about a Death Star Holocaust Theory, calculating whether the first Death Star was too close to Alderaan and whether it would have been destroyed by the wreckage of its planetary victim.
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[Question]
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I have an original world, Hell, who I credit H. P. Lovecraft for the inspiration. I am not asking a question about any of Lovecraft's published worlds.
Inspired by *The Whisperer in Darkness* I have contrived [a Hell](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/224764/what-can-run-the-condensers-on-this-hell-train) where the aliens have taken their harvest of human brains from an outpost in our solar system, similar to Yuggoth. In Hell, these brains develop cities and infrastructure for the aliens’ enjoyment. For them to be useful, the brains need to live as long as possible. For them to be productive, they need to experience basic human needs, which can be leveraged. They are connected to automatons in a nearly immortal arrangement.
## The aliens
Aliens are in all respects properly described by the Mi-Go created by H. P. Lovecraft. They never interact with the automatons when they are active, it is impossible for the cameras of an automaton to see an alien, for the same reason the Mi-Go cannot be photographed. Humans have no knowledge of the aliens at all. The victims were harvested by random selection, being drugged and abducted by a global terrestrial cult. Aliens do not monitor Hell, but they get signals from the brain farm and the mausoleum. Aliens will only ever come to Hell for the following purposes:
1. To maintain the brain farm when an error is signaled, and for periodic maintenance on the vat system.
2. To replace a defective brain, or install a new crop (similar to The
Matrix without the bodies)
3. To configure a new automaton body when one no longer responds to its
brain (this is triggered when a brain goes into shock).
4. To insert a newly configured automaton into a casket (done from
behind the mausoleum, where any broken automaton that may be in the
casket is removed and recycled)
5. To appreciate the structures and industry the garden produces on the
planet, as a form of art.
Replacement: Should an automaton "die" for any reason, the system waits for the brain to go into shock, and then tranquilizes it. The community has been covertly trained through religious suggestion to bury their dead in a special "casket" which is left in a special "mausoleum." A new body is paired up with with the brain, and placed inside the coffin. This is inserted back into the climate controlled mausoleum, and the anesthesia is stopped.
## Automatons
Hell has an automated facility which manufactures remotely controlled humanoid automatons in a few different sizes. The construction uses synthetic muscles which approximate a human muscle, connected to a molded mineral skeleton and coated with a silicone skin. The automatons are slightly more durable than an actual human body however, neither the automatons nor their sensors will suffer mechanical damage from the environment in Hell over less than one day of exposure due to the materials used.
The automatons are fully wired with fourteen sensory devices including vision, hearing, olfactory, gustation (taste), touch, nociception (pain), equilibroception (balance), proprioception (body position awareness), thermoception (heat), hunger, thirst, expansion (stretching of lungs and blood vessels), blood quality (oxygen and hormone levels - simulated), and tensoception (muscle tension).
To motivate the brains to be industrious, the sensors are calibrated to earth. Signals of heat, hunger, touch and pain all come back to the brain in a jar. An automaton left outside would send fairly horrible sensory input to its brain. This compels the construction and maintenance of habitats, transportation, suits, and quality of life industry.
The automatons connect to their brains wirelessly, sending and receiving nervous commands and sensory signals with a very slight lag. The aliens have found that our brains readily adjust to this and it becomes imperceptible. An interface also superimposes augmented reality overlays onto the visual picture of automatons (which all have a special ultraviolet reflective coating for the purpose of chromatic keying). So people look like people, not robots.
Automatons generally have enough power for 3 days of normal human physical labor, as a reserve, but recharge wirelessly each night without the host knowing. The brain never knows what their "charge level is," it follows a fake "hunger routine" so the person needs to eat regular meals. Food is processed chemically similar to normal human digestion—a rudimentary system—which sends the signals of "full" or "hungery" or "toilet" to the brain-in-a-jar. Then the automaton can do its simulated business.
Automatons have bones that can break and muscles which can tear, and they feel stab and blunt wounds. This compels them to manage themselves in avoiding damage and dangerous situations.
The automatons can eat and drink but cannot be intoxicated or anesthetized, because “food” never interacts with the brain. Thus they do not perform or need surgery. They also have no organs to fail or suffer other ailments. A damaged person is generally destroyed as swiftly as possible to reduce suffering, but the resurrection is inevitable. For this reason, fear of injuries generally serves very well to prevent violence.
The people have learned that "no one dies in Hell" and generally, a team goes out to open up caskets eventually. If someone is particularly not liked, or the people who buried them are incapacitated, it is possible to simply be forgotten. Eventually, you will feel starvation and feel suffocation, but can not die until the automaton dies. The coffin is a wireless charger; the automaton can not die in a coffin. If a brain goes into shock in a coffin, the standard anesthesia is given, but no replacement is paired. The anesthesia simply stops any time the mausoleum door is opened for whatever reason. The automaton then may scream for help, or wait for shock again.
## Brains
Brains are kept in a completely sterile and climate controlled environment. The possibility for a virus or bacteria simply does not exist in their static and sealed enclosures. Blood is given nutrients and oxygen according to the feedback from the automaton and several glands which were harvested with the brain. Lymph, pituitary, and other glands operate in response to brain feedback, and produce hormones and proteins as signaled by the brain. Blood pressure responds to the brain's heart signals as well. Blood oxygen levels are a balance between the signal from the automaton and what is sustainable to the brain. The vat can not asphyxiate a brain, so an automaton outside in the 420°C nitrogen air would decrease its oxygen, and send the "burning lung" signal to the brain, as well as all related heat and acid sensory inputs, but the brain would not be starved. In short, the brain has all life support systems needed for physiological wellness, and full sensory inputs for psychological interaction with the world, and a belief that they have "some" control over their destiny. The vats also replicate glands periodically by stem cell regrowth, replacing glands every couple decades.
## Why Hell?
Hell is a earth-like planet which never evolved life. It has a toxic 420°C air mostly of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. There is no organic life save what the aliens brought, and the few structures they provided to start ages ago.
The purpose of Hell is simply to build infrastructure on this planet for use and enjoyment by the aliens who operate well in an environment like earth. Unlike human societies, these aliens have no plans or designs for Hell. It has been determined that control requires too much effort, so this is allowed to run as a wildflower garden, taking its own course. It is not intended for production so much as it is for a piece of art. The humans have complete autonomy and absolutely no supervision or direction. By their own will to survive, they create their own habitations, perform engineering and chemical and mining operations, establish villages connected by trains, and generally do everything possible to improve their own quality of life. They build greenhouses and gardens inside their enclosures, from seed provided some time before anyone remembers. There are several animal species for agriculture and pets that they can maintain. They tend to cooperate because death comes very slowly, and resurrection is something they fear worse than death. They are quite industrious with these motivations.
## The question
Would these brains is a jar suffer a possibility of death or shortened lifespan from the psychological trauma of living in Hell? This is where I diverge from Lovecraft's brains, mine are still mortal. I am attempting to gauge how long they may live under these hellish conditions.
## Close considerations
I respectfully ask that members who consider closing this question under [the unwritten third party rule](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7334/policy-clarification-asking-about-commercial-or-third-party-worlds/7336#7336) to [please chat with me first](https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/60666355#60666355) so I can hear your concerns, and make corrections. I have read the rules closely, and believe this respects all site policies.
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Stress can shorten a person's lifespan, but I believe the mechanism is not psychological: the body releases [chemicals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol#Health_effects) into the bloodstream. Since your brains' bloodstreams are not regulated by normal physiological mechanisms, whether this happens is up to you.
I think many of the harmful effects of cortisol take place in the rest of the body. One such effect is that the immune system is weakened, which is one reason why people are sometimes more likely to get sick or have skin breakouts when they are under stress (e.g. college students before a final exam). Again, whether this happens is up to you. However, you do mention that there are some other organic parts, such as muscles; if they receive cortisol when the controlling brain is stressed, they'll suffer similar kinds of effects.
I believe extended painful torture can drive a person insane. Even if that's false, it sounds like all of your brains will suffer from extreme PTSD, which can cause all kinds of dangerous and self-destructive behaviors.
I would not expect these brains to live very long if their containing apparatuses are giving faithful sensory feedback. Humans are not perfectly rational creatures even when they're not living under constant fear of excruciating pain. I would expect a lot of suicide attempts from practically every single brain, until each becomes convinced through multiple successes that death offers no escape. Then I would expect some kind of total psychological shutdown.
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It seems absurd that the aliens would calibrate the sensors for regular Earth if the purpose of this is to "develop cities and infrastructure." It will become immediately obvious that the brains are in crippling misery, and productivity will grind to a halt. The aliens will get much better results with carrots rather than sticks; given their total control over the brains' perceptions, carrots will be in unlimited supply.
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LATE EDIT: by chance, I happened to stumble across this "expert" testimony in [an episode of the TV show *Law & Order*](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0629250/?ref_=ttep_ep1):
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> **Expert**: There's a chemical reaction in the brain when you're under stress. We can see the abnormalities in a PET scan.
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> **Lawyer**: Can these abnormalities be serious?
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> **Expert**: Absolutely. Neurons stop transmitting, glucose stops metabolizing. Brain function of a severely distressed individual is indistinguishable from that of a person who is mentally ill.
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Take this with a grain of salt: (1) it's a TV show; and (2) the expert has a doctorate in "applied kinesiology," and did not go to medical school. According to the internet, "kinesiology studies the mechanics of human movement and how they impact our health and wellbeing."
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**SHORT ANSWER: YES**
It won't directly kill them, but it WILL end in them basically shutting down. To quote @Tom,
>
> I would not expect these brains to live very long if their containing apparatuses are giving faithful sensory feedback. Humans are not perfectly rational creatures even when they're not living under constant fear of excruciating pain. I would expect a lot of suicide attempts from practically every single brain, until each becomes convinced through multiple successes that death offers no escape. Then I would expect some kind of total psychological shutdown.
>
>
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They'd pretty much just stop working altogether, curl up into a ball, and do nothing. All productivity would stop dead.
Obviously, this is NOT ideal for the Mi-Go (that's just what I'm calling the aliens here). There are a few solutions to this:
**OPTION 1: REGULAR REPLACEMENTS**
The simplest solution is simply to get rid of the brains that shut down like that, regularly swapping them out for new workers. This includes the added benefit of additional motivation, as the Mi-Go could make this 'final death' of sorts even more terrifying than the resurrections.
**OPTION 2: MORE CARROT, LESS STICK**
Never underestimate the power of positive reinforcement. The Mi-Go could leave mysterious 'blueprints' for the brains to complete, and 'rewards' such as essential survival supplies and other things to 'help' the brains along when the blueprints are finished. Thus, the brains are encouraged to make the infrastructure the aliens want.
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## Counter point, none of the humans know they are being held by Aliens, so this is just the Sisyphean struggle on steroids.
Yes, things are hard. Yes things are crushingly hard. However humanity has survived and strived in even the most desperate circumstances. Furthermore, their enhanced bodies will carry the heavy load they have been given. The biggest risk to the survival of the colony will be morale, and while things will be bad, the chance for things to improve will be palpable. You describe people building regulated cities and trains. If they get to that level then it is possible to approximate some level of comfort, leading to no stress. Less stress leads to more productivity in engineers and leads to art, further reducing stress.
Since people don’t know what this place is, they might assume this is the afterlife or a test, and get to work. The things they build may not satisfy the aliens, but that isn’t the goal. The goal is just for people to build something. In addition, the survivors won’t need to worry about dead weight. The first invention that colonists will master will be the creation of sharp sticks. Anyone who doesn’t contribute gets stabbed until they leave or are inoperable. Even if they come back, the guards still have sticks.
While the aliens might not see massive protective structures, and instead see one very well guarded very comfortable shelter staffed by specialists and precisely no one else, that was a possible outcome that they should accept.
This means that while most of the workforce will die off, the survivors could live for a very long time in good conditions.
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## Stress won’t shorten lives, but it will shorten progress
Dictators thrive in high stress environments. Literally being in hell is a constant high stress environment. It won’t be long until someone promises freedom, death or order in the chaos. This is, as it always is, a self serving narcissist promise, mostly used to gather resources and distribute boons to those who reinforce their power. The problem is, lots of the enhancements needed to make the world better, tend to make the world more free, and harder to control. Therefore, the dictator will seek to keep the masses poor hungry and busy on manual tasks, which is exactly what the aliens have made easy. Because of this you may not see trains or climate controlled structures (outside of the royal palace of course). Instead you would see a very low level peasantry given the bare minimum resources to not revolt (which admittedly is more effort than it normally is). What you would see get a lot of attention are the secret police who find and exterminate “leeches” who work less than what is required, or dare to speak against the king of hell.
If the Migo give the humans a chance to thrive though, they will see great returns.
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[Question]
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So I’m tryna think of the most practical shape/design for a mobile medical robot. In my world [a high-tech space-faring society] they are used since a machine can withstand a lot more environments than a human can, and they are not susceptible to biological or chemical contamination.
Anyways, I’m not sure what the best design is, focusing on pure practicality [even if the outcome is super weird]. I know it would have to work with cases such as incompatible atmosphere exposure, vacuum exposure, unfamiliar xenobiolological or chemical contamination [including contaminants with psychological effects], and some pretty horrific injuries [there is a fair amount of unrest in this society]. Its function would basically be to both retrieve patients [bring to safety] and perform tasks capable of saving people [think CPR, emergency oxygen] as well as harmlessly neutralise people [firmly-but-gently restraining, administrating sedatives] in cases of heightened aggression or confusion. Note that it provides, in most cases, short-term and/or emergency treatment, only until a human med team can take the job instead.
It would need to cross terrain every now-and-again, but would also be kept in the confines of cramped, space-bound ships. So it’d need to be strong and have a wide range of abilities, but also compact enough to save space, either when it's not in use or when it's moving around inside of a ship.
For reference, the society is high tech but not *super* high tech [intelligent medical AI but only truly functioning their field of work, medicine has improved but injuries still happen and people still die, many old diseases have been eradicated but new ones have popped up].
By the way, if this is unclear please tell me what I can do to fix it, I’m super new to this site and still need to get the hang of it.
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If hover tech is available: a coffin shaped robot. Alternatively the hover tech can be replaced by 8 to 12 moving legs if legged vehicles are allowed (like Baymax suggested by Wasatchwind).
The "coffin" is normally open at the bottom since most medical emergencies are lying on the ground. The robot can land over a body and close it off from the environment. After judging the condition it is then in a perfect position to lift the body a fraction and shove its bottom beneath, then transport and simultaneously offer first aid to that person. In some cases outside the robot can dig into the ground beneath and lift the body with the ground its lying on should the body not easily be moved without further injury.
The coffin can change its shape and size to match the target (up to a limit ofcourse). It has two spines with lots of equipment and manipulators to perform surgeries and support. One spine is "above" the target, the other spine can move across the coffin to perform surgeries and support from the side or back.
The coffin itself can secure its internal environment, using UV lights and other materials for sterilization and having some small tanks with gas mixtures to save the body. In some cases the robot can cool down the body to slow its processes like bloodloss or brain decay until the body is repaired, along with heating elements to warm the body up for other tasks. The coffin would also have the ability to at least attempt to control the internal environment when the coffin cannot close completely, for example if a broken spine cannot be moved.
The robot can lift one end and even move vertically using its hover tech. If it is a legged vehicle it uses nimble legs (tentacle-like legs for example) to twist and turn through tight environments in order to reach the body and retrieve it (or keep it alive until the route can be cleared). These also allow it to move in any position, vertical, horizontal, sideways etc. This can be necessary for either the medical procedures or simple comfort during the trip to the nearest vehicle capable of transporting the coffin robot.
If the tech allows the coffin is flexible enough to be retracted and stored along the spine of the robot, giving it more leeway in getting to the victims.
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There are three big principles I see in the general design of medical robots - one is reliability. If you have a robot that carries drugs around a hospital, you don't want it breaking down too much. Thus, avoiding flashy new tech with it, but more tried and true stuff that will work consistently is of big importance when a medical robot might be involved in emergency situations.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DbzLo.jpg)
A second big principle I've seen in medical robots is, especially when they interact with patients more, they are made to look more approachable. When in the anxious situation of being in a hospital, especially after traumatic events, the last thing a patient needs to see is a creepy, utilitarian industrial robot.
Think Baymax:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uXuNG.jpg)
I think one last consideration is safety. These robots are going to be moving through environments filled with humans, are going to be doing things like performing surgery, etc. Thus they'd have rounded corners, ways to stop them quickly if something goes wrong, etc.
Last note - you might want to disconnect the duty of rescuing people unless supplies/time is scarce. There are a bunch of other different problems disaster relief robots work with - you might look at Boston Dynamic's Spot and its well honed AI to map its environment, it's excellent ability to balance on loose surfaces, and other abilities. Further improvements for disaster relief bots would likely focus on soft robotics, on getting through tight spaces like a collapsed building.
[Answer]
A very good question! Of course, this comes down to a lot of different things, but generally I would look at this from a practical standpoint for our framework, and then a psychological one to give it shape.
Looking at the requirements, we're going to need a bot that is durable and energy-efficient. We're looking at the intersection of lightweight and lifelong materials, pushing me personally towards titanium or aluminum. Some metals also possess self-sterilizing properties, including bronze and silver, and so they might be considerable choices as well despite their loss in integrity. Protective suits might be needed by robots for similar reasons as humans regarding the possibility of unfamiliar chemical or biological contaminations. You might want to consider multiple, small and dextrous digits for their hands, possibly having the ability to separate into more or less as needed for the task, for the purposes of delicate medical tasks such as surgery. As for vacuum exposure, they should be pretty much fine so long as most of their delicate internals are protected and they have something to hand onto. If anything, I'd be worried about them freezing up more than exploding like fleshy things do. Psychology shouldn't be a concern for the AI; if you're programming DocBot to enough of a degree that it can suffer legitimate psychological trauma then you have done too much. The robots should not be burdened with conciousness, at least not yet and not for these purposes. Restraining patients should be easy enough seeing that they have limbs and are made of metal, they should have enough weight and exert enough force to complete this task well enough. All-terrain should be relatively easy as well. If a human can go there, a humanoid robot should be able to as well. If not, using another tool to retrieve the patient is probably the best course of action. Compactness shouldn't be an issue either. So long as you keep it vaguely human-size, you could easily just shove your bot in a locker until someone needs it.
And now the psychological standpoint. Since these robots will be interfacing with a large variety of species and cultures, it will be difficult to pinpoint a most comfortig form for our caretaker. For humans, a sleek and sterile white design with few or no exposed parts and no human-like face is likely the best option to be the most comforting. But, for a species from the desert, the white may be slightly threatening in their culture as it could suggest the dangers of the desert and the daytime sun. Some species might be unable to see colors such as red, which may causing discomfort or possibly even pain upon attempting to do so. In this, it is likely the best choice to have the same general blueprint applied to several different series of unit, specialized for the care of different species. Regions with less wealth or less racial diversity may only have a few or one of these different specialized series, whereas more established medical facilities could have several of each on standby. Overall, though, robots are usually not considered very comforting and may find their future in medicine more oriented to being first responders to emergencies and/or surgeons, rather than providing the services of more long-term caretakers. This solution is also a lot more cost-effective, and it reduces the amount of traits and flexibility required of these robots; AI's usually don't take well to being given a lot of different roles to balance to begin with.
Hope this helps!! Best of luck with your robots regardless. And welcome to worldbuilding! ^^
[Answer]
## Spider Bot
If you're looking for something all-terrain, including zero gee, that folds up into a small space, I think you basically want a giant spider.
Multiple limbs allows you to grasp at several different locations, which is very useful for climbing, moving in zero gee, and traversing very rough terrain. If these limbs have manipulators, then having many lets you use a few for movement or stabilization, and use the rest for interacting with people or the environment.
## Packing Up
The central body of the spider bot could be relatively small - big enough for the power source, storage of supplies, fasteners to strap a person to it for transport, etc. If you fold the legs in, you could store a spider bot in a space not much bigger than the body.
## Human Interaction
A couple of answers have highlighted that medical bots should be "human friendly" in their design. I'm going to suggest that having a terrifying spider bot as a medic could really add to the world building of a world as hazardous as the one OP describes in the question.
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[Question]
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**Sword and knife fighting: overview**
* Dual fighting w/sword & dagger (military knife)
* Sword is used for range and additional strike power (swords are relatively larger and heavier and should therefore hit harder than daggers)
* Dagger is used for close-quarters (AKA up-close-and-personal) combat, as well as exploiting gaps in enemy defense (stabbing chinks in enemy armor).
**Pros:**
* More capable in close quarters than dual swords
* Better at penetrating armor than dual swords
* Can strike farther and harder than dual daggers
* Users should be able to adapt to dual-wield swords and daggers instead of *a* sword and *a* dagger on the fly (read: to adapt to changing combat situations)
* Swords and knives are commonly used, making it relatively easy to train large amounts of people to dual-wield them together
* Trainees could be taught to dual-wield throwing knives alongside a sword, enabling ranged attacks at the cost of lousy close-range weaponry (throwing knives are bad for stabbing and slashing things)
**Cons:**
* The sword will be a hindrance in tight quarters
* Daggers can only be used in close range, making them useless unless your opponent is practically on top of you
* Swords and daggers are disproportionate, which will likely offset one's balance when using a sword and dagger together
* Dual swords are better at dealing damage overall
* Daggers can't block, parry, or disarm opponents like a sword can
**Now, if training isn't an issue (dual wielding is usually unfeasible due to the vast amount of training required to effectively wield two weapons at once), and therefore one can wield a sword and dagger *simultaneously and effectively,* would dual-wielding a sword and dagger be an effective strategy in combat?**
**To clarify:**
I am asking about a soldier using a sword and dagger simultaneously and effectively, and whether being able to do so would actually be useful in a combat situation. The fact this combo exists as a [companion weapon set](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Companion_weapon) suggests it *would* be useful, but as I have no experience nor any real knowledge in this area, I would like further input on the viability of this strategy.
**The best answer** will account for the pros and cons here and explain whether or not sword-and-knife fighting will be actually useful in a combat situation. The best answer should also elaborate on *why* it will be useful, as well as *where* and *when* this strategy will be most and least useful.
[Answer]
Historically, this was fairly commonplace, if not necessarily popular. However, I think you may have a slightly… “romanticized” view of its usage, but let’s get down to it.
So, sword and dagger is actually a very effective form of combat and we see it multiple times in many different cultures, though not always in the same “format” if you will. When you dual wield any melee weapons, you generally use one hand for blocking, parrying, and feints, and the other for attacking. This isn’t a hard and fast rule but rather a useful generalization.
For instance, the samurai often were armed with a bow, spear, katana, wakizashi (short sword), and a tanto (knife), however they didn’t seem particularly found of dual wielding any of these weapons, though that doesn’t mean it was never done.
Closer to your example is something like a rapier or arming sword and a parrying dagger. Here’s the thing though, the dagger is mostly going to be useless for offense. Both historically and in my own experience as a martial artist, dual wielding is tricky at the best of times, and when the weapon in your off hand is substantially smaller than the rest of the weapons involved, you aren’t going to be attacking with it. Rather, the dagger is used for parrying, blocking, and otherwise deflecting and binding the opponent’s blade. This doesn’t mean the knife is useless in close quarters, far from it, but ideally you take care of your opponent long before things come to that.
To specifically address some of your concerns, actually one sword is better at almost everything than one dagger. It moves faster, hits harder and from further away. It can also defeat armor better via half swording or the “murder stroke” which is grabbing the blade and striking with the hilt, effectively making it a light hammer. Also half swording, which is grabbing the hilt with one hand and the blade with the other, makes the sword equally adept at close range combat as a dagger.
As far as training goes, dual wielding anything is not easy, and it’s not the same as just using a knife or just using a sword. Getting the flow and rhythm of two weapons is pretty difficult and takes very good coordination.
As for your cons we already addressed that swords still work well at close range.
* Daggers actually have a bigger range than you might think, though nothing even approaching a sword.
* Dual wielding a sword and dagger will have no affect on your balance, as swords aren’t that heavy and daggers are often pretty thick and sturdy. Even if there was a significant weight difference it still wouldn’t throw off your balance, humans are great at compensating for that sort of thing.
* Many swords are quite poor at dual wielding, the difference in damage output is pretty small.
* Daggers are great at parrying, in fact the most common arrangement of dual wielding in European history is the sword and parrying dagger.
So yes, this is very useful, but it works very differently than it is usually depicted in modern media.
Also, I would advise you to determine what kind of swords and daggers you are talking about, as well as what type of armor you are facing. If we’re talking about fully armored samurai or knights in full plate, you want a single, two handed weapon that you can put real power behind with a dagger as backup. Dual wielding in that situation will be almost useless.
Edit: I almost forgot, no common soldier would be dual wielding. Common soldiers almost always used spears, not swords. They are cheaper, easier to repair or replace, and it super easy to train someone to be proficient with a spear, much less so with a sword.
Edit #2: I did forget this part, don’t use throwing knives in warfare. Throwing your knife is almost universally a bad idea. Throwing knives are most useful as a distraction, as they are low mass and fairly low velocity. In addition, in a combat situation they have low accuracy, low penetration, and next to no stopping power. If you want throwing weapons, javelins, darts (big combat darts), and honestly rocks are much better options.
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> dual wielding is usually unfeasible due to the vast amount of training required to effectively wield two weapons at once
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This is absolutely not the case. Wielding a second weapon in your off-hand does require additional training and practise, but it does not impose some kind of weird ability-draining penalty that can only be overcome by superhuman effort... this is a game-balancing mechanic from the likes of D&D, and not an accurate observation of the real world.
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> I am asking about a soldier using a sword and dagger simultaneously and effectively, and whether being able to do so would actually be useful in a combat situation
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It is entirely possible to do so, and indeed it has been done in the past. Famously, Miyamoto Musashi was an advocate of the long-and-short sword style, and wrote about its pros and cons in his work, [The Book Of Five Rings](https://ia800209.us.archive.org/29/items/BookOfTheFiveRings/Book%20of%20the%20Five%20Rings.pdf) (PDF) which is worth a read if you've not come across it before... it isn't very long, and it should correct some of your misconceptions (so I won't doing a point-by-point nitpick here, this time!)
Here's the thing though, it is unusual not because it is extremely difficult, or expensive, but because in almost all combat situations using a shield is a much better thing to do with your off hand.
Shields are substantially more effective against missile fire (until someone brings along an arquebus, of course) and rather than just being a passive chunk of defense they can be used to bind the weapons of your opponent and make strikes, too. Anyone using a sword (or axe) and a shield *was* "dual wielding" already, but again, only the likes of D&D turn shields into purely passive bits of armour instead of tools and weapons in their own right.
But here's another thing... soldiers wielding swords was certainly a thing, but spears, pikes and halberds were even more often a thing (and remember that having a large weapon like this does not preclude the use of a shield! D&D isn't telling you the truth about this, either!).
On a battlefield, reach is very valuable, hence the popularity of pikes or spears (and even Miyamoto approved of them... samurai weren't just sword-wielders, after all) and obviously their horseback counterparts, lances. Against armour, warhammers are far better than mucking about with half-swording or trying to bash people with the handle of your sword.
Use what's appropriate. Consider what your opponents are using. Have a diverse army. A whole lot of sword-and-dagger peeps are going to fare *very* badly against an army using spears and crossbows, for example.
In a non-battlefield situation, especially if your opponents aren't going to be heavily armoured, sword-and-dagger is *much* more appealing, and quite effective. You haven't specified the job your soldiers are doing, so being more specific is impossible!
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It's not really suitable for melee warfare. It is and has been used for dueling though.
A shield is preferable for any sort of organised melee as it can block melee weapons and missiles and most melee situations start with ranged attacks. It would be extremely difficult to block an arrow or sling missile with your dagger.
Africans did throw daggers very effectively before melee, but they held several behind their shields and did that part of the fighting with spear and shield.
There are several major problems with dual wielding in this fashion. Which is why no one has done it historically.
1. You have no ranged defense.
2. You cannot stop a heavy weapon with a dagger. And organised melee infantry usually use heavy weapons.
3. You're a danger to the movements and safety of your comrades.
4. You could not be used in tight formations.
However it's a reasonable and common secondary weapon to have on you in case you lose your shield or need to poke someone through their eyeslit while you sit on them.
In terms of usage dual weapons are dangerous in single combat, but they're better if they're close to identical in weight. They give an advantage of being able to attack multiple sides and angles almost simultaneously like [this video of my boy training](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG-VSzah_FQ) and they improve the off hand dexterity. But they're also limiting in some respects (you don't want to tie you arms into a knot).
You can also attack multiple sides and angles with a single blade, like in [this vid of my other boy training](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es_JpH4I_jI).
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The problem is that the sword/dagger commonly used for *civilian* defense i.e. in cases where a one or more people end up in melee combat in a civilian setting or otherwise in duels.
In massed combat however the primary weapons of infantry soldiers were either some kind of pole arm if they were 'line infantry' or alternatively if they were missile troops crossbows, bows or arquebus etc. Those were their primary weapon and the one they were expected to do their fighting with. In both cases the idea is to maximize reach and prevent your enemy from getting close to you and both classes of weapons do this much better than swords or daggers.
Swords and daggers were the reserve or 'back up' weapon (like pistols are today for soldiers). And they were reserved for situations where a soldier had either lost their main weapon or couldn't deploy it. For example your line gets overrun or your engaged in a siege etc and have no choice but to fight in close quarters when defending or attacking a wall or street or God forbid a tunnel under the fortifications.
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Use your stronger arm to puncture, shortest blade goes in the strongest arm to take advantage of leverage and lesser weight.
Use the longest blade in your most dexterous arm, use it to open the enemy defenses then rush in and wrestle it to the ground, with the strongest arm stab the enemy wherever their vulnerable point is.
it go like this: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOgSOXSjthE>
The guy used the sword to open the enemy by forcing his arms up, then dropped the sword to grab him and throw him on the ground with enough force to make his armor burst off his body. The next step would have been to stab him to death multiple times.
Yes you grab someone while holding a blade, with a shorter blade its easier tough.
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As explored in my [last question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/200042/designing-invincible-armour), my sci-fi civilisation have figured to make a functional suit of armour out of invincible unobtainium. However, they find themselves facing another problem - a suit of unbreakable plates is little use if the enemy can just shoot through the visor or the sensor holes. How can I design a suit of unbreakable armour to best protect the non-unobtanium parts, as well as the decidedly not unbreakable human inside?
From the last question, unobtanium has the following properties:
* Unbreakable;
* Perfectly reflective;
* Completely Inflexible;
* Made through quantum space magic.
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### Shutters. And spares.
There are some other good answers, but we're talking about *invincibility* here, which is why, starting with my answer to the previous question, I'm feeling pessimistic.
Particularly, I'm feeling like your threat envelope may include such drastic measures as detonating a nuke (and I don't mean any puny "tactical" nukes, either) right in your soldier's face. In other words, protection against projectiles is great and all, but if being hit with a ship-killer laser results in a mission kill, we're not there yet.
So... I present to you, shutters and spares.
As other answers have already mentioned, your first line of defense is going to be making the holes by which your sensors (cameras?) "see" as small as possible. The next step is to design a system that allows you to slam a cover ("shutter") over the sensors as quickly as possible when you detect an attack with the potential to damage the sensor. If you can do this *before* the attack hits, even better, but since the attack you're mostly worried about involves large amounts of radiation, your first warning may be the sudden thermal spike as your sensor turns into disassociated ions. At that point, you're mostly engaged in damage control and hoping you don't get so much bleed-through that it fries the computers *inside* the suit.
That's where spares come into play. Hopefully you aren't facing an enemy that can dish out such attacks with impunity (or else you're probable hosed). Your design goal is for the user inside the armor to be able to replace the cameras when they get fried. (Tip: this may be *easier* if they tend to get vaporized.) Be sure to do this while the outside protective cover is *closed*. You'll still be blind, but it won't be an instant mission kill.
Oh, and since unobtanium is perfectly reflective, you could also employ retroreflectors surrounding the sensor apetures, as suggested by [DKNguyen](/users/70078) (thanks!). This won't do much against bombs, and an enemy firing from orbit might be able to get out of the way of the reflection in time, but it may cause any nearby attackers to think twice.
(Overkill? Maybe, but the OP did say *invincible*; my goal is *literally* something that can walk through a point blank nuclear blast and remain Combat Effective üòÅ.)
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Keeping the person safe is pretty straightforward, as you can pipe all of your sensor data into the armored suit through a rather small cable. Start with your impervious suit, slap as many sensors as you need on the outside, and then just run one cable through the armor - your armor is exactly protective as before, except for the fraction-of-an-inch hole through with the data is transmitted. You can put the hole in a less-accessible spot like the armpit or sole of the shoe, and the armor loses virtually no ability to protect its wearer. The data port is just one more joint in the armor that should be protected with overlapping plates or some other covering.
As for protecting the sensors themselves, that's a little trickier, since you can't cover them entirely with unobtanium, or else they won't be able to see anything. But since unobtanium is indestructible and inflexible even in thin filaments, you can cover your sensors in an unobtanium mesh, which will still allow them to see, but will not allow physical projectiles to reach the sensor. You can make the mesh as fine as needed to block arbitrarily small projectiles, with the tradeoff of limiting your view somewhat, although that can be mitigated by adding more sensors.
I can't think of any way to protect against electromagnetic spectrum weapons, as if the sensor has the ability to receive useful incoming EM radiation, it can also receive harmful incoming EM radiation. You'd need some very fast-acting mechanism to detect harmful radiation before it actually causes damage, which then closes a shutter over the sensor. Functionally, though, this still allows the enemy to temporarily blind the wearer, as the sensor will remain inoperable until it's moved back to safety (which might be difficult if all your sensors are blinded).
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Easy: a periscope.
That's how the soldiers in WWI were able to look over the trenches without having to poke their head out, where anybody with a rifle or a machine gun would have been more than happy to put some lead into it.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/r4JqK.jpg)
Even if the enemy aim at the periscope, it won't reach the bearer's head.
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# Don't turn your back on the enemy
Here is an M1 Abrams main battle tank.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jscuV.jpg)
Specifically, it's the front of an M1 Abrams main battle tank. You're looking at armor that can shrug off a massive amount of damage. What about the back?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dk2BI.jpg)
I still wouldn't recommend trying to attack an M1 from behind, but there's a lot less armor there. Weapons that would barely make a dent on the front could disable the tank from behind. As [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams) (the source of these images) puts it, "Similar to most other main battle tanks, the M1 Abrams feature composite armor only on the frontal aspect of the hull."
Why not put the giganto-armor all around the tank? Two reasons. For starters, it's just not practical to make the tank that much heavier. And secondly, tanks aren't supposed to turn their back on the enemy.
Soldiers in your superarmor could be trained to operate in squads of multiple people. Each suit's non-invincible weak spot could be located in a different place and each squad could work in a formation where they protect each other's ports. For example, a team of four could move in a box formation with each port on the inside of the box. And you could put all sensors outside of each suit, requiring only a small data port to receive information. No need for a visor if you can put a TV screen in each helmet powered by external cameras. You'd basically end up with a vulnerable area the size of an astronaut's umbilicus connection.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/F5hPA.jpg)
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## Transparent photochromic unobtainium
You are trying to solve a problem sci-fi writers haven't had much success with for many decades. But since you already have unobtainium, why not add a second, related kind of unobtainium specifically to protect sensors?
First, make it *transparent*. This isn't much of a stretch, there are some incredibly strong transparent materials in reality. Putting a transparent plate in front of your sensors will keep them safe from anything physical.
But since it's transparent, what about lasers? That's where the *photochromic* part comes in. You know the special glasses that get dark when you go outside into bright sun? The real thing takes a minute to get dark and most definitely won't protect against a laser, but if your transparent unobtainium can become opaque the instant any strong light hits and then quickly become clear again, your sensors are now safe.
This should be enough for the usual kinds of sensors - cameras are the obvious ones, but radars will work just fine as long as the special unobtainium is transparent to radar frequencies too. Other more specialised sensors for data such as sound, air composition, or barometric pressure may be more hampered by the armour though, and you may need to look for some exotic alternatives if you plan to include these in the suits.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Sci-Fi weapon that can kill people through armor, but doesn't damage starship hulls?](/questions/181567/sci-fi-weapon-that-can-kill-people-through-armor-but-doesnt-damage-starship-hu)
(24 answers)
Closed 3 years ago.
There are plenty of modern or slightly futuristic developments of the firearm that would avoid punching a hole in spaceships. The problem is that in doing so, all of them are much worse against body armor.
How could you design ammo that would punch through an enemy's body armor but not punch through the hull of a ship or space station?
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**Range-detonated munitions.**
The US military actually performed field testing of their ["XM25 CDTE"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM25_CDTE) which is an airburst grenade launcher with pre-programmable detonation distance. It was designed to target enemies that are hiding behind cover like walls or windows without resorting to the inexact and often infeasible ballistic arcs required by traditional grenade launchers, particularly in urban warfare settings. This is how it works:
1. An enemy is in cover in a building next to a window. The soldiers can't get a clear shot.
2. The soldier uses the XM25's laser rangefinder to determine the range to the window and then adds a meter two to the total
3. The XM25's ballistics computer calculates, reprograms the grenade, and when the soldier fires the grenade, the grenade counts rotations until it's reached the proper distance (eg 2 meters past the window)
4. The grenade explodes in an airburst, eliminating the target without hitting anything
Ultimately, the XM25 program was canceled for a variety of reasons but the technology would be perfectly plausible for a near-future setting. Your space firearms could operate something like this:
1. Wherever the user points their gun, a laser rangefinder determines the distance to the targeting point
2. When the gun is fired, the round detonates at the measured distance with an armor-piercing effect to negate body armor at short range (maybe similar to how a HEAT round might function)
This avoids overpenetration because even if the bullet hits an unarmored target, it still detonates all the same. Also, if the user were shooting down a long corridor, they could set their gun to disarm all projectiles that fly past the enemy or past a certain range leaving only inert rounds to strike any pressure vessel bulkheads. Unfortunately, even with such a system it would still be possible to purposefully shoot out walls, but I don't think there's anything you can do to prevent that.
In general, I'm struggling to think of a "realistic" space combat scenario where there are boarding actions and people have access to body armor and armor-piercing rounds but they don't have armored walls or they care about maintaining pressure. "Realistically" all the combatants would be wearing armored pressure suits anyways and loosing pressure in the ship/station would just be the price of close quarter combat.
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Assuming you need penetration and can’t rely on [blunt force trauma](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/181567/sci-fi-weapon-that-can-kill-people-through-armor-but-doesnt-damage-starship-hu/181579#181579).
**Spikes**
More specifically: flèchettes that carry a payload of sealant at the rear.
If the sealant is expanding and can be separated from the flechette just after impact then you have around that will happily penetrate armour and deliver a metal spike right into it’s squishy target. The same round will also go through the skin of a ship, but will instantly seal the hole it makes while the flechette sails into the void.
If you make the flechette heavier, longer and sharper you can penetrate heavier armour while still sealing the hole you leave.
Basically I’m proposing high tech space crossbows. Go figure.
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Explosive bullets.
No, seriously!
A spaceship hull will always be a multilayered construct, as a large part of its job is to keep those Meteor(tm)-brand hypervelocity bullets out there on the outside.
An explosive bullet that chews a neat 1-inch spherical hole in the inner layer of your hull will be an annoyance for the maintenance and repair crew.
The same 1-inch spherical hole in the enemy's body armor will **seriously** inconvenience him.
Note that the ammunition to be used relies on its explosive power, not on projectile velocity to do its damage. Also, so they can be used in both gravity and zero-g with equal success, you would want a self-propelled bullet, that fires with virtually zero recoil. Something like the [Gyrojet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet).
Conceivably, you could even make the projectile smart enough to only detonate on hitting an appropriate target. Although I have no idea how to fit enough brains into a small projectile like that, there are military minds that can think around corners like that. With projectiles like [Smart Bullets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_bullet), that somewhat aim themselves to a laser-lit target. If you can make them smart enough to aim, you can make them smart enough to not explode if the impact target is invalid.
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Unfortunately, there's not much that can be done to prevent a hull from being penetrated by a round that can also penetrate body armor.
## Slug throwers
Body armor is specifically designed to catch a bullet and slow it down over a distance, which is why the shot still leaves a bruise or broken bones (in some cases).
Even having a steel hull that's 3/4" thick steel isn't a guarantee that it's bullet proof. The .50 cal rounds in the video below aren't armor piercing, yet they very nearly penetrate the steel plate. That's a gigantic amount of mass to have in a spaceship and would take a massive amount of fuel to propel it, as well as try to get it to change direction for "evasive maneuvers". You need Star Trek level tech to make that happen, essentially greatly reducing the momentum caused by the mass and Newton's laws of motion.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dXvetFDX3A>
And a .50 cal handgun can easily penetrate multiple thinner steel car doors, with the glass and the interior still installed, but it's caught by a Kevlar vest. As this is done by a civilian, it's also not an armor piercing round, which is proven by it not going through the vest.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKpqfXnvFHk>
In the US Army Basic Training I had 23 years ago, we were shown the capabilities of a M16A2 armor piercing round before we were given the rifles to practice with. The relevant example here is that a steel ammo box was filled with water and shot. Neither the 2 sides of the box or the water significantly slowed down the 5.56mm round. For comparison, 5.56mm is a similar caliber to a .22 rifle, just with a much higher muzzle velocity and different shape. I wrote more about that [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/96503/what-kind-of-natural-armor-would-stop-bullets/96525#96525).
And yes, water can have an effect on bullets, just not the amount in an ammo can. And the higher the velocity the faster the bullet fragments in water, however this wasn't tested with armor piercing bullets.
<https://mythresults.com/episode34>
And if you want to see what a .50 cal armor piercing (AP) round will do, here's another video. Apparently this guy isn't in the US. This is still considered an easily carried weapon for the battlefield, so could easily be used on a ship during boarding. It's also the same caliber as the .50 Desert Eagle of the handgun in a video above, so well within the realm of battle use, but it won't have the same stopping power due to the shorter barrel.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsgwcDOGJQY>
## Alternatives
If you think changing the medium of the gun will make a difference, steel is more dense than body armor, so it wouldn't as easily be vaporized with a laser or plasma gun, but then you have surface finishes to deal with.
I wrote another [Answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/96890/in-a-future-where-lasers-are-the-weapon-of-choice-why-not-wear-mirrors/96905#96905) about lasers from my experience with laser cutters in non-professional manufacturing, and even included a [video](https://youtu.be/WkOQffTjsC8) I made testing my theories about lasers and anti-laser armor.
Some of that Answer would also apply to plasma, but you're still dealing with something that is considerably hotter than the melting temp of most materials, so would easily penetrate steel just like body armor. The reason why a [plasma cutter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qXja6MEsdE) or laser cutter works on steel is because it is so much hotter than the melting point that it instantly vaporizes the material in front of it, rather than heating the whole piece.
You might be able to get away with plasma or lasers, due to the body armor being relatively thin, but you'd still need thick hulls, which would still have literally tons of mass. If you go with aluminum, which is more reflective and lighter than steel and would help prevent laser holes, it wouldn't work against plasma or slugs.
## Force fields/shields
If you upgrade your hull with force fields, you might be onto something, but that would take a considerable amount of power, which might be better used to get away from your attacker. And that would probably have prevented your ship from an enemy breach, or at least boarding, anyway.
Also, if you have that level tech to be able to have it everywhere on the inside of your ship, you might be using it for body armor as well. There's this long standing race between armor and things to penetrate armor, with the piercing elements always getting the upper hand faster than the armor can change to protect it's wearer.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_armor>
I can't find any article that specifically says it ATM, but in the race between protecting the wearer and killing an enemy, killing the enemy always wins in the end. Nothing is bullet proof, only bullet resistant. Your force field is turned down low to preserve power, so it'll take a 9mm, but not a .45 cal. Or it's turned up to deal with a regular .50 cal, but an AP round goes through. Or it's turned up all the way, and now you can't return fire, because cycling between protection and firing takes too long. Not to mention that dropping your shield to fire your own weapon also allows projectiles in.
## Conclusion
There really isn't a practical way to prevent hull breaches from weapons that can pierce body armor. Unfortunately, there's just too many variables involved as well as too many forces to deal with to handle with anything, but magic or handwavium.
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An anti-tank rounds can kill a kevlar-wearing person much more easily than regular .45 rounds[citation needed]. Yet you would not you take a 17-pdr to a gun fight, unless you are either Deapool or Rambo. You take the f...... handgun, which would not tickle a ship's hull.
It's all about the right tool for the right job. Even the most [Rule of Cool](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool) dependent media such as Star Wars honors this, because it is such a given that picturing otherwise would be weird.
Design the ammmo in such a way that it delivers just enough energy to bring down an armored human target but not a polar bear, for example, and spaceships are safe by extension.
[You can see the energy output of many different weapons in wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_handgun_and_rifle_cartridges) A hunting rifle for large game might deliver 3,000 joules at point blank, whereas a .357 Magnum delivers 500 to 800 joules depending on the kind of ammo. You might need much more than that to pierce a hole on a ship.
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**It punches thru either one. With a very tiny hole.**
Your gun shoots very small very hard aerodynamic projectiles very fast. Maybe it is a railgun and it shoots osmium needles. These things do go right thru body armor. When they hit a body they produce a shock wave that turns things to jelly. Projectiles continue on out the far side, followed by some jelly in slow motion if it is that kind of fiction.
They also go thru the ships hull and leave a neat 2 mm hole. You can fire at something outside right thru the hull if you choose. Atmosphere can escape thru this hole. It makes a whistling noise. Not a whole lot of atmosphere escapes. Some jelly floating in zero G might get sucked out with a slurping noise, if it is that kind of fiction.
A piece of chewing gum can plug that hole, for the time being or longer as events warrant.
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Maybe instead of doing that just have the people getting invaded vent the ships oxygen and other stuff and just wear oxygen supplies so that 1 invaders can just kill them all by wearing oxygen supplies and blowing wholes in the hull and 2 so that they only need to worry about hitting the ships vital parts which maybe they can see with augmented reality so it doesn’t matter if the bullets can penetrate the walls or not. Also if the ship is carrying such little oxygen that venting it will dangerously lower supplies than the crew is already in big trouble.
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**Keep it Simple**
The only practical way without over engineering everything to a ridiculous degree or bringing 'unobtainium' into the mix is to make the walls of your station (and by walls I means the external hull, viewing ports & airlocks etc) from material that is harder or thicker than anything which can be practically be warn by a human being.
So to use a modern comparison; the maximum current rating for body armor in the US are Type 3 & 4 condition body armors. These are basically plates that will stop at least several high velocity rifle rounds before failing.) But to the best of my knowledge no-one makes conventional combat armor that provides full 360 degree level 4 protection. This is because it would simply be too heavy and cumbersome to wear for any length of time. Instead the highest levels of protection are limited to the vital organs and everything else is usually made of more flexible materials that offer lower levels of protection.
Even the current US military body armor, which does not offer that same level of *all round* protection has caused problems with something like 30% of all injuries in the field (don't quote me on that stat) being put down to strain caused by the weight of the equipment and armor soldiers are required to wear for long periods of time.
So make your exterior of the station out materials that *cumulatively* give you levels of protection comparable to '4 plus' and your good to go. And it doesn't have to be steel etc. For example a composite wall consisting of a thin outer metal hull lined internally with a layer of carbon fiber armor, then perhaps an thick layer of aerogel and finishing with a thin inner wall might do the trick.
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I need to know if this is possible, and if so, what kind of wing to use. I've thought of placing the wings on or behind the shoulders, and having hollow bones. The cat itself is no bigger then a pet cat because of weight. The cat is a hunter who needs to move fast. Songbirds and squirrels are prime targets, usually nothing bigger. I'm afraid to use insect wings since they could break in a fall. The cat also has flukes on it's tail for possible steering.
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From what I can see, there's a lot to unpack on what you're asking for. **"*best*" is subjective depending on the climate and environment**. Heat and dry weather would require a certain wing type over jungle wing-types.
A mammal with wings isn't common. Glider species, bats and flying squirrels are something to draw from for a more realistic approach. They do not have fluffy bird-wings but skin based wings, excellent for mammals. The wings would be hairless to prevent any air-drag from them.
This approach means changing your cat's way of mobility and physique; they cannot be ground to all-fours as our cats would be constantly. They's need to have the flexibility of their limbs as a Monkey would to allow vivid movements of wings.
If their wings are part of their front limbs, the configuration of their physique would start on how they'd take off; this means the wings need speed to work with; so this is more suited for a glide-type of flight; start of high and swoop in and out.
If the wings are an added limb, then you'd need to find a suitable place where it won't hinder the front or the back limbs. You're most likely looking at bat-like wings for the extra strength of support and to have more lift.
Putting the wings on the back would be difficult to manoeuvre normally, or at least how you'd expect a cat to move with by comparison to real-life cats; the wings themselves would need to be part of the bone structures and so the cat's size and shape would have to reflect on the space needed.
If it's on the sides, then the cat would need a supportive bone structure to house 'limb' that far down the spine. Strong enough to support the cat's weight and the wings have to be large enough for the weight but also able to be tucked away from the cat's other limbs, which could mean it could wrap around itself, huddle over it's back or perhaps tuck into fuzzy skin-pockets
Or, you could perhaps make this into a more hybrid-like species. Based off a cat but could have lemur-like attributes ( think of Avatar; Last Airbender's Flying Lemour; Momo) Physical body of a lemur but the head and tail of a cat.
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**No wings.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tneJD.jpg)
[source](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/463096774166953723/)
Or legs. They just add wind resistance.
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Consider the possibility of a cat possessing the wings of a modern multi-role combat jet aircraft, such as the [F/A-18 Hornet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Hornet) (shown here) in use by many nations.
A feline with the wings of a fighter aircraft has the distinct benefit of allowing for a wide range of armaments to be carried and used against its prey and any predators that might threaten it. For instance, pesky neighborhood dogs might be dispatched with a [Hydra 70 air-to-ground rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_70), while a mouse might be obtained for dinner by dropping a [Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Direct_Attack_Munition) on its burrow, or a bird breakfast acquired with a shot of an [AIM-9 Sidewider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder) air-to-air missile.
If space is an issue (after all, who wants a cat with an extraordinarily wide wingspan wreaking havoc inside your home), you should consider choosing a [folding wing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding_wing) configuration typical of naval aircraft for compact storage aboard aircraft carriers.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AurZI.png)
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If you're going with magic/handwavium, take inspiration from birds that prey on songbirds/squirrels. If it's going to be hunting in the woods, consider wings like an Accipiter hawk, for open areas a Buteo hawk, if it's a stealth hunter maybe owl-like wings.
If you want plausible biology, you'll be in a bit more of a pickle, not least because you need to add two limbs, which just doesn't work for a vertebrate. You would need to either sacrifice a pair of legs or go with a sugar-glider-like flap, which would allow gliding, but not powered flight. In the former case, you could look at bat wings for inspiration, but you'd probably basically end up with a predatory bat by the time you were done evolving it to work.
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>
> Songbirds and squirrels are prime targets, usually nothing bigger.
>
>
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When it comes to those animals, the three kinds of flyng predators that come to mind are:
* Owls
* Falcons
* Hawks
Owl wings would do for stealth, which goes well with cats. Falcon wings would do for speed and agility.
Hawk wings would also be fast and agile, but not as much as falcon wings, and would not be a compromise between speed and stealth, so the choice really boils down to owl or falcon. Since you also mentioned speed in the question, I think falcon wings are what you are looking for.
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**If you are going for plausibility,** bat wings would be the choice I would go with. There are other examples of flying mammals, such as sugar gliders and flying squirrels. However, as Wikipedia states, the only one that truly has *wings* is a bat.
>
> The only true winged mammals, bats, have wings in place of arms, as do birds, while species of gliding mammals like flying squirrels, have membranes of skin that stretch between the front and rear limbs.
> If the wings were hairless it would significantly reduce drag.
>
>
>
However, **if you were going for magic/science-fantasy,** I agree with [@The Square-Cube Law](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/21222/the-square-cube-law). Owl wings or falcon wings would be best considering the criteria.
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[Question]
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In the story I'm creating, a major weapon type of humanity will be Antimatter based weaponry. This is a fairly new technology, as antimatter production facilities have just reached the size and capacity to realistically produce the stuff in necessary quantities to use. I know that energy-density wise, antimatter is significantly better than anything humanity has produced up to this point, and as such would be more significantly powerful than thermonuclear weaponry. In the modern day, though it has been studied for use in weaponry by the US Air Force, antimatter is not used due to extreme production costs and low production amounts. Aside from production costs, what are the major downsides to using antimatter?
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**It is so hard to keep the matter out and the antimatter in.**
Antimatter makes wet dynamite look like Wonder bread. Stale Wonder bread. If you look at antimatter wrong it will blow up.
1. To contain antimatter you must meticulously keep away any particle of matter. This means the antimatter must be under total vacuum. I am not sure how one would generate a vacuum so completely void of gas molecules. Even one gas molecule in there that touches the antimatter would produce an explosion which would wreck your vacuum apparatus, and there would ensue a (much) bigger explosion.
2. Vacuums work by pumps that pump out any gas. Antimatter can be any element in theory but so far the antimatter produced has been antihydrogen and antihelium. If your antimatter sublimates off into the vacuum the least little bit, there will be floating molecules of antimatter in your vacuum. When the vacuum pump pumps out an antimatter molecule it will touch the pump innards. This will produce an explosion that will wreck your vacuum apparatus, etc, etc.
3. Even if you have a perfect God-level vacuum and totally unsublimatable antimatter, cosmic rays are cruising thru everything, all the time. Sometimes they go right on thru the matter here on earth. Occasionally they hit a molecule in the matter they encounter. Cosmic rays are made of matter. If one touches antimatter it will cause an explosion that will wreck your containment apparatus etc.
To contain antimatter you would need some sort of supervacuum - maybe something that electrically charged any nearby molecules and then repelled them by charge. This would work a lot better in deep space where there are fewer gas molecules to begin with. That would work for charged cosmic rays too. You would have to hold the antimatter in place using magnetic levitation or the same sort of charge trick as you use to exclude the gas, directed inward.
All that makes conventional explosives seem so convenient and friendly.
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When you're dealing with antimatter, there are 3 C's of challenges to overcome: cost, creation, and containment. The OP states that creating large quantities of antimatter is now feasible, and, I assume, cost-effective, so we'll treat the first and second challenges as solved. That leaves containment.
**Containing antimatter is very hard, but, I'd argue, not impossible.**
Picture a small solid block of antimatter, say anti-iron. Even 1 kg of the stuff would have a comparable yield to the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated$^1$. The best way to keep it contained is to magnetically levitate it (preferably above a high-temperature [superconductor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity#/media/File:Meissner_effect_p1390048.jpg)) in a perfect vacuum.
Let's first address the issues brought up by Willk in his earlier answer.
1. **Vacuum Quality:** No vacuum chamber is perfect, but even with today's technology, we can do well enough.
We can currently build massive vacuum chambers [capable of maintaining 130$\mu$Pa of pressure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Power_Facility#Thermal-Vacuum_Test_Chamber). I'll assume that tiny amount of gas left in the chamber is just air at room temperature (to simplify my calculations, I'll use 300 K and assume pure Nitrogen, with a mass of 28 AMU per particle). The important thing is the order of magnitude. If any energies we get out of this are closer to a campfire than a nuclear bomb, it's probably manageable.
How much energy is the chamber radiating from trace gas molecules colliding with the antimatter? Rearranging the ideal gas law, we get
$$
\frac{N}{V} = \frac{P}{k\_B T}
$$
$$
\implies D = \frac{P}{k\_B T} \times M = \frac{(130\times 10^{-6} Pa)}{k\_B (300 K)} \times (28 AMU)
$$
The total energy per cubic meter of the chamber, assuming all the gas is converted to energy, is the density $D$ times $c^2$: $\sim 131 MJ/m^3$. WolframAlpha says that's about as much energy as burning a gallon of gasoline. Admittedly most vacuum chambers built today wouldn't appreciate being set on fire, but this is the future we're talking about, and they're building this chamber specifically to hold antimatter. This is more campfire than nuke, so it's just an engineering problem.
2. **Vacuum Evaporation:** the antimatter (as well as the inner walls of the chamber) will boil slightly in the vacuum, also releasing energy via matter-antimatter annihilation. Is this a problem?
Again, the quantities of mass we're dealing with are too small to matter. Here's a plot of the pressures caused by various metals boiling into a vacuum:
As you can see, iron (Fe) experiences so little vacuum evaporation at 300 K that its pressure is literally off the chart (even after you convert from mmHg to $\mu$Pa). As long as you don't build the chamber walls out of something with a higher pressure like magnesium (Mg), you probably don't have to worry about this.
3. **Cosmic Rays:** Random protons flying through the universe will sometimes hit the antimatter core. Is this a problem?
No. Again, it's a matter of scale. According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray#Cosmic-ray_flux), the total flux is only about $10^4$ particles per second per square meter (assuming particles with less than 1 GeV of energy won't even make it through the atmosphere). That's far lower than the ambient pressure of the vacuum chamber, so it's negligible.
**So what *do* we have to worry about?**
1. **Losing Power:** If you want to use these bombs like nukes, you need to be prepared to store them for years at a time, primed and ready. Keeping a vacuum going continuously requires continuous energy, unlike nukes which can just sort of sit there. And you need to build extensive safeguards so that if the power goes out, you don't blow your own country up.
2. **Radiation:** As I said before, due to reactions with residual gas in the chamber, your antimatter bomb will be emitting as much energy as a campfire, more or less. This won't necessarily harm the device, but unfortunately it will very much harm anyone not behind a lead shield, as it's in the form of high-energy electrons, positrons, and gamma rays that will very easily pass through the chamber walls.
3. **Transport:** This thing makes me nervous just thinking about it. You need very clever engineering to keep this thing from blowing up if you jiggle it in the wrong way. If this is loaded onto a plane or a missile, you need to factor in changes in acceleration and program your magnets to compensate, or it'll bump into something mid-flight for sure.
4. **Flashlights:** I'm not kidding. Shining ordinary light on the antimatter will cause it to expel positrons due to the [photoelectric effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect). I calculated at some point long ago that even if the antimatter were otherwise perfectly contained but you shined a flashlight at it, the resulting gamma radiation could kill you in seconds. Your vacuum chamber probably isn't made of glass or anything, so it's probably not an issue. I just find it funny that antimatter is so volatile that you can literally die by looking at it the wrong way.
None of these things are disqualifying; an antimatter weapon is feasible with enough effort, funding, and ingenuity.
But honestly, is any of it worth it? I'd argue that that's the main reason why antimatter weapons aren't practical: **we don't need stronger weapons.** No two nuclear powers have ever gone to war, because nuclear bombs are terrifying enough.
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$^1$: I'm assuming that all the mass will eventually be converted to energy via good ol' $E = m c^2$. This isn't a safe assumption for nukes, since most of the fissile material gets launched by the explosion before it can release its mass energy. But, on Earth at least, antimatter doesn't have this problem. Once the antimatter gets out, it's going to keep interacting with the surrounding matter until it's all gone.
As user110866 points out, though, where exactly that energy will go is very complicated since there's no sustained chain reaction, so I can't say for sure how much of that will be converted to heat or a shock wave vs just heavily irradiating the surrounding area.
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Storage:
Antimatter cannot be stored easily or safely.
How do you contain it?
The risk to other matter such as equipment and personnel seems quite large. Larger than, say, using a thermonuclear device.
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Radiation hazards.
When a particle more complex than an electron annihilates with its antiparticle, the result is a mess of weird gluons whose ultimate child particles depends on what else they run into. Unless you're very careful to annihilate isolated particles, the way people do in physics experiments, you can end up with products like high-energy neutrons and gamma rays flying around. These are exactly the types of byproducts that irradiate the surroundings of a fission reaction and create radioactive fallout.
If you'd like to kill somebody without rendering the entire neighborhood a radiological hazard area, you should stick to lower-energy physics like conventional ballistics or explosives. Maybe a nice railgun.
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Things to be used as a weapon require that you have a dedicated "arming" mechanism. It's good if the arming mechanism is redundant to the normal node of activation. It's also good if the mechanism is passive. For production of weapons its good if you have passive precursors and store only a small quantity of the unstable stuff.
By definition in an armed conflict, the opponent will almost certainly try to damage your infrastructure (logistic, technical, administrative). Current methods of storing antimatter safely require continued power.
So in the current view these weapons would be something like nuclear weapons, just worse (at least nukes don't explode when storing them). You would not want to hand out "antimatter grenades" to you foot troops in the scale of 10000s. You would not want "antimatter bullets" in the millions - it would be a logistic nightmare during an armed conflict keeping these safe - landmines, non detonated bombs are already bad enough without having an implicit timer and gamma-radiation poisoning.
So now let's look at the "classical" usecases
* "super nukes" - as long you are not planning on blowing up planets, fusion bombs seem to work well for most applications
* "mini nukes" - no state level actor would proliferate such a techology. Use for states is unclear
* Explosive ammo - i could imagine that these make sense in very limited setting these make sense, but its a borderline case.
The only usecase (beside planet destruction) which i could assume is realistic is "controllable radiation mines". You design the containment in a leaky way that you get a significant amount of gamma radiation and you control the containment in a way that it is linear instead of exponential decay. So you set the load and the timer, and after a few hours it\s safe (if nothing was strongly activated to enter the area), but before that there is a deadly gamma radiation (before that the enemy has the option of destroying the containment - explosion + strong radiation pulse) or shielding it. make many small ones of these and combine it with stealth you can switch on and off the irradiation of the enemy controlled areas at bad times for them.
[Answer]
As others have pointed out, Antimatter is difficult to both produce and contain.
The most well known property of antimatter is that, for each matter particle, there exists an oppositely charged but otherwise identical "anti" particle. The complete picture is a little more complicated as other quantum properties are also reversed. For instance, anti-neutrons are electrically neutral, just like neutrons, but they have opposite Isospin and thus strongly interact like a proton. Thus it is impossible to trap antimatter in the form of a proton-antineutron, or pesudo-deuteron, nucleus.
The most difficult part of production is that antimatter is only created via very high energy photon-matter scattering. The exception to this is positron emission which is very rare. Thus the production of antimatter would require very large machines (particle accelerators) which would consume much more energy then they would produce.
The only anti-particles which can be captured are the charged ones since these can be contained within magnetic fields. Unfortunately grouping large amounts of charged particles creates an electrostatic imbalance, since magnetic fields need to be much stronger than the electric fields they contain, a small amount of charged antimatter requires disproportionately large, yet very precise, magnetic containment which is also very energetically unfavorable.
**Aside from production costs, what are the major downsides to using antimatter?**
Assuming you were able to over-come these obvious issues, there are some more subtitle ones which would need to be taken into account to use antimatter. @Cadence mentioned the important issue of the products of pair annihilation. To elaborate, pair-annihilation produces very high energy photons, which have the tendency to scatter and are liable to form pair production if anti-nucleons were annihilated. Thus it is very difficult to get a controlled amount of energy out of the interaction and thus it really would be difficult to use it for propulsion.
Using it as a weapon would pose similar problems. It is not a simple matter of computing the rest mass of the antimatter (times 2) to calculate the total energy transferred upon detonation since the high energy radiation will scatter.
The type of antimatter will be important, for example if only low KE positrons-electrons are used, the resultant energy will be too low energy to pair-produce upon scattering and the photons will propagate out in all directions. The reason that nuclear weapons are so incredibly destructive is because of their creation of sustained nuclear reactions; producing chains of highly exothermic reactions and thus enormous explosions. Antimatter annihilation would need to be calibrated to the right energy scale to produce similar chain reactions. Photon penetration tends to be very deep below pair-production thresholds, but this will decrease the tendency to produce sustaining reactions.
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[Question]
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The setting and technology level is late Medieval to early Renaissance. I have a character who possess the ability to create and manipulate flames, however, the power comes with a single drawback - notably, said character requires *fuel* in order to sustain the flames for any given length of time. Once created and sustained, he also possesses minor pyrokinetic abilities, i.e. he can direct the flames in ways that he wants, although it's not to the point of creating massive walls of fire or anything of that nature.
Given these limitations, I decided that the best weapon for such a character would be an oil-throwing gun. As in, kind of like a water gun, except instead of shooting out a thin jet of water, it fires a thin jet of oil, whereupon said character lights the oil on fire and uses his pyrokinesis to assist the now-firebolt into flying further.
Specifics:
* Must be something consistent with the tech level - both materials, and techniques involved in the creation of said weapon.
* Nothing explosive involved, i.e. gunpowder - the idea is to make this only dangerous in the hands of a trained professional with magical powers. I don't know how you'd involve gunpowder, but I'm just covering all my bases.
* Oil isn't the required liquid to be fired from the chamber, however given that it's easy to acquire in bulk (well, relatively easy) and the fact that it's highly combustible when released in a spray, it seemed like an ideal choice. If you have a better liquid, go ahead and use it.
* Given that the character wielding the crossbow has pyrokinetic power, range isn't much of an issue - I don't need it able to shoot the jet of oil a hundred feet, but it should be able to at least do ten. Furthermore, the amount of oil isn't important either, because magic can make it burn hotter than it should, though, again, the more oil the better.
* For purely external reasons, and not because I expect it to be practical, some part of the mechanism must involve the crossbow's arms, additionally, it must look like a standard crossbow. It doesn't matter how, just that it does. (The Watsonian explanation is that it's so it can be disguised as a normal crossbow.)
Lastly, the more technical, the better! If you can give me an estimate of range or even give me diagram of how it might work, that would be appreciated.
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You take a standard crossbow, and replace the standard bolt with something resembling an over-sized (about the size of your forearm) hypodermic syringe filled with oil. I'm going to lay some real bad MS paint artwork on you right now:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZSnj5.png)
(1.) is your external iron casing, manufactured by a blacksmith by hammering a length of iron pipe around a mandrel to form the conical end. (2.) is the flammable oil filling, while (3.) is a wooden plug stuck in the end of your iron casing and sealed with wax to prevent leaks (though it will leak eventually). (4.) is the piston. When the crossbow strikes the back of the piston the pressure in the casing will pop the wooden plug out of the other end with the oil shooting out right behind it.
Energy transfer from just the string to the piston may be inadequate from a dynamic systems perspective, so you may want some sort of mass attached to the crossbow string to get enough follow through to get all the oil out of there (adjust the diameter and length of the casing, and diameter of the nozzle as needed to get the performance you want). You'll never get the metal piston and casing to seal by themselves with the technology of the time, so (5.) is a circular leather gasket that fills up the gaps. Seal the back of the piston with wax as well to prevent leaks. Don't drop the flaming candle on it in the process.
This whole assembly will need to be securely latched to the crossbow to prevent it from flying off when you get down to business, preferably with a quick release so you're not limited exclusively to New York reloads. EDIT: A latch isn't necessary (good in the time before replaceable parts). You just need a flange at the front of the cross with a hole big enough for the nozzle fit through and a socket that the casing fits in. You'd place the oil syringe in like a normal bolt, but when the string strikes the back of the plunger the flange at the front would keep the thing from flying off. Easy reloads with little additional fabrication.
All the above can be fabricated with basic metal and leather working technology, and certainly by any society capable of fabricating a crossbow. The materials would likewise be widespread. From an engineering perspective you're taking something that is known to work (syringe) and ripping it off to make something slightly different; it's a good way to know you're on the right track. Range will be similar to a super soaker, and will depend on the combination of the power of the crossbow, the diameter of the casing, and the diameter of the nozzle. Total oil delivery/time of burst will depend on the same variables, with length of casing and the force profile of the crossbow stroke as additional factors.
Voila, an early Renaissance crossbow that squirts oil.
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Okay... so you say in your question that you want "an oil-throwing gun; as in, kind of like a water gun, except instead of shooting out a thin jet of water, it fires a thin jet of oil", and you have *not* adequately explained how you think this can be reconciled with "a crossbow".
So I'm going to ignore the whole "crossbow" thing.
You already answered your question. You want a squirt gun. So long as we're talking about a "refined" oil (e.g. something you might use in an oil lamp) and not crude petroleum or tar, a squirt gun will work just fine. With sufficient pressure, you can get pretty good range (consider a garden hose, or for that matter, real flamethrowers; the kind that shoot napalm, not modified torches). So the only question is whether you can build such a device with medieval technology.
That's a fair question, but offhand it feels plausible. If you can build a one-way valve, you should be able to build a piston-type air pump. If you have even halfway decent metalworking, you should be able to build a pressure chamber.
However... there might be a better way. Basically, you want to build a 'gun' with a liquid bullet. What you do is take a fuel tank that contains some air or another oxidizer and start a fire *inside* the fuel tank. Provide a suitable nozzle so that the expanding gas from the fire forces out the remaining fuel, which you then *also* light on fire and steer toward your target. Design the tank so that it is quickly replaceable/refillable... although, if the nozzle is part of the tank, you may have a serviceable single-use weapon. (Another option might be to have a separate combustion tank connected to a larger "ammunition" tank with a valve.)
Essentially, you are making a [bottle rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_rocket), but with oil instead of water, using combustion to generate pressure rather, and you want the "rocket" to be stationary so you can use its "exhaust" as a weapon (a la the Kzinti Lesson üòâ).
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In a comment, you mentioned: "Ideally, the crossbow firing mechanism should help fire the oil somewhat". Perhaps instead of a pressure chamber, you pull a little oil into a smaller tank from a larger "ammunition" tank (through a one-way valve), then use a bowstring connected to the piston to force the oil out (basically, the piston replaces the crossbow's quarrel).
This still isn't a "crossbow", exactly, but it at least incorporates the mechanism from one and does not need a pressure tank (although the "barrel" still needs to be able to withstand *some* pressure). However... I'm not sure this is actually practical. Bowstrings and similar mechanisms are designed to deliver force *quickly*. Driving your piston does need some force behind it, but unless you're okay with your oil jet having an *extremely* short duration, it needs to *sustain* this force for a longer period of time. I'm not sure that a bowstring will a) behave in a satisfactory manner for this purpose, or b) have any advantage over a piston that you pump with your arm, directly. It will also take longer to reload compared to just using your arm.
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For either version, you might want some kind of valve before the nozzle that stays shut under low pressure but opens under higher pressure, so the weapon doesn't just leak out the oil when it isn't being fired. If you're very careful about how you carry it, you might be able to get away with just a tube between the 'ready' oil reservoir and the nozzle with an air-gap between the outlet of the reservoir and the nozzle that will be higher than the oil level in typical carry positions. Note that, if your piston is at the back, this probably means a tube that runs from the front of the weapon to the back, then forward again, as in this (piston not shown):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3XDYB.png)
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Take a conventional crossbow and fire darts with the head consisting of a small sealed pot filled with combustible.
Fire the dart at the target and once it crashes of impact spreading the combustible around, set it on fire with the pirokinesis ability.
Range will be roughly the same of a normal crossbow, construction idem, you just need to modify the dart head.
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# Sabot-discarding crossbow
There were many different kinds of crossbow during the time period in question. You could definitely use a crossbow style of weapon to launch liquid downrange. If you want to do so with a sense of style, you could use a container that's designed to split in half when fired. This is called a sabot, and below is a high-speed picture of a modern sabot-discarding round.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/h8CZh.gif)
Sabots are not normally used for liquids, but normal armies don't have magical powers. Your crossbow would fling the round a short distance downrange and scatter the oil into a cloud. Then your hero would ignite it and guide the flaming oil using his power. This would give your hero a reason to use a normal crossbow.
(Sidenote: When researching this answer, I was surprised to find a 1990 patent for a [sabot-discarding archery arrow](https://patents.google.com/patent/US4958617A/en). The nineties were a weird time.)
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No Problem:
Flamethrowers were invented [numerous times in the ancient world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons), by numerous cultures. Adapt any of these to your uses:
* [Greek fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire)
* [Chinese flamethrower](https://ojhsancient2.weebly.com/chinese-flamethrower.html)
* [Fire spurting lances](https://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/miltech/firearms.htm) are small enough to mimic a crossbow or be built into the frame of a crossbow.
* [Blunt bolts or incendiaries](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvo6xkr2quU) are naturally an option.
* [Some crossbows (especially for small game) fired sling pellets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOxPmEqM7vw), and these could be easily adapted for larger projectiles. Or you could use [bullet-shooting crossbows](
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet-shooting_crossbow>) or [musket-ball shooting crossbow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fllqaJax88).
* For oil, a kind of sling would also work very well to lob a simple bottle at enemies instead of musket balls.
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**Firebreathing.**
[FireBreathing-Corn Starch, Sugar, Flour, Milk Pwdr (Which is Best?)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAHc1_yWvTM)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jrpdj.jpg)
Crossbow schmossbow! Your character is a Firebreather! There are many videos on fire breathing; the linked uses various yummy powders. There is much precedent for firebreathing and once clouds of flame are rolling, your pyro can scoot them around for fun and profit.
yes, yes, the OP says crossbow. Somehow a crossbow must be involved. Your character protests he has been blowing fireballs since he was 9 but rules are rules.
I here assert that a fireplace bellows is a glorified crossbow, and seems a safer mechanism for blowing fireballs because you don't need to worry about inhaling a bunch of powder. Also, you can save your powdered milk for cereal eating and use **powdered charcoal** as your fuel. Your crossbow bellows routes its flow thru a forward reservoir containing charcoal powder, entraining powder as each puff leaves the bellows. Ordinary folks would have a flame source up front but your character does not need that. He can work his crossbow vigorously, puffing a good cloud of flame each time!
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[Question]
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The Ice Mages of a world I'm crafting can create constructs made from ice. Now, a master Ice Mage might be able to do fun things with his construct like project them in showers of ice shards, but learning to do that takes time, effort, and skill. It's unlikely a small village would have someone who can do that. On the flip side, just learning to create a construct made of ice is very easy - anyone can pick it up in a few months of minimal training, and thus everyone in a small village could feasibly be taught it. Here are the rules of the constructs:
* Water cannot be created by ice magic. When creating the construct
from water, you can shape it into whatever shape you want, but the
water must come from somewhere. Typically ice mages will have a canteen of
water (or several) on them at all times.
* The ice weapon will not melt in the slightest until it is exposed to
temperatures exceeding 212 degrees Farenheit (100 degrees Celsius). This is because of magic. If
you create an edge from the ice, you will not need to worry about it
being blunted by melting under most normal circumstances.
* Exotic types of ice (basically, Ice-2 and above) are *not allowed*.
These are typically created using pressure and thus are outside the
range of the Ice Mage's ability. Ice-1 is the only type of ice allowed.
(Though you are allowed to assume 100% purity of water.)
* You must be in physical contact with the water to turn it into ice. You can
also add more water onto a broken ice weapon to repair it / reforge it / add
to it, but you cannot melt the ice at will and reform it. If the Ice Mage
withdraws the magic, it functions like normal ice.
* Assume that water is plentiful, but not unlimited. Also, obviously, carrying
too much water would be a problem as that would weigh the Ice Mage down.
Now, the Ice Mages of this world have a problem - they're constantly attacked by the barbarian tribes. And, the barbarian tribes being true and proper barbarians, they go into battle with no armor on, and using crude stone weapons. Now, the Ice Mages may be more advanced in terms of intelligence, but they don't really have weapons either, and the best armor they have is cloth armor. They do have their Ice Mage magic, though. So the question is, **given these rules for constructing ice weapons, what's the best way to establish an army to fight against armorless barbarians wielding stone weapons?**
If you try traditional weapons (i.e. swords), you run into weight distribution issues. If you try massed lances, then you run into structural issues (as lances can run on the long side). And should you opt to just create giant spike walls of ice, that requires a gargantuan amount of water, which the barbarians could just run around. Thoughts?
[Answer]
Ice caltrops. By itself, it won't be enough to stop all attacks, but it's an economical use of water that is easy to conceal and can seriously snarl a horde of barbarians running over it. Which would buy your ice mages time to escape. And it can be planted in advance.
Magic non-melting ice would also make a convenient all-purpose construction glue. Need to build a wall quickly? Just grab whatever rocks, logs, etc. from the forest as filler, then pour some water over it and freeze it together. Your mages could probably assemble an impressive defensive fort overnight if necessary.
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When wrestling with magical items interacting with non-magical items, it can always get a bit messy.
A "real" ice sword break after a single swing, and might cause some lacerations but won't cleave foes in two. If we can magically increase the sharpness and strength of the weapons then maybe, but those are nobs you could tweak to become really over powered.
Rather than inflicting wounds from cutting or stabbing, blunt trauma seems to be where ice weapons could really excel.
However, your mages probably aren't going to be as beefy as the barbarians, so we can assume they wouldn't be very deft with a 20lb+ ice mace (which would still probably break after a single hit).
The real vocation your ice mages will excel in is in crafting projectiles. Ice arrows would be pretty terrifying and effective against unarmored enemies. Your mages could also create perfectly smooth projectiles for a sling.
Fastening those two objects out of rock takes a lot of time and effort, and your mages could basically mass produce them.
A major advantage of using magic is for the "Shock and Awe" factor. Seeing a line of wimps in robes start pulling ice javelins from a puddle and hurling them at you would be pretty intimidating.
Something to consider with the ranged weapons is that they all take a decent amount of training to be proficient with, but at least you could keep the barbarian hordes at bay (as long as your water supply holds out).
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First step: invent Pykrete. Lace the ice to be with fibers or fabric zo reduce shattering and increase the overall structural strength.
Now your mages can armor up. A kind of plate/scale armor backed by gamerson should increase your survival rate.
On the offensive side a variant of the Macuahuitl might be viable.
Sharp slivers of stone, teeth or glas firmly seated in a backing of reinforced ice. This would combine reasonable blunt force trauma with the lacerations caused by multiple edges. Akin to the effect a saw has compared to a knifes edge. The latter induces profund bleeding, especially if you optimize the number, size and placement of the saw teeth to the average anatomy of your opponent. The weapon will degrade relatively fast, but melting it down and rebuilding it should be possible between battles. In a pinch one could add ice spikes and sharp shards at short notice.
Construct spear- or arrowheads in a similar way. Sharp, pointy breakaway parts would remain in nonletal wounds. If they heal over without proper removal of the foreign object your opponent will be permanently hampered.
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Move to an island.
If ice mages can turn water into ice, crossing a body of water to reach them will be an absolute nightmare for any enemies that have not invented flight.
If they use boats, you can freeze the water around those boats, or create spikes to make holes in them, or crush them in expanding ice chunks. Once they are forced to swim, you can easily tear them apart by strategically creating ice spikes.
Plus, all of that water can be used to create limitless projectiles or defensive structures.
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You could use the water to create an wall of ice. It would be really hard to climb it, and you can repair it magically by adding more ice. If water is enough (any natural river or water well would suffice), this would be feasible, and that wouldn't require that much water, depending on the size of the wall.
If you want something more offensive, you could set up traps with ice, like holes with ice spikes in the bottom, or if the barbarians aren't aware of the magic properties of the ice, you could make water ponds around the village and freeze the barbarians on the spot (one mage should be disguised and close to be able to touch the water).
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Since you're outclassed physically, your weapons should be those of protection and guile, as you will never win in a fair fight.
* Cloth armor can be soaked, Voila! Ice armor
* covered, small ponds with water, barbarians fall in, you freeze the surface thus trapping them, and killing them at your leisure.
* Tanks of water with very small openings, shooting streams of water out at high pressure and velocity at intervals. mage touches the stream, ice javelins hurl at the enemies.
* Low ice walls for them to jump over, right into pits on the other side.. filled with ice spears.
* Ice bolts for crossbows.
* Ice rocks for slings/slingshots.
* Force them to cross Ice bridges to avoid the water, make sure you use ice-planks to construct them, with a means to melt them quickly if needed... something to direct jets of steam at the barbarians as they are crossing to scald them, and melt the ice planks would work well.
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Seeing you are talking about walls ans spikes i am assuming ti's mainly a defensive war.
So i would opt for booby traps like the following:
Large pools of shallow water, when the barbarians mass on them (like a camp) freeze it while they are in it.
If Freezing takes to long to effectively use it on the fly dig holes with ice spikes on the floor and cover the hole with a layer of ice strong enough to hold for a limited time...as the army would charge at you the structural integrity of the ice would diminish and maybe barbarian number 3 or 4 who steps on the ice will crack through it and get impaled. this would
* Kill several of them.
* Bring fear to the enemy seeing they just lost soldiers to seemingly nothing.
* Create a rift between the enemies front and back, and split up they would be easier to deal with.
Maybe cartoonish...but ice is slippery, take a chess board(30cm by 30 cm tiles), now replace the white fields with slippery ice and the black fields with small sharp pointy ice spikes...when the barbarians charge they will shift from white space to white space. Such movement is not that stable as just running in a straight line causing them to slip even faster. they will slip and with some luck land on a black space (ice spikes) and have some impaling issues.
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IF the people being attacked are near a forest I think they could set something up like a spiders web between tree but have the ice be as sharp as possible. So essentially the barbarians have to run through a wall of tiny crystaline knives. Even if the barbs break the tiny pieces of ice they are still sharp and now all over the ground.
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Specific situation question: I have a ship with a 'whipple' shield consisting of 5cm of titanium (or a material similar to it) spaced about 50 meters away from the main hull (which is itself pretty durable, with a much lighter whipple shield to protect from sand-grain size impacts), and that shield gets struck by a tungsten projectile massing about 250kg with a velocity of about 60 km/s. At that speed, it has kinetic energy about equal to 100 tons of TNT. Let's assume the tungsten projectile is about ten times as long as it is wide, which would make it 'about' 10 cm in diameter and about a meter long.
Would the main shield have enough mass and thickness to vaporize the projectile completely, allowing for the secondary shield to handle the debris, or would the impact only destroy the front part of the projectile, allowing the remainder to go on through to the ship?
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To pull up an old but useful formula derived from work on shaped charge jets penetrating tank armour: $$P = L\sqrt{\frac{\rho\_j}{\rho\_t}}$$
$P$ is the penetration depth, $L$ is the length of the penetrator, $\rho\_j$ and $\rho\_t$ are the densities of the penetrator and target respectively. Note that this is different from the classic Newtonian penetrator model, because in this case the penetrator is travelling so fast that impact forces will easily overcome any intermolecular bonds and so both the penetrator and armour can be treated as fluids.
Anyway. If you want to stop a metre long projectile made of tungsten, one way to do this would be to have a plate (or multiple plates) of tungsten armour with a total thickness of a little over a metres, then some spacing, then some additional shielding to mop up the high-velocity fragments. If you want less dense armour, such as aluminium, you'll need to increase your armour thickness by $\sqrt{19.25/2.7}$ or 2.6 times. Your 5cm of titanium (twice as dense as aluminium, but far below tungsten) will knock off the front 25mm of the projectile, and all the rest will pass through.
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**Addendum**
Having read a little more into this, it seems that there has been *some* thought about the explosive effect of the energy released in this sort of collision. The impact *will* produce a certain amount of sideways-splattering of the impactor, and a certain amount of damage *will* propagate up the impactor too. What I've found seems very handwavey, so take this with a small pinch of salt.
We can approximate the volume of the crater carved out by an impact as $V\_c = E\_p/S\_c$ where $E\_p$ is the kinetic energy of the projectile and $S\_c$ is the cratering strength of the material involved, handwaved to be three times its yield strength. The yield strength of tungsten is 750MPa, so its cratering strength is defined as 2.25GJ/m3. We can imagine your rod to be stationary, with a 10cm wide, 5cm deep cylindrical projectile of titanium striking it. That much titanium weighs 1.77kg, and has a kinetic energy of about 3.2GJ. This gives us a crater volume of about 1.47m3 and assuming this is basically spherical, a crater radius of about 34cm. That's quite a bit more than the 2.5cm the hydrodynamic approximation gave us, which given the huge amount of energy involved isn't really surprising.
What it isn't, however, is enough to blow the whole rod to pieces. The rear two-thirds of the impactor will remain intact and will just keep on trucking, and so absolutely ruin the day of anyone on board the ship.
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The extreme spacing of your armour would work against non-solid projectiles (like modern shaped-charge HEAT rounds) because the jet won't remain together over that distance. This isn't necessarily true of a solid tungsten rod though, which will have its tip ablated off but might remain basically intact over that 50m span and then, in all likelihood, tear a huge hole in your ship.
Note that even if the armour *did* disrupt the projectile, it would still only save you if you had multiple layers of armour of substantial thickness. You've still got most of the 250kg projectile flying towards you at 60km/s, and armour that is intended to "*protect from sand-grain size impacts*" will absolutely *not* be up to the task and you'll get totally mangled.
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Now, note that *if* this armour was capable of disrupting the projectile (and I suspect that it is not), then the simplest countermeasure from the attacker's point of view is to fire multiple smaller projectiles, slightly separated along their trajectory. By breaking the single massive round into 10 cylinders, each 10cm wide and tall, it is possible for successive penetrators to travel through the hole left by the penetrator just in front of them. Such a projectile could reasonably punch through 9 layers of armour, defeat clever reactive armour, and deliver a serious punch to the vessel inside.
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60 km/s is so high, that you can neglect any inter-atom bounds and thermal movement and consider both armor and missile as a set of independent atoms. At first stages of impact missile atoms would *pass through* atoms of armor. Then scattering of tungsten atoms on tungsten atoms begins. You just can't call it evaporation - it would be an understatement.
Since the materials are the same - scattering would be on an "atom for an atom" basis. So only this 5 cm would be "scattered off" this tungsten rod and 95cm of it would still hit main hull. In that hull this rod would travel at most "95 tungsten-equvalent cm" (it would be twice more for steel) before it all "scatters out".
Thats all means that 5% of rod energy would be released at shield (as 5t TNT explosion) and 95% of energy would be released at and in the hull (95t of TNT explosion).
UPD: the best defence aginst this rods would be counterintuitive: if you make you ship out of thin aluminium with total width in a path of the rod to be about 5mm, only about 0.1% of a rod would deliver energy (100 kg of TNT - but it would be spraded between each surface) and it would just fly through, leaving hole about meters across. Which is much better than almost nuclear-scale explosion inside.
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As many other posters pointed out, the Whipple Shield isn't going to do much against a vary large, dense projectile. Its purpose is to absorb the impact of very small objects like dust grains or micrometeors.
However, it is possible to take this principle and apply it as a form of active armour. Rather than a fixed plate, the ship can carry batteries of small rockets and an active radar system which fires the rockets at the incoming projectile. Each rocket upon launch can deploy an umbrella-like Whipple Shield and manouevres in position in front of the projectile, and the entire flock of rocket Whipple Shields will arrange themselves in a line, so the projectile will end up flying through multiple layers of shielding.
The desired outcome is the projectile breaks apart after multiple impacts and the smaller pieces are either absorbed by the terminal armour plating of the ship, or fly past harmlessly.
The entire arrangement would have to be somewhat like the Israeli "Iron Dome" system, capable of tracking incoming rounds and only launching when it calculates that the projectile will actually impact the ship. This conserves ammunition and also adds uncertainty for the aggressor, they will not be able to clearly determine if the system has expended all ammunition or not, and then must carry and fire additional rounds at every target in order to ensure they can overcome it. Since there are multiple layers of defense in a space battle, from lasers to ECM to counter missiles to terminal defense, the enemy spaceship will either run out of rounds, or the expense of building additional spacecraft and missiles will mean they have to give up some other capability (maybe in the larger civilian economy).
The primary purpose, then, isn't to defend the ship, but rather induce enough uncertainty in the adversary's tactical, operational and strategic calculations that they are deterred from attempting aggression in the first place.
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What about the effects of adding an electromagnetic charge to the shield? While it might not do much to negate that kinetic energy, maybe it could deflect the rod or its fragments in harmless directions...
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When gods descend to the mortal plane, they must inhabit specially built bodies in order to maintain their presence and hold their aethereal energies. These bodies are built in the aethereal realm with Godtech and made in the image of a human being. Since the essence of a God is so large, the smallest these bodies can be made is in the 8 - 9 ft range. Within the physical form is a large core that contains the god's essence. This core functions similar to a miniature nuclear reactor that powers the body and allows the god to control it like a puppet.
Even with these specialized forms, the gods essence is so strong can't be perfectly contained, radiating from the body in a golden hue. This divine radiation bathes the surrounding area with divine energy, including the sentient beings within that area. Human beings can experience various affects from this aura, including light headedness, extreme pressure, shortness of breath, and unconsciousness. Even heart attacks can occur in certain people, which can be fatal.
These gods need to keep their divine aura at benign levels to prevent it from radiating too strongly from their physical forms, so that it doesn't completely overwhelm the humans surrounding it. Mortals must feel the majesty of their presence without suffering the ill affects. I would also like to keep the God's form as biological as possible, to keep the appeared center of a highly advanced being.
What is the best way to make this happen?
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What the god needs is a heat-sink. An object which they can focus their excess awesomeness into so that it doesn't pour out into their surroundings. This is why many gods are associated with the objects which they carry. (Thor's hammer, Poseidon's trident, etc.) Those aren't really weapons because god's don't need weapons to be safe from mere humans. The objects are power-sinks, slowly being transformed by the god's will at the atomic level.
At the beginning of a god's incarnation, the object might be made of some lightweight material like wood. During the incarnation's stay on the human plain, it slowly transforms into denser and denser metals. If the god stays too long, the object reaches the unstable radioactive densities, causing a brand new type of aura problem.
The incredible density of objects left behind after divine visits might also explain how some myths came into being. ...only the worthy can pull the sword from the stone or lift the hammer.
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# Gold-dust Shellac.
A rare and dense metal that has been used by rulers to enhance their health, strength and fitness to rule for [thousands of years](https://magic-spells-and-potions.com/magical_properties_of_metal.htm#Gold):
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> Gold is the sun metal. It has therefore been linked over the millennia
> with everything to do with health, wealth, and growth.
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* reflects not just the golden radiance of the God back into itself, but itself is a symbol of both supreme [Good and Evil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Culture).
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> Moses was instructed to cover the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the
> Covenant with pure gold.
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And what more fitting to give to a God a gift that makes the God not only safe to be around, but still gives them that shine of divinity.
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They deplete the energy to lower the power of aura.
Do a little thing on the atoms of the water, create some carbon, mix it well and create a wine. Then they can spend whole night among the people. And maybe the duck that was in that kitchen was turned to well done even without plucking but who cares?
Before going into the city it's good idea to use the energy on... maybe killing some leprosy bacteria? Or when you really need to drain that tank again do some atom welding and create whole leg with muscles and veins.
Or if you are not into those type of "good deeds" just propel yourself 30 feet into air and disperse the energy creating "sun halo" or "sun arrows".
Maybe post on "medammitgram" "felt energized, might burn a city and rain some frogs later idk".
Or if you are form those "good guys" part of the pantheon spend whole year on selling your energy to some Fair Trade toy makers and then do a Tour De world once a years and give those toys away. That sparkling dust you leave when you dash through the sky always make little kids say "Santa was here!"
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Scheme #1: The "Faraday Cage"
Build something similar in concept to a Faraday cage into their clothes - something that diverts the radiation and channels it into a "ground" line. This could be meticulously masked as thick threads or bands woven around their clothes, giving the appearance of wearing gold or platinum weave.
The weaves are connected to an energy-absorbing mechanism disguised as a traveler's bag or backpack. A valve or controller mechanism allows it to selectively leak out a metered amount of energy to let everyone know how awesome they are.
Scheme #2: The Power Armor
Wear a high-tech torso-plate that absorbs the radiation as a power source - this should block it from most angles while protecting from damage and otherwise being extremely functional.
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>
> When they started dropping from the skies.. or no, they landed. They were so similar to us, yet so different. Like nothing we would've ever designed or created - but so much like *everything*
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Eyewitness account, 2 weeks after 'The Event'
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For first-encounter project I am working on, my version of humanity is *being* encountered by aliens from space. They are intended to be not too human-like - because that would be *too interesting*. But also not too much like the usual [bugs](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsectoidAliens).. more like [fleshy engineering things](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StarfishAliens).
Their technology is starkly based on biology and chemistry, rather than metallurgy.
For this scene, and really all situations where I have them use the technology in question, they are entering the earth's atmosphere inside huge wart-like lumps of flesh(?) - their version of droppods/dropships.
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**Q**: How to design an organic heat-shield for (re)entry of an earth-like atmosphere?
I have imagined something along the lines of interchanging layers of [callus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callus) for structure & something to be burned off, and [blubber](https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/questions/10467/how-much-does-body-fat-actually-insulate-you-against-the-cold) for thermal insulation. But I am by no means a biologist/chemist, and only a hobby-engineer..
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Something along these lines has already been tried. The Fanhui Shi Weixing, a Chinese surveillance satellite (<http://www.astronautix.com/f/fsw.html>) used an impregnated oak heat shield. This wood, white oak, chars rather than burns which is a desirable quality in a heat shield as it carries heat away. Each layer turns to charcoal and is then carried away:
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> The FSW satellites used a 5.9-inch thick heat shield made of oak. During reentry, friction caused the wood to burn and char, leaving behind a layer of charcoal. That charcoal was blown away in the wind as the satellite fell, exposing more oak, which burned and turned into charcoal. It’s a repeating process that ultimately allowed very little heat to get through to the spacecraft; both the wood and the charcoal are great insulators. It was a light and elegant solution to the reentry problem. (<https://vintagespace.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/can-a-wood-heat-shield-really-work/>)
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If your aliens simply use biological materials, something akin to this would be a good solution. If the technology itself is alive, then the innermost layer of the heat shield could be constantly growing living tissue as L.Dutch suggested, and in this way it could also be reusable if needed.
Whether the same properties would work on something fleshy rather than woody is hard to say, though for atmospheric entry a hard surface is probably going to be desirable due to the immense stresses involved.
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Carbon based fibers are pretty good at resisting heat (I have used a graphite crucible when I had to evaporate TiO2), so they could be used as heat shield.
Unsurprisingly, carbon is also the base of life as we know it. And a process for making carbon fibers is to actually use some carbon based precursors and let them burn to leave the fibers.
Therefore a plausible way to go would be for them to have:
* a deep layer of cells producing carbon based fibers (a la skin or bark)
* a surface layer resulting from the deposit of such fibers
During atmospheric reentry the surface layer would burn due to the intense heat and turn into carbon fibers, producing additional shielding.
With such mechanism you also give a realistic limitation to the number of reentry they can do in a short time, since they need to allow the surface layer to reconstitute.
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Consider shells - of oysters & similar shellfish. They're a biological composite, formed mostly of layers of calcium carbonate. The calcium carbonate has a high melting point (825°C), while the microstructure makes it much stronger than the bulk material, and could be designed/evolved to ablate to carry away reentry heat.
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**Jelly.**
You want something that can absorb heat and move it away from the entity undergoing re-entry. [Specific heat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity) is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of a given material by one degree. Given that you are working with biologics, it is lucky that water has one of the highest specific heats.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V0SX3.png)
Also handy for this is that water can undergo 2 phase changes in the range of temperatures one might encounter during your scenario, and each of these soaks up a lot of energy.
Your creatures are encased in a thick layer of jelly, much akin to jellyfish jelly. It is mostly water, with enough biomolecules (?long chain polysaccharides? siloxanes?) to serve as a scaffold and hold it in place. This stuff is frozen initially, and then the outer layer melts during re-entry, then vaporizes. The thick layer ablates with the energy of re-entry, absorbing this energy with the innate high specific heat of water and then 2 phase changes, with the final steam blowing off of the creature.
This would work fine, and thick jelly is great for a biological entity.
Bonus 1: Thick jelly would also be good protection from radiation in space.
Bonus 2: Creatures would land with a messy splat, blobs of disgusting space jelly spraying everywhere.
Bonus 3: [Star jelly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_jelly) is a real Fortean mystery. You can tap into the real world Bigfooty weird history of star jelly (aka Pwdre Sel) as part of your backstory.
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> In 1950, four Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, policemen reported the
> discovery of "a domed disk of quivering jelly, 6 feet in diameter, one
> foot thick at the center and an inch or two near the edge". When they
> tried to pick it up, it dissolved into an "odorless, sticky
> scum".[16][17][18] This incident inspired the 1958 movie The Blob.[19]
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>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/j0CUS.jpg)
<https://ufoholic.com/unexplained/man-walking-dogs-finds-strange-goo-in-a-field-is-it-star-jelly/>
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A material like [Starlite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlite) would be ideal. It's supposedly "mostly" organic. From Wikipedia:
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> Starlite's composition is a closely guarded secret, but it is said to contain a variety of organic polymers and co-polymers with both organic and inorganic additives, including borates and small quantities of ceramics and other special barrier ingredients—up to 21 in all. Perhaps uniquely for a material claimed to be thermal and blast-proof, it is claimed to be not entirely inorganic but up to 90 percent organic.
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Make them sweaty.
Bit of background: SpaceX is redesigning their Starship Super Heavy (aka BFR) to be made from stainless steel, and [plan to have it sweat as a heat shield](https://youtu.be/LogE40_wR9k?t=531).
The basic concept is that tiny pores on the forward surface will "sweat" out liquid methane fuel, which will absorb the heat and blow away, keeping the stainless steel below the melting point.
Your visitors could store large amounts of compressed liquid methane, harvested from comets or produced by their own bodies, and feed it out through their pores as they aerobrake.
Combined with toughened skin that can handle high temperature, and reverse thrusting to reduce velocity a bit before reentry, and a way to lose speed quickly like a parachute or something, and they should survive.
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In my book series (link [here](http://sites.google.com/site/weaselworldofficialsite)), Aurea (a planet based on Byzantine Anatolia) is conquered by a group called the Tatians, who have access to technology that would not be out of place in Star Wars (faster-than-light space travel, holograms, orbital bombardments, electricity, internet, etc). Could this planet be fully brought up technologically to their standards by the time their 19-year rule is over?
Background:
The Tatians are at war with basically all of the rest of the galaxy (which is loosely united in a shaky alliance centered around the Aureans and the Ishgas). The Ishgas are the only civilization in the galaxy whose technology is on par with that of the Tatians (in fact the Tatians stole their tech from the Ishgas).
Anyway, when the Tatians occupied Aurea, its king (named Weasel) went into hiding on a backwater planet and will not be heard from again until 19 years into the future. Since all of the planets in the alliance besides Ishgabangaloodoo and its farming colonies were under temporary Aurean leadership, the Tatians acquired these planets as well when they took over Aurea. The Tatians swiftly moved to occupy these planets, and within a few days, the Tatians controlled all of the galaxy except for Ishgabangaloodoo and 5 farming colonies under its rule.
However, Aurea was the most resource-rich planet they conquered, causing them to invest the lion's share of their economy into building up its infrastructure. Hundreds of millions of workers were forcibly resettled there. Roads were built. Schools were built. All of the illiterate peasants were put in schools and taught to read. Power grids were set up. Internet servers were installed. Medieval spires were replaced by steel skyscrapers. Spaceports were built in all the major cities, allowing people from other planets to flock to Aurea due to an extreme excess of unfilled jobs. The Tatians even moved their capital to Aurea since they considered the land so beautiful compared to their freezing tundra homeworld. The Tatians operated a command economy, similar to that of the Inca Empire or Ancient Egypt. However, their repression towards basic human rights proved to be their undoing here.
Around 17 years into the occupation, although the planet was advancing technologically like never before, many teenagers began to question the authority they were living under. Despite things like mandatory 2-hours-a-day propaganda radio that managed to brainwash all of the adult ex-peasants into mindlessly obeying their new government, people began using the radio's music channels to express their views. Albums like Purple Day's "Tatian Idiot" topped the charts. When the government began imprisoning the people who made this music and shutting down anti-government radio stations, basically the entire youth rose in a massive revolt. The Tatian garrison was overwhelmed and completely wiped out by sheer force of numbers, forcing the Tatians to send in 60 million troops (roughly 1/5 of their entire army) to suppress the rebellion.
During this time, the Tatians relocated their capital back to their icy homeworld to avoid this danger. When the reinforcements arrived, they badly beat the Aurean revolutionaries over the next year until they were on the verge of defeat. When all hope seemed lost, the Aurean Alliance (a group, centered around Ishgabangaloodoo that had been rebelling against Tatian rule in the northeast of the galaxy) had found Weasel in hiding, made him their leader, and began an all-out attack on Aurea that worked together with the revolutionaries to liberate the planet.
When the planet was liberated, the new Tatian institutions were kept in place with some major modifications: The economy was changed from a command system to a mixed system, similar to that of the modern USA, meaning things such as factories and farms were now privately owned, but still regulated by the government. However, the propaganda radio was abolished, and the Tatian government was replaced by a Democratic system.
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Is the Tatians' advancement of Aurean civilization deliberate or is the advancement just incindental?
Suppose it is deliberate. You suggest that. How will the Tatians prepared for this? this is going to need a **lot** of organization. That's all doable with StarWars technology though.
The Tatians are going to need to build up a whole economy in 19 years! Can they do that?
Both Henry Taylor and kingledion mention The neccesity of smart people .
You say Tatians have StarWars like technology. That might include a technology that would alolow them to "download" civilization building ideas into the Aureians brains. There would be Tatians in charge of kidnapping Aurians and Tatians who would strap 'em down and zap'em with information. We don't need no stinking teachers.
Both Henry Taylor and kingledion mention infrastructure and they'e correct. Here's what I think about that-
You can't build infrastucture by just being smart enough to make it. Infrastructure building requires access to natural resources. The Aureans will have to find them,and they'll have to extract them,and they will have to be able to extract them in an economical way,and don't forget,that economy will have to built within 19 years.
The Aureans probably won't want build all this. They'll need a reason,but that's not a problem. "Back to work! -Ptttssh-
The Tatians will have 19 years in which to:Establish a headquarters and method of controling the Aureians. Advance a Byzantine civilization to a StarWars level. Depart said civilization. The first requirement would be,hard.These Planetary Command and Control Centers don't build themselves. The second, really hard because of the whole education-infrasructure thing. The third would also be hard because it would be very disruptive of the civilization. People have air traffic systems and missile detection systems and things.
All these topics and must be on the agenda of the Interplanetary Technology Advancement commitee.
I don't think it can work.
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# Difficult to impossible.
To maintain an industrial society, you need a large number of people with a scientific and engineering mindset, and even larger numbers of industrial workers. The historical medieval mindset mixed science and theology at the university level, and craftsmen were trained in a guild system.
It takes 12 years from primary school to the end of secondary education and another five or more years to get a master. A master's degree might be enough to teach the next generation in primary school, but not to organize and teach PhD-level courses. And that's assuming the Aureans progress as quickly as people do today. Parents are a significant influence on educational outcomes. Students will need more support if they come from an illiterate home.
Your Tatians could start to educate workers, and give the smartest of them the chance for higher education, but that would lead to major *social* disruption. They might be able to force this change through, but will it hold once they leave?
I guess the Aureans will get a big boost, followed by a breakdown that does not fall quite as far as the starting point, followed by faster-than-historical development as the parroted contents of the libraries is truly understood.
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If the goals of the conquerors was to elevate the technological level of the conquered, and if the conquerors knew ahead of time that they might only have 19 years, then it could be done. The trick is that it would have to be very deliberate on the part of the conquerors.
Start year one by taking all of the conquered children out of the fields and put them in school full time. For the next sixteen years, educate all age groups in parallel such that children who were sixteen on day one, graduate with a highly technical college education at age 32. Children who were 3 on day one, graduate with the same degree at age 19. Children born after the conquest would be enrolled in school as they reach age 3, and would progress with education in a more normal birth year-based grade-level manner.
This gives you a massive first generation of graduates who can take over all of the technology support and educational roles which your conqueror crew have been handling for the last 16 years. Then, with three years of on the job training from your conqueror crew, who stay on in an advisory condition, the planet should be ready for liberation on the first day of year 19.
Simultaneous to the mass education effort, other members of the conquering crew would be installing modern infrastructure, building hospitals, power stations and factories. Again, all of this would need to be targeted for eventual transition into native hands. Every technological appliance installed would need to be based on the knowledge which the children are being trained.
Finally, at some point the children who now run and maintain the planet need to be informed that the conquerors are leaving and why. Pulling a "So long and thanks for all the fish" departure could disrupt the planet and cause it to regress back into barbarism. Furthermore, detailed instructions should be left with the children, outlining then next several decades of planned industrialization and growth. "The power-packs for all of the class 3 equipment will only last another 50 years, so start building power-pack assembly plants near all of the hydroelectric and geothermal power stations we have given you. Here are the plans for those new plants."
I would suggest that the reason behind the Conquerors doing all this can be based on how dangerous our own journey from Medieval to Star Wars is likely to be. We have barely survived getting to the Nuclear level. Without the assistance of a Benevolent Conqueror, we probably won't survive to play with Blaster Pistols.
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I think it would be possible, but only if the Tatians brought along a literal planets worth of technology to elevate the planet.
Basically, once the Tatians have conquered the planet and want to access its resources, they bring in their own technologies and equipment and place them all across the planet. They train the natives to use this machinery and basically be free labor for them. You don't need to be smart, to follow a comprehensive guide that will cover ever single aspect of the technology, every thing can be documented along with a maintenance guide to ensure the machine can basically run forever.
So imagine you've just lost the war and you declare victory, you just warp in all the resources you need. Mining equipment, factories, robotics centers, satellites, colonists to better repopulate the world and so on. Just use your warp drive, and drop them into orbit. Educate the workers enough to be able to follow a visual and extremely comprehensive guide and force them to look after everything while you harvest all the resources you can.
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As a counterpoint to the 'is Africa industrialised?' answer (which I think is possibly overly derogatory about that continent anyway) I'd like to point to the example of Meiji Japan. This culture went from more-or-less medieval technology to beating industrialised European empires at their own game within a generation or so, and that was without even being (formally) colonised. Obviously, this is less of a leap than your jump to space-age tech requires, but presumably this tech would itself allow the cutting of corners in the process of education and infrastructure-building as other answers suggest. A lot depends on the attitudes of the peoples involved, and the circumstances of conquest; are the colonisers able to credibly present themselves as benevolent liberators rather than oppressors forcing their alien ways upon people? Even in a best-case scenario I think such a wholesale transformation of society is likely to meet strong resistance from people's innate resistance to change, so 19 years is cutting it fine, but if your colonisers are really skilled at the process I don't think it's wholly out of the question.
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# Is Africa industrialized?
Most of Africa was colonized by European powers for some 50 years between ~1900 and ~1950. The colonizing powers brought in Western technical expertise and built railroads in particular, and some other infrastructure as well.
Very few of the post-colonial African nations have any sort of advanced infrastructure remaining, another 50 years after de-colonization. South Africa (which was not really colonized) has some significant industrial infrastructure remaining, but in general, these countries don't have the industrial base to build railroads, automobiles, skyscrapers, dams or whatever else. What manufacturing exists is usually brought in and installed by other, more advanced nations (largely China, these days).
From the example of the colonial experience here on Earth, I would say that the answer to your question is a resounding no.
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My kingdom has 2 entrances in a hilly field by the ocean shore, comprising over 100 acres. The entrances are the size of a road and can carry carts up and down tunnels leading 12 stories underground to a large city. The city has thousands of people housed in caverns, and this city supports an army of 400-500.
Th underground city owns a small portion of land on the surface, only 100 acres, or about 75 football fields. It is a dense orchard of apple trees and it is in a hilly environment like the picture below.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nZ0aq.jpg)
The underground city is being attacked by a kingdom, who are Viking-like with 800-900 men. These raiders land on the shoreline and ambush the entryways in the night.
I would like ideas on how to use this hilly environment with technology available in the Middle Ages to take back the land on the surface from the Viking people for the underground kingdom.
The problem I face is developing a good plan for victory when the underground people have been ambushed and forced to close the doors to the main entrance sealing themselves inside. They are not going to die down there but they cannot stay there forever, so how do they take back the surface? They cannot simply wait it out because if the Vikings control the entryways, then they are stuck down there forever. The Vikings will also not stop their siege because they want the riches of the underground city.
So the idea is that neither of them have any backup or help in the war, it is one kingdom against the other for this first battle, with the outcome needing to be the underground claiming victory. Poison is an option, alchemy, like real alchemy used in the past is used in this world. So more or less if chemistry is involved I'm fine with that as well, seeing that they're similar.
The idea was for them to be outnumbered, that is why I was looking for other methods to "even the battlefield" but I don't want one to be overly powerful and downright kill the other. But smokescreens, poison or anything else you can do with chemistry or old middle ages technology that could help them win, I'm open to suggestions.
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So Technically, your city is at a huge disadvantage being underground and only having two entrances. I'm going to assume you've closed both your entrances, and that they are super heavily defended via traps or just giant gates so that the defenders can't break through. You can't use traditional anti siege methods, since your city is build below ground, so your attackers will have the height and hence range advantage on your defenders.
So here are a bunch of suggestions you could do
**Booby Traps**
Just throw down a tone of traps and open the doors. Your tunnels and access points will need to be designed to stop things from rolling all the way down, so your going to need a series of down and up ramps to stop this from happening. Your vikings will file in and hopefully enough of them die to the traps for your soldiers to fight
**Poison**
Depending on your access to water and food, you could poison their supplies and the resources around you. Vikings shouldn't carry too much food supplies with them and will need to restock constantly to feed themselves so if you make sure there is no food and water around, they will be forced to move away
**Sea Mist**
On some days your going to get a strong sea mist and this gives you a good change of launching guerrilla operations. Sneak most of your soldiers out, attack the vikings from the direction of other kingdoms to make them think allies are coming and then retreat. You could also use this change to poison their supplies or kill off key leaders.
**Narrow Entrances**
Your entrance ways are going to be fairly narrow so its evens down the fighting from 900vs400 to just the row of men who are facing each other in the cramped tunnels. This means that if your soldiers are much better trained than the vikings, you could try draw them into the city tunnels and fight them there and win. Sort of like 300 style.
**Smoke and Mirrors**
As you mentioned before, you could try and use smoke to even up the numbers you are facing. The vikings won't be able to see as much and will likely be surprised by the smoke, breath a bunch in and start coughing. Your well prepared soldiers will have damp clothes over their face so they can breathe and this gives them a quick advantage and build up momentum. If you could build up enough pressure as well and open the doors quickly, you could have an explosion of smoke which engulfs the vikings as you rush out. You could also use this idea with a poison gas when you know the vikings are outside to force them to back out.
**No Light**
One of the other things you need to consider is the advantage of the dark. If your attacking at night you don't want any fires or shiny things with your troops. They make it easier for vikings to spot you and can give your position away. All your soldiers should be wearing black clothes and their weapons should be covered in soot so they don't reflect any light. If you have every been outside away from the city, its basically pitch black at night. The moon is barely enough to see anything. So you could do things like adjust all your soldiers to the dark, open the gates with a bright light and then extinguish the light. Your vikings having seen the bright light haven't adjusted to the dark yet, while your soldiers waiting with their eyes closed are and have a quick advantage over the vikings who are pretty much blind.
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Well, I think I get the gist of the military situation. The problem with two entrances, obviously, is that they'll get camped - certainly if they're only as wide as a road. On the other hand, I'll assume the invading parties really do want those riches and not simply bury this underground city & seal it off. They want to breach the defences. I'll assume the following:
* No cavalry on either side (you don't bring horses to invade an
underground state I presume)
* Logistical issues are irrelevant; neither party intends to be patient enough to starve the other (ignoring the question of what the invading parties have planned in terms of logistics)
* The underground state does not possess the numbers to face both of them head-on in a pitched battle on even grounds
**International relations**
Wars should always be placed in an international context. You said the two neighbouring kingdoms are to remain neutral, but that doesn't mean you can't use deception and lies to make the enemy think there's an army build-up on the borders (fake tents, banners etc.). In fact, your diplomats could convince the neighbours to simply station some real troops there without actually getting into a fight. No matter how neutral they are, no one likes the sight of a battle on their doorsteps. The point here is that the invaders have to react by at least diverting some of their troops to meet the threat, allowing you to take on a divided enemy one at a time.
**Have the two kingdoms quarrel**
I can't imagine two nations as dissimilar as +/- the Egyptians & the Vikings to work together in concert without some miscommunication or animosity. Have some of your agents sabotage camps / ships and pin the blame on the other party. In any case, distrust means you face two disjointed armies instead of an united one.
**Let them in?**
Turn this ridiculous disadvantage of having a grand total of two entrances into an advantage and allow them to breach the outer defences of one entrance to slowly lure them in. I'll assume your army knows their city better than the enemy does. While the enemies are lured deeper into the underground city, try to break out from the other entrance with your main force & attack them in the rear from the outside. Combine this with some mutual distrust amongst the two invaders and perhaps you could pull off some kind of victory.
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**Empty Fort Strategy**
As per [the good ol' Art of War](http://www.zhuge-liang.net/zhuge-liang-the-art-of-war/32-zhugeliang-theartofwar-36stratagems). Note that this kind of mind games are highly dependent on the respective leaders' reputations and personalities. In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it worked plausibly because the defending general knew the attacking general was the cautious type, and the defender had built up a fearsome reputation through pulling off multiple victories against overwhelming odds.
**Conventional victory**
Now for the other extreme, the foolhardy invader easily blinded by riches and glory. This is where your network of small 1 or 2-man (presumably concealed) tunnels come in handy.
What your underground state needs to do is to bait the attacking armies into your main access tunnels. There are a lot of ways to do this. The more boring ways involve display of obvious military weakness. You can use scantily clad pretty girls scampering right in front of them; presumably your Vikings are as interested in rape as they are in pillaging. A spy planted as the enemy commander's concubine whispering in his ear can do that job as well. Honeypots are possibly the oldest trick in the book after all.
Once you have drawn them in, the invader should be in a prepared kill zone. Prevent his exit by planting an armed force at his rear that came out via the small tunnels. Now unleash your deadliest artifice upon the invader; burning oil and Indiana Jones-style giant killer rocks work just fine.
A more extreme version of this involves preparing an entire fake city for the invaders to go into. The fake city is full of booby traps of course. You can unleash a whole array of horror movie style gruesome deaths upon the attackers once they have entered this trap.
**What comes after**
Now comes the trickier part of bringing about a peace that would last at least in the short term. To achieve this you can use a trifecta of fear, distrust and alliances. A fearsome reputation is the most useful in the short term to directly dissuade further attacks. Impaling your enemies on stakes and leaving them at the coast line for all to see, a la Vlad Tepes is one method, as is eating the livers of your foes with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Since I've mentioned Romance of the Three Kingdoms earlier, you can also invite their ambassadors to a [human meat banquet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dong_Zhuo)(tucked in the 'Rule of terror' section)
Distrust has already been detailed by others. Finally, try to establish yourself as a trading partner, if not an ally with your neighbours. A big trading account and potential allies makes it less likely they'll want to invade you again.
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In [my answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/592/75) to the question, [How would the design of a habitable underground fortification differ to that of a castle?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/583/75), I described in some detail the construction of an underground fortification.
An intelligently designed underground fortification won't be as simple as a cave with gated entrances. The entrances will be designed to be actively defended, so if the raiders attempt to force entry or even blockade them, they will be in range of the defenders' defences. An assault on the gates would quickly turn into a massacre for the raiders, and if they have any sense, after the first attempt on the gates, they won't try again.
Castles are force multipliers. They allow a small number of defenders to engage a larger number of enemies. For surface fortifications, the usual multiplier was ten - for each defender, the attacker needs ten men to achieve nominal parity. For an underground fortification, the multiplier may well be higher - perhaps twenty to fifty or even more, depending upon the nature of the fortification and the geology in which it is situated, twenty if it is in soil or gravel, to fifty or more if it is excavated into hard rock. Therefore, the defence force of 400-500 men could be expected to hold off an enemy numbering between 8000 to 25000. The 800-900 'vikings', having run once into the meat-grinder that a well-constructed set of defences could be, wouldn't stand a chance. The best they could hope for is to escape with their lives. Picture this:
The Vikings locate the entrance to the underground kingdom, and prepare a battering ram from a convenient large tree in order to take on the wooden gates set into the cliffside. They advance under their shields as the defenders rain arrows down upon them. The fact that the arrow-loops on the cliff face are entirely enclosed makes counter-attack difficult - an arrow must be aimed to pass through the loop, and siege weaponry munitions are too large to pass through the loops, the only hope is containers of burning oil, but if those were to be used, the oil would burn the siegers more surely than the defenders.
On reaching the gate, the ram is swung, and despite losses, the gates are breached. A few defenders flee down the tunnel and vanish around a corner- those that aren't killed. The raiders follow, only to find that just around the corner is another gate, but this one isn't wooden, it is made from tens or even hundreds of tons of stone, rolled sideways into place. The ram cannot be employed - the passage is too narrow to turn its great length, and no application of strength can roll the gate aside - the defenders have placed a big wooden wedge behind it, and the raiders might as well be trying to push a stone up a mountain.
Then, when the raiders have swarmed into the entry tunnel, they discover why it is so long and lightly gated at the surface - the whole thing is a death trap. The defenders open hatches in the roof and rain down burning oil, rocks and any other deadly substances they have. A little forethought by the defenders would provide grated vents near the main stone gate and any fire within the tunnel would be fed air from there, the downwards slope of the tunnel acting like a chimney to emit the smoke from the flames from the gate, and the draft would fan the flames.
If the defenders are especially nasty and have had plenty of time to work on their defences, they could close a second, hidden, stone gate just behind the remains of the wooden gates that would trap the raiders, making their escape impossible while they burned to death. Defences like this could easily kill hundreds of men, and the raiders only *have* hundreds Then the defenders could open the outer stone gate again and dare the attackers to advance inwards again over the charred corpses of their comrades.
So, the raiders have been presented with a fortification that they cannot defeat. They could try to besiege it, erecting their own fortifications around the gate to prevent the defenders from resupplying, however, there is the matter of the *second* gate.
The second gate would be similarly equipped with defences as the first, but in addition, it would be *hidden*. There would be observation/defence posts overlooking it so that the defenders could see if it had been discovered or if any enemies just happen to be nearby, but it would be placed in an area too narrow to make a good camp, but the gate would look like nothing more than a featureless rock face.
The second gate would allow the defenders both to resupply and to exit their fortification unseen, at night, when they would engage in guerrilla warfare against the raiders, inflicting atrocities upon them at night and whittling down their strength until they have no choice but to flee.
By engaging in guerrilla warfare, a small force can take on and defeat a larger one piece by piece, or force them to retreat to their own fortifications, making their own resupply far more difficult, and should the raiders do *that*, they are doomed, as the defenders have better supply.
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I see this a mostly the same a a castle siege, with a few pros and cons thrown in.
## Use your weakness as a strength
Since you have only 2 entrances, you only have 2 places to defend, instead of a whole encircling wall. This means you can concentrate your forces in 2 spots, instead of being spread out.
I would think a good defense would start with [arrowslits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrowslit) in the hillside surrounding your gates. These might have to be recessed a little, so invaders can't easily get above and directly attack you from them. You'll need them to be just far back enough to require attackers to get into the arrowslit to attack you, which opens them up to being shot down. However, you'll need them forward enough to still allow your archers to see and shoot the attacking army.
Next, you gate should also be recessed a bit, so you can have more arrowslits pointing at your gate. Once the opposing army gets to your gate, they should be surrounded by your archers. A series of openings directly above your gate can also allow you to pour hot tar or boiling water on your attackers. What I'm saying is that your gate should be a choke point for the attackers.
This is working off the idea of the [Battle of Thermopylae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae), where a small band of defenders blocked a pass, preventing a considerably larger force (7000 against up to 150,000) from gaining access. Your forces are much more evenly matched, so you shouldn't have much of a problem here.
## Natural armor and tunneling
Other pros is that you cannot be breached in the normal way, with ladders, catapult, or other airborne means. You can, however, still be breached by digging or tunneling. Also, your roof can be compromised and caused to collapse on top of you.
The cons can be mitigated, though. Since you presumably have more experience digging, you should be able to collapse any tunnels your attackers dig, by either digging above or below them. Doing this correctly should trap and kill the enemy diggers.
Seeing as this is a large city, your roof should be rock, instead of just compacted dirt, so collapsing it should be pretty darn hard. The attackers would have to work at it pretty long to make that happen, which should allow you to clear your gates, exit your city, and attack the army above you.
You city should be well below the waterline of the surrounding land, so you should have plenty of water, and castles should be stocked with provisions for months, if not years.
## Don't breathe too deep
The only real problem you'll have is air. However you refresh your air can be blocked, either physically or with fire. You can literally be smoked out by building a large fire with green/wet organics that produce a lot of smoke. Having a defense around these openings can help, as well as a filter of some sort.
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100 acres is such a small amount of land (695 yards x 695 yards, or less than a sixth of a square mile EDIT: **the Vatican -- smallest country in the world -- is larger, at 109 acres**) that it can be easily occupied, and the two entrances -- by definition close to each other -- sealed from the outside. Even worse, when you're in a cave, you've surrendered the high ground.
Now, to the answer... there must be a *reason* your kingdom is down there instead of on the surface like every other kingdom, and hasn't already been conquered: you're mining a mineral that's valuable to your neutral neighbors.
Because it's valuable to your much larger neighbors, there's a tacit agreement between them and you that they'll protect you from each other and outside enemies in exchange for selling them this valuable mineral at very favorable terms. IOW, you're buying protection.
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Given that the defenders are outnumbered and in a strategically poor position, they can only win by cleverness. The problem with a clever gambit, though, is that against all but the stupidest enemies it will only work once, so you have to be sure to catch as many of the attackers off-guard as possible (and have as many back-up plans as possible).
The best way to even the field is to draw the attackers into a trap (see [Dwarf Fortress](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Trap_design) for some ingenious underground trap design), but a trap that kills a few dozen enemy soldiers will not even the field enough to secure a victory before the enemy wises up to the traps and they lose a lot of their tactical advantage.
For that reason, I'd suggest pretending to lose the battle. The narrow roads ensure that neither army's entire force can be brought to bear at once, which means staging a fake rout is easy than it would be otherwise. After the fighting begins, the defenders should fall back past carefully designed traps, and should fall back as far as possible without giving the enemy freedom of access to the city (as that presumably has a more open layout and you can no longer control their movement). Once enough of the enemy are inside, you can use secret routes to encircle them and close the front gates. Ideally you have several gates in a row that you can drop at the same time, sectioning the enemy into small, tidy forces that can be easily overwhelmed, one-by-one (optionally with traps in the rooms to soften them up first).
The fighting needs to be staged well so they don't get suspicious, the fighting can't go *too* easily for them, and the pace needs to be kept up - you do not want the invaders to have time to inspect their surroundings and find the hidden passages and traps you'll need to seal them off.
If your kingdom has used this strategy before, though, the invaders may be aware of it and act accordingly; there's not much they can do about it other than refusing to enter the city until everyone inside is dead, though (from poison or starvation, perhaps). Even this can be worked around, though, with a false traitor - someone from inside the city who promises to divulge all the secrets of the city in exchange for freedom (and money, lots of money) - who instead just leads them into a different trap.
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The main problem I see is the actual defense. During a siege of a castle, attackers will always try to cut the access to food and water first. That's why every castle/fortified city needs it's own access to water and enough food to survive for several month at least.
When attacking an underground city, the food problem is the same. However, there is also the problem of air. An underground city needs ventilation holes and it needs a lot of them. It also probably needs chimneys.
The first step when attacking such a city would be to find those holes and close them (it will be probably easy to find them during winter because of the heat and vapor). Then, the defenders will start dying quickly.
The obvious result is that the defenders cannot just close the gates, they have to open the gates and let the invaders in and fight inside.
Unfortunately, it the attackers decide to just block the gates and let people in the city die, there is not much they can do. The strategic disadvantages are just too much.
If you want them to win, you need them to start digging and open more entrances.
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In Warlords Europa is a semi-independent world who's surface is dominated by ice mining companies or colonies dug into the ice, but below the ice thrives the "Hanging Cities" affectionately named Atlantis.
I'm my head the city would look like a massive dome built encasing the opening to a mile diameter long borehole to the surface (which is installed with a thick steel casing and a large elevator). The dome itself would be supported by what would look like a series of large metal roots.
Would it be feasible to build a dome that is gripping the roof of the ice on Europa (with supports drilled into the ice of course)? Or is this idea just too crazy to work?
Note: The dome needs to support the weight of a decent sized city. Also the ability to look out of the dome (probably through projections on the inside of the dome) is a necessary feature.
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It depends just how thick the ice crust actually is. If the estimates are correct and it's 10 miles or more thick, if you put anchor bolts right through it, then you could hang anything you wanted off them. That's without even taking into account the fact that:
1. Atlantis is going to weigh almost nothing, Europa has a fraction of Earth's gravity.
2. There will also be a buoyancy effect from the ocean that the city is "hanging" down into, you may have more trouble with damage from the water squeezing the city up into the ice crust than anything else.
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It might not be a good idea over long times. It's correct that ice has great rigidity and strength, [but](http://www.acegeography.com/ice-formation-and-movement.html)
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> under steady pressure it behaves as a plastic (mouldable) body. In contrast, when put under sudden compression or tension, it will break or shear apart.
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Therefore if your city only rely on ice for stability and positioning you will be disappointed when the plastic flow will start moving it.
The fastest glaciers move at about 40 meters per day. It take even less than that to crumble down a building.
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## Yes, it would be possible
From [this](http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9902/Schulson-9902.html) we can roughly see the max stress for ice is about 9MPa. Steel for example withstand about [400 MPa](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ilker_Topcu2/publication/26523032/figure/fig1/AS:305435920879634@1449833006731/Stress-strain-curve-of-S220-steel-rebar.png) (strongly depending on what steel you use). if I am interpreting the graphs correctly.
So steel is easily better for this, but that only aside.
But what you have to take into account is that europas **gravity is more than 7 times lower than earths**. So the strain you would put on the ice would be significantly less than it would be here on earth.
Also **it is not hanging in air, but in water**. Water itself is about as heavy as the ice and would carry some of the weight to.
While I am not a mechanical engineer and couldn't design a facility hanging from the ice, I am convinced it is possible to built something that would.
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Yes. Under the ice is a subterranean ocean. You can make your dome out of ice and due to buoyancy it will float. Attach the reverse dome to the ice above - now you have an enclosed space. Similar to an igloo, you would have to re-ice the dome but that actually strengthens it.
Inside the dome, you would anchor the buildings to the ice sheet above so that the dome does not have to support their weight. Connect the buildings with skybridges.
You can either drain the dome and fill it with air or make the buildings air tight and leave the water. If you leave the dome filled with water, the buoyancy will reduce the weight that hangs on the ice sheet and allow you to build taller (or I guess in this case deeper) buildings.
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I'm working on a story about another dimension of this same Earth but without the same human development and history. The land and natural conditions would be the same except for the ones directly affected/created by humans.
In this dimension, I want a human society living IN tree cities (cities created inside giant trees). I've already though of the "technology" possible for that and how a few selected trees became giantic (short version: humans are really good at bioengineering in this dimension). The trees would be from different species autoctone to each the zone (Iberian peninsula, in this case).
However, I'm not sure how big those trees could be but I'm sure there are physic limitations for that.
I don't want a massive city yet I would like if it the tree could be big enough to contain a minimun of a thousand people but, hey, the more the merrier!
So, basically, **How big (height and witdth)could a tree be keeping the Earth physical laws?**
If you need more info or details, here I am!
edit: the tree extra-needs (such as more nutrients to keep growing or those nutrients reaching the parts of the trees needed) are handled by the humans living in it.
edit: To be more specific as it seems that the question is not clear enough. I don't know much about physics but I though maybe the athmosphere or the weitght of the branches/leafs could affect its size.
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## Purely mechanical consideration of maximum height
The tallest tree cannot be taller than the height at which the downward pressure of its own weight exceeds its [compressive strength](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressive_strength).
The strongest [wood has a compression strength](http://www.conradfp.com/pdf/ch4-Mechanical-Properties-of-Wood.pdf) of about 40 MPa (when green, that is, alive) to about 60 MPa (when dry, that is, dead for a long time). Let's say we have a super-wood with a compression strength of 60 MPa while the tree is alive. The density of strong woods is around 0.75 to 0.8, but let's cheat a little and make it 0.6. In these conditions, the maximum height of such a superwood tree cannot exceed 1000 m, because higher trees would crush the wood at the base under their own weight.
$$\small \begin{array}{l|c|c|c|}
& \text{Compression strength} & \text {Density} & \text{Maximum height} \\\hline
\text{Real-life live oak, green} & \phantom{0}\phantom{0}37.5~\text{MPa} & 0.80 & \phantom{0}470~\text{m} \\
\text{Fantastic superwood, green} & \phantom{0}\phantom{0}60.0~\text{MPa} & 0.60 & 1000~\text{m} \\
\text{Best bricks (for comparison)} & \phantom{0}100.0~\text{MPa} & 2.00 & \phantom{0}500~\text{m} \\
\text{Inconel 718 steel (for comparison)} & 1000.0~\text{MPa} & 8.20 & 1200~\text{m} \\
\end{array}$$
(In this table, "maximum height" means the maximum theoretical height of a column made of the respective material.)
## As for maximum diameter...
Trees grow thicker by 5 to 10 mm/year; let's say the Fantastic Superwood increases its diameter by a whopping 50 mm/year. In 10,000 years it would reach a diameter of 500 m, which would make it a mind-blowing gigantic tree, but still rather cramped for a city...
[Answer]
Terry Pratchet in his novel the Long Cosmos had trees miles high. This was on an alternate earth where oxygen levels were higher but otherwise was earth. His trees were infused with hydrogen to support their weight and got around the leaf limitations in RonJohns post by using sacks to carry water up hollow cannals using hydrogen gas. I dont remember the details on how the hydrogen was seperated but thinknit had to do with a symbotic fungus.
Point being if you are going to use genetic manipulation, why allow the limitations of our trees be your limits? So long as there is a justification for whatever attributes you have. (One example, your trees can grow so high because they modified the proteans that make up the cell walls to be similar to spider silk, increasing their strength).
And finally, be sure to consider the consequences of very large trees in your world. Higher oxygen for example. Or different views on wood harvesting (are there laws saying ones building in the tree cant harm the tree, or is selective pruning allowed?)
[Answer]
<https://www.livescience.com/14667-tall-trees-grow.html>
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> Two main opposing forces affect a tree's height; one pushes it upward while the other holds it down. By analyzing the interplay between these forces, a team of biologists led by George Koch of Northern Arizona University calculated the theoretical maximum tree height, or the point at which opposing forces balance out and a tree stops growing. This point lies somewhere **between 400 and 426 feet (122 and 130 m)**.
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> "As trees grow taller, increasing leaf water stress due to gravity and path length resistance may ultimately limit leaf expansion and photosynthesis for further height growth," the biologists wrote in a 2004 article in the journal Nature. This limit lies at or just above 400 feet.
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Thus... no cities in trees when following your desire to "(keep) the Earth physical laws".
EDIT after you changed the question: No one has studied how big trees could grow if capillary/transpiration were enhanced by humans. To grow tall, a tree must have deep roots, and grow **wide** for stability. But you can handwave that away just as you handwave away gravity pulling against capillary/transpiration forces.
[Answer]
RonJohn's answer deals with the limits on the height of trees, but there does not seem to be a limit on the horizontal size of a tree, if you remove the limit on the 'tree' being a single stem.
For an example, consider the aspen groves of the western US. These are single organisms, having many trunks connected by a shared root system. This one <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)/> covers an area of 106 acres / 43 hectares and is estimated to be about 80,000 years old. There are others of similar area.
The size seems to be limited only by environmental conditions. They typically grow along mountain meadows and streams, in areas where there is enough water to support them (they don't survive in the drier surrounding soils). Using a little creative bioengineering, it wouldn't be difficult to create one with larger trunks and a wider spread.
[Answer]
IMO, reality is a good starting point:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Sherman_(tree)>
The article includes some data on now-dead trees which were known to be significantly larger.
However -- more importantly -- the article points out that 'General Sherman' is the largest living **single-stem** tree in the world. If your alter-Earth people take the step of engineering multiple-stem trees, like baobobs:
<https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/huge-hollow-baobab-trees-are-actually-multiple-fused-stems>
...then hypothetically there may be no limit to the diameter of a "single" such tree. Height-wise you're still up against the strength of the wood, but that may not be relevant if your fused-stem trees can be, say, a couple hundred yards in diameter.
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High-Magic world. What sort of rules could be put in place to nip the pesky infinite energy teleportation problem from happening? Currently the rules I have are:
* Large mana use / long cooldown
* Short distance only (under 5 miles)
* Can only be done from a higher elevation to a lower elevation
* Pressures must be within certain range between source and destination
* (Possibly unneccessary) Only between pre-constructed fixed points (Anchors, basically)
Are there better ways to word these? (For example, should I say from a lesser gravity well to a higher gravity well, instead of elevation?) Would this prevent infinite energy problems?
Edit: When I say the infinite energy problem, I mean the problem of infinite potential energy through teleporting objects.
[Answer]
Larry Niven wrote an essay on the consequences of various rules for teleportation. I think it would be worthwhile to read it. The title is something along the lines of The Theory and Practice of Teleportation, I think I first read it in "All the Myriad Ways."
Edit: He explores limiting teleportation to short range, long range, cheap to use or expensive to use, both scientifically and briefly the consequences on society. Most germane, I recall he discusses the problem of energy gain or loss.
A solution I recall was storage of the excess or deficit energy (as I recall, using it to move water in & out of storage tanks). This could be adapted to magic, possibly with the teleport spell freezing up if the magic storage capacity was full or empty.
[Answer]
The teleportation spell converts "mana" energy into the potential, kinetic and compression energy needed for the teleported mass to achieve equilibrium with the target destination. If the target requires LESS energy, the remainder is converted to wild mana, heat or radiation that is released at either or both ends.
In this scenario, mana is some kind of low-entropy energy that allows mages to manipulate other systems. The entropy is what makes the spell irreversible. Mages can't recharge their powers by teleporting down a few floors, as the energy returned is more chaotic (or in scientific terms: KABOOM!).
Teleportation to unknown or far away destinations would be quite hazardous in this system, as it might take all of your mana (and leave you stranded halfway) or cause a giant explosion. For short range travel, mages would likely establish a list of favorite destinations and memorize the energy requirements from a range of altitudes and distances. Included in those budgets would be the mana cost of protection against the waste heat.
For longer range travel, specially prepared teleport rooms would be necessary, equipped with either a mana focus or energy dissipation mechanisms, depending on the destination. Personal protection for the travelers is also recommended.
A downside of this would be the potential for destruction by suicide attack.
To avoid infinite-range-catapult magic, add the condition that momentum changes cost energy too. Unlike energy, changing it is always a cost. On an earth-like world (i.e. a spinning globe) that means momentum differences increase with distance because the angle changes. Teleporting to the opposite side of the planet would mean reversing the momentum completely, costing a prohibitive amount of mana. And no, you don't get hypersonic rocks that way, as the teleport won't work unless the object ends up "at rest" relative to the destination. Something about reintegration failing when moving too fast.
[Answer]
Infinite energy is only an issue if your system does not address it.
The most obvious solution is to make "mana" be a form of energy, and casting a spell obeys the conservation of energy rules just like every other physical interaction. Problem solved.
If your mana must not be equatable to energy, for some reason, then you must either deal with infinite energy or ensure the spellcasting itself does not do any work (in the physics sense). One approach for this would be to create a portal which one can be "pushed through," doing all of the work required to maintain conservation of energy as the object passes through the portal. Or perhaps teleportation only supports movement to places with lower potential energy.
If that too is impossible, you have a connundrum. If your teleportation *must* be able to do things which cause work, but you need mana to not be a form of energy, then you're between a rock and a hard place.
One solution that I've played with is to make casting not be a guaranteed thing. Make it so that the mere act of casting fundamentally changes the teleportation spell itself whenever cast. Casting the teleportation spell in energy-creating situations might destabilize the spell, making it less castable. You can devise the mathematics behind it any way you please, but the general pattern would be "if you abuse it, you lose it." You make it so that there's only a finite amount of energy that can be created with teleportation spells at all before the fabric of spellcasting itself shifts such that teleportation can no longer occur. If you like your spellcasting abilities, you better not abuse them (and you better convince all those who share the spells with you to not abuse them either!)
[Answer]
Just do a matter for matter swap instead of teleportation. You teleport a certain mass somewhere you replace it with an equivelent mass. This means you have to be careful how you teleport, as your mass in air would leave a big vacuüm and a nasty hit as the air rushes in. So you would have to partially teleport people into the ground so they can dig themselves out, or you allow the equivelent mass to be nearby but not necessarily on the location of the teleported thing.
Perhaps easier would be to have masses ready at the teleportation site. For example, each teleport site has a bunch of big rocks and sand on the edges. Each time you teleport, a part of the rocks and sand similar to your weight is teleported to your starting teleportpad in exchange for your mass. You can even have an economy on getting rocks and some types of sand to the teleporter to keep it running if it has to accept more teleports than it has to send, while a teleport that sends a lot of people needs to constantly haul Stones and sand away to prevent it being burried.
[Answer]
I would add another component: teleported objects should arrive at their destination with zero velocity, related to the ground they will be landing on.
This is assumed in most magical systems, such as teleportation in DC or Marvel comics, or in RPG's like Dungeons & Dragons. However, this is taken into account in games such as Portal and in worlds such as the Discworld. Teleportation is usually lethal in the latter due to that.
This will prevent abuse of thermo's second where something would shoot out of the lower gate (due to momentum) just to fall back up inside the upper gate.
If teleportation does not involve gates/portals, though, then you should already be fine.
[Answer]
You might get some good ideas by reading Vernor Vinge's *The Witling*. It's nominally SF, but its set on a world where the aliens can teleport, but only as long as the teleport obeys physical laws.
Vinge is a *very* good writer and also thought through the implications of non-law-breaking teleportation very carefully. In fact, much of the tension in the story arises from teleportation's non-violation of the laws of conservation of energy and momentum.
So the aliens can teleport between hemispheres, but if they jump too far nearby, they hit the ground (or fly off into the sky) due to the relative velocity difference of their starting point and ending point. They are an old civilization and have chains of artificial lakes all over the planet and jump (in a boat) from one to another, letting the water cushion and dissipate their relative velocities.
They can jump uphill and downhiil because they *exchange* equal masses to keep the potential energy due to gravity constant -- failing to do this can hurt them badly.
They kill with their minds, teleporting a bit of their opponent's body or brain. (They can shield themselves from the effect.)
Again, read the book. Vinge has done a lot of thinking about what a society of teleports would be like.
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[Question]
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In my book I'm writing one half of the island is littered with city-states. I was wondering who would be in power there and what type of government there may be.
Here's some information that may help:
The city-states are a good size, tentatively I say around 10,000. Most are on the coast but a few are in the mountains and grassy areas. Also, A few are near a kingdom that has a monarchy if that would change things? They also have a class system much like any other.
Thanks.
[Answer]
All right, let's see. Medieval city states. Here are some examples of actual medieval city states.
## Florence
* The nominal head of state was the [*Gonfaloniere of Justice*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonfaloniere_of_Justice) ("gonfaloniere" means roughly flag-bearer). He was one of the Priori (see below), and had the same vote as the other eight; but in addition he had command of the security forces. *"To distinguish him from his other eight colleagues, his crimson coat, lined with ermine, was further embroidered with golden stars."* (Wikipedia)
* The government of the city was vested in the [Signoria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signoria_of_Florence) composed of nine members, called *Priori*, chosen at random every two months from the members of the [guilds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilds_of_Florence) (one from each of the seven major guilds plus two for the minor guilds). (The Gonfaloniere was the ninth man to be chosen.)
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> *"Immediately after they were elected, the nine were expected to move into the Palazzo della Signoria, where they would remain for the two months of their office. There they were paid a modest sum to cover their expenses and were provided with green-liveried servants. The Priori had a uniform of crimson coats, lined with ermine and with ermine collars and cuffs."* (Wikipedia)
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* The Signoria was expected to consult with the other representative bodies of the city. Two of those (the *Dodici Buonomini*, Twelve Good Men, and the *Sedici Gonfalonieri*, Sixteen Flag-Bearers) were permanent; the others, such as the Ten for War or the Six for Trade, were called when needed.
(Sources: Thomas Adolphus Trollope, [*A history of the Commonwealth of Florence, from the earliest independence of the Commune to the Fall of the Republic in 1531*](https://archive.org/details/historyofcommon01trol), vol. 1, London, 1865; the articles [Republic of Florence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Florence) and [Signoria of Florence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signoria_of_Florence) on Wikipedia.)
## Venice
The [Most Serene Republic of Venice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice) was not really a city-state, as it held a considerable territory, both around Venice and overseas. But it certainly *began* as a city-state.
* Venice was governed by an elected [Duke of Venice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice) (*Doge*, Italian pronounciation `/ˈdɔːdʒe/`, Venetian pronounciation `['dɔːze]`) *and* the [Great Council](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Council_of_Venice). Neither the Duke nor the Great Council could govern alone; they had to agree for any law to be passed or for any action to be taken. The Duke had executive authority, but the Great Council (or, in practice the much smaller Signoria) could veto him.
* Membership in the Great Council was reserved to the families inscribed in the [Golden Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libro_d%27Oro) (*Libro d'Oro*). (Those are conventionally called "noble" families.) All eligible males became members at the age of 25, plus 30 chosen by lot from those aged 20 to 25.
* The preceding paragraph is not completely truthful. During the centuries there were several methods of choosing members of the Council. See for example, [Serrata del Maggior Consiglio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrata_del_Maggior_Consiglio).
* From time to time, usually in time of war, exceptionally rich families were co-opted into the Great Council and inscribed in the Golden Book. (Thus, they became noble.)
* The Duke was elected by a reduced electoral college, selected by lot following a unique and complicated procedure.
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> *Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine and the nine elected forty-five. Then the forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who actually elected the Doge. None could be elected but by at least twenty-five votes out of forty-one, nine votes out of eleven or twelve, or seven votes out of nine electors.* (Wikipedia)
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* In his executive attributions the Duke was aided by a Cabinet called the *Collegio*; all his actions were subject to approval by the *Signoria* representing the Great Council.
(For those readers who know how the former Socialist countries of Europe worked, the Duke of Venice is comparable to the Secretary General of the Communist Party, the Great Council with the Central Committee, and the Signoria with the Political Bureau of the Central Committee.)
## Hamburg
The [Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg) is a great example because *it still is a city-state*, one of the very few city-states remaining in the world.
* Hamburg was governed by an unelected Senate composed of the richest citizens.
* The actual administration of the city was executed by the Mayor, who was subordinated to the Senate.
* At the beginning of the 15th century, the ordinary citizens fought for and obtained the right to elect a consultative Council of Sixty; the [first Constitution of Hamburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hamburg#First_constitution) required the rich men's Senate to consult with the popular Council in matters of war and peace. (The only thing which the Senate absolutely could not do without the approval of the Council was to grant a safe-conduct to a foreigner who owed money to a citizen of Hamburg.)
## Lübeck
* [Lübeck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCbeck) was a typical garden variety German city-state. The city was governed by a City Council (*Stadtrat*) of [burghers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgher_(title)), selected by co-optation for a term of two or three years.
The members of the Stadtrat were known as *Ratmänner* (singular Ratmann) or, in the official Latin of the time, *consules*. To be eligible for a place in the Stadtrat, a man had to be free, German by birth, an directly interested in the prosperity of the city; only merchants were admitted: persons who had gained their wealth in manufacture were not eligible.
* After serving two terms, Stadtrat members became members of the consultative *Altrat* (Council of Elders or Senate).
* Executive functions were exercised by officials appointed by the Stadtrat for a term of one year.
(Source: M. V. Clarke, [*The Medieval City State: An Essay on Tyranny and Federation in the Later Middle Ages*](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B019P2PKKS), Routledge Revivals, 2015; the link goes to Amazon.)
## In general
Medieval city states were *oligarchic republics*, where power belonged to a restricted body of rich, or at least well-off, men. In the north, city-states operated generally by consensus; in the south, city-states had complicated election laws, which commonly included some sort of [sortition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition), intended to ensure that no faction ever gained the upper hand.
(Just to clear a common misconception: in the Middle Ages true autocratic power was quite rare. A few Byzantine emperors were true autocrats, although they *all* claimed the title. A very few western European kings. One or two Popes -- in the Middle Ages Popes did not even have ultimate authority in matters of faith. But by and large, medieval sovereigns were caught in the complex web of personal allegiances which is characteristic for the medieval society. I don't know of any medieval city state ruled by an absolute monarch for any length of time.)
[Answer]
In a fantasy world, the government could be practically anything you want. You just need the appropriate reasons to justify it.
However, there are two things you have to take into account when choosing your system of government:
* **Population**: 10,000 is a fairly low population level. Looking at historical examples, Classical Athens had at least 10 times that. The Republic of Venice had a population of about 180.000 in 1490 and the Republic of Ragusa had 30.000 inhabitants in 1808. Population is, usually, on par with govern complexity. Not the same level of complexity, bureaucracy or institutions are needed to rule a city of 10,000 or a city of 180,000.
* **History, beliefs & economy**: Systems evolve for a reason. The beliefs of the people of your world and its past history would have shaped their current form of government: why they're city-states and not kingdoms, republics and not a monarchies, for example. Or their form of government may have changed over time. Also, a city with a agrarian-based economy or a city with a commerce-based economy may have different forms of government due to the different interests of its citizens.
That said, let's take a look at some government options.
## Democracy: Classic Athens
[Classical Athens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Athens) is a most well-known example of ancient democracy. However, it was [not the kind of democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy) we know today.
To start with, only adult males could vote. They were about 10% to 20% of the total population. Women, men with suspended rights, slaves and foreigners were not allowed to vote. It was also a direct democracy system. Any male with the right to vote had the duty to go to the assembly and vote. Vote could not be delegated.
Most officials were chosen by lots among those who nominated themselves, and magistrates held office for a year. Of course, not anybody could afford to nominate themselves. The full system was [a bit more complicated, including councils and tribunals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Constitution-of-the-Athenians-in-the-4th-century-BC.png).
**In you world:**
Fitting a Athenian-like type of democracy with the class system you mention would be easy. Just limit those who can vote with something like censitary suffrage, which basically means that only those who hold a minimum amount of money or land could vote.
## Mixed system: Sparta
Another Greek example is [Sparta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta). It was a mixed government system governed by [a system of laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan_Constitution).
Sparta was ruled by two hereditary kings supposedly descendants of Heracles, with religious, judicial and military duties. The existence of the dual monarchy had usually legendary explanations.
They were not autocratic rulers. The [Gerousia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerousia), the council of Elders, made up of 28 men over 60 and the two kings, made the decisions of high state policy. The [Ephors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephor) shared the executive branch of government with the kings. The Apella was the assembly of citizens, that only could decide between the alternatives presented to them.
## Oligarchies: Italian city-states
Until the end of the 18th century, there existed several [city-states Republics in Italy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_city-states) and the Dalmatian coast. Though officially called "Republics", their governments were, in fact, [oligarchies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy), with the power in the hands of a chosen few.
[Venice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice) is, perhaps, the best-known example. The [Doge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice) was the ruler of Venice, were elected for life by the city's aristocracy (of which the Dogo was also one) though a council of 40 members.
Early Doges were autocratic rulers (they held all the power), but their powers were later limited and shared with the Great Council, composed by members of the patrician families. With time, the Doge's power was limited again by the establishment of the Minor Council, with the power shifting mostly to the Council. There were also checks put on it to prevent the development of an hereditary monarchy.
The Doge also had a ritual role, symbolizing the marriage of the city with the sea (Venice was, after all, a [thalassocracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassocracy)).
Other examples: [Republic of Genoa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Genoa) (1005-1797), [Republic of Florence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Florence) (1115-1532), [Republic of Ragusa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ragusa) (1358-1808).
## Autocracies: Monarchies/Principalities/Duchies/etc.
A city-state the size you propose could easily be ruled by a single ruler, that could be a (Sovereign) Prince or even a King. Other titles historically used were Grand Prince, [Grand Duke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_duke), [Count](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count), [Margrave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margraviate), Landgrave, [Count Palatine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_palatine) or even just [Lord](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord). You could also have a dual rule, a [diarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diarchy), with two kings, princes (see [Andorra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-Princes_of_Andorra)) or a prince and a religious leader ([see Tibet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_dual_system_of_government)).
Phoenician city-states were ruled by Kings. [Principalities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principalities) existed in Medieval and Modern Europe. Liechtenstein, Monaco and Andorra are the only surviving ones nowadays, with [Luxembourg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxembourg) being a sovereign [grand-duchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_duchy).
The lordship could be either hereditary or [elective](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy), where the king/prince/lord is usually chosen by a council of nobles or, in other cases, by the army. It can also be a mix of the two, with the council choosing from the members of a single family (for example, between the children of the previous ruler), or provisions may be put in place to prevent a single family from holding successive kingships.
Dukes and Counts also ruled independent territories in the Middle Ages. For example, the [Catalan counties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_counties) that broke off Charlemagne's empire or the [Duchy of Milan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Milan).
**In your world:**
A Prince may also be vassal of a king while remaining sovereign (see the history of [Monaco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco)). That option could work with the cities near a kingdom you mention. These cities could be sovereign, but required, for example, to pay some kind of tribute or have their foreign policy supervised or curtailed.
## [Theocracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theocracy)
If religion has an important role in your world, the ruler of your city could easily be the High Priest(ess)/Pope, etc, ruling by "divine mandate".
The [Papal States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_States) were a real-life theocratic elective monarchy and so it's the [Vatican City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City) nowadays.
## The bottom line
The best system of government is the one that best fits the world you've created, whatever it has a real-world equivalent or not.
[Answer]
**Sparta-like government**
The population is about the same that your City-States. Two kings rules the city, with a 28-member 'council of elders' limiting their powers. These men are recruited from the highest social class, the aristocratic Spartiates.
Beneath is a middle class, called the Perioeci. Made up of farmers and artisans, the Perioeci pays taxes and can serve in the army, but they have no real political rights.
At the bottom are the helots: a slave class.
[**Classical Athens democracy**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Athens)
For a City-State, I would think of no better choice. But I believe your City-States are a bit... too small for this kind of government. I will leave this here in case you want to adjust the numbers and give you a second option.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VwYgC.jpg)
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*Inspired by [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/103481/inducing-a-solar-flare) from yesterday.*
Solar flares can give off a large amount of radiation, but on Earth this is typically absorbed before it reaches anywhere but the poles, and even then only in very reduced quantities.
I was wondering if, in the event of solar flare activity that was powerful enough to at least partially bypass the defenses of an Earth-like planet, there were any scientifically plausible reason that it might do the following.
1. Irradiate parts of the planet below, making them hazardous to life.
2. Scatter these areas about the planet rather than simply sterilizing the whole planet.
3. Hit areas closer to the equator with noticeable radiation without turning all of the land closer to the poles into a radioactive mess.
I'm guessing the answer to this is probably a hard no, but thought I'd give it a go and see what came of it. If the answer is actually yes, how big a solar flare would this require?
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*Edit: I'd also be fine with answers that incorporated a planet with an altered magnetic sphere, or even a flipping of the poles if either is necessary. Just so long as the planet remained Earth-like on the surface.*
[Answer]
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> **Irradiate parts of the planet** below, making them hazardous to life.
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> without turning all of the land closer to the poles into a radioactive mess.
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## No.
As others have mentioned, you misunderstand radiation. A hard blast of X-rays won't cause it's target to become radioactive.
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> Scatter these areas about the planet rather than simply sterilizing the whole planet.
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## Yes.
If by *scatter* you mean "the side facing the star".
The flare must blast *hard* X-rays instead of the typical *soft* X-rays.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray#Soft_and_hard_X-rays>
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> X-rays with high photon energies (above 5–10 keV, below 0.2–0.1 nm wavelength) are called hard X-rays, while those with lower energy are called soft X-rays. Solar flares only send *soft* X-rays.
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Naturally, only one side of the planet faces the sun at any one time. Thus, the **STUPENDOUSLY MASSIVE** flare (a hypothetical X80 or higher) would punch through the magnetosphere and the X-rays would sterilize everything facing the sun, but nothing on the other side.
If it's only 20 minutes or so, the planet wouldn't have time to turn very much on it's axis.
The destruction would be felt world wide, though, because of trade, etc.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_flare#Classification>
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> The classification system for solar flares uses the letters A, B, C, M or X, according to the peak flux in watts per square metre (W/m2) of X-rays with wavelengths 100 to 800 picometre.
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_flare#Hazards>
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> The strength of an event within a class is noted by a numerical suffix ranging from 1 to 9, which is also the factor for that event within the class. Hence, an X2 flare is twice the strength of an X1 flare, an X3 flare is three times as powerful as an X1, and only 50% more powerful than an X2 [10]. An X2 is four times more powerful than an M5 flare.
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>
>
Since the Earth's magnetosphere is not uniform, some areas will get blasted more strongly than others.
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> Hit areas closer to the equator with noticeable radiation
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>
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Unfortunately, the opposite will be true, due to the nature of how charged particles act in magnetic fields.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oEULN.jpg)
[Answer]
## Unfortunately, your premise is flawed
I won't digress on the topic of magnetic shielding and the potential areas of effect, because the entire premise of "turning areas radioactive with radiation" is flawed (and a common misconception).
The fact is that there is a difference between *radiation* and *radiation emitting elements*. While solar flares give off large doses of radiation, they probably won't cause radioactive areas. The same way than getting an X-ray scan won't make you radioactive, although you were still irradiated.
You can create radioactive elements with radiation, for example, Carbon 14 being created from Nitrogen under the action of cosmic particles/solar flares (as @wetcircuit stated it in the comments, the correct terms are "induced radiation" and "neutron activation"), but creating such amounts as to create radioactive wastelands would probably sterilize the planet anyway.
[Answer]
**NO**
Solar flares are massive bursts of light accompanied sometimes by ejections of charged particles, mainly electrons, protons and light ions.
Electromagnetic radiation, no matter the wavelength, is not bothered by the Earth magnetic field and it is, at most, absorbed by the atmosphere. This keeps off Gamma rays, X rays, UV rays. Mind however that none of these can induce radiation, but only ionization.
Charged particles are instead deviated by the magnetic field and mostly hit the poles. These particles are still dangerous, as they can damage all the molecules in a living organism, and accumulation of this damage can be fatal, either in short or long term. Still they cannot induce radiation.
If the Sun magnetic field is so strong than can significantly perturbate the Earth magnetic field, it may be possible that a significant flow of particles hits not only the poles but also other areas.
Just based on my gut feeling, I have the impression that in case a solar flare is powerful enough to shower the Equator with charged particles we should be concerned about our entire atmosphere being brushed away, rather than a bunch of particles hitting here and there.
[Answer]
Okay I'm not sure what size the flare would need to be apart from "big" really Really big; possibly too big for a star like Sol to produce, although there are some oddly flat areas on the moon that suggest Sol can produce some huge flares.
The important thing is if you had a flare large enough what would it do: you'd almost certainly find that the damage was pretty one-sided, as in occurs on only one side of the world, worst at the equator distributed in an egg-shape. The short half of the egg will be in the hemisphere where it is winter the long half extending into the summer side, and the damage will be isolated in a thin strip near the noon line at the time of the flare.
When it comes to lasting irradiation of the surface you need to look at the geophysical make-up of the area effected, soil and vegetation will erode away after the event and take radioactive material away but where bedrock is close to the surface and absorbs a large flux of charged particles and fast neutrons it will remain in place much longer giving off radiation to it's local environment and generally being unhealthy to hang around.
A flare big enough to punch protons and neutrons through the atmosphere in those quantities even across a relatively small area is going to be catastrophic. There will be some variance of the shape of the radiation burn-through due to magnetic field strength variations for example a major flare hitting the [South Atlantic Anomaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Atlantic_Anomaly) will do far more damage than the same flare in a location with full field strength.
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The dominant society on my conworld is at a level of technological and scientific development not unlike our own, with minor differences here and there. Scientific standards are decided by Academy of Science (for want of a better translated term), and this includes the system of measurements, which in this world is similar to the Terrestrial Imperial system, but with derived units in a manner similar to SI derived units. The native numeral system is dozenal (or duodecimal, or base-12), so a lot of the unwieldy aspects of an Imperial system of measurement can be handwaved away (12" to a foot is nice and round, for example).
So far, I've got units of length, area, time, temperature, and mass. Following the example set by the SI derived units, I've also come up with equivalents for force, pressure, and energy (newton, pascal, and joule), though I haven't thought of appropriate names for these units.
**How can I derive units for electromagentism (e.g. volt, ohm, watt, ampere), as the SI definitions seem to be a bit confusing in this regard? The ampere is currently the base SI unit for current, but how did they decide exactly what one ampere is?**
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For more context, I've listed all units in this system of measurements as they're currently defined below. Note that whilst I'm using the same *names* as common Imperial units, the actual definitions vary quite considerably.
## Base Units
* Length: foot = 267 mm
* Mass: pound = 528.72675 g
* Time: second = 0.8544 s
* Temperature: Originally defined by assigning 0° to the freezing point of water, and 144° to the boiling point of water, but supplanted in physics and chemistry with a unit using the same graduations but measured from absolute zero instead, analogous to degrees Celsius and kelvins.
* Molar weight is the amount of substance which contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in one ounce of carbon-12, which makes it slightly less than one SI mol. The analogue of Avogadro's constant is correspondingly adjusted.
* **Ampere equivalent?**
* **Candela equivalent?**
## Length
* *Point* = 0.309 mm ($\frac{1}{72}$ of an inch)
* *Line* = 6 points = 1.854 mm ($\frac{1}{12}$ of an inch)
* *Inch* = 12 lines = 22.25 mm ($\frac{1}{12}$ of a foot)
* *Foot* = 12 inches = 267 mm (Base unit of distance)
* *Yard* = 4 feet = 1.068 m (Less commonly used instead of feet)
* *Chain* = 18 yards = 19.224 m (Commonly used in surveying (miles-chains))
* *Mile* = 72 chains = 1384.128 m (Common unit of large distances)
* *League* = 4 miles = 5536.512 m (4 miles, or the distance a person can walk in an hour)
* *Pica* = $\frac{1}{6}$ in = 3.7083 mm ($\frac{1}{72}$ of a foot)
* *Furlong* = 9 chains = 173.016 m ($\frac{1}{8}$ of a mile)
* *Link* = $\frac{1}{144}$ chain = 133.5 mm (Surveying unit)
* *Rod* = 24 links = 3.204 m (Surveying unit equal to $\frac{1}{6}$ of a chain)
## Time
* Second = 0.8544 Earth seconds
* Minute = 72 seconds = 1.02528 Earth minutes
* Hour = 72 minutes = 1.230336 Earth hours
* Day = 24 hours = 29.528064 Earth hours
* Year = 241 days ≈ 297 Earth days
## Mass
The base unit of mass is the pound, but the modern ounce was originally defined as the mass of one cubic inch of water.
* *Grain* = = $\frac{1}{6912}$ lb ≈ 0.019 g
* *Dram* = 48 grains = $\frac{1}{144}$ lb ≈ 0.918 g
* *Ounce* = 12 drams = $\frac{1}{48}$ lb = 11.015140625 g
* *Quarter(-pound)* = 12 ounces = $\frac{1}{4}$ lb = 132.1816875 g
* *Pound* = 4 quarters = 1 lb = 528.72675 g
* *Stone* = 12 pounds = 12 lb = 6.344721 kg
* *Hundredweight* = 12 stones = 144 lb = 76.136652 kg
* *Ton* = 12 hundredweights = 1728 lb = 913.639824 kg
## Derived Units
So far, I haven't thought of what names to give these derived units
* Force: poundal (pdl) = 1 lb⋅ft / s ≈ 0.193 N (probably only used with prefixes much like our kilogram?)
* Pressure: poundal per square foot ≈ 2.713 Pa (could also use pounds per square inch: 1 psi = 390.625 Pa)
* Energy: poundal⋅foot ≈ 0.052 J (possibly also only used with prefixes)
[Answer]
Volts, ohms, and amperes are **not** units of power. Volts are units of [electric potential](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_potential), ohms are units of electric resistance and amperes are units of electric current.
The unit of power is the watt, with the straightforward definition of joules per second. In your system, the unit of power would be "pound" times "foot" squared over "second" cubed; one such unit would be equal to 0.060432434082031 watt.
To see why, you must consider the [dimensionality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensional_analysis) of power. Power is energy over time; energy is force times length; force is mass times acceleration; and acceleration is length over time squared: so that overall power is mass times length squared over time cubed.
## Electromagnetic units
The quirky [SI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units) [definition of the ampere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampere#Definition) comes from its history.
The basic problem is that there is no obvious way of relating electromagnetic units to mechanical units. Historically, electromagnetic units were defined in terms of forces, using either:
* [Coulomb's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb%27s_law), resulting in the so-called [CGS electrostatic units](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_units) ([statvolt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statvolt), statampere, [statcoulomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statcoulomb), etc.). In this system, the fundamental electromagnetic unit is the unit of charge, called statcoulomb or
franklin or esu (electrostatic unit of charge), defined as the charge of an object which, when placed at 1 cm distance from another identically charged object, will repel it with a force of 1 dyne.
* [Ampère's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amp%C3%A8re%27s_force_law), resulting on one hand in the CGS electromagnetic units ([abvolt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abvolt), [abampere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abampere), etc.), and on the other hand in the SI electromagnetic units (volt, ampere, etc.) In this system, the fundamental electromagnetic unit is the unit of electric current.
Historically, it all began with the abampere (CGS electromagnetic unit of electric current), defined as the current which, when passing through two infinitely long conductors of negligible cross section placed 1 cm apart in a vacuum, produces between those conductors a force of 2 dynes per centimeter of length. Nice definition, with simple numbers. (1 cm is 0.01 meters; 1 dyne is 1 gram times 1 centimeter over 1 second squared, that is, 1/100,000 newtons.) Once you have a definition for the units of electric current, electric charge is current times time, and electric potential is work over charge, so you can derive immediately units of charge and potential.
When engineers came into the picture they found that scientists used absurdly small or absurdly large electromagnetic units, so in 1873 the [International Electrotechnical Commission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Electrotechnical_Commission) (which at that time was called the International Electrical Congress) voted to adopt as the engineering unit of electric potential the volt equal to 100,000,000 scientists' abvolt, and the ampere defined as 1/10 of the scientists' abampere.
To sum it all up, first you must choose if you want to have a system of electromagnetic units similar in spirit with one of the various CGS systems (electrostatic, electromagnetic, or [Gaussian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_units)) or with the SI. Then, if you choose to have a system of electromagntic units similar in spirit with the SI (that is, a system where the [electric permittivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permittivity) and [magnetic permeability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeability_(electromagnetism)) of the vacuum are dimensional constants, and the 1/4π factor is not rationalized out), *and* you want to have a unit of electric current about the same size as the ampere, you can define it as the current which, when passing through two infinitely long conductors of negligible cross section placed in a vacuum at one unit of length apart, produces a force of 2×10−6 units of force per unit of length; this would result in a unit of current equal to 1.389 amperes.
*A unit of length is 0.267 m, and a unit of force is 0.193 N. 1 ampere of current would produce 1/0.267 \* 2E-7 N per meter at the distance of a "foot", or 2E-7 N per "foot", or 1.036E-6 units of force. We want to have nice numbers, so we need 2E-6 units of force, which is 1.93 times greater; take the square root because force is proportional to the product of the currents and you get 1.389 amperes.*
## Photometric units
Unlike other units of measurement, the photometric units don't measure physical quantities but sensations in the brain of a "standard observer", which is more-or-less an average person with average vision ("average" taken over persons with no visual impairments such as color blindness); they work only for humans, and would baffle a dog or a cat. As a consequence, the photometric units on your world depend on the physiology and neurophysiology of the inhabitants.
In particular, the fundamental photometric unit, the candela, is defined so that a light source of one candela appears to a human to be about as luminous as an ordinary candle. The SI definition is that a candela is the luminous intensity of a light source which emits monochromatic green light with a radiometric intensity of 1/683 watts per steradian. For monochromatic yellow light human physiology makes the radiometric power needed lower than 1/683 watts per steradian; for red monochromatic light, the power would be greater; for blue light, even greater; and for infrared or ultraviolet light no amount of power is big enough to produce one candela, because we cannot see infrared or ultraviolet light at all.
If the inhabitants of your world have the same physiology as humans and you want to keep the same luminous intensity for the candela, the corresponding definition would require 1/41.275 units of power per steradian.
[Answer]
**are you looking for names, or relationships?**
Volt, ampere, watt, and ohm all take their names from the people who discovered the fundamental concept and the basic realtionship between these aspects of electricity.
* Volt: Italian physicist [Alessandro Volta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Volta)
* Ampere: French mathematician [Andre-Marie Apere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9-Marie_Amp%C3%A8re)
* Watt: Scottish inventor [James Watt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt)
* Ohm: German physicist [Georg Ohm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Ohm)
Many of the names of SI units came from the people who discovered the *aspect* or *relationship* involved. Standardization into an SI unit came much, much later.
The reason I bring this up is that most of the units of measure we use today are spectacularly arbitrary. They may be universally defined, but they're hardly universal at all. Evidence of this are the wild numbers we must adopt as *constants* (e.g., the [Planck constant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant)) to make rational relationships that are irrational due to the arbitrary nature of our "standards."
Who says that time, even time associated with Earth, need be defined by 24 hour days? Do we even need minutes? What, really, is a second? For example, the ancient Babylonians divided the day into 24 hour segments, but the ancient Chinese divided the day into 100 segments. How would the formulas we use today have changed had the word adopted the Chinese solution rather than the Babylonian solution? It was an arbitrary choice, one being no more right from the point of view of physics than the other.
As I look through your list you appear to be assigning words in a one-to-one fashion with what we use today. You're providing basic relational differences (referenced to Earth), but in reality... it's 100% the same system.
So, use the names for the above four units of measure as an example and move forward. Create four inventors, and assign the their names to the unit name to honor them as we did.
**Defining units begins with understanding relationships**
Physicists of the past weren't looking to define a standard. They were searching for relationships in our physical world. Three of the four units are defined with one remarkably simple equation: [Ohm's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohm%27s_law).
R = V/I
A similar calculation defines power:
P = V\*I
In other words, whatever definition you use for *volt* will impose itself on the definitions of the other three units because the *relationships* must never fail. They're actually what's important.
No standard unit sprang into existence. The relationship between two or more units was mathematically established first. A rock-solid, written-in-stone means of "defining" exactly what something is (like a second,) came much, much later.
Your choice of how to define any SI unit is as arbitrary as the methods used on Earth. **However, if you want WB:SE to help you with alternative methods of defining standard units, you should ask for each definition as a separate question, or this becomes too broad.**
***However, how important is this? As an author, are you straining at a gnat? How important is mimicking the body of standardized measurement in your story? Better still, how important is it that the unit definitions exist? Without a bit more insight, it appears to be a ton of work with little value.***
[Answer]
There are many ways to define units. Even the SI unit for length has been derived in different ways over our history-- it initially used a
[seconds pendulum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seconds_pendulum); now it is light/wavelength based. The definitions change as science allows more precision.
This means that your alternate history of science will generate many different bases. Ultimately, there are underlying physical constants, like the charge of an electron.
Units systems are just oversimplifications abstractions that engineers use to avoid doing real simplify the math.
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Which natural conditions are needed to force the evolution to immortality? I've read on a page (I don't remember the page) that if the environment is safe, the animal would evolve to have a shorter lifespan and large amounts of offspring and if the environment is dangerous the animal would evolve to have longer lifespan and small amounts of offspring, because it's too complicated to take care of a baby animal in a dangerous environment. **But** I've read on other site that the more dangerous an environment is, the more offspring would be produced to increase the chances of survival of the race.
So my question is: which natural conditions are needed to force the evolution to longer lifespan and even immortality?
**Bonus:** Which natural conditions are needed to force **humans (humanoids)** to evolve to immortality?
[Answer]
tj1000 mentioned the idea of optimizing *accumulated* knowledge. I will explore and develop that idea.
What we need is a situation where knowledge continues to be accumulated over time, and cannot be passed on during a normal growing-up period. One reason might be because the elders remember places or situations that don’t occur every season, or even every generation if using the traditional span of growing up, reproducing, and passing on skills to children as *they* grow up. The Grandmother Effect (mentioned by Palarran) might be a primitive form of that.
Consider that animals learning only by *doing* and being shown by adults have no other way of recording history and passing it on as abstract knowledge. A troupe following the food sources may range over a large area, *and not return* to the same area for a time greater than a generation. Furthermore, you have a cross product of location and climate. So, to plug in some numbers, if a childhood is 15 years, the parents will be 30 when they are done teaching their own kids and the cycle repeats. But knowledge about where to find a fresh-water spring during a dry year in this specific region is not something the parents ever experienced themselves. In fact, the last few times the troupe passed this way, it was wet weather. So, where’s that spring? Maybe an elder *does* remember.
Having memory-keeper elders live longer and longer will allow them to recall more situations, which is only collected from their own direct experience. The younger elders-to-be are *shown* the spring. They might need to remember that 5 or 6 generation-cycles later, only then passing it on in turn.
The water example is inspired by the case of Elephants. It was long rumored that they have “generational memory” but actually they simply live 60–70 years: compare with females being sexually mature at 9 and adults at 18. So an old elephant may be a grandmother at 40 and a great-grandmother at 60 and *remember* things that she wasn’t able to pass on to her children earlier.
To recap, favor extended lifespan in a social animal by having a large variety of changing conditions that are not repeated frequently.
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Meanwhile, we have the issue of actually living that long. Cells have a pre-programmed number of copies they will make because they *do* degrade. It’s interesting that the rate of cancer in animals doesn’t scale with the lifespan and overall size — the amount of compensating traits will improve to match the need. But that can’t scale up indefinitely.
Macroscopic living things with specialized tissues that *do* seem to be immortal will actually go through rebirth, not actually lasting without tissues wearing out. Plants, you understand, spread vegetativly, growing *all new* parts from a shoot. A certain jellyfish reverts to an earlier stage in its lifecycle and metamorphosises again.
So, how about starting with species that *do* undergo metamorphosis? Consider butterflies: they don’t gradually turn into adults; rather, they undergo a full development process in the same way as a fetus in an egg does.
So imagine a phylum descended from ancestors that had a complex lifecycle with different [instars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instar) and underwent metamorphosis. As evolution took it towards more advanced life, it kept the ability and undergoes *partial* metamorphosis so that it can keep the brain with its learned experiences. They might have different forms at different ages or have different *casts* with different bodies, all based around this inherited original lifecycle. Now, an adult might morph *again* to become an “elder”, and continue renewing its form every generation by repeating the metamorphosis but targeting the same form again.
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Why *can't* body parts be regrown? If an animal can have offspring, then clearly it’s possible to fire up the development process from a single “good” cell. I think that’s getting off topic and is worth its own question. I’ll just leave you with the idea that *targeted*, partial metamorphosis could evolve into such an ability. Essentially, your offspring keeps your old brain with everything you learned, but can evolve physically otherwise!
[Answer]
There is a (fictional) talk about this by the protagonist in [*Fragment*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragment_(novel)). He makes an argument that lifespan is evolved to prevent inter-generational reproduction, and different lifecycles and lifestyles give rise to different spans. In a situation where an animal is unlikely to meet its own direct offspring (e.g. mating is done in an annual mass congregation as opposed to a small local community) that pressure does not exist.
Eventually, they explore an ecosystem where predation is so severe that there was no need to evolve an obsolescence mechanism; meanwhile they also have a system like with bees where an animal only mates once and stores the material for life, thus no inter-generational mating was possible and *that* pressure was not needed. The intelligent life they discovered has individuals that live for tens of thousands of years and never grow old.
[Answer]
Try looking at this [List of longest-living organisms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organisms), and you'll get a clue of what animals potentially live longest.
The closest you can have is prolonging the lifespan, maybe into hundreds, or even thousands. But no immortality. Nature has dropped a "wear and tear" rate on each and every single organism, which is designed to allow natural selection pressure evolution.
I became interested in this topic back when I read a book about genetic (I forgot the name or the author, but he was a journalist).
## What is aging? Google it, you won't be disappointed.
Everytime your cells multiply, your DNA strand is cut shorter than its original length. That's why the longer we live, the more we accumulate malformed cells, manifested as wrinkled skin, blurry eyes, forgetful memory, and such. It's because the newer cells have their DNA strand cut short on their endpoints - might be a very important information about a certain enzyme.
```
ABCDEFGHIJ -> ABCDEFGHI -> ABCDEFG -> ABCDEF
```
However, nature has developed an interesting protection against this: **telomere**, a "useless" repetition of a meaningless section, placed on the ends of a DNA strand, giving a margin to protect important information. It delays the "aging" of the DNA.
```
ABCDEFGHIJtttt -> ABCDEFGHIJttt -> ABCDEFGHIJt
```
An organism with a longer lifespan has longer telomere. A short lived one has shorter.
However, dangerous environments (predators, or such) remove the advantage an organism with longer telomere has (they die before using up their telomere), causing them to evolve with shorter telomere. Therefore, "endangered" animals - usually small animals, which are prey to many predators - usually have a short lifespan with a lot of offspring.
## Longer lifespan vs reproduction
In nature's view, **after the reproduction age, you are basically useless**. It's better for you to die quickly and efficiently, allowing the food and effort to maintain the survivability of your offspring.
An aged body means that you have accumulated many failures in your body: heart, liver, kidney, *reproductive system* - that's why it's even better for you to die quickly, to prevent you from passing down cut genes to your offspring. To maintain this body you spend energy to repair the damage internally and externally. If you are not about to give birth to more *healthy* offspring, then nature deems it's better to reallocate the energy to other things.
Thus, it's far *more efficient* to have babies rather than maintaining an aged body - which consumes energy that can be reallocated to having **more babies.**
***If they have no or few endangering factors, the pressure of natural selection will encourage individuals with longer telomere to survive better.***
**Bonus:** There is an enzyme called **telomerase** that is able to "repair" cut telomere, but it is not active continuously. However, in some organisms this telomerase is active more often.
For **human/humanoid**, the key factor is stress. Removing stress will greatly increase individual human to live (because [stress suppresses the defense system](https://www.google.co.id/search?q=stress%20suppresses%20the%20immune%20system)), allowing individuals with longer telomere to have advantage, thus evolving humanity to have longer and longer telomeres.
[Answer]
This is dependent on the species as much as the environment. I would recommend **a creature with slow reproduction and few offspring that is slow to reach maturity, set in an environment with very high infant mortality**. If a species has to have a long life simply to breed enough to carry on the species, either that species will go extinct or evolution will find a way.
For an example, let's imagine some species of mammal that is pregnant for a year or more to give birth to a single child. For the purpose of this example, say it takes twenty years between a child being born and it becoming sexually mature (and thus able to reproduce). Let's also stipulate that the environment is dangerous enough that most children die before they reach that age. In principle, this doesn't even require any special environment; prior to the Industrial Revolution, fewer than half of all humans lived to adulthood (with the result that lifespan figures tend to give a misleading picture of how long people could live back then), and humans are (supposedly) intelligent. It doesn't take much exaggeration from there to envision an environment where four-fifths or more of a large mammal's offspring die before reaching sexual maturity.
If it takes this species, say, eighteen months at minimum between births, and four-fifths of those children die before they become mature enough to themselves reproduce, that species will require a high maximum life span simply to perpetuate itself. Under that scenario, you would get roughly one adult every eight years under ideal circumstances. This mandates that adults live thirty-five years at the barest minimum, and there will need to be a considerable margin for safety (ideal circumstances being practically non-existent in reality). A species like that would have to live fifty years or more in practice (barring accident, predation, illness, etc.) just to produce enough offspring; assuming this species also raises its young, cares for them, etc., that adds another fifteen or twenty years before members of the species can afford to enter into old age.
Under this example, you'd end up with an average life expectancy for adults (excluding the many, many casualties who die before adulthood) of at least seventy years, and this isn't even an example that stretches very far beyond humanity; exaggerate the figures for pregnancy/time to maturity/infant mortality/all of the above, and you can get an even larger figure simply as an evolutionary requirement. Raise the duration of pregnancy to thirty months, for instance, and you end up with an average of one living adult every twelve or thirteen years (again, under ideal circumstances) instead of every eight; your average lifespan for adults would then become something closer to a hundred years. If you want more focus on the environment, exaggerate its dangers (high number of predators, high disease rates, whatever works) and spike infant mortality, with a similar result.
None of this will select for outright immortality, however. If you want that, you're going to need a way to avoid overpopulation. There's also a problem of genetic dominance; a handful of immortal individuals could go on having children forever, making their genes too widespread, which would effectively create inbreeding within a few generations due to nearly everybody being descended from the same great-grandparent or some such scenario. If they have some equivalent of menopause, you instead run into the problem of justifying why they live forever, consuming resources that could be going to their offspring, when they can no longer reproduce; the [Grandmother Hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_hypothesis) might give you some pointers for that, but on its own I don't think that would ensure immortality.
[Answer]
**The Telomeres and Telomerase** have already been mentioned in an answer. But in my opinion not sufficiently explained.
First of, a Telomere is the repeating sequence that prevents aging by absorbing your DNA shortening; telomerase is the enzyme and adds more repeats to your telomeres after you loose a bit.
"But wait!" You probably think "If we already have an enzyme that repairs this damage why do we even age?" Only two cell types express Telomerase:
1. Stem cells. Your stem cells have more preserved DNA than your normal cells, from a stem cell replication one cell stays a stem cell, the other becomes a 'normal' cell. Normal cells also replicate and their DNA damage accumulates, but a certain percentage of them each 'generation' of cells originate from stem cells and will have long telomeres.
"This enzyme sounds incredibly useful! Why doesn't every cell simply express Telomerase?" That's where we come into contact with the second cell type that has to express telomerase.
2. Cancer. An incredibly amount of cancer cells will die before they replicate. Your immune system attacks cancer, cancers are under constant food and oxygen shortages, cellulair defense mechanismes will self-destruct the cell as soon as they notice they are a cancer cell. Not to mention all the mutations might leave a cancer cell simply unable to function. One of those cellulair defense mechanismes I mentioned **is the telomeres**. Due too their incredibly high attrition rate and accompanying high reproduction rate cancers will go through their telomeres fast, and if they don't make specific mutations to express telomerase they will die. It is safe to say that every single person reading this has had a mutation and a cancer in their life, but this cancer would have died off before it became noticeable because it ran out of its telomeres; didn't make a "lucky" mutation to express telomerase and died. I will repeat this: **Every one of you has been saved from having a tumor because your normal cells do not express telomerase.**
Cell immortalization is a giant hurdle; the fact that your cells have a build in self-destruct timer that will go off after a set number of generations is what enables complex life to exist.
If you want immortal life you again have two options:
1. Your beings produce telomerase in every cell and your cells have no other major differences from Human cells. Your beings are immortal but plagued by cancer and tumors.
2. Your beings produce telomerase in every cell but they have additional cellulair defence mechanisms. I'm not going to give an entire lecture on Oncology so let's just say that your Telomeres are not your only way your cells 'realize' they are a cancerous growth and self-destruct. If you say those other mechanismes are sufficiently advanced and numerous they might very well offset the massively increased cancer risk that telomerase expression gives.
[Answer]
Really sorry for the long answer. It's the product of too much coffee.
*tldr;*
**Kill off the people that weren't going to live long with, for example, a virus that shortens your telomeres.**
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When you think about evolution you have to think about one thing above all the others. Reproduction. Evolution is driven entirely by and for reproduction. If we're smarter than homo heildelbergensis then it's because being smart helped us reproduce. It either helped us find resources or stay away from danger, but the reason for being smart is so that you can indirectly, reproduce better. To turn it on its head, if being smarter only meant that we all became basement dwellers and never saw the light of day, we wouldn't be very sexy, and probably wouldn't reproduce. If that were the case the species would not become smarter.
Fitness is a term that in this context means reproductively fit. Your fitness is basically how well you reproduce. So if it's a thousand of years ago and you're big and strong and you're able to hunt and protect your family, then you reproduce. Your genes get passed on. Your offspring survive to become big strong people and so on. There are counter examples where being bigger might be a disadvantage but let's leave those for another discussion. This is just a simple example.
Another important thing to remember is that evolution does not go towards anything. There is no end goal in mind. A bear has a white coat when its brothers and sisters all have brown coats. The white coat helps him hide in the snow. There was no force that was driving him towards whiteness, it just happened randomly and it turned out to be a little better than brown. He hunted better, got fed and that let him reproduce more than everyone else.
Now let's start the experiment. We want immortal human beings. How do we get there? Currently, "all things being equal" (they're not, I know), everyone of breeding age is reproducing. That means that people who will live to be older than 100 and people who will kick it in their mid 60s are all reproducing. Right now there's no fitness related to longevity. Everyone can start breeding when they're done puberty regardless of how long they're going to live. So that would need to change.
Let's just say that since we do have a goal in mind (immortality), we can build to that goal gradually and have intermediate goals (longevity). So we allow for some circumstance that takes people who weren't going to live that long out of the gene pool. They are no longer reproducing. Not with our octogenarians, not with each other, nobody. Their short lived genes will die with them. Now we have a breeding population of very old people.
As other posters have mentioned, it really is about that reproductive age. Once you hit menopause you are no longer passing along your genes. Whatever you already passed along is what you passed along. If you live to be 300 after you hit menopause it won't matter because no one knew you were that sexy and you never reproduced more than the average person, let's say. So it's not enough to just live longer in and of itself, you must retain your ability to reproduce in order for that to be a fitness factor.
So that's it really. Those that won't live long must not reproduce (or reproduce as much, depending on how long you want the immortality process to take), and those that live longer must reproduce more. The question is how do you know? And that's what your original question is all about. What natural conditions will lead to this outcome?
Without knowing ahead of time who is going to die of natural causes early and who is going to age like wine, natural conditions can't really select those people. So you're going to need to invent a mechanism that can tell who is going to die early, either directly or indirectly. Here's where it gets interesting.
Imagine a virus like any other virus, except that it doesn't kill the host. It makes a copy, leaves a gene in your cell that says "do not infect me" and then leaves you alone. It's a whole other class of virus, real smart and sustainable virus. Let's add one curious effect of this virus: it decreases your telomere length (if you believe this is the basis of all aging and not a cumulative set of deteriorating genes or other mechanisms). So it makes everyone age. Everyone gets the disease, everyone is infected. Everyone is aging way faster than they should be. See where I'm going with this? :) So who lives? The people whose cells just happen to be slightly better at repairing telomeres. So they reproduce and only they reproduce, which leads to the start of generations of ubertelomeremensch.
This is one way but you could do it other ways. Maybe radiation from a star makes everyone age and mutate and only organisms with strong DNA repair (not just shielding) can survive. Basically, you want the people to die off who aren't going to live long anyway. That'll do it. You make the people who will live long more reproductively fit and they'll evolve to at least very long lives.
And we are talking about the species as a whole. If you wanted to do an offshoot and say "these jungle people over here bred mortality right out of their stock", you could do that too.
To be ever weary of the randomness of the process however, and as a counter example, evolution might prefer people with a certain protein or a certain overactive organelle. And, at first, it may have nothing to do with longevity, but through the course of random evolution it will provide the key function to repairing cells and DNA indefinitely.
Other interesting things to consider: the cells in your body come from your parents, those cells came from their parents, those cells came from their parents. If you follow the line all the way back you end up with some *thing* in our sweet mother Earth's history that found a way to reproduce itself over and over until we ended up with you. It might not be the same person, but it's life. That's called germ line immortality, and it's pretty dog gone amazing.
I had another point to make but I forgot it. Must be getting old.
[Answer]
I will sort of answer this by pointing out that immortality is contrary to evolution, because it stops the improvement process.
Evolution, which we can observe, occurs during reproduction. If we assume that the evolved version may contain improvements over the original, then the original is now just wasting resources by continuing to live. The individual creature may be at odds with that goal, but that's how living creatures as a whole operate - they reproduce to spread the species, and to improve the species.
Human intelligence may lead to some form of intervention to either stretch life further or make it immortal, possibly by engineering DNA strands with super long telometers, or mods to the replication process to stop the loss. But, if one follows how life has evolved naturally, immortality is just not one of the goals the evolution process seeks to achieve.
Perhaps the next stage of evolution is intellectual evolution, where the individuals are preserved so they can continue to contribute based on their accumulated knowledge. But, it will be up to humans to intercede in the evolutionary process, to achieve that goal. The natural mechanism itself is not set up to achieve immortality.
[Answer]
The humanoid species would have to develop and evolve in an environment that maximized intelligence and skills and abilities necessary for technical work. Also, they would need to develop the psychosocial factors towards self-centredness.
Once the humanoids created science and technology eventually as their technical culture increased they will develop advanced biomedical technology capable of enhancing and extending longevity. Given sufficient time the humanoids might find a way of developing technologically mediated immortality.
In summary, the humanoids need to evolve to be capable of producing high level advanced technology. This will lead to increasing levels of life extension and longevity which eventually could turn into immortality.
[Answer]
There may be a natural way to immortality.
Evolution, like others already mentioned, is tightly coupled with mortality. So, let's imagine an environment that has no need for evolution. A environment with very, very constant conditions. In that environment, an organism can reach its "optimal form". Once optimal form is reached, any modifications to that form would be detrimental. So, if everything going according to plan, that environment eventually will get populated by that only form of the organism. Next thing, it would be very beneficial for such organism to be long-living, and replicating all the time. Sure, it may lead to overpopulation, but all forms would suffering from it. Longevity ensures proliferation of the optimal form. A form with shorter lifespan would, over the course of its life, produce less offspring and therefore is not optimal. At the end, we would end up with the environment populated by of potentially immortal organisms competing with each other for limited resources.
[Answer]
[fet's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/83700/38289) is really good, and I will use that mechanism to try to give the OP a method to achieve the desired outcome.
Indirect natural selection means that some individuals reproductive fitness might be influenced by others. This is a form of social natural selection.
If you accept that the way to immortality starts trough longevity you want a selective pressure that allows the elderly to keep being productive and helpful to they families after they cant reproduce anymore.
For cavemen that could be two natural challenges, one that cannot be overcame by elders and one that can. Lets imagine a village of hunters. This hunters need to walk a long journey everyday to catch their prey, and at night there are predators outside. Elders have a hard time hunting for lack of agility and stamina.
Now lets add trouble at home... say, deadly ants. Our village has plenty of anthills and no way to kill them. Also the ants can get aggressive if disturbed, which children often end up doing.
So a small family of 3: father, mother and one child needs food and protection for the child. If the mother can help with the hunting/gathering of food she will not be able to without leaving the child unattended.
If this family included a grandmother the mother would be able to go and help hunt without endangering the child. In this way the father/mother chances of raising a child would be increased by the longevity genes os his/her mother.
[Answer]
In no natural environments, immortality will arise in complex life forms. For complex life forms to arise, many mutations must take place. If mortality were to take place, it would reduce the rate of these mutations since life forms have to reach equilibrium with their resources. This means exhaustion of those resources and it is not beneficiary to feed an older generation when you can feed the new ones.
Many are often confused that evolution is an extremely random process. It is not! The whole point of sexual reproduction and desires is to make it semi-supervised. Similarly, aging is another tool to make life more diverse.
So, to answer your question, once the perfect life form for a particular environment has been reached, deviations from it are undesirable. Hence, in such a case, immortality can be a solution to preserve the perfect living code. I doubt that such a solution exists for a dynamic and a self-interacting systems/environment in which life will arise and in which life will reshape it.
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[Question]
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**Context:**
In my world, society has progressed to 2050-ish, a new nation rose on Greenland led by an aristocratic community called the "Grey".
Numbering at 1000 or so, the grey is a group of highly intelligent, genetically enhanced (with slight improvement in brain power and longevity) religious devotees. Details about their religion is unimportant, but it is not at odds with science/progress, and its overall effect is that, among true believers, this religion inspires a sense of duty, and gives the Grey a condescending attitude towards nearly all outsiders, seeing them as hedonistic, wasteful primitives.
Also, the Grey exercise their power by collecting a small percentage of national tax (which they share among themselves from a common pool), directly controlling the army and hold veto rights over the more "normal" political activity performed by a mostly democratic government.
**Problem:**
When the Grey replaces dead members, they prefer using their own children (which they produce with calculated care) however, it is possible that the children they raise are not as religious as their parents or are unwilling to act as rulers. This means that either many children have to be produced so that some may suffice for future leadership, and it also generates the problem with the under-performing children, who may become a factor of instability.
If it is necessary to replenish the Grey's members by assimilating outsiders, the group may compromise its ideological/genetic purity and the sense of separation from the rest. It is also difficult to test the new members for their loyalty, more specifically, it's difficult to tell whether the new members are truly assimilated with the Grey's ideology or simply pretending to be so as to secure power.
**Proposed solution:**
I am thinking that culling the Grey's own children for sufficient replacement will work, and the under-performing children can be put in a sort of "pacified confinement" which is equivalent to a highly comfortable prison where the inmates are stripped of all power and cut-off from communication with the outside world.
Nevertheless, I am not confident that this will completely dispel the inmates' capacity as factors of instability, and perhaps a disproportionate number of Grey's children will voluntarily choose this lifestyle, forming a significant burden on the Grey.
[Answer]
**Short version of solution : Mid Ranking Management.**
Long version : lots of things I don't like.
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> In my world, society has progressed to 2050-ish, a new nation rose on Greenland led by an aristocratic community called the "Grey".
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Or something more in keeping with the national language and culture, perhaps. "The Grey" seems a rather uninspiring name for a group leading anyone. It conveys no meaning or association with any historically or socially important ideal. It may be the sort of name an author might pick, but it's not going to help get you to power and at some point you have to start not in power and rise to power.
"The Grey" is a dark name and would convey, if anything, a sense that they might be dangerous. It's not an accident that groups tend to go for names like "New Dawn", "Shining Path and so on. Positive spin.
Rethink the name.
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> Numbering at 1000 or so
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So barely enough to populate even the most senior positions in an administration.
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> , the grey is a group of highly intelligent
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In what way ?
Intelligence can take many forms and if they're just randomly intelligent and individual members can funnel their energies into medicine, art, music, literature, games, programming, engineering and so on, that won't really give you many of the 1000 who are actually skilled at the skills of politics and economics that they'll actually desperately need as a small group to survive.
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> , genetically enhanced (with slight improvement in brain power and longevity)
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Slight ? So if I concentrate hard I can out think them ? So the top 1% of the million or more population can match them or better them ?
They'd better be well beyond "slight".
Longevity isn't much use if you're a minority group that can find itself shot against a wall in a revolution.
So you want long lived individuals or a long lived clan ?
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> religious devotees.
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Dogma rears it head.
Dogma is a weakness. Any form of religion is, by definition, a factor that will be considered reactionary by people outside that religion.
All a religion does is make it focus for resentment. "Why are we being led by this minority ?" is going to be followed, eventually by "Hang the Bar Stewards !". History is pretty clear on this point.
If you have a religion and you want to hold power, it must be a religion the ordinary populace are comfortable with.
Which leads us to ...
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> Details about their religion is unimportant,
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Yes, they are. Details of a practically minute nature are responsible for some of the bloodiest and most ruthlessly pursued wars in history. The devil is in the detail.
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> but it is not at odds with science/progress,
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It must be. Religion requires belief without evidence. There will always be a point where this clashes with science, which require no belief unless there's evidence.
There will always be a point of contention, usually many, between these two fundamentally different outlooks.
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> and its overall effect is that, among true believers,
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Question : how do you tell a true believer from someone who just claims they are ?
Answer : tell them you'll spare the ones who relinquish their faith and burn the believers are the stake.
A system, I might add, which has been used extensively by humans and, hard as it is to believe, the true believers often will go to the stake and you're left with the cynics to feed.
Another way of viewing this is Who Polices The Police ? Who says you're a true believer and how do you prove it ?
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> this religion inspires a sense of duty,
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One man's duty is another man's holocaust. Dogma is a problem and, again, who decides what's duty and what's unworthy personal obsession ?
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> and gives the Grey a condescending attitude towards nearly all outsiders, seeing them as hedonistic, wasteful primitives.
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Surely they'd start seeing each other that way as well ?
Normal greed, envy, lust and all those other human emotions will lead you to look at not just your servant, but your master, as a waste of space you could be using better. :-)
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> Also, the Grey exercise their power by collecting a small percentage of national tax (which they share among themselves from a common pool),
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Bet that's popular with the vast majority they depend on to not rush teh palace gates !
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> directly controlling the army
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1000 people don't control an army. They control, at best, 1000 people.
The army will be the de facto rulers and, as history proves, if you depend on the army to keep you in power, you're just a moving target.
Something other than a terrible name and a condescending manner is going to be required to stop all these armed and highly trained people from just turning on you.
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> and hold veto rights over the more "normal" political activity performed by a mostly democratic government.
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A mob also holds a veto right. Usually in both hands.
A minority religious caste creaming money off the top and who cannot be democratically removed is, in no way, going to successfully pass itself or it's society off as a "mostly democratic" government.
If it looks like a nobility, acts like a nobility and swims like a nobility in it's private swimming pool, it's a nobility.
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> When the Grey replaces dead members, they prefer using their own children (which they produce with calculated care) however, it is possible that the children they raise are not as religious as their parents or are unwilling to act as rulers.
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So not produced with much calculating care at all.
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> This means that either many children have to be produced so that some may suffice for future leadership, and it also generates the problem with the under-performing children, who may become a factor of instability.
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Actually just the ambition of the ones being groomed for future leadership is sufficient to create a lot more instability than anything else.
The ones who don't have ambition and under-perform are, by definition, no threat at all to the ones who have it and do perform.
They are a non-problem who'll be happy to get by on a basic "better than average" job with enough trappings of power to not need real power. Perfect mid ranking managers could hardly be described better.
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> If it is necessary to replenish the Grey's members by assimilating outsiders, the group may compromise its ideological/genetic purity and the sense of separation from the rest.
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That'd be the same sense of separation that will find them waiting for execution after the revolution, I take it. :-)
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> It is also difficult to test the new members for their loyalty, more specifically, it's difficult to tell whether the new members are truly assimilated with the Grey's ideology or simply pretending to be so as to secure power.
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As I've pointed out, it's just as difficult to tell what's really going on inside the mind of all these condescending, ambitious people.
It's fundamentally impossible to avoid this problem and still have any free will in a group.
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> Proposed solution:
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There is no perfect solution.
You need a system of exams, formal and legally binding (on both sides) to test for ability, inclination and deception.
How do you test for deception : you use good interrogation methods (and that's the talking and listening type, not the idiotic buckets of water nonsense). You use detectives to check things. You use, in fact, a good Intelligence service. The exams just test technical competence and knowledge. You'd probably also test for ability to lead - check out how the military do that, because if there's one sphere of human endeavor that requires a better than average success at finding good leaders, it's the military !
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> I am thinking that culling the Grey's own children for sufficient replacement will work, and the under-performing children can be put in a sort of "pacified confinement" which is equivalent to a highly comfortable prison where the inmates are stripped of all power and cut-off from communication with the outside world.
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I'll say this again : mid ranking managers. Practically the same thing without the weird connotation of "culling" - an unfortunate choice of word.
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> Nevertheless, I am not confident that this will completely dispel the inmates' capacity as factors of instability, and perhaps a disproportionate number of Grey's children will voluntarily choose this lifestyle, forming a significant burden on the Grey.
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Gotta have mid ranking managers with little or no real power. Planet's full of them and while they're a nuisance and get in the way really powerful people (like engineers) they're not going to be able to form and execute any plan, either singly or in a group, that could possibly destabilize anything.
No revolution was ever started by a mid ranking manager. Well, probably.
[Answer]
Follow the model of the [Hutterites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite).
They are in many ways like your Grey: a community (a communistic community!) of religious devotees who marry among themselves, and who are possessed with a sense of purpose.
Hutterites have lots of children. Children are baptized into the church. Not all of them are. Some might not want to. Some don't make the cut. They do not have some penal colony for children of Hutterites who do not become part of the church. These kids grow up to be people outside the church: Catholics, or agnostics, or whatever they want to be.
The Grey can do the same as the Hutterites. They have lots of kids. Pay attention to them. Those who are willing and who make the cut can be Grey. The other kids are just regular people. I am sure the population of Greenland is not only the 1000 Grey. There are probably lots of other people doing the things people do. The Grey kids who grow up to be not Grey just mix in with the regular population.
From <http://www.hutterites.org>
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> When young people feel ready to make a commitment to baptism, they
> meet with the senior minister and make a formal request. The minister
> brings this request to the whole brotherhood and if there are no
> objections, they are accepted for a probation period. Every Sunday
> afternoon for 6 to 7 weeks, the baptismal candidates visit each of the
> witness brothers who provides spiritual and religious teachings
> ranging in length from ten minutes to over an hour. Hutterites accept
> all 12 points of the Apostle’s Creed as Truth. All members publicly
> declare their belief in The Apostle’s Creed upon baptism.
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> Can a non-Hutterite join a Hutterite colony A question that is often
> asked is whether or not an outsider can join a Hutterite colony. It
> has happened that outsiders or non-Hutterites join a Hutterite colony,
> but it is quite rare. Few Hutterite colony are open to outsider
> joining, but there are a handful who would consider it, depending on
> the candidate and the willingness of the candidate to adopt to the
> Hutterian norms. Over the year’s many people have attempted to become
> full members of the Hutterite community, but haven’t been successful
> for a variety of reasons.
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[Answer]
StephenG was quite comprehensive; and I agree. So let me get more prescriptive:
Your strategy is wrong. Your Grey are not being very intelligent if they give themselves all the perks of power as an elite ruling class, that is a recipe (and always has been) for the underclass to revolt out of resentment and slaughter them, assassinate them or their children, particularly when large numbers of the underclass have nothing to lose. Such as at times of great poverty, failed crops or other economic collapse.
**Everyone** can be overthrown by sufficient force; there is simply no insurance against it. The best fighter on the planet cannot dodge a thousand bullets (or knives or spears). Your Greys must rule by terror (e.g. Hussein, Ghadafi), or rule by love; meaning there are *much better ways* to make money and have power than being a member of the government.
If you want to filter out opportunists, you must find ways to eliminate monetary reward, so the only rewards are the satisfaction of knowing you have helped others. Who would do that? Altruists. What if a Grey child must take an irreversible vow of average income in order to join the government? They get the average income of their citizens, for life, period. Any more than that due to any reason whatsoever must go to charity, they have no access to their pre-existing property or wealth for life, such pre-existing property or wealth will not increase in value (or all increases will be donated to charities); any cheating is a death sentence; there is zero upward mobility, in money or property, if you choose to enter government. The Greys ensure you **will** live the average life, period.
To counter megalomania (power hungry, not money or property hungry), use WL Gore corporation's inverted management. Here is a slightly modified version of that:
First, every new Grey must start at the bottom, on a one year probation.
In that time they must apprentice to four task teams in government (a task team being 1 to 20 individuals working on a specific thing); the first is chosen by the candidate, each subsequent one is chosen by the team they just finished with (after 3 months); although the team may consider the candidate's stated preferences for type of work.
At the end of the year, all members of the teams must vote on whether to accept the apprentice or not; all four teams must declare them suitable, within each team 2/3 of members (rounded up) must declare them suitable.
If they do, the lifelong vow of average income begins, with ceremony: This is like joining the military, certain transgressions or betrayals can literally cost your life.
On to countering megalomania: The inverted management idea is that every level of management is chosen by their underlings, and their position can be revoked at any time by their underlings. The first level managers similarly choose amongst themselves for their boss, etc, all the way up.
So, say we manage 1000 Greys by groups of 10: 10 greys choose a group manager; resulting in 100 group managers. These organize in groups of 10, and choose 10 section managers (over 100 Greys each). These 10 section managers elect a President. If at any time they want to overrule a Presidential decision, they can; or they can demote the President back to their own ranks and put somebody else in charge.
Only the level beneath a manager can demote a manager.
To adjust this slightly to address the costs of management; Low level groups are actually self-organized in groups of about 12 to do the work of 10. When they elect a boss (A), it is one of them; If they pull their boss back into their ranks; they put someone else there. Now if their boss (A) is then elected to the next management layer up: They elect a new boss, B, and hire a new employee (or recruit one from another team with more than they need). If boss (A) is ever pulled back from an upper level, he falls all the way back to his original, no-boss-at-all level. He can rejoin his original team, or some other team. If no team will have him, and presuming he has not committed any crime, then he is without work. But he still gets paid.
There is a small risk of free-riders in this system; presumably they would be rooted out by the 1-year probation period by one of the four teams that vetted each candidate. But there is little risk of megalomaniacs getting very far, and little risk of corruption due to the limitations on income: The other Greys in the government that **are** working will ensure that is strictly enforced. You have altruists doing this work because they want to help people, and they don't get any special rewards for doing it.
The vast majority of actual humans are not altruistic to the extent of giving up all future possibility of wealth, and making themselves permanently subordinate to the collective. The Citizens don't want this job; it would be like being jealous of garbage collectors being paid an average wage. A small percentage of citizens might feel that way, but not enough to overthrow the system.
If it is religion that motivates the Grey, fine: The restrictions on what it costs them to help people ensures their religious motivation is not a pretense to cover for self enrichment or satisfying their hunger for power.
[Answer]
A religious order of aristocrats would educate their children in a strict way that encourages memorization and conformity. People need two things to be happy: security and love. Deprived the children of parental contact and have them treated warmly by their care-givers only when they follow "the rules". Have the care-givers isolate a child who fails to meet expectations. Allow only the religious doctrine which they are being thought to provide comfort and hope.
Children of inattentive or distant parents grow to seek approval of authority figures or rebel. Those that rebel would do so by the time puberty sets in and could be culled. This would not be a problem if they are never allowed to bond with their parents and vice versa. Since the child has been taken at a young age if not at birth, the parents would simply chose to believe that one of the successful children was theirs and refuse to admit that their genes could have produced one of the bad eggs. Once grown and given social standing and influence, the chances of one of them questioning the status quo would be negligible.
The real problem of socially engineering a caste of people with such rigid prerequisites is that the greys would all lack empathy and social skills. Beyond the completion of their necessary duties, they would be hedonistic robots with an unbalanced view of self. Spoiler (you would just be copying the Vatican and the religious education of the clergy in the middle ages).
[Answer]
I would divide the country into three groups:
1. The Grey.
2. The military/police.
3. Everyone else.
Children of the Grey become officers in the military or the police. Children of current members of the military or the police may become officers as well, although most would stay in the ranks. Officers are expected to exemplify the ascetic nature of the Grey.
Everyone else can join the military or the police but few slots are available.
When a member of the Grey dies, one of the officers is chosen as a replacement. This might be a child of the Grey, of an officer, or of someone from the ranks.
This keeps the Grey on top. It gives them strong roots in the military and police. It allows for merit-based promotion. It does not allow for quick promotion, such that someone would have to live the ascetic lifestyle for years to reach the Grey. This would be hard for someone to fake for that length of time, particularly as their schooling would also have been monitored by the Grey. So a non-believer would likely be dismissed early.
People in the everyone else category can not themselves join the Grey. They can only join the military or police ranks. Their children can potentially join the Grey.
[Answer]
So, what you want is the English house of Lords. Those people are not genetically engineered and they still like to live the posh life and get privilege because their grand-grandx24grandfather 600 years ago had a dinner with a king.
Of course, from time to time there is one person who likes to live a common life. Fortunately they usually have more than one child so the emptiness is not permanent.
Oh, and also, they usually go to the army and become important figures in the command chain.
And the sense of duty is derived from a very low place. Cover your ass or communists will take your castles and palaces and money. They learned the lesson when the French part of the family was given a nice view from the guillotine.
Also your problem is only a problem if you **NEED** them to have exactly 657 members in the body. If you let the number be changeable to suit the able number your problem is non-existent. Source: The House of Lords.
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[Question]
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I recently became interested in the concept of matriarchies, since they are nonexistent in world history. I started to wonder what set of circumstances would lead to it occurring, and came up with a hypothetical scenario I've discussed with some friends. I am curious to know what other people think of it.
Suppose women early in our history possessed the inborn ability to access power from an alternate realm. This power would manifest itself in the world in the form of magic. This magic is gender specific to females, and could be learned through training and study. Simple spells and rituals would be easy to learn, while more advanced ones would be specialized. A system of magitech would form, in which magic would be combined with technology. Anything from golem-like mechsuits, to energy crystals that operate as power sources and batteries, to runes that generate heat and light could be just some of its uses. This magitech could be used by anyone, but only be created by females. Although magic is powerful, it is time consuming, draining, and often require multiple components. This would limit it's effectiveness in some ways. Attack magic would be a specialized field, and often limited to support roles in war.
One of the inborn magical traits women would possess is the ability to control their reproductive functions. Pregnancy would be an active process, in which the mother could decide whether to make it a boy or girl. Birth control would be a natural trait that could be turned on or off. They could choose to carry to term, pause, or abort the child at will. Birth would be a relatively painless, or maybe even enjoyable experience. Also, women would be infertile while under stress, which I would think would eliminate coercion.
Would these changes be enough to justify a matriarchal society forming?
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As a parent, I can say that sweeping changes to the first 9 months will not cause a dramatic change in status. It's the next 18 years that affect everything.
* Determine a child's sex - this could be powerful, and would definitely complicate a patriarchal society based on firstborn sons. It's not immediately clear how it would go. On one hand, a woman could refuse to have sons unless her husband obeys her wishes. On the other hand, King Henry showed that failure to deliver a male heir can result in certain unpleasant side effects.
* Speed up / slow down gestation - For most this would be a *mild* effect, bordering on not even any effect at all. For most women in history, birth occurred at home, where she would have been anyway. The timing would matter little, though I could see many speeding up their gestation just because it's a pain... literally.
Gender roles in society are based on society. If you want to change gender roles, such as creating a matriarchy, change the society. It's far easier and more effective.
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# Why is there a 'patriarchy'?
I disagree that patriarchy is a product of society. Patriarchal societies are one of many possibilities, their dominance came to be mostly because it is (or was) an evolutionary advantage to be a patriarchy.
The reproductive potential of a group of people is limited by the number of women of childbearing age in that group. If the women are kept from risk-taking behavior, it increasing the odds that they will be around to increase the population. Being able to increase the population at a higher rate means that humans naturally fill environments to carrying capacity relatively quickly (see: the world, today). Once humans reach carrying capacity, inter-group conflict is more or less inevitable.
In these conflicts, the societies that emphasize male fighting prowess and female fertility have the inherent advantage of numbers. This is the primary reason that all the most advanced societies are patriarchal. Where agriculture in flood plains allowed massive population increases, those societies with lots of male warriors and female having kids were able to eliminate or displace any other types of societies. Once nomadic herding of cattle and sheep spread through the rest of the world, the patriarchal society dominated there as well.
# Example
Let us say, in your society the magic wielding women do the fighting and men take care of the kids. Your society is now up against a patriarchal band from right down the river. There isn't enough farmland for both of you, so fights are inevitable.
The magic-wielding women may have an advantage against stick-wielding men of the other tribe. But in the course of conflict, a percentage of the magic-wielding women would die. By the next generation, the patriarchal band had 100% of its women produce offspring, but in the magical matriarchy, several of the women died in battle before they could have some or all children. The patriarchal tribe now has a relative advantage.
Now add in other factors. Can magic wielding women who are 6-9 months pregnant be useful in combat? Can stone age men feed newborns, or do some women have to stay behind to breastfeed while the rest of the women are out fighting? If the women are able to control pregnancy and reduce their fertility rate, that just damages the groups chances even more
# Matriarchy is a product of evolution, not of society
Unless your magical matriarchy has both a way of a. outfighting male-warrior based societies and b. keeping up with their fecundity, then those societies are probably doomed to marginal areas, like the rainforests and mountains where near-matriarchies are found today.
And if these matriarchies are banished to marginal areas, they would not have the chance to technologically develop the magitech you suggest. Instead it would be the patriarchal societies that did so.
Now, the integration of female-only skills into a patriarchal society would likely make it less male-centric, but the formation of matriarchal societies from the start is unlikely.
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They wouldn't need to control the birth process to gain control. They wouldn't even need to enter combat directly.
The minimum they would need is to be able to "buff" or heal the fighters. If they could increase the strength of speed of their fighters (presumably men) then their tribe would be more likely to win battles. If they can heal the fighters, they will be less damaged from the battle and have a better chance of winning the next battle.
Just using this strategy, A tribe with women who could wield magic would spread its influence. Since the women are responsible for the easier victories, their influence would rise over time.
The tribe with the happiest women would be the one with the most support.
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**YES**
This would form a matriarchal society, on one condition.
The magitech could be altered/ made in a basic form over short time periods. If this is viable then women would be the most likely to become warriors, as they could improve/alter their fighting magitech at short notice to respond to a given situation.
This would most likely result in a matriarchal society, as the warriors tend to become the chieftains (chieftainesses?) Over time, with a more complex society, this would result in a matriarchy without any need for birth control/alteration magic.
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Absolutely
If women alone were able to access abilities that far surpass conventional physical abilities then they would surpass men long before civilization developed.
Men's patriarchal authority stemmed from the superior physical strength and lack of hardship from childbirth. By essentially removing both of those women would immediately be superior to men in nearly all aspects of life.
Men would at this point be little more than dumb brute animals since their only real advantages over women are void. Even though this was how many women were treated in various societies in history, they did eventually overcome this (and many are still in the process today) because women are still closely comparable to men.
In a society with differences of this degree though, women would never have any need of men for much more than breeding and manual labor that couldn't be done with magic. They might as well be cattle and would likely never learn any of the basic knowledge necessary to advance in society like literacy or even basic math.
This doesn't just support it, but almost guarantees it. In comparison to men, women would almost be literal gods:
* ability to create life
* magical abilities that can control aspects of nature
* likely some sort of magic and/or eventual technology to greatly advance life
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I'll disagree; a stable Matriarchy would not form.
Anything can create a matriarchy. The question will always be "Is it more stable than alternatives?" Humans have tried almost every conceivable means of governance and have learned some lessons along the way. For example, celibacy is not hereditary.
Also, patriarchy's of old worked in large part because the blood lines could be blurred. The male child of the Queen was the Prince. If the King is so inbred as his family tree looks more like a bush, the captain of the guard was new blood. There are estimates of ["non-paternity"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-paternity_event#Rates_of_non-paternity) that vary widely, but hover around ten percent. Historical rates are just pure guess work.
Note that this is an argument on Patriarchy as a means if inheritable stabilization over many generations. It doesn't apply to local power, sense of worth, or other contexts. Those are questions steeped in assumptions of current society.
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One of my local TV stations re-broadcasted Rambo II last night and that got me thinking.
That compound bow is really cool.
It is relatively compact to carry around, because the limbs can be detached from the central handle part. Certainly less cumbersome than lugging a longbow around.
The pulleys (or cams, whatever you want to call them) make it less strenuous to keep an arrow ready at full draw.
That is all good.
In my fantasy setting I've got humans, elves and dwarves around. My elves would really love those compound bows.
Tech level is late renaissance up to just prior to the steam engine. Dwarves and elves are both very good at metallurgy and could, in my setting, work aluminum, magnesium and various alloys. (In that aspect they are a century or 2-3 ahead of the tech-level.)
A modern compound bow usually has metal (aluminum/magnesium/alloys) and fiberglass parts for the limbs and handle. And the string and wires are typically made of high-tensile steel-wire and/or synthetic fibers.
The steel-wire and metal parts may be achievable given the metallurgic skills of my elves and dwarves, but synthetic fibers and fiberglass not so much.
Would my elvish artisans/crafters, maybe with a bit of dwarvish help be able to build such bows? Any suggestions for alternative materials would also be appreciated.
P.S. It is the bow I'm after, with normal arrows. I don't care about the explosive arrow-heads as used in the movie.
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## It's possible, with some changes to history.
The biggest obstacle in making a compound bow is the cam system. Simply put, there are a *lot* of things that can go wrong with it. It took until 2005 for someone to design a twin-cam system that wouldn't need frequent tuning, for instance. There was nothing in this design which *couldn't* have been invented by Leonardo da Vinci; there just wasn't much of any experimentation with pulley-based bow systems until the 20th century.
However, in a world where clockwork was used significantly earlier, leading to the development of more mechanical weapons, it's not inconceivable that the idea could have arisen around the Renaissance. (Consider the Antikythera mechanism: a clockwork device with differential gears, from the second or third century *BC*. If that sort of technology had been more widespread, clockwork might have become prominent significantly before Renaissance times.)
Without the cam system, there's not really a point in having detachable limbs. The strength of a non-compound bow comes from the bow itself acting as a spring; finding a way to make the limbs detachable, while keeping the entire bow sufficiently springy *and not breaking under stress*, is not trivial.
If your dwarves are able to work aluminum, which is a notoriously difficult metal, the materials themselves are less of an issue. You may not be able to make wood as strong and light as fiberglass, but it can certainly be stronger and stiffer than is conventional for a longbow. Or even hollow metal components might be used as a substitute.
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The compound bow is a modern invention. The patent was published in 1966 (after about 6 years of "garage" development) by Wilbur Allen. So your elves are well ahead of the real world here.
It was the invention of modern materials (fibreglass, modern glues) that enabled the bow to be built. The development of other improvements to bow such as torque stabilisers (giving a culture of "improvements in bows can be made"). And an interest in bowhunting - requiring a bow with a 60-70lb draw weight. In other words, the time was ripe for a compound bow in the middle of the 20th century, and not before. (source: <http://sagittarius.student.utwente.nl/artikel/compound/comp1.html>)
Horn, sinew and other natural materials have some excellent properties, as does yew wood. It would not be utterly unbelievable for the dwarfs to build compound bows and if it suits your story you are free to take wood from the *Manus vibro* tree, which is as strong as steel and as light as paper. If your dwarfs already have aluminium alloys much of the hard work is done.
There is the issue of beauty. I think compound bows look plain ugly, compared to a longbow. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
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**Yes**
The first compound bow was made out of wood anyway.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/h4LYH.jpg)
The cams and could easily be made of metal, and that's the only thing made of modern materials, everything else is made of wood or simple metals.
They will not be common however, they would cost a fortune and they don't offer any real advantage over a crossbow and can't be made super compact like the modern ones.
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The primary advantage of a compound bow is the limbs can be much stiffer than regular bows (which are essentially "tension" weapons using the spring properties of the bow limbs to store energy). Essentially, less energy is being put into the movement of the limbs and more into the bowstring, and hence the arrow.
While this may not have been expressed in those terms in the past, bowyers had plenty of empirical experience in this, and crossbows (especially steel crossbows) of enormous power were developed in the same time period that you are looking at, although instead of cams, the archer used a crank to draw these bows.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2WQRe.jpg)
*16th century steel crossbow*
The evolution of bows was cut short by the introduction of gunpowder weapons, but a steel crossbow drawn by a crank has a very slow rate of fire, giving the archers only one chance to shoot at rapidly advancing horsemen (and even a limited number of shots at dismounted men at arms advancing on foot), so the pressure would be on to find a way to make drawing a steel crossbow faster while keeping the power of the huge draw weight so the quarrel can penetrate steel plate armour.
Now, a genius like Leonardo da Vinci could have conceivably developed a compound steel crossbow (as a polymath, he would already be aware of the mechanical advantage derived from pulleys and transmission systems, having developed several of his own), so without alternatives like firearms and a strong demand for rapid fire weapons to deal with fast moving armoured battlefield threats, he *might* have eventually hit upon combining the mechanical advantage of cams or pulley systems (although based on what we know about Leonardo, it is equally possible that he would have come up with something totally different......)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/anNoc.jpg)
*"Compound" crossbow? Whatever do you mean?*
So given the conditions of needing a very powerful bow and high rates of fire to neutralize heavily armoured and fast moving battlefield targets, the "desire" for something along the lines of a compound bow will exist, but you would need a polymath with experience in weapons design and mechanical systems who can concptualize "how" these two ideas can come together.
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You would not even need dwarves and elves; the first compound bow was made out of wood.
Regardless, the thing that prevented compound bows from being invented until the 20th century was that people just plain did not know how the necessary physics worked. As a result, they could not have a "eureka". They had the proper techniques to make one, they just simply did not know *how* to make one.
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With quantum computer that can easily fits inside our can drinks and machine learning algorithm so advanced that we can easily fool all animals especially ourselves to tell the difference between what's real and what's illusion. In the future we can hug and pat holographic projections using invisible pressure wave in the form of ultrasonic transducer, or play a game of fetch with a mechanical canine. No longer do owners have to suffer the loss of their beloved pet, hopes for those with asthma and allergy problems and no need to clean up their mess. However I could not see why many still prefers keeping live pet in the future?
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This is like asking why a book is better than an ebook, or why a letter is better than an email. No matter how convenient or easy or clean something is, there's just something about knowing it's *real*. People keep pets to pet, yes, but ask anyone with a pet, even people who just have a fish, and each and every one will tell you that their pet is a person too. It has a personality. It has likes and dislikes and quirks that make it unique. Yes, a robot could be programmed to have a little randomness, to develop x number of quirks, to develop tastes. You could take all the good things about pets and make them real in a robot, and you could get rid of all the bad things, but really, what makes pets special is that they're real. A stuffed animal is still soft, it will still snuggle you, you can heat it up and it will be warm, but it will never be truly *real*. That's the difference. It doesn't matter how good an imitation something is, if you changed anything at all, even things that are clearly for the better, it's not real anymore. There's a reason people don't write books in which nothing bad happens, and why there are no movies where nothing goes wrong: life is about the moments when something sucks, when it breaks, when everything goes wrong, when plans go awry, and just basically the worst moments because those are the ones that make the person, and those are the ones that make the pet.
That being said, having a real pet is definitely an endeavor. It's hard, it's dirty, and it's expensive. It takes time and love and forgiveness, things that not everyone has. I could very well see how the general populace might end up with robot pets. Easier, cheaper, safer... it's basically fast-food. You know it's not real, but it's quick and easy and it'll do. People still want to sit down and eat real food, though, and the same would be true with real pets. The wealthy, who had the time and money, would have real animals, and they would probably flaunt the fact whenever they had the chance. Real pets would become a status symbol, like fur coats, and just like fur coats, faux pets would do their best to imitate the real thing, but they would never replace knowing that what you have is really *real*.
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The tactile feedback of touching another living thing is far more complicated than it looks at first. Living things respond to your presence. They also respond to how they perceive your emotions. Many of these responses are very rapid, within a few hundred milliseconds. It can be very difficult to reproduce these accurately, especially because they depend on how *you* feel at the time, so you cannot pre-record them.
However, this does point to an interesting choice your world can make. If, in the midst of a technological revolution, they have to choose between whether they raise their children to interface with living things or machines, the children may never learn to desire that living feedback. In fact, it could even become uncomfortable (because it is terribly hard to predict in advance how it will go). As a result, a technologically advanced society may loose touch enough that they may be totally comfortable with an anamatronic device.
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* Because they read the scientific news [that became available in 2016](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/4ytvby/the_relation_of_toxoplasma_infection_and_sexual/), and realized that [cat-related toxoplasmosis results in more "shades of gray" (proclivity to BDSM)](http://evp.sagepub.com/content/14/3/1474704916659746.abstract), and don't want to lose that.
* Because some people always have irrational affinity for what's "natural" and rejection of what's "artificial". in 2016, there are people who snub eBooks in favor of dead tree books. Who buy hand-crafted things of questionable quality just because they are "artisanal".
* Because there's a psychosomatic (or may be real?) difference in levels of satisfaction of petting a live animal vs. fake one, even if the lab tests show no difference in objective tactile and audio experience - leaving aside that the latter is nearly impossible to achieve in the first place.
People like to listen to live music instead of to hi-fidelity record, even though the latter is (1) cheaper, (2) can be better quality because you have better performer recorded and (3) you don't have downsides and inconviniences of having to go to a concert.
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It is simple, **THE COST!**
Because in future too, **adapting such technologies would be expensive for many.**
Even if we assume that poverty on Earth would be abolished completely in future, It is still difficult to assume that each and every one would be economically balanced. Despite availability of such technologies, their cost may divert humans to use the 'real' pets.
Also, if we are to establish civilizations on other planets, migrating technologies from Earth to those planets or simply creating technologies on those planets too would be highly costly. It will be easier, comfortable and far cheaper to migrate the real pets to other planets.
**Digging Deeper**
If we even think more about the future...
The future criminals may use your *virtual* pets to kill, rob or kidnap you simply by hacking or manipulating the code and/or wirings. But hypnotizing real pets is very difficult if not impossible.
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Taking a slightly different psychological approach...
Have you considered the [Uncanny Valley?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/t0Awv.gif)
Many people find animatronics to be kind of creepy. Oddly they can be even more unsettled when they're more realistic.
You may remember [The Furby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furby) from the late 90's:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/x6nE9.jpg)
It was more or less an early artificial pet, but notice also that it appears almost deliberately artificial looking, bearing little to no resemblance to any actual person or animal, but *some people* still found them creepy[[citation needed]](https://xkcd.com/285/).
Now compare the Furby with the [Genpet](http://www.genpets.com/index.php)1:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4JvCM.jpg)
I'm guessing that you can see where I'm going with this, but to state the obvious... a lot of people were really disturbed by the Genpet concept. The more "real", life like, and (perhaps most disturbing) humanoid an artificial pet becomes the more *some* people will be upset by them.
Now there are obvious caveats and edge cases, The Furby did experience wild popularity albeit short lived popularity, but the uncanny valley will likely be a huge design consideration for future artificial pets, and perhaps a reason that *some* people will never truly accept them.
Note:
1:
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> [Genpets aren't real](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genpet)
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Because **the pet can love you back**.
That is certainly true in the case of animals of relatively high intelligence like cats and dogs. For less intelligent creatures like fish it might be more debatable whether it is capable of love, but even then there is something like a relationship between two living things. You can **make a pet happy**.
The near perfect technological reproduction of the physical sensations of having a pet may satisfy some, but it will not allow the human to *give*. For much the same reasons, humans will mostly continue to seek the company of other humans, however realistic androids get.
However if science advances to the level where robot pets can be made as sentient as the animals they imitate, things might be different. But how would we know? The manufacturers might claim that the robo-dog truly felt love for you, and its behaviour might be programmed to resemble the behaviour of a loving dog in every way, but I think people would still doubt. The only way that I would be convinced that a robot had been made as self-aware as an animal would be if I had already been convinced that a robot could be made as self-aware as a human. (This would happen by the robots passing the [Turing Test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test) or similar. Basically, they'd *tell* us that they were conscious and we'd believe them for the same reasons that we believe each other to be conscious.) Thus, I suggest, *sentient* robot pets will follow, not precede, the development of *sapient* computers, despite the creation of animal-level artificial intelligence being an easier task than the creation of human-level intelligence.
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**Life Lessons** All those inconveniences of having a pet that you can neatly program out--well, they teach children things, and for adults, owning a dog is like training for having kids. (It's not the same, but it's a start.) People want the experience and they want the inconvenience. If you've cleaned up dog puke at 3 a.m., you have to factor your dog into the expense for every vacation, and you've cleaned up dog poop with those little bags, then kids are the next step up. By having a pet, you'll know that some things are out of your control, you have to clean up some gross things, and that your life has to be adjusted for the pet. Having a programmable death installed, is not the same as real death. The death of a pet is often the first way that children learn to deal with death.
Your pet chews something up? Wipe that part of the program. You never have to find a way to change your life to accommodate that tendency, or teach the animal. There's something to be said for that experience.
You may as well ask, why adopt children instead of programmable people who grow--there's no off switch on a kid, they pee and poop and make dinner inconvenient.
**It's boring and mass produced.** Because a mass production of pets means that they won't have individual personalities, and if they are programmed, they will all respond the same way. You are talking about algorithms as though that will mean that the electric pets have the same sort of responses animals do--but there's a lot of things that animals do that we don't like--and that's part of what makes them interesting. We have thousands of YouTube videos of pets which do something or learn something unexpected--like the one which tries to attack the windshield wipers, or coming home to find your kitchen ruined, with two dogs telling on the one who did it.
**Expensive** Also, it seems like that would be massively expensive. That's a pretty good reason not to get one.
**Programmed love is not the same.** Getting love from something that's programmed to love you is not the same as getting love from something that decides to love you.
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**Loss makes every day count.**
*"You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone"*
If something were to last forever, then there's no particular drive to enjoy its presence *right now*. That, in turn, means you'll never truly enjoy something in the way that you would if it were to cease existing at some unknown point.
To live - truly live - is to love, to feel, and to enjoy the moment whilst it lasts, because we know it won't last forever. This applies to anything that's alive - pets or indeed family members too. Cherish those fewer special moments rather than drown in the endless ones; something that would otherwise be special becomes routine and therefore ordinary.
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Assuming you had two cities, one of them an average real world City, and the other identical in every way, except that it's technology cannot advance beyond steam power (Cannot use combustion engines, guns, electricity, etc) And it has magic. These two different cities, both specialize in manufacturing and are trying to outpace each other. There are three main types of magic used by the Magic City:
**Elemental Magic**
Allows the manipulation of elemental forces, the closest fictional comparison for overall power level I can give would be Avatar: The Last Airbender.
**training:** it takes 1 year of study to be proficient in one element. It takes 4 years of study to be proficient in all four.
**Body Magic(Necromancy)**
Allows people to summon the undead, and give them basic programming-like commands. They are minimally intelligent and non-sentient, but can be made to do repetitive tasks nearly indefinitely unless the body rots beyond usefulness or is damaged. These zombies are slightly weaker than an average human, but do not get exhausted. If the summoner of a zombie dies, their summoned zombies default to attacking the nearest living human.
**training:** To summon one permanent zombie, it takes about two years of intense study of body magic. For every 2 years of additional study (equivalent difficulty to taking a college engineering class) you can summon an additional zombie.
**Dimensional Magic**
People can create personal pocket dimensions for storing objects. These pocket dimensions have a maximum capacity in weight equal to a persons maximum lifting capacity. People can create portals from one place to another within line of sight, although this takes a lot of focus, and does not allow for any other tasks while holding a portal open. If a portal is closed on a non-living object, it will slice it through with a flawlessly smooth cut. Living objects are gently shoved outside before it closes. Portals can be enchanted on identically sized openings in such a way that the portals will be active perpetually, and can be moved, but will always be oriented in the same direction. **Training:** It takes 2 years of study to make dimensional portals of a consistent size and duration. It takes 8 years of study to be able to make permanent enchanted portals.
**The Questions:**
Would these types of magic,while being restricted to steam power allow for the magic Powered City to outpace our Real World City in total manufacturing output?
What advantages and disadvantages would these types of magic provide?
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**MAGIC WOULD OUTRUN THE NORMAL CITY IN THE SHORT TERM**
Given the things you listed, I would like to propose that magic wins in the short term, but the city wins in the long run depending on which way advancements go.
**In The Short Term**
*Elemental Magic*
Allows for more control over elements than modern day machines as people can manipulate it by will rather than with other mechanisms, which are sustainable to malfunction.
*Necromancy*
Allows for more manpower and less reliance on actual humans having to do the work, which would allow people to do more things.
*Dimensional Magic*
Gives more physical space, with each person having the capability of storing items somewhere other than the current plane that we live in.
**Long Term**
Now it wasn't specified if the cities had the capability of advancing to civilizations, etc... If that is the case then unless the magic gets further developed, technology will outrun magic. With us almost being able to go to other planets in 2016, say in about 100 years, magic would stay with the stuff you listed while technology could spread throughout and maybe even outside our solar system.
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I'm reasonably sure that the Magic city could outperform the non-magic one indefinitely. But in the long run it would probably be most efficient for both of them to specialize. If you don't want that to happen, you might have to explain why it doesn't happen. On a different note, since this is all basically manual labor that can only be performed by academics, education would be a huge part of the magic city. Because of the limitation on numbers of zombies you stated, most of these academics would probably be necromancers.
**Elemental Magic:** Can't think of anything new for this one, but you mentioned Avatar: The Last Airbender. I haven't watched a lot of that show, but as I remember they did a great job in exploring the potential of their magic in the show itself. So maybe a fan can help out here or you could (re) watch it yourself.
**Body Magic(Necromancy):** Especially in textile manufacturing there is still a lot of manual labor today. Considering that the zombies would probably be cheaper than the cheapest manual labor, while still able to perform the same tasks, there would still be a market for its wares even today.
You could also produce energy by putting zombies in treadmills, although human zombies might not be the most efficient option here.
For this to be reasonably efficient you need a steady influx of corpses. You'll need a lot of embalming substances and insecticides to keep the corpses fresh for long enough to be useful. This would probably be an industry in its own right.
I'm assuming the type of civilization is such that they can't outright mass murder people on a regular basis (if you do want that, I think doing it for religious reasons "Aztec style" would be the best way to go). Also, if they just outright kill people it's doubtful that they would get anyone to work there in the first place. Thankfully, the zombies could themselves be the solution to this problem: just having them work alongside the regular workforce would probably create hygienic conditions so horrendous, that life expectancy would plummet. Think regular outbreaks of cholera, bubonic plague, etc. The factory owners would consequently have a huge incentive to prevent advances like the invention of antibiotics, or at least to prohibit their use in the city.
**Dimensional Magic:** This is the biggie. As far as I can see, this allows you to break the law of conservation of energy. You wouldn't even need steam power – just raw clockwork will do. You could just have a heavy metal object (or a series of objects) eternally falling along a rail between two portals and turning wheels as it goes. The turning wheels can power anything you like. No steam necessary, no coal required. This would make them a lot more cost-effective than anything else in the Industrial Revolution. Also, the skies would be clear of smoke. Once you move past the Industrial Revolution, the city could start exporting its raw energy: you could just have a piece of metal with a large surface area falling between two portals. Eventually it will start heating up by friction with the air – you can then transfer the heat to a substance with high heat capacity (say heat up salt until it melts) and export the heat to wherever science starts working again. You can then evaporate water with the heat and drive turbines with it.
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Your magic society would do quite well until the tech society decided to put a stop to it.
Why? Look at your magic users. They are all the result of YEARS of effort and study. So in a war every magic user lost in battle would represent the loss of both a person AND their skill/work output. While for the tech side the factory workers themselves can be relatively unskilled and easily replaced, so if they die in battle it is just a personnel loss, the machines back home can be run by someone else with just a little on the job training.
So in a magic using society the people ARE the industry, while in the tech society the machines are independent of the people, so it can sustain war losses with less of a drop in economic output. Thus I predict that in your competing city scenario the tech guys will eventually decide to wipe out the magic users if they are in direct competition.
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I do see one basic flaw in your reasoning. By the time we had steam power, we had guns. If you are looking at the level of tech needed for steam power, look to this link: <http://science.howstuffworks.com/steam-technology.htm> and notice that coal mining has to happen, and fire is involved.
Steam engines are external combustion engines, and you've said no combustion engines, which leads me to believe that you need to look more closely and research all that steam can do.
We had steam powered cars! And if tech is stalled at the level of steam, then the other type of engine (internal combustion) will never be developed, and this WILL be. So congrats, you'll have cars, and trains. The only reason why steam cars are not common knowledge is that the electric or internal combustion engine replaced them BEFORE they could be on every road.
What I have to say to you, is this: go back and research the advent and the development of steam and what the tech level actually was at that time. Even in the nascent days of steam tech, there were guns. They weren't very good to begin with, but you have to realize, steam really picked up steam around the Civil War and after, and guns were pretty common by then . We even had them in time for the American Revolution--and we're talking more than just cannons here (see the Second Amendment). Without steam, the Industrial Revolution never would have taken place--and in England by Dickens' time, it was a world of coal and factories. So read some lit and history from that time so that you can get a better handle on the tech level of the day. Gas lights were everywhere by this time as well, except in the country.
There are questions that have to be answered before moving forward. Like: can anyone do magic as long as they have training? How rare is it to be able to do? What is the cost of training these mages and does that cost outweigh what the tech place has to pony up? Magic users, who have to have this level of training are more expensive really, than tech users, who can build stuff and stick unskilled workers in to do the task with a minimum of training.
EDIT: There's another issue at play here--and that's the question of why these cities are isolated from each other and there isn't a cross contamination of ideas. If it's cheaper and better to use magic--people will. If it's cheaper and better to use tech, people will. If the common people can't access magic or there aren't magewrights that make the magic equivalent of a cell phone useable by all the people--guess what--tech wins. But if they are isolated, then, going to say that at first, magic will advance things a little further (if things are more common or cheap enough) but anything magic can do, you can bet tech people will be looking for ways to do it without magic--and in fact, the magic may cause science to be jumpstarted in the tech city. And, I'm going to say, vice versa. Once science starts pulling ahead, you can bet mages will be looking at the principles applied and the things that can be done and will be working to make a magical cell phone....
**Elemental Questions:** Can someone with elemental training capture and set an elemental to autopilot? If not, they will be in demand as specialists. Can only one elemental be controlled at a time? How much energy does it take?
**Body** In this case, it really looks as though an orphan on the assembly line is less trouble and $$ than a zombie. Orphans for the win! The Workhouse for the Win! You'd need a pretty high death rate and I would guess---people cool with you using their dead family members to pay off debt..
**Dimensional**This seems like a lot of trouble to go to in order to carry an object from one place to another within sight. However, you can use the falling motion as a source of power, clockwork or steam as the Second to Last Unicorn said in their brilliant answer! I will say that as a way to cut things precisely, this will be a boon. Again, the cost may be higher here than it would be for tech.
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Assuming it is a Build Off and each city has access to the same amount of raw materials, then without question the magical city wins.
The ability to harness levels of production close to the factory line methods of the Modern city means a lot. Steam power allows for pneumatic machinery(and hydraulics!) and that level of technology was the mainstay of the industrial revolution. The fact the magical city does not have to contend with a workforce outside the trained magicians is another huge bonus(undead workforce).
Probably the most significant part of the advantage of the magical city is the fact that elemental magic would be used in conjunction with dimensional magic to mimic the foundation of steam technology. Heating a pocket of dimensional air would be quicker and safer especially if the portals were controlled by dead person hands. If magic stopped right at this point the city would have an advantage of virtually zero operating costs.
The modern city would take just as long to set up as the magical one. Engineers are notoriously educated nearly as long as the magical ones seem to be yet the modern engineers will be limited by modern society where the magical one clearly will not(the modern city is reliant on the global economy).
The after effect of lower production costs and overhead would allow the pricing out of any competing goods from the modern city. Not to mention transportation costs would be lower as well.
If an established school of education is formalized to the point it seems to be at, it means that an apprentice would have at least two production units upon finishing basic training. It would be the starting point of every magicians entry into magical manufacturing. Necromancy. Elemental. Dimensional.
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It's hard to say since the capabilities of the Magi society will depend on magic output per person per day (after training). There is also debatable 'manufacturing efficiency'. This could refer to 'time to refine raw material into finished products', 'raw material not lost in processing', 'cost to process raw material into products', or just '# of products produced per day'.
## Tech City
The tech city has the advantage of automation. Once built, as long as there is enough raw material, they can just keep pumping out goods with minimal maintenance. Of cause, this is only a small advantage if you factor in that most things are built in batches, and then production stops (like phones).
## Magi City
The Magi city has the ability to 'create space' and 'reduce distances', something completely out of the tech realm. This allows the magi city to develop setups like perpetual motion factories and cut transportation times.
...
You should also consider the threat of a mag-tech city appearing. If profit can be made using the strength of both societies, you will need a good reason people don't exploit it. For example, using tech level measuring precision with magi level cutting precision. Or if the zombies can be configured to follow orders from a monitor, equip zombies with AI monitors for AI intelligence and zombie robustness (with maybe a kill switch to terminate the zombie in case the summoner gets hit by a bus)
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The catch is it's one zombie per 2 years of necromancer work. So lets say a preserved zombie lasts 20 years, that's still only ten times as long as the necromancer spent creating them, and the zombie is weaker and far stupider than a human doing the same job.
The magical city just won't scale, it will do fine at first but as soon as things like mass production start happening none of the things you suggest can keep up.
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A Magic City like you described couldn't outpace modern technology unless you made some alterations
1. Instead of learning to control one zombie they can control hundred this would give them a large Factory Workforce a Workforce with no need for fuel or electricity to keep them running a Workforce that could be always on.
2
Dimensional: can open portals and leave them open without having to constantly concentrate on it. This would allow them to use portal base highways where are your car or truck would drive from portal to portal which would allow for better transportation which would make better production.
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I'm creating a legal system without supreme court.
Instead I want citizens who are ready to spend something like 40 hours a year learning about an area [agriculture, energy, transportation, finance etc] to be able to veto legislation in that particular area.
The problem I have is allowing citizen justices to self-select risks regulatory capture. By that I mean only farmers would go into agriculture and they will rubber stamp ethanol subsidies laws, or banksters will happily deregulate their frauds. Though it would be probably better then now since the electorate will be bigger.
On the other hand if I make it as jury duty I'm getting unmotivated citizens who will find it as annoying duty.
Any idea for better selection?
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There is no way to avoid bias. Even farmers who become experts on finance are going to promote finance policies that help them, or at least the majority will. Legislation on agriculture isn't the only thing that affects a farmer, and the same goes for all other areas.
Also note that 40 hours a year is practically nothing. The citizens will be absolute beginners in their areas. Giving them power to veto legislation is a dangerous business.
Now if you really want to keep this system, here are some ideas:
* **The citizens are chosen at random (like jury duty) but are allowed to refuse.** Being able to veto legislation is a major incentive, so I wouldn't worry about not being able to find any citizens up to the task. However, this type of incentive will mean that your justices will probably lean towards having very strong political feelings which compelled them to accept. Strong political feelings are more associated with those at the ends of the political spectrum so people like moderates will likely be underrepresented. If this is an issue for you, you can also add other incentives. Keep in mind that the types of incentives will influence the kinds of people who are more likely to agree. Possible incentives: money (fixed amount or percentage of income?), land, free tuition, etc.
* **Citizens are only eligible to be justices in areas that are not directly connected to their livelihoods.** E.g. farmers can't be justices on agriculture.
* **There is a pool of citizen justices in an area, and legislation is only vetoed if enough agree.** A set percentage of the vote must be met. If you pick justices from a variety of backgrounds, there is less worry about bias. They will also have to discuss the matter with others to try to pull them toward their side. This changes your set system though, because no one individual has the power to veto.
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If you want to rely on wisdom of the crowds, you must have institution that serves as useful guide instead of being a just another hoop that politicians must jump through.
I would go with the fallowing:
1. Random selection with a right to refuse (in order to avoid regulatory capture and limit iron law of oligarchy)
2. Elected for minimum of 4 and maximum of 12 years
3. Remove all those whose voting record differs the most after 4 years (this will limit dissidents but your institution will have more predictable mind)
4. Payment of average annual salary for their work (so you could have many citizen-justices, large electorates are difficult to bribe/threaten whatever)
5. Requirement of spending 1/3 of the average working hours on duty (those include both training and deciding on laws/cases)
I don't think that being ineligible in area of your livelihood is a good idea, all the professionals know more about the area they work in then part timers, and since they will be in a minority anyway due to random selection, farmers/bankers will have to persuade fellow justices that subsidies/bailouts are the right choice.
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### Select them at random, but not just for one trial.
Instead of selecting a new jury for each trial, select these citizen judges for a multi-year term in a specific court type. Courts specialize in broad areas such as fraud, drugs, taxes ...
Once the citizen judges are selected, the usual conflict-of-interest rules apply to excuse them from any one case. In their first year they may be inexperienced, but they will learn. Schedule the selection so that newbies serve with more experienced ones. Call it one day per week for five years. Accounting for holidays and vacation time, 300+ hours OJT in the first year, plus 1,200+ hours in subsequent years.
Of course that requires serious compensation for these citizen judges, on a level that allows them to cut back on their *regular* profession. On the other hand, they must retain an option to get back to the old job afterwards.
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Your post first claims the issue you have is bias and then mentions motivation and annoyance. Which is it? How do you fix all three? Random selection, large enough pool, large enough court, and a carrot large enough to be motivating - say $10,000,000. for a year IF they pass a competitive exam. Maybe as determined by a panel of judges from lower courts chosen at random - that is: both an ("unbiased") academic test, as well as a reality-tv type contest. I'll point out the obvious. There's no requirement that you have to be a lawyer to be a justice on the SCOTUS but the issues are fundamentally legal so few examples exist of someone who hasn't had a formal education in Law. Let's say, 3 yrs of Law School at 6hrs a day, 6 days a week, 50 weeks a year. That's 5400 hours (and that AFTER a bachelors!!!). Or lets take the low side: 3 hrs a day, 4 days/wk, 40 wks per year for 2 yrs. That's 960 hours- again after a BA.Your 40 hrs is risible. Why bother? Continuing to point out the obvious, the justices have been filtered by years of actual experience. Both their intellects and their conduct has been visible for decades. The idea that most Joe/Josephine Blows will possess the mental/emotional skill set necessary is a pipe dream, imho.
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Recently, I've been [struggling to create an avian race that evolved hands to replace its wings](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/48820/1971). The consensus on that question was that it was not evolutionarily realistic for the bones of a wing to rearrange into the bones of a hand. But then another idea hit me: if the bones of the wing are too specialized for flight to become a hand, what about the feathers?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GX702.jpg)
It's a classic cartoon cliche, but **is it evolutionarily possible for a bird that has lost the need for flight to have its wing feathers develop into crude claws?** Feathers are made from keratin, the same material as claws and nails. It seems all it would take to make a crude claw is thickening the rachis (shaft), reducing the barbs, and adding a few points of muscle attachment to the quill.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uxMHZ.jpg)
They don't have to be too fancy; I'm just hoping for the ability to grasp and hold objects and maybe to help them climb in rocky environments, not to operate complex technology or perform surgery (I imagine they'd use their foot-talons for that). Just to make them more culturally relatable, I'd like for them to have semi-functional hands even if their foot-talons are more capable manipulative appendages.
So, feathers as crude fingers: Yae or Nay?
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Unlikely.
Feathers have no muscles, nerves, or anything that can be used for motor control in them. They have a muscle at the base, but its control is very limited.
*Maybe* a feather might develop a hard 'hook' or claw at the tip which could be used to stick to things a little, but control would be virtually impossible. Also it would make them bad at flying, so basically pointless.
More importantly, if a bird needed to develop the ability to grip or climb things, there is a far better option - proper claws. Hoatzin chicks have a pair of claws that they can use to climb trees quite well before they develop flight. Many other birds, including ratites, waterfowl, ostriches, owls, flamingos, and cassowaries have small, vestigial claws on their wings. A bird lineage could easily develop raptor-like hands; the reason why they don't is because it would make them worse at flying, so it isn't worthwhile in an evolutionary sense.
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## Na na na na Birdman!
In my answer to your other question, I pointed out that they would still be able to glide, even with the psuedo-fingers. Remember now that flight evolved from gliding in the first place, so it is not unreasonable that these avians could evolve to act like a bat or a pterodactyl, still having a small finger and flight. The problem here, as I said before, is not the wing, but the weight. The heaviest flying animal ever was around 150 lbs, this is medium weight for a human, but that animal was built for flight and flight only.
**Birdman II the sequel; Now we're flying**
The medium here is to trade size for flighted hands, below is a little evolutionary chart of birdman arms vs bird arms that might help you with this problem;
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1h7B4.png)
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`...it was not evolutionarily realistic for the bones of a wing to rearrange into the bones of a hand`
Why not? Wing bones evolved from the same basic vertebrate structure as humans, <http://www.livescience.com/23922-velociraptor-facts.html>, there is no reason why these couldn't evolve into hands. The end result would not be capable of flying, but they would have functional hands.
Bear in mind good engineering practice is to have one part do one thing. Elegant practice is to have one part multitask. Elegant systems don't work out very well in practice. Your birds can have arms with a large range of movement and sufficiently strong bone structure to support them, or stubs of limited freedom to hang wings on. Not both. And definitely no feathers-turned-talons without the wing structure to support them.
PS: I looked at the answers from [Evolving an intelligent avian race with a human-like appearance](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/48820/evolving-an-intelligent-avian-race-with-a-human-like-appearance), and the consensus is the same: flight or fingers.
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Birds moult their feathers on a regular basis. Here's a nice [article from Cornell Lab of Ornithology](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/the-basics-feather-molt/) about it. It would be like us severing one or more or our fingers at a time and then having to regrow them.
Soooo... don't use feathers as fingers, use the rachis stump of each feathers as a squid sucker. Scroll down on [this page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_limb) to see pictures of the circular-with-spiky-rim suckers of some squid. Your feather has muscles attached to it which evolve into the sucker control muscles. The rachis is already hollow, and keratin is as stiff and as flexible a structure as chitin, so can perform the same functions.
1. Stage one: rachis stubs as hooks, just like primitive cephalpods used to catch their prey. Here are some [fossil hooks.](http://www.fossilmall.com/EDCOPE_Enterprises/invertebrates/invert61/Invfossil-61.htm)
2. Stage two: modern squid type of suckers, round with spiked rim.
3. Stage three (if you want it): Octopus type flat suckers which [act as suction cups.](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/octopus-chronicles/octopus-suckers-have-groovy-secret-for-strength/) These are much more derived/specialised and you have to go through the other stages to reach them.
Downside:
* You'll be moulting the suckers, as mentioned, so will need a lot of them. 120 suckers on your hand, with 10 regrowing every month, say.
* Those hooks and hollow suckers with spikes are designed for hanging onto **soft-bodied prey**. They won't be great for climbing cliffs and trees. Unless your world has plenty of velcro-bark trees or fuzzy-felt cliffs! :-)
* Your bird will look like something out of H.P.Lovecraft's worst nightmares!
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Looking at how birds evolved, it is quite clear they gradually modified their arms and hands to become the structures which are now wings in modern birds. Since evolution is about repurposing existing structures to adapt to changing conditions or enter new niches, it is possible in theory to devolve a wing in order to recreate a hand. This can be clearly seen in this skeletal reconstruction of *Archaeopteryx*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7UnmY.jpg)
As you can see, the fingers and forearms are very elongated in order to support the flight surfaces, while the upper arm bones are becoming shorter to allow for muscular attachment and the movements needed for flight. the fingers are still fingers, and on reconstructions of the actual creature, the ends of the fingers still extend from the wing surfaces to a allow Archaeopteryx to grasp prey and climb trees. Look carefully at the illustration and you can see the tips of the claws on the wings.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PFQo9.jpg)
The real question for you as the author is what sorts of conditions exist to cause an avian creature to devolve wings and re evolve the features of forelimbs? Flight is a very useful adaptation, and on Earth it has been done at least four times (insects, pterosaurs, birds and bats). In almost all cases, the adaptations needed for flight require very specialized bodies. In Earth's evolutionary history, any avian that goes back to ground is filling an open niche with limited competition, but none have ever re evolved forelimbs (the Terror Birds essentially lost their wings, while Penguins have turned their wings into flippers).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WeQbF.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/S5kql.jpg)
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Wouldn't it be more likely for the bird to evolve "backwards" toward something that looked a bit more like the archaeopteryx? In that case, the third "finger bone" in the dinosaur's hand formed the leading edge of a bird-like wing, while the first and second fingers remained fingers and extended out at the final bend of the wing. Presumably, the archaeopteryx could use the wing fingers to climb, hang from trees like a bat or even hold food, and still had feathery wings to use for flying.
I could see a bird that didn't need to fly as much going that way instead of using the feathers, necessarily.
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So in a medieval based magic fantasy world, a town was established next to a river in a large forested area. Basic infrastructure and facilities are up. Suddenly, patrols found shadows flitting across the forest. It is theorized that they are giant wolves.
How would a small town of 1000 people defend themselves from the wolves? **They have to be able to ward off future attacks from the wolves.**
**Humans**
* 500 knights with full body armor and armed with pikes, swords and shields [all steel]
* 100 mages who can use
+ fire magic
- fireball
- flame spear
+ earth magic
- earth wall -> creates a 10cm thick, 1m tall wall
- earth needle -> a sharp spear of rock pierces through the ground into the enemy
+ However they have a 3 second cast time and it is possible to avoid the magic attacks.
* 400 construction and admin staff without any combat experience
* all of them can be armed
**Wolves**
* they will be attacking at night
* their claws and teeth can easily shred through steel plates 3cm thick
* their fur is able to negate magic damage to some extent (one fireball won't matter, 25 fireballs would be like tickling it) and can ward off blades (if swung with the full strength of an adult male, those steel blades will shatter)
* weak spots would be their eyes and insides of their mouth
* trying to feed them will result in you being their second meal
* the wolves are about 2 meters tall, 4 meters long and can probably run faster than 61kph (38mph) which is the top speed of a gray wolf (IRL)
* their natural predators will be left out of the equation (what is going to eat a wolf built like a tank will probably destroy a town with its eyes closed)
* there are about **a hundred giant wolves**
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Humans with siege weaponry and magical abilities will always win out over mere wolves, no matter how large or scary.
I'm not going to address the obvious shortcomings in the biology of a 2m tall wolf because I'm assuming they're "magical" creatures. I can live with that, although tearing through 3 cm of steel with they teeth is basically ridiculous. I would suggest you downgrade that to being able to crush a man in plate armor due to the strength of their jaws, but not that they be able to simply rip through steel that easily.
Anyway, the advantages that humanity possess are intelligence, and opposable thumbs.
The wolves are at a severe dissadvantage for several reasons, and I'll get into that a little bit at a time:
**Wolves at Dissadvantage**
We are way smarter than any pack of wolves could hope to get. Sure, wolves are clever, and can come to create associations, for example, between that stick the man is holding, and the loud noise and destruction that follow every time he points it at something (they avoid being aimed at by hunters once they've been exposed to firearms).
However humans have the luxury of intellect, and the ability to think up many, many different traps, tactics, and strategies.
Furthermore, humans have the luxury of hiding behind their walls, and choosing when to strike out at the wolves, while the animals are in a bit of a desperate situation. You see, animals that size are going to need a ridiculous amount of food to survive. 100 of them are going to hunt the larger species in the area to extinction within weeks (think deer, turkeys, wild hogs, etc.)
This means that they will be acting in *desperation* when attacking humans, and that they won't exactly be either in peak physical condition, or thinking that clearly.
**Humanity Will Triumph**
Going up against these things in infantry formations is asking for trouble: they're monsters. But we're smarter than they are, can wield intricate tools and weapons, and furthermore, know magic.
Siege engines are the way to go. Ballistas to be pricise. The Romans used them to great effect, so I'm assuming that your society will be quite capable of building them as well.
Set intricate spike traps in the forrest, warded by magic so that the wolves don't see them until it's far too late. Release animals who have been fed subtle poisons into the wild for the wolves to hunt down and get sick.
Set up ambushes where you allow them to "find a way" into the city only to confine them into a set area and drown them, opening fire on the animals trying to swim from the safety of the walls.
Of course the wolves may get sneaky and start avoiding humans, but unless they simply leave the area in search of food, sooner or later they will *have* to face you.
Unfortunately this goes both ways, and the bastards may simply interdict the roads into town, and hunt down travellers. At that point you will have to come up with a fast response tactic.
Heavy cavalry is probably the way to go, however you want to come up with a way to bring heavy weapons to bear on the beasts very quickly. Crossbows sound like good weapons to tackle these things. A crossbow bolt easily goes through heavy armor at short to medium range, and contributed to full plate armor being phased out (firearms were the coup de grace).
Build heavy wagons with firing ports, and fill them with crossbowmen. As the wolves approach to ambush the column, open fire.
Since you're only facing 100 wolves victory is basically guaranteed.
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I know this is going to be a boring answer, to the point your likely not use it, but it's the honest answer. If these creatures are really just wolves, giant killer wolves, but only wolf level intellect and evolutionary instincts, then humans are pretty safe.
Humans offer very little meat and there is little reason to hunt us over say deer or oxen or whatever creatures they usually prey on. Unlike [certain tropes](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuperPersistentPredator) there is little reason for them to be hunting humans, and so it doesn't take much to discourage them from hunting us and sticking to prey species that frankly are less wasteful of energy to hunt.
If these are 'normal' wolves then humans are unknown and thus scary. We walk on two legs making us tall and thus appear big and intimidating, Remember the #1 best way to survive a bear attack is to run at it, even though the bear is larger, stronger, and easily able to kill us if you charge it will run away. It doesn't know what you are or why your attacking and with little to gain it's not worth the risk that you can do something dangerous so it runs. Combined with our herd mentality and we're not a very tempting target unless the wolves are starved and desperate, their evolution has taught them to avoid the unknown.
Combine that with our defense. If they attack as a pack and we can harm even one or two of them they won't come back. They're not used to herd species that group together to defend themselves, rather then stampeding away and letting the weakest get eaten. If they attack they would only take one or two humans. Any more and it would seem like excess meat and would not be tempting. If during that attack we manage to harm any of them their instincts will tell them to avoid this. The risk of harm is too high for the benefit of food. With 100 mages we can kill one of them, 100 fireballs > 25. Thus they will quickly want to avoid us - too much harm for too little food combined with their own instincts to avoid the unknown and hunt what they evolved to hunt.
Going along with that, our best defenses are psychological.
### Make the unknown scarier
You have 100 mages that can do bizarre magical things, the sort of things these wolves have never seen. This can be quite scary. You don't need to use much force at all, just light and sound and confusion caused by whatever illusion or optical affects you can create will be enough to make the already-unknown humans far more confusing. Their instinct is to avoid unknowns, this magic will be a huge one. They won't want to mess with all these mysteries, they won't know what kind of bad things we can do, so they will run rather then attack for little meat from things that may be able to kill them.
A related tactic, as I already mentioned, is to have all your mages work together to kill the first wolf that you see when they come towards you. With so many mages you likely can overwhelm the first wolf's magic defenses, at least enough to hurt it if not kill it. That will be enough, if they are being hurt from afar by an unknown THING and have no way of knowing how easily it can keep doing that the proper response is to flee.
### Is that rival wolves I hear?
I don't know whether your mages can do it, but if they can manage any kind of illusionary effect make them think some other, larger and scarier, predator is around. Recreate the sound of foreign wolf howls etc. to trick them into avoiding you.
### Enlightened human beats darkness
I tried way too hard for that pun...
Put simply, keep the entire town brightly lit during the night. You imply these creatures hunt during the night. If so they institutionally use darkness to stalk prey. For this reason they will avoid areas of bright light, it removes the ability to stalk prey. Thus all things being equal when they go hunting they will avoid areas of bright light. As I said, there is little to make us a tempting target over other prey, so with no particular reason to head to our town over any area the lack of ability to sneak up on prey is sufficient discouragement to pick another area.
If you use fire as the way to light up the outside of the town this works better. Almost all species are afraid of fire, as wildfires are powerful and lethal. They burn at such absurd temperatures that there is no way your wolves can survive them. Thus they, as all species, will instinctively be afraid of fire. The fires you use may be controlled and not dangerous to the wolves, but if they aren't intelligent they won't know that. They will avoid something they're afraid of like fire whenever possible.
### Let's avoid that uncomfortable place
Anything you can do to make the area around your town one they don't like will be incentive to hunt elsewhere. Simple traps that don't do serious harm but are uncomfortable, spreading unpleasant scents (or any strong scent which 'blinds' their nose to other scents), making it so they often have to step on things that cut into their paws, even arranging random spraying with water when they cross an area, can make an area generally unpleasant to be in, which is enough, again, for them to choose to hunt in another direction if they have no real motive to focus on you.
### City Walls exist for a reason
In medievial times any city of any size at all would have some form of city walls, usually to defend against humans. Build them. You imply that wolves could break down walls if they try hard enough, but again, why would they? If you surround your town with a decently sized wall there is no reason for them to try to break through it.
Even if they are inclined to break through it there are easy defenses. Grow brambles and other pointy plants along the walls, or just include your own spikes on it. These aren't lethal, but it would make it hard for a non-intelligent species to figure out how to break down the wall. Try biting it and it hurts the inside of your mouth. This can be enough to discourage attempts to break it down. Remember, non-intelligent wolves don't really have great planning skills, to associate destroying a wall with the possibility of a food source is not impossible, but it is somewhat hard for them to grasp. Throw in any obstacles, even small ones, and it can be enough. Just dump water on the wolves from the top of the wall when they get close and their flee. After all, anyone standing on the top of a wall looks like a HUGE creature - it's so tall, and thus scary.
### Would the big bad wolf like some yummy chocolate?
Long term poison is a good way to get rid of the wolves, assuming your mages know anything about creating it. In fact you don't even need lethal poison. Spread any mildly toxic substance around the outside of your town will work. Even if it only gives them indigestion or diarreha, it's enough to find the area unpleasant. Of course real poison, perhaps helped with magic to enhance it, can be a great way to start eliminating the wolves for good once the town is well defended.
### Is a new house worth risking your life over?
Going to an even more boring answer, this town isn't worth dying over. If you don't like the above answers and want to imply the wolves insist on trying to attack humans despite their evolutionary psychology, then the real answer is that humans leave.
The first wolf attack would kill only a small number of humans, as wolves don't kill more than they can eat. Not only is it pointless and a waste of energy, it leaves less prey species for their next hunt. After the first attack when humans see how strong wolves are and that they are so impossible to fight well... why bother? If you can't create a defense with a very high probability of preventing wolves from attacking at all then you're looking at deaths happening somewhat often, and while a town is nice it's not required for these people. They haven't been there long enough to have any psychological commitment to it. Packing up and going where they started and abandoning the town they were working on makes more sense then slowly being picked to death. If they can't stop the first/second attack then the 98% of them left will just go back home.
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Your consideration of population seems more of a garrisoned outpost, than a straightforward town. That said, these wolves are ( I'm assuming this) still blood and bone carbon life, and therefore susceptible to toxins. Even toxins as unsophisticated as heavy metals like lead, arsenic , etc. could be introduced into carrion and catapulted (?) to a safe distance, allowing them to ingest, and the numbers to dwindle. Even those not killed by toxins, might well have some fight taken away by illness.
With so many mages, I suspect that powerful poisons are well within grasp, and may tip the odds into the humans' favor.
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Place mages around the city so that any approaching wolf will see the fire. All wolves are afraid of fire, and giant wolves presumably would be, too. Just don't let them get near enough to see that the magic fireballs can't hurt it.
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Trapping has been around for thousands of years, there are many refined methods and trapping scales rather well (a deadfall trap for a mouse and an elephant are basically the same, you just need a bigger rock, a pit trap just needs to be deeper, etc). Traps can be strategically placed at choke points into the town or baited out in the wilderness.
For more advanced traps the toughest challenge will be making them strong enough to make an impact on such a strong, well defended beast. You mentioned the society has steel working skills, so large leg-hold/bear traps or the like might be possible. Rope is surprisingly difficult to cut and people have been making them large for ships for quite some time.
Also, the traps wouldn't need to hold the creature indefinitely - as its chewing or fighting its way out the knights and mages on shift could be rushing over to further restrain the animal and finish the job. A trapped animal is easier to poke in the eye than one that's actively trying to eat you.
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Let us assume *limestone* is available. You have a forest, you have a river. You have 500 burly men armed with cutting implements at the least.
I can save your town.
You must send out your knights in the day to gather stout beams from the forest for a stockade. The villagers must excavate and erect an earthen backing for this wooden wall in a semicircle surrounding the village, and the height of the whole construction from the bottom of the excavation pit to the top of the stockade must be thirty feet at a minimum. Sharpen the tops of each post and connect the ditch to the river at both ends, letting her waters flood your little moat. As for the mages, set them to burning your limestone and creating vast quantities of quicklime. Tie this foul substance up in sacks small enough for even the weakest child to heft, and in times of trouble gather the people in your village and form chains from your quicklime depot to the wall, passing the sacks as fast as they are able up, whereupon their contents should be loosed unto the waters below. Wise men would cover their faces, for the chemical of the devil cannot mix with the life-giving waters, but that an evil choking cloud is formed, which gets at the eyes and mouth of those subjected to it, and will drive away even the greatest wolf from our doors.
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Well, if you have a basic strategy then I think you can easily win by using the knights.
You put your knights in groups of five and use the sheer weight of numbers to overwhelm the giant wolves, because I think one of these wolves would be able to take out a knight or two, you go into 100 5 v 1 fights and have the knights aim for the head (where they can damage the eyes and the mouth), then you have a pretty good chance.
Beyond that, you have the mages all target a single wolf at a time, using the earth wall spell you mentioned to help protect knights that are in trouble, and the flame spear to aim for the eyes, potentially using the ground spike spell, but I don't know how effective that would be, and again, target the head as that seems to be the only vulnerable place.
On a separate note:
No medieval town could survive with having half the population as knights. Medieval technology was very limited and required having nearly everyone work in agriculture to help make food, which isn't helped by having 10% mages and the remaining in admin or construction. Where are the farmers?!
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# Wolves aren't your problem.
Your wolves aren't your biggest threat. *Your village composition is.* Your town has no farms. No farmers. No livestock. No *FOOD*.
Per [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/20826/what-percentage-of-a-population-can-be-part-of-a-medieval-military), a typical village can support roughly 1 fighter per 15 adults at maximum.
So you have 500 soldiers who can guard your builders.
But no one is feeding them. So how does food get in? Via caravan? Then you need caravan guards, not town guards. Otherwise, the wolves don't attack the village. They're cunning enough to go for easy prey -- the horses or oxen pulling your food train are far easier prey than any town full of well-guarded construction workers.
So they attack the food caravans. No food comes in. Your village either collapses and everyone flees back to some other town, or they become malnourished under the half-ration rules they must use to conserve remaining supplies. Malnourished soldiers are not combat effective soldiers.
Or worse, starvation and cannibalism destroys your town, leaving nothing but dying bodies for the wolves to chew on.
# Bring in farmers
So you quadruple your population and make it 600 defenders for 4,000 people, 3,000 of whom are food-producers. Great. Now you must spread your army much thinner. You can't expect to enclose not just the town but also the farmland in strong walls. Not initially, at least.
Farmers are exposed. Farm animals (livestock, oxen, etc) are exposed. Your soldiers are spread thin in roving patrols to guard them. Some farmers and livestock get eaten...
But really, per the above ratio, you're still not producing enough food to be self-sufficient. So your caravans and farms are still a major weak point that needs to be dealt with. Or you're back to starvation.
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**Food**
Yes, the food is going to be the problem. You have no farmers to keep your guards healthy. But if you build platforms on top of the houses, let's go with three feet high, six feet wide, and seven feet long. You could fill them with dirt and grow food on top of the houses. this would allow for you to condense you town.
This would limit the kinds of plants your able to produce, but its benefits outweigh the cost.
**Defense**
You mages can throw earth needles and fireballs. Have them use the fireballs to light up the village during the night. If wolves come to attack and if they're smart enough, they're attack in a group.
To counter this, have the mages send the rock needles in hails, like what archers would do. mow the wolves down, then have a cavalry charge drive them out. To keep the wall from being breached, plant thorns and stinging nettle around it to make their mouth's hurt.
Trapping the wolves in pits and and other kinds of traps would allow you to kill them easily. then you could use their furs, skeletons, etc as decorations, such as hanging them on the walls so other wolves can see them.
Heavy weaponry would take time to make / get to you, so if your town survives long enough, you can bring in some ballistas and crossbows. All this together and you should be okay.
And since theirs only a hundred wolves, they'll go down pretty quickly. Now if they're mating and having pups, that could be a problem. Or a benefit if you get you kidnap them and over generations, domesticate them.
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The only spell you need is one to get plants to grow faster - the kind that takes bonemeal as a material component.
Plant lots and lots of citronella. Make candles out of it and lit. Ask any dog owner - most will say that their critters will run away from it like the devil supposedly runs from the cross.
As a bonus, the town is going to smell really nice.
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I was thinking of a situation in which an Extra Terrestrial plant life form evolves a nervous system and eventually a brain. This plant diversifies into a variety of different life forms with some living in the water, some living on land, and some flying through the sky. It is able to move and its brain controls its movements. It has eyes for seeing, organs that it uses for smelling, and organs for hearing. It derives all of its energy directly through photosynthesis. Most species of this plant have keener senses and a more intelligent brain and the ability to move faster than most animals on this planet.
What type of selective pressure might have caused this plant to evolve a brain and the ability to move?
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Let's start with a venus fly trap.
It has a basic nervous system for catching things (which then benefit it with extra vitamins and minerals).
Now lets say that the bugs on our planet have a sudden mutation that changes their external appearance and gives them a new body fluid that harms the plants.
The Fly traps will now randomly die...unless they have a way of differentiating. This trait would give those traps an advantage, they survive in higher percentage and thus that system would continue on and refine in time.
Movement might come from the need to follow the bugs. More bugs could mean less need for roots and shorter roots. That could mean a plant that would start with something akin to a lean that would uproot the back roots could end up with moving roots to follow targets.
Add in more advanced leaves to detect bugs and we have proto eyes.
One could assume that it would all expand the plant's basic nervous system, which would become advanced enough to make decisions and we have your plants.
(I just noticed the bit about photosynthesis on a reread)
One could also assume that the some of these plants might branch off and use these traits to get more sunlight and fewer bugs.
Perhaps a volcano erupted, killed off most of the bugs, increased the quality of the soil and clouded much of the sky. This would kill off the plants dependent on bugs and leave plants that used those same traits to get sunlight while using the rich soil to make up for the lack of prey.
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>
> I was thinking of a situation in which an Extra Terrestrial plant life
> form evolves a nervous system and eventually a brain. This plant
> diversifies into a variety of different life forms with some living in
> the water, some living on land, and some flying through the sky.
>
>
> * It is able to move and its brain controls its movements.
> * It has eyes for seeing, organs that it uses for smelling, and organs for hearing.
> * It derives all of its energy directly through photosynthesis.
> * Most species of this plant have keener senses and a more intelligent brain and the ability to move faster than most animals on this planet.
>
>
> What type of selective pressure might have caused this plant to evolve
> a brain and the ability to move?
>
>
>
So...its a cool idea what you are trying to accomplish.
**Unfortunately it is not biologically possible.**
[Photosynthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency) may be the basis of life on Earth, but it is horribly, horribly inefficient.
There is a reason it take acres of plant life to feed a human.
**So to address your four main points/design items**
1. Movement is energy intensive and necessitates the development of musculature or a complex system of water pumps to extend and contract various parts of the plant. The main problem here is mobility requires cellular specialization beyond what plants have...and picking up those pieces makes them less "plant" like.
2. When you start adding sensory organs (sight/smell/etc) you are drastically increasing the amount of energy needed to support the creature. This plant would require a massive amount of space to have the energy, and I would think at a certain size energy transfer would lead to diminishing returns on increasing the size. The size would make item #1 even more impossible as more mass requires more energy to move...
3. Sorta already covered this. Photosynthesis as we know it is not capable of this. Even man made photosynthesis (solar arrays) is not terribly efficient (though a great technology).
4. Does not compute. There is simply no way to get a plant that is better at being an animal than an animal.
**There is no selection pressure that could get you to this point**
Now, that said you could have a sort of hybrid, or rather an animal who retains the ability in their skin cells to photo-synthetically respire. This would be sort of like having an appendix, its a vestige of some past need and is no longer necessary for survival, but it could hypothetically improve a creatures fitness.
The shared ancestors between plants and these hybrid animals would go all the way back to single celled organisms in your reality.
The surface area ratio to mass on a human is way way lower than that of a plant (obviously) so the net energy gain would be minimal...particularly if your people like clothes...
But some smaller animals, perhaps snakes, could get a not insignificant gain from this system.
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The "Why" isn't so important. Evolution is fickle; it cares more about the fact that they would survive, than why it would do it in the first place. Look at the Platypus.
A multi-cellular life-form with the ability to use photosynthesis could evolve to be mobile, having specialized cells for movement (possibly levers like muscles, or valves for using hydraulic pressure, like spiders) or some similar mechanisms. It would probably use this adaptation to escape animals that would eat it. As it evolved, it would probably split into several different species. Some might take advantage of actual Plants, and climb up very tall trees to steal sunlight.
Many will probably evolve a lot of surface area to catch a lot of sunlight. However, these creatures would be slow. Especially if they had complex tissues like brains. They would be a lot like some reptiles, not moving much and conserving energy until they need to release a huge burst of speed. On the other hand, there would eventually be races of these mobile-plants, with the ability to eat other creatures. Plants, or Mobile-Plants. Even other animals. They would be a lot different from regular plants though, and definitely different from animals.
If you want plants that can actually "think" and move about freely, then you would want your plants to be able to eat. There's simply not enough surface area otherwise.
On the other hand, you can probably increase their speed by lowering the planet's gravity, or having it ingest materials it could use to produce more energy. Like having them seek out energetic metals like magnesium, to use in aiding their movement.
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A lot of the existing answers seem to be focusing on the technical aspects of photosynthesis and plant movement, but from what I gather you have either figured that out or don't care (not caring is perfectly valid, a little bit of mystery goes along way) - so I'm going to focus on "What type of selective pressure might have caused this plant to evolve a brain and the ability to move?", which seems to be the actual question anyway.
First, like animals, plants need a few basic things to survive from their environment: water, nutrients, air, and sunlight. The way I see it, the source of these life-elements can vary on a long or short term basis. We see that variation has directly affected the evolution of earths plants. Regionally we see plants that can stand larger variations of temperature and water (areas with more prominent summer/winter or wet/dry seasons), and locally plants that need a lot of sun (like trees) or those that don't (like underbrush).
I'm also going to rule that evolution typically favors survival of the *species*, not the *individual*. So a plant being able to roam around must benefit the survival of the species.
Taking all of that into consideration, **I'm going suggest an environment where any of the key ingredients that a plant needs to survive vary's too wildly, or for too long of a time for another version of a stationary plant species to survive.**
Variation on a slow timescale would promote plant migration to areas where the missing elements can be obtained. I'm thinking Game of Thrones style 9 year winters here, or massive decade long drought cycles. Also, If you want to develop a long history, it could start with ground cover plants that "move" by growing and dying, their root systems perhaps evolving to work more like legs eventually. Familiar mutations related to perception like antenna and eyes would increase competitiveness, and promote more variation, predatory plants, etc.
Variation on a small timescale is a bit more difficult as we see that now with day to day weather, so I'm going to stretch a bit here, but you would need much larger swings of temperature or something that leads to prioritizing which of the life requirements the plant is collecting at different times. A concrete example would be a rocky environment where plants move out onto the rocks to collect sunlight, then back near a warm spring to collect water and nutrients while avoiding being frozen at night.
Basically they would be filling a gap and taking advantage of a source of life-elements that other species can't.
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There are a lot of good, useful questions already, so I'm just going to add a few ideas that I myself toyed with, working on a sentient plantlike species.
One of the points made a lot in the other answers, is regarding the inefficiency of photosynthesis. Trying to find a way to excuse this also gave me a good excuse to mobilise the plantlife. Two things make photosynthesis so inefficient; the amount of energy collected is not very large, but more importantly, creating chloroplasts is very costly for an organism.
There is a simple way around this. Now, I can't verify how reliable this particular wikipedia article is, but I can definitely imagine this working.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysia_chlorotica>
Now this creature is a sea slug, but the basic principle can be used for any organism. Instead of making its own, costly chloroplasts, predation allows an organism to steal the chloroplasts from prey-plants.
When the plants start trying to eat each other, it's easy to imagine them developing movement from that. First the predator will move to better consume the prey. Then the prey will develop movement to escape the predator.
To compensate for the lack of energy gained from photosynthesis, my plantlike aliens will also digest the rest of the prey-plant, giving them the energy required to move like an animal. Perhaps this deviates further from plants than you're looking for, but I figured the chloroplast stealing might still work?
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Plants evolving mobility, eyes and brains is a great idea, but it only works in a fantasy and not in science-based science fiction. Several other answers on photosynthesis show that the energetics won't support plants capable of exceeding animal performance and it doesn't even come close to doing so.
The energy just isn't there. Putting this on a planet closer to its sun won't help either. Plant metabolism runs at only a few percent of animal metabolism. The planet Venus receives twice the solar energy of Earth. Placing the planet closer to its star will only turn it into another Venus. Not the best environment for plants of any kind.
I like the Technically Yes answer where animals have chloroplasts in or on their skins. One possible solution to plants with eyes and brains is that they aren't plants they're really animals camouflaged as plants. Examples are sea anemones in our seas or stick insects.
For evolution to change plants into animals (which is in effect what you're asking to happen and this is most likely impossible or close enough to make no difference) there would have to be an environment which selected for vision, intelligence and mobility. Animals would evolve faster and more readily to become super-animals able to see better, be smarter, and move quicker. Plants wouldn't stand a chance against this competition.
The only plausible way plants could acquire eyes, brains and mobility is genetic engineering. I can imagine a decadent alien genetic engineer spending time on a planet with abundant plant life and to while away the long hours changed the plant life to give it eyes, brains, and a degree of mobility (this might be in only short bursts when the plant stored enough to make a move). However, plant energetics remains a problem. Plant life is low energy life, animals enjoy a high energy biology. Plants able to outrun animals is effectively impossible.
If you want to write a science-fantasy, there are no problems with extraterrestrial plants that are brainy and mobile with eyes to see. Just go for it. The imagery is great and that makes for a great story. Sorry about that, I only wish mobile plants were real they would make life in the universe interesting.
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Human nerve system actually resembles the roots of the tree or a fungus. Something to think about :)
Regarding the need for plants to develop brain and mobility. It could be that without animals to challenge the plants, they would try to compete each other for the sunlight, soil and nutrients. Ability to guard and deny the resources to other plants would mean that plants would develop both offensive (predatory) and defensive (countermeasures) genetics. Once you have predatory plants that try to out compete other plants, they would need to develop strategy, the ones that are not predatory enough would be "weeded out" (pardon the pun). Overtime this would mean that the plants would have to develop a sort of a brain that would be partially based on instinct (action/reaction) and partially on coming up with abstract thinking (strategies, communication with similar species) etc.
The need for the plant to move would come once basic brain functionality is there, because strategically staying in one place would mean resources such as nutrition may be depleted faster and mobility would ensure access to more resources.
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## Technically Yes
If we loosen the definition of 'plant' to a creature that uses
photosynthesis and has chlorophyll, then multicellular creature that, before becoming what we consider plants may evolve to avoid
things that eats them. It just requires that one mutation of a cell
that both uses chlorophyll and moves, and BOOM you will eventually have plant that have brains like animals or plant animals, plantimals. Unfortunately they will not be fast, think a sloth or a turtle on land, but hey both of those survive.
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I have one extremely specific scenario
**Underground mazes**
There are resource that your proto-plants need to survive , but it is currently in a resource poor aquatic environment. There one thing that your plants depend on to survive. Underground mazes. Basically , as ice forms cracks in rock that is less brittle than average , forming long and deep pockets that sediment may get trapped into, and where water may seep into , storing essential , life sustaining resources the plant needs. The only catch in that the pockets are deep and hard to access, and since your plants' little seeds can waste any energy or resources in this environment, they adapt root like tendrils that first "solve" the maze , then establish the most efficient route from plant to resource , much like slime mold.
After the soil and water are used up , the plant withdraws its tendrils and creeps along the rocks under the same mechanism that it used to use its tendrils to search the maze. After a while , when it cannot find resources , it reverts into a cyst , and floats away , waiting to land on more fertile rock. This process with help a lot when your plants colonize land, but before any of this can happen , the earliest ancestors of these plants must gain mitochondria-like organelles along with chloroplasts through endosymbiosis.
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Recent research shows seeds have decisions-making cells basically analogous to simple brain-cells. They use them to decide when to germinate, in a way *somewhat* similar to brains.
So, an extremely high concept idea would be to have the seeds evolve into animal-like organisms.
source: <https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/do-plant-seeds-have-brains>
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**TL;DR**: "plant" is a role, and this role functions at timescales incompatible with the original requirement. Anything that can move fast and has a brain is an animal, the best you can get is a photosynthetically capable animal - but the energy it could have from photosynthesis would likely be useless anyway.
The problem that you're facing is that anything that is a plant is incapable of high-energy processes, like movement and heavy, real-time processing (and eventually sentience).
What plants do is concentrate the available energy, and other lifeforms use this concentrated energy to support their high-energy processes. The ambient energy is collected, and with its help, some chemicals that are not of much use by themselves are converted into more energetic compounds (more or less). The energy stored in this way can then power those other lifeforms that move around and respond to things quickly. The waste products are then, of course the same chemicals that the plants "energise".
In other words, plants are not as much as specific kinds of organisms as a specific "stage" of the energy chain - one that concentrates the thinned out ambient energy and passes it onto the next stage.
In Earth's case, the plants mostly work on sunlight and beat stuff like nitrogen, water and carbon into sugars and other organics. Most organisms that eat plants in one way or another can then power their own locomotion (excluding obvious stuff like fungi). Most of those are very delicious and get eaten themselves, but they're still mostly on the same stage, the only really efficient energy boost happens with the plants - the differentiation is really between plants and animals here, as even their cell "templates" are different. Either way, the specifics of the plants we have here on Earth are likely unique to Earth, but the role of that first energy stage is not.
[This question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/122867/how-might-kinetosynthesizing-plants-look?rq=1) brings up an interesting alternative, for example - instead of sunlight, motion energy is captured and (presumably) used and stored in a similar way to our Earth's plants - by converting chemicals into other, more energetic ones. Some of the answers detail very interesting specifics of capturing motion energy, but the overall design and idea of the plant is virtually unchanged, except for specific changes needed due to how such energy is distributed, compared to sunlight (direction, intensity, seasonality).
If those hypothetical plants still produced the same sugars (and weren't poisonous), regular Earth animals could probably feed off of them. We could swap out Earth's plants with those alien plants and it would've probably worked out mostly fine, after like a century or two.
Another thing is that most of the reactions happening in plants are fairly slow, both because of their nature as well as because they happen at the ambient temperatures (that's why warm-blooded animals are more capable than cold-blooded ones), and because of the chemicals and rudimentary signals being sent by free flow of fluids. Animals also have systems that work that way - the different hormonal signals and their effects are far, far too slow compared to nervous system response times (even the fastest hormones in humans are on the order of seconds).
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This isn't exactly worldbuilding but honestly, I wouldn't know where else to ask it.
The scenario goes as follows. In an utter cliché moment you get summoned by some wizards to help their country/world to a higher technological level than it currently is. The current level is in this case irrelevant but let us assume it is also cliché and amounts to early mediaevalism through the eyes of romanticism/fantasy, you know what I'm talking about.
These wizards aren't entirely stupid and know you can't have all the knowledge of your world in your pocket. As such, they allow you to travel back to your world only once to take as much knowledge with you as you can to theirs.
Now for the question, how would you take as much knowledge with you through a summoning assuming you can take anything you want with you at least within reasonable size (so taking the entire earth with you isn't valid!). The goal is obviously to rebuild the knowledge with as little research as possible, so not taking something with you that's easily researched is viable strategy. Ergo, how do you economically take knowledge from one plane through another through summoning?
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Spending the money to buy a really good encyclopedia (on acid free paper) and "The Way Things Work" would provide the background for developing to the level of our civilization at the time the books were published.
Note I am advocating for real books rather than an e-reader since it is far less likely to cause problems (i.e. the startled apprentice drops the e reader when it lights up....) and books on acid free paper can last centuries.
Depending on the actual mass/volume of what you are allowed to bring back, filling a large, quality carrying case (something like a Pelican case which is waterproof and airtight, depending on the model) will ensure you can bring back a decent quantity of books (how to manuals, and step by step instruction books), and your library will survive for so long as the case is closed and protected (no barbarians making off with your library!)
One other book you should bring is a good economics textbook, or Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations". It is one thing to have the technological know how to build steam engines and bolt action rifles, but generating the wealth to build the infrastructure to design and manufacture all that is going to be a big hurdle to overcome. You will be on a steep learning curve to "build the tools to build the tools", and if your economy cannot support the needed growth for raw materials, design and testing work, hiring and training skilled workmen, getting more food (since the peasants will be very attracted to factory work if it is more remunerative than being a serf on a farm) and so on. The real foundation of our civilization is the ability to create and manipulate *wealth*, and capitalism is about the generating and *use* of capital. If the King is hoarding all the new found wealth of machine production, then the rate of growth will be very slow, and advancing will also be constrained.
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Assuming that the magical world doesn't have entirely different physical sciences - Get a solar-powered e-book reader, download as many gigabytes of science, engineering and medical text books as you can cram in. Include starter texts as well as intermediate and advanced texts.
Might be worth looking up some older texts and history of technology books so that you have some idea of how to transition from their current state of technology to your current technological level too. If you're willing to share it about carry as many additional readers as you can manage.
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I second paper books, though carrying around a reader as well may be worth trying.
No matter how good the textbooks are, they assume a student being surrounded by the very civilization you want to copy.
Thus, in addition to textbooks you'll probably need a description of scientific method, some reference manuals on math/physics/chemistry, and a collection of simple facts that will work as a carcass for deep, thorough knowledge. Note that you should also plan experiments that prove any such fact to hold in your new universe.
For instance, a textbook on modern medicine will be useless until you develop some advanced chemistry to make drugs. However, mere knowledge that bacteria exist (if it holds) may save thousand of lives.
And also you'll need a description of a simple printing press so that whatever you bring with you can be replicated fast.
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Have you seen the [Time Traveler Cheat Sheet](http://gizmodo.com/5207549/time-travel-cheat-sheet?utm_expid=66866090-67.e9PWeE2DSnKObFD7vNEoqg.0&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F)?
That alone will get you everything you need to kickstart a medieval society up to industrial (although most of it will be very difficult to achieve straight away). The rest can be figured out with research: simply knowing a task is possible can be enough to generate the means to solve it (e.g. an atomic bomb can be worked out with only a high school education and access to materials).
From there, download the text-of-articles-only copy of Wikipedia (a mere 43 GB uncompressed). Most of which will be useless (articles on plants, animals, people, places, and historical events which have no bearing on your task) but the remainder will provide a fairly solid background on useful topics and easily searchable. While it might not go into sufficient detail to act as a blueprint, it should provide the cursory knowledge which your wizard contacts should be able to learn from and devise their own solutions.
Follow that up with a trip over to <http://www.survivorlibrary.com/> and download the stored resources there, which cover a variety of topics and generally used as a resource in case Earth bombs itself back to the stone age. It is unfortunately mostly ORC'd pdfs (not very compressible), but does fit on 31 DVDs (or 6 BluRay) which are available for purchase (that is: I don't see a 'download all' link, but I do see the DVDs for purchase which gives an indication of size).
A modest tablet computer and recharge method (e.g. solar) along with an external battery (charge the battery with the solar, charge your device from the battery) or two will be sufficient material resources to store your collective knowledge. If you can, bring a bunch, rather than forcing everyone to cluster around a single screen.
The first thing you'll want to do is devise other methods to recharge your tablets so that you aren't confined to the dwindling resources you brought with you (solar cells will fracture, cables will fray, things will get damaged). Which you should be able to do with the time traveler's cheat sheet alone. Thin copper will will likely be your first challenge, and while easy to manufacture in quantity with the right tools, making those tools and finding a supply of raw ore will be difficult.
A good [wire draw plate](https://contenti.com/drawplates) may be advisable to locate and bring with you as well, as it is light and easily transportable and absolutely essential to the production of wire, as well as some strong neodymium magnets. Both will speed the production of your first generator (necessary to keeping the devices regularly charged!) and will be very difficult to produce otherwise.
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If a human were cursed with the need to transform into a specific animal (*i.e.* a canine), would his DNA change after the transformation?
I would appreciate help in answering this question. This is for research on a book I am in the process of writing.
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Ignoring the physical/mechanical issues with the transformation itself (a wizard did it), I see another possibility for the DNA: a mixture between the two.
Point one: The genomes of different species are mostly identical. See [some numbers with sources here](http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/25335-Percentage-of-genetic-similarity-between-humans-and-animals). I'd estimate that a human and ~~werewolf~~ dog share between 80 and 90% of the their genome, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for an individual to have all of the genes necessary for two species.
Point two: Only a small fraction of our genome contains actual coding sequences, most of it is "junk." Even out of our genes themselves, not all of them are "active" at any one time. The relatively new study of [epigenetics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics) studys what causes genes to be activated and deactivated, and what influences the 'strength' of their expression.
Putting these two together, you might say that the genetic structure of your individual has been modified to contain all the genes from both species, and some epigenetic mechanism 'switches' between the two sets of genes that are specific to one or the other species.
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That depends, what do you mean by transforming into a canine, and how does the process work?
Fundamentally, humans aren't capable of transforming into other animals. Either some external influence is transforming the human into a canine, or else they are some human-like (but decidedly non-human) creature with the innate ability to transform.
In the former case, probably. On a basic level, if the DNA of the organism isn't canine DNA, then it's still some other creature. If the internal organs/form/etc. are all canine, then the DNA will at least need to encode the proper growth patterns for the cells in order to stay alive. Cells are constantly dieing and new cells created, and without the proper DNA, this process won't work.
If the creature is a natural shape-shifter, then it probably has shape-shifter DNA. Canine DNA is incapable of this, so it will need some non-canine DNA if it is to go about the process of changing shape. It may create some canine DNA *in addition* to its shape shifter DNA, or at least canine-like DNA, but will remain fundamentally a shape-shifter and not a canine.
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# No.
It would *be his own DNA* that gave him the attribute of being able to change into a canine. He would not be a human being, he would be a different species, supposedly descended not from when we split the primates up, but it would have to be way, way back, potentially as far back as [Boreoeutheria](http://www.pnas.org/content/106/40/17083/F3.expansion.html) splits.
Unless you wanted to add in some fantasy mad-scientist thing, where his DNA was somehow created artificially: in which case, this answer still stands: he has his own, unique DNA.
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EDIT - More answer, to try to meet the intention of the story:
**Further, no** - If someone's DNA was altered so drastically (and it would be instantaneous, as cells are constantly dividing), it would not mean that they would have a fast transformation.
Suddenly cells are behaving differently, and there are missing cells as well that you need to create. Muscle would start growing in awkward places (breaking out bones), organ failure as they start and stop growing in areas: it would be an ugly and horrific death. Please just have one DNA for the sake of your characters.
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Does it transform DNA? Sure. Why not. Its your book, you can really do anything you want to. It doesn't matter if it makes sense or not.
If you're looking into science based ways to do transformation, you can make educated decisions as to whether the DNA transforms or not, but it's really up to you.
DNA is what we build proteins from. We upregulate genes, and it causes us to make proteins that we use to manage our cellular lives. That's its entire job. Nothing more. Whether DNA is changed or not depends on how you want to have your transformation process to work.
You could make an argument that the DNA is changed to be more canine, then something kicks the cells into hyper-super-ohmygod-howtheheckisthispossible overddrive and instead of producing a reasonable amount of proteins per hour, they produce some ungodly high rate (multiple orders of magnitude faster than normal) to give you the raw materials to make a transformation occur. To have this process work, you'd have to alter the DNA.
On the other hand, with the amount of handwaving it takes to admit a science based human/animal transformation, you could also claim that this transformation occurs purely in the proteome (the collection of protiens in the body). This is just as scientifically reasonable as doing it with DNA, give or take, so there's no particular reason DNA has to get involved.
It all comes down to what you believe you can convince your readers is acceptable. Work done in the genome (DNA) has far stricter rules than work done in the proteome (proteins) which is actually still a relatively unexplored territory for science. If your readers want strict rules, DNA based transformation may make sense. If your readers don't care about the rules, but care about who kills whom and who hooks up with whom, trying to make a DNA based transformation process might get in the way of telling your story.
In the end, trying to explain how major physical changes (i.e. vampire teeth or werewolf musculature) occurs is *substantially* more important than whether a particular genome sequence is altered. Those changes are completely unexplained by either changes in the genome or proteome. Whatever reason you have for those changes to occur will completely dwarf any molecular level decisions you choose to associate with the transformation. You may choose to incorporate genome or proteome rationales for some of the changes, but 99.9999% of the changes are well beyond science's perception of what cellular mechanics of proteins and DNA are capable of achieving. Don't sweat the small stuff: choose DNA or no-DNA purely based on whatever makes your plot the simplest to tell, and never look back.
Remember Sanderson's first rule of magic: The authors ability to resolve conflict with magic is directly proportional to the readers understanding of it. As long as the understand what magic can and cannot do, it doesn't matter what technical approaches you assign to any particular magical ability.
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Is there any chemical that is biologically produced in humans, that when impregnated in hair follicles, produces green hair?
If current keratin follicles cannot do that, pick another biochemical for hair follicles and try again...
I assume that making new proteins, like Chlorophyll, is harder than impregnating hair follicles with things that are already produced by humans, like urea, or blood...
An environmental explanation.... like a high-copper environment, is ranked by side-effects, and permanency. Permanency is worth more points than no-side-effects...
'Points' is currently metaphorical, but that can change in tune with viewer responses.
Side-effects from the process are expected, but less side-effects will make a better answer.
----------------------------------------------------------**Objective**----------------------------------------------------
Designing a human that grows green hair, naturally, while staying as close to real humans as possible?
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I've turned my hair green semi naturally before. Black hair - bleached blonde - waterpolo player that was in a chlorinated pool 6 times a week. There's a lot online regarding chlorine turning hair green...but it's important to note that chlorine is actually not what turns your hair green. It's actually copper.
Copper has a blue green coloring to it when oxidized and it bonds to the hair on a molecular level...when added to an otherwise uncoloured hair, the green color becomes decently prominent. You can undo this with some shampoos (I believe 'chelating' shampoos is the term for that).
Copper is required by our bodies to some degree...you can go two ways with this:
1. Your people are actually blonde by nature, but a heavy presence of copper in their environment begins to collect on their hair. Lacking the ability to remove it, everyone has green copper coated hair.
2. Your people have an unusually high amount of copper in their bodies...their naturally unpigmented / blonde hair begins to take on a green color simply due to their naturally high copper levels.
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One way a human could have green hair is not through chemicals, but through a symbiotic relationship with some green organism living on or in the hair, as with the sloth and algae: ([sloth algae fur link](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2532635/Sloths-slowly-ALGAE-grows-fur-used-camouflage-food.html)). This would still require some changes, as I doubt that human hair is currently a good environment for algae.
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You could just make it so that the humans have pigment free hair similar to a polar bear this in turn could mean that their natural hair color would be clear. depending on the environment this has the potential to result in the hair collecting particles that would make hair take on different colors such as oxidized copper collecting and turning hair green. Just so you know this is similar to albinism but it would be restricted to their hair and normal albino humans are not completely devoid of pigmentation unlike the pigment free hair that would be needed for this method of having green hair to work.
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First, I'm going to assume you're asking how we can make humans *grow* green hair, instead of just having it by dying it the color that we want.
Pigmentation is a curious thing - the reason that we have hair and skin of a certain color is a combination of our genetic makeup, coupled with our dietary intake having a predisposition towards certain colors - change one or the other and you can have your green hair. A diet heavy in green byproducts would help, but you'd have to pick one that's non-toxic. Alternatively, you could genetically engineer humans so that their diet naturally produces an excess of green, though you might find this showing up in skin and nails.
Green does occur in nature regularly, so you're in some luck there - though it usually results as a type of photosynthesis. You could try experimenting with creating photosynthetic hair that is naturally green, though this would have other results - some might be desirable (less need to consume) and some might not (wild mood swings depending on the weather).
Of course, if we allow for direct genetic engineering, you could just alter human DNA to naturally produce the pigment on its own - though you might wind up with more than just green hair on your *head*, since excess like hair is not very discriminating.
In short, while you could definitely make it happen, there's bound to be unsightly side-effects you're going to have to work out before mass producing green-haired people.
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I have two brothers who had blonde hair when children that got darker as they aged. Thus they weren't really permanent blonde I guess.
When we went to the sea shore for the summer my brothers' skin got red and their blonde hair seemed to turn faintly greenish.
That's right, I have relatives whose blonde hair tended to turn faintly greenish in the sunlight.
So if whatever process made their hair seem faintly greenish was stronger a person could have hair that looked obviously greenish at first sight.
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Skin and hair have 2 natural pigments, eumelanin and preomelanin. See, other animals such as birds have a pigment known as porphyria, which is in human blood but not skin. Idk if a person with this would have like, dry or thin hair, because porphyria-pigmented feathers are weaker. Then again, evolution could have fixed the issue a while ago. So, from a strictly fantasy perspective, the answer is definitely yes. However, humans don’t have pigmentation from porphyria naturally...yet.
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I've designed a world where dinosaurs have lived with humans since the advent of civilization. One thing that is key to the story is that they travel by rail a lot, mostly because that is one of the safer ways of traveling in this dangerous world. I have the gauge set to 20 ft to be able to transport hadrosaurs, smaller sauropods and therapods, and similar dinosaurs. I want to know more about the specifics of the railway because this will affect what both sides can use to transport in this race against summoning demons. The time frame is 1880s technology, but transportation technology has been accelerated due to the pressures placed by living with dinosaurs. If I could have help determining the size of train-related stuff, it would be greatly appreciated. If there is a more appropriate place for this please let me know.
Specific question: the length of each kind of different wheel arrangement. I want to be able to make military ones as it is taking place during the Civil War.
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The selection of [rail gauge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge) has only a little to do with the loads that are carried by the train, and more to do with factors such as budget, desired speed and the space available to build the track. The broader the gauge, the more expensive and the more space required. Broader gauges cannot turn as sharply as narrower gauges.
You may also be confusing rail gauge with [loading gauge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loading_gauge). Loading gauge is the space required for the rolling stock on a railway, which is typically larger than the rail gauge.
However, a [hadrosaur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrosaurus) might be up to 26' in *length*, but they would not be anywhere near this *width*. They would likely fit quite nicely in a carriage on a standard-gauge railway, though there would likely be only one or two per carriage.
So, I believe that most of the dinosaurs that you might want to load onto your railway would fit quite well on modern standard to wide gauge railways with a gauge of no more than two metres. You certainly wouldn't need - or want - a 20' rail gauge.
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### Parallel Tracks
History provides you answer with the Schwerer Gustav, an extremely large railway siege cannon used in WWII.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aI1I0.jpg)
As you can see, it runs along parallel tracks. The total width of the tracks is probably in the neighbourhood of twenty feet. It was pulled by ordinary locomotives. The cannon weighed a little over 1300 tons, so I think you could happily transport numerous extra large chickens on your super broad gauge railway!
Another example of a super-broad gauge railway can be found in [this SPACE.SE query](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/40875/how-did-the-u-s-s-r-manage-to-rotate-the-n-1-from-horizontal-to-vertical). The Soviet "Grasshopper".
(Picture: Old Machine Press)
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The [Mir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir), [ISS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station), [Tiangong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station), [Skylab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab), the numerous [Salyut-missions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_programme)...Space-stations are one of the most impressive and interesting feats of modern engineering, which in my opinion, makes it even more tragic to see them burn up in the atmosphere at the end of their lives.
And my current setting (an earth-analog) features them as well, with quite a few space-stations in orbit at once during any given period. And for motivations that would take a bit too long to explain (and which don't have much to do with this question), these people don't plan on letting their stations re-enter for a *very* long time. Instead, the engineers of this world set their sights on expanding the preexisting stations by attaching new modules (or possibly combining them with other stations already in orbit) for the duration of their stays, which will be a bit more than a whole century.
Their technological level isn't really progressing all too much during this time, they have roughly the same know-how as we do today.
Which would lead me to my question:
**Could it be possible for a modular space-station to remain structurally stable for over a hundred years, while continuously being added-to?** (and how big could it possibly get?)
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# Yes, via Ship of Theseus
This is very easy to accomplish. Over time, as components are added and expanded, outdated or worn out components are replaced by their equivalents. If the station has been designed in a modular way, I see no reason this shouldn’t be possible.
At any given time, no part of the station would be older than the maximum shelf life of modules in your world (ten years? Twenty years?) but the station as a whole can be arbitrarily old as a whole.
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**Maybe**
(The third possible answer other than No and Yes by others)
The primary reason of current stations failing is that the modules, including air locks and outside insulation, gather micro-damage originated from high energy particles or specks of dust colliding at high speeds. We here do not have the tech required to provide preemptive sealing ability to the pressurized compartment, and employing structure scanning aboard is apparently difficult enough to perform a complete scan of the space station, or even a single module. The secondary reason is that computers evolve, and what was a decent computing power brought to orbit in 2000, does not just count for 2020.
If, however, your world's space industry would froze their standards for space station elements for a century (which is largely impossible here on Earth, for numerous reasons starting with f'n copyright), then a space station might be operational as a whole by gradually replacing modules that are on the brink of failure, or have just outlived their usage, with freshly made identical systems, and maintaining redundancy all the time. But, since replacing a module in the midst of a space station would require undocking both sides thus disconnecting the SS in two or more, there have to be elements in its construction devised for at least temporary connection of separated parts of it during replacement operation. Like, if you are to replace the ISS's *Destiny* module, you would need a connection of all that's behind it to the bulk of the station, such technologies need to exist and be reliably adapted to space-based installments before such station would be able to last for this long.
Yes, the station would be like Ship of Theseus, eventually getting all its parts replaced several times each, but with proper tech and planetside desire to *plan* for a hundred years long space mission it would be possible to maintain. However, it takes much to even start, to my knowledge, ISS was built with some but not all tech required to last a hundred years in orbit, including edge module replacement ability and technology, at least one airlock module was replaced during its flight, and we already run it with state-of-the-art tech, so maybe... MAYBE we would build a station designed to eventually get fully replaced in orbit. Before that, we're doomed to bury our space experiments once in a while, and your people are too.
**How big it can be - well, BIG**
If you're totally into module-based construction for a space station, with a means of replacing any single module at one time, I say you can build at least ten times bigger station than ISS, both dimensions-wise and pressured volume-wise. Eventually you'll hit limits of energy supply (aka no more place for solar batteries, as energy demand would rise as volume while energy supply would rise as square, limits of resource supply as increased space would require increased crew thus increased demand on *everything*, and limits on building new parts as having more parts in the station means more replacement parts need making and delivering them to orbit. This would equalize somewhere above the current state of ISS, depending on technology used at every stage of module and rocket production (QA for each module would be a major issue), thus putting a feasibility and sustainability limit on the size of your station.
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Ok, so maybe?
As other post have pointed out, the structure will eventually just wear out either from high speed space dust or thermal expansion contraction over time. Micro stresses will build up.
You can get around this. BUT it will cost you dearly and be highly inefficient. Buildings especially built today are seemingly built as disposable structures like a Bic Razor. If today you live in the US in a neighborhood, that was built in say the 1920s-30's. they would be considered historic. In England 21% of homes were built before 1919. Edwardian era and even Tudor homes are not uncommon. The Hagia Sophia Mosque in Turkey is over 1600 years old built in the year 360, There are many other older buildings still in use, and not completely replace as per "Ship of Theseus"
Obviously building a cathedral in space out of monolithic stones is absurde.
With our current tech as OP stated is the setting, it becomes even more unlikely. But perhaps fortune may smile upon the the station builders and provide them with a serendipitous source of building material they do not have to hoist up though the planetary gravity well. If this were an alternate earth, I would say relocating the asteroid Psyche to earth orbit and redefining it as our second moon (Would we still call the moon Moon if we had two?). Psyche is
roughly ~270km in diameter and of mostly nickel iron composition. With this source of virtually unlimited material, you could convince me that a determined mind could build orbital structures that could last long enough to satisfy the OPs requirements.
Alternatively: Rather the the whole of the stations being designed to last this long. What if we designed and built only the frameworks to be 'permanent' and even made in a way to be connected to other frames in a modular way. Components that the individual frames contained could be replaced as time wore them down or they became obsolete. From a distance the structure would look the same. Only on closer inspection would one notice the new recent additions. Like walking into the Notre-Dame Cathedral rebuilt after the fire to see this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gOeqX.jpg)
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There are good answers out there, but one must remember the issue of micrometeorites and space debris. With a technology roughly as that of ours, there would be some challenges. The analogy of the ship of Theseus proposed by Daniel B is a good workaround. Unlike building on Earth, where gravity puts stress on the modules, in space it is basically the act of docking and un-docking which may pose a temporary stress. Micrometeorites do not necessarily puncture the hull from the first hit, but eventually they will cause damage and chipping off the hull's surface. Expansion and contraction due to heat difference between sunlit and shaded parts of the hull can put stress on clamping areas between the modules. There may be more "wear and tear" factors I didn't think about, but I think cosmic rays may cause some metal fatigue over time. In addition, spin-gravity for the comfort of astronauts may add the stress of centrifugal force which is comparable to gravity on Earth. Can a ship dock while the station is spinning? What will be the effect of change in the weight distribution? Replacing a module would require temporarily stopping the spin. If space stations are small enough, it may be a good idea to launch a new one instead. Much larger stations would benefit from the modular approach. There are also the orbital corrections. Low Earth Orbie (LEO) exposes the station to atmospheric drag from the exosphere. This is "orbital decay". You need to take higher orbits if you want the station to last longer. And each time a ship docks or undocks, there is always a slight "push" or "pull" while docking, which may change orbit. So orbital correction may be necessary. Thrusters must be placed correctly and expanding the station may require changing their layout or adding more thrusters. Thrust adds stress on the structure and an old station in need of maintenance may rip apart.
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**No**
I own a hundred-year-old building and am currently adding onto it. It's expanding the usability of the building, but one absolute truth remains...
... The original building is on its last legs and will eventually (sooner rather than later) be demolished due to increasing decay, aging infrastructure, and all the safety problems that come with it. And that's ignoring the reality that it's more expensive to maintain an old building than a new one.
Now add the pain of sending those extensions into orbit.
I know you said that the technology level isn't progressing much — but that's a fallacy. Technology progresses as problems are solved, and an ongoing space program that's valuable enough to justify sending extensions and modifications into orbit can't possibly mean there are no problems to solve. You have at least those relating to aging structures, aging infrastructure, and the natural inclination for someone to stub their proverbial toe on something that doesn't work in your, let's say, 50-year-old space station and say, "there's got to be a better way to do this."
So, technology isn't quite as stagnant as you might think. Not replacing or maintaining the space stations represents stagnation.
**Why doesn't this work?**
Earth has a remarkable advantage over space. If I want to add on to an old building, I simply clear the weeds, lay some concrete, and (OK, simplistically) nail some wood together. You see, it's not really the old building I'm adding onto. Oh, I might be using one of its walls (compared to constructing an entirely new building), but the simple truth is, I'm building something on the surface of the planet. I need to worry *a lot less* (if at all) about the connection to the old building. Yup, I'm oversimplifying, but think of it this way...
...that space station might have been designed for extensibility, but 100 years is forever in technology years, and the cost of putting a space station into orbit that can be arbitrarily extended and/or modified...
Take it from an engineer. We're mortal. We can't see that far into the future and plan for every contingency. That space station must handle 100% of the new add-on (power, utilities, structural strength, orbital stability, changes in purpose...), and that's a big deal.
**Conclusion**
So, no, you can't *in real life* do what you're trying to do.
**Epilogue**
Now forget everything I just said. When you write your story, drop a line that basically says, "government engineers, contrary to normal government expectations, successfully designed space stations that can be extended with an unlimited lifespan." Then flip us all the proverbial bird and write your story.
On your world, this isn't just possible. It's practical.
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Making this easy would require completely linear design with new modules being added to the tip and old modules discarded from the base. However such design may not be otherwise optimal (everything is further to reach than with branched design).
With the current stations like ISS, this rule has not been followed. The station branches into multiple directions, so that if you want to replace the ageing Zarya FGB (first module), this cannot be done without disassembling all station into 3 parts that later may be too heavy to navigate and safely attach to the replacing module.
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> which in my opinion, makes it even more tragic to see them burn up in
> the atmosphere at the end of their lives.
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That line pretty much sums it up.
Give this problem to an engineer, and they will reject it over the more 'practical' solution of continuous replacement and upgrade. That, after all, is what technological advancement is all about, and that is what currently drives space exploration. 'The next venture will be bigger and netter than the last.' Continuous advancement and improvement. Everything is, in the end, just a prototype for the next iteration. They even designed CERN to be replaced/rebuilt.
Give this problem to an architect, on the other hand, and they will say 'Absolutely, my magnificent design just HAS to last a century, for future generations to marvel at'. Architects design monuments to their creativity, to last forever. They do not design to have it crash and burn. Artists, however, are a different creature - Burning Man as a prime example.
It is the emotional piece that the engineer misses, and the architect embodies. A lasting legacy, not just a technological accomplishment.
The Engineer/Scientist says 'why bother?' but the Architect replies 'heritage'.
To keep a space station up for a century is an economic consideration, not an engineering one. Primarily, the cost of continuous maintenance. The Eiffel Tower was designed and intended to last only twenty years, that was the original requirement. It was designed to be torn down, bolted, not welded connections. (In fact, there was some consideration to dismantling it and bringing it to Canada, rebuilding it in Montreal for Expo '67.) Yet over 100 years later, it is still standing. However, the cost of maintaining it is not trivial. After being completely repainted 19 times (with primarily lead paint) the weight of the paint is now 25% of the original weight of the pig iron used to construct it.
This station could, for example (taking a page from the space shuttle design), have a central spline covered in replaceable ceramic tiles meant to be continuously replaced. How long it was kept up in orbit would be a political/economic factor of how motivated the powers that be are in providing the ongoing funding for maintenance. The longer it is intended to remain, the more inventive can be the solutions to build in permanence. These tiles could also incorporate insulation that kept the heat uniform around the outside, preventing expansion and cooling problems. Expansion joints could do the rest. (The Eiffel Tower was designed so that, when the iron side that faced the sun heated up and expanded differentially from the shadow side, the tower would bend to accommodate.) It would, of course, require booster propulsion to keep the orbit stable, or even to lift it into higher orbit as the mass increases.
So the answer depends on whether this is 'just' an engineering/scientific project, or does it have some symbolic nationalistic or corporate goodwill significance? Do they WANT it to last a century, economics be damned, regardless of the functionality or practicality?
There is the old tale about Paul Bunyan's Ax. The original ax is in the Smithsonian, and still in constant use. Mind you, the handle has been replaced ten times, and the head eight, but it is still the 'original' ax.
If economics, cost-benefit, and functional return on investment are disregarded, and the solution desired is an architectural one rather than engineering, the answer becomes **'probably, depending on your budget.'**
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Imagine you have a world that is earthlike enough for humans (or nearly human-equivalent creatures) to exist on it, so naturally, this world also has a moon.
I imagine the moon to be roughly the same size as the Earth's moon (since the planet this moon orbits is also roughly Earth-sized), but I have never thought about its composition (the type of rock or material it is made up of), since I don't have enough knowledge about that to make an educated guess, that would still be believable.
Would it be possible for this moon (as opposed to the Earth's moon) to have a breathable atmosphere?
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As you probably know, Earth moon has no appreciable [atmosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere).
This is because the combination of its low escape velocity, temperature and lack of magnetic field can allow for just traces of xenon to be kept long enough around it.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vi0C6.png)
Giving a magnetic field to a body like the Moon is difficult: it is small and cools down pretty quickly on cosmic scales, and it also has too little iron to have an appreciable dynamo effect.
If you can't stop the leak, you can still think of pumping more in: an active volcanism might help in releasing more gases in the moon atmosphere, and if the net balance is positive, the atmosphere will grow thicker over time.
However, for volcanism we have the same considerations as for the magnetic field: the little body cools down quickly.
Unless you place it closer to the planet so that the tidal effects keep pumping energy into the planet, heating it up. And also this would not last too long, since the energy put into heating the moon is taken away from the orbiting energy, altering the orbital distance.
Moreover, volcanism alone won't give you a breathable atmosphere, not for humans at least. For that you would need the whole shabang of life and carbon cycle we have on Earth.
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Assuming that:
a) the moon is similar to the Earth's moon in terms of density
b) the assumed atmosphere would be Earth-like, that is the temperature would be roughly 20 Celcius and the pressure about 1 atmosphere,
then no it's not possible for the moon to have a breathable atmosphere. This is because the escape velocity of the moon would be about $2300$ m/s (see [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity#List_of_escape_velocities)), while the distribution of thermal velocity for gases such as oxygen is in general above the escape velocity of the moon. You can check the distribution (called Maxwell-Boltzman) [here](https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry_Textbook_Maps/Supplemental_Modules_(Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry)/Kinetics/03%3A_Rate_Laws/3.01%3A_Gas_Phase_Kinetics/3.1.02%3A_Maxwell-Boltzmann_Distributions).
Take into account that gases higher up in this imaginary atmosphere will have high velocities due to the heat from the star. Finally, planets such as Mars do not have a thick atmosphere for the same reason.
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Sure. As per the other answers the thing that stops the moon having an atmosphere is the gravity is not strong enough to hold it. however, the moon is only 3.3g/ cm^3, all we need to do is increase its density by a factor of 5 and it will have a comparable gravitational field as earth, and comparable escape velocity. Make the core of the moon predominantly out of Uranium, (or other very heavy metal) and you will get there, which also takes care of the question as to why it doesn't cool down. How on earth such a moon forms with so much Uranium is another question. Such a heavy moon will have a severe tidal effect on the earth.
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The earth's core stays warmer due to radioactive decay. Perhaps a moon with a large iron core infused with a high concentration of radioactive elements would
1. have enough gravity to keep oxygen in the atmosphere
2. enough radioactivty to stay warm for eons
3. enough magnetic field to prevent the solar wind from blowing the atmosphere away.
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**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
Edit: For clarification, this question is in regards to silicate use in carbon-based biochemistry, not silica-based biochemistries.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/41pdN.jpg)
The microorganisms you see above are called diatoms; they are a very diverse group of algae which make silicate cell walls called frustules, which they shape into various forms and arrangements. In other words, *they are unicellular plantlike protists that live in glass bodies*.
I naturally wondered if this body structure could be applied into a multicellular structure, perhaps forming an analogue to either coral reefs or even woody plants. The main biological constraints I can think of regarding this are:
* silicates, as inorganic materials, do not grow with an organism, and so would either constrict it until it’s crushed within its own body (as is the fate of diatoms) or the organism would simply outgrow any silicate covering, and need to find/make more.
* Silicates, as inorganic materials, must be obtained from the environment somehow. For a microorganism, this is easy to do - it can take silicates suspended in water. But for a multicellular organism, it becomes much more challenging - how would such an organism obtain new material to be processed for its outer body?
* Silicates, as inorganic materials, don’t digest easily. Assuming an organism wants to eat this “glass plant”, then it will need a way to either process the silicates or use them for itself. (*This, though, is a comparatively easy concern to address. Niche partitioning is the spice of life~.*)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5DW5g.jpg)
I attempted to create something with these thoughts in mind, and this was the result - a microbial colony mirroring stromatolites, but created with frustules instead of sedimentary deposits. As the autotrophs replicate, new cells leave through a pore at the tip of the frustule; they then cling onto the parent cells, and build their own frustules connected to them, like a microbial coral tower.
While I’m satisfied with this result, though, I’m wondering if this or something similar can be done with a proper multicellular organism. So what circumstances would need to occur to allow for a plant-like or coral-like autotroph to build bodies supported by silicates instead of cellulose or other organic compounds? How effective is this, compared to using organic compounds?
[Answer]
There are already creatures using silicates for their scaffolding, like the [siliceous sponges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siliceous_sponge)
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> The siliceous sponges form a major group of the phylum Porifera, consisting of classes Demospongiae and Hexactinellida. They are characterized by spicules made out of silicon dioxide, unlike calcareous sponges.
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> Individual siliachoates (silica skeleton scaffolding) can be arranged tightly within the sponginocyte or crosshatched and fused together. Siliceous spicules come in two sizes called megascleres and microscleres.
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I guess outside of water the brittleness and low elasticity of silicon dioxide could become too much of an obstacle, but inside water it seems to be pretty fine.
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ADDENDUM: The [glass sponge](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/glass-sponge.html): already somewhat shrub like.
[Answer]
There have been several silicon biochemistry questions this month. Why has it suddenly become more interesting? Whatever the reason, I'll skip stuff growing in the sea for now (L.Dutch already covered glass sponges and you already mentioned diatoms) and concentrate only on stuff growing on land.
You may be surprised to learn that there's already a fair amount of silica in vegetation in the world in the form of [phytoliths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytolith). According to [Cycling silicon – the role of accumulation in plants](https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1469-8137.2003.00778.x), as much as 47.3 mg per g of dried plant matter of some grasses can be silica, nearly 5%. [Silicon as Versatile Player in Plant and Human Biology: Overlooked and Poorly Understood](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4641902/) claims as much as 10% of dried mass, but I can't find the reference they're using to back up that figure, possibly because I ran into paywalls.
A quick look at [the composition of the human body](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body) on Wikipedia suggests that 2.5% of the wet mass of a human is calcium and phosphorous, and given that 53% of the wet mass is, well, *wet*, some grasses would appear to be as mineralized as you are.
That doesn't necessarily mean there's enough to make something as silicaceous as a tree is woody... [lignin](https://www.britannica.com/science/lignin) (a structural compound in trees and woody shrubs) makes up 17-35% of the dry mass of various kinds of tree.
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> How effective is this, compared to using organic compounds?
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Problem is though that despite how much silicate-based matter there is in the world (silicon and oxygen make up [more than 50% of the Earth's crust by mass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust)) it is relatively unreactive.
From [The anomaly of silicon in plant biology](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC42876/pdf/pnas01532-0027.pdf) (PDF):
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> The soil water, or the "soil solution,"
> contains silicon, mainly as silicic acid,
> H4SiO4, at 0.1-0.6 mM-concentrations
> on the order of those of potassium, calcium, and other major plant nutrients,
> and weli in excess of those of phosphate.
> Silicon is readily absorbed so that terrestrial plants contain it in appreciable concentrations
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(interestingly, this paper also mentions the 10% silica figure, but doesn't source it)
*Silicon as Versatile Player in Plant and Human Biology*, linked above, says that this silicic acid mostly comes from acidic weathering of silicate rich minerals (not sourced, but does at least sound plausible). Trying to liberate silica directly is very energetically unfavorable, so I don't see any kind of lifeform trying to eat the raw stuff unless it had a fluorine-based chemistry, which is probably a bit too exotic for your needs. Instead, your land corals would need a large enough root system to harvest enough silicic acid from the soil or other water sources, in just the same way that grasses harvest the silicates they need to form their phytoliths.
Your silicaceous corals, then, might need to be somewhere with a good supply of silicic acid, which might imply a climate with more acidic rain that we get falling on igneous rocks or [diatomaceous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth) sedimentary rocks. This would ensure high levels of bioavailable silicates, hopefully allowing more substantial silica-based biomineralization than you find on Earth.
To comment on some other bits of your question:
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> I attempted to create something with these thoughts in mind, and this was the result - a microbial colony mirroring stromatolites, but created with frustules instead of sedimentary deposits.
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Either that "coral" is fully covered by the water when the tide is in, or you need some way to transport nutrients to the top (and some reason why it doesn't just widen out below the tidal zone.
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> Silicates, as inorganic materials, don’t digest easily. Assuming an organism wants to eat this “glass plant”, then it will need a way to either process the silicates or use them for itself
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As briefly mentioned above, "digesting" silicate minerals is very energy intensive and I suspect it just won't be done because it isn't worth it. I am now imagining some combination of a goat and a [parrotfish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrotfish#Feeding), chomping up glassbushes with a beak and regurgitating pellets of sand having extracted the nutritious parts of the plant matter...
[Answer]
**Many plants lay down silicon to augment their "skeletons". Horsetails have the most.**
No plants I know of need to build their bodies out of silicon lke the glass sponges do. But lots of plants add silicon to their bodies - probably more as a defense than as structural elements. The ability to use biological silica has evolved several times.
[Four hundred million years of silica biomineralization in land plants](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1500289112)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A93I3.png)
Check out Equisetaceae on the left - the horsetails. They are nearly 20% silicon by dry weight.
Horsetails are an ancient group of plants. Back when the earth was theirs some of them got as big as trees. I have looked before for images of the calcium skeletons of horsetails and I finally found some here.
[New insight into silica deposition in horsetail (Equisetum arvense)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3160890/)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oVvZl.png)
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> Microwave-assisted acid digestion of horsetail, either grown
> hydroponically in the presence of silicic acid or in plants collected
> from the wild, resulted in silica deposits and 'skeletons' which were
> successfully labelled with the fluor PDMPO. Silica was identified in
> acid digests of all areas of the plant from the rhizome through to
> spores in the cone. There were no structurally-distinct silica
> skeletons in the root, only what appeared as diffuse deposits of
> siliceous materials (Figure (Figure1a).1a). Silica skeletons of basal
> stem showed epidermal-like cells, 30-40 μm wide and 100-300 μm long,
> with heavily silicified cell walls and approximately equidistant
> punctate deposits of silica within the walls which were suggestive of
> the expected locations of plasmodesmata. Each 'silica cell' included
> an amorphous, spherical silica deposit between 10 and 20 μm in
> diameter which had the appearance of a nucleus or vesicle. There were
> also occasional heavily silicified (as indicated by an enhanced
> fluorescence) skeletons of stomata,
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You could riff on plants with silicified tissues and come pretty close to what you proposed in the OP.
[Answer]
"I’m wondering if this or something similar can be done with a proper multicellular organism"
Yes. If the question is limited to only silicates, then the issue is more challenging, although probably still feasible. If the question is broadly, silicon based "organics", then almost definitely.
Starting from a very basic level, most of biology is based on nucleobases of DNA and RNA, with the five nucleobases being adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), thymine (T), and uracil (U). These are primarily C,H,N,O ring structures. Ex: cytosine is C4H5N3O. Yet, humans already know that [Nucleic Acid Analogues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleic_acid_analogue) and [Unnatural Base Pairs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_pair#Unnatural_base_pair_(UBP)) already exist, leading to an [Expansion of the Genetic Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_genetic_code) using lab created nucleobases and amino acids.
With this said, silicon can form many of the same structures and bonds, and even directly substitutes for carbon in many molecules. From the [Wikipedia Silicon article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon) "Furthermore, since carbon and silicon are chemical congeners, organosilicon chemistry shows some significant similarities with carbon chemistry, for example in the propensity of such compounds for catenation and forming multiple bonds." (Ex: [direct silicon substitution is often viewed as an issue in graphene](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b01894)).
In terms of [Cyclosilicate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicate_mineral#Cyclosilicates) ring structures, an example with very similar organic character is: [Hexamethylcyclotrisilazane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexamethylcyclotrisilazane) which is a ring structure of C6H21N3Si3 (Note the Si is actually the ring and the carbon are just edge attachments).
Silicon can also form multi ring structures, such as some of the [Inosilicates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicate_mineral#Inosilicates) like tremolite or pellyite. It can also form long graphene like sheet structures of rings such as the Phyllosilicates. Apparently, chemists have only recently started realizing though that silicon can form many of the exact same [aromatic ring structures (2010 paper)](https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/silicon-goes-aromatic/3003635.article)
The implication of this being, that alternatives to the basic building blocks can "probably" be synthesized using C => Si substitutions. (Note: this is unproven personal supposition)
This also leads into the other idea, that [Organosilicon Chemistry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organosilicon_chemistry) is already a concept. [Silicone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicone) is perhaps one of the most well known products of this line of research, and an excellent example of how not all silicon compounds are stereo-typically "glassy." When it bonds in a chain of the general form (⋯−Si−O−Si−O−Si−O−⋯) it becomes that soft rubbery material use to seal windows against air and water.
* By Achim Hering - Own work, CC BY 3.0, <https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3140696>
Silicon based life, or silicon-carbon mixture life could make all kinds of uses for a material that's relatively pliable, resistant to chemical attack, and fairly easily replaceable with new additions.
Silicon is also already used for [Water Glass (sodium silicate)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_silicate) and [Silica Gel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silica_gel). Silica gel especially can be useful for silica-organic analogues because it can adsorb ~40% of its weight in water, and then readily release the water by heating at 120°C and return back to its starting state.
Finally, large scale structural materials of silicon, or silicon-carbon (such as [Silicon Carbide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_carbide)) are both quite viable, in addition to the [Silicon Nitrides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_nitride). Silicon Carbide and Silicon Nitride are both thermodynamically stable, extremely tough and durable, and can be readily shaped into numerous different forms.
Finally, several creatures already use silicon in the formation of shells and exoskeletons. Diatoms and sponges have already been mentioned that cause an [undersaturated solution of silicic acid to polymerise to form silica](https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/guessing-natures-silica-secrets/3001900.article) using an enzyme process that is not especially well understood. The [Radiolaria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiolaria) groups is another category that also uses silica.
So at least in a very theoretical framework: 1) The basic building blocks of DNA / RNA appear to show at least the possibility of a silicon substitution for alternatives. 2) Hard structural framework materials (skeletons/endoskeletons, exoskeletons) appear to be fabricatable using either silicon alone, or a silicon-carbon mixture. 3) Soft, flexible gel-like structures similar to skin appear to be fabricatable such as Silicone, Silica Gel, or Water Glass, which also have the possibility for water and nutrient regulation at close to Earth temperatures, and might work as substitutes for cell walls. 4) Silicon is also being [investigated for possible uses as muscles](https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/silicon-based-artificial-muscles-a-new-approach-to-soft-robotics/), so the concept is at least there for large scale actuators.
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[Question]
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My story is an urban fantasy tale, set on an alternate Earth where every mythical humanoid that humanity ever thought was real, *is* in fact real, or at least used to be before going extinct. From vampires and werewolves to elves and dwarves to merfolk and minotaurs, they all came into being because at some point in history, a magically-potent human under the right conditions spontaneously mutated into the first of a new magically-active species that then created more of its number by breeding with humans. Due to their immunity to aging and disease, they are collectively referred to as immortals. However, they very much can be killed.
The reason these species haven't overrun and dominated the human race is because, even before they were forced into concealing their existence in the early 1700s, my setting has a phenomenon that keeps their numbers in check: moontime.
Every lunar cycle, at the moment the moon reaches peak fullness, time stops for everything non-magical for a full 24 hours, and the world is flooded with magic. However, for reasons unknown, moontime has an odd effect on areas that have seen excessive immortal foot traffic. If the monthly average immortal population of an area exceeds approximately 1 in 1,000 humans, then for the duration of moontime that area will find itself beset by horrific, otherworldly abominations with an appetite for immortal flesh. Furthermore, the higher this ratio gets, the more intense the onslaught the immortals will have to survive. So immortals eventually figured out that they need to keep near human settlements, blend in, and never let their numbers exceed 1 in 1,000.
But sometimes, surviving moontime isn't just a matter of the immortals keeping their own numbers down. It's about the humans keeping *their* numbers *up*.
It occurred to me that many disasters would disproportionately affect humans in their death toll, most notably plagues due to the immortal population's immunity to disease. Any mass die-off of the human population would leave the immortals as an uncomfortably high percentage of the population.
This results in a tragedy known as a "Reaper's Moon". A month where, whether culled by the moontime monsters at the end of it, or slaughtered by their own people to prevent the former, a *huge* number of immortals die to bring the population back in line with the recently-reduced human population. And they're remembered by those who were there as horrific and harrowing tragedies where friends were forced to turn on each other, or else unite against unspeakable horrors.
I initially imagined that one of the most famous Reaper's Moons would have happened to the Native American immortal population amidst the plagues following the Columbian Exchange, but looking at estimates of the number of deaths and the timescale over which they happened, it was far too slow and steady for any specific month-long period to have a memorably hefty death toll. The moontime deaths of that period would be remembered more collectively, as a long, slow and painful series of smaller cullings that gradually wore them down to almost nothing.
No, if I want there to be a specific, *individual* Reaper's Moon that the immortals who survived it look back on with horror as the single darkest moment of their centuries-long lives, I need something else entirely.
**What historical tragedy, one which would logically disproportionately affect humans as opposed to magical creatures with enhanced strength, speed and endurance, would result in a massive and sudden shift in the area's immortal carrying capacity and result in an infamous and horrific Reaper's Moon?**
[Answer]
# One of history's great famines
Initially, I was going to suggest something like the Rwandan Genocide, or the Firebombing of Tokyo, but as you note, the immortals can be killed, they just don't die of natural means. *Assuming* that also covers starvation, the most brutal Reaper's Moons would happen during times of intense famine, when everyone around the immortals would be dying off en masse. Thematically, this is even quite evocative and appropriate:
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> for the duration of moontime that area will find itself beset by horrific, otherworldly abominations with an appetite for immortal flesh
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> remembered by those who were there as horrific and harrowing tragedies where friends were forced to turn on each other
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These are characteristic traits of the worst famines, where starving families will kill their own children to stave off hunger, and when the people around you become the very monsters you fear.
It will likely be doubly bad because if the starving people around you notice that you look pretty well fed, *they* might become the very abominations you fear.
## Some potential candidates:
**Some of the worst Soviet famines**:
* The 1921-1922 Russian Winter famine. 5,000,000 dead in the Volga region over the course of a 6-7 months, or a ~million a month
* The 1930-1933 Holodmor. 7,000,000 dead over three years. (good choice for historical/cultural cachet)
**One of the catastrophic Indian famines during British rule in India**
(many of these are poorly documented and might have affected more people)
* The Great Bengal Famine, 1769-1770, 7-10,000,000 dead
* The Chalisa Famine, 1783-1784, >10,000,000+ dead, entire areas depopulated
* Doji bara famine (The Skull Famine), 1791-1792, >10,000,000 dead
**One of China's worst famines in the 1900s**:
* The Great Chinese Famine, 1959-1961. Potentially 50,000,000+ dead.
* The 1907 Famine. Potentially 25,000,000+ dead of starvation and violence
[Answer]
I think that It might be a mistake to dismiss the post-Columbian epidemics in the new world as being too slow.
They caused a massive population decline in both continents which lasted for centuries among the native - the Indian populations probably didn't stop declining and start recoving for about 400 years until about 1900. So the overall rate might be too slow for a spectacular event.
But some of the many, many individual epidemics which composed this continent wide centuries long population decline would have been very catastrophic.
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> The Mississippian culture was a Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE, varying regionally. It was known for building large, earthen platform mounds, and often other shaped mounds as well.[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia#Decline_(13th_and_14th_centuries)) It was composed of a series of urban settlements and satellite villages linked together by loose trading networks.[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian#History) The largest city was Cahokia, believed to be a major religious center located in what is present-day southern Illinois.
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The Mississippian way of life began to develop in the Mississippi River Valley (for which it is named). Cultures in the tributary Tennessee River Valley may have also begun to develop Mississippian characteristics at this point. Almost all dated Mississippian sites predate 1539–1540 (when Hernando de Soto explored the area),[3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll) with notable exceptions being Natchez communities. These maintained Mississippian cultural practices into the 18th century.[4](https://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/11/12/bloodletting-the-deadliest-one-day-battles-in-military-history/)
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> The Mississippian culture was a Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE, varying regionally. It was known for building large, earthen platform mounds, and often other shaped mounds as well.[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia#Decline_(13th_and_14th_centuries)) It was composed of a series of urban settlements and satellite villages linked together by loose trading networks.[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian#History) The largest city was Cahokia, believed to be a major religious center located in what is present-day southern Illinois.
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The Mississippian way of life began to develop in the Mississippi River Valley (for which it is named). Cultures in the tributary Tennessee River Valley may have also begun to develop Mississippian characteristics at this point. Almost all dated Mississippian sites predate 1539–1540 (when Hernando de Soto explored the area),[3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll) with notable exceptions being Natchez communities. These maintained Mississippian cultural practices into the 18th century.[4](https://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/11/12/bloodletting-the-deadliest-one-day-battles-in-military-history/)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture>
It is believed that pigs from De Soto's expedition introduced diseases which rapidly reduced the populations of Mississippian communities. The largest Mississippian communities would have been large enough for a few immortals to live as 1 in every thousand inhabitants.
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> The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site /kəˈhoʊkiə/ (11 MS 2)[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia#Decline_(13th_and_14th_centuries)) is the site of a pre-Columbian Native American city (which existed c. 1050–1350 CE[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian#History)) directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies in south-western Illinois between East St. Louis and Collinsville.[3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll) The park covers 2,200 acres (890 ha), or about 3.5 square miles (9 km2), and contains about 80 mounds, but the ancient city was much larger. At its apex around 1100 CE, the city covered about 6 square miles (16 km2) and included about 120 manmade earthen mounds in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and functions.[4](https://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/11/12/bloodletting-the-deadliest-one-day-battles-in-military-history/) At the apex of its population, Cahokia may have briefly exceeded contemporaneous London, which at that time was approximately 14,000–18,000.[6](https://historum.com/threads/the-bloodiest-one-day-military-disasters.1104/)
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The population of Cahokia declined during the 13th century and it was abandoned by about 1350. So a nuclear family of immortals who found that theywere safe in Cahokia might have had to face death as the Cahokian population declined.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia#Decline_(13th_and_14th_centuries)>
Similarly, early explorers report dense concentrations of villages along long stretches of the Amazon River, while later explorers reported the region was very thinly inhabited.
There were much larger cities in Mesoamerica and the Andes of South America. And Spanish colonists recorded various epidemics among the Indians in those cities in the centuries after the conquests of those regions. A specific epidemic which reduced the population of a large city by 25 percetn or 33 precent or 50 percent would have meant disaster to a group of immortals there who were close to the upper limit before the epidemic.
And of course there have been deadly epidemics in various old world cities too. Constantinople had a population of hundreds of thousands whentheplaguebrokeout in 541-549.
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> Procopius,[11] in a passage closely modelled on Thucydides, recorded that at its peak the plague was killing 10,000 people in Constantinople daily, but the accuracy of the figure is in question, and the true number will probably never be known. He noted that because there was no room to bury the dead, bodies were left stacked in the open. Funeral rites were often left unattended to, and the entire city smelled like the dead.[12]
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian#History>
If during the plague over a thousand died each day for a year, the population of Constantinople would have declined by 365,000 duirng that year. And if the immortals in Constantinople were almost one in ever thusand, almost 365 immortals would have had to leave the city amoung the crowds of mortals that abandoned it. Each immortal would have had to select a destination town with a population of at least 2,000 to hid in, so that there would be enough people left over after the plague devastated that town, and hope that no other immortalwa s headed for that town.
So you need to look up the most populous cities in history, especially the most populous cities before the rise of modern medicine and sanitation, and then look up the major plagues which reduced their populations at avious eras.
What about the Chicago Fire in 1871? Comparatively few people were killed, but tens of thousands lost their homes and became refugees. And the Peshtigo. Wisconsin fire started on the same day and killed far more people, probably over 2,000, and thousands of others had to flee from the fire.
And what about the times when a large city with a vast population was captured by an enemy.
Vijayanagara was the large capital city of the Vijyananagara Empire in the 16th century.
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> The city was a powerful urban centre in South India from 14th to 16th century and one of the ten largest cities of the world.
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> An ongoing war between Muslim Sultanates and the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire led to the Battle of Talikota in 1565 CE, fought about 175 kilometres (109 mi) north. It resulted in the capture and beheading of Vijayanagara leader Aliya Rama Raya, mass confusion within the Vijayanagara forces and a shock defeat.[13][32][30] The Sultanate army then reached Vijayanagara, looted, destroyed and burnt it down to ruins over a period of several months. This is evidenced by the quantities of charcoal, the heat-cracked basements and burnt architectural pieces found by archaeologists in Vijayanagara region. The urban Vijayanagara was abandoned and remained in ruins ever since.[33][16][34] Vijayanagara never recovered from the ruins.[31][35]
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> The Italian Cesare Federici writing two years after the empire's defeat states that "The Citie of Bezeneger (Vijayanagara) is not altogether destroyed, yet the houses stand still, but emptie, and there is dwelling in them nothing, as is reported, but Tygres and other wild beasts."[36]
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> Sanjay Subrahmanyam states that Vijayanagara was arguably one of the only three centers during this period with a population of over 100,000 in South India and that from the contemporary accounts and what remains of its expanse, the city proper and the suburbs had a population of 500,000 to 600,000. He notes that Domingo Paes had estimated its size at 100,000 houses.[40]
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So in the mere months of the Sack of Vijayanagara its population may have plummetted by over 500,000 as former inhabitants became fleeing refugees, slaves dragged away in chains, or rotting corpses. And if the immortal population had been close to the limit, over 500 immortals might have needed to find new homes in other cities or die.
And of course other cities may had even higher populations that Vijayanagara and been massacred by rutheless enemies.
The Mongols were notorious for massacuring the entire populations of cities they captured. In most cases those cities would have had only tens of thousands of inhabitats, room for only a small population of immortals.But a few had populations of hundreds of thousands. The Mongols also drove the rural population, much larger than that of the cities, to the cities, to labor for the Mongols in the sieges and provide human shields for attacking Mongols. And I expect that the country peopl wold also have been massacred after the Mongol victories.
So there were reportedly hundreds of thousands and even sometimes over a million persons reported killed at some Mongol sieges, though some historians consider those numbers exaggerated.
One very bloody day during the Mongol conquests was March 19, 1279, when the Battle of Yamen completed the Mongol conquest of Song Dynasty China. Thousands of Chinese soldiers were killed, but the majority of deaths were civilians, and at elast 100,000 are believed to have died on that day.
I note that possbily some immortals might find themselves in a large moving group of people, an army on the march, or a migrating horde of barbarians, or a stream of refugees. And if many of the others in the group died or were killed, the immortals might suddenly find that they were way more than 1 in a thousand.
Here is a link to a list of deadliest natural disasters.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll>
So you need to find the bloodiest disasters and their dates. And then you need to find the lunar phases at the dates of those disasters. Since the "Moontime" when the immortals get slaughtered if their population percentage is too high is at the instant of fullest full moon, you need to find really big disasters that happened hours or minutes before the instant of full moon. You don't want a significant percentage to the deaths to happen after the full moon, but you don't want the deaths to be long enough before the full moon for the immortals to start to migrate to other highly populated regions.
And astronomy programs should be able to giv e the dates of the full moons closest to the various terrible natural disasters in history.
For example, here is a link to an online moon phase calculator.
*<https://everydaycalculation.com/moon-phase.php>*
And here are links to lists of bloodiest single days in military history:
<https://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/11/12/bloodletting-the-deadliest-one-day-battles-in-military-history/>
<https://www.quora.com/What-has-been-the-single-deadliest-day-in-all-of-history>
<https://historum.com/threads/the-bloodiest-one-day-military-disasters.1104/>
<https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/deadliest-single-days-in-war.html?chrome=1&A1c=1>
The major bombings of cities include:
Dresden 13-15 February 1945, 25,000 dead.
Nagasaki 9 August 1945, 39,000 dead immediately.
Hamburg 24-30 July 1943, 42,600 dead.
Hiroshima 6 August 1945 50,000-60,000 killed immediately.
Tokyo 9-10 March 1945 80,000 to 130,000 killed.
And probably many thousands also fled from each of those cities, dropping their populations even more.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_of_strategic_bombing>
The Battle of Cape Ecnomus in 256 BC might have been the largest naval battle in number of men present. The Romans allegedly lost 10,000 killed and the Carthaginians lost 30,000 to 40,000 killed and captured, making it a very bloody day and similar to the Battle of Salamis.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cape_Ecnomus>.
And psosibly you might want to consider changing the maximum proportion of immortals in a population so the immortals have higher population levels and so suffer more fatalities during moontimes following various disasters.
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## Don't need to kill many people if there's population migrations
Catastrophes and wars make deaths, obviously. But it also moves people. Looking at the current war in Ukrainia, more [than 5 million people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Ukrainian_refugee_crisis) were reported as refugees, that's a whopping 10% of Ukrainia's population. But more interestingly, the movements are not made uniformly, they create a depression outwards the conflict zones. Such turbulences are your best bet in creating reaper's moon events. Indeed, while every immortal's life was organized and stable beforehand, they're now forced to move into others territories, and :
* Nothing guarantees that their destination has enough population margin to prevent a reaper's event.
* Nothing guarantees that they'll spread out uniformly among possible destinations.
Indeed, since you cannot really order each refugees where they have to go (it's chaos and they're concealed, after all), you'll quickly reach over-saturation in places and under-saturation in others. [It's like when you throw a coin 1000 times](https://anydice.com/program/287b3), it's almost never exactly 500 heads / 500 tail, it'll most likely deviate by 5, 10 or even 30, enough to reach the critical thresholds you want to hit.
Besides, in case of wars where people who can fight are needed, you'll remove the fragile population (elders, kids...) from the frontline, leaving most likely the immortals who will be enrolled and gathered into the same place. In other words, you cull part of the population while keeping the same amount of immortals at the same place, increasing concentration.
## An example
We'll look at small or medium cities in the order of 20000 to 100000 people. The critical threshold would be around 20 to 100 immortals, at which point a reaper's moon can occur.
Now let's say you already have 1 immortal for 1200 humans -a nice 20% above your limit-. You'll have between 16 and 83 immortal pop'. As such, you only need 4 more immortals to reach the critical threshold in the smallest town and 17 in the bigger ones. If we add in half of the population as human refugees, you'll need only half more to saturate, that's still a very low number, statistically speaking! We're not counting in the hundreds, but in the tens! It's very liable to local randomness.
This low values can -and will- lead to some towns having a few immortals too much coming in while others cities could accept more, enough to trigger the event in some -if not many- places.
## Conclusion
Most big wars and cataclysms which move lots of people around in short amounts of times are good candidates. Ukrainia's invasion, World wars 1 and 2, tsunamis and earthquakes (like the [1923's Kanto's one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_Great_Kant%C5%8D_earthquake))... All of these are very likely to create a reaper's event, even if we forget about casualties.
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## Black Death
There was a bout of plague in Europe that started around 1346. Over 7 years, it killed between 75 and 200 Million people.
140 Million people over 84 months gives about 1.6 Million people per month. Assuming any kind of seasonality to the plague - eg, flea and rat populations peak in spring/early summer - you could easily see months with significantly higher death tolls.
It is estimated to have killed between 30% and 60% of Europeans, so the immortal population would have to decline by the same amount over the same 7 years.
## 1918
1918 was a bad year.
It's the last year of WWI and the "Hundred Days Offensive" - which only covers the Western Front from August until the armistice - saw 2 Million casualties. (mostly wounded, but we're still looking at hundreds of thousands of dead.)
Two major epidemics break out: the Spanish Flu kills 17M-50M over 2.5 years, and the Russian Typhus epidemic kills 2.5M over 4 years.
Russia and Finland are both having civil wars in 1918, and Russia is also fighting in Ukraine.
For your immortals it might be worse: mass mobilizations are required to support all this fighting, so even the US (which saw comparatively light casualties) might see major Reapings because so many people have left home to support the war.
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**Slaughter at Jericho**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BQ86X.png)
. . . or any historical battle where one army slaughters the entire population of a town. Ideally one more recent than Jericho.
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In the Biblical battle of Jericho, the Israelites march around the walls seven times, carrying the Ark of the Covenant and blowing their trumpets. On the seventh day they shout loud enough to make the walls fall down. They then go inside the city and put every man, woman, and child to the sword. Or so they thought.
In fact there were many immortals living in the city who escaped the sword. You see Immortals always know a way out. They always have an escape route and somewhere to hide, in case the locals decide they don't like immortals any more and form a lynch mob.
The Immortals' secret tunnels and hiding places kept them safe from the murderous Israelites. In this regard the Biblical account of the Siege of Jericho, in particular Joshua 6:21, is inaccurate.
Once the Israelites slaughtered all the mortals and grabbed everything they could carry, they abandoned the corpse of Jericho. This left a city full of immortals ripe for the next Reaper Moon.
**Homework:** How do the Israelites react to the sudden horde of nightmarish monsters in the city? Are they sent by God to enact his wrath on the unbelievers. Or are they sent from the unbelievers' heathen gods? Remember the Israelites did believe in other gods such as Moloch. They just thought their own god was more powerful and righteous.
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**It is not so easy to keep count of the mortal/immortal ratio**
Similar to Tortliena answer, immortals need to keep a 1/1000 ratio on *the monthly average immortal population*, and I think the same can be said about the mortals
This means that in case of immortals who just stay a pair of day in a place - unbeknownst to the local immortals - they could tip the monthly balance of the area. Even because I expect the immortal/mortal ratio to be always quite near the threshold (it is easier to "cumulate" immortals rather than immortals because of the longer life span).
So, some possibilities that could trigger a reaper moon even in absence of a big event (in areas where the ratio is dangerously near the culling threshold and the immortals aren't able to calculate exactly the average ratio)
* A big people shift (pilgrimages, concerts...) of some days during the month tilts the ratio and the local immortals weren't able to realize it before it is too late
* Some travelling immortals stop in a city for 2-3 days without alerting the local immortals (they don't need to be in group, maybe they've been to the city independently)
* A city loses enough mortal population in the summer (because of vacations) to go below the safe ratio
People could argue that immortals are quite naive in remaining in a city/place in these ambiguous situations, but it should be remembered that even moving away would require the knowledge of a safer place, so in some cases they would have no choice but to stay and hope for the better
Note that this could also be weaponized by some immortals, so I think that they would try to enforce some rules against free movement to avoid this.
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**The aftermath of A War**
There were multiple population shifts after the first and second world wars. Maybe instead of doing one massive event there were multiple "Reaper's Moons" across different countries and wiped out a lot of the immortal communities in those areas.
You could do it that some of them went of to fight or hid at home, depending on which one it could be that they head to spread out due to most men going of to fight. Or it could be that they were still mending from the war and didn't realise that they lost so many people in their local communities. This way they're hit twice within a short span of time and would cause them to be horrified of the time as well as being cautious of future wars.
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The following is the map I am using for a D&D city I've named "Braedon". (It's just a map I found on google image search that I colored in.)
I have established that this is a city with a "Puppet Government", whose figurehead is entirely controlled by warring rival gangs throughout the city and/or the merchants and mages guilds-- whoever has the upper hand at the moment dictates what the "government" does. I am presuming that the population of this city state, including nearby incorporated small farming communities (not shown), is somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 people. (If this is an unreasonable assumption given what is shown here, let me know?)
The trouble I come to is that looking at this map I've selected, I'm not sure I can fit very many rival gangs. There are three clear regions I can see (west of the river, with east of the river split north and south)... would this mean I'm limited to only three gangs? Would my proposed Mages / Merchants Guilds cut into even that?
Given this map, how many gangs could I reasonably include? I really do want a fair number, enough so that it feels "gang ridden", not merely like there's a single mafia-like entity.
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I can see at least seven gangs being possible, but really they'd be rather tiny gangs for a town of this size, which I suspect wouldn't be able to house 10000 and would be more apt to house 2000 if the building count is of any indication to population size.
The gangs, as I would name them, would be the:
1. River trolls(controls the river bridges and extorts a toll out of people for river crossing access)
2. Dock rats(controls the docks and strong-arms protection money out of the fishermen)
3. Bay rotwoods(smuggles in goods and patrols/controls the bay itself beyond the docks)
4. Eastside smalls(controls the eastern side of town, right of river, most of them small thieves)
5. Westside bigs(controls the western side of town, left of river, most of them big thugs)
6. River forkers(controls the forking river area and mugs people in the area both on foot and boat, like river pirates)
7. Crop raiders(similar to the dock rats in the protection money business but with the outlying farmers instead, probably takes a bit of produce in each visit)
The exact expanse of their influence or controlling territories would fluctuate a little over time of course, but if you don't really care for them to not be too large this is how I'd divide the area(except perhaps the rotwoods and the raiders since they'd have the largest available space/territories by default).
As for your mages/merchants, they'd probably be situated somewhere in the middle along the river, or in that fortified looking section since they'd probably have the clout and funds to build such a thing.
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Doing some quick back of envelope math, The county of LA has roughly 10 Million people, there are roughly 500 gangs with 50,000 total members meaning that there's roughly a one gang member every 200 people in LA. Per this math there would be at most 50 gang members in your town. You can divide them into gangs as you see fit. But the smaller the town the harder it will be to remain anonymous so best to round down.
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## Crime Flavors
Some answers seem to concentrate on geography, but I think type of crime is a better starting place. You'd probably get at least one gang for each profitable kind of crime.
Smuggling, protection rackets, pick-pocketing, and drugs are all profitable crimes in a port city.
Any kind of magic that's illegal (or can be used for illegal activities) could also support a gang. Necromancy for cheap labor could be an option: you'd need a source of (fresh) bodies, to move those bodies in secret, at least one mage to resurrect them and give them orders... That sounds like enough for a gang. Bonus points: it's a mix of magic and mundane, so you can step away from the mages guild trope if you want.
## The Port is Key
Even if the city is relatively small, if a lot of valuable cargo passes through it, then it can support an outsized criminal presence. If you think of the criminals as parasites, the port effectively makes the host much larger, which will allow for a larger parasite.
## Mix and Match Sizes and Activities
Pick a couple of activities that you think are particularly valuable - say smuggling, cat-burgling the wealth merchants, and drug-running - and give each of those 2-3 rival gangs. Make these your large gangs, in the range of 100s of people.
The less profitable ventures also get 2-3 smaller gangs, but they are much smaller. Maybe there are only 50 pick-pockets in the whole city, and they work for 3 different groups, whereas smuggling employs 500 people in 2 rival gangs.
The big players may also dabble in the smaller ventures - one of the drug-runner groups also does extortion on the side, say.
## Result
So if you have ~6 types of crime and 2-3 gangs per type, you could have roughly 10-20 gangs, with some being very small, and others numbering in the hundreds. Since they can step on each other's toes even when they aren't directly competing, there's a lot of room for politicking.
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**There's the NW - SE divide - so 2.**
The point of contention between them might just be the green-spaces on the SE side of the river - the SEasters claiming ownership because they're in their territory, the NWeasters - not having green of their own feel resentful and want equality. The SEasters seeing an opportunity to charge for entry into their territory.
Another area in which territory can be fought-over, conceded, reclaimed might be the isolated block at the north end of the town. Or maybe that's the posh part of town, the kids going out-of-town to a private school and looking down on the "gang culture" of the rest.
In my home town, it was west of the railway against east - or "The-Lodge" against "The-Road" each having its own secondary school catchment areas. The recreation ground was on the west edge of centre. No major violence per-se, but then low unemployment and fairly good conditions.
There's always the odd occasion when a visiting football team from a less-local town would attract hoards - our whole town would make common-cause against the "outsiders" to "give them a good welcoming".
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**Any constellation with more than two factions fighting for the same territory is unstable.**
When there are three or more factions of comparable strength, then that stalemate can be broken by two of them banding together. Two allied factions would be a lot more powerful than the other(s) and could then eliminate the other faction(s) one after another until only them remain. They would then either stay allied and there won't be a conflict anymore, or they are going to then break their alliance and end up fighting each other.
So when you want an ongoing conflict, then it is very hard to justify how there are more than two factions which all fight each other and all survive for any notable period of time.
One option would be to have two *alliances* of factions which are of about equal strength, but each of them consisting of a number of sub-factions which have conflicts of their own with each other. Now you actually have a very interesting situation from a storytelling point of view: The sub-factions in each one of the major factions are rivals and threats to each other, but the other alliance is an even larger threat. So they have to thread a thin line of fighting against their internal enemies but without weakening the overall alliance so that it would no longer be able to fend off an attack from the other alliance. A scenario for telling stories full of intrigue, subterfuge and backstabbing.
Another option to have more than two factions would be if there is one overarching sovereign ruling over all of them which uses a "[divide and rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule)" strategy to keep the gangs in check. Like the city administration or a crime overlord ruling over all of the gangs. They know that they wouldn't be able to stay in charge if all the gangs would band together, so they actively keep them in perpetual conflict. Whenever one faction emerges with the potential to take over the others, they actively intervene and break it up.
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You can justify why the town has a mysteriously large number of gang members, as other people have mentioned, if there is enough profit. If you invent something with profit margin of cocaine in your world, there is no reason why many gangs could not be there at one time.
Consider the situation in the Netflix series "Narcos" portraying the gangs of Mexico in the early 1990s. After the death of a kingpin, who has kept an unsteady peace between criminal cartels from different towns, riches have begun to accumulate in one town near the border in a city called Tijuana. Occasionally all the gangs have to meet in Tijuana for some social event, and pay tribute and taxes to the new cartel leader that controls that town, because without his approval they can't get their cocaine to a large market North of them, the United States. Of course, they are meanwhile plotting how they can come up with their own way through the border. This includes gangs from various towns. I suggest that your town is like Tijuana, maybe it is the bay town closest to some equivalent market, with the best access to something people are selling very successfully and very illegally.
The product could be anything: books of ancient demon summoning, dragon eggs, maps to sacred tombs etc.? Anyways it is making the crime bosses rich.
Here are the reasons why studying something like Tijuana could be interesting:
1. Controlling the docks because of an illegal commodity seem the most likely reason that gangs would be interested in this relatively small town.
2. If the gangs control the government of the town, they have officials either intimidated or on a payroll. Which means they are making a lot of money..more from the Pablo Escobar playbook.
3. Larger crime families, mafia or cartels, from other cities would interested in this town and "protecting" their interests, so they send in representatives.
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*Disclaimer: this is a modified cross-post of [my post on the Space Exploration SE site](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/46104/semi-feasible-alternates-to-silicon-electronics-for-a-von-neumann-probe?noredirect=1#comment150248_46104), adapted to better fit the Worldbuilding community.*
A [Von Neumann Probe (VNP)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft) is a sci-fi probe which explores the universe in a self-replicating fashion: it finds a location to recreate itself, does the necessary mining and processing to duplicate every part of itself, and then sends off the duplicate to start the cycle anew.
Suppose a society wants to create a VNP with our current level of technology. There have been real-life attempts to approach this idea (see NASA's [Advanced Automation for Space Missions](https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Advanced_Automation_for_Space_Missions), and two 3D printed 3D printers named [RepRap](https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap) and [Snappy](https://reprap.org/wiki/Snappy_3) as examples), but **they all seem to have the fundamental barrier of silicon chip production.** To my knowledge, producing silicon chips with a VNP is far from being achievable currently, since producing a full-scale clean room and electronics factory would take a VNP the size of cities or larger. I will assume graphene electronics technology is impractical as well, since that's still in its infancy and would probably need clean room conditions as well. **Without a means of duplicating its own electronics, our probe cannot meet the requirements to be a VNP: 100% self-replication.**
With this in mind, **are there any *somewhat practical* alternates to silicon electronics that could be used for our fictional society's VNP?** Vacuum tube technology, pneumatic instead of electric transistors, mechanical computers, something else? Emphasis on the practicality of the designs.
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## What will replace integrated circuits?
The replacement for the [small scale integration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit#SSI) of the early 1960s was medium-scale integrated circuits; medium-scale integrated circuits very replaced in the 1970s by large-scale integrated circuits; and large-scale integrated circuits were replaced by the [very large scale integrated circuits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Scale_Integration) in the mid-1980s. By the time we will be ready to make von Neumann probes, we will surely have unimaginably large scale integrated circuits.
Why not use discrete components, be they electronic transistors or valves, electromechanical relays, pneumatic valves, or mechanical gears? What is so special about integrated circuits?
The answer is threefold: speed, reliability, and power consumption.
* Speed:
[Electronic valves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube) are painfully slow; their problem is that by their basic principle of operation, electrons have to travel appreciable distances (on the order of millimeters in the smallest valves) from the cathode to the anode; this takes time and limits the speed at which the valves can operate.
Yes, there are applications where [special vacuum tubes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_magnetron) are used in the gigahertz range. Those applications do not involve switching, and are not useful for computation.
Nevertheless, electronic valves are the nearest thing to a practicable replacement for solid-state electronics; and, historically, they were indeed used for building practicable digital computers, the most powerful of which was the famous [AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/FSQ-7_Combat_Direction_Central) of the American Air Force [Semi-Automatic Ground Environment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environment), which directed and controlled the NORAD response to a potential Soviet air attack. The Q7 used about 50,000 miniature vacuum tubes, consumed 3 megawatts of power, weighed 250 tons and operated at the blazing speed of 75,000 instructions per second.
That's *slow*.
But why are we so obsessed with speed? Doesn't a von Neumann probe have all the time in the world?
Oh no it doesn't, not if wants to do anything useful. Fabrication processes, for example, happen at the speed they happen, and in order to control them, the computer must operate fast enough to satisfy [hard real-time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing#Hard) requirements. [Computerized machine tools](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_control) and automated fabrication processes only became feasible when computers became fast enough to be able to keep pace with the outside world.
Pneumatic valves, eletromechanical relays and mechanical gears are very much slower, and cannot really be considered. Fun historical factoid: the first automated telephone exchanges were built with electromechanical relays, obviously. By the 1950s they proved too slow, and were replaced with electronic exchanges. A technology which was proven too slow to operate telephone exchanges is not suitable for building artificially intelligent beings.
* Reliability:
Electronic valves are not reliable. Discrete electromechanical or pneumatic components are worse, and mechanical gears are the worst.
The best and most reliable low-power long-life vacuum tubes, designed and built specifically for use in the mammoth computers of the late 1950s and early 1960s, reached lifespans of hundreds of thousands of hours. For the ludicrously slow and SAGE computer mentioned above, this meant that a failure would occur only every couple of hours or so, which was a tremendous achievement for the time, but it is of course unacceptable for the proposed application.
This is the bane of *any* system built of many separate parts. The reliability of the system decreases *exponentially* with the number of separate parts. The usual mitigation is to divide the complicated system into separate modules containing only a reasonable number of parts, and duplicate or triplicate each module; this is what we do for airliners, for example, which, without this redudancy, would be much too unreliable to be useful. However, the best solution is to do away with the complex system completely, and replace it with *one* integrated solid-state part.
* Power consumption:
Electronic valves are voracious power consumers. Pneumatic valves are worse, and electromechanical relays and mechanical gears are the worst.
Remember that SAGE computer above, and its stupendous 3 megawatt power consumption? That is *half a million* times more power than that consumed by a modern general-purpose low-power CPU such as the [Intel Celeron N3000](https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=87259), which runs about two hundred thousand times faster... A lowly Celeron N3000 is about *one hundred billion* times more power efficient.
But doesn't a von Neumann probe have all the power available it needs? Nope, it doesn't. It's the problem of cooling. That power needs to be dissipated as waste heat. Even in good conditions, such as in the friendly atmosphere of Earth, getting rid of 3 megawatt of waste heat requires the use of very large liquid cooled radiator or maybe a small [cooling tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower). I don't want to even *think* about how to reject that amount of heat in the vacuum of space. (And remember that 3 megawatts only buys you less than 100,000 instructions per second. Pitiful.)
The point being that there is no reasonable replacement for solid-state electronics using big, visible, separate components. On the contrary, the race is *downwards* towards smaller and smaller and even more tightly packed *integrated* components.
## Then how would a von Neumann probe manufacture integrated circuits?
It is not the *material* out of which [integrated circuits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit) are made, it is the required *size* and *precision* of the parts. Modern integrated circuits are made in complex and extremely expensive [fabrication plants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant) because they have very very small very very precise features, and the only way we know how to make such very very small very very precise features requires expensive photolithography and clean rooms and vapor deposition machines and so on.
* Not all integrated circuits are made of silicon. Just for example, [gallium arsenide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_arsenide) is also used in special applications.
* And guess what, integrated circuits are not the only components in common use which require clean rooms and expensive equipment to make... The tiny nozzles of ink-jet printers, the minute light-emitting diodes of OLED displays, the exquisitely precise lenses of a modern superzoom camera, the microscopic mirrors (and their actuators!) of the [digital light processing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Light_Processing) imaging devices used in modern cinema projectors, also require extreme fabrication technology. And the list can be greatly expanded...
Yes, we do make very very small electromechanical devices -- the DLP devices mentioned above are an example, [piezoelectric accelerometers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectric_accelerometer) are another; and they are made with the same technology as integrated circuits...
* Moreover, we *know* that our way of making very very small very very precise parts is not the only way. In fact, there is a common, mundane natural process which also makes very very small very very precise parts, and it does not require eye-wateringly expensive fabrication plants, and advanced vacuum, and clean rooms, and extreme photolithography and so on: and that process is *life*.
Living cells assemble minute components, and vehiculate them, and use them, by means a complex *molecular* machinery which operates in a warm, icky, aquatic medium. It is just that at our present level of knowledge we *can* make expensive fabrication plants, but we *cannot*, yet, design and make the kind molecular machinery used by living cells.
The point is that silicon integrated circuits are nothing special; they are not the only products in modern technology which require very very small very very precise features, and *anything* which requires very very small very very precise features can only be made, at our present level of technology, with complex machines, and clean rooms, and advanced vacuum, and so on. It doesn't matter whether the device to be manufactured is electronic or mechanical -- it's the size and precision of the parts.
But this does not need to be the case forever, and we *know* it won't be the case forever. People are working on developing technology which will allow direct manipulation of materials at the atomic and molecular level, maybe inspired by the processes used by living cells, maybe wholly new: and when such technology will become available, integrated circuits could be *grown* in a portable fabrication unit.
In the end, the von Neumann probes of the far future will have two avenues of replication:
* Either they duplicate the development of human tehnology, that is, make the machines to make the machines to make the machines to make the machines which make integrated circuits, and microsocopic mirrors, and and accelerometers, and minute actuators and so on.
* Or else, use some as yet unknown future technology which allows direct manipulation of materials at the atomic and molecular level, and directly grow the complex parts they need.
By the way, "chip" is a colloquial name for "integrated circuit". In a serious discussion, integrated circuits are called integrated circuits, not "chips", the same way that people are called people or persons and not "guys", applications are not called "apps", and fabrication plants are not called "fabs".
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What you are making these chip sets out of is not the issue. It is how small you are making them. Full-scale production facilities are unavoidable under current or near future tech as long you are trying to make something that small and precise, but there is a simple solution that does not require reinventing the computer chip.
The trick is that your Von Neumann probe does not need to be able to make computer parts at all. All your Von Neumann probe needs to be able to make is the factory where more Von Neumann probes are made. Until the factory can start churning out its own electronics, the factory can run entirely off computer systems already on the probe. By loading up with a bunch of spare single-board computers similar to [Rasbery Pis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi), it could carry the programmable control systems for over 200 independently operating systems in a storage compartment no bigger than a bread box. This way, when it lands it can create computer controlled mining bots, refineries, production lines etc. all the way up until you have a fully functional factory.
The same could be true of other hi tech parts that you may need early on like optical systems or wireless communications components.
Once you have a fully functional IC factory, then you can produce more and more of these simple computers to run things up until you have enough to manufacture all the things you need to start making more VNPs, including the hundreds of spare computers.
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Maybe you can circumvent the need for electronics by using nanobot networks. But it would be slow. But at least they could reproduce themselves.
For electronics:
### The telescope does it
Surely your VNP has some kind of sophisticated very large telescope to spot things in the nothingness of Space. Turns out, in chip manufacturing, the projector with its optics is the most complicated part!
The hard vacuum is giving you a Fab space for free. Just blow up a tent with an inert gas and you have a very clean atmosphere to work in. No dust there.
Chip Fabs are built as vibration-free as possible. That's for free in space.
Then you need a good monocrystal of Silicon or any other future chip material. That's low tech, we were making them 70 years ago. Today those are bigger and cleaner, but still that's not the point which would stop a VNP.
Then you need to saw it into plates and polish those into perfectness. I still guess it wouldn't stop a VNP.
Then you have to apply chemical agents, layer after layer, and light them with a miniaturized plan of the chip. This is the complicated part, it is here where the battles are fought today.
You take a supersized chip plan, use some kind of optics to miniaturize it to the wished-for size and then you use the smallest photon (read: highest possible energy, today this is UV) that your optics can work with, to project the picture on the waver. Clean away the agent, apply the next layer of chemicals, repeat with the next layer's chip plan. You need to repeat that a dozen times over with different chemicals.
They are even building limited 3d structures today, but I don't know how... I left that area 20 years ago. üò¨
The consecutive plans have to be projected to the exact same spot, to within few nanometers exact for today's electronics, as sharp as possible. There is always something going wrong with today's tech, so that's the reason why we have computers with three processor cores: the non-functioning ones are software-disabled, the others sold. You could use those little failures as a story-device to explain differing personalities among your probes.
Your VNP certainly has super-good optics for space observation and the capability to replace them in case of. I think it has matching production capabilities already, right?
So there is no reason not to give it the electronics production optics, too. Or plans how to make them and how to use them.
It all comes down to the little fine adjustments in the end, which is time-costly. But if a VNP has something then it is patience and time, so no problem here.
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Possibly ludicrous answer:
**Build it without any semiconductors.**
A semiconductor is just a neat way of making conductors, insulators and switches in one easy package. There's nothing stopping you building a complex electrical logic circuit from relays. Of course, a relay-based computer is going to be really power hungry and have really slow clock speeds. Clock speeds aren't a problem because your VNP will spend thousands of years in transit, so a couple decades to make a decision about something shouldn't be much of a problem.
Power is a bit more of a problem, but it's a problem even for silicon based VNP's. You only really need to run the computer when you're in a star system of interest, so you should have free solar energy at that time.
Of course, computation is only part of what silicon is used for. For example, solar panels. There are probably solutions here as well: bimetallic strips moving magnets through coils and set your spacecraft rolling. (Or if you have some sort of fluid system that can last the life of the VNP, have a solar-stirling engine).
Camera's are also made from silicon. Can we do this some other way? Sure, [photomultiplier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photomultiplier_tube) tubes don't need semiconductors. You'd need a fantastic array of them to get any resolution but because space is a vacuum maybe you could make them more compact?
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Silicon is just a convenience material. Computation, actuation and detection can all be done other ways at the cost of additional power requirements and larger equipment.
Remember that silicon is a recent invention, and analysis of stellar motion, particle physics and just about everything else predates the transistor by decades to millennia. So perhaps to design your VNP, have a look at how the scientists of yesteryear did things.....
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Brains. Once you learn how brains actually work, you could potentially engineer special-purpose ones. These need not be human scale brains: something the size of a mouse or rat brain should be adequate for running a space probe.
The advantages is that if you provide a self-contained support system (AKA "body") for the brain, you can easily solve the problem of building new ones. On the down side, you'll need a rather larger life support system, since you can't just plug them into a wall socket.
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Human computational machines have only ever used 5 basic technologies. They are, in rough chronological order:
1. Purely mechanical (Babbage engine, brass gears and steam power, theoretical only never built).
2. Electro-mechanical (relays, but digital logic is possible).
3. Vacuum tubes (purely electronic, but difficult to scale, digital and analog both possible).
4. Purely analog electronics (useful for solving some mathematics problems, but general-purpose logic is impossible).
5. Semiconductors (primarily silicon, but occasionally indium/gallium/etc used, digital logic really took off with this stuff).
None of the preceding four are appropriate for a VNP. The first two are mechanical and prone to physical wearing. The third is so failure-prone it's amazing anyone ever bothered to attempt it, but when you're a government and throwing millions at problems you're desperate to solve, I suppose you'll do nearly any absurd thing. The fourth was mostly for research projects.
And of course, the fifth has given us (lately) a global computer network that lets you ask the question and me answer it. It might even be sufficient for your VNP, if not for the problems you describe.
Almost all of our impressive "software" has two primary qualities. The first is that it is digital, relying on discrete values. It need not be binary/boolean necessarily, but the analog systems are out. Furthermore, it is also needs to proceed on a Turing-machine-style logic. While we can theorize about how things like a Game-of-Life pattern can produce awe-inspiring complexity, we lack the science to create software that takes advantage of that.
We can also make some guesses about other things that the technology can't be. It probably can't be photonic (current conceptions of this assume that it'd be semiconductor as well). It can't be much humbler than what we're capable of now (1970s software and 1970s storage density just won't cut it, nor likely even 1990s).
I propose that out of all the concepts and ideas I've read about over the years, only one is reasonable appropriate for your question. Magnetic logic.
Instead of using a semiconductor for this, researchers have investigated in the past few decades using iron as a substrate. They'd magnetize small regions on this substrate, such that they were adjacent in a chain. Since magnets don't tolerate the same poles of another magnet next to them, one magnet flipping its poles would cause the adjacent magnet to flip, and so on down the line. When I read about this 15 or 20 years ago, the idea was that this would be ultra-low power computation (no need to feed electricity to it for signal propagation). Unfortunately, I can't find the original article (might have been Scientific American or some other pop science rag).
The big question with that though, was how to implement logic gates. For that, I present this article.
<https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00635-y>
Again, it's using a ferrous substrate. Cobalt this time, but this is just the first attempts with the technology (it's possible that an advanced version might use something else).
Refining iron or cobalt is something simple machines could manage, even to within the tolerances this technology might require. There's no photolithography or difficult chemistry involved. Masking might be done with something as simple as laser-sintering. Though the solid-state lasers themselves again probably require semiconductors, these aren't typically integrated circuits and are far simpler to manufacture.
I don't know that there's a popular term for whatever this technology might be called.
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(Inspired by many other questions that I'm not going to try to list...)
According to most sources I've seen, a "typical adult human" burns around 10-15 kcal/min while doing "strenuous" exercise. (Some sources may go as high as 25 kcal/min. Also, the number can increase depending on mass, so let's say we're talking about someone who masses ~100 kg or less.) However, it seems to me that even a "full body workout", isn't really. (If nothing else, you're usually not using opposing muscles simultaneously.)
If I had some way of causing *every cell in the body* to spontaneously metabolize as quickly as possible, how much [Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(physics)) could this produce? (Mind that I'm talking about Power in the physics sense, not electricity. Also mind that I'm not asking about *burning* cells or matter-energy conversion, I'm asking about producing power via normal metabolic processes, i.e. without destroying the body in the process.)
For the purpose of this question, don't worry about waste products or waste heat. I'll [ask about those separately](/questions/181022). For now, just assume that they are all magically whisked away.
(Note: Yes, this is very similar to [this question](/questions/11900). Please don't close this as a duplicate, as a) it isn't *quite* the same, and b) that question doesn't answer this one.)
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## A zeroth order approximation from first principles
Let's try to arrive at a [Fermi approximation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem) of the maximum *sustained* primary energy production of the human body.
("Sustained" is important. The human body *can* output 2 kW or more of mechanical power, corresponding of about 7 kW primary energy production, for a brief period of time, using ATP and oxygen already stored in the muscles. Sprint runners use this mode of operation.)
Disregarding all the details which make the joy of biochemistry, the human body produces energy by burning glucose. The gross reaction is
$$\mathrm{C}\_6\mathrm{H}\_{12}\mathrm{O}\_6 + 6\mathrm{O}\_2 \rightarrow 6\mathrm{CO\_2} + 6\mathrm{H\_2O} + 2{,}880\ \text{kJ/mol}\_{\text{glucose}}$$
The human heart pumps no more than about 2 $\times$ 100 mL of blood per beat, and the maximum heart rate is about 200 beats/minute, giving about 20 liters of blood per minute in the systemic circulation. One liter of fully oxygenated blood contains a little less than 0.3 grams of oxygen. All in all, you have no more than 6 grams of oxygen per minute to burn your glucose.
6 grams of oxygen is about 0.2 moles. Since you need 6 moles of oxygen to burn one mole of glucose, you cannot burn more than 0.03125 moles of glucose per minute; times 2,880 kJ/mol, we get a top theoretical energy prodution rate of
$$90\ \text{kJ/minute} = 21.5\ \text{kcal/minute}$$
That's about 1.5 kW, for those who care.
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I can make a very rough calculation assuming that the maximum heat loss for a body in water corresponds to a [power of about 24 kW](https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.4015/S1016237205000251), and "immersing a person in iced water" is *not enough* to lower his temperature in case of severe [TFMPH](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonyl_cyanide-p-trifluoromethoxyphenylhydrazone) poisoning.
Therefore, the human body can produce at least 24 kW of heat.
TFMPH, as well as other proton translocators, causes exactly what you describe: "causing every cell in the body to spontaneously metabolize as quickly as possible" (it is used for this purpose in some highly illegal "weight loss" concoctions).
However, be advised that this results in **death** in a matter of minutes, because the organism literally cooks itself alive. You asked instead "without destroying the body in the process".
Also, this is **not** the same as producing useable energy (rather the opposite: all energy goes away as heat). The latter would require muscular activity, so you might maybe found some estimates in medical papers on [malignant hyperthermia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malignant_hyperthermia).
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According to [this link](https://www.uci.org/news/2019/track-sprinting-a-question-of-watts), cyclist Chris Hoy could blast 2500W of mechanical power during a short time.
Assuming a 30% muscular efficiency, that's 8333W metabolized.
Obviously, Hafþór Björnsson can do much better
This does not exactly answer your question, but that's a lower bound
**Note**: As your question implies some level of magic in the metabolism, I focused on the idea of `the maximum Energy a human can make without destroying the body in the process`. Of course, such an effort can not be sustained for many reasons.
You explicitaly told us not to care about overheating and waste management, but oxygen (as detailled by AlexP) and glucose flux are the next limitation in realistic biology
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I have no data on how fast human temperature can go up and down, only the anecdotal evidence that fast temperature changes due to fever (going either up due to sickness or down due to antipyretic) usually take no less than an hour to happen.
I do have a link to [a question in chemistry.se stating that the specific heat for the human body is 3.5kJ/kgK](https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/a/97738/31035). So for a 100kg person to go from 36C to 40C in 1h, that is an energy expenditure of 1,400kJ. Over 3,600 seconds, that is ~389 watts.
That is enough to power [maybe a couple 60" TV's, or seven laptops](https://www.saveonenergy.com/energy-resources/energy-consumption/). Not enough to power a coffee maker machine, though, so I wouldn't even bother. If I'm using magic to get energy from people I'd rather mix pyromancy with necromancy - [completely burning a person yelds 1kWh/kg](https://what-if.xkcd.com/128/), which is 3,600,000 joules/Kg. If a 100kg person takes an hour to completely roast, that's 360,000,000 joules in one hour, so 100kW - three orders of magnitude more power!
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To be clear: this is energy coming from all cells, just wasting energy generating heat. Muscles contracting can reach higher watt counts. See [Madlozoz's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/181028/21222).
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According to [Stanford](http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph240/labonta1/#:%7E:text=Theory,can%20output%20over%202%2C000%20watts.) around 2000 watts in short bursts or 300-400 watts sustained.
This from studies interested in using metabolic energy to power implants, they wanted a baseline of how much energy was theoretically possible. Without knowing what time interval you want this is about the best you are going to get, how much energy the body can put out over minutes is drastically different than over seconds because they involve drastically different metabolic pathways and limiting factors.
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Currently trying to create a religion that follows around a dozen God/Goddesses for several cultures based on medieval Catholic Europeans (11th century onwards).
I have based the various deities roughly on those of ancient Greece/Rome with a Gaia/fertility goddess inspired head deity/mother of the gods at the top. This is a little twist I liked but am happy to change as I know medieval society was very much patriarchal and I am still working on that.
I have in mind replacing Cardinals with head priests of the various deities however I can’t wrap my head around how I can create an elected Pope figure in this religion from these head priests with separate patron deities. That brings me to how can I split the power and resources the medieval church had between a dozen Gods and I cant work it out.
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Funny you should ask that... Let me offer a quick and very partial introduction on how the Roman state religion was organized.
## It's not a Pope, it's a Supreme Pontiff
One of the titles of the Pope, Bishop of Rome, Patriarch of the West, is [Supreme Pontiff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope#Supreme_Pontiff), *Pontifex Maximus* (or *Summus Pontifex*) in Latin.
This title is *old*. Very old. As in, very much older than the Catholic Church or Christianity in general; and it has *always* been the title of the Great Priest of Rome, pagan or Christian.
At the top of the organized Roman state religion, back when Rome was pagan, was the [College of Pontiffs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_of_Pontiffs), *Collegium Pontificum*; its members were the highest ranking priests of the state religion; it included the [Rex Sacrorum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Sacrorum) (King of Sacraments), the fifteen [flamens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamen) (high priests of the individual cults of Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus -- the *flamines majores* -- and 12 other deities -- the *flamines minores*), and the Vestals. The [*Pontifex Maximus*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifex_maximus) was the head of the College of Pontiffs, and thus the Great Priest of Rome.
The title was carried over to the Christian Great Priest of Rome; there has been a Pontifex Maximus in Rome for 27 centuries now.
Aside: the word *pontifex* definitely looks like it should mean "bridge-maker". Lots of mental energy has been expended trying to understand why the Romans called (and still call) their Great Priest the Supreme Bridge-Maker, whereas actual bridge-makers were never called *pontifices*.
[](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:August_Labicana_Massimo_Inv56230.jpg) [](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Welt-Galleria_T001_bn.jpg)
*Left, [Octavianus Augustus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus) as pagan Pontifex Maximus, 1st century BCE. Photograph by [Marie-Lan Nguyen](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jastrow), available on Wikimedia; public domain. Right, Pope [Clement XI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Clement_XI) as Christian Pontifex Maximus. Engraving by Christoph Weigel the Elder, 18th century CE.*
The way the Pontifex Maximus was appointed changed in the course of history.
* Originally, he was elected from among the members of the College of Pontiffs, and he had to be a patrician.
* Then (in the 4th century BCE) the election became public -- the Pontifex Maximus was elected by the people, and the office was opened to plebeians.
* Then (in the 2nd century BCE) the office became overtly political -- the Pontifex Maximus was elected by the *comitia tributa* (the assembly by tribes), just like the consuls.
* Then (in the 1st century BCE) the office was subsumed to the imperial power, one of the offices cumulated into the position of the man whom we call "emperor" of Rome.
* Christian Pontifices Maximi are elected by the College of Cardinals. Even *that* changed during history, but I won't enter into details.
## TL;DR
The Roman pagan state religion did actually have such a position. The Great Priest of Rome was called the Pontifex Maximus or Supreme Pontiff and he (it was always a he) presided over a College of Pontiffs containing the highest-ranking priests of the cults of individual deities. The title was carried over to the Christian Great Priest when Christianity became the state religion.
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Just loosen the doctrine enough to have the saints and the angels worshiped like gods.
Just as Jupiter was the "CEO" of the Pantheon, in this new doctrine it would the church god to have that role, with saints and angels playing the role of the other deities of the classical religion.
Consider that many rituals and festivities of the pagan tradition were assimilated into the new doctrine, to ease the transition to the new faith system. Therefore it is not entirely fictional to have such a development.
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Some possible solutions:
A godhead: If all twelve deities are emanations of one, potentially unknowable, deity then its possible they might agree to elect a single representor for their religion, who might be expected to behave impartially to each god/goddess.
A cycle: If there are exactly twelve then, for instance, each might have a dominion of a month, wherein the cardinal of that deity presides for a month and makes executive decisions for the religion and then at the end of the month steps down, while the next in line takes his/her place.
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For my fantasy world, I want to prevent rapid modernization for as long as possible, yet have magic tools (or spells) exist that preform functions similar to modern technology (or even better than). How long can I (realistically) delay the widespread adoption of such innovations?
By "magic tools", I just mean technology or trinkets enhanced by or run on magic. Wireless video transmission, anti-gravity magic propulsion, arcane blow dryers; you name it and I'll probably think of something. And spells, well they're spells, techniques preformed by people using skill, and little to no technology. I want my world to make sense, and don't want observers to think, "why isn't insert\_innovation\_here used by the peasants in the village, or the commoners in the city?"
For this, assume that Magic\_Innovation\_A has been invented on the same continent as those cities and villages. All of the things, processes and techniques necessary to making/using it have been discovered, and the innovation's dissemination will start within the lifetime of the inventor. If it's a skill or spell, then it's not too hard for the average person to learn/use, and if it's tech, then it's not to hard or expensive to produce. The countries on said continent have their fair share of wars, but are not completely isolated from each-other, allowing it to spread across borders. Nothing is going to stop the spread of Magic\_Innovation\_A; it's adoption is inevitable, baring an apocalypse that's not happening.
Could I use cultural factors as an excuse? I know those can influence the adoption of technology or practices, but I don't know to what aspects or extent. And I know preventing the invention of something simple like rubber can prevent other things from being invented or discovered, but I don't know how long I can prevent those things from being invented either. Could I make the innovation a state secret, and delay its' release to the general public that way?
Really, what I need is general information and examples to real technologies and skills, but a rough timeline would be nice. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
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**Superstition**
In a magic world, believing that what the orcs do has to be unclean. Prior to the French revolution, peasants starved rather than eat potatoes because they came out of the ground and were thus devilish. Maybe the widgets from the union of soviet Dwarves are safe, or maybe they're secretly cursed or in league with demons. Who knows? Did you know that if you spell-fix a crack, you break your mom's back?
**Greed**
If you have to pay for the rights to use new tech, old tech is just fine. Damn those wizards in arcana city and their copyright protection! It's magic, so maybe there really is a copyright spell limiting the use of magic. Local widget makers ban the use of widgets from foreign countries. Making horse gear and wagons was a huge industry until cars came along and wiped them out. Maybe the state is charging huge taxes (leading to smuggling)? Items are simply too expensive for regular folks to use (think third world countries today)
**Pollution**
Maybe more magic is seen as contaminating (or really IS contaminating) the land and poisoning the Dryads. The druids are telling everyone the crops will fail if they cast those foreign spells.
**Lack of education**
Do your peasants read? If priests and nobles don't tell them this stuff, they don't learn it. Make all the incoming merchants only go to trade centers and the spread of knowledge slows.
**Power**
Oh, no commoner. You can't use that spell. It might let you shoot my soldiers with a magic missile! How did you get the money for that? I guess I need to raise taxes again. But not for your neighbor using good old safe magic.
**Terrain**
Well, just because the people on the other side of the mountains know stuff doesn't mean it gets here. Then there's the river monsters, not to mention the dragons.
**Timeline**
I can't really tell how much any of this would affect the timeline of technological infiltration - that depends on too many variables.
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This is a problem that often comes up in "Fantasy" settings and there's quite a few solutions. Here's my personal favorite, and with it you can suspend the technological revolution indefinitely and maintain a technology-capped world:
To use this solution, you implement three principles:
1. Magic is unsuited for mass manufacture. Every magical item is produced by a skilled professional.
2. God, gods, or other powerful immortal beings exist and are the "hands-on" types of deity
3. Divine beings have a vested interest in preserving the status quo, especially their power
The first principle ensures that you can have magical hair driers, flying carpets, and indoor plumbing, but only for the rich or "magic caste". Because everything that's enchanted requires a magic user to craft it, and there are only so many skilled magic users, peasants won't get their hands on wands of fireball because they simply can't afford them. This can easily be explained by, for example, making non-living things unable to cast magic and therefore curtailing any assembly lines of magical items.
The second and third principle go hand-in-hand and rely on the idea that with enough technology, humanity's creations can reach apotheosis and allow humans to directly compete with gods. For example, maybe gods have determined that if "information age" technology is discovered, then it's only a matter of time before some scientist creates a superintelligent AI that rivals the divine or they determine that while nuclear weapons aren't a threat to the gods, anti-matter ones are. In short, the gods fear what humans could create in a short period of time if they underwent a technological revolution. That's why they suppress technology and prevent technological advance.
As for how the divine actually suppress technology, that can be done in many ways. Most directly, the gods could just smite people who are getting too smart or thinking about things the shouldn't. More indirectly, religious organizations could have "inquisition" arms which investigate and string up "heretics" or the religious organizations influence the governments to such a degree where they do the technology-suppressing work for them.
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Real life example: [North Sentinel Islanders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese)
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> The Sentinelese, also known as the Sentineli and the North Sentinel Islanders, are an indigenous people who inhabit North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal in India. They are one of the world's last uncontacted peoples.
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> the Sentinelese appear to have consistently refused any interaction with the outside world. They are hostile to outsiders and have killed people who approached or landed on the island.
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> Some of their practices have not evolved beyond those of the Stone Age; they are not known to engage in agriculture.
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> The Sentinelese have been widely described as a Stone Age tribe, with some reports claiming they have lived in isolation for over 60,000 years. But Pandya speculates that the Sentinelese arose either from a deliberate, more recent migration or from drifting off the Little Andaman.
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The first recorded contact with them dates back to 1867
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Few kilometers from them, people can use their smartphone to post questions on SE communities.
If we rely just on the recorded contacts, as long as you have the right conditions, like those pushing the Sentinelese, 160 years are possible.
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# Because Magic.
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How magic works is, the mage connects with the local "magic field" and harvests/channels as much or as little they needs, then they shapes this amount according to specific rules and algorithms (the "spell" proper). They then can bind the finished product to an object or a location.
It is possible to "industrialize" magic because it is possible to imbue an object or location with the power of gathering and shaping the ambient magic: **the object becomes a mage**, even if a mage that can only perform one, or very few, spells. This is your **magic factory**, that can churn out magic objects.
There are three types of magic objects:
* **talismans**. They contain a certain quantity of magic and use it in accordance to the spell. When the magic is exhausted it must either be replenished within a given time, or the spell itself will dissolve, rendering the talisman inert.
* **magic objects**. They do not contain magic (or not much), but the spell enables them to access the way more potent local magic field, and shape it as "programmed" to achieve their non-magical purpose (e.g. boiling water, drilling a hole, etc.). They do not exhaust their magic unless severely abused.
* **magic shapers**. These are magic objects that produce a magical effect; namely, either talismans or magic objects. Producing talismans is way more expensive, because larger quantities of magic are required to not only manufacture, but charge them.
And now the clincher - *the magic field is neither homogeneous, nor uniform, nor constant*.
* Its *intensity* increases in time, unless depleted by reorienting it, as magic seeps from wherever it comes from, at different rates depending on the location (crossing between ley lines are much valued to install magic shapers). There are dead zones where the recovery rate is very low.
* The magic is actually a blend of at least five different *tastes* or *essences* - traditionally Air, Earth, Water, Fire and Spirit. They seep at the same rate, but in different proportions.
* These proportions vary very slowly. The two sides of a river might be completely different in their Water-to-Spirit ratio, but otherwise you might walk one hundred leagues and the ratios would stay the same within one part to the hundred.
The consequences of this are as follows:
* talismans work everywhere, but they can only perform very simple tasks and can only be recharged in a suitable area, or at a factory. "Recharging talismans" (essentially large magical batteries) are possible, but ruinously expensive and quite massive, so not easy to transport.
* magic factories are not moveable. Relocating them slightly far from a nexus is antieconomical, relocating them in a different magic area is impossible - and very dangerous.
* magic objects will work forever *in the area they were built*, but will start malfunctioning if you take them too far, or across a magical border. The *function* of the spell can be reverse engineered and the spell *often*, but not always, adapted to a different area (a 200:1 Water:Earth spell will not be useful in an area where the ambient magic has very little Water and too much Earth). Modifying a spell to use different elements is sometimes possible but often dangerous and requires terrifying amounts of skill.
# and the above is the desired outcome.
So, while the adoption of a gimmick can proceed at industrial speed *in a given region*, diffusion beyond that can only happen at *highly skilled artisanal availability* speed - so, very slowly or not at all.
Duplicating a spell within the same area only requires a Prentice Witch, or almost any talented individual that has a knack for sensing magic. It is almost the same as *operating* a magic object. Reverse engineering a spell to take it across a border, on the other hand, requires an experienced Engineer Mage, so it would only be done for highly valuable spells, and experienced Engineer Mages are rare and expensive.
Then there might be the fabled Spellmasters, that have the twin abilities of *seeing* what a spell is doing - they can access its source code - and *knowing* in their minds how to twine whatever ambient magic is available in order to achieve the same result.
It would be roughly the equivalent of reading "MOV AL, 0", understanding that it means *zero a CPU register* for Intel 8086 CPU, and know that this can be done with "XOR A" on a Zilog Z80 or "CLR" on a Motorola 68000.
[Answer]
**Go for a society relatively stable and isolated, with little social mobility and knowledge being concentrated at the hands of few, and give them a strong cultural/religious basis.**
You're basically looking for what we had in medieval Europe, which remained with relatively few major changes during the period. This was due to a series of factors, but the most important might have been isolation. With the constant threat of invasions, everyone was terrified, which led people to group together in societies where money became secondary over survival. Peasants worked to feed everyone, knights and nobles trained to defend everyone and priests prayed and preached to save everyone's souls from hell. This resulted in a society where, safe for things like the Church noble relation (a noble can become part of the Church), there was little to no mobility (a peasant could become a knight which meant going up a class, but that was rare).
So, after this poor explanation of the middle ages, your society would have to be divided in many relatively isolated kingdoms and follow a similar path, in which classes are strongly determined and social mobility is reduced, everyone has specific functions and they are more focused on themselves and their surviving than they are about making business with the outside world. This could have many degrees, likely kingdoms closer to the borders being more open to business than those in the middle of the country, distributing their goods at a higher price even. The reason for such isolation to the outside could be justified by religious or cultural beliefs, maybe a sense of superiority to other countries or even with them being considered heretics, and you'd have the ideal conditions for items from the outside to take long periods to be available to everyone.
Another thing that would help would be assigning to outside products a connection with the higher classes. Maybe because trading goods isn't as predominant in these isolated societies, even the cheapest outside products would be seen as goods that only the higher noble classes and members of the "church" should have. That way, with the culture already established, a peasant wouldn't use noble items, for they'd be likely ridiculed for such "petulance".
Lastly, concentrate the knowledge available to a few groups. One alternative would be to have something like what the Church did, saving many archives from the Greek and Roman eras and keeping them safe, but partially out of reach from those who weren't part of the Church. With the knowledge kept in the hands of few, you'll prevent your society from making their own technological advances, as long as you attend to the last main problem: keeping it from changing.
One of the main reasons the middle ages ended was the end of the invasions, which allowed many **structural and political changes**. People could leave the fortified castles with less fear of being killed by invaders, cities could grow again, business could become more prevalent, populations could grow more, etc. And it was exactly this series of changes (along with issues such as the plague, the crusades and the hunger caused by population growth and deforestations, but changes nonetheless) that would cause the middle ages to end, giving place to the modern age.
To sum it up, if you try to follow the middle ages pattern, your society needs to remain partially isolated from the outside and have as little changes as possible, so the systems that exist within it don't collapse. Your society can expand its territory, but it must have a reason to minimize exposure to the outside and prevent drastic structural changes to its insides. I'd love to explain in detail how it all worked, but there simply isn't space to do so. I strongly recommend you to research about feudal societies to understand what made them tick and see which traits would you like to use on your own world.
[Note] - sorry, I pretty much remade the answer as the last one had a decent amount of innacurate and partially biased information. I still think something like what we saw with the catholic church (a strong institution with vast power, positioned as the highest elite) would be beneficial to ensuring a society from suffering too many changes too fast, as it has the power and influence to prevent such changes from happen or to at least mitigate them as much as possible.
[Answer]
In short: If you are committed, indefinitely.
The way you put it sounds a bit like "If there are any and all requirements for something to spread fast and wide, how can I make it spread as little as possible?"
For a widespread adaption of those things, several conditions need to be met:
1. Advancement\_A is reproducible
2. Advancement\_A is fairly understandable for the next person that does not use it yet
3. Advancement\_A does not require great funds or specialization to use
4. Advancement\_A has benefits that are more visible than the costs or threads of using it
5. All necessary steps to use Advancement\_A are either visible or self-explanatory/ easy to backward engineer
6. Users of Advancement\_A do travel to or are visited by people that do not know Advancement\_A yet but would like to use it
So to prevent Advancement\_A to spread, we need to eliminate at least one of the points above. I will give an example for each point:
1. If the spell comes from a magic crystal that has been created by chance, there can only that many spells that can be cast or scrolly that can be crafted using that one cystal. Obviously, the spells become rarer and more expensive further away from the home of the crystal
2. Constructing firm stone structures is not that hard, but you won't learn how to do it just by visiting a church/ castle. You can steal some ideas but you won't be able to reproduce it the way you can learn how to say the magic words that are all it needs to cast a spell in some magic systems.
3. If it requires years of training to learn the arcane affinity needed to control spells, not many people will be able to copy your new spell even if anyone who has that level of training knows how to cast it just from watching you do it once.
4. As long as any step required to use Advancement\_A is perceived to be expensive or dangerous, people won't tend to try it as long as they have other options. Both flame throwers and gun powder have been invented twice because the first time they have been seen as evil and were condemned but you can add in real threads or arbitrary costs at any point.
5. It might be cheap and easy to create a spell scroll and it might be easy to use one but the only place they are created is in the sanctuary of the magical or religious society that invented the spell and espionage is night impossible since only the inner circle may enter there. As long as one can not learn how to make a scroll by analyzing one, that will ensure the monopoly on anti-gravity spells until another order makes up their own anti-gravity spell but they will keep it secret too, don't worry.
6. India might have had a spell that allowed elephants to safely travel through mountains and it was vastly available there. There even was a chain of countries with good relationships between India and Carthage but no direct trade. No one but Hannibal had use for that spell so no one bothered mentioning it and he never learned about it. If the advancements are less specialized, they will slowly travel step by step as long as there is contact between users and non-users.
Combine difficulties at several of the points I mentioned and you can slow down the spread of Advancements severely but the only points that can really stop them are 1 and 6. If it can't even be reproduced by the inventors and only a certain area can be supplied with it or if there is no contact with others, the advancements won't spread outside of those boundaries. Everything else is just a matter of time and demand and I would assume big innovations to travel to all trading partners within a generation.
[Answer]
8 existing answers and not one of them has mentioned...
**The Amish**
Just because people of your society can see these innovations in use elsewhere, know exactly how to acquire or reproduce them, and have the no barriers to doing so if they wanted to... doesn't mean they want to. They just value other things.
Every innovation that's *worth* anything will necessarily bring about sociological changes. Whether those changes are good or bad is not an objective thing--it is purely a matter of individual values. And furthermore, it is usually very difficult to predict ahead of time exactly what those changes will be, meaning you may not be able to accurately subjectively evaluate them, either. Just seeing them in use elsewhere isn't good enough, because the culture of "elsewhere" is not your culture.
It just so happens that in our modern globalized culture, progress is widely considered an inherently good thing, for its own sake. But that's not an objective, universal truth, either. It is a learned cultural value. So just give your society different values. Make them, like the Amish, value their interdependence and social stability, and treat any changes with extreme caution. That doesn't mean that they will never, ever adopt any new thing--but they will only adopt new things after a long period of careful consideration of exactly how introducing this new thing will affect the community, and a consensus that the changes are worth it and wanted. And even then, adoption of any new thing is likely to be voluntarily limited to circumstances in which it provides the most benefit, with the least disruption--thus, why Amish communities may choose to adopt telephone service, but only in the form of, say, business phones which are only to be used in the office, for business purposes, during working hours. Or they may choose to adopt internal combustion engines... but only to run farm machinery when enough manual labor is not available in a given year.
Religion may be a factor, as it is with the Amish, but it need not be. And there need not be any malignancy or lies to suppress the new magic or technology. Merely a general agreement that **we** don't *want* to live that way.
[Answer]
A famous case from history which you may be able to apply is that of the [Luddites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite). Broadly, their livelihoods depended on skilled manufacture of handmade crafts, but textile mills made their work and skills obsolete. This began to return them to the economic servitude that was even more popular at the time with wealthy factory owners than it is today.
They fought back by actively destroying the machines (what they are most famed for) and through occasional violence.
[Answer]
Similar to an institutional religion, if you have a malign ruling body, they may host public charades "demonstrating" the dangers of the magicks used by nearby areas.
Tell your children and punish those caught with it! This magic is not to be used, or it'll bring terrible and mysterious consequences as before.
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[Question]
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Most of the sunlight in a rainforest is intercepted by its canopy. Only about 2% of the light reaches the ground. How tall would a rainforest need to be to make it completely dark at ground level? Like the completely dark depths of the ocean.
[Answer]
It may not be possible with conventional plants alone as stated in another answer, but almost complete shade could be brought to the forest floor by the addition of another layer to the ecosystem consisting of:
# Giant fungi. ([Prototaxites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites))
Fungi, not needing light to photosynthesize could potentially form a multi layered "underforest" cutting out virtually all of the remaining light.
The highest layer being the bracket fungi attached to the tree trunks:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LVRdx.jpg)
Attribution: mungosaysbah.com
Beneath these would be the traditional shaped toadstools:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sDKp3.jpg)
Attribution: infocus247.com
It's thought to have been the case [at one time on Earth](https://infocus247.com/2015/11/20/earth-was-covered-by-giant-mushrooms/):
>
> From around 420 to 350 million years ago, when land plants were still
> the relatively new kids on the evolutionary block and “the tallest
> trees stood just a few feet high,” giant spires of life poked from the
> Earth. “The ancient organism boasted trunks up to 24 feet (8 meters)
> high...”
>
>
>
[Answer]
Enough light must penetrate to the bottom of the canopy to keep the tissues there alive and productive. If the canopy of a forest becomes thick enough to block light completely, the leaves or needles at the bottom of the canopy will atrophy, die, and fall off. This limits the thickness of the forest canopy.
Since a layer of leaves or needles never stops all the light that reaches it, there will always be some light under a forest canopy during at least the brightest part of the day.
If you want permanent complete darkness at the forest floor you have to postulate an alien kind of tree that uses a solid web instead of clusters of leaves.
Adjacent trees would cause their webs to join up or abut exactly, since any overlapped part of a web would be an unproductive drain on a tree's energy budget. Alternately, the forest would be characterized by constant "web battles" that would make most trees wish they had leaves.
[Answer]
### It doesn't matter
While it is true that the amount of light that ultimately impacts a surface generally follows an inverse square law, if we assume "reasonable" heights for your canopy and the distance from your planet to its sun, the difference between these is sufficient that we can effectively ignore fall-off.
That being the case...
What happens when light hits the top of the canopy is that:
* Some of it is absorbed
* Some of it passes through
* Some of it is scattered
The scattered light, if it hits a lower leaf, is going to bounce around your canopy (being attenuated each time, but still...) and eventually make it to the ground. Essentially, we can consider the light that isn't absorbed as light that we need to absorb lower down in order to accomplish our goal.
Now, it happens, this is essentially the same thing that happens with the ocean deeps, except that, instead of macroscopic leaves, you are dealing with individual water molecules doing the absorbing. Now, in theory, you can't stop "all" light, but your goal is to stop enough (99.99...% with enough 9's) so that, practically speaking, you've stopped "all of it".
The reason this works with water (oceans) is because you are more or less uniformly absorbing light across the entire depth. However, as A. I. Breveleri notes, forests don't work that way. In a "normal" (read: something we might find on Earth) forest, leaves exist to absorb light. At some point, there is not enough light to absorb for it to be worthwhile for the trees to put out leaves at that depth, which means, practically speaking, there is a limit to the amount of light a forest canopy can absorb. (This is why you *have* a "canopy"; leaves at the top, close to the light, with a lot of "empty" space underneath.) This, in turn, is why *the height doesn't matter*. Essentially, there is a limit to the depth of leaves that your trees will grow. Once you reach this, going taller doesn't reduce the light (much; see first paragraph), it just increases the distance from the canopy to the ground.
### So... what?
In order to overcome this, you need to alter the cost/benefit ratio of growing "stuff" in the lower layers of your forest. You could do this by having leaves that are productive with very little light, thickening your canopy, or you could fill the understory with something that is less light dependent (e.g. fungus, as mentioned by We are Monica). The rate at which light penetration is reduced will depend on your approach. Thus, the question as originally worded, doesn't really make sense.
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I know that copper has antifungal properties, but I'm not sure exactly how it works. So... How does it work exactly?
If you were fighting some fungus monsters, would using a copper sword give you any advantage over fighting them with a regular sword?
[Answer]
No, the copper would not really enter their system from the blade of the sword. Copper is actually [an essential nutrient for fungi, and also toxic in large doses](https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-micro-030117-020444). Your weapon is really only a cutting instrument, no matter what the material is the target will only get exposed to a minuscule amount. The blade will work best by being sharp. Copper is very soft, in practical use any other metal weapon could literally cut your blade in half. If you miss and hit a rock or a tree, your blade will be dull.
Now, there are occasionally species which react poorly to certain metals. If you design your fungi-monster with a copper sensitivity, it could act like a poisoned blade. But do pay attention to the down side of a soft metal. You will be replacing that sword very often.
A steel blade may be forged with a channel that holds some loose [copper powder or paste](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B01921ZG74). When fighting fungi, be sure the hero checks and retarnishes his blade with copper.
And serrated is not better. No one saws their enemy with a sword :).
[Answer]
If it's a magic effect, like silver weapons against werewolves, sure. But not if it's just a poison. Poison just isn't a very effective weapon in melee combat. The deadliest poisons in real life take several minutes to even show symptoms, while swordfights are over in seconds. All poisoning your sword does is let you turn a total defeat into a [Pyrrhic victory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory). If you don't care about your life, all you have to do to be sure you kill your foe is to land a hit. Basically, poisoning your weapons doesn't do you any good if you care about your own survival. Either you win the fight, then you didn't need the poison; or if you lose the fight, you're dead. Your foe might die a few minutes/hours later, but that doesn't bring you back to life.
So with this in mind, is it really worth using a weapon so soft that just a few swings will bend it out of shape, and one or two hits on a hard surface will dull it?
If you have to use copper, switch to ranged weapons. Who cares if your arrowhead bends?
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[Question]
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Let us assume that I built a dome on the moon's surface. That dome is pressurized and has nuclear-powered lights to deal with the long lunar night (or is in one of the poles). I also have water, either from the moon's lunar craters or from an icy asteroid gently landed on the surface and covered with something to protect it from evaporating under the sun.
How barren is the lunar soil? Why can't plants grow there and what can be done to fix its problems?
[Answer]
Experiments have been done about this:
<https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/growing-plants-in-lunar-soil/>
<https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0103138>
>
> When humans will settle on the moon or Mars they will have to eat there. Food may be flown in. An alternative could be to cultivate plants at the site itself, preferably in native soils. We report on the first large-scale controlled experiment to investigate the possibility of growing plants in Mars and moon soil simulants. The results show that plants are able to germinate and grow on both Martian and moon soil simulant for a period of 50 days without any addition of nutrients. Growth and flowering on Mars regolith simulant was much better than on moon regolith simulant and even slightly better than on our control nutrient poor river soil. Reflexed stonecrop (a wild plant); the crops tomato, wheat, and cress; and the green manure species field mustard performed particularly well. The latter three flowered, and cress and field mustard also produced seeds. Our results show that in principle it is possible to grow crops and other plant species in Martian and Lunar soil simulants. However, many questions remain about the simulants' water carrying capacity and other physical characteristics and also whether the simulants are representative of the real soils.
>
>
>
[Answer]
[Lunar soil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_soil) is made of [regolith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regolith)
>
> Regolith covers almost the entire lunar surface, bedrock protruding only on very steep-sided crater walls and the occasional lava channel. This regolith has formed over the last 4.6 billion years from the impact of large and small meteoroids, from the steady bombardment of micrometeoroids and from solar and galactic charged particles breaking down surface rocks.
>
>
> There are two profound differences in the chemistry of lunar regolith and soil from terrestrial materials. The first is that the Moon is very dry. As a result, those minerals with water as part of their structure such as clay, mica, and amphiboles are totally absent from the Moon. The second difference is that lunar regolith and crust are chemically reduced, rather than being significantly oxidized like the Earth's crust. In the case of the regolith, this is due in part to the constant bombardment of the lunar surface with protons (i.e. hydrogen (H) nuclei) from the solar wind. One consequence is that iron on the Moon is found in the metallic 0 and +2 oxidation states, whereas on Earth iron is found primarily in the +2 and +3 oxidation states.
>
>
>
To grow plants you need to have [pedolith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil)
>
> Soil is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life. Earth's body of soil, called the pedosphere, has four important functions:
>
>
> * as a medium for plant growth
> * as a means of water storage, supply and purification
> * as a modifier of Earth's atmosphere
> * as a habitat for organisms
>
>
>
It's more or less the same situation one find immediately after a volcanic eruption: the solidified lava cannot host life as it is, it needs to be weathered and transformed to become pedolith..
[Answer]
It is said by this popsci article that both lunar and martian soil are viable planting mediums. The test shows that martian soil is much better than lunar soil. The journal's report backs that up. Popsci does not give final conclusion: it is possible, they say, but many questions remain. The soil seems to dry-out quickly, they add. On the other hand, you must remember that eons of meteor bombardment makes ultra-fine dust. You must remove the dust, or your planter will turn the soil into a concrete block. (Don't know how coarse was their tested soil, if it dried so quickly). The soil may be processed to remove fine dust. As it was never exposed to water, you may see how it reacts with it. Once a reaction (if any) takes place, the chemical reactivity is neutralized. You may start adding nutrients and beneficial microorganisms and start planting.
Nasa's article states that the 4 elements necessary for growth are not available in the soil, with oxygen being bound. They are naturally absorbed through water and the atmosphere: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. All other elements may be present in the soil.
Bbc article shows that marigolds can thrive on the minerals. So yes, that is possible. Don't forget that under lab conditions on earth they receive the 4 elements C, O, H, N from air, water and co2, so that the minerals in the soil make-up for what's missing. This allows us to extract water from polar ice, provide humans and poultry as a source of CO2 and maybe all what we need to bring to the moon is some nitrogen fertilizer to start the nitrogen cycle. With an adequate supply of minerals you can maintain a cycle.
DISCLAIMER: Part of my experience comes from a failed attempt to plant in a soil patch which was stripped or unpaved. The area was under concrete for many years and too inert for any planting. It took some time until plants began taking a roothold. This shows the importance of introducing oxygen and essential organisms into a soil which has always been sterile.
References
Popsci: <https://www.popsci.com/article/technology/crops-grow-fake-moon-and-mars-soil>
The journal: <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0103138>
Nasa: <https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=32005.0>
Bbc: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7351437.stm>
[Answer]
I think it's worth mentioning that even if you *could* use lunar soil to grow plants, it may not be a good idea for your Lunarians:
1. <https://www.livescience.com/62590-moon-dust-bad-lungs-brain.html>
2. <https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/22apr_dontinhale>
>
> "The real problem is the lungs," he explains. "In some ways, lunar
> dust resembles the silica dust on Earth that causes silicosis, a
> serious disease." Silicosis, which used to be called "stone-grinder's
> disease," first came to widespread public attention during the Great
> Depression when hundreds of miners drilling the Hawk's Nest Tunnel
> through Gauley Mountain in West Virginia died within half a decade of
> breathing fine quartz dust kicked into the air by dry drilling--even
> though they had been exposed for only a few months. "It was one of the
> biggest occupational-health disasters in U.S. history," Kerschmann
> says. This won't necessarily happen to astronauts, he assures, but
> it's a problem we need to be aware of--and to guard against.
>
>
> Quartz, the main cause of silicosis, is not chemically poisonous: "You
> could eat it and not get sick," he continues. "But when quartz is
> freshly ground into dust particles smaller than 10 microns (for
> comparison, a human hair is 50+ microns wide) and breathed into the
> lungs, they can embed themselves deeply into the tiny alveolar sacs
> and ducts where oxygen and carbon dioxide gases are exchanged." There,
> the lungs cannot clear out the dust by mucous or coughing. Moreover,
> the immune system's white blood cells commit suicide when they try to
> engulf the sharp-edged particles to carry them away in the
> bloodstream. In the acute form of silicosis, the lungs can fill with
> proteins from the blood, "and it's as if the victim slowly suffocates"
> from a pneumonia-like condition.
>
>
>
Obviously we don't know for sure how it might happen, but before I start pulling in large quantities of moon (or martian) soil I'd like to make sure we've determined for sure that the soil won't kill me, even if the plants like it.
Personally, I'd just go for the hydroponics.
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[Question]
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This is a follow up question to this older question:
[How can I use my dominance of the software industry to get my customers to worship an eldritch abomination that they don't believe in?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/123087/)
Hastur, the king in yellow, wants to cross over into the mortal realm. To do this, he must depend on human worship to provide him with the power he needs. He has studied human history in order to find the best and fastest way to gain followers. He ultimately decides to use social media, a medium that reaches the most people around the world.
He creates a worldbuilding website in which people can discuss aspects about their world and ask questions that they are having trouble with. After they sign up and agree to a long acknowledgement contract that hastur knows nobody will read, a person will be allowed to post questions about the world they are building. Other members can up vote or down vote these questions through a system of karmic points, and give their best answers they believe will solve the problem. These answers can also be voted on by others. Questions and answers must meet certain regulations and stay within established guidelines. They must be specific, be of a particular quality, and cannot be duplicates of other previous questions.
To the outside world, this site is just a fun way to build a community and help would - be world builders create their best project. However, the truth is far more sinister. In the contract that an individual signs is a stipulation clause which states that they sell their souls to hastur upon agreement, enslaving them to him for all eternity. The karma points are a form of worship from humans that feeds the yellow king. The more up votes a question gets, the more powerful he becomes, the closer he gets to his goal.
Hastur has created a team of "moderators" to govern his site. This is a group of elected individuals who have been chosen by the king in yellow to regulate the questions and comments to prune good ones from bad. Questions that do not meet the guidelines of the site are closed and deleted after a number of days, and will no longer be able to be voted on regardless of popularity.
The question is: if the goal of Hastur is to gain power through points, why would he be picky about quality and delay his plans? Since he feeds off points regardless of quality, why would he limit the kind of worship he gets?
[Answer]
Simple, this hypothetical site (which of course bears no resemblance to any real site anyone would know) would suffer long term consequences if they don't enforce some kind of quality control. So while in the short run their users would amass more karma, the site would be less attractive to others, so in the long run there would be less users with less *overall* karma.
[Answer]
Do you really think a bunch of upvotes is Hastur's master plan? We're talking about an Elder God for Pete's sake! The whole point of invoking these gods in a story is that they are incomprehensible!
So my rationale for the rep caps and the closed questions is "w̹̞̤̞͕͍̦͞ḥ̤ỳ̟͉̮̼̲ͅ n̵̟̘̝o͏̛̮͍͙̯͔̣͘͜ṭ̟͓͍͕͚͍͠ͅ?"
Now let's talk really perplexing incomprehensible elder god stuff, like making a Mathematics Stack Exchange and a Math Overflow... or like pretty much all the stuff they talk about on Math Overflow.
You think we're trying to [summon an eldar god](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/31388/how-would-facebook-sysadmins-prevent-the-summoning-of-cthulhu/31391#31391)? Those guys are doing the [real summoning](https://mathoverflow.net/questions/24047/ultrafilters-and-automorphisms-of-the-complex-field). I at least started with real human text before falling into the madness of Ç͘͏͈̹̠̙͎̳̯͚͔̼͙̻͔͖̲̩̹̕ͅt͏̖̲̤̫̤̫̼̪̥̠͙͚͍̭́ͅḩ̡̲͈̫̯͚͉̱͍̳͝ù̧͙̭̙̻̲̙͚͔̲̬͚͢͝͡ḻ̴̵̨̹͉͙̟̯̞̠͔̦̝̩͜h̶̼̜̦͖͍͎͍̕ṷ̴̶̢͙̗̬͇̯̞̗̰̣̬̥̲̣̦ text. They aren't even chanting in English anymore!
[Answer]
**Hastur is a reflection of what people think he is.**
If Hastur just needed upvotes, he'd build a website dedicated to cat videos. Even elder gods love cat videos. However, Hastur's need for worship isn't a simple "5000 upvotes for an extra +5 to infernal wailing" equation of upvotes to power. Instead, Hastur build his power off of human perception of what they think he can do.
None of that is explicitly laid out in the worldbuilding FAQs, of course. Instead, hidden deep in the EULA, which Hastur knows full well that nobody will ever read, is a caveat that states that any question about worldbuilding actually relates to Hastur's abilities, and an upvote is a measure of belief in that ability. If someone asks "what sort of poisonous insects would make the best projectiles?" that question provides Hastur with the power to launch poisonous insects as projectiles.
This brings us to the need for moderation. Badly thought out questions, at best, will lead to poorly defined and difficult to use abilities. If people are focused on fixing the spelling errors, and wondering how a question even makes sense, they aren't spending their time mentally defining new powers and abilities. Moderating his worldbuilding website keeps people focused on good questions, which will lead to solid, usable powers for the elder god.
[Answer]
The karmic points are nice, but what Hastor really craves are those tasty souls that the terms&services provides. The king in yellow is aware that more, and more tasty, souls will be attracted by the siren song of quality.
[Answer]
# A United Community Builds Power United
Hastur is a clever elder god: he has seen what has happened to his sibling El. Once a powerful deity, El ruled over people across all the Mediterranean, but as his worship spread, his worshippers began to divide and turn against each other... and as they divided, so was El divided. Century after century, El was fractured over and over, his power fading like an empire split amongst warring sons. Now, El has been so thoroughly shattered that each of his aspects is as weak as a newborn kitten.
Hastur does not want to make this mistake. He places devoted cultists, these ‘’moderators’, adherent to tightly-binding rules, to administer his new ‘faith battery’, stripping away divisive influences and keeping his power base intact. After all, it’s not just about having power, it’s about directing it the way he wants, as well.
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[Question]
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In this world human-like people have skin that is unbelievably difficult to cut through and I was wondering what biologically creatable material is flexible enough to act as skin but it also essentially impossible to penetrate with a medieval era spear.
Same size as humans with a 30% threshold if you need it.
Same size planet as earth with similar atmosphere and minerals, again minor changes necessary are ok e.g. 10% more aluminium or something.
It can be any material that could theoretically be made by a body e.g. some theoretical polymer.
Must be based upon a real material that is either believed to exist by reputable sources or does exist. Minumum handwavium, please.
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Meet my newest skin upgrade, with an advanced apology for the crudely-rendered schematics.
## Cutaneum
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tejyR.png)
As you can see, the image looks just like the average cross section of the integumentary system, except with a few modifications.
* **Special Hair** is just like ordinary skin hair, except that its actually spidersilk with carbon nanotube enhancement. You get to be a little bit like spiderman, except you don't shoot webs from your palms only - you naturally grow controllable super-spiderslik from every special follicle of your skin. Each strand of special hair is not at all extraordinary on its own, but combine it with the modified sweat secreted from special follicles and each strand of special hair will interleave into an impenetrable full-body mesh.
* **Special Follicle** is your new limb. With one of this, you can grow a single special hair, vary its length, drench it in gluey-cementing sweat, or drain such sweat from such hair. What's more is that you can choose to semi-consciously control the flexibility and hardness of the resulting hairy-silk armor to better suit your needs.
* **Non-Newtonian Fluid Reserves (NNFR)** are cells containing non-newtonian fluid. Instead of a layer of fat, or of porous composites, or of rigid armor, I give you a single layer of impact-responsive units. Each NNFR unit is coordinating with all the others to allow your skin to flow like liquid when you want to move, but harden like concrete when you get hit by strong forces. This way, all the kinetic energy of piercing weapons hurled at you will completely be absorbed and dissipated by these cells. That is, if said piercing weapons get past your already-impenetrable carbon nanotube-infused spider-silk fur.
### Summary of procedures for biological superskin
1. Dot your skin with carbon nanotube-infused spidersilk-spinning follicles to resist deformation.
2. Place a layer of non-newtonian fluid under your skin to absorb impacts.
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Did you read about osteoderms? Dinosaurs and nowadays crocodiles have bone plates included in their skin which makes the skin really really difficult to cut.
I dissected a crocodile and it is really hard to get through (best is to use a bone saw or an XL version of poultry scissors). These osteroderms are quite big on the back and smaller around the joints, which allows a full range of motion for the crocodile (even full gallop and high jumps).
Advantage: creates (together with a sturdy leather skin) some "walking tank" look, bone material can be easily synthetisized by the body
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Spidersilk. Its biologically createable and properly woven through the skin it can protect against sharp objects. With enough fat tissue below it the blunt force impact can also be stopped.
The biggest problem would be bulk creation. As noted in this page: <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk> the creation of 3,4 by 1,2m took 1 million spiders and 4 years. On the other hand your glands could produce continuously rather than be destroyed during silk extraction and would grow with your body over the years so it should be feasible.
Edit: the spidersilk piece of cloth is ofcourse a solid slab of spidersilk, a skin wouldnt be a solid slab but would ideally be made of normal skin cells which pull the spidersilk on between them to create a network of cells and silk. This would be a feasible amount of silk assuming the creatures need to grow to adulthood giving it time to create enough silk as its body size increases. Thick groupings of spidersilk could be grown for protection against small-arms (if available) or environmental hazards like sharp thorn bushes and your neighbour stabbing you with a knife or arrow.
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If you're willing to accept scales (probably a practical necessity for your question), I would suggest using keratin as the dominant material. You'd end up with a distinctive resemblance to [pangolins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin), which for bonus points are a very real demonstration that what you're looking for is possible in nature. These are real mammals (albeit seriously endangered: due to its scales and meat being considered desirable, it is a huge target for poaching) with durable scales.
As for the keratin used for those scales, it's absolutely believable for humanoids to be producing it, if not necessarily observed in such quantity: it's the same stuff that your fingernails are made of, so human-like creatures with such an adaptation aren't likely to break suspension of disbelief (although there are side effects of having scales for skin, like the problem of keeping oneself clean, but that's probably out of scope for this question). I don't have hard numbers, but I believe they'd resist sword cuts just fine. A spear stabbing at them (not cutting, since what is essentially a long pointy stick is useless for slashing) would probably be blocked as well, although I'm not 100% certain on that.
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**Different take - not skin, but fur**
Imagine really thick, matted and layered hair - perhaps similar in properties to spider silk, or keratin.
Unlike plates that press into the underlying skin, impact resistance is high, and its tangled structure will slow and snag projectiles - similar to kendo armour or quilting in in a gambeson.
As a bonus, you get added warmth, flexiblility and it behaves like chain mail in spreading impact forces.
Your characters will look like imposing shaggy dogs, and probably smell like one too.
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**Aramid fiber, aka Kevlar**
Aramid fiber is an organic material, made of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen. While evolving the mechanism to produce it may seem difficult, it's only a little more complex than the proteins found in silk. Of course aramid is significantly stronger than silk, as well as being impact and abrasion resistant. A person containing fiberous aramid in there skin would maintain skin flexibility (when you by aramid it comes in sheets of fabric), and the skin would be extremely resistant to tearing. As to being cut with a medieval spear, most places that sell aramid fiber also sell special serrated shears made of hardened steel, cut it would be a slow process requiring the best materials available at the time, possibly with a sharpening break required at some point.
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The movie *Hitman* centered around a plot of killing someone with sub-dermal armor. The YouTube Chanel *Film Theory* did a video explaining how this would be possible. Check it out: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsE10pSYBos>
For those without the time or desire to watch a 13 minute video, the answer is graphene. It can be made in sheets as thin as 1 molecule and it is made purely from carbon atoms, which also makes up a lot of the human body. When arranged correctly, carbon atoms form diamonds. So basically you have diamond armor just under your skin. You look normal, you weigh the same as a normal human, *and* your skin can stop bullets. A sufficiently think layer of graphene would only me 100 nanometers thick. It is supposedly 10 times better than steal armor. Plenty to stop a spear.
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I have a type of coral that feeds off of bacteria that love bird feces (or something involving a bird species). It grows large rocky spires out of the water to create a habitat for birds. I need to know how high these spires can get realistically and if coral could even grow above the water's surface.
* They grow in ocean water about 8 meters deep
* Rising and falling of ocean levels is not possible
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I do not like leaving this without some cool way to accomplish what the OP requests: a living thing, feeding on bird feces which grows in such a way as to host a bird colony.
Living with part of the body out of the water requires vascular channels. What has those? Multicellular life: vascular plants and animals. Vascular plants that do this exist: mangroves. But let us be awesome. What about an animal that does this?
I have two dreamt-up inventions to offer.
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**The Shell.**
Mollusks can get big. [Giant clams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_clam) are big but prehistoric bivalves got much bigger.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xS92a.jpg)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inoceramus>
And the mollusk body plan is amenable to scaling up even more - giant squids are mollusks. A clam would be delighted to /feed off of bacteria that love bird feces/ as the OP states. That is the sort of thing filter feeding clams eat. Your bird island is comprised of a colony of these. They are big, with the bodies below water feeding on what dribbles down from the tall Murex-type spires of shell they extend up above the waterline for the birds.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murex_altispira>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qjXTx.jpg)
Small clams nestle among the big ones, shell spires reaching for the surface. These small ones also feed on what comes down from the birds and grow as they do, ready to take the place of their elders when those die.
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**The star.**
Echinoderms are durable and cool ocean creatures. They can put up with some time out of water and it is not uncommon to see a sea star making a foray into the air at low tide. Your bird host could be comprised of huge, sessile echinoderms. It is easy to picture a clump of mighty sea urchins, their ramifying spines jutting above the surface. But I like the [crown of thorns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown-of-thorns_starfish) starfish as the model because these things are so burly and huge. Echinoderms are very ancient, and your creature can be a survivor from the Ordovician.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/h4pDK.jpg)
<https://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog/bounty-called-for-on-deadly-crown-of-thorns-starfish>
Your bird host star can be mobile when young, foraging and eating as starfish do. Then as it gets large and less mobile, it seeks the company of its kind on the bird roost. It sends its spikes above the surface to host the birds and feeds on what washes down.
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> I need to know how high these spires can get realistically and if coral could even grow above the water's surface.
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Corals do not grow outside water. If they don't have water, they die.
Corals grow on top of the deceased ones, not on their bottom. Being enclosed between a rocky/sandy bottom and a layer of deceased con-specific is really a poor choice if your nutrition model is based on capturing food particles suspended in water. It means that only the outer ring will get some nutrition, you would grow on rings, not on pillars.
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What you describe is more like a salt-water tolerant tree with limestone for wood, if it has something akin to a [coralline algae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coralline_algae) as a [cambiun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambium) layer then such a thing might be possible. The bark will be a flaky layer of mineral salts that the tree can't use while the core "wood" is largely similar to modern coral structures. Dead trees would look a lot like coral sticking up out of the water.
The problem is rigid structures like coral don't last very well near the surface due to wave action, have a look at the third paragraph of the answer to [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/89602/could-coral-float) to get an idea of the hurdles involved. If they pierce the surface the erosive forces are even stronger so your pillars won't last very long and will have to grow very fast to get above the surface at all.
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I'm trying to create a new race of humanoids that are in appearance almost identical to humans with one exception: They have an extension of their spine protruding from their back, much like a tail. It would however be very long and be used similarly to a scorpion's tail, minus the poison. The way I envisioned it is: it would appear as if it's only bone, similiar in appearance to a human spine, but longer and meant as a weapon, tool for movement (like a spring for long distance jumps) etc.
My concern for this idea is the following: **Would the humanoid have any control over the 'limb', considering there is no muscle around the bone? Do I specifically need muscles to be able to control it or is there another solution?**
if there are any additional details necessary, I'd be glad to provide.
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You could control the tail with something inside the bones. Easy answer would be to think of a regular tail just encased in bone, but if you want something thinner, you could imagine discs between each section of bone that swell in specific ways to move the tail. This swelling could be through blood engorging soft tissue, or if you want something more imaginative, a piezoelectric material that swells in reaction to a voltage.
It seems like these methods would be slow and clumsy, but evolution can pull off some neat tricks. I'm pretty much just a meaty water-balloon, but I can move well enough to write posts!
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> (...) it would appear as if it's only bone, similiar in appearance to a human spine, but longer and meant as a weapon, tool for movement (like a spring for long distance jumps) etc.
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> My concern for this idea is the following: Would the humanoid have any control over the 'limb', considering there is no muscle around the bone?
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It may look like bones, but that's just appearance.
Think of a platypus bill. It looks like a proper duck bill. But did you know that it's not bony? The platypus's bill is made of leather!
So you may have a multi-articulated tail that looks like a spine, and feels like a spine to the touch, but it's actually hardened, pale human skin. The muscles and real bones are all inside.
As for how agile it is, that depends on a lot of factors - but if it is thin as an arm or thinner, there is no reason why it couldn't be at least as agile as a monkey's tail.
The real issue here is what survival advantage that would provide that would cause humans to evolve such a limb. Probably your race evolved from simians that did have prehensile tails, unlike us which have evolved from tailless apes.
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Let's take inspiration from the [claws of mantis shrimp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp#Claws). Their club- or spear-like claws are deployed by flexing and releasing [bands of chitin](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21884-zoologger-shrimp-wields-strongest-club-in-the-world/). In the same way, your creature's tail would need such a structure, and there would need to be a strong group of muscles at the base. Also, just as the shrimp's claws can pretty much do just this one thing (i.e. club or spear at high speed) your creature's tail would not have fine control, just coil and strike once every couple of seconds.
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Any tail to be used as a prehensile tail would need significant muscles to accommodate the fact of it's use.
<https://animalsake.com/animals-with-prehensile-tails>
The pictures of the monkeys and other animals in the link above show large amounts of muscle near the base of the tail, tapering out at the end. Visually comparing the tail to the animals arms and legs, it's about the same size, so it's basically another limb for them.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehensile_tail>
That link might be a good start for you. Looking at the references might take you to the anatomy of a tail. My Google searches can't seem to find that in 5 minutes, so hopefully you have more luck there.
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Can you flex your index finger? In case you can (hopefully!), tell me where the muscle is.
So, in one word, yes this is possible, and nature has done it. You can, in principle, place muscles *somewhere* close to the center of mass, and move stuff around with tendons that are bound by tendon sheaths and go around accessory bones. Not the most energy-efficient thing to do, not the least stressful thing for tendons, but certainly doable (and done).
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So I recently had this bizarre idea on using Swarming Wasps as Bio-weapons.
(I'm going to simply use Bio-engineered wasps instead of bees for sake of less confusion on what the swarm is of)
The idea was to construct some kind of explosive [From a grenade, mine, trap,etc.] that contains pheromones to attract the wasps, once detonated. All the User needs to do is open a container of angry Fabric piercing Bio-engineered wasps and let the magic happen. The Wasps can be bioengineered to only attack those with the pheromone on them, so that way there won't be any drawbacks.
The only few benefits I would see with this kind of weapon is possibly be useful for crowd control or for as a non-lethal area defense weapon.
[You could always augment some kind of paralysis or sleep venom in them]
you also wouldn't really need to worry about tranquilizers that much because the aiming is done for you.
The problem is that I don't really see how they can be a better alternative to traditional chemical weapons; because, if you were focusing on just lethality, You may be better off with just using explosives
So is this kind of weapon really practical in a modern battle?
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It's "practical" right up until you use it exactly once.
Such a weapon could be argued to potentially very useful in scenarios where the enemy is a guerrilla force which is blended in with the local populace (aka what the US has been fighting for the past 10+ years in Iraq and Afghanistan).
Don't know who the enemy combatants are? *The wasps will!* (gunpowder residue left on clothing, etc.)
That being said, however, how long after the enemy sees the wasps in action do you think it is that they'll start spreading gunpowder around villages, and in busy market places, waiting for your wasps to go haywire and kill innocent civilians?
This sort of targeted weapon is easily defeated once you understand what the criteria on which it acquires it's prey is. By ensuring lots of collateral casualties you will be forced to stop using said weapon.
Countries with modern military technology will probably develop other countermeasures such as sonic repellents, potent bug sprays, or even weaponized wasps of their own, whose only purpose will be to hunt down *your* wasps.
Even low-tech forces will be able to defend against them by simply deploying electric insect traps, bug spray, thick clothing, etc.
Additionally, surviving wasps will potentially pose a danger to your own troops in the future.
At the end of the day these wasps constitute nothing more than a gimmick.
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**Limit stealth**
If you can track the insects better than you can track their soldiers it may be more valuable to mark some of them then kill them. Especially if it wasn't possible to remove the pheromone in the field. Say release a wasp every minute to be sure you know where the main group is.
**Long term harassment**
If the pheromone stuff is obnoxious to remove and attracts an insect common throughout the area, afflicted soldiers might have a hard time for a long time. This might be more valuable than killing in line with maiming reducing forces more than killing; unit cohesion might suffer if some fraction of their forces always brings insects to bother his buddies.
**Secret marking**
It may be possible to secretly deploy the pheromone without any obvious effect some time before the conflict. Say you splash the goods of some merchant who does business with them, then a week later their whole camp is overrun with pests providing cover for a real attack.
**Centrally controlled escalation**
Your troops are only responsible for marking targets, no chance of someone loading real bullets when command called for rubber ones. The decision makers also are never in harms way.
Say you start out only wanting to bother them a little, say to disperse a peaceful crowd. Your police splash them then command releases some wasps with regular stingers. If that fails, say they take cover command releases the wasps capable of breaking through glass, or resistant to being swatted. Later you want to arrest some of them, so command releases the tranquilizer wasps.
**Injection**
Having access to enemy soldiers' blood in their bodies might be more valuable than just getting it outside. It is generally much easier to make things have an effect as a shot than through the skin or lungs, and a much lower amount is needed if you can be pretty sure it will get to the person than with gas or liquids that can be blocked or go places other than the targets. You could give them diseases which requires longterm care bankrupting their country even if the win every battle. You might with enough biology knowledge mess with their brains, making them a danger to their own side.
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Stinging insects are dangerous only if the target has exposed skin or wear light clothes.
A thicker robe and a face mask are sufficient to disable the offensive potential of your wasps.
Consider that even in desert scenario soldiers never fight bare skinned, and they are already trained to fight wearing a gas mask. So forcing them to wear a wasp protecting mask is no big deal.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UDqlS.jpg)
Nevertheless your weapon can be better used for stealth attacks in sensitive location, where a human would be suspicious. Just label the target with a paintball loaded with the pheromone (or something similar), and set the swarm free while you hide in safety.
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**This isn't practical,** Any radius that your pheromone bomb can cover a conventional bomb could cover as well.
As far as crowd control, it would be less lethal though, you would still end up with casualties, especially of bystanders. It would not be good PR to have some kid dieing from anaphylactic shock simply because he was passing a riot.
Its also impractical making and maintaining all those wasps compared to conventional armaments. If you say they take care of themselves well now you have a bioweapon that is infesting a region like an invasive species, you would have no way to hit the off button.
Flamethrowers and thick suits would be very effective countermeasures against them.
And finally this is potentially banned by the Geneva convention. While it explicitly bans bacteriological bioweapons it also says [toxicological](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_Weapons_Convention) weapons. Being that the wasps inject a toxin, potentially indiscriminately, it would likely be counted as such.
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I can see this as being an interesting weapon, and it has its pros with its use. However, there are also (as with most things) cons.
## Pros:
For one, a swarm of killer wasps is difficult to fight off. In many video games and books centered in the dystopian genre, swarms of murderous insects are used quite often for this very reason. You can shoot at the swarm all you want, but there are always too many for a few pathetic bullets to do enough damage. You can attempt cutting at them with a sharp weapon or go on a desperate attempt of bug-spraying the air, but more often than not even that won't do any good against genetically modified bugs. The fact that a swarm is so hard to defeat is a major pro to any government or military force using such tactics.
Another pro would be the fact that the swarm of wasps (assuming they can be controlled by whoever is using them) is controllable. Nukes, explosives, and weapons of mass destruction cause accidents, you can't tell an explosive what its target is or what it is not supposed to harm, its only task is to harm anything around it and blow it to smithereens, friend or foe. Assuming the wasps are genetically modified to do so, a swarm of killer wasps has more practicality in this way. Someone can tell them exactly what the target is, and they will only attack the one target, taking no accidental collateral damage on an ally that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They could potentially be able to recognize who is the enemy and who is not, and hence their attacks would be *much* more precise, potentially taking out the risk of harming your own allies.
The idea of a swarm of wasps can be lethal. Just because they seem pretty harmless *now* in the real world, considering they are only about the length of your pinkie finger and cause relatively little pain, doesn't mean they have to be harmless in your story. Give their venom a kick to it, in the Hunger Games a wasp like creature called Tracker Jackers could send you into a delusional frenzy if you were stung by one. Why not have yours do something similar? Maybe being stung by one means certain, painful death, maybe instant death, maybe it forces you to see the thing you are most afraid of (give it a bit of a Scarecrow from the DC franchise vibe) or maybe it sends you so insane you feel a giant, uncontrollable urge to kill everyone you love, or maybe you turn into one (more far-fetched, but still doable depending on what your story is like). Even better, give your swarm of wasps size. Why not make them the size of a human... or bigger? The only issue there is they would be easier to shoot at and kill, however also more overwhelming upon attack, so there is a pro and con in that change. Or you could keep them tiny. Tiny can be deadly too.
## Cons:
If this is modern warfare as in 2000s contemporary, a swarm of wasps as a weapon is going to be difficult to pull off. People can see that happening in dystopian or sci-fi novels, but if this is contemporary people won't believe your story. In today's day and age, the technology to pull something like making genetically modified and mentally controlled swarms of killer wasps is... non-existent, to say the least. Besides that, governments wouldn't fund such a project, not now anyways. The money for it would certainly be off-the-charts, not to mention the idea *now* would seem ridiculous to government leaders. Maybe in the future when the technology is around (or if your novel is contemporary *science fiction*, but if it's just contemporary... most likely the idea is going to be shunned, both by characters and the audience.
Wasps are killable. I stated before that a swarm of them would be difficult to kill (and that comment still stands), however they are, eventually, killable and destructible. They aren't metal, so certain things are going to wound them that would have no effect on, say, a tank. On the Swarm vs Explosives point you brought up, explosives don't get wounded. They wouldn't physically get hurt and then go into survival mode with the possibility of retreat because they don't think, they are simply explosives and that is what they will do one way or another: explode. Wasps on the other hand still have instincts. They will get hurt and possibly die (although with a swarm of them even if a few die there is no real damage done other than loosing "troops," with victory sill a possibility of the high 90 percentile. However because they are creatures, genetically modified or otherwise, survival instincts are still in tact. If a lot of them, in some way, were to get wounded, there is a high chance the rest would retreat, simply out of survival instincts. Now I could be wrong, they could simply get more angry and sting more people (which is what wasps and bees typically do when threatened), but still, it is a possibility to consider.
The idea you have with the explosive of pheromones could actually cause drawbacks. Like a normal explosive (which doesn't care who or what is around it, it will explode and cause damage), a pheromone explosive would have the same issue. If there is an ally near it when it explodes, they're screwed. The pheromones will get on that person and the wasps won't think twice about stinging them or killing them or whatever it is the wasps are supposed to do. That is definitely going to be an issue and is probably the biggest thing that would need to change, in my opinion.
Versus a tank, seeing as you said "modern warfare," wasps are not going to be able to sting it. They could... but it isn't going to do anything unless their stings are explosive or somethin. That is also going to be an issue you'll need to get around (and it is able to be solved). Maybe have the wasps swarm and carry the tank, then drop it from high in the air (kind of comical) or have them be smart enough to pry open the hatch and get inside. Whatever you do, this is a problem you will need to address.
## Conclusion:
I'd say don't give up on the idea. It's a good one, and could certainly work for different genres or scenes. Personally, I have a (granted, irrational) fear of bees and wasps, so this idea would literally be my worst nightmare. Because of that, I think the idea is great. I know I'm not the only one who would be scared out of their mind if a swarm of wasps came to attack. The idea could totally work, you just have to take into account the cons and find a way to solve them or work around them.
Not *everyone* will like the idea, but of course when does that ever happen? The idea may not seem practical to some (it is far-fetched in modern times), but it certainly isn't impossible, do not count it out. As I stated at the beginning, many stories (books, movies, video games) have already used an element similar to this one. It isn't impossible and the idea has some practicality: its been used in popular stories before (i.e. The Hunger Games, Hive, the Stung series, Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon, and more), but there are parts of it that are also impractical that you should keep in mind. Don't be discouraged if you get stuck, it happens, and I'm sure you can work through the issues and impracticalities. Overall it's a good idea; it may need tweaks here and there and cons need to be addressed and fixed, but nonetheless it is doable.
Hope this helps, good luck!
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Secrecy is key, but this could be useful, at least for a while.
I'm thinking using them to take on guerrilla troops like the ones hiding in caves in Afghanistan. We know there are terrorists hiding in caves, but we don't know which ones. The wasps will help us find them.
First, have the pheromone activate only when it comes in contact with a human. Saturate the area with it. When someone goes in or out of a cave, the pheromone activates and pulls in the swarm. Add some sort of tracking to the swarm, so you know what cave they went into. The swarm knocks everyone out, and troops have time to go in and capture everyone with minimal casualties.
It might work, it might not. It's no crazier than some military ideas like [The Military stink bomb](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/01/0107_020107TVstinkbomb.html)
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So the heroes banded together, roamed the world, found new allies, amassed an army and set out to free their lands from the evil empire. And they succeeded! But what happens now? A lot of stories like go right up at the point where the good guys win and end there. Nice way to finish, but I've always wondered about what might occur after their hard fought victory.
Does a new government rise up from the ashes of the empire led by said good guys? Or would the land just fall in to chaos now that none is around to govern it? Would it be possible for them to face the same hardships as their enemies, like dealing with rebels wanting to rid themselves of their own style of government? What could possibly happen after the empire falls?
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I'll take the occasion to mention Brandon Sanderson Mistborn series. Its practically the main theme of the second book.
Anyway, to make it short: **any empire** needs some sort of power infrastructure to work. It serves no good being an evil emperor if you don't have anyone who goes around, making sure every peasant stays in check.
Most evil empires are set in a fantasy/medieval word, so we can mainly talk about nobles, army lieutennants and priests, but this could really be true for *any* administrative figure. An army of tiny, zealous bureaucrats can work as well as a real army. After all your empire cannot sustain itself on pure evil: you will need someone to collect taxes for you, spread your orders, cull the locals, enforce law ... **tl,dr:** a lot of people, organized in some sort of gerarchical structures, are needed to make an empire function.
Now, when the good guys take down the evil boss, they'll have to deal with this state of things. Let's assume that the evil army isn't a problem anymore, because it's being conquered already, and rule them out (it's kind of a strong assumption, since there may still be rogue evil-battalions around, or experienced generals gone into hiding). The good guys have to choose how to rule - turns out, as you can imagine, that is not easy.
I'll also assume, from now on, that the best option is to keep the empire united and intact and try to avoid total chaos. A central government means order, and the good guys probably wouldn't want to be remembered as the ones who saved the land to let if fall into mayhem.
**Sit on top of the previous infrastructure**
One option is to convince all the government apparatus that there is a new boss in town. This could seem a quite viable option at the start, since the good guys have the upper hand with the military power.
This way poses several hidden and not-so-hidden threats.
First of all, we may as well assume that most of the administrative higher-ups are evil, or corrupt, or have tainted themselves with horrible atrocities. Probably it will be hard for the good guys (from now on, the *GGs*) accept to work with them.
But this is true for lesser bureaucrats as well. Who knows, after all, how much corruption is spread into the empire organization?
Probably most people who worked with the evil emperor felt that they were "just doing their job at the best of their capacity", but as it turns out, those people tends to be cruelly efficient when led by a convincing evil intent (If you haven't read it: [Eichmann in Jerusalem - Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem)).
Some can be convinced to work with the GGs, some will retain faith to the previous emperor and try to silent undermine the establishment. Given months, the collection of taxes or food sources may get more and more crunky.
Keep this in mind, because it can be crucial.
**Kick the castle down**
Seeing how the previous option fares, the GGs may want to kill/exile/fire everyone who ever worked in the previous administration and replace them with people of trust and goodwil. And that's great! I mean, I'd have too my best friends leading far, important regions of my empire, rather than some possibly murderous stranger.
The point here is that if the evil emperor or his staff cared even a bit about efficiency (and someone, if an empire is able to sustain its weight, has to care about it) it means that the previous administration *knew the work well,* or at least, well enough to do it. The GGs are maybe good at winning the war, but may not have the sligthest idea on how to do accounting, how to collect and store taxes and supplies, prevent famine, disease spread, overpopulation in the main capital ... and whatever else.
It might take time to build a new system that works. This means a long period of instability and reduced tax income at least, total catastrophe at worst. Probably the GGs are on the good side of a lot of people, exspecially towards those categories oppressed by the evil ruler, but even those people will stop being supportive without a job, a shelter with decent conditions, and food in their bellies.
Also, large masses of people are prone to have a short memory. "*Hey, the last emperor was kinda bad, but at least was able to produce bread for all!*" regardless than this was true or not.
So, it's probably good to keep your army around and try to mix between the two solutions - giving most power to people of trust but trying to learn all the possible from old employees before, if ever, replacing them.
**How to deal with nobility 101**
If your empire has nobles, you probably have to win them on the GGs side. Maybe there are some nobles on the GGs army (that was all good to overthrow the evil emperor, but now they'll want something in return...). Nobles tend to be quite proud, stingy, and good at scheming, thought - not exactly the people you want around. As it goes, they could be a major source of instability - even if not openly hostile towards the GGs.
In every empire in human history, there was the struggle between the central authority and the aristocracy / local authorities. This is going to stay, no matter what. Even the most good willed noble will try to get something for himself - now, imagine what the *least* good-willed can do.
Nobles conspiring to assassinate, or start a rebellion, are a clear example of this. They could right up take their lands, fortify them, and proclaim their region a separate reign. Either they will do this right away, or at a most propitious moment. Hostile nobles can work with reluctant bureocracy, zealous priests, and - even! - other nobles.
Even if they work with you, their are still regional authorities, and giving them too much power will be detrimental to the empire - assuming you want to keep the empire on, of course.
**Foreign Relationships**
Yea, I know. Most evil empires are so evil and so big that there is literally nothing beside them. If the previous emperor didn't conquer all that was there to conquer, tho, the GGs will have to deal with their neighbours, they be either other empires/kingdoms/coalitions of city states or "whatever sort of dweller of the wild regions". Now, the second kind of neighbour can be an hassle to your border region, but should be in check (unless they manage to unite all the tribes in one enormous raiding party, of course).
The real treat are those neighbour kingdoms. Maybe they hold a grudge against the empire, maybe they just want more land for themselves; the point is, the best moment to wage war to someone is when he isn't able to respond. Probably the GGs will have to wear energies and resources to mantain order and internal affairs, so, it will be difficult for them to resist an assalt from a foreign nation. Better still if this happens at the same time with a noble revolt in another part of the empire.
**Much and more:**
I kinda spent half an hour or more on this answer, and you'll be tired of reading my rants. Is there more? Oh, yes. Surely someone else will bring up religious matters (more so if the evil emperor was lead of a cult), economics, and who knows what else. Hope I did provide some good insights, tho.
So, quick recap:
**Does a new government rise up from the ashes of the empire led by said good guys?** Yea, but it's a ton of work.
**Or would the land just fall in to chaos now that none is around to govern it?** Could definetly happen, regardless of the GGs intentions. Lead an empire is no easy task; in real life, empires often didn't survive their emperors (Alexander the great is a great example of this). Chaos can be temporary, tho. Some sort of order should emerge from it, after much bloodshed.
**Would it be possible for them to face the same hardships as their enemies, like dealing with rebels wanting to rid themselves of their own style of government?** Absolutely. But before dealing with rebels, they have to deal with all the administrative duties! Common routine, yes, but the larger the empire, the more difficult it gets.
**What could possibly happen after the empire falls?** Chaos, as you stated it; more war, as I explained earlier, between different factions; or a longish period of instability and insecurities after wich a new empire eventually rises.
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Fiction is not your only resource; consider revolutions in real life. Consider the American Revolution: King George and Britain was the evil empire, our Founding Fathers were the rebels. What did they do after they won? They formed a new government from scratch; no trace of the English system anywhere; no Royalty, no peerage, no permanent Titles, no birthright privileges.
They wrote themselves a new Constitution, rather short and to the point. They were already divided geographically, they formalized that. Then they got on with business much as it was before, with more freedom, less taxation, etc.
They did have some squabbles and yelling matches. They did have to come back and meet again to revise things a few years later. But most people feel they did a passable job, and they definitely threw off the yoke of the English completely, abandoned the system of Monarchy and Royals completely, and this all lasted for long after the last of the original rebels had peacefully expired. (Charles Carroll was the last surviving Signer of the Declaration of Independence; he died at the age of 95 in 1832).
I will note, the Americans did this without killing King George, and without entirely destroying his Military people or assets. That was due to their distance from England, but you can build similar isolation or barriers into your story: How much damage you do to the existing infrastructure is truly up to you as the author; as is the willingness of the Kings men to accept defeat and accept the Rebels as their Leader.
[The Rebel Leader: "You may solemnly swear to surrender arms, walk away, rejoin your family and leave war forever. Or you may remain a soldier, your only oath of fealty will be to protect and defend with your life all the people of this land equally. Or our champions have agreed to give you an honorable death in unarmed single combat, with a respectful funeral. The choice is yours."]
Like the American Revolution against the British, your story will be more believable if the Rebels have discussed, before they won or even began to fight, what they believe in for forming a country, and if they were, like the Founding Fathers, relative to most others of their time, well read enough in political theory to engineer a new working system.
Then your post-victory phase doesn't have to start from scratch with your characters suddenly acquiring all kinds of new ideas, many of which are rather dry reading. You have already sprinkled those dry bits throughout, from the beginning: As opinion, camp fire debate, and ideological justification for fighting in the first place.
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Yes how to solve the problem of the evil empire here are a few common tropes as well as some real life possibilities.
1. The good and righteous heir to the throne: this is how the problem of the evil Empires is usually solve in fiction have the heir to the throne defect from the bad side and joined the good guys and help overthrow his dad. Once In Charge he can turn the evil empire into a good or at least not so evil empire.
2. Occupation and rebirth. Let's look the most common inspiration for the evil empire the Third Reich. Once the Third Reich was defeated the US and Russian forces occupied the countries which had formerly been taken by the Third Reich. In the USA's case the occupation didn't really last long just long enough to reestablish their Old Governments. In the case of Russia the Old Government wasn't reestablished but instead the countries were formed into a new entity called the Soviet Union. In either case though you have a time of essentially martial law for at least a little while and tell old governments can be rebuild or new governments can be formed.
3. You can do nothing. This is probably the worst thing to do but it's possible for you to do it, after all your calling as a hero was to take out the evil empire you've done that you've destroyed their armies and now their leader is dead. If you want you could just go back home and let things work themselves out, true there might be chaos maybe Wars from from factions within the empire that have been hostile to each other for quite some time and only held back by the strength of the evil Empires Imperial and are now free to resume hostilities, true that the remnant of the Imperial Army may rally behind one of the few remaining generals and might form an even more evil empire but that's another Hero's problem your job is done.
So we're clear I'm assuming that you not only killed the leader but also destroyed the evil Empires Army. If not then you really haven't defeated the evil empire. And you now have to fight his generals you will try to use the military to seize power and make them self the new emperor Star Wars the expanded universe or Star Wars Legends if you want to see some examples of how that would turn out.
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## The problem
When you remove a government, you leave a power vacuum. This vacuum is larger the more authoritarian the previous government was. Everyone with power will try to use the opportunity and fill that vacuum by seizing power. Organizations which might be relevant are:
* Religious organizations (Egypt 2011)
* Remnants of the old military (Egypt 2013)
* Neighboring states seeking an opportunity to increase their sphere of influence (Ukraine 2014)
* Competing paramilitary organizations (ISIS in Iraq since 2006)
When there is more than one faction which considers itself able to fill that power vacuum, then you will likely end up in a long and bloody civil war (Lybia 2014 till today).
In those cases where the resistance does have the resources to fill the power vacuum itself, they usually discover that they have a crucial problem: They are good at toppling governments but not so good at forming them. Guerilla fighters don't make good politicians.
Often the new revolutionary government starts well meant and with great intentions. But because they are lacking proper statecraft skills and political experience, things soon go downhill. There will be voices which claim that things were actually better under the old regime. Counter-revolutionary movements start to take form. To regain control, the revolutionaries will again rely on the instruments they know how to use: violence and terror. In the end they just end up as a regime which is just as oppressive as the one they replaced. Examples:
* The [Reign of Terror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror) after the French revolution
* The [Bolsheviks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsheviks) after the Russian Revolution which ended up in the formation of the USSR.
## The solution
Writing a story about the virtuous rebels seeing their ideals crumble under the harsh reality of realpolitik might make for an interesting story (ex: George Orwell's [Animal Farm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm)).
But if you would rather like to write a story where the rebels are successful at reforming the state for the better, they will most of all need good and experienced politicians in their ranks. These must be politicians who believe in the general ideas of the revolution, but are not so fanatic that they want to enforce them immediately and above all other interests. They must be aware that they won't be able to change the country over night. They must work within existing structures and gradually reform them to the society they want while minimizing any collateral damage. Not with force but with good rhetoric and clever negotiation.
This surgical approach to reform won't be liked by the more extremist elements among the revolution. They will consider that approach half-assed and will question the loyalty and resolve of the politicians. So the extremists will have to serve a backseat role in rebuilding the country. You might want to consider [sending them somewhere far away to fight another revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara).
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The state in question exists in a pre-industrial world, which is separated from a parallel reality called The Warp by a thin barrier. This barrier protects the world from the denizens of The Warp and its corrupting influence. The Warp exists everywhere, in people's homes, where they work, etc. In certain parts of the world, the barrier has significantly weakened or fallen completely, allowing The Warp to seep into reality.
The Warp's influence corrupts everything it touches. It mutates animals, plants, humans, and entire areas. Prolonged exposure to its influence is detrimental. The inflicted become more aggressive and hostile, and serve as a continuing danger to others. Giant beasts, man eating plants, and places that defy the laws of physics are present in areas where the warp is most prevalent. It also extends itself to human society. Some children are born deformed due to The Warp's influence, and can be hereditary. These deformities range from physical to mental defects and are very obvious to onlookers. These warp touched individuals are referred to as the tainted. These individuals are not always dangerous, as their afflictions could just be physical rather than mental.
A culture developed in this state that emphasize's genetic purity. Fertile women, who produce strong, healthy children, are highly valued and considered sacred. A woman's biology is under her control. She can choose when to get pregnant and can slow down or pause the rate of gestation. Deformed babies who do not pass inspection (extra limbs, scaly skin, etc) are euthanized at birth.
What justifications can a state provide its people that would rationalize this social policy? What methods can it use to reinforce it in society ?
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You could do worse than to take your justifications for a pure and rational state from [Plato's Republic](http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.mb.txt).
>
> The proper officers will take the offspring of the good parents to the
> pen or fold, and there they will deposit them with certain nurses who
> dwell in a separate quarter; but the offspring of the inferior, or of
> the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some
> mysterious, unknown place, as they should be.
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> Yes, he said, that must be done if the breed of the guardians is to be
> kept pure.
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The Republic has lots of other ideas on setting up a state, many of them excellent.
The Nazis also were very efficient at setting up a state and part of their endeavor (predating the execution of the Jews) was a euthanasia program of defective babies and children, based on cost effective use of limited state funds and ensuring genetic purity.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lPRsu.jpg)
From Wikipedia.
"60,000 Reichsmark is what this person suffering from a hereditary defect costs the People's community during his lifetime."
Euthanasia of malformed newborns was and is pretty widespread. Economics favor it if resources are limited. The Nazis used this justification and that of genetic purity. In your circumstance it would be very plausible that these deformed ones have been tainted by the Warp and will grow to be a threat to their classmates.
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> What justifications can a state provide its people that would rationalize this social policy? What methods can it use to reinforce it in society ?
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This seems strange to you, I guess, because it's unthinkable in the modern era. But as other posters have pointed out, it's something that has precedent in the past.
It's actually stranger not to kill the deformed at birth culturally--at least in ancient history.
As to justification, you've already provided that more strongly than it's seen in the real world, by giving the deformities the ability to actually be a DANGER.
**REAL WORLD JUSTIFICATION 1: Possible inability to work and a drain on resources.**
In normal circumstances, killing deformed babies was common practice in ye olde times, because resources were scarcer and the ability to work was valued. A baby that merely had a club foot might be considered for euthanasia. Anything more serious could result in death for the child.
**REAL WORLD STUMBLING BLOCK 1: Heir and a spare. Solution below.**
That didn't mean that some deformed children were not allowed to live. But this depended often on social strata. For example, wealthier families might indulge, especially if they were desperate to produce an heir. It was always good to keep around a spare kid even if you'd already had some, just to pass things down, because disease could take them all. However, you could definitely help to make sure your nobles DON'T do this, by having some sort of inspection of their body before the crown/title is passed on when they are an adult. (Or have a certification done at birth.)
**REAL WORLD JUSTIFICATION 2: Purity & pride.** It's already been pointed out here that many societies, from the Spartans to the Nazis have used this as a reason.
**REAL WORLD STUMBLING BLOCK 2: Hiding deformities.** I know you said these deformities are obvious, but that doesn't have to be true and even so, in the real world people found lots of creative ways to hide deformities, if they could. In your world, you have the inspection at birth. Midwives would have to be above reproach, and the penalties for hiding that a child has a deformity might be death, or at the very least, social humiliation, and being stripped of their midwife license. If a kid has say, one scale--maybe that will fall off later? Or it could be removed by a discreet doctor?
I'd say there should be a certification that a kid gets at birth--a tiny defect like a small patch of scales and such might be watched, and they would not get certified pure, which means that they are not allowed to get married and have children. (Of course, this will result in common law marriages, and it will often be between the tainted, which may result in communities apart, which may occasionally be burned to the ground because the people there are blamed for whatever).
Whether a set up like this is allowed is going to depend on how many babies are born with some level of deformity. *If you have a high birthrate, and a really low percentage of deformity, then killing them all, even if it's cosmetic and easily hidden, should be possible, if the consequences are dire.*
And, if a child is discovered years later, what then? Because babies are cute, mothers love them, and there will be some, especially with minor defects that will not be killed, even if you kill any midwives that allow it. Should they be killed then? That's possible, but more difficult to do without eliciting sympathy, especially if they've been useful members of society. Depending on the frequency you have to do something with those--either give them a job that might kill them (fighting the creatures that have resulted from the Warp) or find another way to separate them from society.
Solutions here include 1) multiple witnesses at the birth 2) dire consequences for hiding such a thing 3) perhaps an inspection by several priests or priestesses prior to marriage to make sure you haven't been influenced by the Warp since your birth or as a second measure if perhaps your midwife allowed you to live.
**REAL WORLD JUSTIFICATION 3: It's a hard knock life.**
The easiest way to make it acceptable to kill babies, is to make sure that it's illustrated to people that the lives of the tainted are, in fact, more terrible than being alive. A mother would feel better about killing a child if, in fact they would be sparing them a life of misery and pain. In ye olden tymes, this was used as justification, but with your world, I am sure you can find a way to turn that up to 11. Government and society can participate in this. There should be caged carts with tainted people to illustrate this. Seriously.
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**Think about the parents**
I imagine something with this sort of pervading effect across all aspects of life would seep into culture too. Fables, myths and Gods will doubtless be related to this. What you need is some story of "returning" the tainted to the Warp. Some method where the mother can console herself with thinking her baby has gone to the right place for it, rather than having taken away any potential joy the child could have had.
Mothers build up a bond with their child and are primed to do anything for their child at the moment of birth. You need to give them a good reason not to regret their choice else you risk a rise in various mental illnesses and guilt in the parents.
I suggest some peaceful seeming method, floating the babies out in small wicker basket into a lake where the spirit of the void is said to live. Perhaps these boats are designed such that they will sink before too long (when the spirit takes them).
If the state adopts this belief or promotes a church following it then before too long it will become the norm.
You could even tie it in with adoptions - after sending off a tainted child you can adopt (or perhaps adoptions will become preferred and pregnancy an occupation where all children are taken from you).
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The available evidence indicates that for hundreds of thousand of years it was routine for parents to kill newborn infants or abandon them to die. It is estimated that about 10 to 20 percent of all humans born were murdered as newborn infants. Naturally any noticeably deformed infants would be much more likely to be murdered.
Therefore I do not think that your fictional society will have much difficulty persuading its people to behave just as evilly as the vast majority of humans throughout the existence of *Homo sapiens* have, instead of behaving as good as the comparatively tiny minority of humans in recent decades, centuries, and millennia who have been opposed to murdering newborn infants.
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There is no shortage of real world examples of this. Will points to the most visible, recent example. The Spartans did this (and more) to breed strong warriors.
There is a shrinking tribe in Africa that does this but they go a bit overboard. They mix it in with superstition to the point that if a baby cuts its first tooth from the lower jaw instead of the upper jaw, it is killed for the good of the tribe. There are so many "non-defect" features that, because they are bad omens, end up with the death of the child that the tribe is on the verge of disappearing.
In India (in the remote villages), some still drown girl babies simply because the family has to pay a dowry to marry them off.
So, whether the people are trying to promote the strong or avoid the bad, it seems pretty common to get the culture to buy into eugenics.
Here are some ideas:
Maybe provide scholarships for the strong, tax breaks for healthy children, increased costs from taxes to marriage licenses for each "sub-optimal" person living in that family (if you marry into a family with such people, you get the tax penalty too).
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Nazis... Sparta... Barbaric tribes...
Hmmm... Why are we looking really so far?
Would there really have to be a justification? Wouldn't making it legal (claim it's not a human being; its all parents choice) it letting society to get used to this idea.
Let's look at fate of babies/fetus diagnosed with Down Syndrome:
>
> About 92% of pregnancies in Europe with a diagnosis of Down syndrome are terminated.[14] In the United States, termination rates are around 67%, but this rate varied from 61% to 93% among different populations evaluated.[13] When nonpregnant people are asked if they would have a termination if their fetus tested positive, 23–33% said yes, when high-risk pregnant women were asked, 46–86% said yes, and when women who screened positive are asked, 89–97% say yes.[84]
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome#Abortion_rates>
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Actually the most twisted thing is that gov may just ask parents who disagree to sign a statement that they want to send the kid to some asylum, cover all cost and provide collateral.
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My generation ship aliens have 2 thumbed hands. No, not the 2 thumbs on the same side that some humans have but the 2 thumbs on opposite sides. So it would be kind of like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HMqHm.jpg)
Except more reptilian and less human as far as the skin but this picture right here is of a hand with 2 thumbs and the thumbs on opposite sides of the hand.
The reason my aliens have 2 thumbs on each hand is to increase their grip strength. The grip strength of the pinky may be 50% of the total grip strength of the human hand but we wouldn't have much grip strength without a thumb. Having a thumb makes us better at grabbing on to things. I would imagine that having 2 thumbs would be even better. Plus, with a 2 thumbed hand you could cross your 2 thumbs while having the other 4 fingers relaxed. And counting in base 12 would be easier too.
**Anyway, would having a second thumb on the opposite side of the hand increase the aliens grip strength significantly? I think it would, but would my aliens really have significantly better grip strength than humans with a second thumb on the opposite side of both hands?**
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The Moties are an alien race from a series by Pournelle and Niven who have hands like those you describe, with a thumb on each side of the hand.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God%27s_Eye>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aBd7o.jpg)
from <http://javidluffy.deviantart.com/art/Meet-the-Moties-326500764>
As regards real things, koalas have two thumbs but on the same side. Thus the grip is still a pincer with thumbs on one side and fingers on the other.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ECxuc.jpg)
The problem with a hand like you depict in your photoshop image is that the fingers cannot contribute to a pincer like grip with both thumbs at the same time. They become superfluous.
Possums come closest to a real thing that you describe except the fingers are rotated to work with the "thumbs". Each thumb has an allied finger. That still leaves the possum with a superfluous middle finger, which might be used to signal other possums. That on the front feet only - back feet are like our hands. I think the Moties might have had 6 fingers and probably that gives 2 fingers allied with each thumb and no spare middle.
I was interested to see the palm grip pads on the possum which I did not know about and which are pretty cool.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SWpMq.jpg)
this possum hand from <http://www.hsu.edu/Academics/ARNatureTrivia/mammal-marsupial.html>
My proposition: for your alien, copy the possum hand with its palm grip pads.
Maybe the marsupial angle could be used to design other aspects of your aliens too.
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Well the main purpose of the thumb is in giving something for all the other fingers to push against while gripping.
The technical term for the gription provided by a finger is the coefficient of static friction. The force that a finger provides is directly related to this coefficient. Assuming then that your aliens thumbs and fingers are similar on coefficient and contact area, your getting a 1/5, or 20% increase in gription.
Hmm. Not the fifty percent we need. Well, there is of course the other factor in the gription equation, force applied. Here is where the extra thumb really shines. The equation is F=uN, where u is that coefficient and N is the normal force applied. With one thumb we assume the limiting factor for holding gripping an object bigger than why we can just curl our fingers around (where a thumb doesn't help much) is how much normal force applied by the fingers that the thumb can counteract. With two thumbs, you can counteract twice the force (assuming enough finger musculature to supply that force). That's a 1/2, or 50% increase in gription. Note, however, that this is only in the thumb required for gripping case. Think a little about the times you hold onto something really tight, and I think you'll find that thumbs aren't usually all that helpful. They're useful for opening doors, but consider how your aliens will have to grip things to make full use of this thumb.
As a side note: to us one-thumbers, that extra appendage would be pretty weird. The utensils etc. that the two-thumbers use will seem pretty weird two.
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For grip strength feats the fingers push against the gripped object against the palm, not the thumb. Try hanging off a branch gripped between fingers and thumb and you may get a chance to see what happened while you're falling. Whereas you can hang from a branch, take your thumb off entirely and wiggle it around and still hang there for a while. Other primates have tiny thumbs relative to ours, they stabilise and help a bit, but overall it's the fingers and palm doing the work.
So grip strength isn't so much about the thumb. The thumb comes in to it's own and is particularly useful for fine gripping and manipulation rather than strong grip. You can see this with powerlifters, they don't grip around a bar, their thumb is on the same side as the fingers for many lifts. And when disarming someone holding a weapon, or breaking a hold, the thumb is the weak point in their grip, not the fingers.
You extra thumb would actually get in the way for some bar lifts. Other situations such as martial arts it will be an advantage in some ways but bad in others since you lose the ability to chop with the edge of your hand and instead would damage the outward thumb trying to do so. Human hands are actually pretty well designed.
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Reptilian with multiple opposing digits? Sounds like chameleons:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3Lnhe.jpg)
[photo source](https://www.pinterest.com/explore/chameleons/)
Yes, our little Madagascan color-changing friends already have the arrangement you are looking for. Why? Because their arboreal life almost demands it.
While moving along from branch to branch, from tree to tree, even over flowers and leaves, you need to be able to hold on. The mouth and tongue capture the prey, and the tail aids with balance and can grip a little, but for true twig-grabbing strength, they rely on that second opposable digit.
Your aliens started from something very close to Earth's chameleon, and therefore likely arose in a similar environment or biome. They then went right on evolving, until arriving at sentience and space travel and all that.
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## Around cylindrical objects, yes
The human hand performs seven types of grips, the six listed below plus a fist. Your aliens should be able to duplicate all these motions though some will be more awkward than for a human.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MSuoO.jpg)
Of the six grip types, the cylindrical grip would benefit most from an additional thumb. Spherical grip might benefit from a second thumb. Tip, palmar, and lateral grip would improve in some circumstances. Hook grip would see no change. A fist might benefit from a second stabilizing thumb but I'm not sure how much (I'm don't have a good idea of how fist strikes work in order to make a guess about how a second thumb might help or hurt).
## Where these aliens grew up
It seems clear that these aliens evolved in an environment where the ability to very securely grasp cylindrical objects was a significant selection pressure. Whatever the environment, the neurological costs associated with a second thumb provided the needed survivability over a single thumbed cousin.
## Additional Reading
[The Anatomy and Mechanics of the Human Hand](http://www.oandplibrary.org/al/1955_02_022.asp)
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**The utility of a second thumb would probably be greater if the two thumbs were specialized, rather than identical mirror images of our current digits.** Similar in spirit to the asymmetrically-armed Moties in Niven/Pournelle's classic first-contact novel,
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God%27s_Eye>
I posit one thumb (probably our original one) becomes the 'power thumb' with stronger bones, tendons and muscles. The hand becomes elongated (longer carpal bones) and the "power thumb's" bones elongate to match. The 'dexterous' thumb stays at finger scale, for fine/delicate work.
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This is an idea I've been toying with for some time. My idea is a human race where FTL is relatively easy, so colonization is widespread. Its not entirely wild frontier. Habitable worlds are identified and a "Citadel" is constructed. Basically a building that is large enough to house the initial population, has the infrastructure to support them and can act as a seat of government when the colony begins expanding and the population has alternate housing.
Strict birth-control is enforced during the initial phase of colonization, because colonists must first expand their infrastructure and be able to live independent of the Citadel. After the colony is deemed stable enough, the birth control enforcement is lifted.
Now we come to the meat and potatoes. Assuming a fairly small initial population (say 200-400) where the workforce is supplemented with machinery, would it then be a good idea to ensure genetic diversity within the colony by also bringing a cargo of sperm- and egg cells? Basically couples who wish to have children may need to have one or both of their "genetic input" replaced with the "cargo gene pool".
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Genetic diversity is an issue, but may not be a deal breaker. There are several islands with populations that descend from a small number of founders: Pitcairn (6 women and 11 men) and Tristan da Cunha (7 women 8 men) have had to deal with much more severe inbreeding. You should screen your colonists for genetic defects. (Tristan da Cunha has a high prevalence of asthma, due to its founders). In general people 50 is enough for the short term, and 500 for the long term.
How easy is FTL travel in your universe? If there is a regular ferry service from other nearby colonies then the introduction of new arrivals can also increase diversity. However, having 200 individuals is on the small side, if there is to be no further influx of arrivals, whereas 400 is probably enough for there to be no inbreeding depression at all. Inbreeding only becomes a problem on the second generation (when recessive traits can start to appear) You may have 20 years to build up new arrivals.
If you are looking to expand the population then the limiting factor may be the number of wombs. If you are taking sperm with you, it is hard to justify the presence of men among the founders. Not having any men makes enforcing the initial birth control phase much easier, and then it makes the population growth phase quicker.
The effective population size is $$\frac{4N\_mN\_F}{N\_m+N\_f}$$ where $N\_m$ and $N\_f$ are the number of fertile men and women (counting vials of sperm as men here). You can achieve a healthy effective population of nearly 500 with just 125 women and a well-stocked sperm bank.
Further reading about this at [this page](http://yanwong.me/?p=1115), and at the sites and papers linked there.
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A colony in a new found land is always an highly risky place, where death is more likely than in the colonists' homeland.
Taking for granted that the mortality rate will be higher, controlling reproduction is very likely to threaten the colony immediate future. You need to have as much offspring as possible to replace the deads.
You might consider loosening the family bonds, so that orphans are grown up by the community and have more chances to reach adulthood.
On top of this, having more genetic variability is a good idea in the beginning. Once the colonists have started adapting to the local conditions (it will take some generation) using homeland genetic material will be detrimental to the adaptation.
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Would your cargo gene pool help? Of course it would. You're introducing genetic variety into your gene pool. That will help offset inbreeding. However it might not be the only solution to your problem.
## travel is cheap
If FTL is plentiful, why not bring in more fresh 'breeders'? This can either be more colonists from Earth or colonists from nearby colonies that come of age. You could even enforce a policy that forbids mating with fellow colonists. Either the men or the women must go to other colonies.
That allows you a target for your education. You obviously teach engineering to the group that stays, that will maintain your colony. There is another reason why this is plausible. People tend to be not attracted to those they grow up with up to at least age 7. So anyone you saw daily up to age 7 tends to be unattractive to you. You treat them like a sibling. Obviously exceptions exist but that was about 5% I think.
## Think of the stretchmarks
I'd argue if your civilization has both FTL and can make a colony with only a few hundred people and no extra imports from home, they can make artificial wombs. Why? Because they remove an important bottleneck.
If you don't have artificial wombs it makes sense to have more women then men. Fertilize the extra women with either cargo sperm or the existing men. Will require a cultural shift, especially the latter. Artificial wombs would allow even men to have children. All he needs is a cargo egg and time. That could create an interesting parent-child dynamic as you'd have a lot of single parents.
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**Numbers Not Required**
If you are wanting to use artificial insemination, why not just use [CRISPR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR), or something like it, to create artificial genetic diversity. CRISPR allows for the precise editing of genes. The unfertilized egg and/or zygote could have randomness injected into its genome to preserve diversity.
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This would be for a medieval/steampunk type tech level.
I have a set of soldiers in my book that I want to have wearing mirrored armor and I'm curious if that is at all explainable with real world application? Would it be possible to create armor with a mirror like substance? Or would it need to be simply steel or another metal just polished to the brights shine anyone has ever seen? Also, is it possible to have a mirrored surface like that that is strong and durable? i.e. won't shatter like a real mirror would when you hit it.
I want their armor to look like pretty traditional armor, but I will give them some interesting helmets and I want the surface to be like a literal mirror. I realize this might cause a problem for themselves as well so I've considered dressing them with some sort of fur draped over their shoulders to block any rays of light that might distract them.
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To me this is an easy yes, for several reasons.
First, when you polish metal, you take away things called [*stress risers*](https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/q/18183/4152). This overall makes the metal stronger because it is less likely to crack, chip, or break under stress.
Second, it could easily be explained within your world (just like you are saying). The military unit which your armor is used in could easily *require* their members to clean and shine the armor to a bright sheen. You could easily accomplish this using steel wool and some [Brasso like substance](http://www.britsuperstore.com/usa/browse-by-section/homecare/metal-polish/brasso.html?gclid=CL-t1IzR_NECFc2KswodPWAHZQ&p=1#products-list-item-3382). Requiring the "troops" to keep their armor in tip-top shape is part of *esprit de corps*, which is a means by which to keep the troops motivated.
Third, as part of the world, it could be known these specific "knights" (or whatever you are calling them) have this certain armor. This armor signifies great things, *yada, yada, yada*. You get the picture.
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It is certainly possible to polish steel to a bright mirror finish. This is quite labour intensive and bare steel oxidises fairly quickly so it would take a lot of looking after but can be done. Buffing with a hard wax helps preserve teh surface a bit longer.
This would be pretty difficult to maintain on a long campaign in the field but for troops based at a garrison it might well be possible.
Even some modern military units use polished steel armour as part of their ceremonial uniforms, for example the [Household Cavalry](http://householdcavalry.info/brest.html).
Gold or silver plating would help both of these are simple enough processes to be reasonably plausible with medieval technology and there are plenty of examples of silver and guided armour. Gold especially is very corrosion resistant but relatively soft so more prone to scuffs and scratches.
In terms of practicality stainless steel or chrome plating would be the most durable but these really require quite sophisticated industrial processes which are modern rather than medieval.
Historically it is not uncommon to see evidence of very ornate ceremonial armour with guiding, bluing and engraving etc and more utilitarian sets used for actual campaigning, often black. Conversely there h ave been periods where black armour has been fashionable because it was associated with the professional mercenary companies which had a formidable reputation in europe.
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Why not?
Imagine regular armor wrapped with aluminum foil (or for that matter, silver foil) that is held taut?
It could be ablative with damages layers torn off between battles like a snake's skin.
It wouldn't add much protection from anything except light (and perhaps lasers), of the appropriate waive lengths, and it would be shitty for stealth, but I don't see why it isn't feasible.
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If you want them to have armor that is highly polished and highly reflective then a simply covering over the regular armor would seem more practical.
After all, while you want them to look nice, it's also important that for those hopefully rare occasions when they venture forth to hit people that they have *real* armor that stops such trivia as bullets, shrapnel and (my personal favorite) your basic club-with-a-nail-in-it.
So you would give them an inner layer that takes the hits and some very expendable easy replaced spiffy mirror finish material as an overall-style uniform.
If you're mainly interested in mirrored head gear then you can actually use a normal mirror technique if you can get some very tough transparent plastic ([transparent aluminum](http://makezine.com/2012/01/17/transparent-aluminum/) anyone ? :-) ). In a normal mirror you just spray the mirror finish onto glass.
I suppose a full body armor suit of the same type is equally possible.
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Metallic film cover that is already mentioned is one option. Another option is metallic plating, like chrome plating.
Durability: low for foil, medium for plating. Both inferior to solid steel (even chromium is harder than steel, scratched chrome finish would look much uglier than scratched steel).
Usability: both foil and plating should be made at some kind of factory/workshop. Soldiers can apply the foil themselves.
Look: Ok for the foil, potentially great for plating. When foil is affixed manually, it will shine, but can't really look like a mirror.
Just polished steel will also shine, not as bright as foil, and it will also never look like a mirror.
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If force fields haven't been invented and ships must be able to deploy and return too fast for doors, how might a capital ship be able to protect its hangar from space debris and opposing fighters
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The most sensible way would be to avoid having an internal dock altogether. IF a capital ship needs auxiliary ships like lighters, sensor drones or cutters to carry landing parties, they should be held in external cradles.
This provides several advantages.
Firstly, the ships can be deployed and recovered much more quickly than through a hanger or landing bay.
Secondly, there is less risk of having an accident contaminate the living spaces of the ship if the auxiliary ships are held externally rather than internally. As well, of there is an accident, the ship could be ejected quickly from the cradle.
Finally, and this should be greatly stressed, the elimination of a hanger space inside the ship eliminates a potential weak point in the structure. This could be very important if you are going to postulate a high thrust/ high ISP drive. Manoeuvres which cause the ship to pull more than a standard "G" would have to be avoided, since the ship could buckle under the stress. Weapons impact could also cause stresses to accumulate around the hanger so the ship buckles or breaks at that point. If your ship is using physical armour, then you also eliminate weak points in the protected volume.
So having auxiliary ships attached to the outside of the ships hull on cradles seems to be the best means to solve your issue without the use of forcefields.
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Future-tech Capital/Carrier ships will have to weigh their options when it comes to speed, versatility, and protection. The fastest option may be severely under-protected, and the most versatile options may be excessively slow, etc. To decide on the best possible options it is necessary to know not only what you need, but exactly why you need it.
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**What is a Hangar?**
A hangar is an enclosed storage area for aircraft/spacecraft. The hangar is where most repair and maintenance occurs and depending on the particulars of the vehicles in question it may also be where a pilot actually enters/exits their aircraft.
**What is a Runway?**
On Earth, all heavier-than-air fixed-wing aircraft require a minimum amount of forward airspeed to generate the lift needed to fly. Runways provide a clear path for these vehicles to accelerate from a stopped state up to the speeds required for liftoff. They also provide a safe area for that same craft to perform a controlled deceleration when returning to a non-flying state.
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## Does a future-tech Capital Ship want or need both (or either)?
The specifics of future-tech may be hard to speculate but general engineering principles still apply the same now as they will in the future. Without some big *game-changer* new technologies or tactics severely altering the landscape, extrapolating currently used ideas and allowing for some best-guess technological improvements may be the easiest way to evaluate possible options.
**Hangar** - Pros and Cons of enclosed Hangars.
* Pros:
+ Protection - Full enclosure offers some level of baseline protection. At a minimum it will prevent visual identification by hostiles, and beyond that minimum it could potentially be a well-fortified defensive position for all *"grounded"* craft. In non-combat situations it would likely offer a level of environmental protection (cosmic radiation, high-velocity space debris, etc.).
+ Versatility - An enclosed hangar can offer repair services, maintenance, etc. in a variety of ways that might be otherwise impossible to externally-docked aircraft. With an airlock system, maintenance can be done without the need for all maintenance personnel to don spacesuits; while some time (and/or air) may be consumed in the pressurization and depressurization procedures, the overall time saved in manhours may more than make up for that shortcoming. Even if repair is largely automated and requires no pressurization procedure for human mechanics, repair robots can be made smaller and more agile if they operate in an enclosed space where they will need less radiation shielding, etc.
+ Specialization - Depending on the airlock procedures or docking systems used, the entry/exit from an individual craft may involve quite a bit of hardware. The more capable/flexible the Carrier is the less hardware will be required on the smaller craft which allows room for more fuel, payload, etc. If pilot extraction can be carried out assembly-line style (as each pilot enters/exits) for an entire multi-ship hangar by one or two machines (rather than needing one extractor per ship) then overall weight of the Carrier can also be reduced.
* Cons:
+ Space - Large open (unobstructed) spaces take up a lot of physical volume and the strength of the structure must be carried entirely by its shell since interior supports would obstruct the passages. Some of this can be mitigated by having the hangar built alongside the more rigid superstructure of the ship but the hangar space will still be a weak point.
+ Containment - The fact that the individual craft are brought into an interior space of the ship can be bad for containment. Explosions and fuel leaks (which can lead to either fires or explosions) can become significantly more damaging when occurring in an enclosed area. Furthermore, embarkation ships (rather than the dogfighter-type scrambled aircraft generally described when talking about Carrier-type craft) which land on alien *terra firma* may introduce harmful contaminants, either chemical and pathological, that would be best kept outside.
+ Bottlenecks/Bandwidth - Although large hangars can operate efficiently using a few pieces of equipment over-and-over assembly-line style, those limited capabilities may create bottlenecks when something goes wrong. If two pilot-extractor machines can typically service an entire hangar wing, then one extractor going offline instantly halves the hangar's throughput. Individual external docks offer the maximum possible bandwidth, being able to launch all craft in the time it takes to launch one.
**Runways** - Pros and Cons of Runways in space.
* Cons:
+ Space - The space taken up by the defined acceleration/deceleration laneway can potentially take up a lot of physical volume. If this area is even partially enclosed this can add up to a lot of material.
+ Traffic - If everyone uses the same (or one of a few) designated entry/exit points then there will be an accumulation of traffic around these points, leading to more accidents. It also means that these hotspots are easy targets for enemy combatants.
+ Purpose - Spacecraft operating in space have no minimum-airspeed requirement to "fly" the way modern aircraft do. The designation of a specific "takeoff" area is therefore somewhat archaic- just a potentially vestigial procedure no longer warranted in the zero-g landscape.
* Pros:
+ Movement - Although individually-docked ships can all scramble and detach simultaneously, they are all equally exposed until they're all successfully detached and cleared from the main ship. Starting from a stationary position they are sitting ducks until they come up to speed. An enclosed runway, though offering less bandwidth, is able to offer a visually-concealed area for scrambling ships to reach appreciable speeds. Though enemies may know the vector the ships are launching from, the actual time-frame allowed for them to line up a shot may be significantly shorter than the timeframe for shooting low-starting-speed individual externally-docked ships. Runways also provide opportunities to install assisted-launch devices.
+ Deceleration - Landing on a modern water-based aircraft carrier is difficult from what I understand. Docking on a Capital ship likely has similar difficulties. Although in space there is no fear of "falling off the edge" if your approach is too slow, there may be many instances where trading precious seconds of landing time for precision can cost lives. Runways funneling traffic into per-specified approach vectors can severely aid recovery by including rapid-deceleration gear using tailhooks and similar-concept devices.
+ Defense - Although these entry/exit hotspots will likely be noticeable to enemy combatants, they are also more easily defended by the home team (compared to having a bunch of decentralized landing positions). Concentrating firepower at these locations will make it very difficult for enemies to line up the sort of "sitting duck" shots they'd ideally be getting by zeroing in on a docking (and therefore slow) aircraft.
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## Possible Conclusions
Though others may read the same above pros/cons and see different areas to optimize or design around I think the following ideas offer at least one reasonable interpertation:
**Have a runway (primarily) for assisted-deceleration and landing.**
Individual docking procedures are generally rather precise operations requiring a low-speed final approach; this makes them an extremely dangerous maneuver in a combat situation because the low-speed and fixed-location creates an easy target over a relatively long timeframe. The use of a deceleration runway can alleviate some of these issues by making the position more easily defensible while decreasing the timeframe where "landing" pilots are prone to attack.
Using a runway funnels pilots into a focused approach vector, which makes it easy to concentrate defensive countermeasures along this corridor, while also making it easy to install automated deceleration and recovery systems. Pilots can enter at appreciable speed, and begin a mild deceleration while automated systems line up the approach and latch on with a deceleration arm/anchor which can then decelerate the craft much more quickly without further precise input from the pilot. The anchor can then hand the ship off to an automated taxiing system to tow the ship to the most expedient hangar bay while the anchor resets for the next approach.
**Divert craft to different hangars as needed.**
Once a ship has been recovered it should be taxied to an appropriate hangar or bay. Depending on the situation the ship may need extreme repairs, a quick refuel and rearm and redeployment, or just a parking space. Ideally, some amount of hangar space should be optimized for these different sorts of roles. Refuel/rearm/redeploy ideally should be extremely automated and should stay completely outside of airlock. Repair would likely follow a tiered triage system, placing high-explosive-risk ships in bays where they pose least structural risk to the Carrier (and probably with highly-automated repair systems to minimize crew casualties), while pushing more average repairs to various other bays either mechanized or manned depending on the extent and complications of the damage. Tailoring different hangar bays can help improve automation procedures as well as minimize the number of compression/decompression events necessary (each of which require time, energy, and some amount of air resources).
Additionally, since the taxiing is an automated towing process, pilot extraction could potentially occur during that time. This would be particularly useful for medical intervention, but would also make hot-swapping pilots during a refuel/rearm pit-stop very easy.
**Have a number of mini-runway launch-tubes for faster scrambling.**
Although spaceflight requires no minimum-airspeed with regards to takeoff, there is a slight tactical advantage to having a non-zero launch speed. The use of an automated landing and hangar system rather than multiple individual docks means that the remainder of the system is already strongly inclined toward using runways, however, the traditional long runway isn't a necessity. Assisted-launch systems are far simpler in design and principle than assisted-recovery systems, so these take-off runways do not need to be nearly as large as the landing runway. A large number of these launch-tubes could be used, partially recreating some of the high-throughput bonuses of individual-exterior-dock systems, while retaining the bonuses of concealed deployment and non-zero launch speeds.
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One approach is to have a shield wall in front of the opening that requires one or more turns to get into the bay properly. This would prevent anything coming directly into the bay. This is similar to how breakwaters function to reduce the impact of waves on docks.
You could also have a friend-or-foe system with a point defense that automatically shoots anything that comes toward the shield wall. Assuming public key infrastructure (PKI) is valid, ships would have to have a valid encryption key to disable the system. Having the shield wall form a gauntlet (multiple turns) would give the point defense plenty of time to shoot enemy ships that actually go around the wall before they hit the bay.
Having a PKI and automated docking systems would let the computers take over for docking the ship and allow the system to have more precise entry vectors and turns ("maintenance tunnels are too small to pilot" paraphrased from Matrix 3) for the automated system, which would add another lay of security. In this case, once the docking system engages, it can pilot the ship precisely through the multiple turns of the shield without sacrificing significant speed ("wait until you are a thousand meters and give them a little shock" paraphrased from Alien 4). If a computer knows the exact turning ability and dimensions of the ship, they could probably get the ship through a precisely small opening or around the corners with very little tolerance.
You could also use automated docking robots to guide through the shield or gauntlet. This would also mean that the individual ships require less fuel to maneuver since that is handled by the docking "tugs".
Even if you don't have a shield wall, using PKI to identify friend-or-foe would allow you to have a point defense system (shoot all unknown ships). Of course, that would let into overriding the system for unknown or stolen ships, but that might use a secondary hanger that is well protected with a door.
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The capital ship could protect itself by using whatever anti-spacecraft technology exists to destroy enemy fighters before they can enter.
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How do they leave their smaller ship once inside the larger one? What about gravity?
A cradle system might work well, but you won't be able to do a variety of sizes and shapes of ships, and will have the embarkation debarkation issues. I liked the system in the first Capt. America movie where the small fighter jets were in the belly of the vehicle. But in space, well, there would have to be tubes or something so they could breathe on their way in--or they wear space suits, even inside their planes. This really depends on how large the fighter ships are and how much time people actually spend in them.
As for it being "too fast" any one who flies a ship can come in as fast or slow as needed. And they can keep doors open if need be, I suppose.
As the posters above have noted, if you aren't going to have passive defenses, things that shoot any ship not one of yours might be the way to go. But there has to be time to process that. There can be an automatic key, but having something the pilots also say to get in, might be good. And it should be unique to their ship.
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Well, it could be that the ships that are designed to go into those hangars could be shaped in a way, and the hangar openings actually are shaped just for those ships to go through.
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Generally speaking, fighters/drones shouldn't be docking while mid-battle and if a fighter can't slow down it can't maneuver so this doesn't really make sense...
Though if this is something you need you can drop the whole hanger out of the ship so all the docking is exterior to the ship, attached through some elevator system to the main bulk of the ship. This would make it so the hanger can enter and exit the ship and the ship can close the armor over that area and reinforce it's structure by having it so any time it drops out beams extend into the empty space. Generally speaking this isn't all that smart and it pretty much leaves all your support gone and your fighters vulnerable and if it gets wrecked you've just lost all your fighters even if you're fighters are fine. In fact if someone tried this I'd just wait for them to deploy and then target the hanger... then fly away. They either are going to sit there till supplies are used up or leave and then I can attack them without engaging their fighters...
Another option is similar to the above is to not have a hanger at all. Instead, have individual hanger bays that stay out while in battle, but aren't physically connected to an internal hanger save through a mechanism that can pull them from the bay to a place where they can be worked on. The bays would each have their own air locks and you could probably carry a lot more of them, but it would also be a pain to work on them.
Another option is to use torpedo like tubes where you shoot out the fighter and the fighter can enter the incoming tube and then you can deal with an internal air lock and such after it has landed. Of course this slows deployment and pick up, makes it hard to dock because it have to aim for a tube, and also creates a target to just destroy the tube and you cripple the ship pretty good.
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On our own world, following the fall of the dinosaurs, mammals became the dominant class. This was caused by a cluster of factors, such as the rapidly changing temperatures and their ability to adapt. No matter *how* they became the dominant life forms, they *are*; this makes me wonder could birds become the dominant class?
I mean obviously it is *possible*, but surely there are ways that I can increase the odds of birds becoming dominant, or even guarantee it. What evolutionary environments would help guarantee birds become the dominant class?
A list of all Planet of the Aves questions can be found [here](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3939/planet-of-the-aves-series/3940#3940)
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First off - who says mammals are dominant? There are about 10,000 species of birds, and 5,500 species of mammals. Mammals only get the 'dominant' label because (a) we are mammals and therefore biased, (b) the herds of megafauna which we like to watch in wildlife films - wildebeest, kangaroos, deer - are mammals.
Some of the birds had a bloody good go at being dominant. For instance, the [terror birds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae) were successful carnivores in South America for about 60 million years. Their mammalian competitors were marsupial carnivores, not placental carnivores for most of this. (The herbivores they were preying on were placentals). There were similar but unrelated giant killer birds in Europe and Asia - the [Gastornithidae.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastornithidae)
Where birds are going to lose out to mammals is **being big**. To be big they have to give up flying, because you can't be the weight of a sheep or a wolf and still get airborne. Basically to become enormous you have to become flightless: ostrich-like or terror-bird like.
Any niche which the birds *don't occupy* (because they need to stay small to fly) will be exploited by a mammal or reptile.
**Mammals have teeth**. That makes them really good at processing tough plant foods such as grass, or crunching up bones. A bird can do anything a mammal can in terms of making its intestines longer, or its stomach more efficient, but it can't chew its food. You could give your birds teeth again, but you will have turned them back into feathered dinosaurs.
**Eggs can't run away.** Mother mammal is lugging her babies around inside her womb, at the point that Mother Bird & Father Bird are sitting on their babies in eggs. So mammals can do things like travel while pregnant, but birds are stuck in one place until the eggs hatch. (Once hatching/birth has happened, things even up a bit). You could have some of your birds evolve live birth, and thus give them a life style more like a mammal's. There are fish, reptiles and amphibians which give birth to live young, so it's not completely outrageous to suggest a bird can too.
**Eggs are size limited.** The [elephant bird's egg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_bird) seems to be the maximum size which can be achieved. Even giant sauropod dinosaurs had eggs not much bigger than an ostrich egg. Birds therefore can't do the mammal thing of producing one enormous baby per year - they can't have a foal or a calf or a fawn. An adult ostrich and an adult deer might weigh the same amount, but the deer's newborn fawn is far ahead of the ostrich's newly hatched chick in the race to reach adult size. Again, live birth sorts this out.
**Mammals have milk.** It's a brilliant way of turning mum's fat and protein reserves into baby food. The milk can be specially tailored to baby's needs: high fat for baby polar bears, for instance. Birds (mostly) just have to collect what nature offers for their babies. However, pigeons and flamingoes produce [crop milk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_milk) which has the same function AND can be produced by both mum and dad. Make crop milk a more widespread feature of your birds, and they can feed their babies more like a mammal.
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The meteor missed. The end-cretaceous mass extinction event didn't happen. Velociraptors and their friends lived on. They continued to evolve, to be large, and to eat whatever they wanted.
We now understand that late "dinosaurs" were very close to birds. They had feathers, hopped on two legs, and maybe even made sounds closer to chirps and eagle-cries than to Hollywood roars. In fact, even though we call both T-Rex and Stegosaurus "dinosaurs," A T-Rex has more in common with a modern sparrow, and lived closer in time to a sparrow, than to a stegosaurus. (Yes, this is an [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/1211/) reference).
Clearly, at least a few things survived the end-cretaceous[citation needed] and became what we call birds. Had more things survived, and carried on as they were, they would have remained dominant. Mammals would have been kept in check and never got past being tiny rodent-like things scurrying around in burrows. The alt-world avians of today might not look exactly like real-world birds, but would be very close. And they would totally rule!
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I'm afraid 'evolution' and 'guarantee' don't play well together, *however*, you could improve the odds by giving a few species of avian life some of the advantages that mammals have. Once there were more than three types of mammals, not all made the evolutionary cut. Monotremes , Marsupials and Placentals all share milk for the young , I think that a parent being able to feed the young from stored resources (unlike Avians) is a profound advantage.
Secondary, although hominids are upright, *most* mammals are not. To my knowledge, all Avians are upright. Without forelimbs or other means to grasp and do tasks like making tools, evolution is limited.
Reselect a small to mid-sized Avian population, and give them the ability to feed the young on a short term basis, even in the absence of food, and the ability to grasp and shape the world around them, and you might have a winner... just my opinion.
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As an alternative to making the world more suited to birds, you could go with a few events to make the land less feasible to mammals and other creatures leaving only those that can go airborn to survive. And I think it's possible with a few geological and salt changes on our Earth.
There are several large scale extinction events in our not so distant history, most notably the Quaternary extinction events within North America that devastated the large mammal species. As a glacial period ends, you are left with giant melting ice sheets. These ice sheets melt at the surface, leaving large lakes on the top of them that grow and grow as the ice melts. Eventually these lakes breach the glacial ice wall holding them in and you have the entire contents of the lake then wash across what could be an entire continent. Lake Agassiz (larger than the great lakes combined) and it's associated drainage event into the Hudson Bay is attributed to an over 2.5 meter increase in global sea levels in some areas. Birds survive this event of course as they ride it out while air-born. Mammals and other land dwellers aren't so lucky.
Continuing these thoughts...there is a good reason why land-bound dinosaurs did not survive when the meteor impact hit while their air-born relatives survived. Being able to fly and the mobility this gives greatly increases a species ability to survive worldwide disasters.
As such my answer to your question is an increase in global disasters/extinction events, such as the toba extinction event that almost snuffed humanity as is, would inhibit all those that weren't yet able to fly. Leaving the birds as the only class to survive the repeated onslaughts of meteors, floods, volcanoes, and the nuclear winters associated with some of these events.
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In questions I have asked about the [afterlife](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/47181/how-can-i-scientifically-explain-the-afterlife) and [gods](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/25899/anatomically-correct-gods), it seems that the simplest solution of explaining these are to create a 4th spacial dimension.This dimension allows for souls and consciousness to exist and attach to a body, which effectively explains reincarnation and heaven.
The problem here is while I can excuse these things with dimensions, I now have to wonder what a soul is made of. After a lot of guessing and wondering, I have landed on gas as it fits with the classic depiction of the soul.
This creates a problem because, to my knowledge, there is no creature ever to exist that uses gas to store biological information. So, **can** I store information in a gas? If not, why not? If so, how much information?
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You can store information in a gas, but you can't store much.
Gasses are really inconvenient for this job, because they are always trying to escape from whatever container they're stored in, getting molecules stuck to the walls, and so on. They also move around at great speed. So counting molecules is impractical. Temperature, pressure and volume are almost completely interchangeable with gasses, so you can't store information in those separately: they really only amount to a single value "how much gas is there?" and that changes, fractionally, due to leaks.
The reactions between the different kinds of gas in a mixture aren't very useful because they'll either have gone to completion, in which case it's just two numbers, amount of gas A and amount of gas B, or they're in equilibrium, in which case you have three gasses to have amounts of, but the amounts *change* with temperature.
The presence or absence of different gasses, as read by a sense of smell, is your best bet, since such a sense can detect lots of different organic compounds, but this is still a very low-density way of storing information compared to DNA, and it isn't a good long-term means, because the sensor will interact with the gas and contaminate it slightly.
The thing that makes DNA storage so excellent is that it's built around long chain molecules. Very highly organised matter like that gives you very dense storage. But you can't have long chain molecules in a gas, because of their high molecular weight: before you get them hot enough to be a gas, they fall apart.
You might get lasting information storage of a kilobit per cubic centimetre with a scent-based mechanism. DNA, in an experiment in 2012, gave storage of 5.5 petabits per cubic millimetre, about 5 million million million times as dense. No, those three "million"s in a row aren't a mistake.
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This can be done *theoretically* but the methods **practically** required to make it working are far, far too demanding and intricate and difficult to build.
Basically, information is just simply the value of some specified variables. What is the temperature today? (The information is a real number). What color are your eyes? (The information is a text string, the name of a color).
# How Can Information Be Stored In Gaseous Form?
* by the composition of the gas. is it pure nitrogen? pure oxygen? or is it a mixture? if it is a mixture, what is the composition of the mixture? all these variables can be used to store nearly infinite amounts of information, considering how many different gases are possible and how many different combinations are possible to form a mixture.
* by the mass, temperature, volume and the pressure of the gas. simple enough. this only allowed for small amounts of information to be stored.
* the reactions between the gases. which gases take part, what products are formed, how are those products processed. all these variables can be used to store information.
* proportions of isotopes - same as used to detect how old archeological things are.
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You can do this. However, it is tricky to do so because gasses have so much apparently random motion. That random motion, if it is indeed random, can quickly obscure any information you hoped to store.
However, if you knew something we don't about the structure of matter, it may be that what we observe as random movement of gas molecules is not truly random at all. There may be a pattern to it. It may simply be a pattern that we have not been able to decypher, so we lump it all together and call it noise.
This is very hard to do in the middle of things. However, if you have an opportunity to control the initial state of the universe, or the rules of the universe, there are opportunities to hide information in places which are invisible to us with scientific measurements.
Such a theory cannot be thought of as scientific, for there is no empirical way to test the theory, but it is not impossible for it to occur alongside our known laws.
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**Yes, gas can store information.** Gas is *mostly* made up of small molecules, but larger substances can certainly dissolve. [Moth pheromones](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John-Byers-3/publication/7142972/figure/fig8/AS:279265967919149@1443593603537/Examples-of-moth-pheromone-components-Z-9-tetradecenyl-acetate-or-Z9-14Ac-in-commonly.png) can contain a wide variety of fairly long chemicals. These don't just fall out of the air - moth pheromones can travel for many miles. Moths of many different species may be finding their own vision of Heaven flying in all different directions on the same night.
For larger tranmissions, you could design a clever combinatorial code, designed to ensure that all the chemicals you produce are volatile and unreactive, where one end contains a recognizable tag (maybe an aldehyde) and a series of branching carbon chains, multiple bonds, ether and ketone linkages, fluoride and alcohol groups etc. that can be translated to an identifying code number (the memory address value). The contents are then specified in the same manner past a certain number of carbons along the main chain from the aldehyde. Each odor molecule would hold a few bytes of information at a known position in memory.
The receptor would probably be some *remarkably* fancy GC/MS rig, though it would be more amusing if instead a computer could design Fab fragments to bind each of the address locations, and then use a similarly designed Fab (minus the aldehyde-interacting site) to read out the data, and express those fragments on *E. coli* membranes, relying on the randy little critters to conjugate and in the process concatenate some well-crafted genetic constructs so that by reading those sequences on a nanopore sequencer, you can tell which data matched up with which location. In cloud cuckoo land you should be able to receive your data faster than a confirmation email, if the wind blows the right way.
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Consider that when gas phase changes to plasma it becomes quite like a neuron or a circuit, and, given a sophisticated enough network, we could emulate some of the brain cascades like memory, reflex, or sensation.
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**You have no storage problem.** If anything, you have a problem of filling the available storage.
We have three spatial dimensions, a time dimension (completely different than the spatial ones, not least that we move in one direction only) and possibly some others.
Now you get another dimension into the mix. Leaving out what that dimension actually IS, everything has its scalar position in there. Maybe all non-soul particles are zero, while all soul-gas particles have some non-zero value. Note that everything still has the usual dimensions, so the soul-gas has (for the lifetime of the owner) the same spatial and temporal coordinates as the body. But in soul-dimension every particle has their own soul-measure. All the information storage you will ever need, right there.
Why does the gas need to do the same thing in soul dimension as it does in our spatial dimensions (i.e. be completely random in particle position)?
Every particle in the soul dimension has fix value, it is a ***crystal*** in that dimension. With a body-sized gas-cloud in normal atmosphere, you'll have ballpark 10^24 particles, each with their own, fix, soul-dimension-value. If the soul stores its information as a binary barcode (for some reason), i.e in the distances between soul-adjacent (not real-space adjacent neccessarily) particles, you could store 10^24 bits in there. That is Ten million one-terabyte harddrives.
That number grows if you do not stop at binary code, but go up: say its not one of two distances between particles, but particles can be any of a hundred measures from each other! Et Voila! You now can store 100^(10^24)bits in that soul.
While the soul gas particles do their wild dance in the real, in the soul dimension they are ordered and static.
One particle at 1 karm, next at 3 karm, next at four karm, next at five karm, next at seven karm - distances so far: 2,1,1,2, or 1,0,0,1 in binary, a nybble of soul if you will, if the soul is so gauche as to be binary....
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A staple of science fiction is substances like 'durasteel' or 'tritanium', which, through generally unexplained means, have vastly superior material qualities when compared to conventional materials. Other common materials for constructing sci-fi vehicles and structures out of are heavy, stable elements, like those proposed to be in the "[island of stability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability)" in the periodic table.
However, there are other forms of matter that can exist in the universe, which are *not* found in the periodic table. Antimatter is the most obvious example, but interacts poorly with matter, limiting its utility as a construction material in a world filled with ordinary matter. More exotic things like [pentaquarks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentaquark) also exist. Unfortunately, most of these particles are highly unstable, limiting their utility in the construction of spacecraft and the like. Are there any such exotic, non-atomic forms of matter which would be feasible as futuristic construction material?
*Note: I'm concerned with building large-ish (person sized or larger) structures out of such materials which are 'long lived' in the sense that the construction materials won't decay in fewer than a couple of years.*
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## No
There are no known macroscopic structures composed solely of non-Baryonic matter
### Antimatter is \*atomic\* matter
Antimatter is Baryonic matter which forms atoms when positrons ($e^+$) are added. It interacts (reacts) quite vigorously with normal atomic matter. Just like normal matter, it possesses mass, charge, etc. You should consider anti-matter as *atomic* matter too.
Even "neutronium" the exotic nuclear soup/plasma found in neutron stars are made from Baryonic matter.
### Other types of matter don't clump
The problem with other forms of matter (non-baryonic [Hadrons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadron) and [Fermions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermion)) is: first, they usually don't clump like the Baryons to form larger structures like nuclei and second, you can't get different non-Baryonic Hadron clumps to stick together in a manner similar to that of the chemical bonds that atoms can form.
### Any other possibilities?
It's not impossible that exotic behaviors like what you want could occur in a [quark-gluon plasmas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark%E2%80%93gluon_plasma) under extreme conditions. However, under conditions we encounter every day, those behaviors would not live long enough for what you likely want. Similarly these clumps won't be on the same size scale as you & me. They might get as large as nuclei.
[Pentaquarks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentaquark) and other [exotic Baryonic matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_baryon) are probably your best bet. If you could find a Pentaquark with enough stability then from the outside, it would behave similarly to a normal baryon - except more massive.
Since quarks carry +/- 1/3, +/- 2/3, or 0 charge; then you could get a baryon with really weird charges. Many of the possible combinations are likely not stable but since it's your story you can make the rules. Unfortunately, we have no way to tell you what the macroscopic properties of such a material might be.
### How about even weirder stuff?
There are a bunch of weirder particles that are not part of the [Standard Model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model) (the most widely accepted theory of what particles we should expect) but are not expressly forbidden by other things we know about physics.
Some of these are fairly well known ([Tachyons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon) & [magnetic monopoles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_monopole)). A lesser known one is [negative mass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass) (not anti) matter.
Monopoles at least **are** predicted to exist by some current theoretical models but would tend to repel each other and not form larger structures. However, we've never directly or indirectly observed these exotic particles and the chances of them being real are very slim.
Tachyons aren't supported by theory but aren't really forbidden either. The main trouble with these is that we could only observe them by their interaction with normal matter. We haven't found any particle interactions which might be accounted for by them.
Negative mass matter is hypothetical only.
### Common Sense
If such materials were possible, we would have observed them in nature.
### Story trumps Science
If such a material is necessary for your story, then simply invoke it as one of the fictions of your story. Larry Niven needed materials with fantastic properties for his [Ringworld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld) so he imagined [scrith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld#Concepts).
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What do we have that's non-atomic matter and is stable at normal temperatures and pressures? That is, what has rest-mass, isn't made of protons and neutrons, and will last longer than a fraction of a second?
***Baryons?***
These are things made of three quarks. It includes protons and neutrons, but there's other stuff. A quick look at the [list of baryons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_baryons) reveals the problem with trying to use them as a building material: except for protons and neutrons they're all wildly unstable lasting, at best, 1/10,000,000,000th of a second.
***Mesons?***
Mesons are one quark and one anti-quark. [They're all unstable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mesons). The best you'll get is 1/100,000,000th of a second. Getting better!...?
***[Degenerate Matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_matter)?***
Sounds cool! It's how neutron stars can be so dense! ...but it's a special form of plasma at either extremely high densities or extremely low temperatures. So it's atomic.
And it will fly apart as soon as it's not held together by extreme gravity or is given even the slightest amount of energy.
***[Quark Matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QCD_matter)?***
Quark matter, which includes ideas like [strange matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_matter), is so energetic the quarks themselves are free to move around. Unfortunately this requires overcoming the [strong force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_interaction) which, you guessed it, is very strong. It is the *strongest* force. Keeping quarks from bonding requires temperatures in the area of 1,000,000,000,000 K.
***[Pentaquarks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentaquark)?***
These are particles with four quarks and one anti-quark bound together. They're theoretically possible, and two *might* have been observed in 2015 at the [LHCb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHCb) which should give you an idea how unstable these things are.
Sorry, it's atoms or nothing.
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Alright! So You want not-periodic table matter..
Let's see. As some have said the problems with these things is that they do not clump together and they last uhm... nothing.
We can make them last longer using the **quantum zeno effect** ([here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Zeno_effect)). For example my Jupiter airships are filled with Muonium gas, which has about 10% the density of molecular Hydrogen and therefore provides very good lift and is stabilized by a special laser light. QZE can also be used to give longer life to "normal" unstable stuffs like superheavy elements and things like Astatine.
To make them clump together we have to mix them with normal matter and make **exotic atoms**. These boys can form molecules and stuffs and therefore can have a very diverse range of qualities ([here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_atom)).
In general Oniums are "atoms" made by a particle and an antiparticle, alternatively you can replace electrons with muons (results in smaller, heavier atoms) and proton with hyperons (chemically similar to normal elements but with different nuclear qualities)
EDIT: Forgot to mention that some of these even have symbols and naming convention. So you can make some pretty cool sounding names for your compounds! [here](http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/pac.2001.73.issue-2/pac200173020377/pac200173020377.xml)
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There is a concept known as [strange matter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_matter) which has been theorized based on our mathematical models of nuclear physics, though never observed. It would be a sort of "liquid" made of [quarks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark) which aren't confined to protons and neutrons, and it's been theorized that forms of it could be stable at low temperatures and pressures--for example, [this paper](https://web.archive.org/web/20150613081318/http://www.jetpletters.ac.ru/ps/1224/article_18487.pdf) says "Witten has pointed out that strange quark matter might be stable at a zero temperature and at a zero external pressure."$\text{\*}$ (In fact, the analysis indicates it should be *more* stable than ordinary matter under these conditions since as mentioned [here](http://lss.fnal.gov/archive/1991/conf/Conf-91-349-A.pdf) it would be the 'ground state' of matter made of quarks, meaning it would have lower potential energy than quarks confined to protons and neutrons. As discussed in [this answer](https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/238151/59406) from the physics stack exchange, the idea is that ordinary matter is "metastable", having a potential barrier that tends to prevent it from decaying to strange matter unless it temporarily gains enough energy to hop the barrier, or unless you wait a sufficiently huge time for it to [get through the barrier via quantum tunneling](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/quantum/barr.html))
[This PhD thesis](http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.6389) on strange matter in astrophysics has a section on p. 22-27 where it divides strange matter into some categories based on size, the largest being "bulk strange matter" with mass equivalent to over $10^{44}$ protons, which would again be "stable at zero temperature and pressure" along with very small strangelets with mass comparable to "isotopes of super-heavy elements" and an intermediate size with mass less than $10^7$ protons but larger than the very small category, which would have a radius of the order of a few hundred femtometers (a femtometer is a millionth of a nanometer). It's mentioned that for the intermediate size, "The electrons will now be found ‘orbiting’ the strangelet as in an atom", so maybe there could be a sort of "chemistry" with materials made up of multiple strangelets of this size bonded into "molecules" of a sort, although maybe the attraction would be too weak given their large mass or maybe they would just group together into bulk strange matter under these conditions, I couldn't find any info on this. Either way, bulk strange matter might have the features you're looking for.
It's mentioned on p. 29 of [this paper](http://chimera.roma1.infn.it/OMAR/dottorato/papers/jaffe_sqm_1.pdf) that negatively charged bulk strange matter would have disastrous consequences in the real world, since "ordinary atoms would be attracted to it and absorbed" (converted into strange matter themselves), but that for positively charged bulk strange matter, "a Coulomb barrier prevents this system from absorbing the nuclei or ordinary atoms" (and there are [theoretical and observational arguments](https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/5101/59406) against negatively-charged strange matter being stable enough to 'infect' ordinary matter in this way). It's also mentioned that "since it is very dense even small chunks cannot be supported by material forces at the Earth's surface." This would suggest a problem with using such matter for construction on planets, and would also greatly add to a spacecraft's mass which would increase the fuel needed to accelerate it, but perhaps one could imagine using it to plate space stations as a form of armor (and I'm also not sure how thick a layer of strange matter could potentially be, perhaps thin enough that the mass wouldn't be so large even for a largish area being plated). Another interesting science-fictional use for very small bits of strange matter could be to create some form of ultra-tiny machines much smaller than nanotechnology, the notion of "femtotechnology" discussed in [this article](http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/01/10/theres-plenty-more-room-bottom-beyond-nanotech-femtotech/), which could function at low pressure and temperature.
$\text{\*}$*That quote only mentions stability at zero temperature, which is apparently simpler to analyze mathematically, but I found [this paper](http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.2079v1) which discusses stability at higher temperatures. I don't really understand what parameters are being graphed on the horizontal and vertical axes in the bottom left part of Fig. 1 on page 3, but it appears qualitatively as if "stability window"--the range of values of the parameters for which strange matter is stable--changes only slightly between T=0 and T=10 MeV, and according to the conversion [here](https://www.phys.ksu.edu/personal/cdlin/phystable/econvert.html) a temperature of 1 Kelvin corresponds to 0.0000862 eV, so 10 MeV = $10^7$ eV would be about 116 billion degrees Kelvin, suggesting you only have to worry about temperature affecting stability in extremely high-temperature cases. Page 120 of [this book](http://books.google.com/books?id=YhNR_EbX5yoC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA120) mentions that understanding how stability changes with temperature "is important since we shall in fact be looking at nuggets in hot environments such as the Big Bang and supernova-explosions."*
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# Overview
We have *durasteel* and *tritanium* because nano-structured material science is a very new field, and writers could not have reasonably predicted it over the history of sci-fi. The kind of nano-engineering we are used to comes from biology, which we all know is "squishy", not solid. However, the strongest materials we are able to make today do not involve finding magical metals. Rather, they are discovered at the nano-scale, from building things up at the molecular level.
# Examples
[Carbon nanotubes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube#Strength) are currently one of the strongest materials we know about. [Aerogel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel#Silica) is one of the best insulators, as well as some of the lowest-density material we know how to make. And, of course, [graphene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_applications_of_graphene) is the current poster child of nano-engineering awesomeness. Then there are [metamaterials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial_cloaking), which can provide a kind of cloaking.
# Theory
What these examples teach us is that nature is not interesting because there are 100+ elements on the periodic table. 100 is a very small number, atomically speaking. It is interesting because a mole is a very large number: ~$10^{24}$. If you take just a small handful of those 100 elements (or, in the case of carbon, just one) and combine $10^{24}$ of them in different ways, how many interesting things can you produce? The answer: a mind-boggling number.
Biology is the first proof of this. But biology has an agenda: it's trying to make successful replicators, which limits the kinds of materials it can produce. Biology doesn't produce aerogels because most creatures do not need to insulate themselves from 1000 C flames. Humans, on the other hand, have all kinds of uses for an insulator this effective.
Other examples involve energy storage. In the past, we would make batteries, optimize them, and then ask: "How do we make the battery hold more energy?" And the answer was usually: "Find a different material to store it." So we moved from lead-acid to NiCd to NMH to LiIon to LiPo. Well, chemistry-wise, LiPo seems to have the best energy density we can find, so how can we squeeze more performance out of LiPo? The answer is to stop doing macro-scale chemistry, and zoom down to the micro- and [nano-scale](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17326565).
# 8th Century Metallurgy
A simple iron sword is better than a rock as a weapon, but iron is relatively soft as metals go. So add some carbon, and you get steel. Now, most of us think of steel as a fairly uniform material. Just a bunch of iron with a tiny bit of carbon mixed in. The strength is surely just a function of how much carbon is included, right? Well, not quite. In fact, steel quality varies quite a bit depending on the process used, and as far back as the 8th century, blacksmiths were using nanostructures to make [Damascus steel](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/11/061116-nanotech-swords.html). Of course, they didn't know that carbon nanotubes were part of the secret to making really tough steel, but that is apparently the case.
So, instead of looking to a magical element on the periodic table to give you exceptional new properties, start with the $10^{24}$ lego bricks in a kg of common elements, mix, match and rearrange them in novel ways, and you can probably derive almost any kind of extreme property imaginable.
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There are a few other similar questions. The answers mostly point out downfalls as to why this wouldn't work. In this question I try to address these downfalls, hoping to patch (not necessarily totally fix) the system. I am interested in how balanced you think this system is. Are there are other shortcomings I have not seen (brownie points if you can provide a fix).
Also feel free to chip in with possible impacts it would have on society/the economy and/or how different aspects of politics (lobbying, election campaigns) would be different. (This latter isn't required as I don't want this question to be marked 'too broad' but I would love to hear opinions, either in your answer or comments).
I'm trying to create a new type of government where taxes aren't mandatory. Instead you are given votes based upon how much income tax you decide to pay. People who don't care about voting can keep all their money. But people interested in the political system could essentially buy votes, the more they cared the more votes they would buy.
**[EDIT** with clarification] I am NOT trying to make the perfect, corrupt free government/voting system. I do not think there could ever be such a thing. I totally plan on capitalizing on there being flaws and using that conflict. But you see I believe most people will agree that our current system is also corrupt. Yet it still works and we still use it (even if we grumble about it's unfairness). What I'm really wanting is a critique of this system. Could it be used, would people be as indifferent as we are (as a whole) in trying to change the system. And are any other major loopholes in this system I'm missing? For example, would this completely break/change our economy to the point that it would fail.
This whole system would follow some rules/regulations which (hopefully) balance it and help prevent it from being abused.
* The price of each additional vote increases exponentially. This is the main system in place to prevent the rich from dominating elections. The first few votes would be cheap enough for anyone to buy (maybe $1 for the first vote, or whatever). Wealthier people would have an advantage individually since they are able to buy more votes. It is important to note that this wouldn't be too large of a gap. This is because it would reach a point where they would be spending large chunks of their fortune for a single vote which wouldn't be cost effective. Assume many smart people have bumped minds to develop a fair growth rate for the equation(s).
**[Edit** with additional information] Feel free to challenge me on this (I'm perfectly willing to listen to criticism). The purpose of the **exponential** growth on vote prices is to let someone spend a little more money if they care that much but to not let the rich completely dominate. The growth rate (whatever it is) would try to balance this out. A rich person wouldn't be able to buy a 100k votes for example as this would obviously be unfair.
* There are different kinds of votes you can buy. E.g. national/state/county votes. Obviously that vote could only be used in the respective election. Buying a county vote wouldn't increase the price of a state/national vote (possibly having different vote cost growth rates set in place by the respective government?). Therefor people wouldn't be deterred from buying national votes since their vote 'counts less' and therefor would get less bang for their buck.
* The money spent on different votes in the previous bullet would go to the respective government. Federal vote money would go to the federal government, state vote money to the state etc.
* There is still a version of the w-4 form and IRS ([W-4](https://www.irs.com/articles/what-is-tax-form-w4) [,IRS](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/irs.asp) quick explanations for non Americans). The W-4 would serve as a way for the government/IRS to see how much you earn. The IRS would investigate (audit) possible cases of voting fraud. For example, if you spent more on votes than your total income... expect a visit. It doesn't have to be that extreme, maybe you spent a large chunk of your income on votes but are living as if you didn't.
* Voting is still anonymous. This is to provide another safeguard against the wealthy abusing the system. While they can give people money to spend on votes there is nothing stopping a voter from voting as he/she pleases.
**[Edit** with additional justification] Lots of people are bringing up the fact that it doesn't matter if a candidate can enforce whether the person he/she pays votes for them or not. This is because it is possible to find a base group of people you can be certain will vote appropriately. I have thought about this and didn't bring it up before because **wouldn't both sides be doing this.** How effective can this truly be? Wouldn't they just (more or less) cancel each other out? In the end the only people I see benefiting from this is the government since they're getting all the money. Also adding another bullet below this (which also address this issue).
* **[Edit** with an additional bullet] I totally forgot about this one in my original write-up. **Paying other people to vote for you is illegal.** There would be appropriate penalties for both the payer and the payee. No this will by no means stop this from happening and people buying votes can distance themselves from the actual exchange. But it would act as a deterrent and it wouldn't be as rampant compared to it being legal.
* Votes can be bought at anytime throughout the year so you don't take a huge financial hit come election day. They can also however be bought at the voting booth. But purchased votes only be spent during that voting cycle. A person can't save up votes over ten years, buying cheap votes, then use them all at once. (Possibly a refund if they aren't used? Or not, free money for the government 'n all).
What do y'all think? Would this system work or would it crumble for reasons I haven't addressed. Again feel free to include how you think this would change the government/economy.
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### Lack of buy-in
Why does democracy work? The main reason is that it legitimizes the government. Because people believe that their votes matter, they understand that sometimes votes won't go their way. In this system, people wouldn't feel that way. If there's a close vote that involves a clear choice between high tax people and low tax people where the high tax people win, then people will be frustrated.
### Lack of revenue
Trump pays hundreds of millions in taxes. In this system, why would he? A thousand dollars gets him nine votes. Why pay another thousand for the next vote? If you read Sanders' tax return, he paid \$27,653. But under this system that would only get him thirteen votes which he could get by paying \$16,383. So Sanders would either save \$11,270 or pay \$16,384 for his next vote. Most people would choose to round down most of the time.
In the US, federal taxes are roughly 25% of GDP. Even if we assume that people would pay 25% for however many votes that gives, will they be willing to pay 12.5% of their income for one vote? That's what exponential growth of just doubling gives you.
### Advertising is cheaper
The basic problem is that votes just aren't worth enough. People won't pay big money for votes. It's much cheaper to pay for advertising. Even if a million dollars of advertising only convinces a thousand people net to your position, that's still much cheaper than buying a thousand votes.
### Balance
A system needs to create balance. In our current system, people who pay for services and people who use them are mostly separate. So the payers want to pay as little as possible while the recipients want as much as possible. This gives a kind of balance.
Under your system, there isn't enough money to pay for any kind of welfare state. The people who want services don't have the money to pay for them. The people who have the money don't value votes enough to buy them.
### Compare to charity
Charitable giving in the US is only 2% of GDP. Even tithers (e.g. the Mormons) generally only give 10%. This is well short of the 25% provided by taxes.
### Without scaling
The natural fix to all this is to decrease the scaling factor. Instead of doubling, multiply by 1.5 or 1.1 instead. Let's take it down to 1. What value does Donald Trump give to voting? Unless he feels needs as many votes as he pays dollars in taxes, he'll pay less. That would only increase the budget deficit (already large).
The only people likely to pay significant amounts will be those who benefit from the votes. But that means that they have to expect to benefit more than they pay. In order to beat 10% of the vote (from paying a 10% tax as charity), they'd have to buy their own 10%. So at the unrealistic rate of 10% natural giving, we can get up to 20%. Still short of 25%.
There's another problem. If your 10% is going to pay for services valued by others rather than your services or charity, why pay it? But without that 10%, there's no reason for the greedy to add their 10%.
So even without scaling, there just isn't enough money from selling votes to eliminate taxes.
[Answer]
**The rich would utterly dominate politics.**
Furthermore, once they do, they will either make it cheaper to buy more votes, or make all votes more expensive, thus limiting the number of people who vote.
You have to understand that even with voting being free many people simply don't bother. When it starts costing them money even fewer will do so - except for the rich, of course.
In their case not only will the rich vote, but also their wives/husbands, children, mother/fathers, cousins, etc. will all be present and accounted for. They will even give their employees money to go buy votes in their favor, and then maybe give them a nice bonus too!
Whereas some low income families will have to buy maybe one or two votes between a group of them because they can't afford anything else.
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> **Example:**
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> Picture two families, one rich, one middle class. They both consist of a mother, father, son, daughter (both 18+), and two sets of grandparents.
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> In this example we will price the votes as such: **1st vote** $1, \*\*2nd vote\*\* $500, **3rd vote** $10K.
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> The middle class family buy one vote each, for a total of 8 votes cast, but the father decides he feels *very strongly* about this election and actually goes out and buys an additional $500 vote. This means that he will not be able to buy his son that new hockey equipment he had been asking for, but he hopes to get it for him for Christmas instead.
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> In this scenario the middle income family casts a total of **9 votes**.
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> For the rich family things are a little different. The father purchases 3 votes for each of his family members - either outright, or provides them with the money in some other way (through business transactions, gifts, allowances, etc. He has legal avenues to do so).
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> His family effortlessly casts a total of **24 votes**. And they still go on a 5 star tour of Europe the following month.
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What you're setting up is a system of government in which money is power, which realistically is also the world we live in now - only you're making it ***a lot*** more obvious.
Looking back in history, there was a time when only landowners had a right to vote, which automatically excluded the vast majority of people who were not nobles/rich. Obviously, they only passed laws that were in their favor, thus propagating imbalance.
An example that I always thought interesting was that of Starship Troopers: a world in which if you don't sign up for military service and serve a certain number of years you do not qualify as a "Citizen" and do not have the right to vote. Their logic is that if you're not willing to die for your country then you have no say in how it's run. Now ***that*** sounds fair.
[Answer]
This system was in place in the Roman Empire for a substantial part of its history.
It is also essentially the system of government used in most modern business organizations and in most condominium associations.
Also, most monarchies were special cases of this system in which a monarch personally finances government out of his own pocket and personally owned a substantial share of the national wealth to pay for it. Most Islamic monarchies today operate on that basis right now. There is no taxation and no representation.
More generally, the proximate cause of democratic government in most countries in Europe was a bargain between a monarch who ran out of money and a monied or landed class to raise funds in exchange for a partial surrender of political power. This was the trigger for democratic government in Spain, France, England and at least parts of Germany and Italy.
[Answer]
Ok so I would like to make this answer to point out that in such a system the rich would *always* be to *effectively* buy votes at the base rate instead of at the exponential rate.
You brought up that if you pay people to vote you can't be certain they'll vote how you want. The problem here is that this would be a very small issue for the rich.
You only need to find a bunch of people who you are certain will vote in your favor such as religious evangelicals if republican, then just buy votes by giving them money. Even if there are laws against it it would be impossible to stop. You could hide your vote buying by only giving a few votes and spreading it over a larger group. Or better you could just give them donations that aren't for voting per se but they would likely be motivated to spend it on votes, and if they don't then they don't get more money next election.
As for whether the rich people in both parties would cancel each other out: Well even if they did it would still be exclusively about who spent the most money, but in addition one party would probably have a slight monetary advantage, since money is the only thing that matters in this election once one party got ahead they could leverage that to stay ahead forever becoming a one party system.
**In response to your edit:**
* I need to make it extremely clear, ***that even if voting buying is is illegal it will still be ubiquitous***. Unless you have laws against giving people gifts of money, then the rich will be able to pay people money *with the expectation that they will buy votes with it*, if they then don't use the money to buy votes for the election for which it was granted, then they will be granted no further money for future elections. Even better they will likely grant the people somewhat more money than is needed to buy votes, which they can then spend thus making them dependant on their rich benefactors(and less likely to bail out and spend their allotment on stuff other than votes).
* To readdress your other point:Sure both sides would be *effectively* (even if not *technically* in the eyes of the law) be buying votes. This wouldn't cancel out for long though, (if at all) for as you see such a balance is extremely unstable. As soon as one side gets an upper hand they can use their extra power to get more money, to buy more votes... effectively since this is all about who has more money (people will take advantage of the system *quickly*) as soon as one person gets more money they effectively can cement their power indefinitely. They would probably also change the laws to further cement their position.
[Answer]
**Prussia** had a similar system called [Dreiklassenwahlrecht](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_three-class_franchise) in the 19th century. You can draw from their history.
[Answer]
IMHO the whole proposal is wrongheaded. If a polity doesn't have one person one vote they should have the number of votes inversely proportional to a person's wealth.
Imagine Person A has \$ 10,000,000.00 and Person B has \$ 10,000.00.
If they both pay an emergency wealth tax of 50 percent, Person A will have \$ 5,000,000.00 left and Person B will have \$ 5,000.00 left.
If they both get a government grant of \$ 50.00 Person A will have \$ 10,000,050.00 and person B will have \$ 10,050.00.
Person A could claim that he deserves more votes because he has more to lose. But it seems more rational to accept Person B's claim that he deserves more votes because he has so little that losing a specific dollar amount or even a specific proportion of his wealth will leave him with much less than Person A.
Poor people tend to suffer much more from government taxation and gain much more from government benefits, considering how much they affect the resources available to poor people, than rich people.
In short, the poor need more influence over government policy because even minor changes in their wealth affect them much more.
Since people at different economic levels are about equally good or bad depending on one's point of view and thus more or less equally deserve to suffer or benefit, one can deduce that poor people deserve more influence over government policy than rich people.
I propose the reverse of the original proposal. Make voting equally difficult for the rich and the poor, but pay people each time they vote, so that the poor will find it worth their while to go to the trouble of voting several times but the rich won't think it worthwhile to vote even once.
[Answer]
Here are the problems I see:
You would have too little tax income, too many elections, and immense social unrest.
Almost no rich person would pay the steep exponential tax for a few more votes. They can easily buy as many votes as they like at the cut-rate one dollar per vote price point. A liberal millionaire would simply "donate" to the *blue state inner city disadvantaged voter fund* that helps families struggling to buy votes. A rich conservative would "donate" to the *red state evangelical voter fund* that helps rural families struggling to buy votes. Votes being cast secretly has very little effect on this since most people's political leanings are extremely easy to glean from demographics and Facebook profiles.
A rich foreign *government*, though, might be inclined to pay the exponential costs, through agents, to install a puppet. If your country is an influential player on the international scene, this is very likely and would lead to a loss of sovereignty. You basically get a country that is auctioned off to the highest bidder every X years. (Side note: I believe there is a board game that works just like this, you "invest" in world powers and whoever invests the most in, say "Europe", controls that country's military for 1 turn).
Making a budget and long term financial planning would be close to impossible. The city running out of money; the city council calls for early elections.
What buy-in do the poor have to serve in the military or obey the law in this system? This would quickly deteriorate into a feudal system with a ruling "noble" class and the poor second class citizens. Given ideas of freedom and self-determination are freely available on Wikipedia these days, how long before your country experiences a popular uprising?
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One more issue which I think has been neglected: polarization. If you are moderate, you may give up idea paying. If you are fanatically convinced that politician A is the Saviour or anti-Christ, then you'd pay a lot to vote. Needless to say the most crazy people would decide about the final result.
(A working system could involve a compulsory taxation and unequal votes. Then the result may actually quite good as it may even give more power to medium class vs. the richest, as the richest would have less power through advertisement)
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[Question]
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Many scifi stories feature a vast interstellar empire that spans more worlds and races than a single being could hope to visit in a lifetime. These empires, in many cases, are highly centralized and have an all-powerful emperor who delegates power to military leaders who deal with the civilian governments in the systems in their spheres of influence. Let us assume that humanity unites and the United Nations transforms into the first global democracy and we spreads through the stars and colonize millions of worlds, both uninhabitable and habitable.
These colonies band together into a loose confederation of planets and an official loose military and administrative alliance is established not unlike a scaled-up version of the American colonies after they broke away from England. This alliance is centered on Earth, the first city-world. An official Confederate Navy is established that is comprised of primarily planetary security forces and militia. Over time, humanity meets many less advanced races with what we would consider "modern" technology. Most of these races petition to be admitted entry into the confederation.
Now we have the type of confederation/republic depicted in many prominent scifi works. **How can we take this fragile political entity and turn it into a galactic empire centered around a single all-powerful emperor?**
**EDIT:**
There is FTL travel and communication.
# EDIT2
Humanity has been spacefaring for about 300 years and started with the discovery of FTL in 2125 during a mass famine on Earth. FTL was relatively cheap, with transportation of a squad of 40 or 50 soldiers costing 150 million USD. With the advent of new technologies such as worm-hole drives that can be put on any ship, FTL has become insanely easy and cheap. If a ship does not have FTL capabilities it almost certainly was built by imbeciles.
When humanity met other races and those races asked for admittance into the Confederation, they were granted basic 22nd century FTL technology so that their leaders could attend senate meetings. The structure of the Confederate government is as follows;
## Prime Minister
Head of State. Can be chosen from among any of the political leaders of the Confederate worlds if they have been members of the Confederacy for more than 50 years. The Prime Minister must also be an adult (this is relative to species) and a citizen born in the Confederacy. A member of any race in the Confederacy can become Prime Minister so long as they learn to use The Galactic Standard, an electronic device that allows instant translation from the host language to the written language of all other races present. The President can Veto the decisions made by the Senate.
## Senate
An official legislative body that governs the Confederacy at large. The job of settling border disputes betweens members, ordering sanctions on defiant member worlds, and taxation as well as fall on this body. Helping members deal with natural disasters (like that rare asteroid that satellite defense systems miss and hits the planet) also falls within the jurisdiction of this branch. The Senate can propose laws as well a veto those proposed by the Prime Minister.
## General Assembly
This is the most powerful branch of government, and it has final say in all things. It is comprised of the former human leaders of Earth, with one leader to represent the historic nations of the 20th Century before the Confederation was formed. While every one of these nation-states is de-jure independent in theory, they are in practice one state. They surrendered their sovereignty when the major nations of the Earth surrendered their entire militaries to the United Nations in the Treaty of Koningsburg in 2124.
## Judicial
The Confederation has no official judicial branch. Major disputes in law are settled by the General Assembly (which is all too often prejudiced against the non-human races). In almost all cases the law is settled by either independent system or sector governments (it varies widely as some systems have subjugated (to the meaningless protests of the Senate) entire sectors. Confederate law states that members may not wage war, but often rival governments will wage proxy wars and occasionally simply openly defy the Confederation.
# Military
Now, let's face it; if you have mass shipping, you will eventually have pirates. Human greed guarantees this, and most alien races have the exact same problem we do. Wherever there is money to be made, there is somebody willing to steal it and kill for it. If you don't want these marauders to make off with your gold, women and children, what do you do? You either shoot them, or make the gold, women, and children so dangerous and hard to get that they do not try. The local governments (often funded and urged by large corporations) each have their own professional army and fleet. These vary in size according to technological level and industrial capacity as well as population size, and with over a million local governments it is unrealistic to expect me to convey all the different organizational and technological differences in every army and fleet.
The Confederation has a small navy. The Confederate Navy (CN) is comprised of about 10,000 Beijing Class Cruisers that can carry about 10,000 soldiers and 1000 Troop Transports. Each cruiser also carries four full wings of fighters and is escorted by 6 Moscow Class Destroyers and a dozen frigates, which can serve a variety of tasks. A typical Confederate fleet will be comprised like this;
```
Confederate Fleet ->
Capital Cruiser ->
4 fighter wings ->
16 fighter squads ->
20 fighters
10 bombers
500 Landing Craft ->
20 Marines
20 Heavy Assault Androids
20 Mobile nano-artillery pieces (i feel the need to say that these fire canisters full of nano bots that automatically eat enemy Androids. Cool!)
50 Recon drones
6 Destroyers ->
2 advanced landing craft
6 Marines
10 Recon Drones
10 Heavy Assault Androids
20 Frigates ->
500 - 1000 Confederate Militia Soldiers
As much supplies as can be packed aboard the massive cargo holds.
```
Confederate naval ranking goes like this;
```
Grand Admiral ->
Marine General ->
Deployment Commander ->
Battalion Commander->
Group Commander ->
Team Leader ->
Lieutenant ->
private
Corporal ->
private
High Admirals ->
Admirals ->
Rear Admiral ->
Group Leader ->
Captain ->
Crew Commander ->
Petty Officer
Marine Group Commander ->
Team Leader ->
Lieutenant ->
private
Corporal ->
private
```
The official Confederate Army is nothing more than the Armies of Earth. Their structures vary as there has been no direct need as of yet to centralize the structure aside from a few relatively minor authority disputes and conflict resolution missions.
# Religion
Most major religions have survived and spread to the stars. Hardcore fundamentalists are often prejudiced against all non-human lifeforms and the space equivalent of an outlawed KKK nick-named the "Enforcers of God" was formed by the Christian Fundamentalist world of New Constantinople VI B, a moon orbiting a gas giant in the habitable zone of the fictional star of Constantinople IV[1].
# Other Political Entities
There are a number of systems not in the Confederation. The Confederation does not militarily expand and only gains ground by the petitions for admittance coming from rim worlds. Secession, however, is not legal. Once in the Confederation, you are in for the long-run.
## Krenn
The most powerful Confederate neighbor is also the most peaceful galactic participant, and remains neutral in most, if not all, conflicts. The concept of the "individual" does not exist for this species, known in Confederate space as the Krenn. Each Krenn world has a High Queen who lays eggs that hatch to produce Queens, which rule regions of their worlds and lay eggs that hatch to form workers, soldiers, engineers, and brains[2].
The Krenn bodily structure faintly resembles some long-extinct Earth colonial insects and their origin is unknown. They claim to be evolved from massive insects on their home-world, but Confederate scientists claim they were genetically engineered by a long-extinct race, possibly as weapons of mass destruction. Scientists support this evidence with that some of the oldest Krenn buildings and starships look like they were designed for someone with a more humanoid form[3]. The Krenn have colonized over a thousand systems.
## Alari
The Alari are tough, humanoid, warlike race. They raid Confederate space from time to time, though they are only settled in a dozen systems. They have instigated three large-scale conflicts with the peaceful Krenn[4]. They are only a minor threat.
## Qalik
These are a humanoid race that are highly integrated with technology. They live in no specific system, drifting along in massive brain ships. It is unknown what happens in them, but it is well-known to never attack one; everyone who tries dies. They make no attempt to communicate with other races, believing themselves to be superior and god-like to the lowly lifeforms still controlled by biological limits.
# Others
There are numerous races bordering Confederate space. Some are peaceful and some are warlike. Some are humanoid, some are not. These are some others worth noting.
## Altorans
A race dominated by commerce. While not afraid to defend themselves and while not technologically inferior in any way, they prefer peaceful trading and see war as bad for buisness.
## Mil
The Mil are renowned weapon builders and designers. All other races compete to gain a monopoly on Mil weapons. This has sparked several unsuccessful attempt to subjugate this race by its neighbors, including the fearsome Alari. These always end in the vaporization of the attacking race. The Confederation recently signed a military alliance treaty with the Mil. The Mil are centered in the Mil system, the only known system with four habitable worlds. All of these worlds are heavily populated.
## Grennolis
The Grennolis is yet another highly militarized race. They are the only other race known to be able to interbreed with humans. Many animals on their homeworld Grennoli strongly resemble Earth creatures that lived in the 21st Century before the mass extinction Humans brought upon Terra. The Grennolis have settled small colonies and basis in nearly a hundred systems, but none of these aside from the homeworld are developed. They gained their FTL capabilities by attacking a joint Altoran/Mil trading convoy passing through their system. This has alienated both of these races. Recently the Grennolis have signed an offensive alliance pact woth the Alari, which has allowed both them and the Alari to subjugate their immediate weaker neighbors and to both build decent-sized empires.
# Current Political Situation
The year is 2375 AD.
Despite the relative weakness of the Alari and Grennolis Alliance population-wise, the Alari fleet alone is double the size of the Confederate Navy. The Grennolis Army is equipped with stealth technology that would make any general envious. There has been a decent build-up along the border between the Alari and Mil which has lead to a desperate Mil petitioning the Confederation for full admittance. The petition has been tied up in the Senate and GA intrigues for over a year now. To make matters worse, the Confederation is in the middle having one of its bi-decal elections.
There is some talk in the senate of postponing the elections. A poweful faction in the Senate is trying to push through an Ultimatum-bill to the GA to be sent to the Alari basically demanding they remove their fleets from the border. The only reason this has not been passed is because about 30% of the Senate is against this, knowing it will likely force the Confederation into a bloody war which it might or might not win.
Anti-alien sentiments are running high in the GA as well as some factions in the senate, and any alliance or admittance terms will likely have to favor humanity.
The current President is highly popular and there is a very good chance he will be reelected for a fifth term. He believes in democratic ideals, however, and would never try to force the Confederation into an Empire.
# Current Military Situation
The Grennolis and Alari have begun a massive build-up along the bordersystems and raiders and pirates using Alari ships have been frequenting shipping lanes near the borders. This has resulted in a massive Confederate build-up. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been drafted and local governments have been ordered to support Confederate forces. Over a hundred private military companies have been hired by both sides and five hundred new shipyards have been commissioned by the Confederate government.
Over a thousand wings of fighters have been commissioned and are in the process of being manufactured. The Confederate government has went quintillions of Galactic Confederate Credits into debt to pay for these armaments. Research in biological weapons has been secretly commissioned by the pro-human GA and test targets have been chosen. They are testing the new weapons on minor races that resemble the Alari physically the most. Worm-bombs, a relatively new weapon that opens a worm-hole that can destroy entire systems if placed near the star[5] are being mass-produced by the Confederate government.
### Footnotes
The aliens humanity has encountered have an even wider variety of religious beliefs, ranging from machine worshipping to christian-like religions. A very large fraction of them have abandoned religion in favor of other ideals, seeing the existence of so many different species as proof against whatever they believed before.
1 I know; these people are insanely original. Interestingly enough, there is a nearby primarily Turkish (muslim fundamentalist) settled system whose capital planet is named New Istanbul IV, so the problem is not only restricted to the Greeks. There is also a rivalry between the two and there are often small-scale conflicts over minor border issues (under who's jurisdiction does that space station between the two systems fall to?).
2 These are the Krell equivalent of scientists. Brains act as a sort of super-computer for this race, allowing the Queens to process massive amounts of data as well as pumping out new weapons and architecture schematics for the engineers to use.
3 The evidence; devices meant to be operated by a being with six fingers; the Krenn have three or four fingers depending on their biological job.
4 Funny thing too; the Alari have lost every one of those wars.
5 Technically it was outlawed during the forty-fourth Convention of Earth after an alien terrorist nearly unleashed one on Terra.
Little note This is actually for a space strategy RTS I am working on for mobile. Don't have screenshots, but most of the logic is laid down and now I just have to find some art assets and work on my (not-so) intuitive user interface. The game is 2D. Combine Civilization 1 with Age of Empires and you have a general idea of what my game should feel like. I have a lot of small-scale projects I work on.
[Answer]
The 'easiest' would be an outside threat to the members of the confederation. Like the Borg or some other species bent on domination and conquest.
We would band together (hopefully) to help each other survive and push back this mutual threat. (Though sitting by the way side and hoping the threat passes you by will be a strategy some will take.)
The other would be some kind of dictator like Palpatine/Hitler, slowly, often by trickery (at the beginning), to get systems and groups to support him/her/it. After a while, when they have a significant following, they start pressuring more to 'join' and eventually the hold out will be conquered.
[Answer]
## The Confederation develops strong AI, puts in on the internet, and elects it as president.
As the Confederation has come to understand all too well, human leaders suck. However, they've also discovered that advanced intelligences formed out of enormous networks of processors can govern quite effectively.
They first developed one of these a few generations back. It was the first Strong AI that humanity ever made, and consisted of a single supercomputing cluster that could operate roughly on the same level as a human brain. Moreover, it was programmed in such a way that it could talk to humans, understand, and *empathize.* Being a computer network, it could also easily communicate with and distribute tasks to other computer networks, effectively allowing it to solve problems incredibly efficiently by properly managing lots of computing networks. The scientists called it the Global Emergent Neuron Network, or GLENN.
GLENN rapidly transitioned from a simple experiment into a trusted adviser and political activist. He campaigned steadily for those platforms which he saw as most likely to benefit the Confederation, a goal which he was programmed for and which he wholeheartedly pursues. GLENN's business ventures also took off, and he funded the construction of additional computer cores in other cities and on other worlds, all connected through the Galactic Internet.
GLENN was soon recognized as the single most powerful entity in the Confederation, with a presence on nearly every world. However, he remained a force of good. His core edict of 'serve and strengthen the confederation, and improve the lives of its citizens' continued to drive him. He did not twist it, reinterpret it as 'death to humanity' or fall into any of the other standard AI tropes. He met with and discussed philosophy and government with the greatest philosophers and scholars in the galaxy. He made friends. And, after a long period of introspection and self-reflection as to how he could best serve humanity, he decided to run for Prime Minister of the Galaxy.
Of course, for a galaxy-spanning AI, term limits don't really make sense. GLENN did a great job in his first term, and the General Assembly almost unanimously decided to remove them. Elections still happen, of course, but there is little in the manner of serious opposition to GLENN's presidency. Flesh and blood organisms are simply too limited to do the job that GLENN can, and he has the resources to purchase a copy of any new AIs that are developed (of which there have been many) and incorporate their code into his.
Now, GLENN is loved, GLENN is worshiped in a pseudo-religious manner as a god who truly listens to what people are saying, every minute of every day, and reacts accordingly. GLENN operates on the will of the General Assembly to reward those who further the cause of the Confederation and, with brutal efficiency, command the armed forces to destroy those who threaten it.
While he would never claim such a title there are now many of the faithful who elevate him to a position above a mere Prime Minister: GLENN, Emperor of the Confederation.
[Answer]
To take a nod at [current events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers), start with a highly dispersed economy in a dispersed political system. The economy gets integrated by the collective effort of banks, megacorporations, etc. Then some very selfish actors start to exploit loopholes in the regulatory climate, or create them in the first place. The general population gets upset. What can they do?
* Remove the freedom of business to shift fictional assets as they like.
* Introduce galactic minimum standards for taxation, transparency, etc.
If they take the latter option, they're on the way to a galactic government.
[Answer]
There has to be a catastrophe or other threat. This creates a need for a stronger navy or central government. Once it begins to accumulate power it continues to do so.
The ideal vector would be civil war. Take a look at U.S. history as an example.
[Answer]
Have a group of old people with more money than morals, the concentration of capital soon turns into political power that is then used to create laws to benefit them at the cost of the rest of the population.
As the government cuts the access to basic needs in exchange to benefiting the rich you will have an increasing concentration of resources, unemployment, wage-slavery, rampant debt, health and infrastructure problems.
All that you need is a charismatic leader to put the blame on someone else and promise quick, easy solutions to the problems of the nation.
For a bonus, shift the economy towards the production of weapons and war material, so you then creates a need for an almost constant war to keep the industry profiting.
[Answer]
Since there are other independent realms bordering the confederation in the original question, the confederation might change into a more centralized system, possibly an empire, for reasons of better managing the economy and for being stronger in dealings with outside governments, just as the United States of American found the Articles of Confederation inadequate and so adopted the Constitution.
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[Question]
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*As part of a series of questions that I've been doing about microscopic humanoids ...*
In my world , there are a race of microscopic humanoid organisms ( 0.2 mm - 0.22 mm ) . They live in a variety of biomes , such as leaf litter , stone , and on plants and trees. My questions is -
Would weapons such as axes and spears be useful when scaled down to such sizes , especially against small arthropods such as ants and Pseudoscorpions?
[Answer]
No, your humans are too small.
A 0.2mm tall human is about 9000 times shorter than a 1.8m human, but its volume, and thus its mass, drops by 90003 or 729,000,000,000. A typical 70kg human becomes just 0.00009mg. Let's look at your expected opponent.
A [typical black garden ant is about 4mm long](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_garden_ant#Appearance), or 20 times longer than your humans are tall. A [Brontosaurus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brontosaurus), at 20m long, is only 10 times longer than a human is tall. [Black ants weigh 1.5mg](http://www.antweb.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&tag=ant%20weight&limit=20) or 16,000 times more than your humans. By comparison an [African Elephant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_bush_elephant) only weighs 150 times a normal human.
Here is what that would look like.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gdqUU.png)
Here is a human and an elephant for comparison.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iyH0r.jpg)
Your humans simply would not have enough mass to affect an ant. Nor would they have enough height to do anything but poke at its legs.
Trying to scale humans down has myriad problems. This video on [What Would Happen If You Were Shrunk?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkvo-DrU2gM#t=3m09s) by VSauce3 scratches the surface.
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What humans are good at is throwing rocks. That should be sufficiently primitive.
Here, like in many other cases, the cube-square law causes problems. A stone is 8000 times smaller, thus it has an area that is $6.4\*10^7$. Its volume, however, is $5.12\*10^{11}$ times smaller. Having the impact concentrated on a small area is how spears work, and the rock's impact is now much less concentrated. But it gets worse, small creatures can not throw a rock as fast as large creatures. All in all, rock throwing is much less dangerous. Sure, they might push the target a little, but nor brake bones or cause wounds.
Same for a spear, but there, the cube-square effect is cancelled but the fact that it is 8000 times sharper. It is however moving much slower, so no weapons based on hitting the enemy is very efficient.
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Basically, what Schwerm has stated. No, you cannot use these *weapons* effectively against those threats. At 0.2 mm (max limit), your people would be able to wield a spear hardly more than 0.3 mm. By comparison, even a juvenile ant is around 3mm and has 6 legs AND a pair of powerful denticles. An ant bite can send pain waves even in a grown up 6 feet tall human being. How do your people can fare against such a threat when being 1/30 of its length?
To help you think in perspective, would you be able to fight an ant that is double the size of a T-rex? It doesn't need to bite you at all (which would instantaneously clip you in two). Just a *stomp* by that monster ant would be enough to painfully end your life.
Also keep in mind that arthropods have exoskeletons, so that your *weapons* would hit the harder parts of the body first, which further implies that you will not be able to punch a hole through your arthropod adversaries (in perspective, a 6 foot person would have to punch a hole in 2 feet thick bone before his spear could hit the softer tissue inside).
So all in all, no. The weapons would be as useless against such adversaries as you trying to bring down a T-Rex with a spear.
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While attacking the traditional way will not work, your humans are small enough that they can crawl in through the joints and other openings on your ant. When inside, they are still large enough that they might survive the immune system for some time. Risky business, but such is life for any creature that small.
Inside, the small spears and knives could do significant damage. Maybe the humans could even accomplish rudimentary control of the ants, like some parasites do in the real world.
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What weapon? **Intelligence**.
I'm looking at Schwern's illustration when contemplating it, BTW. Diagrams like this ought to be part of the OP's posts. Now that he understands the scale that should be presented goin in rather than needing to be a major part of the answers, for subsequent questions in his series.
Anyway, **poison** comes to mind. As does a rope covered with sticky stuff that the ant can't break free of, to get tangled up in or at least get teathered with!
More *intelligent* then sticks and stones would be to use chemical pheromones. Make the ant do what you want, go where you want, including in a pen or cage. Make it hold still while you attachnthe reins, make it refuse to perceive any alarm even as you dismember it.
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Keep in mind that an average human is able to feel motions and surface inconsistencies of about one micron in size by touch, scale this down by a factor of 10000 (from 2 meters to 200 microns), then you are looking at a race of microscopic humanoids that can feel individual atoms(0.1nm) by touch, in a sort of Biological Atomic Force Microscopy. a Human fingertip can manipulate, in minimum, an object the size in the millimeter range, scale this down by a factor of 10000, then the smallest object your microscopic humanoids could manipulate is about 100 nanometers--the size of most biomolecules. their hair (if exists) would be about the same thickness of a chromatin fiber of most cells, and most proteins will feel like grains of sand to their touch. with a sharpened stone tool, your microscopic humanoids could easily manipulate atoms and molecules to create some of the most Formidable poisons any living being could only dream of--simply make something that will fit in to the protein molecules you want to target, and you now have a poison that will take out an entire ant with a single microscopic pinch of your humanoids' hand.
In comparison, most bacteria will be about the size of the fingertips for a Humanoid organism 200 microns in length. So bioweapons in the form of a deadly pathogen will also work for the microscopic humanoids, as most arthropods do not have an adaptive immune system, a simple breach in the joints of the ants with a deadly pathogen inserted into the Haemolymph of your target/prey is enough to take down even the largest, strongest of all ants and tarantulas.
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>
> "From the rumours, it seems this world is cursed. I don't have trouble
> believing this, our sky is darkened by a permanent smoke. It is said
> that behind this smoke used to be the biggest fireball anyone has ever
> seen. Stories say that a powerful magician created it hundred of years
> ago to keep the world from freezing. But it is gone now, as all we can
> sometimes see, when the smoke is pierced, is shards of white lights in
> the sky. The fireball was probably shattered by the one who set this
> curse upon us.
>
>
> Our world is cold and dark. But we've grown used to it. At first,
> storybooks say that the white shards falling from the sky used to
> freeze us so much it burned, but we've grown used to it and protected
> ourselves accordingly. Our eyes grew accustomed to the dark, at least
> a little.
>
>
> We're at war against an enemy we cannot fool. Creatures, mighty and
> swift, are searching for us. At least, it seems there aren't many of
> them since they did not find us yet. Our clan is separated in groups,
> scattered into the wild. Using maps, we're able to figure where are
> the other clans. Once in a while, we change locations as we need
> to move not to get caught. We meet with another clan to share with them our
> new location. This mechanism keeps us safe."
>
>
>
This world is set in a fantastic medieval world, mostly populated by humans. As described by this character, the sun is permanently hidden by a clouded sky, caused by a curse. It isn't complete darkness but it looks like a heavy-clouded day a little before the sun rises in "our world", so there's a little light. It snows most of the time, and it seems the only time the curse allows people to see through the smoke is at night (hence the little lights). They are separated as a "war" tactic, to keep enemies from slaughtering them all if they were to ever find them. Let's assume for now they cannot hope to win a fight against these creatures, meaning they need to flee.
Where would such a group shelter themselves? Considering the cold temperatures, the constant darkness, the need not to be found easily and the need for basic resources (food, water, etc.). They do not have much material to move, apart from some tools and food/water reserves.
I thought a cavern would be a good pick since they can protect from snow, are not necessarily easy to find and can somehow protect from the cold. But big (consider room for 10-15 persons) caverns aren't necessarily easy to find and it is pretty much impossible to see something in the darkness of a cavern. Also, I'd like my characters not to *all* be in caverns so it can be diversified a little.
They have no access to magic themselves but are used to live in difficult situations so they are self-sufficient.
@AndreiROM and @Frostfyre made me realise it didn't make sense for them to still be alive in this scenario. Here's [the post that addresses this problem](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/30169/magic-drink-to-survive-a-sunless-cold-world)
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Your people probably wouldn't seek permanent shelter anywhere, instead preferring to build [Yurts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yurt) that can be rapidly put out/deconstructed, and moved by pack animal/two or three people.
These yurts would really be essential to the survival of your people as a means of shelter, a way to hide the light of their fires (lest they be discovered) and also because they can be made exclusively from dead animals if you know what you're doing, which removes the need for wood and hence large plant life (which won't grow on a sunless world unless magic). The yurts don't even need much in the way of skin covering in a snowbound world, as you can use the snow to form an insulating layer over the yurt itself, forming a cross between a yurt and an igloo. Having camped in a lightweight tent under similar circumstances I can personally attest to it being warm.
The other advantage to yurting is that it helps you with your war-footing. Need to move on? Shovel the snow away, take off the skins, fold the yurt and move. Too many people in your group? Get half the people to yurt-up and roll-out. worried about leaving a trail behind? Pick up the yurts, put out the fires, let the snow cover the evidence.
The biggest concern for your people is going to be fuel. Water is abundant if it can be melted. Food will be easy(ish) to come by if prey can be lured in by the warmth near the yurts or hunted by some of the hardier people in your tribe. The lack of sun for plant growth (year round!) is going to be a killer. Unless you have some form of plant that grows woody branches in very low light levels, or access to coal reserves (surface deposits revealed by the Curse, perhaps?), your people are going to freeze and die eventually. Even hardy people living high up in the arctic circle have access to trees that grow in the long daytimes.
Essentially the society that you're after is a strange combo of the Inuit and steppe-nomads, with a bit of Victorian coal-mining chucked in. Now I'm imagining someone in a Parka riding a Yak and stroking his magnificent mutton-chops...
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What I'd like to point out is that humans are not nocturnal creatures.
**1 Psychological effects**
Living in the dark for an extended period of time has pretty negative consequences on our psyche - check out suicide statistics from northern countries.
**2. Physical effects**
We need sunlight to drive vitamin D production in our bodies. Without it, we will slowly sicken and die. I'm not sure that this would be possible in the conditions you describe above - especially if people spend a lot of time hidden in caves and the such.
**3. The environment**
Without sunlight plant life will die in a matter of weeks. Once plant light perishes, herbivores starve to death, and soon thereafter, the carnivores. It's debatable at which stage humans would kick the bucket, but it's inevitable.
Maybe with low-light conditions some plants may survive whereas others will perish, but I think the world would still experience a mass extinction event.
**4. Self-sufficiency**
You say this group is self-sufficient, but with no way to grow food, and unable to hunt (normal animals will have mostly died), what exactly about them is self-sufficient?
**Conclusion**
Within these parameters, their position is absolutely untenable. These people might eek out a living in small groups, scavenging supplies of preserved meats and other foods from "before the curse", but they would inevitably either succumb to starvation, or get slaughtered by these other-worldly nocturnal predators.
**Suggestion**
If these people had some highly fortified positions somewhere where they could use magic to create light, in order to grow some crops, as well as "heal" from the effects of the night (psychologically relax, and replenish vitamin D levels), then it might work out.
Imagine that this place is an enchanted valley where the one or two surviving "good" mages are able to sustain a long-term light spell, but that the valley/castle can only hold so many people, so groups have to take turns venturing out to scavenge supplies in order to make room for others.
That's my 2 cents, anyway.
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To answer the updated question:
**A nomadic lifestyle is death**
Taking into consideration the fact that plant life would basically become extinct, these people would not be able to adopt a nomadic lifestyle. Nomads rely on finding food on the road. With no plants growing, and no animals to hunt, what would they eat? Add in the fact that they are being constantly hunted by creatures which thrive in the darkness, and they're completely screwed. The stronger of the bunch would maybe survive for a while, but the women and children could never keep up. If they die, humanity is finished.
**Strongholds, and hidden villages**
Humanity has been building very impressive defenses and strongholds for many thousands of years. A medieval style society, especially one which has access to magic, would probably have a couple of pretty nice strongholds to fall back on, especially if "evil mages" are roaming the land.
A lot of people would die in the beginning, but then the situation would stabilize. Survivors would gather to those well defended places, where magic might allow them to survive in a world which will otherwise become barren and dead in only a few short months.
Because those few places would be very crowded, survivors might strike out to settle new places - defensible caves, or hill tops. Valleys, or places such as Helm's Deep in LOTR, where a fortification might be built to keep the evil creatures out.
In those places, magic might be used to nurture crops to grow, and keep people from simply going crazy, or losing their desire to live.
Strong mercenaries, or skilled trackers would venture out to resupply outlying settlements, or to scavenge in the ruins of the old world for things which they do not have the ability to produce in their enclaves, such as certain magical items, etc.
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It seems pretty obvious to me that this is a post-apocalyptic society still feeling the effects of strong [nuclear winter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter) following an all-out thermonuclear conflict. Probably these people are at least a couple of generations removed from the original conflict, as it seems they have lost the collective knowledge of their civilization based on the description of events and the current state of things.
## Food
Survival itself will be very difficult. Beyond the need to stay warm, food will be a top concern. Plant life depending on photosynthesis will not survive. Herbivores depending on those plants will not survive. Hence the survivors' options for food will be severely limited. Scavenging for surviving food stores will be important. Eating insects may be the best option at times.
## Groups
Staying in small groups will not only be good for protection against "the enemy", but from other surviving groups. Raiding will probably be commonplace. Cannibalism will be tempting.
## Build temporary shelters with dead trees
Staying warm is important, but not that difficult with some basic survival techniques. There will likely be plenty of dead trees around for wood and building temporary shelters. Assuming it's too cold to rain, windproofing the shelters will be sufficient, so they need not be water-tight. In that case, piling up a few layers of dead branches/underbrush will suffice.
## Mobility
The groups will want to stay mobile, for the reasons you mentioned, as well as the reasons above.
## Consequences
Leading a nomadic life in a cold, dark, barren world will take incredible will. Many will die. Some will just give up and wander off into the darkness to await a cold and lonely death, a release.
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I would recommend building shelter in the shallow [underground](http://inhabitat.com/6-fascinating-underground-homes-that-go-above-and-beyond/).
Whilst the examples are obviously not medieval, the concept can be retrofitted to older technologies and building methods.
They can be built, as seen from the link, in a number of different environments, such as hills, caves and even flat ground.
I would suggest digging a large trench (flat ground) or cave (hillside), building buttresses to support the roof, and using the materials that were dug up to build a stable roof/wall in order for the accommodation to blend in with its surroundings.
This would work to keep the homes warm, as less heat would be lost from conduction through the ground as opposed to air. And if interior fires are allowed to be built (if smoke is not an issue) they will not let a lot of light be seen from the exterior.
Also, if there is little exterior light (as the sky is always cloudy), there will not be as much need to have such large windows etc, except for ventilation.
This would help these homes to be invisible from the 'creatures', as they will be indistinguishable from the surrounding environment from a distance, particularly under a thin layer of snow.
The only issue would be if there is heavy snow, it might be very difficult to leave the abode, so there might need to be at least one person awake at all times to remove any snow covering the exit. They could also act as a lookout for the creatures, and cover the doorway with a layer of snow as camouflage when they are nearby.
These homes could then be built in locations where people can survive easily, such as near water/food sources. As the creatures are likely to do most of their hunting for people in these areas, they will be sufficiently hidden that even with a thorough search the creatures would not find the home unless they were directly on top of it.
Particularly if these tribes are constantly in contact with each other, they can guide each other to any underground shelters that they have built that have since abandoned, in case anyone would like to go back to it eventually, and mark for others which ones have been compromised.
This would mean that more shelters would constantly be being constructed in order to stay ahead of the predators, meaning that they would be vulnerable in the construction stage, but this would be true with any building method.
Whilst it is true that life as we know it could not exist without the amount of sun that we get, a lot of species on earth are incredibly resilient. Whilst some sunlight would be required, plant life would eventually adapt to survive on low sunlight at certain times of the day, particularly things like algae or fungi.
Obviously these things would need to be considered, as well as potential adaptations of humans and animals living in circumstances with little sunlight. That means that this story would likely need to be set many years after the curse took effect, so that life could once again (precariously) sustain itself, with humans adapting to no longer be at the top of the food chain.
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Without light, without warmth, how does anything live? The meteors that killed the dinosaurs did so mostly from the dust cloud it threw into the air, first killing off most plants and then the herbivores starved and then the meat eaters starved. Light/heat/energy is the basic building block of life. Granted you need more than that, but that is a requirement!
People actually need light to produces Vitamin D and also other physiological benefits.
Plants do not grow in below freezing temperatures, they hibernate. So unless some plants learn to add anti-freeze to their veins they won't grow, and on top of that, plants produce CO2 when they don't get enough light to photosynthesize.
So no plants, for at least decades, so all living things live off of 'meat'. This is generally not a healthy nor sustainable living arrangement.
Now, maybe there are fungi in caves to help support diets, this could at least conceivably handwaved away. This would also encourage finding and living in caves, or just as useful, digging tunnels underground, warrens like gophers. The ground is a great insulator and areas could be kept 'warm' merely with body heat.
These are really the only two options, natural caves, or man made caves/holes, since without trees there isn't much to build. There may be enough dead ones left to help shore up tunnels.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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Closed 8 years ago.
* This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
* Questions about Idea Generation are off-topic because they tend to result in list answers with no objective means to compare the quality of one answer with the others. For more information, see [What's wrong with idea-generation questions?](//worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/522).
[Improve this question](/posts/28653/edit)
I'm working on a story about killer who uses knives and blades to take his victims' lives. The only problem about is that I can't really explain why he does this and not just use a silenced gun. The story takes place in our world in the year 2007.
Things to note are:
1. He could use a gun; it's not like he doesn't have access to one.
2. Gun laws aren't very strict and he could own a firearm. You just aren't allowed to carry it with you in public.
3. The character doesn't do stuff in the story just because he likes to do it. Right now I'm going with that argument for the knives, but it doesn't really fit for him.
So why would he use a knife/blade rather than a gun?
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It could be related to his motive for killing people. Since you say "knives and blades" that seems more elaborate than just stabbing someone in the back and suggests that the method might have significance. Say a revenge for a murder committed with blades. Or a cinematic professional killer might have a specific modus operandi or trademark for advertising purposes.
Blades are also more silent than guns. Even if you use subsonic ammunition in a suppressed gun, the bullet is driven by an explosion. It won't be quite as silent as a knife. For someone who hates making noise it might be valuable.
Blades can also make less of a mess. If you stab someone so that he dies from it and leave the blade in the wound, there might be minimal blood splatter. Guns in contrast are difficult to use clean. Even if you succeed in avoiding the blood, you will probably have propellant residue all over yourself.
He might prefer killing close range to avoid mistakes. This would negate much of the edge guns have over blades.
You can build an improvised blade from any suitable size piece of metal, plastic, or wood. They are inferior to real fighting blades for combat, but kill just as well. Building improvised guns is a pretty good way to lose fingers and even then you'll need to carry ammunition. So if you have a killer who does not want to carry weapons around or buy weapons or ammunition from unreliable sources, blades do make some sense.
Another benefit of improvised blades is that you can easily dispose of them. As long as they are not covered in blood near the site of the murder, they might be discarded as trash. Wrap it in paper and put in a trash can and it is probably safe. Guns in comparison are much more expensive to discard and can be recognized as the murder weapon and traced.
They limit your tactical options, but if the killer is a methodical patient type who is willing to wait until he has a safe opening to kill without fighting, blades do still work. That is really the key in my opinion, since using blades instead of guns limits your options, the killer must control the risks some other way. Stealth, disguise, preparation, etc. The methodical, patient, and precise personality.
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There's a pretty wide range of possible answers here.
1. Guns might be legal, but silencers might be illegal - and will certainly attract attention. Personal possession of silencers is restricted in several states. Which means that killing people with a gun is loud and thus dangerous.
2. (Small) knives are easier to hide. If he's an assassin type person, then he needs to sneak through security checks quite often, which makes small bladed type weapons more convenient. It's easier to make a ceramic type knife that is invisible to xrays and metal detectors, while many components of a gun have to be metal. Sniffer dogs can detect guns better than they can detect knives.
3. Knives are cheaper and more disposable. Guns are also often traceable, in terms of bullet patterns, or from the powder residue. If your killer is getting a new gun/silencer for each kill, then that's both expensive, and noticeable to law enforcement.
4. Knives can also pierce bullet proof vests - you'd need to be specially prepared for a knife wielding enemy.
5. If this character is in fact (somehow) heroic - or at least has a sense of professionalism, then there's other possible considerations. For example, knives are less likely to lead to injuries or death to bystanders, if this person is concerned about that.
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A really simple explanation, if you'd care for real-world logic, is because "silencer" is a misnomer - [they don't "silence" anything!](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/11/gun-silencers-dont-make-them-anywhere-near-silent/) The best currently available silencers [still produce over 100 dB of noise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressor#Subsonic_ammunition), while you are warned that hearing loss may develop for noises over 85 dB. Indeed, it is still recommended you wear ear protection when using a "silencer".
The reasonable term, generally used by experts (such as in the military) is "noise suppressor" or just "suppressor", which is an accurate description. It softens the noise so it doesn't carry quite as far, is less likely to damage the hearing of people in the immediate vicinity, and in long-range applications it can make it harder to locate the source of a sniper who fires from a suppressing rifle.
Further, even if a perfect silencer existed, if a bullet hits something hard (whether on that person, if the bullet misses, or if the bullet passes through the person and hits something on the other side) the sound produced can be as loud as the gunshot itself! And if a real silencer did exist, it could very well be made so illegal that just being caught with it would be as bad as being caught doing a killing itself - but it doesn't exist and it's logically impossible for a full powered gun, so I wouldn't make this a plot point if you wanted hard science.
Absolutely none of this applies to knives. If you want to be stealthy, you cannot shoot someone with any normal gun - no matter what ridiculous contraption you stick on the end of it.
And if you'd rather make your readers squeamish, you might [imitate life](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TruthInTelevision?from=Main.ArtImitatesLife) and make the killer have [piquerism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piquerism), "sexual interest in penetrating the skin of another person, sometimes seriously enough to cause death", as a number of real serial killers who preferred knives and needles have in the past. After all, if your killer isn't twisted in the head, I'd suggest you aren't really doing it right.
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Knives might be considered a much more personal touch.
It would be easy to develop a character who *needs* a connection with the victim, whether the killer is a serial killer or a contract killer with a specific method.
Knives require a physical connection with the victim that a gun completely avoids.
Also (as mentioned by others) knives are much more disposable, much easier to dispose of, and much harder to trace.
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I'm going for the ultimate in world building here: Creating a whole new star.
I have a race that's about a [Type II civilization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Type_II) (as per the Kardashev scale). The important thing here is that they're capable of building megastructures, such as a Death Star. They *could* build a [Dyson Sphere](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere) or something on that scale, but it would be extremely hard.
For some reason, this civilization wants to [make a star](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_formation) in the middle of a [giant molecular cloud](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_cloud), which is a large interstellar cloud composed of gas (molecular $H\_2$) and dust where young stars are born. For a star to be born, a section of this cloud has to undergo gravitational collapse.$^1$
Scientists (in our world) don't know for sure what triggers this collapse, but there are some ideas. One is that a supernova shockwave hits the cloud. Another is that two clouds collide and collapse.
How can this civilization trigger any of these events and form a star? Is it even possible?
Note: A food page to look at is the Wikipedia page on [Jeans instability](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeans_instability). That might help you come up with an idea, if you can figure out what quantities need to change.
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$^1$ You *could* just add matter, but I'd like to avoid that.
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Ok, I'll bite. If all you got in the area is a big cloud, mostly Hydrogen, with teensy amounts of heavies scattered about, and you're getting chilly, or wanna cook s'mores, and you need a New Star there toot sweet, as Granny Ogg would say, what can you do?
*Above: Very Rude Nebula. Basically asking to be subjected to some serious fusion.*
1. You could blow up (turn super?-nova) a nearby star you don't like. I hear that take a bit of energy. Likely beyond a Type II.
2. Find a nearby inactive black hole, feed it some hapless dwarf and point the jet at the cloud. Iffy.
3. Build giant megastructures to generate huge magnetic fields and direct the gas in a large area.
4. Get overthrown in a rebellion by the overtaxed populace asking why you're spending their hard-earned Joules on acts of cosmic vandalism like setting molecular clouds on fire. They will banish you to the center of a molecular cloud. As a dense massive object, your (soon to be inanimate) body will slowly attract nearby gas molecules. Over time, your body will become the accretion center for a new star.
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If you've got a death star, why not park it for a few centuries/millenia in the middle of the gas cloud?
Better yet, store all of your death stars in the middle of the gas cloud when they're not in use. Their gravity will help compress the gas cloud which will in turn increase the internal gravitational force it exerts on itself. Once the gas cloud is proceeding nicely towards stellar formation, and the center of the cloud is generating enough gravity to get it the rest of the way on its own, fly the death stars off to the next cloud of gas to create the next star.
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Set up a large number of large thermonuclear bombs in a sphere around the correct mass for the star you wish to create and explode them simultaneously. This will create two roughly spherical shock waves one travelling toward the center of the sphere, another away from it. If the explosion was powerful enough to overcome the pressure of the gas cloud, the shock wave travelling towards the center will not stop until it has compressed the gas enough for it to collapse on its own gravity and form a star.
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Build a really big ramscoop (a set of magnetic fields that funnel material toward a central point):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet>
But reduce constriction so you don't actually achieve fusion. For propulsion use whatever it is that you're already doing as a type II civilization. Now the end result of running your ship through the GMC will be compressed "strings" of material, but it's still the H2 that you want to build your star out of.
By running the ship in several tight loops (think a spring or slinkie) you should be able to create enough of a clump that it will start pulling together under it's own gravity. Over time it will pull in more of the cloud and eventually turn into a star.
I am not well versed enough in the physics to be sure, but you might have to do several clumps to get your target stellar mass (assuming they'll eventually fall into eachother).
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**Physics**: If there's a black hole nearby which is spewing out a powerful jet, the civilization could "just" redirect that jet to compress the cloud. By flipping the black hole sideways or setting up a ramscoop as proposed by Dan Smolinske.
**Chemistry**: The cloud is not collapsing because its pressure counteracts gravity. A "death star size" machine produces a cloud of particles which reacts endothermically with elements in the cloud (possibly as a catalyst, to reduce the amount of material produced). This cools the cloud, reducing the pressure. Alternatively, the new molecules have new degrees of freedom so that radiation can be absorbed as say rotation of the molecule, or they are able to radiate heat more efficiently in the infrared frequencies in which the cloud is transparent. All this reduces the kinetic energy of the cloud particles, reducing pressure and allowing it to contract.
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Pulse X-Ray, Gamma and other high energy laser beams at precisely calculated areas of the cloud, ionizing the gas molecules that the beam passes through - ion attraction will condense those areas and eventually lead to stellar formation. (Ironically) Solar sail equipped magnetic field generators sailing through the cloud would also accelerate the condensation process in a largely automated process.
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If we assume you have access to some kind of anti-gravity and artificial gravity technology, then just stick a gravity generator in the cloud, turned on to its maximum setting, and wait a few thousand years.
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The land of Koyokuni has been depopulated of people and their domesticated animals for many years, and had been sown with ergot spores, venomous insects, large, aggressive venomous birds and even magical combat automata programmed to kill any intruders, but those sowing the land with these area denial measures also left behind arsenic in Koyokuni's oil lamps and candles, so that if they were ever used, they would poison those nearby.
A group of magicians, including the one who originally ordered the area-denial measures have come in and have cleared them all out, recalling the combat automata, destroying the ergot spores with magic, killing all the venomous critters, and most importantly for this question: they have removed all arsenic that isn't in the ground.
My question is: What effect would removing pretty much every atom of Arsenic which isn't in the ground throughout the entire unpopulated rennaissance-tech-level land of Koyokuni have?
Don't worry about the plants and animals, I'm concerned about structural or chemical changes to anything that might contain bound Arsenic, that might have been made by rennaissance-level humans.
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# Many things will go extinct
You said “unpopulated” but not lifeless. So, some things will die including rats, hamsters, minipigs, goats, chicks, and possibly even humans.
**They won’t die immediately.** But you will greatly complicate pregnancy, lactation, and could kill things with vitamin B6 deprivation.
No one knows what biological role arsenic plays in organisms, however [studies clearly show that depriving certain things of arsenic causes problems](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01783629).
The exact answer is simply we don’t know because no one has ever tried depriving people or the billions of other species of arsenic.
Non-living effects will be minor, as already mentioned. Colors may change and some things will be less durable.
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* Anything containing copper will age / corrode / wear out faster. Probably the most noticeable effect
* Specifically, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenical_bronze> will become brittle / easy to shatter and break
* Second most noticeable, some paints will change color and flake/degrade faster - especially vibrant or bright greens (emerald range) and yellows (canary yellow). See <https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-history/arsenic-art-history/> - lose their shine, become more like shades of gray or brown, etc...
* Some bricks and brick work will become more fragile and degrade (but not very fast). See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick> and the use of arsenic-iron sludge as a strengthening agent in bricks
* Arsenic will show up in many kinds of traditional pottery, and pots will become more brittle too. Also, crushed, glazed pottery is sometimes used in mortar or early forms of concrete, which could also degrade. See eg <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27392578/> - again, not super fast to be noticed
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Wearing green will stop being unlucky.
This superstition arose from the consequences of skin absorption of arsenic by those who wore green. The green dyes contained arsenic.
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I have designed a planet's landmasses and now am wondering where the tectonic plates would be. I understand this is backwards to the popular method of tectonics-first, but I wanted to design how the planet looked rather than hoping the long and tedious simulation method would result with my desire. Let me know if my question is too vague to be answered. Thanks!
The grid represents equirectangular 15° increments.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KRtQC.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EzCES.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9FjGa.png)
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On the real Earth, the [boundaries between tectonic plates](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tectonic_plates_(2022).svg) can be:
1. In the middle of an ocean, e.g., the [Mid-Atlantic Ridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_Ridge); or
2. In the ocean near the coast of a continent, e.g., all along the western coasts of the Americas; or even
3. In the middle of a continent, e.g., the [East African Rift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_African_Rift).
(1) is more common than (2), and (2) is more common than (3).
But really, geography worked just fine for thousands of years without any knowledge of tectonic plates. Just make up your geography, and let geologists bother to find the boundaries between tectonic plates.
Bonus:
Tectonic plates are not eternal.
* Sometimes they split: for example the African plate is currently in the process of splitting into a main African plate and a new-ishly born Somali plate.
* Sometimes they merge: for example the [Ural mountains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural_Mountains) mark the former boundary between a European plate and an Asian plate, which are now solidly fused into a Eurasian plate.
* Sometimes they vanish: for example, the tiny [Juan de Fuca plate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_Fuca_Plate) is all that remains of the once great [Farallon plate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Plate), most of which has gone deep below the North-American plate and will never be seen again.
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Well one thing we can do is point out you have a set of coastlines that match which would predict they are an ancient spreading center like the Atlantic. (in red)
You also have two areas that look like convergent boundary islands (in green) the southern one most likely a complex convergent boundary like Oceania.
Its not a complete map but it is a starting point.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zfBnc.png)
The high distortion on polar continents will make it bit difficult, If your program can rotate your globe projection it would make it easier ith multiple projections.
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Without knowing were mountain ranges are, all we can really go off is how fractured a coastline looks and where ocean islands are. Large island chains in the middle of the ocean for instance usually dont just happen without any tectonic activity nearby.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A0krz.jpg)
This would be my guess. But i am not entirely happen with this. I am fairly confined the central island collection would look a bit like this. But idk what goes on in the northern hemisphere. Often times tectonics are not super intuative. As an example here is a map i simulated; [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4KcwN.jpg)
And here are the Plates and mountain ranges; [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cPe6y.jpg)
So as you can see, with simulated stuff it is just not super easy to get an accurate picture just by looking at the final continents. Especially fault lines going through continents are basically impossible to see without an elevation map.
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On my worlds of Earth, Ruquelis and Ersutiabu, there are three sexes relevant to this question, Men (XY male), Women (XX female) and Lilim (LX female), where X, Y and L are sex chromosomes. Lilim are effectively women with elongated, taloned feet and batlike wings with which they can fly (magically-assisted flight, but that magic isn't relevant to this question). Lilim- and women- children are indistinguishable until the age of 7-9 when lilim-children begin to grow wings and their feet begin to change into talons.
We therefore have crosses:
Men (XY) and Women (XX) -> 1/2 XY and 1/2 XX.
This corresponds to our familiar 50% male/female sex ratios in unions between men and women
However, we also have:
Men (XY) and Lilim (LX) -> 1/4 XL, 1/4 XX, 1/4 YL and 1/4 XY.
In these crosses, YL is immediately lethal, as the L chromosome is missing genes necessary for survival of a zygote that is only present on the X chromosome, preventing even a single round of cell division.
This leads to lilim effectively having a birth ratio of 1/3 XY Men, 1/3 XX Women and 1/3 XL Lilim, with a slightly lower birth rate than is the case for women.
In the distant past on Earth, lilim could not successfully bear XX offspring due to maternal/fetal incompatibility that caused XX woman offspring to be aborted in the first trimester, leading to a live birth ratio of 1/2 XY Men, 1/2 XL Lilim, and a significantly lower birth rate than is the case for women. Women also went extinct due to the higher survivability of lilim, until lilim were genetically engineered to eliminate the maternal/fetal incompatibility with XX offspring.
Since women reproduce more rapidly than Lilim, and breed true, this has led to undesirable social outcomes on other worlds on which populations of humans with lilim have settled. On Ruquelis, lilim prevent women from reproducing by killing or sterilizing girls who haven't begun to transform into a lilim by age 9, while on Ersutiabu, women are socially and economically discouraged from reproducing.
So, my question: How can lilim breed true once again?
I have considered putting an 'X-Polarase' gene on the L chromosome, so that during meiosis in a LX mother, any of the four resultant cells of meiosis that carry an X-chromosome will become a polar body rather than an ovum, but this would have the effect that lilim would then give birth *only* to lilim, as it would not be possible for them to supply the needed X-chromosome to an XY male offspring. This would lead to them becoming a parasitic sex, which is not what I have in mind.
I'd rather not go back down the road of maternal/fetal incompatibility between LX lilim mothers and XX woman offspring, so is there any other mechanism by which LX lilim and XY men can (almost) always have XY male and LX lilim offspring only?
In effect, I'm looking for a solution that maximises the LX lilim birth rate and minimising the XX woman birth rate from a LX lilim mother, rather than having fully half of their potential offspring being non-viable if at all possible. The genetic modifications need not be made to the lilim, but may instead be made to men, if necessary.
The best answer will involve the fewest gene changes and result in lilim giving birth to as few XX offspring as possible.
Additionally, since these changes must be distributed through the population by just one person who can only effect the change on one subject each ten minutes, for a maximum of 8 hours a day for a maximum of 1 month, it must propagate through the population naturally to as great an extent as possible.
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## Differential chemotaxis
Sperm use chemical gradients to reach the ovum. The receptors they use are genetically encoded, and so are the chemoattractant molecules produced by ova. You need to genetically modify *both* men and lilim, such that
* male gametes carrying an X chromosome are more strongly chemoattracted to the lilim ova that have an L chromosome
* male gametes carrying a Y chromosome are more strongly chemoattracted to the lilim ova that have an X chromosome
It's up to you which of these configuration uses the "default" chemoattractant pair and which you modify, but you will probably have to alter both the L and Y chromosome (we are probably trying to avoid modifying X because of the larger pool carried by women). The molecular mechanisms can be very varied - produce more of the existing chemoattractant from the ovum, increase/decrease receptor affinity on the sperm, produce a repellent molecule, alter surface linkage molecules used in the process of egg membrane breach, etc.
In this configuration, XX and YL zygotes are very rare, with the added bonus that lilim fertility increases (because fewer zygotes have the unviable YL combination).
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## Lilims twin a lot
Fertilised lilim ova have a far higher chance of twinning than humans. Around 50%. (Maybe 100%?). Even triplets are common, and quadruplets are only as uncommon as human triplets.
This not only boosts their birth rate substantially, but tends to provide the lilim with at least one highly loyal sibling, and, if things go badly, an aunt for their children.
This has some major effects on lilim society and family life. You can create conventions/family structures for a society where twinship is common or even nearly universal. Drawing on books by or about twins will yield loads of ideas you can riff on. You can decide if the twins are fraternal or identical. Edit: On second thoughts, only identical twinning really helps. You get two LX offspring per fertilisation.
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# Chimeras:
Your Lilim have a modified form of meiosis. Lilim eggs don’t separate in meiosis. So there is an L egg and an X egg together. The X egg is the one fertilized. If the sperm carry a Y, the L egg fails to survive and the Lilim gives birth to a male. If the sperm carry an X, the XX egg undergoes a limited form of meiosis to make a copy of the DNA and transfer it to the other egg so the L egg becomes an LX.
The organs critical for life derive from the XX twin, while the LX twin gives rise to the reproductive tissues an those that will be responsible for the Lilim phenotype. At the appropriate developmental stage, the LX tissues begin to replace certain XX tissues to create the Lilim body plan.
Enough things go wrong in this process to give rise to a limited number of XX females without the LX chimeric twin. That percentage can be whatever you want for your story.
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# Uterus bacteria
Create or preferably alter some bacteria that live in the uterus. These do their normal symbiotic tasks. However, the bacteria are triggered when anything other than a LX has nested. During the pregnancy the different hormones exuded from non LX fetus makes the bacteria react. They turn the environment inhospitable for any fetus. If the child is LX there won't be a reaction.
The person delivering this only needs to insert the bacteria colony into the uterus. For spreading it effectively to everyone you can use the same way many good and bad bacteria spread. HPV, AIDS, gonorrhoea are easy examples. Lilim can assist the spread by engaging in certain sexual activities. The bacteria can then spread from person to person.
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**A simple solution**
The lilim's X(human female?) chromosome in their gametes tend to become human Y chromosomes, making it possible for them to produce L, X, and Y egg cells. This leads to the possibility of LX, XY, XX, LY, and YY zygotes.
As you've stated, LY is inviable. I don't know what would come from a YY(as the above change would make that possible, probably somewhat likely) but let's make that inviable as well. This leads to the only viable obtions being LX, XY, and XX. Since the lilim X chromosome only sometimes doesn't turn into a Y due to [insert your reason here], the vast majority of lilim offspring will be either human males or lilim, with about 40% of their fertilizations being inviable.
Edit:
I see that some genetic changes must be introduced throughout the population to make it so that quite literally only lilim or human males are born. In this case the solution would be to find what causes the change to sometimes not occur and then make changes so that the X to Y change always occurs(barring genetic mishaps and such).
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I'm throwing my latest idea out to compete with the rest of the ideas here...
**Mitochondrial incompatibility**
In humans, both eggs and sperm carry mitochondria, but the sperm's mitochondria are not inherited, as they do not enter the egg during fertilization. They are of matrilineal descent.
Secondly, X, Y and L chromosomes each have genes that are common to all three chromosomes, genes common to two but not the third (X and Y but not L, X and L but not Y, & Y and L but not X), and unique genes not shared by either of the other two chromosomes.
So, by modifying the mitochondria to add a gene lethal in diploid cells (preventing cell division) that is inactivated by a protein that is produced by a gene on both the Y and L chromosomes, but not on the X chromosome, XX cells will not divide, but XY or LX will. YL will still be lethal by its own mechanism.
Lilim mothers with the modified mitochondria will therefore only give birth to LX lilim and XY men. These mitochondria will be inherited by all of the lilim's offspring, but will be transmitted only by the female offspring, so it will not make its way into XX women.
Lilim birth rates will remain slightly lower than women's, but as pregnancy with XX (or YL) offspring will not occur, the probability of pregnancy per menstrual cycle in lilim will be half of that of women. Unlike the former maternal/fetal incompatibility, XX offspring won't result in a pregnancy that is miscarried in the first trimester.
[Answer]
**The Lilim's gamete selects for the "correct" sperm arriving**
Contrary to popular belief, it's not the first sperm arriving at the egg that fertilizes it, but usually one of the almost-first ones in a (currently) hardly understood process. However, some selection is involved (in humans) since even with a [50:50 sperm sex ratio](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2019.00388/full), the fertilized eggs are NOT evenly split, to account for more XY embryos not making it through pregnancy and early childhood.
So while absolute pure-breeding would be hard to explain with this mechanism, a significant skew towards LX offspring could be the case, enough for a stable Lilim population to exist.
Alternatively: maybe the reproductive system even flushes out (almost) all non-L-carrying eggs, meaning that it's either nothing (if a Y sperm makes it), or a lilim if an X-Sperm makes it. The occasional XY and XX births from Lilims are causes of this selection not working absolutely and can be as rare/frequent as your story/world requires.
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Not quite what you asked for, but you could disrupt non-lilim breeding using a [gene drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive). Modify the L and X chromosomes to carry a payload that hijacks DNA repair mechanisms to copy itself over to unmodified L and X chromosomes, resulting in new chromosomes with the same payload ("correcting" X chromosomes in XX' progeny or L chromosomes in LX' to make them X'X' and L'X'). The key part: men with X' chromosomes make sperm that are viable only in lilim females.
* XY + XX -> 2 XY, 2 XX
* XY + L'X' -> X'X', L'X', X'Y
* XY + X'X' -> 2 X'Y, 2 X'X'
* X'Y + L'X' -> same as XY + L'X'
* X'Y + LX -> same as XY + L'X'
* X'Y + XX -> sterile
* X'Y + X'X' -> sterile
Then in subsequent generations, X'Y males can only reproduce with lilim, and X'X' females are only fertile with XY males but produce only X'X' females and X'Y males. The modified chromosomes can only be removed from the gene pool by preventing every individual carrying them from breeding, and without intervention, the unmodified X chromosome becomes extinct in a relatively small number of generations.
This doesn't make lilim "breed true" (unless you make the X'X' combination non-viable, which you said was undesirable), they are still equally likely to produce a "normal human" daughter or a lilim daughter, but they become the only fertile females: in the end, all humans have lilim mothers, and it becomes impossible to have a self-sustaining population without lilim.
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It seems like civilizations that used the atlatl usually switched to a different melee weapon, so the atlatl and its darts were more exclusively ranged weapons.
If I am designing a civilization that uses atlatls, could they possibly use the atlatl (thrower) as a smaller weapon in itself? Would this make it less effective?
The method I have in mind is literally a hatchet blade fixed to the end of an atlatl.
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you want the end of the atlatl where the spear sits to be light to transfer the most energy to the spear when throwing.
If you put a heavy blade on the end then after throwing you end up needing to deal with the energy that you imparted to the atlatlchet. Energy that didn't go to the spear's speed.
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This is going to run into the same mechanical problem as putting a spear blade on the end of a bow. Like a bow's tips, the tip of an atlatl needs to accelerate as quickly as possible to get the velocity of the projectile as high as possible. Sticking heavy things on them impedes this.
Now, that said, with an atlatl you have the advantage that there is only one tip, so the handle part could maybe have an axe head or something attached to it. It will need to be shaped so as to not endanger the user when throwing things with the weapon, and the thin, light shaft of the atlatl won't be nearly as good as an actual axe handle, so you'll have to use a short grip on it and then the long end of the throwing half will get in your way a lot... But it would technically be better than fighting bare-handed.
However, a dedicated hand axe will work a heck of a lot better and not risk damaging your expensive and finely-tuned atlatl by whacking armored opponents with it. The extra weight is pretty negligible. You'll want a hatchet for doing camp chores anyway.
Alternatively, I suppose you could put a hook on the back of a hand-axe suitable for loading darts on. It wouldn't throw anywhere near as well as a real atlatl, but up it to javelins instead of darts so they rely more on weight than speed and it would probably buy you a few extra yards of range.
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# Creative License:
Despite searching, I can't find anyone who has done this. The only weights you can put on an atlatl are about mid-shaft and then only about 85 grams. The shaft of an atlatl, to be efficient with such lengths, seems to need to be as light as possible.
So to make it a melee weapon, we'll need to be creative.
In any case, your shaft needs to be made of something REALLY strong and REALLY light. Even with that, it's likely that the kind of abuse it will take as a melee weapon will damage the spear-throwing ability. A shaft of normal materials might still work as a club and an atlatl, but it would likely do one job, the other or both poorly.
Have you considered a punch-dagger? The handle where the person holds the atlatl would have a grip that included a strong hold and a built-in piercing weapon. This would give the fighter an emergency weapon in desperate situations and look really bad-ass.
If the shaft were REALLY (handwavium) strong and flexible, the punch-dagger could double as the business-end of a spiked war club. Or an axe, if the punch-dagger were shaped like an axe head. In this case, there would be a grip at both ends. It would still only be a light melee weapon. A dedicated weapon would work better.
A thin spike on the end of a strong shaft could be used foil-like as a stabbing weapon. It would likely wreck the atlatl function, and the atlatl part might cause it to stick in an opponent. Or a spike on the handle end could work like a knife to stab (rather awkwardly).
A chain attached to the grip-end of a strong atlatl could be attached to a flail head. While it strikes me as awkward, most of the weight of the flail would be away from the arm. Then the mid-shaft weight could functionally be a second handle to allow the flail to be swung about two-handed.
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I understand you would like to give your world some original nuance, but I cite the old say: "jack of all trades, master of none".
This is true also for weapons. The most lethal and effective weapons are those that are
1. optimized for one kind of usage (to put it simply)
2. easy to learn to use effectively
#1 allows to optimize the weapon in itself, #2 allows optimizing the training of a large army with less economical effort, hence optimizing the overall effectiveness of a group.
There is a reason why in all history most armies where composed by troops specialized with a single kind of weapon. In the cases where you really needed more versatile troops (such in more modern warfare) you had a set of different weapons each optimized for a different purpose.
For example, the ancient rome soldier had a gladius for melee and the pilum for one-shot ranged attacks.
Another example: in modern warfare the typical soldier have an assault rifle for normal mid-range operations, a pistol as sidearm and an assault knife, and probably some grenades. In a platoon you could have more specialized troops, for example those able to use an RPG or a stinger missile.
In general Swiss-army knife sort-of weapons are more difficult to use and to train to use effectively. Moreover, once the weapon breaks, you loose all your offensive capability, whereas if your sword breaks you could always use a dagger or a bow to be still useful on the field.
In addition, a more mechanically complicated weapon could have more mode of failures and could be more costly to build an maintain.
Bottom line, aside from ceremonial reasons (e.g. the halberd, a weapon that was notoriously difficult to use effectively, but was great for show), funny multi-purpose weapons are a big no-no from a strict practical warfare POV.
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Plenty of excellent answers here, but I'd like to provide a note of practical experimentation that you might be able to wrap your head around.
Throw a baseball. Now throw a baseball with a 2 kg wrist-weight attached to your arm. You'll be lucky to get half of your top speed. I tried this with .5 kg wrist weights, trying to play Beat Saber, and it really got across how much a little extra mass slows down your actions.
A typical stone axe head weighs .3kg. The effort to accelerate that weight (regardless of which end of the stick it's on) will subtract from the energy that goes into the spear. You could make the axe head lighter, but then it would be a less effective axe.
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You may want to take a look at [Woomera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woomera_(spear-thrower)) for ideas. This traditional [Aboriginal Australians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_Australians)' spear thrower often made as multi-purpose tools: often shaped like long narrow bowls to carry food and water, possibly can be used as shields, and many had a sharp stone cutting edge attached to the end of the handle.
Another to take a look is wood-with-embedded-edge weapons, such as [Macuahuitl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl).
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There is a popular movie trope of the near-total elimination of a sex (often male) because of a virus/a plague. This got me wondering :
How would such a virus work?
I'm not sure if it would be possible, but I had one idea: the virus would mainly attack those with a high amount of testosterone, thus making men the only ones infected.
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# Have a DNA virus.
Y chromosome holders have [a gene to make them male](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testis-determining_factor) so have a virus that binds to this, and produces a toxin that kills the host if the gene is present, or isn't present.
It's simple, if immoral, piece of genetic engineering.
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There are two simple cases to consider: a virus that preys upon a characteristic present in only one gender, and a virus that is counteracted by a characteristic present in only one gender.
In the first case, you have viruses that target one specific gender by, for example, starting cancer in reproductive organs. HPV can lead to such cancer, but affects both genders. It's not hard to imagine a virus that only leads to cancer in one, however, maybe even a variant of HPV.
In the second case, you have viruses that are vulnerable to the defenses of only one gender. [This article](https://www.news-medical.net/health/Does-the-Immune-System-Differ-between-Men-and-Women.aspx), for example, details differences in the immune responses of men and women. With a higher immune response, women can fight off certain diseases easier, but can be prone to autoimmune responses as a consequence.
If you're dreaming up the world, you get to set the exact mechanism by which the virus works, but these two avenues are where I'd start looking. It's a bit easier to explain a virus disproportionally affecting one gender than one only affecting one gender, but you could pull it off with a virus that triggers fast-spreading cancer that must start in reproductive organs, or maybe one that triggers an autoimmune response, in certain cases.
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This is painfully easy if you're targeting men, but not reliable. All viruses target specific proteins. There are numerous proteins that are only expressed by the Y chromosome. If the virus feeds off of one of those, then it would only effect men.
If you're targeting only women, my understanding is that this would be much more difficult. You would have to target a protein that exists in all people, but have men express a protein that inhibits it.
The hard part would be making it infectious. You'd need it to first target an exposed protein, like in the upper respiratory system, or as a sexually transmitted disease. If it's sexually transmitted, then men would have to get it from other men. From there it would work its way through the system until it found the protein it was targeted to feed on exponentially.
The unreliable part is that there aren't many proteins that are in "all men and no women." There will always be some cases where people are naturally immune, even if they do have the protein. The diseases that target those proteins are generally limited to the reproductive organs.
What you'd wind up with is something like super-syphilis. Although the mechanism isn't understood, syphilis has a higher fatality rate among men. If you could isolate that mechanism and exploit it, you might have what you're looking for.
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The virus can lie dormant in the male urethra or female uterus. It can only reproduce in one of the two, depending on whether it targets men or women. It spreads through sexual contact. Once it gets where it wants to be it wakes up and starts replicating. It produces a chemical that spreads through the body and poisons it.
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**Chivalry**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5iXjJ.jpg)
<https://interestingengineering.com/the-origin-of-woman-and-children-first-the-sinking-of-hms-birkenhead>
Your people know the virus is bad. It is an existential threat and it could wipe them out. There is a treatment but there is not nearly enough for everyone.
The society makes a decision: the people who are most important are women and girls. Those are the people who get the treatment. They are the people who survive.
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