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I'm trying to create a 'futuristic library' in a 1st-world country set in the 21st century. I'm imagining a library where for each book, there is instead an electronic tablet to hold the same text. Each electronic tablet only holds one text and serves the same purpose as a book. In what context would such a the creation of a library system with electronic tablets be practical or preferred to physical books?
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## Realistically, never.
Books just aren't that much raw data. A one-book tablet would consist of a very small ROM chip with the book and a lot more chips controlling the screen, input/output, and other functions (to say nothing of the expense and bulk of the screen itself, or the casing, or the battery, etc).
No matter how much you can slash the price of each of those components, there's no getting around the fact that it would be more practical to have many books' worth of data for each physical tablet - this requires far less material and storage space, and hardly impacts usability since the vast majority of library books spend most of their time on the shelf.
What would be even more practical is to separate the two parts. Keep a huge vault full of ROM chips, and a smaller number of tablets to slot them into. In this sense, the vault of memory chips is much like a microfilm repository, except that the reader is small enough to be portable and lent out to library-goers.
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**When the information in the books is top secret.**
The problem with distributing information electronically (e.g. downloading to regular eBooks) is that digital information is easy to copy and share, and therefore likely to be copied and shared. Normally that's a good thing, but if the information in your library is highly sensitive/classified (nuclear codes? DNA source code for killer viruses? Black magic spellbooks? Level 35 Scientology texts? etc), then you want a way to keep the information secure and share it with only the few people who you trust to see that information.
One way to do that would be to keep the information on old-fashioned paper books, but those are subject to mildew, aging, etc, so instead you fashion hermetically sealed tamper-proof eBooks, each with a hard-coded encrypted ROM containing the sensitive info, plus maybe some other security devices like a retina scanner, a self-destruct, geofencing alarm system, photocopy-resistant display, and so on. Now if anyone tries to make off with a book to steal its secrets, the book will fight back! :)
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When paper started to become mass produced, libraries and libraries were reluctant to adopt it as replacement for parchment, because there were concerns that paper was less resistant to time and less versatile whenever there were needs for "corrections".
In your case, tablets might be ok-ish, as long as the electronic is reliable. I recently had to buy a new laptop because the other one had a sudden failure of the motherboard, resulting in its irreversible death. While it was disappointing for me, I can imagine that no library would appreciate losing content due to random failures which, with big numbers, are bound to happen.
Therefore having what you describe would be viable only when and if the underlying electronics had become massively reliable or, even better, capable of self repair.
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**Cheaper to Produce**
In the real world it is cheaper to make a paper book than an electronic one. In your world it must be cheaper to make the electronic one.
Perhaps we have chopped down most of the trees in the world and not found a good alternative for slices of pulped dried wood. Paper is a luxury item.
One top of that, the electronic books are small to lower material costs. Each *book* is just a data chip that contains the text. It either (a) projects the text onto a surface to read or (b) gets inserted into a tablet-shaped reader.
The library has tablets you can use inside the library. They have a few hundred tablets but millions of book chips. You can also bring your own reader, or use a reader app on your smart device. If you rent the book you can insert into a reader at home.
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Practicality or preference might not matter. Product doesn't have to be better if it can be sold in right-way to right audience that is those who decide to buy the books.
Whole thing could be type of pork project or indirect subsidy to local manufacturing economy. Readers would be produced by local company with connections to government. Giving money directly would go against regulations or trade rules. But buying tens of thousand of devices would be no problem. Hand crafting all of those devices would generate jobs.
Also it could be marketed as being at the bleeding edge of technology. Getting rid of old dusty books and replacing them with modern technology. Look you can even change the font size for single book stored in the device.
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The library has a diverse audience (in terms of language, eyesight, reading ability, etc.) The electronic books automatically adjust to the reader's preferred format. They have:
* Auto-translation into many languages
* Automatic font scaling for people who need large print
* Text-to-speech abilities for illiterate or distracted readers.
* Bookmarking functions, so dog-earing is obsolete
* Automatic search and indexing, to easily find topics in the book
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The supreme court ruled that piracy is in fact not a theft so people can copy and share any digital material without breaking the law. To counter that Publishers decided to implement DRM protection so strong you cannot buy an e-book file without authorizing it with hardware chip found in the reader. After years of this practice they notice that pirating a paper copy is a lot easier because of scanners and they can control companies licensed to make DRM chip-enabled devices so they stop printing. Since electronics are extremely cheap and cutting trees a taboo, libraries concluded it's better to have one reader per book than multiple readers authorized to open thousands of book files they own.
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In your world, engineers haven't invented dense electronic storage or WiFi (or these are prohibitively expensive), but space is still at a premium (like in a very large city). This leads to a strange balance where one tablet can just barely hold one book (especially with illustrations), but it's still cheaper to make a library of thin tablets than to buy a larger space to house the same number of books.
Alternatively, people in your world just prefer things this way. No messy menus, no search functions, no page turning. Just one book per tablet, plain and simple. And if tech is cheap enough to provide this luxury, why not?
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**There are no cows or trees**
In the late 21st, due to runaway emissions, humanity has killed inadvertently killed off all plant life. All animal life, therefore, also went extinct, except for those pets which eat the same artificial food that people eat. People live in climate-controlled biospheres, and there are a few trees to maintain oxygen and to add a bit of color. Meat is an expensive luxury, affordable only to the ultra-wealthy, and the mass-production of paper or parchment is unfeasible. Electronic components, such as tablets, become the literary medium of choice, by default. Tablets are still expensive, so lending-libraries with many tablets to borrow is still more budget-friendly than buying one's own.
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Physical and digital books can be copied. For a truly 'digits rights management' system, there has to be some form of encryption.
Recall those flat 2D images that look like nonsense, but if you stare at them in the right way, they become a 3D image? The image is all in your head, not on the paper.
I can foresee a system wherein the tablet has encryption technology for the data on it, and your eyes have some form of contact lens that decrypts the signal. Perhaps some form of polarizing filter that only lets select pixels through, based on some encryption algorithm. Without the decryption, the image from the tablet is just random noise, that even if copied, produces even worse non-encrypted random noise. Totally meaningless, with absolutely no meaning in the data stream.
The tablet and your personalized eye filter would have to be synched, at the point of transaction, in a private-key public-key quantum encryption system. Only then will your filter be able to 'read' the content of the tablet. The image will be 'all in your head'. Only you, and your mind, will be able to extract any data from it. Your personalized serial number in your filter has to match the personalized serial number of the book and of the library to unlock the data. The public-key private-key synch will be a time-sensitive, one-time-only interaction controlled by quantum entanglement computing. And since quantum entanglement is a one-off system that is 'localized' to a specific 'entanglement event', each entangled tablet would be unique in its quantum entanglement. No possibility of duplicating the tablet with the data on it, since the original entanglement 'pair' would also have to be duplicated. The data would only be in useable form on that tablet only.
Thus, very high-end 'professional' books and manuals, containing very expensive data that the authors wish to be protected, would be stored on their own limited-edition tablets, keyed/encrypted only for that data, to ensure their limited distribution. These would be kept in 'libraries', where the data was not able to be transmitted over any form of 'net'. One would have to personally have the tablet in order to have access to the data.
And since the entire process could be made time-limited, much like a library has a 'due back by' date, when the borrowing time was up, the encryption key is no longer valid, and the tablet just displays noise to the viewer again. The tablet would be only so much useless technology, unless returned to the library and re-activated. The data on it would otherwise be lost forever.
Being able to download the information onto the tablet would defeat the purpose, as there is now a copy in a 'downloadable' format in existence, that can be hacked by others at the distributed source (library, book store, or other). To be a truly 'limited edition' format, the original work would have to be stored in a controlled facility where the tablets were produced, and not further distributed or made available. Thus, one tablet, one iteration of the data. The number of tablets with that data on it could be strictly controlled. If the tablet is destroyed, the data on it is permanently 'out of circulation'.
I suppose a human could be the intermediary to copy the data from the encrypted form to another form, much like someone reading a book into a recording device, but the public-key private-key would be controlled as to who has access to it. Also, I can not envision how pictures, images, and graphs could be transcribed.
I doubt if the system would be used for mass-market pulp-fiction and such, as the circulation would not be great enough to make each novel profitable, and these mass-market books have a short best-before date. However, for really good works of literature, limited edition works, and for books that contain highly valuable information that one does NOT want in mass circulation, I suspect there would be a limited market for select libraries in select places, like universities and such. Collectors, as well, might have access to the synch technology that would allow them to provide access to the tablet for others to enjoy, allowing them to pass on the public key to others, but the original tablet would still have to be physically present to view it. One tablet, one copy of the works on it.
Think perhaps along the lines of great artistic creations, works of literary and digital art much like the 'one-off' works of the physical art masters. Art galleries would evolve into 'tablet galleries', viewable only to those who's personalized eye filters were quantum entangled/synched/encrypted to the tablet.
**Addendum**
Even a 'block chain' technology, such as is used for cryptocurrency, can be 'split' and then each copy placed on a completely separate 'net', each 'net' now a copy of the original cryptocurrency, that can be circulated within its own system. The block chain cryptocurrency only has protection and value within its own distribution net, its own contiguous block chain. Only a 'physical hard copy', suitably encrypted and uniquely serialized, can ensure that the works are kept original and 'limited edition'.
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the tablets while only containing 1 book at a time can be downloaded with any book in the library's digital archive every book can be any book this means that books don't have to be sorted or rearranged and new books can be added more easily. As to why each tablet can only hold one book I don't really have an idea for that but it could work as an incentive to return the tablets in order to have a new book stored on them.
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Hypothesis: A world with magic users is (unbeknownst to them) slowly dying because of magic usage
Question: What would be the underlying cause of this slow decay?
Conditions:
* The magic in this world is in some way respecting the law of conservation of energy. If energy is spent while using magic (performing telekinesis, pyrokinesis, you name it) it is taken from elsewhere (from within, the environment, certain objects, etc.)
* The magic users are oblivious to this fact which means that the 'slow decay' of the world should not be easily determined
The question is in some ways inspired by the old Dark Sun campaigns, where you had 'defiling' and 'preserving' magic. Defiling magic caused a slow decay of the world (in the sense that energy was taken from plants and life in general) and finally led to a Mad Max-like desert world that could barely sustain life. Obviously this is quite visible and its progression was clear to the world's inhabitants.
A different dynamic would be that magic users are merrily shooting their fireballs or constructing their earth golems, until they are confronted with thier plausible demise. Liken it to the effect fossile fuels have had on our world: fossile fuels certainly made our lives easier and allowed many scientific advancements, but at some point we figured out we can no longer continue like this for it might lead to catastrophic results for our 'habitat'. But in the interim we weren't aware of its harm.
Ideas I've had were drawing energy from the sun. However, it was justly pointed out that the sun cannot reasonably be depleted if you want the magic spent to have the same energy output as the energy input. It could also be sourced from the core of the planet, which might destabilize the planet's magnetic field and kill all the inhabitants due to the sun's radiation. Not sure if this theory could hold as I'm quite clearly not a scientist.
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**A magic based world has magic based life.**
Life draws from available resources. Life on earth evolved from materials available on earth. There's always a question of what alien life might be like, if they had to evolve in different circumstances with different resources available -- different "building blocks". In a world of magic, it's reasonable to assume that life has evolved with "magic" as a building block.
There may be basic cellular processes on this planet that have evolved to rely on magic. Weak magic is to them as weak oxygen is to us or weak sunlight is to Earth plants. No magic? Cells die. The exact biological process probably isn't important (and may well be beyond the science of your world to comprehend anyway) but the basic idea is that life in a world of magic evolved to rely on magic.
Spellcasters expending magic is therefore something like a [nuclear winter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter). Except instead of kicking up dust to block sunlight, it's either interfering in the magical field used by all life, or it's depleting it faster than it's renewed. Life evolved to require magic, and now it's getting something like **"magical suffocation"** -- it's not able to get enough of it, and this causes failures on the cellular level.
You could even take it a step further. A magical *universe* could have magical *physics*. Instead of [the four fundamental forces of physics](https://www.space.com/four-fundamental-forces.html), they have five. Or more. The extra ones require magic. Weakened magic could cause failure *at the molecular level*. You could get as fantastical and far removed from science as you want, here, but the key point is that **if a world evolved in magic, then magic is probably a building block of life** and without it, life -- and possibly the world itself -- suffers just the same as we might suffer if there was a lack of CO2, sunlight, or the strong nuclear force. Whatever the wellspring of magic is, it is becoming clear that overuse is stretching it thin.
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**Each time magic is used, the gate opens a little wider.**
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> The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their
> consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not
> forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste
> hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the
> South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is
> engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower
> long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their
> cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a
> foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see
> Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded
> threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres
> meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where
> man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They
> wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.
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[The Dunwich Horror, HP Lovecraft.](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dh.aspx)
Your magic users are oblivious, most of them. They don't know about the Old Ones, and the fact that they are waiting, inching closer, ready to clean off the world and take it back. The gate between the worlds has been shut for a long time. The magic users don't know that every use of magic opens that gate a little wider. Little things from that plane slip through. Horrible little things, that corrupt and change the earth. And so as the Old Ones get closer the world too feels the foulness. When the first one comes through the gate it will open it for the rest. That will be the end.
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## Magic's Forgotten Origins
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> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
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Your inhabitants have been living in a techno paradise for so long, they don't even know how the magic works: Trillions and trillions of nanobots spread over the entire world, governed by their distributed intelligence and human voice commands, have been doing your inhabitants bidding. The nanobots spread themselves to every corner of the world through wind and water. It's not a spell, it's a voice command.
To avoid a grey goo scenario, the nanobots cannot replicate without *very* explicit instructions. This knowledge is lost, and every spell inevitably consumes some of the nanobots through wear and tear, or self destructive actions such as fire spells, which force the nanobots to combust.
As the number of nanobots dwindle, magic becomes weaker and weaker, the intelligence of the network diminishes, and less and less complex "spells" (requests) can be understood/fulfilled.
Maybe one of your characters will get lucky and find a very interesting book describing how magic works, and become a more powerful wizard than anyone thought possible. They could kill at arbitrary distances, take away others abilities, create structures or items, create entirely new spells, manifest a copy of their body in other locations, and maybe even replenish the "magical energy", for everyone, or a select few. Anyone with this knowledge could become a god.
There could be regions, like space, where magic doesn't work, or works weakly based on the current nanobot population.
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> Any sufficiently studied magic is indistinguishable from science.
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# Destruction of the ozone layer
Energy can be taken from many things. It doesn't need to be one thing. This spread out energy can also delay the effect. One part it could take the energy from is the ozone layer, reducing ozone to other forms.
Before global warming we had something much more direct. We used gasses that started to bond with the ozone layer. This prevented the benefit it offers for all life. Reduce the UV waves from the sun that reach the ground. UV isn't noticed directly by humans, as it's an invisible form of 'light'. All consequences can be disastrous, but difficult to detect.
UV can influence on both a long and a short time scale, from an 'everything in the sunlight will die', to 'reduction in crops, sea life and increase in cancer', to just minor inconveniences. You probably want to go for the middle ground, where at first nothing much is happening, but slowly things take effect. This increases to big changes we have difficulty noticing, like many species of (sea) animals and plants reduce in numbers. This in years or decades the eco system can strain to bursting, then tipping over. For humans it might look like less crops for a year or two and less insects, then suddenly you have plagues of certain species and mass deaths of others, making much life quite difficult. This can lead to more magic use to fix problems or stay alive, causing the increase of all effects.
From the setting I suspect knowledge of UV and ozone is absent or little, making even people who notice powerless to change it. The utility of magic might be too high to give up as well for many people, making them deny, ignore or even abuse it. If the gasses that attacked the ozone layer were the key to huge amounts of cheap energy and strong military might, it would still be in use today.
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### Accelerated entropy
Magic is about getting things done, and *fast*.
Want to move earth? Use magic to do millions of "grain moves". Want vegetables? Grow them from thin air very fast. Want to burn an enemy to a crisp? Send "heat" in then faster than they can "refrigerate" themselves.
But there is a thing. You are basically *moving* entropy around with magic, not creating these effects directly. Every time someone uses magic, some land, somewhere, gets a little more barren, that is, [a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy#:%7E:text=a%20state%20of%20disorder%2C%20randomness%2C%20or%20uncertainty). And so the world dies a little.
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## Nuclear Magic
Mages cast spells by manipulating the structure of atoms. This is done with the mages' fundamental ability to alter probability and thus they can bias the quantum mechanics underlying all matter. Because the low-level effects of spells are probabilistic, the spells just do mostly what they are supposed to do. A spell based on a chemical reaction does mostly mess with the Valence electrons. But part of the magic of such a spell interferes with other parts of the atom, leading to nuclear reactions. Those result in an array of catastrophic effects destroying the world.
**Gamma Radiation**
Very high-frequency light. The photons damage organic molecules and cause mutation and radiation sickness.
**Neutron Radiation**
What precisely free neurons do depends on their velocity. The fast ones "just" punch complex molecules apart. The slow ones are more hazardous. They are absorbed by surrounding matter leading to a phenomenon called neutron activation. This transmutes elements into unstable isotopes, leading to further decay in the environment.
**Nuclear Explosions**
Mages can set off nukes. This might sound like it would break any setting, but you can limit the damage this does. Have nuclear magic be considered dark, forbidden, and forgotten. Most mages only do this as a side effect. Secondly, no enchantment or artifice; magic needs an active caster whose spells have a ramp-up time. This means that an explosion will get the caster itself before it gets out of hand. I know that this isn't exactly how nukes work, but those mages wouldn't be working with fissables directly. Iron is the element where you can't extract any energy with nuclear reactions. Heavier elements are affected by fission, and lighter ones are affected by fusion. Those reactions are not that energy efficient for the most part. So the mages are not playing with nukes unless they figure out nuclear physics.
**Nuclear or Weird Apocalypse**
This world has world-ending lore. A mage who figures out uranium enrichment, how to get their hands on any fusion fuel with a low Lawson Criterion, how to make antimatter in large quantities, or how to produce any number of exotic particles with their dark nuclear magic is insanely dangerous. Depending on what they figure out, this could kill anything from a city to the local part of the universe.
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## The aliens are unhappy
Magic often seems to have an innate intelligence - cast your spell and something happens that seems to understand your wishes.
Actually, that's because it's being run by a group of advanced aliens who have been running the planet as a kind of zoo / experiment / entertainment. They introduced the idea of magic to humour themselves, and/or assist the inhabitants with their daily needs. But they're getting a bit fed up. Too much greed is making things difficult. So they're losing interest, and getting a bit sloppy with their actions, ignoring the "spells" or just doing something different out of spite. And now there's a growing movement who want to abandon the experiment, clean out the spellcasting race, or just plain send it hurtling into the sun.
Your humble hero is the only one to understand this. But nobody else believes them, and they can't change the situation alone...
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# Greenhouse gasses
The key equation for digesting glucose is
$$ \text{Glucose } +\text{ Oxygen } \to \text{ Energy } + \text{Carbon Dioxide} + \text{Water} $$
For photosynthesis you have
$$ \text{Carbon Dioxide } +\text{ Water } + \text{ Light } \to \text{ Glucose } + \text{Oxygen} $$
For magic you have
$$ \text{Mana } +\text{ Oxygen } \to \text{ Effect } + \text{Carbon Dioxide} $$
Where "Effect" is the fireball, scrying, power to fly, talking with animals, and so forth.
Powerful spells gobble up oxygen from the atmosphere and expel greenhouse gasses. Too much magic and the ice caps melt and sea levels rise and yada yada yada.
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**Pollution**
"pollution" in a more generic sense is where I would go.
Food goes into your body > it gets processed > out comes waste... Of various types. Sweat. Pee. Poop. Eye gunk. Boogers.
Raw materials gets processed into goods. Those goods get used. Resulting stuff gets dumped into garbage piles, into the ocean, into our water sources, etc. Natural disasters destroy and unleash waste while we also create ever larger trash piles.
As you "injest" magic? It gets processed into effects. "(performing telekinesis, pyrokinesis, you name it)". Well after that? Where is that "energy"? The residue? the processed magic?
We have the same problem with our oceans. Slowly but surely, we pull stuff from the ground. process it. and then a very large portion of waste makes it into the ocean while we also over-fish and over-develop.
so as "pure" magic gets processed and refined and used? Out the other end it gets output and then it's back in the atmosphere. Some of it gets recycled - like water becomes clouds becomes new streams... but some of it is left over "waste". It gets put into the system as "forever chemicals" that eventually build up over time and taint the "well". Too much bad stuff and our water sources are now tainted and you drink it. Then you get cancer or suffer effects from the "bad" water.
As the magic gets used, waste gets created and fed back into the system until some point where the magic is simply covered in "filth". Spells don't do what you want or have unintended side effects - on you and on the animals around you. Requiring more and more purification rituals to get useful mana - and to stop you from going insane from the pollutions in your body or disastrously bad side effects .
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Consider all of the resources you have in life. Not just the energy you derive from the things you eat, but the things that you use up, the people that you know, and the broad range of things available for you to do on any day. We don't actually make use of most of those opportunities, but they're out there.
Magic, in a real-world sense, has always been about increasing the probability that good things will come my way. What if that were a limited resource? What if the universe really was a zero-sum game, and that any time I had an opportunity, I was taking that opportunity from someone else? What if a small group of people found a way to harvest the opportunities from future generations to enrich themselves?
This is an abstract concept, but it has a solid application. Find something that isn't a physical resource, and fuel your magic from it. The things I've seen this done for include dreams, color, and gravity, but could even be children's tears or the electro-weak force. Invent an energy economy around that thing, then find a way to exploit it. You then create an opportunity to abuse and exhaust that resource. And then you have a story.
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## Enemy Action or Willful Disregard
Dark Sun itself pretty much gives its own rationale for the decline of its world, multiple ones actually, across the different editions (and novels vs setting books & modules).
So long as there are powerful individuals in your world - mages, rulers, Sorcerer-Kings - with a vested interest in using magic that overrides any concerns around the impact, and/or the ability to direct the worst effects to less-powerful peoples/remote places, you've got your explanation & dramatic conflict in-one.
You can stick with the classic environmental allegory, or go for something more external/exotic (aliens, fae, etc). Dune trod similar ground - with Paul promising to "heal" Arrakis, but ultimately kicking the can down to his son - sins of the fathers and all that.
Malicious intent and an active avoidance of known-facts was implicated in the D&D versions as well as in real-life. Worldbuilding doesn't always need a purely physical-world solution.
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Upon reading your question I immediately thought of the world in the light novel "Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?" (I'm a spider, so what?)
Once you find out more about the origin of that world you find out that the humans there found out how to wield the very life force of the world itself. Their reckless use caused the world itself to start dying! This is what created the situation that we are first made aware of at the start of the story; that the world seems to be like a video game (skills, levels, etc). This turned out to be a System created to essentially *farm* humans; putting in effort to grow strong in the System allowed you to generate energy yourself, and that energy was then harvested when you died and used to slowly heal the planet.
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On the planet Nova 3, there exists a species of intelligent, Macropodidae-like creatures called Novians. The species is mostly herbivorous, although meat is eaten on special occasion. Their planet is covered by many biomes, such as rolling plains, dense jungle, savannah, and tundra. The Novians evolved from bipedal horse-like creatures 175,000 years ago, and they have four stomachs. Most of what they eat is grass and roots. They used to be prey to creatures called Daystalkers, but those all went extinct long ago. Novian culture never developed the wheel, but they were able to advance to an era similar to humanity's space age.
My question is: could a modern society exist without the wheel?
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I have a suggestion; since you only want this to differentiate them from wheel inventors, would it be OK if they come up with something very similar?
I suggest you credit them with the invention of the **sphere**.
This in turn leads to a discovery of a ball & socket mode of transport.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7USjM.png)
[Takigen ball caster](https://www.takigen.com/products/list/16070) <-- use inverted
This would be close enough to a wheel to not need much extra explanatory text to familiarise readers and need only as much in the way of additional artefacts required to use the non-wheel mode of transport as you want to drive the plot. For example if they're the right size they could just use the spheres on the same roads the wheel inventors use otherwise you could develop plot along the diplomacy required to hash out a common road specification that both transport modes could use.
Using @Separatrix' list of issues, the only items not immediately solved are the trains (set train tracks as grooves instead of rails) and rolling tree trunks which stumped me until I remembered your world has this species of tree whose roots have perfectly spherical nodes that roll to the fire far better than logs. ;-)
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# Yes, but no
They will have invented the wheel, many times in many places. But you're asking for them not to have used the wheel for transport. You're going to have to justify this, every step of the way.
Why did the farmers not develop a cart to take goods to market?
Why was the train not invented to travel large distances overland?
Why was the car never invented? The truck?
Why was the bicycle or motorbike never invented?
Why was something as simple as rolling a heavy log to the fire not valid?
All these machines would have been sitting in front of people dozens of times for tens of thousands of years to solve a problem they would have had. You have to justify why they weren't valid solutions or how the problem they would have solved never existed.
You can suggest that they're such efficient runners that personal transport was never required, but that doesn't hold true of goods, especially in an industrial revolution situation.
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In order to avoid having a wheel you need to have something that's just as good invented before it so whenever someone figures out the wheel and tells the rest of your creature by that "look at how this cool round shapes rolls around" they can just say "we don't need that... our Jabba-Jabbas do the same thing far better".
Now seeing how Worldbuilding doesn't have to be Sci-Fi (and me not seeing any way for it to happen in a hard Sci-Fi setting) I'm going to stick to soft Sci-Fi ways for it to be possible:
* Magic - a simple magic allows things to levitate or move frictionless so no need to have the wheel
* Anti-grav material - if an anti-grav material is abundant and easy to use then why not use that instead?
* Telportation - if you can move from point A to point B why take the slow route?
Damn managed to figure out a hard Sci-Fi reason to them not having any wheels:
- a weird one but what about having some religous objections to use a wheel as it was once used by Daystalkers and is therefor made by the devil? it will be slow and complex but there is no reason a spaceship can be build with zero wheels in the process.
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(I won't even ask where bipedal horses came from, and why they devolved to quadrupedalism, nor where their intelligence came from, nor how they can manipulate fire, much less forge metal or even have such a surplus of stored food that some horses could dedicate themselves to academic pursuits.)
# No.
The wheel and axle are too fundamental to just about **every** area of technology.
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So, to not have wheels, you kinda need a reason not to have wheels, and something that'll do the job within those circumstances.
For me, what jumps to mind immediately is **terrain**. Steep hills, deep snow, quicksand and swamps. Many of our state-of-the-art cars can't negotiate this kind of terrain, so neither could primitive carts.
To find an alternative, we must once again look to the real world. So, what method of vehicle locomotion outcompetes wheels in extreme terrain?
**Treads**, of course. These are more advanced than wheels, so would take considerably longer to invent than the wheel. Basically, imagine a loop of wood (or alien equivalent) planks, tied together with strong cordage, with rotating discs (Does that count as cheating?), pulled by a domesticated beast.
This would have a few implications for your species, however. Since treads are less maneuverable than wheels, their military doctrine would be different to ours (More guns and armour, less speed and maneuverability.)
Transport would also be less comfortable, so driving might not be seen as something enjoyable (Except, perhaps, for the wilder individuals.) as much as it is on Earth.
Hope I answered your question well, good luck with your species!
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The "easy" transportation when wheels are unfeasible is water, as others have suggested. And you don't need an oceanic landscape to make it viable. The Indigenous people of North America [had no wheels](https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/aboriginal-peoples-did-not-have-wheels) because of the lakes and rivers.
Some might feel comfortable arguing that the lack of wheels is directly responsible for the relatively primitive technology these cultures had. Personally, I don't see this as an insurmountable problem for someone with some imagination.
Since you've said the main reason you chose the feature was to create a difference between this species and humanity, I think it's worth saying that you should *either* develop the idea *or* choose something you feel you can commit to and develop. I don't think it makes sense to choose a detail for the interestingness it might add, and then hand-wave it into a summary instead of exploring it.
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Not a terrestrial one no, a wheel is the basics for axles, gears, sprockets, a massive number of manufacturing techniques are based on it. It is just too simple basic and essential a tool. It is like asking for a such a civilization without the lever.
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I could see a sentient species not using the wheel for transportation, but these would be avian or arboreal types of creatures that seldom if ever go on the ground. An environment that makes wheels very impractical, like SealBoi suggested is another reason.
But considering the environment and body shape of your aliens, it's very unrealistic. All it would take is one of these aliens on the rolling plains to realize that wheels can help them move things faster and more easily than before, and from there it would quickly spread.
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### You can make wheels mostly useless, but it's not necessarily enough
I guess it's possible to make wheels pretty useless for many uses e.g. by making your planet surface covered by just bogs and deserts, where wheels sink, but boats and other floating devices are much more useful.
I see at least one caveat, though: mines. It doesn't seem viable for advanced civilization to exist without mining, but for mining you need at least some dry space to start digging, and in effect you get the mines themselves, where wheels seems much superior to any alternative. Even if you give your folk gills to breathe underwater and submerge the mines, wheels seem too useful to not use them.
Also, I'd expect cable car to be invented at some point, and they use wheels.
### Maybe if you make super-slippery materials available
Having no-drag sleighs may render carts unnecessary and complicated. Two caveats:
1. This may be actually a big dent in law of physics to produce such materials easily. But I'm not even sure, and perhaps no one will notice.
2. Wheels have nice property of moving just in one direction. Super-slippery sleighs don't have it, they can go any direction and you have to actually anchor them. Also, they need some propulsion, and for propulsion you usually want traction. So using your super material to create superior bearing for wheels may happen to be an annoyingly good solution.
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**Yes, if they live on a jelly.**
If the whole surface of their home planet is a sort of elasic goo, or jelly, or a quicksand, then they would have no need for a wheel, and a wheel won't work. They would not need a wheel in industrial machines if they have access to some super-slippery material, some form of ideal ice, that they could use for bearings and carts.
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You can prevent wheels in several different ways (mainly variations on terrain), you can't prevent them from inventing the gear.
They are going to have to invent round things and those round things will have to be used to control and distribute power.
Even super powers and magic aren't really going to make tha go away.
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@mcalex
The ball caster has very little ground clearance relative to its size. This is unavoidable since the cup must envelop over half the ball or it'll fall out.
Since the interface between the ball and cup is the same surface that it runs on (as opposed to a normal wheel, where the rim is quite separate from the axle) it'll fill up with crud very soon if used on anything other than a clean surface.
And it's one thing when it's being pulled. How would you develop a powered version of it?
Lastly, sooner or later someone will be maintaining one (i.e. cleaning the crud out of it due to point 2 above) or playing with a toy one and start twirling the ball between his fingers and realize that he could drill a hole through it and mount it on a rod, and then he could make it smaller and lighter and get lower ground pressure by making it cylindrical...
Apart from that they're a brilliant idea!
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Due to the fact we are human we find it difficult to divorce ourselves from our humanness to think like an alternate species. If a species had kangaroo-like limbs and a horse-like head living within a world that abounds with plant type food with not much need to cover vast distances and lift heavy things, I can imagine them to totally bypass the industrial age. If the environment was filled with items containing strong magnetic properties I could imagine the creation of anti-gravity devices to leapfrog the age of the wheel. I look to some of our fellow species for evidence of capabilities which humans still struggle to understand. Take for instance the advanced navigation capabilities in birds, the ability of a chameleon to rapidly change its skin color etc. I would imagine a bird-like species to entirely bypass the age of the wheel easily. The progress of human evolution has been aided but also hindered by the pathways we have chosen as a species. What we have created as a species could lead to our rapid extinction so you could argue the pathways we chose are not the smartest and best for us for long-term survival. It could be argued that the positive contribution made by humans to the Earth biosphere is zero-sum game or worse. Given that humans have risen to the "perceived" top of the evolutionary race, we now control and limit the advancement of most other species, however, germ and bacteria development seems to be giving us fair competition. If it were not for us ... what would it be? ;-)
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**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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In a world where magic and technology coexist in a *Final Fantasy* type world: at what point would one become redundant?
Would cell phones be easier than whatever magical means of communication? Would a combustion engine be better than the magical alternative? Or would there be no point of redundancy? Would the world carry on with some mixture of both magic and technology?
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## When one is cheaper than the other (In terms of time, effort, and money)
In terms of time and cost, I think the one that will survive the most will be the one quicker to use or to learn, and cheaper. If communication magic is easy to learn and spellbooks are cheap, then why would you invest in long distance communication technology?
This is just an example. A vice-versa version would be if guns are cheaper and stronger than investing in offensive magic spells (time, effort, money), then why learn them?
I think time will consider them obsolete and primitive such as how we make fire nowadays. We just use matches or lighters than actual flint and rubbing wood together.
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I don't know anything about the specific world mentioned but I think if magic and technology based on science co-existed in a world then
1) science would eventually discover the science behind magic.
2) magic would be used as science to augment technology (computers, machines, whatever). I think you're making a mistake in assuming that magic is stagnant. This might be the case if all magic is of a divine source where all the spells where handed down at the beginning of time and they exist unchanged, but in a normal world any technology would evolve with time and this also includes the technology of magic: even in a fantasy world without advanced scientific knowledge new spells are made, new potions, new methodologies, what have you. So eventually, they would make new magic which works together with non-magical technology, they would make new gadgets which can use magic or can be augmented by magic, and this would happen even before they discover the science behind magic.
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### Neither would replace the other
There is no reason why anyone would want to replace one or the other from a purely scientific point of view. Using technology makes redundant tasks easier, because nobody has to manually do them. Even if magic could theoretically do the same thing, someone has to control the magic. Being able to do the same thing, but without any concentration or energy drain would be a big advantage for technology.
At the same time you are not as dependent on a single human being. Imagine you have one highly skilled mage that can do a task for you and your business depends on this task being done properly - what happens to your business when this person dies or is just ill for some time? You would need redundancy by having a mage of the same skill level. But having humans of exactly the same skill level in anything is difficult. There are always differences. With machines that produce the same thing over and over again this is far easier to accomplish.
On the other hand magic is something probably anybody, or at least most people, can do with varying degrees of proficiency. If I can create a little flame I don't need a lighter. Ever. And because I like that spell and I am good at casting it I can replace one piece of technology on a personal level - because I don't use magic as often and won't ever be drained of mana. Someone else might be really, really bad at fire magic though - but maybe he can create wind, which might be nice on a hot summer day.
Magic could also do things that are one-time-only. If it's too expensive to build a machine you just use a bunch of mages. And if there is currently no technology capable of doing what you want to do your magic might do the trick. Combinations of magic and technology as with flying cities or magical bullets might be another idea, depending on the specifics of the magic and its interaction with technology. The most important factor might be whether technology could allow to store and utilize magical energy. A mana battery might make individual humans not such an important factor and would make sure that you don't need humans 24/7 to do stuff - you can store energy from multiple humans over a long time and utilize whenever and in whichever quantity you need.
**Both will complement each other - there is no practical reason why one would replace the other.**
Of course you could have religious bans on magic/technology and strict rules/laws about their usage to limit one or the other in certain areas in any way you would imagine.
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If a machine can replace something, or has innovated something, we adapt to the innovation and replace the procedure or utility that it has innovated.
In our history, we replaced arrows with bullets, stones with metal, and so much more.
But Magic, for me, might be difficult to replace, as Magic is immeasurable as currently we provide proofs based on Science, and we measure something based on science (It is the magic of technology)
So, In your world, when could the people replace the magic they posses with technological advancements?
You have to provide first the limitations when using magic.
If a mage could cast a fire spell which also causes his hands to burn and decay, then he might replace the said spell by just using a flame thrower, a rocket, or a nuclear missile depending on how much power he wishes. If a water breathing spell makes the user look like a fish if used it for long periods of time, then a scuba diving equipment, or snorkel can replace the said magic.
Coexistence of technology and magic could happen too. As long as your the boundaries of your magic is nullified by your technology. Technology could also provide protection from magic, provided if the limitation of the magic is negated by your technology.
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There will be no point of redundancy if only specific human can use magic. Think of it like being "magically disabled". I can even see the future where those without magic is considered disabled, and those who can develop a policy to accommodate them.
However, there can exist a world where both coexist simply because both is considered just as different branch of knowledge, similar to how physic and biology different, but both complements each other.
A gun that shoots magical energy can work because producing a projectile launcher saves magical energy, while preserving the destructive power of Magic Missile and long range of a firearm.
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**When society deems it fit to do so.**
This can be influenced by many factors:
**Economic Factor**
Bwrites answer sums this up pretty well
**Religion**
Secespitus answer touches on this.
The book Dune comes to mind here with the religious ban on artificial intelligence and the need for the prescience inducing drug spice which can be analogous to magic.
**Fashion**
Humans have the wonderful ability to weigh the pros and cons of an issue and then ignore them completely and make decisions on whim. If this is done by influential people than this could be a deciding factor.
**Government Regulation**
If the government enforces regulations for various reasons.
**Summary**
There are many reasons why this could happen, but I think trying to predict which one would require magic, which has been replaced with science in our society.
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In an Earth-like world with a moon as large as this:
Would the larger tides discourage oceanic shipping?
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As HDE 226868 notes, the moon does not cause [waves](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_wave). It causes [tides](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide). A larger moon, that is, a more massive moon, would have a larger mass. This means larger tides, as the gravitational force of the moon on the earth's water would be larger. (If the overall mass of the moon was the same, I would easily expect no change in tides. Same mass means the same gravitational force.)
Would very strong tides deter ocean shipping? Not that I can see. A larger moon would discourage a lot of coastal cities. [Dikes/Levee/Floodbanks/Stopbanks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levee) would need to be larger. Some areas which would be used as ports would not be usable as ports, but then other areas would open up.
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Higher tides would make shipping more challenging, but (probably) not insurmountably. Certainly shallow-water boating would be affected.
Why do I say "not insurmountably"? Consider the Bay of Fundy, with normal tides in excess of 50 feet. Fishing is common, although there are a few challenges
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How high do you think these tides would be? In many parts of the world, tides are not particularly significant. However, Liverpool has a tidal range of up to about 9m (30ft) and was, at one time, the shipping hub of the British Empire and one of the largest ports in the world. So it's perfectly possible to have a functional port with a tidal range that's much higher than today's world average. Unless you're imagining much larger tides than this, the answer to the question is **No, larger tidal ranges would not discourage ocean shipping**.
(The high tidal range at Liverpool is a resonance effect, similar to the Bay of Fundy, which has been mentioned in some of the other answers.)
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No, but it would change how harbors are built.
Currently the tides only cause a relatively small height change of 60 cm in average. The high tides in the Fundy Bay and Rance are due to resonance effects, there are also places on Earth where no tides are observable.
If you decrease the distance, the tides will be higher. Harbors will be then more likely build near rivers (using the river as transportation to the sea) or when they are build, the harbors will have swimming pontons accessed by ramps, compensating the height differences. So not a problem at all.
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If you want a detailed analysis, simply solve [Laplace's tidal equations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_tides). These are not easy to do. If you're curious, I can get you part of the way to what might be an answer. Also, *I'm* curious as to what the math will turn up.
[Achille Hui has a very helpful spoiler](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13736/hierarchical-spoilers/13738#13738) (regular ones don't work for $\LaTeX$, and take up too much space), which I've used to cover up the math. Click on it to show some of my work, or skip it to read more.
$$\require{action}
\toggle{
\begin{array}{cl}
& \bbox[2pt,color:black;border-radius:3px;box-shadow:4px 4px 8px black]{
\verb/Click to show math/}
\end{array}
}{
\begin{array}{cl}
A=\frac{1}{a\cos\varphi}\frac{\partial}{\partial\lambda}(g \zeta+U)
\\ B=\frac{1}{a}\frac{\partial}{\partial\varphi}(g \zeta+U)
\\ C=2\Omega\sin\varphi
\\
\\ \text{We now have}
\\
\\ \frac{du}{dt}-vC+A=0
\\ \frac{dv}{dt}+uC+B=0
\\
\\ \text{This leads to}
\\
\\ \text{I have no idea how to solve this. Wolfram Alpha}^1\text{ could help, but I don't}
\\ \text{have a subscription. Something out there will help you.}
\\
\\ \text{When you have that, substitute in for $A$, $B$ and $C$ and plug it all in to
}
\\
\\ \frac{\partial\zeta}{\partial t}+\frac{1}{a\cos\varphi}\left[\frac{\partial}{\partial\lambda}(uD)+\frac{\partial}{\partial\varphi(vD\cos\varphi)} \right]=0
\\
\\ \text{Solve for } \zeta \text{ and enjoy.}
\\
\end{array}
}
\endtoggle$$
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1 You can find a potential starting point [here](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=u%28u%27%2BA%29%3D-v%28v%27%2BB%29).
**Note:**
This is just to let you know what the math is. There are other answers that cover everything else, so I've decided to leave this as is, because I couldn't add anything else.
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It would not only disrupt shipping but everything else needed to run a modern civilization. If the Moon were as close to the Earth when it formed, about ten times closer, the tides would be about a thousand times higher. The Earth's crust and the magma beneath it would then also experience significant tides. You would then probably have permanent flood basalt eruptions at the plate boundaries at a scale of the one that led to the formation of the [Siberian Traps](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps).
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It would not discourage oceanic shipping, but it *would* make the times it can be done more selective.
If you have a port that is 20m deep and full at high tide, with our Moon you should still have *at least* 10m left at low tide (depending on the tides in that area). That's plenty to operate big ships in.
If your Moon is closer and your tides bigger, your 20m harbor might be empty at low tide. This means ship captains need to plan more accurately: they need to be in and out of a harbor this shallow within a couple of hours. Delays in voyages would lead to big delays at the destination waiting for the next tide.
The alternative is that harbors are built bigger, which costs a lot more in both money and time.
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[Moon illusion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion), i.e., a harvest moon:
**Size is just as important as distance.** Our Moon is outside the Earth's [Roche limit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit) and we are losing it at about [4 cm](https://www.google.com/search?q=how%20far%20per%20year%20lossing%20the%20moon&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=how%20far%20per%20year%20losing%20the%20moon&spell=1) a year. Shortly after it formed, it would have appeared 15 times larger than today:
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> The moon [was] so close that rock and magma [were] tidal. The lunar pull [was] 4000 times greater than today [...] In the sea, every wave was a tsunami.
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*What If We Had No Moon?* -[YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LygCTL6b7YU), Discovery Channel (short answer: [we wouldn't be here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/20042/799))
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## Background:
Story Background:
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> The main crux of my story is that one of the 2 mcs - Delilah- is from a group of people being exploited, and the other is the son of the leader of the group doing the exploiting - Jack. Delilah is helping people leave the situation they're in, but the people doing the exploiting send Jack under cover to try and stop it. (Obviously, he then has character development, and we follow as he changes for the better and all that good stuff.)
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Exploited people are leaving their situation, resulting in a lack of work being done by that group. The exploited group (once rested and feeling restored) take advantage of their exploiter's weakened state, and the country ends up going into civil war.
It's set on a small archipelago, 'Island Union', with the exploitation happening (mostly) to the north of the central island, by the south of the same island.
## What I'm looking for
What I'm stuck on is the specifics of what exactly the exploitation is. (I'd rather it not be to be *too* similar to any *one* specific instance of irl exploitation. I don't mind so much if it's more similar to the exploitation that's happened within the British Isles, since I'm from the UK, and much of the rest of the setting and culture is heavily inspired by the UK.)
I think it would be good if it's the main source of income for the I.U. I think that might help make a juicier internal conflict for Jack, as well as give him a somewhat less terrible reason to be doing this.
## Things I've thought of
* **Lithium mining**. this is what I was initially thinking of, then I figured the worker would need to be highly trained for that, and it wouldn't work for a series of 5 tiny islands.
(Edit: The main reason I thought maybe not this is, I had a couple readers think it didn't make sense for a tiny island to be able produce enough lithium for other countries to be interested in buying it. The island has to be tiny. For story reasons, they need to walk to where they are to where they need to go. I was thinking ~5/6 days walk from east to west, so ~144 miles - and probably about 75 from north to south. Li mining typically uses large evaporation lakes, and requires a large amount of space. Granted, there were a couple other things some of them said that made me think it would be fair to ignore their specific feedback, but that was a doubt I was already having.)
* **Coal mining**, but I'd rather it be modern if it can be, and that didn't seem to fit with the way things are going, climate wise, but it might work in a 'its terrible conditions for the workers, who have little other choice in the matter, AND it's bad for the climate!' might work.
* **Food source** The northern half has excellent farm land, but terrible coastlines for sea fairing, and the south is the other way around, finding it almost impossible to feed themselves with their own farming, relying on sea trade as well as northern farms. I did think this might be a good way for it to work. In many ways, I want the I.U. to be of some note to the rest of the world, and this doesn't offer that. However that might have the benefit of explaining why the rest of the world might not get involved with the later civil war (which would make things simpler for me!)
I would really appreciate any input anyone could offer! I often find it hard to see which might be best or think of any other ideas.
These are just the things I've thought of. If there's something not listed that jumps out at you, I would love to hear it!
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## Pearl Diving (or similar sea-based resources)
There is a reef off the north coast that has a unique and valuable shellfish species, and the northerners job is diving for them.
Exactly why these shellfish are so valuable could vary. Pearls are the obvious answer - top-quality natural pearls can sell for thousands or even millions of dollars each ([La Peregrina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Peregrina_pearl) sold for over $10,000,000 in 2011, but that is with significant historical significance on top of its raw value). On the other hand, a historical story might use [Tyrian Purple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple), while a modern or sci-fi take could give them pharmaceutical properties (imagine how valuable an anti-aging drug or reliable cure for cancer would be) - or if you want to double down on how evil the bad guys are, they're the key ingredient in a new, dangerous, but highly-addictive illegal drug.
Regardless of why they're valuable, this species has very specific habitat requirements that mean they can't be farmed (or, in the case of pearls, farmed ones are considered 'cheap knockoffs'), so they must be harvested in the wild.
Reasons why this is unpleasant and exploitative can be tailored to your story needs, but could include:
* The workers are paid pennies for recovering a product worth a fortune. (Supposedly the worker who found La Peregrina in the 1500s was rewarded with 'his freedom') This one is obvious, but included for completeness.
* The sea where the shellfish are harvested is particularly dangerous, due to currents, weather, temperature, or some combination of all three. This likely fits well with your note in the food section about the north having a terrible shoreline - only a mad or desperate person would swim off North IU, but that's the only place where Union Rainbow Pearls are found...
* Technological assistance isn't possible. There's no way to harvest these with nets or lines from the surface, and they're too fragile or difficult for a robot to handle, so a diver is needed. Perhaps they live in caves or reef crevices that are barely large enough for a human, so SCUBA gear is too bulky - or the gear *can* be used, but there's a major risk of death-by-snagged-air-hose.
* Alternatively, the assistance *is* possible - perhaps an automated harvester has recently been developed - but the exploited group can't afford it themselves, and the exploiters don't want to pay.
* The flora and fauna in the area are particularly dangerous. Sharks, sea snakes, salt-water crocodiles, tangled kelp forests, merfolk, krakens... whatever it is, as above, only a madman swims off North IU.
* The shellfish *themselves* are dangerous - perhaps they have venomous claws/spines or are just highly poisonous to the touch. If they're valuable because of some chemical that can be harvested, the dangerous part may well be the reason they are so valuable in the first place.
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Archipelago in the middle of the ocean?
Tourism, where the locals are exploited as cheap work force while a few have the property of the facilities and get all the money paid by the tourists.
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# Have a foreign power import educated labourers
There's an island with a poorly known but similar situation to yours. [Nauru](https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/07/magazine/world-s-richest-little-isle.html)
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> Citizenship in the minirepublic is restricted to the native Nauruans, a brown-skinned, mixed-blood people, predominantly Polynesian but of mysterious origins - their language is unlike any other - and there are only about 4,300 of them. Nauru is technically the richest country in the world, body for body and acre for acre, because the Government's annual income from the sale of phosphate is at least 123 million, or more than $ 27,000 a year for every Nauruan man, woman and child.
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> Everything is tax free. ''Taxation is unsuited to the Nauruan temperament,'' President DeRoburt once said. Nor are the Nauruans troubled with the hard and dirty work of mining the phosphate that is their sole export and the source of the island's wealth. Laborers are imported from the nearby island states of Kiribati and Tuvalu, Hong Kong and the Philippines to do that. Managers, supervisors, technicians, schoolteachers and top Government administrators are recruited from Australia, New Zealand and Britain, the three countries that formerly ruled Nauru jointly. In general, Nauruans either work in the phosphate industry or in national or local government. Nauru, which has a low crime rate, also employs 57 Nauruans on its police force.
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Essentially you have some sort of foreign power importing in foreign labourers to work on an island to produce some extremely valuable goods. It could be lithium mining, it could be coal mining, but regardless, very intelligent and well educated citizens from some foreign country that's fairly poor and not well connected were lured in by a much richer and more prosperous power to do the mining.
They work in slave like conditions, and legally no one cares because the natives get paid tons of money and massive perks to tolerate it, and because the international community gets a rare and valuable product. Enough money gets sent home to their home country that the native country is ok with it. Everyone wins, except the slaves.
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1/12 of the whole income of [Tuvalu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvalu) is from the `.tv` top-level domain.
Your archipelago can have a natural resource (either digital or something like oil) where profits are only distributed to the Jacks and not the Delilahs.
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The exploited produce a cash crop (or manufacture something in warehouses or their homes) but lack distribution channels and are thus forced to sell all (or most) of their products to the exploiter in exchange for products they cannot make themselves (metal products + tech?).
The attempt to develop alternative distribution channels could provide another reason for the undercover spy deal. For an island where boats coming in doesn't work well you could maybe try seaplanes or something?
This would likely require the exploiters to be somewhat unpleasant in their pursuit of maintaining their distribution monopoly but I don't think it would require them to be absolute dictators - which might be something the central government/other islands would not approve of.
Assuming this war does develop, it seems the north side of the island would be almost completely dependent on their new distributor to be providing them with weapons.
If they are farmers, they would likely retain the ability to feed themselves but would lose their primary trade channel for everything else.
If they are workers who manufacture products, they may be able to repurpose some of the factory tools to aid them in making weapons but would then likely require food from their new trade channel.
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**All exports must go through the exploiters.**
**Option 1, through law**: Residents of the island are not allowed to sell their goods directly to foreign buyers. Any stock not sold locally must be sold to the Government, who then sells it to the foreign customers, of course at a profit. Anyone caught smuggling faces grave consequences.
**Option 2, through technological resources**: Due to a peculiar seabed formation in the area, the waters are nearly unnavigable around the archipelago. Jack's family are the only ones with ships able to navigate the treacherous waters, and therefore the only ones able to export goods to the outside world. Foreign buyers would have the resources and technology to develop boats capable of sailing through the region, but since the goods are already being delivered to them they have not gone through the effort. The formations that make the waters hard to navigate can be several miles off the coast, leaving some navigable waters near the islands for fishing with more basic boats.
**Either way** the end result is that it makes the exploiters the only available buyers for families in IU with a surplus of goods produced/gathered (which would be most of it, in an export-based economy). This means they can set the price for which they buy the goods from the exploited workers who will have to choose between getting pennies for their work or nothing at all.
From there the resource itself can be anything. It doesn't need to be unique to the island, or even particularly rare or scarce elsewhere. It can be a mix of multiple industries too. The obvious industries for islands are of course fishing, but also tropical fruits like bananas and sugar cane.
[Answer]
**Prostitution.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_Dutch_Caribbean>
>
> Prostitution in the Dutch Caribbean (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba,
> Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten) is legal and regulated.[1][2] At
> least 500 foreign women are reportedly working in prostitution
> throughout the islands.[3][1] Bonaire,[4] Sint Eustatius, and Curaçao
> are sex tourism destinations.[2]
>
>
> Curaçao, Aruba, and Sint Maarten are destination islands for women
> trafficked for the sex trade from Peru, Brazil, Colombia, the
> Dominican Republic, and Haiti,[3]
>
>
>
Your exploited persons are prostitutes. Few if any are born on the island. They wound up in this work for various reasons. The exploiters run legal brothels and pay taxes, supporting the government.
--
I like the idea of revolution and the workers taking control; the government becomes a democracy. But the brothels continue because sex tourism is good money and other options are scarce. Not in a cynical way - now working conditions are good and workers are protected not exploited. Could that be ok?
[Answer]
# Construction
An island in a vast ocean is a prime location for an airforce and/or naval base for a superpower.
Have the Jacks struck a deal with a superpower where they lease part of the island to the superpower. Part of the deal is a supply of labourers to do construction. The Delilahs form this group of labourers.
[Answer]
Guano.
Islands attract seabirds, which leave dung that's rich in nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium. Over thousands of years, they can build up huge deposits.
That guano is then valuable as a fertiliser, and as a precursor for nitrate-based explosives (gunpowder etc.) Before the invention of the Haber process, which allowed for making these products from atmospheric nitrogen, guano was a very important industrial and military resource. This resulted in colonial powers looking to control guano-rich islands and mine them. See Nauru for an example of how this has worked out historically.
[Answer]
Fishing.
External parties could be supplying the capital, in the form of large and effective fishing trawlers, but then employing locals at cutthroat rates and keeping the lions share for the profits for themselves as the "owners" of the boats. Workers are free to move from boat to boat in search of better deals, and boat captains frequently play rivalries off each other, but at the end of the day, no matter which boat you serve on, you always seem to get a raw deal, either from poor profit sharing or "company store" style policies. For example, you made $1000 for this fishing trip, minus \$300 for lodging on the boat, minus \$200 for food on the boat, minus a \$150 safety fee, minus a \$200 equipment fee, so your take is \$150.
If you then wanted to raise the drama stakes, you could have the fish be largely for foreign consumption, and have that consumption displace locals ability to feed themselves. Real world example here may be Quinoa, which, now that it has become popular in the US, has become much harder to afford for locals for whom it used to be a staple.
Resistance from the locals could take the form of unions, sabotage, deliberate underperformance, and other such things to start with; enforcement from the capitalists may take the form of beatings, blackballing, economic coercion, and other such things.
[Answer]
Financial services, insurance, legal services, tax haven, software services, money laundering, gambling, knowledge-based services, many famous islands and archipelagos do that. but the island(s) need a draw... where are they near?
[Answer]
# Lumber
If the islands are in the tropics, the trees there tend to grow quickly, which is ideal for a lumber trade. Islands are also a great place for building ships, and at least in the early days of seafaring, ships require a lot of wood. An island nation in a strategic place in the ocean would be a great place to stop over for repairs, and to build more ships if needed.
Logging is backbreaking mostly low-skilled labor, so one more check for your exploited local workforce. Any oppressor nation with a large navy will be looking for ways to acquire lumber from their vassal nations in order to expand and maintain said navy, so this would be a perfect resource to exploit.
For a good real-world example, look up [Sebatik Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebatik_Island) off of Borneo, on the border between Malaysia and Indonesia. If you look at the island in [Google Maps satellite view](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sebatik+Island/@4.1515347,117.6988645,49384m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x3215a2e3ae31d2a1:0x4f06c0d84937e230!8m2!3d4.1480899!4d117.784246?hl=en), you'll see that nearly all the trees there are in perfect even rows, due to the European lumber trade that used to control the island.
[Answer]
## Purple (or equivalent)
The reason purple was associated with royalty in Roman times and earlier is that the only known method of producing it then was from a certain type of mediterranean sea snail, only found in Phoenicia (I believe the name Phoenicia is from the same root as the Greek word for purple, although stand to be corrected here).
From your suggestion of lithium mining I'm guessing your world has more advanced technology than ancient roman, however the same principle could apply given a niche non-synthetic substance (that is, farmed or hunted rather than manufactured). Make it a luxury item like a dye or cooking substance for maximum cruel needless profit to whoever controls the trade, or raise the stakes to make it a medical or otherwise more needed substance such as insulin or an antibiotic for a more dramatic version.
## Indirect Force Exploitation
Exploitation means using an unfair advantage to increase profits.
Where that unfair advantage is physical (workers threatened with violence, superior weapons etc as has so often happened irl and historically), it's going to make a very predictable development/storyline for the main characters because the moral choice is so clear-cut - and you run the risk of the audience disliking Jack at the start because of his (presumably) exploitative nature/circumstances before he undergoes development.
*However* if the unfair advantage is more subtle and indirect (for example controlling of trade routes, travel, a legal loophole or a resource crucial to the industry) a single entity/company/group can maintain a monopoly easily without the working population necessarily realising they are being exploited - remaining (fairly) willing workers within their limitations. A further narrative benefit of this sort of exploitation is, generally in a physical exploitation case the exploitees must rely on superiority of numbers (to some degree) to effect a revolt, whereas in the more indirect form a much greater effect can be made by fewer characters undermining or getting out of the system, as a rule.
[Answer]
Any resemblance with real people, place or events is purely coincidental. Except not really.
## Tourism
Island nations can make for very attractive vacation spots, and you can certainly develop a healthy industry off that, with hotels, restaurants, jetski rentals, boat or helicopter tours, and so forth.
You can already exploit people just on the salaries. If basically all the jobs are in the tourism industry, your choices are 1) low salaries of the service industry serving first-world tourists, 2) no job, 3) buying a ticket out, presuming you want to uproot your whole life, can afford to, and there's a government that'll want to let you in.
In short, the owners and shareholders get the lion's share of the profit, meanwhile the staff is paid peanuts because they don't have any power in that situation.
Then you have the double whammy of the cost of living. Island nation with small islands means firstly you don't have a lot of land. You can fish, you might have some arable land to feed your people, you might have some trees to build houses, and that might be fine for your population, but then you have all those tourists to keep happy.
Fact is, the trouble of living on an island with very limited land is you have to import a lot of things.
First there's food. More people require more food. Tourists might eat more individually than locals. Tourists might also expect things that your island has never produced. And to add insult to injury, all the fresh, local produce, well that can be sold off at a higher price to tourists, so hope you enjoy imported canned goods.
Then there's manufactured goods. You need resources to make stuff, but you also need factories. Industrial zones and tourist areas don't mix very well, assuming you have the real estate to spare in the first place.
Then there's also fuel. Yes, solar power is nice, but the panels are imported and degrade quicker when you're in the middle of the sea. Wind and wave power can conflict with tourism and boat traffic. But you sill have planes, boats and most cars that still run on combustion.
And once you face the fact you have to import everything, you have to think about the port you'll need to import it. The smaller the port, the more expensive imports and exports get.
So the higher the cost of living, the less you can afford to not have a job. And bonus points if you can guess who runs the supermarkets.
## Banking
The British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, the Seychelles, Bermuda, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Vanuatu, Tonga, you get the idea hopefully.
Favorable tax laws mean foreign banks come to your islands. Rich foreigners bring their money into those banks. Of course, those banks have to be staffed, but there's also lawyers and accountants that can provide a wide range of fiscal services.
The lower the taxes, the more attractive your tax haven. You try to offset the nominal tax rates with the sheer volume of money to be taxed. 50% corporate tax on a million is half a million. So is 1% corporate tax on fifty millions.
So all the banks, lawyers and accountants handling all that tax evasion can make a hefty profit. And the best part is, they also pay taxes, and possibly at a higher rate because bank clerks maybe can't afford to pay a tax lawyer to dodge their taxes.
In short, make money from money, and also from the people making money into money.
## Luxury natural resources
Most natural resource you can think of, some other nation can probably export more of it and cheaper. You'll have to import the equipment and fuel to extract and process it, and then you'll need the necessary infrastructure to export it.
Overall, you're severely limited in your ability to compete with e.g. China, or the United States, or Brazil, and other large nations, but even with small continental nations, even just because they either can produce the equipment themselves, or can import more of it and cheaper.
Pearls, as suggested in an answer, do work because it's luxury and niche. So there isn't much competition, and you can still make an absurd margin even if export costs are also absurd.
The best bet here is a resource that can be uniquely tied to your island will. A protected designation of origin of sorts. Think "Cuban cigar". Sure, you can make cigar elsewhere, but the rich people, they want handrolled Cubans.
Doesn't matter much how little you can produce, or expensive it is to export, because nobody else can make it. That's the best thing about luxury: supply and demand need not apply. You can set prices arbitrarily high, and that'll only make it more prestigious.
---
The nice thing is you can combine all of the above. There may or may not be overlap on who controls those industries, but the import part is that the revenue those industries generate is what the government functions on.
In practice, those interest groups control the government, so they can lobby for extremely favorable conditions making them even richer.
Meanwhile, the workers have no choice but to basically take any job, at any cost, because everything is expensive and you can't live on welfare.
And then it shouldn't take much to spark an uprising.
]
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[Question]
[
Nyarlathotep, the Black Pharaoh, is in ancient conflict with other elder gods in his weight class, and seeks to enter the realm of Earth to rule over mankind. Unfortunately, he is prevented from doing so by a barrier that blocks eldritch deities from crossing over. To get around this, he breaks his soul up into thousands of pieces and seeds them into thousands unborn children. These kids become immortal avatars of Nyarlathotep called Nylanders, who do battle with each other over the centuries through one-on-one engagements to the death. When one is killed, the other "eats" the loser and gains their power and memories, absorbing them into themselves. When all pieces of the deity have joined, Nyarlathotep will become whole within one body and would be reborn on the mortal plane. In the end, there can be only one.
As each child is killed/destroyed, the remaining Nylanders' gain that power equally. There is no single benefit to the one who made the kill. As the Nylanders are killed over the centuries, the rate of power absorption would increase each time, with the final two battling being the strongest of their brethren.
As power is shared out over remaining warriors to prevent a major shift in balance toward one individual, this battle is spread out over many millennia. This forces Nyarlathotep's assembly to take longer than what is necessary. What benefit would a deity gain from slowing down his conquest of the mortal realm?
[Answer]
**It wasn't part of the original plan**
You see, this kind of plan of break your soul into pieces, then incarnate into thousands of children isn't something that would have been done before (that's also why Nyarlathotep took the other gods by surprise with this).
Nyarlathotep expected that when incarnating into someone, Nyarlathotep would *be* that someone. (Maybe that's what would happen when a godly soul enters into a mortal body) However, what actually happened was that the Nylanders aren't exactly *only* avatars of Nyarlathotep, but they also have their own desires and agenda. Perhaps, a more powerful soul entering an unborn children would simply make that soul that was going to live there (young and inexperienced so far) to go back to the queue and enter int a different baby instead. But here, it's not a full soul, it's 1/100.000th of a soul. Even being a powerful one, it is too tiny (heh, if it wasn't the barrier would have blocked it) so it got "appended" to the original souls of the Nylanders. As the number of Nylanders decrease, the Nyarlathotep piece on each one is more powerful, but it is now dealing with full-grown souls fully settled on their body.
The ideal outcome for Nyarlathotep would be for all NYlanders but one to commit suicide. As soon as possible.
I don't think Nyarlathotep piecces have a global view of all its parts (i.e. each piece would work independently, although with the same goal). But even then, not knowing how many other Nylanders are out there of it it's appropriate to get rid of this body, it would be simple to organize gatherings of Nylanders, where all cups but one contain poison.
Reality turned out to be quite different. Nyarlathotep just wants *one* Nylander to be left, it doesn't mind which one. But each Nylander has its own will and wants to be *the* one left. So, they have been fighting between themselves for centuries.
[Another interesting twist may be each piece of Nyarlathotep soul might develop differently, each taking its own approach, so they may also end up looking like they were different entities. Maybe also affected by the experiences and personality of their host. One piece of Nyarlathotep could be brutal, other more compassionate, a third one might prefer a manipulative approach from the distance...)]
Nyarlathotep is slowly winning, anyway. It was relatively easy to encourage the envy, hate and control wishes of the Naylander souls, so they actually have been following the same goal as Nyarlathotep, but on its own.
(Not to mention the cases where they "betray" Nyarlathotep. The god might want him to go attacking a different Nylander after winning a battle, but the Nylander could instead stop to enjoy the villa of the defeated one, or center its efforts on certain lady. whereas Nyarlathotep would ignore relationships it could not control or abuse)
[Answer]
## Time? What is this Time you speak of?
The Elder Gods do not have the same relationship to time as you and I do. Perhaps the length of time was not something he could comprehend before the realm of Earth. Perhaps it is not actually a problem to him as it would seem to a mere mortal. Perhaps it is even of advantage to him -- the longer it take on Earth, the less time will pass in the realm of elder gods "simultaneously."
## Experience
Nyarlathotep is aware that he's a novice as a human. The human lives are to gain as much power and experience as possible. That they strive to kill each other also means they strive to attain as much as possible to make that difficult. As an Elder God with the experience of a thousand lives over many years, Nyarlathotep will be much more more powerful than a mere elder god. (For one thing, he will have a better grip on this "time" thing.)
[Answer]
### Stealth
The barrier makers also patrol the realms looking out for anyone cheating. If Earth changes very slowly, they are less likely to notice a change and fly in and break up his conquest.
By keeping things slow, they're not going to notice what he's building until it's too late.
[Answer]
## Collective Pain.
Since these children are at least partly Nyarlathotep, your deity in question, and the process of reforming involves a painful death there is at least one reason to slow it down. It is painful to Nyarlathotep himself. There could be a theme of a partially collective conscious. Traditionally beings with a collective conscious of any kind are very hesitant to kill their own, as they experience the pain of death. Murder is rare in collectively conscious beings, for that reason (at least of their own).
## Remnant Energies or Traits.
Another reason may be that some of his traits and powers must still travel across the barrier in place. Perhaps war and death are a kind of sacrificial energy that could be used in that process. The process of transferring energy across the barrier would have to involve more than simply breaking his soul into pieces, for example. The barrier must be tricked so that the nature of these souls is hidden. Perhaps the soul pieces could not all come down at once (they have to be hidden in returning human souls).
## The Cost of Defying Higher Forces
Regardless of the reason there must be a cost involved in breaking through a powerful barrier between worlds. Perhaps rapidly combining would put his plot at risk of being discovered. Barriers like this, powerful enough to hinder the power of eldritch deities must be put in place by something even stronger. Such command of supernatural forces implies that the opposing being or beings is from a higher order and that a confrontation would be costly. At the very least some level of hidden higher order knowledge was responsible for creating the barrier. In the last case, even a small piece of the soul flying through would weaken him and would cause him to have to build strength again over time. The limitations in place from the cost of crossing the barrier should be enough to prevent him from gaining full power, or full awareness, as he struggles to regain himself and gain power over the mortal realm.
[Answer]
## Acclimatisation
If you buy a fish from a pet shop and drop it straight into your own fishtank, the sudden temperature change can kill it. Even the laws of physics are different in our realm from those where Nyarlathotep comes from. To survive, it needs to adapt to local conditions, by generating a little bubble of altered reality around it (or whatever hand-waving you prefer).
The original "Nylanders" each have only a tiny piece of Nyarlathotep in them, so they only require a small amount of adaptation - the eldritch part can piggyback off the part that's human. But as they merge, they become more alien and the work required to adapt them to Earth conditions increases, putting a limit on how quickly they can grow.
For a different metaphor, trees that grow quickly tend to have weak, brittle timber.
[Answer]
Nyarlathotep (I must say, I love the Lovecraft universe) doesn't want to manifest in the most *eager* and *greedy* avatar; it wants to manifest in the most *suited* avatar. It wants to slow the process down because it wants a thorough competition: each Nylander must be given the chance to show that it is the *right* host, and so any advantages that are gained purely by happenstance — e.g., being the first to encounter an inexperienced avatar — should be neutralized.
When I (as an avatar) and you (as an avatar) meet in combat, the combat should *only* reflect our fitness to be host, not our previous experience or out egotistical desires. Nyarlathotep does not care a whit about us; it only wants to manifest in its fullest form. Thus we must try to destroy each other as equals, whatever our history, because only *that* way will Nyarlathotep know which of us is best.
[Answer]
Another possibility, it may not have been intentional.
If he didn’t have much control over where all his soul fragments went then they could very well be on opposite ends of the planet. If the world is fairly pre-globalization it could simply be that it takes the better part of a year just to get to the next continent to fight the Nylanders over there.
On top of which they need to actually track each other down (assuming they don’t have any kind of preternatural sense to aid with it). So a single Nylander could spend a few months tracking down this one mercenary captain whose supposedly super boss, only to find out eventually that he’s a plain vanilla human.
And while they are pulling a “there can be only one” scenario, presumedly they don’t want to die. Some may try to avoid battle unless they have the upper hand or make an escape once it’s clear that they’ll lose.
This deity may have preferred everything getting wrapped up in a decade, but logistical issues and the free will of his incarnations unavoidably stretch out the completion of his plan.
[Answer]
Perhaps the avatars could be spread out not only in space, as one answer suggested, but through time as well? One is born in 2000AD, the other in 1989... They'd need to wait for the last one to appear by simply necessity instead of a desire to prolong the conflict.
If I recall correctly, Nyarlathotep also loves to toy and mess with the humans. Perhaps that way he prolongs the fun part of the conquest?
[Answer]
**It was an artistic or creative choice.**
The battle between Nyarlathotep and his opponents on their own plane has an aesthetic component. They want to defeat each other, true, but just as important is the ballet of *how* they do it.
During the long ages that the drama you describe is playing out on Earth, Nyarlathotep is singing to his opponents about it (or some equivalent). He "scores more points" doing it this intricate and time-consuming way than he would score if he took the most direct and ham-handed efficient path possible.
[Answer]
## Horcruxes:
Perhaps the advantage of having no soul in the outer realms is substantial. Once the Nylanders merge into one, your elder god MUST take up residence on Earth. In the meanwhile, he's in the outer realm with no vulnerable soul to get hurt or killed. While it's great to move to Earth, there are limitations, and for now he's taking advantage of getting stuff done in the outer realm while he still can, and with the invulnerability of having no soul.
[Answer]
**Knowledge and humility**
The more generations that pass and mortal 'lives' Nyarlathotep experiences the greater his knowledge of the human world, its complexities, its politics, it's cultures etc and with that knowledge comes power.
The more generations that pass and mortal 'lives' Nyarlathotep experiences, with all their joys, pains, hopes and disappointments etc the more empathy and understanding of humanity he gains and (perhaps) the more 'human' he becomes. Then the only question becomes is this a strength or a weakness?
]
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[Question]
[
Wondering about a source of vegetable oil for my goblins. Something that produces nuts, perhaps? An underground nut-bush? Or something that produces a lot of seeds, the same way dandelions do? Or could we get a plant which produces fat/oil, and the whole crop could be crushed for it (like fatty turnips)? It doesn't matter if the plant is useful for anything besides the oil.
The important part is the production of oil. While the plant is underground, there are magic crystals that give off sun-like light down there (to keep things simple).
Is an oil-heavy plant, an oily turnip, possible? What sort of characteristics might such a plant have?
[Answer]
**Try the Oil Palm**
Most people have heard of palm oil for good reason. It has a high oil yield for plants. It is the vegetable oil with the highest annual commercial production.
[For each hectare of oil palm, which is harvested year-round, the annual production averages 20 tonnes[citation needed] of fruit yielding 4,000 kg of palm oil and 750 kg[citation needed] of seed kernels yielding 500 kg of high-quality palm kernel oil, as well as 600 kg of kernel meal. Kernel meal is processed for use as livestock feed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaeis_guineensis)
If you are from the US, Burma, or Liberia the annual yield is about -- 3,568 pounds/acre plus 446 pounds/acre for the higher quality palm kernel oil.
It has been tested as a replacement for diesel, and works well in most ways. Current production techniques are not as green friendly as the could or should be for a major fuel source.
---
**In theory, [algae biofuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel) should be best of all.**
>
> Algae cost more per unit mass than other second-generation biofuel
> crops due to high capital and operating costs, but are claimed to
> yield between 10 and 100 times more fuel per unit area.
>
>
>
and
>
> The United States Department of Energy estimates that if algae fuel
> replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require
> 15,000 square miles (39,000 km2), which is only 0.42% of the U.S.
> map,[11] or about half of the land area of Maine. This is less than
> 1⁄7 the area of corn harvested in the United States in 2000.
>
>
>
In practice, after some promising initial research, the costs have not fallen as originally hoped, and has fallen into disfavor in the bio-fuels community. Short-term gains/losses often being more important than long-term potential in the real world of impatient investors.
[Answer]
C. langsdorffii is known as diesel tree.
>
> [C. langsdorffii](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copaifera_langsdorffii) is a medium-sized tree usually reaching 12 m (39 ft) in height, with white flowers and small, oily fruits. The wood is light due to its porosity, and it is honeycombed with capillaries filled with oil. Tapping the tree involves cutting a well into which the oil seeps and where it can be easily collected. Despite its vigorous production of oil, the tree does not grow well outside of the tropics.
>
>
> The diesel tree can be tapped every six months for more than 20 l (5.3 US gal) of fuel, and it will continue producing for around 70 years. One acre with around 100 mature (15-20+ years old) trees would produce up to 25 barrels of diesel per year which could sustain the fuel needs of small farms, about 40 l (11 US gal) per tree per year
>
>
>
I am assuming that you want this oil for lighting or heating, in which case it is still fine.
[Answer]
To have a plant with realistic characteristics, I would think about two things: **how** it produces the oil and **why** it does so in the first place.
Without going deep into chemistry, let's just state that **plants need a lot of energy for oil synthesis**. Most oil-industry crops that come to my mind are tropical or subtropical ones - soya, coconut and oil palms, peanuts, even that diesel tree. In more temperate climates, it is not very "economic" for plants to produce much oil. So the plant needs a potent source of energy, mainly light.
In a fantasy setting, the source can be magic. **Magic gives you complete creative freedom** and you can create any plants you want. But crystals that can support the production of oil would be an amazing magic source and goblins with potent magic in possession are a problem on its own. Also not very science based.
If your goblins live deep underground, then I would create a volcano nearby. **A magma river can create an unlimited supply of heat and light for your plants.** It also solves the **why** question. There would be volcanic ash and flying hot cinders from time to time. The plants could develop an oily surface layer to protect themselves. Their oil-covered leaves would then be harvested.
If your goblins live close to the ground, then **surface plants are an option**, too, even if the goblins themselves live down below. In arid climates, trees can have roots as long as 50 meters. Extremely long lived trees could make energy supplies by synthesizing oil deep underground in their root system. These roots would then be harvested. (Depending on the size of the forest and your goblin culture, there could be a risk of depleting the oil supply, though.)
[Answer]
There is a probably a lot of ways to make a magical hybrid plant that gives off enough oil for your goblins, but if you intend for it to be as realistic as possible, it seems peanut oil might be a good way to start. At least it seems plausible for me. That said, I guess it depends on the climate of your Goblins habitat. You might want to first find a plant that suit your climate, then make up a reason for it to produce more oil than usual or perhaps a way for the Goblins to have enhanced it in some way/found ways to extract it easier than usual.
For a list of plants that produce oil, I would go here:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vegetable_oils>
I hope this helps you.
[Answer]
I'd suggest sunflower oil. Sunflowers are easy to grow and have a lot of seeds. There are varieties that produce multiple flowerheads on a single stem, some that have larger heads, and others are bred for shorter stems, so you don't have to worry about them needing a high room underground.
Of course, if you have magic crystals, you can just as well have the knowledge to bred a variety of plants to have all the traits you want.
You can grow sunflowers as annual plants or as perennial plants. The perennials are cheaper to grow because you don't have to sow them every year (seeds and work are costs), but in case the soil gets infected it's easier to just plant annuals and disinfect the soil between cycles.
In case the goblins use the oil for raw food or biodiesel, sunflower is an excellent choice, but if they want to burn it in torches or to fry potatoes in it, it's not such a good idea. Sunflower seed oil has a lower smoke point when unrefined, compared to palm oil, for example. Also it needs to be stored at lower temperature than palm oil to avoid oxidation.
[Answer]
Assuming there were some sort of rampant fungus or insect, a plant could feasibly produce a protective oily sap exuded from the skin and from the leaves as a protective barrier. Plants already do this in nature, but sap is most certainly not vegetable oil.
So the question is where it can come about the nutrients to produce the vegetable oil. Corn can produce a small amount of oil by producing sugar and breaking down sugar into fat. The sugar of course comes from the sun's rays, so if the plant isn't in some underground cavern, this is enough. The goblins could crush up the plant and separate the pulp and water from the oil by throwing the pulpy plant mass into a bin of water, whereby the oil would then float to the top.
If the sun doesn't hit the plant, then there may not even been a need for the plant to grow out of the earth in the first place and therefore there would be no need for a protective film to protect against insects (the way plants protect themselves underground is through a tough skin like potatoes).
[Answer]
**Fire fungus!**
Yep, I made it up. But here is the rationale.
First: realize there are plants that want to burn. They are super flammable on purpose.
<http://wildfiretoday.com/2009/07/09/have-some-plants-evolved-to-promote-fire/>
>
> Many plants that live in places prone to fire are highly flammable —
> more flammable than plants that live elsewhere. This has led some to
> speculate that these plants have actually evolved to cause fires: that
> they “want” fire, and have evolved features that make it more likely
> that a spark will become a flame, and a flame will become a fire. I
> call this the torch-me hypothesis.
>
>
> The argument goes like this. Many plants depend on fire for their
> propagation. Indeed, without fire, these plants disappear. If, for
> example, longleaf pine forests do not burn regularly, the pines will
> be replaced by water oaks and other species. So — runs the argument —
> fires are desirable because they kill the competition. Plants that
> enhance fires may thus have an evolutionary advantage: they murder the
> competition while creating the right circumstances for their own seeds
> to sprout.
>
>
>
The fire fungus is such an organism. It wants to burn. The burning fire fungus explodes and the fire resistant spores blow on the winds produced by the flame. In its underground environment, the fire kills things and depletes local oxygen so other things die. Food for the fungus.
**What would it accumulate?**. Bacteria and some yeast can synthesize long chain alkanes: basically petroleum. <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25545362>
The fire fungus might do this, accumulating the equivalent of motor oil or kerosene in its fruiting bodies. Or maybe there are petrochemicals naturally leaching up thru the soil - like a tar seep - and the fungal mycelia gather and concentrate these. Fungi can oxidize alkanes and petrochemicals for energy also.
Fire fungus seems like a good underground organism. They would grow in the dark producing a large field ready to fiercely burn. If you are going to harvest them, you had better not light your work area with torches...
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**[Ricinus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricinus)**
It's produce a lot of oil and come with a few bonus:
1. Can be easily farmed.
2. Can be used to produce [**Biodisel**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel)
3. His "nuts" (green capsules) "explodes" (like a small firework) to spread it's seeds when it's mature and hot enough.
4. Not much time ago it was used as medicine (in small doses, large doses are fatal) and to punish kids (it's simple tastes horrible, believe me)
5. Kids use it as ammo to slings (lot's of fun until it hits someone eye, again it was some decades ago, serious its shells can be very hard).
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**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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Most science fiction dealing in the subject of force fields depicts them in a similar and unsophisticated light, e.g. force fields rarely do anything besides form basic polygons to create walls, protect spaceships, and so on. But I've wondered occasionally why science fiction (movies and mainstream writers are my main points of reference, to be honest) never seem to imagine worlds where an alien or future society uses force fields to construct all or some of their electronic devices. Or at least more sophisticated devices than shields, domes or walkways. If you're talking about a civilization that exists tens of thousands of years down the evolutionary highway, is there a somewhat realistic universe where force-field based electronics makes sense?
My basic thinking goes like this…most force fields in fiction are able to withstand extraordinary, high-velocity forces, repel electrical signals and laser beams, etc, and often imitate many properties of matter. Likewise, it seems fair to imagine some types of force fields could also conduct electricity and take on even more exotic properties of specific types of matter. If so, and this future society had mastered nanotechnology alongside their perversion of physics, is it too much of a stretch to imagine they'd built some kind of microscopic Holtzman generators that could create force-field based chassis, mechanical parts, and even circuitry? Maybe they’d also devised some method for programming the generators so that all of the various parts would generate at the same time, thus making it possible to pull a functional, force-field weapon (or whatever) out of thin air.
It seems like this concept hasn't really been explored much in mainstream science fiction, and I'm curious why that is. Can you think of other books, shows, or films that have explored the concept of force-field based complex devices or electronics as outlined above? More interestingly, what do you think would be the most science-based, logical way to describe *how* this technology would work in a story?
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It’s a literary effect where alien and/or future worlds are more like ours in every way, with “something special” only used in a singular or niche role. If you think about it, you realize that the “special thing” would have sweeping affects across all of society, but ① the author can’t imagine the result, and ② the reader would not understand the actions and motives of the characters in everyday situations.
For a mundane example, consider a hypothetical “golden age” story written before WWⅡ. It mentions synthetic polymer used as a specific plot item, and *only* for that item, completely ignoring the tupperware in the break room, or that *everything* would be made of plastics and other materials are rare. Or that disposable “styrofoam” cups would cause problems with the environment.
This will be the case of **any transformative technology**. Unless the story is *about that*, it will be seen in a niche role only.
In another century it will seem funny that space construction is described as bolted together with structural members being an issue or even a plot point! (I’m thinking of superconductors with flux pinning, which is pretty close to the “force field” example you started with.) Today we look at a [old stories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppet_Masters) where they have space travel and even space stations mentioned, but no communications satellite technology! How could he have missed such an obvious use for the space station that’s *in the story*?
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Regarding computers and similar complex devices, consider this:
* Science fiction with such advanced technology tends to include starships. There is also an assumption that force-field-generated gadgets **disappear** when you kill the power. So having all critical systems in a vehicle out of solid, reliable matter is a good idea, unless the force field equivalents are so much better in performance.
* Are the force fields somehow self-sustaining or do they require a projector? If they require a projector, will the projector be more or less complex than the force field construct it generates? If the technology of the setting assumes that the projector must be more complex, you gain little by having it project a device.
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In Star Trek, the holodeck creates a surprisingly diverse amount of things that are said to be all photons and force fields. This includes devices with capabilities beyond the computer that created them (see "The Nth Degree" from TNG where Barclay creates a holographic neural interface, or I argue Voyager's Doctor is more than just a UI for a program, but rather the hologram is part of his computer; his holographic brain is a photonic computer that supplements his program in addition to the database the ship's main computer offers, and that's why he can be lost forever if he goes down with a failing emitter, though the canon is mixed on support for that.)
The holodeck is a fairly young technology in the world of the show, so they use it conservatively to get started, but we see the seeds of them expanding it to more and more areas. It isn't just projections of simulations like a modern monitor shows the output of a computer program, but already the holograms themselves are usable devices.
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Actually, there are plenty of just such examples. Though it's only used as weaponry, and typically more in games. (that's a jab at the other plausible uses I could dream up)
So. Examples:
* [Lightsaber](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lightsaber) (Star Wars)
Don't jump to conclusions and start going off on how they're stabilized lazers. By this definition, Lightsabers fit:
>
> Likewise, it seems fair to imagine some types of force fields could also conduct electricity and take on even more exotic properties of specific types of matter.
>
>
>
* [Energy sword](http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Type-1_Energy_Weapon/Sword) (Halo)
This fits far more neatly into what we consider forcefields used aggresively. Including the ability to wear down the battery charge, running out of sword to use.
* [Energy Shields](http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Shield) (also Halo)
Don't be so quick to dismiss the more typical uses of forcefields. Though it can be argued that 'the best defense is a good offense', having a strong offensive game and a personal forcefield to keep you alive isn't a bad thing.
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In conclusion. It doesn't matter what is common or popular. **Someone needs to be the first to take the plunge.** So, I say, take the plunge. So long as the technology makes sense in context with your background world and technology, most won't mind. After all, there are those that lap up every detail from fiction where the technology is certainly nothing we know from today, like: Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Quantum Leap, Halo series, even the 007 franchise (Each movie likes dreaming up tech & gear that doesn't exist at the time the movie is released).
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Iain Banks' Culture series features [drones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Drones), who interact with the physical world entirely through "fields" rather than manipulator limbs. Fields are projected force fields that can be finely tuned to handle objects, act as shielding, or repel with force. Fields can also be coloured, to express emotion and state of mind.
Ships also sport multiple layers and types of fields, some acting as sensors and others as visual projections, to encompass an area much larger than the physical dimensions of the structure itself.
Another type featured in the Culture books are [effectors](http://theculture.wikia.com/wiki/Effector), multi-purpose EM field manipulator used for everything from sensors to reading minds to hacking.
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I'm designing a creature that has found a new way to evolve directly during its life time. This method is different from having to bear incredible environmental stress or being a victim to violent radiation.
This entity strives to survive by stealing the genetic code of other organisms around and using it to adapt to new menaces.
The creature decodes the genetic code of something else, copying the useful parts, and then importing them into a compatible format like DNA to XNA and vice versa.
I imagine this ability could be useful for a myriad of things like fighting cancer, by simply stealing the genetic code of animals that have already become immune to it (like naked mole rats) or defeating a virus by using the genetic code of said virus for its own advantage.
Much like water bears, but with the bonus of choosing what genetic code to steal instead of letting fate decide.
Over time using the genetic code of other organisms can transform this entity into a completely different creature (without losing the genetic thief ability).
Is this any realistic, or is it impossible even for alien life?
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Generally speaking, this genetic thief would die out really fast, or would either be so advanced as to probably not need to use its advanced processing power in this capacity.
# Compusaur
Did I say processing power? Yes I did.
Assume we have two creatures with human-level genetic codes: on the low end this means over 20,000 genes. We are uncertain how the human genome works because to fully understand this we'd have to understand how each **allele** (variant of a gene) interacts with each other allele of every other gene. Already this is a hugely complex problem, but lets assume there is only a single variant of each gene (which we know not to be true, elsewise everyone would look the same, more or less), and our gene thief finds this other, human-like creature.
It has to determine how each of twenty thousand genes works with every gene in its own body. A single gene would be 20,000 computations - and we're not even looking at [polygenic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygene) groupings - traits that are controlled by multiple genes. A three-gene cluster would take 20,000 \* 19,999 computations. In a case where each of these three genes has two alleles, it's roughly 20,000 ^ 6, or close enough to not matter. The number of computations explodes astronomically - beyond astronomically. This gene thief has the computational prowess beyond modern reckoning. It can surely be using that to do any number of other complex things that would better ensure its survival.
# Cancersaur
The alternative is to blindly steal genetics and try them out. This is exactly the same as giving yourself cancer: cancer is just cells with different genetics replicating through your body. You're unlikely to survive: though if you did, you'd be stronger.
# Randosaur
But! In reality genetics are swapped all the time. You absorb genetics through your food. When a virus invades your body, some of your cells learn that virus - by stealing its genetics. Babies inject their genes into their mother, causing her to become a genetic mosaic. Trees pass genes to shrubs. Genes are constantly flowing around. Most of the time, the receiving organism rejects the genes if they're dangerous. Sometimes they onboard them - and this is where gene therapy comes in. But the key is that the channels by which new genes are accepted are very narrow.
A mother pretty much knows that her child's genes are roughly the same and probably not going to kill her. Trees and plants passing trees around do die a lot, as do bacteria that swap genes - but their reproduction outpaces the death, meaning the workable imported genes end up lasting. When your immune system accepts genetics, it does so in a way explicitly designed to fight that virus. In order for the gene thief to work it would have to find a channel that narrows the odds of death by a *huge* amount.
And the result is unlikely to be something straightforward like, "I grow a bat's wings." Rather, it will onboard the genes and something new will emerge based on the complex interaction of the proteins that gene codes for. When gene therapy is done, they go to great lengths to determine what the result will be, and a lot of the work is around not having an adverse effect that is hard to predict. The results are not as predictable as getting whole new capabilities: instead the results will change things at a small scale (like the amount of a hormone produced), which will have different effects on different parts of the randosaur's system.
So while you can, and do, have gene thieves in the wild, it's not as 'whole feature' as you propose.
[Answer]
**This already exists.**
Bacteria already have this: they can swap small pieces of DNA called [plasmids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmid) which have a few genes on them.
For example, one of the reasons that antibiotic resistance spreads through bacterial populations so fast is that the genes can be loaded on plasmids, which make it into the environment and can be picked up by other bacteria.
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This will ***not*** help the creature become strong or help it survive. On the contrary, it will very probably end up killing it very soon.
# The Problem Of Compatibility
You cannot steal partial genetic code from an organism and expect it to function successfully in another body. For example, if your said creature decides to live in a desert and finds it too hot to be likeable, it would naturally feel like stealing some desert resident animals' genes and make itself at home with the heat. The problem is that the genes of those animals would not kick in, doing the same thing in this creature. The problem being that genes are meaningful only in the background of the whole genetic setup of a creature. For example, it tastes some blood of a camel and decides this is a nice method for living happily in a desert (camels have a much thicker blood and lose very less water through sweating). However, stealing genes only for the camel's blood (or its skin, too and water management system) would be a bad idea because those genes function well only in the background of the complete camel genome. For example, the antibodies present in the camel's blood would not function properly with the immune system of the creature's *original* blood. Similiarly, camel's water management system would probably be highly incompatible with the water intake of the creature's *original* organs.
So all in all, no, just stealing part of genetic code of a creature and hoping it would function properly in an otherwise alien background genome will not work.
# Some Cells Are Rarely Ever Replaced
For example, brain cells (some parts of it), a lot muscle cells, several types of blood cells etc. [reference](https://www.quora.com/It-is-said-that-ALL-the-cells-in-the-human-body-are-replaced-every-few-years-How-do-we-retain-our-memory-if-the-same-happens-in-the-brain)
This means that these cells would not be replaceable for the organism.
# The Main Problem: Cancer
This is when different types of cells have different growth/mitosis rate. Considering that cells of different organisms have different growth and multiplication rate, copying anything from a quickly multiplying cells genome would spell doom for the creature as these cells would quickly form tumors and ravage the host body with a matter of few weeks.
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Maybe a different approach to others, instead of stealing genetic material and integrating it into an existing pattern there is the possibility of cloning an individual's body parts and integrating them wholesale into the host body.
That gets round the trouble of cells, then it's a case of having a plastic type mind (say octopi) that can easily adapt to controlling to new appendages and having a body that does not reject foreign bodies wholesale.
So you can grow the wings of a bat, minus the body and graft it to your own.
Note: this would take a lot of energy to grow new mature body parts, so don't forget a healthy appetite to go with it!
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Steal genetic material? Probably not. But control its own growth, to become like other creatures? Maybe.
Our theories of evolution say that creatures' changes over time come from mutations and selection of advantageous traits. To have controlled, significant genetic changes within a generation without "third party" devices (e.g. genetically modified viruses, radiation) seems highly unlikely -- first of all, no known creature can change its DNA selectively. The most "adaptable" organisms (e.g. cockroaches) are adaptable because they have a high rate of mutation, not because they can control their mutations to be beneficial.
## Lo, enter the Tree-o-zard.
A sentient creature, shaped like a large tree. With a small version of itself for each "branch".
This creature would induce mutations in each small body/"branch" through exposing it to radiation (plausibly, it originates from some atmosphereless planet, where radiation is abundant)(definitely no shortage of radiation in space) and allowing the different mutations to consume each branch. The "trunk" (original body) would be made of a thick radiation-proof material, so that the creature's original genetic code wouldn't be damaged. Then, when a branch is found to have a good mutation, it would be assimilated into the trunk, and all other branches destroyed (as through abscission). Then, the Tree-o-zard would regrow a new "generation" of branches, and repeats the process.
"But wait!" you say. "Wouldn't this crea--"
Yes. This creature would have to be mind-bogglingly large. To get a mutation that's actually desirable would be extremely difficult. Pretend the odds are 1 in 1,000,000,000 (1 billion). Even with ten billion branches, the odds of the Tree-o-zard getting a good mutation is hardly guaranteed (I'll make an edit later when I do the math). Therefore, the process would be extremely slow, and the creature would likely be sessile.
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The use of the word "stealing" imply to deprive it's original owner of something. I think that incorporating some fragment of DNA material from one organism to another do not impact in any way the donor.
I start by clarifying this idea with an example. I will then give my opinion as to why borrowing some fragment of genetic code to incorporate in an adult is unlikely to give any visible result.
An example where that word would qualify could be: If I publish a book in which I copy a few pages from a popular author, such as Shakespeare. If my book appeal more than the original, if these few pages add value to my work and if these few pages are sufficient to convince some people to not buy the original source, depriving the original author of revenue that she would otherwise get, then this is clearly stealing.
This example is purposely exaggerated. An author can be considered as dishonest even if the source of the few pages was not from a well known author. A law suit in such case would help the original author to be discovered.
To answer to the important part of the question, I think that incorporating fragment of DNA from other organism is unlikely to help in most cases. For example, if a mammal would dream to get wings like a bird, such change can not happen on an already fully grown animal. A mammals would probably prefer to use the genes from another mammals, such as the bats, instead of using those of birds. Because the closest common ancestor between birds and mammals is much farther in time (possibly more than 300 millions year), the portions of the genetic code which are similar enough to be compatible and work in a meaningful way are very small.
The specific genes needed to change, for a large scale modification such as replacing the arms and legs with a wing system similar to bats, would need to affect the growth rate of early cells, soon after they start to differentiate.
The way the cells carefully orchestrate the rate of division, migration and pre-programmed cell death to create a viable miniature copy of an adult is an incredible amount of finely tuned apparently useless portion of DNA which actually may act as timers and other part of the genetic code controlling specific chemical triggers which act as equivalent to a decision making entity when described as an algorithm.
To give an comprehensible example, suppose you would try to build a machine which reproduce the symphony of Beethoven using thousands of coo-coo clocks, each one preprogranned to hit a bell at the right time. Let's say that you could group some of these mechanical clocks in clusters which would play the part of the music that repeat. A master clock would trigger each groups, onne by one, manage to rewind the clocks that already ding one time, to allow them to be ready to replay that portion of the song later.
Basically, a large part of the genetic code which appear to be useless for an adult is needed to build this complex 3 dimensional organism made of trillions of cells, like all pluri-cellular living organism do.
Once this structure is built, it can not morph to another one. Take the example of caterpillar. The metamorphosis to become a butterfly is done by demolishing the house and building a brand new one. Every organ is dissolved and a brand new set is developed from scratch. It is like if these two phases in the lives were two distinct creature encoded in the DNA. Half of the genetic sequence knows how to develop from egg to caterpillar.
Then, all the food accumulated by the caterpillar as fat reserve is used, similar to the yellow and white of a chicken egg, to restart the growth of a single cell inside the cocoon. That cell in the dying caterpillar restart developing like a freshly fertilized egg do, starting with a few divisions, probably 5, creating 32 identical copies. Then, starting to differentiate, each cell getting an almost identical copy of all the DNA, except small parts that account for cell specialization.
The only cell that get a fully intact DNA sequence, the entire instruction to start the next generation, are the sperm and egg. Every other cell get a copy with tiny difference, some parts of the code acting as lock to prevent the neuron cell to create the same protein as the liver cell, for example. \*Bad example as I learned last week that the cells in the liver have mode than one nucleus).
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This already exists in a far more impressive form - enter the Tardigrade:
<http://www.sciencealert.com/the-tardigrade-genome-has-been-sequenced-and-it-has-the-most-foreign-dna-of-any-animal>
They are called water bears, and are almost everywhere from the great lakes to the himalayas. They can survive in extreme heat and extreme dryness and come back to life when the time is life. Tardigrades are the inspiration of Half Life 2's antagonist race - the Combine, which use host features to combine into new life forms.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vmg8n.jpg)
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So I have this android character that has super-human abilities. I like her durability level, speed, and everything else, but I feel her jump is a bit to short. She can lift around 12 1/2 times, or 2,000 pounds/1 ton, her body weight of 160 pounds. Currently she can leap vertically around 28 feet, but if she crouches, she may be able to jump 42 feet. Horizontally from a standstill she can jump around 36 feet, but running on 2 legs at 50 MPH she can reach about twice that, and if running on all 4s at full speed(100 MPH), she can leap to around 100 feet. How plausible is this, and if it is not, what is the more accurate jumping abilities?
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This all depends on the mechanisms that give strength to your android. just saying your 12.5x stronger doesn't necessarily relate across the board. Even in humans this can vary a lot. In humans, we have different muscle tissues that help us excel in different ways. This article [What Are Fast- and Slow-Twitch Muscles?](https://greatist.com/fitness/what-are-fast-and-slow-twitch-muscles) talk about the different muscle fibers and what they do.
Basically, it comes down to what mechanisms your android has and how it's used. Your android might be able to lift 1 ton of something, but if its servos are designed for high capacity over time, it might not be able to jump 1 inch. Now, if it's designed to exert large amounts of force quickly, it could jump great distances, or run fast, but may not be robust enough to lift and hold large weight.
This is a balance that engineers deal with when designing any mechanical system. They determine the job the machine needs to do and balance the components that go into it to accomplish that job. It's all a give and take when it comes down to the benefits and draw backs on selected materials. Materials designed for heavy lift tend to be heavy, reducing speed and agility. Components designed for speed are slimmer. Plus having a servo move 1 ton quickly could cause high forces and may just fling its load around uncontrollably.
However, this is fiction. You can make the android have all the best components and not have any draw backs, so it could lift 12.5x more weight, can run 12.5x fast and jump 12.5x higher than any human can.
Here are some examples of how engineers are balancing components and function
[MABEL Bipedal Robot is Fast Enough to Run You Down](https://spectrum.ieee.org/mabel-bipedal-robot-is-now-fast-enough-to-catch-you)
[10 Humanoid Robots of 2020](https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/10-humanoid-robots-of-2020)
[KUKA Robotics introduces world's largest and strongest robot](https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ir.2007.04934fad.001/full/html)
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The vertical jump distance appears unrealistically large to me. To be able to raise your CG by ~42 feet (13 m) would require leaving the ground at a velocity of around 16 m/s. If leaving from a crouch, it might be reasonable to assume that the maximum distance she is accelerating for is no more than 1 m (legs fully compressed to fully extended). To accelerate her 160 lb (73 kg) body to that velocity over that distance requires an average acceleration of 128 m/s^2 over that distance, so a continuous applied force of 9350 N. The latter is consistent with an ability to do a 'static' lift of 1 tonne, but during the push-off her muscles would need to produce an output power of around 150 kW, which is over 200 horse-power. Even during explosive exercise a human body can only output power of around 2-3 kW, so your android is exceeding that by a factor of 50-75 rather than 12!
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Human vertical leap varies tremendously even between people the same height, weight, and leg press strength -- but the highest vertical leap I'm aware of in a human (male) is close to 49 inches (~125 cm). Assuming the 12.5x strength factor gives 12.5x the energy on leaving the ground (12.5x the force over the same distance), your android ought to be able to jump a simple 12.5x as high, other factors (including technique) being equal.
That's roundly fifty feet (about 15.25 m).
Long jump is more complicated, because not only does it involve vertical jump (hence flight time) but also horizontal sprinting speed. If she can get a similar amount of height as in a vertical leap, her air time would be about four seconds, giving a forward distance of up to roughly *six hundred feet* (about 190 m) from a 100 mph start.
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I assume you already ran the math, since your figures pan out, but just in case (or if anyone wondered),
* How much high can she jump when running? Let that be X feet, or 0.3048\*X meters. **28 feet is plausible** since vertical acceleration is about eight times a human's. There is a slightly more complicated calculation to determine her jumping power from her legs' length and stance: she must not only be able to lift more mass than a human, *she must be able to do it very fast*.
* Since the acceleration of gravity g = 9.81 m/s^2, this means she stays in air for a time *t*, such that s=0.5 \* g \* t^2, so 0.3048 \* X = 0.5 \* 9.81 \* t^2, which means that t = SQRT(0.3048 \* X/(0.5 \* 9.81)) = approximately SQRT(X)/4. To get time in seconds from vertical jump height in feet, just extract the root and divide by four.
* So, 28 feet means SQRT(28)/4 = 1.32 s in the air.
* How far can she travel horizontally in 1.32 s?
* 50 miles is 80467 m, one hour is 3600 s, so her speed is 22.35 m/s. In 1.32 s she can then cover 1.32 \* 22.35 = 29 m, or 95 feet.
Now, vertical jump and horizontal speed are roughly related, and from that 28ft leap I would have expected a much faster running speed; she *should* be able to run at about 120 mph (almost parallel to the ground). *Controlling* her speed is a different matter, of course.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Minimum time required to infect entire human population with a virus](/questions/8495/minimum-time-required-to-infect-entire-human-population-with-a-virus)
(4 answers)
Closed 3 years ago.
In about six months time every human on Earth is infected with a virus. How would a virus spread to cause such a quick transmission rate to infect 7+ billion people?
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First, the virus has virtually no symptoms. If there are symptoms, we notice. If it does have any symptoms, they have to be sneaky, like increasing our sweat just a bit, or making a person slightly more needy of social contact. This probably means it hijacks and suppresses the immune system to some degree.
Second, the virus pretty much has to be airborne, shared by breathing. That’s the easiest transmission method. Sexually transmitted diseases just don’t get around (ironic). Skin contact diseases do spread, but not in casual interactions.
So, you’re looking at an airborne measels-meets-AIDS combo. Yuck.
But even with high communicability, you still have distribution problems to remote islands, Arctic and Antarctic climates, etc. I strongly doubt you can get every human within six months unless you have **someone consciously spreading it.** An organization playing courier will be needed to get it around that fast.
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SRM covered a lot so i won't repeat the lack of Symptoms or the airborn part but i do want to expand on his
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> someone consciously spreading it
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Ever heard of the Blood Plague Incident? IT was in the MMO World Of Warcraft where a "disease" got spread outside of where it was supposed to stay. This caused major community hubs to get infected fast with a high mortality rate. Problem is people wanted to avoid that so they went to more remote locations, with the virus following due to infected people trying to go there too (To intentionally spread it because of the "If i die we all die" mentality or just seeking refuge).
So that would be the reason remote places get infected, people fleeing or spreading out of s sense of "fairness". So for it to work he disease should be spreadable way before the it is detectable.
A likely scenario would be people fleeing infected areas, some of them are carriers (hell maybe even all of them) who think they are not sick and view the original inhabitant as selfish/paranoia and justify them taking control (and spreading the disease or at least kill the healthy) out a sense of need.
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## Major International Events
The first cases appear in a city shortly before it hosts the Olympics, World Cup, or a similarly-sized international event, and many infected people are working the event in positions with lots of public contact (ticket-takers, concessions, athlete wranglers, etc.) Fans from all over the world attend and pick up the disease. The fans spread it further as they journey home, including many long flights with stopovers at major international airports as well as trains, buses, etc. Athletes pick it up and, being very fit and healthy to start with, don't show symptoms while they do press tours, public meet-and-greets, parades, etc. upon returning home.
By the time anyone's showing symptoms a few weeks later, it's all over the globe and spreading rapidly.
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**Use birds as (additional) carriers.**
As others have pointed out, some small pockets of human civilization might be completely isolated (though personally I doubt that they don’t have *any* (in)direct contact). But I’m pretty sure all of them have some contact with birds. The only possible exception is the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station which is completely isolated for seven months between February and October. You’d have to time your virus correctly to infect them before the last flight in mid-February.
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If you really aim at infecting
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that's highly unlikely, bordering the impossibility. There are human communities which are so far apart from other communities that the virus won't be able to reach them.
Think of the people living on Sentinel islands, or remote tribes in the Amazon forest, for example.
Our modern and high developed transport network makes it rather easy for a pathogen to quickly travel between continents, but then a capillary diffusion within the continent is another story.
It might be easy in Europe and North America, but for Asia, Africa South America, Oceania and polar regions it might take way longer than 6 months, if it can happen at all.
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There is a theory that some viruses may originate from space ([panspermia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia)). So if you take the concept of a readily transmissible virus with minimal early symptoms (the "measles-meets-AIDS" virus suggested in other answers) and combine it with the idea of the Earth encountering a fairly broad cloud of virus-bearing material then you could start the infection process all over the place. Even small remote communities would see some initial patients, and the high transmissibility would account for spreading it to the rest.
I would probably not have suggested this answer if you had used the "hard-science" tag as while the panspermia hypothesis is credible enough for a significant number of experiments relating to it to have been carried out by NASA, ESA and maybe others, the results of those experiments appear to quite significantly constrain accidental panspermia, albeit not entirely rule it out. Essentially you need meteorites at least 1m in size to carry the micro-organisms in order for them to survive atmospheric re-entry. Therefore, for it to happen everywhere at once *and not to have happened before* you need something like a meteor storm but you can't rely on the existing annual meteor events. You probably need to invoke something like a new comet to dump a whole load of suitable rocks bearing the virus into Earth's orbital path. So it depends whether you want your plot to be fully "hard science" or whether you're happy with a "plausible but not likely in practice" explanation. Of course, depending on your plot you might have the option of deliberate panspermia, where the virus is seeded across the world by aliens.
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You make it generally harmless, and spread through common animals that aren't seen as pests. Sounds like you want to read about [Toxoplasmosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis)
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The virus spreads rapidly. We ourselves spread it. If we are infected by a virus and we meet someone, we cause them that virus too. But sometimes it is not the virus in my view. It is the environment that is polluted. And pollution causes harmful viruses. And of course, it will infect, everyone living in that environment.
An example is the [Holi festival](https://holi-2020.com) in India. On Holi, everyone plays with colors that are [toxic](https://holi-2020.com/holi-after-effects/). So the color rises up into the air and everyone breaths in it. So almost everyone is infected with some respiratory issues or throat infections due to the presence of the fatal virus in the air.
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Thing is there are tens of thousands of medical facilities performing blood-tests every minute around the globe. The existence of the virus would be discovered early on and people would start contingency operations. Bunkers, quarantine facilities, etc. People are resilient and inventive.
The only way this could work would be the collapse of the civilization as we know it before the virus dissemination is started. The whole of the humanity going back to middle-ages, but even then you can't rule out bubbles of the old society living isolated underground or in hidden areas, some of them military protected and others going to great pains to remain hidden and unknown. There are people right now concerned with this exact scenario you are trying to concoct. I'm talking survivalist, be-prepared groups active on message boards, with tons of information regarding how to outfit your bunker best :) The downside of the civilization collapse would be that you'd have fewer ways to spread the virus (no planes, trains, cars, mails).
So you'd have to operate from space and not rely on the existing infrastructure. You'd have to have access to vast amounts of resources, deploy pods from outer space in a systematic manner.
And still I don't think it's possible to infect the whole of the humanity in its entirety.
Leaving aside the difficulty of reaching purposefully isolated and hidden groups living in bunkers or other hidden facilities, individual humans are unique at genetic level. There would still be people immune to the virus. You just couldn't get them all sick.
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I am not a specialist but heard about a real virus that seems to achieve what you want: It's name is "Papillomavirus".
It is a virus transmitted through genital zones, as well as through mouth. Thus, it is supposed to have infected every men and women in developed countries after 25 years. The thing is that you don't have symptoms, and no directly related diseases as well for most people, so the virus is not detected.
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You can have the disease actually change people's behavior so they want to get away anyone they know and towards people they don't know. This is similar in concept to how the parasitic wasp infects caterpillars- caterpillars protect the wasps (having been inside and eating and affecting the caterpillar) that burst from their skin with their own silk and attack any creature getting near the wasps.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 5 years ago.
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I'm writing a story about people being stuck in a large hotel. One character wants to call a loved one, but I'm trying to think of a reason that they can't. My initial thought was that the front desk line needs to remain open for communication with authorities, but I don't see a reason why they wouldn't just use their room's phone.
My research so far has indicated that phones work even during power outages. Is there a reason that the main desk phone would work, but a hotel's room phones wouldn't? Most hotels I have been at require you to dial "9" before calling out. Could this play a factor?
I'm also open to suggestions on how the hotel management could communicate with local government without phones, if I had to completely "cut the wires".
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## Maybe yes and maybe no
* Old-style analog telephones are powered by the telephone network; old-style urban telephone networks (the so-called POTS, Plain Old Telephone System) generally have a power reserve of 48 or 72 hours.
+ *Some* (most likely old and formely Soviet) hotels may have their room telephones connected directly to the analog urban telephone network. (The last time I met with such an arrangement was some 15 years ago in Kishinev, Republic of Moldova.)
+ Other old hotels may have their internal analog telephone network; this is not unheard of even today. If the hotel has its own internal analog telephone network, its PBX (Private Branch eXchange) may or may not have reserve battery power.
* Modern hotel room telephones are really small computers, likely using ARM processors and running some sort of voice-over-IP software. This kind of telephones are powered from the wired Ethernet network and are connected to a server. This kind of setup may or may not have reserve battery power.
+ In corporate settings the phone and data networks are just about always set up with a massive UPS (Uniterruptible Power Supply) *and* a Diesel generator.
+ In a hotel setting, it depends. Higher-end hotels will likely have UPSs. In some locales where blackouts are frequent, a Diesel generator may also be present. Mid-range and lower-end hotels likely wont' have reserve battery power.
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Regular phones work during outages, but servers which route calls will only last as long as the batteries on their UPS. It may be that the front desk phone is connected to a regular line and the hotel's internal PABX or equivalent; all room phones need to go through a server to reach the proper phone company lines. When the servers are down, you are out of luck.
This is specially true nowadays, given that we are using increasingly more VoIP solutions.
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Home phones continue to work because they get their power from the local exchange. The local exchange gets their power from the same source you and I do, but usually the reason causing *your* blackout does not affect the power going to the exchange.
I worked in a restaurant attached to a ten-plex hotel. When the power went out the room phones did not work because they got their power from the PBX and when the PBX went down there was no power for the phones. The front desk phone also went through the PBX, but when the PBX lost power or had some other kind of error the front desk phone was able to bypass the PBX and connect directly to one of the phone lines in the trunk -- the one to which our primary phone number was provisioned.
So if you need the room phones not to work you can simply provide for no backup power to the local PBX. You don't have to explain it, just say "the only phone which works during the blackout is the front desk phone".
I hope that helps.
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These days a lot of hotels have cordless phones in the rooms, these absolutely require mains power to their base stations to continue operation and will crash in an outage. For anything else it depends on the set up of the internal network hardware and reserve measures, if any, included therein.
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The typical home phone continues to work because it is drawing its power through the phone line, which is getting it from the phone company exchange. I presume the phone company normally has backup generators so they can keep working through a power failure. If you want to make such a phone fail for purposes of your story, all you need do is say that the backup system at the phone company failed.
Years ago most hotels (and mid-size to large businesses) had a PBX, "private branch exchange", to connect all the room phones to each other and to outside lines. Maybe today many or most are using VOIP, "voice over internet protocol". Either way, these require local power to run the PBX or server. The hotel may have backup power, or not.
If they have their own backup power, the idea of that failing is not wildly implausible. I used to work for a company with a chain of retail stores. The stores were all connected to headquarters over the internet. They were very worried about the servers going down and the stores being unable to process sales. So they built a "bunker" that could survive a tornado, fire, etc to house the servers. Then the servers had a battery back up that kicked in automatically in case of power loss, a generator to back up that, and a second generator in case the first generator failed. A few months after putting all this together, there was a power failure. The battery backup failed, the first generator failed, and the second generator failed. Our servers all went down.
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## Too many calls
So, there is a power outage. Everybody and their uncle grabs the room phone to 1) ask what is going on or 2) tell somebody about it.
Unfortunately the local network is not scaled for this. Even if there are battery backups all over the place, the system can NOT handle that many calls at once.
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Have you considered a lightning strike? Could conceivably burn the internal hotel network, but leave the external connections intact.
More trivially, if your setting is in modern times the internal phone system could just crash due to software or hardware problems. Might be even a malicious hacker attack, if it works for your plot.
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PSTN phones get their power from the exchange they're connected to. Large exchanges (like your local one) have battery and generator backups - that's why your phone continues to work even though there is no power in the whole city.
Hotels (and large offices) are bit different. They have small local exchanges - that's why you have to "dial 9" to reach outside network. If the hotel exchange doesn't have backup power (a reasonable expectation), all phones connected to that exchange will go quiet with it. If the front desk phone can reach room phones directly, it's hooked up to the hotel exchange and depends on it as well. However, it's possible that the front desk has a second phone, one connected directly to the outside line - and this one will keep working. Another possibility is that the local exchange has a failover mode: when it loses power, it connects one, predefined phone directly to the outside line.
Bottom line: if you want the hotel phones to die, just kill the local exchange in the basement. Front desk can have a second phone, according to your needs.
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So, in my story, their is a Superhero called “Mind Quad” aka John Paul “JP” Stevenson, a college dropout. Back when he was 23, a radioactive brain tumour nearly killed him, but thanks to an experimental treatment surgery, his brain is more powerful than any other human in existence. His mind is as powerful as a super computer, and he is an ultra genius. He was later recruited into the Union of Superpowered beings, and is a type-1 superhero.
His powers are all related to brain control, and include the abilities of Telepathy, Telekinesis, and Mind Reading. The ability I’m focusing on is the Mind Reading part. He isn’t able to simply turn off his Mind Reading ability, so it stays on all the time. My question is, how could I plausibly explain why MQ doesn’t constantly hear the thoughts of everyone around him?
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### Range based on [Inverse Square Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law)
JP's mind reading ability has a physical basis. Similar to other types of waves, the brain waves that he is able to read disperse by the square of the distance from the brain.
If he is within 6 feet of someone he can read their mind extremely clearly. If he moves to 12 feet away, the signal is only 1/4 as strong, like a whisper instead of normal talking. And if he moves 100 feet away then he can't read much of anything, unless a group of people synchronize their thoughts to "shout" at him.
Just like a conversation in a crowded room, if he is by himself with one or two other people he can read their minds just fine. But if he is in a crowded subway car with 20 people within 10 feet, he can't read much from any individual - just like regular people can't distinguish voices in a crowd.
Put him in a stadium and it becomes noise and he tunes it out as he can't understand any of it - just like a regular person learns to ignore sounds in the same environment.
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He disciplined himself into treating all surrounding 'voices' as [white noise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_noise), just like we walk in a crowded street without focusing on every single sound surrounding us. By the same token, our hero can specifically focus on one or more specific target and listen at them clearly
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You can't turn your ears or skin off, but your brain has more than enough systems to filter signals. For example, you probably weren't aware of the sound of your PC or the feeling of your chair until you read this, as your brain (and feedback loops in the peripheral nervous system) was filtering it until it became (sort of) relevant.
You also use such systems to filter conversations in a crowded room. People with autism miss at least a few of these systems which is why they can be "overloaded" with signals. Imagine trying to listen to one conversation but hearing 6 simultaneously without any chance of making sure which words belong to what concersation...
If your superhero is so super with his brain, he could have the ability to rewire parts of his brain, similar to how someone with a brain injury can have parts of his brain rewire itself to have a higher functionality. He rewires parts to function as a permanent filter similar to what his body already does, but perhaps more effective.
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**First easy answer**
Imho is not that difficult to justify: "listen" is somehow a passive task and, notably, people in big cities (with a lot of traffic) or near train stations are quietly used to sleep with a high level of noise. No big deal, they are not deaf, they just don't care except when they do, so they can understand what they want and simply discard everything else.
**Even more easy answer**
It's called "**mind reading**" and not "**mind listening**" for reasons, it's definitely an active "high concentration" task, and "mind reading" is also very different from "mind seeing".
What's the issue in not reading all the books that are in a library if you don't want to? None...
If you want to read a book you can - and have to- grab the book, open it, and **READ** it. You can **see** that other books are around you, but who cares?
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The answer is quite simple: **he doesn't focus on what people are saying**. When you are in a crowly place with several persons who you don't care, Do you listen to what is saying each one of them? Of course no, even if you wanted you wouldn't be able to hear and interpret what is saying each one, it's too much information to process! Your brain just doesn't pay attention to that, the same with his brain.
Also, if you don't like that idea... you could think that **thoughts are like voice**: Thoughts emits like a kind of "sound" that he is the only able to hear, but this "Xs waves" diminishes by distance as sound does. Can you hear what is someone saying at a hundred metres?
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It can be likened to tinnitus, and the way that many sufferers of tinnitus can learn to block it out by listening to music or simply with their thoughts.
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A text-reading human being isn't reading every book (or other text source) in the universe simultaneously.
Like the mind-reading superhero, any words (in one's native language) that a literate person sees, he will read reflexively. This ability can't be *turned off*. But we can't perceive all sources of text in the universe all the time. It is certainly plausible that a mind-reading individual would also experience their own set of perceptive limitations.
The easy example would be to say that the mind-reader is perceiving certain signals whose strength decreases with distance. Additionally, a certain minimum signal strength is needed for the mind-reader to perceive the signal.
However, feel free to be more creative with this idea. You may wish to have certain things block these signals, in analogy to the way many surfaces block the passage of light. You could also play with more complicated ideas of reflection, refraction, absorption, and interference.
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Our eyes don't see everything that exists all at once. We only see in the direction we're facing, we need to physically focus differently for near and far vision, and we can concentrate on a small part of what we see, mentally ignoring the remainder unless something interesting/important (like a bus hurtling towards us) enters our field of vision.
Most objects we can see are opaque. If two people are standing one behind the other, the superhero might not be able to hear the further person's thoughts at all, or the thoughts might interfere with each other.
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JP's Mind reading capabilities could be 'on' all of the time, but his brain may choose to ignore it (or at least most of it).
Just like how you can see your nose, but your brain chooses to ignore it.
JP's brain could be always 'aware' of the thoughts of other people, but until he **concentrates** on listening in, it could just be like a background noise. (Similar to how if i wanted to see my nose, I'd just concentrate on it).
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Knowing what everyone is thinking at all times can be a curse. Knowing their true intentions can drive a person mad. Though the character can hear others' inner thoughts when he chooses to, he learned long ago that the base desires of humans are cruel and selfish and make him lose faith in humanity. But he also knows that they rarely reflect what humans really want, and are often instantaneous reflections instead of coherent thoughts. So he chooses to ignore them, and chooses to see the beauty in this world, rather than the ugliness. Random mind reads aren't for him, not for the sake of others' sanity, but for his own.
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See JP's pajama hat? That, my esteemed fellow, is JP's way of getting some quality sleep.
Inside, it has an anti-static mesh coupled with flexible gold cloth.
A cranky hero soon slips unto villiany, so JP makes sure to get his 8 hours of undisturbed beauty sleep. üòâ
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I'm going to go the other way. He does read everyone's mind. All the time.
In fact, he projects his mind into everyone's mind. All the time.
His consciousness is no longer isolated to himself. He runs processes on every human mind nearby. These processes don't *feel* like thought to the people he is piggy backing on. For the most part, these processes don't impinge on the conscoius experience of the people being suborned; "Mind Quad" no more orders human minds about than we tell the cells in our skin to divide.
The original JP Stevenson is basically an antenna for the distributed "Mind Quad" hive intelligence to be able to communicate with mere mortals.
In order to engage in conventional mindreading or telepathy, "Mind Quad" has to work quite hard at it. You usually aren't aware of what your tongue is feeling; you have to focus on your tongue. "Speaking" into the mind of someone is akin to learning how to do the Spock hand gesture, or bending only the top joint of a finger; it requires flexing your finger tendons in a strange and unnatural way.
Reading someone's mind is like that; focusing on bending only the top joint of a finger. MQ is *always* reading everyone's mind, but not as a *narrative*; the reading of the mind is as a subprocess to MQ's intelligence.
This also means that MQ will sometimes know things *and not know why*. If MQ wants to, say, pick a lock, the hive intelligence could pick up the muscle memory and try to transcribe it to JP's movements.
What more, as MQ itself is ridiculously larger than a human consciousness, actually communicating the reasoning behind decisions is going to be difficult (heck, downloading it to JP's brain might be challenging!) You might know that JP taking a step back will cause the supervillian to miss an attack on someone else, but explaining how you knew that might be impossible.
MQ might also find dreaming individuals to be easier to hijack for processing needs. If we assume near unlimited range, brains on the other side of the planet are only 80 ms away. So sleepers will be relatively slow thoughts, but a huge supply of them.
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Let's say a modern man is transported to a world that is roughly medieval and modeled very clearly off of medieval Europe. He manages to impress the son of a king and eventually gets the king to hear out his 'crazy' theories. The king is willing to experiment with sanitation, but is not certain he believes in it and is only willing to commit so much effort to it.
The modern time traveler explains the basics of germ theory and that most medieval diseases were transmitted via drinking water. In addition to explaining the advantage of boiling drinking water he suggests a sewage system. The problem is he doesn't know how to make one. He has a vague idea that modern sewers use filtration, chemicals, and UV light to clean our sewage, of those only the first seems remotely plausible given the tech available but he doesn't know much more about it.
So he suggests that a sewage system can be made to collect waste and drop it off down river of the city so at least they won't be drinking their own waste. He is far less confident about the ability to filter and clean out waste but he vaguely suggests he thinks they may have used sand and/or stones to filter waste before and perhaps they could figure out some way to do that.
Finally he happens to recall a bit about Miasma theory, the flawed theory that 'bad air' makes one sick, and that the first sewage systems were built based off of this theory. Thus while he does clarify that stench is more our bodies system of warning us of stuff that may make us sick rather then the source of the sickness he does suggest a general rule of thumb that if a sewer system keeps the stink of human waste away from the human nose it's probably protecting from disease.
Given this very vague and limited explanation the king pulls together his top experts and asks "think you can do something based off of all this nonsense the supposed future knowledge stranger claims will help? Also I'm only toying with this idea to humor my son's belief in the loon and the potential to maybe make our cities not reek so much, so how cheap could you make this whole sewer idea?"
My question is basically can an effective sewer be made given such limited description at a cost low enough that a king not entirely sold on the idea would be willing to sign off on it? If so can you give me a rough idea of how significant the cost would seem compared to the available budget of such a king and how much of a difference would it make in spread of disease to a city that built one? Would the results be noticeable enough to prove the efficacy of germ theory and/or sewers to the skeptical king?
Less relevant, but related, question would be where the fist sewer would be built. Ideally it would be in the capital, but would a modern already built congested capital city be able to fit in the new construction and sewage system? If not what type of city might be an easier place for a first experimental sewer to be built?
Please note I realize that pre-medieval sewers existed in our world, but this world isn't exactly identical to ours. Either sewers were not discovered in this part of the world or they were forgotten, much as roman sewers were neglected. The point is there is no historical example of a fully functional sewer available to draw ideas off of.
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Sewers were not invented to get rid of poo, they were invented to resist flooding. Getting rid of poo is just an add on.
So, depending on the geography of your city, there may already *be* a sewer system. Basically, if there is a likelihood of flooding, it doesn't even need to be common, it just needs to be a reasonable concern, than the water might sweep away the buildings that make up the city, and even if it doesn't, if the water has no place to go it will quickly spread disease.
So, you build a place for the water to go! Hence the invention of the sewer.
Which actually gets into another point. People know that waste is bad.or at least dangerous. They don't necessarily know exactly why, but they know it is. Additionally, depending on the time period, if your character tries to explain sanitation he is more likely to be called a crazy reactionary than a mad revolutionary, because sanitation is intimately linked in most cultures to religious rights. It's likely that he will be trying to convince people to do things they already associate with priests and other ritual orders that are much older than the city itself, while new issues with disease are typically not so much a result of stagnation, as a result of unchecked growth.
Like, the most devastating dusease out breaks in history were not caused by people not washing their hands (though that certainly made them worse) but by exploration and trade. On a less grim note, the river thanes didn't get the big stink until the industrial revolution filled London with far more people than the ancient city could support, and the ganges didn't get full of trash till the 19 and 20th century.
Basically, most of the suggestions the character makes might not be nearly as radical as you might think. And they will tend to seem less crazy the less "advanced" the civilization is
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## They can surely dig a trench
In one New Zealand city that I know well, Nelson, they had a simple trench because they couldn't afford a sewer during a long lean post settlement era. It drained sewage to a river mouth, leaving clean water upstream.
The trench was notorious because for many years it was open and drunks would fall into it and drown or die of infection.
This was from 1840 until 1870 (?) or so!
Compared to having sewage running down the streets, it was still a huge improvement.
Take a test village (or wealthy city street) with the correct geography that is administered by your enthusiastic prince, and install small pipes down to a big trench with wooden covers. Bring in water using an aqueduct or pipe from a higher elevation or just take it from an upstream point of a river. Dump the sewage in the sea or a lower elevation river or a downstream point of the same river they get water from.
Make soap plentiful and provide some warm baths too if you feel like it.
That part of Nelson has very expensive real estate now, FWIW.
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**Open Sewer**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pY99J.png)
The simplest type of sewer is the famous Tudor style open sewer in the middle of the street and people throw the contents of their chamber pots out the window.
Make it sloped like modern sewer pipes you can drain the effluence into the outskirts of the city. Perhaps assisted by rain, the peepee and poopoo goes into big compost heaps and eventually fertilizes the nearby farms.
There is no need for UV treating or recycling waste water. There are fewer people around and more water from the river available. Though you might try to filter the water from the river somehow.
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If you want to get through to this king in that period you're better off starting with the army.
European kings tended to be at war with each other on a fairly steady basis and one of the great limiting factors of the army was how many died of disease while on campaign. You can start with the much simpler option of ensuring the army digs a "[long drop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_latrine)" well away from their drinking water supply while in camp. Keeping the army healthier for longer will go a long way to getting you in vogue with a king.
Once you've successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of this, you might have some progress with getting the funding for a deliberately constructed sewer in a city, but remember that didn't really happen in Europe between the Romans and [Bazalgette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bazalgette) (the [Indus civilisations had sewers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_Civilisation) 2000 years earlier than the Romans).
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As described by others, getting a pre-industrial *sewer* built is not a problem at all. Which leaves the question of filtering the sewer water, and this can also be done with pre-industrial technology.
What you do is run it through a wetland. If your city is on a river, it would already have wetlands in that river's flood plain which, due to being regularly flooded, is not built upon (or at least not by anybody important). On that floodplain you can construct a system of shallow ponds, and drain the sewer into them. The nutrient-rich water will support lavish plant life. Crucially for your local economy you would have reeds, useful for thatching and potentially forming an export industry if they are not used within the city itself, and regular algal blooms providing plenty of food for carp (it must be carp, because it can surface to breathe air; other fish would suffocate). You can also have a sluice system allowing each pond to be drained every few years; the muck from the bottom makes incredible fertiliser, and boosts local agriculture accordingly.
There is plenty of historical precedent for all of these. Wetlands very much like those described above have been built by many European cities, and even without sewers emptying into them, fish ponds were lucrative enough to be granted as privileges to monasteries and the like.
And on a last note, you would not need (or want) to discuss such matters with a *prince*. Why even bother when the city magistrate is more accessible, probably already in favor, and unlike a prince has the power to make such decision and the resources to carry it out?
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# This question shows a common (and erroneous) belief about the middle ages
This belief stems from the the Victorian Era, and the "age of enlightenment" which was smellier, dirtier, sicker, and overall less enlightened then the "dark ages."
It is true that medieval people didn't understand germ theory, however they did not wallow around in puddles of excrement, and had come up with a fairly good theory of miasma (bad smells cause sickness, which is not wrong... Sewage, Rotting food, and many mold smell, and cause sickness). Many cities had sewers, or other waste disposal alternatives. Because people don't like the smell of shit. Smaller municipalities used latrine pits that were slowly moved around. And the waste products composted and eventually used for fertilizer.
There were open and closed sewers (Some of which as they aged started leaking sewage into the ground water, this was more prevalent in the Victorian era, then the medieval period). There were also jobs built around waste handling. Dung carts, bintman, rakers... Human excrement it turns out (And the excrement of other creatures) was valuable, It was turned into fertilizer. Used by tanners for curing leather.
# So the answer to the question is:
**Your man from the future doesn't need to teach those poor *unenlightened savages* about sewers**... They know what sewers are, they build sewers, and maintain them. They have legal disputes, lawsuits, and fist fights between neighbors who have disagreements over the others improper disposal of waste. (Lots, and lots of cases).
# It also shows another mistaken belief
"Most medieval diseases were transmitted thru water".
Nope, cholera, and dysentery were transmitted thru water. And don't get me wrong, those are pretty awful, but influenza, mumps, measles, rhubelia, avian flu, swine flu, the pox, smallpox, the common cold, and tuberculosis, are not waterborne diseases. Some of these can be transmitted thru water, but their primary mode of communication was thru contact with infected individuals, insect bites, unwashed clothes/utensiles, unwashed surfaces... etc.
These can be slowed down by better personnel hygiene (hand washing). But not stopped.
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I writing a story about a physics student who has a difficult relationship with his estranged father, world famous physicist and strong proponent of string theory. As a revenge he wants to rule string theory out, something that his father spent his all life working on.
What would be the most plausible way to do it? How about proving there is no extra spatial dimensions.
My story is mostly psychological, about unhealthy obsession with revenge. However I want physics to be at least plausible.
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First, I agree with L.Dutch; so I am avoiding duplicating that answer!
String Theory is already defeating itself; there have been two books written on the problems within it. [Not Even Wrong (The Failure of String Theory and the Search For Unity in Physical Law) [Peter Woit]](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0465092764) and [The Trouble With Physics (The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next) [Lee Smolin]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics).
There are several problems; including [The String Theory Landscape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory_landscape), which is basically the notion that in order to compute something in string theory, you must make a number of arbitrary choices (meaning there is not logical reason to choose one instead of the other), and due to these choices there are $10^{500}$ possible "answers" you can get.
According to Woit,
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> The possible existence of, say, $10^{500}$ consistent different vacuum states for superstring theory probably destroys the hope of using the theory to predict anything. If one picks among this large set just those states whose properties agree with present experimental observations, it is likely there still will be such a large number of these that one can get just about whatever value one wants for the results of any new observation.
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A second problem is the lack of [Background Independence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_independence#String_theory). You can read about this at the link; but generally it is a desirable feature of physical theories (like Einstein's General Relativity) and it is not possible for String Theory to have it.
The third problem and reason it has not been abandoned is [The Sociology of Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory#Sociology_of_science).
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> Peter Woit views the status of string theory research as unhealthy and detrimental to the future of fundamental physics. He argues that the extreme popularity of string theory among theoretical physicists is partly a consequence of the financial structure of academia and the fierce competition for scarce resources.
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Meaning, the reason people keep working on it is because it became the dominant theory for decades, and sucked up all the funding of physics departments, and writing papers on String Theory (basically mathematics papers because no experiments can be done) has resulted in most physicists having become String Theorists for their entire career, and they run the departments, and are advisors to students, and the curricula and research projects for graduates are overwhelmingly about String Theory.
A fourth problem is that String Theory is inherently [super-symmetric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersymmetry), and the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have ruled out, to about 99.9% certainty, any super-symmetric particles.
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> These findings disappointed many physicists, who believed that supersymmetry (and other theories relying upon it) were by far the most promising theories for "new" physics, and had hoped for signs of unexpected results from these runs. Former enthusiastic supporter Mikhail Shifman went as far as urging the theoretical community to search for new ideas and accept that supersymmetry was a failed theory.
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If super-symmetry dies, then String Theory is almost certainly dead too, but this has not stopped the String Theorists! Likely because of the Sociology problem, that String Theory and solving that type of problem has become the **culture** of physics.
### Given all of that, it is very unlikely it can be definitively proven wrong, and even if it were, the theory would just morph into some other version of string theory.
Your student's best option is not to study String Theory and prove it wrong, that is a life-long rabbit hole with no escape.
Instead, he could reject his father's field, and study an alternative and **prove it right.** Specifically, the biggest contender is [Loop Quantum Gravity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity). This has a few of [its own problems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity#Problems_and_comparisons_with_alternative_approaches), but it doesn't suffer from the ridiculous Landscape problems of String Theory, and unlike String Theory is expected to make testable predictions.
It also has the advantage that a relatively small percentage of physicists are working on it; which makes the odds of a student discovering something new more plausible. (String Theory has been hammered by the majority of physicists, including all the masters and icons, for fifty years.)
In this scenario, the student may find something in the equations of LQG that leads to a new version of [Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics), and works better than the existing relativistic versions of this and solves the [Problems of MOND](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics#Outstanding_problems_for_MOND). i.e. it would completely eliminate the need for dark matter in observations, or explain velocity dispersion in modular clusters, which current MOND's do not.
Or, the LQG solution he discovers would make gravity waves travel at less than the speed of light, resulting in a MOND which would be new physics and break String Theory. (The 2017 results of LIGO and the existence of gravitational waves at all is in question).
The best way to kill String Theory is with a new development in LQG that generates excitement in the physics community for a way forward in explaining multiple items in the [List of Unsolved Problems In Physics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics). Solving celebrated outstanding problems is how physicists win Nobel prizes, become influential, get funding, and generally gain success. Open a new path to that, and people will start abandoning String Theory in droves. It will become a joke. Your student will become famous and outshine his father.
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Following on Popper's theory of science, a theory is scientific if it can produce forecasts on the outcome of an experiment which can be falsified.
That is, one can make an experiment and show that the theory is wrong.
Example: according to Newton theory of gravity, light is not affected by gravity. If we measure that light is affected by gravity, Newton theory is proven wrong. And that what has been done with the experiment of measuring Mercury position during the solar eclipse at the beginning of the 20th century.
As far as I know, string theory has not yet produced any forecast which can be falsified in our world. But that would be the way to go: use the theory to make some forecast on the outcome of an experiment, and use the experiment to confirm or not the forecast. As long as string theory will make forecasts which can be verified only in 20 dimensional foam of wrapped dimension we will have no way to disprove it.
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Simple.
String theory is not science, it's philosophy. He can simply state that fact and watch his father tear his hair out. To anything his father says he just replies 'Show me you doddering old fake'.
Science has to be able to be backed up by observable phenomena and experiment or it's not Science. The onus of proof is on those who assert it as fact, not the other way around.
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**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/122213/edit).
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In the current world, people wear life jackets on small boats, and life-boats are present on ocean liners. Similarly on airlines, they brief passengers about life jackets are under the seats, and air-masks dropping from the roof above. These are all due to the inherent risks of the means of transport.
Along with this safety equipment, there are also often
phrases and checklists which help people remember what to do. Some examples are:
* In case of a fire: Stop Drop Roll.
* In first aid, they teach you checklists of things to look for, such as "ABC": Airway, Breathing, CPR. Or "CLAP": Control, Look (for hazards), Assess, Prioritise
* In hiking/outdoor: injuries, shelter, communication, water, food is a fairly common order to help prioritise what you should focus on.
So I'm after the sorts of acronyms and sane priorities would exist in a space-faring environment. What would an astronaut focus on first?
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In particular, I'm looking for the list of priorities that a space-pilot flying a courier between colonies would be expected to know. He probably learned it at pilot's school when he was in his 20's, and has a refresher course every year or two to ensure he knows latest procedure.
The list I've come up with of things that should probably be included are:
1. Integrity. If a space-suit or vehicle is compromised, a space-traveller can die in seconds.
2. Injury. Even if the suit is not breached, a blunt trauma could cause injuries that may lead to death. Assuming an area with breathable atmosphere is found, time should be taken to deal with life-threatening injuries.
3. Atmospherics. If the rebreather/oxygenator/whatever filters the air is not working, a space traveller can die in hours.
4. Communication. Rescue will take a long time (at least a few days), but a human can survive thirst etc. for several days. The time taken to initiate communications is likely not significant. (Eg activating a radio beacon) but could be if there are serious
5. Engineering. Without the heat generated by a space-ships reactor systems, and without proper heat/cooling, a spaceship is likely to become unlivable within days.
6. Supplies. After help is on the way, you can focus on water and then food.
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Things I'm looking for
* Anything missing or extra in the above list that is realistic for near-reality space travel
* Sane priorities (eg should the space traveler focus on heat/cooling before communication?)
* Nice acronyms or are easy to remember - as would be taught in the equivalent of a first-aid refresher course.
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Extra information on the world so you know what sort of things may go wrong:
In the near future (~100 years), space travel is common. Vehicles fly at FTL speeds, but the shielding and energy to do so is virtually the only departure from known physics. FTL still takes time, being limited to somewhere near 10,000 light speed range. This allows voyages to Alpha Centuri in 7 hours, Epsilon Indi in 21 hours, and to Betelgeuse takes 46 days. Crossing the Milky Way would take somewhere like 34 years. So it's fast enough that in colonised parts of the galaxy, it is similar to international aircraft travel, Further out, it is slow enough to compare to travel by ship. Failures in FTL drives result in vehicles stranded in real physical space, often with mechanical issues from near-instantaneous deceleration. There are trained space-rescue-response teams at many larger colonies. Response time is one or two hours-to-departure (and then however long it takes to get to the "crash" site).
Space suits are less bulky and more robust compared to current ones because materials science has improved. While tough, they can still be cut and torn. They come in several categories similar to how life jackets are rated for difference scenarios. By law, space craft have to carry space suits/life preservers depending on the vehicles intended use: eg a cargo tug in a space-port (and indeed, most small craft) would have the operator wearing a light-duty space suit capable of sustaining life for 2-3 hours. A long-range exploration craft would require longer-term suits (life for 3-4 days) easily accessible. Passenger vehicles carry escape pods that can sustain life for two-three weeks.
There are no "magic" devices, so no self-healing materials or nanobots. AI's are an extension of current technology (eg you can program them for specific tasks, but no general purpose AI's). Tools in common use are normal physical tools such as screwdrivers and wrenches. Things like plasma-screwdrivers and weld-all-gismo's do not exist, however duct tape now has stronger cloth and glue....
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> Really, the question is "What's going to kill you if you don't have it", in order of "How QUICKLY will you die if you don't have it." - Morris The Cat, in comments
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How kind of you to capitalize a word for me. Let's pick one up for dealing with an alien life form. That's required safety training, right?
**Quarantine** - Ensure the alien life form cannot infect the habitation regions of your spaceship. So many bad movies start by forgetting to quarantine!
**Uniqueness** - Find a few unique attributes of the creature. Maybe they're green, or maybe they have six fingers on their right hand (prepare to die). You're looking for quick and dirty features you can use in the next step.
**Identify** - Go dust off the "alien identification manual," and see if any of the unique features show up there. This will provide a list of additional features you should look for to get a positive identification.
**Check** - Check the latest political concords documents, to see if this is a species which may be friendly, or which may eat your liver (with fava beans). Some species change status in these documents based on who is at war with whom.
**Kill** - Kill all class I and class II dangerous species. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200
**Language** - Try to instigate communication using one or more standard galactic tongues, based on the specific life form identified.
**Y** - If the life form is sentient: "**Why** are you here?"
**If you find yourself dealing with alien lifeforms, you must act QUICKLY!**
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Your ship has been damaged by enemy fire. You are injured and hurting, so it should be easy to remember the universal acronym:
### A.C.H.E.S.
**A - Air** - Air is the most precious item in space. Without air, you are dead in minutes. Check your oxygen/air supply so you know how much time you have to work with. Check the relevant hoses & valves to make sure everything is in the safest mode - e.g., any connections to possible damaged areas of the ship should be closed, output from the tanks adjusted to the lowest safe level in order to make the air last as long possible.
**C - Communications** - Help will be on the way, but only if they know you are hurt and and know where to find you. Activate your emergency beacon if it was not activated automatically. Set your main radio to the standard emergency channel and broadcast an S.O.S.S. (Save Our Space Ship) together with your coordinates, in case the emergency beacon didn't get the message through. Set your computer to alert you to any incoming transmissions.
**H - Hull Integrity** - Check your ship's hull integrity. Automatic bulkheads should have sealed off each section, but now you need to verify that and check damage control systems to determine what areas are damaged and how severe the damage is. Is there a possibility of restarting the engines? Can the ship be safely towed with a tractor beam or will need you need to leave the ship as part of the rescue process?
**E - Energy** - Survival for a day is easy, provided you have enough air and an intact section of the ship. Beyond that, you will need energy for communications and life support. Assess the status of the reactors (likely offline for safety, but it may be possible to bring them back online if the surrounding areas are intact), fuel cells (which are also dependent on your limited oxygen supply) and batteries.
**S - Supplies** - The last thing you need is food and water. Mostly water - you can easily survive a few days without food. But if your engines are busted and your communications are offline then rescue will be based on the last automated location signal before you came out of FTL, so there will be large areas to be searched and it could take weeks to be rescued. If the W.C. (that's Water Cycler) is still working then you will be OK for water, but if it is not then careful conservation will be required.
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# None
Modern aviation has had a number of [fatal accidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOAC_Flight_712) where important emergency steps were omitted, causing a far worse outcome. [Simulator studies](http://www.code7700.com/pdfs/line_pilot_performance_of_memory_items.pdf) have backed this up, showing a high error rate in memory recall during stress.
As a result, the modern thinking is not to rely on memory items. The additional time it takes to read a checklist is far better than missing a critical item.
For the most part, computerized checklists, which prioritize multiple faults, automatically show the relevant action items, and remove items when finished, are the replacement for memory.
If you look at a modern airliner, like an Airbus, the only memory items are for cabin depressurization (immediately don oxygen mask then read the checklist) and loss of brakes.
So if it won't kill you in 10 seconds, there won't be a acronym or something you recall. You simply obtain and follow the checklist.
So for complex procedures, the future pilot will pull out their flight tablet and run the "Loss of Power in Interstellar Space" wizard, which will ask questions as necessary, interface with the ship's systems to see if there's any fuel left or the state of the reactor, for example, automatically calculate how much oxygen remains, and prompt them through the correct procedures.
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*This checklist is real, we use it during preflight when we're evaluating ourselves for fitness to fly.*
## If I can answer **no** to all of the following, then IMSAFE to fly.
* **Illness** - Am I affected by any illnesses that would prevent me from safely flying?
* **Medication** - Medications can have surprising effects in a low-oxygen environment. Have I taken any recently?
* **Stress** - Some amount of stress is necessary and perhaps even desirable, but too much is unsafe. Am I too stressed to fly?
* **Alcohol** - *"Wow, those alliance marines on Purgatory sure know how to rage. I'll never look at a shotgun the same way again."* Is it less than 8 hours from bottle to throttle? Is my blood alcohol content greater than 0.04? Any effects of alcohol still in my system?
* **Fatigue** - *"Those toolbags at Crew Scheduling put me on for an 0500 show-up but my launch isn't until 1300? And I'm scheduled to overnight on Tarthan IV? It has six suns! It doesn't even have night!"* Am I going to be too fatigued to fly?
* **Emotion** - *"I just saw my planet destroyed. I assure you, I am emotionally compromised." - Spock.* Am I emotionally unable to fly?
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## SAFE
* Suit Up
* Assess the Situation
* Find your Procedures Manual
* Engage Emergency Protocol
## ACE
* Air
* Communication
* Ensure Survival
Two different simple acronyms that you can use. ACE sounds like something you might learn at a crash course pilot school, especially one where pilots are getting a new or separate certification but probably already know what they're doing. SAFE is more like a company policy, especially for a company that might have top of the line suits that they payed more for so that the ship can have cheaper life support systems. And of course Asses is self explanatory, and if the assessment says it's okay you get your (F)procedure manual and finally follow the 23 point checklist for reestablishing communications and rationing instructions until a rescue arrives.
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So, to start my story, I need to make sure that my so called "Defenders of Earth" can leave Earth *unnoticed* (not yet sure), that's why I'm thinking of Cannons, **1000ft** long, hidden beneath the earth. Then these cannons will fire the **20Ft** diameter bullets at a **80 degree angle**.
These bullets are composed of 4 layers:
## This is the rough sketch of the compartments of the rocket.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7Y3Tv.jpg)
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* Red Part is the Rocket Part (10 tonnes)
* Blue Part is the Fuel Line (15 tonnes)
* Green is the Thick plate (5 tonnes)
* Orange is the content, which is a human in a exoskeleton armor (1 ton)
The weight of the bullet is 40 tonnes, with the rocket layer as the heaviest component. The rest of the weight is the rocket itself.
The sequence of launch will be:
1. Cannon loads bullet
2. Cannon Fire bullet
3. Bullet "must" reach Mesosphere
4. Bullet Rockets will fire
5. Bullet "must" reach Exosphere
6. "Package" will launch
Here are some variables that I am not sure of:
1. Velocity of the exiting the muzzle of the cannon.
2. Amount of gas the bullet rocket has
3. etc... (other variables I have not yet think of)
assuming I handwave these variables, is it possible that this contraption can succesfully (and maybe secretly) launch a bullet shaped rocket into space?
**BONUS:** (But optional)
If you can calculate the time of the travel that would be great! But if not, and yet have a answer, that will also be great!
Please don't ask me the materials the rocket is created. I have not yet think of this. But can I at least say that it is the same of what the space shuttle uses.
**ADDITIONAL INFO FOR BOUNTY:**
These bullets are supposed to be the transports for my story, I want them to actually survive the travel from ground to outerspace, with much reading about how does [NASA](https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/basics/launch.html) does it. It seems I need to have some sort of staged flight? But can the I achieve it realistically with my contraption?
Any other Idea to launch the bullet is appreciated, as long as it involves a bullet shaped rocket.
The nanobots are out of the question since they will be weapons, and are not components of the rocket.
The armor of the packages (The humans, my defenders) are made from depleted uranium. I'm not sure if this info helps.
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As others have noted, the 42000 *g* acceleration will make a hash of all but the most hardened payloads, making the project infeasible. As well, the blast from the "gun" and the high speed projectile screaming through the atmosphere into space will be rather noticeable as well.
Indeed, the only way to generate enough energy to actually launch more than a notional payload into orbit is likely nuclear energy. An underground test in the "[Plum Bob](https://io9.gizmodo.com/no-a-nuclear-explosion-did-not-launch-a-manhole-cover-1715340946)" series accidentally (?) had the massive steel cap over the shaft blown off by the nuclear explosion, calculations suggested the cap was moving at 6X Earth escape velocity at launch. While it *may* be in the outer solar system today, the more likely result was it was vapourized by the incredible forces and air friction in the atmosphere.
More recently [Brian Wang](https://worldtransformed.com/wt1/our-fears-transformed/brian-wang/) of "[NextBigFuture](https://www.nextbigfuture.com)" has advocated for a version of this (the "[Wang Bullet](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2010/03/150-kiloton-nuclear-verne-gun.html)") to shoot massive quantities of material like steel or even coal into space for colonization projects (the coal would provide carbon for various industrial or life support purposes).
To make this efficient, you would probably need to fill the shaft with water so the x-ray output of the bomb turns it into plasma and effectively couples the energy of the bomb into the projectile.
So yes, you could launch "bullets" into space with kiloton bombs, but it won't be "unnoticed" in any sense of the word......
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**The human will die instantly if blown out of the cannon**
(Note: skip to "Launch Detection" for how to address the changed focus of the question.)
A back of the envelope (literally) calculation full of approximations shows that in order for the bullet to reach the mesosphere (50 km ASL) on a ballistic arc, launched from sea level, it needs to be launched at around 1200 metres per second. Note that this will *just* reach an altitude of 50 km after 80-90 seconds and start falling back, the rocket will need to do all the work of getting anywhere after this.
Assuming perfectly smooth acceleration over a barrel length of 300 metres (1000 ft), acceleration will be on the order of 2300 metres per second squared for almost half a second. While all my numbers could be off by as much as 50% in either direction (lots of approximations) 230 G is simply not survivable. Even by adding all plausible (and some implausible) favourable factors, humans can't get into space this way in any condition to achieve a mission.
**Single stage to orbit - not that easy...**
The main difficulty in getting into orbit is not achieving the required altitude but reaching the required orbital velocity of over 9.4 km/sec. Escape velocity is 11.2 km/sec. This is not practical with current technologies (which is why multi-stage rockets are used to get to orbit in the real world).
**Is there an alternative?**
All you are launching is a single soldier in exoskeleton armour. This doesn't look like a long range or long duration mission, more like a special forces job in earth orbit. In that case - why send a fragile human? Send a drone (or 3 smaller ones), controlled from groundside. The drone will need some pre-programmed routines, but lightspeed delay is minimal, especially if in low-earth orbit. (Although you will need to keep switching to a new retransmission station with line of sight as the drone orbits.) This allows you to use your payload for mission-critical capabilities instead of life support and means you no longer need to worry about how to retrieve the operator at the end of the mission. However, given that you have clarified that the crucial element of the story is to deliver four humans into space unnoticed, the following section will examine how to do this.
**Launch detection and covert options**
Assumptions regarding the enemy, designated Red Force:
1. Red force has finite forces that are in total control of Earth orbital space.
2. Red force has satellites in orbit with ground observation capabilities sensors equivalent to current United States surveillance satellites.
3. Red force has other sensor capabilities equivalent to current United States capabilities.
4. Red force has both space-to-surface and space-to-space weaponry equivalent to current Earth prototypes or near-future concepts, primarily mass drivers or missiles.
As other answers have covered, it would require a linear accelerator hundreds of kilometres long to launch a person into orbit without fatal acceleration levels. Building such a linear accelerator (overcoming massive engineering challenges) without being detected and attacked from orbit would be extremely difficult, time consuming and hideously expensive. So let's look at other options using conventional launch vehicles.
If a satellite has its sensors watching an area, there is no real way to disguise a missile or spacecraft launch. Any currently existing rocket which is efficient enough to get a payload into orbit will produce a massive thermal signature. It's the same as being in a very dark room, yet the tiny indicator lights on appliances are easily visible. The only way to mask them is to put something thermally opaque between the sensor and the thermal source (not practical), increase the temperature of the entire region to match the temperature of the rocket exhaust (not survivable), wait for the observer to stop watching (maybe) or poke out the eyes of the observer (ahhhh!).
The Defenders need to be tracking the enemy satellites in order to make this work - no alternative. If they are lucky there is an existing hole in the Red Force satellite coverage that they can take advantage of, somewhere that is not being directly observed for a few minutes every so often. If such locations do exist then they are probably in bad locations for launches - it would be all too easy to keep the entire equatorial area under observation, for example. If there is no practical location that they can take advantage of then they need to get into the anti-satellite business using either rockets, cannon or lasers.
So there is a use for the cannon - a bunch of depleted uranium marbles in a casing can survive a savage acceleration and only need to reach the satellite's altitude for a moment - then the satellite's > 9km/s speed will provide all the kinetic energy necessary to destroy it. Ditto for a rocket, no great performance required. Regarding lasers, I am suggesting tracking the satellite with a laser powerful enough to dazzle the onboard sensors, not something powerful enough to cause material damage. If at all possible, hit additional satellites covering different areas at the same time, otherwise Red Force can focus all its reserve sensors on the one area.
While the eyes are poked out or looking elsewhere is the time to launch. All four humans launch in a single 2-stage vehicle with a bullet-shaped final stage. At roughly the same time five smaller rockets also launch. The smaller rockets will deliberately have the same acceleration profile as the primary and cube-corner radar reflectors to give them the same radar signature. Once they are out of the atmosphere they will inflate "caps" at the front to give them the same visual profile as well. (This is assuming that the Defenders are on a budget and cannot afford to waste six full-size launch vehicles.)
Now switch to Red Force's viewpoint for a while. They just lost a few satellites or their imaging, refocus other sensors on the area and pick up six bogeys as they clear the atmosphere. It looks like the Defenders had trouble getting quality components because one suffers a catastrophic failure at first-stage separation. The other five continue on but as they get close to an intercept course on an important Red Force target two more malfunction - the lead one explodes into tiny fragments and the last one loses thrust and starts venting fuel on one side, throwing it into a flat spin. The three remaining rockets accelerate towards the Red Force target to ram it but miss, either as a result of more poor engineering or point defence fire. Red Force has emerged victorious, albeit fairly easily against the ragtag Earthlings...
Switching back to the Defenders' viewpoint - the rocket that failed at first stage separation was to make the subsequent malfunctions believable. The second rocket to go will explode into prefragmented pieces designed to provide maximum visual and radar distractions, with the direction of shrapnel release to provide masking without endangering the humans. The four humans were aboard the third rocket - the rocket's spin was carefully planned to be in a plane that will give them the vector they need to reach their target (or get close enough for low-impulse thrusters to do the rest) if they release at the correct point in the rotation. The humans' armour is as non-reflective to visual and radar wavelengths as possible and includes thermal masking - I strongly recommend it is made of carbon composites as much as possible instead of depleted uranium. Provided they keep tight emissions control, the humans will look far less interesting and important than the thousands of bits of space debris in the area.
I acknowledge the influence of the late Nigel D Findley in the plan presented above - see p127 of the Aztlan sourcebook for Shadowrun 2nd Ed.
**Edit 1 - previous alternative**
Recent events in Hawai'i have inspired an enhanced solution, albeit with no research to back it up. While it would be a really bad idea due to the geological instability of the area, let's posit an undersea tunnel linking O'ahu to the Island of Hawai'i. Hidden from prying orbital eyes, this tunnel could be repurposed into a linear accelerator a few hundred kilometres long, with the normal exit on the Island of Hawai'i extended and aimed upwards, albeit in a gentle curve. There are lots of engineering difficulties, such as evacuating all the air in the tunnel in front of the bullet, but these are not inherently impossible if the tunnel has sufficient integrity. Time the launch to coincide with a volcanic eruption (predicted or induced) and the Defenders can launch their projectile with hot ash covering any thermal signature and the eruption covering for the shockwave.
I realise this is nowhere near the original specifications of the OP's cannon. However, it does give a vaguely plausible mechanism for an undetected, human-survivable launch, with the added drama of requiring precise timing to avoid the bullet being destroyed by airborne debris from the eruption.
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## [You've got a space gun.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun)
There's no doubt this idea could work, as the article I linked will tell you. So essentially yes, this contraption of yours is entirely possible (as for whether or not you can use a Space Gun to launch a projectile unnoticed into space, well that might be a good idea to ask in another question, since that seems right up this site's alley)
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There is no doubt that you could create a contraption like that that could send the bullet-shaped rocket into mesosphere, or even space. The problem is how safe would the cargo be. If you were trying to fire it so that by the time it leaves the 1000ft canon it has escape velocity, 11.2km/s, (which is still not enough to reach the atmosphere as friction will slow you down to a much smaller terminal velocity) your heroes would experience aroun 42000g of acceleration which would most definitely kill them. There is no way to get around this as even the thickest armor wouldn't help their brain smushing down into their skull. If your story isn't very futuristic sci-fi, the best bet for your heroes are old-fashioned rockets, which can thrust continously instead.
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Since this is not tagged with Hard-science i'm not gonna do the math, but the space gun is not a bad idea.
Most here realised the gun would suqash most payloads before reaching orbit, but there is 2 factors missing, 1 they are trying to "shoot" the payload in to orbit reaching the full escape velocity at the muzzle, but the "bullet" has a rocket propulsion system build in, thus lowering the need for full orbital insertion att the muzzle. (the delta-v to reach space at 100 km would be about 1.4 km/s about 1/10th of orbital speed, to reach 300 km you need about 7 km/s and you have keplers law to help with the insertion burn)
The second is that the atmosphere is too high. But if you are able to rise the muzzle to a higher ground the atmosphere would be thinner and and again less drag would be needed.
Ex. the atmosphere is about 14 psi at ground level but at the top of mount everest it is almost 1/3 at 4.8 psi. The reason you don't launch from a higher place is that the trouble of moving the rocket that high is not worth the small return but in this case the barrel is about 10 km anyway and you don't have propulsion on the way up
While your heroes might not be able to launch from mount everest the accelerator needs to be long and your citadell could be aprox 10 km tall, with the space gun barrel down the center.
An alternative would be to launch from a plane having a space gun on the plane gives a bit of velocity and speed, the launch would be harder to detect. But that will give other complications.
Once up there the capsuile would make the capture burn and your hero would be in space.
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If you fire a bullet and want it to reach space, you basically need to give it Earth [escape velocity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity) of 11 km/s. After that, it doesn't matter which angle you use to fire it, as long as it doesn't hit the ground. (actually it does matter when you take into account atmospheric drag)
As bonus, handwaving a cannon to fire a projectile at that velocity will take out the need of a more complex structure of the bullet. You may want to keep some steering capability.
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In general, the best way to get a military payload into space without anyone noticing it is to put it in a big box labeled "telecom satellite" and just launch it on a rocket. There are enough commercial and scientific launches with various payloads and orbital destinations that you could probably hide in the traffic, or at least convince a reader that that's plausible.
If you want to leave Earth orbit, there's really no stealthy way of doing it (at least not yet; if at some point in the future there are regular commercial trips to, say, Mars, camouflage becomes a viable option again). At the end of the day, it's a lot easier to spot a hot, fast-moving object in empty space than it is to hide it, no matter what mechanism you come up with to put it there.
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Borrowing some tech notes from *[The Forever War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War)*, you could use make your passengers incompressible, thus protecting them from most or maybe all of the acceleration you're subjecting the craft to. Disclaimer: I'm not sure how deeply into the fiction side of Science Fiction that particular measure is, it makes sense logically but it may or may not work when real-world physics is involved.
Alternatively if you want a bullet shaped object you could use a giant [Gyrojet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet), it's a rocket, but it's also a bullet, in this case you're basically using a [single stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-stage-to-orbit) Earth-to-Orbit vehicle. It would burn propellant the whole way down the barrel and out into space, thus smoothing out point accelerations to something tolerable. Secrecy is maintained by location, whatever the launch method you need to out the launch facility out of the way to prevent observation anyway.
There are some super-tech methods available to you, inertial dampers and that sort of thing but they throw up other problems, usually more than they're worth.
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## TL,DR;
Yes, you could do something like this.
No, the system you proposed definitely could not do this without killing the human(s) inside. The acceleration I derive from your numbers (if you assume constant acceleration - which is a bad assumption for conventional guns), is an acceleration of ~7000 g's for about 0.1 seconds. 7000 g's is guaranteed to turn your crew into red jelly at the back of the capsule.
## Details
### Background
[Years ago I wrote up description of how the Ram Accelerator technology could be used to accomplish this goal](http://jim2b.blogspot.com/2010/10/case-for-space-vii-ram-accelerator.html#5). Researchers have used experimental Ram Accelerators for decades. We could probably build one now that could launch things into orbit.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8FMdO.jpg)
### Facility
However, the facility would be very large and expensive. In order to not squishify your human passengers, the launcher barrel needs to be many MANY miles long. On my blog I limited the launcher to 3 g's of acceleration and discovered such a launcher requires a launch tube of 362 km about 225 miles!
Note that a straight up "space gun" can't apply an even g load. The passengers would experience most of the g load up front and get squished. That's what makes the Ram Accelerator a much better technology for human passengers.
### Staging
This technology also requires an apogee kick motor. Basically, it can put the hero on a ballistic course with its highest point in space. However, once you get there, you must apply some additional delta V to circularize the orbit or your projectile will crash back to Earth. Your projectile will survive the trip as a single stage or possibly 2 stages (if you plan to do external scramjet
burning after leaving the end of the tube).
* Stage 1: ram accelerator burns fuel/oxy mix in the tube.
* Stage 2: external scramjet burns onboard fuel with atmospheric oxygen
* Stage 3: apogee kick rocket to circularize the orbit.
These stages do not require dropping prior stages. However, it seems to me that dropping the Stage 2: external scramjet fuel tank would probably be a good idea.
### Times
Assuming an 8,000 m/s exit velocity,
* Time to end of tunnel, 4.5 minutes
* Time to Apogee after exiting tunnel, 25 seconds.
### Vessel shape
The ram accelerator vessel would NOT look like a conventional bullet. It would possess a shock cone in front and an aerospike in the back.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y6oMC.jpg)
[From University of Washington ram accelerator lab website.](http://www.ramaccelerator.org/home/node/11)
## Conclusion
You either get a small facility with thousands of g's of acceleration, only suitable for bulk materials OR you need a gargantuan facility able to launch humans without killing them.
You can't get both characteristics in the same facility.
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So I've seen a lot of research done into how guns react in low gravity environments as well as on space stations. However, for my story I was wondering how the trajectory, force and speed of the bullet would be impacted. The planet has a thin atmosphere but a gravity that exceeds earth's. I think that firing a gun in low gravity results in the bullet moving faster, but I'm not sure. Would this mean that firing a gun in hyper-gravity results in the bullet moving slower towards its target? And if so, would this result in the bullet falling back to the planet's surface because of the gravitational pull, before reaching its target.
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TLDR: depending on how extreme the changes are to gravity/atmosphere, gun development would completely change and they would act more like modern artillery (on a much smaller scale) than anything we think of today.
Extremely thin atmosphere along with super high gravity basically means your gun would be used more like a small mortar launcher than anything resembling how guns are used on earth. Gravity still affects bullets on earth but for most usages it makes very little difference. This is because most gun battles are going to be close range, so gravity simply doesn't have much time to change the direction by much. The exceptions are going to be long range rifle shots, and snipers certainly take the effects of it into account.
The atmosphere also heavily affects how guns are used and ammo is developed. The atmosphere has two main effects -- it significantly limits range for most guns/ammo types because the bullet quickly loses velocity which causes it to tumble. For long range guns it plays a major role through rifling, where the bullet is aerodynamically stabilized by being spun. Thus, by removing the atmosphere you would greatly change the development of firearms. The design of the bullets would probably change significantly because aerodynamics are much less important, and traditional things like rifling would be completely pointless.
To sum it up, guns would be very different in a world with much less atmosphere and much higher gravity. Even short range gunfights would be unrecognizable if you pump the gravity high enough as you'd basically be firing at 35-70 degree angles (to the horizon) into the sky and people would be arcing the bullets over the enemies cover. One would assume guns would become computers generating firing and aiming solutions much like modern artillery because traditional aiming would be near impossible. I wouldn't be surprised if bullets completely changed into cylindrical explosive balls.
But as a caveat it really depends a lot on how extreme you make things. If it's just 2x gravity and 1/2 atmosphere that's a lot different than 10x with 1% atmosphere.
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Gravity doesn't affect the velocity at which the bullet leaves the gun, that is a function of the energy released by the gunpowder.
Gravity affects only how fast the bullet will reach the ground while it is moving after the explosion of the gunpowder or, in other words, the vertical component of the velocity vector.
This results, all the rest being the same, into a bullet going further away into lower gravity and the opposite in higher gravity.
Example:
* planet A has low gravity, reaching the ground from 2 meters height takes 4 second.
* planet B has high gravity, reaching the ground from 2 meters takes 0.5 seconds.
When firing horizontally from 2 meters height a bullet with muzzle velocity 500 m/s, on planet A it will travel 2000 m before hitting the ground, while on planet B it will just travel 250 meters (ignoring drag).
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I was going to put this in a comment to @l.dutch - but it kinda morphed into an Answer.
The issue is that when one has a Firearm, one has to sight it in. For reference - All of my rifles (except my .22s) are sighted in for 100m.
This means at 0 metres (for my .308) the offset between where I aim and where the bullet hits is 1.5 inches, due to the Ballistic arc.
And that is where our Super Gravity is going to have an impact(heh) - Higher Gravity means I'm going to have to sight my Rifle in more aggressively (to account for the changed ballistic arc) and whilst I CBF doing the Maths - depending on the round chosen and the ballistics - you could end up with a projectile that resembles more an Mortar shell trajectory.
e.g. something slow and subsonic like .45 ACP
**And this would absolutely have an impact on Bullet Speed, especially as it slows downs approaching the top of it's ballistic arc and as it speeds up come down on it's ballistic arc**
Unfortunately, all the online/free Ballistic Calculators have Gravity as a fixed constant. There are some super long range ones that are very expensive that do factor in changes in earths Gravity (I think, I don't do that sort of long-range shooting)
In short - Yes, it will have some impact, because of Ballistic Arcs and that firearms are Zero'd for a specific range.
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As a thought experiment, replace guns and bullets with slingshots and angry birds. You can assume the birds are spherical for this exercise. You will be better able to picture what happens in different gravities.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/deQfL.jpg)
You can find a great deal of nerding and mathing in one of our more science-oriented sister stacks: [How does gravity affect bullets? @Physics](https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/10773/31264).
But in short: the gun/slingshot imposes a force on the projectile, which causes it to be accelerated to a certain velocity. That velocity is the sum (vectorial addition) of a horizontal speed and a vertical speed, at the point in which the projectile leaves the weapon. As the projectile flies, gravity keeps changing the vertical speed over time. The more intense gravity is, the quicker the trajectory bends downwards. Notice that in a vacuum, the horizontal component of the projectile's velocity is constant.
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The answer is that it depends.
You say your planet has a higher gravity and a thinner atmosphere than Earth meaning the bullet will be pulled to the ground faster but there would be less friction giving it further distance. I'm assuming the explosive reaction when firing it is no different to any other gun/bullet you'd use on Earth?
There is obviously going to be considerations due to the variables involved (how much more gravity and how much thinner an atmosphere) but there are also other factors such as humidity, temperature, altitude, etc.
When firing, the distance is important because, with higher gravity, the bullet will drop faster and, with thinner atmosphere, the bullet will travel faster and further. This is why you see in computer games, like Sniper Elite, that the player needs to aim higher to account for gravity and aim ahead of a moving target to account for the time and distance to reach the target.
So to answer your final question, what should happen is that the bullet drops quicker but will likely travel further/faster as it will slow down at a slower rate than in a thicker atmosphere due to less friction. But it depends on how much extra gravity and how thin the atmosphere is.
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Gravity doesn't affect the speed of the bullet unless it has a vertical component. What it does do is mess with the trajectory and if course the mechanism of the firearm itself (especially making sure that it feeds reliably).
Atmospheric density and sound speed, however, have significant affects on bullets.
1. Low air density means that small rounds reach their target with more of their energy left and less lost due to drag.
2. Sound speed directly affects bullet aerodynamics.
3. Spin-stabilization is more effective if there is less drag. I would expect longer thinner projectiles to be viable which would further cut down on drag.
4. Bullet drop would increase from gravity, but bullets would reach their target sooner since there is lower drag.
5. If the speed of sound is higher, for example because of a hydrogen or helium atmosphere, the projectile may be subsonic and therefore also much quieter, making silenced high-powered rifles viable.
6. I would expect that light fast rounds would benefit from this change. Expect to see small bullets with high muzzle velocity to reduce bullet drop, since they don't lose much energy at long range, which is the main downside of light fast rounds on Earth.
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The vector of the bullet trajectory would follow the spacetime gravitational structure falling on the planet surface sooner that in a lighter gravity.
The bullet velocity will not be modified by friction if the atmospheric density is not higher than the initial comparative one.
Now increased gravity augment the weight of the bullet that may decrease the bullet velocity ( On a second thought)The bullet acceleration would be diminished.
My opinion: it would be slower and a shorter trajectory.
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Short version: A given person’s arms are now legs. But somehow they are able to climb trees despite having no opposable thumbs or big toes. How is the anatomy of their arm-legs designed to make this possible?
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**Long version:**
[Alendyias](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/80953/alendyias) recently asked a [question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/236808/14322) concerning a creature called the Creeper, that is something like a big scary vampire bat. As per Alendyias rules, anyone who kills or eats a creeper acquires an "enchantment" that gives them some of the creeper's powers.
What the creeper enchantment does is to. . .
## Turns your arms into legs!
Given a person who has undergone this transformation and has since adjusted to their life as a creeper, what kind of changes to their arm/leg anatomy would be required to make them proficient tree climbers? the level of improvement I’m looking for is that they could not climb trees for more than a few minutes before the transformation, and now it is as natural as walking.
One major constraint: I want to preserve plantigrade feet for all four of their limbs, and to not add opposable thumbs.
This brings me to my question -- what about their front legs makes this possible? How are the joints arranged so that the legs work for both walking on all fours and climbing through the branches?
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### Claws
While humans and other primates use fingers to climb, there are many champion climbers that have no need for this. Cats and squirrels both come to mind; neither have much in the way of thumbs but they can pretty much run up a tree without difficulty.
One issue with this is that the square-cube law can be troublesome; the bigger you are the longer and sharper your claws need to be to climb effectively. But big cats like jaguars and lions can climb trees just fine (though not as well as smaller cats) so it shouldn't be an issue for human-sized Creepers, provided they have big, catlike claws.
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**Pygmy Goat style**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DGn1j.png)
<https://www.treehugger.com/goats-really-can-climb-trees-4863877#>:
Goat hooves can fold like folding a book, pinching things between the left and right halves. Thus they climb. Pinchy hooves plus goat intuition is all they need. The people with the Creeper enchantments are set up exactly like goats. For all intents and purposes they are goats.
Although I think Tom's idea has merit too. The Creepers are also hookers.
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Maybe they can have claws (prosthetical even) that they can latch into the soft wood of trees like sloths.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZFeKZ.jpg)
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## Strong hooking ability
I think it's impossible to truly "grasp" anything if your digits are not opposable. You've ruled that out, so I think we'll have to rely on climbing techniques that do not require grasping.
(It's worth noting that one alleged benefit of the Creeper enchantment is a much higher vertical leap, but I'm going to assume for purposes of this question that simply leaping from the ground directly to the top of a tree would not count as "climbing.")
So, my backup plan would be a part of the anatomy that can be hooked over (or around) a branch so that the creature can pull itself toward that branch.
As it happens, the human foot can kind of do this. Not by flexing, but by bending at the ankle. Bend your foot upward, bringing your instep closer to your shin, and you'll see what I mean. If you had two of those on the ends of your arm-legs, you could hook them around branches and pull.
But that anatomy is not well-suited enough for that purpose. Major problems are:
* the muscle that performs that bend is not very strong in humans
* the range of motion doesn't permit a sharp bend, which increases the risk that the hook will slip and the creature will fall
* the instep is very poorly adapted for holding weight: the convex shape of the bone means that most of the force will be focused on the outermost portion of that bone, and I can tell you from experience that it doesn't take much force on that bone to cause a lot of pain
So, the features we'd want are:
* flat or convex instep with some muscle between the skin and bone
* rough skin on the instep for better grip
* greater range of motion at the ankle
* much stronger muscle that controls the ankle bend, at least on the side that bends the foot upward (*might* be the tibialis anterior)
* probably change the kind of joint that the ankle is
What you really want is several features of the human hand. Even if you remove our opposable thumb and lock our fingers similar to how toes are locked, the hand would still be a decent hook because it doesn't have any of the problems I outlined.
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Panda Trivia: Giant Pandas are the only bears with grasping paws. Instead of opposable thumbs an elongated wrist bone acts as a sixth finger to let them hold bamboo more easily.
I wasn't sure if I believed this, but on another web page:
A panda’s paw has six digits—five fingers and an opposable pseudo-thumb (actually an enlarged wrist bone) it uses merely to hold bamboo while eating.
So perhaps hope is not lost, although I don't think pandas are especially good climbers.
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If the tree is not too thick and the creature can wrap it's arm-legs around it and hold on to it this way, it could climb by gripping with the lower legs, extending the upper ones, moving the lower ones up, etc. Kind of like how bears climb except it would rely only on holding tight as bears also have claws to help with grip.
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In the 13th century A.D., the king put up a hefty bounty for anyone who can help defeat the dragon and rescue his daughter. Actually, this was all according to the king's devious plan. The dragon was actually gifted to him by a mysterious wizard who foretold that as long as the dragon is alive, then his kingdom will continue to flourish and prosper. Before the wizard leaves, he reminded the king to hold a monthly sacrificial rituals consisting of a healthy human. Otherwise the dragon would starve to death.
The king devised a scheme to deceive the world about the dragon. He put up a hefty bounty on the dragon confident that a few armed individuals would not be enough to subdue a thick scaled 15 meters tall winged dragon. He also claimed that the tension at the borders have been growing rapidly. Otherwise, he will order his troops to go on a long expedition.
The king is alarmed upon learning the news that many guilds are gathering every adventurers and equipping them with high quality gears. He suspects the groups could harm the dragon eventually if he leave them to their own devices.
My question is what can the king do to save the dragon and yet seen by the public as determined to get rid of the dragon and retrieve his daughter by hook and by crook?
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The king could offer the traditional reward of his rescued daughter's hand in marriage (obviously to only one successful dragon hunter), with a gift of land, some money and a title of nobility as a dowry. This would tend to encourage lone unmarried male hunters, as it's rather hard to share a bride (especially a *royal* bride) or a title, and the king need not agree to the estate being split up and sold, since a *gift* of land belongs to the king, and is held in trust by the recipient, and reverts to the king or his heirs (i.e. his daughter's children) upon death or relinquishment by the holder.
This would encourage single common-born adventurers, possibly with a small number of hirelings, but *not* large, organized groups of equals, when only the leader of a successful group can truly profit.
That the dragon shouldn't have too much trouble with lone commoners and perhaps a few hirelings would be a bonus, since the nobility who can afford good weapons, armour and training wouldn't be as interested.
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The king is "deceived" by a "scoundrel" who claims to have slain the dragon. In fact, the king ordered the dragon to hide for just the week when the co-conspirator collected the bounty. Now the "scoundrel" is gone, the dragon is back, and the king pretends to be angry. For a sufficiently villainous king, the "scoundrel" may hav been genuinely deceived, and got hanged after he did exactly what king wanted him to do. Or he is in a faraway land, spending the bounty. Makes no difference.
So from now on, would-be dragonslayers have to check in *before*, take a number, and return with the head of the dragon. The king's courtiers will of course manage the waiting list to prevent ganging-up.
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**Hostage Situation**
The dragon tells the adventurers that they have to face him in a one-on-one honor duel or he roasts the princess that he's kidnapped. The dragon also informs that would-be adventurers that he has the sense of a dragon and will be able to tell if some clever idiot wants to try ganging up on him. To make matters more enticing, the dragon also proclaims that in the one-on-one honor duels, the dragon will not use certain natural advantage (fire breath, wings, etc.) to 'even the odds'.
Naturally this is load of dragon dung and the dragon will cheat when the duel actually happens, but c'mon, it's a one-on-one duel, no one will see it.
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## Thermopylae
The dragon, receiving all its food by delivery, does not leave its cave, which is entered by one passage, called the *Thermopylae* because of the extreme heat that periodically radiates from this grim gate. Only one bold adventurer can pass through at a time, hoping the dragon cannot hear him stealthily descending. (It is not so much that the adventurers don't *hope* that the dragon doesn't drip with saliva when it smells their fearful sweat as they climb down through that sauna, as that they simply don't think about it) Sending two people in single file would be silly because then *both* would get burnt to death with just as little benefit.
The King's role is only to dissuade such miners as would hope to open a second passage from the surface, citing learned authorities who say that twice the passages makes for twice the dragons.
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People lose interest on joining a group to kill the dragon as soon as they realize that, for a group of 20(30? 40?) or more, the share everyone would get would be too small to be worth the risk.
As soon as a group starts to grow to a certain number, the adventurers start to realize this, so they just plainly decline, or some of them decide to form a smaller group to get a bigger share for themselves.
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The way I see it, you've written yourself into a corner. I'll try to break my reasoning down here, and come at this from different angles to show you why I come to that conclusion.
# First.
Dragons, in Medieval times, are seen as beasts to be slayed. Adventurers, in the traditional fantasy sense, are in it for money, glory, or for the thrill of the hunt (for generalized archetypes with the group). So, what part of this won't attract adventurers in droves?
To get around this, you would need a reasoning why dragons are so feared, few would dare face it. And that creates a new issue, because you need people to face it regularly enough to feed it. Adding that it was common to have hunting trophies hung so that local lords could tell the epic tale of how he felled so mighty a beast. So you add to the issue.
# Second.
'To rescue his daughter'. Rescuing a princess is often equated with earning her hand in marriage. Even if not outright stated, it is often assumed. And that would attract nobles in droves itching to climb the political ladder. Or does marrying a princess mean nothing in this setting?
Even if it doesn't include a claim to inheriting the throne from the king, which many would argue marrying the princess does, it comes with clout. That's what political marriage did in time period. The mere mention of a princess in peril will drive most if not all single nobles to act.
To further highlight this. There's the simple act of 'saving a damsel in distress'. All you would need is one man with a hero complex and an army under his command, and the king's plan is ruined. While it can be argued most would be more pragmatic about it, claiming that no one would is patently misguided.
# Third.
Even if you have the king issue decrees to the nobles not to engage the dragon, which comes with a slew of issues in and of itself. And even if you ignore my first two points entirely. You have one very important hurdle to overcome: the common folk.
What happens when there's talk of a wolf lurking too close to their herd? They panic and try to band together to hire someone to take care of it, if not hunt the beast themselves.
Now there's talk of a dragon? It can be argued that most will not pay it any mind as long as this dragon stays far away from their farms and herds and families. Until, that is, a single incident that cannot be readily explained otherwise. Perhaps someone falls ill and they don't know the cause of the illness. Or someone goes missing and can't be found or, worse, a half-eaten corpse that might be the missing party is found.
All they need is one person in an angry mob to suspect this dragon and give voice to it. And you've got yourself a brand new issue on your hands. So now there's not just adventurers to contend with, but local militia out for the dragon's head. They might not know or even care about the reward, they just want revenge.
While it can be argued that common folk stand no chance against a dragon, will every farmer refuse to face a dragon when farmers were so often drafted into the military to fight a noble's war? It would just take one such a survivor to take up arms. And given how many peasant revolts took place in history...?
# Conclusion:
Your best bet is to use this dragon as your executioner. Have the king make a new decree. That anyone who commits a crime that warrants it, the perpetrator will be fed to the dragon. Depending on the population and prosperity of the kingdom, it would happen often enough that you should feed it regularly enough.
But it still doesn't negate the above points. The king would have to play his cards carefully. Admit the dragon is in the kingdom's best interest and rival kingdoms will hire adventurers to slay it, in order to weaken them. Admit to nothing and people will get nervous about tales of a dragon.
Given massacres have been sparked by '[cruelty to a cracker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_desecration)', I do not have high hopes this will work out in the king's or the kingdom's favour.
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**Fake Ancient Prophecy**
If this is taking place in a medieval era, the people are probably extremely superstitious, so they’d easily fall for a fake prophecy. This idea would simultaneously be a subversion of the “chosen one” trope commonly used in media.
Use their superstitions against them to prevent anyone from killing the dragon.
In essence, the prophecy would state that the only one who can kill the dragon is “the chosen one” but this chosen one has to be extremely specific and carry a very particular set of characteristics. He needs to be six-foot tall, muscular, has a scar on the right side of his face, be born on a leap year during a solar eclipse, and have a birthmark in the shape of a unicorn. The exact details are up to you, but the point is that this chosen one needs to follow a ridiculously specific set of criteria.
There are also a specific set of trails that the chosen one needs to pass, all of which are incredibly difficult to the point that no one should be able to succeed. For the test of strength, you must fight a bear with your bare hands and no other weapons. For the test of intellect, you must answer a series of increasingly impossible riddles that the king made up himself. They’re all super ambiguous so, even if you have a sensible answer, the king can just say that wasn’t the right one.
“What can you put in a box to make it lighter?”
“Holes?”
“Sorry, the answer was fire.”
Ask another guy the exact same question. If he guesses fire, say the answer was holes.
Lastly, the test of spirit. You have to prove you are worthy by having the gods themselves perform a sign. A very specific sign. You need to climb to the top of a mountain in embarrassing and uncomfortable ceremonial garb, chant a specific sequence of made-up words with perfect pronunciation. If you mess up even one syllable you fail and have to start the whole process over. That’s not the tough part, though.
Once you’ve finished doing all these things, a very specific miracle from the gods needs to occur. As you hold your arms to the sky, a lightning bolt needs to strike the shrine at the perfect angle, and an eagle carrying a snake in its mouth needs to land on your head.
Again, the exact details can vary as much as you want, you can probably make it even more complicated than this, but the point is to make several increasingly difficult trials no one can pass.
By introducing this prophecy, the king looks like he’s the one who’s suffering. He wants to save his daughter, but darn, the prophecy keeps making things nearly impossible. After scouring the earth for the perfect candidate, the chosen one is unfortunately nowhere to be found.
To make the prophecy a little more realistic, have the king hire scribes in secret to make it look as authentic as possible and speak to as many superstitions as possible. On top of looking ancient and extremely legit, this thing speaks to the main religion of the era. Anyone who dares to question it’s authenticity or it’s veracity is questioning the will of the Gods.
Since he’s king, back it up with real examples. If somebody questions the prophecy, he ends up dead in a ritualistic manner. There’s a clause in the prophecy. “If you don’t believe these words may your head be chopped off.” So all doubters are found with no heads. No one questions it. No one’s brave enough to question it. They start to genuinely believe this is the will of the Gods.
The dragon could be described as an Envoy of the Devil. Build him up as being completely invincible to everything except the chosen one. If you’re not chosen, you’re dead. That’s it. No question. To add credence to this, have the king send a bunch of fakers to pretend to be “the best fighting force ever assembled”. They pretend to fight the dragon and are never seen or heard from again. That’s why only the chosen one is allowed to go.
The fear alone should keep people away. Perception is powerful. Everyone knows the prophecy at this point, and the dragon is said to radiate powerful fear. Anyone who looks at him will be struck with such paralyzing dread that they will never be able to draw their sword before they die. Even if a legitimate foe reaches the dragon, the fear will dishearten them. If they weren’t scared before, they’ll be terrified now, doubting themselves for just long enough for the dragon to kill them.
You wanna know what would be hilarious, though? Having the king’s efforts to stall constantly being foiled?
The chosen one needs to have a scar on the right side of his face, born on an eclipse on a leap year, and have a birth mark in the shape of a unicorn? Well that sounds like Olaf the Baker’s Son. He has all those characteristics!
The King “What, that’s impossible. Okay, I can still work with this. Let’s see if he can pass my impossible trials!”
Test of Body-Wrestling a bear. Olaf is so strong he beats it with ease. The King starts to sweat.
Test of Mind-Riddle Contest. Olaf gets all the answers right, even on the hard riddles. The king is so shocked that anyone could get them right that he forgets to pull anymore tricks.
Test of Spirit-Olaf climbs the mountain easily, even in heavy ceremonial garb, chants the words perfectly and the miracle happens exactly as the prophecy said.
At this point the king is genuinely scared that maybe the prophecy was true, so he hands him a sword that can’t cut anything, saying it’s the Sword of Destiny, the only one that can kill the dragon, and he also gives him a shield that breaks extremely easily, calling it the Shield of Unbreakability.
Olaf charges in, finds the dragon easily.
If it gets to that point, the king should just come clean with the chosen one and tell him that the dragon’s not the real threat. If Olaf listens, they can pretend he killed the dragon, give Olaf a reward of gold and riches, and everyone can live in peace.
If Olaf is intent on killing the dragon, the king can kill him and say the dragon did it. He wasn’t the chosen one. If Olaf, can’t be killed (because with all the stuff he’s been through the man seems like a beast), just twist the prophecy by saying “What, we have the right chosen one, but not the right dragon. It’s this OTHER dragon that you need to kill. The first dragon is the dragon of light, blessed by god. It must never be killed.”
Honestly, that sounds better. Make the prophecy be that the dragon should never be killed. That would’ve been easier, but honestly the whole crazy novel worth of insanity that got me to the end of this answer was too fun not to write.
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If the dragon is intelligent, he can work together with the king to keep the facade going.
To stay safe from harm, the dragon just needs to fly above bow range every once in a while. Adventurers seeking the king's reward will travel the direction the dragon is going... The beast can lead the adventurers onto things that are causing trouble to the kingdom, such as bandit camps, orc settlements, goblin knolls, ogre mounds etc. The adventurers will think this is part of their great quest to save the world. The actual effect is that there will be losses on both human and monster sides. The dragon just has to wait until both sides have retreated, and then pick up a human corpse for sustenance.
This becomes even easier to keep going if the dragon can shapeshift, so they can sneak into the castle and talk to the King without raising suspicions.
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Unfortunate accidents happen to the more competent and larger parties. Of course king tries to avoid these by providing them the best possible guides he can. After all the guides known the land and the routes to dragon. Unfortunately sometimes slight errors in navigation happened to lead them to group of bandits. Very large one, no one even had any idea one was around. Now they can't even be found anymore, must have run away...
Or just when they are about to commence an attack unfortunate wave of food poisonings, or poisonings in general... Or stab wounds on the key members of adventurers...
If the groups seems dangerous enough just sent an assassin or two along to make sure right sort of person ends up winning. Or no one at all. After all can't give hand of princess to just anyone. And kingdom really supports these activities. Things just tend to go horribly wrong, like whole idea was cursed.
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**Lie**
The King is not above deceit, and can tell a half-truth in that there is a prophecy that if more than one person tries to slay the dragon, the Kingdom will fall into ruin (after all, if the large group defeat the dragon, the kingdom will fall into ruin).
To 'solve' this, the King arranges for tournaments to be held to find the most powerful member, thereby getting all the individuals to either kill or cripple each other whittling down their numbers. He then tries to get the champion assassinated in an 'accident' at a later stage.
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**OPTION 1: HAVE THE DRAGON "HIRE" SOME SECURITY**
The king could simply bolster the dragon's defenses by bribing another group of men, just as well-equipped as the adventurers, to defend the dragon from the big group.
**OPTION 2: SEND HITMEN TO MAKE THE PARTY DISAPPEAR**
The best way to go about this is to simply have hitmen "sent by the dragon" to make them disappear. Alternatively, he could send thieves and saboteurs to ruin the adventurer's chances of beating the dragon.
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The land of Vau was once dominated by the Queens of the "Old Kingdom". The currency of the old kingdom was known as the "Argen". The Argen was minted in silver, bronze, and iron varieties. However The Old Kingdom collapsed 100 years ago due to the capital being sacked and royal family betrayed while trying to escape up a hidden mountain pass by warriors from Shabat.
While it's been 100 years since the collapse of the old kingdom the coins of the Queens still retain value. I'm wondering why they would? Now the silver and bronze have value in themselves so that's a no brainer, but why would the iron coins still retain value (even if diminished)?
Note:
The new dynasty established by the Shabati: The Menanids where not very stable and the territory of the old kingdom fractured into dozens of successor states and petty kingdoms splintered away during the chaos of the collapse.
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The coins of a fiat currency, if designed correctly, will always have an intrinsic value lower than their face value; that is to say, that the value that the nation all agrees the coin is worth should be more than the cost of the materials and labour used in minting the coin in the first place. There is a very simple reason for that; if you put $2 worth of silver into a silver dollar for instance, then people just start melting down the coins and selling the silver. That's a bad way to manage currency as it means that you never really know how much currency you have out there and you end up devolving into a de facto barter system using precious metals instead of coins.
It also means that your mint is running at a loss instead of a profit; making money off literally making money was so common the practice even has a name; [Seigniorage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage).
So while the metals may have an intrinsic value, a new empire, kingdom, oligarchy, or whatever won't see the coins as reserves as metal but reserves of value. As such, all the hard work has already been done. The real effort in making money is deciding how much to make to match the state of the economy, determining how much inflation you want to create to stimulate your economy without stifling it through excessive interest rates, etc. Your subjects, even though your major nation has split, already know how much a loaf of bread or a house costs in terms of the coins that exist, people are familiar with enough with them that counterfeit coins are more easily recogniseable...
Putting all this a different way, changing regime is a lot easier than changing currency and the wise leaders of the fractured enclaves of the former nations will know it. Not to mention the fact that a common currency means that establishing (or even just maintaining the existing) trade relations throughout the fractured nation becomes so much easier. All in all, it may well be a good idea for such a cluster of smaller nations to maintain a common currency, especially if they end up forming any loose confederacy or trade relationship.
There is a price to this kind of thinking, however. It assumes that each of the new nations has a roughly equivalent rate of production, or industry. If they don't, then sharing a common currency is actually a burden to the poorer performing nations.
Think of it this way; one of the reasons that Greece was in so much trouble within the EU was that it didn't have the kind of industry base that Germany or France did. In fact, a lot of their industry focused on tourism. Tourism is a discretionary spend, so when the Euro starts to go up in value against other major currencies on the back of car sales out of Germany and wine and cheese exports by France (massive over-simplification I know) then Greece loses out because the Euro costs more, meaning tourists choose to go somewhere else for their holidays.
If the same thing is true in your fractured nations and there is an imbalance between some of them, expect them to branch off and form their own currency that can change in value against other currencies to protect their industry and export sales. That said, at least one of the states to form out of the former nation is likely to keep the original currency, and as such all nations will respect its value based on the relative prosperity of the nation that uses it.
Put simply, keeping an old currency in circulation even after regime change can be a great shortcut that keeps industry going while the high priority aspects of the regime change can be attended to, and then the currency can be reviewed in detail later on as the time and priorities permit.
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Retiring the old coinage and minting new one takes a lot of effort and a centralized institution with sufficient control over the territory.
>
> The Menanids were not very stable and the territory of the old kingdom fractured into dozens of successor states and petty kingdoms splintered away during the chaos of the collapse.
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Other than barter, using old coins is the only way to oil the economy. Pun intended, as having iron coins lasting 100 years will require continuous oiling.
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**There are two obvious mechanisms that can insure your iron coins retain some value**
1. Iron **does** also have intrinsic value of its own / always will :
If a [9 inch](https://www.google.com/search?q=230mm%20in%20inces&rlz=1C1NHXL_enGB711GB711&oq=230mm%20in%20inces&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.6895j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) iron dagger blade [weighs 445g](https://www.google.com/search?q=wireght%20of%20a%20standard%20dagger%20blade&rlz=1C1NHXL_enGB711GB711&oq=wireght%20of%20a%20standard%20dagger%20blade&aqs=chrome..69i57j33.18447j1j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) & the iron coins weigh [one ounce](https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1NHXL_enGB711GB711&sxsrf=ACYBGNR3gG446HcJWwt6DQjRojMH7Os2Tw%3A1573658039121&ei=tx3MXeSCB8Oi1fAPh_eygAM&q=one%20ounce%20in%20grams&oq=one%20ounce%20&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0i273j0i67l7j0l2.58582.61648..67697...1.1..0.91.875.11......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71j35i39j0i131j0i131i273j0i10.4fYCHDVwPns) (28 grams) then sixteen of the iron coins are enough to make a blade.
So if a new dagger is normally sold for two gold pieces then allowing for his own profit margin for the work turning them into a blade & the cost of the handle a blacksmith should normally be willing to pay something like one gold piece for sixteen of the old iron coins.
*From there standard barter mechanics take over.*
Regardless of their original face value your iron coins settle at a value of perhaps sixteen (maybe as low as twenty in the absence of a nearby iron crafting industry) per gold coin.
2. Some other state adopts them & continues to use them as their own :
If you've a reasonably stable widely accepted neighbouring coin system a neighbouring nation may have simply adopted it as their own legal currency rather than bother minting their own, when the nation responsible for it goes to the wall it's easier to maintain the status quo & keep the now dead countries currency as your own than do anything else.
*It's already widely accepted & understood after all.*
The same can apply to whatever replaces the now defunct country, why change what's been working well so far, you've got the infrastructure for minting already in place so just carry on.
*The new rulers will likely want to put their own head on any new coins but why change anything else?*
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The Old Kingdom had developed unparalleled technology for fine detail metalworking. Unfortunately, the technology was lost with the Kingdom, and nothing close has since been developed.
This makes their money impossible to duplicate, that is, impossible to forge.
Precious metals are at a disadvantage. How confident can people be that that's real gold? Sure, the specialists can tell, but that's expensive and inconvenient.
Meanwhile, anyone with perfect or near-perfect vision can tell whether an Argen is a real Argen, just by looking at the Queen's finely crafted eyes.
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The coins hold their value because they have intrinsic value, the value of the material they're made out of.
Unlike current fiat currencies in our world, that's how currency got its value originally. A coin had the value of the amount of metals that went into its creation.
It wasn't until much later that that link was lost, mostly when somewhat less scrupulous rulers started to make coinage that looked like it was all gold or whatever but really was just gold plated nickel or iron.
Also, a currency holds its value as long as it has meaning. As long as the people using it agree to its value, it has that value.
So if you agree as a society that a 1 Denari coin buys half a loaf of bread, a tankard of beer, or half a pound of pork chops, that coin has that value. As soon as a butcher decides that no, he no longer accepts that coin in trade, things start to collapse. That may well take time, unless entire towns or counties come to the same decision together and decide to mint their own currency.
At that point, either a system of barter with other places is negotiated, or that community basically cuts itself off from the rest of the world.
This isn't uncommon. After WW2 the German Reichsmark was still used for a while in Germany, this time backed by the allied occupation forces, until a new currency could be created and produced in sufficient quantity to take over. Of course that only took a few years. Similar when the EU switched to the Euro. The old currencies remained legal tender for a transition period of several years, and were slowly removed from circulation with stores and banks taking care of filtering them out and turning them in for Euros at the several nations' central banks as they got them in normal transactions.
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# Money is valuable because money is valuable
At one point, the Argen was valuable mostly because the Old Thrones said it was, and used their power and influence to make it so. But people adapted to this reality. Now lots of people have these coins. They don't want them to become worthless, that hurts their economic power (because something that used to be valuable now isn't).
So there are a bunch of people for whom Argen coinage is still going to be worth something. These people will still accept Argen coins (because who would trust someone if they want to give *you* Argen but won't themselves accept them?)
And that in turns means an Argen is valuable to *you*. Because you know you'll be able to spend it.
Money is *weird*. You might be wondering 'doesn't this mean all you have to do to create a new currency is convince enough people it IS a valid currency?"
The answer is yes. That's exactly how it works. [Private currency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_currency) was a thing for awhile. It isn't anymore not because it doesn't work, but because it *worked too well* and basically all governments decided allowing it was a bad idea, and cracked down.
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## Why would they stop being valuable?
Metals has intrinsic value, high purity metal used in coinage even more so. but also consider very old coins are worth more now than they were originally, especially if the place that made them no longer exists. A roman coin is worth way more than its intrinsic value.
For most of history coins were not standardized, they were worth what they weighed, the stamping on the coins were just proof of purity. The coins will still be valuable long after the civilization that made them is gone. In fact the ability to retain value outside the place that made them was one of the advantages of many metal coins, a gold coin was still worth its weight in gold anywhere. The value will fluctuate a little bit becasue the value of the metals may change but unless there is a huge flood of new metal (spain and silver) they will likely stay consistently valuable for dozens of generations.
If said civilization standardized sizes they will stay valuable even longer since they also serve as semi-standardized weights. If they punched holes in them like some countries they last even longer because they are also easy to transport.
## Iron is a problem, but not for the reason you think
you seem to be worried about irons value, but iron of known purify is very valuable, to the point I would bet most of the coins get melted down to make things or more likely corroded away. Iron is not a good metal for coins, even worse if it is going to be mixed in with bronze coins. it makes you wonder why they would make coins of something as corrosion prone as iron. I doubt you will have many surviving iron coins. Copper, bronze, brass, and silver coins last because the corrosion is stable that is it does not continue once it has formed a surface coat, while iron will corrode away entirely. Worse if it is in contact with bronze or copper while wet it will corrode even faster due to galvanic corrosion.
**I suggest changing iron to copper.**
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Anything used as money needs to have 5 properties:
1. Divisibility
2. Portability
3. Durability
4. Recognizability
5. Scarcity (high ratio of value to weight and volume)
Silver and gold have been used historically because they score highly on these things and they were recognized as having commodity value for jewelry and other uses.
Note also that nothing has intrinsic or objective value: all value is imputed. Prices can be objective and give a rough indicator of value in that if you're willing to pay a given price for an item, then you value the item more than you do the amount of money you have to pay. But it can't be objectively stated that you value an item 5x more than the money or 3x more than another item.
All prices result from two auctions: seller vs seller in offering items at various prices; and buyer vs buyer bidding for items.
The use of coins is an attempt to increase Divisibility and Recognizabilty as well as possibly Durability and Portability.
The use of iron coins would be problematic because iron would swiftly corrode and be destroyed, so Durability is low, unless the iron is alloyed or magically preserved. In your world, the Scarcity of iron may or may not be low. Both of these would factor into the imputed value of the iron coins when they were minted, much less 100+ years later.
If, as I think was said later in this thread, the old kingdom made the coins unique(Recognizability) and highly Durable, then they could be used as currency for a long time. However, because they can no longer be made, they also could not be debased(inflation) so local governments might attempt to ban them or put other relatively debased coins on the market. In that situation, Gresham's law would come into play and the old kingdom coins would be hoarded by people and come off the market.
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Peasants -- and the vast majority of your population are peasants -- don't care. It's coins. Such have always been used to buy and trade with. Most of them have no notion who the sovereign is even when the land is united.
In early modern France, peasants who dug up troves of ancient Roman coins would just use them as coins. It was vastly easier than barter.
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how about because it have historical value in it.
like respect or nostalgia for the old kingdom, like the past ruler or the kingdom is very influential for the current kingdom history or tradition etc.
thats why they still keep such currency.
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There is a historical example of this. When comminists came to power in 1917 in Russia, they had to continue to mint old "czar" money (actually restarterd - czar was overthrown 6 month earler).
The main reason was - foreign affairs. Other countries had everything nominated in czar golden coins and they do not want to change this way (gold is gold).
But that was not the only reson - this 10 rubles in gold was the only hard currency in the chaos of revolutions and civil war. It was widely used amoung all the sides (yes, coins minted by Reds was used by Whites). It was so common that almost all coins left are of "bolshevik's mint" - czar coins is a greater rearity (most of them were taken out of country and refourged)
This "old money" were printed (as paper money) even after civil war - most industrial countreis refused to acknowledge USSR and demanded to use czar currency.
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Each of the successor states claims to be the rightful heirs of The Old Kingdom. They continue using the currency as part of their claim. Unlike those other pretenders.
Except for those oddball trading countries who decide to use the same currency as their trading partners for convenience sake.
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The Stackexhangerians live on a habitable, earth-like planet near Alpha Centauri. Problem is that their world is dying. Let's say it was attacked by yet another race of hostile aliens, and most of *their* civilization annihilated. But some of the population managed to escape in generational ships that don't have FTL travel. They went into cryosleep and it took them 500 years to reach the outer limits of the Solar System.
To make things more "logical": the aliens have more advanced tech than humans, yes, but nothing that would allow to them to take on Earth head-on as they are VASTLY outnumbered. They are also tired and worn out from their travels, and they don't have a lot of military personnel to begin with. Also, this is a near-future Earth wracked by climate change, destroyed resources, overpopulation etc. There is no space for these aliens to land on Earth and grow their own population. They don't have the means to land on Mars or the Jovian/Saturnian moons and "start from scratch": they need a ready-made world. And since they can expect resistance, they decide to soften up the Earth first to make colonization/conquest easier.
How do the Stackers tackle this issue? I was considering two options:
* They send spies to Earth and over the years, the spies not only learn about human tech and human biolology, they also indoctrinate disenchanted humans to their side, and together, they develop a biological super-weapon. the bio-weapon decimates most life, but some people prove immune. Now all the Stackers need to do is put boots on the ground and pick off the remaining survivors
* They use their last remaining weapons to either bust up Earth, or push an asteroid into it, or something similarly destructive. They will then try their luck at, once again, picking off the survivors using their advanced technology
Do any of these make sense or is there another way they can approach this?
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**Can't beat em? Join em!**
Your refugees contact a selected Earth government. They ask for help. They say that they are fleeing their dead world and need a place to live. They have advanced tech they are willing to share. Plus they are xenocurious humanoid hotties who only wear skin tight silver lamé space jump suits.
There is no government on Earth that would pass up the chance to get that tech with benefits. It would give them an edge against their rivals. It might help fix some of the problems Earth has come to. If they blow the aliens out of the sky, there goes the tech. The government would make room and the aliens would move in.
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It sounds like for your story you want violence! That is fine. There is no better way to learn how to war on humans than to team up with some humans. Once the aliens are received by their Earth state patron, the aliens might mention their interest in having some lands to call their own - still under the protection / supervision of their host, of course. A neighboring hostile country would do perfectly. With the alien tech, a war of conquest is easy for the host country. The humans of this country are sent packing or exterminated, or remain as a subjugated population according to the tone of your story, and the aliens move in.
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Pushing asteroids isn't a terrible idea.
They've already travelled hundreds of years, so coordinating a cluster of small asteroids to take out all the major cities of the planet in one bombardment wouldn't take much resources, there wouldn't be much we could do about it, and what's another 10 years to wait.
The collapse of human society that would surely follow such a major disaster would likely prevent any coordinated response from humanity at all.
At that point, the aliens just need to wait to find a region of earth that is suitable for them with a low population density, set up shop, and use their advanced tech to create a defense zone that keeps humanity away.
At that point humanity is not likely to catch up to their advancement faster than the aliens can advance their own tech, or develop counters to the human tech.
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**They don't need to.**
Simply put, a civilization capable of traveling vast, interstellar distances to colonize another world already has the technology sufficient to sustain themselves without needing to colonize another world, much less commit xenocide in order to do so.
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Part 0: observe and infiltrate, if possible. Learn the language, the people, the conflicting factions, the lie of the land. Get you some high quality, high resolution surface images of *everywhere*. Note everything that looks like a power generation facility (lots of cooling towers and or lots of smoke), an industrial facility or a major population area.
Part 1: sweep earth's orbital space clean. This can be done without much fanfare... maybe send in little automated spacecraft to simply push everything out of orbit rather than going full-on Kessler syndrome, but depending on how you want to get to the planetary surface afterwards and your ability to clean up or avoid the debris you could just blow everything up.
Once the various GPS networks are down, there will be chaos below.
Part 2: drop a large number of relatively small kinetic impactors onto the targets you identified in part 0. You don't need to annihilate every single human, or everything they've ever made. Just smash up a load of stuff. Hitting the population centres might not even be necessary, given that you've just utterly wrecked the foundation of technological society... the ability of the system to support a huge population has been wrecked.
Don't use silly giant asteroids. They'll just wreck the environment and cause any number of awkward long term ecological and meteorological problems. Large numbers of small impacts are much more efficient, neat and clean.
Part 3: wait a bit. Doesn't need to be long... maybe a few months. Watch the panic and rioting and disease and civil collapse below. National armies may mobilise, but they can't fight you anymore, even if they knew where or what you were. Wait for the worst of things to calm down (eg. mass die-offs of people unable to feed themselves, or deal with injury or illness). Wait a little bit longer. You should be able to see groups reforming to try and rebuild civilisation from the ashes... larger groups and organisations should be visible from space with suitable sensors, and from closer to via autonomous drones.
Crush them, too. Rocks or rods from god, your choice. Again, you don't need to do a total 100% cleansing strike... let them build up hope, and take it away from them. The survivors of the second smiting will likely be broken and demoralised, and those who aren't will simply be unable to offer a realistic defense of their world, minus any support or industrial base.
Part 4: land somewhere that seems quiet and start rebuilding your world. If necessary, establish a quiet zone with the aid of autonomous reconnaissance and hunter-killers. Any humans still around will probably just surrender. You don't even have to be a cruel victor and enslave or execute them all... sterilise them, where practical, and let them live out the rest of their lives in relative peace. Oppression builds resentment.
Keep forces in space, though. Don't take any anti-air or anti-satellite weaponry to the surface, and don't bring any humans up to orbit. There's always the possibility that you overlooked something, or a particularly clever group might seize control of a spacecraft. Space security is paramount. If it doubt, smite.
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1. Niven-Pournelle's "Footfall" handles this scenario so well that you need to read it to avoid copying them without having read it :-). They even start out from the same general location. Worse/better they have tech that they inherited and do not fully understand.
They use space domination, kinetic weapons (from orbit ANYTHING is a weapon). They have advanced LASER technology and use launch-LASERs for ground to orbit. They have nukes but are not keen to mess up the playground with them. They start off destroying all major dams and bridges, and go from there. They aim at domination, not extinction.
**\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_**
2. Create an organism with
* infectiousness of the common cold,
* payload when triggered like Ebola (mechanism may differ but Ebola is "pretty effective"
* Silent transmission like HIV.
It doesn't trigger until we all have it and then it presents an Ebola like worldwide effect with nobody to help thos who may otherwise survive with proper care. Charming.
Y'All die, y'hear.
There is a lot of help available.
A few decades back Australian scientists came close to making a excessively effective mouse destroyer by genetically engineering Mousepox, but lnfectiousness was low - just as well for mice and humans.
One can be sure that the major powers took it from there and by now have a human targeted wipeout weapon too terrible to use.
The aliens just need to track it down.
**\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_**
**Australian mousepox development:**
[Populist outline{Guardian}](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2001/jan/11/genetics.uknews) - Lab creates killer virus by accident
7 page open access paper here [The mousepox experience](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2816623/pdf/embor2009270.pdf)
[Legion](https://www.google.com/search?q=australian+mousepox+genetic+engineering&rlz=1C1CHBF_enNZ834NZ839&oq=australian+mousepox+genetic+engineering&aqs=chrome..69i57.13087j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) - web search.
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I would go for the horror factor. The aliens infiltrate our solar system and take up residence in the planetary neighborhood, without tipping off Earth to their presence. They then use evolution to their advantage, altering and introducing key terrestrial crop plants to Earth capable of out-competing our plants. These invasive species were given an alternate genetic alphabet (other than C,A,T,G).
Once the crops take hold, humans the world over find that no matter how much they stuff themselves, they and their loved ones are dying of starvation in ever increasing numbers. Humans starve on a world of plenty because the invasive crops are not digestible!
By the time those pathetic humans realize that they have a problem, the crops have thoroughly polluted the food chain and the scale of human die-offs has snowballed beyond the humans ability to control. Society collapses, human capabilities degrade, and the humans still have no idea as to the true source of their woes. The doom of the human infestation is assured! Muwa-Ha-Ha-Ha!!
...Or is it??? Every plan goes awry, and the story of how humans discover the nature and true source of their woes, identify the aliens only weakness, then ultimately overcome them is the stuff of a great novel. But PLEASE! Do not hinge human salvation on the the aliens' unfortunate choice of Windows-98 for their operating systems. (I'm looking at YOU, War of the Worlds 2005.)
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1. Land on Ceres or another suitable body.
2. Build a mass driver capable of launching 1000 ton payloads at Earth.
3. Start making payloads. You can just use a metal skin and fill it with whatever is on the surface of the planetoid you wind up at. When you have a few thousand of them, start firing them at Earth.
4. Wait for the pulverization to be finished, then make a tasty human smoothie out of the remains and start moving in.
This has the advantage of leaving the planet habitable and ready for occupancy, once you hose down the impact areas. A single large asteroid big enough to wipe out humanity could also leave the planet uninhabitable.
[Answer]
**How does an alien race from a dying world annihilate most of humanity to colonize the planet for themselves?**
Is this not what the rich and greedy already do?
Jungle munching machines, mass forest fires, and incomes high enough to numb oneself from the guilt of killing without question. Taking, taking, taking. Eyes always on the next conquest, never stooping low to see the trail of death behind you.
I know this is not the answer you wanted, but I say, if you're looking for an out of this world story we'll believe in, look at the wake we've left behind on our own planet. We treat Earth like we don't depend on it, like its an entity entirely separate, that if we have to do without, we'll find a way. Wilfully arrogant, destructive aliens on our own planet. We are literally alienating our species from its home base - a dying world - and annihilating most of humanity to colonize the planet for those of us greedy enough to steal it from all who we share it with.
[Answer]
Land in a region of **civil war**.
Conquer a small region large enough to stay for some month. Attack the fighters, and allow civilians to flee. When the acquired region is occupied, defend it, and make it clear to the fighter of the civil war. The fighters will just be fully **occupied with fighting themselves**, and understand that they do not even need to fear you currently. It would not be rational for them to divert resources fighting you. If necessary, take care to keep the war active, not won by either side.
Stay in the location as long as you like, and start interacting with humans when you are ready. Prepare for fighting, but possibly cooperate. **Acquire intelligence** as part of the preparation.
Now, continue to **fight globally** or **cooperate aggressively**. You had much time to decide, and to prepare, so it is **much easier than any other kind of attack** could be, because of intelligence and preparation as much as you want.
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Optionally, use multiple locations.
Optionally, use Afghanistan to Land, and make the local tribes cooperate by providing superior weapons and fighters. At first, attack by air, fighters are vulnerable by air attack, but nothing else. The geology is hard to attack without local knowledge, and the local humans have fighting experience since multiple generations. (Russians fought there until they gave up after long time. Then, the USA did the same). The local people are very few because of the geology.
[Answer]
**We come in peace, but the Facebookites don't!**
(Yes this is basically the plot of that Doctor Who episode from 2005.)
Land somewhere not too populous but connected, maybe Australia or the U.S. Midwest. "Crash land" a small pod in a desert next to a decent sized city, leaving your ship in orbit around Mars or something. Sightings in every newspaper, people going mad. Is it true? Have we finally seen a UFO? After a few days, show up to the highest government official you can find. We come in peace!
Tell them that you are survivors of a far off world, wrecked by war with the Facebookites, who wish to conquer the galaxy! Now that your pod has "crashed" on earth, they will surely come looking for the last survivors, and find your semi-civilised world. Their tracker vessel is already in this solar system, scanning the surface of Mars! They will surely crush you on sight with their warp bombs! Unless... you give us access to your planet's defense systems, so that we can upgrade them and help you combat them!
When you finally have access to all of Earth's nukes and other assorted weaponry, it'll be too late for them to do anything. Set each country against its neighbours, maybe don't nuke everything or you'll probably ruin the environment.
And now you have a nice little planet all for yourselves!
[Answer]
How about this? Slightly tongue in cheek, but would allow you to have the Stackexhangerians have arrived a few years ago, and do it all without those silly Earthlings knowing anything about it.
Spend a couple of years learning all the languages and infiltrating all electronic systems you can.
Then, encourage mass communication on a global scale (push that internet!).
Then, encourage more and more systems to use it (cloud solutions). Encourage all encryption etc - the Stackexhangerians are advanced enough to think quantum encryption is quaint, let alone standard prime multiplication etc!
Then, start to "modify" what's going on a little. You want governments that are at the more extreme ends of the spectrum. Shade a little of the automatic translation that hopefully by now you have going on, to sow distrust between allies. Chose a couple of the larger powers that are relatively isolated politically and shade blame on them (but not enough evidence to actually call them out on it). For the more technologically savvy countries, try and make the politicians and the technical elites have different enough agendas that they actively start working against each other.
it now depends on how you want to push them over the edge! Let's assume we want a nice stable planet at the end of the process, with as little cleanup as possible.
So, in order of easiest to fix for a very high tech group.
1. Push that environmental disaster (and maybe plant enough false data so any warnings are ignored until too late). 40% of the world population lives near the coast (<https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/es/papers/Coastal_Zone_Pop_Method.pdf>), so rising the sea levels quickly (eg 4-5 degree global warning over a short 20-50 year timescale) would nicely destabilize things and start several low level wars (with luck!), that should start dropping the population.
2. As they're nicely reliant on the WWW, crash it! (you don't want to do this straight away, as this might encourage people to throw nukes around, and that takes a while to clean up). This should stop any interference in what the Stackexhangerians are doing, and reduce the likelihood of discovery. Hopefully a few more deaths from here. And for kicks, corrupt the codes for the nukes so they can't be used against the Stackexhangerians even if someone spots it!
3. Maybe at this point trigger a few carefully crafted viruses, both against the humans (careful here, you don't want them to jump species!) and also against their primary foodstuffs (may something against grasses). Again, a few weaker ones are less likely to jump to different types, especially of you concentrate on the more heavily modified food strains.
4. By this point you should have mass die off. Now it's just a choice of do you want to have a slave race, or eliminate the last survivors.
[Answer]
[**Nuke them from orbit; its the only way to be sure.**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_nuclear_explosion)
But with a little more nuance than that. Our intrepid Stackers have come to Earth in a nuclear-powered spaceship. Knowing that they don't have enough power left to go anywhere else anyway, they craft a series of small, nuclear devices meant to be detonated 30-50 km from the ground and drop them over key technological centers of the world. This results in an EMP that knocks out the backbone of human communication, the internet, and a good deal of all other forms of communication (see the linked article). (They also roll over the various emergency communication satellites that various governments have installed). No body knows they did it, or if someone does, they have no way of getting this information out. There is no preparation for the coming invasion only a lot scared people on the surface.
And what is this surface like? It's the near and entirely paperless future. Everything is online. Physical stores don't exist anymore (or are a novelty). Physical money is a rarity. People rely on the internet to get their food and to get their paycheck. Governments rely on the internet to move their resources and organize their efforts. Armies rely on the internet to command their forces. Every soldier is wired to and depends on the net. Or did, anyway. The result is pure chaos without a known cause and no outside source for relief.
I don't think humanity would completely destroy themselves in the resulting collapse of society; this isn't as ultimate a scenario as the other comments are giving, but it would do the trick. The Stackers could carve out a big of territory for their own and it may be decades before the rest of the Earth even knows they've landed. Their preserved future-technology would give them a huge advantage over mankind. Importantly, I think this scenario allows for a wide range of plausible human resistance. In this story, humans could be reduced to sparse and feudal tribes for generations, or the ever-intrepid humankind could dust off their old tech, retool their factories and give battle within years.
[Answer]
A depressing answer is that they don't even intend to do that. They come here in peace, hoping to share everything they know with humanity. Unfortunately, their micro-organisms "have other ideas".
There are four possibilities when separately evolved biospheres meet:
* 1: Mutual incompatibility. They cannot eat our biochemicals to any dangerous extent, and vice versa. What they hoped for. They brought food synthesizers to make food out of simple feedstocks like simple hydrocarbons and ammonia.
* 2 and 3. Superiority of one or the other. In HG Wells' "War of the Worlds" it was Earth's microbes that triumphed over the Martians. In this tragedy it is the other way around.
* 4: Microbial war. Their microbes consume all Earthly higher-level life, and vice versa, leaving a planet full of slime which will evolve into new higher organisms if the Sun lasts long enough. The Fermi paradox is answered if very few civilisations work this out in time.
[Answer]
## Grey-ish Goo
If you're talking entirely separate evolutionary process, these aliens will have absolutely no compatibility with our ecosystem. They will have to transplant their own crops, environment, etc to be able to live and sustain themselves. Therefore, they need to eradicate our ecosystem first and foremost.
Therefore, they design an organism, likely small, like a bacteria, fast replicating, that consumes key terran proteins (or something similarly universal). It will quickly spread and reduce all earth life to nutrient sludge, and the aliens can terraform to their liking in its wake. Our scientists will be too concerned with trying to devise counter measures to this pathogen to have much immediate concern about these strange plants growing in the dead zones.
[Answer]
1. With the threat of orbital bombardment
2. By exerting influence at upper echelons of global government, through mind control / infiltration via shapeshifting tech / religion / cabal
3. By engineering global catastrophe through nuclear war or accident / metrological / biological / toxiclogical / mind control / killer robots etc, and then sleeping in orbit while humanity withers / dies / tears itself apart
4. just asking for help!
[Answer]
Use their mastery of advanced technology to hijack mass and social media in order to subtly influence the politics of the most advanced nation and cause them to select the worst possible leadership. Political, economic, ecological, and martial disaster ensue.
[Answer]
**The biological weapon:**
The ability to hibernate in cryo-sleep and then revive implies an incredible control of their own biology. They can repair cellular damage from ice crystals and also repair the DNA (or equivalent means of inheritance) damaged by radiation.
And no, you can't just ignore the radiation by saying the cryo pods are shielded. Over a time period of centuries, even the radiation coming from their own bodies would cause enough damage to have to be repaired.
So in short, these beings are clearly capable of manipulating biological systems with great precision. Crafting a biological weapon after studying us is very plausible.
**Rock Dropping**
If they can make it here from another star, then have absurdly good long-term power generation. Shoving a few rocks around once they get here should be no problem.
**Other weapons**
Again, if they made it here from another star, their ship can produce a lot of power. They might be able to just irradiate us from orbit.
[Answer]
Easy. Stay in a geostationary orbit behind Mars. Meanwhile, research biological vulnerabilities of humans to build a deadly virus that could be dispersed with very small one-way entry vehicles.
In 2 or 6 months, the Earth population could be 10% or 15% so the planet can be invaded easily.
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[Question]
[
**I need ideas for a chemical or disease which kills the victim upon holding it in the palm for about 4 or 5 seconds. The death isn't necessarily immediate, as it might take days to kill the victim in the case of an incurable disease.**
If the substance can't kill the victim, at least it should cause permanent damage to the heart, nervous system, or brain. An overall skin disfigurement or damage to any other vital organs will be okay!
Something mixed in DMSO?
The specific chemical or disease should be somewhat easy to acquire with some effort for a common man because it must sound obvious for the readers.
Don't suggest nerve agents or Anthrax please. Because they are inaccessible for a common man.
[Answer]
The canonical example is
## Dimethylmercury
>
> [Dimethylmercury](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethylmercury) is an [organomercury compound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organomercury_compound). A highly volatile, reactive, flammable, and colorless liquid, dimethylmercury is one of the strongest known neurotoxins, with a quantity of less than 0.1 mL capable of inducing severe mercury poisoning, and is easily absorbed through the skin. Dimethylmercury is capable of permeating many materials, including plastic and rubber compounds. It has a slightly sweet odor, although inhaling enough of the chemical to notice this would be hazardous. (Wikipedia, *s.v.* [dimethylmercury](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dimethylmercury&oldid=891851971))
>
>
> Dimethylmercury is extremely toxic and dangerous to handle. Absorption of doses as low as 0.1 mL can result in severe mercury poisoning. The risks are enhanced because of the high vapor pressure of the liquid.
>
>
> Permeation tests showed that several types of disposable latex or polyvinyl chloride gloves (typically, about 0.1 mm thick), commonly used in most laboratories and clinical settings, had high and maximal rates of permeation by dimethylmercury within 15 seconds. The American Occupational Safety and Health Administration advises handling dimethylmercury with highly resistant laminated gloves with an additional pair of abrasion-resistant gloves worn over the laminate pair, and also recommends using a face shield and working in a fume hood.
>
>
> Dimethylmercury is metabolized after several days to methylmercury. Methylmercury crosses the blood–brain barrier easily, probably owing to formation of a complex with [cysteine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cysteine). It is eliminated from the organism slowly, and therefore has a tendency to [bioaccumulate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulate). The symptoms of poisoning may be delayed by months, resulting in cases in which a diagnosis is ultimately discovered, but only at the point in which it is too late for an effective treatment regimen to be successful.
>
>
> The toxicity of dimethylmercury was highlighted with the death of [Karen Wetterhahn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn), a professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, in 1997. Professor Wetterhahn specialized in heavy metal poisoning. After she spilled a few drops of this compound on her latex glove, the barrier was compromised, and within minutes it was absorbed into her skin. It circulated through her body and accumulated in her brain, resulting in her death ten months later. This accident is a common toxicology case-study and directly resulted in improved safety procedures for chemical-protection clothing and fume use, which are now called for when any exposure to such severely toxic and/or highly penetrative substances is possible (e.g., in chemical munitions stockpiles and decontamination facilities).
>
>
>
The beauty of it is that dimethylmercury is easily synthesized:
>
> The compound was one of the earliest organometallics reported, reflecting its considerable stability. It is formed by treating [sodium amalgam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amalgam) with methyl halides:
>
>
> $\mathrm{Hg} + 2 \mathrm{Na} + 2 \mathrm {CH}\_3\mathrm{I} \rightarrow \mathrm {Hg}(\mathrm{CH}\_3)\_2 + 2 \mathrm {NaI}$
>
>
>
[Methyl iodide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_iodide) ($\mathrm {CH}\_3\mathrm{I}$) itself is also easy to make.
All in all, all you need in order to make one the deadliest known substances is access to a high-school chemistry laboratory.
[Answer]
**Honeybee.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ez0J9.jpg)
<https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2018/02/21/advocacy-groups-pressure-state-to-ban-bee-killing-pesticides/>
I like this because if your victim is allergic, he can very definitely die from a bee sting. It takes seconds to get stung. This method is not applicable to the general population, so if user63214 is some disgruntled would-be murderer I am not an accessory. But for a story it could work just fine.
[Answer]
* Caffeine
+ known to work with DMSO (some people consume it this way)
+ wikipedia: "pure powdered caffeine, which is available as a dietary supplement, can be lethal in tablespoon-sized amounts"
* Warfarin
+ accessible as rat poison
+ a few grams should be enough (1-5 mg tablets are used in medicine)
+ use with DMSO? no idea if that would work
+ causes bleeding, necrosis...
* Hydrofluoric acid
+ indirectly accessible in glass etching kits
+ or you can just buy it
+ how scary do you wish your novel to be?
[Answer]
**Ricin**
[See here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricin) [and here](https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/ricin/facts.asp).
Made from the castor bean, the plant can be found as a common ornamental in parks and gardens.
There is no antidote.
@AlexP also provides a great vector.
I am not going in to production and delivery but no special requirements and a little creative thought should show how this could be achieved.
[Answer]
Here's another *accessible* chemical compound that hasn't been mentioned so far:
# [Dimethyl sulfate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfate)
>
> Like all strong alkylating agents, $(\text{CH}\_3\text{O})\_2\text{SO}\_2$ or $\text{Me}\_2\text{SO}\_4$ is extremely toxic. Its use as a laboratory reagent has been superseded to some extent by methyl triflate, the methyl ester of trifluoromethanesulfonic acid.
>
>
>
It can be synthesized in the laboratory by many different methods, the simplest being the esterification of sulfuric acid with methanol. Another possible synthesis involves distillation of methyl hydrogen sulfate.
>
> Dimethyl sulfate is carcinogenic and mutagenic, highly poisonous, corrosive, and environmentally hazardous. Dimethyl sulfate is absorbed through the skin, mucous membranes, and gastrointestinal tract, and can cause a fatal delayed respiratory tract reaction. An ocular reaction is also common. There is no strong odor or immediate irritation to warn of lethal concentration in the air.
>
>
>
[Answer]
While i do not know of any easily obtained chemicals or substances that can kill as you just through contact of your palm (probably a good thing for the general population) i can offer you some ideas.
**Delivery**
Firstly though, i am going to present you with a possible delivery system. As many chemicals need to be in your bloodstream to take effect, we would need some way of transferring them there. Thusly, i present you with *The Assassin’s Glove* (name pending).
This would be a glove who’s palm is laced with hypodermic needles, similar to those you may find in nettles. As you shook someone’s hand, these needles would be pressed against their palm and inject the substance into their body. With this glove, you could inject practically anything into the target. Here are some suggestions:
**Substances**
Snake venom is relatively easy to obtain, assuming you can find and extract the venom from one. However, as it is a venom, it can’t kill you unless it enters your blood stream. You can safely drink snake venom if you do not have any cuts from your mouth to your stomach. However, if you had a cut or it was injected into you, then you would feel its effects.
Cyanide is a classic killer, you can extract it from apple seeds if your protagonist truly has no access to any kind of harmful substance.
Hydrochloric acid, extracted from bleach, may also do the job. Bleach does have a strong smell to it though which may give your assassin away.
**Alternatively**
If you’re just looking for a way to stealthily kill someone, polonium has famously been used. It is a radioactive substance which emits alpha radiation. Alpha radiation can not penetrate human skin but, of ingested, it is fatal. The reason it kills you is the same reason you are normally safe from it, it can’t penetrate your skin, meaning its stuck inside you and damages your DNA. It would likely take weeks or months to kill someone this way but it has been used in the past. You might also be able to inject it to get a similar effect.
[Answer]
I was thinking about oleander / nerium. It's highly toxic and causes cardiac arrest. It has beautiful flowers and it's used in a lot of gardens. If you touch the sap it makes you're fingers tingly. So it's not deadly when you touch it.
[Answer]
# Elemental Mercury
Okay, this doesn't really meet your requirements. Not much is absorbed through the skin. But mercury in your hand is fun to play with and your victim might keep it on longer than 4-5 seconds. The danger is from the vapors. If your plot allows, pouring large amounts of mercury around the victim's bed or car, or another relatively small space where the victim spends a lot of time, might do the trick.
Elemental mercury is what's in thermometers (the kind without batteries), so it would be relatively simple (though expensive and time consuming) to gather enough for the perpetrator to use (assuming a lot of safety equipment, the kind easily found online). The more dangerous form of mercury is methyl mercury, but that's not exactly sold in handy dandy glass containers. Mercury also has medical applications but purchasing it in larger quantities might prove more difficult.
Instead of buying old fashioned thermometers, the perp might want to buy new digital ones and offer them free to doctor's clinics and households and schools in exchange for mercury ones (as a way to reduce potential toxic exposures...swap programs like this probably already exist legitimately). You may also have some luck with fluorescent light bulbs.
>
> Elemental mercury, also called “quicksilver,” is a heavy, silvery,
> form of the metal mercury that is liquid at room temperature. It can
> slowly change from a liquid into a gas that is invisible to the naked
> eye. The gas or “vapors” that are released will start to fill a room
> if mercury is spilled indoors.
>
>
> Mercury is a very
> toxic or poisonous substance that people can be exposed to in several
> ways. If it is swallowed, like from a broken thermometer, it mostly
> passes through your body and very little is absorbed. If you touch it,
> a small amount may pass through your skin, but not usually enough to
> harm you. Mercury is most harmful when you breathe in the vapors that
> are released when a container is open or a spill occurs. ([ref](https://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdch_MercurySpillFactsheet_85689_7.pdf))
>
>
>
Will elemental mercury fumes kill a victim? Maybe. But organ damage (which you allow as an alternative) is more likely.
>
> How much mercury spilled in a room will make air in the room unsafe?
> Any amount of mercury spilled indoors can be hazardous. The more
> mercury is spilled, the more its vapor will build up in air and the
> more hazardous it will be. **Even a small spill, such as from a broken
> thermometer, can produce hazardous amounts of vapor if a room is small
> enough, warm enough and people spend a good deal of time there, as in
> a small bedroom.** ([ref](https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/mercury/docs/healtheffectsmercury.pdf))
>
>
>
Spilling the mercury on to a hot surface (like a stove) will vaporize it quickly. Spilling it elsewhere will allow the vapors to accumulate more slowly. The liquid form is easily tracked through a house and hard to get rid of.
>
> Inhalation of elemental mercury vapors is the main source of toxicity,
> as mercury is well-absorbed through the lungs. Problems from
> inhalation result either from a large one-time high exposure or a
> long-term exposure. Long-term exposure of inhaled vapors is generally
> more dangerous, with the nervous system being the primary target of
> mercury toxicity. Symptoms may occur within weeks but usually develop
> insidiously over a period of years. Neurologic symptoms include
> tremors, headaches, short-term memory loss, incoordination, weakness,
> loss of appetite, altered sense of taste and smell, numbness and
> tingling in the hands and feet, insomnia, and excessive sweating.
> Psychiatric effects are also seen after long-term exposure. The
> kidneys can also be effected. **Intense exposure to high concentrations
> of mercury vapor can lead to severe respiratory damage**. ([ref](http://www.coshnetwork.org/node/360))
>
>
>
So there you have it. Organ damage from even short-term exposures. But not from being held in the hand. Consider that a frame challenge, that the substance you are imagining probably does not exist. But you can combine mercury in the hand with mercury spilling all over the place and creating fumes. Maybe try when the victim is locked into a sauna for an hour. There are many possibilities.
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[Question]
[
**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 6 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/97296/edit)
So I'm designing a world where monsters from a well-known (in-universe) video game leak into a modern world. The monsters and the local law-enforcement will trade blows, bodies will drop on both sides. (The heroes are a third party here, they aren't "above the law" but the law enforcement doesn't know how to stop them, nor do they want to stop the people fighting the monsters.) The monsters (and some humans, as a result of the anarchy) will basically be involved in terrorism-scale criminal activity.
But the problem is I don't want to handle (A) The possible military implications or (B) the populace at large. The events NEED, to keep my story simple, to be isolated to this one town where the game takes place.
I can't think of an easy way to handle the (quite realistic) concern that police would "call for backup" on a national scale, or that there would be nationwide panic over the brand-new beasts that dwell among us.
I need a conspiratorial level cover-up. Any thoughts?
EDIT: Barring this possibility, how might I keep the military from significantly mucking up my RPG Player party from doing their own poking around? (They're high schoolers.)
[Answer]
I have sometimes wondered - why, when some single medium powered superhero realized he is up against a big deal, does he not call up in in-world heavy hitters from his universe to help? Answer: the Fantastic 4 and the Avengers are busy saving the world from proportionately greater threats, like Galactus or Thanos. The local superhero is on his own and has got to make do.
So too your city. This dimensional leak thing is not something limited to your city only, or certainly the national guard would show up. But the national guard is busy containing something similar at the capitol, and your local issues can't compete - the locals have to take care of things.
This larger story of nationwide dimensional breaches also offers a narrative thread. You can drop hints that all is not well. Maybe some National Guardsmen do show up, tails between their legs. If your role players do well they may get clues about what is going on in the capitol and possible ways they might be able to set things right there once they level up with the current challenge.
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Bureaucracy is your friend. It's known to be slow moving, unimaginative, and skeptical of spending money. So when your little town starts screaming "monsters from a video game are attacking!," your petty bureaucrats are gonna Occam's Razor the heck out of that situation. After all, what's more believable, imaginary monsters came to life, or a town has a gas leak or some mold causing them to hallucinate? Even a terrorist attack is more believable.
So the wheels will start grinding ponderously--send someone out to investigate, possibly send someone else out to investigate the investigators when their stories are unbelievable, then have meetings to decide how best to proceed, etc, etc, etc. You can even get partisan politics involved once it's clear that yes, this is really happening, putting the brakes on rescue operations in the name of "fiscal responsibility," or only sending in half measures that don't really help at all. Played right you could have their help show up just in the heroes darkest hour, or just after it's all resolved, or...never.
As for cover-ups, easy-peasy. Videos will hit Youtube if they have internet, but who in their right mind won't think they're faked? Skeptics will be all over that like white on rice. Any fault in the videos will be seen as evidence it's all faked. People will suspect it's a viral marketing campaign for the game, and the game designers might even take credit--or at least, mysteriously not deny it--because hey, free advertising, and who cares where it comes from?
Those interested in a cover up at upper levels would do well to release truly faked videos to further muddy the waters--we've all seen the court of public opinion, one proven fake must mean all of it is fake. And that's not counting the fakes that the public will do themselves just to mess with people or to see if they can. The real videos can be plastered all over youtube and they'll still be lost in the noise that is the internet.
As for eyewitnesses, get the conspiracy theorists involved. You get enough of the fringe shouting about how this is really, really, *reeeeeally* real and suddenly the news becomes toxic. No self respecting news station will carry it. And that's *before* the conspiracy theorists start adding extraneous things like aliens and chemtrails and FEMA death camps to the mix. Once they start doing that (and they will) the only way anyone will believe this really happened is if someone produced a body, and even then they might be skeptical.
Meanwhile the area goes under quarantine because of drugs/gas leak/really bad fungus/anything that can cause hallucinations and illnesses and could be in the area and that the general public would ***not*** want to get. Make it sound like the least pleasant thing ever (think the Ebola scares) to keep the public away and justify whatever response the military/government *does* manage to send out.
A cover-up these days is easier than getting people to believe something. For those at the top, just play on their lack of empathy--for example: it would cost less to quarantine or bomb the town or just murder everyone in it than to help them, and news of a monster attack might adversely effect the next election since it happened under X's watch (whoever the dominant party is), so let's keep the whole thing on the down low, yeah?
As for the public, keep in mind most news programs these days are corporate and have completely dissolved their investigative news teams. Most newscasters don't even roam far from their offices and rarely leave their home cities. Everything they get is second-hand. They're also easily distracted by a scandal, so have a mass shooting or a violent protest or some politician with his pants down and it'll be all they talk about, effectively burying the news of this one town.
As for the common man, aside from having questionable news sources, they also have skin in the game with being seen a certain way. One of the big ones these days is not being anti-science, so skepticism has practically become a moral imperative. People are happy to tear apart anything unusual or that questions the accepted standard (for example, we still cling firmly to BMI as a health measure despite all kinds of evidence that it's essentially useless), and they'll even disregard real facts in order to be seen in a positive light by others. This behavior is as common for the skeptics and scientists as it is for those of a more...we'll call it an "intellectually creative" mindset and leave it at that.
And this need to be accepted is *really* easy to exploit.
You want to cover up anything, just make it worth more social capital to *not* believe that thing that's happening in front of your face is actually happening in front of your face and people will fall in line.
[Answer]
That's simple enough. If it is like a game, then the monsters' corpses vanish into nothing shortly after they are killed. So there is no direct evidence. If you were planning on having item drops, you might want to limit them to things like weapons, gold, and ores. Things that can be explained away.
Then, you make the nature of the portal interfere with attempts to record the monsters. On film or digital cameras, they look like animals, or humans, or even just blurs.
With no real evidence, it is just written off as gangs and rabid animals. The police are having problems dealing with it, so they made up these exaggerations and lies to get the military to intervene.
Of course, some people in the government do believe it, but they deny it to avoid a panic, and so that they can experiment on the monsters they have captured.
[Answer]
To limit the scope of all activities to just one town, I think several things have to be in place:
1. Physical and informational isolation of the town from rest of civilized world. If your monsters spawn in the middle of New York, or on top of the White House, forget about getting the world to conveniently overlook them. This has to happen in some rural town, preferably some significant distance away from major cities. Communications can be disrupted by some unexplained electromagnetic interference caused by the same portal allowing monsters to come here.
2. Keeping the monsters within the vicinity. If your monsters escape this town and move on to bigger population centres, people will find out. Perhaps have them only appear/ move in the night, and mysteriously dissipate at daybreak? While a common trope, I think it might help pacing somewhat (and in the context of a game, the day hours can be used for a series of sidequests to prepare for the night - think zombie survival games). The furthest that the monsters can wander from your town will then be limited to their speed during the night, and if your town is far enough from everything else, cities will not get to encounter your monsters in the flesh.
3. Government intervention. Of course, authorities will be informed of the situation, but they will realise quickly that it is in the public's best interest for information NOT to get out. Military efforts are focused on containment rather than elimination for starters as scientists are called in to study the situation, while news is released that the town is being used as the set for a new movie - explaining what some people might describe as strange sightings. This gives your protagonists a window of time to do their stuff.
4. BONUS: plot twist - this has actually happened before in another town, but your protagonists did not know because it was covered up too (duh). This helps to explain why the government was able to react so efficiently, and possibly why they were happy to allow a bunch of high-school kids to run around as opposed to conducting a full-scale military operation. Twist v2.0: the initial outbreak was the inspiration for the well-known video game!
[Answer]
**Stranger Things Justified this**
In ST they played with a very similar scenario of how to tell the nation the government was conducting inter dimensional tests resulting in deaths and the invasion of foreign organisms.
The answer is you don't because no one would believe you. Frankly, its hard to believe absurd events occurring let alone dedicate resources to on technically unsubstantiated claims.
**How this applies to your scenario:**
Police Chief calls the state governor going:
"Holy \*\*\*\*, strange monsters that look like they are from the game Monster Smasher are appearing in our streets and murdering the citizenry and there isn't jack we can do."
Governor: "Calm down everything is going to be all right Ill handle this right away" Hangs up calls out to the secretary "We need to find a replacement police chief for so and so country quickly and recommend the current one for a **psych evaluation and drug test**."
**Chances are the police chief may be more politically inclined to realize this is a bad idea, just like in ST**
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Some thoughts...
Could be this community has its own secret. Maybe the town is the HQ for a cult, and don't want outsiders around. Maybe they're secret polygamists, and they're afraid of being persecuted. Maybe it's a retirement community for various mafia groups (this might help with gun and rocket-launcher availability, too ;D ).
Hmm ... could be this town is seriously anti-technology (Amish?), and is in a remote location. So it's very difficult for them to get the word out.
Say, does it have to be a whole town? Might your setting be a boy scout camp? Easier to explain a lack of cell phones there. Though you'd end up with some *very unusual* badges being awarded...
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The *real* question is not why people disbelieve in supernatural events and monsters, but why the local authorities like police don't call for the army or whatever defense forces need to be mustered to deal with a supernatural monster outbreak. The answer is, of course, is about the balance of power.
Like the policy Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) concerning nuclear weapons during the Cold War there will be a long held policy concerning outbreaks of supernatural monsters. This will be practised by both sides.
The 'leaking' of monsters into our world will not exceed a certain amount. This will be sufficient to tax the resources and capacity of local police and emergency services but not drastically exceed them. On the human side, our response will be limited to that of the local authorities, and in the event that massive amounts of additional human forces respond to a monster incursion the extradimensional floodgates will literally open with a veritable tsunami of monsters pouring into our world.
So when the local cops call the capital for additional support they will read the equivalent of whatever executive order of Act of Parliament or similar legal and governance instrument is needed to deal with these situations. Basically, it's you're on your own and the best of luck and we hope you survive.
PS: Don't bother to try and leave town. The Army will surround the township and anyone caught leaving it, will be be summarily executed.
PPS: This is for the common good of humanity. Best of luck again.
This also explains why cops and other services tolerate your heroes. They are freelancers who don't break the rules concerning official responses by humanity.
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1. It's an internal conspiracy, The town leaders are secretly responsible for the creation of the monsters, or perhaps they are the monsters or they've cut some sort of deal with them. Whatever the reason the town leaders don't want the military or the government to get involved for fear that they will expose them. So Instead of calling the military or the National Guard whenever the monster kills someone they Instead cover it up blaming it on some sort of animal attack or serial killer or something .
2. Another option is to give The monsters some sort of mine wipe ability to your monsters that can make people (That are not your heroes ) From remembering them after they leave .
3. But if you want something fairly simple then another easy option Is simple use fear and doubt . People are naturally skeptical specially now days about Fantastical things such as monsters, And people are naturally afraid has been labeled crazy. Your police chief might simply be afraid That if he calls the National Guard and says "Video game monsters are coming to life and killing people send everyone" That he'll end up in a psychiatric facility .
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A random human, Bo, can reload life; whenever he dies, he simply loads back to before he was dead; whenever we catch him, he loads to before we catch him. Bo has been causing some problems and we need him to not be around, either by permanently killing him or preventing him from being able to reload.
As requested, here are the limits of his power
1. When he reloads, he reloads as far back as he wants within the last year
2. When he dies, he automatically reloads to the last week, where he can the reload further
3. He can only reload once a day (barring death reloads)
Assuming an unlimited budget, is there any way to stop Bo?
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Like all stories which involve creating an unstopable force and then beg for a way to stop it, the solution is to take the details and abuse the heck out of them.
His power to reverse time a year is powerful, but it's conscious. That means it has a weakness. His power to reverse time a week upon death is far *far* more powerful because it's triggered by some metaphysical "death" event.
The solution is to find a way to knock him unconscious (take your pick), and then immediately sedate him. Put him in a medically induced coma for at least one week. Then kill him. This will trigger a rollback of one week, but he will be unconscious at that reload point, so he will not be able to enact a conscious reload. He will not be "dead" at that point, so this will not automatically trigger the 1 week rollback from that point. He'll just remain in a coma for 7 days again, and then get killed.
Now the real question is what happens to the rest of the universe when this one person who can magically "roll back" get stuck in a death loop like this. Does the universe keep going? Hopefully the answer is yes because otherwise the universe is 100% screwed... he's going to die eventually, of old age if nothing else.
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Control his information.
If his reloading is conscious (he decides to do it) then you can try to control his information. With an unlimited budget, you basically create an environment for him that works like the Truman Show: a potempkin village where the people around him are actors, his phone and computer are 100% hacked and displaying information you want him to have, and wherever he goes, he sees what you want him to see or is prevented from going there (not captured: prevented).
If his reloading is unconscious, you may have more options. You experiment with him until you know what constitutes "capture" and then you herd him to a place or locale where he isn't technically "captured" -there was no real "moment of capture" because he was traveling -something like the bottom of the Grand Canyon. You seal the exits and leave him be. You might experiment with this reloading as it applies to speed of death. In other words: if he starves to death over the course of several weeks, does it reload to before those weeks? If so, you can just throw him enough food to keep him alive but neutralized.
If none of the above works, you have to analyze HOW he is causing you trouble and deal with that. If he is causing trouble because he gets information out, you block his ability to do that, but otherwise leave him unharmed and un-captured. If he is planting bombs, you follow him constantly and diffuse the bombs, but leave him alone, prevent him from buying materials, etc. You follow him constantly, tail him everywhere he goes, and just stop him from doing specific things in ways that do NOT trigger a "reload".
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Fry his brain before he knows it, but without killing him. Set up a trap to microwave part of his brain or give him a lobotomy. Just enough to not kill him but turn him into a mindless person who does not know that he needs to reload. And then put him in stasis.
The question is, when he dies, does his disembodied mind initiate the reload, or is it an automatic thing? If it is automatic, forget it. He will eventually die and you have no chance of stopping him. If his disembodied mind initiates the reload, but that disembodied mind resets to full mental health at death, again, he will eventually die and you cannot stop him... But with the 1 year time limit you added, hope is reborn. You turn him into a mindless idiot and hold off his death for a year. No matter if he dies, the best he can do is return to being a mindless idiot waiting to die.
If the reload is initiated by his disembodied mind, and that mind remains what it was at death, then you lobotomize the guy and kill him. His after-death mind remains an idiot and does not realize that he needs to reload.
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**Plan A:** set up a failsafe plan that ensures his death at least one year before he actually dies.
If the circumstances are such that even if he reloads one entire year his death is still ensured, he will die. Such a situation could be a virus, a toxin, a disease, an assassination plan with enough contingencies that he can't do anything about it.
**Plan B:** depending on the technology available and depending on the specifics of how he can use his power. Put him to sleep, into a comma, under hypnosis or in a dream or give him brain damage. That way he's effectively out of the game but won't be able to do anything about it because he is either unconscious, dreaming or unable to even decide to go back.
**Plan C:** I don't know if this is even possible but guide him into a depression so bad that even if he dies, he won't want to reload.
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I'm not sure what sort of world you're setting this in, so here are some possible solutions:
* **Matrix-like solution**: Give him a prison that creates the illusion of winning, when it's binding him utterly. Never thinks to escape.
* **HPMOR-like solution**: Total amnesia that makes him forget he has those powers. (Also, turn him into a newt pebble).
* **Star Trek/Stargate-like solution**: Stasis device to freeze him in time.
* **Comic book-like solution**: Another being with at least as much power who curb-stomps him.
One more thing… **paradox**: What happens if he gets an illness, perhaps cancer, that becomes certain to kill him a year before it becomes symptomatic?
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Kill him so many times that he *automatically* reloads to before his conception. Find a way to embed some sort of information into him that travels back with him, like a phrase or something similar, that automatically causes everyone around him to try to kill him.
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If you can't beat him, co-opt him. Persuade him to stay in the present. He has to have a reason: love, family, achievements - something that he would give up by going back and doing over. Maybe he did have something like that in a different timeline and when his back was against the wall he had to give it up with a series of jumpbacks. Once he jumps back in the timeline to before it happens it probably will not happen again. Now he is bitter and bitter demigods are trouble. Talk to him and understand what it was that he lost and how with help he might be able to get it back.
The extreme take on this is a present so good he will not want to leave. He reloads a groundhog-day like repeat of the perfect day, over and over, forever. He causes no more trouble. I think Heaven might be like this.
What a great ending to the story that would be.
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The only plausible solution to this problem per the constraints you have set is to use a super fast acting coma inducing drug.
Even that is not a guarantee though, reloading on capture is not the problem. In that case he is making a mental choice to reset. But if he can also cause a reset on his death that would appear to be a failsafe, like a dead man's switch on heavy equipment.
If he can do that without mentally choosing to do so I don't know that there is any way to stop him at all.
My best suggestion is to drug him and keep him in an induced coma so that he cannot die, but also cannot mentally choose to reset.
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I want to create a magma slime, which has a magical vulnerability to being cooled down and turns to rock easily (like when hit by a water or an ice spell). This rock can then be shattered to gather valuables.
Is it possible that quickly cooled magma/lava would form any valuable materials like gems, or would it only form igneous rocks?
[Answer]
Quickly cooled lava form a naturally occurring glass called [obsidian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian)
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> Obsidian is formed from quickly cooled lava, which is the parent material. Extrusive formation of obsidian may occur when felsic lava cools rapidly at the edges of a felsic lava flow or volcanic dome, or when lava cools during sudden contact with water or air. Intrusive formation of obsidian may occur when felsic lava cools along the edges of a dike.
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> Obsidian is mineral-like, but not a true mineral because, as a glass, it is not crystalline; in addition, its composition is too variable to be classified as a mineral. It is sometimes classified as a mineraloid. Though obsidian is usually dark in color, similar to mafic rocks such as basalt, the composition of obsidian is extremely felsic. Obsidian consists mainly of SiO2 (silicon dioxide), usually 70% by weight or more. Crystalline rocks with a similar composition include granite and rhyolite. Because obsidian is metastable at the Earth's surface (over time the glass devitrifies, becoming fine-grained mineral crystals), obsidian older than Miocene in age is rare.
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About its value:
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> Obsidian was valued in Stone Age cultures because, like flint, it could be fractured to produce sharp blades or arrowheads in a process called knapping. Like all glass and some other naturally occurring rocks, obsidian breaks with a characteristic conchoidal fracture. It was also polished to create early mirrors.
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A notorious use of obsidian blade was as cutting edge in [macuahuitl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl)
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> The macuahuit was a common weapon used by the Aztec military forces and other cultures of central Mexico. It was noted during the 16th-century Spanish conquest of the region. [...] It was capable of inflicting serious lacerations from the rows of obsidian blades embedded in its sides. These could be knapped into blades or spikes, or into a circular design that looked like scales.
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> The macuahuitl was sharp enough to decapitate a man. According to an account by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of Hernán Cortés's conquistadors, it could even decapitate a horse
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# A minor frame challenge: You're not looking for gems that might form as it dies, but gems that it reasonably might have
Diamonds, Peridot, Garnets, I think Rubies and Sapphires as well all form in the mantle, and are brought to the surface by volcanic activity. Your magma elemental could easily do the same.
There's no reason to limit yourself to just "minerals that form from cooling magma" though snowflake obsidian and others can be very cool
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Going by scientific studies of lava cooling, large crystals are formed when lava cools slowly. Slowly cooled lava/magma becomes granite, while quickly cooled lava becomes basalt.
So, a quickly-cooled body of lava would not be expected to form large crystals, much less large, valuable crystals, unless they were already within the body, due to having a higher melting point.
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Real world example: [pillow lava](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillow_lava)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LcUtX.gif)
(gif from Richard Pyle via [USGS](https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vsc/glossary/pillow_lava.html), longer and slightly higher-res clip available on [internet archive](https://archive.org/details/pillow_lava_480), full documentary "Where Pele meets the Sea" is available for free online if you search)
That's an underwater eruption of lava in the ocean, so it gets cooled extremely quickly, whilst the inside cools slower and remains molten for longer. Might be a good model for the motion of your beastie whilst it is under attack.
The skin of the pillow lava is glassy, because crystal grains don't have time to grow large and the pressure of the extruding magma underneath prevents the formation of actual large chunks of glass because the cooling crust is being continually flexed and heated. Unless your magma monster stays absolutely still whilst you cool it, you're unlikely to get nice macroscopic chunks of glassy stuff like obsidian, but more like chunks of basalt.
Gem formation is a complex topic in itself, but suffice to say you don't find a lot of gems in volcanic eruptions. Stuff like [kimberlite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberlite) (a famously good material for finding diamonds in) forms deep in the mantle under considerable heat and pressure and over geologically significant periods of time, not over a few minutes or hours of conflict on the surface. Of course, animate molten rock monster don't exist in the real world either, so if you want them to be diamond piñatas then no-one can reasonably stop you.
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> Would it be possible that quickly cooled magma/lava would form any valuable materials like gems
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No, gemstones form in a lot of ways but never by cooling lava. However it may have 'eaten' some adventurers and have some ceramic false teeth floating in it, or gold, or as many gems as you want. It depends if it incorporates gems etc,. into it's body after ingesting/absorbing them. Which is totally up to how you want your story to go.
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While normal slimes are regularly depicted as homogeneous blobs, magma slimes are much more complicated internally. They have several internal organs that filter various materials from their bodies.
For example:
* Magma slime gizzards use internally formed diamonds (formed from carbon under heat and pressure) to grind up absorbed materials to be further digested.
* Their gallbladders/livers/kidney equivalents remove the copper, silver, or gold melted from various adventurers coins they have ingested.
* Certain magical items that are resistant to fire are not destroyed by being absorbed and are instead sealed into cyst like cavities inside the slime.
These hidden treasures aren't obvious when killing the slime as the majority of their bodies do solidify into various rocks, but a good strike with a hammer will reveal the inner treasures. Older larger slimes will naturally have absorbed more material and have more internal treasures.
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I'm making a character that keeps their books stored in their many large mouths. Thing is, it's a medieval setting and I'm not sure how the book would be made to survive being in such an environment.
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Writing with iron-gall ink on vellum has survived more than a thousand years of semi-sheltered storage; the combination and some of its properties are responsible for much of our detail knowledge of the pre-Renaissance period of European history.
Vellum is a special kind of lightweight leather; the skin is scraped very thin (removing the flesh side), then dampened and pressed flat before being trimmed to fit the required page size. Because it's cured and mostly collagen, it's very resistant to time.
Iron-gall ink is made from *copperas* -- an ancient name for ferrous sulfate -- and oak galls, which contain gallic acid. The final ink is brown-black, quite permanent -- and because it contains a small amount of sulfuric acid, it penetrates the vellum skin and literally etches itself into the medium, which makes it remain faintly readable even after the skin has been scraped to erase previous writing (recycling is not a new thing, and vellum was expensive).
These scraped and reused vellum skins with semi-legible older writing are called *palimpsests* and they've been found to contain everything from shopping lists to love letters, still barely visible underneath the newer writing (which might have been a book page, but more often was a newer letter or records document). There are vellum codices (a *codex* is a bound flat-page book, like the ones we use now, so called to distinguish from the scrolls that were still fairly common in the first millennium of the common era) that date from as far back as late Roman times and are still legible, and a book that was intended to last would still be made from vellum as late as the 17th century.
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# Many!
Let's start simple:
## Fabric, yarn & String
You can actually use fabric to hold texts, by embroidery. As an alternative, you might actually just do knots in string, getting you the Inca-Script. Some yarns are very resistant to moisture and wet surroundings.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VkhDI.png)
## Bamboo strips
Did you know that "the art of war" was not written on paper but on strips of bamboo? With the right ink, the text was perfectly waterproof, and bamboo can be stored in moist environments for a long time, though not indefinitely. With the wrong inks, the writings would wear off over time. The following picture is a copy from the 18th century:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/feGkt.png)
## Wax/clay tablets
Romans used wax tablets (with a wood backing) for short-term notes. These are water-safe, and you can inscribe them with a piece of wood or specialized stylus, as seen on this picture of a Roman Tabula.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0ZI4Z.png)
In a related fashion, clay can be used. It has an upside and a downside: the upside is, that once it dried, the tablet can be burned and thus preserved forever. The downside is, that unless it is dried and burned, it isn't necessarily waterproof.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mPWYN.png)
## Metal sheets
Thin metal sheets, about a tenth of a millimeter to a quarter of a millimeter, can be imprinted on akin to a wax or clay tablet and result in very clear texts. If the sheets are made from copper, gold, or silver, they won't corrode. Technically, this is called embossing, and if the metal is too thin, they can become rather fragile.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tlOW5.png)
Thicker metal sheets, about half a millimeter or more, can be engraved and possibly more easily stored than an imprinted metal sheet. Those books would be much thicker and writing in them takes a skilled engraver, but they can stay extremely long.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Sxcq.png)
## Leather/Parchment/Vellum
Leather, parchment, and vellum are themselves water resistant to some degree, though the thicker the better in this case. There are many inks that can be used on them that are waterproof. Among them is iron-gall ink, so you could use strong acids or possibly even tattoo thick pieces.
## Wood/stone tablets
Wood is somewhat waterproof, and has been used to engrave whole stories. Likewise, stone can be carved with letters, which takes longer but is more impervious to water, if the right stone is used. However, it's much heavier.
## Metal casting
Using a clay or stone mold, whole texts can be cast into metal slabs. Depending on the skill of the caster, these plaques can be as thin as two millimeters. Their backside could be used to engrave commentary even.
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If you are not bound to use paper or parchment, your character can use books made with carved stones, fired clay or bones.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oa3dV.jpg)
As additional bonus stones and clay could help the character in chewing their food.
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# [Etching](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etching)
This technique dates back to the 1500's, and creates relatively permanent metal prints that can last for millennia. You basically cover a sheet of metal with wax, and scratch off the wax with a needle where you want your ink to show, then wash the whole thing in acid, and the acid eats through the metal wherever the wax was scratched, then the wax is removed leaving your image on a smooth metal plate. Being metal, it's waterproof, and you can get very detailed text and images. Etching can be used to make rubbings onto paper, so it's useful for making multiple copies. The oldest master prints in the world are etched metal. Many thin metal sheets can be bound together into a book, which while thicker than a modern paper book would still be easily recognized as a book to anyone familiar with them. Go a bit later into the 1800 and you have [**Lithography**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithography), which is a similar technique but on thin sheets of stone. In a fantasy setting, it's not unreasonable to imagine that lithography could have been invented a century or two earlier to fit into your "middle ages" time period.
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I have a magic system with two types of magic: black and white.
Black is a liquid that can be frozen/condensed into a slightly tougher than ice, crystalline solid, that can be refined into pointy things through practice in bending. Demons and some humans can control black magic, which was created by the god of Void.
White magic is a gas/powder that can be condensed into solid objects when controlled. Unlike black magic, this is more of a smooth metal type solid, and, kinda like black magic, through practice one can refine it into a sharp object. Angels and some humans can control white magic, which was created by the god of Holy.
There is also a third god that I don't really have much of a use for other than that he created life and the Earth.
So:
* Black is liquid, white is gaseous/powdery
* Black is crystalline, white is metallic.
* Black can't be sharp, and white can't be pointy.
The problem:
* There is no limit on bending. The only limits are that a demon has to bring black magic into heaven to use black magic; they can't summon it there. An angel has to bring white magic into hell for the same reason.
* This means that someone could just summon a pike behind their enemy and stab them anytime they want without the enemy realizing.
* I don't want to just limit white and black magic to a certain level because I *love* the idea of someone summoning a massive block of black magic and swinging it around, before slamming it into the ground causing shockwaves, or someone summoning a massive white magic construct and having it circle them, forcing whoever's fighting them to parkour and dodge the constructs and blades, and shields.
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An easy explanation would be that it’s not just the physical world you’re dealing with. Your willpower must be able to reach out from your body to perform the action you wish. Magic is a physical manifestation of Will, but for there to be magic first there must be Will.
If someone else with magic is standing in your way it is trivial (unless they’re distracted by avoiding, say, a swarm of sharp things) for them to exert some of their Will to prevent yours from flanking them. So too can you prevent them from manifesting effects behind you. If your ability to project raw will drops off quickly with distance then ‘getting behind’ someone is impossible. Their will will always beat yours before you can manifest an effect.
So instead you focus your will near/behind you, create a giant war hammer out of your favoured magic and swing it overhead to crush them. Or make that pike and hurl it at your enemy. You can give it shape and energy while it’s near you and your Will is uncontested, but trying to do the same near your enemy just opens you up to them stopping you dead and then hurling a cloud of shuriken at your face. Constructs, once imbued with your Will, maintain themselves, but controlling them directly is much harder if an enemy is between you and them performing the magical equivalent of electronic warfare.
TLDR: raw will is easy to disrupt at distance.
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**Magic is environment dependent.**
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> /The only limits are that a demon has to bring black magic into heaven
> to use black magic; they can't summon it there. An angel has to bring
> white magic into hell for the same reason/
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Riff on this. Heaven and hell are the absolutes. In between there is variability in the amounts of black and white available. One could consider it like magic altitude - there are high places which are not quite heaven but in which white magic is much easier to come by than black. There are low places which are not quite hell but where black magic is easier to come by than white. These places might be the way they are because of things that happened in the past - a saint's tomb, a great massacre etc. Or by chance.
A high magical altitude place might gradually shape itself because of the availability of white magic - the geology, plant and animal life will gradually come to reflect the presence of white magic and dearth of black magic, and vice versa.
Your black magic wielder with the earthshaking black magic wallop will be doing this in a low magic altitude place. The black magician in such a place will be cocky and drunk with black magic. White magic wielders opposing him will know they are at a disadvantage in such a place where they will feel sick
and weak, and so might be reluctant to show up. Or if they must, they plan for that disadvantage.
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Two major magic systems come to mind: the Force from Star Wars and your obvious inspiration source, bending from Avatar: the legend of Aang/Korra.
In both cases, there is no hard limit to the amount of magic one can put into their surroundings. The bending is limited by one's skill, self-confidence and concentration, and to some extent genetics.
So your characters don't accidentally change the orbit of the planet with their magic because in their minds, they believe they can only deal with so much substance at a time, and only for substance at some distance. Supreme acts of opening a can of whoop-ass require supreme concentration or supreme plot.
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As to why wizards don't sodomize each other with sneaky magic lances, here are some possible reasons:
* [They are not rogues.](https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Rogues_Do_it_from_Behind)
* It takes time to form the lance, and only someone really oblivious wouldn't notice. So unless your world has smartphones to distract people, such attacks would not be efficient.
* Honor system. Our world has a lot of conflict, with people murdering each other at alarming rates. We too have ways to sneak attack people. How come we get more stabbings and shots to the head and chest than to the bums? Think of it.
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so there are three gods. two of them are useful, the last one just exists because they created some shit and he contributes nothing else. what if the third god balanced magic? and I don't mean like limiting magic to a cap level, I mean just balance it between people. so that way someone who is a master of white magic or black magic can't easily overpower an apprentice. the third god could be there to just make it impossible for someone to summon a white or black pike behind their enemies and shove it up their ass. you don't have to limit it, mostly because no matter how much you limit it, it will always be easy to just summon a pike behind their enemies back, but also because you just have to make the third god make it impossible for people to shove stuff up peoples ass. how? they're a god, why ask how? they just do.
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A practitioners willpower (or summoning ability or whatever) is divided into three main components: force, precision and control. In order to increase one of these, you must take away from one or both of the others.
**Force**
The simplest component, essentially the willpower required to draw sufficient magic to get the object here and get it moving (outward from the caster). Massive objects require a lot of force, leaving very little left over for precision and control. The more force is applied the faster the object will travel, relative to it's mass. Lighter objects can move very fast with only a moderate amount of force. A large boulder can only be hurled straight at an enemy. A non-projectile object, such as a sword or shield only requires enough force to bring it into existence, allowing for far more precision.
**Precision**
By giving up mass, more willpower can be put into the exact shape of the object. The more complicated the object, the more precision is needed. Summoning multiple unique objects is additive, so summoning a sword and shield takes the sum total of their respective precision. Summoning duplicates of the same object is logarithmic, so a swarm of shurikens requires far less than their individual sum total. Summoning a swarm of shurikens requires far more precision than a swarm of pebbles, since each individual object is more complex. (Note: when practical, users will often summon small throwing weapons with minimal force then throw the object themselves, allowing more willpower to be allocated to precision.)
**Control**
Control is the most complex component, allowing the user to manipulate the orientation and direction of objects, relative to mass. A spear shot at an enemy doesn't do much good when it flies end over end and hits them sideways. Control allows the user to orient the weapon correctly and control its flight. Controlling multiple objects individually is multiplicative, with each object doubling the amount of control needed. Controlling multiple objects in a group is logarithmic, with each object requiring less than the one before. A straight line requires minimal control (especially when precision is used to create a more aerodynamic weapon, like an arrow, that will fly straight on it's own. Getting a sword to fly straight, stabby end forward, is much more difficult). Control can also be used to redirect the path of an object or hold it in the air. Small adjustments don't take much, a steady arc takes more and stopping an object and sending it in a new direction entirely requires a lot of control (note: creating a steady arc of small, simple shards that circle around the caster as a unified group is very advanced, but still much simpler than controlling 2-3 knives that individually attack multiple enemies at once, which is considered to be one of the most difficult abilities possible). Counteracting gravity and levitating an object requires a moderate amount, proportional to the objects mass. Control is also used to specify the location at which the object appears. The farther away, the more control is needed. Summoning a pike directly behind your enemy with perfect orientation and position will likely take too much precision and control to have any left over to move it to the...correct location. Using less force and precision to make a small rock, however, might be quite effective in a different way ;)
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While others fiddle with the mechanical aspects of a versatile bit of magic, this answer will strive to deal with the personal aspect of it.
A magic system requires not only the power and the rules surrounding it, but people to use it. Every person might be theoretically able to do everything that the magic can do, but it does not mean that they have the ability in practice.
To us that create it, the idea that you can create weapons behind somebody and launch them might be obvious, but it might not be an obvious or easy thing to the people of the world.
**People Specialize**
Just because it is theoretically plausible to do something, does not mean that everyone can do it. Polearm sodomy is a pretty specific skill and one that really only has the purpose of assassination or slapstick. Even then, there are likely better ways to do it with enough creativity. Also, not everyone has the mindset to summon polearms out of nowhere and throw them at people. It takes a certain kind of hero to do that.
That typed, you will have the assassin that fights by trying to launch weapons at blind spots, creating distractions, and otherwise using ambush tactics to win in a fight. Likewise, there will be someone that creates a giant golem to fight with while they stay preferably out of sight. On a more mundane front, you will have people that put White or Black magic to use in mundane pursuits such as farming or blacksmithing.
Most people will figure out that they are good at one or two things, then hone it into something that they can use on a regular basis. Some will choose to generalize, and they will be dangerous for the ability to do more, even if it isn't as masterful as what others that specialize in it can do.
For an idea, look at the secondary cast of Naruto -- chakra there can basically do anything. While there are a few set "basic skills", the characters have their own specialties and generally do not stray from it, though they may elaborate on them. Affinity and ability play into this, but rare is the character that is more of a dedicated generalist in the chakra arts there. Likewise, Hunter x Hunter is similar, with basic techniques that everyone can in theory use, and a personal skill that a character develops then elaborates on as time goes on. However, a character tends not to create a second all-new skill. They can however, apply the one they develop in various ways.
**Affinities**
Related to specialization above, people might have an inborn ability to a certain type of magic (white or black) as well as a certain way of using it. Related to the idea above that people will gravitate to a small subset of magical ability, this actually codifies that into a restriction of the system.
Depending on your desire, it might be possible to learn a magic that lies outside your affinities. Alternatively, it might be next to impossible to do so.
In summary: While the *system* can do almost anything, a *person* can't.
**People are Uncreative**
Avatar's bending is quite versatile if you think about it -- one can achieve a lot with control over one of the classical four elements. But if you watch the show, a good amount of the bending is similar to each other when seen in the show. Of course, there is only a small subset of the bending world shown, so what lies outside the told story could be different.
If your black and white magic is only passed down through tutelage from teacher to student or master to apprentice, then those students might not really think about using this magic in different ways. People will get used to the standard forms, and build a personal style based around it. Only a few might experiment and try to create something new and/or powerful as a personal skill.
This will go doubly so if the authorities that teach magic can arbitrarily decide what is taught and/or allowed to be known. Not that does not stop secret assassination techniques, but they won't be common because they won't be taught. Also, formalized teaching might start by teaching self-defense and shielding before moving on to attack skills which means that by the time these people grow up, a full-body defense might be a normal thing.
This is not necessarily a sleight against the people of your world -- it's just an application of the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
**Personal Ability**
Obviously not all people are created equally. Some will have more power, while others more control. Not everybody will be actually capable of doing everything, and most of this can be increased by training should somebody actually want to.
If willpower is needed to gather and shape magic, then there will be some people that can smash with large blocks of power while some could only create a single personal item to use/launch.
Capacity to wield magic can be another factor. Since it looks like this style of magic works by manipulating a physical substance, the amount that somebody can use is a personal skill. One that people can probably train to be better at.
Ability to output magic is a third potential parameter -- how much can a caster wield at a time. Somebody that can keep an item conjured for hours will have a different experience than someone that can create a giant golem but only for five minutes at a time.
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# Shaping can only be done at near touch distance
It's an easy fix. You don't have to mould by hand but, say, 5cm (2in) away from your hands the material takes the shape you want. This means people can't just manifest powers anywhere but doesn't hinder the actual manifestation itself. You can have the shaping be as fast as you need it - it can take seconds, it could require a bit more time, perhaps. The important thing is to just be at closer range.
***Animated GIFs used as examples are spoliered just because they tend to flashing a lot***
This plays nicely with common depictions of magic where somebody would run their hand over something and reshape it
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or even materialise an object seemingly behind their palm as it moves
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Tweaks and variations are possible depending on need. Some examples:
* The thing being shaped can have a transitive property. You can grab a sword and then shape the rest of the blade, for example without running your hand over it. Gives more leeway but still prevents just producing spikes anywhere.
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* The range of the shaping can be changed. Perhaps that requires more concentration, so you can manifest powers few metres away but it's exceptionally hard to surprise somebody with this. Or perhaps it requires expertise that few ever attain.
* Propagation of shaping to reach behind somebody or more generally *afar* is slow (at least enough to react) and visible (at least enough to be noticed). The magic has to travel there, so you can't just surprise somebody with this, even if you're able to manifest powers pretty much anywhere.
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While looking over the question I realized I had a limitation in a magic system I've developed that might work well for you, but I see Joe Bloggs has already listed half the idea behind my limitation. Ah well, I'll share anyway.
## Area of Dominion
An area of dominion is a sort of unconscious defense every living creature (or maybe just intelligent creatures, or maybe just ones capable of magic, whatever works for your world) has against magic. Basically, within that area, the creature's control over their magic is maximized, and an enemy's control over magic is reduced greatly or nullified entirely. It extends in all directions to a distance (a foot? a few feet?) based on (willpower? Magical might? Whatever works for you).
This mainly stops tactics such as manifesting a spike/razor inside an opponent's brain/heart and just instantly killing them.
Constructs do not fall apart within an opponent's dominion, but they cannot be altered or controlled. So the basic idea is to simply create your construct outside the dominion, and then throw it/swing it into the dominion of an enemy and let inertia take care of the rest. You can have "homing" projectiles (that are just you controlling them to follow the opponent), but once they enter a dominion they continue on the fixed path based on their momentum/aerodynamics, giving opponents a chance to dodge, with more margin for error the bigger their dominion.
Larger constructs do offer some level of control within an enemy dominion, as you can simply hold the construct by the parts of not within the enemy's dominion. Things like chains/ropes could also offer control, but either way it's not to the same level as you'd have outside the dominion, and perhaps vulnerable to being broken without you being able to reinforce the construct.
When two opponents get closer to each other, you could have the dominions either push up against each other, perhaps with the stronger dominion being more resistant to being pushed back because of their initial size or just a certain factor of hardiness. This gives stronger users the option to simply walk closer to their opponents to deny them space where they can manifest their magic, while allowing themselves to manifest/control constructs closer to their opponent, making them harder to block/dodge. Or they could simply cancel each other out.
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Going from that, I can imagine people carrying around bottles or vials of (very concentrated) magic, and using the magic from there. You can't just make a magic spike appear behind (or, even more broken, inside) someone's butt simply because there is no (sufficiently concentrated) magic there to be handled in any way.
This also creates the possibility of actually allowing what you wanted to avoid, if someone leaves a vial or a puddle of magic hidden somewhere. Imagine laying magic in an area as a trap that you can use against your opponents. Maybe they can also use it, if they see the hidden vials.
Imagine someone ingesting magic. Ok, please don't imagine that.
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To expand on @Frozenstep answer about the dominion idea : you should read the story The Zombie Knigth Saga by Frost.
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> The twist is that the range is relative between people : the more powerful you are, the more you can materialize near someone. There is an instance of someone materializing a spike directly inside someone else mouth, but it's made clear that it's because of the power difference between the two.
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**Option 1: More deadly magic takes longer to cast**
Sure, someone can summon a pike behind their enemy, but that form of insta-kill would have to have a greater cost to the caster (more energy, longer time, etc.). If it takes too much time it can be countered, and/or if the cost is too great then they might be 'out of mana' so to speak for the rest of the encounter.
And if one magic-wielder is so powerful that they actually are able to cast these spells with minimal cost, then so be it - that's what makes them so strong!
**Option 2: Forbidden magic**
I don't like this option as much, because I can't imagine followers of the God of Void concerning themselves with what is/isn't allowed, but your problem could be resolved with a concept similar to 'Unforgivable Curses' in Harry Potter. I'm not sure this would apply to you since your spells are more generic / free-form, but perhaps using something so deadly that it can't be countered would be considered 'unforgivable'.
I personally think option 1 is pretty good - I can't imagine that all magic-wielders would be able to easily summon things that would kill someone immediately - that would be left to only the most elite humans / demons, at which point your limitation is only by difficulty level and can be achieved with enough practice.
I hope this provides some value and good luck!
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Evidence exists that Hymenopteran eusocial insects possess higher social and logical intelligence than most other insects (i.e. facial recognition in wasps, limited self-awareness in ants), suggesting that the two traits have some correlation, which inspires this question.
I am working on a species of eusocial creature that supposedly evolved from a Hymenopteran-like arthropod. An increase in size and body mass allows the species a degree of higher intelligence. However, the creatures still retain their strict biological caste system with single reproducing queens and large numbers of specialized (and expendable) non-reproductive workers, who act only in the interest of the colony.
Colonies rarely cooperate with one another, and most of the species’ lifespan is spent collaborating only within their own hive, which (I think) would limit the development of communication and exchange of ideas that would result in greater intelligence. Also, the expense of growing larger creatures with complex brains may conflict with a biological system that constantly produces/replaces hundreds of short-lived, self-sacrificing workers.
Could it stand to reason that a eusocial caste system described above could survive a spike in intelligence?
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# TL;DR: Yes, it already exists.
Note: @Daron pointed out that variations in insect development actually are called castes. I had the misconception that the original question was attempting to anthropomorphize non-biologically enforced castes, but the entomologists already did that for him.
There are a couple of cases you have to consider, based on speciation. In the first the two creatures belong to different species, for instance humans and dogs. We've basically bred dogs to be subservient, and even if they achieved human-level intelligence, we kill off any dogs that try to get above their place. When a dog bites a human, the dog is killed. That's a hard rule of dog breeding.
In that case, your question is, "Is there an intelligence level at which dogs will no longer accept their subservience?" This is a serious question. The smarter dogs are more teachable, but they're also more prone to deciding that they don't need to obey you after you've left the room.
In this case I believe it can be maintained, but only at the cost of increasing cruelty as the subjugated race gains intelligence.
The other case is where some chemical or physical process adjusts the phenotype during development. This is what happens when a worker honey bee is fed royal jelly. I don't know the specifics of it, but it makes the bee capable of laying eggs, but less capable of foraging for food.
The question here is whether or not the workers would chafe at not being able to lay eggs, and seek out a method of inducing the development later in life.
Humans are currently running into a similar issue with our male/female caste system. We socially assign roles based on whether a person has expressed male or female secondary sexual characteristics. All one race, but we decide that those with boobs are less capable of making authoritative decisions.
With that example in mind, then, yes, an intelligent species can evolve with such a caste system, because we have done it. Humans like to think that they're too intelligent for such things, but that's mostly hubris on our part.
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A lot depends on the “type” of intelligence you are talking about. Human intelligence will be the easiest to write, but you are essentially creating insect-shaped humans for you story. You could always break the mold and explore other types of intelligence. For example, your bugs could have the ability to recognize usefulness in potential applications. They find a prey species they enjoy eating, recognize it thrives near certain plants, transplant said plants to near their colony, and have domesticated animals after a few generations. There wouldn’t need to be any actual communication, just recognition and mimicry. Copying what others did before you works fine. There are limitations to this type of intelligence, but it can allow for rapid environmental adaptation without the need for communication or self-awareness.
I think one issue you are having is that you are thinking about it from the perspective of a human. Try and shift your viewpoint to that of your intelligent insects. You are born into a caste system which has existed in similar form for millions of years. This caste system is literally programmed into your DNA. Fighting against your ingrained genetic programming would indicate insanity, or some other genetic deficiency. Societal culture would likely work to encourage the continuation of such a system. As your insects grow up, they are taught that this is the way the world works. This becomes an ingrained worldview backed by genetic drive. Your world works this way from the moment you are born, so why would you fight it? The world operating differently from what you expect would cause significant stress.
This doesn’t mean that your intelligent insects are unable to conceive of what life would be like if they had been born differently. A worker might wax poetic about how much he/she could accomplish in service to the hive if he/she lived as long as the queen. They could ponder the meaning of life, and have their religion provide the answer that service to the hive is the highest form of holy worship. An intelligent mind might even ask questions about other hives, and if they have similar beliefs. That is the thing about intelligence, it lets us explore beyond what we can see immediately around us. It can also help lead to longer lifespans as risky behavior is recognized and methods of decreasing the risk are determined.
One issue with a short lifespan, is the limiting of time needed to learn complex information and/or skills. This is not an issue in an organism operating on instinct, as there is little/no need to learn information. It becomes an issue when you are trying to advance technology beyond simple pointed sticks and clubs. How can you teach a being with a lifespan of a few years enough to let it improve upon what it has learned? A stick might be better for digging as it can be replaced when it breaks. Adding a hard rock to the end of the stick improves it a bit. Eventually you run into a wall where the information needed to make a steel shovel is more than can be learned before an organism dies. It is hard to imagine all of those steps being taken with organisms, who each know a small portion of the process, resulting in something complex. This would lead to your bugs turning levers for the good of the colony and the results being starships. You can hand wave this by cheating and giving your organisms eidetic memories which allow them to instantly memorize anything they see and hear, but that is tacky.
As for communication and cooperation, intelligence can allow organisms to overcome knee-jerk instinctive reactions. A worker who finds a wounded worker from another colony could overcome an urge to kill the “enemy” worker, as it is no threat. Intelligence can also mean empathy. Feeling bad about the condition of the injured worker could lead to the uninjured worker providing aid. This aid might open doors and allow for the exchange of ideas.
A lot depends on the purpose of your story. Your bugs will need to have the type of intelligence which is best suited for getting the message of your story across to the reader. If the purpose is to simply explore this new world and the implications of it, then pick the aspects of intelligence you find most interesting to explore. If you want to examine overcoming genetic drives, then make those aspects of your species a primary driving factor and pit your main characters against them. They might want to kill the neighboring colony, but if doing so will result in their own destruction then that is not an option regardless of their feelings. The world exists as a medium for telling your story in the way you intend. All of its aspects should reflect that.
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## Long-lived, long-distance forager honeybees
I'm not 100% sure I've understood your question, but I'll take any opportunity to go on about bees, so.
Honeybees are eusocial insects capable of [abstract thought](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32438324/), [mental navigation maps](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24889633/) and [social exchange of complex foraging information](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22864869/). One aspect that many of these papers don't necessarily highlight is these experiments are all carried out of *foraging* bees.
The caste system in honeybees is peculiar compared to, for example, ants, in that all bees except queens and drones go through the various castes as they age - starting out close to the "core" of the colony with jobs such as tending to the eggs and pupae, and then moving closer to the surface, handling food and waste, then guarding the boundaries of the hive, until, at the end of their life, they start to leave the colony to forage. Foragers actually [grow new neural pathways](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25784170/) in preparation for this step. In particular, they build up their mushroom bodies[1] which are the learning and memory structures of the insect brain and generally considered the "higher order processing" computational centre in invertebrates.
But forager bees are doomed. They typically only live 2-3 weeks after leaving the hive. During this time, they are able to feed themselves on nectar while on a forage (they consume a stupendous amount of energy!) but they are still shackled to the hive for other nutrients, since the ability to digest protein is restricted to a specific, hive-bound caste. Interestingly, if the hive experiences a collapse, some foragers will move back in and "revert" to the indoor types[2] that have been depleted; if they do, then their life expectation can increase to even several months.
As they reach the end of their brief outdoor life, their brains rebuilding themselves for the beauty and complexity of the natural world, these foragers become more and more [adapted to the outside world](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31043647/). Their accumulated experience makes it easier for them to navigate and their foraging strategies more effective. I wonder what would happen if they didn't have to die so soon?
Maybe the landscape that your bees forage on requires very long trips, so the foragers can't reliably come back to the hive between forages. Maybe this leads them to retain their own protein-digesting enzymes. Maybe, with time and nutrients, their brain can keep growing, the pruning of experience offset by fresh new connections. Maybe the additional range they gain leads them to develop intermediate "cache stations" for pollen. Maybe these become local hubs where foragers who have ventured far afield waggle dance to the new explorers about their adventures. Maybe they compete to gain "followers" - more foragers on the same route means a better chance at an unbroken supply line back to the hive. Because as much as they know that they can never go back, the hive is still home.
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[1] yeah, not a good name, I mean they are very vaguely mushroom-shaped if you squint, I guess
[2] I can't seem to find the ref to this, I wonder if it's a beekeeper myth? But my pubmed-fu is rubbish lately.
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One example of an intelligent species that keeps a caste system is humanity. Over large parts of the globe and huge spans of history, women where pushed to work in the domestic sphere, and where often pushed out of certain castes (warfighting beeing the prime example). Never uncontested, never to 100% effect but the push was and is there. But that's not what you are asking about.
I think your concept faces several big questions:
* How did it come about?
* What is the relationship between queen and hive?
* How does it work energy wise?
I think Otties answer contains an excellent idea that I will borrow, distort, and build upon - long lived foragers who learn and aquire some intelligence. At one point in their life, they become to frail to go on forageing, language developed partially through imparting experiences on the younger flock. The elders (as I will call them from now on) mostly sit at the nest. Not every member, not even a majority, reaches this age. If need be the elders allow some culling among their young ones (and possibly among themselves). This is one solution to the energy puzzle. The other one is that these beasts are very efficient foragers and activly terraform (to a greater extent than even beavers or certain ants do so) their environments.
Because all worker castes are essetnially the same animal they share the same capability to learn and think. Also, more brainpower turns out to be useful in nest building or rearing the young (for example only foragers *need* language but the language skills develop faster when the specialized nursing cast also has language capability). So at first, the more capable brain is about as useful as male nipples for these non-foraging castes, but once language enters the game, these capabilties become useful and are selected for.
The queen is not necesarily as intelligent, because laying eggs does not require much thinking. If intelligent, they could be one of the elders. Or they would be the egg laying machine, adminstered by the elders.
In this answer I treat the elders as a homogenous group. What social structures they give themselves is pretty open. There could be ruling clique of relativly youg, strong elders or even one strong'man'. There could be an athenian style democracy. There could of course be a roughly egalitarian society, this is even likely. One thing that was very important in early civilizations, possession (or right to use land) that could be passed down through the generations, would play no role in a hive. It will be an interesting question what, then, the chief conflicts ithin such a society will be about.
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Intelligence is always tricky... as humans, we tend to think of it as something it isn't. You imagine that there is this being (and that it's an individual), and that it can communicate with you and hold something you'd call a meaningful conversation. That it has a self-awareness and some innate drive to do *things* some of which at least won't pertain to its survival, prosperity, and reproductive success. You know, that it has hobbies or curiosity, that it responds to novel stimuli in a manner that would make sense to you (or at least could make sense to you if you tried to make sense of it).
That's not intelligence. It's a trait or group of traits we'd call "human-like" for lack of a better term.
If we explore a much more limited definition of intelligence, it might be helpful in answering your question. Imagine a biological organism (or member of a super-organism in your case). It has a large and developed brain/brain-analog (some organ that computes). This species is capable of high technology or will be capable of it soon (in the real world, ants invented agriculture 4 million years ago, so even mindless beings can have *some* technology). This species responds to novel threats and environments at a speed beyond which evolution is capable of.
The species very well might have metallurgy or something comparably remarkable (something humans might be envious of). It has or soon will have machines capable of multiplying work (levers, pulleys, etc). It has or soon will have machines capable of performing work (steam engines, electric motors, etc). If humans were to show up with a "take me to your leader" sign held in their hands, they'd recognize it as a situation that has never occurred before and one in which a quick mindless reaction would be undesirable.
Are these beings even individuals? Would they think of themselves as conscious like we do? If communication was established, would they think of consciousness as a valid concept at all? Would they bother to communicate beyond that which was necessary to solve communication? Are they capable of deliberate deception? Are they capable of imagining a need for deception?
If you sat down with one and tried to have a conversation and supposing it responded, would it even seem intelligent to you or would it be like talking to malfunctioning software?
Such an intelligence as this would allow the species to deal with novel threats (or even form symbioses perhaps). It would allow them ever greater levels of technology. And it wouldn't interfere with the traits that we like to think of as "hive-mind" in our favorite fictions. I assert that this isn't incompatible with your species and its biological caste system.
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In a Eusocial organism, selection operates at the hive level†, and it's at that level you should be looking for intelligence. It's not that every worker is going to be intelligent, but that the hive itself is. That could operate through specialised thinker castes, it could operate through emergent intelligence in the collective (think how ant scent trails work, allowing the hive to find complex near-optimal solutions while each ant is individually operating only simple rules), or it could be that only the Queen is really high intelligence. However it works, if you have high intelligence then hives are going to be communicating with each other, and that communication is going to be key to both the development of intelligence and the development of technology and culture.
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†In the main, but there's actually a whole load of really interesting evolutionary conflict cases here which can undo eusociality but they're not relevant to the question.
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Yes most certainly, you can't entirely get away from your biology.
Look at humans, the gender binary can be look at as soft biological cast system. While much of the gender divide is social, yet it has a biological component which is why the role for men and women in different societies are so similar dispite differences in distance, environment, culture and religion.
Even today this still effects us this is why female presidential candidates have such difficult competing against there male counter parts.
Let's not forget pheromones, in most hives the queen omittes pheromones to control the hive. If the hive were more intelligent they might be able to figure out that the queen is controlling them, but that doesn't mean they will be able to do anything about it.
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A hag is a witch deeply entrenched in the art of dark magic. This kind of magic comes from experimenting with forces beyond our reality. Over the years, her abilities and spells grow in power. However, her physical form also changes, evolving into a higher life form. At the initial stages, she retains some resemblance to a humanoid form. As time goes on, it grows in size and all traces of humanity slowly vanish as she begins to resemble something close to an eldritch creature. Misshapen, formless, with tentacles, mouths, or limbs,etc, or what have you. Every new form is different from hag to hag.
Although powerful, they are not at the top of the ladder in terms of scale, and there are the authorities, who work in tandem with good covens, who seek to hunt then down and exterminate them. Some of these hags run the equivalent of fortune 500 companies, or are politicians in positions of power. Therefore, they must conceal their identity in the public sphere for the times when business must be conducted. Their changing form obviously poses some barriers for them, and must be worked around.
My first thought was some kind of glamour spell, which allows then to put on a false disguise to communicate with others. However, this doesn't take into consideration the size of the individual. A 9 ft (2.7 metre) tall human would be a dead giveaway, not to mention the increased weight of the hag, which perceptive people would notice. Also, there is always a feeling of wrongness that comes from an eldritch creature. They are so anathema to normal life, something from beyond this world and reality itself, that they ooze a sort of corruption that would be picked up by anyone who is in their presence for any length of time, and would figure out that something is wrong.
How can this creature remain in public life without exposing itself?
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**They *don't* hide in public**
The problem with the spells that hide their form is that they can fail. If the people looking for the hag *know* what they are looking for, then eventually the spell will be seen through. Either through supernatural means (there *are* other witches working at this) or maybe through indirect means - finding which person is too heavy or has conspicuous trouble going through doors that are smaller than 9 feet, or otherwise somehow doesn't match their image.
**The hags hide *in private***
The hag should just stay out of cities. Maybe they will go amongst humans for something urgent or maybe if they are needed for something, but the hags should just limit contact with normal humans.
Instead, the hags should just have other humans handle their errands. Normal humans can blend very well with other normal humans. And these minions should be *loyal*, so as not to endanger the hag.
To this effect, a hags should start cults. Magic can help and maybe even brainwashing (even magical one), but a cult can be started even with mundane means. We do have some pretty crazy cults in the real world. Serial killers have led them as well as others. So, the hag doesn't *need* to use magic to start a following.
A cult is pretty loyal once properly trained *and* it can be a self-replenishing resource. If a minion becomes too bothersome, or maybe exposes themselves, then they can be removed via whatever most appropriate way the hag has. The cult can just have recruitment efforts to maintain their numbers.
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The classic approach is for the abomination to have a human representative who acts as a proxy in day to day life. They can then keep their monstrous form hidden behind castle walls, only interacting with that single person who is well compensated for keeping the secret.
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Once a hag starts transitioning, she also starts transitioning out of public life.
If she is running a Fortune 500 company, then her charismatic and loyal heir takes over and becomes more and more of the public face of the company. If she was very much in the public eye prior, then perhaps just have her go on a sabatical or retreat to re-ignite her "creative energies" and have her become an excentric and brilliant recluse.
If she is a politician, then she retires and keeps her connections and funding to keep pressing for whatever political agenda she got in to politics for (Cthulhu 2020 seems a bit too overt).
So, as others have also said, a continued *public* life is not likely something that can be maintained. But that doesn't have to stop her from gathering and exercising her power (whether economic, political, or magical).
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
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The hag's powers extend beyond the feeble perceptions of reality that mere mortals are aware of. She is a higher dimensional creature now and what people see in public is merely the cross section between her higher dimensional form of writhing tentacles and the three dimensions of our reality. To kill the beast, you will have to trick or force the bulk of her mass into our world.
This would be like making a giant bend over so you can stab at it's head. Some chains which reach far enough and are strong enough to contain it will be needed.
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Another possibility is that the Hag has some kind of spell that allows her to use the skin of a human to look like that person and even have the size of that person. Another possibilty is that the hag controls person from her safe hiding spot directly.
Or the glamour is more complex and directly alters the minds of the people seeing the hag so that they don't realize the difference.
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They might be able to hide them selves under a large cloak with a human head rigged up as a puppet, sticking out of the robes. Look up Hiruko from Naruto to see an example of what I mean. The over sized robe would likely look like they had a hunched back, and with her magic rigging up a human head to seem alive seems to fit her character. If it seems to obvious they'd be seen, you could have the puppet pushing a cart where the hag hides beneath goods in the cart.
I think the sense of doom emitted would be generally passed off by people who feel it, as long as she keeps moving. This would allow her to pass from town to town, and remain uncaught by the authorities. Unless they know to look for something like this, it's just an old woman passing through.
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The Elders have a much better understanding about how the universe works than we do, but let's consider that our fledgling science, for all that it has gotten wrong, is right about mass. The problem that the hag-abomination has to deal with is not that she looks horrible and inhuman, but rather that she has grown too big to pass for human. Her magic can easily conceal the tentacles and extra eyes, but her five tonnes of writhing blobbiness cannot easily negotiate human size doorways and low interior ceilings.
The solution requires her to magically divide herself into multiple separate beings, each apparently independent, but all unified under a single will. The spell to do this is old and has surfaced in human history in the biblical references to the demon named [Legion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_(demons)), a single supernatural mind that can inhabit one body or many.
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The hag uses her eldritch powers to possess a normal, non-magical person. With her own corporeal form hidden in the depths of her secure, magical fortress, she goes forth in public in the body of another.
The host may be a victim, overwhelmed by the force of her will and subdued by her magic; or they may be a volunteer from her own coven, who is willing to sacrifice their own body in her service; or maybe she has constructed a flesh golem specifically for this purpose.
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**They use propaganda to controll public perception and live secluded**
Ever read the *Dunwich Horror by HP Lovecraft*? There was an eldritch horror wich hid in public by mostly keeping to itself. It even got away with a lot of odd things in its community, but people simply thought he was unpleasant and eccentric.
Additionally the *Dresden Files by Jim Butcher* might give you a good idea on how to hide supernatural creatures. The magical world has remained hidden by using propaganda, having magic that makes technology malfunction and simply using the widespread disbelief wich is well established in the publics mind. After all if I were to claim that Donald Trump was an eldrich abomination advancing a n ancient doomday scheme I would be ridiculed and thrown into the luny bin. Even if I present some bloomy pictures as proof I would be seen as just another conspiracy nut.
If your hags have existed for a long time in powerful positions they had plenty of time to run success misinformation campaigns and shape the publics perception. Should someone discover things for real they are killed, bribed, or recruited.
The hags then live secluded lives as businesses people or run politics via lobbying (as important people do today) as grey eminences.
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**Possession**
They select a victim and take control while stashing their actual body somewhere safe. After awhile they can discard the victim for a new victim and continue in the same roles.
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**Corsets.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6k6ls.jpg)
<http://www.corsetiere.net/Spirella/Modelling.htm>
The hags have special tight underclothes. Not just waist corsets, but tightenable gear for all parts of the body. Their helpers put them on the hags and tighten them up, smashing and squeezing all that hag meat down into a human shape underneath the strong underclothes. Even the head. It is super uncomfortable for the hags but they kind of like it in a masochistic way because they like discomfort and pain so much they still like it even when it is happening to them. They like even better though thinking about the hags that are even haggier and saggier than themselves and how uncomfortable they must be when they have to get their human stuff on. Hags help make this gear for other hags and give them as gifts.
As regards the ooze of corruption: strong cologne. Also a great gift between hags!
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The keywords here are "something from beyond this world and reality itself". Also, powerful dark magic? For such a being, shapeshifting should be *perfectly* possible. Considering the fact that darkness and corruption are usually found lurking out of sight, this possibility becomes even more likely. As for oozing corruption, plenty of people do that without being hunted down or killed-politicians, lawyers, used cars salesmen, social media manipulators, you get the jist. The problem isn't hiding, it's keeping someone from figuring it out.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 5 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/115246/edit)
So, after the apocalypse, there is this charity organization, ORE, that has set up HQ in Des, Iowa. They have about 3,400 members, with about 1,000 of those living somewhere outside Des. They need to stay connected with these outposts, and keep them well supplied. They have a task force of 50 messengers, who have to brave the wide open wastes and deliver news and supplies. The one problem is, it would make more sense to mount the messengers on horses. But my story relies on them walking to their destinations. What would be a plausible reason for the ORE members to not use horses?
* The apocalypse was 500 years ago, so the Iowa environment is just the same as now. Plains.
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Horses take a lot of food. If you don’t have a fully developed agricultural sector, or a lush prairie landscape you won’t be able to keep many horses alive.
Or perhaps horses didn’t survive the apocalypse, at least not in this area or in large numbers. This makes horses too valuable to standard messages.
How many of your 3000 survivors knew anything about horses or saddle making/tack making before the apocalypse? Where all the survivors city slickers with no idea how to handle a horse? Perhaps they do not use horses because they don’t know how.
Horses have become wild once more. They are smart and dangerous creatures that can easily kill someone by accident. Perhaps with no one who knew how to handle them all the horses have become wild and are now just another dangerous beast to avoid while traveling.
The wilds are wild, filled with stalking beasts and dangerous men. Riding a horse might become too much of a target to both. It is simpler to hide a person’s scent, and a person from sight than it is to cover the scent and sight of a horse. Walking takes longer, however it’s safer.
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Horses mark the messenger as being a target of value. Traveling on foot, he is just another footsore traveler without any valuables or value for ransom. He blends in and keeps ORE secrets safe by being anonymous
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If your environment is a wasteland, there may not be available food to support the population of horses needed to have mounted messengers. Even if you have horses used within our settlements for farming where feed is available, the food may not be available on the trail. Horses work well when there is available forage for them. Having to manage the logistics of feeding horses on the move would seriously impact their usefulness.
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There is a big number of possible reasons:
1. The apocalypse was hard on horses. They went extinct in North America;
2. There are dangerous predators out on the plains. They are specifically attracted to animals like horses, while people on foot can travel stealthily;
3. There is a new poisonous plant among the grasses. Horses will eat it, but suffer and die afterwards;
4. Horses are sacred animals. It is unforgivable sin to burden a horse;
5. Horses are dirty animals. It is unforgivable sin to touch a horse;
6. Humans undergone a genetic mutation that allowed them to walk faster than horses;
7. Horses undergone a genetic mutation and became sentient. If humans would try to use horses like they did, horses would overthrow human rule, and humans will be demoted to [yahoo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo_(Gulliver%27s_Travels)).
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They may need stealth. And horses - or any other mount, for that matter - are not stealthy.
Sure, with a mount you can carry hundreds of kilograms of load, specially if you use a cart. But you also let all those bandits know where you are.
A single person may be able to carry medicines, letters and whatever on their body and, packing light, they may be able to cross the wasteland unnoticed among the bushes.
I know it because when I play Fallout and Elder Scrolls I always have an easier time when I am travelling alone and crouching.
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Horses aren't just horses. They're specialized through selective breeding. Farmers want draft horses that can pull heavy weights and provide a lot of torque when e.g. plowing, but don't need speed. Messengers want fast horses that have great speed and stamina, but only need to haul an average-sized person.
If all they have are draft horses, walking is probably easier and faster. (For one thing, you don't need to spend so much time taking care of your horses.) It's also way cheaper. It would hardly be surprising that a community of farmers, who previously didn't need to do much long-distance travel, don't have a stock of speedy horses available.
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Perhaps they need their messages to be delivered in a hurry. Humans are pretty much the [best endurance runners](https://phys.org/news/2007-04-humans-hot-sweaty-natural-born-runners.html) on Earth, and over 100 miles a fit and trained human is likely to be faster than a horse, especially in hot weather. Fast horse messenger services historically relied on remount stations fairly close together, and your organisation sounds like it doesn’t have the resources to maintain such stations.
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Bad or corrupt management
Charitable organizations often attract dishonest or inept people. 50+ horses may represent a huge drain on the available funds of the organization. Funds that the ORE managers may be funneling off to private ventures, or outright squandering on useless efforts. ORE may even HAVE a stable, and a handful of horses. But due to mismanagement, the horses may not be in shape for travel. Even if some of the horses were in shape, their use may be dominated by the bureaucrats of the organization for non-messenger uses.
If the horses are too difficult to use, the messengers may just forego using them altogether.
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**Paranoia about disease**
Little isolated communities means a lot of inbreeding among the livestock. They are only adapted to the endemic diseases in their homes.
Bringing an animal from far away it's considered a risk vector. That horse, drinking on the communal water trough can introduce a new parasyte and, before you know it, all your livestock is dead and you don't survive the next winter.
Horses can't enter areas near villages so they don't pollute the aquifers.
The same as countries do now with diseases like the Swine Fever, but at a local level.
**Luxury tax**
Villages demmand money for sleeping inside their walls (we built them, you can't enjoy their protection free) or going through bridges. Horses are expensive so people with them can pay for that luxury. Let's say the same as two men.
Your ORE organization can't pay so much and your messengers go on foot.
**Lack of a relay system**
Horses get tired, too. Even more if they aren't feed enough, shoed properly and the weather is too hot. IF you can't change horses every couple of days, they are going only at walking pace, as fast as the messenger on foot.
Horses might be too expensive to buy, breed and feed for the work they provide.
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Horses are outlawed by those who appose the ORE organization.
While they have 3,500 members they are very small in comparison, and represent a threat to gains, lords and other organizations that feed off the lawless post apocalypse world.
Any messengers found riding horse back are killed. Restricting them from using horses helps suppress the organization, but when the messengers are on foot they blend in as regular pilgrims. As long as they keep their ORE identity a secret.
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In a vast desert, several factions vie for dominance. The factions use giant tanks and advanced aircraft. All the factions have a common origin, but are now entrenched in their respective dogmas and will continue warring for the forseeable future.
Despite desert camouflage being the obvious choice for vehicle colors, only one faction uses the "obvious" desert colors - grey, yellow, orange, brown. The other factions have opted for "bright" ones: red, blue, green.
Thus, there is some reason that camouflage isn't considered necessary. There had to be some scientific or technical answer to why bright colors would not be a liability, or why they would at least be used even though "traditional" desert camouflage is available.
*Edit*: setting is a future world. Technology is certainly more advanced than today, but not extremely so: spaceflight is routine but still *very* challenging, AI has begun to emerge but has by no means replaced all human crews/pilots, life spans are long but immortality is not on the horizon. Much of the population still lives in conditions comparable to today, since warfighting consumes most resources.
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By [lighting up an object](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-illumination) it can appear garish from some viewpoints but at the same time it can act as camouflage from others. If a dark object is visible on the horizon, lighting it up can make it appear to be as luminous as the horizon and when seen from a distance it is hidden.
Garish colours can also serve to confuse people as the brain tries to interpret an image in the distance. Broad bands of colour might be misinterpreted by the brain as eyelashes if the viewer is squinting. Bright colours might also mimic colour distortions seen in binoculars at extrema ranges. Unusual combinations of colours can also confuse the brain into thinking an object is smaller than it actually is and or is traveling on a different heading even if it can be seen.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mn4r3.png)
<http://camoupedia.blogspot.dk/2016/05/hypothetical-dazzle-camouflage-schemes_28.html>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lX5z2.jpg)
<https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/452822937506176766/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yvheA.jpg)
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage#/media/File%3AEB1922_Camouflage_Periscope_View.jpg>
I think this one illustrates the point well. Top right - which way is the ship traveling? Bottom - how many ships? And in which direction are they traveling? Is it two ships or has one ship got a decoy chimney? Is that a third stationary ship or is it part of the first ship?
<https://hyperallergic.com/106107/modernist-camouflage-reconstructed/>
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I am thinking about animals. Tanks are kind of like animals. Why would an animal want to be seen, or not care if enemies see it?
1. **It wants to intimidate.** Animals that are trying to scare off predators or rivals make themselves look big and formidable. A cat raises its hackles and puffs up to look big. Lizards with colorful throats expand them. Maybe true for these tanks?
2. **It wants to be seen by conspecifics (allies).** If coordination is done visually it may be worth more to be easily seen and identified by your friends (or potential mates) than the risk you incur by having enemies spot you. This is why male birds are bright colors - they want to be seen by the females (and maybe also other males, to scare them off). Your tanks may coordinate action visually. They do not want to shoot each other by accident.
3. **Bright paint has advantages other than color, which is incidental.**. @Henry Taylor above puts forth a convincing scenario where tanks don't care what color they are because they assume they will be seen. But this does not explain bright blue. If I don't care about being seen as I drive down the boulevard my car will be a combination of primer gray and rust. You can posit that the paints chosen have other advantages like wear resistance, thermal emissivity etc. Perhaps the active ingredient happens to be a vivid color - for example copper sulphate is vivid blue which has nothing to do with its anti fungal action. This is the explanation for bright colors in fish which live at such depth nothing will ever see the bright colors - the colors are incidental.
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Final and different option: **Bright colors are camouflage.**
We think of camouflage like a leopard is camouflagued. We do not see it 30 feet away in the shadows. But what if you are camouflaging yourself against the sky? In the desert, objects on the horizon are often obfuscated by mirage.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EBJTF.jpg)
<https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/26/68/592668a7ec144026ce0e337ce6aa6e55.jpg>
You can see that the horizon is actually the color of the sky. A blue tank would be hard to distinguish. Sky can come in different colors and if one is trying to blend in with the color of the sky, apparently garish colors would be appropriate camouflage.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vLGC1.jpg)
<http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160324-the-story-behind-chinas-minecraft-military-camo>
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**Short answer**
The factions not using desert camouflage are tritanopes.
**Background**
Maybe the planetary inhabitants using the non-camouflage colors aren't trichromatic species but instead miss the blue cones in their *retinae*. They either may not have evolved multichromatic vision, or alternatively, they lost their blue cone somehow. If they didn't evolve trichromatic vision (as did your camouflaged faction) they may be less advanced evolutionary spoken in terms of color vision. Note that their evolution then has followed a different evolutionary path than *homo sapiens*, given that we obtained trichromacy through a doubling of the low-frequency cone due to a dual red/green cone type. Hence, they may have followed a different evolutionary pathway unknownst here on earth. We earthlings diagnose blue-cone deficiency as tritanopia; a recessive autosomal trait in people lacking blue cones.
To expand on **[tritanopia](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tritanopia)**, *i.e.*, trichromatic species that loose their ability to detect blue wavelengths, miss cones with the short-wavelength (high-frequency) blue opsin. It is a rare autosomal recessive trait leading to blue color blindness. These people are definitely not 'color blind' (bad terminology), as they still have color perception, but it is different as their colors are perceived as follows (source: [Colour Blind Awareness](http://www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-blindness/types-of-colour-blindness/)):
>
> People with reduced blue sensitivity have difficulty identifying differences between blue and **yellow**, violet and red and blue and green. To these people the world appears as generally red, pink, black, white, grey and turquoise.
>
>
>
Also see Fig. 1. below for a visualization of tritanope vision.
Note that their ability to distinguish yellows is due to the opponent form of color vision; we as trichromats perceive colors through a red-green and yellow-blue opponent axes (known as the **[Hering theory of color vision](http://psych.ucalgary.ca/PACE/VA-Lab/colourperceptionweb/theories.htm)**). Stripping away blue cones disrupts the yellow-blue axis, making the perception of yellows also difficult as a consequence. The obvious problem is the other factions still use blue colors in your scenario, which should be adapted then in your story line.
The most common form of color blindness on earth is red/green color blindness. This form of dichromatic vision is shared among many other primates. Our trichromacy is thought to have been favored in evolution to discern ripe fruits (yellow/reds) from their unripe counterparts (green).
As another alternative, the factions not using desert camouflage may have monochromatic vision (black-and-whites only), but that would not make sense, as apparently they still apply specific colors, *i.e.* red, blue and green in your story abstract.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KMlhe.jpg)[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6ds29.jpg)
Fig. 1. Left: trichromatic vision. Right: tritanope vision. source: [Colour Blind Awareness](http://www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-blindness/types-of-colour-blindness/)
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Computer Vision and Computer Augmented Targeting Systems make camouflage obsolete.
With cameras which capture [hundreds of gigapixels](http://www.in2white.com/) in each shot and massively parallel image analysis systems which can instantly pick out micro-meter movements at maximum weapon range, "what color is your tank?" is no longer an important question.
Once two tanks are within direct line of sight of each other (or within view of their surveillance drones and tactical satellites), the vibration of their engines, the movement of their barrels, even the breathing of their supporting troops are all instantly detectable.
Camouflage only works against humans. Against computers, it isn't even worth the effort.
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Electronic detection is so good that battle experience has shown camouflage is a complete waste of paint.
However, friendly-fire incidents are a huge damn deal, and there have been combat days where they fragged more of their own than the enemy did. So they painted all their tanks PINK and that ended the problem.
Honor may also factor into it; for whatever reason it may be morally reprehensible to them to "false-flag", even making their markings low-vis to exploit ordinary battlefield confusion/fog of war. It is a matter of battlefield honor that their units are **clearly** marked.
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**Abusing knowledge of enemy IFF systems**
The people who use visual camouflage use garish colors to highlight targets. "Is that tank actually green? or has the computer colored it green to tell me it is a friend?" Gives a moment of doubt which might be critical. The variety of colors is a hedge against the obvious solution of changing IFF color highlighting.
**Your IFF is more important than delaying enemy detection**
The reaction time from detection to launching weapons is critical. Stealth, be it cloaking devices, jamming or something works well enough that targets and friendlies appear suddenly and randomly well within lethal range, and if you don't hit the badguys in the first 30 miliseconds chances are they got you. This makes gunners jumpy. In the last war you lost more people through friendly fire than to enemy strategic surprise.
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The key to my answer is in the restrictions that a desert places on activity hours, in the punishing desert sun manoeuvres are next to impossible, engines overheat and unprotected humans are prone to collapse within an hour of exposure to the elements. In such an environment combat takes place during the night and in the twilight hours of dawn and dusk, light amplification equipment is an essential targeting tool for all involved. Light amplification clarifies image at the cost of colour definition so pattern recognition becomes key to target acquisition and verification, contrast is key when creating [disruptive camouflage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_coloration) colour doesn't matter at all, which is why you get brightly coloured hunting gear like [this](http://www.outdoorsupplies.co.nz/RL_ClassicAnorak_Blaze_Lge.jpg). Humans can see and avoid the bright colour in good light but the colourblind Deer you're stalking sees only the pattern that disrupts your otherwise threatening outline. Light amplification basically makes everyone colourblind, contrast and pattern become the camouflage attributes that matter and they're actually *easier* to achieve in bright colours. Sure if you get caught in the open during the day exposed to marque-1 eyeballs you're toast but the environment will kill you pretty quickly, but not fast enough for comfort, anyway.
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It's the ideal city for a siege. They have all the resources and man power required to sustain themselves during a siege.
They are able to:
1. eat
2. drink
3. be merry
4. mend weapons
5. make weapons
6. tend to the wounded
Suggestions: Do they grow crops in their houses? Do they have a well? Do they have a mine?
## How can they be self sustaining?
As usual I'm willing to take suggestions.
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### No, they can't
**A siege is nothing more than a test of endurance.**
In order for a town to be able to do all of the things you list in a siege they would have to have access to:
* Fields
* Orchards
* Vineyards
* Mine(s)
* Workshops (of so many different kinds it's not even funny)
* Huge, huge, huge stockpiles of materials, foods, medicine, etc.
Traditionally, city walls defended only the most important parts of a city, and maybe not even that, but would only allow for the population to hide away while the barbarians raid the town itself.
Some of the larger, more important capitals of Europe ended up having massive walls surround a very large area of the town, however even they could not possibly include the fields, vineyards, or even all of the citizen's housing within them.
In order to feed a decent sized city (say, 30 - 40K people) you would need hundreds of acres of fertile land, thousands of workers, thousands of farm animals, and God only knows how many tools, etc. Encircling that in a wall would be a massive undertaking, and you'd need a very large armed force to defend that wall. Who would work the fields at that point?
Not only do most cities not have access to all of the materials they need in order to achieve what you wish, they also don't have the workforce to keep all those industries staffed - a lot of those workers will have been conscripted to fight on the walls by that point.
You might be able to maintain one of those industries operating in a minimal capacity for a while if you're *lucky*. A mine that somehow has all its entry points within the town (not sure why you'd build a town on top of a mine, however), might be able to keep extracting *some* ore, or at the very least smelting and shaping the ore it has on hand for a while.
But sooner rather than later those men are going to be on half rations, not to mention busy fighting on the ramparts.
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If you increase the dimensions of a city by two you increase the length of the walls by two and the area enclosed by four. If you increase the dimensions of the city by ten you increase the length of the walls by ten and the area of the city by a hundred.
So it is theoretically possible to build a city so large that it can support the men required to defend the walls forever. That can be made easier by using a shape that has the most area for the least amount of walls - a giant circular city.
Or the city might need to defend only a tiny segment of its circumference. It could be built on top of a giant mesa with vertical cliffs hundreds or thousands of feet or meters high, except for a tiny segment of artificial wall guarding the path up to the city that has to be manned by defenders.
The city would have to be vast to supply all its needs.
If you remember the legend of the Avar Rings, those vast concentric defenses included most of Hungary inside the outermost ring, and yet the Avars still raided far and wide outside their country for loot they desired, and so provoked the attacks that eventually defeated them.
Of course such an isolated city that had most of its needs locally produced and such great natural defenses and did not raid their neighbors would not be likely to be the target in a conflict.
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# A Real Challenge
**Mathematically it's possible: [Square Cube Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law).**
For example:
**Alpha City** has:
* **50 metres of radius** and it is like a **square** (**50m x 50m**). Or **100 metres each border**.
* Inside it has a fertile **surface of 2,500 m2** (capable of feed **250 citizens** [$surface \div 10$]). $50m \times 50m$
* It has a **perimetre of 200 m** where they need **200 soldiers** to protect it. $50m \times 4$
You can see that the city is able to support 250 citizens where 200 of them are used like soldiers, so we only have 50 to farm enough food to feed 250, pretty hard, no? $250 \div 200 = \text{1.25 citizens per soldier}$
After some time of hard effort, the Alpha city has been able to expand their walls and now they have doubled their size!
* Now it has a **100 metres radius** (100m x 100m). Or **200 metres on each border**.
* Inside it has a fertile **surface of 10,000 m2** (capable of feeding **1,000 citizens**).
* It has a **perimetre of 400 m** where they need **400 soldiers** to protect it.
Now the city is really happy, because they are able to support 1,000 citizens and they only need 400 soldiers to protect it (they have 600 farmers to feed 1.000 persons). $1,000 \div 400 = \text{2.5 citizens/soldier}$
**As you can see the ratio of citizens per soldier is bigger than before ($2.5 > 1.25$).**
Each time we double the size, the perimetre would be doubled, but the surface would be quadrupled.
Using this idea you can know that with a certain number of people it is possible to make an "isolated" city surrounded by walls: [the Anime Shingeki no Kyojin: Attack On Titans](http://attackontitan.wikia.com/wiki/Attack_on_Titan_Wiki) is an example of that, where a **huge** (can seem small but, it's really big) kingdom is completely self sustainable and surrounded by walls.
# More Math
## Soldiers
I am not sure if this is relevant for your questions, but I will post it anyway.
How many soldiers should an army have to defend a city? Well, I am not sure but I don't think a city surrounded by walls would need more than **5,000 men** (in medieval age only men were in the army).
Only the **[7.5%](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/20826/what-percentage-of-a-population-can-be-part-of-a-medieval-military)** of the population (in the worst cases) were soldiers. Also I am not sure if this number (7.5%) is about men or men and women. I assume the worst scenario (**7.5% of men**), so a city with 5.000 soldiers should have $5.000 \div 0.075 = \text{66.666 men}$.
Ugly number so I will change it to **67,000 men**. If there are at least **67,000 men** there would be **67,000 women**, so in the city there are **134,000 persons** (**this is impossible for a medieval city...**). Also you have to count the older people and children. Sorry, but I am not sure how to calculate that. I believe that half of the population are children and older people: **268,000 total population**.
According to [Medieval Demographic Made Easy](http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm) a **city** has **62,523 persons/km2** (38,850 per square mile) so it has $268,000 \div 62,523 = \text{4.29 } km^{2}$. I think making a square city is bad, so I'll calculate with a circle.
* $\text{Surface} = \text{4.29 } km^{2}$
* $\text{Radius} = r = \sqrt{A} \div \pi = \large \text{0.65 km}$
* $\text{Perimetre} = p = 2 \times r \times \pi = \large \text{40.88 km}$
So it has:
* $\text{Soldiers per km wall} = \text{5,000 soldiers} \div \text{40.88 km} = \large \text{122 soldiers/km}$.
Or $\text{1 soldier each 8.175 metres}$, pretty good.
## Food
But we have forgotten something very important, **62,523 persons/km2** is about homes, not about the food. Luckily the same page also says that terrain is able to support **289 persons/km2** (180 per mile) **AND** it says *"including requisite roads, villages and towns, as well as crops and pastureland"* - even easier!
* $\text{Surface} = 268,000 \div 289 = \large \text{927.34 } km^{2}$
Pretty big, no? Well, you can have an inner wall of 4.29 km2 and an outside wall for crops and pasture ($\small \text{927.34} km^{2} - \text{4.29} km^{2}$) of **924.04 km2**.
* $\text{Radius} = \large \text{95.67 } km^{2}$
* $\text{Perimetre} = \large \text{601.11 } km^{2}$
* $\text{Soldiers per km} = \large \text{8 } soldiers/km$
Or $\text{1 soldier each 125 metres}$, well, you have to only defend the gates.
**Extra:** Also your city would have:
* **589,600** animals.
Of which:
+ **400,928** are fowl (chickens, geese and ducks).
+ **188,672** are cows, pigs, sheep, cattle and other "meat" animals.
Now our citizens are capable of **eating and sleeping**, but we need to do more things.
>
> 1. Food **Done**
> 2. Drink, ...? Well, cities have water wells, don't they? Or at least a river or a lake... **Done**
> 3. Be merry
> 4. Mend weapons
> 5. Make weapons
> 6. Tend to the wounded
>
>
>
## Jobs and Workshops
Now we can calculate the amount of jobs in the city with **the same page referenced before**.
Look at this table: (if anyone knows how to make a spoiler I would be so glad if he could edit this table)
>
> $$ \left|
> \begin{array}{cc|cc}
> Business&SV&Business&SV\\
> Shoemakers&150&Butchers&1,200\\
> Furriers&250&Fishmongers&1,200\\
> Maidservants&250&Beer-Sellers&1,400\\
> Tailors&250&Buckle Makers&1,400\\
> Barbers&350&Plasterers&1,400\\
> Jewelers&400&Spice Merchants&1,400\\
> Taverns/Restaurants&400&Blacksmiths&1,500\\
> Old-Clothes&400&Painters&1,500\\
> Pastrycooks&500&Doctors&1,700\*\\
> Masons&500&Roofers&1,800\\
> Carpenters&550&Locksmiths&1,900\\
> Weavers&600&Bathers&1,900\\
> Chandlers&700&Ropemakers&1,900\\
> Mercers&700&Inns&2,000\\
> Coopers&700&Tanners&2,000\\
> Bakers&800&Copyists&2,000\\
> Watercarriers&850&Sculptors&2,000\\
> Scabbardmakers&850&Rugmakers&2,000\\
> Wine-Sellers&900&Harness-Makers&2,000\\
> Hatmakers&950&Bleachers&2,100\\
> Saddlers&1,000&Hay Merchants&2,300\\
> Chicken Butchers&1,000&Cutlers&2,300\\
> Pursemakers&1,100&Glovemakers&2,400\\
> Woodsellers&2,400&Woodcarvers&2,400\\
> Magic-Shops&2,800&Booksellers&6,300\\
> Bookbinders&3,000&Illuminators&3,900\\
> \end{array}
> \right| $$
>
>
>
Each type of business is given a Support Value (SV). This is the number of people it takes to support a single business of that sort. With this you can know the amount of medics, taverns, etc in your town.
* You can see that there is a "Magic-Shop", don't pay attention...
* Also, a medic has a $\*$. This is because the total amount of doctors (even without a license) is $350$.
In the case of this town it would be:
>
> $$ \left|
> \begin{array}{cc|cc}
> Business&Jobs&Business&Jobs\\
> Shoemakers&1,787&Butchers&223\\
> Furriers&1072&Fishmongers&223\\
> Maidservants&1,072&Beer-Sellers&191\\
> Tailors&1,072&Buckle Makers&191\\
> Barbers&766&Plasterers&191\\
> Jewelers&670&Spice Merchants&191\\
> Taverns/Restaurants&400&Blacksmiths&179\\
> Old-Clothes&670&Painters&179\\
> Pastrycooks&536&Doctors&158\*\\
> Masons&536&Roofers&149\\
> Carpenters&487&Locksmiths&141\\
> Weavers&447&Bathers&141\\
> Chandlers&383&Ropemakers&141\\
> Mercers&383&Inns&134\\
> Coopers&383&Tanners&134\\
> Bakers&335&Copyists&134\\
> Watercarriers&315&Sculptors&134\\
> Scabbardmakers&315&Rugmakers&134\\
> Wine-Sellers&298&Harness-Makers&134\\
> Hatmakers&282&Bleachers&128\\
> Saddlers&268&Hay Merchants&117\\
> Chicken Butchers&268&Cutlers&117\\
> Pursemakers&244&Glovemakers&112\\
> Woodsellers&112&Woodcarvers&112\\
> Magic-Shops&96&Booksellers&43\\
> Bookbinders&89&Illuminators&69\\
> \end{array}
> \right| $$
> And for the $\*$ medics they would be $766$.
>
>
>
So:
* We have $\text{158 licensed doctors}$. We also have $\text{766 } doctors$ counting without licensed.
So we have $\text{5000 } soldiers \div \text{158 } doctors = \text{32 } soldiers/doctors$ or even $\text{5000 } soldiers \div \text{766 } doctors = \text{7 } soldiers/doctors$.
>
>
> 6. Tend to the wounded **Ready**
>
* We have $\text{179 } blacksmiths$.
$\text{5000 } soldiers \div \text{179 } blacksmiths= \text{28 } soldiers/blacksmith$
Well, blacksmiths would be able to supply the demand of weapons (at least without a war). In a war maybe they would have "some work", but soldier's equipment is not lost every day, so they would be able to supply the demand in time (you can have spares).
>
>
> 4. Mend weapons **Done (remelt broken weapons)**
> 5. Make weapons **Done if they have an iron mine or copper + tin mine**. They don't even need a mine at all. 5.000 soldiers won't have more than 25.000 kg of metal, right? In iron you can save it in **3.14 m3** (you can store it).
>
* As you can see they have several locals (400 restaurants and taverns) so:
>
>
> 3. Be merry **Done?**
>
## The wall
Oh, I forgot something, **the wall**. A [normal wall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_fortification#Walls) is about **2.5m x 10m**. Also a good wall is made out of stone, so: (I am calculating that the wall is filled inside. It's false, so you can even use this materials to build a thicker wall.)
* If you choose the first wall (without farms) it would take **1.022.000 m3** of stone.
* If you choose the second wall it would take **15.027.750 m3** of stone.
I think it would take several years (for the first, maybe one generation for the second...) of working to make the wall. Luckily you have 67.000 men (worker force)...
## Resources
A self sustainable city needs all kinds of ores, metals and plant to survive alone. Luckily our city is very large, so it has a lot of terrain to find these resources, or at least to make **huge** stockpiles for war times.
A self-sustainable city needs all kinds of ores to be able to survive alone. With my knowledge and [this question that I asked](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/84194/which-minerals-are-needed-to-make-a-sustainable-medieval-country) I get to the conclusion that your city needs:
* **Wood:** wood is used very often in that age. It's a cheap and easy construction material (which can replace the stones of walls) and also it's used like [charcoal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal). Sadly, ores are "almost" endless in a medieval age, but trees aren't, the city would need orchards and manual forestation (this, like ores, would take more surface, so you would need to expand your city).
* **Land suitable for agriculture and pasture:** obviously you need a lot of different crops and animals.
* **Stone:** "advanced" building material, very strong.
* **Iron / [Bronze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze) (Copper + Tin):** hard metals used to build swords, armours and a lot more things.
* [Clay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay) and [lime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_(material)): not needed for an army, but it's very common in the everyday items of the medieval age.
* Antimony + lead: used in everyday life.
* Salt: food conservation.
* Coal: useful, but can be replaced with charcoal.
* **Silver / Gold:** for coining. You need a currency (you can also use copper, tin, aluminium, antimony, iron, [etc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_metals)).
I hope this could help and sorry if I went through the branches.
[Answer]
Not what we perceive as a city. You'd have to wall in a whole country (not impossible as the Chinese walls demonstrate, but a huge and cost intensive undertaking).
BTW, Machiavelli recommended not to build fortresses at all, but to maintain enough troops to defend the open country.
[Answer]
## It depends.
The answer really comes down to resource consumption versus resource production. All resources (whether in a city under siege or not) are somehow expressions of solar power (notwithstanding asteroids crashing into the atmosphere, etc.).
So, if your city's population is maintained within defined tolerances, and they're prepared by having sufficient garden space to grow food for that populace, and they have a waste processing solution (more preparation), and they're willing to live indefinitely without imports or exports, then yes.
I don't believe any modern technology is required, however a certain modern-like understanding of *how things work* would be necessary to construct a city that would withstand an indefinite siege (you'd need several specialized Davincis). And don't mistake that the city would have to be designed from the ground up (or, rather, from below ground) to withstand the siege. And the surrounding landscape, weather patterns, and a lot of other factors would have to be lined up just right to survive such an undertaking.
As someone above pointed out, your military resources would be a drain on your system, so designing the city so that its defensible by a small group will relieve that strain.
But with all those things taken into account, sure, it's really possible.
**Edit:**
I just realized the one significant factor that one would have to take into account when deciding where to put this extended-duration siege-resistant city: *salt*. There's no practical way with medieval technology to capture and reprocess salt, and it's required for survival.
[Answer]
The only way I really see this happening, would be if you had perfect, pre-existent conditions. Such as a ring of extremely difficult to cross terrain, such as a particularly harsh mountain range, with only one or two accessible valleys which could be easily defended.
The area within the ring would not only have to be of sufficient size to support a large city, and all of its surrounding towns, villages, farmland, etc. But also large enough to support a healthy woodland, large enough to satisfy the wood, and hunting needs of local population.
But if you were to have an area like this, you could say that the soil is rich and fertile as a result of now dormant, but once active volcanoes. Such a location would also have several mountain streams, likely culminating in a lake somewhere near the centre. This would make for good farmland and therefore solve problems of food and water.
If the surrounding mountains were once volcanic in nature, it would also mean mountainside mines could well be rich in minerals commonly found only deep under ground, meaning that supplying armour and weapons for your army would not be an issue.
During peace times, an area such as this would have a healthy trading economy, due to its prevalence of rare gems and minerals. Combine that with the defensible nature of the city, and some merchants may choose to make this city their home, further helping the economy.
While this is not, strictly speaking, a city, the area would support a large city, naturally defended by surrounding geography, which would be able to sustain it's self during prolonged siege.
[Answer]
Yes - it's a simple answer of maths, and is similar to the square-cube rule (ie the reason you can't have 8' tall ants)
In this case it is as follows - you need X soldiers per metre of perimeter, and Y civilians to support those soldiers (call the number Z people). Each person needs A food, and that food needs B area to grow.
As the size of the besieged land increases, its surface increases at the square of the diameter, whilst the perimeter (the bit that needs defending) increases proportionally to the diameter.
So if town N is 1km across, a town of 10N will need ten times the people to defend it, but it will have 100 times the area in which to grow food and find water (and the chances of having a spring, etc in which to find water that cannot be interrupted or poisoned increases by 100 too).
So yes, a fully self-sustaining community could be besieged indefinitely it it was large enough - but you may find that by the time the numbers make sense that it's actually a small country rather than a large city by the time the maths works.
[Answer]
I support the "it depends" theory.
In a hurry, such as in case of a suddenly incoming siege, it's impossible to establish fully and quickly. Partial solutions might born, but as far as I can see, two resources become too rare or even non-existent at a time.
* **Minerals.** It's simple: either you built the city upon mineable ores, and you get the necessary iron, coal, copper, gold (if it's necessary in a closed city at all, what I doubt), or you don't and as you use the processed ores and tools made out of them, sooner or later, you're out of them. Assuming you're closed, it's fatal, as fighting with wooden tools is a handicapped situation.
* **Plants. All types.** Take a look at a medieval city. Now look at the size of fields around it. And that's just the wood. How can you implement that production ratio in a medieval city? Only with magic. Or via underground farms, if you can provide light, but that needs another resource and I'm skeptical about its feasible implementation in, let's say, 12th century's technological level. Also, if you're out of seeds, you're out of luck. And plants might be important in several areas beyond food supply: medical care, architecture-tools-etc (wood), warfare (maybe) and so on.
Walled farms might come into account but as I mentioned, they are *HUGE!*, and thus, walling them would insanely increase the length of border you have to defend. That'd be extremely risky.
So, under lucky circumstances, it's possible, but I'd rather keep it theoretical, unless you support it by magic or some kind of similar improvement.
[Answer]
For self sufficiency you need around an acre per person to grow crops on, and thats with modern farming techniques and nutritional information. Medieval times were not as productive or well informed. That kind of space is not possible inside city walls.
See: <http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/how-much-land-is-needed-to-be-self-sufficient>
Medieval times weren't as well nourished either though, but at a density of 60 people per acre <http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm>
Rthat leaves you pretty short. Nowadays we eat about 2000 calories a day, your beseiged population will starve on just 30, and thats if every square inch of ground space is devoted to growing food.
And that's just the food. If you want to mend weapons, tan skins, burn fuels and do other industrial stuff your space requirements grow even more.
[Answer]
Here's a [great list](http://listverse.com/2013/09/20/10-of-the-longest-sieges-in-history/) to get you started.
You'll notice that blockades feature in most of them, as does smuggling in food.
To answer your question, we would have to have actual numbers rather than the generalities you've given here.
I don't believe that any siege can be held off indefinitely, and anything with walls will likely not be able to grow as much as is needed. Crops need sunlight, so growing them inside is not a viable option since glass is not common or, depending on when and where almost impossible to get. You could grow some on roof tops, but then they would be vulnerable to fire-- if I were besieging them, flaming tar would definitely be launched over the walls to cut off any food supply growing within.
Being merry and drinking involves vineyards or wheat and the space to make alcohol. That's a lot of real estate.
Making and mending weapons means a supply OR stockpile of metal. How much space that takes up will depend on how many people you need to outfit.
Tending to the wounded is more difficult than you might imagine. Healing herbs are generally found growing in the countryside and collected. Cultivation of these, which sometimes needed specific soil conditions, light and other things, was sometimes done, but you generally need a specialist to do it. You'd also need a way to make cloth to bind wounds. That means a supply of sheep, which you would have to feed.
The circumference of the city will have to be manned, even if the walls are stout, and absolutely you will need, as others have pointed out, difficult terrain around that as well. There needs to be an easily defensible way in and out through that terrain which bottlenecks attackers. Eventually you will run out of boiling oil and wood for arrows.
Speaking of arrows, while you can use alt crafting methods, you do need bird feathers...so...hey, going to need a lot of birds. Which you also have to feed. But they will be delicious later.
[Answer]
**YES, they can be self sufficient**, if they build a wall around everything, including food production fields.
Take the Anime [Attack on Titan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Titan) as an example.
In [Attack on Titan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Titan), only scouts go outside. Their purpose is not to trade or gather food, but to "scout" and kill some big guys.
The city feeds themselves. They are believed to be what is left of humanity. Perhaps an apocalypse is a good motivation to build a self sufficient city, no matter the timeline.
Here is some mathematics on how many land a city needs to support its population. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ_VfizNaJQ> (it is about Attack on Titan too)
]
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[Question]
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## The kingdom where rulers are young
Once upon a time, lies in a faraway place a medieval kingdom following a classic european hereditary monarchy, excepted on two peculiar points. First, the ruler could be equally as Queen or King, but that point I will not linger on it too much. Then, a custom which has lived for millenias make it so that, as soon as the heir reaches the young age of 12, they become the new ruler of the country. And this even if the old monarch is still able to reign. The old ruler becomes the advisor of the new one and keep their political contacts, but in the end, it's the new ruler who makes the call on important decisions and who is publicly shown as the head of the country.
### The detailed inheritance code
I know you like it, so here are some details concerning how the inheritance is done :
Regarding other members of the family, the eldest sibling is chosen as the monarch, but their younger brothers/sisters don't take their role as they become of age. If the current monarch dies, the power goes to the parent if and only if there is no siblings older than 12 who can take the crown. In case said parent takes back the power, they are "temporary" monarch until such (or new) siblings are of age. Cousins and uncles/aunts are chosen as a last resort in the event there is no direct heir and no ruler anymore, in which case the one closest -but older- to the age of 12 is chosen (aside from political shenanigans you have in such really bad situations).
Still following? Good! Now the advisor part : The eldest monarch's parent, or -said differently grandparent- keeps the title of main advisor if they get the chance to see two coronations in their life. However, the new ruler's direct parent still has some words to say as a secondary advisor. In other words, while the youngest is the one with the power in hand, they can call either of their parent or grandparent for tips.
Finally, to give a rough idea of the powers each party has : The young king at its youngest has most if not all the executive power, but until they become older, rely some of their legislative power on their advisors, since they can understand better the implications of new laws. For the young ruler it becomes kinda way of accepting or refusing a suggested law, then altering it and eventually have a word on all as they grow older and wiser. The transition process can be really quick if they prove themselves to be quick-witted, or last up to 6 years if they're less knowledgeable. Usually, at the age of 15 they have all powers a king or queen has, though.
Phew, I think it covers most of the topic and there should be no hole. I hope. On to the issue.
## My problematic
I can easily predict that this tradition would reduces in general the time one monarch is in charge, to as early as 12-14 years if they have very quickly an off-spring. However, I have an hard time in dreaming how well the outcome would be, and what good things can be taken from such tradition on a political standing.
To give a comparison, I know that young rulers did exist : For instance, [Louis XIV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV) in France became officially a king at the age of 5, and while he didn't actually take much responsibility this young, he did eventually well enough to be called the "Roi-Soleil", or Sun King. In another country and time, [Tutankhamun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun) gained access to the power at the age of around 9. Yet, these cases are often unwanted cases where the predecessor died, and such events create unstability in the kingdom (like the Fronde rebellion that Louis XIV faced). If it was known and correctly announced and prepared, there would probably less ruckus, but still I have some doubts...
**So what are the advantages (if any) that early power pass-on is standardized and favored, especially in the political games you have with your vassals and other neighboring kingdoms?**
[Answer]
**The king also has a kind of (authentic or alleged) shamanic nexus with the earth**
In some ancient societies, the health and vigour of the king was considered directly linked to the health of the land, to the point that as soon as the king started to show the first signs of old age, he was sacrificed and a new, young and healthy king was crowned.
Luckily for the old king, in this society it is not considered necessary to sacrifice him, since his wisdom still is kept in great consideration, but in order to keep the land fertile, it is necessary to have a king in his prime.
Basically, the idea is to have a kind of "constitutional" kingdom, where the king is a shamanic/religious/cerimonial role, while the former king acts as a prime minister.
In this situation, obviously the main advantages are perceived, rather than real (they could be real in case of a magical setting, of course).
[Answer]
## Dynastic Turnover:
I think you would have an odd paradoxical effect. There would be a motive for the king/queen to have lots of siblings, but no legitimate children. A liege with an heir is already planning for retirement. If the king has an acknowledged mistress, his children are not heirs. The liege's kids are likely off the table, or they will wait to have kids until they are older. Potentially, they might even declare their own kids as illegitimate to maintain power.
Similarly, brothers and sisters of the liege may have a motive to have lots of children - the liege will name an heir when he's ready to retire, but not a day sooner. If you have a child in the line of succession the liege likes, the chances are better for him/her to be named heir. Oddly, young children would be advantageous, because an old king could name a young child as heir and still have some 'breathing room' before being forced out. They might even name one kid heir, then name another heir right before the designated heir becomes the new ruler to prevent the loss of power.
So you may have a tradition of grooming for inheritance without naming an heir, or sequentially naming new, younger heirs from among potential inheritors. This would lead to a lot of struggles as rulers wait a little too long to pick an heir or prior heirs dispute that they were no longer heir. Royal houses may find themselves overturned by usurpers, especially if the ruler grooms several individuals to curry favor among his friends, family, and followers. While this would lead to increased volatility, it might also lead to greater flexibility as to who rules.
Potentially, the greater volatility might lead kingdoms eventually to invest greater and greater governmental powers in nobles or bureaucracies so disputes about who is king don't disrupt business as usual. Kings rarely had absolute power, and this would make it official. The fear of very young lieges in charge would also lead to this same end point. No one wants a short-term king, and no one wants an inexperienced one ruled by hormones and ignorant or inexperienced.
If this same rule applied to all nobility, it could potentially lead to an end to the rule of nobles. Other systems would crop up (guilds, churches, bureaucracies, etc.) to take the volatility out of the system, and nobles would be relegated to symbolic power.
[Answer]
# As described, this seems very implausible
While there historically were 12 year old monarchs, they were almost never effective rulers until they become older. In most cases they were king in Title only, but the kingdom was actually ruled by a regent until he was a bit older. Immaturity issues aside, a 12 year old has simply not experienced enough in their life to be as proficient at anything compared to their older selves; so, an older more experienced king was typically desirable. The only real reason people would normally choose to serve a monarch this young was because they needed someone to be the "rightful heir" to keep the nobility from starting civil wars over who gets to rule. According to the feudal mindset, if the throne is not actually vacant, then changing leadership is a very bad idea.
Then there is the secondary issue that people don't just let go of power. The person who is king already has indisputable power, and his children have none. So, the first king born into this system would just rewrite the laws to prevent his child from ascending prematurely.
## Consider this instead:
While giving a whole kingdom over to a 12 year old should only be a last resort, getting a head-start ruling at a smaller scale while the king still lived is useful because it meant that new kings could step into their roles fully experienced and knowledgeable about how to rule. In England, the County of Cornwall is often assigned to the first born son to rule while the King still rules the country as a whole in this way your 12 year olds are not literal "kings", but rather lords of a significant fiefdom. It this way, your general premise will make a lot more since in that the dad is still alive and well and advising the boy while he rules, but does not have to abdicate the throne or destabilize the whole nation to do it.
[Answer]
The Ruling monarch would be subject to two very curious diseases.
1. Almost all Rulers would be sterile, having no offspring.
Apparently the stress of knowing that the moment they have a child, the universe puts an indelible 12-year expiry stamp on their reign, causes sterility among Rulers.
2. Children of Rulers (few and far between as they are), will suffer from an acute form of timed Infant Death Syndrome. Possibly linked to puberty, this dread disease strikes *shortly before* their 12th birthday, leading to inexplicable deaths due to poisoning, slit throats, and other similar "natural causes"
[Answer]
* **Monarchy in name only.**
The king is a youngster and the former king is just *one* very senior adviser. That gives plenty of practical power to the other advisors. Assume that on average, those royal advisors produce better government than any one king.
* **A custom of trial by combat.**
The "international order" of the setting still has a big place for trial by combat. No champions allowed, and wriggling out of a challenge would be a major loss of face. so one kingdom would rather send a 15-year-old than a 50-year-old. 12 would be a little young, however.
Alternatively it used to be that way, and the tradition of early coronation survived.
* **A custom of diplomacy by marriage.**
All the little kingdoms squabble and make up again, all the time. The ultimate playing chip on the board is the dynastic marriage of a king or queen. Much more certain than marrying the *heir apparent* or the *heir presumptive*. So the tradition developed that heirs should turn king before they reach the proper age for marriage.
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As written, I suspect your system will break down rapidly. Humans tend to hold on to power as long as they can; a system like yours will encourage your rulers to have children late or not at all, which is a problem if there's any risk of death for the reigning monarch, which there is. Battlefields are always a hazardous place, for one, and a king unwilling to lead his troops personally is likely to lose respect and influence. Queens run up against maternal mortality, which was not a trivial matter in medieval times even for royalty: there were certainly other reasons why ruling queens were few, but the risk of the queen dying like that was one of them. And of course, for royalty, there are natural causes (disease, illness, falling down the stairs badly) and "natural causes" (poisoning, a knife in the heart, etc.) of death in surprising abundance.
This is entirely separate from the problem of a 12-year-old king or queen being the expected outcome of your system. Someone that young, no matter how well educated, simply isn't going to have the practical experience to make good judgement calls consistently. There will be exceptions (when are there not exceptions?) to this general rule, but most are going to suffer from acting on impulse and doing something stupid; teenagers are not renowned for their good sense, and royalty is scarcely immune to that. Your thought of advisors is a good one, but if the monarch is, well, the monarch, that won't be sufficient as a safeguard to stop the kid ruler from saying something insulting to the envoy of Whereverland (or responding to an insult from said envoy in kind) and inciting a war.
If your system is kept as written, you're not going to have very effective dynasties ("effective" meaning "long-lasting" for the most part). One way or another, people are going to sabotage the system to make sure this kid ruler doesn't throw a spanner into the works of the monarchy. This will likely come in the form of the kid ruler being reduced to a puppet, a king or queen in name but who has little actual power, the advisors (the previous monarch and their trusted councilors, probably) wielding the real influence, but there are other ways you could resolve this issue with relatively small tweaks.
**Suggestion**: make the heir's assumption of the monarchy a more gradual matter, instead of dumping the crown on their head the moment they turn twelve. Have a tradition where the ruling monarch hands off certain duties to their heir as they grow older; if tradition doesn't specify, this will probably be whatever the current monarch doesn't like to deal with (border disputes, traveling, ceremonial duties, whatever the given individual hates). The royal heir is effectively a king or queen in training, so treat them and train them accordingly.
This gives the heir a piece of power to satisfy their taste for it without overwhelming them. If they want more power, they will have to show they can wisely use and manage the power they have been granted so far; this gives them a powerful (ahem) incentive to learn to wield power properly. As they prove adept, the monarch can hand over other duties, until eventually the monarch can step down in the knowledge that their son or daughter will be fit to continue their dynasty, and as the trusted advisor they will still wield considerable influence with a fraction of the burden (they're not young anymore, presumably).
The exact time frame for abdication would probably depend on the heir's aptitude and wisdom, but something around 18 to 20 is plausible, I would think: for the truly gifted, it could be even sooner. I would recommend a tradition that the heir should not wed until after they put on the crown, to avoid having to worry about a family until they have mastered the proper use of power. Of course, if the firstborn child is mad or stupid or otherwise ill-suited to be a monarch, you'll have some issues, but that is almost universal among monarchies.
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1. **Council of elders.**
The young monarchs are inexperienced in all ways, and would rely on a group of advisors more than a typical adult ruler. These advisors would likely recommend more informed and prudent actions than an individual would make operating solo. The council would be more likely to rein in disastrous and imprudent courses of action. With the day to day process of governing done by council one would lose the possibility of a crazy inspired spark of genius that some lucky royal might have. One would avoid the probability of dullards, egomaniacs and other terrible rulers that royals often turn out to be.
2. **Short life expectancy for royals.**
Perhaps in this land there is lots of fighting among the aristocracy - maybe as duels with each other or in wars. They do not live long. But neither do they do much fighting until they are full grown so between 12 and 17 or 18 they are likely to stay alive. By having the power with the kids it sidesteps predictable succession crises when monarchs tend to die in their early 30s.
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### The Japanese Emperors did something similar.
In [medieval Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daij%C5%8D_Tenn%C5%8D), it became the custom for the Emperor to give up the throne while still alive, and become simply a very senior advisor for the new Emperor. This created a system where often the previous Emperors had more political power than the current Emperor did. This eventually resulted in a series of civil wars between the supporters of the current emperor and the supporters of previous emperors, eventually resulting in the general collapse of the country into civil war and the beginning of a period of history referred to as the Sengoku Jidai, or Warring States Period, and the loss of much of the Emperor's power as the warring military leaders took control over the country.
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**No True King**
While to the outside world this Kingdom would look much like any other, in reality this would be some-other-form-of-government (oligarchy perhaps? Or even a Republic!) wearing a Monarchy suit. Think modern England but without an immortal Queen. This can be a Good Thing, especially at a place and time where all its neighbors ARE Monarchies.
1: The King/Queenship is hereditary, and largely ceremonial. Because you keep rotating out young rulers at a rapid pace (no 30-year-reigns here! Ascend the Throne and pop out an heir ASAP, for the good of the realm!) whatever council advises the King will wield the true power. Done correctly (the bane of all government systems) this isn't something the "Ruling Dynasty" will fight too hard. After all, you live like a king, you're in charge of all the royal banquets, and get prime seats for the jousting tournaments. When your alternative is a flat-out overthrow of the monarchy what's not to like? A small council of professionals is going to generally be better than absolute rule, so your "Kingdom" is likely to be better governed than its neighbors in the long term.
2: You still LOOK like a monarchy from the outside. Sure it's really this council-of-elected-burgomasters that run the country, but you still have a King on the throne like everybody else. Sure your inheritance code is a little weird, but at the end of the day Divine Right is still being followed! This takes care of one of the big problems with a not-monarchy in the time-of-monarchies. Namely, that obviously-different government types get warred on an awful lot. So it's a best-of-both-worlds situation where your "Ruler" isn't upsetting the apple cart and is just like your neighbors', but the people actually in charge are generally going to be better at getting things done.
2a: As an additional perk, you still get (albeit in a weird form) the "bonus" of making marriage alliances with all the other monarchies. This was a **Big** way of making and keeping the peace in Medieval societies, and having that advantage while essentially operating a "Free city" type government is great.
On the topic of "what if they don't want heirs to keep power longer" I don't actually think that'll be a huge problem. Firstly, the desire to have a stable line is something ALL monarchies everywhere care a great deal about. If you're in charge of a hereditary monarchy it amounts to a moral duty to the nation to have a child asap. Plus if you're in charge by 12, have a host of advisors marrying you off soon after, and then puberty kicks in.... let's just say it'll take more self-control than a normal teenager has NOT to produce an heir quickly, especially when all your adult mentors are egging you on.
So what happens to your Monarch Emeritus once the new monarch is enthroned? If the ruling council's non-royal members do their job right he/she will be a non-entity because they haven't learned to BE anything other than a face at ceremonies. One spoiled rich kid on a council of Actual Adults doesn't do much damage. They get the "decorations" portfolio and nobody minds. Or you could run the (riskier) option of putting them In the Field. A 30 year old with an upbringing in soldiering is in their prime as a Field Commander for military campaigns. The only problem is military victories tend to make people politically powerful, which could spell the end of your cozy Oligarchy-in-a-Monarchy-Suit style of government. You best bet would be to have a former ruler take up some sort of religious post. Not as the head of your faith (being in charge of THAT could make him or her want temporal power as well), but perhaps as a sort of spiritual figurehead. "Now King William VI is on the throne, William V will join the Royal Temple to maintain vigil there as God Wills" or some such thing. If this is a fantasy setting this Royal Temple could easily contain enough worldly delights that a former King/Queen would very much look forward to hanging out there and not care overmuch about the power they might try to gather instead.
Now I will say this would work better as a patrilineal setup rather than allowing ruling Kings and Queens. The reason is that a 12 year old king looks cute, and at 16ish can produce an heir, So he's out by say 30 on the late end. A ruling queen however comes to the throne at 12... and it's a dice game. Even with the best medical staff of the age childbirth was fraught with peril, and the younger the mother the worse the odds. So you could quite easily lose your queen in a bad birthing that leaves 0 heirs. Or you wait until your queen is older, at which point she'll have the brains God doesn't grant horny teenagers, and maybe she decides to hold off childbirth indefinitely to hold onto power, or even amass enough power of her own that she doesn't feel the need to pass it on when her heir comes of age.
There are of course a TON of problems with this setup no matter if it's male only or male/female inheritance. But the questioned wanted upsides so upsides it is!
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Wangling protocol
This is more a "how do we get ourselves out of this pickle" than a true advantage, but if the king's role is encrusted with ceremonial duties -- and worse, religious responsibilities -- this gives you a way to juggle them. Perhaps some do not have to be performed when the king is a minor -- make the age of majority 25, and maybe all those can be skipped permanently, or perhaps only just before he abdicates -- but if the king performs all the ritual sacrifices and observes all the ritual purification and purity taboos, the council of advisors can rule the nation.
Give the king time enough to do actual duties to prepare him for the task of ruling. He will also have to receive ambassadors and petitions from below, so he will need actual qualifications for that.
The king would probably look forward to his escape and have an heir as soon as is feasible.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[How do creatures with a hive mind communicate?](/questions/495/how-do-creatures-with-a-hive-mind-communicate)
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Closed 3 years ago.
The question basically explains it all: I'm looking for the possibility and the means by which a creature can communicate with other members of its species with "telepathy".
I'm not looking for pheromone-emitting or just a silent "language" like a sign language, by the way.
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Thinking about this rationally, you just need your creatures to communicate using a medium that isn't detected by other creatures in the environment.
This can be:
* Extreme high or low frequency sounds (bats/whales)
* High or low frequency light
* High or low frequency movements (hummingbird wings)
* Exact frequency sensitivity (something moving at an exact frequency being visible to other animals, much like how a flipbook or zeotrope works)
* [Chromatophore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatophore) skin patterning (octopii communicate their emotions via skin patterning that makes no sense to other animals)
This is, to all intents and purposes, telepathy.
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## It depends on your definition
The informal definition of telepathy is effectively "by magic." The communication simply happens without any physics behind it.
But if you want to explore it a little more scientifically, then you have to define what you mean. I'm going to define it to mean "biological communication via a medium that's incompatible with the biology of outsiders." But there has to be a medium. If there's no medium, it's magic. Nothing wrong with that, lots of stories use it, but there's no point in trying to define "how." This also, by definition, means that the telepathy can be observed and understood by outsiders' application of a sufficient level of technology and effort. Everyone has the same laws of physics.
There are a variety of communications that aren't "telepathy" by this definition as they rely on observers simply not *understanding* the communication: jargon, code words, steganography, encryption, secret hand signs, shifting patterns of color, etc.
I'll ignore pheromones because the question said to, but they would be a decent option.
* Touch-based sign language, based on applying varying forces and shapes of pressure would be an option. It's pretty mundane, as these things go, but hard to eavesdrop on. This is pretty close to what is already done by the community of [people who are both blind and deaf](https://www.ndcs.org.uk/information-and-support/language-and-communication/sign-language/tactile-signing/). Our computers could learn it, given an appropriate interface device and a cooperative creature.
* The "direct neural connection" idea in Jacob Badger's answer is a pretty good one. It would open up new disease vectors, and it obviously requires physical contact. On the downside, the bandwidth of a single nerve is pretty low, and a nerve bundle capable of carrying as much information as a conversation would be difficult to connect on demand. But it could happen.
* UV light is another option. Many species, especially insects, can see light frequencies that humans can't. Bees [use this to find nectar within flowers](https://www.beeculture.com/bees-see-matters/). A creature that had patches of UV-pigmented (or UV-emitting) skin and UV-sensitive vision could use this to communicate.
* By the same token, ultrasonics could be a choice. Bats and dolphins only use it for echolocation, but they *could* use ultrasonics for communication too. 20th century technology could easily detect all this.
* Going slightly more exotic, another option would be radio waves. Life on Earth never evolved sensitivity to radio, but maybe it could have, especially in an environment where *sensing* radio waves would be valuable. Some animals can create electrical currents, and electrical currents plus a conducting wire of the appropriate length makes a radio. There's iron in our blood (some animals use [copper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemocyanin), which is even better). An organ could exist that maintains a radio antenna inside it which could be used to transmit and receive radio signals. 20th century level or more advanced humans would, of course, detect this quickly, but it would probably take a while to understand it. For a variation, you could instead use the electrical currents to modulate magnetic fields. The range would be short, and you only need Iron Age technology to detect it (but probably advanced computers to decode it).
* Going more exotic than radio, you could try neutrinos. This is pushing the boundaries, but I don't think it's *impossible*. Neutrinos are difficult to detect and this communication might go unnoticed, at least for a while, by humans at a modern/near-future level of technology. The easiest way to produce neutrinos is through radioactive decay. A species whose biology was broadly compatible with radioactive elements could modulate the fission rate of the uranium in its body, and therefore its neutrino emissions, by increasing or decreasing the local concentration of it. Current state-of-the-art enables [lightweight and compact](https://www.ornl.gov/news/worlds-smallest-neutrino-detector-finds-big-physics-fingerprint#:%7E:text=From%20left%2C%20Professor%20Juan%20Collar,the%20SNS%2C%20is%20at%20left.) neutrino detectors. A sufficiently large creature could contain a similar device, grown biologically. Nothing here is biologically *impossible* although there are a lot of stretches and dots to connect. Rate of information transfer would be low, but you can't beat the stealth.
More exotic than that? You're going into the realm of speculative or implausible physics. Gravitational waves are too difficult to generate by a plausible creature, and then you have undetected hypothetical particles, dark matter, etc. If the physics isn't understood or doesn't make sense for the purpose, you're into the realm of magic.
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This would be otherwise impossible without the discovery of [brain waves](https://www.sinhaclinic.com/what-are-brainwaves/#:%7E:text=Brainwaves%20are%20electrical%20impulses%20in,brainwaves%20occur%20at%20various%20frequencies.). Brain waves are electrical impulses in the brain.
So just make them be able to send out much more powerful brain waves that are easier to "pick up" in the form of thoughts and/or feelings. Then make your creatures also be able to receive and interpret those brain waves into the correct thought(s) and/or feeling(s) and bam! Telepathy.
Though they *would* only have so much of a range before the waves become patchy, and/or dissipate.
Also, they would be vulnerable to electrical interference.
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I think the closest thing we might get to old fashioned telepathy is something like the tseheylu from avatar.[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YxfLm.gif)
No words, no language, just the instantaneous transfer of data from one nervous system to the other by plug in. So you can just have your creatures holding tentacles, and signaling each other as if to say, “plug me in, I need to talk to you,” and depending on how technological your creatures are they could have an implant that can make their “plug in” telepathy into “wireless.”
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One that I've not seen gone into depth here is electromagnetic fields, as distinct from "radio".
## Electrics
Marine animals from clams on up either inadvertently or deliberately produce electric signals, and those signals are detected through the water by marine predators (sharks, skates, rays, reedfish, sturgeon, etc). Most have their electroreceptors in [ampullae of Lorenzini](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampullae_of_Lorenzini), and those of sharks are sensitive to 5 nV/cm.
To work at reasonable range, this requires water or conductive ground, however; air is a reasonably good electrical insulator, so I suspect such communication over air would be necessarily short-range.
We can calculate the range and data rate we'd get by comparing to an electric eel.
To emit electricity, electric eels use [electroplaques](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_organ_(biology)) which, arranged in series, emit 860V at 1A and 25Hz.
A shark can detect 1/172,000,000,000th of that voltage over 1cm. So if we can find the sphere that has 172 billion cm surface area, that's the max theoretical distance they could communicate, assuming perfect conductance. That's a 1170m radius (nearly 3/4 mile), so that'd be the max communication range with biological organs that exist on earth.
On a flat plane (eg wet ground), the distance would massively increase because now it's just a disc, not a sphere, to a shade under 274km.
Be warned that this is assuming perfect conduction, not taking into account resistance, impedance, interference, noise, and other confounding effects, all of which would *severely* decrease this range. akin to saying "The blue whale can emit at 188dB, and the most sensitive hearing of any animal is (I don't know, and have no idea why this is so hard to google) dB, therefore using speech we could communicate out to thousands of miles if we assume air transmits sound perfectly".
It's also assuming that it's OK to electrocute the person next to you in order to shout across to the next room.
At 25Hz, you can transmit a signal of at most 25 bits per second, which is still plenty for speech, with human speech having a bit rate of some 39 bits per second. Cranking it up to 40Hz to get the same rate as speech doesn't seem infeasible, or even higher, plus you can use other modulation schemes to get higher data rates at the cost of range.
## Magnetics
Detection of magnetic fields ([magnetoreception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoreception)) has been shown in everything from bacteria on up. Many such animals have been shown to navigate by magnetic fields, for example. But for the most part, we only have hypotheses about how this is done, and don't even know the sensitivity-levels of the sensors.
The study of this area is [magnetobiology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetobiology), and as that page admits in its lede:
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> Biological effects of weak low frequency magnetic fields, less than about 0.1
> millitesla (or 1 Gauss) and 100 Hz correspondingly, constitutes a physics problem.
> The effects look paradoxical, for the energy quantum of these electromagnetic
> fields is by many orders of value less than the energy scale of an elementary
> chemical act. On the other hand, the field intensity is not enough to
> cause any appreciable heating of biological tissues or irritate nerves
> by the induced electric currents.
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That is to say, we not only don't know how animals detect this (though there are plenty of hypotheses), but we don't even have a clue how it's physically possible for them to do it as well as they do.
The page also makes the (unsupported) claim:
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> Their perception can be on the order of tens of nanoteslas.[citation needed]
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So if you want more magic-and-woo SciFi, magnetic stuff is good. If you want Hard Science, maybe best to stick to electric stuff. But remember that they're both just two sides of the same coin! An electric field creates a magnetic one, and vice versa.
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Using real world science? Not really possible like you might want it, as far as I am aware. Telepathy and telekinesis are essentially just sci-fi magic,and there's no such thing as a signal which just appears in the target's mind (unless maybe we enter the realm of quantum physics, in which things begin to get rather interesting, but still).
So let's break it down the classic telepathy you seem to want and see how your "sign language" limitation doesn't apply if you want communication:
In classic telepathy, what do we see? We see people communicating only with their minds, without requiring any kind of device or even their voices. In some cases, this communication can even be used to transfer knowledge and ideas rather than a phrase in a specific language. Do we see this anywhere in real life? Yeah, in radios, Bluetooth sharing and the internet.
Truth here is that in all these cases we see exactly that, with some differences: in radio communication you speak to the radio, the radio converts what you said into a signal and sends this signal. The other radio "magically" receives the signal, interprets it and uses it's sound box to convert the signal into something the other person can understand. Now, notice how the radios can communicate between each other without needing to use sound? That's called electromagnetic waves, a kind of wave that isn't unlike light, but it's one we can't detect with our senses alone. A very similar concept is used when you use Bluetooth to transfer a document from a device to another.
When you break it down, telepathy is no different from someone who is unaware of the existence of Morse code hearing it. The difference here would be that the beeps are in a frequency this person can't perceive.
So summing up, can telepathy like you probably mean exist? Yeah, so long as you understand it doesn't have infinite range and your species can somehow produce and detect electromagnetic waves as a means of communication ([example involving the use of radio waves](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/123462/anatomically-correct-radio-communication)). If you don't want to use radio, you can just look at other alternatives in @Slows 's answer. Can information be exchanged through means other animals might not detect? Yes. Can it be Done without requiring the information to travel through some medium, just appearing at the receiving end? Yes, with magic or with sufficiently advanced technology, which are basically the same, except one category is named magic and the other sci-fi.
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Others have already mentioned radio, but perhaps your creature has brain circuitry to communicate through electromagnetic induction, like a transformer. Maybe a neuron coil wraps around the amygdala and modulates the signal with their emotions, which would induce the same current in the brain of a peer. The range would be really short though, probably even have to touch heads for the clearest signal, but it also is constantly broadcasting / receiving. They'd also probably give intense spiritual significance to minerals and the planet, also being great at navigation by "listening" to the magnetic fields. If they are intelligent and develop technology, cell phones might interface with the brain this way. They'd be extremely vulnerable though without technology, get a strong enough magnetic flux and the electric current will fry their brains.
You could also make up some kind of sci-fi "quantum entanglement" explanation.
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True telepathy would basically be organic radio - somehow your critters would have to be able to generate, modulate, receive, and interpret EM waves. That would allow them to communicate over distance, would be undetectable to others (without equipment scanning the particular EM band they communicate over, anyway), and depending on the band could transfer quite a bit of information.
Given that we have Earthly species that can [generate and store electric charge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_eel), I don't think it's flat-out impossible for some species somewhere to evolve a way to use that charge to generate EM waves, although I can't even begin to imagine the selection pressures that would favor such a development.
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One more possibility - usage of a field existing in extra dimension.
In 4th dimension (sush, string theory!) objects might be in a good proximity to each other in curved 3d spacetime so that creatures can utilize some field that leaks into this fourth dimension for their communication.
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Assuming the atmosphere on a Niven ringworld is retained by gravity, what shape would it be?
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> Full details of Ringworld <http://larryniven.wikia.com/wiki/Ringworld>
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As I understand it, Niven proposed walls on either edge that would form a sort of trough for the atmosphere to sit in to avoid it leaking into space. However keeping it in a trough assumes there is sufficient gravity to retain it. He also has oceans on the outside of the ring. These also must be retained by gravity. Why then does he need a raised edge?
**Question**
Assuming the cross-section of the ring is a rectangle with sufficient gravity, *and there are no retaining walls*, what shape would the atmosphere adopt? Would 1, 2, or 3 in my diagram be possible configurations?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FtYVq.png)
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Without edge walls, the spin gravity would quickly result in all the atmosphere falling off the edge of the Ringworld. Don't forget that your gravity is only *outward from the center*.
The "oceans" visible on the outer surface of the ring were the shapes of the under sides of basins formed into the surface for the largest, deepest oceans -- several of them many times larger than Earth.
If you built a ring *that didn't spin*, and it had large enough diameter relative to width and thickness that the "arch" (the opposite side of the ring) has negligible gravity effects on the local surface, you'd get a shape like your first or second illustration, an elliptical atmosphere surrounding the rectangular cross section (and all the water would tend to collect at the center of each flat). Whether the edges stick out of the atmosphere would depend on the ratio of width to thickness.
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You're missing the way the ringworld simulates gravity, which is entirely centrifugal force from the rotation, the atmosphere has to be contained to remain in place.
Hence your image is more like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8pEvy.jpg)
Where the ring has walls to contain the atmosphere and the only way onto the planet surface is through the open inside face or through airlocks in the walls or floor.
You can't have anything on the outside of the ring. While as a stationary mass the ringworld would have a centre of gravity coincident with the star it was in place around, the spin negates that gravity and would cause anything on the outer surface to fly off. This does give you a cheap space launch mechanism though as you don't need to escape the gravity well.
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I think you misunderstood what a Ringworld looks like. People live on the inside of the ring with "down" pointing outwards. Gravity is mimicked by the apparent centrifugal force caused by the Ringworld spinning. This also pushes the atmosphere outwards against the "ground" (= the ring") and you only need walls on the side to keep it from leaking out there, assuming they are tall enough.
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We all know about the horrific history of the slave triangle which transported people from Africa to the Caribbean and America in exchange for sugar and other plantation produce.
I'm trying to envisage a United States where the concept of african slavery never took root. The two areas I want to focus on are ethnic diversity and racial tension.
Presumably there would be a considerably lower proportion of African Americans living in the United States today. However, would being much more of an ethic minority result in more or less racial tension today?
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## Nobody can give you a definitive answer as it is primarily culture-based
In some cultures like **Sweden** there have not been that many ethniticies from far across the globe until recently, but they are still rather open-minded.
In **Japan** people are not racist in the sense that they think of white or black people inferior, but they are not open to them. Japan has a lower refugee intake than the US for example. Also it is very difficult to immigrate to Japan.
In **Germany** it is quite split at the moment. Overall there is a decent acceptance of other cultures, but in the last few years an portion of the public has grown a distaste for the arabic countries/cultures, which is why there is a permanent discussion about taking refugees from there.
It is to note that Germany has a rather high quote of immigrants. (Also had that before the refugee crisis)
The majority of people is rather accepting of most cultures.
The **United States** is predominantly of caucasian ethnicity, but in general it is very mixed. How racist the people are is mostly dependend of *where* you are in the US. Lousiana and rural Texas tend to be more xenophobic than californian folks. It is all a matter of culture.
### How homogenous a country is has not that much influence on the perceptions of other people
Given the examples you can see that perception is mostly culture-based and not based on what skin colour the majority of which fraction of population has.
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Liath: The first thing we need to know is how many slaves we are talking about: The "Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Database" (<http://www.slavevoyages.org/>) says:
*Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America.
And only about 388,000 of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America. The rest to the Caribbean and South America.*
Of course that amount of Africans were NOT the total slave population. Because you have to add the sons of these slaves born in America, and the sons of the sons, and so on (3 centuries). A census of 1860, indicated **3,953,761 slaves**, representing 12.6% of the total population (reference here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_Census>)
So, the first thing is: without slavery, you will have almost 4 million humans less living in America.
The second: Without slavery, the jobs done in the plantations may have been done by American citizens, with a regular salary and perhaps even sindicalyzed. All that may have raised A LOT the production costs. Take this in consideration (according to National Geographic): <https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0131_030203_jubilee2_2.html>
*During the colonial period in the United States, tobacco was the dominant slave-produced commodity. Concentrated in Virginia and Maryland, tobacco plantations utilized the largest percentage of enslaved Africans imported into the United States prior to the American Revolution. Rice and indigo plantations in South Carolina also employed enslaved African labor.*
That means: Those products will be much more expensive to the final customer, and the related economy impact may have been totally different (in the crops and in all the labor performed by slaves).
Additionally, since there were no slavery, no "freedom heroes" would have ever existed: Martin Luther King or Abraham Lincoln (for example) may have different reasons for being remembered.
And about the racial tension... I´m not really sure how it would change. Consider the Jewish in the Second World War, for example. They were no slaves, however they had a hard time with the Nazis. You don´t need to be a slave to be part of a "racial tension", you just need to be "different".
Additional explanation about this last paragraph: The basis of the racial conflicts between ex-slaves and masters was precisely that: I white people have to assimilate that a person that once was my slave, now has the same rights than any other person in my family. And vice versa: I African people have to change my mindset and understand they I have no master any more. Both ways of thinking (stablished for centuries) need time to be assimilated. Specially because half of the country (USA) didn´t want that change. It was imposed. So, in a country with no "ex-slavery", there will be no particular reason for one person to "feel" superiority over another person. However (and here is why I said "I am not really sure"), there is no guarantee the racial conflicts will not exist. We humans need no deep reasons for that.
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**Racial/etchnic tensions didn't begin in the U.S. with slavery, didn't end with the abolition of slavery, and since tensions exist all over the world, it won't end in the U.S. anytime soon.**
*You're trying to analyze a very complex issue by adjusting just one variable.*
If you go read up on the New York gang activities of the mid 1800s you'll find that anything that could justify a person being excluded was used to rationalize every effort to exclude them. People wanted prosperity/security/opportunity/power (what name you apply here isn't that relevant). The Irish hated everybody because they wanted to protect their jobs and political power. Everyone hated the Jews because people have been hating the Jews, Hebrews, and Israelites for 3,000 years and old habits are hard to break. Everybody distrusted anybody who didn't speak a language they understood (usually English). The U.S. was one of the few immigration-oriented mixing pots to come to be in a very long time — and the nation was just begining to figure out how to solve some very old problems.
Free blacks simply added to already existing racial and ethnic tensions that boiled over at the time of the U.S. Civil War. Enslaved blacks were one of several causes that led to the devestation of the Southern Confederacy during the Civil War, and they were a very easy group to blame for their misfortune. How would any of this have changed if the U.S. had avoided institutionalized African slavery? It wouldn't have changed a single thing. Nada. The hate, the anger, the fear, the contempt, all would have shifted to someone else.
And often did. I can't prove it without doing some research, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if more Native Peoples died as U.S. colonialism moved west than did African slaves.
So, what would have changed in the 50s, 60s, and 70s if we didn't have the black civil rights protests? At that same time we had ERA/Women's Rights, we had Native People's rights, and a growing Latino sub culture in the U.S. Had institutionalized slavery never existed, we would have had immigration from African nations just as we did from all other nations, resulting in a growing African subculture. What would have changed?
Absolutely nothing. The historical claims of the cause of the civil rights movement would differ, but there would have still been racial and ethnic tensions resulting in various civil rights protests, violence, and change. At most, it would have delayed changes in law that had been boiling in the wings for 50+ years.
The point I'm making is that with every wave of immigration the "established" people in the U.S. have complained about the "new" people, resulting in tension. People hated the influence of the Irish in the early 1800s. They hated the influence of the blacks in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They hate the influence of the Hispanics today.
So, other than possibly (possibly, not accounting for natural immigration) having a lower percentage of African influence in U.S. demographics today and a list of different reasons for the social changes in the 60s and 70s, I suspect nothing at all would have changed and nothing at all would be different today.
**TL;DR**
Other than changing the focus of who we ~~hate~~distrust, there would be no substantial change in racial tension in the U.S. had we avoided institutionalized slavery in our history. That one variable is not enough to overwhelm the many other variables contributing to ethnic and racial tensions in this country. This in no way is meant to demean or trivialize the nature of our factual history. We're paying a heavy price for what happened in our history. But that price is due because of deeper problems than the institution of slavery alone can explain. Slavery existed for a reason other than convenience, and it's that underlying reason that's the problem and the reason why basically nothing would be different in the U.S. today had institutionalized slavery not existed here.
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**We might see black people less defined as dangerous, subhuman animals.**
A lot of the other answers try to point out that all, or at least most other ethnic groups have been discriminated against, and so there wouldn't be much change.
The big thing to remember is that while the Irish, Italians, Jews, etc, each had their turn as the "dangerous new group" that were coming to take our jobs, black people were quite literally being treated as sub-human, and less than a person from square one. So, so much of American history was dedicated to keeping them down, and allegedly keeping "the rest of us" safe from them. Once slavery was abolished, there were a number of plans to send them back to Africa.
The levels of racism aimed at black people can barely compare to that of any other ethnic group, and that's directly due to that unique and horrific position they had in American history. There was a need for Americans to constantly convince themselves that these people...weren't. They were classified as sub-intelligent, far closer to beasts of burden than actual humans. They were literally 3/5 of a person The treatment of other ethnic groups can't come close.
If slavery never existed in America, or was eliminated so early in our history so as makes no odds, there would have been FAR less of that endemic need to treat them as...ownable objects.
Of course, if their status of slaves ended so far back in our history, I suspect they might have ended up similar to how we treated the Native people. We didn't seem to mind doing horrific things to them to get them out of our way.
New immigrants from Africa would certainly be seen as an "invading force" in the same way damn near any other nationality became, but I think we'd see a far more similar treatment in comparison to other groups.
I don't recall any national sheet-wearing organizations dedicated to the elimination of Belgians. There were plenty of organizations trying to stop immigration, but not as much the whole "just string em up" thing.
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Racial perceptions aren't a matter of "descendants of slaveowners" versus "descendants of slaves". They're a matter of "us" versus "them".
If you look at the history of the United States, you'll see that "white versus black" is hardly the only racial tension. That history is replete with "No dogs or Irishmen permitted" signs on businesses, "Chinese need not apply" job offers, and the like. Without a history of slavery, there might not be institutional discrimination against African immigrants, but dark skin and non-European facial features make for a clear enough "them" group that informal discrimination will abound.
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Take any minority and see how they are treated. How do American's view them? I expect that with out slavery this is what we would expect. I would argue that racism against peoples of African descent is not because of history, but because they are too high profile and too easy to identify.
In my opinion the problem with racial tension in the United states is not caused by history, it is caused by 3 phenomena:
1. The isolation of many communities (causing xenophobia). This is probably the main one.
2. The popularity of racism in the media because it sells/gets peoples attention (the news loves to highlight race wherever possible). This keeps the issue fresh in everyone's mind.
Example: Instead of a headline like "*Escaped Mental Patient arrested for Hit and Run in Detroit*". You get something like "*White driver runs over black pedestrian in Detroit. Police haven't commented on whether this was a hate crime.*".
3. The culture (characterized by ignorance and arrogance in places where intolerance is said to be an issue).
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I see two possibilities:
1. There would be no racial perceptions as there would not be any Africans left. If you look at documentaries about African tribes, you'll notice they are complete savages. If it wasn't for the guilt the West has about slavery and the resulting humanitarian aid, they had just slaughtered eachother.
2. Increased racism, because following the same logic as point 1, I wouldn't be suprised if they wouldn't even be in the stone age and not even classified as the same species.
Adressing *Presumably there would be a considerably lower proportion of African Americans living in the United States today*:
Not presumably, there probably wouldn't be any. They were taken to America for their raw strength. How would they get here if it wasn't for slavery, if they weren't taken? On a raft?
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So I have in mind a plot point in mind where my protagonist is elected to pilot a giant humanoid robot with flight capabilities - Kinda like a mobile suit from the *Mobile Suit Gundam* franchise. To pilot this robot, the pilot docks a specialised car into the chest, whose interior transforms to form the cockpit of the robot, with a HUD of the robot's 360° peripheral vision displayed on all of the windshields. This robot is to be used on land, in the air and in space, using its legs alongside thrusters on its calves and upper back to move around, and its hands to manipulate tools and weapons, such as it's characteristic Sonic Sabre™ (which needs a better name).
My character, however, has only ever driven the car, *not* the robot. And when the time comes for him to do the latter, he has had no training or briefing other than a brief flick through the rather rudimentary *'Beginner's Guide to the Gamma Bull'*. But, when he gets going and has a minute or two of practice, he finds piloting the robot to be a piece of cake.
But for that to be the case, the control method for the machine must be really intuitive. Again, my character has only ever driven the car, which is a push-and-go automatic. How exactly could the car's interior transform to make piloting the robot so easy? What additional functions could be made available?
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Some things I've had in mind;
* **Avatar style** - The mech suits in James Cameron's *Avatar* have their pilots stand upright in a harness, using the motion of their arms and I presume their legs to make the robot itself move around. This would be perfect and undoubtedly very intuitive, but I'm not sure how well the interior of a car could accommodate this, even after transforming slightly - Remember, the pilot still has to use all of the cars windshields for sight.
* **Mostly automated** - The other idea I've had is that the controls remain somewhat as simplistic as those of the car, meaning that a lot of the robot's motion would instead be automated - Pushing the gas pedal, for example, would make the robot run or walk, but the robot itself would be doing all the calculations regarding balance and footfall. The problems I encounter with this concept, however, is how the pilot would control things like arm movements and flight - Could the steering wheel split into two joysticks? Could the PRNDL stick be a joystick?
* **Mental link** - As somewhat of an addendum to the previous idea, the pilot could have *some* manual control through physical controls, but other aspects of the machine's motion would be dictated through a mental link, a la the Alaya-Vijnana from *Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans*. However, would the mind be able to cope with controlling its own motions while also sending motor orders to body parts it doesn't even possess? Would the unstable mind of someone whose never controlled a giant robot before cope with such stress?
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**"Why a car?"**
Honestly? [Rule of cool.](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool) I consider it a pretty core part of this system's concept and feel too attached to ditch it. Sorry ¯\\_(ツ)\_/¯
**"What's the advantage of a giant robot?"**
See the previous question.
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I'm going to go completely the other way from the existing answers, rather than a neural link or sensor suit to translate the drivers body movements to control the robot, make the giant robot have an AI system that controls itself with only command input from the pilot.
The automated system would handle everything from walking, running, launching missiles, to sword fighting. It would provide situation reports and respond to verbal or control button commands from the pilot; The AI could highlight identified threats and recommend actions and respond when the pilot says, "move to position 3 on the map", or, "attack the target I tagged on the radar using the main cannon," and the AI would carry out the orders.
This would eliminate the main limitation of having the pilots body control the robot, namely that the robot can move in ways and do things that the human body simply cannot do. It's joints can move in different ways and faster than any human, no human has built in thrusters or machine guns, or transforms into a jet. Workarounds for a trained pilot could happen and with extensive training the pilot could use a body sensor input device quite effectively (the AI could also teach your novice how to use it so that the pilot gets better and more control as the story develops), but an untrained person wouldn't initially know how to do anything that a human cannot and is likely to flex their wrist or blink their eyes in the wrong way and accidently launch missiles or initiate the self destruct.
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So, you have a humanoid robot. And you want a human to control it as instictively as possible.
Most humans can control the motion of their own bodies quite well, so let's work from there.
You could strap the pilot into some sort of contraption where he is held around the waist and can move all limbs freely. thus he could simply walk when he wants the robot to walk, extend a hand where needed, and generally just move the way he wants the robot to move. for any extras, like activating, adjusting and directing thrusters, use a joystick.
This way you translate almost all actions direrctly and in the most intuitive way available, reducing specialized control to an absolute minimum.
Add to this a bunch of automated and multiply redundant failsafing and stabilizing systems to prevent oversteering and loss of balance, and your setup should be ready to go.
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My first thought was what Burki mentions - biofeedback kind of thing. Read "Starship Troopers" and that is a great example of just this sort of thing. But the problem with that is that you then end up limiting the robot to the physical limitations of the pilot. If the pilot gets tired of running, and can't run anymore, the robot is stuck. Plus, how do you handle other functions like flight and firing the robot's eye-lasers? So, I would go with something different.
If I remember correctly, we have something called mirror-neurons. When we imagine ourselves running, the same neurons fire in our brain that would fire when we actually run, but mirror-neurons keep the signal from actually going out to our limbs.
You could have an interface (helmet? telepathic? brain implant?) a-la Avatar movie, which allows the pilot to "imagine" the actions he/she wants and the robot would do them. The interface can induce an imagine/day-dream state that allows the pilot to do everything they want to do, in their mind, without it actually translating into any motion. This allows for total control, and if the interface is sophisticated enough, control could even include flight and use of other non-human capabilities the robot may have - pilot, day-dream away.
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## A Xbox/Playstation Controller coupled with game-like software and Z Targeting.
I mean, really, who hasn't had a blast in Zelda and made Link do all sort of things using nothing but a regular controller?
If you have a good AI taking care of the hard stuff, like balance, know movements, personal space and pattern recognition, a standard controller with a smart configuration can very well provide a *huge* array of functionalities. Also, by making it so similar to a videogame the protagonist already knows and plays, you can make it even more believable.
Of course, you wouldn't be able to provide complete control for the pilot for the more detailed stuff, but for gross combat and movement, that should be more than enough.
An interesting note - today, some military vehicles are actually operated by Xbox/Playstation-like joysticks. [No, I'm not making this up.](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3082276/War-games-Russia-reveals-latest-tank-controlled-PLAYSTATION-controller.html)
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**A mental link is not much of a problem**
You ask, "would the mind be able to cope with controlling its own motions while also sending motor orders to body parts it doesn't even possess?" and the answer is "probably quite well, in fact." The human mind is actually incredibly adept at adopting tools into its "body plan" and a number of experiments have shown how relatively easily it is to trick the mind into thinking that things that aren't part of its body actually are. Just think of the [phantom limb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb) phenomenon. You may think that that is slightly different because it's a limb that the mind feels like it 'should' have, but further experiments have shown that you can convince the mind that completely foreign objects are part of it.
Further, adapting extensions to our body plans is commonplace. When you use a tool such as a wrench or grabber, it subconsciously becomes part of our body plans, and we sort of feel like we have an extended reach. We're not getting nearly as much sensory information from the tool, just a bit of vibration and resistance, but we still adapt it into our body plan to feel as though it is part of us in a sense. We work by "feeling" things with our tools. Even when we're driving cars we have a sense of adapting the car to our body plan, using information we get from sight and touch from the vibrations moving the vehicle to sense how close we are to other objects, how straight we are on the road, etc.
Experiments in inducing out of body experiences have shown that where we feel like our consciousness is is highly susceptible to suggestion. There's nothing paranormal or supernatural about it - it's just a trick of the subconscious. But people have been able to be convinced that they are actually inside dolls that are larger or smaller than them,, for example.
You see where I'm going with this: If the mental link is providing sensory input from the mech's body, and the pilot's body is not receiving much variance in its sensory input (he's restrained in a comfortable seat), then the pilot will pretty readily feel like he *is* the mech. And it does help that the mech already has the same basic body plan of the pilot - it is easier to trick someone into thinking they're a doll than a car.
(Likely, this trick of adapting tools into body plans evolved alongside tool use, because it makes us feel much more natural when using them. Any master craftsman who has told you that they treat their tools as an extension of their bodies is not just being poetic, this is a real thing. I wouldn't be surprised if other tool-using animals have a similar cognitive experience, but it's an abstract question to ask a bonobo. Either way this is an aside since your protagonist is a human, presumably.)
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I agree with @Michael that some kind of neural interface would likely provide both the best performance (least delay and most accurate implementations of the pilots intentions). But what if we don't have that technology available? As an abstraction of the "tools as extensions of the body" idea, you can see similar results with more generic controls; just look at the majority of video games. Want to swing your sword? Press X. Need to circle-strafe the enemy? Use the two thumb-sticks while squeezing the trigger! All you need is a gamer for a pilot.
I didn't see any mention in the OP of the pilots other skills, but the statement "My character, however, has only ever driven the car" could suggest that he built, or at least modified, the car himself. In that case, he could install whatever combination of controllers/joysticks he's most comfortable with. A few short hours of pilot practice combined with system training (when I hit X, swing the sword) and your mech is up and running/gunning/flying. [Related? Wikipedia: Megas XLR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megas_XLR "Related? Wikipedia: Megas XLR")
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**Complete mental link only.**
Since Your mech is obviously inspired by Daimos, I suggest You follow the pattern set there to its ultimate version. **The pilot's suit/chair/helmet hijacks the impulses from the spine and feeds them back there.** The pilots looses the non-autonomous control of his body completely, and the mech becomes HIS body. Note that the 'non-autonomous' part is very important, else his heart would stop. Anyway, the pilot feels what the mech feels, and moves it as his own body because it IS his own body now. His biological body is completely inert and would probably have to be kept very tight by the pilots chair.
You cannot get more instinctive from that, and as a bonus this is a solution which is realistic in terms of our own world's physics and biology. A further bonus is in that this solution offers a possible explanation for the origin of the 'glowing eyes' which are one of the staples of many robot series, including Gundam franchise.
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Highly sophisticated AI combined with a neural link. (note, the AI does not have to be sentient. It is likely just a very powerful computer)
The neural link operates at a high level. It intercepts the "desires" of the user (eg walking forwards), forwards this to the AI which then, with regards to the robot's situation, actually makes the robot move.
The neural link also has another function. It blocks commands from the body, preventing the user from actually walking around and injuring themselves inside the cockpit.
I suggest you attach the neural link at the neck so that he can still smile and talk. Or maybe somewhere down his spine if he should be able to move things with his hand.
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With an advanced enough AI you could forgo the neural link, but in doing so you would lose significant control. A steering wheel and gas pedal could easily be translated into the robot walking, but then you have no way to tell it to kick.
On a side note - real life robot boxing:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbPQuwLYgXg>
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The simplest way is a suspended full feedback body suit.
You see what the robot sees and you feel what the robot feels and the robot responds to your body's movements. You move your arm and the robot's arm moves the same. See [Haptic body suit for VR](http://www.roadtovr.com/axonvr-making-haptic-exoskeleton-suit-bring-body-mind-vr/)
Weapons target based on what you are looking at and everything else is voice command or automated.
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As machine learning & AI becomes more and more robust, I've learned that the idea of having a human control something robotic is the fastest way to slow down the robot.
Machines run tons of calculations per second. If you have a robot that has a stabilization method in order to walk bipedally, then it's already running tons of calculations to equalize it's legs to stabilize itself.
That processing can get extended to aiming and firing weapons with pin-point accuracy in split-second timing (aim-bots, basically). To react to situations with dodges and maneuvers in split second timing, etc.
Adding a human to the sitation..
1) you now have sometihng soft and squishy the robot has to worry about protecting
2) that soft squishy thing has a brain and body that can only withstand so much g-force, which limits the reaction speed of the robot
3) if the robot is waiting for the human to react.. human reactions, regardless of how fast, are far slower then machine / computer reaction..
Basically, humans are good at making decisions
Machines are good at enacting will.
So, I would second the notion that the human "pilot" would actually be a co-pilot just along for the ride. And, the robot is there as an exoskeleton to protect the human while giving them a lift to some place the human needs to go to because "human decision required".
With enough technology, robots are going to be able to react, fight, etc, far better then humans, so funneling all of that through a human brain just slows down the reactions and capabilities exponentially.
Machine learning is even getting good at "reading" things beyond the level humans can.
EG: a human eye only has so much color / light processing capability to detect the differences in things. Meanwhile, a computer can detect the differences in colors at the lumens scale (such miniscule differences in color that the human eye can't detect it). This is how machine learning algorithms are able to spot and highlight things in photos that the human eye normally wouldn't.
After I got into data science and machine learning, I looked at sci fi a totally different way.
When I see shows where the humans say "give me manual control!" to insinuate the human will be far better at accomplishing a goal rather then the computer that has split-second reaction times and far better sensors.. it makes me laugh.
My idea of what pilotable robots also changed. The robots would pilot themselves. We're just along for the ride while the robot acts like a walking APC protecting us inside.
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This is gonna come off as a little rude or dismissive, but I don't mean it that way AT ALL!
And what I want to say is: if you're going to do something so nonsensical, why bother thinking the rest of it through? Why spend so much time trying to make it realistic when you're doing everything else around it in such an unrealistic fashion? If you're doing stuff just for "cool-factor", then just swing for the fences. Make up something similarly non-sensical and don't worry for a moment whether it's realistic or not!
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In Christianity, there is the idea of the [Rapture](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture), in which - if I understand correctly - the good are taken to the afterlife, while everyone else remains on Earth.
Take an alternate Earth. Sometime in the near future, something like the Rapture occurs in a manner agreeing with the beliefs of religion X.1 However, the deity of religion X decrees - just before leaving - that this will happen a second time (and perhaps more beyond that) when those still on Earth will have a second chance.
This has some interesting implications. It gives some pretty strong proof that religion X is correct. It also means that those remaining on Earth have some motivation to do everything possible to do enough good to be accepted to the afterlife the next time.
The beliefs of the mainstream sect of religion X state that violence is unacceptable for most reasons (the exceptions being self-defense and the punishment of those who commit violent crimes). One would assume that people would, therefore, cease fighting, as violence could prevent them from being rewarded the next time this Rapture-like event happens. There might be exceptions, though.
Would wars still happen after a Rapture-like event? If so, why?
Edits from comments:
* There is proof that those who were taken were brought to the afterlife
* It is implied that those who were taken will go to "heaven", while those who remain have a good chance of going to "hell"
* There is no "deathbed-confession-of-sins/conversion" that would save somebody.
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1 All the religions in this world are different from the religions on our world, so religion X is not meant to correspond with any particular religion.
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Wars would still happen.
* ~3% of human population have ASPD (sociopaths/psychopaths) according to DSM-IV. Take away 30% during rapture that are genuinely good, and this rises to ~5%.
* Those 5% tend to either:
+ not care about long term consequences (one of the traits of ASPD)
+ OR, they simply don't see themselves getting into heaven anyway (no deathbed sin forgiveness, as per OP's clarification), so might as well go to hell for something more fun and enjoyable than petty brawls and small time murder.
* They can easily conscript less evil people into the war, by threatening the latter (go into the army, or we kill your wife and kids). Remember, in the history of mankind, many if not most wars are a result of a will of a small band of powerful people, not a result of popular vote.
+ they can even trick the rest of population into thinking that the war is "self defense" and thus permissible. There are always real, imaginary, or special-services-arranged, *casus belli*.
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Contrast your scenario with middle ages' Christianity (as a religion pretty much undisputed and devoutly followed in central / western Europe):
>
> It gives some pretty strong proof that religion X is correct.
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>
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Check.
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> those remaining on Earth have some motivation to do everything possible to do enough good to be accepted to the afterlife the next time.
>
>
>
Check.
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> The beliefs of the mainstream sect of religion X state that violence is unacceptable for most reasons...
>
>
>
Check.
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> One would assume that people would, therefore, cease fighting, as violence could prevent them from being rewarded the next time this Rapture-like event happens.
>
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No check.
Wars?
You betcha. Case closed. ;-)
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Well, look at people today: we have a lot of proofs that "if you do X bad things (illness,injuries, death) will happen" but people keep doing that (see cigarettes, junk-food, drugs, pokemons...) because "it won't happen to me" or "I can stop before it's too late".
Also, there could be an external power coercing people to do bad. For example in the case of Christianity, the devil will impose people to have its mark and worship him or die. Some may not be able to bear the stress and tortures and decide it's better *not-to-die-now* than *not-to-be-damned-later*. Not everyone is forward-looking.
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People are people.
Take any (sufficiently large) subgroup of people and ask me what they'll do under a set of circumstances and by far the most likely answer is "the same thing any other group of people would do."
So, you ask: *Would wars still happen after a Rapture-like event? If so, why?*
## Yes
Because people are people.
Perhaps a more interesting question comes from understanding what **The Rapture** means to certain evangelical Christians. Some sects have embellished "The Rapture" and included lots of lore not found in any historic Christian writings.
Usually these embellishments (now) include a global apocalyptic war, probably nuclear.
My opinion is that this is not more or less likely than such a war would be prior to such an event.
You add this statement:
>
> The beliefs of the mainstream sect of religion X state that violence
> is unacceptable for most reasons (the exception being the punishment
> of those who commit violent crimes). One would assume that people
> would, therefore, cease fighting, as violence could prevent them from
> being rewarded the next time this Rapture-like event happens. There
> might be exceptions, though.
>
>
>
Most of the world's population (~70%) is **NOT** Christian (of any sect). Most Christians beliefs (>75%) do **NOT** include a **Rapture** like event.
Even supposing everything you mentioned, people not interested in **Rapture** will still commit atrocities, crimes, violence, etc. If the US is invaded by violent horrible extremists, you can be certain that the non-Raptured citizens will do what is necessary to protect themselves from beheadings, rape, torture, sexual slavery, and other atrocities.
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**Yes**, even with definite proof that one particular religion is the actual one true way, there would still be fighting about it. For a while.
People get really invested in their beliefs, so if an event happened that completely invalidated everything they had believed all their lives, some people would fight back.
Atheists would try to reason away the evidence, probably even going to even further out explanations, like alien abduction.
Other religions wouldn't want to admit that their beliefs were less valid, and would attack the believers of the One True God, and probably go on a general rampage just out of spite.
You would have groups that would try to fight the One True God directly, to try to stop the next rapture event from happening.
There would still be a lot of new converts.
The fighting would start to die down after the second rapture event. If there was a promise of a third as you imply, then you'd have a lot of the people who tried to reason away the evidence or fight it starting to admit that they were wrong and convert. There would also be a large power vacuum for the remaining die hard fanatics and psychos to try to fill, so it wouldn't be completely peaceful, unless the One True God removed the worst of these at some point.
**For example:**
In the book of Revelations, there will be one rapture at the beginning to take away the believers so they won't have to go through the judgement (similar to Noah being in the ark, or Lot and his daughters being taken out of Sodom), and another half way through to take any converts up that had been convinced by the first rapture and repented of their sins.
Armies march from Asia and Europe toward Israel to fight God, and get slaughtered. Then Jesus returns in the second coming, along with all the people who had been taken away in the raptures, where they'll get to spend 1000 years on earth the way God wanted it in the beginning before man sinned.
All of the people who followed the Anti-Christ are thrown into hell, the devil is thrown into the bottomless pit, and everyone that missed the rapture but didn't take the mark of the Beast gets to enjoy paradise on Earth.
At the end of 1000 years of peace, literal Heaven on Earth, satan is released from the pit, and gets one last chance to convince people to rebel, and some do. After this rebellion fails, there is the judgement where all of the souls that didn't go in the rapture are judged and all the fallen angles and unbelievers are thrown into the lake of fire for eternity.
So, in this example, even after seeing the truth with their own eyes and living it, there will still be **some people that want to do it their own way when given the chance**.
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Hmmm, I was wondering when my Christian-based homeschooling was going to come in handy -
Your Xian religion may vary but assuming a precedence exactly analogous to the mythic liturgies of Christianity; the Rapture occurs during a period of times known as 'the tribulation'. This is a brief seven-year period chock full of good ol' testament style vengeance-of-god stuff: Earthquakes, wars, pestilence, etc.
There are variations amongst denominations concerning the when specifically the rapture occurs, but as a sort of compromise many theologians believe there will be two rapture events, one at the beginning of tribulation and another halfway through:
The first is the more 'common' interpretation of Christians, to the delight of all us heathens and pagans, are plucked from the earth. This occurs with no warning, signaling the beginning of Tribulation, thus sparing the faithful from big g's wrath.
The other event, a more traditional (medieval) view, occurs half-way through the tribulation and correlates with some other events: the false prophet is revealed; the two witnesses are publicly executed by The Beast; there is a marked increase in frequency and magnitude of earthquakes and volcanoes; the dead shall rise to walk amongst the living; whatever that wormwood thing was; and, *infine*, the gentiles wage war against the Jews in the holy land. Of the dead who walk again, those with names lucky enough to be written in the 'book of life' are taken with all the remaining Christians - the final rapture. What follows is 3 1/2 years of the world rent asunder. The tribulation ends in the battle of Armageddon where the Jews, defending the holy land, look to be overrun but then god rains fire from the sky and saves them even though they don't believe in Jesus they're still his people so I guess it's okay for them to be saved after all. Anyway, following this is 1000 years of Christ reining 'by the iron rod' as god-emperor and THEN the final judgment, and then, to borrow the Yiddish, yadi-yadi-yah.
So, to answer your question, Yes. According to biblical myth, at least, the rapture event is indeed the very precursor to war. But it has to be the last war! The whole point of rapture is for the merciful and wise Xiox to protect all the true believing Xians from the, presumably, generally and thoroughly unpleasant events unmaking the world. After that, though, no. Christianity is disappointingly vague about what the millennial reign of Christ will actually be like. near as I can tell it involves singing in a really big choir. The general impression is, at least, there will be no war. Think of a super-despotic theocracy. Those tend to be, at least inwardly, very peaceful societies. Before Xians are admitted final suspended simulation aboard god's golden space colony, a final weening of the unfaithful pretenders most occur. The repression will be planet-wide and absolute - very Orwellian with much boot stamping on face. Any attempt to build an insurgency will be rooted and expunged by the all-knowing, all-seeing Theo-technocrats.
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**I think so.**
Just a note: for your story, you should specify that your rapture does not include the apocalyptic events after the 'good' are saved.
Since I believe the majority of the people on Earth are generally 'good,' the remainder of civilization will have to reconstruct, and will likely be shamed into telling the 'rapture' story in many varied and different ways.
This leads to a second (and onwards) generation(s) who will be skeptical of the event being a divine rapture; indeed, skeptical of much recent history, since, let's say, 85% of the population was removed, leaving a lot of questions.
War is not necessarily inevitable, but I would consider it likely.
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Interesting that you chose to ask about war and not crime, murder and other mayhem.
the above stats on ASPD does suggest there will be a certain group of individuals that will continue to transgress. As well, as mentioned in the comments, some people do not want to end up in a heaven where you get to praise some god over and over again for all eternity.
Consider also the buddhist heaven where you live in sensual bliss but are reincarnated since you are still apart of the cycle of living and dying.
And then consider wars in general. They take a certain amount of organization and resources, and 'control' of people. Historically, wars devolved when one of the opposing armies could no longer feed the troups.
If people are still required to grow food to feed themselves, they might not fight unless someone can supply them with the sustenance. they would likely still have families and still feed protection and love for them, but might not be all that interested in killing others for some other resource grab or control of territories.
Although, as is found in history, you might convince a bunch of people to 'righteously' kill off the remaining non-believers through some perversion of the belief system that ascertains that the killing is justified by the deity in question that caused the rapture. And if you include the caveat that said 'crusade' would equate with a free ticket to rapture number 2 (the sequel) then you could probably do it.
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You mention that there is proof that those who were taken were brought to the afterlife. However I wonder what kind of proof could actually convince *everyone*, even those who never witnessed the original event. This to me seems a little implausible.
If every single person was an absolute devout follower of the religion, and never questioned any of its doctrines, then obviously there would never be wars. However unless human nature is very different on this alternate Earth, this kind of unwavering universal belief simply could not occur.
Also if every single person was devout, proof would not be required. I would suggest that if proof is required, then the followers aren't devout enough to guarantee complete fidelity to the religion, regardless of how convincing this proof may seem.
In short, if the inhabitants of your alternate Earth are fully autonomous beings, then conflict and war will invariably still happen.
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People with different opinions (and actual power) don't just give up when you show evidence, no matter how strong.
Imagine that you're a leader of a strong cult (or a political party or something, it's all the same). Your whole life, you and your followers have been saying that Xian god doesn't exist, and that their religion is a load of bull. Then a lot of light appears all over the world, and most Xians simply vanish. The *last* thing you'd say is "Huh, guess that Xian thing is true after all!". Instead, you'd use the same to *strenghten* your own position:
* Nothing magical - aliens came and took / killed them all.
* Another god was getting tired of their bull, and got rid of them. Stupid misbelievers. All the more proof that Yian god is real!
* The good old "what does that prove anyway?" After all, creationist sects are still powerful in places, no matter how much evidence you bring. Even if their god came down from the skies and said "Come on, cut the bull already! Obviously you made a few mistakes when copying the old tablets/scrolls!", they'd still find a way to disregard this. It wasn't really god. We understood his message wrong. It is a test of faith (*very* popular with abrahamic religions, especially christianity). Don't worry, there's no need to invent any evidence or a reason at all - simply state it as a fact and let *them* worry about such trivialities.
* Good riddance. Finally their god (or whatever) took them, and we can carry on without their interference. Do we really want to lose the world we built with our own hands just so we could get an eternal servitude in prayer and boredom? There's no satisfaction in being handed the world on a silver platter - we're going to work hard to make a heaven on Earth!
* ... and a million of other things a skilled politician could explain away.
The best thing is that you don't even have to have one explanation - everyone will take the one they like the most, like with all conspiracy theories. The only thing they'll agree on is that there *is* a conspiracy - and that's quite enough to completely discount whatever observations or evidence there is :)
If everyone believed that unicorns only follow people who are Good, the second a unicorn started following your political opposition, you'd start with the "well, obviously, that's just fairy tales". You don't just roll over and die!
One of the tricks that makes science *really* work is that its predictions are testable, and usually it isn't really all that hard to test (and design your own experiments). And even then, with the huge, overwhelming evidence, most people ignore whatever facts they don't like, be it the age of Earth, or that blacks are people too, honest. Sure, a rapture-like even would probably be a bit more spectacular than a science paper, but that doesn't really have much of a lasting effect - most people would probably forget it the next day, I'm not even starting on the next generation or two - "Sure, grandpa, a light came out of the sky and took the true believers..."
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Wars don't start because ~3% of the population are sociopaths/psychopaths.
They start because of so many different reasons (economical, social, environmental etc.) it's so complicated I doubt rapture event will effect the likeliness of war at all.
People on earth will have to continue living their lives as they always had, although the loss of so much of the population could cause these tensions that lead to war such as the complete loss of economical infrastructure (similar to maybe a huge epidemic?).
The fact that so many "good" people have left the earth will not change the likeliness, this dietys idea of good could be anything? If old religious texts are anything to go by, maybe even going to war with other beliefs?
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I have this story where this dude turns himself into a mutant by saturating himself(drinking, cooking with, bathing in, inhaling, and injecting it) in this stuff he made with energy drinks, protein powders, vitamins, veggies, and more(and irradiating himself as well). I imagined and want it to be liquid.
But see...he has no access to a blender as he is shrunk down to around an inch in a building. There is a cockroach civ in there with him but they are hostile and are have around ww2 level tech, so no blenders yet, I think.
So how could someone make a mutant smoothie without a blender?
As this story is already not scientifically sound, please ignore the ramifications of the Square-Cube Law when answering this.
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# Use a knife and a mortar and a pestle or a rolling pin.
The classic ancient way of doing it was to dice up whatever finely with a knife and then use a mortar and a pestle, basically a rock and another rock with a grove in it, to grind it up finely.
You can also use a rolling pin, basically any cylindrical object, to crush things.
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### Fine Filtration
Never inject anything intravenously that comes out of a blender, a mortar and pestle or a sieve and press. That will kill your hero before he can ever mutantise. Basically, the globs will clog the capillaries in his lungs and he'll die of a pulmonary embolism. This is not good. At least not for your dude. The cockroaches on the other hand will have a feast!
Nope, your dude will have to take the sludge that comes out of the mortar & pestle, blender and sieve and he will have to filter it. Several times. Check your local college or high school chem lab for some **grade 2 qualitative filter paper**. This stuff has a pore size of 8 μm, which is about the same size as a red blood cell's diameter. Whatever filters through that is okay for injection, provided he doesn't die of sepsis before he mutantises!
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Sieve and press. That is all it takes.
(Done it myself.)
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**Frame challenge**
If he has shrunk down to an inch, he will be dead anyway. Human red blood cells can't be shrunk and still fix oxygen. Full size blood cells would block his tiny blood vessels. Even the best blender and finest human-sized filters could not produce a liquid that wouldn't kill him.
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Messing around with different aesthetics and groups for this story, and I'm wondering how to go about this. I wanted to do a setting where a region is full of basically ancient Egyptian inspired cultures but the climate is colder instead of a hot arid desert. I've seen it speculated that certain groups were able to maintain their darker pigment even in colder climates if they kept a diet of vitamin D and were still in a region exposed to sunlight in a place with high latitude (correct me if these aren't entirely accurate).
Now I'm working on a group in the same world that are basically desert "Vikings". most of the suggestions I've been given end up making them basically Middle Eastern ethnic groups, but I wanted to keep their ethnic background and phenotype Scandinavian-inspired.
Basically for these two groups I want to keep the selective pressures that cause pigment changes. Would the opposite of the vitamin D thing be if their culture ate a lot of folate? I figured since in a hot and exposed place UV destroys folate stores, they would have to have folate diet that would make up for this. Would they have to be recent migrants to the region for it to be plausible, or can it still be plausible for them to be natives to this hot desert region? Can the elements that create this scenario be realistic, or do they need to be more fantastical? like say, fantasy foods or circumstances that would cause this.
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Sir Cornflakes is [correct](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/241116/22685) about not mixing with darker-skinned people, but how did humanity's skin color change in the first place?
\*Evolution is not quite "survival of the fittest" as it is "reproduction of the fittest". As long as your light-skinned people are able to naturally reproduce (have children) and avoid intermixing with darker-skinned populations, they will maintain their color just as if they were living anywhere else in the world. Specifically, conditions such as skin cancer or nutritional deficiencies triggered by their new climate *must not reduce fertility or otherwise reduce individuals' ability to reproduce*. If they do reduce fertility, members of the community with slightly darker skin will gain an advantage, and the community will tend to darker skin over time.
The above reason is why white people who have lived in Florida for generations are still as naturally white as those who never left Europe.
The above reason is also why conditions of the elderly such as Alzheimer's Disease will most likely never "evolve away". By the time someone becomes impaired by Alzheimer's, they have almost certainly had all of the children they will ever have and so there is no evolutionary pressure to avoid genes that might contribute to it. Conditions that kill in childhood, affect a person's ability to find a mate, or that directly reduce fertility may all be subject to evolutionary pressure as affected individuals will likely have fewer children and descendants than unaffected individuals.
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People who live in the desert might wear very little clothing because of the heat, or maybe wear a lot of clothing because of the heat.
I notice that Arabs wear a lot of clothing to cover most of their bodies in the Arabian Desert.
And I think that Berbers also cover up a lot in the Sahara Desert.
Thus Arabs and Berbers probably don't get a lot of sun tan since most of their skin is covered most of the time. Thus the sun probably doesn't darken their skin much darker than whatever their natural skin shade is.
So some desert dwellers who wear a lot of clothing probably would be protected form the sunlight except on their hands and faces. Of course fictional desert dwellers could wear gloves on their hands. And Taureg men wore face veils like Muslim women did. Possibly fictional desert dwellers could wear face veils masks or very broad brimmed hats.
I once read about a battle where a group of Taureg swordsmen made a mounted charge on French colonial troops armed with rifles. The Tauregs lost, naturally. And it was said that the corpse of the leader of the attack had white skin. So apparently some Tauregs have naturally pale skin, which doesn't tan much due to be being covered up.
So there is no scientific law prevent people with light skin from moving to desert areas, and covering up to protect themselves from the sunlight, and so avoiding becoming tanned.
And as long as they don't intermarry with darker skinned people, their skin will retain its original light shade. It takes many thousands and tens of thousands of years for a human group to have much biological adaptation to new surroundings.
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Perhaps the desert sun is so hot and devastating (as is the reflection off the sand), that people can't go out during daylight hours. Even if they went outside during daytime while clothed, the ambient heat would essentially bake them. Since they only go out at night time, then they'd maintain their light pigment. Because daytime in that location is so powerful, that's also when animals and wildlife would be out and about, so it's the perfect time for the vikings to hunt to sustain themselves.
They could have dug into a limestone mountain side or made pueblos with a nearby river/ocean inlet. It's possible since they arrived from the ocean as vikings that there were/are whirlpools that prevent them from leaving their coast, so they've been marooned there for centuries and built a small community.
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SPF100 Sunscreen.
That's probably the most realistic answer.
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There is no "evolution on demand".
The people will maintain their light skin for a long time just because they don't mix with dark-skinned people. They may suffer from sun burn and skin cancer, but this does not trigger mutations to darken their skin. Also note that defect mutations with the effect of lighter skin are frequent, but constructive mutations with the effect of more melanin production and darker skin are rare.
Native American people settle equatorial South America for more than 10k years and didn't become as black as Africans or people from Southern India in that long time span.
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This is a very, very simple problem. We look at how skin changes color, and then identify how we could prevent this.
[It is estimated that it takes](https://sites.psu.edu/ninajablonski/) as little as 100 generations for a race's skin color to acclimatize to a new geographic area. In the past, skin turned darker because the lighter skinned people died of skin cancer before they could breed. Skin turned lighter in low light areas because the dark skinned people suffered from many health issues due to vitamin D shortage.
If you apply sun screen (or cure cancer) and provide vitamin D, you remove the selection pressure that makes this a selection criteria.
Note that 100 generations is the extreme low end, which involves massive selection pressure (which is to say, lots of people dying), and is more than 2000 years, so you probably don't need to concern yourself with this. If your white people are privileged, then such selection pressure would probably be swamped by the benefits of that privilege.
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Setting aside the diet and pigment thing (incorrect!)
**Your albino desert vikings have fur.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Klowr.jpg)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism#/media/File:Snowflake_-_Barcelona_Zoo_White_Gorilla3.jpg>
Skin pigment protects from the sun in sunny locales. But if you have fur you don't need pigmented skin; the fur will protect you. White fur keeps the desert vikings cooler because white reflects more light energy. Instead of clothes they have elaborate fur braids and hairdos. And they go around in the buff because it is hot, but you can still make the anime because they have fur. They are desert yeti vikings; yes.
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Skin color is almost entirely an adaptation to *latitude*, not biome. In particular, each latitude has its own local equilibrium between less melanin [producing skin cancers](https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2021/09/staying-safe-under-sun-how-melanin-levels-can-significantly-affect-skin) and more causing [problems with Vitamin D generation (Rickets)](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/rickets/symptoms-causes/syc-20351943). Whatever point that equilibrium is, that's going to be where residents' skin melanin levels will tend to equalize at.
So if you want naturally light-skinned desert dwellers, you either need a high-latitude desert, or a planet that receives less UV radiation than ours.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yq6ZD.png)
To give an example from our own planet, the Gobi Desert is relatively high-latitude (about the same as latitude as southern Europe). Most redisents are Mongolians. The best photo I could find showing the faces of multiple Mongolians is this promotoinal photo of the Mongolian rock band "The Hu"
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/09WOp.jpg)
Different people are different of course, and there are some ethnic coloring differences, but these skin darknesses in general wouldn't look out of place in much of southern Europe.
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## Predation is more dangerous than skin cancer
Your desert is inhabited by incredibly dangerous predators which rely primarily on eyesight to hunt their prey. Because the sand is white, people with white skin have better natural camouflage. Sure, black skin might offer better protection against the sun, but as long a you are more likely to be eaten for having black skin than you are to die of skin cancer for having white skin, then the white skin will still be more selectively fit.
Some alternatives along the same lines could be that predators simply prefer easting dark skinned people. Maybe they taste better, maybe they are easier on the digestive system, or maybe they just more closely resemble the predator's actual preferred food source... like if they like eating chimpanzees, and are more likely to mistake a black person for a chimp.
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## A rite of passage that favours the fair
Every would-be Viking captain is sent to the farthest reaches of the frozen North, in the ultimate test of survival. The darkness up there is a serious threat to life and the darker skinned mixed Viking/Africans survive less of the time.
Captains naturally have more far more children.
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**Why would a powerful god need or want a blood sacrifice?**
Many religions require blood sacrifice to their gods, but why?
Here's an example:
>
> Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the
> course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of
> the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of
> their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his
> offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was
> very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you
> angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be
> accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its
> desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
>
>
> Genesis 3:22
>
>
>
Now my question is not about fairness in the above case. But what would a god do with a sacrifice anyway? Eat it? Let it rot? Do they get it raw and have to cook it themselves?
If gods are so powerful, what could a human offer them that they couldn't get easily for themselves? After all, they're not going to starve if humans don't give them food.
**Question**
Can anyone suggest why all-powerful gods want offerings of food and in particular meat?
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**Considerations**
* Please assume that the god can get as much food as they want by simply snapping their fingers and creating it - if indeed they want food at all
* Why meat and not veg? Are gods carnivores?
* If they want impoverished people with no goods or money to show respect, why not just ask them to hit their own thumb with a hammer or similar? In fact, this would be a good test of loyalty for rich and poor alike.
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Gods just want a token of submission from their worshipers.
It's not really about the particular offer, a god could simply materialize a pizza-onigiri by snapping its tentacle, it's more about reminding the worshipers who is in charge and who is not.
And of course what's the point of asking something common to enforce submission? Ask for strawberries in January, or ask for meat to a farmer. So they will have to put real effort into searching for it.
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The god needs the blood/meat sacrifice as a DNA sample, to help them identify which of their many created universes is the source of a particular prayer request.
Imagine that you are the author of hundreds of successful stand alone books. (Hopefully for some of you that isn't just imagination.) Now imagine that one of the supporting characters in one of your earliest creations petitioned you for more pages, maybe even a whole sequel novel. What are the chances you would remember that exact supporting character and which of your many creations that petition came from. You would want that character to remind you of where they come from and since they are not privy to the title of the book they call home, their only hope of successfully reminding you would be to include a excerpt from their universe (your book) to lead you back to them.
The animal DNA is a very complex and likely unique excerpt from the worshipper's universe, rich with the writing subtleties and nuances of its author at the time of its creation.
It is therefore a perfect path back from the god's much grander existence, down to the little part of His creations which the worshipper calls home.
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**False Gods** (Or at least not all powerful)
A false god might need substance in the form of life essence to survive simply draining the life of a sacrifice might extend it's own.
In a lot of fictional worlds magic comes at a price, one that often can be paid by a life. Perhaps your god had the knowledge to cast the spell but requires life energy to cast the spells to help his people... sacrifice one virgin girl to fill his mana bar so he can cast a grow speed spell to bluntly put it.
**A cruel god**
Sadists come in all sizes and shapes, why would a god be different? He doesn't need the sacrifices, nor does he even want them...he just enjoys the suffering it would bring to others.
**A between tier of beings** (Also requires the god to not be all powerful)
Perhaps the sacrifices are not for your god, but for a tier between the humans and god (angels/vampires) who do require such sacrifices to stay alive. The sacrifice might be needed to keep them alive and able to serve god/the people. Or prevent them from taking more then they need(usurping god).
In the Movie Van Helsing (2004) the townspeople get mad at the main character for killing a vampire, the reason given was that they only killed what they needed to survive and would now also kill for vengeance. A god might make a deal with beings he himself could not kill by handing over a tribute to preserve the peace.
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## The sacrifice isn't really for God, it's for us
God gave us the universe, and our own lives.
God has asked for sacrifices in return, to permit us to feel like we're giving something back - and maybe God made some suggestions on which sacrifices could feel significant to us, to help make the relationship more meaningful.
Like how a mother will permit her toddler to sweep the kitchen floor, even though he's is not doing anything but pushing dirt around. The sweeping means something to the child, and helps him feel like he's making a real contribution to the cleaning and the meal. And eventually he may learn some useful skills from the discipline and practice.
Food is and will always be an important part of the lives of us mere mortals, who have to eat to live. We get practice giving, we get practice gathering and preparing. And, in most systems of worship, it's also people who ultimately eat (most of) the food "offered" to the deity, anyway. (Greek and Roman religious feasts were supplied from offerings; the Jewish sacrifices supplied food for the priests, etc...)
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Ok, so let's take from the same theological perspective as your original prompt and discuss it from the top. You ask a lot of questions (which I think might technically be against the rules of this exchange), and most of them are fairly complicated theologically, but here's some vastly oversimplified (read "therefore wrong") reasoning that could serve as the base logic for a fictional universe.
**If gods are so powerful, what could a human offer them that they couldn't get easily for themselves?**
A human can offer companionship and/or worship. These are things that cannot be easily handwaved away by simply saying, "They're a god, of course they can do that." How can any being, even a god, provide companionship for themself? How can any being, even a god, provide a satisfying worship of themself?
Presuming that a god desires companionship or desires to be worshiped, one of the few things that can provide that is a fully funcitoning sapient being with free will, which brings us to the next point:
**Can anyone suggest why gods want offerings of food and in particular meat?**
This is actually 3 questions:
1. Why do gods want offerings?
This is an extension of the above. A god who desires to be worshiped needs to prove that your worship is sincere and not merely lip service. Actions speak louder than words is never truer than with a god. A god demands sacrifice to prove that you are willing to give up something that matters a great deal to you in service to them, in this way showing that that thing (and symbollically nothing) is more important than they are.
2. Why do gods want food?
What else is more important to humanity than food? Air? Water? You cannot really sacrifice those without actually killing yourself, but perhaps some gods may require their followers to fast from water or hold their breath for long periods to show their devotion by depriving themselves of basic bodily needs.
Depriving yourself of food for your god through sacrifice shows that you are willing to give up something vital to the continuation of your very life to pay homage to your god.
3. Why in particular meat?
Because meat cannot be gained without the loss of life. Now, you are not just sacrificing food, you are sacrificing life itself. Most cultures hold very different levels of importance on the type of life in an animal as opposed to the type of life in a plant. An animal can think and reason if only in its limited capacity, and now your god is asking you to take that away from something and sacrifice it to them in order to prove your devotion.
Take this a step further towards human sacrifice and it actually makes even more sense. It is typically immoral to murder a human, so asking for a human sacrifice is asking for someone to sacrifice their very morality (some might even say their soul) to prove their devotion to you. What could be more meaningful than that?
I hope this helps. I'm going to go wash my hands and rethink my life because that took a really dark turn at the end that I wasn't expecting.
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This maybe isn't the best answer for creating a fictional world where Gods are real and actually do want blood sacrifices, but...
A lot of ancient cultures associated blood with life (which makes sense) and thus with the fertility of crops. To them blood sacrifices were the equivalent of modern day fertilizer.
As L.Dutch - Reinstate Monica pointed out, it is also about submission. It's equivalent to a gang leader making an initiate commit a crime to prove loyalty and then rewarding them with a car or something they want/need.
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**Psychic Feedback**
This applies mostly to D&D style gods that feed on the psychic emanations of their mortal followers. The congregation's faith is exactly what gives the god power.
What's tastier than belief is any strong emotions tied to the god in question. It can be good emotions (fertility cult orgies) or bad emotions (self flagellation and sacrifice). The god gobbles up both types of emanation and becomes more real.
So why does blood sacrifice fit the template? Well imagine you are a sustenance farmer (See Cain and Abel) and your fattest animal accidentally falls off a cliff. Imagine the mental turmoil $-$ perhaps it means your village will starve this year.
When the god sees how effective this was, they go to your brother and demands he sacrifice the fattest animal from his herd. The brother complies and goes through all the same turmoil, only this time the god gobbles up the turmoil.
Now imagine if your first born son accidentally fell off a cliff. Imagine how distraught you would be. That's why your god finds this sacrifice so delicious. . . .
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## Sacrifice requires cost
Economics teaches that a price must be considered from both directions. What it costs the producer to make something is obviously a big factor, but equally important is how valuable something is to the buyer.
In other words, a sacrifice is meaningful even if it turns out the sacrifice itself is worth nothing to the god. Because it *is* worth something to the one [making the sacrifice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesson_of_the_widow%27s_mite):
>
> "He sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, 'Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.'
>
>
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What does God need with a blood sacrifice? A true and proper God does not "need" *anything* from a mere mortal. The whole point of a sacrifice is the cost to the one who makes it; that's the difference between *sacrifice* and just another kind of *worship*.
To circle around to your original Biblical passage, it painstakingly emphasizes Abel offered the best parts of what he had. The firstborn was highly symbolic and important, and then he also gave of the best parts of what his flock had produced. It's unclear what exactly was the issue with Cain's, but [another passage](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews%2011:4&version=NIV) says the problem was his offering wasn't good enough.
It's not about the blood. It's about being willing to put your money where your mouth is when asking God to intercede on your behalf.
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**Gods don't need stuff, they need worship**
A god's power / self-worth / whatever you want to call it is based on the number of worshippers and the amount of zeal with which they worship. A sacrifice is just that - a sacrifice - not necessarily a gift as such.
To a poor farmer, a sheep might be a lot to give up. So it's a powerful expression of worship to the god, moreso than simply saying your prayers or going to Mass every Sunday. The more valuable the item sacrificed is to the sacrificer, the more it pleases - and empowers - the god.
So presumably a *human* sacrifice would be even better better, especially if the human was willingly being sacrificed.
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Answer: probably because animals were the only thing of real value that most people at that time would have been able to provide on a semi regular basis. And sacrifices of value were required to ensure commitment. Just the sort of thing that the jealous God (Exodus 34:14) needed to help prevent the encroachment of foreign gods, graven images and such.
The idea of such animal sacrifices (and indeed human sacrifices such as Isaac) makes little sense seen from the perspective of today after more than 2000 years of history, the reformation and enlightenment. In fact it is positively grotesque as is the case with a great deal of the content of the holy books for the 3 Abrahamic religions.
To make sense it must be viewed through the eyes of some religious shaman living more than 2000 years ago in the late iron age when the wheel barrow was the height of technology and there was a great need for the people to pull together. Making animal sacrifices was the best they could come up with at the time and by some quirks of fate the text lingers on.
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One thing I haven't seen in answers, but was in fact quite important in cultures practicing human sacrifice is communication.
People always wanted to communicate with gods. They did it through prayer, through sacrifice that may lure the god to altar through a smell of cooked or burned offerings and many other ways. But all that is indirect means. And sometimes people just want to be sure that gods heard what is needed.
When you want to be sure someone got your message, you send it through messenger. Some, like ancient Greeks, placed prayers inside fresh graves hoping the soul will carry them on the way, just like you can ask a person to carry a letter to a city they are going anyway. Others wanted more direct approach so they arranged death of desired messenger. In this case, those often would not be forced through violence, on the contrary. As if you want to petition someone important, you send as prestigious messenger as possible. And for the sacrificed person it was a great honor and usually promise of bypassing the most terrifying aspects of travel through Underworld or ending in best possible variant if many Underworlds existed.
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## He doesn't care about blood, humans just think he does
There are actually three differences between Cain and Abel's sacrifices, not one.
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> ... Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. **In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground**, and **Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions**. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.
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> *~Genesis 4:2-5*
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1. Cain offered his sacrifice "in the course of time" whereas Abel offered "the firstborn of his flock". The God in this story wants humans to trust in him. While he has the power to manifest anything he wants, humans have freewill; so, trust is one of the few things a human can give that holds value. When you sacrifice that bounty that God has given you BEFORE you know how much he will give you, you are expressing your faith in how much he will give. But if you collect your full harvest, and then sacrifice out of what you already own, then you've not actually put in trust in your God. You've only calculated how much you can live without.
2. Cain sacrificed "an offering" whereas Abel sacrificed "of their fat portions". In addition to trust, God wants to be honored. Again, this is a matter of freewill. He can not (or does not) just MAKE us honor him. So, when we choose too, it makes him feel good. While he does not care about the differences between the quality of one thing and another, he knows that we do. When we sacrifice that which we find best, he knows that we are showing him respect which makes his works feel appreciated.
3. Cain scarified the fruit of the ground and Able of his flock. This is actually the one thing Cain got right. He knew that he was SUPPOSED to sacrifice out of the gifts God had given him, but he did not do it out of a place of trusting and respect. This is like the differences between the child who obeys, but complains about it the whole time and when a one does it to make you happy. Just because a child obeys does not mean that his actions will make his parents happy or proud. Likewise, just because you sacrifice to God "because you have to" does not mean that God will be moved by your obedience.
## How this could work in your setting
If the people in your setting base thier understanding of God on the Bible or a similar story, then their belief of a need for blood sacrifices would be a matter of not understanding thier God. The thing is, they know that every time they go out and sacrifice the fatted parts of thier first born calf that it pleases thier God because whether they understand all of the differences or not, a shepherd can not make that sacrifice without showing trust and honor; so, it usually works out pretty well.
However, if your people were to sacrifice the first fruits of thier land, they could get the same outcome. It does not even have to be a physical thing either. A professional who schedules his service to the church first, and then his paid work around that, is equally likely to earn thier God's favor... but everyone says the fatted calf thing works; so, most people just want to stick with the "sure thing".
This forms the superstition that is has to be a blood sacrifice. And when that does not work... well clearly it was not ENOUGH blood; so, they sacrifice more and more blood until they get what they want. This however is not getting what they want because they have made thier God happy with them. This is more equivalent to begging until thier God shows pity on them. Not nearly as wise of a strategy long term, but it works too.
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God doesn't want your sacrifice, it is teaching you to mourn.
Life is made of good and bad moments, if there's a good God in your universe, I assume there's a bad God. The good God is trying to make humanity strong, by having them run through loops and mazes to appease him, because that's just how the world works, bad things happen on really quickly, and we have to be prepared, what's best having no food, or having no food due to a pandemic ? That teaches humans to save a little sun for rainy days.
Also, I'm pretty sure they would do that, just to understand how much people were willing to give up for them, how grateful they are for what you do for them. You're an infinite being that has lived through all there is to live, you get bored and create a new shiny toy for yourself, will you not indulge in playing with it even if for a bit ? In the bible, GOD required sacrifices up until he sacrificed his own son, as the ultimate sacrifice to eliminate all future ones. Why ? I never got it to be honest (he is infinite, so he could divide himself infinitely to create us, and sacrifices are like giving back pieces of him, and I do get the contradiction, but maybe it is more to do with His ego)
Now, if you want a different god from what reality has to offer, here's my input :
Your god is subject to entropy, which means that he requires energy, and the only way for him to capture that energy is through belief, and what makes you pray harder than having your son die, or your main source of food gone ? Cain was punished because his belief was weak, he could not devote more than a couple seconds to his God, and gave him rooting fruit that was on the ground. That doesn't show belief, and the best way to instill belief is to instill fear. How can people not believe in something that killed X person for not doing what he said?
We already remember bad things way longer and better than good things, maybe that's why god choose to scare us and keep us submissive because maybe any other way we would have lost faith. This pairs really well with the belief that we create and manipulate things into existence, IE: We all think lava is moderately warm, so we use it to clean ourselves. Yes, people do believe that.
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One thing that’ll limit humans in colonizing planets is the atmosphere. Currently humans primarily need oxygen to survive, and without it all life that needs oxygen to live will die. Currently, plants produce oxygen when other animals breathe out carbon dioxide, which these plants use in a process called photosynthesis. Another problem that we face with is global warming, which is caused by an excess of greenhouse gases being produced and released in the atmosphere, with one of those major greenhouse gases being carbon dioxide.
This leads me to the question:
**Could humans evolve to breathe both oxygen and carbon dioxide?**
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This depends on what you mean by "breathe CO2". We breathe in a certain amount of CO2 - about 400 ppm, currently - with every breath, and exhale air with about 38,000 ppm. So humans & other animals can tolerate - indeed, depend on - having a certain low concentration of CO2 in the air they breathe.
Much higher concentrations will kill us, though. CO2 is a waste product, and needs to be removed from the body.
As for breathing it in the sense that we breathe oxygen, absolutely impossible. We obtain energy by reacting O2 with carbohydrates &c in food, producing CO2 as a waste product. There is no more energy to be extracted by reacting the CO2 with anything that could reasonably be found in an earthlike environment. We'd somehow need to emulate plants, and use some external source of energy, like sunlight, to split the CO2 into O2 and C.
But photosynthesis depends on surface area. A human needs many hundreds of square meters of photosynthetic area to supply its energy needs.
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**Having 2 types of mitochondria**
As far as it's accepted nowadays, our mitochondria, the organelles that allow us to breath and the ones which require the oxygen, were once bacteria that engaged in aerobic respiration, which were then fagocited by an ancestor euchariotic cell, developing a relationship of symbiosis with it and essentially turning into a cell organ. The reason plants can engage in photosynthesis is because, as we suspect, they also ate another bacteria which was capable of photosynthesis.
Now first, why O2? Well, oxygen is used as the final electron acceptor in our respiration cycle, being combined with hydrogen to form water and provide the energy to form ATP, so to breathe CO2 we'd also need to be able to use it as an electron acceptor. Luckily, CO2 already has that use in some bacteria which do not use oxygen. These bacteria, being known as methanogenic, combine carbon dioxide with hydrogen to form methane and water, and usually thrive in swamps and other locations in which oxygen isn't as widely available.
So one possible scenario to enable us to use both particles would require a change all the way back to when we were unicelular organisms, consuming a variation of our methanogenic bacteria, as well as the one which would become our mitochondria, could potentially allow for an entire planet of creatures which can use both oxygen and carbon dioxide for respiration. This use of CO2, however, requires more hydrogen than the use of oxygen and releases methane in addition to water, methane being considered an asphyxiating gas in high concentrations, meaning your new humans would need special metabolic processes to deal with this chemical, so I'd assume it's use to be facultative and limited to low oxygen environments in which CO2 and hydrogen rich food are abundant.
**Note**: *although it sounds like a small change, the ability to use CO2 (a gas that's toxic in high enough quantities and is commonly responsible for decreases in blood ph in our species) means these humans WILL have a group of differences in their metabolism. So these humans, as well as the other animals, will not be just an exact copy of us and our animals with a second different group of mitochondria. The mere evolution of such a trait would show it was beneficial, hinting at the existence of certain environments in the world from which these humans came from that have low levels of oxygen but high enough levels of CO2 to allow the body to use it to produce ATP, or other different kinds of pressures that made it so this trait was selected as advantageous.*
So summing up, your humans, like most other animals in your world, will have 2 different kinds of mitochondria, will be able to breathe both oxygen and carbon dioxide and will likely have some metabolic strategies to accommodate this ability as well as to deal with the methane, as it will be constantly flowing through their bloodstream until it's ditched out in the lungs. There's also a chance they might evolve to be capable of absorbing more hydrogen from food.
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Not without radically changing our diets.
There are organisms that breathe carbon dioxide: methanogens. They rely on also having an environmental excess of hydrogen available, to reduce CO2 to water and methane.
The food molecules used by eukaryotes, including humans--things like sugars and lipids--do not have nearly a high enough fraction of hydrogen (or other strong reducing agents like magnesium) to make it worthwhile to inhale excess CO2.
On the other hand, humans could conceivably evolve (or at least be engineered) to not need to breathe anything at all, and exhale both CO2 and methane as waste products, through a combination of fermentation and facultative anaerobic respiration which converts glucose into acetic acid and then cleaves acetic acid into CO2 and methane, at the expense of needing to eat more food to make up for the lower energy yield compared to aerobic respiration.
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It makes **a lot more sense** to have humans evolve to breathe nothing at all.
Chemically, **oxygen is like a battery**. It's got a lot of energy and it wants to react with things to get rid of it. We humans (and most things you think of as "life") take advantage of this fact to fuel our needs as organisms. After you react the oxygen with things and release the energy, you get **CO2, which is like an empty battery**. There aren't that many things you could end up with that have *less* energy than CO2.
Plants breathe in empty battery CO2 for scraps and use the materials to construct sugars to store solar energy. You can **think of a plant as charging up the empty batteries they breathe in with sunlight** to make a *different* charged battery, in this case sugar molecules. They even build their bodies out of sugar, creating huge sheets of sugar molecules called cellulose which they use for their structure, but that's another story.
**Breathing in CO2 is like collecting empty batteries** — fairly useless unless you have another energy source to charge them up. However, you could feasibly have food that provides all the energy an organism needs without the chemical requirement of an oxygen supply. The most obvious example is gunpowder, which can actually burn both underwater and in space, releasing its energy as it does so. You could also have oxygen or other oxidizers included in the food itself. Basically any rocket fuel mix will do, as it needs to be able to burn in space.
Anything that you can set on fire without an oxygen supply is a good candidate for a "food" that humans could evolve to live off of without oxygen in the air. After all, there is some truth to the phrase "burning calories." We're a lot more like an engine than many realize.
**I would play around with the "if it burns without air it works" rule of thumb. I'm looking forward to seeing what interesting ideas you come up with!**
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# How could humans *evolve* to breathe both oxygen and carbon dioxide
Okay, so they already breath oxygen. We just need to add CO2. Surprisingly, it is not too difficult in principle.
What we need is called "cellular endosymbiosis", which starts with an *infection* by a photosynthetic monocellular organism (probably a very simple alga). The infection will give you green skin, and the alga will release glucose and oxygen into the blood stream, taking in water and carbon dioxide.
Once the details of the symbiosis get worked out, the alga can abandon a sizeable part of its cellular machinery and dedicate itself to photosynthesis and reproduction (I just discovered from Wikipedia that this particular kind of endosymbiosis is called [kleptoplasty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptoplasty)).
We know that this is possible because **it has happened** in the past (that is how chloroplasts got in the plants, just as mitochondria did in humans), and it has even happened in a higher order organism such as [Elysia Chlorotica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysia_chlorotica).
This is not full "breathing" because the fully illuminated surface required to sustain a human metabolism is on the order of ten to twenty square meters, while a human only has between 1.5 and 2 square meters. We can imagine to greatly improve the alga efficiency and supply the human with a "energy saving" operating mode, similar to lethargy or coma. In an emergency, a human could survive almost indefinitely (provided he can *also* recycle their own wastes) on sunlight alone, without breathing at all.
Actually, a human would need to breath only when the additional metabolic needs overwhelmed the skin capacity *and* the outside air contained enough O2. Otherwise, respiration would stop and metabolism would need to slow down (this already happens with the so-called capnic reflex), so that the skin might have a chance to get rid of the metabolic CO2.
# SF literature
In [Beggars' Ride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_Ride), a DNA modification (not organelle-based) is presented that allows humans full autotrophy - "half an hour in the sun" being sufficient for a day's metabolism *(which is impossible: solar flux is at most some 1.5 kW/sq m at the Equator, so half an hour in the sun would give about 750Wh of energy; that is about 650 kilocalories, while a human metabolism requires about 2000. At USA average insolation of 1.1 kW/sq m, or 950 kCal per hour, you would need a bit more than two hours continued exposure, and that is assuming 100% efficiency; ordinary photosynthesis is about 5%)*.
In [Heart of the Comet](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/410660.Heart_of_the_Comet), humans have been supplied with artificial organelles called cyanutes that thrive on methane, cyanide compounds and sulphidric acid, and scavenge them from the bloodstream of their hosts, to allow them a safer survival on Halley's comet.
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How cities and the world would change if matter replicators become reality someday?Will money disappear and all goods and services become free?Would create new products become very easy even if they are extremely complex?Would agriculture, commerce, mining and distribution become obsolete?How would cities look like after such revolution?
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We already (in the western world) live in the post-scarcity economy as far as our ancestors would see it. We produce enough food and manufactured goods for everyone, and it takes only around 20% of the people of working age in order to do so. And yet it doesn’t feel that way, and we don’t all feel rich, because we have developed new wants and needs, mostly for services, which your matter replicators won’t be able to produce. Given that the economy is already 80% services, a switch to 95% (someone presumably has to make the matter replicators) wouldn’t be a massive change.
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Not all goods and services will be free.
* Real estate would still be limited. either it is sold for money, or some other means of rationing.
* In most settings, those replicators still require power which cannot be replicated directly. One can either replicate and operate a power plant or buy the services of someone who does it. If there is a market, the price of power will be reasonably close to the price of generating power.
* Many *services* cannot be replicated at all. You can't replicate a haircut, or an opera performance.
* Many *goods* cannot be replicated without becoming a forgery. A replicated Mona Lisa isn't the real thing, and everybody knows it.
* When human activity (like power generation) has adverse impact on the environment, it must be rationed some way. If cost were no issue (note: it will be an issue, see above), then there would be a "waste heat emission credits" trade.
Having replicators would *help* to create a [post-scarcity economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy), but it does not *eliminate* the need for a rationing system. Money seems to be one which works better than most others (planned economy, gift economy).
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Apart from energy, raw material and ecological footprint costs, the templates, i.e. "recipes" for making items would still be marketable and likely trademarked.
Sure, if you're a programmer, you can try making your own templates from scratch but they probably won't be as good as the ones developed by big companies having thousands of employees working on the same product and having done rigorous testing.
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To the other answers you were given, I'll add only one factor: **energy**
Even with nuclear fusion available, energy will not be 100% free, and that will add to the cost of using a replicator. In other words, a private will always be paying the bills to get his food & goods, will be fined if the replicator's use will break some law (creating guns, chemical weapons, etc.), and the Government will tax people if replicators are used on a wide scale for national interest.
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Money will becomes pure data so it can't be replicated (except by the banking system)
Someone will own the replicators and every copy will involve a licencing fee.
Services are still services at least until AI controlled robots take all the jobs.
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Given any kind of living organism (plant, animal, silicate, gaseous, energy, etc.,) what logical reasons (natural, environmental, evolutionary selection, nurtured, artificial) could result in more than three genders?
There are a number of possible methods for single-gendered reproduction. [See examples here....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexual_reproduction)
Bi-gendered species are commonly known, won't get into that.
Possible tri-gendered combinations could be womb/sperm-donor/egg-donor, or perhaps womb&egg-donor/sperm-donor/post-birth-nurturer.
One possible quad-gendered combination could be womb/sperm-donor/egg-donor/post-birth-nurturer.
These combinations are, of course, simply swapping around the known existing gender parts from humans. I have not attempted to combine any of these with the asexual reproduction methods listed in the link, which could result in possible additional groupings and multiple genders (or perhaps heterogamy over time instead). What other possible combinations could exist, and what logical reasons could cause a species to have/develop more than three genders?
I have read [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/579/is-it-possible-for-a-species-to-have-more-than-two-sexes?rq=1) link, and it did not answer my particular angle.
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## Trioecious reproduction
The definition of a sex is that each sex produces a unique type of gamete. If it does not produce unique gametes then it is not a sex. A caregiver that does not contribute genes is a caste or morph.
The advantage of being triploid and trioecious is that this reduces the risk of genetic bottlenecks and inbreeding depression.
The disadvantages are that three individuals are required to reproduce and, contrary to popular belief, reduce phenotypical diversity. Recessive alleles are fair less likely to display phenotypes because three copies would be required.
**An environment where trioecious species outcompete dioecious species would need to place greater selection pressure on genetic redundancy over the costs of finding mates and reduced phenotypic diversity.**
An example of a true trioecious species occurs in the speculative fiction novel *Silent Runners* ([Source](http://sff.net/people/dragonwriter/worldbuilding/trisexual.html)).
## Hybridogenesis
Hybridogenesis is a form of sexual parasitism where one species is limited to a single sex and must parasitize the opposite sex of a closely related species in order to reproduce. The genes of the parasitized parent are discarded from the germline of their hybrid offspring, ensuring that the parasite species' purity is maintained.
Thus, species that engage in hybridogenesis may qualify as possessing multiple sexes on the demographic level. For example, the Iberian minnow consists of triploid males, triploid females and diploid males. The diploid male is a sexual parasite whose offspring are always diploid males, and ultimately requires both triploid males and females to reproduce.
## Social Hybridogenesis
Social hybridogenesis is a form of hybridogenesis found in certain eusocial ants. ([Source](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982212005167))
*Symmetrical* social hybridogenesis occurs when the parasitized species adopts the same strategy to parasitize the parasitize. The ant genus *Pogonomyrmex*, for example, has two species with four sexes on the demographic level. Each colony requires three individuals to reproduce: the female mates with males of her species and the other. Males are spawned asexually by females. Same species mating produces only reproductive females. Cross-species mating produces sterile hybrid females that form the worker caste. Collectively all four sexes, two males and two females of different species, are required for both species to survive.
To put this by analogy with cells in one organism: reproductive cells require gametes from the other species to produce somatic cells.
This would not work the same way on the organism level. There the analogy would be the female produces a sterile hybrid offspring which she parasitizes similar to the anglerfish. As far as I know this strategy does not occur in any known species.
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# Extreme seasonal fluctuations
Imagine an area (or planet) with variable climatic conditions; varying combinations of length, precipitation, temperature, and an ecology similarly adapted to unpredictability.
An asexual surrogate sex could impart [epigenetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics) information to the gestating fetus. Perhaps the surrogate's input determines whether it will develop into a male or female, or its size, or something else better suited to the environment the surrogate is exposed to. In boom times the surrogate births smaller offspring after shorter gestation so they can eat quickly and develope on their own; in lean times the surrogate puts the fetus(es) in stasis (perhaps for years) or gestates them longer so they're better able to cope.
# How
An [ovoviviparous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovoviviparity) species produces an egg that hatches wihin the host-mother. In this case the egg is transferred to the surrogate, where it hatches and an immature/underdeveloped fetus emerges to be incubated.
# Other advantages
* It would also mean the male and female can "impregnate" multiple surrogates each breeding season, resulting in more viable offspring without putting either at risk.
* And a surrogate as part of the rearing process means three adults are protecting and gathering food for the offspring.
* If the climate is particularly harsh or predation high, the death of either males or females won't result in catastrophic sex imbalances that disrupt future generations.
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As @Seeds and @John Feltz said above, you really can't logic evolution. The answer is always "because survival." But, below at least are some "reasons" how a species came to have multiple sexes:
## Trisomy
Most life on Earth is diploid: each chromosome comes in pairs (X and Y are a famous variation on the rule). In "higher" species, having three of just one of your chromosomes leads to a syndrome of some sort. This is not good. Having three of every chromosome (triploidy) is always unviable. But maybe your creature evolved with three sets of chromosomes, meaning three gametes (be they egg or sperm). That could be a reason for three sexes (after all human males and females only vary by one single chromosome).
## Chimeras/Mosaics
Chimeras are produced by the merger of multiple fertilized eggs. While it's considered a fluke from us diploid normal pants people, maybe your species has a reproductive mechanism that actually waits for eggs to be fertilized by more than one individual--who must be of different sexes themselves--then fuses them into a chimera.
## Life Cycle-ish?
Maybe creatures with more complex life-stages might could be said to have an extra sex or two, depending on your story. Usually life-stages are quite different from each other, for example, Egg-->Caterpillar-->Chrysalis-->Butterfly are different life stages of a single individual. (I really like Egg-->Facehugger-->Chestburster-->Xenomorph!)
But to get to your question consider the hydra. Let's start with an egg. From that you get a polyp, which is basically a sessile non-sexual stalk that reproduces asexually by budding. When food is low it will bud off male and female medusa (which are free floating). The medusa spurt out gametes which join to form eggs. So, you sorta have three sexes: a non-sexual polyp, and male and female medusa.
Using this life-cycle idea, perhaps your made-up species could have three sexes in the adult stage, A,B, & C, which produce different life cycles depending on the pairing. A+B produce A or B or C. A+C produce a Type D warrior caste that can asexually clone itself (after all, Type D need genetic variation too). B+C produce a sterile Type E. A+B+C produce a trisomal crazy pants variant. And so on.
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I think I see a way you could actually evolve something akin to this:
Take a species with normal sexual reproduction, something happens to divide the population and they begin to diverge, although not quite to the point of becoming unable to interbreed.
Now the barrier is removed and they can now mix again. Their Y (or whatever equivalent they have) chromosomes have diverged substantially, however. With the population again mixed the females converge on a common genetic structure but the Y chromosomes don't mix and thus there is no convergence--females are common but there are two distinct varieties of male and they turn out to be complementary in the game of survival.
Thus you get the situation where the ideal family unit is a type A male, a type B male and a female, although any given offspring has genes from only two of the family members.
Once this situation has developed the Y chromosomes are free to evolve independently of each other, the type A and type B organisms drift apart.
You have a species with something close to three genders with a reasonable evolutionary path to get there.
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As a slight variation on your theme, you could have a species that is still split into male and female, but each of those is further split.
This is the case for the [side-blotched lizard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-blotched_lizard)
There are 2 female "genders" and 3 male "genders", which are differently colored and have different behaviors.
The females are divided into "orange" and "yellow", with the orange laying many small eggs and being very territorial, and the yellow laying fewer, larger, eggs and are more tolerant of neighbors.
The males are divided into "orange", "yellow", and "blue". Oranges are larger and claim a large territory and many females and are very territorial. Yellows claim no territory or females but sneak into an orange's territory to mate with his females when he is in another part of his (too large to completely guard) territory. Blues claim a small territory and a single female, which he can defend from a sneaking yellow, but cannot prevent a larger orange from taking his female if it makes the attempt.
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Each of the genders could contribute less than half of the genetic code needed to make a new critter. In animals on earth, males & females each contribute half of the genetic information (50% in the egg, 50% in the lucky sperm). In your critters, each could contribute 1/4 of the genetic material. Or 1/5th. Or anything you want.
Optionally, there could be one "female" in your species, carrying the egg with 50% of the genetic material and additional nutrients & stuff. There are lots of variations of the "male"; for example, each different type of "male" includes only 10% of the required genetic material in its sperm. A "female" needs to be impregnated by one of each of the 5 types of "males" in order to put together a complete genome. Somehow, by magical science and chemistry and biology, all 5 segments of "male" DNA arrange in the correct order and the correct orientation to create a complete genome.
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Gender is a matter of different cell types and genetic diversity. If there is only one gender, you find that the biodiversity can take a hit. Two genders tends to make sure that one organism can't breed with its (essentially) clones - this is better for the species.
Thus, I give to you the strange world known as Earth and the lowly [slime mold](https://web.archive.org/web/20070214074621/http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/ZooGoer/2004/2/wildersideofsex.cfm).
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> Beneath the lilies lies a rotting log, home to a tiny organism that isn’t a plant or an animal or a fungus. It looks like a blob of scrambled eggs, but in fact it’s a slime mold (genus Physarum), an otherworldly creature with 29 variants of sex-controlling genes, dispersed among eight different types of sex cells. To ensure genetic diversity, each slime mold sex cell can only fuse with a sex cell that has completely different variants of genes than its own. If you calculate all the possible combinations of genes and sex cells, you will find that Physarum have more than 500 different sexes. Reproduction for slime molds may be complicated, but it’s never boring.
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So there you have not sperm and egg, but eight different types of gametes. And not just "X" and "Y" but rather 29 genes.
And this gets you to, 500+ genders. Its not a matter of different binary, but just *different* being sufficient to have different genders. This isn't any threesome or strange biology. Just that you've got to have this thingy and that thingy be different, provide different genes and combine.
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Don't ask about logic, ask about environmental pressure. Some of the things you mention sound more like job descriptions than actual genders. Are the womb providers and/or nurturers actually structurally different that the ostensible male female roles? or are they just playing a part until their turn to be male/female. (are they even the same species?)
Aside from that though, all we know is DNA/RNA based life. There's two strands, which makes two sexes pretty easy. Not a lot of reason to have more, except maybe redundancy. Even then, though, say you have four participants in a given reproduction, if it comes down to three motile providers and one egg provider (plus any non-genetic roles) it's still just two sexes.
You could possibly work something where one being impregnates another, then that being impregnates another with the resulting cells, which undergo further modification/addition of material. Through a certain number of similar steps. But if all members of the species can perform any of the roles, there is really only one gender, just slightly different [changing] roles in reproduction.
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Why would it occur? Because it provides a survival advantage.
So why does it provide a survival advantage?
* The more diversity in genetic material you have, the more likely you
are to be able to survive and reproduce in a difficult environment: eat a different food, make an antidote to a poison, etc.
* The more parents you have, the more likely you are to be well fed and
cared for during infancy. Note that these have to be actual
gene-contributing parents.
* The more copies of genes you have, the more likely you are to survive
in a highly mutagenic environment.
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If you have 4 or 5 genders you may have reproduction that requires something more complicated than a gamete-based method. For example, you could use role types versus gender types and there could group responsibility for nurturing the offspring until its capable of surviving on its own.
For the reproduction part, you would need gene-contributors (what humans would call egg and sperm donors) and you might need more than one of them due to something that would cause certain combinations to be successful and other to not be successful - and then perhaps you would need a "quickener" - a member of the reproductive group that contributes an energy that takes the gene contributions and makes them combine to form the proto-being. Lastly if these beings carry unborn offspring inside their bodies you would need an incubator.
All of these factors taken together may result in a litter of offspring rather than one single offspring per reproductive cycle.
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One of my favorite numbers to use after three is four.
Reasons for four:
* Two entwined species that can't live without one another, each with two genders.
* Rather than dominate and recessive genes we could use a voting system. 3 of your parents have blond hair so you have blond hair.
* Four parents with four biologically segregated roles mean there is less work for any one gender.
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I'm assuming you mean 'sex' (anatomy & biological function), rather than 'gender' (see Fayth85's answer).
Way back in the 90s, British Telecom was testing [code which had 'sexes'](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15220561-100-rampant-sex-solves-telephone-traffic-problem/) and the ones with three sexes habitually came out best. The initial conditions favoured three sexes, so three sexes out-competed all other numbers of sexes.
Sex will evolve waaaaaay back in your planet's history, long before things like wombs and parental care have evolved. It'll happen when your animals and/or plants are just tiny things randomly dumping their equivalent of sperm and eggs into the ocean.
Here are a few science fiction examples which came up with reasons for 3 sexes. **SPOILER ALERT** - these examples give away plot twists.
**The biochemistry rationale**. In Vonda McIntyre's *Dreamsnake*, the snakes have a DNA triple helix (or alien equivalent thereof), so mate in threesomes. Each snake is providing one strand of the DNA when the snakes mate.
This version puts the three sexes at such a fundamental level - the biochemistry - then you could argue that everything on that planet which reproduces sexually has three sexes. It is the default setting for everything (apart from asexually reproducing things).
**The quality control rationale**. In Stephen Leigh's *Dark Water's Embrace*, the aliens have males, females and intersexes. The planet is bombared by radiation from its star, and the intersexes act as quality control to keep the mutation rate down. Male mates with intersex. Intersex filters his sperm to remove the defective ones. Intersex mates with female to pass on the good sperm.
This one has to evolve later, once internal fertilisation has been invented. So on Earth most fish and amphibians wouldn't have it (water protects them from radiation anyway?). But reptiles, birds and mammals could develop it.
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**Some fungi have thousands of "sexes"**
The answer to your question depends on why you mean by a sex. Male and female are dimorphic, and have separate roles in reproductive development that correspond at the fundamental level to micro- and macro- gametes. The female produces fewer, larger, less mobile gametes than contain more nourishment to get the development started; in contrast to the male producing many, small, typically mobile gametes. Everything about the distinction of sexes essentially follow from this starting point.
Fungi do it differently. There's no morphological distinction between the "sexes", or more properly, "[mating types](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mating_in_fungi)", instead cells of the two parents merge directly to form diploid cells that later divide. The importance of the mating types is simply to reduce inbreeding so two individuals of the same mating type can't interbreed. In some branches of the fungal tree species can have thousands of different mating types (i.e. [Basidiomycetes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basidiomycota)).
So, the question of whether you can have more sexes depends on what roles you expect your sexes to take. Are you looking for a system in which >2 individuals are involved in each mating event? Do you require distinct morphology for your sexes?
The suggestions you put forward are implausible on the face of it - there must be individual advantage in every role for the system to persist. One possible way round this if the sexes rather than being fixed as in humans are life stages as in some fish (i.e. angler fish which start male and become female if they grow big enough) or if you imagine that the roles are more closely akin to castes in Eusocial species.
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There is no logical reason for that to happen, but it actually happens as there is no logical reason for why life in the first place has to exist but it does exist anyway.
I think by gender you are referring to biological sex and not the social identity teenagers use today based on their feelings...
The biological sex is determined by only one thing which is sex, and not sex as in having love with someone but the biological meaning of sex. The sexual cells an organism produces determinate the sex of the organism.
Example:
In humans there are 4 sexes
Male which produces Motile cells(sperm)
Female which produces Oogame cells(eggs)
Sterile which doesn't produce sexual cells
Hermaphrodite which produces both motile and oogame cells at different periods during their life.
(true Hermaphrodites that can produce both sperm and ovules at the same time don't exist in humans)
The reason for why there can be only two types of sexual cells is the lung of the cells, the mitochondria has it's own genetic code different from that one of the cell as they evolved separately.
if the mitochondria of the sperm is not compatible with that one of the Egg then they will not fuse, that's why there needs to be at least two types of different sexual cells in which one has the mitochondria to stay alive and the other doesn't as it will fuse with the other anyway.
In case mitochondria didn't have it's own DNA then that could leave space for an infinite amount of different sexual cells on the same specie.
and it could actually happen as evolution doesn't plan for what makes more sense, what is the best and most perfect and efficient.... evolution doesn't have the will to decide. therefore everything that works will evolve even if it doesn't make sense or isn't efficient.
Just look at how stupid the evolution of mayflies was, they live for 4 minutes in which they just reproduce and die then the cycle repeats... this is the proof that evolution isn't based on logic.
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**Gender is a social construct. Sex is a biological contruct.**
As is, in the vast majority of species you have a minimum of three sexes: male (sperm produders), female (egg producers), and a sex not readily identifiable as typically male or female (a combination of the two, whether on chromosomal (XX, XY, XXY, XYY, XO, etc.), gonadal (testes, ovaries, womb, etc), or external genetalia (vagina, penis).
Gender (identity) is a spectrum with at the two extremes thereof: masculine and feminine. For example, you could have feminine guys, masculine girls, or essentially any combination of biological sex and gender identity.
Now, having said that, what you are likely talking about is the biology; ergo, sex and sexual dimorphmism. There are dozens of unique approaches I can think of off the top of my head when it comes to procreation and raring offspring.
First, you have the posibilty of a 'slave sex'. Just like with the seahorse and some species of frog, that the egg producer either excretes the eggs (for or post fertilization), it isn't all that hard to believe there would be room in such a setup for a third sex to bring the eggs to term (i.e. guard them, offer nutrients). In fact, certain species of wasp use other species for this (burying the eggs in them so the hatchlings will have food after being born).
Another example? Well, we look again to nature: [ants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant). Sterile females (in some subspecies with wings) versus fertile queens and worker/soldier ants (infertile males) versus drones (fertile males). There you have four biologically divergent sexes in one species, and how they help the species servive (even if the infertile ones cannot procreate).
Another way this can play out? Like with [bees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee). In some subspecies (I'm tempted to say all, but I don't know for sure this is the case) females would suck/eat/drink a special substance (excretion) from the queen bee, keeping them infertile to not over populate the hive. This way, if anything happens to the queen, there is a host of females that can take over. It isn't as dramatic as the ant example, but it would work just the same.
Another, slightly off-topic, example is to show how the parents go about raising the offspring. [Black swans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan#Nesting_and_reproduction) help here. A percetage of them form homosexual couples and start a threesome with females just for the eggs. Once she lays, she's kicked out of the nest, and the happy couple go about their lives.
Then we get into 'gender differences' that could help with childrearing. For this we turn to Micronesian with [Fa'afafine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fa%27afafine). The 'third gender'. They help take care of the home, help raise siblings, nieces/nephews, etc.
If you want a more religious reasoning (depends on your species) you can also go with the [Hijra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)) of India. They were believed to be holy, conserated to a god that demands the removal of male genetalia as an offering to her.
In the end, it's about what angle you want for these 'extra sexes/genders'.
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Consider two species (species A and species B) that initially develop as symbiotes, each with their own set of genders (let's say two each, A1, A2, B1, and B2). Let's also say that these species are in the vein of waterbears or similar species - good at gene transfer between species. Two such species that operate so closely could reasonably be expected to become very similar due to the gene transfer, but not so similar that they can no longer perform the functions that make them symbiotes.
As this pair of species evolves into higher life forms, their symbiosis might become less and less pronounced; it is presumably useful for an animal to be mostly independent. The one arena in which independence is *not* a virtue is in fetal development - a fetus has no hope of being independent anyway. So this pair of species might retain only the part of their symbiosis that relates directly to fetal development. Perhaps, for example, each species helps develop the other's immune system. The result might be that the mother, a female of species A, gives birth to a child of species A and another of species B simultaneously.
This isn't, scientifically speaking, a case of four genders; but it's a close enough mimic that I'd imagine that A1, A2, B1, and B2 would be treated as genders in any society that developed. It's also worth noting that if you started with a pair of species that had three genders each, the result would be a "composite" species with six "genders"; throw in a more complex, many-partner form of symbiosis and you could step it up even more.
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My hero is fighting using a longsword. He also knows some basic/intermediate spells so he could for example conjure a shield, throw fire, and things like that. He is currently saving his lady and to do that, he must first fight with an enemy that has full plate armor and a big greatsword.
I want to make it a really hard fight but I am thinking that maybe a greatsword is not the right choice for his enemy. Wouldn't that put him at too big a disadvantage? I am thinking that maybe it would be hard to believe that he could parry that greatsword.
As for more information:
Hero is wearing light leather armor. He doesn't have a shield, but is capable of conjuring one using some of his magical power (he can do magic, but there is a limit to the "mana" he can use before needing to meditate to harness more).
He arrives on horseback, but I plan for the animal to be killed early in the combat. The rest of the fight will be on foot.
The hero is "champion" of the goddess of death. The sword he has is in fact a gift from her. He often channels his power into his blade making it stronger and more devastating.
The lady he is going to save is in fact the goddess. She betrayed another, more powerful god because she wanted to take his place. The god discovered and banished her. The opponent is guarding the place where she is being kept and tortured. Hero is also in love with her so he is willing to fight till the death.
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**The Greatsword is a Handicap**
A greatsword is not a dueling weapon. Historically it was used mostly as anti-cavalry weapon, that is because it is too big to do anything but horizontal slices or two handed thrusts. Those are powerful attacks, enough to take down a horse, and also cover a lot of ground (range advantage) but in a duel it means its attacks are predictable and slower.
**The real question is whether you expect the mage to slice through his armor**
You cannot take down someone in heavy armour without attacking its armour gaps (not easily done with a longsword, you need fine control of the tip of your blade in order to hit a gap). The other way is just hitting hard to cause impact damage or wearing your opponent out, and given that you are a mage against a fighter, I assume you are not gonna outdo him physically.
**Use your sword to defend and your spells to attack**
You cannot damage him with the sword, but it has a nice range and can be used to keep enemy attacks at bay, saving precious mana. You focus at casting should be directed at what ever will cause pain, fire spells, or tire him out.
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**The mage can’t afford for this to be a sword fight**
If the enemy is a knight and the person is question is a mage, making this a sword fight is a losing proposition. Your knight is probably stronger, better trained in sword fighting, and has armor to cover most of their mistakes. If the mage has no armor then he must either focus on casting shield while fighting or fight with little to no armor. The knight has every advantage in a sword fight, as such the mage needs to make sure this isn’t a sword fight.
There are two ways to do this, run and cast fire, or shield and cast fire. Due to the shield the mage has an advantage at range, and at worst this turns into ranged combat between a knight who might not be the best crossbow shot and a mage who is trained to throw fire balls.
Anything one handed will likely be knocked aside by a great sword, so unless the mage is much stronger than the knight he won’t be able to parry for long.
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### Greatsword vs Longsword is already balanced.
Both greatswords and longswords are already two-handed weapons; the greatsword is somewhat longer and heavier, but that doesn't mean that the guy with the greatsword is surely going to win, or that the longsword would be unable to parry the greatsword. If someone who's not an expert on medieval swords were to watch the fight, they may well not be able to tell the difference between the two types of sword.
If anything, having the smaller, lighter sword may prove to be an advantage if the weilder of the sword is skilled enough to take advantage of the marginally slower strikes of the greatsword, allowing them to parry and riposte.
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**Grease**
Having no reference for what you consider a basic/intermediate spell I have defaulted to the Dungeons & Dragons spell list. The grease spell can be cast by most level 1 spellcasters.
This spell summons a puddle of slippery grease either on the ground or on an object. This is bad news for the knight since his metal boots have bad traction on the grease and his metal gauntlets have bad traction on the sword hilt.
Once our hero greases the ground under the knight's feet, the duel consists of the knight flopping around trying to get to his feet while haphazardly swinging his massive sword in arcs, while the mage tries to get in and stab through his visor or armpits without getting cleft in twain or slipping on the grease himself.
The *fight* is difficult because the knight is still almost invulnerable to sword blows, and the hero can still be cut in half by a single swing.
**Note:** If this fight is still too hard/easy for the hero, then simply adjust the level of slipperyness to make it easier/harder.
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**Go through your spell book... or serve your mistress. Your choice.**
What we have in here? *Conjure fire ants?* Nah, he's too disciplined for that. I think. Nerf iron objects was removed due to game balance considerations. *Leda's Liquefaction* might take the opponent down a notch. A *kaleidoscope* spell could keep him swatting uselessly at a horde of nerds. *Whoah*, wait a minute, an old packet of boosterspice fell out from between two pages... this book has seen some epic parties. Take a whiff of that stuff and *prescience* his sword out of your face, and save your magic points for later! But it's not *romantic*!
No, you're wielding a sword from the Goddess of Death, and you want to serve her absolutely. What do you think you have to do? Charge him, and die. And come back. And charge him. And die. And come back. And tackle him, and die. And come back, once again, by the woeful magic of that fateful blade, that restores life to those who die wielding it. **Die by the sword, live by the sword!** If you have to wait for the swordsman to die of old age, I promise you one thing -- in the end, Life perishes, and Death remains.
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If this fight is happening in an age before Benjamin Franklin and other scientists formalized our understanding of electrical conductivity, then your hero can easily defeat the villain by casting a lightning bolt at that great sword shaped lightning rod that he is holding, but he might not know that he can do that, yet...
So he starts the fight as an underdog, trying to block a great sword with his toothpick sized long sword. After it flies from his hand during the first clash of steel, he can run away a bit, relying on his enemies armor encumberment to stay out of sword range. When the enemy inevitably corners him, he can use the shield spell to deflect the killing blow, then escape back out of range as his foe recovers from confusion over his sword hitting the spell's invisible barrier. Better yet, if the foe was charging blade point first at the cornered hero, the shield spell might defer that point into some bulky wooden object. The sword might then be stuck for long enough for the hero to retreat.
At some point, late in the process of loosing this fight, the hero might randomly cast the lightning spell, maybe just hoping to blind the knight. But then the blue sparks crackle across the conductive plate armor as the knight inside screams and cooks. The hero will have won a hopeless battle by shear luck and the as-of-yet undiscovered power of electricity.
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**Sword from the Death Goddess.**
1. Hero realizes he is outmatched.
2. Hero is able to duck greatsword a couple of times. Parry does not work. Hero cannot hurt knight thru armor.
3. Hero tries spells. Spells slow down knight but are not going to be enough.
4. Hero's sword is a gift of the Death Goddess. /He often channels his power to blade making it stronger and more devastating./. Hero channels power and calls on the sword, for real this time. He blocks the greatsword. The greatsword dies, crumbling into rust. The Death sword looks different, scary. He points it at the knight.
5. The knight, weapon lost, faced by black flames sword, yields. He leaves. Which works out because the mage's sword itself dies about 45 seconds after that.
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We are going to see this knight again. Maybe not as an opponent.
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The balance of this fight really depends on what you mean by "greatsword" and if the "longsword" in question is period appropriate to the armour the knight is wearing.
"Greatsword" is not a term modern armourers generally use rather we describe swords as two-handed [insert model of sword here] because they were simply oversized versions of the many, varied, one-handed forms available, there is an exception that we talk about shortly. Many two-handed swords were simply for show but in the late medieval period a sword was created that was specialised as a two-handed weapon, a true greatsword called the [zweihänder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweih%C3%A4nder). Where the oversized two-handed swords of earlier eras were clumsy by comparison with their one-handed versions the zweihänder is a light and nimble as well as a powerful blade, the product of late-medieval/early renaissance advances in metallurgy and fully capable of crippling men in full plate.
"Longsword" is another term that doesn't actually mean much in terms of describing the characteristics of the weapon; every sword from the Viking era through to the ceremonial swords still used by militaries the world over fall into the basic parameters. As such one can see that longswords have changed continually through the ages in response to advances in armour and the changing demands of the battlefield. The arming sword, or ["knightly sword"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightly_sword), was no exception to this rule of changing form and in fact remained the second dealiest weapon when knights met each other in combat, bested only by lance from horseback.
If the knight is using some oversized ceremonial blade and the mage is using an arming sword specialised to the knight's armour I feel sorry for the man in the tin suit. Similarly a knight with a zweihänder against a man with an ill suited one-handed sword simply *will* win unless something goes badly wrong for him because an inappropriately shaped blade won't be able to penetrate the knight's armour no matter how it is used.
There are some simple, probably inexpensive, tricks the mage could try as well. Heat exhaustion is the greatest enemy of anyone in armour, even in modern reenactments people have died of heat stroke on cold days. Heating the knight's armour even slightly will make this worse. The other trick is bright light, from experience I can tell you that a knight's helm doesn't let one see out particularly well in the first place, and if you up the contrast the outside world turns into a blur of bright light, coloured shapes and occasional shadows. If the mage can blast the knight in the face with a really bright flash he stands a good chance of dazzling him for several seconds, long enough to do some serious damage.
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I would first start with, there are soo, soo, soo many ways where a fighter-mage could gain the upper hand (relatively easily) especially since you only say, "he must first fight with an enemy", and don't mention why he would close the range / distance (or why he'd let his horse get killed) or terrain at all.?. But if the Mage has any agency in those aspects, he's soo many options:
* Cast Heat Metal on either the sword and/or armor
* Cast Sleep on the fighter
* Cast Light into the fighter's eyes
* Cast Magic Missle (who knows, depending on the level & roll might work)
* Prep an illusionary floor over a pit containing spikes (& a Rust Monster üòã) and have the fighter chase him around a corner & fall in üò≤
* Heck, just invite your neighborhood friendly Rust Monster to the fight üò≤
... all of which can be done at some distance ... there's no reason for the Mage to close that distance until he has the advantage.
I could go on, & on ... but in general, if the Mage is creative (& barring a giant disparance on level/HP or some really bad rolls) the Mage should be able to even the playing field, if not gain the advantage.
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When I first read this question title, I assumed you were trying to find a way for the knight to beat the mage.
Magic and melee are entirely different approaches to life, usually the mage just needs to find some high ground and turn the fighter into a boil in the can dinner.
* [Blink](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/blink) and variants thereof are considered fairly basic spells used to keep out of melee range.
* [Frost](https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=12544/frost-armor) and fire armours are equally standard options that respectively slow or harm the attacker while protecting the caster.
As a general rule the simple fighter with nothing more than a sword (with or without board) is the one at a disadvantage in a fight with a caster. The only rule is remember to foreshadow any spells you use so you're not pulling them out of the bag on the day.
The simplest option would be to freeze his feet in place then cook him in his can.
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I'm worbuilding a situation about a polygamous family, consisting of a father, his several wives and their many children. They are cut off from their tribe, by highland rebellion which closed the only mountain pass. As per their custom they don't intermarry outside of their tribe.
Could the family survive for two more generations if half siblings marry each other?
Per tribal code, members that present liabilities for tribe are disposed off, sword in a heart style. That includes deformed, crippled, ill with small chance of getting better etc.
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Contrary to popular belief, inbreeding doesn't radically increase the chance of offspring developing health problems in isolated cases--it takes many, many generations of close, in-family relationships for offspring to start having high chances of birth defects or other inbreeding-related health problems.
That said, In your tribe, not only do you have multiple wives to diversify the genetic pool, but you're also only concerned with two generations--a rather short amount of time in the grand scheme. As long as your patriarch and wives aren't all already blood-relative direct siblings, there shouldn't be any significant genetic problems in the first two generations above the norm.
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Inbreeding does *not* automatically result in birth defects or cripples. It's the method used to produce "purebreeds" and it's no different between horses, dogs and humans; it will increase greatly the chances that any negative trait that is present in the genetic stock, and is normally masked by genetic variability, will surface and breed true - resulting in birth defects, stillborns, and cripples (this *plus* controlled reproduction of the healthy individuals only, will allow to weed out genetic defects and select for desirable traits until they "breed true").
For example, the father is XY and the mother is xX. This is a typical situation for haemophilia. Neither parent is affected, but the mother is a carrier. The children might be Xx (carrier again), XY (unaffected), xY (affected), XX (unaffected). Now it is possible to get a xx offspring in the next generation from the Xx and xY siblings. Breeding the apparently healthy individuals with one another (Xx and XX vs XY) will yield a healthier second generation and allow surmising that one of the two females is unaffected, and stop breeding the other as well as the other's offspring.
Of course, the more the latent defects, the more difficult and lengthy the process (it's little use to have a child which is healthy for traits A and B if they die in their infancy because of trait C).
But if those defects *aren't* present, they can't come to the fore. In your case, with several possibly unrelated wives, it is unlikely they would come to the fore for several generations; the current stock has probably been vetted enough in the past, "sword in the heart" style.
There is such a situation, if memory serves (minus the sword part), in Charles Stross's *The Family Trade*, where marriages are organized to maximise genetic diversity within an inbred extended family; the whole marriage business is called the "wreath" and is supervised by the aunts and grandmothers.
(For humans, you might have to take the [Westermarck inhibition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect) into account)
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Consanguinity is defined by a coefficient which is the probability of two genes being identical (homozygote) by random.
you can learn to compute the coefficient [here](http://atlasgeneticsoncology.org/Educ/ConsangGenealEng.html).
In your case, the first generation will have a coefficient of 1/8.
In comparison Charles 2 the infamous king of Spain that was crippled by several and severe consequence of consanguinity had a coefficient of 1/4. A child born from a relation between first degree cousin has a coefficient of 1/16.
Its short term effects are often exaggerated but are real:
* Increase in autosomal recessive disease. (a disease that appears only when you have both copies of gene the same and deleterious)
Other effects, pregnancy problem, risks of metabolism disease, mental disorders are hard to distinguish from other factors but seems to be more prevalent. If you want to learn more there is extensive literature on this subject on PubMed.
In your case, your small tribes may survive but have increased risks of seeing some form of rare disease. That may not appears at birth [example](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27853007/).
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If there are no genetic issues, then there is no reason they could not continue to inbreed indefinitely.
If there are genetic problems, inbreeding will certainly manifest them over a few generations. But a genetically healthy population can be extremely inbred - as has been shown with many rare-breed domestic animals -- over many generations with no problems.
However, your society has a much bigger problem with its 'tribal code' which is likely to result in it being wiped out, by civil war or depopulation, fairly rapidly. We are all liabilities in the long run, but we don't necessarily accept that being killed is a good thing :)
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my name's amàlí and i'm a hyper spunky 23 yr old girl woman (lol, i guess, idk). i run a youtube channel called AMAzing (get it!?) where i talk about what's going on in my life and the world and draw for people and stuff. well, i can do magic and so i thought i'd share it with my subscribers cuz it's super cool (also fun). but nobody believes me! they all just think its special effects and hyperbole.
i don't edit my own show, i know some nerds who help me out (thx, <3 u guys) cuz i'm more artsy fartsy and kung fu than comp nerd. anyway, i think i need to stop wearing low cut shirts cuz i swear half my subs are there cuz of my pasty 'assets' instead of to actually listen to me.
the point is, how can i get my subs to believe i can do magic?? i can do pretty much anything u can think of (like all those -kineseseses, and psychometry, and teleportation, and stuff). what's my best bet?
thx y'all :) Xs
-amà
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Do I need to translate? I guess I should translate.
Okay. Here we have a gen-Y YouTube girl (who seems to have a vendetta against capital letters and types like a 12-year old) who wants to share her joy with people - but everyone on the internet is a skeptic (and maybe not even really paying attention). What can she do to be taken seriously and believed? It doesn't seem like she cares about being noticed by the 'wrong people' and is more concerned with the tendency for people to think that everything is a con or a trick.
I have some thoughts myself, but she's already heard me... it's your turn!
-aon
EDIT:
It appears that I need to make an alteration to better explain the question. Here goes:
In a world exactly like our own, the year is 2017, and The Masquerade is in full effect. There are some particular persons, scattered across the globe, who have access to abilities that make Man greedy and the Gods jealous. Suppose that one of these such people was a *genuinely good person* and enjoyed (gasp) *sharing with others*. Those who are part of The Masquerade do not approve of sharing... but! They are curmudgeonly people and wave away mention of this newfangled 'Inter-net' thing. How would such a person bring their abilities into the public eye without the interjection of said curmudgeons? How would one unmask The Masquerade?
Since the question has been posed: What are the limits of this magic?
Let's assume that the sky is the limit. The limitation in this case is not the magic itself, but the intentions of the user. Sure, you could just roll reality up like play-doh and make everyone believe everything you say; but that is *not very nice* and also *really boring*.
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Easy: call the [JREF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi_Educational_Foundation) and win the Randi Prize. Proving supernatural claims to scientific standards is what this is *for* (and the million dollars is nice, too).
Anything you simply demonstrate to your followers will wind up on [Captain Disillusion](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOXxzW2vU0P-0THehuIIeg) etc. and be presumed to be a video hoax.
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In real life, the Randi challenge has been discontinued. There are still [others](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prizes_for_evidence_of_the_paranormal), but best drama would be to involve a venerable character that can give credible authority. So make up your own character based on Randi, set it in the recent past, have the challenge still exist in your universe, or pass *other* tests and then have the retired venerable authority consult to design and officiate over ultimate high-publicity testing. The real James Randi is pushing 90.
In your story, I can imagine that first the youtube community of video SFX variously analyses and duplicates her video feats. Then she has some of *those people* shoot the video as she performs. Then the street magic group duplicate it, claiming they know how it was done (each inventing his own way). Only after repeated rounds of this does she learn how scientific method is the real answer, and that scientists are fooled by magicians so *finally* finds the niche represented by Randi etc. Being a kid※ works out well as it makes it more beleivable that she didn’t already know some of those things, and the case of past hign-profile (fake) psycics.
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※ OK, 23 is not exactly a kid… it reads more like an early teen ager. Even so, the last round of John Edwards, Sylvia Browne, et al. would be before she payed attention to such TV shows.
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# If you don't personally experience it, it's nothing more than hearsay
It's the internet, so some people are going to believe anything - just like those videos you seen about people doing unfeasible things with table tennis balls.
To get things real, you need to make real things happen, for all of your viewers.
Some simple (and non harmful) things to do would be:
* ask your viewers to hold something in their hand and then move it to their other hand
* make an origami model out of a piece of paper on the viewer's desk
* change the ring-tone on their phone to the [My Little Pony](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcBNxuKZyN4) theme tune
**For magic to be real, it needs to be actually experienced by the viewer**, otherwise it's just stuff that people see on their computer and therefore open to scepticism.
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>
> Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but
> inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their
> fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so
> every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth
> forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither
> can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth
> not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore
> by their fruits ye shall know them.
>
>
>
Translated (and *totally* not revenge for making me read that *in character* text) :
People will believe in magic if it produces magical results. Healing the sick is the traditional one used by various holy men. Obviously this depends on what kind of magic the person has, but any magic worth calling magic should have *some* utility. Just go ahead and use it effectively and openly. The word will get around very fast.
Unless your power works over the internet (in which case you have no problem), the internet is simply a channel for doing public relations and publicity for whatever you actually do. Use of powers and proving their reality is something you do live and direct as needed to produce whatever results it is you want.
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# Live performance.
No matter how many "Fake!" comments there are, there will still be some people believe in what they see and want to see it live.
So, the next step is going into public. Do magic without any chance for someone to say "Cheat!" without safeguards. Standing in the middle of a public space, wearing a bikini (to avoid any hidden tools), holding a ball of fire in the hands would be a good start or levitate random people or things.
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**Predict the future! Correctly, many times, and on events with enough impact.**
This cannot be faked with special effects (or ordinary effects, for that matter!). No matter how hard people cry "fake!", it won't take long until even the most adamant skeptics have no choice but to admit that they cannot rationally explain how you are right time and again with your predictions. Once your magical girl starts getting enough publicity, she could start to make self-fulfilling prophecies too, to show people that she can predict not only future possibilities but unavoidable destinies.
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[Question]
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OK, I'm putting together a bunch of concepts for a interstellar military, one that sits between the Colonial Marines(Aliens) and the UNSC(Halo) in terms of technology and equipment. Lasers exist, but are used less by the interstellar forces due to the added complexity, weight, and reduced effectiveness on the planet they are fighting on which has a denser atmosphere with a large amount of particulates. Also because of this most fighting is a relatively short range. Most kinetic weapons are 'normal' by todays standards, and missiles and micro-guidance packages are considerably cheaper than today. Given that they have to lug everything across interstellar space a lot of the equipment and vehicles will be intended to fill multiple roles.
How effective, then, would a tank armed with a Vulcan(or similar) rotary cannon be?
I envision it as similar to the [Merkava](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkava#General_characteristics) crossed with the Colonial Marine's APC. It would have decent armour, although maybe not as much as a MBT. Good mobility and speed, perhaps through wheels rather than tracks. And it would be able to carry a few soldiers(4 to 6) as well as its crew.
The idea behind using the Vulcan is that it can scale its firepower. Against a tank it fires on full auto, against lightly armoured targets it can fire burst mode. Also, if the turret is correctly designed it can also engage aerial targets. this should give it greater flexibility than a conventional MBT, although at the cost of making it less effective at being a tank.
The problems I see are the vulcan not being able to damage a MBT without the high angle attack it gets when used in a A-10 attack aircraft, and the turret being to heavy for effective anti-air work. The latter can be fixed with 'its the future! engineering!' but the former is more of a problem. Would it be more effective to have a dual or quad mounting of small bore HV cannons instead, perhaps light gas guns?
In summery;
1) Would a armoured vehicle with a rotary cannon, and the ability to engage aircraft, be a more flexible option for a interstellar military than a conventional tank?
2) Would multiple HV cannon mount be better than a rotary design?
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Just a few general-purpose suggestions to go along with this quote:
>
> “There has never been a military in the entire history of the human race that has gone to war equipped with more than the least that it needs to fight its enemy. War is expensive. It costs money and it costs lives and no civilization has an infinite amount of either. So when you fight, you conserve. You use and equip only as much as you have to, never more.”
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― John Scalzi, Old Man's War
**1. Minimize moving parts:**
The terrain described in the question (dense atmosphere, high ratio of particulates) sounds like it would be pretty rough on a rotating barrel assembly. To top it off, if you moved to a planet with slightly too-high gravity, the weapon would jam because there'd be too much downward drag on the ammo feed system. There's a couple options rooted in current technology which could work around this.
a. The [Metal Storm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKlnMwuCZso) system stores all the rounds (which include propellant) directly in the barrel, stacked on top of one-another and fired in sequence. If one round misfires, the next round in the chamber pushes it out. This would allow very efficient ammo storage, and drastically reduce the number of moving parts on the weapon.
b. A [Gauss/rail/coil cannon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXF0n6aojSc) completely eliminates the need for propellant for each round, and also eliminates any moving parts exposed to each planet's atmosphere. This would allow the most efficient ammo storage possible (you'd only store the "warheads"), and would enable the military force to fabricate their own ammunition from any ferrous material on the planet. Combined with a compact nuclear reactor, the crew would have virtually unlimited ammunition.
**2. Maximize modularity:** For an interstellar military, you'd want a fighting vehicle capable of fighting in a low-gravity jungle one physioday, and a high-gravity tundra the next--it's far cheaper to ship the vehicles/crews directly from one engagement to another, rather than shipping them all the way from a major manufacturing hub or storage facility each time. Being able to replace their wheels with treads for sand travel, or remove armor plating in a higher-gravity environment, would be essential.
Most of this could be performed in the "mother ship" that takes them from engagement to engagement, but a tiny 3D printer on-board the AFV itself would allow them to create small replacement parts without having to head all the way back to their FOB (or whatever their equivalent is).
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Consider this:
* AFVs can be **overarmed**, with weapons which can easily penetrate their own armor. Think of a tank-destroyer armored car like the [AMX 10 RC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMX_10_RC) or a light tank like the [M41](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M41_Walker_Bulldog).
* AFVs can be **balanced**, with weapons roughly in scale with their frontal armor. That's the [M1 Abrams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams), but also the [Stryker ICV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stryker).
* Then there are a few **underarmed** vehicles, with armor in excess of their own weapons. Many are IFVs like the [Namer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namer) or [Marder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marder_%28IFV%29) (if you count just the cannon). Others are specialist vehicles like the [M88 recovery vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M88_Recovery_Vehicle).
Vehicles designed to fight other vehicles tend to be balanced or overarmed, not underarmed. If the armor is strong enough to resist one hit without penetration, it will probably resist a dozen hits, too. Using multiple hits to "chew through" the armor only works if the hit was almost strong enough to punch through. Here is a [steel target after a couple of hits](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71uBTY+3pjL._SL256_.jpg). (I was just looking for a nice pic, I'm not endorsing the product or the review on Amazon.) If this was the hull of a vehicle, do you think more shots would have helped?
And all other things being equal, a higher rate of fire increases the weight of a weapon.
* A 7.62x51mm rifle like the [L1A1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L1A1_Self-Loading_Rifle) is roughly 4.5 kg.
* A 7.62x51mm machine gun like the [M60](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M60_machine_gun) is roughly 10 kg.
* A 7.62x51mm minigun like the [M134](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minigun) is at least 40 kg.
So if your goal is to get a balanced or overarmed AFV, it is unlikely that you can afford a high rate of fire as well. You get *one* gun, with a relatively *low* rate of fire. Otherwise the designers would be tempted to reduce the rate of fire just a little bit and to increase the punch, to make sure a hit becomes a kill.
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A rotary cannon is probably the worst weapon system for this sort of tank.
The primary bottleneck for a interstellar military is logistics. The supply chain to ship supplies from one star to another, and then down to the ground and then out to the field is significant. The point of a rotary cannon however is to fire that ammunition off really quickly. Consider that the A10 carries 1.5 tons of ammunition and can fire that in 15 seconds. What does your tank do when it runs out of ammo seconds into an engagement? What happens when your fleet runs out of ammo?
And that's ignoring the fact that such cannons take a few seconds to spin up...
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There are several good answers here already, but let me throw in a few more ideas.
What is the purpose of the vehicle that you are building? What kind of interstellar world are you building? In both reference points given, Halo and Aliens, the ground forces are used to explore what the fleet does not want to destroy from orbit. Get the fleet tug boats to drag some small asteroids, calculate trajectory, and drop them onto the main military bases. This way you are using resources already available in the area to cause tremendous damage. Think the Seekers from [Advent Rising](https://www.gog.com/game/advent_rising), "They throw rocks." You can kill a whole planet that way without having to land any troops. Our current military is using [smart rocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_bomb) to knock out specific vehicles and targets with minimal collateral damage.
So then, if gravity-powered destruction can be cheaply done on a variety of scales, what is left for your vehicle to do? With interstellar war, ground vehicles are used for final objectives and surgical tactics. The enemy has entrenched itself in the main powerplants, and crushing that will irradiate the habitable portions of the planet, or such.
* Lighter Recon and transport. Think Warthog. It is quick and has a mounted rotary cannon, but mostly it is used to get the troops from A to B faster. Sometimes you park behind a rock and use the turret to pin down a bunker entrance, but for the most part it is light armor and quick.
Yes, with [backpack drones](http://www.livescience.com/6955-military-tests-miniature-spy-plane.html) we have the ability to recon anything above ground. But if you want to recon and then also act, you need a few boots in the right place. As stated in one of the other answers, ground troops are tricky and can get into advantageous places.
* MBT. This design and metric has been discussed in great detail in several answers. It is a good tool when the enemy has an inferior main battle tank, but it takes a lot of storage on your interstellar craft and has limited situations of peak usefulness. Seriously, how far through a Halo mission did you ever take a Scorpion?
Any threatening ground forces can be squished from orbit. [Gun installations in mountains](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054953/) or other heavy bunkers could be a problem, but land some troops on the mountain above them and repel down with explosives, ODST style. Your army/navy/peacekeeping force will be thinking from the top down, because that is how their initial assessment of the planet will be oriented. Landing a few tanks in the field in front of the gun bunker is just asking to get shot by those guns.
Really, interstellar soldiers are going to have a [few darpa exoskeletons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hkCcoenLW4). Mostly those are [used for cargo](http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Caterpillar_P-5000_Work_Loader) but you could easily mount some [Metal Storm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKlnMwuCZso) tubes to some of those, and use them for temporary artillery.
The interstellar force will save resources (money, cargo space, weight) where possible and try to have an adaptable force. Having a bay full of armor for a long voyage sounds like a great way to increase inertia and reduce your fleet's effectiveness.
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You don't want a tank at all, but some sort of gunship platform.
Since you are coming in from space, your forces will be limited compared to whatever the planetary defenses can muster, so you want a vehicle platform which is much faster than whatever they have. This gives you more tactical and operational options, and allows you to cover a much greater area with a small force. As well, a flying platform has a much longer line of sight with its sensors (both passive and active), providing you with more situational awareness. You can see what *they* are up to and quickly mass your forces or move them depending on the situation.
As for weaponry, a rotary cannon is a specialized weapon for a particular purpose (having a very high rate of fire against fleeting targets). You will need to carry several different weapons systems, and since you have limited numbers and limited carrying space, each weapon should be multi purpose. I might suggest a rail gun as the primary weapon since it can deliver a devastating kinetic energy punch against ground, air and even low orbital targets. Missiles can carry explosive warheads for different types of targets, and many missiles are multi-purpose as well (the Starstreak SAM can be fired against ground targets and has a similar effect as a 40mm cannon shell, for example). Missiles can also carry sensors (anti radiation missiles for use against radar, for example) or non kinetic warheads like EMP or chemical agents and smoke.
Using the same platform as the basis for a troop carrier provides the means to take and hold ground, the ultimate reason you are invading rather than nuking the place from orbit (it's the only way to be sure...). Think of the movie Aliens and you have an idea of where this is going.
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It really depends on what you are going to use this vehicle for, how you're going to deploy it, and what do you envision it to do/engage.
A multi-role vehicle, while seemingly smart/more financially efficient, will sacrifice many capabilities that a purpose built vehicle has. Especially combat vehicles. So let's say, your vehicle is designed to transport infantry, engage ground/low level air targets, and provide fire support. Then yes, the vehicle you design will probably work well, especially if the opposition has little/no heavy armor, deploys primarily soft skinned/light armored vehicles. But as soon as it meets an enemy that deploys considerable numbers of heavy armor/MBTs, its going to get shredded. Tank armor are typically designed to withstand hits from much bigger bores than what rotary cannons have.
This is why modern IFVs (Infantry Fighting Vehicles - which is what your vehicle sounds like) are also equipped with ATGMs (Anti-Tank Guided Missiles). Will a force primarily equipped with IFVs (even with ATGMs) be able to counter a armored thrust of tank units? No. At least not in open, maneuver warfare. **IF** that force manage to suck the tanks into close terrain (say cities), and **IF** the opposition tanks do not have the training and doctrine to operate closely with its infantry in such terrain, and **IF** the tank force do not deploy IFVs/screeners of its own, then *maybe* it'll work.
ETA: Also, depending on how this force is deployed, then your IFVs might need support from orbiting platforms i.e. the ships from which they deployed. Remember: A spaceborne force is limited in mass in order to be viable. You cannot deploy heavy armor easily from space because of the sheer weight. A force that is waiting for them on the ground has the advantage of not being so limited. They can concentrate their heaviest armor/units, defenses, etc. where they are needed the most.
You will then have to design a 'space-air-land' battle doctrine for your troops.
[Answer]
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> How effective, then, would a tank armed with a Vulcan(or similar) rotary cannon be?
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Effective against what kind of target? Soft or lightly armored targets? Yes. Main battle tanks or heavily armored positions? No. Not unless you got really really lucky. An MBT is more heavily armed and armored and thus will dominate in open combat.
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> Would a armoured vehicle with a rotary cannon, and the ability to engage aircraft, be a more flexible option for a interstellar military than a conventional tank?
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Yes, in absolute terms, it is more flexible but the tradeoffs required to achieve that flexibility may be too great to make it effective. MBTs have a single mission, kill other tanks and APCs and not die in the process. To achieve that mission they have large guns and thick armor. An APC
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> Would multiple HV cannons be better than a rotary design?
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The fewer moving parts in a mechanism, the better it is. In light of extremely long supply lines as one might expect to find in interstellar conflicts, getting spare parts and ammo to the front lines is difficult. 3D printing of parts may alleviate this problems to considerable degree but it's not a perfect solution. No 3D printer can print *everything*.
**Alternatives to the rotary canon**
*Railguns*
Assuming rapid deployments to distant star systems, this civilization has access to very advanced technology such as superconducting materials and compact fusion reactors. Tech like this facilitates rapid fire hypervelocity rounds from railguns/gauss guns that require no propellant and minimal space. Hypervelocity rounds achieve kills purely through kinetic energy; no explosives are needed. With a compact fusion plant onboard, the power requirements for rapid firing shouldn't be too hard to meet. Barrel wear may be an issue.
*Drones + Guided Weapons*
For the last 60 years, there's been a growing trend towards more capable sensory networks coupled with increased accuracy. As targets gained more degrees of freedom to evade incoming munitions, the greater the need for weapons with terminal guidance. Modern day examples include laser guided bombs, JDAMS, cruise missiles, torpedoes, and air-to-air missiles.
In the far future, this trend toward better terminal guidance and better sensory networks should only continue. Thus, pervasive drone/sensory coverage of any battlefield will be required to drive the one-shot-one-kill guided munitions of the future. This strategy complements the need to make every shot count in the context of infrequent/expensive resupply. If each round fired results in a kill or knock-out then fewer rounds are needed; and resupply requirements are less egregious.
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Your first question is, in my opinion, inherently flawed. A vehicle with limited abilities to engage ground troops, armored land vehicles, and aircraft, is by definition going to be more flexible than a conventional military tank. What it's not going to be as good at is providing superior firepower to friendly infantry forces and survivability. I know you're envisioning a Merkava-style tank/APC hybrid, but it's important to note that Israel has a major technological advantage over its immediate geographic rivals, and can afford to make a tank/APC hybrid because they're not sacrificing so much in either capability to lose superiority in either capability against a military like Egypt's, Jordan's, Syria's, etc.
Now, because this is an interstellar military, weight constraints definitely play a role, but I think you should still consider giving your military a main battle tank. They're awesome, they're very effective at accomplishing the objectives they're designed for, and they provide major morale boosts to friendly infantry and forces opposing troops that are outgunned to either be destroyed or withdraw. Rather than, say, mounting a .50 caliber machine gun on top of this tank like is done today, you could put a small unmanned railgun, laser, etc., that can provide anti-personnel support as well as anti-aircraft firepower. Alternatively, you could put a swarm of small drones on the sides of the tanks that serve as both extra armor, and when deployed can help clear a building or down enemy aircraft.
I think your second question has been better answered by others so I'll leave that be.
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What you have is not a tank, but a mobile anti-air artillery platform. It can provide some help against helicopters and straffing airplanes and some anti-infantry support, but won't win a single battle.
**Scenarios**
* Against enemy AFV: Even if the armour is good, your tank is unable to harm any enemy tank. So, the enemy tank can try to move around you at leisure, find your weak spot and BAM!. If you say "I put more armour in the weak spot", it leads to a desigual arms race:
+ the enemy tank upgrades his main gun (one part of the tank) to increase his penetration power
+ you have to upgrade **all of your armour** to protect against that.It is not difficult to see that your armour will increase in weight way faster than your enemy gun.
* Against enemy infantry: here you are able to use effectively your gun. The enemy can oppose two kind of weapons:
+ small arms fire, for which you do not need so much armour
+ anti tank weapons, which is a return to the previous point (you are safe as long as you present your "strong" point, so you are not free to roam and cause mayhem into the enemy lines. Another reason for not approaching infantry is that soldiers are sneaky and can move into a position where then can try to hit the upper and lower parts of your tank.
* Against enemy aircraft, but only against those who try to straff your friends. For fighter/bombers flying high and launching "intelligent" missiles and bombs, you are just another target.
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In essence, your lack of firepower makes your vehicle almost useless except for fighting infantry, and for that it weights way more than it needs to (instead 2 super heavy anti-infantry vehicles, 4 medium/light anti-infantry vehicles would provide more fire power and better flexibility). I do not think it is a good idea.
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What about high speed vehicle that rely on thermooptic camo to get to the battle. and are used in urban combat? (tall building and subways) would protect from orbital strikes and aircraft
I recall ghost in the shell with there small nimble smart tanks as way modern armor might survive such a conflict. They will support soldier with indirect fire support weapons mortals, ECM, heavier weapon than soldiers want to carry and maybe drones.
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A vulcan cannon is a terrible choice for a sci-fi tank. This forces the tank to carry massive amounts of extra ammo weight that will get exhausted quickly.
How to build a sci-fi tank that doesn't fail hard:
* Gravity considerations: It must be designed to work properly in any amount of gravity that doesn't outright cripple the crew. So you're looking at anything from "no gravity" to perhaps 1.3 Earth gravity. Rugged wheels with a highly adaptive suspension are a must. You also have to account for the case where there's too little gravity for wheels to be useful, in which case it's advisable to include an impulser engine so the tank can fly. Another advantage of a flight engine is that the tank can be safely airdropped.
* Primary (anti-personnel) armament: Definitely an energy weapon (laser or blaster type), because ammo adds excessive weight.
* Secondary (anti-vehicle) armament: This might seem like an odd choice - take an EMP projector or ion cannon. This allows you to burn off shields and disable enemy vehicles without needing to carry shells or missiles which add weight. As an added bonus, the EMP projector/ion cannon automatically intercepts incoming guided missiles whenever possible.
* Small missile rack - perhaps around 4-6 missiles. Because sometimes you just have to demolish something when "disabling electronics" and "fill it with laser holes" doesn't cut it.
* Extremely tough shield generator backed by dual powerplants. Space marines don't have time for vehicle failures, and focusing on energy-based protection decreases required survivable hull weight. Energy shields also self-repair, decreasing the overall attrition rate.
* Medium-lightweight stealth hull. This increases maximum speed and agility. Rely on the shield generator for primary protection. The stealth hull makes it difficult for missiles to lock on. Sure you could down them with an EMP or ion cannon - then again, why bother?
* Bonus feature: Heatsinks to nullify infrared signature for a limited amount of time.
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[Question]
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**Background:**
Say there is a country that is ruled by a king, medieval era style. It rules over several cities and towns, maintaining control with a national guard.
Now let's say within the boundaries of this country, but close to the border, is a city that has rejected the monarchy, and rules itself.
There is no established government in this city, and no leaders. There are several gangs, large and small ones, that operate on an honor based system. There are people that are not "within" a gang (like inn owners etc.), but most people have an unofficial affiliation with at least one faction.
Each of the gangs understand that if they were to fight with each other constantly, no one would benefit. So grievances are hashed out in a fighting pit. This can be between individuals within gangs, or entire gangs pitted against each other.
There is a lot of crime in this city, as there are no official laws, but there are a set of 'rules' people are expected to adhere to (no stealing and no murder included). If these rules are broken, they get thrown into jail without a trial. Once the jail is full the individual prisoners fight it out in the pit, and the last one surviving gets freed.
It is a flawed system, as the strongest survive even after multiple infractions, and gangs tend not to rat out their own very often, but it has kept the peace between gangs for many years, and everyone accepts it.
Most of the larger gangs have chapters in cities around the country that still come under the reign of the king. The monarchy accepts their presence, as none of the gangs are large enough to pose a threat to the throne individually, but if they combined they might overthrow the entire country. So it is in their best interest to have them pitted against each other, rather than join forces.
The gangs offer services to people and businesses, from basic mercenary work like protecting trade caravans between towns, to basic farm labor at the harvest, to assassinations (by the less reputable gangs).
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**Question:**
How would the lawless city function at an economic level? Could earning money from the separate chapters and funneling it to this town provide them with enough money for trading for goods? How large could such a city become before it simply collapses due to the lack of infrastructure and government?
There are probably more considerations for a lawless town to function that I'm overlooking, so feel free to throw them in if you choose, but I feel the biggest problem would be maintaining a flow of money without taxes etc.
People do live in/near and trade with this town so they don't have to pay taxes, but as there is no government they are generally at the mercy of bandits etc. which is where caravan protection becomes a lucrative business. But would it be enough?
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How different is this from a standard feudal system during conflict?
It sounds like the gangs aren't totally anarchist, each one is likely to have its own territory and (effectively) laws. After all, laws aren't something magical, they tend to come down to someone with a big stick able to enforce them. The gang leaders would likely be similar to small time warlords.
So we've got a small island of feuding warlords who don't follow the local king. I imagine that would normally upset a monarch but I assume you've got some good reasons worked out for why he'd leave them alone.
The gangs are going to be extorting "protection money" out of businesses in the city like old time mob bosses. Free from royal control the city is going to be a hub for trade in contraband items and illicit events banned in the rest of the kingdom. Does the king really hate prostitution? The city will have a lot of it. Ditto intoxicants, gambling or people practicing protected trades that would be controlled by the crown in the rest of the country. Keep in mind that royally recognized guilds often prevented people from practicing a trade without being a member and traders might need the approval of the crown to operate. This city would welcome craftsmen who had angered the guilds somehow.
Indeed any items that are highly taxed in the rest of the country will also be big business.
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All right, let's say there's a blacksmith. He makes cookware, horseshoes, weapons, and any other things that are made out of metal in a medieval world. This particular blacksmith lives in your city, so he has some sort of gang affiliation. Even if he wants to remain neutral, he's probably going to get adopted by a gang sooner or later, simply because it's more convenient that way. This gang will hire him for any blacksmithing jobs they need, and even without a monetary system they can probably pay him by giving him access to other gang services (for instance, he now gets fed by the gang butcher and farmer). At this point, though, they're going to want him to work only for them, and since they've got the muscle, he's probably going to agree.
If we imagine all services work like this, suddenly we don't have one city, but many small cities situated next to each other. Each gang has its own ecosystem, with everything they need to stay alive. Just like with real gangs, each of these gangs would probably claim a chunk of their city for themselves, and try and keep other gangs out. Essentially, the city would work a lot like a series of city-states or nations.
So, then, just like with nations, the gangs would only deal with one another when trade becomes beneficial. Say one gang has the good blacksmith, and another gang has the good farmland, so the first gang might give the second gang a really nice set of armor in exchange for some food if their own stores run out. The smaller the gangs, the more they're going to have to rely on each other to survive. On the small end of the spectrum, you'd have a city that looks pretty uniform, as everyone is forced to share most of their resources. On the large end, there could be night and day differences between the gangs, as their interactions are kept to a minimum.
Of course, at this point I should mention that I don't see why a single gang wouldn't just take over, or at least that the number of gangs would settle at <=2. If you look at American history, the two-party system developed in about a decade; despite the large number of countries involved in WWII, most people agree it was Allies vs Axis; in your lawless city, I don't think it would take long before gangs built up alliances and formed two factions. Just going by my earlier points, the smaller gangs will need to rely on other gangs more; thus, either they will eventually become dependent on a larger gang and get absorbed, or become co-dependent with a similar-sized gang and combine. This process will most likely continue until you get two gangs. At that point, I guess you could secure an uneasy equilibrium, but like I said earlier, the bigger the gangs get, the less they'll need from each other. With this in mind, I don't see why the gangs would keep on living next to each other; people killing each other usually good for business.
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Try reading the history of Iceland. Instead of gangs there were family-based groups; each group was based on a farmstead, with the economy based on farming. No cities, no towns, no villages, no king, no single ruler. Eventually law-and-order mostly prevailed. In time, the system broke down when individual leaders became too powerful and tried to take over property and wealth from the others. After that Iceland eventually ended up becoming a protectorate of Denmark.
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**What will they do for money?**
It's likely that the lawless city will largely focus its economy on an area in which it has a distinct advantage over communities in the surrounding areas: doing things that are illegal in those areas. For example, if gambling and prostitution are generally banned in the nearby areas, I would expect those activities to contribute significantly to the economy of the city.
The city is also likely to be home to a large number of people who engage in criminal activity in the surrounding kingdoms. A highway robber, for example, wouldn't need to fear the actions of the police of the areas in which he commits his larceny if he spends his down time in a city where those forces have no jurisdiction. Human trafficking could likewise use the lawless city as a base for operations in the surrounding lands. These unscrupulous individuals will also have needs which will be fulfilled by a standard array of grocers, dentists, and the like.
**Real world context**
There are two good real-world examples of lawless cities that behaved more or less like this: Tortuga and Mong La.
Tortuga, of course, is the well known pirate haven of the Caribbean. While is was theoretically a colony of various colonial powers, its de facto lawlessness meant that it could serve as a home base for pirates acting in the region.
Mong La, on the other hand, is a modern city in Myanmar near the Chinese border. It's largely controlled by criminal gangs, who make their money in large part through cross border tourism from China. Mong La has prostitutes, casinos, and a large market specializing in the illegal wildlife trade. The government of Myanmar has no real control over the area, and the most common currency is the Chinese Yuan. Similar patterns of activity can be seen in other 'lawless' cities like [Kowloon Walled City](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City) in Hong Kong.
**Currency**
The outlaws, without having control over the city itself, are likely to simply use the currency of nearby 'civilized' kingdoms, especially as robbery and patronage from people in those regions will likely bring in this kind of currency.
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**Q:** How would the lawless city function at an economic level?
**A:**
Badly. Historically warlord-ism and anarchy go hand in hand. A lawless city would have a bit of both.
Neither is known to enable the economy to flourish, as that requires personal safety for the average person.
Basically the economy would function exactly the same as normal, exchanges will be made when and if both parties feel it is beneficial.
However one can only function in such an unsafe environment if able to protect oneself.
Consequences:
Everything is very expensive and mortality is high.
Likely only the very base necessities will be available at all for most.
Gangs will form, clash, collapse, and will provide temporary and flawed structure at best.
They will exploit everyone else to get by.
Most people will lie low and will barely get by. They will try to safeguard assets by hiding them.
A very small number of people at the top will be able to wallow in every imaginable luxury, too small a number to really impact the economy at large.
**Q:** Could earning money from the separate chapters and funnelling
it to this town provide them with enough money for trading for goods?
**A:** The city chapters will have no lever to request funds from other chapters, so they are on their own. The strong will flourish until taken out by another party.
The weak will either die or end up as slave of someone stronger.
Trade will be at a bare minimum: Weapons, food, a tiny bit of luxuries.
Payment will be protection, favours, money, gold.
**Q:** How large could such a city become before it simply collapses
due to the lack of infrastructure and government?
**A:** It will not collapse. Neither will it grow. It will simply be an unattractive place to be so
the population will decrease rather than increase.
There will come in little money from the outside; safety is required for peddling out prostitutes and illicit activities or substances.
Such would be the domain of criminals operating inside policed environments, where the customers are.
One possible exception would be if a gang becomes powerful enough to set up a safe smuggle line or slave trade. All the other gangs would then try to get a piece of the action as well, which would destroy the nice profitable niche again.
**Q:** There are probably more considerations for a lawless town to function
that I'm overlooking, so feel free to throw them in if you choose,
but I feel the biggest problem would be maintaining a flow of money without taxes etc.
**A:** Money will take second place to the ability to survive.
Stealing will have a sizeable niche in the economy.
Protection money flowing from the producers to the powerful will replace taxes.
And the powerful will give back very little.
**Q:** People do live in/near and trade with this town so they don't have to pay taxes,
but as there is no government they are generally at the mercy of bandits etc.
which is where caravan protection becomes a lucrative business.
But would it be enough?
**A:** Often, no. Economic activity will remain at a low level due to high risk.
Safety on a personal level will be... gone.
In the end
Usually anarchy leads to warlord-ism leads to dictatorship. Which will provide policed streets but does not provide a free economy. More likely would be that the nest of lawlessness will be eradicated when the state grows stronger, or more annoyed. The state would have to be VERY weak for gangs to overcome it. I personally know of no historical example.
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An example you could run with is a Wild West town - the "law" is either non-existent, or is just a guy with a gun *and* a badge instead of just the gun. There might be "laws", but they're only enforced if you can take out the crook - if you have enough influence and enough guns, you can do what you like.
Money will work like money always does - as a medium between commodities. (Unless people start trading chickens for bullets, you'll always have some sort of currency). But that's not your problem. The problem is how do people run their businesses if there's crazy people with weapons running amok?
Everyone will be armed, because you're in a might-is-right scenario. Someone might avenge your death, but that don't help you stay alive.
Houses and stores (which will probably be in the same structure) will be built to be defended. An example is a turn-of-the-century Western bank, where the teller lives upstairs with a shotgun, and there's a grill in his floor that he can stick a shotgun through, pointing directly in front of the safe.
Now, in practical terms, people are going to start banding together for safety and support and strength, which is where your gangs come in. If the gangs can't get along, you don't really have a town - you have several walled compounds that happen to be very close to each other. If they're on speaking terms (in the "it's not worth our time to shoot each other on sight" sense), you really are a lot closer to feudalism - it's just a bunch of gang leaders instead of a bunch of nobles in charge.
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>
> Law - Noun. The system of rules that a particular country or community
> recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and may enforce by
> the imposition of penalties.
>
>
>
Strictly speaking, if there are no laws either written or unwritten, then there is anarchy and chaos. Everyone does what they want to do, and the only consequences are those suffered while enacting their wills. This situation does not and never has existed; because usually killing someone or taking their stuff makes their family and friends upset. Then they enforce the social law of not murdering or stealing by (ironically) murdering the offender or taking his stuff in retribution. This process continues until both sides call off the war, or only one social group is left standing.
So, what you're asking is not how a lawless city could function, but rather how a city without an official government could function.
## So, how would a group of gangs control the city?
The same way any normal government maintains order, through forced collection of dues, recruitment of individuals from the populace, and strength of arms. A gang leader can convince people to run with him, but in order to keep them they at least need to eat. Some thugs may have loyalty, but most will want to be paid. There will always be neighboring gangs who will be vying for control of the territory and sabotaging each other's client businesses.
A craftsman looking to start up a business there will want to select his patron carefully to get under the thumb of one of the larger and nicer gangs. As others have said, the city would have started out with smaller gangs that combined until reaching a level where they lost interest in merging and could not easily displace one another.
At this point it depends on the temperament of their leaders. Fight to own everything, or negotiate truces with your neighbors so there is some stability. Fighting is always more profitable when it is on someone else's turf, and it is too easy for an arson or two to slip in and even the score. If a gang cannot protect their clients then they'll lose the confidence of their clients and thus the financial support to maintain their territory.
For a modern and successful rendition of this, look at the Las Vegas Strip, an area which is still unincorporated into the City of Las Vegas. The Strip is owned by a collection of casinos, resorts and other businesses who handle the regular maintenance of roads and utilities on their own properties. They depend on tourism to survive, so they make things as nice as possible for their customers.
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A libertarian city where the only rules are existent are such that they perpetuate the absolute freedom of the citizenry. Each man or woman works to his or her own ends. No man nor woman has the right to impose their business upon another. This ethos is enforced by those, democratically elected, to essentially keep the peace. You see, this community is only loosely confederated. Taxes are non or barely existent as this would imply a forceful coercion or 'theft' upon another sovereign individual.
The economy would function easily without proper governance. The free market is remarkably flexible and easily adapts to the wants and needs of the total civilizational mass. When a want is popularly supported an individual, by his own will, rises up and fills this demand with supply. The reason for this efficient assumption of responsibility (something the statist would beg and plead for the government to slowly adapt the needs of it's subject, if at all) is that the individual who quickly reacts to a need, or more formally, acts upon a realized need, benefits greatly by filling this role. It is a net positive for all parties when an individual, by his own sovereign will, fills a need within society. Thus forming a cohesive group that would cooperatively work to protect itself from the impositions of outside forces (gangs, warlords, etc).
As the civilizational mass grows in size and complexity the wants and needs of the individual grow more diverse and the need for diverse occupations arises along with it. And thus, a role for each citizen according to their present mode of functionality arises. Education, being of utmost importance to the improvement of the individual, would be privately funded for all who are in need. Likewise health care. Scaling this to nearly any size wouldn't be much of an issue. The only issue would be maintaining a cultural cohesion (which would emphasize the need to protect and respect the needs of one another within the civilizational mass). Thus, a form of city-state nationalism that is self-reinforcing would be passed throughout the civilizational mass via cultural transactions.
Compared to heavy-handed bureaucracies inefficiently doling out subsistence each local group of individuals takes care of whatever individual need arises This system would maximize efficiency, life, and liberty.
Iceland and 17th century Pennsylvania but both were really pre-modern libertarian societies - Iceland's *althing* and Pennsylvania's caretaker state government during the colonial era, and more to the point, both were monolithic, agrarian, and isolated cultures at the time; it worked in Pennsylvania at the time because of the Quaker influence of living in peace.
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[Question]
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I'm trying to design a railgun to meet a very particular purpose: to destroy (i.e. render inoperable) modern man-portable firearms, such as pistols, rifles and grenade launchers, from a [Glock pistol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glock) to a [Barret M82](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_M82) while minimising the harm done to the people carrying them.
These railguns will be small and carried by autonomous flying platforms controlled by highly capable artificial intelligences, which may be assumed to be able to fire their railguns on an ideal trajectory to hit the weapon but not the wielder. It may also be assumed that the firing platforms are able to hit their chosen targets effectively at will, even if moving, to within a [CEP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_error_probable) of 2.5mm at the railgun's effective range of up to 2 km. The projectiles are self-guided after firing, and can adjust for firing inaccuracies, air movement and target motion.
**The question:**
**What combination of the projectile's dimensions, material and muzzle velocity would best allow the projectile being delivered on the ideal trajectory to render modern small arms inoperable, while minimising the potential for injuring the soldier carrying the weapon?**
I don't necessarily need 'weapon is hit and explodes in a burst of fragments' unless the damage delivered is required to disable a larger, heavier, more robust weapon. The most robust target weapon should *reliably* be disabled by a single hit with a minimum of excess energy provided the target is hit within 7.5mm of the point at which it was aimed.
I would prefer that the person carrying the target weapon, whether wielding it or carrying it holstered or slung, not be injured any more than necessary. Bruising is acceptable at any time, bones may be broken or dislocated only if no other option exists, bleeding should be minimised, and loss of extremities or loss of life is unacceptable.
While this weapon may be used to cause human casualties, it is not its primary purpose.
I am not interested in debating the feasibility or otherwise of a railgun & slugs with these capabilities. Think of it as Clarketech if you need to. I am interested only in the dimensions, material and velocity range of the slugs needed to perform as specified.
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Railguns seem spectacularly poorly suited to this task.
* Railguns are unlikely to scale down to the projectile sizes required, especially while imparting enough kinetic energy to damage a weapon at 2 km.
* Even a scaled down railgun would require a massive power supply, unlikely to fit on a flying platform.
* Railgun projectiles almost have to be solid lumps of copper or aluminum to withstand the current densities involved in launch, or just to provide enough surface area to drive the current through. The electromagnetic, thermal, and acceleration environment is not conducive to complex electronics and guidance mechanisms.
* The described precision is completely unrealistic from a ballistic projectile.
* The described precision is even more unrealistic from a flying platform.
* The described degree of control of the effect on the target is unrealistic.
This doesn't work. Even if your end goal is to disable enemy hand weapons via kinetic impacts, railguns aren't the way to get there. You want something like a micromissile with a captive bolt or tiny shaped charge, not a railgun.
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This seems like a bad idea unless you're willing to do some serious handwaving.
If you're not wanting to just shoot the person holding the weapon, you're violating multiple fundamental rules of firearm safety. Firstly don't point your weapon at something you aren't willing to shoot. And always be aware of you line of fire and what lies behind your target.
Most modern weapons are designed to contain small explosions with enough energy to project a lethal projectile hundreds of yards. While they definitely can be shot and disabled this is a much more precise shot than that required to hit the combatant holding it.
While there are plenty of ways that a weapon can have it's performance affected by relatively low energy bumps and dings, a weapon that jams more often, is still a dangerous threat to anyone getting shot at.
If you miss you'll probably hit the combatant with a lethal projectile.
If you hit the weapon there's a high risk of generating lethal shrapnel, or over penetrating.
If you're willing to accept those high odds of killing the combatant to take their weapon out of combat it will be strictly easier to just shoot them instead of their weapon.
If you had some sort of super AI that will not miss and is capable of predicting the movements of the combatant's weapon, and assume that overpenetration and shrapnel can somehow magically be mitigated, a rail gun can adjust the energy of the projectile depending on the targeted weapon, any small arms caliber is probably going to be good enough.
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**Slow Thermite glueballs.**
I was pondering exactly this: how a drone could incapacitate a tank without killing the crew.
The projectile is quite slow and very sticky. It deforms on hitting, absorbing most of the kinetic energy and it sticks where it hits. Then the thermite starts up. The thermite melts some of the metal it is on but also distributes molten iron into the interior of weapon or vehicle.
If the glueball hits a person the person can wipe it off or disrobe to get rid of it. At worst the person will get a burn before wiping it off. If it hits a weapon the weapon will probably be dropped and the glueball can do its thing. If it hits an occupied vehicle above the occupants they will be able to move away from dripping molten metal. If some drips on a person he will be burned by it. For a vehicle in a nonoccupied area there are horizontal surfaces where gravity will help the glueball and it will be difficult to run out and get a ball off before it starts melting through. Molten iron added to electronics or engines or gun barrels will incapacitate them.
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**Not possible to disable**
First, what does "disable" mean? My take on this is that the firearm can no longer be discharged unless damaged/destroyed parts are replaced. Hence, blowing the trigger off a firearm or removing a few mm from the length of the firing pin is considered equivalent to punching holes in the chamber or turning the entire barrel into iron filings as far as "disabling" a firearm goes.
The problem here is that even though a CEP of 2.5 mm with all impacts within 7.5 mm of point of aim (POA) is implausibly good, it is not good *enough* to reliably disable a firearm without seriously or fatally injuring the user. The trigger is probably the most delicate part on most firearms, but it is only a couple of millimetres across, meaning that the majority of rounds fired at it would miss. Ditto for the rods (where applicable) connecting the trigger to the hammer, the hammer and sear etc. The biggest target for attack from all directions is the chamber, but even this is not terribly large.
Let's take a 9mm pistol as an example. 9mm rounds are straight (not necked) cartridges, so the internal diameter of the chamber is effectively 9 mm, giving a radius of 4.5 mm. Assuming a chamber thickness of 2 mm, this gives an external radius of 6.5 mm. As soon as a round targeting the chamber is more than about 4.6 mm off target it will be striking an inclined surface at an angle of 45 degrees, as a result deflecting at up to 90 degrees from its initial direction of travel. Given that human beings are less durable than the chambers of firearms (*citation required*) this means that a significant minority of rounds will be ricocheting unpredictably with ample energy to kill or maim the person carrying the firearm or others in the vicinity.
**Not quite disabled**
However, an alternative that does not *quite* disable a magazine-fed firearm is to distort the magazine well to prevent the insertion/removal of a magazine. The section of the receiver that a magazine is inserted into is definitely large enough that, assuming it can be engaged from the side, the target area is a basically flat surface with a diameter of > 15 mm, providing a guaranteed hit and no unpredictable ricochets. Punching a 4-5 mm hole with jagged edges through the top 15 mm of the magazine well will prevent insertion or removal of a magazine and, if there is a magazine currently in the firearm, will damage the round/s in the path of the projectile and prevent feeding.
This will not fully disable a firearm as the operator can still insert an individual round into the chamber and shoot. Turning all magazine-fed firearms into single-shot breech-loaders will significantly diminish the combat capabilities of modern armies though.
There is a caveat for even this option. Each railgun *must* be able to vary its muzzle velocity based on the range to the target and the type of firearm being engaged. If the railgun always fires with the same muzzle energy then a round that will punch through one side of the steel receiver of a 7.62 mm L1A1 at 2 km will drastically overpenetrate when targeting the hardened plastic receiver of a F88 Austeyr at the same range of 2 km or a L1A1 at 100 m. Given that a 5.56 mm SS109 is supposed to penetrate 3 mm of steel at 600 m range, I would guess that *impact* velocities for weapons to penetrate one side of the receiver without blowing clean out the other side will need to vary from 100-300 m/s, with the lower end for targeting receivers made of hardened plastic and the upper end for more hefty steel. Note that these impact velocities are quite low - if the projectiles are shot at hypervelocity railgun speeds then they will need to decelerate sharply just before impact in order to avoid overpenetration and resultant damage to personnel.
Projectile design 1 - only a relatively small calibre (5 mm?) projectile is required at the target in order to cause the appropriate damage to the receiver. The projectile needs to be made of a dense handwavium in order to:
* survive the railgun launch forces
* self-guide itself to the target
* drastically re-shape itself to magically decelerate down to 100-300 m/s immediately before impact.
Projectile design 2 - if there is no reason for hypervelocity initial projectile speeds, then the rounds can be shot at much lower speeds, ranging from slightly over 100 m/s for point-blank shots at fragile receivers to maybe 1 km/s for shots at hardened targets. This has the further advantage that it requires far less handwavium for projectile self-guidance. The key difference with this shot profile is that long range shots will take multiple seconds to reach their target, during which time a person may move a body part into the path of the shot, beyond the ability of the projectile to steer around it. Therefore, the dense handwavium for these projectiles must be able to:
* self-guide itself to the target
* disintegrate some or all of itself into dust/filings that will become harmless within 10 metres. This allows a high mass projectile that will retain its velocity better over a long flight to become a low mass projectile just before it hits or allow the entire projectile to turn itself into harmless (within 10-20 m) "dustshot" if circumstances change so it is going to strike a person.
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Even if you assume that a flying railgun was capable of disabling a firearm (which Christopher James Huff very accurately refutes), such a projectile-based system would inherently violate your "minimize harm to the operator" principle.
As a simplified example, consider what is probably the most reliable and least complicated modern firearm option: the revolver. You have a couple of ways to disable a revolver. You can destroy the trigger or hammer but even with perfect aim, you're almost guaranteed to destroy the wielder's finger as well. You can blast a hole through the body of the weapon to destroy the internal gears, but you'd have to punch a hole through one or both of the wielder's hands before you could hit the body. You could aim for the cylinder itself but if the impact set off any of the not-currently-chambered cartridges in the cylinder, you could blow the entire weapon apart (along with the wielder's hands). The safest thing to target would be the barrel. Severe damage to the barrel would make the weapon unusable but wouldn't prevent it from being fired. If the wielder didn't realize the problem, attempting to fire the weapon could result in [catastrophic damage](https://www.wideopenspaces.com/good-guns-go-boom-catastrophic-gun-failures/) that could maim or kill the wielder. All in all, there's just not a way to safely disable something with a projectile when it's covered so completely by the wielder's hands. The wielder is going to suffer permanent injuries, if not complete loss of a limb or of their life.
2.5mm accuracy sounds like a lot, but don't underestimate the size of your target. The [firing pin](https://www.firingpins.com/1911-9mm-80-series-stainless-steel-firing-pin) for a Smith & Wesson 1911 9mm pistol (random example) has a radius of ~0.86mm. If you're trying to disable the weapon by breaking the firing pin, then the majority of your shots will miss your target and risk causing collateral damage instead. Triggers are a thin, flat strip. Line of sight to the broad side of the trigger will be blocked by the weapon body itself, so you'll be aiming at the thin profile of the trigger which is much smaller than 2.5mm. Aiming for similarly-small internal components is also risky, as there can be a fine line between disabling the weapon and causing it to discharge while pointed in an unsafe direction.
Not to mention, if loss of life or extremities is completely unacceptable, then that becomes a loophole that renders your entire system inert. Humans would simply re-design weapons so that all of the useful components are hidden behind the user's hand, arms, and body, or so that they will self-destruct violently if subject to extreme external forces. The drones will never have a clean enough shot and thus will never fire.
With these things in mind, your overall approach is doing things the hard way. Your drone should ignore the weapon and shoot the operator's hand directly. They'll end up with significant hand damage either way, but at least you'll avoid triggering a fatally catastrophic [RUD](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/RUD) event. If you really want to minimize operator injuries, have your drone disable the operator with a dart laced with some sort of incapacitating agent. 2.5mm accuracy is generally sufficient for targeting parts of the human body like the thigh or shoulder. You could also disorient them with a remotely delivered flashbang, immediately followed by several rubber bullets or beanbags aimed center mass to knock them down and disable them long enough to be disarmed. A drone-mounted [directed energy weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon) could heat up an attacker's hand and weapon until they reflexively dropped it, without permanent damage to the weapon or attacker.
[Answer]
Let's use something... electro-magnetic with the aim to disarm.
Guns are mostly made of metal. It is hard to hold a metal thing, that is hot enough. If we manage to heat up the gun without cooking up the gun wielder, we are good.
So, instead of using a typical railgun to electro-magnetically accelerate a projective, let's induce [Eddy currents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_current) in the target gun. Probably, magnetic field to do so is too high, however. It would be a device of a size of a MRT scanner.
Unfortunately, several Tesla of magnetic field strength might:
* fry sensible devices, such as heart pacemaker;
* yank small metal objects in the direction of the magnet: imagine keychains and paperclips flying with considerable speed;
* yank the actual gun from the target,
which makes it not an ideal solution.
[Answer]
**Reverse Railgun.**
A railgun uses electromagnetism to launch a metal projectile forwards. There is a big line of electromagnets that engage in sequence to follow the bullet as it moves along the barrel.
You want the railgun to shoot a rifle out of a guy's hands without hurting the guy. The problem is the bullet will go through the rifle and through the guy; or the bullet will stop and the rifle will keep going and go through the guy.
Of course that assumes we are using the railgun to launch the projectile *forwards*. . . .
I propose we instead launch the projectiles **backwards**. The magnets engage and instead of shooting a metal bullet, the railgun sucks the metal rifle from the guy's hands.
This disarms the rifle guy. More importantly it does not harm the rifle guy. Provided he lets go in time.
To Disarm and Not Harm. The motto of the United Railgun Corps for the past 100 years.
[Answer]
**Railgun Big**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/URYfC.png)
The American Navy will have you believe their railgun can fire a 10kg tungsten projectile ten times the speed of sound, for hundreds of kilometres and when it gets there it will go straight through a tank and then through the tank behind the tank.
At least they USED to claim that. If I am correct they now claim to have stopped working on the railgun since the raily-ness was too expensive it didn't offer enough benefit compared to missiles and normal cannons.
The railgun was never good at hitting big things cost effectively. It is certainly not the sort of thing to pew pew a rifle out of a soldiers hands without hurting the soldier.
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[Question]
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Background: In the early 2020s a magical life-extending "elixir" is created but is in short supply. However, a very reckless individual steals most of the US's supply and drinks a sufficient amount of it to extend their life by 8000 years. It is decided that this individual must be quarantined to avoid any possible further damage or annoyance to the US or world.
Five criteria are identified by the committee put in charge of isolating this individual from the outside world.
1) No possibility of the individual's escape from quarantine
2) No contact between the outside world and this individual allowed
3) Location must be over 1AU away(in order to minimize chance of being located and visited in the future)
4) Individual must be held with lifesupport humanely for the period of their natural life(i.e. 8000 years)
5) Must be achievable with current or as-soon-as-possible technology(to remove this individual ASAP)
EDIT: As an alternative, the committee also considers painless death of the individual, as long as it does not constitute cruel or unusual punishment.
So, the big question: can any such solutions be found with present or very-near-future technology?
Any and all answers will be greatly appreciated. Thank you all for your time.
[Answer]
As I think through this I face a few issues that constitute a [Frame Challenge](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7097).
* No prison is inescapable with the right amount of help.
* "No contact" might need definition. Unless you're planning to either build an entire self-sufficient space station (outside our current tech) or drop him on Mars (kinda still outside our tech if you can't go near him for 8K years), this is a deal killer. Unless you want to let him enjoy his 8K years in a state of starvation.
* Considering 99.9% of our current tech was invented in the last 150 years of human history, there's a better-than-average chance that sometime during the next 8,000 years we'll develop such cheap-and-convenient interplanetary travel that no matter where you put him you'll have teenagers tagging the prison and prying at the seams just to see if it would be a good place to enjoy some weed.
* Humanity has yet to produce *anything* that can be proven to last for 8K years that could conceivably be used to hold a person. So artificial construction via near-term tech is out.
* And on top of this... any off-planet solution would be ***astronomically expensive.*** What's the point of holding onto a dude for 8K years who you can't so much as taunt and mock? Every human-rights activist on the planet for the entire 8K year period would be hounding you (and that's a lot of time to lose in court) and you really can't keep him a secret all that time. *(Or can you? Muahahaha!)*
**Your only practical solution is to cremate the guy.**
Because unless there's a self-sustaining solution that allows you to feed him, clothe him, tuck him in at night, and completely ignore him, there's no believable way to keep anyone for 80 years, much less 8,000, and not have a whole lotta ugly transpire. Worn out parts come to mind.
So... cremation. You know someone suggested it.
*It's worth pointing out that you might be asking the wrong question. Telling your readers that the government used emerging space-stealth tech to stow this guy away is trivial. You really don't need to explain it. What you need to explain is why anybody in their right mind would do such a thing. Talk about off-the-books. In the words of the immortal Julius Levinson: "You didn't think they actually spent ten thousand dollars for a hammer and thirty thousand for a toilet seat, did you?"*
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> 4) Individual must be held with lifesupport **humanely** for the period of
> their natural life
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This already should be your show stopper. What you want is solitary confinement for 8000 years. You can safely assume that your prisoner is most likely going to kill himself after some years or decades. So if you don't invent a perfect Holo-Deck, there is no way to achieve your goal.
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**This may just be possible**
Let's check the number you're looking at. A human needs about 2,000 calories a day, but without movement we can decrease that number to maybe 1,500, or even less. Multiply that by 365.25 days per solar year, for 8000 years and you end up with 1.789 x 10^*13* joules of energy. Or, to put it in better numbers, 1/4 of the total energy of the Little Boy atom bomb. That means we need **power**. As in, 'nuclear power'. And once we've got a nuclear powered prison, things become a bit easier.
You see, we don't need a space prison because space is really good enough. What we need is just a generation ship. And we've got the perfect place to put it, too. The Earth's L3 Lagrange point. The ship has a small enough mass, and it's thrusters should be able to help self-correct if need be. In addition, the L3 is not one, but 2 AUs away at all times, and the Sun is between your captive and the Earth, so contact is going to be all but impossible.
Now the problem is just air, water, and food. As long as the ship is *perfectly* (and I mean perfectly) self-contained, it's a closed system, and there's nothing wrong *in theory* with having all three solved with liberal application of electric power from the nuclear generator and sunlight from the sun. ([This question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/95936/a-completely-self-sufficient-generation-ship) has an answer which seems to indicate as such.)
On a separate note, I hear potatoes are apparently pretty good for this kind of thing. (That was a joke. The amount of space you'd need for potatoes and soil are way too much. You'll probably have to rely on cultured bacteria for that kind of sustenance, which would all need to be specially bred for the purpose, considering that they'd be providing some essential vitamins, minerals, nucleic acids, etc., that you can't make. And we don't have that kind of bacteria now. But it's theoretically possible with modern tech, and that's what counts.)
I haven't done the calculations for whether we could launch a payload like this into space, but the Saturn V has a payload capacity (for trans-lunar orbit) of 50 tons. Most of the weight will be the nuclear generator, which is only going to be a few tons, so it seems doable.
So, now we've got a nuclear-powered satellite, and, since you asked for humane life support, I found these pretty compact [memory cards](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B00ECEVGN0) on Amazon. Not as cheap as an external hard drive, but I think it's a bit lighter. Buy a few hundred and stock it with shows, books, games, music, funny cat videos, whatever suits this person's fancy, or will. 8000 years is a long time, interests will probably change.
So, adding them all up together, and we get 'this is crazy enough to work'. So, barely possible with a nuclear-powered self-sustaining generation ship orbiting in L3. On that note, I'd advise launching from Discworld, as one-in-a-million chance happen nine times out of ten there. (Yes, I think it's that improbable. Like I said, theory is good, but something *will* go wrong.)
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## Frame Challenge
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This is a stupendous amount of effort for no benefit **at all**.
[KISS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle) and shoot him in the back of the head. Or have him suffer a convenient "accident" (even if he's really durable, he's not Superman, so getting crushed by a steamroller will do the trick).
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I know this takes it in a completely radical direction from your request, and likely doesn't fit the narrative you have already, buuuut --
Contain him within a VR prison. He thinks he is still roving around doing whatever he would want to for those 8,000 years (or his *perception* of 8,000 years) and all the while is just in some small cell being looked after by a small medical team as a pioneer of VR lifestyle.
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Just put him on an asteroid!
While obviously heavily science fiction, I think the core idea probably might be worth looking into - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lonely_(The_Twilight_Zone)>
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I am building a world where most of the wildlife is capable of flight and there is an ecosystem that is almost totally isolated from the ground. Is it possible to have a mammal, roughly the size of a labrador retriever, be capable of gliding and landing softly on the ground, without any injury? I am currently thinking of a flying squirrel and bat hybrid, however with hollow bones to make it lighter. But could hollow bones support the weight of such a animal? Could it be possible to have solid bones in areas like the leg, and hollow ones in other areas?
The world would be exactly like Earth in almost every way, including air density and gravity. The mammal can be the size of a border collie, but it needs to be larger than a falcon and any bat or flying squirrel. It is also predatory.
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Two things affect the possibilities:
1. What is is the air density. Thicker air means less wing needed, or slower speeds needed for a given amount of lift. You can do this with either higher pressure, colder temperatures, or by mixing a heavier gas as one component. E.g. Sulfur hexafluoride.
2. What is the local gravity? Lighter gravity means less muscle needed.
To get both lighter gravity and higher pressure, make your planet larger, but lower density.
Edit for earth conditions:
The largest birds I know of are condors and albatrosses. I've found one mention of 15 kg -- 33 pounds. Weight of a small border collie. These birds do not actually fly much, so much as soar. They are very good at finding and using updrafts. And for these critters we're talking wingspans of 10 feet. This is not a critter that maneuvers well through the treetops.
While lighter bones will help, especially if they are built like trusses, and not like columns, most of the weight is muscle. So things you can do to make a larger flying critter possible:
* A type of muscle that can produce more power per pound. Faster individual fibre recovery time. Lots more mitochondria per cell. A better reaction to create ATP from ADP
* A mechanism so that muscles can use short chain fatty acids for energy, instead of exclusively on glucose.
* A replacement for hemoglobin that can carry more oxygen per volume of blood.
* Viscosity agents to make blood slide through capillaries more easily.
* Valving in the veins in flight muscles to help the heart circulate.
* Some form of flow through lung, so lungs don't spend time exhaling. If you set it up so that air flows in through the mouth, and out through an opening further back, and set up the blood flow in the opposite direction, you have all the benefits of a counter flow exchanger. This should double to triple the effectiveness of the lungs. The animal has to have some kind of diaphram to breath when stationary, but once flying, can use flow through.
* A mechanism to store energy that can be metabolized FAST.
* A mechanism that can store oxygen for later use in burst mode. See Niven's "Legacy of Hereot" series on Grendel metabolism.
A 'tree top' ecology would also have room for *really* good jumpers. Think in terms of self contained catapult, where the muscles can ratchet back tendons to store energy, and then the critter leaps. Grasping limbs would be optimized for shock absorption to catch branches on the other side.
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According to Wikipedia, the Andean Condor is about 2 to 3 times the size (not weight) of a Labrador.
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As Fleon mentioned, the Pterosaur flew on earth. It is estimated to have weighed 250 kilograms, according to wikipedia. There certainly were some with a wingspan of 10 feet or more.
<https://www.livescience.com/24071-pterodactyl-pteranodon-flying-dinosaurs.html>
So lab sized seems easy to imagine, and sure, there is no reason to suppose it couldn't safely land.
As far as hollow-bones go, they'd definitely be an advantage for flight. To continue with the pterosaur example, it could likely also could run on the ground, using its wings like front legs.
It may be possible for a solid-boned creature of dog-size to fly, but easier to go with hollow bones.
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I am going to base my reply by incorporating some of the information supplied in other questions, and adding some input of my own.
As mentioned by Fleon and Vincent the pterodactyl (member of the pterosaur family) was quite large, and was capable of gliding and/or flying.
As mentioned by James McLellan the Andean Condor is larger in size than a Labrador, but does not definitively say that it weighs less, but it probably does. (Fact check: Male Labradors weigh between 29.5 and 36 kg, while an Andean Condor weighs in at up to 15 kg).
And then of course there are bats - mammals capable of true flight, but usually quite small. Bats do not have hollow bones, but their bodies are tiny compared to their wingspans. (Fact check: The largest bat is the giant golden-crowned flying fox with a wing-span of 1.5 to 1.7 m, though they are very light, weighing 0.7 to 1.2 kg).
So the short answer to your question is **Yes** it should be possible. But what would the survival imperative be to develop the ability to fly or glide?
One might be the presence of very large, prolific burrowing carnivores. That would be a great motive for getting off the ground and staying off it.
Fact checks provided aided and abetted by @Mauro, so thanks again!
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## Your suggested size is not an issue.
I would say that this albatross is roughly the size you're after?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iQDr0.jpg)
The existence of the albatross in real life proves that the size of the animal in no way precludes it from flying.
Not convinced? How about this bad boy?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BrNIc.jpg)
That's the Argentavis Magnificens, and it is **massive**.
The Andean Condor was mentioned in another answer and is an equally relevant addition to the list of massive birds.
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## Hollow bones.
I don't think they are necessary. There are a few interesting things to note about hollow bones, and I suspect these differ from your current interpretation of why hollow bones are useful:
[Reference link](http://projectbeak.org/adaptations/skeletal_hollow.htm)
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The benefit from hollow bones isn't so much that they allow you to fly, but rather than they minimize exhaustion. Once you're flying, your torso is essentially suspended from your wings. The heavier your body is, the more stress that puts on your shoulders.
Unless your flying mammal is capable of long-distance flight, the hollow bones don't seem all that *necessary*. But there's nothing wrong with giving the animal hollow bones.
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As per your question:
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Given the explanation quoted above, I'd say that the hollowness of the bones does not meaningfully affect the animal's capability of supporting its own weight.
Birds have hollow bones, and let's look at [avian weight record holders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_birds):
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> * The largest bird in the fossil record may be the extinct elephant birds (Aepyornis) of Madagascar, which were related to the ostrich. They exceeded 3 m (9.8 ft) in height and **500 kg** (1,100 lb).
> * The largest carnivorous bird was Brontornis, an extinct flightless bird from South America which reached a weight of **350 to 400 kg** (770 to 880 lb) and a height of about 2.8 m (9 ft 2 in).
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Those are **massive** birds, which proves that it's possible.
Do note that there are no currently living *flying* birds that weigh more than e.g. a labrador. It seems that heavy flying creatures are at a disadvantage (unless they went extinct for an unrelated reason?).
But that doesn't mean that yours can't exist. You're talking about a completely different ecosystem where most of the wildlife flies. It's perfectly possible for a heavy flying animal to not go extinct.
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The largest flying animals weighed 500lbs and were the size of a giraffe, on an earth like world a dog sized animal (whether chihuahua or great dane) is no problem whatsoever.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qbcZD.png)
Let's be clear hollow bones let you be bigger for the same mass, it is why a giraffe sized animal only weighs 500lbs. All animals with hollow bones have a mix of solid and hollow bones, not all bones in a bird are hollow so you can mix them up just fine. There are also varying degrees of hollow cormorant bones are much thicker walled while still being hollow.
The only issue you have with hollow bones is mammalian breathing does not work with air sacs (hollow bones need air sacs to be hollow), but your alien life is not earth mammals (even if they look like them) so you can give them a bird like breathing system with no issue.
Lastly hollow bones can be just as strong if not stronger than solid bones, this is quite easy to see since a goose wing strike can break a human's arm. The air sacs in hollow bones are pressurized which stiffens them additionally hollow bones are cross braced they keep the bone anywhere it is need to maintain strength. Think of it like an I-beam vs a solid steel bar, the I-beam is just as strong but a lot lighter.
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In a generic fantasy setting there exist "magic-users" who may, depending on their specialty (like any skill, you have to specialize to become competent), raise armies of zombies, cause literal firestorms, summon and command demons, turn shadows into physical substances, etc. They don't rule the job market because any fighting man may train hard enough to pull off physical and mental stunts that would be impossible in reality, allowing them to stand toe-to-toe with the magic-users.
How is this possible?
EDIT: By "physical and mental stunts" I mean the sort of stunts seen in action movies like leaping across buildings, dodging bullets after being fired, ignoring the fatal convection next to a river of lava, resisting mental trickery, and so forth. Stuff that isn't particularly flashy but is impossible in reality like magic.
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One obvious solution is that there's a different way to use magical talent. Rather than doing it in a wizardly style, sufficient dedication in physical training, or craft training, lets you start to focus the world's ambient magic on other activities.
Fictional examples include the [Physical Adepts](http://shadowrun.gamepedia.com/Physical_adept) of the Shadowrun TTRPG and the gifted smiths of Michael Scott Rohan's [Winter of the World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scott_Rohan#The_Winter_of_the_World) novels.
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Depending on the strenght of magic users, the task can be difficult. For this answer I will assume that your 'normal' fighters possess only physical capabilities of real-world humans. The training alone, no matter how hard, is not going to cut it. However, it's not a hopeless case. Here are few suggestions how I'd approach it (and some reasons why mages do need 'normal' fighters):
1. **You can't defend yourself from what you don't see coming.** - take the caster by surprise. If you neutralise him before he even knows what's coming, his magic won't do him any good. You can achieve this in many ways - like: dagger in the back, club in the head, arrow from around a corner etc. People tend to be really creative when it comes to assassination.
2. **Wear the mage down.** Assuming that the magic supply is not infinite, using it is bound to tire the caster down at some point. I like to think about mages in fantasy like of limited-use weapon. Sure, magic is powerful, but your ammo is really limited. If someone plays cat and mouse with you, its possible you will run out of juice before the real fight begins. That's where your 'normal' fighters come in.
3. **Team up.** As cool as magic is, the amount of magic users tends to be limited. Just overrun them with raw numbers (see point 2.) and attack from multiple sides at once (see point 1.).
4. **Mitigate the damage.** It is a fantasy world, so you can invent some kind of alloys that either entirely negate, or weaken the effect magic has. Some races can be more immune to magic than others. You can get enchanted armors that resist magic. etc
5. **Train like a beast.** This point has most to do with your question. We assume that all your 'normal' fighters have the same limitations as real-life humans. In real life, if you train too hard, you are bound to injure yourself to the point where you cant train anymore. In a fantasy world, just apply magic balm to your torn muscles/tendons and keep on training. Tired? Eat a magic bean and go back to training with your full strenght. Imagine what level of proficiency would real-life martial artists have if they never had to worry about injuries and never had to stop training to recover. They would be really scary. Every one of your fighters would present abilities of an elite athlete, and in multiple disciplines. That alone wouldn't cut it, but combine it with other points (and maybe some more), and you have a chance to compete against the mage.
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The best way to approach this divide between magic and physical talents is to balance them, like you would balance them in a video game. Because you, yourself, are defining what magicians can do, and what physical artists can do, you can balance them.
One common thread in many of these answers is that magic offers a way to hold onto great potential energy and then unleash it all at once. Thus, as long as a magician can have time to charge, they're invincible. We're going to have to tailor that if we want to balance these awesome powers.
I would recommend having mages harness their energy in a form that is closely tied to the spell that you intend to cast. An extreme version of this might be the Dungeons and Dragons approach of your wizard having to memorize a set of spells every morning, and they can only cast the spells they memorized (consuming one charge of Fireball for every Fireball cast). If desired, you might give them the ability to change one energy into another over time (letting them memorize a Fireball, and with 10 minutes of concentration turn it into a Healing spell). As with any magic system, those details are up to you. However, the key artifact of this adjustment is that the mage is committed to a spell, and it will take them work to turn it into something else.
This leaves an opening for the physical fighters. If they can identify what spells are cued up in the wizard, they can simply avoid putting themselves in positions where that spell is effective. This is actually a major part of warfare: your number one priority is making sure the enemy can't shoot you.
You can tune this any number of ways. For example, one approach might be to make it so that spells are weak unless highly specified. You may barely light a candle with a Fireball, but if you memorize a "Fireball pointed north," you can roast a turkey. This, combined with the ability to slowly adjust the spells in your head, will create a rather interesting fight dynamic. The wizard has to keep the spells specific enough to do damage, but the more specific they make them, the easier it is for a physical fighter to avoid them.
This approach also plays well with the idea of rituals which permit wizards to cast extremely powerful spells. If they're willing to take the time to hyper-specialize their spell, it could be extremely strong. However, if a warrior comes up and disturbs the ritual, that power may be very difficult to adjust back into useful fireballs and ice-blasts, so the wizard would be weak during that time.
As always with magic, explore and use creativity, but I think a balance like stated above has great potential.
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# Magic is awesome because it lets you store and expend power
Did you know that you use exactly the same amount of energy for running and walking? Running just lets you get there faster. This is why pulleys and ramps and such are great - you get to spread physical effort over a larger amount of time, which makes it easier to move heavy loads.
Magic takes that to the limit. If I spend a week making skeleton warriors or enchanted swords or demon contracts, that's me storing up power. I can expend that power to make something happen in the world that I could not achieve with my flabby wizard body - topple a kingdom, raise a castle, crash an asteroid into the moon to get revenge on the Moon King once and for all.
This works great because "down time" is plentiful for everyone most of the time. If there's no rush, there is no advantage in running somewhere over walking, or carrying a heavy load straight up when you could use a ramp.
# Martial arts typically cannot do this
Your kung-fu warrior is generally going to be reactive rather than active. An enemy? Run over there and punch it. It is now dead...and until you see another thing that needs punching, your punches are useless. You can't spend the next five minutes concentrating your muscle power into a really awesome punch.
This is not only a problem of power, but also one of versatility. The wizard is able to store power, so he can have stored a whole bunch of different things (which most magic systems allow, because magic is magic and so can do anything). Any ability the kung fu master needs to have, he needs to have all the time, so he typically has fewer things going on.
# You can nerf the casters
The ability to store power is less useful in two cases. Case one: there is no opportunity to store the power. If it takes a week to complete the ritual of whatever, but you need the results of that ritual every day, the usefulness of the ritual rapidly diminishes, no matter the quality of its results. Case two: There are harsh limits on how long such power may be stored. If a necromancer can only have one skeleton warrior at a time (or only order one skeleton warrior to move at a time) then the skeleton warriors aren't terribly useful. If a wizard makes a magic sword, but the sword loses its magic in the next ten minutes, it's not as good as just being skilled with your regular sword.
# You can let martial artists store power too
You only need a small amount of fantasy to explain how they can do this.
* Meditation: By centering their minds and souls, your kung-fu guys can improve their abilities. Maybe they can force their own bodies to produce adrenaline and pain-blocking chemicals, allowing them to push their bodies to the limit. Maybe they channel the might of their ancestors. Maybe they do hella drugs. Whatever the reason, a small amount of prep time can give you a superman that can rival a magic guy any day.
* Intense planning: Like, really intense. Bordering on precognition intense. Sherlock Holmes meets MacGyver intense. By studying things like how an arrow flies, the warrior can predict where arrows from his enemies might land, and just not be there. A utility belt is a must, but you can make do with some pocket sand in a pinch.
* Allies: A very common structure of many folk tales is this one - the hero goes on a quest, during the quest he helps some magic talking animals, in the end he's in a bind but the magic talking animals come help him. Moral of the story: why punch people when you can contract the services of Enormous Bear 4 Hire Ltd. at a reasonable price?
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I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you let yourself get bogged down in details about how magic "really works" (or in this case, how martial artists do things that clearly defy physics) then at best you get these awkward stops in your storytelling where you explain "Hisenberg Compensators" or "Midichlorines" or whatever. Think about how such explanation have affected people's appreciation of the story; they typically don't help immersion and they certainly don't drive the story forward.
Basically, if you're not worried about where the fireballs come from, don't worry about where the wire-fu comes from. The audience sure won't.
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Maybe be a master of human mind, trick the magic-users, fool them.
Know when they might attack and how, also how to provoke them when to hide when to attack, people with much power feel strong the moment they talk about their power and maybe your weakness is a chance to strike them down.
Play around with things, throw a ball to distract them and attack, or maybe find a groub.
It should be more easy with a party of magic slayer.
But a magic-user using the same tricks would strike you down so your chances are very bad, one false attack could cause your dead.
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Like Skye and John Dallman pointed out anything beyond human capabilities would probably rely on the magic or equipment available to your world
(e.g. üî´)
Also building on top of their answers, I'm guessing your magic requires energy similar to the [eragon book series magic system](http://inheritance.wikia.com/wiki/Magic). Thus unless technology allows for the magic users to have access to large pool of energy. Non-magic folks could still be on par in terms of capabilities.
*(That being said non-magic users are unlikely to perform
beyond human feats without specialized equipments or magic sources)*
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Why are tanks and infantry still used on the battlefield, when artillery and missile launchers can shoot at much longer ranges and do much more damage?
A wizard might be able to toss fireballs at great range, but if the fighter gets close enough, an unprepared wizard can become defenseless.
Also, wizards might be in much smaller numbers, their services might be much more expensive, and they might need a long preparation time, fancy hand motions and all to cast a spell, when a quick punch or a quick arrow from a short distance might be quicker and more effective.
If a wizard is physically more fragile than a fighter, and magic needs preparation time an fancy motions, even an average fighter can beat up a wizard in a melee.
Warning, TvTropes link : [Squishy Wizard](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SquishyWizard)
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I think this concept was handled in a similar way in the Japanese manga Naruto. They broke down fighting skills to physical, mental, and elemental. Although the mental and elemental were generally seen as more effective in the manga, the physical had a large part of it also. The mental and elemental abilities relied on the amount and ability to manipulate ones own chakra, the equivalent of D&D mana. The physical abilities relied on training but also, at higher levels, the ability to remove ones own instinctual limiters, to allow more physical abilities, but at the cost of physical health.
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The probable results of the below (in my imagination) would be a toss-up between asphyxiation, blindness, and/or molten magnesium in uncomfortable places but I'm not entirely sure. So given this scenario what would be the outcome:
An angry fire mage is fighting a crafty metal mage: how much of a bad day will the fire mage have when hit with a face full of magnesium dust that has passed through a fireball?
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Good Morning Apprentices,
Today's subject in Combat Magic 201 is important, so please pay attention.
As fire mages, you will encounter this technique quite often on the battle field. The enemy's metal mages love their particle attacks. Almost every time you let your combatant get upwind of you, expect that they will conjure particles into the wind. Those particles might be arsenic, chlorine, or if they know that you are a fire mage, then expect magnesium.
Our standard response to Particle attacks are the same regardless of the nature of the particles, but to pull it off, you need some working space and some knowledge of the current battle field layout. You need to know where your friends aren't with bonuses if you know where your enemies are. If you know that, you can turn the enemy's weapon against them. If not, then you are probably going to ruin everyone's day, friend or foe alike.
Here is what you do...
Hold your breath, close your eyes and create a massive fire behind your enemy. This isn't a moment for delicacy or grace. Let it all out. Incinerate the air behind where you want the enemy's cloud to go. You're not trying to kill a combatant while sparing his armor, weapons and relics. Your trying to cook the empty air into non-existence, to superheat the air behind your enemy so that it rises into the sky like a geyser. Then just keep your lungs still and your eyes closed until the screaming stops.
How this works is that the rising superheated air leaves a vacuum behind, and nature hates a vacuum. So air from all directions will rush in to fill the space which your fire just emptied. Some of that air will come from the place where your enemy is standing, between you and the vacuum. And then your combatant's air will have to be replaced from somewhere as well. If you've arranged things properly, much of your combatant's new air will come from the particle filled air around you. You'll know it is working when you feel a strong cold breeze blowing from behind you towards your fire.
You will know that it is done when the breeze-blown particles reach your enemy and his guards and they start choking and dying. Only then should you risk opening your eyes and taking a new breath.
As fire mages, we are the most powerful of the magic wielders. All the other elements serve our energy. We can boil the seas, turn metal and earth into lava, and yes, we scald the air itself, creating wind. Never underestimate the power of your gift, for we are the mightiest mages to walk in this land.
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On the behalf of all fire mages in your setting, allow me to say two simple words.
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So, you don’t want any metallic dust in your face ever for any reason ever, no thank you, I’m fine. Normally we’re talking eye damage, possible blindness, lung damage (could be fatal), not to mention possible abrasion of the skin, later illnesses developed by exposure to various metallic dusts, and of course metal poisoning. All of which would suck.
And none of which matter *at all* in this case.
Magnesium burns very hot. As in 2,500 K, 2,200 C, or 4,000 F kind of hot, and those are rather lowball estimates. If a cloud of magnesium dust is ignited, everything in the cloud is dead, everything close to the cloud is dead, and if something in the cloud is completely immune to heat, it doesn’t matter because all the oxygen in the area, and probably in said heat immune creature’s lungs, is going to be gone. No oxygen is normally kind of a downer because things tend to die very quickly when deprived of said element. But wait, it gets worse. Within the cloud, death will likely be *nearly instant* because any living thing will probably inhale superheated air and *ignited magnesium dust burning at* ***2,500 K.*** Not exactly healthy for your insides.
If you are outside the instant death range but still relatively close, you’re still dead because of severe burns causing dehydration and infection, and that’s *if* you don’t die from shock first. Outside of that range you are still burnt and blind, possibly permanently, from the intense heat and light. Finally, you will also ignite anything that is even *remotely* flammable, and depending on where the fight is taking place, that could be very very bad as well.
Also, in modern terms this would be considered a very serious war crime.
Your metal mages would need to remember, however, that the fire mage could ignite the magnesium before it reaches them, which could very well flash fry your metal mage and all of his friends.
Now, I’ll probably regret informing you of this next part, but here goes anyway. Your metal mages could actually do much, much, ***much*** worse.
Enter aluminum and iron oxide. Mix it together just so and give it a little ignition source like, oh I dunno, a *fire mage*, and you get thermite. Now, many sources say thermite also burns around 2,500 K, but it has one tiny, little, easily overlooked property that might be kind of important in this scenario.
*It brings its own oxygen.*
Not sure what this means, WELL allow me to be the person who haunts your nightmares forever because it means *you can’t extinguish thermite once it starts burning.*
* Water? Nope, we use it for welding underwater.
* Vacuum? Nope, it has its own fuel and oxidizer and will burn until one of them is gone.
* Cold? You would have to instantly chill the entire 2,500 K fireball so low that it stops oxidizing, so good luck.
Congratulations, you’ve just created one man terror weapons that can be scaled up to, basically arbitrary size that are nearly impossible to survive. For added horror, if you do this inside any enclosed space, you get a low tech thermobaric bomb that kills from heat, the pressure wave, and the following lack of air that can last for minutes depending on the size of the bomb.
Happy hunting you demented war criminal.
[Answer]
First question: Does chemistry work the same in the magical world? If not, that might not work. However, for the sake of the question, we'll assume it works enough for magnesium to work as you say.
Is the fire mage resistant to fire? In magical worlds they often are but not always.
Can they control existing fires? If so, you just gave the fire mage a really fun toy if they are resistant or can react fast enough (maybe it is instinctive control).
If they aren't resistant and can't automatically push the fire away, the rest doesn't matter. They are crispy.
Asphyxiation is only an issue in an enclosed space. People can hold their breath for 1 to 5 minutes. Any building with an open window will replenish the O2 in plenty of time.
Blindness may be an issue if they don't have a resistance to that.
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The fire mage would die, but the side with the fire mages would still win.
It takes a talented, prepared and somewhat lucky metal mage to create exotic metal fragments, anticipate the attack and be able to place them at a distance and in the right spot. There aren't many of those, but there are plenty of young fire mages. There are also old fire mages who know to watch and wait to use the big fireballs when opposing mages are tired and distracted.
I'm stealing this from the Recluse series by L.E. Modesitt. In that series White/Chaos mages mostly shoot fire -- older ones gain more powers, but young headstrong kids with firebolts think they're invincible hot stuff (which they mostly are). Black/Order mages are good with stone, healing, and metal-working. A few know combat, but most work in a shop. For the very few with the experience, skill and aptitude to beat fire-mages, it's easier to just keep track of where they are and avoid them. In those books they actually waited for the fire mage to cast, reacting with a tight force shield around them, trapping them with a fireball. That's basically the same as the mageneese -- the best metal mage using the worst fire-mage's weapon against them.
[Answer]
That depends on two questions:
## How much magnesium did you create?
See, if you're using an angle grinder and you accidently shower your arm with sparks, you don't instantly lose that arm from 1,100+ Celsius metal touching you. You need more than just a few sparks to start a fire because of total energy. There's just not enough metal hitting you and it doesn't have enough total energy to do much more than crisp some of your already-dead skin cells.
Same principle applies here. A few grams of magnesium dust are not going to hoist the fire mage with their own petard. Yes, it would be distracting and maybe a bit painful depending on where the flaming dust was, but it wouldn't be lethal, not by a long shot.
## How fine is the dust?
Let's say you have a metal mage and a fire mage in a fight, about a block apart. They both launch an attack at the same time - a cloud of magnesium dust and a fireball, respectively. These attacks travel at baseball speeds and cross each other at the midway point.
If the dust is too fine, it burns through very quickly and has stopped burning by the time it reaches the fire mage. Because it has a lot of surface area attached to very little volume, it loses heat very quickly. A log in a fireplace will stay hot longer than a piece of paper, even after the fire goes out. In addition, losing all that heat means the fire will definitely go out, as fires need heat to survive.
Metal mages would want to make their return fire into loose pellets or similar. This gives enough volume and depth to keep burning for long enough, and enough heat to keep the fire going until it hits that annoying fire mage. On impact, the loose powder will spread all over the fire mage, burning them all over.
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In [The Laundry Novel series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laundry_Files), basilisks and associated weapons and creatures turn their targets to stone by transmuting 10% of carbon to silicon. Ignoring the question of how, what effects would this actually have? It’s shown to generate massive amounts of heat, but I’m more interested in what kind of stone this would actually produce if used on a human. Note: it’s specifically carbon, not living things. Paint has been shown to ignite in the same way.
[SCORPION STARE](https://thelaundryfiles.fandom.com/wiki/SCORPION_STARE) is a weapons system based on reverse engineering basilisks and medusae:
"In the case of SCORPION STARE, about ten percent of the carbon nuclei in the target are randomly transformed into silicon nuclei as if by magic. Messy pyrotechnics ensue: gamma radiation, short-lived muons, some really pretty high-energy chemistry, and lots of heat. We worked out how to do it by reverse-engineering basilisks and medusae—animals and unfortunate people suffering from a peculiar, and very rare, brain tumor. Now we’ve got defensive camera-emplacements on every high street, networked and ready to be controlled centrally when the balloon goes up. Street cleaning by CCTV-controlled flame thrower.
The technology itself relies on a trick of quantum observation that temporarily replaces the carbon atoms of the target with that of silicon. This causes an instantanieous chemical reaction, as carbon dioxide for example now becomes silicon dioxide, thus permanently altering the chemical make up of the entire object."
[Answer]
**People Soup**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5uM3D.gif)
Matthias says all the carbon is locked up in molecules in the person. This is correct.
Now turn each carbon atom into a silicon atom. The silicons can no longer form the same molecules. The molecules fall apart into loose atoms -- Is this where the heat comes from? -- and the connections between the molecules also fall apart. The person turns into person soup.
Why person soup and not person powder? It's because over half the human body is made of water. And water contains no carbon so is still water after the basilisk gets you.
For a normal person, the water is locked up inside cell walls and molecules, to the body appears solid. But turn the walls and molecules into powder and all the liquid is unleashed.
Much like the fruit smoothie above. The chunks of fruit look solid but somehow blend into a liquid when you chop them into tiny bits.
The person soup will be thicker than the fruit smoothie. More like mashed potato or banana or porridge. Or maybe refried beans. Yeah beans, that sounds good.
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**Short answer: There would be no apparent petrification, you would just see the human die.**
Carbon in the human body is almost entirely part of organic molecules. So if the silicon just replaces the carbon it would not form any kind of mineral/stone but would just create organosilicon compounds (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organosilicon_compound#Silenes>). Which look not like stone but more like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6aFHl.jpg)
This is of course the pure form and regular organic molecules could just like this, when in their pure form. Pretty any process in the body would stop working more or less instantly, since the biochemistry of the organosilicon compounds is quite different. There would be no obvious change to an observer. So the affected person would just drop dead, maybe getting cooked by the heat.
There could be some rupture in the skin due to a lot of dead cells or the heat, but I don't know enough about this to make a prediction here.
Any non-living compound would just change chemical properties and would not serve its original purpose anymore. It could cause a decay, since the covalent bonds of silicon are weaker than with carbon.
[Answer]
The way to tackle this is to compare carbon and silicon chemically. They contain similar properties as they are both in the same group on the periodic table. Each contains four electrons in its outer shell, meaning it forms four bonds with other atoms. Theoretically, this would mean silicon could serve as a good analog for carbon. Practically, however, there are too many differences for this to be viable:
**1) Size** - silicon atoms have one more shell than carbon, making them much larger. If silicon would replace carbon in the body, there wouldn't be enough space for the atoms. Even if there was, the larger atomic size of silicon means it would mess with bond angles. The carbon-ring formation used throughout the body, including in DNA, likely could not form with silicon. So this could never work for steric reasons.
**2) Polarity** - silicon is more electropositive than carbon. Its extra shell means it has less attraction for electrons, and would therefore be more susceptible to attack by other compounds. Many silicon-based compounds are unstable and spontaneously hydrolyze or combust in water or air. So replacing silicon with carbon in the human body would theoretically result in a minefield.
**3) Reactivity** - silicon's properties make it most stable when bonded with oxygen instead of itself, unlike carbon, which frequently forms long carbon chains in the human body. Because of this, **silicon would likely react with oxygen in the body, forming silica (SiO2) compounds. Interestingly, silica is a solid, found in quartz, sand, and other natural forms, which may explain the stone texture you describe.**
More information on silica vs carbon chemistry could be found [here](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7345352/#:%7E:text=3.1.&text=Silicon%20is%20the%20closest%20analogue,(non%2Dionic)%20compounds.). The article discusses the potential of silicon as a building block for life. This sentence is of note in our particular context:
>
> Si chemistry in oxygen-rich environments (e.g., water) ultimately leads to silica (SiO2) (which is a refractory solid rather than a gas, with no double bonds to oxygen as in its carbon equivalent CO2)
>
>
>
This hopefully answers the question of what kind of stone would be produced by replacing carbon with silicon. However, it must be noted that this is not realistically feasible, due to the size and polarity constraints described. Moreover, as you mentioned, the process of replacing carbon with silicon generates an enormous amount of heat. This could be described as a reaction similar to nuclear fusion, in which two atomic nuclei collide forming a larger atom. This process releases a large amount of energy (think of the heat the sun releases as hydrogen is converted into helium). The human body could never sustain such an amount of energy, and therefore, even ignoring steric/polar constraints, **a person would roast before silicon could react to form solid silica compounds** (aka stone).
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## Burning death, meat spiced with amorphous silica remains
Let's look at the carbon in our bodies for a second.
The *vast* majority of carbons are linked to at least one hydrogen, and very many to two. Sugars, proteins, fats, you name it; they all have empirical formula CHxOy(Other)z, where H >= 1.
Bear this in mind, it's important.
When you swap out carbon atoms like that for silicon atoms, you haven't made silicon carbide or silicones (those require there to be no Si-H bonds). No, you've made silane groups.
Silanes are highly flammable in air and react pretty violently with water under most circumstances. The slower, controlled reactions a few of you have encountered are exceptions deliberately engineered for that slowness. Silanes with the weird coordination environments you get in the body are *not* those exceptions, quite the opposite.
BURN!
You immediately cook. You don't explode, although a few small flames erupt on your skin. But the heat capacity of water wins the day here; you don't roast, you stew or maybe boil.
The product of silanes reacting either with aqueous species or air in small amounts is amorphous silica.
The remaining body is partially stewed and a bit gritty, being more than 90% cooked flesh and hot water and a few percent dispersed amorphous silica.
We hope that turning 10% of the brain's carbon into silicon immediately ends cognition before cooking commences, but who knows for sure?
PS Bump the fraction of transmuted carbon well up from 10% and consider swapping some or all of the Si for Ca or Al to get a mineralised body.
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## Atomics and other explosions
@Theresa Kay did a perfectly good job of describing the chemistry, but I've always wondered about the basilisk guns. You need to have one of two situations:
1. 10% of carbon gets an extra 8 protons, neutrons, and electrons, or
2. Pairs of C-12 fuse together to form Si-24
The second option is MUCH easier to deal with, as the person would explode. As you work your way up the periodic table, the amount of energy from each step up decreases, so you'll get less than 1/20th of the energy for equivalent hydrogen fusion. On the other hand, [it's been calculated](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/135013/hydrogen-bomb-mass-to-energy) that a 50MT bomb only fuses about 2.33kg of hydrogen. If we're talking a 100kg human, then you're getting 1.85kg of carbon fusing into silicon. Let's call this something in the 1 megaton range.
However, let's say that such fusion energy was handled by the transformation magic. You'd still have the problem that Si-24 has a half-life of 140ms. Through beta decay, you'd wind up with a lot of magnesium, with traces of neon and sodium. Molecular cohesion would be non-existent, and the thermal effects of beta decay would boil the body instantly. Hot, bloody mist for everybody.
The first one would also result in an explosion, but the magnitude would be far less. A carbon atom is around .09nm in size, but a silicon atom is around .2nm across. The volume of carbon in a human body is roughly 1.1 liters. If turned to Silicon, that would add roughly 6 liters of volume, virtually instantaneously. I can't calculate how big the explosion would be because you can't compress silicon that much. I'm suspecting that we're talking about something that would take down a building.
@Andy273 brought up a horrifying third possibility, based on [the wiki where the basilisk gun is described](https://thelaundryfiles.fandom.com/wiki/SCORPION_STARE). This is where *just the nuclei* of the atoms are replaced, leaving an immense charge imbalance. It would be like lightning in reverse, only worse. Your typical lightning bolt has around ten coulombs of charge. The sudden increase in protons would result in a disparity around a hundred million coulombs.
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Since the original question has already crossed the line by invoking a third party world, I'll invoke a Douglas Adams type of answer and go with 'bloodstone' to answer the question 'what kind of stone would it produce if used on a human?'
Though, of course, if we want to steer close to the science part of the science-fiction spectrum, we'd have to go with silicon carbide or carborundum.
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Short answer:
**You would die**
Long answer: Due to carbon's mostly unique property of making bonds to itself, it allows long chain molecules that can store data (y'know, like our good ol' friend DNA) and gives living things energy as glucose. No Carbon, no energy, no information storage, no life.
You could also become a big, human-shaped, highly impure, silica mineral formation if the right combination was in your body
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Reasons to colonize planets of another solar system?](/questions/67504/reasons-to-colonize-planets-of-another-solar-system)
(18 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
Once a civilisation reaches the point where it can put reasonable quantities of manpower into space, it is generally assumed that it will start colonising other celestial bodies. However, as I understand it all the resources it needs will likely be available in moons, asteroids, comets, planetary rings, etc, all of which are way more easily accessible than those in the deep gravity well that is a planet.
So, why would a civilisation choose to colonise a planet instead of using those celestial bodies mentioned? Specifically, a colony that could be reasonably described as a town or city, not just remote research stations like we have at the poles.
Edit: This question is about why a civilisation would colonise any planet (regardless of whether they're in the home system or not) when moons, asteroids and other celestial bodies are much easier to access.
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* Atmosphere: A planet with an atmosphere is considerably safer to a colony than a domed or underground base
* More resources. A planet will almost certainly have more resources to draw on
* gravity. Humans tend to lose bone mass if they are in low-G environments.
* Growth. More room, more growth
* Defensibility. You can dig in on a planet in ways you cannot on smaller bodies.
* Food and water. Find renewable resources on a planet and you'll have an easier time than having to watch every last morsel of food and every last drop of water.
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I think it all boils down to resources and energy use. In the short term (where we are currently) coming from a planet to space, it is much easier to bring resources from the planet to use in space, simply because there isn't sufficient infrastructure in space to allow resource production. In the medium term, low gravity well sources would provide cheaper (less energy) resources for use, but in the long term when you start exploiting resources at a very high level (a very large space population) those low gravity well material sources will run out and you have to go where most of the available resources in the solar system are and that pushes you to the planets.
For comparison the mass of the [main asteroid belt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#Characteristics) is ~3×10^21 kilograms, with half of that mass actually being in the four minor *planets*. This sounds like a lot of material and it is, but it is only 4% of the mass of Earth's moon or 0.05% of the Earth mass. Even given that we generally can only access the atmosphere/ocean and the first several kilometers of the crust, this ~1% of the Earth's mass accounts for a much larger amount of available resources.
So at a certain point you need to go to the planets to get resources, and if you want to use a resource most effectively, you try to limit how much energy that use requires. For materials on planets that means you can most efficiently use the resource on the planet, without having to expend the substantial energy to boost into orbit. This would make colonizing the planet more advantageous than trying to use the materials only in space.
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A political realist would tell you that the question is not necessarily confined to "What is enough?" So long as there is more than one state, more than one company, more than one entity, the question will be, "who controls what?" and after that question "who controls the most and what can I (as an actor [state, company, or other type of entity]) do to control more?"
That has been the driving force behind geopolitics since at least the time of Alexander the Great--so it may extend to *astro*politics as well (couldn't help myself). Superpowers are not content with having "enough" oil or any other important resource, they want to ensure that they control more than their opponents; states are rarely content with their economic or security agreements, they want to maximize their power; companies are not content with breaking-even, they want to maximize profits and increase revenues.
So to answer your question, even if the actors, players, or competitors agree that the moons, comets, and astroids have more than enough of whatever resource for all to share, they will eventually move to planets for the same reasons that the Mongols, Conquistadors, and every other power in history has moved into new territory:
1. Resources - not just to have sufficient quantities but to control resources and keep them out of the hands of opponents, or figure out a way to monopolize them somehow, "You can only buy lilac stardust in Dollars; not Euros!"
2. Strategic locations (*astro*strategic positions?) - unless space travel brings world peace, strategists, military and economic, will want to control certain trade routes and territories to force compellence or administer deterrence.
3. Expansionism - Hey, more is always better--and this new stuff is interesting if only because it is new!
4. Hubris - not only confined to Nero, Caligula, or Commodus.
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**You don't put all your eggs in one basket**
If you want to go on being a civilization for a long time. If you value your cultural addition to the universe. You will want to make sure your species and base culture will survive extinction level events.
Because once the big asteroid hits your planet there's no coming back unless you have a fairly decent breeding population somewhere else. Thus you may just as well forgo creating art, literature, technology and religion. It's all pointless endeavors anyway, just passing the time from here to oblivion.
**So why planets**
Well, people do like room to move around. Also, provided we have terraforming capability, a planet will be self sustainable. You don't have to figure out how to get around having almost no gravity at all. You have all the basic building materials you need for you colony. You have room enough to grow food. A planet colony will be much more resilient than some free floating tube or a hole on an asteroid. Those are nice for farming materials. But for a long term strategy you want a planet. (Preferably at least one in another solar system as well.)
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Hmm ... may I suggest that, given a nice enough planet, it may take **way less work** to maintain a colony on a planet? A planet is big enough that mistakes you make (chemical spills, random explosions) can be smoothed away by the scale of the ecosystem, which -- bonus! -- you don't have to maintain. An orbital habitat, or any essentially self-contained ecosystem, has to be actively maintained. This takes time, expense, and effort.
There are also cultural factors. I can see having factions who prefer the hustle and bustle of space-hab life, as well as ... well ... "Space Amish" who want to settle deeper roots and not "live in a tin can". ;D
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**Natural growth**
Interesting things draw explorers, explorers draw technicians, technicians draw venders, venders draw merchants, merchants allow people.
We will first place bases (like our polar stations) various places probably starting with places many people have heard of like the Moon or Mars. And it will be found that the next science experiment requires more equipment and people to support that equipment. And then more people help make this other project work. Eventually it won't always make sense to ship people back, and babies will be born out there.
The city of Washington D.C. was built on a swamp and has little reason to exist except that the US government lives there. A city on the moon might be expected to exist for a similar reason, scientists need or want a number of things that support people could help with, and support people want a vast number of things some of which would be perhaps cheaper to make locally than ship from earth.
**Logistics**
Distance does matter, resupplying a Moon base is more convenient than shipping to the asteroids and much much faster. And shipping from the moon to any particular asteroid as needed may be a better support model than having each asteroid base have enough supplies for every contingency. And cities often grow at shipping hubs.
**Solar power**
It is better closer to the sun. And it turns out most of the mass close to the sun is down wells. The asteroid belt is more than 3 times as far from the sun as the moon is, so gets something like 10% the power from the same solar panels. That is a serious consideration in power intensive activities like growing food and refining metals.
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There is a very good argument for building space-based structures to live in, or settling on smaller bodies like moons or comets. As you note in the question, the resources available from these structures will be easier to obtain than those on a larger planet.
But the planets are there, and there will be people who want to settle on them. Ultimately, given enough time and technology, humanity will expand and settle on everything they can. It's not a case of doing one or the other.
Ultimately, it's about expanding to fill all available niches.
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**It's the Law**
Colonizing smaller bodies could be banned as encouraging rapacious resource extraction over sustainable colonization. The greater gravity well and difficulty of extracting resources out of a planet's surface area means populations have to settle and develop more.
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**Health**
We are not completely certain about all the health effects zero-gravity has on the human body yet, but so far it is not looking good for the [growth of healthy humans](https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast02aug_1).
This is a major topic for nasa recently who put a man in space for a year who also had a twin on earth in the hopes of finding the most precise changes to his body. The results are not in yet, but [the whole article is here](https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-06-12/nasa-using-twin-brothers-observe-effects-zero-gravity-human-body).
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Scenario: A healer is facing an enemy and can only use magic.
I want the healer to oppose this enemy by using his magic, so that the continuous healing would kill the target, like he has too many cells, or grows tumors or something. Is it possible?
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Given the information in [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4312/if-accelerated-natural-healing-were-to-occur-what-would-happen-to-the-human-bod?rq=1) and its accepted answer, it seems clear that the natural healing process of a human being (or of any other creature) can itself be a deadly weapon if supplied with magical acceleration.
If the body is healing an injury, it requires the ability to supply the necessary energy, materials, etc., needed to physically perform the repairs. If you use healing magic to accelerate that process naively (without accounting for these secondary problems), the body will begin to steal from itself in an attempt to keep up. It's probably going to lose that contest, however; step up the healing rate to a thousand times the normal (which is still short of what would be necessary to get near-instant regeneration, incidentally), and it's a safe assumption that the body cannot increase blood flow by a thousand times, meaning that the tissues around the injury will almost instantly be deprived of oxygen and nutrients.
Give that a little time (a few minutes, probably, before you get gangrene or cell death), and the only result of the healing process is that the damage has actually expanded. You've also weakened the opponent in the meanwhile by drawing off a large part of their bodily reserves for this healing. The accelerated healing will then start up for this **new** damage, and... well, you can see how this will result in a vicious spiral that can only get worse as long as the healing magic is kept up. The exact cause of death may vary, but my bet is on oxygen deprivation (hypoxia) as the body steals so much oxygen from the bloodstream that it can no longer fuel essential organs or tissues.
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Killing an enemy with a tumor is not effective on a battlefield. If you want to kill somebody, you want him dead now, not in 20 years from now.
Set this aside, assuming that your "healing spell" is not a generic one, but really addresses some inner body functions, it is doable.
I.e. a certain spell can increase the adrenaline production. In some cases this is beneficial for the body. Do it out of context or too much and you will give a nice heart attack to your target.
Same goes with insulin.
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It depends of course on the nature of the healing magic and how fast it's working. I'll assume the magic is more or less equivalent to modern day medicine and that it can be used without the prerequisite of an existing condition to cure.
The three things I'd try:
* A spell used to staunch blood flow also be used on a non-bleeding target causing massive blood clots.
* Magic to increase Insulin production for diabetics. Will put victim in a coma and eventually kill them.
* Spells used to anesthetize. These are basically sleep spells designed so that the patient does not react to damage and wake up. They must work fairly quickly and once incapacitated the victim will be an easy target for any other attack, magic or otherwise.
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If part of the healing magic involved stimulating the immune system of a patient, then the Healer could focus on stimulating their enemy's immune system to such an extent this would look like an allergic attack turning into a full anaphylactic shock. [Anaphylaxis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaphylaxis) can be fatal.
>
> Anaphylaxis is a serious allergic reaction that is rapid in onset and
> may cause death.[4][5] It typically causes more than one of the
> following: an itchy rash, throat or tongue swelling, shortness of
> breath, vomiting, lightheadedness, and low blood pressure. These
> symptoms typically come on over minutes to hours.[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaphylaxis)
>
>
> Common causes include insect bites and stings, foods, and medications.
> Other causes include latex exposure and exercise. Additionally cases
> may occur without an obvious reason.[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaphylaxis) The mechanism involves the
> release of mediators from certain types of white blood cells triggered
> by either immunologic or non-immunologic mechanisms.[6] Diagnosis is
> based on the presenting symptoms and signs after exposure to a
> potential allergen.
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Magically induced anaphylaxis could be caused by if the healing process can be manipulated to make the enemy's immune system overreact. This the most probable way healing magic can be used as a lethal technique.
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It depends on how you want your magic to work.
Also depending on your setting there will be differences, for example a medieval world will have other methods than a modern or post-apocalyptic one.
There are quite a few possible methods.
Please note, that I answer the question to killing with healing magic but I do not activly adopt the approach with tumors and cell regeneration.
Below are the ones I think are the easiest to apply in any setting.
## Technique for preventing blood loss
If there is a method to block the blood flow.
Apply that to a vital region like the lungs or the heart and the result might be deadly.
## Sugical techniques
See [ArnoldF's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/89068/28789).
## Techniques for detoxication
There might be methods to help someone from poision, including emptying the gastro-intestinal tract, which might lead to server pain and organ failure. This can at least immobilize someone for a time.
## Magic for healing bones
Sometimes you have to rebreak a bone to mend it right.
So your magic could have a method for this. Apply this magic to the spine of skull and the result can be fatal.
## Others
There are a lot of other possible techniques including something like regrowing stuff or generating blood to let vessels explode, even some kind of magic painkiller that works similar to modern ones.
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# Cancer
Cancer is the runaway reproduction and growth of cells, unbound by normal constraints (i.e. stop it you jerk, we're all in this together). In a vague general sort of way it's caused by cells deciding that the environment they're living in isn't conducive to cooperation and it reverts to winner take all (that is, I'm in this for me and my daughter cells). All the instructions for being a single-celled form of life is still in our DNA, it's just turned off so that cells specialize in order to cooperate together. Turn them back *on* again through some trigger and you get cancer.
Magical healing *could potentially* be viewed as a rapid increase in typical cellular life-cycle. And if the conditions are no longer viewed as mutually beneficial by the individual cells (i.e. the prisoner's dilemma equation starts looking better and better if the cell Defects rather than Cooperates) then they could be spurred towards being cancerous instead.
And cancer would just eat that healing magic right up. Yes please make me a healthier cell!
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### Surgical techniques are dangerous.
Any magical healer worth their salt would have a need to excise tumors, sap poison from blood, or mend broken bones. One could imagine any of these spells backfiring or being deliberately applied (by a skilled caster) in such a way that much more than a tumor is taken away, or all of the target's blood is drained, or bones are regrown to [the point where the target can no longer move](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrodysplasia_ossificans_progressiva).
As an example, in the anime Naruto, Kabuto Yakushi's fighting style is based around his unusual offensive application of the ["Chakra Scalpel"](http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Chakra_Scalpel) technique. He uses this spell ("jutsu" in the show's parlance) in close quarters combat to add a precise lethality to his blows.
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I can see quite a lot of opportunities. Most of them depend on the assumption that you, as a dedicated Healer, have access to not only generic healing spells that cure minor ailments, but also a wide arsenal of specialized healing spells that address specific body functions and problems, and that these spells actually require you to judge if they're the right tool for the job, and that they will work regardless of the current state of the target.
For instance, you could cause a target to overdose on a certain hormone, such as adrenaline. In that specific case you'd have to be careful to actually make them overdose, as giving them not enough to die might potentially turn them even more powerful. It's quite easy to give "more than safe" amounts, though.
Depending on the biological knowledge behind these spells, you might have access to a defibrillation spell that induces a strong (relative, that is, strong when introduced to nerves) electric current which can be very dangerous when the target is not actually suffering arrythmia. Alternatively, depending on the level of control that you have over the magic, you might be able to induce a current in other nerves, potentially paralyzing your target.
And you might have access to a cauterize spell to sear open wounds -- which can also be just as dangerous when used on healthy skin. You could turn the target's immune system against it by activating responses out-of-context. You could administer narcotics and render them unconscious. The list goes on and on.
However, if you don't have fine control over the magic, your actions are rather limited. If you only have access to spells that cure specific (or generic) ailments, the most obvious solution could be to use healing spells in a far greater scale than they were designed for, potentially causing many of the effects I just listed. Doing so might cause the body to deprive itself of resources, which probably causes a brief surge in power (during which you might want to run away) but causes death by exhaustion shortly after.
All of these things, however, might take a lot of time (which you might not have) and probably drain a lot of energy on your part (which might be better spent on healing allies).
All in all, if you are a healer and your allies are all dead (on the assumption that you actually *have* allies and that you didn't go solo as healer), the best recourse might be to run.
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Not only a healer could do that. A healer specialising in dental spells would kill people with ease.
You cast two spells - one for deciduous teeth and a second one for jaw soft tissue to regenerate in a very fast manner. Or for salivary glands to instantly produce a lot of saliva. Your enemy is now suffocating.
Second approach. You speed up the liver's healing process. The liver regrows so fast that it's painful to move and all intestines, literally, are bursting out.
Third approach. You speed up the work of the kidneys or the stomach. Your enemy is now dehydrated, but also his bladder is full and he really needs to go to the loo.
And at last, cardio spells. You're a healer Leonard, goddamit! Cast a higher pressure spell on his heart and tightening vessels spell on, let's say, the legs. You can the play to make him faint or to create an infarct. Or just a plain old heart attack if you can stack high pressure/low pressure spells for 10 seconds.
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Well it is magic. You can make it to behave what ever way you want.
Having an antidote healing spell at hand?
Let it be poisonous if not actually poisoned.
Want to make the healing create tumors if healed too much?
Well, describe as your healing magic to behave like this.
Want your magic healing to summon a lot of nanobots rebuilding target cells?
Just let your magic behave that way.
Want to let healing deal damage instead? let your magician summon hearthstones [Auchenai Soulpriest](https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/media/hearthstone.gamepedia.com/7/7e/Auchenai_Soulpriest%28656%29_Gold.png?version=74f77f7fb20b15a4c6711fbca72bf0af)!
Its simply magic, you can't search for a real world confirmation without specific scope. If you ask "can magic do ....?" The answer simply is "Sure it can, its magic!"
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Yes, there are many ways in which a "healing effect" could be used to kill the target. It's the way in which your healing effect works which would be key. So if the effect can be directed this would help.
**Auto-Immune diseases**
If the healing effect could be linked to making the immune system better you could get it becoming over active this can lead to conditions like [MS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_sclerosis) which could be used in an accelerated fashion to kill, this might be a bit slow.
**Cancer like**
Another option is if you can accelerate the actually process of splitting the cells within the body. Then you could have various forms of cancer in this way, just heal the body till it creates a huge mass of cells, this replicates cancerous growths.
**Bacteria**
If you can accelerate cell splitting then you could also heal not the person but the bacteria that is already present in the target, we have many many different type of bacteria or fungus in us and an imbalance can cause many issues, a mild condition is [Thrush](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidiasis) but there are other bacteria or fungus that can also be fatal, or cause other condition such as blood poisoning.
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The answer is pretty much yes – you can kill someone by healing. That is if it's using the body is natural healing process and just speeding it up. This might work for all types of healing depends how you magic works.
But again assuming that you're not actually healing person so much as speeding up their body's natural healing process. Body naturally and places damage cells with new ones. For reasons that are yet unknown the body can suddenly start producing large quantities of new cells for no apparent reason this is what's commonly called cancer. If you can control the body's natural healing process you could theoretically cause cancer.
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Yes
Fundamentally it's magic, so you can define how it's mechanism works however you like. To help define a mechanism by which "too much of a good thing is bad" here are some sources.
A scientific mechanism of "too much of a good thing" is oxygen toxicity. Essentially if the partial pressure of oxygen is too high, it becomes toxic. Cell membranes are damaged as they become "oxidized". Your healing magic could behave the same way. Too much magic in the system causes the target's flesh to essentially cook or burn.
A literary example of too much healing being a bad thing is a book by Orson Scott Card. "A Planet called treason". The main character has regenerative powers, but is a "Radical regenerative" The body cannot distinguish between healthy and injured. As a result the regeneration is constant, resulting in extra digits, or limbs that must constantly be cut away.
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As there already are a bunch of answers covering the 'healing' of the opponent, I'll take another route than the others:
## Self-Enhancement
Healing Magic can potentially fix broken bones and even recover them. Use this to 'recover' the mage's bones to an extent, which can already be considered as enhancement. Make his knuckles or his complete arm several times bigger, harder, more resistable and so on. Let him use his magic to boost his strength or adrenaline to a maximum and then let him attack. Should be able to crush an enemy's defense and kill him in one punch.
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Healing can be restitution. Having a prosthesis competing for space with regenerated limbs/organs can become ugly. And what if you stop the healing with the limb back in place but circulation not yet in working order and/or enough blood available yet? Shock, likely.
You might incapacitate an enemy by healing his hairs from all the haircuts they have been given, effectively turning him into a tripping hairball.
How about healing bacteria in his body from a past infection?
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As Zaibis mentioned, the short of it is that you can do whatever you want because it's magic.
If you actually want it to be readily accepted, you need to go into the full specifics. For example, is some methods of arcane healing I've seen, the process has a duel fuel system using the source of magic as the medium for energy transfer.
For the amount of healing done, around 75% of the "life" energy required was given up by the caster while 25% or so was taken from the recipient. As a result, if the person that required healing was damaged too much or hadn't had much in the way of nutrients, there was a chance for failure, or the caster would give up too much energy and end up passing out or dying on their own.
The more detail you go into the process, the more you can get away with and actually explain.
"Ignore my search history, I'm a writer, I swear."
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Obviously, it depends on the way magic works, but we can ask a more generic question. *Can a healer kill?* Imagine a surgeon with a scalpel in his vic^W patient. Can he kill? Of course, it takes him a lot of precision and control **not** to kill. And if your healer can use his healing magic on his opponent, then, figuratively speaking, he has his scalpel in him already. Now all he needs is to twist it just the *wrong* way.
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Natural healing occurs in the body as well as the mind. Forced healing (though magic) might only heal the body, but not the mind. This unnatural gap between the two can be fatal when it becomes too large.
This is based on the idea of "the body cannot live without the mind".
A finger cut causes pain. Not that much pain, so it's trivial to overcome. A couple of minutes after cutting yourself you don't even notice it anymore.
But imagine you've been brutally handled on the battlefield, your thigh impaled by a lance, the leg almost severed, your shoulder crushed by a massive hammer. You still live, but your mind has already turned inwards because it could not cope with what happened.
Before the finishing blow you're rescued and a squad mage performs some quick healing. While your body is repaired, you are still secluded somewhere deep inside your mind. How to recover from that takes a vastly different approach then the healing of your body.
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I wonder, my Kepler Bb world has a lot of different biomes. Go x regions in a certain direction and there will be a different biome.
Region 1, where the first city is, has a river, lakes both isolated and non isolated, a cave, a mountain range, forests, and grasslands.
Region 2 is similar but there are fewer forests and the lake there is a crater lake. There once was a huge mountain there but a significant part of it got knocked off by an asteroid and this lake is what is left of it.
Region 3 is swamp throughout.
Anyway, there are 2 biomes where the people that live underground would have to dig through sand. 1 of those is beach at the coastline or in very rare cases, inland. The other one is a hot, sandy, desert.
In both cases, there is a problem, sand is so fine it would most likely collapse if a humanoid tried to dig a tunnel in the sand. But then again, there are quite a few creatures that dig holes in the sand in both of these biomes.
An example of a beach creature that digs a tunnel in the sand is the fiddler crab:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mRdtf.jpg)
And quite a few desert creatures dig tunnels in the sand too. An example of this is the Gila monster:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Waafe.jpg)
But does this mean that sand wouldn't collapse?
Because here is what I think would happen. At first digging down goes really well but then the humanoid starts to go in directions other than down and what happens? As these more horizontal tunnels are dug, the sand up above puts so much weight on the tunnel that it collapses and the humanoid, quite literally, aspirates the sand as he/she digs back up to the surface. A lot of sneezing and coughing and a desperate need for water results from all the sand the humanoid gets in its nose, throat, and lungs. While dust will just give a person aspiration pneumonia and/or sneezing without a scratchy throat, sand would give the humanoid the same thing but with a scratchy throat.
That is not good. Sand is so fine and so vulnerable to collapse. How would a humanoid dig tunnels through the sand without the sand collapsing on itself? Wet sand probably would not cut it. In fact, at just the right ratio, the wet sand becomes quicksand which itself has its dangers since you can get stuck in it.
So they would have to use something other than sand to keep the tunnels from collapsing. The only thing I can think of them doing here is putting rocks all around the tunnels and sticking them together with mud or something that wont crumble into fine pieces as soon as it dries(which I think wet sand would do).
They are at stone age level technology. This means that they build everything from hunting weapons to homes and everything in between without using metal. The closest they have to metal is stone.
**Is there anything else they could do to keep tunnels in sand from collapsing?**
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# You can't build a tunnel in sand
The fiddler crab's tunnel does collapse around him. When the crab is in his hole, the wet sand at the mouth collapses and hides the hole. This is by design to keep predators away. Have you ever seen bubbles coming up through wet sand at the beach? That means there is a crab or clam or something hiding in the sand, who has allowed his tunnel to collapse.
The Gila monster is not digging in sand. Sure the top surfaces are sandy, but you can see some grass growing there. That grass must have roots, and those roots can't extract nutrients from pure sand. There must be more loamy soil down there, stabilized by grass roots. Into this mix, the Gila monster can dig.
No one can build a tunnel in the sand without it collapsing.
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Sand is such a loose concept, covering a range of minerals.
The Sahara Desert has [fine sand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7bX7T8lltI#t=34s). Outside of climate change (snow!), it's really dry and really hot and really loose. It stays formless sand in which you cannot dig.
Sandstone, on the other extreme, formed into a sedimentary rock and can store a lot of water (or oil). The sand needs to start with some quartz and needs compression. You can tunnel in sandstone fairly easily, though you cannot have really have spans without support over about 7 meters. (See your favorite book on Mining or Ground Engineering).
In between, you are looking for how wide a span can be self supporting. Water, organic matter, and more make a difference. One classic measurements include "how steep can I make my sand pile before it collapses under its own weight"? And my favorite question, "if you have nano-machines assemble your human sized sand castle so that each grain is stacked like a brick, does it instantly collapse when someone steps inside?"
It's easy to have sandstone beneath a surface of sand, for your story. If you seek accuracy, you will walk into valley of Materials Engineering from which there is no escape. You have been warned.
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The tunnelers could make a form of paper mache with wood pulp and flour, which might successfully line a tunnel and not collapse. Paper mache can be very strong, and arches can support a lot of weight. I am not sure how they'd actually dig through loose sand though.
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I'm reminded of that sequence from Frank Herbert's Dune where Paul is buried under sand and must tunnel out. The task is impossible, because the tunnel collapses as its being dug. So Paul contrived to create a foam gun/nozzle and uses the foam to stabilize the sand sufficiently to dig out. So, constructional spray foam might be a tool your sand tunnelers could use.
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As a frame challenge, your two examples are not actually examples of what you are asking for.
For the crabs, they don't actually create "burrows". They just burrow down into the sand, letting the sand cover and hide them. They generally don't have permanent tunnels or chambers.
For the Gila Monster, they don't live in tunnels in the sand. They dig into the clay/dirt that underlays any thin layer of sand or dust on the surface. Sand and dust may drift into the mouth of the tunnel, but that just needs to be pushed back out.
For your biomes, how deep is the sand? They may need to dig/clear the sand away and shore up the tunnel entrances to keep sand from collapsing into the opening, but once deep enough, the material may be sturdy enough to need minimal support and reinforcement for the tunnels and chambers.
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Simple: Give your creature who digs in the sand a water gun to saturate the sand, and make it stick together. That way, the tunnel won't collapse. Or pyrokinesis with fire/heat hot enough to melt the sand. Or enough strength to compress the sand into sandstone. There's a lot of ways that it can be done.
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While digging, use plates of dried/cooked clay to support the walls, building them as you advance, this should be easily doable with stone age technology.
They may need a mould to always make these plates in the right shape.
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High tech answer:
Fuse it. You have a tunnel boring machine powered by a fusion reactor boils sand into rock vapour, and fuses a foot deep thick layer of sand into dirty glass.
The base unit for doing this does a 30-50 foot diameter tube (or more like a D with the flat side at the bottom.
A smaller unit with about a 15 foot section can be used to cut out individual caves on either side of the main passage. Do these with the right zigzag path and you can make non-trailer park arcitecture.
Or stick with the Big D passages. Homes are built under the floor.
Another possibility would be create synthetic rock by adding sodium silicate to the sand matrix to form a type of sandstone.
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After reevaluating my sense of perspective on sublight interstellar travel, I'm thinking of moving my planet closer to Earth to cut down on travel time and fuel costs. However, the planet my colonists are traveling to and the solar system it presides in have some very specific conditions.
Firstly, the star system itself is sextenary, composed of three binary pairs. Secondly, all three pairs orbit a central mass black hole with a mass of about 315 suns. Thirdly, this large black hole had to at some point in the past go hypernova, bombarding my planet with high energy particulates that caused various forms of exotic matter to appear in the crust of this young, embryotic planet.
Could a system like this exist anywhere within 10-20 lightyears of Earth? What are the odds that we wouldn't have detected it by now?
EDIT: Taking the suggestion to change to a single binary pair, what's the closest two stars orbiting each other could be to our solar system without having been discovered up until now?
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* Could a system like this exist anywhere within 10-20 lightyears of Earth?
Well, space is big, there's certainly room for it. But the system you're describing seems incredibly dense. I'd be very surprised to find that much matter packed into one system outside of the galactic core.
* What are the odds that we wouldn't have detected it by now?
Six stars, all orbiting an intermediate-mass black hole, within 20 lightyears? Impossible that we haven't detected it. Even if the system were 100% invisible, the gravitational pull of 315+ solar masses would make it blatantly obvious that something absolutely huge was hiding there. It would be the defining feature of our stellar neighborhood.
Also, if a star went hypernova and left a 315 solar mass black hole behind... that planet of yours, all six stars, and the entirety of the earth-sun system are all space toast.
Also, considering that [the most massive star we know of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_massive_stars) is itself 315 solar masses, such a black hole could probably only form from the mergers of several smaller black holes. Perhaps instead of a hypernova, the planet could have been exposed to a [black-hole merger event](http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/encyc_mod3_q6.html)?
# Suggestions:
This is a really creative setting and I'd love to see it work, so here are a few suggestions to make the scenario more believable.
I see two ways you could make this work:
1. Create an alternate history in which astronomers have known about this system for centuries. The hypernova occurred aeons ago and the system migrated thousands of lightyears to reach our stellar neighborhood since then. You lose a connection to real world events, but physics is mostly preserved. I say mostly because it's still very questionable that such a system would be found in this part of the galaxy.
2. Have a wormhole suddenly deposit the system into our galaxy from elsewhere. The hypernova occurred on the other side of the universe, where conditions beyond our current understanding of astronomy allowed the system to form as you have described. This way you maintain a connection to the real world and, considering that we really don't know what happens when black holes collide, **technically** don't violate any laws of physics as far as I know--you just make a few up.
Happy worldbuilding!
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Odds are basically nonexistent.
From this [list of nearby stars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs), there are perhaps 50 stars within the 10-20 lightyear range. The [nearest discovered black hole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_black_holes) is 2600 light years away, and its far smaller than the mass you mention.
The odds of finding a single system with a very particular 6 sun system and a black hole, completely undetected? Well, let me just say that Han Solo really didn't like me telling him the odds.
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Other posters of answers and comments have discussed the impossibility of a nearby massive back hole. Also, the hypernova has too many problems to be worth considering. This does not prevent there being three pairs of binary star system with the 10 to 20 light year range. This is reasonably plausible.
So how to do it? You can follow the example of previous science fiction authors. For example, Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle's *Fifth Planet* (1963) has a planetary system called Helios, with a system of five planets, passing close to our solar system. Now this is something that hasn't, isn't or will not happen. The close passage of Helios happens in 2087.
If this had happened in the real world Helios would have been visible in our skies for millennia. It would have a major aspect of astronomy which it would have dominated culture, been part of our stories, and integral to history. Fred Hoyle was a major scientist and would have known he was rearranging the universe to make interstellar travel easier to do, for the story.
Basically you can do the same thing rearrange space within ten to twenty light years and add the three binary stars you want to have in your fictional future. Too many writers allow themselves to be dominated the tyranny of the real world, forgetting writers have the privilege of rejigging the world to better help their story to happen. Just take a list of the nearest stars within 20 light years and add your three fictional systems. Bingo!
If you want to devise a plausible means of slipping your three binary stars into being within 20 light years, just assume there is a compact, dense cloud of gas and dust that blocks seeing the three binary stars. The three binary stars can be relatively close to each other, or arranged in an approximate line of sight from our position in space to be blocked from observation, so effectively all three binaries are invisible. The dust cloud could be relatively close to the solar system as long as the three binaries lie along that line of sight.
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The only physical place such an assembly of stars could take place isn't in the stellar arms (where we are) but in a globular cluster, where tens of thousands of stars are packed in a tight grouping.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u61Kg.jpg)
While the configuration you suggest is still unlikely (multiple binary stars orbiting a black hole), the odds of many stars and solar systems orbiting a central black hole seem pretty high. The view would be spectacular, with the sky so densely packed with stars that it would not be dark at night, and the central black hole (assuming you are close enough to orbit it but you are not living in an era where it is consuming large masses of gas or consuming stars, so the accretion disc would be minimal or quiescent) would provide a dazzling "Einstein ring" effect, magnifying the light of stars that pass through the ring to your location.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yZlOH.jpg)
Of course there are several issues with living in this location. Firstly, the black hole itself is very dangerous. If there is enough infalling matter, an accretion disc will form, and the frictional energy of materials accelerating at high fractions of *c* will be emitting radiation in all wavelengths, subjecting planets to high levels of everything from infra red to x-ray radiation. Life will have a hard time establishing itself or evolving under a powerful barrage of radiation. The powerful gravitational field of the black hole will also have stars orbiting at tremendous speeds, so the odds of close stellar encounters disrupting planetary orbits is actually quite high.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p2mLJ.jpg)
Another, and more subtle issue is globular clusters are very old structures, and formed when there were far fewer "metallic" elements in the universe. Metal poor star systems will be lacking in most of the elements needed to support life, much less technology.
Finally, although the view is spectacular, globular clusters orbit the Milky Way at an average radius of 40 *kiloparsecs* (130,000 light-years) or more, which is sort of the opposite to the desired effect.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eaTrk.jpg)
OTOH, if there is a means of accelerating a starship to very high fractions of *c*, the crew could have very little time pass while hundreds of thousands of years pass on Earth. John C Wright's "[Count to a Trillion](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0765367459)" series of books has a character waiting out a 70,000 year period while his love travels to and from a nearby cluster. Other hand waves, like hyperspatial wormholes or using the Alcubierre Warp Drive cold make the globular cluster accessible to the characters in the story.
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**Definitely not.**
A hypernova explosion only 10 to 20 lightyears from Earth would affect the Earth significantly and the impact of the radiation would give a clear signal here (even it it happened 100 Million years ago). The signal will consist of a combination of a mass extinction event with the deposition of sediments altered in their isotopical composition due to the creation of radionuclides.
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Context: The inhabitants of my world, humans, live on a supercontinent divided into three subcontinents **separated by seas.** The supercontinent is located above the equator in what is roughly the size and location of Europe in our own world, and the orientation and orbit of the planet is just like our own. Past this is, more or less, just ocean. The northern and southern subcontinents are inhabited by people (originated in the north, and land bridge during an ice age encouraged some to trek to the south), but the subcontinent in the middle is lucky enough to see one visitor per week. Currently, the people of my world live with early 20th century technology.
The subcontinent is essentially just an **open grassland** with no subterranean resources (coal, oil). There are thin rivers and streams throughout the subcontinent, and though I haven't figured out how the geography will lend to this, the subcontinent does receive seasonal rainfall.
As I have already pondered and researched and even read answers to another post, the **lack of resources** would make living on the subcontinent undesirable. This is my current justification for the subcontinent being uninhabited. The dilemma comes from the fact that there is little else for the people of my world to set foot on. Only the polar ice caps and various tiny islands, incapable of sustaining settlements, exist beyond the supercontinent. It is in my current assumption, to be frank, that the people of my world would eventually want to settle on this neglected land anyway. To be clear, the people of my world do not wish to conquer, nor is there an issue such as an overpopulation crisis.
As it can be assumed from my last post way back when, a new front to a war will open on this subcontinent—a rather meaningless war with vague motivations, none of which include the securing of any strategic resources or even a feasible strategic position—between two parties from the north. In order for this front to be fought, the two warring parties need to be able to send soldiers and munitions to the subcontinent\*by sea. For symbolic and literary purposes, I want the subcontinent to be uninhabited before this front opens; after the front closes or the war ends, I am indifferent as to whether or not there is a motivation for a settlement project.
What can discourage the people of my world from settling on this subcontinent, which yields nothing but, perhaps, a whole lot of space for solace? Am I wrong to believe that the people of my world would be inherently drawn to the subcontinent simply because there is (basically) nothing else out there?
Edit: The subcontinent itself should not be dangerous to live in.
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**If there can be grass, there can be people. So there must be something else that is bad.**
And people can put up with a lot of bad. Bad weather can be dealt with by migrations, and huge lands of open grass sound good for pastoralist nomads. Disasters like fires or tornadoes or floods all happen in settled lands on our planet and people cope. People can coexist with large predators that eat people.
People living in a region can resist colonization by other people - the Papuans resisted colonization by the Austronesians for hundreds of years. But no longer. Plus that is "people living in a region" which you don't want.
**It will have to be bugs.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VYu2R.jpg)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsetse_fly>
[The history of African trypanosomiasis](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2270819/)
>
> Throughout history, African trypanosomiasis has severely repressed the
> economic and cultural development of Central Africa.
>
>
> African animal trypanosomiasis or nagana disease is caused by T.
> congolense, T. vivax and T. brucei spp. In wild animals, these
> parasites cause relatively mild infections while in domestic animals
> they cause a severe, often fatal disease. All domestic animals can be
> affected by nagana and the symptoms are fever, listlessness,
> emaciation, hair loss, discharge from the eyes, oedema, anaemia...
>
>
>
>
> Human African trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness is caused by two
> subspecies of T. brucei, T. brucei gambiense and T. brucei
> rhodesiense... The symptoms of this stage are fever, headaches, joint
> pains and itching. The second or late stage of the disease, also known
> as the neurological phase, is characterised by the presence of the
> parasites in the cerebrospinal fluid [3]. In general, this is when the
> typical signs of the disease occur: confusion, disturbed sleep
> pattern, sensory disturbances, extreme lethargy, poor condition and
> coma. If left untreated, sleeping sickness patients die within
> months...
>
>
>
It is not hard to find hyperbolic superlatives when reading about bad things in Africa - as regards sleeping sickness I found "green desert", "uninhabitable zones", "unpopulated" etc. I found recent account stating that in some areas mortality from sleeping sickness is higher than that from HIV. I found accounts of people moving animal teams thru these zones and travelling at night so their animals were not bitten by the fly. Clearly people live all over Africa now, but if you are trying to farm and your animal labor dies, and people die regularly, that is a bad place to farm.
In your world, the equatorial grasslands have flies and the flies have disease. It can be comparable to sleeping sickness. Wild animals in the region are carriers. It affects domestic animals and people too. People crossing the region must travel on foot and wear fly protection or travel at night and seal themselves in tents during the day when flies are out.
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## Stink
There could be a naturally high sulphur content in the soil, and microbes that metabolise it into something like [thioacetone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thioacetone):
>
> In 1889, an attempt to distill the chemical in the German city of Freiburg was followed by cases of vomiting, nausea and unconsciousness in an area with a radius of 0.75 kilometres (0.47 mi) around the laboratory due to the smell.
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Just walking on the ground could release wafts of the "fearful" smell, with only thin tracks free of the microbes available for travel.
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## Liquefaction
Some soils turn into liquid when struck by earthquakes. It doesn't kill people much, but it ruins cities. If the whole damn continent liquifies in response to regular moderate earthquakes, it'll be another (partial) reason not to settle there.
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Right off the bat, I have to point out that open grassland is itself a very valuable resource, worth a lot to the cattle industry (or whatever grazing domesticated animals exist on your world). And even if there were literally no resources to be found, as long as food could be grown there or animals can live there (or fish can be found off the coasts), people would settle there. History is full of cultures fleeing tyrannical rule or conquering, and though you say that your world's people don't wish to conquer, I'd be very skeptical if you claimed nobody in your world's history had ever wanted to be independent from anyone else and go somewhere new. Crossing seas is no major obstacle either; the Polynesians crossed almost the entire Pacific Ocean.
Sadly for your premise, unless this subcontinent is far too dangerous to live in, it will be well-settled by default. And keep in mind the bar for danger is very high, seeing as places like the Sahara and Greenland are populated (albeit sparsely). Given this, here are the options I can think of that come closest to what you asked for:
**1) The land was inhabited, but they're gone now**
Some recent calamity, like a widespread crop failure or plague, wiped out the vast majority of the subcontinent's inhabitants, and the rest fled after their civilization collapsed. The land is now uninhabited, and people fear to colonize it again out of superstition. I don't expect this excuse to work for very long though, since after a generation (20, 30 years tops) enterprising colonists will doubtless decide to claim the land anyway.
**2) The land is still inhabited, just very sparsely**
A nomadic people call this subcontinent home, but there are so few of them that your one-visitor-a-week (why one a week, anyway? That's an oddly specific immigration policy for a country that you didn't want anyone to live in) is unlikely to run into any of them. The large powers in your world are on good terms with this people and, as you said, aren't into conquest. However, whatever sets off the world war is so important to them that they go back on their peaceful ways and invade the subcontinent to duke it out there.
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## Salt
Maybe the grass is some sort of hardcore halophile and the ground is riddled with salt; what isn't salt is dead iron oxide like in much of Australia. Cattle can't graze on it; crops don't grow on it. Water is OK, if brackish, in the highlands, but down river it's undrinkable.
Add in fierce winds and extreme day/night temperature differentials and the end result will be something like the Russian steppe, but with salt. Maybe there's some nomads, who are incredibly fierce and have great kidneys; everyone else just doesn't bother.
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TL;DR: No food fit for humans or livestock
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The grass covering the subcontinent is poisonous to almost all animals. The few exceptions that are immune to the poison are poisonous themselves (accumulating the poison from their food). This means there is *nothing* to eat, neither for humans nor livestock.
The coast is almost completely composed of steep and high cliffs. Strong, chaotic currents and unpredictable storms make fishing from shore impossible and fishing with small boats an unsustainable risk.
The grass also displaces other plants and quickly regrows after cleared from an area. Luckily for life on that planet, it can only survive on that specific subcontinent.
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Lack of iodine.
This region is particularly poor in iodine. Put it before the iodization of salt was commonplace. There are, in fact, regions that were never permanently settled for want of iodine.
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Based on various answers, I would like to present my current solution.
Inland, the **soil is nutrient poor and acidic,** particularly due to a scarcity of calcium and magnesium. This is due to *frequent* rainfall (storm cells are manipulated onto the subcontinent by the geography of the others) that leaches these ions out of the soil and washes them away into the various streams and thin rivers; the same phenomenon can be observed with rainforests, which counterintuitively have poor quality soil. The rainfall also results in a lack of iodine, a critical component of animal diets.
If, for whatever reason, rainfall does not reach certain coastal regions, **sea spray salinates** the land there; which makes it so that the crops of the world cannot grow on it either. There are some grasses in these regions, all halophiles. I haven't taken a really hard look at the geography of my world, but this can be a wild card.
There are multiple omnivorous species of flies that are native to the subcontinent. They primarily feed off the grass, but they may also fight and consume each other. The species are in competition, and if that is not enough for population control, the constant rain threatens to wash eggs away. The flies carry a **parasite** that cannot thrive in the human body but can easily make a host out of any livestock.
How this preference of hosts is achieved is something I'm unsure of and would be glad to be enlightened about. Preventing devastation of the livestock in the other subcontinents in the case that the flies inadvertently migrate, the flies are horrible with temperature tolerance outside of their typical range, and they are the main vectors of the parasite.
The result of all these factors is a subcontinent that seems almost completely normal on the surface. For anyone seeking solace, it may even seem like a pleasant paradise (mind the flies). In reality, all the extremophilic grass growing on terrible soil makes settlement an ordeal, to say the least. Not only will the livestock be poorly nourished, but they fall prey to parasitism. Crops cannot be grown, and even if the humans of my world somehow find a way to maintain crops or livestock, their diet will have a severe lack of iodine. For anyone seeking to fight a war, the land is bearable so long as the soldiers receive food and water from home (the motives for the war are totally out of the realm of this question, as they, again, have nothing to do with gaining a strategic upper hand).
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To settle you need a stable food supply. Grasslands don't have that much for humans to naturally eat anyways so we need to farm it. Could you adjust something about the weather or food crops that they have available to them to cause them to be unable to to effectively farm there?
EDIT: Wait, early 20th century tech? That makes it a lot more difficult since you can bring in all your food by train.
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One another disease scenario
Malaria is said to have been one of the things impeding European colonization of Africa as long as quinine hasn't been available. Unlike already mentioned trypanosomiasis, malaria affects humans; but in case medicine is present, the continent isn't dangerous to live in.
(Naturally, any fatal illness with newly available drug will do.)
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What if the soil conditions are too poor for the people's crops, but support the local grass? That way, even if the crops can grow in the soil, they'd be outcompeted by native flora. Being unable to grow crops there would mean that they'd have to be imported from other lands, which would hinder, if not outright prevent, colonization.
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> To be clear, the people of my world do not wish to conquer, nor is there an issue such as an overpopulation crisis.
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If your people are already this different from humans, it's probably okay to just decide that they lack much of our inclination to explore and settle faraway lands.
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# You need to poison it
Making the land economically unsustainable while keeping it as a viable battleground is pretty difficult.
You have to exclude all natural resources. With 20th-century technology, that's really hard; even salted lowlands will have *some* resources that somebody will come to harvest.
E.g. remember the Penguin Islands? Nothing grew there because birds lived off the sea and covered everything in shit, so nothing could grow - until late in 18th century, it was recognised that the shit was a potent fertilizer; the islands are now better known as Guano islands.
Salt? They will harvest it. *Somebody* will find a way to make that ever so slightly cheaper than the other methods of getting salts on the other continents. Even if it's just for a specific region in one of the other continents, there will be a permanent settlement.
There will be scientists looking for drugs, or plants that can be used to make drugs.
There will be wildlife. *Somebody* will want to eat it. Even expenses won't be a problem - there's a market for hard-to-get food, even if only as a status symbol.
(You can't avoid wildlife, it will evolve to tolerate the mercury, just like the plants.)
Poison, on the other hand, will be a strong discourager.
Mercury. The plants that live there survive mercury, and use organic mercury compounds.
# Option 2: Regular Catastrophes
Every 20 years, the land is flooded.
E.g. excentric planetary orbit and a large moon, every 20 years or so the moon will be in either the near or the far side of the sun so the tide is high enough to have a 3-meter flood - you can't protect a whole continent from that sea level. (The other continents do have land that's above that level, but sadly, the middle continent does not.)
Or maybe the middle continent has a mega-geysir, connected to a large deposit of some mineral that emits huge amounts of fluorine. Grass can survive this no problem, but animals typically don't survive this, and while humans could protect themselves, doing this at a mass scale is prohibitively expensive and accidents do happen so it's unattractive for managers (nobody cares about the workers, there's usually enough cheap labor who's willing to take risks).
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So I have a story about a world where honor is the most important thing and where if someone insults you... *duel to the death*. Most often this is peacefully resolved but when duels happen I want a kind of Wild West theme with revolvers and the like. So with 21st century gun tech why would people still duel with revolvers?
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Sticking to the good old tradition: we are not punks who fight with laser, plasma annihilators and all that garbage used by these honor-less two legged beings who dare calling themselves men.
Our ancestors, those were real men, defended their land and honor with guns and lead, and so we will do.
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The answer by *The Square-Cube Law* sounds good, but let me add **tradition** to the mix.
Honor can only be satisfied by a duel which meets the *traditional forms*. Traditional in your world are swords, and muzzle-loading pistols, and specific models of six-shooters. There are elaborate rituals of challenge and acceptance, selection of site and *selection of weapons.*
What is the difference between killing in a duel (lawful or at least not prosecuted in your world) and plain murder? Tradition! Anybody who shows up with a semi-automatic would demonstrate contempt for traditions and honor. It would instantly *turn* the attempted duel into a murder.
Your setting has to decide if the distinction is written into law (any law that is written down can be searched for loopholes) or unwritten (any cop who is *not a gentleman* might arrest a duelist).
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# Laws and regulations
If you try to duel with AK-47's or M16's you are prone to more collateral damage. And don't get me started on UZI's.
And that's just late 20th century tech. 21st century weaponry is bound to increase someone's capacity to take down a lot of people more efficiently.
Revolvers, on the other hand, are 19th century tech. [The first patent for a revolver is from 1818](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#Patents). They don't have too great a fire rate when compared to a fully automatic 21st century weapon and it's extremely hard to modify them to fire faster. They also take long to reload even if you cheat with those reloading accessories. So the odds of someone going spree after a duel are smaller.
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**Deliberate range limitation**
If a duel is all about "honour" then expanding the scope by killing or injuring innocent bystanders or brassing up their property is unacceptable (nod to The Square-Cube Law's post). Cutting loose with pistol rounds, even nineteenth century types, endangers people for hundreds of metres around, while rifle rounds can go 3+ kilometres (7.62 NATO).
The solution is to use an ammunition / firearm combination that will not endanger bystanders or property. Use a round that consists of tiny, 1 mm diameter pellets of shot in a gel suspension that will disintegrate after it has travelled about 10 metres (or whatever the standard duelling distance is). Fire the round at low velocity but make it a very large calibre round, say .60 or thereabouts. At short range - ie before it reaches disintegration distance - it will blow big holes in anyone it hits. However, once it disintegrates, the square-cube law (the principle, not the user on this site!) means that the air resistance on each pellet will be very high relative to its mass, so they will each decelerate very rapidly in the air to non-harmful speeds. Spectators should probably still wear goggles to avoid eye injuries. Note that this is why shotguns firing very small shot are devastating at very short range but quite safe at surprisingly short distances. (I vaguely recall reading about a weapon / ammunition combination like this for use by sky marshals dealing with hijackers to avoid puncturing the hull or windows and depressurising airliners, but cannot find a reference.)
Trying to make a large, very low velocity round cycle a semi-automatic reliably would be very challenging. This is not an issue with a revolver, though, as the cycling is achieved through pressure on the trigger (double action) or manually cocking the hammer (single action). The revolver would be very bulky due to the diameter of the rounds, so possibly a 4-shot model would be standard for everyday carriage rather than a 6-shot model.
The nature of these rounds would mean that modern body armour would be quite effective against them. Duels would require that participants were unarmoured.
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If you don't necessarily have to stick with the "to the death"-rule, which would have completely depopulated our real-world-nobility very quickly, you can take the the real-world-explanation:
The point of duels was not trying to kill each other, but rather to impose a certain risk and danger on the act of insulting someone elses honour.
Dueling pistols therefore have always been fairly inaccurate and archaic technologywise (for example refraining from rifling the barrel, decreasing accuracy), significantly reducing the chance of a fatal outcome.
Funnily enough even so dueling became such a problem that most nations and militaries outlawed it during the course of the 19th century because the cost of losing officers and nobleman to pointless feuds was still deemed to high.
Duels to the death would have been completely unsustainable.
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Fighting with honour and choosing to duel with revolver type weapons are two different things.
I would think a using a revolver type weapon when other more modern or useful are available, would be a personal choice.
The aspect of an honourable battle for cowboys is the same as samurais, this can be seen in the their movies as they share the same morals but what is more important is their reason for this style.
Both cultures the Americans and japanese lived in a lawless fashion at the times. Seeing your loved ones or local villages raped or brutalised by thugs with no morals or constant underhand tactics was the norm and any kind hearted civilian was used to this immoral and brutal life.
So those that trained hard with experts in either shooting or sword fighting learned a way that above a sneaky or thuggish way of fighting and their skills were so high that they knew they were above unhand tactics. At such a high level they realize they could easily defeat these local thugs so they only respect those others that are as high level as they are.
So it becomes a game of respect and sportsmanship, you only draw your gun or raise your sword when or your opponent is worthy and when high level fighters meet, it is all about the fight and not disrespecting them or others.
So if it is just about using revolvers I think that is a personal choice with a nod to nostalgia but if there needs to be a reason for this type of one on one life and death respect battle, then possibly they could have a back story where they lived in a lawless ruthless time and those that trained hard and became experts, even on opposite sides still respected each other in battle due to their high level.
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Calibre availability, assuming modern weapons means modern armour too then you want to use the biggest bullets possible in a duel to the death. Large calibre pistols tend to be revolvers and in fact small capacity revolvers at that, mostly 4 or 5 shots for 50 cal pistol rounds and if you wanted to use 50 BMG ammo that's a single shot pistol.
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Trial by combat has always been *ritualised* - both in fiction, from the duels of the [harringtonverse](https://honorverse.fandom.com/wiki/Duel) to the trials of clans from [battletech](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Trial_of_Grievance.) and [in the real world](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_combat)
Practically trial by combat is going to risk injury or death, so some form of judicial sanction is required - and a standard form of duelling keeps things 'fair' to an extent. Your average cowhand isn't going to have an advantage over a well trained, practiced professional duelist - but between equals it would be fair.
Since both sides are using the same weapons - its also possible to ensure one side doesn't cheat (by having weapon-selection randomised, or letting the challenged pick his weapon first). Rather than having the rule for a specific weapon type, they might be around calibre, and round count or that a weapon is single action.
Grayson's reasoning for katanas for duelling would be useful to copy here - that the culture of the place idolised westerns, or modelled themselves on it, so when trial by combat became legal, that was their first choice.
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After the apocalypse caused by the third and massively fatal wave of the mutated Covid19 virus, civilisation has collapsed. The only survivors are survivalists. It is well know that they stock up on old-fashioned weapons.
Blacksmiths among them continue to forge these more primitive weapons and making gunpowder is still understood. All the fancy stuff, like lasers, stop working when they break down and there are no spare parts and no mains electricity to keep them charged.
Survivalists have a frontiers-person mentality and so they will naturally settle serious arguments with gunfights.
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A revolver has a known small number of bullets and a known firing rate and isn't a real combat weapon. If you only have a revolver, turning the duel into a battle puts you at disadvantage.
Laws ban the use of more effective weapons in duels, so you can't use the excuse of "I am just ready to duel" to carry a more effective weapon.
Legal dueling weapons are also peace bonded; when you use them, they broadcast and record their use, so using them for common murder is impractical. The peace bond is just a broadcast, so you can use it in self defence.
Carrying a revolver means you are ready to defend your honour. Carrying a rifle or semiautomatic weapon means you are deplorable low class scum.
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## Modern weapons require no skill to use.
With a gyro-stabilized, recoil-compensated, AI smart targeting enabled mid-21st century smart gun, any moron can score a kill on 5 km range. Using modern firearms would make duels too easy. But it takes real skill to hit someone with a classic 19th century revolver. It does of course take even more skill with even older weapons. But flintlock pistols are so inaccurate that they require more luck than skill. And melee weapons aren't deadly enough with modern medicine, so there isn't enough risk of death involved to make the duel honorable.
In the eyes of your society, revolvers are the ideal compromise between deadliness and skill requirement.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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Closed 5 years ago.
* This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
* You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
[Improve this question](/posts/112887/edit)
Let's say I'm returning home in my near-future space capsule, but instead of the leisurely Mach 32 the Apollo astronauts experienced striking the atmosphere, through major [plot-device hand-wavium] interference, I re-enter at Mach 172.
**What would happen?**
I'm guessing I'm instantly vaporized. But what else? Is earth doomed as well?
Edit: Capsule specifics
Let's say my re-entry craft is about 6 meters in diameter and 4 meters tall in the classic gumdrop shape of Apollo era space capsules, with a weight of 10,000 kilograms.
My ablative shielding was designed to withstand up to 20km/s reentry speeds, but is recommended to only re-enter up to 16km/s.
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**You break up in the atmosphere. You make a sound as loud as heavy traffic.**
Mach 172 is 57 km / second; a reasonable speed for a meteor.
I used this site: <https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/ImpactEffects/>
and gave you 10 m diameter and the same density as ice.
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> Earth Impact Effects Program
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> Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh, and Gareth Collins
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> Your Inputs: Distance from Impact: 1000.00 meters ( = 3280.00 feet )
> Projectile diameter: 10.00 meters ( = 32.80 feet ) Projectile Density:
> 1000 kg/m3 Impact Velocity: 53.00 km per second ( = 32.90 miles per
> second ) Impact Angle: 90 degrees Target Density: 2500 kg/m3 Target
> Type: Sedimentary Rock Energy: Energy before atmospheric entry: 7.35
> x 1014 Joules = 175.68 KiloTons TNTThe average interval between
> impacts of this size somewhere on Earth is 28.8 years Major Global
> Changes: The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses
> negligible mass.The impact does not make a noticeable change in the
> tilt of Earth's axis (< 5 hundreths of a degree).The impact does not
> shift the Earth's orbit noticeably. Atmospheric Entry: The projectile
> begins to breakup at an altitude of 98800 meters = 324000 ftThe
> projectile bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 37000
> meters = 121000 ftThe residual velocity of the projectile fragments
> after the burst is 39.7 km/s = 24.6 miles/sThe energy of the airburst
> is 3.23 x 1014 Joules = 0.77 x 10-1 MegaTons.No crater is formed,
> although large fragments may strike the surface.
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> The air blast will arrive approximately 1.87 minutes after
> impact.Peak Overpressure: 654 - 1310 Pa = 0.00654 - 0.0131 bars =
> 0.0929 - 0.186 psiMax wind velocity: 1.54 m/s = 3.44 mphSound Intensity: 56 dB (Loud as heavy traffic)
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I was interested to see that something this size and speed hits earth's atmosphere every 28 years. Ho hum.
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Mach 172 [is](https://www.calculateme.com/speed/mach/to-meters-per-second/172) about 57km/s. If your re-entry vehicle has the same mass as the Apollo Command/Service module of 11,900kg, then it will have a kinetic energy of about 7.7 terajoules. That's [about](https://www.convertunits.com/from/terajoule/to/kiloton+[explosive]) 1.8 kilotons of TNT equivalent, so the size of a tiny tactical nuke. So the Earth is certainly safe, but if it was only intended to handle Apollo-level re-entry speeds, your craft certainly isn't, as it has about 29 times as much kinetic energy which needs to be dissipated.
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The details depend on how much of your capsule survives the fall. I'm not sure if you'd be vaporized, but you'd definitely die of *something.* As for what happens to earth, are you familiar with [project thor and the concept of kinetic bombardment?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment#Real_life_concepts_and_theories)
The basic idea behind that weapon system is dropping a large mass from orbit to cause a kinetic explosion. (an explosion generated simply by kinetic energy, not by an explosive payload) According to the info in the link, 8 kilometers per second is a fast enough re-entry speed for a tungsten rod of approximately 20 square feet to cause a great deal of damage with an impact speed of mach 10. (comparable to a small nuke, according to some estimates) Your capsule is entering not at 8 kilometers per second, but at almost 60. It will have a great deal more drag than the tungsten pole, but also more mass, and I imagine after some atmospheric burning/vaporization, it will lose a lot of that drag.
So I think if your capsule is durable enough to make it to Earth in some form, everything nearby is in trouble, but the earth as a whole is safe. I'm going to keep researching to see if I can find an approximation of how much of a capsule could make it, and how much it would be slowed down. I'll update the answer with anything useful I find.
**EDIT**
It was surprisingly hard to find information on temperatures during reentry at such high speed. I found a record of a supersonic jet reaching mach 20 and heating to around 2000C. Spacecraft seemed to hit around 1300C at a bit less than half that speed. NASA's heat shielding looks like it can take close to 4000C, but I could not find details on what happens above that temperature. (I'm sure it's not good) I'm not sure how the temperature grows as heat increases, so I'm not sure what the odds are that your capsule survives. My gut says that the temperature increase probably slows as the speed gets higher and higher, and your capsule will decelerate REALLY quickly, so I still think there's a good chance some of it will survive, but unfortunately I'm not going to be able to find a definite answer.
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You shatter and burn up in the upper atmosphere, assuming you're angle of approach approximates 90° to the ground, if you're off that by much you're still going to shatter but also bounce off the atmosphere at an acute angle and fall away into the universe. Bits of the capsule will probably make it surprisingly close to the ground due to being composed of heat resistant alloys.
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Even if your heat shield stands, the at this speeds high atmosphere is like concrete. Your spaceship, which is not designed to support that much external pressure, is crashed like an egg at 100 km of height.
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So, this is for a story that has a medieval/fantasy vibe. It has to do with the small village my main character comes from. It's a very old village, having begun with a small monastery. I was thinking it be very simple, made of stone and possibly having a thatched roof. It would be maybe three rooms large, one where the monks would sleep, one where they would store scrolls, and another where they would hold mass. They would have a dirt basement where food was kept, and a small wooden hut/live pin to possibly store livestock.
How long would it take to construct these two structures if they were located somewhat far from the nearest town, having a river, a forest nearby, and located in the center of a mid-sized valley? They have access to a creature that is much like a mule, as well, as they live along the hilly wilderness.
The majority of the information I've found was about much larger and complex constructions, which I don't want to focus on at the moment.
I'm aware that it takes time to build a stone building back in medieval times, and so when I say simple, I meant simple as in relating to other stone creations such as cathedrals, and temples. I know it took decades for them to build those types, so I was thinking that may take considerably less. The wildlands are mostly forested, with tall, older trees. There are plenty rocks along the river side, and the mountain range nearby, is within an hours journey on foot. This church/building should be simple in style, but still enough to leave a mark. This is a monastery, that was created to bring blessings to "the creator" and to keep the wilderness at bay, at the edge of an old kingdom.
Would it make more sense to have the village sprout from a meager wooden Monastery and then, improve upon over the years instead of having it constructed of stone first?
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One thing to consider is that not all monasteries were huge flowery artifices taking decades to design, carve, and build up.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KS1FE.jpg)
Here is an entirely *un*imposing stone built monastery in Ireland. These clochan (bell shaped or beehive shaped) oratories and houses were common. A far cry indeed from someplace like Mount St. Michel or Mt. Athos!
Notice the distinct lack of dressed stone and the lack of complex architecture and the lack of all the fiddly bits usually associated with religious architecture. Basically, a circle of field stones built up with a small doorway and perhaps a small window; the roof gradually arches over the interior.
I know from family experience that a single man can build a field stone wall about 50 foot long by six foot wide and four foot tall inside of a summer's spare time. I'd estimate that a single monk could, using gathered field stones from the area, build such a hut within half a year or less. A small community of monks could knock out a whole monastery probably within a year or less.
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There is much literature on cathedrals, castles and fortifications. Cathedrals often take decades to build, with multigenerational workers, and the quality and expertise required to build them stretched all involved to the limit.
It sounds like your structure is a lot simpler, sleeping quarters and storage - however keep in mind in medieval times livestock often was inside your house, rather than a separate barn.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9rNV9.jpg)
My experience in the construction industry is obviously using modern tools and materials - however the very basic elements of a building has not essentially changed since medieval times.
Stone houses could either be dressed stone or simply rocks found nearby. For instance in the highlands and in mountainous regions, where people are sparse and expertise not readily available, building rock houses was relatively easy - you can still see some evidence of these today. These are loosely assembled random piles of rocks to form walls, such as the diagram above.
Even then though you would need to gather the surrounding stones to pile them high, this may take you several days. Also the size of your structure would always be quite small - keep in mind that to roof it you would need tree branches to span the width of the house. This will limit the size.
Finding and timber and then thatching is another exercise - I know someone who thatched a small roof manually and it took him 2 full days by himself - with thatching premade. Timber will be determined by what condition you find them in - and what tools you have but I imagine if you are in proximity to good quality, correct length timber you would be able to gather and erect a roof frame in around 2-3 days.
Over all perhaps a week for a rudimentary basic rock house with branch-timber roof frame and thatching.
If however you are thinking of a monastery like those often depicted in film, these structures would take years. Dressing timber, honing and shaping stone, even placing flooring (which was not common) would take a long time with primitive tools. Dressing timber (getting branches off, sawing it, joining it) takes a lot of work, and you also need manpower.
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# 42 Arbitrary units
The reason you can only find the build times for large stone structures is that you don't build small stone structures unless you don't have much choice. The only reason to work in stone in that period is because you want to build a large imposing structure.
You need a source of stone, people to quarry the stone, stone masons to cut and dress the stone to fit. Stone masons are skilled workers, they're expensive to employ, there's an infrastructure of blacksmiths and other support workers that come with them. If you're trying to build a small structure you build it out of wood or [wattle and daub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wattle_and_daub). Easy, accessible materials that don't require such expensive skilled labour.
Digging a basement is also a vast amount of work for no real gain and liable to flood. Everything should be at ground level.
Remember that the chimney didn't show up in Europe until the 12thC and even then only in large buildings, they didn't become common in smaller buildings until the 16thC, so your monastery probably consists of single room buildings.
Building multiroom structures in stone would imply that actually these are really quite rich and influential monks, not a small poor rural monastery with nothing much to their names.
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Let me just echo what everyone else is saying. In this time period, stone building is a big deal. There's nothing simple about it. If they scavenge the stone from an older structure, that's possible.
Monasteries during this time were big, big business. Even a small one, in a small town is a way to generate income, as:
* a religious retreat for the wealthy
* a place where beer was produced
* a place where preserves were produced
* a place where books were copied/preserved
A monastery [always aimed to be self-sufficient](http://www.habsburger.net/en/chapter/monastery-business-matters-monasteries-and-trade-middle-ages). What that means is that they produce enough goods and and animals there, on site so that they need nothing else ( or close to it), in order to limit their contact with the outside world.
The buildings and areas you're proposing aren't really in line with what a monastery really was for the time--and that even when they were ostensibly "poor" and "simple" they were actually a product of infrastructure and donations from nobility.
And you likely do need a small pond stocked with fish [in their grange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monastic_grange), if you are following the Catholic no meat Fridays rule.
You're talking about a well-stocked valley with decent resources for population, so you may want to rethink the whole "simple" thing. Because this area isn't poor or humble. They have access to a lot of food sources. For Medieval times, they'd be doing well, actually.
If you've researched the more complex structures and have a timeline on that, go with that timeline.
Let's look at each structure, because, I can tell you that it's pretty likely to be series of buildings rather than one big building, mainly because of fire:
**the basement.**
There won't be a basement. At the very least, it won't be under any building if you are going to the least expense. It will be a root cellar, or a series of cellars dug out on their own. It's going to be shallow and small, because you don't want the trouble of hitting the water table (and these things tend to flood in rainy times) and building the supports is an engineering challenge the larger it is. When I say small, I mean closet sized. And it's unlikely to even have stairs down. Think, hole in the ground with a door on. If there's small hills, I would just build them into the side of a hill--that solves the water table problem at least, though it will still flood a bit during rainy times.
**chapel**
Even a one room building that fits, say, 20 people total for mass--it's going to be built respectfully and well. That's going to take time. This structure is the one most likely to be built to last, with stone.
**sleeping quarters**
build it out of wood. if this is early enough in the medieval period it might have a hole in the roof, in the center over the fire pit, because there are no chimneys... BTW livestock is unlikely to get a separate room, especially if you're going for humble...
**livestock area**
Build a shelter, don't bother with most or any of the walls, just posts to tie things up and a roof to keep the rain out. Pretty fancy though, having them in their own area. But, then, monks in general had a better standard of living...
**scroll storage**
build it out of wood, might be in the same room as sleeping quarters. If you want another room, build another building.
**How long will it take to build**
I am going to start with the assumption that the stones for construction have magically appeared. Because quarrying and transport is a whole other thing. Based on the small sizes of things, my lowest estimate without that is about 6 months-2 years, depending on how much help they have. They will still need wooden large beam structures (if you are going with the rooftop being thatched), and those have to be cut and cured. A real-deal church and grounds at this time takes much, much longer, more like 20 years. If you want them to be proud of their tiny chapel, have it take 5-10 years and make it all stone.
It should be wood though...because stone is hella expensive. Stone is the upgraded version. You want simple and poor--it's made of wood. If, locally, there's a good source of stone, or that's the industry of the nearby lord, I can see it being donated, and it's something that they are proud of...If stone is really available and common for the area, it's still got to be shaped a bit and stacked. If they are common, and more easy to work with than wood (which in mountain areas can be true) then everything in the area will be made from stone.
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A lot of the answers here stress that stone isn't used for simple buildings in the mediaeval period, but that depends on the time period. And also, since you're going for more of a general fantasy / historic vibe, you might also consider construction in Roman or renaissance times.
The Romans often used a kind of concrete mixed with pieces of rock, broken pottery and other garbage. It's an easy material to work with and pretty sturdy. It's also pretty quick to build with. The exact time it needs to set depends on the precise mixture, but banding in ancient structures as well as modern experience suggest that it might have taken about a day for every half a meter in height or so. The surface of the concrete was often finished using ceramic or stone tiles or bricks. In some cases, first stone slabs were put up to serve as the surface of the wall and the concrete was poured in between the slabs and allowed to settle and bond with the stone.
Building with bricks is more time consuming and was historically also quite expensive. (Which might come as a surprise considering our generation's familiarity with bricks as a cheap material during post-war reconstruction, before in recent years concrete took over even in small buildings.) A skilled bricklayer does about 600 to 800 bricks per day. If your monastery contains about 10,000 bricks that would work out to about two weeks.
But in practice construction often took a lot longer. The monastery in Ter Apel took a century to build, although it's much bigger than your monastery and it probably was constructed in several phases, each of which might have taken a few months. But then, this was the reality: monasteries were big institutions because they had to be self-sufficient to a large degree while at the same time also serving an outreach function. You'd have the convent building itself, but also a gate, a library, a bakery, a brewery and a hostel.
Even smaller buildings like brick farmhouses took time to complete, mainly because of financial concerns. Often, the building would start out as a wood-frame building and if the farmer got rich enough he'd start to replace pieces with brick walls, just a few metres every year. Similarly, farmers often started with thatched roofs, only replacing parts with ceramic tiles when they had a financial surplus.
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Just adding a little bit more info on the actual building. If you want to build a really quick building in the early medieval days you build the walls as short as possible and give it a tall round roof. As some others have mentioned, working with stone takes a long time and rather expensive if you hire someone to do it. Making a roof on the other hand is really quick and easy to do.
If you plan on making the monastery more than one level tall then I would suggest only making the first level stone and the rest out of wood or some other material. However, depending on how long the building has been around could give you reason to make it fully out of stone or rather big in size. But, if you are leading more for, it has only been around like a year or so then I would say to keep it simple.
There is a YouTuber that goes into a good bit of detail talking about medieval buildings and architecture. Here is one of his [Videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYhtjAMIV_g) that goes on to explain in a little bit more detail. In other videos, he explains about why the second floors would overhang as well and various other things. I definitely recommend taking a look at his channel.
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My world operates under a few assumptions, and changes to those assumptions are outside of the scope of this question:
* Aircraft are not considered to be any threat to warships, and due to some treaties and influential people, their development has not progressed (Weapons that would be effective against ships are largely forbidden). **However**, aircraft are utilized significantly as scout/recon/targeting craft and are essential in that role.
* Nuclear anything doesn't exist. I'll be exploring this in future questions. No nuclear power, no nuclear weapons, etc.
* There was no equivalent to the Washington Naval Treaty or other treaty limiting the size of battleships. Some battleships have become quite large, with very big guns.
* Missiles and rockets are forbidden from being used as weapons.
The world exists in a largely Late 40s, Early 50s technology setting, with some later 50s things thrown in. As this is a fictional world (Settled by space refugees who weren't able to maintain technology, some centuries ago), I'm not locked down to a date. If something wasn't researched until the 60s but could be achieved with 40s-50s equipment and methods, I'm not going to toss it out because it's "Too late"
With these in mind, **What post-World War II technologies, equipment, or other advances would be essential or extremely beneficial to include on a battleship built during the designated time period?**
I'm not particularly looking for incremental advantages, such as "Better Radar" or "Improved gun barrels" - I'm looking more for things that were game changers, such as the initial introduction of Radar to warships.
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# Guided munitions
Put a GPS tracker and a few fin stablilizers on your main battery weapons, and they will never miss again. Even if GPS is too advanced, there are several alternatives. There were missiles with TV guided warheads and laser guided bombs. The way that AEGIS surface to air missiles work is that a special targeting radar illuminates each target in a certain frequency. The missile homes in on the reflection of that frequency. The same principle would work for a surface to surface engagement. This seems like the best option of the ones I mentioned (better than GPS for moving targets), although the radar would have to be on the tower to illuminate at the 30km+ range of the big guns.
TV, laser, and radar guided munitions were all tested one way or another before the Vietnam War, so by the late 1960s at the latest. Most of them could be reasonably achievable with 1950s technology. In any case, any sort of guidance on the shells would be a big improvement.
# Cavitation rounds
Battleships are most vulnerable *under* the water line. The quickest kills of WWII often came when rounds missed short and hit ships 10 feet below the surface. In the modern fleet, by far the most damaging weapon is the heavy torpedo. By guiding itself underneath a large ship's keel and then exploding, the force of the explosion makes a vapor bubble many tens of feet across. The sudden formation of the bubble will often crack a ship in half. An [ADCAP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_48_torpedo) torpedo, for instance, exploding in the correct place will sink a 10,000 ton *Spruance*-class Destroyer with one hit.
A 16" gun can fire a round with three times more hit-power than an ADCAP. Design the shell to miss short, ballistically travel under the opposing ship, then explode. Once you have guided munitions that you can reasonably expect to hit the water just short of a moving Battleship, these weapons are feasible. With a 1500 lb+ explosive, I wouldn't doubt the ability to break a 50,000 ton battleship in two with one well placed shot.
# Conclusion
Honestly, the economics of this gun are such that you can't have battleships. There is no point laying down a 50,000 ton ship that can be killed with one shot. In this scenario, you no longer need armor, since it does no good against cavitation rounds, and you don't need triple emplacements since your shots are guided.
The new ship of the line will look very different. It will be faster and more maneuverable, and carry just one or two single barreled large caliber
(14"+) mounts. With guided munitions and very long range (accurate at 35+ km), battles will be a 'first one to fire wins' kind of thing. Electronic warfare or other way to disrupt targeting now become the most important thing to a battle.
In real conclusion, since I know you want real battleship on battleship violence, you can't have guided munitions. I hope I have convinced you.
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One of the big ones would be [gas-turbine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_propulsion#Gas_turbines) and [diesel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_propulsion#Reciprocating_diesel_engines) propulsion systems, developed starting in the late 40s and started seeing widespread use in the 1960s. Gas-turbines (essentially jet engines used to power a propeller) have an excellent power-to-weight ratio. This leads to better acceleration at the cost of poor efficiency at low power output. Many ships also carry a secondary propulsion system (usually diesel) for more efficient cruising.
The advances in propulsion mean faster warships than the WWI-era dreadnoughts if you limit size, or the ability to propel larger warships if not, even in light of a lack of nuclear steam-turbine engine option.
While aircraft ultimately superseded battleships in our timeline, battleships in yours would also need [proximity naval mine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_mine#Early_20th_century) safeguards, in addition to the mines themselves.
Radio also became a feasible means of ship-to-ship and ship-to-land communication and navigation during the early part of the 20th century, accelerated by WWII development for military use. While "better radio" is sort of outside what you're looking for, "reliable radio" is definitely something that wasn't feasible in the infancy of the technology, but later became available in the 30s and 40s.
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In the absence of missiles, one of the significant "game changers" would be the research and development of a **railgun** or **coilgun**. Magnetically propelled projectiles are seen as the next step in projectile weapon evolution and rightfully so. For example, the one being developed by the US Navy supposedly can fire sabot multiple times faster than the speed of sound, giving it roughly the same destructive potential as a modern Tomahawk missile for the fraction of the price per-shot. Imagine a fragile tungsten dart slamming into the side of your ship with as much force and accuracy as a missile. That would be utterly devastating against any vessel geared towards a more conventional gun fight.
Obviously your new age battleships would undoubtedly have larger and more numerous railguns than the currently planned *Zumwalt*-class destroyer. Alternatively, railgun armed submarines would be deadly predators, capable of briefly surfacing before perforating an unwary foe with hypersonic projectiles. Chemical propellants, while quite advanced, can't even hold a candle to magnetic weaponry in an old-fashioned ship-on-ship gunfight.
While the means of production might be a bit of a stretch for a 50's era setting, it's not inconceivable. I believe even Germany was playing with the idea during WWII, though the project like to many others never made it very far. Might make an interesting "wonder weapon" concept for your setting.
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Given the rather strange constraints, the best sort of combination of late WWII era technology and scouting aircraft would be to fit battleships with smoothbore cannon firing aerodynamic shells.
The Germans developed the "Peenemünde Arrow Shells" as a side effect of rocket research, and used with the [K-5 railway cannon](https://infogalactic.com/info/Krupp_K5). K5's modified to fire "arrow shells" could reach ranges of 150km, an incredible increase in range.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/a4wmS.jpg)
*Peenemünde Arrow Shells*
Obviously, firing at a target 100km away has a multitude of issues, so a very tight coupling of forward observer to the battleship is needed. The ship will have to have a forward observer which can get into place quickly, operate in the naval environment and be capable of protecting itself if needed. A jet powered seaplane can fulfill the bill, and one 1950 era design, the Saunders Roe SR A1 seems like an ideal fit.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PnClg.jpg)
*Saunders Roe SR A1*
This aircraft is obviously navalized, small enough to carry on board a battleship and launched off a turret catapult if necessary, and if it had been developed into a two seater, could fulfill the role of forward observer or scout very easily.
Combined with some of the other observations (such as using gas turbines and diesel engines to power the ship), a battleship capable of finding and attacking targets at very extreme ranges would be a viable weapons system. To put it in perspective, the USN is currently researching 64MJ electromagnetic railguns with a view to shelling targets up to 200km inland, and these sorts of attacks would only be viable with a UAV or other aircraft to spot the targets and provide fire corrections.
Edit to add:
A ship laid out along these lines might resemble this real life ship, with the long range cannon in turrets up front and the aircraft hanger/catapult arrangements in the stern:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/youUr.jpg)
*HMS Nelson*
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The one tech that might be allowed in your tight constraints would be advances in computers and radar so that the big gun's shells could be guided on the way down. If they could home in on ships, then you could fire over the horizon and still have a decent chance of getting a hit.
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Being able to stay at sea, without resupply, for longer than everyone else. This is a game changer. It transforms brown water navies into blue water navies and gives regional powers global reach. We can see it today; there are perhaps two countries capable of independently projecting top-tier power anywhere in the world for a sustained period (the US and France), with another few working on it (a few specific examples; the UK once it sorts out its naval air power again, China working on naval air power and in the last decade has transformed their logistical support navy to allow global deployment, Russia trying to become a serious naval power again, India ever advancing their naval ability). Some nations have tried and failed in recent years. To do it, you need a navy with global reach.
Technologies that were heavily improved in the years following WWII that massively improved the reach of warships:
Desalination.
Post WWII, the US put a lot of effort into desalination research. If you can make more freshwater, faster, for drinking, cooking, cleaning, cooling and freshwater-hungry maintenance tasks, you can extend the amount of time your ship can stay at sea without resupply. This extends the range of your ship, extends the logistic reach, just makes everything better. Ships that have to return to port every week are very limited in deployment; they need stronger logistics chains, they're more vulnerable to disruption, they need friendly ports, and so on.
Food preservation and compacting.
Similar advantages to being able to make freshwater. The more food you can carry, and the longer it lasts, the longer you can go without resupplying food. Freezer technology, preservatives, processing food to increase nutritional density. The technology of food preservation came on enormously in that time period.
Medical advances, and medical technology advances.
Crew get injured and sick. If you have to return an injured crew member to port, or transfer to another ship, it could be a very big deal. The vessel may have to effectively take time out from its primary mission to meet a support vessel to transfer crew. Even if you don't do that, you're now a sailor short; you'd need to meet another ship or return to port anyway to replace that sailor, or continue at reduced capacity. The ability to keep your crew alive and healthy makes an enormous difference.
Also, communications. The ability to communicate quickly, reliable, securely and in large quantity with a vessel is genuinely transformative. Communications technologies came on enormously in the period in question. If you, and not your opponent, can talk to your warships anywhere in the world quickly and securely, and they can talk back to you, you have the advantage. You have a single consolidated view of everything your vessels are doing, what their condition is, what they can see. The closer to real-time you can make this information, the greater your advantage is. It's a huge advantage. If your opponent can only manage one short message a day, every one of his vessels has a delay on reporting, retasking, everything. It's the difference between a navy acting as a unified whole, and acting as fifty independent vessels doing their own thing. Wars get won and lost on communications. If you (and not your opponent) can coordinate your forces in near real-time, and you can disseminate information quickly throughout your forces, you can negate opposing force advantages in weapons, numerical superiority, speed, and so on.
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**Observation Helicopters**
If aircraft are no shipkillers, there will be fewer carriers, so a battle squadron cannot count on having one. Give the battleships observation and ASW helicopters, something along the lines of a [H-13](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_H-13_Sioux) or [H-19](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_H-19_Chickasaw).
And if there are floatplanes rather than helicopters, or in addition to them, how about [jet seaplanes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_F2Y_Sea_Dart)? Might or might not be catapult-launched.
**Diesel-Electric Power**
In a battleship, [diesel-electric power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel%E2%80%93electric_transmission#Ships) or steam-electric power might be interesting because the generators and the motors can be separated, there could be redundant sets of both. This could help with the armor scheme.
**Gunnery Radar**
Radar to track your own shells and the shells of the enemy. Plus computers to turn that into firing data.
**New turret layouts**
[HMS Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Nelson_(28)) was experimenting with a three-turrets-forward design. There could be more of these.
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## Rocket-assisted projectiles - specifically [base bleed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_bleed) systems
This hinges on a somewhat dubious interpretation of the treaty, but those aren't without precedent. As it has enough basis for lengthy debates between lawyers and diplomats that the military will pay no attention to, they will use it as a legal fig leaf and build the thing anyway.
Missiles and rockets are forbidden, but they are probably defined as **self-propelled** projectiles. However, this is not necessarily the case for rocket-assisted projectiles.
Specifically, in base bleed, the rocket is not used for actually accelerating the projectile. Instead, the rocket plume changes the aerodynamic shape of the projectile, allowing it to gain about 30% range. As such, it doesn't quite fall under the rocket/missile category. It is from the late 60s, but given the emphasis on guns, cutting-edge navies may be already starting to field some, possibly in secret.
Of course, if there is actually some thrust "accidentally" added by the gas, or if said gas helps it for guidance, well, that's still an artillery shell anyway, right?
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I'm not sure how you could reduce the threat of aircraft... You could try treaties, but they didn't work very well in the 1930's. Japan ignored the Washington Treaty on naval construction, culminating in the 70,000 ton Yamato class battleships. Germany cast off the treaty of Versailles in a lot of ways in the mid 1930's, including the Bismarck class battleships.
The problem with those sorts of weapon limiting treaties is - the first nation to violate them has quite an advantage.
To realistically neutralize the effect of aircraft using 1950's technology, you might come up with effective anti-air missiles and guns, to make the battleship too dangerous for aircraft to approach. By the end of WW2, US warships had been so heavily armed with anti-air guns, many with radar activated proximity fuses, that only about one out of 15 kamikazes got through to actually hit a ship. That's an attrition rate far too harsh for pilots who need some expectation of survival to carry out their mission.
Had the battleship continued to be developed into the 1950's, possible future enhancements could have been longer range guns. The peak of battleship gun development were the 18 inch guns of the Yamato class, with about a 25 mile range. It is theoretically possible to equip a battleship with a single super gun whose barrel ran the 1000 foot length of the ship, that could have up to a 200 mile range. You'd probably need some sort of radar guidance in the shell to insure accuracy. However, that's not that big a leap over the radar proximity fuse, so it's feasible that a super gun equipped battleship might be able to hit an enemy fleet from 200 miles away, with the radar guided shell targeting an individual ship.
Won't they be surprised?
Improve the armor. Imagine a battleship made of titanium... would be horridly expensive to build, but you'd have either an extremely tough battleship, or a lighter battleship that had the same armor protection and a very high top speed. Or perhaps Chobham ceramic armor, as used on many main battle tanks today.
As an example of the benefits of high power and lighter weight, consider the liner SS United States. Built in the 1950's, it combined an aluminum superstructure for light weight, with a set of aircraft carrier engines, to yield a top speed of around 45 knots. (this was a 1000 foot long ship) This was done to give the US a very fast troop ship. That top speed was kept secret for decades... we didn't want the Soviets to know we could get troops to Europe a lot quicker than they expected.
The SSUS still exists, is tied up on a river in Philadelphia, while a group tries to preserve it as a museum. Sadly, that aluminum superstructure means it also has a fairly high scrap value, so its preservation is by no means assured.
Nuclear powered... would be a next logical step. High power, without the need to refuel. That could kick your titanium armored battleship up into the 60+ knot range. Try to hit that with a weapon powerful enough to get through the armor.
Underwater weapons, such as homing torpedoes, can be deceived. In WW2, the Germans developed the T5 homing torpedo, that homed in on propellor sounds. However, warships (who were the target of those torpedoes) could defeat that by dragging two parallel lengths of pipe (called a Foxer) behind the ship that simulated propellor noise, and the torpedo hit the pipes instead of the ship. While later torpedoes were developed with active sonar for guidance, that too can be spooked with decoys. As of today, the ability to defend a ship against attack has improved to the point where most major US warships are not heavily armored, relying upon the carrier battle group's defenses to stop threats before they can get through. (although the USS Cole was almost sunk by two guys in a zodiac, but that was more sloppy leadership in a potentially hostile port than anything)
Still, a primary reason the battleship became obsolete was not just its vulnerability to air attack, but the much greater range and accuracy of carrier aircraft. Perhaps you could develop such effective anti-air capabilities that a super gun on a battleship might be the only way to attack an adversary from a distance. That could justify the continuation of battleship design.
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The idea is to have a number of artificial, spherical satellite to have sort of a "spiral" orbit around a Ringworld, such that the inhabitants of each of a number of ring sections see a moon in the sky once every year or two. Is that theoretically possible for a sufficiently advanced civilization?
Edit: By 'Ringworld' I mean a Niven-Ring, I should've clarified that sooner and I will try to do better next time. Thank you all for your answers! I think I have a better idea of what I want to do now.
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There are a few options. I'll assume a Niven-type ringworld with a radius of 1AU (i.e. the surface is the same distance from the sun as the Earth's surface).
If a ring this size were simply in orbit, rotating about the sun once per year, then its occupants wouldn't experience weight. So it actually rotates 41.6 times faster (once every 8.8 days), creating a centripetal force of 1g.
The following ignores the mass of the ring itself (it's made of carbon fiber or something), but at least the first two scenarios could probably be adjusted to account for that.
## Scenario 1
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pGrZe.jpg)
The "moon" (actually a planet) orbits the sun in a highly eccentric *anecliptic* orbit, meaning that its orbital plane **M** is at 90 degrees or so to the ringworld's orbital plane **R** (figure A). If you fix your camera to a point on the ringworld, the moon follows a helical path around the ring, as requested (figure B). However, this isn't really what you want, because most of the time it would be too far away to see, and when you could see it, it would be rapidly falling toward the horizon and then rapidly rising out of view on the other side of the ring.
You'd never see it pass right overhead. But you could time the orbits so that people in a given town only see it once every 5 or 10 or 50 years.
Orbits like this aren't seen much in nature, for a few reasons, but it's nothing that a ringworld engineer couldn't easily fix.
## Scenario 2
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/INLhs.jpg)
You have *two* (or more) moons orbiting each other in a "rosette" (Niven actually mentions this in *Ringworld* although his terminology is [a bit wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klemperer_rosette)). The center of this system orbits the sun in a circular orbit of the exact size of the ringworld itself, so it looks as if the moons are orbiting the ring (figure C). The center point of the rosette goes round the sun once per year, while a point on the ring goes round the sun 42 times per year, so again, relative to the ring, the moons' path describes a helix (figure D). You will pass under the moons once every 9 days.
## Scenario 3
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/W0ODg.jpg)
This one is a bit harder to visualize. First, let's forget for a moment that the ring is a centrifuge, and assume it's simply floating in orbit round the sun. If you have a single moon orbiting the sun in approximately the same orbit (figure E), then it's in geosynchronous (halosynchronous?) orbit and will appear stationary in the ring's sky.
Now, make that moon's orbit slightly eccentric, so that the apogee (strictly, the "aphelion") is outside the ring, while the perigee ("perihelion") is inside the ring (figure F). It's still sort of stationary, but it's bobbing above and below the ring – if you plot it out, its path looks like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m08bl.jpg)
It's not exactly a circle, but it does rise on one side of the ring and set on the other.
Now if you recall that the ring is spinning at an extra 40.6 revolutions per year, that shape becomes a distorted helix – I won't try to draw it, but it's the same type of situation as figures C and D.
If it's important to have the moon pass overhead, then you want scenario 2 or 3; if it's more important to have the moon appear at long intervals, you want scenario 1. I don't think there's a way to have both using orbital mechanics, given that the moon needs to get close enough to actually be visible. If none of these options work, then perhaps instead of a real moon you could have a giant airship, or some sort of moon-shaped machine attached to the ring.
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**Big** problem.
1. Spiral orbits do not exist other than spiraling in in the very thin outer layers of the atmosphere. However, you could have a dwarf planet orbiting just inside the Ringworld's orbit. While it wouldn't actually be orbiting the Ringworld it would look like a moon. Beware that the Ringworld's rotational velocity is .4% of lightspeed, said "Moon" is going to flash by at that speed! Making it a gas giant a bit further out would help a bit in this regard but it's still going to be moving across the sky quickly.
2. The important problem--the Ringworld's year is just under 10 Earth days. It's going to come back to that "moon" every 10 days, not a year or two.
3. The designers aren't going to put up with something like this anyway. While a Ringworld requires attitude control systems anyway the presence of another body like that is going to make the orbital stability problem much worse.
4. Remember that it's always noon on a Ringworld. Moons come out at night!
If you're determined to have something in the sky you could make a fake moon, though. Build another ring at some distance inside the habitation ring. Your "moon" is merely a picture being carried on that ring. This avoids all the problems mentioned above. Why? There is some cultural importance to a moon that's enough to warrant the cost of making a fake one.
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You'll find some hard math [here](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-orbits-not-spiral-shaped), but the short answer is: if you're moon is unpowered, you cannot have a spiral orbit. That's simply not the way the universe works. As mentioned by @Slarty, you could have a very long elliptical orbit, but there's a limit to how long the ellipsis can be before the moon walks away from lack of gravitational pull.
If you love physics & math (or simply want to learn something cool despite the headache it will give you), read Wiki's page on [orbital mechanics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_mechanics). The basic truth is you can't get what you're looking for ... kinda. Let's examine some goods and bads.
However, you're writing a story. Maybe the planet and the moon have higher than Earth-standard gravity, which would allow a longer ellipsis. Perhaps the moon is made of very dense material, which would also allow a longer ellipsis. Or maybe you just make it that way.
**High declination**
Another possibility is to put the moon's orbit on a high declination, such as the orbit of Pluto or the orbit of some asteroids around the Sun. This won't give you years, but it would make the moon appear aperiodically from the perspective of the planet's surface.
**Its orbit must be outside/inside (not within) the rings**
A gotcha you need to worry about is that the moon's orbit must not be within the rings, otherwise the rings will slowly pulverize the moon. An elliptical orbit with a high declination would allow it to move inside the orbit of the rings, but without the declination, it would need to be completely outside the rings (meaning from the right place on the planet you would always see a line across the moon as the rings cast a shadow).
**But, it's artificial, so it can be what you want**
But, everything I've been telling you is from the point of view of using gravity to keep everything in order. If you give the moon *power* then you can have it do what you want. That's really the question you need to answer: does my moon have the ability to apply force to correct/control its orbit? If yes, then it does what you want when you want. If no, then it doesn't matter if it's artificial or not, it must obey the laws of celestial mechanics (with a little literary license thrown in to keep astronomers on their toes).
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**For a "ringworld" meaning a planet like Saturn**
A spiral orbit would not be ideal for a long term satellite as it would eventually crash into the planet or fly off into space. However an eccentric elliptical orbit would allow a satellite to make relatively close flybys of the planet from time to time and depending on the exact orbital period it could easily pass over a different “section” of the planet each time. Here are some example eccentric orbits. The satellite would be moving fastest at its closest approach to the planet in each case.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V5XAb.png)
Edit
**For a Ringworld like niven's ring world:**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1sVkR.jpg)
I suspect the stable orbit of a moon around the ring world would follow a figure of eight pattern or a linear motion perpendicular to the axis of the ring world in a pendulum motion like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/i25b8.png)
See this link for the alternative:[two possible orbits](http://www.cosmosup.com/life-be-like-on-a-donut-shape-planet/)
Although this would obviously not be possible with a central star.
However I think the geometry that the OP was asking for would be best described as a spiral ring similar to this (the closest that I could find being the electrical equivalent):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m3thm.jpg)
But the calculations are atypical and a little complex. So I stand to be corrected if anyone knows better. I should also point out that any ring world orbits would be highly unstable if any other large astronomical objects were in the vicinity (with catastrophic results).
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You may be able to have an orbiting body that is moon-esque in its relationship to a Niven Ring but you don't want to. Ringworlds are unstable in their "orbit" of their primary, and the orbits of Moons are not stable over geological time. As such any object that shares a star system with a Niven Ringworld *will* either get too close and destabilise the structure *or* actually **hit** the ring and make a hole, holes are bad. In *Ringworld* the system is empty of everything except a few [Oort Cloud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud) distance objects left behind to "top-up" the biosphere at a later date, also it uses the *star* as an anti-impact defense particle weapon system because that's how much of a problem the ring getting hit is.
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You could make a second ring structure "orbiting" the big ring(the truth would be it's orbiting the sun) structure which would hold a moon like artificial body and for good measure make it simulate night time on the ringworld segment it's on at that particular moment. Not having a night cycle could prove bad for the psychological aspect of the inhabitants.
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I'm picturing an universe where FTL travel was invented as a sort-of-fluke, and artificial gravity technology isn't available. Transit between star-systems takes at least a few days and a star's gravity well slows the FTL down to a point that it's STL anywhere around the Goldilocks zone.
Also present in the universe are megacorporations that purchase entire planets for resource mining purposes (the lack of breathable atmosphere or magnetosphere having brought real estate prices down somewhat). All the habitats on the planet are company towns built around mining and processing the planet's resources and shipping them home.
Where my understanding of the economics of interstellar bulk transport fails me is this: just how much processing would be done on the mining planet before the end result is shipped back to the homeworld?
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> OP Q: just how much processing would be done on the mining planet before the end result is shipped back to the homeworld?
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Presumably all of it; to reduce both the size and mass of the "end result" before shipping. There is no point in shipping slag which is going to be discarded anyway; and for some mining operations (like rare metals and gems) the "end result" is on the order of one millionth the mass of the processed ore. Why ship a hundred thousand tons of garbage rocks to another star system when they contain only a few ounces of the "end result"?
That stuff should never leave the planet surface; all refinement and extraction of the "end result" should occur on the surface. Or in a few rare circumstances, in orbit around the target planet can be more cost effective despite the work of getting the ore up there (or partially processed ore up there); because a zero gravity environment is (theoretically) very useful for certain types of extraction or metallurgy.
Just like Earth corporations, your customers will want the ore in a finished generic form; like sheets, coils, blocks or spools of wire in various gauges. That is what should be shipped from the planet.
The expense of separate factories for doing that, on each planet, might warrant shipping some single form (like easily stackable cubes, or grains (small spheres)) of the pure "end result" to a post-processing plant where those can be formed into customer-desired configurations, or combined into alloys for that purpose.
I am presuming the mining company is not in the business of producing end-consumer products and only producing materials to be melted down (or cut and polished or otherwise processed) by their customer companies.
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I think you could find lots of models for this here on Earth. Examples:
* Kitimat Aluminum refinery was built in B.C. where they were able to put a tunnel through a mountain and tap a near 3000 foot high lake. The generated power was really cheap. Bauxite is shipped from Southeast Asia (Burma, I think, or what used to be Burma) Aluminum ore is cheap to mine, but expensive to refine. Ocean transport is cheap.
* Eldorado at Uranium City was mining ore that ran 0.25% U. They had a huge concentrating mill that brought it up to a much higher percentage, before packing in drums for barge transport.
* But at Port Radium on Great Bear lake, they found deposits rich enough that they just loaded the ore into burlap sacks and barged it down the McKenzie.
* In the U.S. Iron ore is loaded into big bulk carrier cargo boats, and run down the Great lakes to the refineries.
Things to model:
\* How expensive is it to keep a worker on a mining world? Look at Fort MacMurray for examples. Typical northern camp costs are 2-3 times per worker. E.g. A millwright in Ft. Mac gets about $48/hour plus room and board, plus time and a half for anything over 40 hours a week and double time for anything over 60, and triple time on Sunday.
* How expensive is it to construct the infra-structure to support the crew that runs the refinery.
* Are the ancillary processing materials insystem? E.g. If you are mining a baked rock, do you have an oort cloud full of comets, or an ice moon somewhere where you can get water for processing the ore.
* What is the relative value of automation to worker's efforts? Will a mining world be a million hard rock miners, with saloons, gambling, or will it be a team of 500 programmers, and robot repair techs.
* Is it cheaper to run a FTL ship slower. E.g. On earth ocean freighters run at 10 knots or so, while passenger ships go much faster. Freight trains putter along at 30-50 mph while on good track passenger trains do 70-80, and dedicated passenger service at 300 mph is possible.
* Can FTL be automated. Can you program a ship to take a megaton of stuff to another system, halt just outside the system, and beep "Come get me" ? This lowers the cost of transport.
* What is the relative cost of distance? Does it cost twice as much to go twice as far? Or is it a matter of it costs X to go in and out of FTL and the distance doesn't matter much. In the first case, a deposit of 10% purity nearby may compete with one of 30% purity several times as far away. In the second case a richer deposit may make the company with the poor deposit go broke.
(This happened with Uranium City. The Wollaston Lake deposits at the Rabbit Lake Mine run about 40% -- 160 times richer.)
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**As much as can be economically defensible.**
What's the extraction rate of the ore? Gold for example has an average concentration of about 5 grams per tonne of ore (though is from my understanding usually not mined unless you can get out at least five kilos per tonne, or 17 furbnings to the boartload if you're using Imperial measurements). So... is it cheaper to refine ore on site and just ship gold (which also has the benefit of being very compact and not need huge storage bays)? I'm fairly sure it would.
So for rare metals this is definitely the most viable method.
But I'd say that even for common metals such as Iron (which is deemed commercially viable at around 56% (or 560 kilos per tonne) if my research holds up it makes sense to not lug a lot of useless stone over the planetary system if for nothing else then to reduce inertia.
I'll assume here, of course, that mining and refining at your suggested tech level is highly automated and can be maintained by a small crew of humans who's life support doesn't significantly impact on profit.
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In practice this is about your own world and story as it's a cost-benefit-regulations game.
We've previously discussed the fact that [almost nothing is worth shipping across interstellar distances](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/45472/which-goods-make-sense-to-transport-over-interstellar-distances), so where you do your processing is up to you.
Your questions are:
* Are there pollution regulations on the destination worlds that mean you have to process on the mining world or other equivalent manufacturing world
* Are the costs different for processing at source and destination
* How many people are required for processing
* How much mass is removed by processing
* How many tons can you process per day
* What is the cost per person-day for keeping people on the mining world
* What is the cost per ton for hauling cargo
This is only a quick summary of basic questions to consider, there are far more in the real world.
At the end of this line of questioning you get a couple of numbers that tell you how much work you need to do and where.
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Just adding some examples from real mines in Western Australia, to reinforce that it depends on the economics of the processing as mentioned in other answers:
* Gold grades are around 5-20 grams per tonne, so it is usually refined at the mine.
* Iron ore grades are around 60%, and the raw ore is loaded onto trains for hundreds of kilometres and then onto boats to be shipped thousands of kilometres to China to be refined there.
* Bauxite (aluminium ore) grades are around 30%, and are often refined at site or nearby (into alumina - a white powder), but then exported thousands of kilometres around the world to a smelter to make into aluminium metal, since the smelting requires a huge amount of electricity (which would be expensive to produce locally).
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There is almost no bulk element that's worth enough to make the cost of getting it out of a gravity well worth it. The only resource extraction I can see being worth it would be something like bioprospecting, where the giant corporate behemoth would discover and commercialize novel organisms, biochemistry, and genes.
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Its all about the gravity well.
Getting material off a planet is going to be expensive, unless you are using a space elevator and have fusion powering everything.
So, without those the cost to transport unprocessed ore would be a crazy waste of resources. Its already being done here.. Vollrath makes all their stainless steel sheep pans and whatnot up near GreenBay. I met the owner once, and asked him why they don't do it in China. Turns out shipping sheet pans is really expensive. So, they do it all here..
On the other hand mining the smaller objects would be easier and more profitable. As Asteroids, don't have as much of a gravity well. They are also easier access to the valuable materials.
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Imagine that two people who have the ability to read anyone's mind confront each other. Each one of them knows that the other is able to read minds and so they try to read each other's mind.
Let's call the two subjects *Subject A* and *Subject B*:
*Subject A* starts reading *Subject B's* mind, but simultaneously, *Subject B* starts reading *Subject A's* mind. Assuming that the process of thinking is finite, eventually the thoughts of *Subject A* or *Subject B* should lead to something concrete, but apparently, both of them would be reading each other's mind in a endless process that would require an infinite time to get it done. So the question is the following:
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Have you ever looked into a pair of mirrors that are facing each other? It looks like an infinite tunnel of mirrors, but because the mirrors aren't perfect the farther down the tunnel you look the more blurry it gets.
You could think of mind reading as looking into a window. While you are reading someone else's mind, your window becomes a one-way mirror. So two people reading each other's minds would mostly see the infinite tunnel. Of course, one-way mirrors aren't perfect, so you would still be able to see glimpses of what's hiding behind it, but it does make for an excellent defense against someone who is trying to read your mind.
This also provides for an interesting mechanic - the better you are at reading minds, the more perfect your mirror is, making it harder for your opponent to catch glimpses of what's behind it.
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It really depends on how telepathy is working. When you 'read' someone's mind, are you just reading the surface thoughts that they are concentrating on? Is that all you can read?
I expect mind reading to be a bit more than that. I also expect that if you are reading a mind, you also have your own thoughts and feelings floating around in there. So if two people are reading each others mind, they would see what the other person is thinking and feeling about different things as well as their reactions to what they might be finding in their own brain. There might be some 'mirror' qualities, but both of you would be standing between the two mirrors and able to see all of both of you.
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If one is reading the other's mind, meaning they are hearing the thoughts of the other person, then this seems like it would create an ever-increasing feedback the same way a microphone placed next to its speaker creates infinite feedback.
The two people would probably die.
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There is actually a mathematical proof that this cannot occur in a universe governed by statistics. (I'm trying to dig up the paper, but I can't seem to find it). You cannot have two beings that know about each other perfectly and simultaneously have freewill. If I remember the paper, this even holds true when the knowledge sought is statistical.
Accordingly, the only way for both subjects to read eachother's mind successfully is for one or both of them to give up perfect free will. They must be willing to accept that there are some things they cannot think about during the mind read.
As a trivial example, if both agree to think about a purple balloon, and then read eachother's mind, its easy for both to see a purple balloon. However, as one pushes with more and more pointed attempts to force a paradox (such as trying not to think about what the other is thinking), it gets more difficult to achieve an easy resolution.
Freewill may also be limited by imperfections. All it takes is one grumbly stomach and the process may collapse into a concrete image of a doughnut (thanks, Homer!) A light breeze might even be enough to create a slight decrease in freewill from Person A because they could not think of some particular thing while a light breeze was passing by. This might be enough to create a slight decrease in freewill from person B, because whatever person A was thinking about limited them. This could go back and forth until it collapses to both of them thinking of a concrete thing.
Of course it doesn't always collapse. There is a story of two warriors, with none their equal, meeting to settle their differences on the battlefield. Both warriors strode up, looked eachother in the eye, and then stood there for what must have been hours. Finally, both warriors smiled, and went their separate ways.
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It depends on what "reading one's mind" means.
Are you interpreting what they're thinking at the same time? Because that's how what we do when we're reading a book. It's such a peculiar situation and it hurts my brain to just imagine it, but if the "thoughts" are read in the way we recall things by emulating our sensory input, then the interpretation of that data would be the first instance of an individual thought.
I feel like mind-reading wouldn't necessarily preclude the ability to have one's own individual thoughts aside, such as sensing, feeling, interpreting, etc, simultaneously.
Situation:
* **Person A:** Thinks of a banana.
* **Person B:** Reads mind, sees banana, interprets data.
* **Person A:** Reads mind, sees interpretation, interprets it.
* **Person B:** Reads mind, sees interpretation of interpretation, interprets it.
* Infinite loop, based off of Rob Watt's answer.
**Or**
* They enter a sort of "lock," one that doesn't loop. I wish I could put it into words but I seem to be unable to at the moment. I may revisit this later.
You can imagine them breaking out of the loop - all they have to do is be able to stop reading.
Your question is
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And I believe the answer to that is **a) when the first interpretation occurs prior to the infinite loop, b) each individual's unique thoughts aside from the mind-reading, or c) the first thoughts and senses they exercise upon ceasing their mind-reading. One of those three.**
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this is a standard inducer/capacitor circuit. a thinks of A and b thinks of B. even assuming instantaneous interpretation, a now has B and b now has A. and of course, in the next 'pulse', we'll have a back at A (from b) and b back at B. you can modulate the frequency at which thought exchange happens by increasing the complexity of A or B. same as the circuit, a larger inducer makes the overall circuit an inducer and vice versa. so if a is much smarter or faster at reading b, the overall exchange is a reading b.
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Well, I don't have much mind-reading experience, but I think I can relate to the subject through some basic object-oriented thinking.
Let's suppose that we have our 2 mind readers (Subject A & Subject B), and they each have a set of thoughts that are "active" in their minds (we'll ignore the exact content of the thoughts for the sake of the simulation).
In addition, we'll assume that since they have opened an active channel between their thoughts, that they have synchronized their mental clocks such that over the course of 1 unit of an arbitrary time scale (we'll call it "mind-time") they both refresh their own thought-base, as well as retrieve data from the thought-base of the other. In other words, it takes 1 unit of time ("mind-time") for each of them to first think some new thoughts, and then peek at the other's thoughts.
Assuming that this is the initial setup of the situation, there are two possible ways in which the scenario could proceed, depending on how the telepathic stream is set up:
**The obtained thoughts are externally processed:**
In other words: reading the other subject's mind allows each subject to access the other's thoughts, but they do not copy them over into their own mind. If this were the case, then the result of this bi-directional mind reading would effectively be a Vulcan mind-meld (insert Start Trek reference here), where each of them has access to all of the thoughts flowing between them in exactly 1 iteration (there are no redundant copies of each thought).
**The obtained thoughts are internally processed:**
In other words, in order to see the other's thoughts, each must first transfer them over to their own mind.
If this were the case, the mind-melded state would be the same as stated above, except that each thought would exist in (T + 1) iterations, with T being the time in "mind-time" since the thought was first created. Consequently, the number of thoughts passing between them would grow exponentially with time, and unless each of them has a mind capable of processing an infinite number of thoughts, they will both eventually end up with splitting head-aches, as well as possibly some neuron-damage.
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Yes
I would generally equate telepathy akin to one of the other senses. None of our senses "lock" our ability to think or process other information, listening to music doesn't block out thinking about dinner or what you're also seeing.
In the same way I imagine telepathy would be similar to a sense, you can "focus" on it for better detail, like actively listening and not letting yourself get distracted by other senses; but the telepathy itself would still be on it's own "channel" in the brain and as such you can shift your focus to other senses again.
If telepathy copied a brain state then I suppose a infinite loop could result as you suggest, but that would imply that "reading" a mind was literally placing all of the subjects thoughts in place of yours, sort of like a screwed up reverse mind control.
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As stated, it would really help if you were more specific about what is entailed in "mind-reading". But let's compare it to some real-world scenarios.
In normal speech, or when I'm typing like right now, I can be simultaneously thinking about the concepts I'm trying to convey, the speech/text synthesis, that Star Trek episode where Data rattles off a list of mental processes he was considering while kissing his girlfriend, how I should probably be in bed but am instead on Stack Exchange, the fact that I'd really like to get in an hour or so of Fallout 4 so I should type this quickly, and a number of other things that take less precedence like how my right foot has been resting on my left leg for quite a while and the pain in my left leg is increasing but isn't yet bad enough to necessitate moving my foot.
I would expect that reading someone's mind would be similarly non-linear, so A) you're not somehow reading every single little process in their head at once (it would be impossible for you to process that much data anyways unless you completely stopped processing any data in your own brain which would be a rather fatal way to read minds) and B) even if the entire mind-reading process turned into garbled nonsense, the rest of your brain would still be wondering whether that rumbling in your stomach is from the nachos you had at lunch or the giant soda you bought on the way home even though you know you're supposed to be cutting back. Like watching a camera that's watching the screen ad infinitum doesn't somehow cause your brain to hardlock. You just say "whoa, trippy!" then go back to finishing your soda because you'll cut back tomorrow.
I'm not sure how typical this is, but I commonly experience dissociated cognitive functionality, where one aspect of my thoughts appears as another entity in my head. At its simplest, it's just a bunch of voices screaming different things (or sometimes the same thing), with the most pressing urges being perceived as the loudest voices.
In a more interesting case, I often tell myself I need to accomplish some task. At that moment, my mind splits into three pieces. There's my self, then there's the responsible guy, then the lazy guy. In a heartbeat, all three of us know exactly how the conversation is going to play out. I tell the responsible guy I know he's right, but I agree with the lazy guy (who is at that moment telling me he already knows I'm going to slack off so stop bothering to play out the conversation that I'm currently having with the responsible guy who obviously is actually just a facet of me) and remark that it's stupid that I'm having a conversation with myself when I already know the lazy guy is going to remark that I'm going to remark that I agree with the lazy guy and am in fact going to just be lazy.
And then sometimes I'm lazy, sometimes I'm responsible, and sometimes I realize it's not even the right day and I don't actually have anything I need to do. Turns out that my own mind isn't capable of figuring out what it's going to do thirty seconds into the future with very good certainty, despite the fact that there are three voices in one head in complete agreement.
(FYI, the pain in my left leg just got to the point where it necessitated moving my right foot.)
Similarly, I would expect that the act of reading someone's mind which is reading yours would create instabilities because the two minds can't perfectly predict the actions of the other. So the other mind tells you a lie about your own thoughts which you believe as the other mind realizes it made a mistake, then the paradox is perceived differently by each mind, which amplifies the discrepancy. This forces the two minds to act with agency despite seemingly having no choice at all.
(And I just realized I spent more than 20 minutes writing this and won't get an hour to play Fallout 4 and am debating whether I should just go to bed or bother playing a little and risk going to bed even later and being really tired tomorrow which will make me less likely to finish my homework when I get back from work. These thoughts occur to me as I proofread once before hitting submit in another example of non-linear processing.)
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Since our brain can concentrate on only one thing at a given time voluntarily, telepathy would be done voluntarily as well and in an attempt to read other person's mind when he/she's reading your, I believe you will be indirectly reading your own mind. As Rob Watts stated the example of 2 mirrors facing each other, it will be a mirror looking at it's own reflection in the other mirror facing it.
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Maybe it would be based on distance?
\*The psychics sufficiently far apart wouldn't notice each other,
\*psychics closer together would be able to make out a few levels of feedback before the signal blurs out,
\*but psychics would have to get **very** close to each other before the feedback got strong enough to give one/both of them seizures
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Without information about the way the mind reading ability works we're just spearfishing in the dark.
Let's assume the the mind reading ability is some sort of biological PET that can interpret what the other is thinking. The information, traveling from one brain to an other at the speed of light takes time `t`. Assuming the processing time is equal to `t` because of signal processing and reconstruction due to noise and path losses. Any one reading my mind will see what I was thinking `2t` seconds ago.
If *Subject A* reads *Subject B*'s mind, he will see his own mind `2t` seconds earlier. Which yields `I think I'm gonna read Subject B's mind.`
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Reading each others' mind cannot be defined as equivalent to reading books. Minds always have a background chatter, which even great saints would have a hard time stopping. So yes both can reach a finite answer but only when they are concentrating not on the mindreading process but on another thought.
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Lets propose different idea on mind reading, it was like you can read what someone's thinking(Surface) or you can browse their memory deep down.
So if the question is about ,
**Surface Reading**
Surface reading can be put in simple terms, one can hear what other person is thinking. So if the two people with the power met, it will be conversation.
So likewise a normal conversation, it will be over when one of them left.
If none left, it will be an **infinite** as thoughts are infinite. you try yourself not to think anything ... oh irony is which itself a thought.
**Deep reading**
It will be more like browsing the pages of a book. Two persons view eachother's biography. It will be **infinite** as well, Even if one manage to read entire memory, catching the up with lost moments while reading will lead to a Zeno paradox.
So it can't be **finite** either way.
Thanks Mithrandil for edit suggestion.
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The merfolk are fully marine creatures with a mix of human and piscine traits. The culture in question is demersal, and constructs cities and towns upon the sea-floor. The merfolk all have a finned tail like a fish and gills to breathe underwater. Most of them also have lungs or air-spaces for buoyancy, but a few don't. All of the merfolk need sleep, though not as much as a human. There are other citizens of the society, including manta rays, octopodes, and rarely some cetaceans too
Would this merfolk society have any use for beds (as something for people to sleep on), or would they have no need for soft sleeping places?
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A bed is nothing more than a word that describes a comfortable (and, perhaps, safe) place to sleep. So...
**Let's start with what we know**
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Summary: (a) There's a posture specific to your Merfolk. (b) They will be quiescent. (c) The *could* be less alert, but hold that thought. (d) And they can be awakened.
**Next: do fish sleep?**
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There's the issue with (c) above. Fish tend to remain more alert than mammals. But, to return to that first source:
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> Unresponsive: A sleeping fish won’t react to someone walking up to the tank, peering over the surface of the water, or food being dropped in the water.
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> You Can Wake Them Up: It is possible to wake a sleeping fish. Enough light or noise will eventually get them to wake up.
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**What changes might we care about with an intelligent species?**
The semi-alert state that fish experience when asleep is to protect them from danger. Not just from predators (but that's certainly an issue), but also from stuff moving around. Currents carry things. Sometimes sharp pointy things like sticks. Granted, your merfolk might be deep enough that a stick isn't much of a threat, but they evolved, right? And that evolution would have had basic survival traits that would appear in current behavior.
**Finally, let's return to my first statement and ask, what's a bed?**
I've personally seen fish sleeping in stands of grass. But I've also seen a whole school of trout asleep in a shallow section of river, no more than an inch of water above them, swimming automatically to remain stationary in the water — and in the warm sunlight.
And that discrepancy invites a problem. You haven't explained how your merfolk react to sunlight. But let's set that aside. You do explain that they're city builders.
**Conclusion**
1. They'll prefer to rest indoors most of the time for privacy and protection of both possessions and family.
2. Being inside, currents are not longer an issue (at least not any more than human heating/air conditioning would cause).
3. They are in a medium that promotes 3D travel. That means they'll want to secure themselves. IMO, most intelligent creatures aren't fond of super-tight spaces, so I'm not inclined to believe they'll build closets to sleep in.
4. They will appreciate comfort, and comfort for a fish is warm and safe,so I'm thinking a warming source combined with natural plant life, which will hold them in place just fine. They won't float up because (a) fish don't do that when they sleep unless there's a current to move them and (b) there's a roof.
What's a bed?
* A stand of plant life: grass, kelp, I can imagine pride would lead to a desire for rare plants to sleep in, but I can also imagine plant texture and the equivalent of underwater odor would also contribute to desirability. The plants will be periodically replaced, despite having been planted in the floor of the room, to keep them fresh (not unlike buying a new mattress).
* Water conditioning: meaning freshness, oxygenation, salinity, mineral content, biological content (hey, they're merfolk, do they have gills? This could be a food source), and *temperature.*
The real question here is what they'd use as an alarm clock. Work starts at eight, after all.
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# Their beds would be 3d
Humans don't even need beds. They're just comfy. Merfolk would likely want comfort as well. However, underwater it's like you're constantly flying so a 2 dimensional bed just makes little sense. You can float in any direction. As such, their beds would be three dimensional.
Much like astronauts, they'd use sleeping bags.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iScvQ.jpg)
In space you float just like underwater so what you need is a cozy space where you're safe from floating things and a tight blanket to wrap around you. This is warm, comfy, and lets you sleep somewhat safe from small predators biting most of you.
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Not for something soft. They would be not-very-far from neutral buoyancy. The farther you are from neutral the more you have to work to just hang around. So they would be adapted to being pretty close to floating without effort. Their net weight is pretty close to zero.
Probably not for warmth, either. They will probably be adapted to the local water temperature. Otherwise they will move.
But they might well need beds for other purposes.
For example, there is likely to be at least a little movement of the water. They will want to be secured in some manner so that they are still in the same spot when they wake. That water current is good also because when they are sleeping they won't be swimming. So they need some water moving by to bring them oxygen. So they will want something that keeps them in one location. But it also needs to be comfortable. And they won't want anything that will get tangled. So something like a thin net held down by something springy. Maybe only over part of them, just enough to keep them from floating away.
They might also feel more secure with some sort of protection when asleep. After all, they can't be watching for whatever dangers exist when they are sleeping. A bed in a bedroom might provide just enough protection. Maybe when a shark (or whatever) tries to get at them while they are sleeping, the process of breaking through a wall makes enough noise to wake them.
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### Where a merman resides, and feels safety inside, like a moray
So yeah, [moray eels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moray_eel). They're predators, but they aren't nearly as large or as fast as other things out there, and they'd make a tasty meal for a reef shark. So they hide themselves in a convenient hole, ideally one which fits the eel fairly neatly, and wait for things to come past within the range of a quick sprint from their hole. And if anything does stick its nose in the hole, it's met by a mouthful of sharp teeth. Most things know that trying to extract a moray from a hole isn't a fight that's worth the pain.
It seems pretty likely that mermen would be in a similar position. They might be better swimmers than humans, but they're not better swimmers than a barracuda. Smaller fish can scurry for any cover, but if you're bigger then you can't rely on there being a suitable sized hole, so when you find one then you hang out there for safety. With a small opening to your hole, you're ready to spear anything that tries to get in and get you.
As mermen became more sophisticated and intelligent, they would likely have developed secure structures to keep their whole family group safe. Still though, the basic desire to be secure in their personal hole will likely remain baked into their instincts. It wouldn't be so much to sleep on as sleep in - think of the wall of body spaces in a morgue, perhaps, just with the handles on the inside. Still, it'd be recognisable as a sleeping space in the same way as a bed is.
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If they can control their buoyancy, they won't need anything to sleep on since they can simply float above the ground, even when resting.
They would probably only need a safe environment, unless they sleep with half a brain at a time to keep alert.
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Pre-industrial production system: means of production where the vast majority of goods are made by skilled craftsmen specialized in that field (I.E. Carpenters, blacksmiths, millers, weavers, and woodworkers) and not mass-produced in a factory.
Tied to [is wood a viable material to build spacecraft?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/242389/is-wood-a-viable-material-to-build-space-craft) I am making an alien rustic civilization where the species, due to a low population, never had an industrial revolution while also having post-industrial technologies such as microchip computers, electricity, internal combustion engines, aircraft, and spacecraft; whereas everything is made in workshops, mills, forges, and labs by specialized individuals who are trained from birth to do that single task/the whole product opposed to our factory-based production system.
My question is, how far could you actually get with this system of production?
* this species has a total population of 6 million all concentrated in one big rustic settlement
* food, water, and electricity are the only things mass-produced/mass-refined due to everyone needing food and water and electricity is needed in most workshops/labs
* no mass production, no aluminum or titanium since it's too hard to refine
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I think this question misses what was realistically the biggest improvement of industrialization.
**Standardization**
A skilled craftsman can make incredibly complex and 'modern' machinery; for example, the story of the Ferrari 250 GTO where 'None of the panels match from other models' due to each being handmade. Even today, prototype firearms (as an example) are made as one-offs by a skilled machinist/fitter (See AKJesus- AK50 build video series).
Each screw, nut and bolt is an individual item crafted specifically for its purpose and mated to its specific opposite.
This is where the Industrial Revolution really accelerated things - standardization means you can take a box of standard bolts and a box of standard nuts and know they will fit together without any modification.
Think about the history of firearm manufacture before and after industrialization - there were firearms in the 1700s but the price point of manufacture was significantly higher (as the number of skilled man-hours to produce was higher) - what industralization meant was that the speed of manufacture and the standardization of components was improved.
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**Not very far**
There are lots of problems with the idea of trying to get a total population of 6 million, all in one location, to Space Age technology. To avoid writing a book-length answer, this will just concentrate on a few of the issues - there are more of them:
**Natural resource availability** - assuming that this world is basically Earth-like, not all of the minerals required will be available in usable quantities in proximity to a single city. Iron is almost certainly available because it is so common, but what about everything else? Copper, tin, gold, silver - by the time microchips are getting manufactured just about every non-radioactive element and vast numbers of compounds are required in very pure form. For that matter, are the resources to smelt just iron available? Either vast amounts of wood are required (for turning large amounts of wood into small amounts of charcoal, requiring a large workforce), or coal (which requires a significant workforce for mining). Even if some freak of handwavium means that every element and compound required is somehow available in close proximity to the city...
**Workforce (un)availability** - This society does not have enough people to fill every niche required of a technological society. There are not enough people to mine everything that is required, let alone manufacture all of the parts needed for a pre-1900 culture. Once manufacture of electronic components and custom machined parts is needed, the minimum population to support an industrialized society is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions.
**Price of goods** - Factories take advantage of scale efficiencies to produce goods at a much lower unit cost than cottage industry production allows. AlexP correctly pointed out in comments that without industrial production of textiles, a vast amount of labour within each household is consumed simply producing clothing for the household. See the articles in [this series](https://acoup.blog/tag/textiles/) for detail about just how much effort was required in ye olde days. This applies to absolutely every product imaginable. Just to look at two examples:
* Rope used to be an extraordinarily expensive item because hours of work were required to produce each length, whereas now I can drop by a hardware store or even a supermarket and buy as much as I want out for any reasonable purpose with minimal impact on my wallet.
* The famous essay [I, Pencil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil) goes through the vast number of processes and people involved in the manufacture of a single pencil. When you first read the essay, the automatic question is "Why is manufacturing a pencil done in such a complicated way?" The answer is that pencils are much, much cheaper individually when they are made this way.
If everyone in a society is paying workshop prices rather than factory prices for items then this is a *poor* society. Which has the following consequences...
**Minimal surplus wealth = minimal R&D** - there is not much surplus wealth to go around. Assuming this is not some unexplained utopian society there will quite a few wealthy families and individuals who *may* choose to be patrons of inventors (rather than following the normal practice of patronising artists who can produce pretty pictures and sculptures of the patron), but there are insufficient creative resources to allow rigorous programs of research and development. (Everyone is paying workshop prices for *paper*, which makes it very expensive to even record research notes, let alone publish them.) Even if electricity is discovered, the society will lack both the manpower and the culture to employ thousands of people to build electrical generation facilities and all the supporting infrastructure required.
**No long range transport** - It is not explained why all of these six million people have remained all settled in the one area. However, the fact that they all are in close proximity means that there is no motive to develop efficient long-range transport. Without distant settlements that are farming or mining things that cannot be obtained locally, there is no pressing need to develop long-range sailing ships, let alone railways or aircraft! (Short range railways make sense, but if it is to cover a specific, short route of importance then it is more likely that the relevant hill will be smoothed out to allow the oxen to pull the cars along the rails than the sustained effort to develop an efficient steam engine will be undertaken.) There may be a casual desire for exploration, but if the exploration is not followed by colonization then it will just be an intermittent fad, not a societal imperative to keep the trade flowing. So it is very difficult to see why such a society would invest effort in developing aircraft or even cars, even if it had the population to do so.
**No big wars** - Wars are generally agreed to be bad *[citation required]* but it is also generally agreed that the pressure of wars, especially those that go on for a long time, lead to vast technological improvements. The problem here is that this city + surrounds of 6 million has no one to war against, which means that any fighting is likely to be small scale internal struggles that will end before side A has time to develop type AA armour that inspires side B to develop type BB weapon to defeat type AA armour, and so on. This also means that there will be no non-military spin-off technology that advances society as a whole (eg improved metal forging techniques to make stronger tools or better pressure vessels for engines).
**Societal traits** - Combining the lack of impetus for long-distance travel and the lack of industrial warfare with the concept of a society where *everyone is trained from birth to do their job* - this society is not going anywhere. Whatever stage of technology it is at when the practice of training people from birth for their lifetime employment starts, that is the level of technology that this society will remain at, because it can't train people for jobs that do not exist yet but are vital for the next step of technological advancement. Actually it will only remain at that technological level until the non-renewable resources in the vicinity of this settlement are exhausted, then it will regress to a lower level.
**TL;DR** In summary - this society lacks both sufficient natural resources and population resources to reach the desired technology level and it uses the resources it has inefficiently. It also lacks the social drivers and culture for the development of a technological civilization to be believable.
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## Mid-1900s Level Technology
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> ...this race develops tech inspired by the remains of a highly advanced precursor race that is long dead ...
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While such a small population may never get all that advanced on thier own, once you cut out the pressure of RnD, and only consider logistical limitations, you can actually get pretty far.
There are a number of modern machines that are small and cheap enough to be owned and operated by an individual household that came during or after the Industrial Revolution that could significantly improve a Cottage Industry. All of the tools (except for the microprocessors) in a small modern machine shop can be made in a small modern machine shop by an expert craftsman. This includes metal lathes, mills, injection molds, pumps, compressors, gauges, looms, sewing machines, various printing machines and paper mills, various chemical processing equipment, precision kilns and smelters, etc.
As for materials: aluminum and titanium smelting can be done at a small enough scale to fit in a family run house-hold attached business IF you have a modern power infrastructure to feed it. The chemicals and machines needed are actually pretty easy for a very small number of chemists and machinists to set up, it's the power that is the hard part, but since that part is industrialized, you should be good for making aluminum and titanium alloys. The more problematic metals will be the rare earth metals used in modern electronics. While Titanium and Aluminum take more power and chemistry to extract than Iron, thier complexity is nothing like Neodymium, Scandium, or Dysprosium which can take thousands of passes of refining to get those few parts per million of useful stuff out of their ore.
The other significant material limitation you will face is modern polymers. I once looked up the manufacturing process for Kevlar and found that it took dozens of separate refining processes and a number of fairly complex pieces of equipment to get from raw materials to plastic. This may still be doable by a small number of chemists working on different parts of the production chain, but plastics won't be the cheap alternative to wood and metal that they are today.
The one thing you absolutely can't make is computers... at least nothing nearly as powerful as we have today. The equipment required is simply too sensitive, complex, and precise to be done by some guy in his garage, and as previously mentioned, you can't even refine a lot of the needed rare earth metals. This however, does not mean that you can't make more simple electronics. Simple household businesses could make all of the components you'd expect to find in a [minicomputer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer) or other pre-microprocessor electronics. In fact, up until the late 1900s quite a large number of the electronic devices you'd buy were first prototyped in people's homes.
## No Central Industrialization also means no Planned Obsolescence
Many modern industries can only stay in business by making products designed to break easily and be hard to repair. Industrialization does not just help us produce everything we need, but it actually produces WAY more than we could ever consume, meaning you could still enjoy a lot of modern luxury at affordable rates even with a much less efficient production chain.
Modernish vehicles like cars, trucks, planes, barges, etc. will exist, but without centralized industry, they will be a bit different. Industrialized automotive factories for example can't build cars to last more than 10-20 years even though they know how to make cars that could last 100, and then they fill them up with tons of expensive niceties that break easily or add luxuries that were not in last year's model to encourage people to buy cars who already have cars.
Without industrialized factories you will see far more utilitarian vehicles and machines made. So, while a basic household car may be more expensive and not nearly as fast, powerful, quite, or comfortable as a comparable modern car, they could still become ubiquitous over time as you will see a lot more people driving around in thier old father's or grandfather's vehicles. Overtime, the same people who hand make cars will get most of thier business from keeping cars working than making new ones.
Most Mid-1900s household items will also still exist. Air conditioning, heating, refrigeration, radios, microwaves, gas/electric stoves, lightbulbs, etc. will all be available. Again many of these will be much more expensive than they are today, but last a whole lot longer. For example, a [hand made incandescent lightbulb](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-burning-light-bulb) can last for over 100 years, when you don't have industrialization forcing planned obsolescence like the [Phoebus Cartel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel) which engineered the life expectancy of a lightbulb to only 1000 hours; so, even if a hand blown lightbulb is a 100\$ commodity, the cost is easy to bare when your 30 year old home still has most of its original lights.
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There is an example of a rustic settlement with post-industrial technology right in our own world, and you may find it instructive.
First of all, being rustic forces it to have a dispersed population, and as a result it takes quite a lot of space. It is actually the size of a country. (Spoiler: it *is*, in fact, a country.)
It currently has a population of some 25 million, rather bigger than your society of 6 million, but otherwise it shares many similarities. It is largely cut off from the rest of the world economy, in which sense it is very much like your alien society, which also does not have other economies to trade with. Admittedly this country does not have spacecraft, but they do have intercontinental ballistic missiles, which is not *that* far off. I am not sure if they produce their own microprocessors, but they do have their own operating system (a version of Linux for those interested) and their own internet (not connected to the world's Internet), so it is conceivable that they could have developed their own microprocessor industry if they so chose.
But because of being an otherwise rustic country which chose to concentrate its scarce and dispersed resources into such resource-intensive projects, it also developed some, shall we say, *problems*. Like losing about a million people to a famine in the 1990s.
Yes, I'm talking about North Korea.
Now you can argue that North Korea also has an oversized army, which you do not mention as a feature of your alien society, and their hardships could have been a result of spending too heavily on that army. But spacecraft is expensive too. NASA's budget, at just shy of 15 billion USD, is in fact comparable to North Korea's total GDP, estimated at 16 billion USD. Even that amount of money is insufficient to maintain manned vehicles capable of traveling beyond low Earth orbit. For your alien society, any sort of spacecraft programme is going to be a tremendous expense, throwing the rest of its economy into misery North Korea-style if it can even afford it at all.
...which can actually lead to some very interesting world-building! I mean, think of the tensions within your alien society as its leaders push the population to ever greater sacrifices in the name of space exploration. How do they keep a lid on their citizens' restless moods? Is there maybe a revolution brewing?
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Citing out of memory, during Venice golden age, its arsenal could build a war galley in 1 day, only relying on craftsmen and what is under many points of view a precursor of chain production.
No fancy materials were used, only carefully arranged processes and supplies.
I think your people can reach something similar.
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## Whatever you want
How much and what are you willing to automate? What tools and materials are you willing to allow or forbid?
You've forbidden "mass production", but specifically allowed the computer chips necessary for mass production. Your people are going to rapidly reach the point where they're constrained on what they produce based only on "I need to produce 1000 bolts for my spacecraft and to keep things simple, I should make sure they're all compatible. I have the tools and technology to make as many as I want." Why do they *choose* *not* to do that? Is there a cultural prohibition on automation? How do computer chips with [hundreds of millions of transistors](https://www.utmel.com/blog/categories/transistors/how-many-transistors-in-a-cpu) get around that? If there's no industrial revolution, how did they get the technology necessary for computer chips?
[3D printing technologies](https://markforged.com/3d-printers) are approaching the point where you can print just about anything given the right input materials and tools. That includes tools and upgrades / replacement parts for your 3D printer... A single "craftsman" with a 3D printer just needs the instructions, a compatible set of tools / printing head / tables, and the knowledge to put the pieces together. [Assembly lines are becoming more and more automated](https://www.tm-robot.com/en/why-you-should-automate-your-assembly-lines/). Put "advanced 3D printer" together with "automated assembly line" and "a few skilled workers", and you've got a factory - whether or not you call it "rustic". The key development here isn't the "industrial revolution", tungsten or aluminum but the computer chip. Popular part designs will essentially become standards.
Add in some [CNC mills](https://www.makino.com/en-us/machine-technology/machining-process/high-speed-milling) and [lathes](https://www.haascnc.com/machines/lathes.html), some [automated delivery capabilities](https://www.wipro.com/business-process/the-future-of-delivery-with-drones-contactless-accurate-and-high-speed/), [automated chemistry to produce materials different from what you directly mine / farm](https://www.proleit.com/industries/chemical-industry/) and you're pretty quickly reach a society where machines can create anything, including other machines.
The "workshops" might be kinda large, but since you're apparently allowing most modern and near-future technology, this seems completely compatible with your world. Maybe the robots do everything off in the woods or underground and just deliver goods to the intelligent population, so that it still "looks rustic".
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In my setting there are large floating islands and much smaller floating islands that flow in random directions. Smaller ones sometimes contain mini ecosystems or ore veins that are extremely useful to larger islands. Battles and skirmishes are fought over these or even other larger islands between differing floating islands. Sometimes humans are fighting each other, other times non human entities need to be wiped out to secure an island or defend the home island.
There exists a class of medicine and drugs that greatly helps the human body fight internal diseases and bodily issues. It also makes the human body more capable of surviving on a floating island in the first place as well. Things like cancers, heart attacks, tumors/ general organ ware are curable so long as the issue didn't originate from an outside source. This means that even with a limited pool of people on the island, genetic disease or issues that you would normally see with an extremely homogeneous group are practically non existent. Genetic diversity doesn't rear the ugly head it does when you have a smaller sample size because of the medicine/ drug. This is important because things like a famine or lack of resources (such as water), might kill a great deal of people. But the population can recover without issue.
The drug mainly works on genetics and stopping bodily issues when it can start fixing the issue when its not terrible or out of control. Outside sources of infection or issue can cause rapid degeneration of the human body if not treated well enough in time. In that situation it has limited use there, but modern medicine and general medical practices can step in to save lives.
I.e someone isn't going to be able to survive sudden acute radiation poisoning since the drug works on prevention, mitigation and repair over a period of time. Trying to fix an issue after it happens isn't going to yield helpful results. An analogy is like being shot, but doing medical procedures to late. While the procedures are sound, they only work when done asap.
Because its a floating island, this drug is useful for keeping a population alive. It also means that older people are still able to function greatly as their bodies aren't ageing or being damaged at the rate humans in our world are. **But at the same time this poses an issue, if the purpose of this drug is to help keep people alive and useful on the islands for longer, why is overpopulation not an issue?** With that many older people in great shape on a floating island with limited resources compared to a country, after a few generations the population will explode and keep continuing to grow.
Limiting the drug on the population simply isn't an option (actually its a plot point for a different island, so for the main island its out).
Some ideas that I've considered are:
1. Procreation means a total incompatibility with the drug and any medical practices that use the drug as a basis. Problem is, what's to stop a selfish society from deciding that they don't want kids. At that point you're practically signing up for death, even if it means you can have kids. Encouraging people to have children brings up the issue of a baby boom.
2. The setting is so violent, each citizen past a certain age is required to commit X amount of service years every so often. Past a certain age people get the option of retiring or having longer breaks between their next tour of duty. There are a few issues that I have with this. One is that the military would want to hold onto veterans to train new soldiers. Second, an extremely elite cadre of veterans could basically live forever if they don't die in the service. Third, in order to get to this point of artificial culling, a lot of young people would have to die for this to make sense.
3. Compatibility is a range, some are more tuned than others. Therefore the drug/medicine works better on some people than others. This immediately sets up a hierarchical issue whereby people can selectively choose partners so that offspring can live longer. Down the line the problem gets worse.
Essentially I need to have the ability to increase the lifespan of people without it causing everyone on the island to live for a long long time. People should have the **potential** to live long and be useful, but it shouldn't be the widespread norm to the point that it strains resources. The older people need to be able to fight and do day to day activities in life without much assistance. They cannot be stuck in nursing homes. Ideally I'd like to avoid eugenics or saying that past a certain age, people are executed (seems ripe for a revolution) or restricting it from the general population. Simply getting rid of it isn't an option as its a central resource that many islands and non human entities fight over. Basically if people aren't dying en masse to disease or the body deteriorating anymore, they have to be dying to something else.
At present I am considering rolling the above three points together and changing a few things. But I would like to hear some other arguments since I am not totally satisfied with the arguments above.
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Many Polynesian Islands had this already, no need for drugs.
Population was limited by endemic warfare and blood feuds. Families with 10+ children were common. Sickness was almost unknown until the great unwashed Europeans introduced it.
All the kids were trained to fight in the knowledge that they may need to fight to the death at any time. No one formally declared war, you just assumed your neighbours wanted to kill you and you got them first if you had a chance.
Large areas of some islands have never been cultivated, it wasn't overpopulation in the sense of not enough resources that drove the main Polynesian expansion.
Peaceful visits from other islands would normally be treated very well as they were a source of stories, dance, trade and gene flow.
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# Decreased Libido:
The drugs are affecting the desire of the people using them. People simply have less sex, and the levels keep going down over time. By around age 50, there is really no particular sex drive left. It is POSSIBLE to have sex, but without the impulse or enjoyment, it's just going through the motions for reproduction.
# Addiction:
The drugs make you feel great - like, REALLY great. So much so, that as the users get older, they only feel any real pleasure from the drugs. Getting more drugs becomes their chief preoccupation, and sex is simply not of any great interest anymore (unless it is exchanged for drugs).
# Control:
Your drugs are able to control when a woman ovulates. A woman must take a specific drug to go through a cycle. Since a woman must consciously choose to reproduce, there is no accidental conception. Given a choice, would you take the drug and go through unpleasant cycles if you weren't specifically trying to get pregnant?
# Immunity:
Your drugs boost the immune system. But babies are seen by the immune system as foreign parasites. So like RH factor, eventually after one or two pregnancies, every woman will develop antibodies that cause pregnancies to spontaneously abort.
# Underlying genetics:
While your drugs can treat the symptoms of genetic disorders, they don't have the ability to tell what good or bad genes are. Any trait that is lethal before birth causes fetuses to die before they are born. Sure you can magically cure any disease, but if 90+% of pregnancies never make it to term, birth rates will be extremely low.
# Lowered metabolism:
The drugs slow down the metabolism, and as a result pregnancies are also slowed. So much so, in fact, that it can take a baby six or seven years to be born. This is 6-7 years of constant discomfort, and many women do all they can to avoid this long and unpleasant process.
# Social Pressure:
All those oldsters don't want to compete with young people for resources. When resources become scarce, folks having new babies are ostracized and exiled. Abortion, widespread infanticide, and execution for petty childhood offences mean that few children if any become adults. Citizenship is only given to those who live to over 100.
# Customs:
All youth, at about age 16, are required to leave home. The must go out into the world and find a way to be successful. If they live long enough, they can come home and claim citizenship. This makes for a large number of youth who fail and die, or find a place elsewhere.
# Supply:
There is only so much drug supply to go around. It is expensive, and the sources of the drugs are some of the main sources of conflict. Successful groups with plenty of drugs must constantly fight to maintain their sources. This naturally means societies either restrict reproduction to match supplies, constantly fight to gain bigger supplies, or give up and live natural lives without the drugs.
# Homosexuality:
The drugs cause 99+% of your population to only desire same-sex partners. While people can grudgingly have heterosexual sex for reproduction, it is an unpleasant chore.
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The drug helps preventing aging related diseases and deaths, but does nothing to avoid fall related deaths.
And if you live on a floating island, exposed to winds which will be stronger than at ground level and with no restrains on its edges, it's a matter of time before somebody goes pluff, falling into the void and plunging to their demise.
In particular if the islands are small, the chances of being close to their edges are higher, and so the chance of falling. It can be so common that is considered as a matter of life.
Those deaths will help avoiding overpopulation.
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## If the drug drastically lowers infant mortality then population growth will halt naturally.
we see this in countries where infant mortality drops low enough, people have fewer children. Evolutionarily speaking this happens because when the chances of children dying is high people unconsciously have more children and invest less time and energy in each child because that is more successful in getting your genes into the next generation, once infant mortality is low the opposite is true your best bet evolutionarily is having only a few children and investing as much time and energy as possible into them.
population booms really only happen when a place is transitioning from one to the other. We see this over and over again in populations, infant morality drops and population growth drops a generation later.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zUYk6.png)
## Alternatively, keeping the elderly alive helps prevent population growth naturally.
The elderly don't produce children so the more of your population skews to the elderly the fewer children their are, your population can't grow quickly because most of your population cannot reproduce. This wil not stop population growth but it will drastically slow it.
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The drug makes people sterile.
Most people can have their first few children before they need the drug, but once they take it for the first time, they are sterile for the rest of their lives.
Pair that with your reason No 3 and you can't breed for compatibility for the drug anymore. As you can't select the ones that are highly compatible for breeding. (once you know they are, it is too late).
If you are afraid people might be too selfish to procreate anymore, make having kids a social goal. People want to have kids and they do, but sooner or later everybody needs the drug and can't procreate anymore.
Then there are still accidents to make sure your population does not overshoot and even a very long life ends sometime.
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I think your questions answers your question. Twice
By famine
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> This is important because things like a famine or lack of resources (such as water),
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Or by sword
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> Simply getting rid of it isn't an option as its a central resource that many islands and non human entities **fight** over. Basically if people aren't dying en masse to disease or the body deteriorating anymore, they have to be dying to something else.
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*emphasis added*
No need for complicated explanations, your population stays low because there is only so much food to go around and that scarcity leads to famine or bloody conflict. Either of which will keep the population down.
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**I think no special reason is needed**
If your world is technologically in 1980's-1990's this is close to modern technology level. Currently in most first world countries the birth rates are close to or in some cases below replacement - [see this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#/media/File:Total_Fertility_Rate_Map_by_Country.svg), it wasn't so different back in the 80's - 90's. As long as education level is similar to modern and contraceptives are available, population will not balloon naturally anyway.
The drug will make people age slower and thus stay fertile for longer, but if a couple does not want to have more than 2-3 kids anyway this will not lead to an uncontrolled population growth.
Additional factors are, it sounds like there is a lot of warfare in your setting, which will lead to people dying. Also, since people are living on islands there will be a shortage of space which will make families even more reluctant to have a lot of children.
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**Sausage party**
Dudes, dudes, dudes. It is the island of ever-young dudes. They play the sports, argue about the rules, make wars on other islands, grill, and generally engage in never-getting-senile dudely activities. Valhalla!
There are many fantastic scenarios where all characters are dudes. For some reason Wind in the Willows comes to mind. Mr Toad! Especially in days past the lack of females was not explained. In more recent fiction, creators feel a need to increase the visibility and agency of female characters - the movie version of Lord of the Rings is an example.
Your island of spry old dudes is just that. Where did the ladies go? Did they decamp to some other island? Does the medicine not work for them? Were there no ladies in the first place? Grist for the prose mill.
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## The drug eventually drives people to death
The drug builds up in a person's body over time. This can then become a problem in two ways:
* skipping a dose of the drug has bad consequences; or
* maintaining a high concentration has bad consequences.
In either case, the effect I like is that the individual starts to have breaks with reality, brief spells during which they lose their sense of place or self. These spells become longer and more powerful, until the person has some fatal misadventure while spaced-out. They step off the island while hallucinating, or try to hug a warrior who is attacking them, or eat handfuls of dirt from the garden.
Essentially, long-term use of the drug substantially increases the risk of accidental death. This will lower the average life expectancy across the board.
It's also a pretty standard theme in fiction that anything which seems "too good to be true" is revealed to have secret negative consequences that more than compensate for the obvious benefits.
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In settings where time travel is possible but only backwards in time (Terminator), how did the scientists that developed the machine know that the subjects sent back in time actually were time traveling instead of just being destroyed outright? From the perspective of the people in "the present" (the origin point for the time travelers) the subject enters the machine and after it's turned on they vanish.
My question is how would you know for certain the intended time travelers made it to past (let alone the intended destination), instead of simply being atomized?
I am trying to write a story where prisoners in the future are sent back in time as a form of exile for their crimes, but I got stuck when I realized that without some way of confirming the prisoners are actually being sent backwards in time this would seem to the people of that future as nothing more than an overly elaborate and expensive method of execution.
Any ideas?
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**Short trips.**
TC is going to test my time machine. I am going to send brave TC back in time. Back in time 3 minutes. I tell TC to bring something awesome from the future.
We are going to do the test in 3 minutes because my favorite show finishes then; TC likes it too and we are watching together. TC from 3 minutes in the future arrives. TC high fives the TC that is watching my show with me. TC from the future tells us how the show ends because that is how TC is. As payback TC from the future gets flicked on the head by TC of the present and a minor altercation ensues but they are evenly matched.
It is time to use the time machine. TC of the present grabs my box of Cheezits and hops in before I can get it back. Hops in the time machine, not the box of cheezits.
Now there is 1 TC with me who is the one who gave away the ending of the show. TC forgot about the cheezits in TCs jacket which got crushed during the minor altercation. I guess that is the something awesome from the future.
We know the time machine is safe. No-one got disintegrated. The cheezit crumbs taste ok. TC was still very much TC. We could do a few more jumps and in fact we must have decided to do that because TC from 30 minutes in the future has just showed up. TC from the future has a new box of Cheezits which are the extra toasty kind and it is family size so enough for all 3 of us. All 4 because another TC just showed up and now things are going to get tricky.
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## Isotopic analysis
If the volume in the time machine swaps with the target volume in the past, then you can do isotopic analysis on the air or whatever else has come through to the present after pressing the button. Nuclear wars or the absence of them will show up.
Edit: You could possibly even send back some slow decaying chemical tracer, or dust sized microprocessor with a realtime clock, and sample the air from the same spot over a time period; there's lots of possible riffs on this.
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# History records
I know that in this day and age this is a contemptious issue, but if something is in history books, it probably happened.
So just check if your prisoner is ever mentioned anywhere. To make it even more likely they make it to the records, [send them dressed as clowns. Historians love that, so it will have a lasting impact that you can read about ages later.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_clown_sightings)
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# The Many-Colored Land:
Julian May had a similar issue, and sent his time travelers back with items made to be able to survive in the fossil record. I don't remember the exact things he used, but carved stones, synthetic diamonds, or gold with specific elemental contaminants all come to mind. Then, the people in the modern world need to look through museums and sites near the supposed destination for proof that the artifacts survived to the modern age.
Obviously, if there is a deliberate effort to prevent a signal from going forward (like by the aliens on Earth in May's book) then this would be foiled.
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Does your machine work? Stay out of the room. Have your associate go remove anything in the machine and leave, saying nothing about what he finds. You go in and use the machine to send something back 10 minutes. Now you go talk to your associate and see if they removed said object from the machine.
If they got the object you have a time machine, if they didn't you either don't understand your machine or it's not a time machine at all. No paradoxes in either case.
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Well, the time machine would need to be a tested, proven thing before it can be used in executions. How you test it however depends on the kind of time-travel you imagine.
If you take the "fixed destiny, no paradoxes" route then testing is simple - send something back in time for a short duration. Let's say 5 minutes. See if it arrived before it was sent.
If time travel creates parallel timelines then it's harder, but you can still get somewhere - have the scientists send back in time information about their time machine and the construction. Keep hammering away at the theory, fix the theoretical mistakes you've uncovered, keep sending back. You'll never see the results, but your counterpart in a parallel reality will. Probably in a lot of parallel realities. And they can keep doing that until one of those timelines has plenty of proof from other timelines.
Yet another option opens if you change the design of your time machine. Instead of disappearing, open a portal which you can walk through both ways. The portal creates an alternate timeline, but while it's open, both realities are linked. When it closes though, it's bye bye forever.
Last but not least, you can also just handwave it away if it's not relevant to your story.
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This is NOT a repeat of [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/11441/could-there-be-a-planet-bigger-than-earth-but-with-less-gravity) question.
I am NOT looking to see the smallest planet possible that has less gravity than Earth. I am looking for how big a perfectly habitable planet (Habitable meaning capable of supporting Earth-like lifeforms, in terms of temperature, magnetic field, and atmospheric pressure) can get, WHILE having a gravity field no more than 0.8 m/s² more than Earth's 9.81 m/s², if not the same as Earth's.
This would mean I want the diameter (at the planet's equator) for the biggest possible planet with a magnetic field strong enough to support Earth animals, AND the atmosphere to do so, while having a gravity strength between 9.81 to 10.61 m/s². Nothing else about the planet - moons, topography, atmospheric contents - is important here. I just want to know how big a planet can get before its gravity exceeds 10.61 m/s², while having a magnetic field and the atmosphere needed for supporting life.
A good answer tells me the maximum size of this Mega Earth with habitability while keeping within the 10.61 m/s² upper limit.
A *great* answer also tells me the materials this planet would be made of, AND keeps it super close to 9.81 m/s² with the magnetic field.
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You want a magnetic field...
This means, according to our latest theories on how planets produce their magnetic field, that in the core you need to have some metal. Considering the abundances of elements in the universe, I guess your choices are either metallic hydrogen or iron-nickel.
Metallic hydrogen is thought to be present in conditions present in the core of heavy-weights like Jupiter, therefore I guess it is disqualified. You are left then with iron-nickel, like our Earth.
Then the size of the planet starts to play a role: too small and it will quickly, in astronomical times, cool down, stopping the dynamo (ask Mars for info) and killing the magnetic field.
Of the 4 data points that we have in our statistical series (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) only one has sufficient geological activity to signify a significant molten core, and that is Earth. Venus has signs of volcanism but no magnetic field, so it is sort of an odd ball. Let's go with a core size about the one of Earth. How can we make the planet bigger without getting too away with gravity?
We can use lighter elements, but there we are also constrained by the abundance of elements. The most plausible choice seems to be a carbon rich crust, way richer than Earth, which is at 3000 parts per million of Carbon and 653 parts per million of Silicon, with 9500 parts per million of Oxygen.
If you manage to pull down the average density to 5 g/cc, you can get to a radius of 7500 km with a gravity of 10.48 $m/s^2$. (Earth is at 5.5 g/cc with a radius of 6300 km). With 4.5 g/cc you can get to about 8000 km radius.
However mind that it can be tricky to reconcile a carbon rich planet with an oxygen rich atmosphere.
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If the planet were made out of light material, sans large iron core, it could be much larger. The trick is the magnetic field...
Take a look at Ganymede: it has a magnetic field, but it's buried within the far larger field of Jupiter. I was thinking there was a moon with an "induced" magnetic field from its parent, but maybe that's out of date. But this works: it shows that a large body can be shielded by the magnetic field of its primary, so doesn't need to generate one itself!
Make the body, larger than Earth, orbit a super-Jovian planet or brown dwarf that has a magnetic field that works to deflect the solar wind and all that good stuff.
Thanks to [M.A.Golding](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/34461/m-a-golding) for finding this scientific work which investigates this exact idea: [Magnetic Shielding of Exomoons Beyond the Circumplanetary Habitable Edge](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256422936_Magnetic_shielding_of_exomoons_beyond_the_circumplanetary_habitable_edge).
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If you want a habitable planet that has a gravity similar to that of Earth and a magnetic field and atmosphere similar to Earth then that planet will be of similar size and mass to Earth.
There are a number of interrelated properties which dictate why there won't be much deviation.
[Surface gravity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_gravity), is determined by the radius of the planet and its mass.
$ g = GM/r^2$
Where:
* $g$ is the surface gravity ($\sf{m/s^2}$)
* $M$ is the mass of the planet ($\sf{kg}$)
* $r$ is the radius of the planet ($\sf{m}$)
* G is [gravitational constant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant), with a value of $\sf{6.647 x
10^{-11} m^3.kg^{-1}.s^{-2}}$
Average density of the planet is simply the mass divided by the volume, $\rho = M/V$
The properties for Earth are:
* Mass, $\sf{5973.6 \ x \ 10^{21} \ kg}$
* Radius, $\sf{6371 \ km}$
* Volume, $\sf{1083.207 \ x \ 10^9 \ km^3}$
* Average density, $\sf{5.514 \ g/cm^3}$
* Gravity, $\sf{9.7803 m/s^2}$
If the radius of your planet was 1.1 Earth radii ($\sf{7008.1 \ km}$) and the mass was 1.3072 Earth masses ($\sf{7808.69 \ x 10^{21} \ kg}$), its density would be $\sf{5.416 \ g/cm^3}$, which is slightly less than that of Mercury ($\sf{5.427 \ g/cm^3}$). The surface gravity would be $\sf{10.61 \ m/s^2}$.
If the radius was 1.5 Earth radii and the mass was 2.431 Earth masses, the gravity $\sf{10.61 \ m/s^2}$, but the average density would only be $\sf{3.972 \ g/cm^3}$, which would be very similar to the density of Mars ($\sf{3.934 \ g/cm^3}$). This is comparatively low density which would suggest a lighter weight core of the planet and possibly a smaller magnetic field.
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You would want a planet with a lower density than Earth. If one were to increase the radius of a planet while keeping density the same, mass would increase in a cubic relationship, and as gravity is mass times the gravitational constant divided by the square of radius, that means that surface gravity will increase in an linear function. A planet with a density of Earth's, and a gravity of 1.08 g, which is the uppermost limit, would have a radius of 1.08 Earth radii. We would need to use less-dense materials, and let's assume that said planet is not a gas giant. Pallas, a dwarf planet made mostly of ice, has a density of 2890 kg/m^3, which would be about 1.91 times less dense than Earth.
If we had an planet with Earth's radius, and Pallas' density, its surface gravity would be .524 Earth radii. That means that the uppermost radius that would give a surface gravity within your specified range would be 2.06 Earth radii. Anything larger, and you would probably have to make it a gas giant to keep surface gravity just low enough.
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An Earthlike magnetic field implies a conductive liquid core (doesn't have to be metal; any conductive liquid that circulates in the correct manner will produce magnetism). The density of this core, the mantle, and crust material will determine how large the radius can be and fall within your gravitational limits (note that the larger the radius, the larger the mass can be, so we don't need to limit the planet to no more massive than Earth).
If we eliminate the possibility of artificial construction (a surface that's a thin shell supported by the narrowest possible pillars on top of a much smaller, denser body to provide the magnetic field requirement), we'll need to least dense material possible to predominated in the mantle and crust.
That least dense material (that can stand the weight of the layers above) is probably some form of pressure ice. There are other questions (and even an XKCD, as I recall) concerning how big and dense a pure-water planet could be; this wouldn't be pure water (must be conductive, which implies a certain minimum level of dissolved ions -- sea water works pretty well here, at 2.5% denser than pure), but it won't change things much.
What I recall from those is that you'll wind up with a liquid or solid surface (depending on the atmosphere), a deep layer of liquid water, a layer of hot pressure ice, and a superhot liquid core. The overall density will be no higher than a third of what you'd get from the silicate and ultramafic rocks of Earths' crust and mantle overlaying an iron-nickel core, which allows the planet to be roughly three times the diameter of Earth to have the same gravity.
The problem that arises is that water won't be water at the core of such a mass; there's a point down there somewhere at which it becomes a loose "soup" of unbonded oxygen and hydrogen, and as such may become non-conductive. As far as I know, no one has been able to investigate what water does under much more than a million atmospheres, and you'd pass that pressure a few hundred kilometers down.
How such a body could form is another interesting question, since even comets have some dust and rock in their nuclei, and would thus contribute to a small rocky core (which likely wouldn't be liquid, as there isn't as much core heat available as in a rocky planet). We may be back to an artificial construct after all...
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## Saturn.
[Saturn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn) has gravity of 10.44 m/s^2, just barely below your limit. It is made mostly of hydrogen with a little helium - and it's hard to see a way to refine helium out of a planet. You can suppose a development that rips out the small rocky core, and you can heat it a little, because right now the [habitable zone (300 K, liquid water)](http://www.ciclops.org/media/sp/2010/6495_15622_0.pdf) is around 15 atm, and you want it closer to 1 atm. But the depths of the planet are tremendously hot, so you would be expanding at most a few hundred km of the atmosphere by two-fold or less, with a 2 pi effect on circumference. Unless the core of Saturn turns out to be substantial, to three significant figures, I think Saturn's 366000 km circumference is as far as you're going to get.
There is also a magnetic field. As for surface, well, [that's another story](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/197901/how-would-you-keep-a-reverse-hindenburg-from-exploding)... :)
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I am wondering if there are any specific cities on the North American continent (not considering Mexico for the moment being, for reasons detailed below) that supernatural beings trying to live hidden amongst humanity would naturally flock to in order to hide.
Additional parameters for my question are as follows:
* **Stereotypical masquerade rules apply.** That is, the supernatural beings are in hiding, they want to remain hidden from mankind (and therefore can't openly form enclaves like "Little Transylvanias", and they aren't in a position where they can just brainwash rich people or government officials into giving them all upscale penthouse apartments. Government influence on the supernatural community is not a factor (i.e., I want to see what would happen without the government actually knowing about and trying to manage supernatural beings akin to *Men in Black*).
* **The supernaturals want to live in as nice of an areas as possible.** There's most likely a sliding scale between scrutiny and economic prosperity. In economically depressed areas people are more likely to not ask questions about mysterious neighbors, but living conditions are worse and the crime rate is higher. By contrast, if they tried moving into an upscale suburb or gated community there would likely be more security and economic prosperity but supernaturals would likely be subject to extreme scrutiny. Given this, the supernaturals would have to strike a balancing act between trying to live in as nice of an area as possible but at the same time subject to as little scrutiny as possible.
* **The supernaturals want to stay beneath notice as much as possible**. As a result they would probably aim for regions where the government and fellow citizens have as much of a laisse-faire attitude towards its citizens as possible. I don't know if that would make Canada or the U.S. more appealing.
* **The supernaturals aren’t interested in starting their own city off in the middle of nowhere**. Partly because such a thing would be incredibly difficult to hide a new city of supernaturals springing up, and partially because I’m interested in how closely any IRL area fits these criteria before creating a wholly fictional one.
* **The supernatural beings aren’t interested in living in a non-urban area.** It would be a lot easier for them if the supernatural beings if they were willing to live off in the woods as a hermit. However, the supernaturals in this case still want access to electricity, running water, and fresh coffee. So at most they would be willing to live in a suburban area that has easy access to an urban center. A city that has large amounts of wild spaces in proximity to urban areas might be a favorable factor for them.
* **It would be nice if they could find an area where supernatural disputes can be easily covered up.** I.e., places where it would be easy to cover up things like vampires occasionally preying on people, werewolf pack disputes spilling over into violence, etc. Obviously any kind of crime if it got too noticeable would end up bringing the wrath of the government down on them, but the question is if there are areas where supernatural plot and conflict would be more likely to be overlooked as long as it wasn’t too obvious.
* **Asking about supernatural beings in hiding in general, not any specific type.** Obviously different types of supernaturals would have different needs. Vampires that prey on humans would want areas where they could eat people without being discovered, werewolves would like areas with lots of forests, etc. However, I'm more wondering what would be the best cities in a general sense, rather than which would be best for a specific supernatural.
Worldbuilding SE already has this question ([Best country for humans with superpowers to hide?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/45334/best-country-for-humans-with-superpowers-to-hide)), but there are some significant differences. I am interested in figuring out which specific cities would be the best place to hide, rather than countries. The other question is more talking about 50,000 superhumans migrating as a group (and therefore dealing with immigration laws) and talks about countries rather than specific cities. However, different regions of a single country can be dramatically different in terms of hideability. For example, in North America, hiding in Calgary or Denver would be a completely different experience than hiding in Toronto or New York City.
The main reason I'm asking this is that in urban fantasy series with supernatural beings there is often a single city that ends up being a hotbed of supernatural activity for plot-related reasons. New York City is especially popular for this purpose, but I’ve seen Seattle, Washington, Toronto, Vancouver, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Tulsa, and even Cincinnati used. However, usually the city is picked first rather than picked considering what would make it a supernatural hotbed. **What I’m wondering is if there are specific geographic, demographic, and socio-economic factors that would make supernatural beings under a Masquerade more likely to emigrate there and hence more likely to be hotspot cities for supernatural activity than others.** I would be very interested in seeing if there are cities that could fill the role in other parts of the world like Europe, Australia, Japan, etc. (e.g., would Tokyo be better than Kyoto? Would Liverpool be better than London? Would Melbourne be better than Sydney? Would Perm be better than Saint Petersburg? Not to mention what would be the best areas in Mexico specifically), but I fear that would be too similar to the previously asked question so I am focusing on North America north of the Rio Grande given that most of these series tend to be set there. Trying to focus on the U.S. and Canada over Mexico given that Mexico seems like too much of an obvious answer.
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### Indianapolis
You want a city with low visibility from authorities and where the odd crime can go unnoticed. I think the best metric for this is the effectiveness of law enforcement. You want an ineffective police force who will leave you alone. [Washington Post did an analysis](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/investigations/where-murders-go-unsolved/) of where police are least effective at investigating crimes based on how many murders go unsolved.
Let me just show the cover art from the Washington Post story (A four-block area around Gladstone Avenue, on the northeast side of Indianapolis):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ODOvq.jpg)
(There probably already is a werewolf here - that'd explain all the unsolved homicides!)
The average income of US\$ 42k a year per person (down from the average of \$53k), might scare you off, but looking online at the [upper end of real estate nearby](https://www.zillow.com/indianapolis-in-46290/) there are some really nice mansions for the well-off supernatural to relax in.
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Los Angeles
There are already cultures and beings living there that I would not classify as "Human", and they are an accepted part of the community.
Anecdote: I drove through there one Sunday afternoon a couple years ago.
Walking on the sidewalk, I saw a couple:
Leading: Gentleman. Age 55 or so. Dignified look. Wearing Victorian style upperclass BallGown, in delicate shades of pastel pink. Pearls everywhere.
Following: On a dog-chain. Guy, 35-ish. Very neat goatee, shaved head except for vertical ponytail (rainbow fluorescent). Wearing a leather thong jockstrap, black sandals, and about 15 yards of leather-with-pointy-studs belts.
Leading was carrying a neat wooden Trug Basket, with a selection of 7-11 shopping bags.
Following was carrying the same, just not in a basket.
Obviously just a loving couple out for an afternoon stroll, shopping and minding their own business.
Now... When NORMAL humanity presents such an facade, just how are we supposed to notice if one of them is a Werewolf, Vampire, or Orion Slave Girl?
P.S.
Portland got a very close second place in my vote, due to the existence of people like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CGW1C.jpg)
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> **The supernatural beings aren’t interested in living in a non-urban area.** It would be a lot easier for them if the supernatural beings if they were willing to live off in the woods as a hermit. However, the supernaturals in this case still want access to electricity, running water, and fresh coffee. So at most they would be willing to live in a suburban area that has easy access to an urban center. A city that has large amounts of wild spaces in close proximity to urban areas might be a favorable factor for them.
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I suggest [Yellowknife](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowknife), in Canada.
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> Yellowknife (/ˈjɛloʊnaɪf/; Dogrib: Sǫǫ̀mbak’è[8]) is the capital, only city, and largest community in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, about 400 km (250 mi) south of the Arctic Circle, on the west side of Yellowknife Bay near the outlet of the Yellowknife River.
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The closest city to it is Edmonton, about 990 km away.
Here is a picture of the place to show that it is quite urban:
It is large enough that you can get all the benefits of modern technology in it. But it is quite small with a population of about nineteen thousand people (which is almost half of the population of the province), and as I said above quite far from the next urban center. There is plenty of rural and wild areas around if the supernatural being wishes to do something away from human eyes, while still being able to quickly go back home in a urban place.
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High population densities are your friend. Smaller towns tend to have a higher rate of "everyone knowing everyone", so any kind of secretive weirdness is going to be much harder to hide.
For an entity that feeds on humans (vampire, wendigo, etc.), a city with a high temporary/transient population (the homeless, tourists, migrant workers) is ideal. When someone without social or legal ties to the place goes missing, it'll take longer for anyone to notice that something's wrong.
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# Detroit
Lots of vacancy, including larger factory building. You could easily remodel some of those to accomodate the supernaturals' needs.
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Part of this is going to depend on your supernatural beings.
**Do they all have the capacity to pass for human at least enough to hide?** If not, then at least some of them will need to be basically hermits. Hermits in a nice house, but hermits all the same.
**What do they consider a nice place to live?** A nice place is not necessarily a giant mansion or a top floor penthouse in the big city. Some might want a country house where they have room to be themselves without prying eyes on them all the time.
**How much Urban is enough of it?** Smaller cities are still urban centres, and they will still have many of the amenities of larger centres, but they will not have everything. It is a bit of a sliding scale.
### Cities of Interest
This is the general answer. As you have realized in your own question, different entities will have their own needs and wants.
My thought would be a city of 40,000 to 100,000 people -- Large enough to have most of the urban amenities available, even if actual options are limited. However, there will also be enough semi-rural areas available to have finer homes or larger yards to run around in. Also, enough people so that one can live in relative anonymity if desired.
Also, it is plausible that some supernatural beings actually would consider a farmhouse and surrounding farm to be a nice house. A nice place, an honest days work away from the prying eyes of people sound great. Yes, you have neighbours but so long as you can pass for normal for that time, you're fine for the most part. Surprise visits could be tricky but manageable.
I haven't been around the continent too much so I don't know every city there, but I was thinking of a place like **Chatham** or **Barrie**, in Ontario to go by the range of settlement sizes. It would not be a perfect fit, but those were my inspirations and places that I know of. They are a good size, have a good mix of nice houses in the city, rural space nearby to use, and proximity to larger centres for the rest of their amenities.
But this is a general case. I would assume that vampires, at least as we generally know them, probably want a larger city to have a wider net to cast for anonymous (and possibly willing) food. Werewolves might veer towards cities with woodlands or bush not too far away depending on their control. Aquatic entities are likely as concerned about the waters they need over if their house is really nice -- a place on a river or lake is likely their ideal and not all cities will qualify there.
### Bonus: Hiding the Evidence
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This part will be the trickiest and depend on the powers and control your supernatural entities have more than the location chosen. People will eventually notice that there are bodies in a certain neighbourhood killed in a certain way (if they ever find the bodies that is).
As an example, a vampire will have to figure out how to deal with a bloodless body in the event they drain somebody dry. The cause of death will be very noticeable -- two pricks in the neck or at a vein as well as a distinct lack of blood.
Those that actually bodily consume their prey have it a bit easier -- there will be a disappearance, but without a body it will be hard to prove that they died. Their death will only be assumed until something confirms it.
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How effective or possible would flying machines that are not powered by a machine be on a flat plain?
I have a setting where much of the world is a relatively flat grassland, and the people have no magic. The inhabitants of this grassland are nomads, living in wagons ans almost always travailing. I would like to have them observe the surrounding area from a height, checking for dangers like other groups who might attack, as well as natural predators, and so they can find needed supplies like water, or wood from farther away. Would technology like gliders, wing suits, or really anything be possible to build and operate for a short length of time, as well as being small enough to be carried by a nomadic culture? Would it be possible to launch these from the top of a wagon, if no naturally high ground was close by? The technology level is roughly that of the Renaissance. I imagine hot air balloons would work, but could something like a glider or wing suit, if there was enough wind?
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As long as you have steady winds, you should be able to fly a kite. And if you can fly a kite, [then you can fly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-lifting_kite):
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> Man-carrying kites are believed to have been used extensively in ancient China, for both civil and military purposes and sometimes enforced as a punishment.
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> The (636) Book of Sui records that the tyrant Gao Yang, Emperor Wenxuan of Northern Qi (r. 550-559), executed prisoners by ordering them to 'fly' using bamboo mats. For his Buddhist initiation ritual at the capital Ye, the emperor parodied the Buddhist ceremonial fangsheng 放生 "releasing caged animals (usually birds and fish)". The (1044) Zizhi Tongjian records that in 559, all the condemned kite test pilots died except for Eastern Wei prince Yuan Huangtou.
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> > Gao Yang made Yuan Huangtou [Yuan Huang-Thou] and other prisoners take off from the Tower of the Phoenix attached to paper owls. Yuan Huangtou was the only one who succeeded in flying as far as the Purple Way, and there he came to earth.
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> The Purple Way (紫陌) road was 2.5 kilometres from the approximately 33-metre Golden Phoenix Tower (金凰台). These early manned kite flights presumably "required manhandling on the ground with considerable skill, and with the intention of keeping the kites flying as long and as far as possible."
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> Stories of man-carrying kites also occur in Japan, following the introduction of the kite from China around the seventh century AD. In one such story the Japanese thief Ishikawa Goemon (1558–1594) is said to have used a man-lifting kite to allow him to steal the golden scales from a pair of ornamental fish images which were mounted on the top of Nagoya Castle. His men manoeuvered him into the air on a trapeze attached to the tail of a giant kite. He flew to the rooftop where he stole the scales, and was then lowered and escaped.[citation needed] It is said that at one time there was a law in Japan against the use of man-carrying kites.
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> In 1282, the European explorer Marco Polo described the Chinese techniques then current and commented on the hazards and cruelty involved. To foretell whether a ship should sail, a man would be strapped to a kite having a rectangular grid framework and the subsequent flight pattern used to divine the outlook.
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I have a personal hypothesis that the expression *"high as a kite"* came to be due to people smoking hashish (pot resin) and then flying with these kites, because that would give you one dope trip. Just like Mr. Ronald Amudsen in the picture below (trying the technology to see if it would help exploring the arctic).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Twgx.jpg)
But alas, I have no evidence to support this.
Anyway, having both flown a kite and being high as a kite (though not on a kite) in a very plain place, I can tell you that by this way you could lift a person. That person could go arbitrarily high, depending on how much hemp you got. The hemp is for the rope that will hold the kite, among other things. By the way, if your setting ever becomes a movie, I suggest including [Mystic Traveler by Dave Mason](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odk8yO9MRAM) as the theme for the flying scenes.
Go high enough, and besides the view, you might have enough clearing for a base jump. Being able to build a proper parachute, or even trying a [DaVincian one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute#Early_Renaissance), is a topic for another post.
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Other posters have noted that a steady breeze can launch a kite, and that bungee cords were used to launch gliders. Modern gliders can also be launched using a powered winch to pull the tow cable and pull the glider down the runway.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8nzjh.jpg)
*winch launch*
In order for the nomadic tribe to have more flexibility, they should also have developed a similar system, using a harness attached to one or a team of horses. The horses running will pull the kite or glider up to launch speed. If it is a kite, then the horses may have to continue to move until the kite reaches an altitude where it encounters a wind, but an actual glider could cast off and the pilot would then use his skills to remain aloft (looking for thermals should not be too difficult on a broad plain, but if there is terrain, then "ridge running" and other techniques can also be employed. Keen pilots should observe birds, especially hawks, and try to emulate them.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ssTu1.jpg)
*Thermals*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QFwgj.jpg)
*Ridge running*
The glider or kite should be mounted on a cart or chariot to accelerate, or possibly even a dolly which can be discarded once in flight (similar to late WWII German rocket airplanes like the Me 163).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AcUz8.jpg)
*Me 163 dropping the dolly on take off. You can see it in the lower left of the picture*
The main weakness of this system is the pilot will likely not be able to write down observations or make sketches while piloting the aircraft or kite, and sin't going to be able to communicate his findings easily to the ground crew by voice either. Some sort of easy to understand signaling will need to be developed so the pilot can pass on observations, or an even larger machine built that can carry an observer (who would presumably write a message, tie it to a rock and then drop it down to the waiting ground crew).
The other issue, of course, is how to land safely. Another post suggests that launching criminals from kites was an interesting means of executing prisoners (presumably they lost control of the kite and plummeted to earth). Unless that issue is addressed, the supply of willing volunteers to pilot the craft will rapidly dry up.
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A tethered hot air balloon would work, particularly if they have ready access to a fuel source for said hot air. The grass itself may work, but that makes grass fires that much more dangerous.
Another option would be A Big Kite, again tethered to a wagon. Needs wind instead of fuel. Considerably more dangerous if the wind cuts out.
If you want to be a little fantastic, you could dream up some gas-filled (helium or whatever) seed pods that the nomads gather together in big nets. They're good bird food so they'll be popped and spread their seeds, but the nomads do something to make them smell bad to birds, so they last for much longer. Or maybe they spread there seeds when struck by lightening, and are filled with hydrogen to scatter the seeds that much further. PS: don't float your balloon in a storm.
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You could do this quite easily if you had access to fairly strong fabric & ropes (silk might work) and the necessary knowledge. See for instance parasailing: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasailing> Instead of a boat, you use a team of horses.
With proper design and good thermals, once you're aloft you could probably drop the tow line and ascend further by thermaling (though I've only done in in a sailplane): <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragliding>
This has obvious advantages for nomads, since the paraglider can be packed into a fairly small package.
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Speaking from personal experience: I completed glider training on an airfield which was on a completely flat plain, with the nearest hills too far away to count.
We could be launched by a winch, and with it we could achieve an altitude of about 220-250 meters, depending on the wind. However it was extremely rare to catch a thermal at that altitude, so winch launches were used almost exclusively for learning the basics, and to practice landing. If you were really really lucky, you could catch a thermal at that altitude, but most thermals of any usefulness over a flat terrain started above 300 meters (or 400 meters, most of the time).
So for longer flights we needed a towing plane to get us to an altitude high enough. This is obviously not available in your setting.
**So, the positive**: you can achieve sustained glider flight even over completely flat terrain. If you have nice weather with scattered cumulus clouds, you can hop from cloud to cloud and stay up for many hours and fly distances of hundreds of km.
**The negative:** in order to do that, you need to get to an altitude of at least 300 meters. The winches we used were a little too weak for that, you had to be really lucky to catch the bottom of a thermal which was strong enough to barely lift you. We used late cold war equipment (I heard more modern winches can fly you higher, but your pre-industrial tech would be much worse).
Even for the winches we used, they pulled a 1 km long high tensile steel cable at over 120 km/h. The gliders had a sink rate of almost 1 m/s in still air, so we needed a thermal of at least 1 m/s, which is extremely rare to find below 300 meters over flat terrain. Your pre-industrial gliders will have a worse sink rate and worse glide ratio (you have no aluminum, no carbon fiber, no plastics), and building winches which can launch them to above 300 meters will be really difficult, if not impossible.
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If the nomads were able to produce fabric used for solar balloons, they could lift up light gliders with wide wings to a few thousand meters and start gliding from there.
Models with longer, thinner wings would be dropped for a few hundred meters first to build up speed and then slowly tilt themselves into a horizontal position.
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I was recently thinking about which technologies an Isekai-Protagonist could give his allies in a medival fantasy world. For all those who don't know, Isekai is an anime genre where the protagonist is a real world human who get transported into a fantasy world. Come to think of it, this question applies to time travelers as well.
Assume that I've joined a local lord after I established my value and that I'm a respected advisor. Since he is at war with the good guy empire, I decided to help the war effort by introducing gun powder to this world. I don't know the exact formula, but I know that I need charcoal, sulfur and salpeter. With the might of the scientific method and the more or less voluntary help of laboratory slaves I'll figure it out.
**However I'm uncertain which application of gunpowder I should pitch to the Dark Khan.** Sure, splinter granades are a no-brainer, but I feel that I can do better. While I'm certain that I could teach the artisans the Overlord bound in this service conquering far away lands how to make guns and cadnnons eventually, I want to show results quickly.
The basic idea is to build large splinter bombs to devastate the enemy heavy infantry. Horse archers, shock cavalry and auxiliaries will do the rest. I want to use catapults to launch the bombs. Figuring out artillery maths was one of my early projects, so accuracy shouldn't be an issue.
I got three projectile designs in mind. All are strong, waterproof sacks filled with an outer layer of gunpowder and shrapnel, an inner gunpowder core and a lute. The first design is as simple as that and could be made quickly. However I'm wondering if having the bomb explode above ground would be deal more damage. This would mean that I would have to work out the timing of the lute. Another, even more complex idea of mine was to attach a wodden pole with large fletchings. I hope that this would make it predictable which side would be down during the fall. This might allow me to improve the bombs inner structure to some sort of directional bomb. This would of cause require even more research to figure out. **Which of these designs is best? Does the improvement of the bombs performance type 2 and 3 would bring really justify the extra effort? Or are my bomb catapults a bad idea all together and I should use the gun power in another way altogether to help the war effort?**
Note that sieges aren't the issue, large field battles are. Our shamans got biological warfare down to the pont that most cities prefer to surrender.
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Gunpowder more of a low explosive rather than a high explosive -- it burns slowly compared to more modern explosives and is therefore much more effective as a propellent. This is exactly how it was first used in the early gunpowder era, to propel first rockets and then to fire cannonballs - first stone, then iron and lead projectiles.
Of course, you can make a bomb from gunpower, and many people still do-- the modern improvised 'pipe bomb' made from black powder is exactly this sort of weapon. It's just not very effective (luckily).
Arranging an airburst is possible, but extremely difficult: you need a fuse which will burn for exactly the right length of time to within a fraction of a second.
If you are set on explosive warheads rather than cannonballs or rockets, here's an alternative suggestion: cluster bombs! Instead of one large projectile, hurl dozens of small grenade-like bombs which will cover a wide area and cause far more infantry casualties than a unitary warhead. They will be less effective against fortifications, but that doesn't seem to be your requirement.
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**Yes, but only to an extent**
If the only thing that you have to play with is black gunpowder, you will get much more effect by developing artillery rather than "trebuchet shells".
Yes, we can have explosive shells filled with gunpowder. The biggest issue is how to timely set them off, and avoid your artillery team accidentally blowing itself up. Generally, you need a lot of trial and error to develop even somewhat reliable "slow fuse", and even then its reliability won't be very good.
Your design #1 "a sack with a fuse" will burst when it hits the ground. A natural fix is to switch to hard shells, like cast iron. This way you can have an effective bombardment.
Design #2 "short fuse" would endanger your own forces, because, as I said, you can't have reliable fuses, and you would have to set explosion time too short to be comfortable.
Design #3 "javelin bombs" might work, if javelin design is worked to perfection. However, the charge can't be big, because the javelin would not fly right, or either break or topple on landing.
Your trouble can be fixed in two ways:
1) Contact detonators. It won't be an airburst, but still much more effective than gunpowder fuses;
2) Clockwork fuses. Those are in fact reliable and actually used to produce an airburst attack.
Both of those fixes, unfortunately, would require XIX century level technology.
Meanwhile, good old cannons were effective very early in gunpowder era.
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Assuming for some reason that you cannot or will not be able to create cannons (and early cannons were made using the same process as casting bells, or using the skills of coopers to make "barrels" out of metal strips rather than wooden ones, so it is difficult to understand why you would not), then using some sort of catapult mechanism to fire fused projectiles makes sense.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6NSsd.jpg)
*Early bronze cannon, cast in the same manner as a bell*
As many other posters have noted, the key issue is making reliable fuses. This problem persisted even into the late 19th century until reliable mechanical fuses were perfected, so the ability to make something like this is likely lacking in your environment. One issue which I don't think has been touched upon is the need for the fuse to stay lit while in flight. A simple piece of burning cloth, paper or cork is likely to go out under acceleration during the shot, or while flying through the air, leaving a live bomb in the hands of the enemy (who may know enough to either recover the gunpowder or shoot it back at you!). Early "Matchlock" firearms used a piece of cord soaked with potassium nitrate in order to ensure the match would burn reliably. One thing gunners would do was blow on the burning match to ensure the tip was hot enough to ignite the powder. The act of flying through the air should serve the same purpose, but once again, there will be variability (if the round rotates in flight, the match might be shielded from the airflow that keeps it hot).
Using a "javelin" type projectile can increase reliability and accuracy, but at the cost of needing a ballista to fire it. Ballista were "torsion" engines that used skeins of sinew or rope to provide the driving power, and were quite expensive and needed trained engineers to operate and maintain. However, ballista were quite powerful and accurate, so the ability to send a javelin or a bomb carrying javelin may be enough justification to develop and use these weapons.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HKmas.jpg)
*Large ballista*
The advantage of a ballista is you can shoot javelins several hundred meters, and switch over to "bombs" as the enemy closes the distance. A ballista can also shoot ordinary projectiles as well, so the crew can switch from explosives to ordinary javelins and rocks as the situation dictates. This also saves a great deal of expense, since explosive projectiles might be very expensive. Another advantage is if the projectiles are made carefully, the crew can fire ranging shots with non explosive projectiles and then fire the explosive one once the range to the enemy haas been established. This requires that all rounds have the same weight so the performance is known.
So there is no reason not to be able to use ballista as your mechanism to shoot explosive rounds, and a ballista will provide the performance and reliability needed to make this work.
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Well, once you figure out how to create the gunpowder, you are going to have to work on standardization.
The key to creating an effective Air burst type bomb is going to be the fuse. So you have to work the standard throughout the process. So lets start with the gunpowder. When you figure it out, make as certain as possible that the proportions are recorded and used EVERY time. Next, there is variation in charcoals from different types of wood. I once read an old treatise on creating gunpowder during the westward expansion in the US. The author stressed that you should only use charcoal from a Willow tree to make black powder as it burned faster. So if you find this to be true, record it and always use the same kind of charcoal. Same with the "Saltpetre" The treatise I read said something about creating raised straw beds to pee in out in the sun, and you could harvest the crystalline material left after the water evaporated. He also mentioned that sourcing it from seabird guano worked even better but may not be available. Find the best source and again, document. Same with the Sulfer. The point of all of this is that you want to go to a huge warehouse of gunpowder, pick a batch at random, and it will perform exactly the same as any other.
Next, your first fuses are going to be pretty much gunpowder rolled into paper. Again, standardize the process. For every 12 inch fuse, you use exactly 1 oz of gunpowder in paper of x and y dimensions, sourced from a factory that gives consistent results. Your goal, again, is to be able to take 25 fuses out of a huge batch and they all burn at exactly the same rate.
Now you blend your expertise in ballistics with the fuse timing. You know your fuse burn rate now, and you can calculate the time it will take a projectile to impact the ground. Cut your fuse to the length you need for the projectile to travel, subtracting a second or two of burn time. If it's a little short, it still explodes over the battle field. It may be a bit less effective than you'd like, but will still be scary as heck. If it goes long, the explosion after it hits will still cause a lot of problems. The ones that work right will be hugely effective.
This moves me along to building your shells in such a way that they are deadly to the enemy no matter what they do. Make them heavy, make them large. Even throwing large rocks from a trebuchet is effective against massed ranks of the enemy. If the big rock goes boom after it has crushed a bunch of infantry and maybe a horse or two, even better.
The idea of putting some sort of guidance pole on the back of a projectile isn't going to be helpful as far as the explosive part unless you have the means to create a proximity fuse.
So, If all of your Trebuchets are the same, and all of your Bombs are the same, and all of your fuses are the same, you should be able to set up reasonably reliable airiel bursts. Even if it doesn't work perfectly, you are still building a reliable weapon.
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You are describing artillery, The King of the Battlefield. If you could make cannons, that would be better, but trebuchets throwing 150+ lbs explosives shells is a pretty good approximation and would be devastating against massed soldiery.
In general, airbursts are most effective against ground forces. The shrapnel -- splinters in your case -- rains down on the soldiery with its highest velocity and they don't have any cover except their armor and shields. Ground bursts throw dirt and debris up and out, but the ground itself can shield the targets from the explosion and shrapnel.
Contact explosions are good against structures and very heavily armored vehicles. You may not breach the walls or armor but the shockwaves along can kill humans on the other side.
There is another factor to your weapons that you didn't raise that is a powerful killing action. Create enough heat and combustion that you consume all the oxygen in the local area and leave heavy gases -- particulates, $CO\_2$, $NO\_x$, $SO\_x$ -- in their place so your targets either have to run for their lives -- breaking cover -- or suffocate. This is one lethal mechanism of Fuel Air Bombs like the MOAB. Obviously, anything like a MOAB can't be delivered by catapult. The topic is raised to identify an additional measure of lethality.
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I have this idea for an alternate universe where guns were... flat out rejected. Basically, while the powers that were recognized that guns were more powerful and had greater range, they were considered to be too loud and inaccurate for use in war.
How would a society which rejected guns improve on the crossbow? Could they ever reach AR capabilities?
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Pump guns or air rifles might become popular. There are guns in assault-rifle format which shoot bolts (or flechettes) with compressed air which are used for special operations missions. Additionally, air rifles, that is guns which fire balls or bullets using the pressure of an air reservoir have been around since the American Civil war. The advantage of these is that they are comparatively quiet, easy to operate and use, and almost as dangerous as gunpowder based weaponry.
An "Airbow", shoots bolts:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tc3wS.jpg)
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Self-loading crossbows go back to antiquity, predating the invention of gunpowder, in China. Modern developments along these lines already approach AR capacity with light crossbow power and accuracy. YouTuber Jorge Sprave has even built units powered by a battery drill motor that can continue to repeat as long as there are arrows in the magazine and power in the drill's battery.
The combination of total draw energy needed for long range and ability to source that energy from other than a deflagration mean you'll never have a crossbow with both the range and rate of fire of our AR class weapons -- but tactics will adapt if your powered crossbows only have a range of, say, three hundred meters, instead of a thousand, and a rate of fire of two or three bolts per second compared to fifteen bullets in the same time.
I pity the soldiers who carry these, though; the batteries will be killin' heavy.
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Perhaps the main issue wouldn't be the rejection of firearms, but rather the adoption of crossbows.
Between the fall of the Roman Empire in the West and the adoption of firearms in the 1400's, military power depended on highly skilled men at arms (called Knights in the West, but also exemplified by Samurai in Japan and the Janissaries in the Ottoman Empire). These men required a lifetime of training, starting as young boys, and the time spent in training, and the expense of equipping these men tended to limit their numbers. The English/Welsh longbow was similar in may ways, only by starting training in boyhood could archers handle the 100-120 lb draw weight of full sized bows and draw and shoot fast enough to create "arrow storms".
Crossbows, and complimentary weapons like pikes and pole arms along with proper tactics allowed men with relatively little training to go into battle against Knights, Samurai and Janissaries with the expectation of winning. Polities which adopted "Infantry Revolution" weapons and tactics in the 1400's could field much larger armies than their aristocratic Knightly (etc.) counterparts, and more importantly, could make up losses far more quickly. A townsman killed in battle could be replaced in a matter of weeks by drilling a new man, a dead knight could only be replaced when a child had finished training and achieved manhood, and by furnishing them with expensive equipment.
Assuming the banning of firearms is a cultural issue, as the OP seems to suggest, then what will happen will likely replicate the situation in Japan once the Tokugawa Shogunate established itself. During the wars which raged up to that point, the Japanese were enthusiastic users of firearms and "Infantry Revolution" troops (Ashigaru) armed with pikes, arquebuses and other "modern" tools of warfare. Once the Japanese islands were consolidated, the Shogunate immediately banned the importation and manufacture of firearms, and collected firearms, swords, spears and other weapons from the population to prevent the prospect of revolts and preserve the social rank of the Samurai.
In such a situation, crossbows would actually be a terrible danger to the "Knightly" class and existing social structure. Anyone who made crossbows could issue them out to peasants, cooks and townsmen and have the ability to rapidly raise an army capable of putting lots of effective "fire" on the Knightly attackers, or use the firepower to sweep the walls of fortifications and overwhelm defenders without similar arms. (The term firepower is actually inaccurate, since it is a conceit of using firearms, but I'm not clear of the analogous term for arrows).
So if firearms are going to be banned, then crossbows will also be banned (and military geniuses who experimented with pike or pole-arm tactics will also be looked at with great suspicion). Long range attacks will be done with longbows, since the training for effective use of 120 lb draw longbows also excludes a large segment of the population from effectively participating in warfare (even in England, special laws were passed to ensure people were constantly practicing archery).
In social terms, the banning of firearms will also lead to the banning of "Infantry Revolution" weapons and a great stagnation in battlefield tactics in order to preserve the aristocratic privilege of the Knightly class. So long as the territory is insular enough to remain isolated from outside threats (like the Japanese Home Islands), the situation may endure, but once outside threats enter the picture, the polity will either need to adapt rapidly to the introduction of new technologies and tactics, or die.
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If explosive technology exists, then this is a much more complicated question than just "what would crossbows look like". I'm going to preface by saying guns just never happening in a world with explosive technology is super unrealistic, but if somehow the entire human population just turns an eternal blind eye the to idea of guns, I would expect a timeline that looks something like this:
**16-17th century:** Instead of falling out of use, bows, crossbows, and platemail continue to take center stage in many conflicts. Without guns to content with we might see some more modern inventions come earlier like compound bows or alloyed steel, or a revival of repeating crossbows or gastraphetes so that crossbow could better contend with archers rate of fire. Medieval castles would still have fallen out of use at about the same time as they did in our history since trebuchets could just hurrell massive impact explosives to similar effect as artillery bombardment. Hand grenades would take on a more prominent role since it becomes easier to get into throwing range when guns are not a concern.
**18th century:** As metallurgy continues to develop and good spring steel becomes more common, crossbows will be able to have much longer draw lengths and therefore fire much heavier projectiles than bows. They can now fire impact grenades over significant distances making them the preferred battlefield weapon. If air-rifles are not considered "guns", they might make a bigger debut than they did in our timeline, but ultimately they are still too far ahead of their time to be mainstreamed at this point. Rapid fire crossbows are not a prerogative at this point. Since the army that can fire first pretty much wins the battle, it will be all about range. Tight battle formations become obsolete ahead of schedule since you are just inviting the enemy to kill more of your men per shot. Melee weapons are also beginning to fall out of use as ranged kill capacity goes up. Platemail would begin to fall out favor as stronger crossbows would have similar penetrating ability to firearms. Gambeson or other textile armors may still be pretty mainstream for their effectiveness against shrapnel.
**19th century:** Introduction of shape charged explosives means crossbows and air-rifles will now have the ability to penetrate any armor. If platemail was not already obsolete by this point, it certainly is now. Long-draw crossbows firing massive salvos of explosives remain the dominant battle-field technology, but air-guns may mainstream as personal defense/hunting/side-arm weapons.
**20th century:** The invention of the RPG would have a much more profound role on the course of history. Rockets can out range and fire more rapidly than crossbows making crossbows obsolete. Instead of just being anti-armor/anti-fortification weapons, you would see a lot of smaller RPGs as well, many only being in the 10-20mm range allowing them to take on combat roles similar to guns. WWI era airplanes would be nearly impossible to shoot down, but by WWII time-fused rockets similar to flak shells would be employed en masse. Air-to-Air weapons would all be mostly ineffective until the advent of guides missiles. Rapid fire grenade launchers like the MK19 would be pretty commonplace by the end of the century.
**21th century:** By the current era, the need for more but smaller faster firing RPGs will be much more easily met with computerized manufacturing and advanced alloys. Gun like rocket launchers will fire bursts of small projectiles almost indistinguishable from modern firearms. Cops will have 9mm, pistol shaped rocket launchers. Assault weapons will fire mini rockets from banana clips, so on and so forth. Warfare will look almost the same as it does in our world, it would just work off of different scientific principles.
**Conclusion:** The crossbow would continue to develop after it did in our timeline but not in the direction of the AR-15. Instead of becoming faster, it would become stronger. This is because the crossbow does not lend itself to rapid fire as well as the bow or air gun even when you include things like self-loading bolt clips. However, at the end of their historical effective lives when spring-steel arms were most popular, they typically only had an 8" draw length because impurities in the steel too often made for weak points that could cause them to critically fail and harm the user if you draw them farther than that. This meant that even though the windlass crossbow could have a draw-weight of over 1000 lb, they could not deliver much more force than a 150 lb warbow. However, as metallurgy approached industrial era standards, impurities became more minimal meaning you could have made crossbows with much longer draws. These crossbows could pack enough force to go through platemail whereas historical crossbows could typically only kill by hitting between the plates and penetrating the chainmail underneath or going through the eye slits. Rockets would still eventually supplant them though because rocket technology can be made synonymous with bullet technology once your manufacturing methods become good enough.
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The issue with crossbows is the loading and powering mechanism. Assault rifles are self loading and the ammo is self powered. With crossbows this is not so easy. There are things like repeating crossbows, but they are still hand powered and not very powerful.
Perhaps electricity could be a factor to power the crossbow into resetting the string, or maybe compressed air. But it is unlikely to reach the power and speed of assault rifles without using anything explosive.
Accuracy isn't your problem, as crossbows can be very accurate and have a lot of stopping power. Perhaps with large (powered) compound contraptions you could even get close to sniper-like weapons.
I imagine a type of pedaled crossbow contraption could be possible at low-tech, but this would be a crew weapon at best.
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Using a compound crossbow and a pump-action forward grip, you can produce a good fire rate with decent velocity on the bolts. Your warriors will have to work out, but you might get 160 foot-pounds (270 joules), fired once every few seconds, which is nothing to sneeze at.
I'm with Keith Morrison that crossbows are not that accurate. William Tell and Robin Hood (for bows) are Medieval tall tales.
Unless...
You laser-guide the bolts.
DARPA's already got prototype laser-guided .50-calbier bullets, and laser-guiding a crossbow bolt would be comparatively simple; it's larger, it deploys more gently, and it already has fins.
At that point, you could have an effective range of a mile (1.6 km) against unaware targets or targets with no cover or concealment (This requires a ~280mi/h [450 km/h] which is high, but achievable. The bolt would retain it's velocity well during the 13 seconds it travels through the air.); Against an aware target, you'd have to consider how long it takes the bolt to reach them (again, up to 13 seconds) versus how long before they can reach something that will stop the bolt.
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My first thought is: why reject guns. My answer is: war should be about human energy, not chemical energy. This would then also reject any explosives, and anything powered by electricity, water, fire, etc...
Having said that, one can imagine a spring in a metal box, that is stretched in the box, and then latched stretched. This can become the stored energy for a repeating crossbow. At this point, the speed limit on your crossbow becomes how quickly you can load a spring and projectile (possibly as one unit).
I find it interesting that answers talk about the different ranges of rifles vs crossbows. I believe that the energy involved in each is actually comparable. The difference is that the crossbow shoots a much more massive projectile. So the secret to a long-range crossbow is imparting the same energy into a tiny projectile. This may means some form of mechanical advantage - a system of levers that makes your tiny pellet go very fast. An air compression system (akin to airguns others mentioned) might also work.
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I think for a crossbow to lead to a weapon as capable an modern assault rifle that they would need to solve the problem of getting the bolt or quarrel to start its stabilizing spin before it leaves the bow string.
As others have very rightly observed, with electrical mechanisms they could create very fast firing repeating weapons. The next challenge would be increase the projectiles velocity
But, given the mass difference between a quarrel and bullet, they’ll very challenged by the weapon’s recoil if they increase the bolts velocity to approach that of an assault rifle.
Maybe, if, their society developed their technological and scientific expertise in such a fashion that they developed mastery of electrical and magnetic forces before mastering the chemistry necessary for explosives and rocket propellants then, maybe, they’d conceivably see gauss rifles as the natural follow on to cross bows.
The evolution of these weapons might involve replacing bow component with coiled spring, then powerful electric motor, then to coil guns — which we have yet to realize as anything between silly toys or fodder for sci-fi stories.
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Demonic possession occurs when an evil spirit hijacks the biological system of an organism, corrupting it and taking control of its functions. Although powerful, the possession eventually breaks down the body, degrading it as time goes on, due to its incompatibility with the ethereal form. The demon must exert more of its strength to keep the body together and remain in the mortal world, eventually destroying it and being sent back to its plane. There are, however, special individuals who can act as perfect "containers", able to withstand the pressure of having an evil spirit inside them. These are called demonhosts, and are the perfect blend of human and demon in which the spirit can use its powers to full extent without damaging its hijacked form.
Demonic possession acts similar to a virus, which functions by incorporating its own genetic material into the genome of the infected cells. This infection spreads to other cells, destroying the original cell in the process and eventually spreads throughout the body and brain. This form of self replication occurs very quickly and degrades neural tissue in order to complete its life cycle. This leads to the eventual breakdown of the human form, as it begins to show signs of heavy mutation (for example: horns, scaly skin, spikes, etc).
With a demonhost, the viral infection functions the same way, but cannot be discovered by tests. It leaves cells undamaged and cannot be detected as it moves from cell to cell. Being able to leave no trace of itself prevents it from being noticed or discovered by onlookers and scientists as it subtly takes over its host and consumes its soul, which is completely aware of it but unable to do anything about it.
How could a virus operate in this way?
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This is known as an [Asymptomatic carrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptomatic_carrier) - someone who *never* shows signs of the infection.
This is distinct from an incubatory carrier (not *yet* showing signs of infection, but does later) or a convalescent carrier (*no longer* shows signs of infection, but has done so previously. Often incorrectly consider themselves to be "cured")
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# It's a retrovirus
>
> A retrovirus is a type of RNA virus that inserts a copy of its genome
> into the DNA of a host cell that it invades, thus changing the genome
> of that cell. Such viruses are either single stranded RNA (e.g. HIV)
> or double stranded DNA (e.g. Hepatitis B virus) viruses.
>
>
> Once inside the host cell's cytoplasm, the virus uses its own reverse
> transcriptase enzyme to produce DNA from its RNA genome, the reverse
> of the usual pattern, thus retro (backwards). The new DNA is then
> incorporated into the host cell genome by an integrase enzyme, at
> which point the retroviral DNA is referred to as a provirus. The host
> cell then treats the viral DNA as part of its own genome, transcribing
> and translating the viral genes along with the cell's own genes,
> producing the proteins required to assemble new copies of the virus.
> It is difficult to detect the virus until it has infected the host. At
> that point, the infection will persist indefinitely.
>
>
> In most viruses, DNA is transcribed into RNA, and then RNA is
> translated into protein. However, retroviruses function differently,
> as their RNA is reverse-transcribed into DNA, which is integrated into
> the host cell's genome (when it becomes a provirus), and then
> undergoes the usual transcription and translational processes to
> express the genes carried by the virus. ([ref](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrovirus))
>
>
>
A retrovirus is difficult to detect even with our current knowledge, until it has fully infected the host. Then it's next to impossible to get rid of.
While the enzyme retroviruses use, reverse transcriptase, was discovered in 1971, the [first retrovirus](https://www.britannica.com/science/retrovirus) wasn't discovered until 1979. Others, like HIV, weren't isolated until 1983.
Because retroviruses are [all somewhat different from each other](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK19382/) and can have long incubation periods, there are likely some we haven't figured out how to detect yet. There are some methods (see [*A simple, general method for detecting retroviral RNAs expressed in cells*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2112525)) to "search for unidentified retroviruses expressed in human cancer cells and tissues" but we'd have to know to look for them. Retroviruses are common and just finding one in a human doesn't mean it's demonic possession; it could just be a new strain of hepatitis.
If your demonhost isn't showing symptoms, there is no reason to test her/him. Some retroviruses lie dorment for years. If there are symptoms but they are explained by other medical (or psychological) conditions, there would be no advanced testing. Also, your society may be similar to ours in medical technology, but that doesn't mean identical. Perhaps they haven't discovered retroviruses or engineered tests for them yet.
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In the case of the demonhost, it sounds like what you're describing is more of a symbiotic (rather than parasitic) relationship between the infection and the host. Unlike the possessed individual, in the case of the demonhost the viral infection in this case would just be using the host cells as as food source while it reproduces itself throughout the body, but doesn't go into the 'active mode' of possession.
Now, that having been said, if there's foreign genetic material in your demonhosts, then that foreign genetic material MUST BE detectable. You can't make DNA invisible. It's physically there, if you put it under a microscope, you can see there's something in there that's not normal human cells.
Now, that said, that doesn't necessarily cause a problem for your story. Just because it's POSSIBLE to detect it doesn't mean that physicians in your world know how to do it, or that it's easy or practical.
The simplest solution I can think of is that the demonic cells break down very rapidly when removed from the human body. Perhaps they're relying on body heat, the body's natural electromagnetic field, or both. In any case, it's very plausible to have a scenario where you have a VERY short window to examine a sample before the viral cells break down into bits of protein indistinguishable from the normal metabolic waste constantly in your bloodstream.
In this case the medical profession in your world would probably BELIEVE that the infection was undetectable even through they could detect it if they knew how.
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There was a disease in the middleages that caused a small portion of a town to literally dance to death they found the bodies a few years ago but have yet to find what caused it. There are a lot of symptoms that people just ignore or eventually consider to be normal tingling of the limbs in a minor every once in a while way could be overlooked that's why diabetes isn't first discovered that way. Simple itches turn into rashes but people may say your just allergic to X instead of checking it further.
Take diabetes for instance people can have symptoms like blurry vision or tingling but other diabetics have absolutely nothing only the AC1C test shows you have any issue at all. Those blurry eyes can be blamed on I need glasses or I'm getting old rather then diabetes almost collapsing at work from low blood sugar can be blamed on stress, working to feverently, or not eating breakfast that morning or "I only get it every once in a blue moon so no worries here."
Your virus demons could be similar slight aches or ringing in the ear that go away after a moment overtime will cause no alarm, people would blame the cold they come down with some months later as a cold, its not until you get to things effecting your walking, breathing, speaking, or eating until some might want to look into it others might feel they're ok adjusting to it and waiting it out meaning by the time they decide I can't do this because they can't walk from their driveway to their mailbox it might be too late. Perhapse the demon can trick those around the person too so help isn't received? The person starts to be labeled as a faker and doing it for attention eventually they die and people assume its anything if the cornier has anything to say at all.
Combine this with doctors who don't want to do their jobs they want the patient to tell them what diagnosis the last doctor gave them and then they say yep that's what you got alright just to take their money and wait for the next booking. A disease of demon position could go undetected for a long time.
If a competent doctor was going to run tests they'd just come back normal a doctor isn't going to run a test for say the bone marrow to be tested if they have no just cause in ordering that. If it doesn't show up in any tests either the patient or the doctor is going to give up or else the patient might look for a specialist to take them on as a private case earning themselves the distinction of having a disease that only they have. Meaning not many common people (if any) will know of the disease or care to look it up aiding in the entire under the radar thing you are naturally going for.
Assuming the CDC exists in your world they aren't going to care about 12 -- 70 people having diseases named after them and until the doctors findout that they have patients with the same symptoms (assuming these demons with different personas have the same symptoms on each patient) nothing will change. If the doctors did findout they could put together a panel to make a study paper and who knows if anyone will read it or say maybe the CDC should care about this? The CDC might care more on future zombie outbreak management then a case study with so little of the population effected by some auto immune disorder to give it any funds.
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The running theory is that if the Earth is hit by a sufficiently large meteor, that the impact would create an ice age from all the dust it would put into the atmosphere. While this has been historically seen as a bad thing, this has me wondering if people might one day want to intentionally steer a large asteroid or comet at the Earth as a way to combat global warming.
Could such an impact permanently (or semi-permanently) reverse global warming without causing so much secondary environmental damage that it would make the outcome worse than letting global warming take its course?
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## You don't need a meteor to lower temperatures
I want to introduce you to the year 1816. Also known as [the year without a summer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer). In short, there was a volcanic eruption which expelled a lot of sulfite dioxide particles in the atmosphere. These particles reflected part of the light that came to Earth, thus cooling areas underneath. Areas that covered large parts of the northern hemisphere.
## However, that's not good
The "without a summer" part of the name is not at all coincidental. And it's putting the effects mildly. It doesn't just mean that you skipped going to the beach this year. Effects included:
* snow in the month of July
* frost and low temperatures led to a lot of crop failures
* people lost a lot of money, especially those who were doing agriculture but sectors suffered as well
* people starved to death because of the weak or non-existent harvest
* other people froze to death because they weren't prepared to warm their homes in the summer
Another name for 1816 is "eighteen hundred and froze to death". That better helps convey just how bad "no summer" can be.
## Undirected changes are not good
The global average temperatures in 1816 fell by *only* something in the region of 0.5° C (0.9° F). It's a relatively minor change when you look at the numbers, yet the effects were catastrophic. That was not directed in any way.
A meteor hitting Earth to try and plunge the global temperatures down would lead to an even bigger catastrophe. It would have even less of a direction in terms of effects. In *addition* to the temperature change, you'd have the impact to deal with which can wreak all sorts of havoc. It depends on what the meteor is, how big it is, where it falls, etc. All things you can hardly account for. I doubt you can even account for what temperature shift you'd get from it.
All in all, if we can't even manage when only the temperature changed alone, I don't see how dropping a big rock from the sky and hoping for the best would work out.
## But maybe you can direct the change
Thanks to 1816 and science, we now know a lot more about what particles can do in the atmosphere. If you have some way of introducing more sulfite dioxide particles at a very tightly controlled rate, you can cool the planet. If you can somehow get rid of them, you can warm it back up. So, you might be able to beat greenhouse gases by bypassing the problem entirely. In effect, you will have a "thermostat" for the entire planet and even though greenhouse gasses retain heat, you can set the "thermostat" slightly lower to compensate for that. And then turn it back up before it starts snowing in July.
That is likely to be a huge effort. I don't even know if we have an idea what technology is needed to achieve that. Moreover, it doesn't really solve the core issue - that would still be there. However, a civilisation advanced enough to be able to direct a meteor down to their own planet, and crazy enough to actually do it, could probably go with a "global thermostat" instead. It's still better than their other plan.
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**You're trying to cure the sickness by alleviating a symptom.**
You can't cure global warming by putting more pollution into the air. You may temporarily bring the patient's temperature down, but humanity will respond by turning up the heat. In the end, you'll make global warming much, much worse.
Please keep in mind that global-warming/climate-change/name-d'jour is a *technological* problem. Humanity industrialized. The act of industrialization is having a complex effect on our world and one symptom of that effect is the planet getting warmer.
Another symptom of that effect is my respiratory distress due to pollution. Not surprisingly, you can't solve the problem of pollution by making me wear a surgical mask all the time, either.
**Yes, you can force the world to cool down by dropping a meteor on it.**
You can also do it by detonating enough nuclear bombs. Both alleviations of the symptom are *temporary.* Once the material thrown into the sky settles, you're worse off than you were before because not only did you fail to fix the *technological* problem, you created greater dependency on the technology for humanity to survive the effects of dropping a big rock on the planet or blowing up a bunch of nukes.
And that's not even accounting for the damage you'd cause by dropping a big rock on the planet. Think "Tunguska blast" a thousand times over.
**There are really only two ways to fix the human contribution to global warming:**
1. Stop using the technology (hah!)
2. Improve the technology so that it has a lower impact.
Most activists work toward #1 with completely predictable results (it doesn't work). The rest of us (well, some of the rest of us, there are many who don't care) are working toward #2 as quickly as we can.
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It would be much, much worse than anything climate change does to us. Any impact large enough to create a global cooling effect would cause catastrophic damage over a huge area, kill a ton of people outright, and cause unpredictable changes to nearly every climate.
It would take an immense amount of effort to steer the asteroid into us, and would only ADD energy to our planetary system. A lot of energy.
We would be MUCH better mining an asteroid for metals and making an orbiting field of reflectors to limit the sunlight reaching Earth.
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I'm going the misanthropist way here: you can, by killing most humans and civilisation.
If you throw a lot of tiny meteor (big enough to go through the atmoshpere and still exist) during a long period (a few days).
By removing (most of) humanity/civilisation, you'll surely stop man-made climate change.
However, this doesn't go without affecting the environment:
* You'll also destroy flora/fauna with the meteors.
* Some infrastructures are dangerous to destroy (nuclear power plants).
* Letting civilisation unsupervised might (will) cause additional damages (dams will break, spontaneous explosions cause wild fires).
Note that humanity doesn't cover a big % of earth; you'll either need to aim your meteors on cities, or randomly cover a lot places (which will surely have more impact on environment than letting global warming continue).
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A solid **yes, but...**
In theory, a sufficiently large meteor would throw up enough dust to cause a significant effect on the climate. Science has studied enough vulcano eruptions (e.g. the Pinatubo, Philippines, in 1991) to understand and measure the effects and make a reasonable prediction that yes, this approach would cause a cooling effect.
Now for the but (and in the words of Ben Goldacre: It's a big but):
There is no way to estimate the precise size of meteor you need to throw up the precise amount of dust in the precise way (and height) needed, nor steer it to a precise enough impact location to make a prediction even reasonably appropriate. You could easily hit something you don't want to hit. Either a city, or arable land, or the ocean (causing a floodwave). With the size of meteor required, you could easily do massive damage or cause chain-reactions that dwarf the effect of your meteor.
You also would have no guarantee that you're not doing either not enough cooling to make the whole thing worth it, or are overdoing it and cause a lot **more** cooling than you wanted and then you'll do what, exactly?
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In my setting, the planet is grossly overpopulated. Vehicles are required to carry large loads of people from place to place. Bi-articulated buses are a necessity and have replaced regular buses as a whole.
However, I want to use double-decker tri-articulated buses rather than bi-articulated ones. Would such a vehicle realistically work? My setting has little difference from our modern day society in terms of the structure of roads and the like.
On a side note, how many passengers could it realistically hold? The closest real-life counterpart would be the [Neoplan Jumbocruiser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplan_Jumbocruiser), a double-decker bi-articulated bus that could hold 170 passengers.
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As far as road trains go, your tri-articulated bus is [a bit tame](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iFkKRh5kcM).
There's no real reason you could not have such a bus, though it can be difficult for them to go around sharp corners. Its hard to make a road train have varying angles between the segments. Physics likes to make them all have the same angle.
This issue could be resolved by putting a driver on the tail segment to drive the back wheels. This is also a common approach for long vehicles such as [NYFD's Ladder 34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34JzasYIldE).
Your real limit is convenience. At some point, it becomes more convenient to simply have two busses. That quickly leads to it becoming the most efficient solution as well. If you have long hauls, like the Australian rigs do, you get really nice drafting bonuses to your efficiency. If you're Ladder 34, you can have a bigger ladder than anyone else. But if you're just ferrying people, there's limits to the advantages of road trains.
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**Stick with trains**
When you get right down to it from an energy perspective, trains are always *always* more efficient than buses when you know where your population needs to be.
If your society has any comparison to modern societies, your cities are going to be segregated into 3 main areas; residential, commercial, and industrial. These distinctions are already fully understood and the need for transportation of people between these districts is also already fully understood.
The main reason why most public transport systems across the world are not efficient is because they adopt a 'star' cluster model, which implies that commerce, usually at the centre of a city model, is the most important sector in any given city design. The problem with this is that it doesn't account for two primary factors;
1) Growth of Scale, and
2) Industry
In any economic model, industry is what allows a society to grow and function. Commerce is merely a method of churn within a society that is capable of generating its own industry. What this means in practice is Ring Roads.
If you have people living all around the outer edges of your commercial centre, you also have industries relatively evenly distributed around that centre. Commerce, by definition, needs to be in the centre of a given industrial society so as to allow the even distribution, export and import of good across that society. Industry on the other hand is better placed in close proximity to the source of raw materials and labour for that industry. As a result, ring roads allow for the populace to reach the primary sources of employment *around* the centre of the society defined by the city in question.
What all this means in practice is that if you know where your people live AND where your people work, then putting in tracks and train infrastructure is far more cheaper than building roads AND ever increasing sizes of buses and other capital transport investments to get people from home to work and back.
Ultimately, most cities are reasonably predictable. That means that you know how many people are travelling between point A and B at any given time, which in turn means that you can plan for rail options to move those people and have a far more energy and financially efficient model of transport for goods and workers.
Buses (God bless their cotton socks) are really about filling gaps in change between distribution conduits. If you have an established transit route, trains will always be more efficient than 'road train' bus and cargo models. That said, in a society where (geographically) there is constant changes in residential and industrial sectors, buses are the way to go because they require less up front capital expenditure. Most large cities however do not follow that model, and if you want an example of how a large organised society can fail to implement efficient public transportation via rail, one need look no further than [Los Angeles](http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html).
In my home town of Canberra, Australia, this debate is currently an active part of local politics. The anti-light rail lobby always point to cost, and yet the local government is already restricting parking spaces in the central regions to the point that parking is becoming a blood sport. They say that it's in order to promote choice, without really giving an alternative. This is despite Canberra's bus company (ACTION) heavily investing in articulated buses.
Bottom line is that as any city becomes more heavily congested, the answer is *always* more efficient alternatives to road congestion. Larger and larger buses are not the answer in such cases; what is needed is a transport conduit that bypasses roads completely and which our DNA is somehow programmed to give way to, regardless of how congested the roads may be.
The answer to that is trains.
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@Niobium\_Sage - Do you really mean tri-articulated? Most articulated buses have a single articulation. Bi-articulated vehicles are shown below.
**Images are imaginative creations by Riquelme Robles Marcos Eduardo**
**Double Decker Huracan / Bi-Articulated Buses.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/z5zHa.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XNAPb.png)
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One of the problems encountered with the introduction of articulated busses in London was that the roads and streets are just too narrow. London has less of a public transport crisis that other Cities however, in part because of it's extensive underground railway network. Several Cities in the UK are reopening their tramway systems as a solution to the problems with busses. Sheffield has linked it's tramway system to the main railway network allowing trams to stop at local railway stations and small trains to pick up passengers around town.
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Would it work effectively, you ask. I think what I read here is YES, but it wouldn't be a top choice logically. But for world building, who needs all that logic?
Maybe you're scheming an off-grid triple-segment articulated bus chase and can't tell us without spoiling a plan. With that said, I agree with an above comment that a driver in the back would be MORE effective but not required.
Think of luggage carriers that chase planes around the airport. They have all manner of extra cars segmented or articulated or not and off tracks. The biggest danger comes when the back tracks a different radii than the front; when a 90-degree turn deteriorates to a wider, 70-degree turn.
In chasing the most effective operation for your lesser logical vehicle, you might enjoy pursuing the engineering that minimizes that danger. The real life physics might add more to your story that you still can't tell us! I think even articulated busses need wide turns but something about those luggage carriers keeps their back tires in good line with the path the front tires took and there's no second driver.
You might find 15-segment articulated carriers that hold eight or ten passengers a piece provide more juice for your efforts AND fit the bill for solving engineering problems.
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Rather than favouring trains or buses, I would point-out the technical issues with those buses.
Have you ever ridden an articulated bus, with one trailer? There is a round platform at the connection of the bus to the trailer. This platform is not one solid disk, but two halves hinged together. The bus does not just turn corners: the road may slope up and down. This creates an extra articulation: the joint can bend left and right as well as up and down. Without that disk, the bus floor would be open and people may fall-off under the bus!
Double-deckers should have **two articulation joints**. That is one for each deck. However, if the bus has two articulating joints, one atop the other, how would the articulation swing up and down? I can see that the work around that problem is a complex feat of engineering. The top joint must deal with stretch-and-press in addition to the other movements. I wonder how the passengers at the upper deck would walk above such a joint.
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# Why a bus when you can use a train?
If overcrowding is an issue, then buses are not the best solution. The solution used in the most crowded places on this Earth are trains + walking. Subway trains can easily get anyone in a very dense city to within 1 km of their destination. Their feet can take them the rest of the way.
Trains are more space and speed efficient that road vehicles. Because they are better connected to the tracks than a bus is to the road via tires, a train will start faster, stop faster and are able to move faster on curves; and trains, as pictured below on the Paris Metro, are easily able to accommodate 8 cars in urban environments. Further, the performance of trains on dedicated tracks will be less affected by buses interacting with pedestrian or commercial traffic.
Furthermore, there is a significant body of research that shows that 'at-grade' boarding is more efficient. The per-coach passenger gain from putting a second deck onto a bus will actually slow down the transport of passengers if there are frequent stops. The time taken for people to load and unload from the upper level will cause the trains run-time to slow down so that the total number of people transported will drop compared to a single-decker train. Of course, you just build train stations with two levels so people can on- or off-load 'at-grade' either way.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q0MO9.jpg)
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Another problem that no one has mentioned yet... backing up with more than one towed 'trailers' would be very difficult.
Multiple vehicles provide a better and more flexible solution (if you'll forgive the pun). Other answers give good reasons why.
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In my world, I created a race that doens't reproduce sexually. They have offspring through the combination of their blood, just blood, from a wound, and a special natural place that must be found in this world, in which the new life would gestate in a cocoon-like structure. Just one individual is needed for this, as well as the mentioned place. I thought of this because I wanted to have a genderless race, althought I'm not sure if that's the correct term. I wanted them to be equal in terms of role in the reproduction process, I didn't want to make one gender to be at a disadvantage because of reproduction, and also to make the process easier, at least physically.
With this said, I stil want them to have sexual relationships, their purpose would simply be that of pleasure, or creating a bond between two or more individuals so they can raise children easily if there are any, or so they want to protect each other, as they are immortal to the passage of time, but they can be killed by wounds, and having a child is something not very common and difficult to do, so this way they would better preserve the current population.
Reasons apart, I don't know how to adress or explain this when I'm writing. I've had a similar problem when using pronouns, as there are no males or females. Is a race that can have sex genderless? Can this even be called sex? Could they be seen as a mono-gender race? I seem to be pretty good at confusing myself. Any thoughts on this?
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## Yes, they could certainly have sex.
Homosexual men and homosexual women manage it!
The main question is basically they would not evolve sexual organs, but the enjoyment access of these parts is just a LOT of nerve endings hooked up to the reward (pleasure) centers in the brain.
Presumably, your people do still have reward centers in their brain, and still have feel good emotions for pleasure, love, etc. It is entirely possible they also evolve something akin to sexual organs with extreme pleasure to promote (as a survival strategy) bonding, love, commitment and partnership. Which is much of the reason we evolved both these emotions and the pleasure of sex. Note that not all animals share sexual pleasure; for example many fish lay eggs and males fertilize them after the fact. We evolved this pleasure mechanism to increase the chances of us having sex that led to reproduction; but equally evolution could evolve an equivalent sexual pleasure center in your species to increase the chances of them bonding to *raise* children and increase their own survival rate by committed partnership.
Such a sexual organ would not be linked to intercourse, per se, it would be stimulated by other means, but could be just as pleasurable, and orgasms could also be involved.
For example (and being intentionally clinical) lesbians can bring each other to orgasm, orally or digitally, without any vaginal penetration at all. The necessary organs are exposed. Your race may have developed similar organs, and by culture this organ is kept private and only exercised in intimate committed relationships (and like us, maybe just for fun outside of such relationships). But, like lesbians, neither partner need be dominant over the other. Besides that, they can kiss, hold hands, lust after beautiful bodies, fall in love, etc.
***Added:*** **Evolutionary Clarifications**
In response to comments; *"why would they want to have sex?"*
I promise this tour of real life will help answer this question; and I hope it improves my answer for the more technically oriented.
*Pleasurable* sex, pairing love, familial and parental love all evolved, they did not spring forth with life. Many dinosaurs (Paleontologists have concluded) did not mother their eggs. Like sea turtles, they laid them and left, when they hatched the hatchlings are on their own with an instinct to reach the relative safety of the sea, on their own.
The instincts to nest evolved later in dinosaurs, it improved the survival rate of the hatchlings. The same for the other mothering instincts, hunting for and feeding the young, and protecting them from predators. All of these are a greater investment for longer-lived animals, and are not driven by logic in early animals but **emotions**. Collectively, we could call these "motherly love" and attachment.
Now in a two-gender species, evolution takes a long time for the males to feel this same kind of attachment; but in a single-gender species, all individuals are born with the same instincts: The genetic "invention" (or occurrence) of this behavior would be passed on instantly, and by whatever survival advantages this conferred (we know it confers some) the genetic basis will spread through the population and drive out the alternative within a few dozen generations.
We can expect a similar effect if this parental love for offspring is transferable to non-family: We see at least this IRL for children now, men and women do not have to be the biological parents of a child to love a child, or children. Men have risked their lives to save children in danger they have never seen before; and said afterward they do not remember even making a decision to do that: It was instinct.
Since pairing or partnering is **also** an evolutionary advantage, we can imagine this parental love being modified into pairing love; mutual care for a partner. Two is actually the sweet spot; there is a significant advantages conferred by two people working together, that does not increase greatly by making it three or more. It increases, but not as dramatically as the jump from one caregiver to two. e.g. The dramatic difference is one can protect the children while the other hunts and gathers food, or one can keep watch while the other sleeps, or if one is sick the other can handle the load. No big "game changers" like this occur by adding one more to the mix.
As for pleasure centers, ours are located near and in the excretory organs; presumably this species also has organs to eliminate solid and liquid waste. I am not a biologist but I think it is clear the excretory organs evolved first and when pleasure centers evolved, they co-located there; perhaps the necessary nerve pathways are close by so this is the most likely place to evolve a dense bundle of nerves for pleasurable stimulation. There is some little pleasure in relieving one's self, and evolution is littered with this kind of re-purposing, doubling, and opportunism. Does it make sense to evolve a pleasure center that has no other purpose? Many biologists think the clitoris is exactly that, it serves no other biological purpose and is not necessary for reproduction. In fact as an aside, the external clitoris is not even very well placed for stimulation by vaginal intercourse. So yes, evolution might do this.
I will also note that evolutionarily speaking, the more intelligent a species becomes, the longer the "childhood" phase of development. Primitive brains run on instinct alone, big brained animals (like us, like elephants and dolphins) are not born fully brained, their brains develop over years and require learning and teaching and physical care while that is happening. And this can plausibly require even **more** commitment from a pair of parents; particularly if the species evolved in a more dangerous environment (predators, poisonous plants, animals, insects, killer weather, etc), so the cooperative-pair aspect, say of two parents raising two children each, is advanced.
Thus as your species evolves and grows in intelligence, childhood grows longer, from months (when it was primitive) to many years, and this puts pressure on the pair to stay together. Evolution solves this for them the same way it solved it for humans; with love and pleasure centers they can mutually stimulate, so oxytocin binds the pair together, and they seek to pleasure each other. That sets up the evolutionary feedback loop needed to develop some physical bundle of nerves connected to their brain's reward centers, likely co-located near the excretory organs (since evolution seems to prefer that real estate), similar to a clitoris. So that when stimulated it increases the flood of brain chemicals that create intense pleasure and feelings of love. It is an **emotional bonding** organ evolved to keep couples together longer, and increase the chances of their offspring's survival to adulthood.
Just like in humans! We don't need love to get pregnant or father a child, or enjoy the sensations of sex. But love does has a biological basis that goes beyond lust. So why did it evolve? It evolved to *keep couples together* until their children were independent. That isn't 100% successful, but like all evolutionary elements it doesn't have to be, it just needs to increase the odds of success, and it does that much.
Pair-bonding for your species can do the same. But like us, the bond likely has a physical (neurochemical) basis and the bond is reinforced by regular rewards, and this must operate evolutionarily *early*, before there is much intellect or cognition, while the ancestral species is driven by instinct, emotion and sensation. This is why the bond must be physical with rewarding sensations involved, and the more rewarding those sensations, the stronger the emotional bond.
P.S. I should also add, that if the species is intelligent, then despite the external womb (or "cocoon") used for child development; both instinct and intelligence would evolve to protect this cocoon from predators (making pair bonding even more important; so the cocoon isn't left unguarded in order to search for food). I'd even expect primitive animals using this approach to build a structure around the cocoon to protect it. Birds don't build a nest to keep their eggs high up in a tree for nuthin'! Upon "birth" of the child I'd expect adoption, protection, feeding and education out of parental love.
[Answer]
## Yes, asexual and agender beings can have sex.
Sex has a few functions:
1. Reproduction
2. Pleasure
3. Social bonding
Evolution has generally resulted in sex being a pleasurable and instinctual act, so the species reproduce. It's likely that the reproductive act for your beings would be similarly instinctual, and similarly enjoyable, in order to encourage them to reproduce.
This also means that 'sex' for these beings would likely mimic their usual reproductive behavior, similarly to how humans often *ahem* mimic reproductive sex for recreational purposes, using body parts and objects that induce the pleasurable sensations without the accompanying reproduction itself.
If this bloodletting is a pleasurable reproductive experience, it also implies that their version of 'sex' would likely be a bit...messy, and unusual compared to what we experience. It may also only be possible when they go into 'heat' and/or in the proximity of this special nesting location.
## Defining Sex:
Sex can be categorized (poorly) by biological characteristics. Contrary to popular belief, there isn't actually a good, singular, way to determine sex. [There are roughly nine different criteria that are commonly used](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/340652):
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> External genital appearance, internal reproductive organs, structure
> of the gonads, endocrinologic sex, genetic sex, nuclear sex,
> chromosomal sex, psychological sex, social sex...
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and importantly, [these nine ways of measuring sex often disagree with one another](https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2015/feb/19/nature-sex-redefined-we-have-never-been-binary). Many people have heard of intersexed folks. These are individuals who, among other things, may not have the typical XX and XY chromosomes. When discussing the non-binary nature of sex, these people are often ignored as rare edge-cases. However, it's important to remember that for many, many, many more people, the nine different measurements of sex do not align.
For example, on of my exes is a perfectly normative young woman...who found out one day, that her endocrinological sex is not female. Another example is this person, who's cells are actually a patchwork of 'male' and 'female' despite (presumably) 8 of her 9 sex measurements agreeing the she is sexually female:
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> A 46-year-old pregnant woman had visited his clinic at the Royal
> Melbourne Hospital in Australia to hear the results of an
> amniocentesis test to screen her baby's chromosomes for abnormalities.
> The baby was fine — but follow-up tests had revealed something
> astonishing about the mother. Her body was built of cells from two
> individuals, probably from twin embryos that had merged in her own
> mother's womb. And there was more. One set of cells carried two X
> chromosomes, the complement that typically makes a person female; the
> other had an X and a Y. Halfway through her fifth decade and pregnant
> with her third child, the woman learned for the first time that a
> large part of her body was chromosomally male.
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So what 'sex' your beings are can actually get quite complicated, given that sex is not a clear binary...more like a hazy cloud that people jam haphazardly into two boxes. Given the above, your beings will neither be male, female, or asexual. They will have a sex unique to their species and method of reproduction.
## Their gender is an entirely different issue.
Gender is a cluster of social behaviors and traits. Most people are assigned a gender at birth, and adopt either 'masculine' or 'feminine' behaviors. Some folks sit between these two choices, and others have set of traits that are non-binary. Gender differs from other social groupings in that it is often tied to the role in reproduction. This isn't to say that its a clear distinction, at all, but when we dig down to it, what keeps 'punk' or 'jock' from being genders is not that they don't have different ways of interacting with others, or different styles of dress, or courtship rituals, it's that other human social groups have no interaction with reproduction.
**So**, this means that your beings ***might have gender***.
If they do have gender, their genders may be related to the specific roles they play in childrearing and reproduction. Do some of them take care of the cocoons? Do others serve as mentors for newly hatched people? Do others have a ceremonial or administrative role in determining who's blood is allowed to reproduce, or in the bloodletting itself?
Those may be the genders of this society.
## So, in summation:
They would probably have bloody, messy, very ritualized sex. They *may* or may not have gender depending on what division of labor or subculture exists around their reproduction.
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Rather than say they are genderless, make them both genders. Many plants and tree's function as both male and female, or you could just look a the wonderful world of animal hermaphrodites.
The common worm for example is a Hermaphrodite, it is both male and female. During sex it'll both inseminate it's partner and be inseminated. This way you prevent the question "if they can't have children with sex, why would they get sexual organs?". Also it prevents the necessity of having a special place to pour your blood in and reduces the chances of poor DNA because you can't mix DNA with a partner the way you describe it.
As for pronouns, just make everything male or female if necessary. Or to put it bluntly if you have a more nurturing persona it is female and a more violent persona becomes male or whatever. It's stereotypical but stereotypes developed for a reason and can be used to signal how a character might react and give the reader a better handhold to who's who and what or why they are doing something.
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The only valid answer is "sure, why not!" You are inventing a species that never existed, and doesn't even have to be evolutionarily reasonable. The race is whatever you want it to be.
There is, perhaps, a linguistic question as to whether anything they do can be called "sex" or not, but that's a minor detail. You have specified the intent of the action (whatever it gets called) to be one of bonding. Build something from that intent. If it gets called "sex," great. If not, great! Don't get hung up on the word. The word was designed to fit our world with our assumptions and our cultural norms and our evolved animals. It's just a word.
Now if you want this to be reasonable from an evolutionary perspective, I'd make sure there's a pretty solid reason for having the biology for this particular act. Sex fills a very obvious procreative need, which gets built into us at the genetic level, whether we are humans, dogs, or fruit flies. Your act clearly must solve a similar grade of problem. Consider that any such act can and will be misused. My recommendation: think of this ability as a weakness. Exploit the heck out of it. Let other species exploit the heck out of it. Then, once you're done, make sure that whatever benefits are gained from this act outweigh the costs of those exploits.
Just remember, the world is a strange place. Consider that many flatworms engage in what has been termed [penis fencing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_fencing). They are hermaphrodite worms, where the loser of a duel is the one who has to carry the eggs, which is a substantial energy cost. In this strange class of creatures, there are no gender roles until after "sex," at which point the loser is arguably assigned the "female" role of carrying the eggs.
Nature will always out-odd you. Every time you think you have come up with something odd and impossible, you find out there's already something odder.
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>
> The evolution of sexual reproduction describes how sexually reproducing animals, plants, fungi and protists could have evolved from a common ancestor that was a single celled eukaryotic species.([1](https://itol.embl.de/)) ([2](https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/23/1/127/188940)) There are a few species which have secondarily lost the ability to reproduce sexually, such as Bdelloidea, and some plants and animals that routinely reproduce **asexually** (by apomixis and parthenogenesis) **without entirely losing sex**. The evolution of sex contains two related, yet distinct, themes: its origin and its maintenance. (wikipedia)(Oxford Academic)(Tree of life)
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You can have sexual reproduction without males or females
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> A sexually reproducing organism only passes on ~50% of its own genetic material to each L2 offspring. This is a consequence of the fact that gametes from sexually reproducing species are haploid. Again however, this is not applicable to all sexual organisms. There are numerous species which are sexual but do not have a genetic-loss problem because they do not produce **males** or **females**. (wikipedia)
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Asexual creatures can still have sex
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> The concept of sex includes two fundamental phenomena: the sexual process (fusion of genetic information of two individuals) and sexual differentiation (separation of this information into two parts). Depending on the presence or absence of these phenomena, the existing ways of reproduction can be divided into asexual, hermaphrodite and dioecious forms (wikipedia)
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Anthropologically speaking, Sex and Gender are not the same thing. There are many good examples of societies that organise themselves with more than two genders, such as the traditional society of [Tonga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fa%27afafine), and the [Bugis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Bugis_society) people of Indonesia.
As such, it is not unreasonable to speculate that an alien species that has no sexual reproduction might still organise society along lines that Humans would recognise as "genders".
These divisions might be entirely arbitrary, or there might be physiological traits that are used by the society to assign "genders" to individuals.
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As the author describes, this species just needs to be able to reproduce asexually. And as he described its reproductive process, it's quite similar to *parthenogenesis*.
Now, one could make a point in describing a genderless species or culture as a monogender one, seeing that all specimens would have the same role in society. With this you could say that all are male or female gendered, and that there could be other genders but they disappeared. This has happened already in Earth.
The New Mexico whiptail is a female only species of reptiles which reproduce by parthenogenesis. Also, for the new specimens to be male, a male sperm is needed, but seeing as there are no more males... They also engage in same sex sexual activities.
Applying this to your species would mean that once upon a time, there were male and female in your world, but somehow the male disappeared. This would explain why they have vestigial sexual organs, that could be used for pleasure, but reproduce asexually.
**Note:** In non human species, sex and gender do not have a distinction, and I'm applying that same criteria for the sake of the comparison to the example given.
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## Yes, but they probably won't form exclusive pairs
In humans and other social apes, the pleasure from the sexual act - originally simply used to encourage reproduction - has become re-purposed towards general social bonding. Bonobos will use sex to strengthen the ties of a group and the sex of the individuals pairing up is generally irrelevant, in addition the sex is pretty indiscriminate among members of a group, without many long-term, *exclusive* bonds.
I'd expect an asexual species to be more similar to bonobos than humans - sex is used not to form *pairs* (the exclusive pair-bonding instinct generally revolves around raising a child that shares the DNA of both parents), but to forge alliances and strengthen ties between members of a group. Basically it would be like a stronger, more intense form of a handshake - a gesture intended to demonstrate openness and vulnerability. The exact details of the act do not need to look or function like sex, but it *could*.
### How could it look like sex?
In bonobos the social act evolved from the sex act, but it doesn't have to work this way. It is not uncommon for birds to "kiss" their partners - this may be because birds feed their children by vomiting into their mouth, so touching beaks functions as a pleasurable-bonding sensation that is instilled from an early age and is later re-purposed towards pair bonding (or, if you're not into the vomiting thing, humans and bonobos probably kiss because it loosely mimics the act of nursing, or simply eating). Animals often play-wrestle with their siblings to practice fighting - the same act could be re-purposed towards bonding with other members of their social group. And many social animals expose their vulnerable belly to demonstrate submission and trust - perhaps this same gesture could evolve into belly-to-belly contact as a means of demonstrating mutual trust. So kissing and naked belly-to-belly wrestling basically looks like sex even if its origins are unrelated. They probably won't have genitals though, since there's no real reason for them.
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Humans reproduce sexually. The sex act is therefore linked to reproduction, and therefore tied into our biology. Without reproduction, it's a matter of doing things that feel good to our partner and friends, piggybacking on the biology of reproduction. I can't think of anything that could replace sex in its social and pleasure functions for humans, and I don't think a species that didn't have some equivalent of sex would have anything equivalent. What they'd probably have is the equivalent of back rubs, which are nice but aren't really adequate for social pairing. (We have sex between members of the same sex, but it's still related to doing nice things to the partner's reproductive organs. No reproductive organs, no sex.)
I'd expect members of the species to cooperate in raising children, back rubs or no. They could form up into friendship groups. They wouldn't have sex-based gender, but that doesn't mean they don't have some other dimorphism or polymorphism that affects behavior, so there might be the equivalent.
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I think calling the action "sex" wouldn't make sense. That's like asking if humans can be "venomous", since we don't include any pointy teeth or spines with which we could inject a poison into another animal. Following the "venomous" chain of thought, we could probably hurt another animal with a liquid from our body (maybe stomach acid?), but we wouldn't call that human "venomous".
Similarly, since your species don't have sexual organs, they wouldn't have sex per se. They may be able to enjoy other physically pleasurable activities with each other (like humans can tickle each other or massage each other, no matter what age or gender), but I would not call it "sex".
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Assuming this is how they evolved & it's not a recently bio-engineered alteration to the species.
>
> or a species that evolved with two sexes then developed asexual reproduction as a backup system then lost all their males, like some extant lizards.
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Then the only reasonable answer is **No**
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> You've said you *want* them to have sex, but the text of your question gives no reason for any organs or instincts for the performance of anything that might even broadly be considered as "sex" to have developed & doesn't actually suggest that they have either.
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No sexual reproduction = no sexual organs (& none of the associated pleasure centers) = no sex.
If they evolved this way then they'll have no sexual instincts & no sexual organs.
They'll be both physiologically & psychologically incapable of sex & if there's no other organisms on their planet that evolved for sexual reproduction the chances are they won't even have a word for it .
They probably won't even be aware of the concepts of either "sex" or sexual reproduction if there aren't other organisms on their planet that use it.
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From the evolution standpoint, if they reproduce by combining DNA of two different individuals it's still sex,
everything else is not relevant, and it doesn't require genders but just exchange of genes.
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## NO.
Your race reproduces by an individual spilling ids blood. No sexual relations between partners. End of story.
We have to look at this from the long term perspective: evolutionarily. A sexual species has evolved the mechanism of sex in order to reproduce its physical manifestation within the physical world. (Two (or more) bodies come into contact through sexual union; they exchange genetic material; a new generation is procreated.)
Your species, by definition does not do this. They are asexual and agendered. Your people reproduce parthenogenetically: each individual goes to a particular place, spills some blood into that place and a new generation is procreated. Different biology; different psychology.
Among themselves, they will naturally have evolved some native mechanism that results in bonds of close relationship. It might be as simple as the interlacing of sensitive appendages "hand holding" or the rubbing of orifices "kissing". Proximity and touch; perhaps staring into one another's eyes; mutual grooming. Any of these things could serve as the modality through which the bonding that sexual organisms experience comes about. It's not sex, but it serves a parallel function.
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Re sex and gender:
Sex is basically the physical characteristics depending on genetic factors. In humans, XX are female sex; XY are male sex. (Yes there are rare "other" sexes.)
Gender is basically the social constructs built upon the physical & genetic factors. In humans, female sex corresponds to female gender & male sex corresponds to male gender. (Yes, there are (usually politically motivated) groups that would like us to think we can make up our own.)
Your race has neither of these physical or social phenomena, and therefore will also not have the anatomical structures that go with sex. Such a person may still love and wish to form a deep bond with a fellow of ids own kind or even wish to form such a bond with a sexed & gendered being. While with the former, the physical activity is clearly non-sexual in nature, it can serve a similar purpose. With the latter they may engage in physical activity that replicates some sexual behaviours; and the sexed & gendered being may *interpret those actions as sexual in nature*, but the "feeling isn't mutual" as they say.
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Re pronouns:
Given that your species is a race of rational, intelligent and self-aware beings, language will be something to consider. Especially as you write their stories.
As has been mentioned in the comments, English does have an epicene third person singular pronoun, ***they***. In English, we use this form to denote the third person but whose sex and/or gender is not relevant. That person still has sex & gender, but for the purposes of the present speech or writing, *their* sex is not relevant.
You could use this in your writing, but the inherent sex & gender even within the epicene pronoun I think would not be the optimal solution.
There is precedent in the fantasy literature for true agendered pronouns. The best system I've seen fits nicely with English pronouns already in use:
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> (F)......(M)......(non)
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> she......he......id
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> her......his......ids
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> her......him......idre
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> hers......his......ids
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This particular system was devised and used within a novel whose main characters were, like your species, naturally asexual and agendered. So, no females, no males, no hermaphrodites, no intersexed of any kind.
Whenever I have had need of such pronouns, it is this system I have made recourse to on account of its sounding more "natural" than other systems I've come across and it fits the English in a linguistically diachronic fashion.
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Sex and gender both have meanings which people adopt and fight over in an unending and rather boring attempt to define and redefine what is socially acceptable, what is not, what is weird and what is not.
You want a sexless people to have physical relationships. So do it, just don't call it sex.
You want a sexless people to have child-rearing roles. So do it, just don't call it sex.
Stroking a pet gives pleasure, most of us wouldn't describe it as sexual. It has an inter-specie social function. Not everything physical needs to be about sex or fighting.
In terms of the communication of concepts, I'd suggest just pretending your readers already understand what is going on. Nobody cares if you give your individual characters weird names, and most people capable of reading are also capable of eventually realising that when you say 'yed' you don't just mean a person, you mean a particular type of person or a person in a particular role.
Consider that in a story involving the USMC, people conversant with the material don't spend time wondering what the sexual orientation of 'Gunny' is.
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[Question]
[
The principle of the Cold War was Mutually Assured Destruction... but what if this idea is now obsolete?
In the 1950s the US planned to deliver hundreds of atomic weapons to Soviet targets via a bomber fleet. This was to prevent retaliation by obliterating all obvious sources of enemy command, launch, and industry.
With the development of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles in the 1960s the reality changed, from the prospect of a first strike knock out to mutual annihilation.
Today the USA and Russia possess about 7,000 warheads each. The PRC has just under 300, and India and Pakistan have about 120 each. But are these numbers justified? We want to substantially cut the number of nuclear weapons held worldwide, and to do so we must prove that a much smaller number of warheads is still capable of being a viable deterrent.
Digital civilisation is highly complex and fragile, so instead of trying to wipe out the enemy, it makes more sense to attempt to inflict what we shall call "fatal wounds". These are a limited number of nuclear attacks upon populous and strategic cities which would cause so much chaos it would effectively cripple the enemy nation.
**What is the minimum number of nuclear warheads necessary to knock out contemporary America or Russia or China? What should the targets be and why?** Consider the question in the context of the USA wanting to knock out Russia and China, or Russia to take out the PRC and USA, or the PRC to get rid of Russia and the USA.
This being a reality-check question, it is possible to reject the premise of there being critical points of national failure (in terms of cities). Though this has to be specific to contemporary social and technological circumstance.
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One, detonated in the [Van Allen Belt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt), at least in theory. It goes like this, the modern world is hyper-reliant on electricity and electrically powered machinery, so in theory the EMP from an enhanced nuclear weapon is potentially many times more destructive than the physical explosion and fireball. The idea is that the Van Allens will magnify the EMP effect of a nuclear detonation and spread the amplified EM Radiation around the world creating a complete blackout of all civilian and many military power systems and put the human race back into the industrial age overnight with little to no industrial age steampowered equipment around to actually run things with.
As an important note the group using said weapon could in fact shield themselves from much of the damage if they can crash their electrical grid just prior to detonation.
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It all depends on whether the belligerent parties are sane or not.
* If the belligerent parties are sane, then a modern form of the [Mutual Assured Destruction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction) (MAD) doctrine applies. Consider for example the position of the United Kingdom or France, who maintain just enough nuclear warheads to be certain of their ability to hit Moscow. (Moscow is protected by a [ring of anti-missile defences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_system); so in order to be certain that one missile hits about a dozen or so need to be launched.) Russia is sure to win a nuclear exchange with the UK or France, but with the certain loss of Moscow. Since Russia is sane, they won't do it.
In order for this strategy to work, the weaker party must maintain a capability of guaranteed retaliation, usually in the form of sufficient nuclear [ballistic missile submarines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_missile_submarine) so that at least one or, preferably, two of them are always at sea.
* If at least one of the belligerent parties is insane, then no amount of nuclear warheads is enough, because a madman is, by definition, mad.
So the sad reality is that the U.S.A. *cannot* knock out Russia or China, nor can Russia knock out the U.S.A. Both Russia the the U.S.A. operate enough ballistic missile submarines to be certain that even in the case of a devastatingly massive nuclear attack they *will* be able to retaliate.
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The concept that just because a nuclear device is detonated suddenly missile silos are all firing off like crazy everywhere is actually outdated, there are many options on the table that are all situationally dependent. The most likely cause for nuclear war is that two nuclear powers are engaged in conventional warfare and one begins losing and deploys a nuclear weapon against a military target. After this happens we have several options:
Option 1: Call their bluff. They aren't REALLY prepared to commit to a nuclear war, this is a scare tactic. Rally on the moral high ground that you will not use nukes and press the attack on the ground.
Option 2: tit-for-tat reciprocation. We signal that we are perfectly willing to enter into a nuclear war but would prefer not to by striking a single military target of equal value to the one we lost. The hope is that they realize the gravity of what they are escalating into and decline to escalate the situation further.
Option 3: Escalation. We destroy 2 targets of considerably higher value than the one they did. We are signalling that we aren't just ready to enter into a nuclear exchange, but we are willing to be the ones who escalate it.
Option 4: limited exchange. We retaliate against multiple targets avoiding civilian population centers and instead focusing on missile launch sites, bunkers, and military installations. We are hoping to destroy or disable enough of their ability to retaliate in one blow with minimal casualties because we believe their successful strike may have emboldened them into attempting to do the same to us.
Option 5: All out warfare. We fire everything we have at any target we can because we believe that now that our enemy has opened pandoras atomic box there is no going back.
A very major part of it is psychology, you don't always need to obliterate an enemy to defeat them. So the question "how many nukes to defeat a major superpower" is highly culturally and situationally dependent.
The USA has historically been a very, very poor nation to attack. The Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 have historically demonstrated that trying to psychologically sucker-punch the USA into an early defeat backfires spectacularly. The USA tends to actually GAIN morale from such events, repackaging a disastrous defeat or a horrific disaster into righteous fury and quickly mobilizes its culture for all out-war. The problem with the USA is that they grow tired of war equally quickly. The Tet Offensive in Vietnam or the Chinese offensive at chosen reservoir in Korea demonstrate how even a losing battle fought at the right time can shock and demoralize the war-weary American people into agreeing to a cease-fire or withdrawing early. A nuclear strike against the us right when the end of the war was in sight could very effectively break US morale just like the Tet offensive did in Vietnam.
Russia is a very different beast, they have always been stoic line-holders. The psychology of how they operate is reflected in a "retreat into winter, allow the enemy to exhaust themselves, counter attack when we've weathered the storm" mentality that is heavily ingrained to their culture. The Russians also rule more along oligarchical lines than the USA and components of the military are seen to a large part as expendable so long as they achieve some goal in preserving the momentum of the whole. Soviets tend to have a much more defensive mindset. You'd have to pound them pretty hard to break them. Look at Stalingrad, they lost almost half a million men fighting for a city that contained nothing of value except their leaders name. They were more than willing to sacrifice half a million men simply to create an expensive tar-trap for the nazis. You would have to launch a a decent sized series of strikes crippling their military to break the Russian stoicism.
The Chinese are a bit of a wild-card. The Majority of engagements they fight seem to be civil wars. The long march, and the hundred flowers purge shows that there are really two cultures in china. The inner party and everyone else. Everyone else are expendable in numbers the Russians would even find appalling. China's military is structured to match, despite all what you hear about their hundreds of millions of soldiers, there really two militaries in china. The first is the rank and file conscripts, the 2nd are the elite inner party controlled units. These inner party units are dedicated mostly towards preventing the non-party assets from deserting or rebelling, and that's during peace time. To defeat china you would need to launch a decapitating strike and hopefully without the inner-party's leaders their control over the elite units would collapse. Without guns at their backs the rank and file non-party military would surrender or desert.
These are all approximations and hypothetical meant more to demonstrate the differences of response. The reality is we've never tested nuclear tactics in battle so any talk of nuclear war is going to remain thankfully theoretical.
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That depends on your definition of crippling damage.
Back in WWII, both sides thought about "target sets" for [strategic bombing](https://media.defense.gov/2010/Dec/03/2001329910/-1/-1/0/AFD-101203-023.pdf) that would cripple the enemy economy. The Axis never really got to put it into practice, the Battle of Britain came closest but Germany didn't stay the course. The Allies got to try it.
* They considered knocking the electricity grid out. Too many separate targets.
* They went after aircraft production, including the famous/infamous [Schweinfurt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Raid_on_Schweinfurt) raid.
* Going after transportation was partly effective. Going after oil was even more effective.
Lessons after the war showed that battle damage assessments of these strategic raids were overly optimistic. Germany was quite capable of substituting materials, of salvaging machine tools when buildings were damaged, etc.
Of course a megaton-range thermonuclear weapon is different from a couple hundred GP bombs. Still I believe that the lessons translate. Killing a city, **any city**, would not cripple a major nation. Killing any dozen cities won't cripple it.
Of course one nation which such damage would be at a major disadvantage fighting another nation which got off more lightly. If that is your definition of crippling, consider going after aircraft manufacturers and stockpiles of AAMs and AGMs. There are much fewer of those than there used to be, and a carrier battle group or deployed air wing would be inhibited in their operations if they know that the spares and missiles on board are it.
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On second thoughts, my first answer missed they key point.
*As a credible deterrent, a country needs enough weapons so that it can inflict unacceptable damage even after an enemy surprise strike hurts their forces.*
Unacceptable damage is not the same as crippling damage. The Brits called it the *Moscow Criterion* -- the ability to take out Moscow or Leningrad in exchange for the entire UK (this [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_Kingdom#Nuclear_posture) gives a brief explanation in passing). The French had similar calculations, but I don't know if they had a snappy name.
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## Nuke(s) \* X = Nuclear Winter, X = 100
I think one way we can measure the minimum number of nukes required to be an effective deterrent, is as the minimum number of nukes required to cause a nuclear winter. This outcome is a sufficient deterrent and scales well vs other nations increasing technological might. The end of the world is the end of the world. Its game over no matter how strong your enemy is.
The "mess with us and we will kill everyone including ourselves" strategy is an effective one. Since no one wants to die, let alone have their entire family and everyone they ever knew die and or be exposed to a hellish wasteland life, this should be enough to make everyone involved seek alternative solutions to problems that may arise. These nukes don't even have to target enemy nations, they can be detonated on home soil and the resulting soot storm will be almost impossible to stop.
Current models place the number of nukes required to cause a nuclear winter at around 100 separate detonations.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter>
>
> Based on new work published in 2007 and 2008 by some of the authors of
> the original studies, several new hypotheses have been put forth,
> primarily the assessment that as few as 100 firestorms would result in
> a nuclear winter. However far from the hypothesis being "new", it drew
> the same conclusion as earlier 1980s models, which similarly regarded
> 100 or so city firestorms as a threat
>
>
>
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Considering that most high tech equipment is sourced through a global logistics chain, we have the interesting situation that many nations don't actually make much of their own high tech "baseline" (there are always small, specialized facilities to ensure production of unique military goods, but these are almost hand crafted).
Going one step back, the raw materials for many types of technology is also sourced through a global logistics chain. You might be making smartphones for American customers in (insert nation x here), but where are the rare earth elements for the screens coming from?
This suggests that the primary targets are logistics hubs and ports of entry (since Russia is largely landlocked, attacking seaports is not an option in that particular case). You could go even further. Attacking naval choke points like the Strait of Malacca, the Straights of Hormuz or the Panama canal would essentially crater the entire global logistics chain. You might not even have to actually use nuclear weapons, just the credible threat that nuclear mine have been laid could close the lanes for shipping. In that case, the minimum number would be 5 (one at each end of the Panama Canal, one at each end of the Straights of Malacca and one to close the Straights of Hormuz).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/petUf.jpg)
*Straight of Malacca*
This global trade disruption strategy would affect China the most, since much of their raw materials and virtually all of their export trade is sent by sea. The United States would be affected as a Maritime trade power, but has the rather unique ability to be both largely self sufficient in raw materials (imported lithium is cheaper than US mined lithium due to different mining and environmental laws, for example), and has free access to both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, so could work around some of the effects of closing major maritime choke points. Russia would be indirectly affected. Since they are a Continental rather than a Maritime power, the disruption of global maritime trade would indirectly affect their ability to access world markets, but their customers would also have far less money to purchase Russian goods. Since Russia has a very small GDP compared to that of China or the United States, this would have a considerable compound effect (they would crash harder and have a more difficult time recovering).
To directly attack Russia from a logistical viewpoint, Moscow is the rail hub of Russia, and there are a very few rail choke points in the Urals mountains which connect European Russia with the resources of Siberia through the Trans Siberian railway. Most oil, gas and telecommunications pipelines and conduits parallel the Trans Siberian Railway as well.
So these would be the minimum requirements to cripple today's superpowers.
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You might enjoy reading Nobel-prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling's book, 'The Strategy of Conflict', which explains (among other things) the theory that explains why the US and Russia have such large stockpiles of missiles.
* The main thing stopping the Russians from nuking New York is the threat of an equally damaging counter-attack.
* Hence the Russians' first target would be the retaliatory forces, to avoid the counter-attack (or at least, to reduce its damage).
* Assume a counter-attack strong enough to deter the Russians needs 100 missiles, i.e. if the Russians can reduce America's stockpile to 99 missiles that would be victory for them (or as close as you can get to victory in a nuclear war)
* Assume missiles have a 50% failure rate when fired at other missiles, which are after all in hardened underground bunkers.
* Given the above, if America has 200 missiles, Russia need only knock out half to win, so they need only fire one missile per silo (200).
* If America has 400 missiles, Russia needs to knock out 75%, which means firing two missiles per silo (800).
* If America has 800 missiles, Russia needs to knock out 87.5%, which would mean firing three missiles per silo (2400)
* In other words, the more missiles America has, the harder it is for Russia to get ahead, and it's not just linear; between 400 and 800, America added 400 missiles while Russia had to add 1,600.
* Hence, adding **more missiles to both sides** makes it **harder** for either side to build up an advantage large enough for a surprise attack to make sense.
Needless to say, this is a pretty simplified theory (how do you fit MIRVs and submarines into it?), and it relies on certain assumptions you might find questionable - or at least, very reflective of the paranoia of the cold war where both sides publicly claimed they'd launch a first strike under the right circumstances - but this is the genuine thinking of a very influential cold war strategist. So this book would be a good read if you're interested in these things.
Needless to say, if you give your fictional world an Al-Quida-style attack with smuggled bombs, like in Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears", where your attackers either avoid or don't care about retaliation, I'm sure even a single bomb could cause massive economic damage.
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I've seen estimates as small as 50 for the number of nuclear missiles that China has. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction) says 100 to 400, with around 250 being about the best guess. This suggests that they feel this is sufficient.
A single submarine should be enough to launch a devastating attack if every other submarine, bomber, and stationary launcher is destroyed. That's 24 missiles on an [Ohio-class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio-class_submarine) with 12 separately targetable warheads each, so 288 warheads.
The twenty largest [combined statistical areas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_statistical_area) (urban centers, their suburbs, and related cities) in the United States have about 150 million in population. That suggests that 20 missiles would be enough to attack the US. But if anti-missile defenses are 50% accurate, that would mean that they'd need at least 40. But that understates things, as a 50% accuracy with two missiles per target means that five targets would get no missiles; five would get two missiles; and ten would get one missile each. That's only fifteen targets hit, which may not be sufficient.
Hitting the largest population centers does the most psychological damage. And remember, [fallout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout) will spread far beyond the initial blast. For example, nuclear testing in Nevada caused fallout in Vermont. Targets like Portland, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, Orlando, Washington/Baltimore, New York City, and Boston cover a lot of area with fallout.
Of course, it's possible that even one missile would be sufficient. After all, who wants to be known for allowing millions of citizens to be killed? There have been exactly two nuclear bombs (not even missiles) used in war. And a single modern missile could have done far more damage than the two combined. That has deterred everyone from using them since.
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Can they be pulled by traditional beasts of burden? I want to create a wagon that’s fireproof, can survive high temperatures, turn over to protect the occupants like a shell, and be made with materials available to a pre-industrial society in a world without metal (to protect against dragon attacks, obviously). Such a thing would probably be massively heavier than a traditional wagons in our world, but could it still be pulled by real beasts of burden like oxen or a large horse team? Or would stone wagons necessitate fantasy mounts to pull their weight?
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I think the key word here is **dragon**.
Build a wooden wagon and cover it in dragon scales. It would be the only item to protect you from dragons, not only their fire but also due to the look of it (when turned upside down) will simply look like a dragon in a ball and thus as they won't attack their own serve as protection.
It also fits the narrative quite well.
The alternative is sunflowers.
Sunflowers doesn't burn that well.
There is a big group of fire retardant plants.
A Canopy can be woven from it.
No comment on the safety of the horses, bridles etc.
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With a long enough and strong enough rope, and enough animals, certainly you could pull any load. I think the real challenge would be getting a wagon made of stone that will not break.
To simplify things I'm going to assume that modern structural concrete is similar to a best case scenario for something carved out of solid stone, because they have similar properties and it's harder to find data about the structural strength of stone. It is brittle and handles compression forces well, but not other forces.
Concrete's breaking length, the maximum length of a vertical column of the material suspended from the top, is about 1/25th that of oak. Structural engineering has since antiquity used quite a lot of structural features, like arches, to distribute forces in a way that stone in structures primarily endure large compression forces. This might be harder to achieve in a wagon, and at the very least might merit some redesigning. Additionally it's brittleness would be less able to handle the shocks of a moving vehicle without fracturing.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_strength>
Some redesigning ideas:
* A large stone cylinder within which a wooden carriage is assembled such that it neatly rolls backwards in the inner curvature while the cylinder rolls forwards. If well designed it could utilize most of the internal volume of the cylinder pretty effectively.
* A sled. No moving stone parts, just stone bottom, polished smooth by its own locomotion.
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I started with a [Conestoga wagon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conestoga_wagon).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BYNWY.png)
Dimensions given are 18 feet long and 4 feet wide. I estimate the walls to be 4 feet high. We will not consider the wheels.
We are going to make the wagon out of pumice. This dude will make it for you out of pieces this big.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BHFJq.jpg)
[source](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/5a/cf/ef/5acfefbf8c0d0a593595f00ff4fd61d3--pumice-sierra-nevada.jpg)
Unless you can find one ginormous piece and hollow it out.
[Pumice weighs](https://www.aqua-calc.com/page/density-table/substance/pumice-coma-and-blank-stone) 40 lbs / cubic foot which looks about right for that guy to be holding over his head. Actually that seems a little heavy - maybe he has some lighter pumice because that must be at least 2 cubic feet.
In any case: assuming the walls of the wagon are made of 1 foot thick blocks that is (18 x 1 x 2) + (4 x 1 x 2) = 44 cubic feet, x 40 lbs = 1760 lbs. A real Conestoga wagon weighed about 1500 lbs but could be loaded to considerably heavier.
So: your stone wagon can be pulled just like a Conestoga wagon, by 2 burly oxen. I am not sure how you will pull your wagon when you flip it back over after the fire, because your oxen will be long gone. Unless you train them to lie down next to each other and then flip it over them. That is something you will want to practice a lot when there are no dragons around. Also if the oxen are underneath they will not be able to help you flip it back.
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I once read about concrete canoe championships. Those are a real thing. So going from there, with modern tech it would be perfectly possible.
Now to your epoch. Pre-industrial typically means before the steam engine. Or at least before the fairly modern steam engine.
That probably takes rebar out of the equation.
The romans already made concrete, but we need reinforcements.
Apparently, bamboo can actually serve as reinforcing material for concrete.
So, what do we build?
Your wagon started out as a wicker construct. Yes, a very large basket. That was then covered in roman-style concrete.
While this vehicle is heavy, i am quite confident (thich means: too lazy to do the math) that you could create one that is reasonably fireproof, yet not too heavy to be overturned to serve as a shelter, and be moved by a bunch of oxen. All you do is vary the thickness of the concrete, to arrive at the desired level of fireproofness.
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As per request, here is a little math.
Concrete weighs between 1500kg/m^3 and 2500kg/m^3. I'm a lazy person, so let's take the middle, 2000kg/m^3, which also provides nice numbers.
say or wagon is 5m long, 2m wide and 2m high, a closed box. that gives us a surface area of 48m^2.
Now, say you apply 2.5cm of concrete on either side of your wicker box, resulting in a wall thickness of 5 cm, that would give you a volume of approx. 2.4m^3, and a weight of 4.8 metric tons.
If an oxen, as stated in another answer, can pull something like 400kg on whees, that would mean we need 12 oxen to pull that waggon.
That is a lot. Possible, but really a lot.
so let's look how we can reduce the weight.
Say the wagon doesn't need concrete at the bottom. that reduces the surface area by 10m^2. With the same thickness, that would reduce the weight by half a ton, so we save one oxen.
Better, but far from good.
Acually we don't need the concrete on the inside of the box. With rebar, the concrete also provides corrosion protection, but we don't need that for our wicker waggon. we can also reduce the thickness of the concrete on the outside to, say, 2 cm. with the open underside, that results in
38m^2\*0.02m\*2000kg/m^3 = 1.52 tons,
which can be moved by 4 oxen. Add two more, because your cargo will have weight, too.
Youn cannot overturn that thing, but since it is alredy fireproof on the top, there's no need to.
So yes, i think this can be considered plausible.
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If you have roads of a perpetually wet mudstone that has a slick clay slip layer you could have something toboggan-like pulled along relatively easily but tipping it over is awkward. Any stone vessel stable enough to travel well is going to be too stable to tip over easily in an emergency. Any wagon light enough to tow easily is probably going to be pretty fragile being too thin to endure even small shocks. There are a number of woods that actually resist burning for extended periods of time, I'd have a look at that option first.
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As has been said, it isn't *can* it be pulled, but how many animals will it take? An average ox weighs approximately 1200 pounds and can pull a wheeled load equivalent to it's own weight without over-stressing. A team of two should have little trouble with 2500 pounds and four could pull 5000 pounds from Missouri to Oregon.
What surprises me most is that on a planet that hosts dragons there is not a beast of burden stronger than an ox - perhaps twice or three times stronger. Also, is it not possible that *earthenware* would be more suitable? Ceramics take the high heat, but also are far more efficient to form - much thinner and lighter. Pre industrial societies have fired ceramics (hmm... fire breathing dragons... ceramics...) for 1000's of years prior to inventing concrete or ways to manipulate "true" stone.
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**I think you should approach this differently**
Stone is impractical for moving parts and especially doesn't handle tension very well. More specifically you cant really have an effective stone axel without a lot of ridiculous engineering because there would either be to much friction or it would simply sheer.
Also stone is very heavy, your cart is likely to sink if it touches terrain other than well built roads of gravel or better (most medieval routes were dirt roads save the ones the Romans built beforehand).
**An alternative material that would be infinitely better is CLAY pottery**
It's just as fire proof, is easier to craft, is lighter and it was used by pre-metal working civilizations. Problem is, its fragile and generally just as ineffective as stone is with tension. (PS in most carts you will have tension on the axel)
**Instead of making the whole cart of stone/clay perhaps make a big clay pot** that serves as a roof/dome for the cart. Maybe the wheels could be removed to drop the cart so the dome rests on the ground as a full heat shield. (wont really stop the dragon from smashing it).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iVuvq.jpg) ~kinda~
**Another potential impracticality.** The furnace and resources needed to make such a shield would be massive. Likely, they would make some sort of shingle construct similar to shingles on a roof. So cart roofs could be more easily and quickly made as well as maintained (case of damage).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jmKLa.jpg)
**Its not really great, but then a cart defending against a dragon even with metal is a tough stretch.**
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Think concrete wagons. Concrete is over 2,000 years old. The Romans used it. It would not he difficult to form it into a wagon.
You might find [The Secrets of Ancient Roman Concrete](http://www.history.com/news/the-secrets-of-ancient-roman-concrete) a useful link. You might want to think of wooden axles, however. But they would be expendable in a dragon attack.
As for turning it over for protection, it would be better just to build a box, that could stay upright.
Incidentally, in the Wild West, they never actually formed a circle or tipped the wagons over. Another American myth.
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Ceramics and Segments!
Okay, we know that ceramics have been around at least as long as recorded history, are easy to make and are fireproof. Primitive peoples made them by crafting a basket, packing it with clay and sticking it in a hot fire. You now have a pot. Wicker can be made into just about any shape though, so design possibilities are endless. The downside is that pottery is very rigid and brittle. You can mitigate some of that with segmentation.
Segmentation means you might be able to use a flexible connective material and overlapping sections, Kind of like the body of a millipede. Each segment is going to be relatively small with it's own set of wheels.
Each segment has a tile roof over it on some pole supports. In case of a Dragon sighting and possible attack, take some of the roofing bits and lock them into a cover for the oxen. Flip some segments over for a quick shelter and a roof piece on either side for a fireproof hut for your people.
Here is the immediate downside. If the Dragon gets annoyed and spends some time hitting your shelters, they are going to turn into ovens. In that case, your choice becomes being Flame Broiled or Slow Roasted.
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How about this tried and true method of a portable protective barrier:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CW2Jq.jpg)
If you look at the design of a snail shell it has two important features for a portable barrier which a wagon-shaped vehicle would not have: 1. the way the snail integrates with the shell is to wrap around the center of the shell. This reduces the tensile stress on the shell as opposed to putting all the weight on an axle. You could do something similar, tie the oxen to the center spiral of the shell. 2. The shell is shaped sort of like a sideways number 6. This makes it easier to lift the shell when the threat is gone because the front part is light and the back part is round.
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Only the outer shell needs to be fireproof. Stone wheels would be extremely heavy and would break easily.
You could still have a wooden wagon and wooden wheels with a ceramic or dragonscale covering. You would also cover it with spikes to discourage dragons from knocking it over to access it's tasty occupants.
You also need the shell large enough to pull the wagon team back inside in case of attack.
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There is a world out there, with people fairly like us (minor physical distinctions, irrelevant to the question), and with technology on par with ours, but with a very different religion.
The world (unified government) has this state religion. This religion is
* Based around water
* Good-versus-evil
* 'Good' deity lives in sky, 'bad' in the ocean
* Purification rituals are performed with holy (rain) water
* State church dispenses rituals
* Very lucrative - the ritual includes a tithe
* Tithe amounts to about $50 a year per person, consuming about 3 liters of rainwater a year per person
The government, in an attempt to increase profits, has set itself on the task of collecting more rainwater - more money! However, attaining enough rainwater to support the world population of 9,000,000,000 people is understandably difficult. So, the solution is determined to be a vast rainwater collecting scheme.
The location on the planet, with similar ecosystems to earth, and a similar rainfall capacity as earth, has not been set - the scheme could be anywhere or everywhere. Similarly, the method has not been decided upon.
Most importantly, the maximum amount of rainwater is to be delivered to cities, at distances of 250 km in rainforests, 100 km in temperate climates (prairies, deciduous forests, etc), 150 km in snowy climes, and 100 km (on average) from any other climate. No one should be harmed - that is bad publicity. The next goal (and the one the government is most willing to give up) is to hide the operation - there is a minute chance of people losing faith. But that faith can be recovered. As such the goal is expendable. Finally, the lowest cost in an economic system similar to ours is also a minor but desirable goal.
All in all, how might a government attain the greatest amount of rainwater, transport it with minimal loss in both rainwater and money, and deliver to cities at specified distances, all safe, cheap, and (hopefully) hidden?
**Note** Desalinating seawater is out of the question - tainted by the evil deity.
**Note** If rainwater touches the earth or any water that touches the earth it is rendered groundwater, however certain pools can be blessed if they are artificially constructed and do not touch the ground.
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The requirement is for 3 liters (0.003 m$^3$) per person per year. [New York City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City) has 783 km$^2$ surface area (or 783000000 m$^2$) and [gets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City#Climate) about 1.2 meters of rain per year.
8 million residents need 3 liters each for 24,000 m$^3$ of water. If we catch all of the available rainwater, then we need 24000 m$^2$ or 0.024 km$^2$ or 0.003% of the surface area of the city to be covered by water catchments in order to provide enough rainwater. 24000 meters is about 4 football fields, so, for example, Yankee Stadium and Shea stadium with some cisterns dug below them would be able to collect the needed rainwater over the course of the year.
In other words, in NYC, one of the densest places in the world, this is a trivial amount of area needed to catch the rainwater we need. Even if you drop the rainfall to Phoenix or Baghdad levels, you just don't need much are to catch 3 liters per person. Now Cairo or Lima or someplace where it literally never rains will be a problem, but given your world religion I'd be surprised if anyone lived in such places.
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### Leave a clean bucket outside.
Three liters of water per year isn't very much. Even an area like Phoenix, AZ, which located in a desert, if you're not familiar with the city, receives over 20cm of rainfall per year. A liter is 1000$cm^3$ of water, so collecting enough rainwater for a single person would only require catching the rain that falls in a 150$cm^2$ area.
A standard 5-gallon bucket, in comparison, has a bottom surface area of over 500$cm^2$. Collecting enough water in a place like Phoenix would be as simple as each person placing a bucket outside whenever it looks like it might rain. Rainwater is fairly clean, so as long as everyone keeps their rain buckets clean, it wouldn't even be necessary to filter the water. That calculation is for a desert. Any other environment would make it even easier to collect enough rainwater, so you won't need to transport anything long distance, regardless of where your city is located.
As this is a religious rite, it's highly likely that people won't be using actual general purpose buckets for their water collection. Each individual in your world probably owns a ritual water collection device that they leave outside to catch rain. The water from these collectors would be brought inside after each rain and added to a sealed storage container to prevent water loss due to evaporation.
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On our world we already have the means in almost all climates to do this with minimal alterations to our infrastructure. Existing roof gutter systems that simply discharge in to a 55 gallon barrel are common. I can even go buy one for about $100 at a local hardware store and install it quickly and easily. Mandate your churches to build steel roofs that are somewhat over sized with a simple but robust rainwater catchment system. In Kansas I could easily fill a 55 gallon drum from one side of my roof in a year, so It should be pretty easy to catch enough for the congregations' needs and have surplus to ship to the dryer climates.
A fun thought would be to increase revenue with "holy" gardens that take advantage of all that rainwater and sell the produce. A contained and blessed greenhouse elevated above the ground and using holy rainwater at each church could work. How about a holy Tomato, or some blessed Zucchini?
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First, the word tithe means "a tenth." From your example, if the tithe holds, it would indicate that the average income is $500 a year, and your world is in extreme poverty. You may have meant a more general offering, which would not be tied to a percentage of income.
Remember, the cost of any good is based upon its scarcity. If the holy water is too abundant, the price will fall. Therefore, it is wise to keep the supply limited to encourage a higher price.
Build a temple next to the sea. Scared fires burn below a brass container, filled with seawater. The heat evaporates the water. The temple complex funnels the water vapor such that condensates 'rains' down upon the sacred pools. The government can offer pilgrims access, for a price, can have services in the temple and allow faithful to throw lists of their sins in the scared fire.
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Create catch basins in areas of high rainfall and aqueducts and canals to transport it. Then bless them to make them holy.
Heck, if the Pope could declare the nutria (beaver) in Quebec and capybara in Venezuela to be fish so they could eat it on Fridays during Lent ([Scientific American](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/once-upon-a-time-the-catholic-church-decided-that-beavers-were-fish/)), there's not much else they can't justify.
In southeast Asia, satellite photos have identified a large number of overgrown catch basins and man made water collection pools from previous civilizations. Looking that up may give you more ideas for your civilization.
Another method would be to have every building build catch basins on their roofs as a show of faith. Of course, the basins would have to be properly blessed (for $$$) and the rainwater donated so it could be distributed by the church.
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# Blessed pool, sand bed
Actually there are lots of way to purify water by simple means. A common method is [sand filters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_filter). This will give you safe and storable water. If you want to increase the shelf-life, [store the water in PET bottles and leave them out in the sun for 6 hours](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_disinfection).
Your only concern is the "legal" matters. And in your comment you said you just bless the pools by doing so it "legally" remains holy rain-water. Well there you have it then: blessed collection surfaces, blessed storage pools and sand beds, store in transparent bottles and made safe by sunlight.
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From what you have written, I am assuming that 3 liters of rainwater are worth \$50. This implies that the cost of collecting 3 liters of rainwater + filling (in bottles/drums) expenses + transportation expenses over a distance off 200 km should stay substantially lower than \$50.
The obvious first step in the scheme of things is collection of rainwater. This will obviously require artificial, *blessed* pools. The larger and higher the pool(s), the better. This could be especially helpful in cold regions where snowfall (thus, heavenly water) helps collects large amounts of snow. In the mountainous regions, you would want to build high dams for snowfall collection. The snow can later be transported to warmer regions where it would melt into holy water.
The construction of *blessed* dams would cost you a lot initially, but considering the exorbitant income, each dam would easily pay its price in 3-4 years if not earlier.
For rainforest and plain habitats, you would have to build *blessed* reservoirs. These would be large collecting vessels which would be covered with gigantic lids once rain stops.
You would want to keep the source (where rainwater is collected) and destination (where rainwater is dispatched to) places as close as secretly possible. For example, you might want to build one blessed reservoir in the middle of 5 cities, in a large, barren patch, 50 km from the nearest city. From here, you can transport the rainwater in bottles to all cities and decrease the distance substantially.
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The initial set up will be costly. No mentions of cost restrictions so I will assume that cost is not a factor in setting up the gather points. Something to keep it "appearing" natural would be creating a reservoir that looks like a natural lake. Keep the water outside of the city, so that the only way people MIGHT find it is if they are really going off into the distance... but even still it would be ground water so they would see it and know they can't touch. You don't want to add any facilities to it such as pumps and fences. This would make it seem really suspect especially in the middle of nowhere. So let it appear to be natural. Then have a truck with pumps come by like gas trucks, suck up the water to fill the tank and off they go to the delivery point. Nothing would seem odd about it because these trucks come by anyways for delivery. If you are worried about the increased truck traffic, have the bulk be done at night when most of the people are sleeping.
Oh and one other point to do about the fake lake is that the bottom/material used to shape the lake would be specially made to keep the water from being contaminated so it stays as rain water and not ground water.
You can also design ways to capture water from the roof of churches. Have funnels drip the water down into tanks in the church where the church can then use to distribute. Since this place seems to be highly centered around church, there should be a ton of churches every where. Combine that with a few fake lakes around the outskirts and there should be a fairly decent amount of water coming in.
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[Rainwater Harvesting](http://www.jwgresourcesconsulting.com/rain-water-harvesting.html) initial setup is costly but one time setup is not much worth of it.The main reason of keeping the rain water preserved is the ponds, channels, ditches, canals, etc. is to recharge the groundwater with this surplus unused water. This conserved water is lifted up with the help of deep or shallow tube-wells to be used as drinking water or to be used in agriculture.
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On an earth-like world I am creating there is a small island that is regularly covered in dense fog. The fog is thick enough that your standard human cannot see where the nearest mainland shore is.
Without visual cues is there a way to determine where the nearest shore would be? I need a logical explanation why a person would decide (intentionally) to go a particular direction given that visibility is really bad.
**Limitations**
* Waiting for the fog to clear is not an options due to time constraints
* Modern Era but no technology available
* The mainland is approx 400 M away from the island
* The nearest stretch of mainland is uninhabited
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[The wind/breeze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_breeze). Depending on the time of day, breezes tend to go toward shore during the morning as land heats up faster, and toward the sea in the evening as the land cools down faster.
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Honey bee triangulation.
Bee's have a [forage range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forage_(honey_bee)) of around 4 miles. Once they have collected their load, they will generally fly in a straight line directly toward their hive. (this is a good way to find wild hives, by the way)
If the island isn't to far off shore, he could observe a bee gathering nectar, and then making a beeline across the water.
If he made several such observations he could triangulate the location of the hive, but even seeing a single bee fly off would let him know what direction shore was, and that it wasn't that far away either.
Generally, when looking for hives, people will glue a small bit of cotton or other light colored bit to the bee while it is distracted foraging to make it easier to see as it flies away.
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I've canoed on lakes with heavy fog. Maintaining a straight course requires a compass (easiest) or long piece of cord and a float. (By streaming it behind you and keeping the wake of the float centered in the wake of the boat, you can keep a straighter course.
Conditions that produce fog often have a layer of cold air near the surface. Since the speed of sound is slower in cold air, sound tends to refract toward the surface -- sounds carry much further.
So some form of sonar may work. Construct the equivalent of the clap board used for syncing sound and action on movie sets. The idea is to make a single sharp sound that is uniform.
If you have two people, one person can construct ear funnels out of bark to make hearing more acute and more directional.
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If there is any surf running at all -- even light swells -- these are generally going to run toward the main shore -- within the 180 degree angle of the mainland. This assumes a linear mainland with a sloped beach. Such a beach can't act as a source of waves. Cliffs however can reflect waves.
Waves hitting the shore may make enough noise to be heard from a distance, especially with treebark sound amplifiers.
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Because strong waves can't come from the mainland side, you may find that there is a difference in the evidence of wave action on different parts of the island. I would expect the dominant signs to be in the direction of the dominant winds for your location. Things to look for: Driftwood, seaweed further up the beach, larger sand grain/rocks (bigger waves move bigger stuff)
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If you know what direction the land is, but don't know where that direction lies, you may be able to tell at sunrise or sunset. (That is, you know that the land is East of you, but which way is East?) Unless the fog is extroidinarily thick, you may be able to see a general lightness in one direction. If it gets brighter, as it fades in directionality you 've seen sunrise.
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When fog is dense it is frequently in thin layers. Depending on the shape and vegetation of your island, you may be able to climb high enough to see.
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If you know the local currents and tides, you may be able to pick up their directionality by running floats on cords from the island. Unraveling your sweater is a source of cord. E.g. You know that the rising tide has currents from the Southwest. You can tell if it's rising by putting markers on the beach.
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If the tides have a significant rise and fall, your 400 m to the beach can be far less at low tide. E.g. In the Georgia Straight between Vancouver Island and the coast of BC tides run 30 feet. At a 1 in 10 slope, that chops 300 feet off of each end of your journey. Your 400m is now 200m. Maybe now you can hear the waves lapping.
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Unless your island is dead-flat, then 'downhill' is likely to lead you to the shore - particularly if its a small island.
Determining which way is downhill could be tricky if it's close to flat though and a large island with valleys & craters would complicate things ...
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**Use the environment around you to lead you to it.**
**Sand**
Since shores are eroded, look at the earth beneath you and see if you can notice patterns such as increasing amounts of sand - quartz (silicon dioxide) and feldspar (sodium, calcium, and silica), which are in abundance near beaches, and increasing amounts of pebbles/worn down rock.
Some islands are made out of volcanic material, so increasing amounts of black sand (basalt) are also indicative of an oncoming island perimeter,
**Elevation**
Shores to be on a lower elevation, so if you see decreasing elevation, going downhill for a while would likely bring you to the shore.
**Rivers**
Rivers will also find their way to the shore, so if you see a river, follow it to the delta. However, a caveat - *not all rivers will end at a large body of water.* However, all rivers flow downhill, which is helpful since the shore will likely be at a lower elevation.
**Animals**
Some animals are just better at finding water, due to the raised humidity, the sound, the scents, etc. Other times, animals that have found water might signal to other animals that water is present. If you can identify those animals, you can follow them.
You can also use your own sense of smell. Saltwater can have a very strong scent, and you could use the wind to track where the scent is coming from. Another chemical, geosmin, is responsible for that pleasant earthly scent (petrichor) when the earth is disturbed by water. Humans are very sensitive to that smell (can detect it at as low as 5 parts per trillion).
Even if the ocean water doesn't cause that scent, *rain does*, and it rains more near coastal regions and where the wind hits high elevations from the ocean side.
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Sound?
Several "If's" follow, but it might work...
If the nearest shore is about 400m away then the round trip time for sound from the island will be about 2.3s.
If the not nearest shores are, say, 500m away, that will add over 0.5s to the round trip time, which enough of a difference for a human to perceive.
If the nearest shore has any feature that will echo sounds, making a loud enough noise to carry back and forth over 400m of calm water is possible.
The islander would not be able to find the exact point that is closest, but he or she could be in the ball park.
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In our iteration of "Earth," there are several studies suggesting that the study of paleontology is itself going extinct. In an attempt to envision a brighter future for the field, I want to build a world whereby society values paleontology above all else -- essentially valuing ancient life more than present life.
Feeling that notion was just a bit too extreme, I dialed back a bit and settled for "paleontology becomes the largest / profitable industry."
Other industries can/need to exist too (food/beverage/transportation/ect), but the core of this world's economy is the study, extraction and celebration of ancient life.
## Success metric
In our world, understanding the formation of fossil fuels has powerful real world benefits, but may not always be conducive to a broader embrace of the field outside of utilitarian resource exraction. I want the economy to be driven solely by the enthusiasm and demand for understanding ancient life (dinosaurs, therapsids, ect). So the success metric here is designing society's values to be as fond as possible to ancient life. Equivalently, answers that propose paleontology for utilitarian purposes (gas for cars) will score lower.
## Question
Assuming everything else to be [earth-like](/questions/tagged/earth-like "show questions tagged 'earth-like'") and technology near or at [modern-age](/questions/tagged/modern-age "show questions tagged 'modern-age'"), how might I design the values of society such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
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### You can't make it the biggest, but it can be a lot bigger
The largest and most profitable industries work with the most available resources and sell them to the largest markets. Everyone wants oil, everyone wants steel (though mostly indirectly), everyone wants software, everyone wants to buy stuff cheaply and easily, you can probably name at least one company for each of those markets.
### [A T-Rex can sell for $10,000,000](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/dinosaur-fossils-collectors-museums-price-sale)
Fossils are of limited supply and of interest to a comparitively small number of organisations. There are commercial fossil hunters and private collectors often with more money to spend than the museums, though the ethics of this industry are sometimes questioned. Clean up the image of this industry and you're still talking about a luxury product in limited supply.
It's that limited supply that causes the issue. Consider the gold rush. The way to make money was to sell fresh food and tools to miners. You didn't mine gold, [you mined the miners.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfp2O9ADwGk)
The core of your economy might be extracting fossils for one reason or another, but the biggest industry won't be paleontology itself, it will be one of the support industries that also has a market to the general population (possibly software), or the equivalent of [De Beers](https://www.debeers.co.uk/en-gb/home) that acts as a clearing house for lots of smaller paleontology operations and acts to keep prices up.
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**Chinese medicine claims it can be used to treat impotency.**
Rhino horn does nothing medicinal yet fetches up to $30,000 per pound and has managed to drive rhinos to the point of extinction.
If fossil dust was used instead, it's value was be much greater thus funding an industry to collect them.
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# Ancient Technology
Someone discovers ancient alien technology (stasis boxes, warp cores, etc.) that are incredibly important and valuable. Paleontology (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleontology>) is anything older than 11,700 before present, so that covers a lot.
Now, *astro* paleontology might get a space program roaring along - imagine if someone found something interesting on the Moon or Mars...
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# Anthropology required for time traveling
A certain amount of detail is needed in order to time travel to specific times and places, the more is known about the period you're visiting, the less other resources are needed to make the trip.
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**Conclusive evidence of dinosaurs being aliens, found**
An alien civilisation makes first contact. They are super smart dragons currently and claim that dinosaurs are their ancestors.
**They also claim to be Earth’s true owner and have broadcasted an ultimatum of wiping the human civilisation to make way for their return.**
Humans must do accelerated research like we are doing for covid-19 right now to
1. Fight the aliens.
2. Better Negotiations.
3. Find their own original stories
Ending could include something heartwarming like the Dragonforce actually just wanting humans to unite and mend their ways towards how they treat the environment or
It could be made fantastical like humans being revealed to be another alien civilisation that are galactic arch nemesis of the Dragonkin or another species of apes that inhabited the same planet as the dragons but were forced to vacate their home planet for various reasons.
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**Make paleontology *relevant* to everyday life**
The problem with paleontology and why it's always the awkward unwanted stepchild when it comes to getting funding is that paleontology has ***absolutely no broader relevance to modern life***. Even compared to similar disciplines such as the taxonomy or ecology of living organisms or history in general. Other evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins have even gone on record declaring their contempt for paleontology and how superfluous it is, saying things like "[the evidence for evolution would be entirely secure, even if not a single corpse had ever fossilized](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2010/04/27/in-defense-of-paleontology/)". Or the elder Alvarez calling paleontologists ["stamp collectors" and "not very good scientists"](https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/02/obituaries/luis-w-alvarez-nobel-physicist-who-explored-atom-dies-at-77.html) (though *that* one I will dispute because 1) paleontology has become more relevant since Alvarez' day and 2) he was a huge jerk who said things like this without doing any research and often made these half-baked, poorly-researched statements. Though his argument that a physicist managed to make paleontology more relevant than actual paleontologists still stands.
Compared to the study of *living* organisms paleontology comes up short because studies of the ecology and taxonomy of living animals can be applied to conservation efforts, controlling invasive species, using living animals as barometers to determine the health of an environment, pest control, etc. Paleontology doesn't do any of those things. [And society has already shown how little it values biological taxonomists](https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/61/12/942/390232).
Paleontology is a historical science. It's basically chronicling the history of the Earth and all the things that live upon it. One might say "well, knowing where one came from is important, as well as what did and did not work in the past". That's true. But the problem is that nobody ever starved to death from not knowing their history. It's intellectually enriching, a nice bonus, but otherwise a superfluous luxury. Compare that to human history, which does have more relevance because it is about *human* behaviors, and therefore the policies and decisions that worked in the past can be more easily extrapolated to the present day. Those who do not learn from history and doomed to repeat it, and such.
There is no lesson that can be broadly applicable to social policy about how there was a massive volcanic event 225 million years ago at the end of the Triassic or that there was an inland sea in Kansas in the middle of the Cretaceous. No medical advances have ever been made by the discovery of Lucy and Ardi (and other hominins) and piecing together when and how human bipedalism originated. What knowledge can be applied to the present day (e.g., conservation efforts for *Burramys* finding out that the animal is actually more adaptive than we thought based on its fossil record, or "maybe we should be worrying about meteors") are rare exceptions that prove the rule.
Even Jack Horner's suggestion of using developmental biology to rebuild pseudo-dinosaurs from chickens has been laughed at for having no broader applications. Just because you've engineered a chicken to have teeth and claws doesn't mean it's going to know how to use them, or that it's behavior will give you any indication on how dinosaurs behaved. It's still going to act like a chicken. Even the genes or developmental signals you tweak to cause it to turn into a pseudo-dinosaur may not be the same ones that actual dinosaurs used when birds first evolved. Talking with colleagues we concluded the best use for such an animal would be to try to sell it as a curiosity to rich patrons for research money.
As someone who *works* in paleontology, you should see the kinds of mental gymnastics people do during grant season to try and justify how their research is relevant to the modern day. The big one nowadays is climate change (no, knowing how fast a certain mountain range was thrust up does not tell you how species will adapt to changing climates and anthropogenic habitat destruction).
People often say the fossil fuel industry makes paleontology relevant, but there's a saying in paleontology: "no oil company cares about your thesis on spinosaur paleoecology". Fossil fuel companies only care about a select group of paleontologists (people who study stratigraphy or certain microfossils like conodonts and forams), and even then you basically can't get a job as an oil geologist anymore because what used to require detailed geological knowledge and ferreting conodonts out of rock is now done by machines.
These features are why paleontology is almost always the first science on the chopping block at any major university. And a lot of scientific fields seem to thing the only thing paleontology is good for is getting people interested in science and bringing people into natural history museums.
**What's the point of this long, seemingly nonsensical rant?** In order to make paleontology the largest/most profitable industry in your setting it is necessary to understand why it is *not* so in our timeline. If you want to make paleontology the largest/most profitable industry in real life, you need to make it so that it has some direct application to real life that makes it *relevant*. Relevant enough that it doesn't just benefit humanity when funded (and therefore could be passed off as a luxury), but there have to be actual reasons why cutting funding would be bad. Look at other sciences. If medicine research funding gets cuts we don't have the resources to come up with new vaccines and cures. If engineering funding gets cut countries lose opportunities to make technological advancements. If ecology funding gets cut there are invasive species out there that we spend literal billions each year to contain that will become unleashed. If paleontology gets cut nothing happens. Indeed, this is what happens in IRL museums, the curators get fired and the collections get put in storage, the board of directors only cares about the dinosaur fossils on display.
Some people have brought up ancient technology, and I agree with them. Basically if you're in a technological arms race and how far ahead you are is dependent on what you dig up, then the people who do the digging are your lifeline. Except that would be archaeology or xeno-archaeology instead of paleontology. Paleontology focuses on non-sentient organisms.
Bringing things back to life is another option but even Michael Crichton pointed out there is no money to be made for bringing dinosaurs back to life. The whole reason he had *Jurassic Park* set in a dinosaur theme park was he couldn't think of a way that someone would want to clone dinosaurs and not go bankrupt in the process beyond "rich idiot decides to clone dinosaurs and make a zoo for them".
If they got out and things went full *Dino Crisis* you might have a reason for an adult knowing more than an eight-year-old about *Tyrannosaurus rex*. But even then it's technically interest in contemporary (if resurrected) animals that requires no knowledge of their fossil history. Field biologists would rapidly outpace paleontologists in their knowledge of these creatures due to accurate, first-hand experience of raptors trying to eat their faces.
Time travel is a good option. There you kind of have to know the landscape in order to know where things are, how to survive, and how to not get eaten by a *T. rex*. The downside is that from a relativity point of view it's more looking at contemporary animals than digging up bones, and what would happen really quickly is that scientists would stop digging up bones because you can get more by studying the living, breathing thing. One paper on a flesh-and-blood tyrannosaur would be worth more to science than 100 years of painstakingly pulling information from its fossil bones. Paleontology is like a roadmap to the past, only the map is torn, faded, written in a dead language, and somebody scribbled on it with magic marker.
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**THE PREDOMINANT WORLD RELIGION (or someone powerful) WANTS IT:**
Neo-Accamitism has seized the passion of the world, and dominated by a combination of zeal and conquest. The faith believes in a perfect past where god materialized in a series of incarnations on Earth before humans evolved, appearing once per great geological era. Central to their tenants is that God appeared when the correct mix of lifeforms was present.
Now that the faith has achieved supreme power, they desperately want to bring about the prophesized day that all of God's incarnations appear at the same time. Time is short, because God is due to materialize any time since global warming has caused the final predicted mass-extinction event.
The problem is that the incarnations need the right collection of extinct life forms present to incarnate. Competing factions believe differently. One says the fossils of the species are sufficient and by creating the biggest and most accurate collections of fossils, their temples can trigger the return of the appropriate incarnation.
The rival faction believes they must recreate the species through analysis and scientific inspiration. They seek to make a series of Jurassic-park-like temple-ecosystems where God can be coaxed to reincarnate in a being appropriate to the age.
The factions are technically friendly, but only one can be true. A paleontological excavation war has started, with struggles for the best fossil beds and rivalries for technological superiority. Even military development is paleontology based, with efforts to make cyber-tyrannosaurus and attack dimetrodons. Who knows when such holy weapons will be needed when the heretics take their blasphemy a step too far?
* As another possibility, have aliens come here and pay people in tech to study paleontology. They see us destroying our environment and want Earth's biological history recorded for posterity. It's a hobby to them, but to us their tech is worth trillions. The world is instantly obsessed with paleontology to try and get humanity an FTL drive. Add a motivator like the need to leave Earth due to environmental damage (Irony, studying ancient extinct life as we destroy or own).
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# Fossils actually cure diseases
Some impurity in fossil oil cures diseases such as AIDS, COVID-19 and Ebola. But only in reservoirs that have the fossil from animals that filled some specific niches in the past. In fact, different species produce different impurities which cure different diseases. Paleontology then becomes a matter of survival for the world as a whole, and children will probably learn a lot more about it in school. Countries that do not invest heavily in it enter a recession whenever a pandemic hits, whereas those that invest in this science thrive relatively unnafected.
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I think the most realistic approach would be to imagine a world not too far removed from our own, where automated machinery and more equitable distribution of resources has freed up humanity to spend far less time just trying to make a living, and offered us more time to explore our world and dwell on the big questions. Paleontology (like prehistoric archaeology and come forms of astronomy) offers the only available means of gathering knowledge about the past. It's a limited resource, and the process of gathering and studying materials requires destroying the context in which they were found. Engaging in excavation requires shouldering a great deal of responsibility, as you're denying future generations the opportunity to do what you're about to do. If society as a whole valued this knowledge more, then we would devote more resources to making sure it's done as well as possible (thus, spinoff industries in tech and manufacturing would exist to support paleontology).
Previous opening: My initial thoughts all run in the direction of making fossils more valuable as economic resources, similar to the 'fossils' on Harlan's World in the Altered Carbon universe (a nonrenewable resource that is required for their most advanced technology), or by making some changes in the process by which some fossils become preserved for study and others transform into fossil fuels--which, in a sense, ARE the most important industry in our world. Maybe if it were necessary to excavate and study fossils to produce fossil fuels... but that would ultimately transform the meaning and purpose of paleontology itself.
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### Fossils as jewels.
Diamonds are precious because they are rare, because people want them for jewels, and because of a Belgian family with a monopoly. Fossils are already rare: if your world values them as much as they do diamonds, and makes necklaces with authentic dinosaur teeth, tribolite seal rings, or bracelets/cuffs from hollowed out vertebrae, then there would be an industry to mine them. Add a little crony capitalism and they become the most expensive thing in the world.
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## Artifacts
We assume evolution builds to superior intelligence. We assume no branches existed that got just as far, in a similar span of time, but were cut-down by calamity.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qb8m2.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Soq96.jpg)
That all changes the first time a Pioneer- or Voyager-like golden disk with pictures of velociraptors is pulled from the dirt.
If it can be reliably dated to several million years ago (say Uranium impurities in the disk, present with Uranium decay products), and can be irrefutably established that they were a peer (or maybe even superior) to us in technology (say, for example, a sister plaque is discovered on the Moon or Mars), I think you'd have a sudden big resurgence in wanting to understand ancient history before the Holocene.
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The driving forces behind growth of an industry relate to
1. Cost of Entry. Cost of entry must be low.
2. Profitability. Profitability must be high.
Paleontology is driven by an unpaid graduate student labor pool currently, with paid paleontologists being PhD level or higher. These careers are low demand, because there are few museums with dinosaur bones, and even fewer need a "fresh supply". Deregulation could be a big driving force with growth, but would also create a drive to flood the market with fraudulent dinosaur bones as private collectors seek to own their own dinosaur bones. Amateurs with low-level permits or "certificates" are allowed onto established dig sites and only pay a percentage of the sale for this privilege. Hydrosaurs, the most common dinosaur fossil, are found to contain viable traces of DNA (just as they found a T-Rex with viable proteins that survived fossilization). Everyone wants to be involved in this as dinosaur DNA is suspected to have the cure for cancer, according to a popular (but eccentric) scientist. Because fraudulent fossil bones are common, verified "real" dinosaur come at a premium, regardless of size.
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## Fossils are more common
The reason fossils are rare in our world is because bones decompose; within a few hundred years, most skeletons are reduced to nothing, and only a few rare exceptions survive the millions of years to become what we consider fossils.
So, what would have to change? We have a couple options:
**Bones don't decay**: This happened with wood when it was first developed. For a long time, there was no biological process to decompose the wood, meaning that it just piled up. If we're working with a world where modern bone structure is relatively new (this might be tricky evolutionarilly, but if skeletons were a very recent development, possibly even after intelligence developed, it might work), then it might be possible for bones to not decay yet.
**The world is much older**: We have had animals with skeletons on our planet for about half a billion years. If this world had skeletons for a lot longer, say many billions of years, it would be possible for a much larger number of fossils to be available.
**Events that cause fossilization are more common**: The most common cause for fossilization is for the creature to be buried either before or soon after it died in materials that cause the bones to fossilize rather than decay. Now, having a world where creatures die in landslides all the time seems rather unlikely, but this actually seems like the most likely solution. If an ancient (worldwide) civilization had a tradition that would cause them to bury people in a way that would usually cause them to fossilize, it would carry the potential for billions, or perhaps even trillions of fossils to exist, scattered around the world. This is more than enough to create a major industry.
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## Large-scale motive
The main enduring large-scale motive in this world is power (basically via money or military might), so you'll need to tie into that if you want everyone in the world interested in paleontology. Depending on your genre and the story you're wanting to tell, there are many possibilities. Here are some off the top of my head:
* Ancient advanced race that leaves behind technological advantages. Trite, but effective (so many examples: Stargate, Disney's Atlantis, etc.)
* Ancient elements that assist in present-day military power. A substance, material, or refined base element (e.g. vibranium)
* Ancient DNA. Either Jurassic Park approach, or super-soldier Captain America approach. Could maybe make a Jurassic/Pokemon hybrid where people are trying to find new and novel DNA sources, but again the DNA has to be universally advantageous to everyone.
* Ancient secret material that provides longer life/near immortality. The Dune approach.
Basically, whatever it is, it has to be desirable by anyone in the world, and it has to actually work and provide some kind of advantage for the individual who possesses it.
## The Timeline
In addition to thinking of the "what" above, equally important is where in the cycle of discovery, widespread interest, and decline you want to place your story. In each of the cases above, there's a time when only a few people know about it, and given the universal interest and advantage of the thing, it becomes in high demand. But all paleontology materials are limited and will eventually be used up, so there will be some kind of scarcity/decline (unless you can think of a way to make it all sustainable, I guess).
Good luck!
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You can't do it in a truly realistic way but you can do it in a fantastical way.
The wild arms series had this with dragon bones. Dragon bones made of a fantastical metal that could not be acquired any other way except digging up dead dragons. the metal was incredibly useful entire industries and military complexes grew up around exploiting it. Later it is discovered dragons were actually ancient alien bio-mechanical weapons and graveyards are actually ancient battlefields.
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All individuals contain mana, the life force of a human that can also be used to power spells. People are born with various levels of mana, with some having larger pools than others. This determines the strength of their magic and the power of their spells. The amount of mana a person has also becomes rarer the larger it is, with a rare few having extremely high levels. This naturally makes them some of the most powerful mages in the world.
However, time marches on. magical and technological advances grew along side each other, eventually combining to form magitech. Society runs on magitech, leading to rapid innovation and the growth of civilization. There are now machines built to hold large amounts of mana, far larger than any human being can contain. This would allow for mages of various levels to use them as repositories to power their magic. With this development, the weakest mages can access the most powerful spells, making high level mages redundant.
Technological advances inevitably replaces jobs that were once considered essential, such as male dominance on the battlefield with the advances in weaponry. This is not what I want here. I need for high mana reserves to somehow remain relevant in a changing world, despite recent innovations. How can I make this possible in a world where everyone has access to magitech?
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**The mana stored by the machines isn't quite the same, as natural mana has different composition better for spellcasting**
In our world, we harvest the blood of horseshoe crabs, as it has special substances we use in the medical field. Now, why don't we synthesize these chemicals like we do with so many others? Simple, we can't. Some of the chemicals present in their blood simply can't be synthesized by technology.
Something similar can be seen in diamonds. Can we make them? Yes we can. Are the ones we make exactly the same as natural ones? Not by a long shot, to the point specialists can tell apart by sight (with the help of magnifying glasses, but by sight nonetheless).
Your mana follows a similar path. Mana exactly like that produced by humans can't be synthesized and are very difficult to storage outside of a human body. The "artificial" mana, while great for powering magitech tools and still usable in spells, is vastly inferior to the more refined, more energetic and more spell-efficient mana (think the relation between crappy alcohol and top grade gasoline). Fueling spells with artificial mana can be done, but requires amounts so high that it makes it cheaper to just hire a better mage to do it.
Summing up, the secret here is quality. I'd go with a society that has 2 types of mana: 1- the synthetic mana, which is easier to produce and store (therefore a more compatible energy source in a more industrial society which uses it on a daily basis) and is more compatible with magitech; and 2- the natural mana, naturally produced by living beings, much more powerful, trickier to extract and store, and, most importantly, infinitely more compatible with spellcasting.
That way, while it'll be true that low level mages will still be able to cast high level spells, to do so they'll need such a high amount of synth mana that it just won't be worth the trouble.
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**Mana batteries are Massive and Expensive.**
You said everyone has access to magitech but the question is hard to answer without knowing how much access and what level the technology is at. So I'll just give one example. . .
**Battle tanks are not used for personal protection.** [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6076W.jpg)
Upsides: These things have loads of armor and heavy weaponry. It can move much faster than a person can run and is as all-terain as a land vehicle can be.
Downsides
1. Expensive
2. Probably illegal to buy or own as a civilian.
3. I don't know how to drive a tank -- do you?
4. Too big to fit in my driveway.
5. Terrible mileage to the gallon.
6. Main gun can't fire at anything less than a mile away.
Magic batteries are about the size of a tank. The military own a few that launch fireballs and have made staged battles obsolete. They also have a few that power large magical shields. There is a big one one in the centre of government buildings that runs the telephone system. Aviation companies have a few to power their airships, but they are subject to tedious paperwork and constant inspections. There is one in the hospital that safely teleports tumors out of peoples bodies. The blacksmith's guild jointly own one that purifies iron ore on an industrial scale.
Each battery does one thing and one thing only. The guild machine does not purify copper. The fireball machines do not launch lightning bolts.
That's because the piece of machinery needed to channel the energy is just as big as the battery itself.
Got a job that is not on an industrial scale and requires some degree of flexibility, subtlety or cost-efficiency? Better hire a human.
[Answer]
Make the technological magic "batteries" very heavy. Yes, a lower mage can cast the same spells as an arch-mage, but only when he is plugged into his vehicle size magic battery.
The arch-mage, whose natural mana reserves and recovery-rate are enough for all but the most powerful (tech-enhanced-only) spells, is more agile than his augmented counterparts. A ninja compared to [minigun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM214_Microgun)-totting Rambo with three porters to carry his spare ammo.
[Answer]
**POOR MACHINE TO HUMAN TRANSFER** (*and good old economics*):
Mana comes out of people easily, absorbing into matrices pre-designed to carry out highly specialized tasks. Any old mage using a computer can lift crates or run a magic car, or make a magiphone call. Users have enough training to do all the tasks needed to run and survive in a techno-magical society, but can't throw fireballs (that's what a staff is for) or mind-read (that's what a police interrogator is for) or fly (that's what a plane is for).
But while everyone can maybe warm their coffee with a routine warming spell, why heat a pool? There's a machine for that, and no one but a few quirky mages have that kind of juice on hand. You can't just transfer the power OUT of a machine, that's really hard, and painfully slow. Even if you could, you could only absorb a limited amount to do the magic anyway (unless you're one of those weirdos with huge capacity).
Furthermore, to keep their technological society running, everyone has mana drained from them in their sleep as a sort of tax. Sure, those quirky people with tons of mana are hardly affected, but the regular Joe can't do magic except with a device because he's sucked near dry every night. The weirdos with extra magic can use it at will, or sell the excess and get rich.
In any situation that requires flexibility, or advanced spells on demand, or independent functioning, powerful mages would have a huge advantage. The beat cop has a magic wand, but the powerful mage detective can cast a spell on the spot without any device and auger the direction the thief went. The magic soldier can carry a fireball staff, but when confronted with a fire-resistant dragon, the mage can shoot lightning or paralyze. At the least, there would be mage special forces, and most likely it would be a competitive advantage in most fields.
Finally, all that magic is expensive - both the mana and the devices. Mana costs, and the power company is a real racket (and monopoly). The self-sufficient powerful mage has more money because he can sell mana, but also because he doesn't need a mana-phone; he can just cast a spell for it. Teleporting to Hawaii costs thousands of dollars - unless you got that Mage-college education, and can do it at will.
[Answer]
**Versatility**
Sure you can get a wand that throws fireballs and any clown can use it but what if you want to throw a lightning bolt instead?
The key is people can cast whatever spell they like while magitech is limited to the spell enchanted into the device at the time of creation.
Devices might be faster and more efficient but humans are still the perfect multifunction tool by being able to cast any spell they like.
Look at soldiers. You can fit them out with fireball wands but if they get attacked by something fireproof, those wands are useless and it's all down to natural abilities.
A wand can teleport you to a set location but only a human can teleport you to a custom location.
A wand is no good if you don't have the one you need, when you need it. You can't heal that person hit by a car if your healing wand is at home.
Natural abilities will always have a place in society.
[Answer]
I do believe the answer here lies in the first sentence of your question:
All individuals contain mana, the **life force of a human** that can also be used to power spells
Magitech may have provided a means to store larger charges of that life force, Keyword being storage. Lesser mages may be capable of 'using' the charge, however, given how relatively common they are, it would be more appropriate if they were the ones to supply the life force to create the stored charge. *The 'Greater' mages on the other hand, would be better primed to channel higher capacities of Mana without burning themselves out*, as the result of their very nature.
For reference, consider Celia Friedman's Coldfire trilogy, In which the Fae (mana) is a natural resource that can be channelled by adept individuals, in addition to more common sorcerers, However the raw power of that mana varies and can burn out those who try to control power beyond their ken.
[Answer]
## People have mana capacities, not levels
Individuals with naturally high amounts of Mana are actually just bigger vessels and can generate/collect/however-your-folks-don't-deplete-their-life-force Mana more easily.
While the new mana storage technology allows for people of lower Mana capacity to cast advanced spells, they either take longer to set up, or can cause lasting damage to the user.
Think of people like pipes, better mages are simply wider pipes, which mean that when not casting spells (e.g. a "closed valve") they can store more Mana in them, but also means that while they are casting ("open valve"), they can channel a larger volume of Mana per unit of time.
By contrast, a bad mage is like a drinking straw, and can rupture from overpressuring it by tapping into a Mana reserve too large. Even worse, ruptured mages lose their "Mana valve" and end up unable to hold or control any significant amount of magic, leaking it into their environment and becoming a sort of "Mana-disability".
This better "Mana conductivity" means powerful mages are still very relevant, and actually made even more powerful by the advent of Mana storage, since now they can cast powerful spells even longer.
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> Whereas in the ages of old, it took hundreds of archmages to build the Pyramids of Giza in a year, nowadays a single mage contractor can telekinetically build a skyscraper in a week.
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(of course, tweak the numbers to your liking)
[Answer]
**Machines with the power to deploy their own mana are very dangerous.**
Anything with a lot of mana is potentially dangerous. But even with much mana, human beings remain human. Living beings are living beings first, with any magical changes overlaid on thought processes developed over millions of years of evolution.
Machines do not have that. A machine imbued with immense amounts of life force becomes something other than a simple machine. Maybe the life force itself takes control with Gaialike interests and goals. Or the machine becomes something alien and weird, with inscrutable motives but nearly infinite ability to attain them.
There are still some machines like this, built back before people realized the danger. Mostly people hope not to encounter one. Very occasionally, a person might seek one out.
[Answer]
You stated
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> All individuals contain mana, the life force of a human that can also be used to power spells. People are born with various levels of mana, with some having larger pools than others. This determines the strength of their magic and the power of their spells.
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> I need for *high mana reserves* to somehow remain relevant in a changing world, despite recent innovations. How can I make this possible in a world where everyone has access to magitech?
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I have not fully understood the meaning which I interpret as people with the *highest mana reserves*.
A general considerations: who has access to the *synthetic* mana produced by technology, nonetheless has his own limits *by nature*. Technology helps to improve your limits, seldom changing the rules of ranking: in some cases it can be decisive the maximum quantity of mana you can access, in other the time needed to recharge or to recover, in other the capacity to focus and the endurance.
1. **Maximum mana allowed.** The spell may arrive to use that maximum (the mage's one) and not more. Maybe it can be cast many times but each time with not more than that amount (even here the technology may help but within a fixed extent and not more).
2. **Recharge.** Casting a spell may first deplete the caster mana reserve, that has to be replaced later by the *synthetic* one. The procedure can be time consuming, dangerous even if faster than the natural case.
3. **Focus.** Mages must focus (concentrate) to control a spell. They could have all the magic fuel reserve you want, but without proper control it can be vain or risky.
4. **Endurance.** Exceeding the magicians' resistance limits could lead to a lack of concentration then to fail the spell or to make the magician ill, to poison the used mana pool or to any other negative effect you can imagine.
5. **High competence.** Some family of spells, the most high level of proficiency may be accessible only to the one(s) with the highest natural levels.
[Answer]
Possible reasons:
* stealth - small total amount of mana used goes undetected while properly directed can have huge impact
* power is often less important than precision/speed/mastery (e.g. whether you are struck with 10kW lightning or 1000000kW lightning yields same result (unless you are prepared with a shield)
* magic is an art - you could do more with more efficient magic (e.g. 10kW power heating 1sqrm produces more visible result than 1000kW heating 1000sqrm)
* machine/artifact usage might be a double egde sword where enemy could tap into same power when close enough or channel is created in whatever way
[Answer]
I can think of two reasons off-hand based on two reasons why one would have that in the first place. The issue is not coming up with a reason, but justifying it under the rules of the world.
If a person's capacity is to be relevant, then there has to be a reason that stems from either the progress of magitech, or from the laws of magic.
## #1: Any One Battery can only hold one person's mana efficiently
While mana capacitors can be mass-produced and storage units are fairly common, people and businesses have run into the problem that after a person dumps mana into the device, another cannot efficiently add to it until the system has been emptied.
This makes some sense if you compare it to the physical world -- if you transplant an organ from one person to another, then there is the real likelihood of rejection. While putting a second person's magic doesn't cause a large-scale rejection, it does mean that an appreciable amount of power is spent making the new power compatible with the mana that is already there.
One could try to strip the person's life from the magic itself, but that leads to losses as well. It is a bit better, but not perfect.
However, if you have a person with an absurdly large natural capacity that refills fast ... then that person can fill a mana capacitor up fast with only one person's mana -- their own. There is no need to try to uses loopholes and workarounds in order to be able to get multiple people to fill up a reservoir.
No matter why this is, the point is that if one person can fill a tank of magical gas much faster than a team of two or three, then that person will be of value, if only as a better power outlet.
## #2: Magitech still needs casters in some manner
This relies a bit less on raw inborn ability than it does for training.
While machines can laser-etch the appropriate circle on a sheet of purified copper, or precision burn the runes into an object, the root of the matter is that at some point a person has to actually cast the spells needed to activate the magitech. Once cast, a magical battery might be able to keep it going but the fact is that a battery for whatever reason cannot cause that initial ignition of a magical item.
For many mass-produced things like everglowing streetlamps, this might be done in a workshop/factory on an assembly line. Depending on the level of magic needed to actually initiate the item, having a large capacity might just mean that you can work for 8 or 9 hours safely as opposed to 4 or 5 for the average magitech technician
For this, by expending magic casting the initial spells, one is growing their capacity no matter how slowly it is happening. This would lead to some people having large capacities by the simple manner of working their magical abilities and getting stronger with them.
[Answer]
Perhaps the amount of mana each person had was actually the same, but some people could use their limited mana much more efficiently, thus seeming like they'd have more of it. Now the mana stored in machines is indeed more than what's stored in the mages, allowing poor mages to cast the stronger spells. Obviously the efficient mages are still efficient, and now they can cast insanely stronger spells using the large mana reservoirs.
[Answer]
Perhaps the magitech (I hate that word, I'd just use "technology" in a book) has made the archmage obsolete for most purposes. Any well-trained mage with a battery can outperform the archmage.
However, what happens when the story moves in a different direction? What happens, when for whatever reason, the magical technology is taken away. Then the archmage is useful again.
Why could it be take away? Well, this could be post-apocalyptic in that setting. It could be that the characters went on a three-hour boat tour, ran into a storm, and are now castaways on a deserted island. Perhaps they are in a war, and the batteries ran out of power at the wrong time (either naturally, or because the enemy figured out a way to drain the batteries).
In each of these possible scenarios, being a natural archmage would be very useful.
[Answer]
So your world has magic batteries, essentially? Then wouldn't that mean that
1. A person with more mana could fill them up faster, thus still having *more frequent* access to the same level of magic
2. People can still get to different levels of magic until they need technological assistance, meaning they're less reliable
Additionally, interfacing with magitech could be more difficult than just using magic naturally, so it might just be more mentally draining to people.
All those things considered, someone with a high natural mana pool seems like the better person for almost every magic-related job. I imagine they'd get paid more because they simply get more work done, leading to more social status and so on.
Then people with less magic, making less money, could buy less high-end magitech equipment, further increasing the gap.
Realistically speaking, this could even lead to some hardcore social segregation based on magic potential, even worse than the things we've seen in the real world.
[Answer]
You're asking something quite hard here. What you want to know is the equivalent of asking how to maintain your (pre-industrialisation) stableyard in a world of motorbikes. Regardless of how fit or fast your horses are, a motorbike is faster and has greater range.
Yet stableyards still exist in our world of cars and motorbikes, they just don't fill quite the same niche they used to.
The fact stableyards still exist gives you hope for your natural mana pools, but I suspect you don't want to be reduced to hipsters on holiday. I'm also going to make certain other assumptions here, the primary one being that the magitech is mature, there's no messing around with reliability, unstable supplies, or tedious compatibility isues.
## Commercially
This is probably a dead loss. Your average Joe hooked up to the magical mains at a fixed point or on the office wifi. You're on hiding to nothing here, that's what I'm assuming this whole system was developed to cope with. Mains magic is just better.
*On the other extreme:*
## Hipsters on holiday
I know I said you probably didn't want to be reduced to this, but it still exists as a theme. Wild country, no external power, reduced to your natural reserves and regeneration. Living the dream.
*However this leads us down the recreational path:*
## Sport
A magical world will have some sort of magical sports, and external power supplies are obviously banned in any sporting event. This is where your high natural mana pool people will be able to make their fortunes.
Of course individual prowess has other uses:
## Special forces
Out in the wilds for an unknown period in hostile territory, no option to replenish batteries, minimal resupply. The team will be asked to go up against fresh units with full logistical support, there's a real space for archmages here.
## Search and rescue
This follows the general theme of isolation from a technological base. There's only so much power you can carry, so much each individual can draw on from a limited mobile supply. The more each individual team member carries personally, the more effective the team as a whole can be.
**Perhaps rather than horses and motorbikes, the correct comparison is: "What's the point of being physically fit in a world of cars and electric wheelchairs?"**
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[Question]
[
The setting is low fantasy medieval. Magic (and other supernatural things) belong exclusively to the realms of the gods, and are not for mortal beings to wield. However, there is one major exception.
Each and every recognized kingdom in the world has a single major patron deity who watches over it. They may have other lesser minor deities as part of their pantheon, absorbed from conquered cultures, but the most important thing is the blessing of the patron deity.
Each kingdom has possession of a suit of divine armor and a matching divine sword, bestowed upon them by their patron deity. Anyone is capable of wearing and wielding these artifacts of power, but it requires an uninterrupted hour and a team of high-ranking priests of that deity to perform the prerequisite donning rituals in a sanctified location like a church or cathedral. Part of the donning ritual includes the armor and sword being magically resized to suit the kingdom's chosen champion.
The armor has the appearance of a full suit of medieval plate mail, but with the metal taking on a shining golden color, rather than having the appearance of steel. The sword is generally a knightly arming sword with a similar appearance. Exact styles vary, and are up to the individual patron deity.
When successfully donned, the inside of the armor is supernaturally connected to the patron deity's private god-realm. The chosen champion is technically no longer inside the armor at all, although they appear to be. They are fully able to control the armor as if they were wearing it, and have the same vision, hearing, and nearly the sense of touch as if they were wearing mundane armor.
## The effects of the divine armor are as follows:
* The armor itself is absolutely invulnerable to damage in any form. Projectiles cannot pierce it, blunt impact cannot dent it, fire cannot scorch it, etc.
* Light and sound are transferred to the wearer's senses normally.
* Force *only to a non-harmful degree* is transferred to the wearer's senses. This means they can lift an object and feel its heft, touch and feel solid objects, and so on, but will never be harmed by a mace to the head. The impact will be reduced in strength when transferred, so the wearer would feel it only dully.
* The wearer is aware of the size and shape of the armor, but does not feel the weight of the armor. It is sort of like wearing armor made of styrofoam or cardboard: all bulk and no weight.
* Temperature and particulates are not transferred. The wearer always enjoys breathing and existing in the pure and comfortable air of the god-realm, which means they can stroll through clouds of poisonous smoke and burning buildings with nary a care. This has the side effect of cutting off the user's sense of smell and taste.
* Nothing else can enter the armor with the user unless it too goes through the lengthy prerequisite rituals, and each patron deity's is unique. That means no daggers through the eye holes or armpit slots. They are simply blocked by divine force.
* Things do not stick to the armor. That means tar, blood, and boiling oil will just slide right off onto the ground with no residue, leaving the armor always impeccably clean.
* The armor constantly glows with golden light. This is sufficient to see by in an otherwise lightless place. You can easily see a chosen champion from a mile away in any direction, especially at night.
* Assume bodily waste products are handled automagically without the wearer needing to remove the armor. I don't want to dwell on this topic.
## The effects of the divine sword are as follows:
* It is just as indestructible as the armor.
* It can be commanded to instantly return to the wielder's hand, so it cannot be lost or disarmed.
* It is razor-sharp and never loses its edge. Furthermore, any material with which it comes in contact is temporarily magically softened, reducing the required force to cut through that material. Mundane steel armor could be sliced through as if it were made of leather, leather armor could be cut through as if it were simple clothing, and so on. With a little elbow grease, it wouldn't be impossible for the wielder to carve their own path clean through a solid stone wall with just human effort and their sword.
* When striking at a living foe, the sword shifts itself (and the wielder's body) to actively target the enemy's vital points. The vast majority of injuries caused by this weapon are therefore fatal, and typically fatal in a single blow. It would be extremely difficult to *only* lose a limb to this weapon.
Between these two pieces of equipment, the chosen champion of a kingdom can be considered essentially invincible.
## However, there are a few important things to note:
* The champion is still human inside all that divine power. They will still experience stress, can be tricked, etc.
* One person, no matter how invincible, is still just one person. A group of enemies can split up and the champion is only physically capable of pursuing one of them.
* The champion still becomes hungry and thirsty at a normal rate. Food and beverages can be supplied as part of the donning rituals in order to allow the champion to later consume them while still wearing the armor. Further rituals can additionally be performed after the fact for this purpose as well. Otherwise, the champion must remove the armor first, which requires a full donning ritual to get back on. This can make participation in lengthy campaigns difficult.
* The champion still becomes tired at a normal rate for the strenuous exercise they are doing. This is partially alleviated by the weightlessness of the armor, but combat is still a tiring activity. They can also comfortably sleep in the armor if they so choose, as their real body is able to relax in their patron's god-realm. (The armor won't stop glowing though.)
* The champion is not protected from very loud noises or bright lights shined into their eyes.
* The champion can be trapped in something like a deep hole, which doesn't rely on direct harm and can't be easily escaped by cutting through something.
* If the divine sword of one kingdom's deity strikes the divine armor of another kingdom's deity, both champions are instantly transported back to the location they most recently performed the donning rituals. This is part of the treaty of the gods, agreeing not to use divine power to directly combat each other.
* If the champion who is wearing the armor and wielding the sword dies, e.g. by dehydration after sitting in a pitfall trap for a while, the corpse and divine artifacts are transported together back to the previous donning ritual location in the same manner as above.
## So the question is:
Given each kingdom is always able to field one single incredibly powerful individual, whose supernatural capabilities and limitations are common knowledge, what would be the prevailing tactics in a war between two kingdoms, assuming neither side has any other significant advantages or disadvantages?
In other words, how would rational kings with vast resources and armies of mundane soldiers tactically make most effective use of their single invincible champion, while minimizing the impact of the enemy kingdom's champion?
**Edit:** While I appreciate the strategic insights, I am really looking for **tactics**, not grand strategy. That means I am trying to find an answer to things like:
* What kind of supplies/armaments/formations/other tricks might a medieval army bring to a battlefield, in order to best deal with the enemy possibly having an invincible champion on the other side? i.e. It is common knowledge that the enemy's champion is unbeatable in direct combat, but can be outmaneuvered and possibly trapped. What are effective ways to do this?
* What kind of supplies/armaments/formations/other tricks might a medieval army bring to a battlefield in order to best support their own invincible champion if they have chosen to deploy theirs? i.e. How can our side best protect our own champion from being outmaneuvered and possibly trapped?
[Answer]
Dealing with such a foe from a "mortal's" point of view can be done with a long list of "tricks" which play to the weaknesses of the divine champion. Here are some examples:
* Unstable footing:
+ Quicksand: Just because they don't feel the weight, doesn't actually mean that they weigh less. Even if the champion's breathing or movement isn't inhibited, being stuck in quicksand with zero visibility and ending up deep underground is not a fun way to go out
+ Pitfall traps: Digging a hole and putting fake terrain over it is one of the oldest tricks in the book
+ Mud pits: Similar to quicksand traps
+ Budget construction: Because someone with full plate and a divine sword is heavier than your leather-clad archer, it should be easy to construct forts or bridges which can't hold the weight of a champion. Build a bridge over a ravine or a river that regular folks can cross but isn't strong enough for full platemail people
* Too many traps:
+ Nets: The divine sword can cut a single net, but can it cut dozens? hundreds? Even if the sword instantly slices nets, if enough soldiers throw them, then the champion will eventually simply be buried under a mass of nets. As far as you described, their strength is not increased so they can't gain any momentum to swing the sword with.
+ More weight: every solider carries a couple heavy rocks or bags of sand. Once the champion is pinned, they all empty their sand and throw their rocks. Once the champion is buried beneath sand and rocks, they can't really move, and even if they do, sand just refills the gaps. Then they can simply keep heaping things and dirt on top of the champion until they die of dehydration or starvation.
* Nautical based:
+ Watery grave: If the champion falls into water, like the ocean, they would sink to the bottom and have to walk their way home. Many parts of the ocean are so deep and treacherous that even with infinite stamina and endurance, it wouldn't be possible to escape before succumbing to dehydration or starvation
+ Rivers: Throw the champion into a river and let them be washed away or stuck in the bottom, slowly sinking into the constricting muck and silt.
* Light and sound:
+ Archimedes' Death Ray: Give each solider a highly reflective shield and use the sun to blind champions. Alternatively, build large parabolic reflectors to roast some eyeballs
+ Cause a large explosion (idk if this is possible in your setting) and use the soundwave to render the champion deaf.
* Psychological approach (aka dark shit)
+ Classic villain: The champion may be super powered but is their family? How about their friends? Blackmail them into obeying your wishes
+ Depending on the cultural norms, deploy soldiers that the champion wouldn't want to kill like children or women or the elderly
+ Attempt to traumatize the champion by preforming war crimes or other heinous acts
* Rouge things
+ Poison the champion with a delayed fuse poison so they only start feeling sick or seeing hallucinations a day or so after they've injected the poison and are mid-battlefield.
+ Assassinate priests or whoever required to don and doff the armor
+ Get the champion addicted to a certain substance so they start suffering from withdraw if they don't get their fix every x hours.
* Misc.
+ Attack the champion at range, use hot air balloons or airships to drop things on them or use bows and ballistic weapons to bury them in stuff. They can only throw their sword so far
+ Get the champion lost. With their small visors and limited peripheral vision, they presumably don't have excellent spatial awareness and luring them into a maze, confusing forest, cave system, or other could keep them trapped for days
+ Surprise attacks and distributed attacks. The champion can only be in one place at a time.
[Answer]
**Form alliances**
There are two problems with using these warriors for offense. The first is that the warrior is rendered neutral by the presence of an enemy warrior. That is, your warrior is completely useless if the opposing army can deploy their warrior to counter yours. Furthermore, on the off chance you *can* trick your enemies and deploy your warrior deep in enemy territory without them being able to attack you, this renders you susceptible to enemy kingdoms going after you. In other words, the presence of these warriors is similar to a 'capture the flag' game, except it's a one on one.
Yes, there are problem with long term deployment, except their really isn't. If you can use the ritual to supply the champion with a large amount of food from the get-go, and the champion can sleep in said armor, he's fine. (I'm not sure about waste matter since you didn't mention that, but I'm assuming it'll be taken care of.) Also, the ability to cut through things with the sword means that the user can effectively tunnel through solid rock, so plenty of places to sleep in safety, and the champion can just tunnel underneath an enemy castle given enough time. Also, keeping track of enemy champions in a low-fantasy setting isn't going to be possible 100%.
That being the case, there's only one rational thing to do - form alliances. With more champions than your opponents, you posses a distinct advantage. Your side can have one champion 'on guard' and one champion 'attacking'. In fact, what will probably happen is a series of feints and countermoves between various factions allying with each other for advantages while planning to betray each other.
[Answer]
Rational Kings will adhere to the time honoree wisdom that ‘amateurs talk about tactics, while professionals talk about logistics.’
They’ll focus on how to use their super-soldier to maximize the damage to their opponent’s infrastructure while minimizing the risk to their own infrastructure. If they can destroy the other guys capacity to feed their people, make weapons, and communicate with their troops, while preserving their logistics then their opponents will implode under social forces of their own societies.
How do the achieve this? One tool is game theory. It provides a solid mathematically model for analyzing gain and loss in conflict. Reducing this notion to its simplest, and thereby least accurate, terms, the conflict could be modeled as a grid of places they could attack, and places they could be attacked at. The model also includes the probability that the super-soldier is part of the attacking force or defending force. Each of these attack and defend options has a gain and loss associated with it — gain being maximized if your super-soldier is present and loss maximized if the opponents super-soldier is present.
If both sides deploy their super-soldiers randomly then there will be a predictable outcome of the conflict. If one side determines a predictable pattern in how the opponent deploys their super soldier, then they can gain the advantage by deploying their soldier were it will do most harm to the enemy and maximum protection to themselves.
[Answer]
Nets and traps. Your army would have dedicated squads armed with weighted nets and long spears and poles. They would move in to entangle and trap the enemy champion who would use his sword to cut through the nets but get more and more entangled until finally they are able to pin him down and restrain his arm just leaving the sword waving around pointlessly.
They would then pile rocks on top of him until he is no longer able to move and just leave him there until he dies of dehydration or starvation.
[Answer]
**Kill the priests and steal the opposing divine equipment**
Without high-level priests or ritual sites, there can be no donning ritual and divine equipment becomes useless. They are the most vulnerable part of the supply chain feeding the usage of divine champions.
Thus, destroying these enemy assets becomes the most important military objective. Until this is done, actions by the armies in the field can only be of secondary importance, as no objective in the field can really compare to crippling enemy divine ability. Spies and assassins would be your primary weapon, to track down and eliminate all enemy priests, and survey/sabotage/destroy ritual sites.
The spies also enable you to track down the last donning location used. If your army can entrap the opposing divine champion (in a hole or something), then you can proceed to use your own divine champion to secure the enemy donning site. Afterwards, just let their champion starve to death and watch the equipment teleport into your hands.
The same can be accomplished by inserting double agents into enemy society to train as priests, so that they may someday have a chance to steal the divine items.
[Answer]
Alliances would naturally be a smart course of action, but since that answer is given, I'll go with another couple aspect (especially considering betrayal in an alliance).
1. Non-lethal forms of warfare develop.
2. Considerable research will go in to developing decoy armor sets
For (1) let's consider that no weapon a traditional soldier can wield will kill the champion. But rendering the champion useless has potential. As you pointed out, deep holes could work. Maybe things that entangle not based on sticking (ropes, etc). If your traditional soldiers can incapacitate the opposing hero, then send in yours to do as you please. Wipe out the opposing side's army then march on their capital and destroy their place of ritual. Maybe even filling the place of ritual in such a manner that the teleported enemy champion will be fully encased in solid stone and unable to swing a sword to get out.
If you can't rely on your regular army to entrap the enemy champion, then you could send your champion to do it. This would be a delicate game of cat and mouse with neither hero wanting to strike with their sword unless they are guaranteed to lose. Both heroes would vie for control of the other so that they can incapacitate without they themselves being teleported home. Once one side gains the upper hand, it's attack, attack, attack until the enemy hero escapes or dies. Obviously doing this all with a trusted ally champion gives you massive advantages.
As for (2), this would be the natural course of action after (1) is attempted. Not being able to immediately and accurately identify the champion on the field of battle would allow for deceit of all sorts. This would then lead to chemical warfare to kill off the opposing side's fakes, which would in turn lead to gas masks, which leads to ........
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So, each kingdom has a single nigh-invincible living weapon that has a hard time not killing things. For all intents and purposes, this person is basically a deity on the battlefield, with only their counterpoint to stop them.
However, their powers are known, and the person piloting the divine armaments is human under that awesomeness. So tactics, with a side order of strategy can make a insurmountable obstacle less of one. So without further ado let the Wall of Text begin
### The First Decision
The first tactical decision of how to deploy the Champion is who to put in the armour. If I am interpreting the question right:
* The sword will make its strike more lethal if they hit. This means that accuracy is more important than power in the overall view
* The Divine Raiment does not improve your skills outside the sword's ability to increase lethality of hits
* The sword can be resummoned at will
* The armour does not negate the force done to itself, though the force the wearer feels is reduced and the armour won't dent/ding/break no matter the force
* Nothing prevents the Champion from committing suicide or from otherwise being struck with their own sword
Thus, the first decision is to enhance. A kingdom could honour its best swordsperson with the honour on the grounds that the Champion's only purpose is to bring glory by making their enemies die for their kingdom. Based on the question, gender should not matter overmuch when it comes to this outside of the societal roles in the world itself.
An alternate tactic is to have somebody more inspiring to don the armour. This tactic limits the raw combat potential of the Champion in favour of using the general tactic of using them as a shining beacon for their side. A person that can rally troops into action and not die to kill that morale boost. Less combative, but it is more like applying a buff to anyone around them by their presence.
### Fighting Against
Regular soldiers fighting against a Champion will know that they have no chance -- they will die if struck and they cannot kill them with many forms of direct attack, if at all. Their only hope to slow down or stop a Champion is indirect actions.
The first key for them is to not allow the Champion to dictate the battlefield. If that means a tactical retreat, then so be it. To fight a Champion means to use the battlefield itself to your best advantage. Cover provides additional objects to hide behind that have to be cut through to moved around -- the Champion is still human.
Traps are the primary tactic here. A swinging log might not hurt the Champion or their armour, but it can throw them around with pure force and buy time for people to regroup. A pit trap can potentially trap the Champion for a while, doubly so if you bury the Champion alive when you do it. The Champion is also vulnerable to light and sound and that could be accounted for when building traps and non-lethal measures.
Binding them might or might not work. While the person inside is still human and may not be able to break the bindings themselves, they do have the ability to summon a Sword of Butt Kicking +6 that could potentially cut any bonds if the Champion can maneuver it in the right way. Granted, you might only have to bind them long enough to drop them into a lake, but it is an option. The lake won't drown them (the water can't get in), but it will either delay the Champion.
Lastly, an entire combat style might revolve around killing Champions by getting them to impale themselves with their own sword as that will be the only weapon that could conceivably kill them swiftly. This is the most dangerous of the options, but nothing suggests that the Champion is faster or stronger -- just harder to kill.
### Fighting Alongside
Fighting alongside boils down to two primary tactics for the Champion's allies
First, it will fall to the soldiers around the Champion to find and remove traps, ensure that they can be retrieved from traps they do fall prey to, and otherwise keep the Champion from getting into a situation where they need serious rescuing or replacing.
The other job of the soldiers is to make sure that the Champion has a clear path to wherever they are supposed to be deployed to. If they are piercing a line, then it falls to others to make sure that the Champion remains at the head of their formation so that they can continue to do so. If allies can limit the directions that a Champion needs to worry about, then that frees more of their attention to do what they were called to do.
A notable thing for allies is that nothing says that they cannot wield the Divine Sword as per the question. A tactic might be to give it to an ally for them to use. The Champion is the mobile shield while a highly skilled and lightly armoured mortal swordsman wields the sword. Should they die, the Champion can call the sword back with little to worry about.
### Against a Champion
When two Champions are on the battlefield, each has to weigh the value of completing the mission they were given compared to removing their counterpart from the arena.
Removal is easy since all they have to do is touch each other with their Raiment. Since mortal soldiers cannot kill them easily, methodically making their way to their counterpart to trigger the recall is a valid tactic. This banks on the premise that your Champion and their allies are better positioned to complete their mission.
Counter to that is the need to avoid them so as to keep going with their mission. If a Champion's presence is predicted, then the should be traps and other things around to hinder them (see above). It becomes a matter of either ignoring each other and let the soldiers try their best with their Anti-Champion measures, or try to arrange it so they fall into a trap -- the owner of the trap does not matter.
Also as per the question, the recall only happens when the sword strikes the armour of a counterpart. Champions punching and grappling each other technically do not trigger the recall clauses so good old fashioned wrestling is an option.
### Champion Combat
Lastly are the tactics of the Champion themselves. Who they are under that armour will give a clue as to how they fight. They know their powers and skills, and different people will utilize those powers in different ways.
A tactic is to take advantage of the general invincibility to wade in with long sweeping attacks, cleaving through anybody in their way almost haphazardly. It is probably the easiest for the enemy to exploit, but this combined with the fact that they can't be identified by the enemy might have them question what kind of Champion they have fielded. Once lulled, a sudden switch to a more refined and/or polished fighting style can put a confident enemy on the back burner for at least a little while.
Other tactics will depend on the person but there is no reason not to make sure that the Champion has additional weapons on them for one thing. Like with fight against a Champion, there might be a combat style that takes advantage of certain properties of the Divine Raiment that a normal person could not handle.
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If each side has only 1 champion then attack from 2 locations at once, as their champion can only be in one place at a time. When one of your armies realizes they are fighting a champion they can retreat.
Or you could also make your army fast and nimble (light armor, if the champion has magic sword then why waste effort on heavy armor that can still be beaten). The engage the champion in hit and run strikes, the idea is not to defeat them by force but to a) get them tired by having to constantly run after your soldiers b) pull them away from the rest of your army as well as thier army (or any static defenses their army might have set up).
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1. Interfere with the ritual.
* No churches/cathedrals around, no functional champion. Pick your fights far enough from those.
* Disable the priests
* Steal, break or defile the implements used in rituals
2. Sensory attack - because "light and sound transfers normally". Vision impairment - e.g. blind the champion with sun reflecting mirrors or just equip your commandos with disposable cameras with flashes. Or prevent her sleep by broadcasting Justin Bieber at 11 on the loudness scale.
3. Mobility - champions won't climb obstacles faster than a human, neither be able to make her way faster through marshes. Can still be entrapped for some length of times.
4. the champion is just one concentrated source of power, stay diffuse and use range attack - against the supporting force - to bring the champion to exhaustion faster (yeah, sure, she'll recover. Tomorrow, tho')
5. 'bout that supporting force, there's a very limited amount of it a champion can defend at any one time.
6. champion's "blessed" food/water reserves - poison, steal or make them in any way unavailable for when the champion needs them.
(7. make a rope from your champion's mail armor and bind/hang the other champion. He won't be able to cut it, even if he can't die).
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Everyone seems to want to *remove* the sanctified locations necessary for the donning ritual, but why? Simply put, having one champion is a disadvantage, as the enemy will have the advantage of numbers and the perfect counter to your invincible champion, so why not *steal the other nation's champions*? Remember, they are still *human*, and supposedly "everyone has a price," so give them the right offer and they'll defect. This can be done by A) convincing priests that you have a divine right to rule and that they must help you conquer the world 'as the gods will it!' B) Recruit someone the champion won't immediately attack, preferably someone they care about, and have *them* use their influence to recruit the champion, and C) mind control. Sound and light gets to champion, which allows hypnosis and playing brainwashing messages to them while they sleep.
Succeed, and you have a small army of invincible soldiers, which virtually no one will fight against. Congratulations, you've conquered the world! Fail, and, well...."why is it the good guys always win?! Dang you meddling paladins!"
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The law of equivalent exchange says that for anything to be gained, something of equal value must be lost. This means that if you put in the hard work, you will be rewarded with success. I am a half-metal alchemist who seeks to create a homunculus, an artificial human being without a soul. It possesses unique abilities despite appearing human, and would serve as the perfect slave as they are compelled to obey me. Using a transmutation circle , I was able to communicate with a being called "Truth", who says that I must sacrifice a human being in order to create a homunculus of equal value.
I plan to create an army of homunculi to serve my interests. After sacrificing a human in a ritual, the homunculus was created. However, it is a huge behemoth with mental deformities. Although it has its benefits, such as strength and endurance, it is far from "equal" as it lacks the intelligence to be really useful, similar to a stupid hulk. After experimenting, I eventually find that I need to sacrifice thousands of people to successfully create one single homunculus similar to a regular human.
I am happy that I have created the ideal servant, but it ended up being more expensive in time and resources that I was led to believe. This betrays the law that has governed reality for all time. Either this "Truth" is an idiot who doesn't know what he is talking about, or he is just full of sh\*t and a liar. But as he is called Truth, he is supposed to be incapable of the second option.
How can the law of equivalent exchange fail on one of it's basic principles?
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### You're forgetting the key point of "sacrifice"
All alchemy is filtered through the mind of the alchemist.
It's one thing to exchange one form of matter for another or one form of energy for another, but creating life, let alone intelligence, is tricky business. No equation or transmutation circles will provide sufficient information to delineate *exactly* what's going into the process - there is simply too much data to work with.
This is why the creation of life must involve the sacrifice of life. But it's not just the destruction of living matter - the degree to which the alchemist is *aware* of the life being sacrificed is critical to the process.
And there's the problem. You sacrificed a stranger - one who you didn't know or care about. The nuance of what their life meant was therefore lost in the transmutation, and you get back exactly what *you* gave - a piece of meat, no more, and no less.
No, the only way to create a proper homunculus is to sacrifice *a person who is important to you*. You must have a clear understanding of their mind on a deep spiritual level. Only then can the exchange truly be said to be "equivalent".
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**Because “Truth” is a liar**
Never trust a being summoned from a circle, only dark things answer the presumptuous summons of men.
Truth is demon, a hunger from outside the world who intentionally misled you so that way you would end up killing more people.
How would you verify Truth’s claims before you did the sacrifice? You essentially took it on its word without knowing its true motivation, and it tricked you. The monstrous homunculus was actually made with Truth’s otherworldly powers in a method totally different from the Law of Equivalent Exchange, because Truth is from a different world with different laws, or used material from his world, taking part of the sacrificial exchange and keeping it for his own purposes. Truth didn’t even need you to kill for it to work, he just enjoys the act and hopes you kill more, not only because each sacrifice is enjoyable, but because he anxiously awaits **you** in the next world after you’re damned. He’s already got those other souls
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>
> a huge behemoth with mental deformities
>
>
>
So there you have it. What it lacks in mind, it makes up for with body.
If you've ever played an RPG (tabletop or videogame) that allows you to min/max characters, you know that you can usually increase one stat by decreasing another. I specially like the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system from the Fallout series:
**S**trength
**P**erception
**E**ndurance
**C**harisma
**I**ntelligence
**A**gility
**L**uck
They all range from 1 to 10, where 1 means you are a hair width's away from being completely disabled and 10 means you are a superstar in that field. For example, a character with a 1 in Strength can barely support the weight of their own clothes while a 10 in strength means you can carry more than 3x your own body weight.
A template human has a score of five in each attribute. In the game you start just like that, and you can increase a point in an attribute by decreasing a point in another.
So... What you did with your homunculus was getting a template body:
**S**trength 5
**P**erception 5
**E**ndurance 5
**C**harisma 5
**I**ntelligence 5
**A**gility 5
**L**uck 5
(total 35 points)
And you probably got this in exchange:
**S**trength 10
**P**erception 4
**E**ndurance 10
**C**harisma 1
**I**ntelligence 1
**A**gility 4
**L**uck 5
(total still 35 points)
They're just as min/maxed as average Joe, they are just more specialized towards brawling and gooning. The Law of Equivalence holds true.
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# The laws were more like guidelines, anyways
The situation you describe reminds me greatly of issues that arise in the philosophy of utilitarianism. In utilitarianism, each thing has a "utility" metric assigned to it, and your goal is to maximize the aggregate utility of Everything with your actions. Thus if an action makes one person happy, and another action makes two people happier, then you elect to do the second action.
It gets famously murky when you try to do the aggregation. How *do* you go about aggregating happiness? How many unexpected deliveries of flowers is equivalent to curing one person's mother of cancer? 50? 100? 10,000? And how do you equate one person's happiness to others anyways? Critics of utilitarianism point to the possibility of someone being so pleased by the misfortune of others that the entire world feels compelled to comply. For example, if one person was so pleased by the deaths of other human beings that it outweighed the unhappiness of the dying person and everyone who knew them, the entire world would be compelled by utilitarianism to commit suicide. He wouldn't even have to go out and kill them. Likewise, if someone was mostly numbed, or mildly pleased at helping others, he or she would become a "happiness pump," sacrificing everything for the tiniest shred of approval.
Given these issues are not resolved issues in utilitarianism, I would expect the law of equivalent exchange to be similarly incomplete. I would expect that equivalent exchange was a reasonable model fit of reality for the scholars studying magic in this universe, just like how Newtonian gravity was a good fit at the time, even though it was wrong. For all situations the scholars were concerned with, equivalent exchange worked just perfectly.
So if you were exploring taboo magic, it may be taboo for a reason. It may be taboo because those that came before you literally could not model the consequences of your actions with their simplified models. Whether the real model looks more like relativity, more like quantum physics, or more like something that came out of Jeff Goldblum's mouth while the cameras were rolling, that's up to you!
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Alchemy is the art of transferring matter.
Intelligence and Soul are not part of Alchemy but of an entirely different discipline. The reason that human transmutation is a forbidden art is because the math of alchemy is straightforward 1:1 ratio. The math of the other one is not entirely known, tried, or tested due to the variable ratio ?:1. (That and the tendency to murder its attemptor and attemptee in the process).
Simply put, Law of Equivalent Exchange is in place. You are combining it with an unexplored discipline.
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Alchemy is more like thermodynamics than classical neutonian mechanics. Let's apply [Carnot's Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot%27s_theorem_(thermodynamics)) to magic. You sacrifice the human, which generates a huge blob of magical potential, and then you get magical work done by exploiting the flow of the magic as it winds it's way back to the low-magic reservoir. This results in an efficiency less than 1, naturally, so it isn't that surprising that you got something worse than a human back. And what's worse, you probably want to keep things simple, so you use the room as your low-magic reservoir. Unfortunately you decided to do this experiment in your alchemy lab, where you've already done a bunch of magic, so your "cool" side is actually pretty warm.
And this provides only an upper bound. In a real transmutation, there is always some nonideal loss. You are probably a typical renaissance or medieval alchemist. Your magic vessel is leaky, and it leaks more the more magic you try to jam into it. Human souls have a ton of magic. The practical issues involved in killing 1000 humans makes the process a bit slow, so your magic vessel has plenty of time to leak, and each sacrifice results in a great spout of magic -- it isn't easy to catch it all.
The [first documented steam engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency#Steam_engine) was apparently around .5% efficient -- that's right, not 50%, but less than 1%. So you are in the right ballpark with 1000 sacrifices. If you were as bright as Newcomen you could probably get it down to 200.
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As it includes magic & ethics (what is "equal"?), I'd say this borders on being opinion based but I still would like to propose two options to resolve this:
1) parts of what you exchanged went somewhere else
2) it actually works as intended, just not how you imagined it to be
### The first point covers various possibilities:
"Truth" lied to you and siphoned off some of the sacrifices for its own gains.
The transmutation process is not 100% efficient, the more complex the endproduct the lower the efficiency.
The sacrificed people can resist being used their souls ripped from their body try to flee, slash at you, try to curse you, etc. To your advantage, the transmutation process prohibits them from doing so but that also takes energy.
To lead to the second point, there might just be a universal value to things, beyond any human version/concept of what "equal" is which caused you to misjudge the price required.
### The second option is that it actually worked properly.
To create anything with alchemy and equal exchange you need to put in what is required to get the desired output. So if you want to move a rock and sacrifice food, it takes the number of calories that the food contains to move the rock. If you want to create an intelligent, obedient, healthy and overall "perfect" servant you need much more than just a single human life to that. Possibilities range from that the universe just values the creation of new life much more than already existing one to that the whole process just assumes what it would have taken to create such a servant without alchemy. Quite inhuman and to us morally wrong but to get such a servant you would probably have to breed and domesticate a bunch of humans like dogs. You don't get the perfect, completely obedient servant just like that. The exchange does not care that it might be overkill and that your requirements are quite rediculous, any normal loyal servant would have sufficed but that homunculus would do anything for you, even after years of torture it would still serve you to its last breath while also remaining psychologically stable, something that you would not get from a regular normal servant.
Thus the whole process takes way more energy than you thought, its generations worth of work and energy that it takes to get what you want.
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you give: 1 +X\*500\*(body & soul sacrifice)
you get: 1 body imprisoning a random compelled demon of X rank
The cost over the original meat prison is (1 soul+X500(sacrifice)) is equal to the energy to summon, imprison and compel the demon. The more intelligent they are the harder they are to summon, imprison & compel.
The resulting physical stats are roughly original body +25% of the demons physical stats in their original dimension.
The resulting intelligence & 'magic' stats are roughly 25% of the demons intelligence & 'magic' stats in their original dimension. The original bodies intelligence & 'magic' stats are wiped out.
The biggest gain is health rejuvenation; this is equivalent to the demons original health recovery. This is how a demon can be used to jump start a recently dead body.
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### The Missing Ingredients
Since your goal is an artificial human, you'll need the appropriate raw materials for a human. Do you have them all? There are 11 you will need in appreciable quantities and several more you will need in trace amounts. If you don't have them, then the transmutation will have to manifest those elements from somewhere with some of the sacrifice's energy.
That does not even go into the idea that if you are creating an artificial human, that the pile of raw materials that you are using need to be rearranged into the correct configuration to function as a human. Sure, your recipe might create a superficial shell of a human, but it probably starts with a pile of stuff. Transmuting that requires energy drawn from the exchange.
### Value is Relative
Truth did not lie -- you got a homunculus of equal value. But while one can easily determine the value of physical materials and the cost of rearranging the materials into a homunculus body, what is the value of the metaphysical parts of the body?
A soul is one of those things that science can't quite quantify. How much value does it hold? How much energy can it provide? We just don't know. Likewise, what is the value of the life you are sacrificing? Sure, there is a physical value of it -- the materials, the energy in binding a human together -- but there is something else extra that makes it a life and not a ambulatory mass of chemical reactions.
Other answers have touched on this concept: A random soul and life holds less value than the soul/life you want to create The difference in parameters of the lives in the exchange traded mental stats for physical ones.
And of course, perhaps sacrificing multiple lives has diminishing returns -- each additional life given to your creation now has less individual meaning than the single life you have created.
### A Failure to Understand
A third option is that you have taken Truth's words at face value. To make a Homunculus, you need to sacrifice a human. Well, yes, but you have only sacrificed a life. In part this is related to the above point, but more relevantly the soul is not consumed in the transmutation. That you did not understand Truth in this matter is either a failure to communicate or a failure to consider things beyond the physical.
Also, Truth is a troll. Not as big of a troll as that dimension-hopping vampire a couple of universes over, but a troll nonetheless. They have not lied, Truth has just not told you everything.
Also from the question, Truth seems to have not taken anything from you for this knowledge like others that have met Them. It does not sound like you have gained a forbidden insight for a great cost. Or perhaps you did, and Truth is more interesting than I previously thought.
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**Transmuting the unknown is inefficient**
Transmuted matter is only preserved if transmuted properly, if you take lead and reassemble the atoms to get gold you will get an object of equivalent mass, because you have understanding of the structure of atoms. You are fusing nuclei together to get a denser object thus you are not losing mass in the transmutation process.
When transmuting a person what exactly are you transmuting? The body or the life force (soul)? Because of a human beings complexity you cannot visualize every aspect of what you are transmuting thus you lose mass or energy in the process, leading to an inefficient transmutation. If you transmute mere flesh you can get a very buff homunculus with relative ease, whereas if you transmute the soul you're walking into unknown territory. Even with modern science we still do not know what constitutes a consciousness, so how could we manipulate it in the first place?
You're obviously basing this on fullmetal alchemist but you seem to have forgotten that the hundreds of souls required are actually used to make a philosopher's stone not the homunculus itself. The series has already introduced us to homunculi with single souls (the creepy ones with a cyclops eye). They don't possess as much energy as the seven sin homunculi but are still very resilient. The sin homunculi however are philosopher's stones made into homunculi, thus the stone expends its soul energy to rebuild the homunculi when damaged.
**Permanent loss has the highest value**
When a soul is sacrificed they are lost forever, thus their high value. In FMAB Edward sacrifices his alchemy permanently, which allows him to bring back whatever he desires. This sacrifice was enough to bring back an entire human being back. So using a similar principle sacrificing something permanently could give you something of greater value.
My advice is to use the human reproductive system to create an infinite amount of humans to use in your experiments. With this method you are essentially exploiting the humans ability to produce new souls thus your robbing the money making machine. Using this method your problem of inefficiency won't be a problem anymore because humans are a renewable natural resource. Amoral? Yes, but no one will complain about humans being stolen.
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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).
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Locomotives are huge and really heavy. The GE Genesis (used by Amtrak today) weighs 134 tons; the Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy", one of the largest steam locomotives, weighs 625 tons (including the tender).
How would you move a locomotive to a railroad if there's no rail connection from its current location to that railroad? Would trucks or other road vehicles be able to move it?
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## Built on the tracks
While uncommon, this is an easy solution. The light, individual pieces of train cars can be shipped to a commercial railway (not in use or shut down) by conventional means, then assembled on-site. This rail will then connect to the rails that are still in use.
## Boats and trucks
Either for small pieces or small cars, conventional means of shipping - large vehicles - will work fine when assisted by other means.
## Cranes and ramps
This applies at "crossroads" at which the other methods listed converge - perhaps cars need to be transferred from trucks to boats. Cranes are often used for the heavy lifting; ramps may provide additional support.
## Service tracks
Some factories may have their own railways - "service tracks" - which train cars are constructed on. These can connect to the main ones; the difference between this and the first is that no shipment is involved.
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# Barge
The only thing better than trains are boats. Anything you can move any other way, you can move with a boat.
Find a location on your railroad where it crosses a navigable river (or goes to the ocean), move your locomotive there via barge, build a large single use crane to pick it up and move it to the tracks.
EDIT:
To be clear, this solution would almost never be used. Places that manufacture trains are on train tracks, that is just common sense.
The only circumstances that I personally know of where locomotives are shipped by barge is when nuclear cores are being installed. Often, cores will be built at a plant, and moved by barge to the closest point to the future installation site. Then, depending on proximity to the site, a rail might be constructed and special locomotive placed on those rails. The core will often be in the 1000+ ton range, so lots of special equipment is used for install. This method was specifically used for installing cores built in the US in plants in South Korea.
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# Rail
GE Transporation, maker of the GE Genesis, is [right on a rail line](https://goo.gl/maps/jGTN9s6xt7t).
Brookville Equipment Corporation is [right on a rail line](https://goo.gl/maps/VEUWy9M4W1N2).
Bombardier Transportation GmbH is [right on a rail line](https://goo.gl/maps/zSv3J6n9JJF2).
Note they're also clustered with other industrial concerns making the rail spur not just about them, but about all the other industries clustered there.
# Ship
Historically if you want to get a locomotive from point A to point B and there's no rail link in between, like say to California in the mid 1800s, you put it on a ship. Ports already have rail links, so you drive it down the rail to a port, load it onto the ship using one of those enormous cranes, sail to the other port, and their crane drops it on the rail line.
# Truck And Trailer
As @MolbOrg pointed out, 130 ton locomotives are regularly moved by truck via special trailers. The trailers have many, many, many wheels to spread the load out both on the trailer and on the road (and any bridges it might cross). [Here's an example moving some C44aci locomotives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eE4kXYBBnQ&t=66s) which clock in at 140 tons.
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**Airships.**
They can carry far more cargo than any other form of transportation and need essentially nothing in terms of infrastructure between the launch and the landing.
Payloads were close (for example, 100 people and their cargo) [in the 1930s](http://washparkprophet.blogspot.com/2008/02/airships.html).
Proto-type airships with 60-75 ton payloads are [under serious investigation for military and commercial use today](http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/05/pentagon-funded-aeros-working-on-rigid.html), and the technology scales well with 200 and 500 ton payload versions on the drawing boards.
**Helicopter**
The biggest load by a single helicopter at once is [105 tons](http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/helicopters/q0284.shtml). But, with [several, very large helicopters](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/24978/can-multiple-helicopters-be-used-to-lift-a-heavy-load) going a fairly short distance, you could probably carry a bigger payload, although I don't know that anyone has ever done that with quite such a heavy load.
**Ships.**
625 tons is no big deal for a cargo ship or barge, and also long as the origination point and destination both have connections to a port or even a navigable river, you are set.
**Some Assembly Required**
Just because it weighs 134-625 tons full assembled, doesn't mean that you can't take it apart into manageable sized pieces and put it back together at its destination. A semi-truck load or C-5 Galaxy transport can probably manage 70 ton loads, which could be as little as two or three loads for the Amtrak and perhaps 10 loads for your Big Boy.
Whole castles and towers have been shipped across the Atlantic in this manner.
**Build A Temporary Rail Line To Connect The Lines**
Build a one time use rail line to connect the points and then tear it out.
**Adapt It For Road Use**
Build an adapter (or an oversized flatbed truck) that allows the train wheels to be used on a road temporarily that can be removed once the destination is reached. The adapter doesn't have to be fast, fuel efficient when used, or durable and can be built so that it only operates at optimal temperatures and/or weather conditions.
This (together with barges) is basically how large blocks of stones were put in place for the pyramids.
[Answer]
The classic method is to disassemble the locomotive, transport the pieces, and reassemble it where you want it. One case where this was actually done was the eatly V&T railroad, serving the Comstock Lode mines in Virginia City, Nevada. The locomotives (and everything else) were transported by rail to Reno, hauled up the mountain in pieces, and reassembled.
Wikipedia has a brief article on it: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_and_Truckee_Railroad#Comstock_Lode> More info could probably be found at various historical sites, or the current V&T tourist railroad site.
[Answer]
## Circular Rail - Train Wheel
The other answerers have done the more practical answers. The first thing that came to my mind was (as usual) something more impractical than these.
You take the locomotive. You get approximately 50 times its length (making this up as I go along, don't try this at home) in rail. You put the locomotive onto the start of the rail length, **and then bend it in into a large circle**, so that the end meets the start. Think hamster wheel. The locomotive is trapped inside it, like the hamster. But this wheel isn't attached to a cage - so when the locomotive moves forward, the wheel rolls!
Now you've got what you needed, a 200ft tall rolling wheel with a train inside it. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to steer this monstrous contraption. Maybe a huge rod from the centre of the train could move the frontmost part of the wheel? Or maybe it could use rods to push against the ground like ski poles? Maybe you just have to be really careful and point it in the right direction to start with?
[Answer]
[Here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvyIrsZ7Zhs) a video of a team trying (and spectacularly failing) to unload a locomotive from a cargo ship with a crane. That demonstrates that locomotive transport by train is plausible, and also that a such a locomotive can probably be lifted and carried by a crane if the ropes were made slightly sturdier.
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[Question]
[
I was meddling with creature design a bit, and I had not been successful at coming up with anything that I would call beautiful that isn't some sort of humanoid creature. This is disappointing because it renders the design to be a mere deviation from the existing impression of a human body.
What sort of non-human creatures are typically seen as "beautiful"? How would one go about designing a non-humanoid creature that evokes the sensation of beauty?
[Answer]
I personally find many animals quite beautiful! Frogs, moths and [sea slugs](https://www.google.com/search?q=sea%20slugs&num=100&safe=off&client=safari&hl=en-us&prmd=isvn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF2L-v2O3QAhUBXyYKHQzPBwcQ_AUIBygB&biw=1024&bih=649) are some of my favorites:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pzs0J.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/v7fG1.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ENceY.jpg)
## Perspective
I have even known a person who found bees beautiful, and one who told me [earwigs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earwig) struck him as sexy. So, I think beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.
[Answer]
>
> Beauty is a characteristic of an animal, idea, object, person or place that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction.
>
>
>
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty>)
So, you can put the label "Beautiful" on everything which provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction to you personally. But as the old saying says "Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder" it is an individual experience. A thing you might consider beautiful, looks like a pile of junk to another person.
Beautiful can be anything, your husband / wife, dog, cat, car, the stars, the SR-71 Blackbird, houses, castles, dolphins. For everything in the world you will find some who to tag it with "Beautiful".
Even H.R. Gigers alien is beautiful in my eyes, mainly because it's different and scary.
[Answer]
Many animals not only have an understanding of beauty in the sense of sex appeal, there is significant overlap between what animals find attractive and what humans find attractive.
Symmetry (for animals that are "supposed" to be symmetrical) and smooth, even, or shiny skin/fur/feathers/scales/exoskeleton are all characteristics that indicate health, fitness, and lack of parasites. While (most) humans don't find non-humans sexually attractive, we can often tell the difference between a beautiful specimen of a species and an ugly one, and that will often reflect the preferences of other members of that animal's species.
We can even apply the same airbrush and Photoshop techniques used for human models on animals to make them look better - for instance, the "Ridiculously Photogenic Horse" meme. Also, chickens are known to find physically attractive humans more appealing.
Many species, including humans, also find bright colors attractive. Not only does it catch the eye, it is an indicator of good health, since it is difficult to produce bright pigments when sick. Even though our natural coloration is uninteresting compared to, say, birds, we wear colorful clothing and jewelry to enhance this. Brightly colored eyes are also seen as appealing.
Humans also find animals with graceful, controlled movement more appealing than those with short, twitchy motions, likely for similar reasons: jerky movements in humans and related species is an indicator of disease, injury, or fear. The smooth undulation of an eel or whale is preferred to the twitchiness of mice, birds, or insects.
Species humans find beautiful often have these characteristics. Peacocks, parrots, butterflies and tropical fish are traditionally "decorative" animals thanks to their bright colors, and many people find the sleek fur and grace of deer and big cats attractive. Even species that are not culturally seen as beautiful can be appealing to some: the shiny, iridescent scales and smooth undulations of a healthy snake, or the striking black exoskeleton of a spider. It isn't for nothing that these particular creatures are often associated with sexuality.
[Answer]
Non-human creatures that are beautiful are not only possible, they exist!
I think most of the animals in the world are considered beautiful by some. Some I appreciate are leopards, dolphins, and gazelles.
However, there is a solid argument for what makes these things beautiful to a human observer is only in the ways that they seem human, such as arguments found in [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0zConOPZ8Y) video.
Another thing to look at is in beautiful mathematical patterns that clearly take no semblance from humans and expounding from those, such as fractals. I think there is a lot of beauty that can be found in that complexity.
Of course beauty is a subjective term, and beauty to an alien or anything non-human could just as easily be epitomized in a blob fish.
[Answer]
There is beauty in Symmetry! Not everyone and everything is cable of discerning the symmetry in diverse patterns, however. Hence the cliché, ... In the eye of the beholder ...
So if one wants to develop a creature that is beautiful, one must first ask whose eye? If it is a human eye, one should ask questions about a sample population that eye belongs to. In particular, which patterns is that population likely to be able to recognize, appreciate and parse.
For example, a population of physicists would appreciate the mathematical symmetry that explains both the hellish environment on Venus as well as the comparatively utopian environment on Earth. If one was to write down the mathematical relationships that describes planetary environments, most physicists would attest to their beauty.
So to answer your question directly,
>
> is any creature design that immediately strike one as beautiful and is
> not just a modification of the human body
>
>
>
I must know who is looking.
[Answer]
Beauty is highly personal scale. What one calls beautiful the other may call ugly and vice versa.
Also (wo)man to be called beautiful has to fulfill different attributes than, for example, horse, car, scenery, song, painting, equation, statue, building, etc.
Some can mean beatiful as sexually attractive. And still there are people sexually attracted to things completely out of "humanoid" group.
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[Question]
[
I'm making a fantasy weapon, a spear with a thick, heavy tip.
I know that for a mace or sword that you slam down on your enemy, the weapon being heavier will give you more force, which is good for fighting armored opponents.
For a weapon that you thrust with, like a spear, does this extra heaviness on the tip help?
What kind of battle is it best for, and what kind of user is most helped by it?
Furthermore, is there any historical version of this kind of weapon I could look at?
Edit: I imagined this weapon to be used to break infantry lines with shields, like a handheld battering ram perhaps, although I'm open to having it cut as well. The line-breaker aspect is my main focus though.
Edit: After having looked over all the answers I've decided to look over an alternate design with more versatility, and try to work the heavy aspect into it so it's more useful.
[Answer]
**A heavy pole-arm used by infantry would be a [sarissa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarissa).**
It was an incredible 5 meters long and weighted about 6 kg. It had a sharp iron head shaped like a leaf and a balancing bronze butt-spike that would allow it to be anchored to the ground to stop charges by enemy soldiers.
It was an effective weapon, Alexander the Great conquered the known world with his Macedonian phalanxes using the sarissa.
Strong point was that all of the first three rows in the phalanx had the reach to engage the enemy.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/63fwB.png)
Weak points were the sarissa's tactical unwieldiness and the enormous amount of training required for it to become effective in battle. Lack of supporting units to protect from flank attacks and lack of training limited the use and in the end smaller weapons like the Roman pilum (javelin) and gladius (sword) replaced it.
Reference:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarissa>
[Answer]
I'm coming from a [Historic European Martial Arts (HEMA)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_European_martial_arts) perspective, with a dash of physics, and therefore consider myself only a minor authority in this topic.
# Why Heavy Weapons?
Heavy weapons actually don't help you that much; as a person, you're going to put about the same energy into something no matter what. (This is just because your muscles can only give out so much power, and over the course of the swing you only have so much energy you can impart to your weapon.) Heaviness also helps prevent weapons from being deflected, which is a common occurrence. (This is where video-games get it wrong; your main defense with a weapon is the weapon itself!)
What does alter the use of a weapon has is it's weighting; swords which have their center of balance far from [the hilt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword#Morphology) tend to be specialized in cutting, whereas those with the balance closer to the hilt tend to be for thrusting. This applies to most weapon in general; maces and axes are great for swinging around, not so much for thrusting. (You can still thrust with them, though, but with less efficacy.)
# Your Weapon
Your weapon, however, is a spear-like polearm (or staff weapon). This means you have some advantages:
* Staff weapons (or pole-arms) are great because you keep your opponent further away from you
* The heavy head may let you cut better. Mr. Matt Easton, a HEMA authority, even [talks about this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm8JjvKcnmE). There is also the problem of exposing yourself when cutting, which [Mr. Easton addresses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAgCS2Bsz_k).
* A heavy head also does two things by virtue of it's increased inertia; it is harder to get the head moving (takes more effort to make it thrust) and it also makes it harder to deflect (which can be handy in a thrust).
* The extra weight could help with busting through armor or shields without harming the weapon.
* If you design the tip right, it can get lodged into shields! A shield with a heavy spear sticking out of it is a worthless one.
# Who Can Benefit?
Well, a really strong person may as well try to use this on foot. [Goliath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath#Goliath_and_the_Greeks) and [Ajax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(mythology)#Trojan_War) were both described as using very heavy spears, which made them more intimidating. Mounted individuals, who use the horse to accelerate their weapon, would really enjoy this, but then it's just a lance. Throwing this would be very hard, as it's much heavier, and you wouldn't get the distance you would otherwise enjoy from a thrown weapon.
# Some Examples
* [Glaives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaive); they are pole-arms which cut.
* [Boar Spears](http://www.nationalsurvivalcenter.com/costbosp.html); they are a bit heavier to deal with the stress of hunting.
# Consider Context
Since this is a fantasy weapon, you may want to consider what problem you are trying to solve with this. What is the weapon for? Why is this a better weapons than others? Is there an easier solution?
[Answer]
You're talking about a lance.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/szWQE.png)
Traditionally speaking, they were used from horseback and were too heavy to use on foot.
However, if you're designing a spear for footmen, a heavier tip would still be fine. People don't ONLY thrust with spears - they whack things with them too. So why wouldn't having a heavier tip help with that regard? Sure, the balance would be thrown off a bit but I don't see why you can't use it with proper training.
In your case, the extra weight on the tip would help if you're trying to hit someone over the head with the blade, but if you're thrusting with your arms it would just tire you out more. Instead, you could adopt the lance approach and sit on a horse. Since force is mass \* acceleration, having the heavier tipped spear on a horse would help you to do more damage as a thrusting weapon, but then you have to ask yourself - why not just use a lance?
[Answer]
A heavy thrusting weapon by itself really does not provide the ability to punch through shield walls as you seem to imply, and is quite limited otherwise.
The key issue is that foot soldiers have very limited strength, and will tire quickly in physical combat. The amount of mass that a soldier can carry and manipulate is (generally) limited to @1/3 of a soldier's body weight. The other issue is the amount of space needed to wield the weapon. If you are going to try and knock over an enemy soldier, you either need a "swing" to generate some momentum (in your case, only a straight "fore and aft" motion), or the ability to charge to impart your own momentum to the weapon. Even if your army is built like NFL running backs, you will discover it is rather difficult to bring down a man who is resisting you (especially with a straight push), and of course enemy tactics will adapt to negate your pushing attack.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U2ziT.jpg)
Real life pole arms were designed to give the soldier several different options (the pike may be an exception, but pike squares were never left on their own, operating with other troops). A European halberd comes with a hook to drag a knight from his horse, a spear point to thrust (or use as a pike to repel a cavalry charge) and an axe head to smash through armour. The long reach and leverage permitted you to deal with enemy cavalry, as well as shield walls and armoured enemy soldiers on foot.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5nteg.jpg)
A glaive uses the leverage of the long handle to provide a much greater amount of power to a slashing attack, but since the blade is similar to a Katana, there is still the opportunity to thrust with it as well:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DuXBy.jpg)
A Naginata is a more extreme version, being much lighter and faster than the Glaive, so the power of the attack is due to the energy of the swing, not the mass of the weapon. This also allows for faster thrusting and parrying as well.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0zJwr.jpg)
So while your weapon may be somewhat useful, a weapon designed with a multitude of attack and defense modes will give the soldier greater flexibility and allow them to deal with a multitude of enemy attacks and defences.
[Answer]
A heavy tip does actually help with penetration vs a moving opponent.
If you hit someone with a spear, it doesn't automatically go right through them. You have to push it through with some force or momentum. It also rarely hits perfectly square. If you hit perfectly square, it matters little if the tip is heavy or not, you can just commit to the attack, and drive the attack home yourself.
We fight in a non-perfect world. No opponent stands there and gets hit square in the chest. They're dodging and weaving. Some of this dodging can be done while they are touching the spear. It may happen when the speartip strikes them, or it may be that they reached out to deflect the spear.
When they seek to deflect your spear, they have a simple goal. They need to change the line of motion of the spear such that it no longer goes through their body before the spear finishes its job. This can be done by moving the spear or by moving their body. Generally speaking, the spear is lighter weight, so it is typical to want to deflect the spear.
When they are deflecting the spear, you really can't do anything about it. You are too far away, with a long stick giving you horrible mechanical advantage. A skilled individual may be able to do clever tricks to overcome this, but for most people, the deflection of the spear is a 1 person game between the defender and the spear.
If the speartip is light weight, it takes little force to move it. If the speartip is heavy, it takes much more force to move it to a different line. This can be the difference between a hit and a miss.
At a more advanced level, a heavy speartip offers some interesting gambits. Because the spear will keep moving on its own after you stop pushing it (from its inertia), one may be able to stop pushing the strike a little sooner, and start claiming control of the stick earlier while the momentum of the spear continues to move it forward. However, this creates situations where the spear can overextend you, so those are more difficult to explore.
When exploring such advanced weapons, the momentum games are typically not analyzed to find the ideal balance. Instead, the weapons are used and fine tuned through experimentation and warfare. Whatever balance suits the combat style best is the one that is used.
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[Question]
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**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
So here is the situation.
I have a character who is a trained modern gunsmith and he finds himself thrown into a setting where the most advanced firearm is the flintlock. I know some of the most advanced guns are going to be out of reach, because of the lack of machine tools and such, but I assume he would be able to make something like a revolver or pistol with a bit of hard work.
I want the scene and steps to ring true, what do I need to keep it real?
To clarify, this question is looking for what process this character would use, taking into consideration what tools and base resources they would have available.
[Answer]
*(Sorry about the length, I'm laid up today and bored.)*
By happenstance, I have been researching pretty much this particular issue on and off for several months now for some alternate history type stories.
The problem with whole "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court" scenario which everyone from Mark Twain onward has failed to deal with is that no technology stands alone. Technologies exist in ecosystems of related and supporting technologies. You really just can't pop into a place or time that lacks the ecosystem and reproduce a technology the ecosystem won't support. Indeed, people working in the developing world today often face exactly this problem.
More importantly, the problem in the past was not one of conceptual design, the information that time traveler or the like would have but rather lack of precision and predictability in all forms of manufacturing from the gunpowder, to lead in the balls and most importantly the metal in the components. No to instances of any technology were actually alike e.g. in the early specification for the Brown Bess Musket, the barrel length could vary as much as 1.5 inches and still be considered in spec.
Virtually all the *designs* we think of as being attributes of modern weapons, rifling, revolver or multi shot, breach loading, etc were attempted more than once by 1600 at the latest. All these designs failed in the sense of being anything more than demonstration pieces because in the real world manufacturing, no two components could be expected to have the required degree of precision and accuracy in manufacturing to make the design work reliably.
E.G.
-) Rifling is actually probably older than smooth bores because they usually made barrels by hammering nails or similar pieces of iron flat and then wrapping them around a mandrel in a spiral. If you don't ensure that the inside is smooth, instant rifling.
What made rifles mere speciality weapons was not only their slow loading times but the wide variability (caused by lack of manufacturing precision) in the size of the barrels, groves and bullets such that the friction encountered by the bullet when it engaged the rifling varied significantly. So, although the rifling ensured the bullet flew straight, it randomized the muzzle velocity so the shooter never knew exactly how far any shot would travel along its straight line. This problem grew worse with scale to the point that it made rifled cannon completely useless. It might shoot a mile, it might shoot 10 feet , it might jam and blow up the cannon
-) Revolver and other multi-shot designs were common but again, lack of precision in parts defeated them. Specifically, sealing revolving cylinders against the barrel so no fire escaped to to ignite other cylinders.
-) Superimposed charges (charges stacked in the same barrel) were also tried but again, sealing was an issue and the tended to fire off all the charges and bullets at once.
-) Breach loading: The first cannon were actually breach loading and many examples of individual breach loading firearms exist but getting a reliable seal on the breach proved impossible. Sometimes it worked, sometimes the shooter got blinded
The only truly new designs to arrive in the blackpowder era didn't show up until the early to mid 1800s. The mercury fulminate ignition cap had no conceptual predecessor and there wasn't much thought given to expanding bullet or [the Minié ball](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini%C3%A9_ball) that gave a muzzle loading rifle the same rate of fire as a smooth bore.
**Mercury fulminate** requires an early industrial chemical industry base to produce, you couldn't whip some up at the local alchemist. Well, you could perhaps but the slightest impurity in the fulminate will cause it to detonate randomly. Again, getting precision, in this case purity, was the key bottle neck.
If might be possible for your gunsmith character to introduce the [Minié ball](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini%C3%A9_ball) but it took nearly twenty years of experimentation across the industrializing world to get the expanding bullet concept to work. Also, I'm pretty sure that barrel and bullet precision had to match fairly closely. The bullet had to expand but not to much or to little and the little groves on the side had to survive to prevent nutation tumbling.
An expanding bullet rifle in the 1600s and 1700s even if just a little more accurate than smoothbore but just as fast loading, would have had quite an impact.
***But some wild ideas:***
-) **Electrical ignition:** Even with pre-idustrial tech, making a magneto is not all that difficult and according to [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasting_cap)
>
> The first blasting cap or detonator was demonstrated in 1745, when a
> Dr. Watson of the Royal Society showed that the electric spark of a
> Leyden jar could ignite black powder.
>
>
> In 1750, Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia made a commercial blasting
> cap consisting of a paper tube full of black powder, with wires
> leading in both sides and wadding sealing up the ends. The two wires
> came close but did not touch, so a large electric spark discharge
> between the two wires would fire the cap.
>
>
>
Modern blackpowder is coated with a layer of pure graphite, which conducts electricity and therefore prevents electrical sparks from setting it off, but the old stuff was subject to spark ignition. However, you'd probably want to hedge your bets by making thermal sparks by arcs between fine wires embedded in fine powder as well
A good use of of electro-fire in a historical setting would be to make a reliable and minutely controllable volley gun, really a piece of artillery more than a gun but one in which the character could shoot one barrel at a time in a controlled fashion, something real volley guns could not do. It could define a killing field more like a modern machine gun and would be hard to charge and overrun.
The magneto could be shrunk down to an individual weapon though, perhaps actuated like the pump stock on a shotgun, since a magneto is basically a solenoid so the shape is right already. Just pumping back and forth quickly would generate current. Might have to add a capacitor but those are pretty low tech.
-) **Partial cartridge breach sealing:** The problem with breach loading is the gap where the cylinder with the charge meets the barrel. Most modern system solve this problem by having the cartridge bridge the gap such when the weapon fires, the soft metal of the cartridge expands and seals the gap. Early attempts also used rubber seals.
The era's lack of precision would defeat using an entire cartridge but just maybe, sticking a ring or tube of copper in the breach behind the bullet but over the powder charge such that when the breach closed, the ring crossed the gap would work. When fired, the gasses would deform the soft copper and give an effective seal. The rings would have to removed and resized again before they could be used.
-) **Flechettes:** Again, one of the oldest ideas, early cannon fired arrows but the idea was never scaled down to firearms and they were never combined with sabot to get a good seal. Most likely because even today, good large flechettes are incredibly expensive to make in mass at the size of a bullet.
So, our intrepid hero would have to hand make a lot of small metal finned arrows, likely steel arrows with a bit of lead at the tip for mass. Then make a sealing sabot of lightweight wood, wadding and grease to ensure a seal. In theory,he might have weapon with the accuracy of a flintlock rifle, the loading speed of a smooth bore flintlock and horrific penetrating power, especially against armor. (Flechetts penetrate so readily that it’s a problem when you want to kill a human being. They just a neat little through and through hole. The Flechette has to kink when it hits and flip through the body to do major damage.)
Somewhat surprisingly, flechettes don't have to be all that straight and even to have good flight characteristics over moderate ranges. The ones used in military shot guns are just stamped out crudely and not even loaded with all points and fins pointing in the same direction. Even such crude flechettes would outrange smooth bore muskets and hit multiple targets.
Flechettes with sabot could also be used in cannons producing a blackpowder version of the common anti-armor weapon of today.
-) **Suppressors:** I don't see why you couldn't build a suppressor for a blackpowder weapon although given all the smoke they produced it 1) sound might not be your biggest give away and 2) it would foul quickly, likely in just a shot or two.
## So, the gun smith could whip up something like this:
-) **Ignition:** A magneto, perhaps in the form of a pump stock like a modern shotgun. One pump spins the magneto and then you'd have maybe a second to pull the trigger.
-) **Breach loading with copper seal**: Could just have a lot of chambers made before hand kinda like cartridges that would pop in and seal reliably. Don't think a revolver would work because the cylinder would have to move back and toward the barrel to rotate and that precision would be hard.
-) **Sabot Flechettes projetiles in the pre-charged breachloading cylinders:** As accurate as a rifle but with startling range and penetration. You also have the option of going the shotgun route and putting multiple flechettes in the same load. Bend some fins even and you've got a kind of shotgun with the range and striking power of a rifle.
-) A supressor for a few surprise shots.
The hero might be able with preparation and practice get a rate of fire of say 12 shots a minutes with high accuracy and lethality at range. In action it would look bizarrely like someone shooting a weapon that combined a bolt action with a pumped shotgun.
**But...** with blackpowder after two or three shots, the smoke is blinding and large amounts of residue it leaves behind will foul the barrel, he could never fire more than 30 or so shots before he had to stop and clean the weapon. (Maybe he could swap out the barrel like they did with machine guns?)
In action, the hero would have to keep moving to get out from under his smoke if didn't want to shoot blindly and would have to plan to finish the fight in less than 3 dozen shots.
One problem the hero will face, however, is that he will have no idea how reliable the weapon will be. All the metal is variable and suspect from the barrel to the springs to the copper wire in the magneto. Voids, cracks, rapid fatigue, impurities, you name it would make the weapon a crapshoot, no pun intended with almost every shot. Plus, his gunpowder would behavior differently even from hour to hour as humidity changed.
-) **Recoilless blackpowder mini-cannon:** In theory you could make a recoilless rifle with blackpowder as long as you used the original WWI design that shot a counter weight out the back. The counter weight could be friable (a bag of sand or lead dust) so it would do little damage behind. Such a weapon might be able to fire a 40mm round or so which from a man-carried weapon would be quite a devestating surprise back in the day. Basically, a kind of musket bazooka.
Plus, you could combine the recoilless mini-cannon with some of the ideas above. One guy with the mini-cannon firing flechette case shot could probably wipe out a platoon if shot in enfilade.
-) **Air Rifle:** If you want to cheat a bit, if the hero just happened to take the right plastic back with him, he could make an impressive air rifle. Air rifles were used by snipers in the late 1700s and Napoleonic wars. They had high accuracy, descent lethality and range but again lack of manufacturing precision meant they could never get them to seal reliably for long.
If your character just happened to have modern gasket material, he could whip up something really impressive. Probably, the flexible plastics in the soles of a modern par of tennis shoes would work.
With a stock of compressed air bottles, (hand pumped of course) he could keep up a sustained rate of accurate long range fire that would seem magical for the flintlock age, with no smoke and not a lot of noise.
[Answer]
Basically, you need a gunsmith with an enormous curiosity about the development of firearms, and how the technology was developed. Furthermore, you need to specify exactly what technological level he has found himself in. Flintlocks were in use for about 250 years, from 1610 to about 1860, and the state of technological infrastructure changed a great deal during that time.
Let's take the revolver as an example.
There were, of course, flintlock pistols. What does the black powder revolver need?
Percussion caps. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percussion_cap> These are copper or brass cups with a charge of primer material at the bottom. And the primer? Well, the first ones were mercury fulminate mixed with (essentially) black powder. There are better materials possible, but mercury fulminate was successfully used for a long time. How do you make mercury fulminate? It's not hard: you dissolve mercury in nitric acid, then pour into alcohol. The fulminate precipitates out. But just because it's not hard doesn't mean it's obvious. See <http://www.powerlabs.org/chemlabs/fulminate.htm> for a demonstration of what's required, including a subsequent purification process. Note that production of large quantities is a very iffy proposition, due to problems managing waste heat.
Of course, making primers in any quantity is a ticklish business - mercury fulminate in any quantity is horrendously sensitive to shock and friction, and special techniques had to be developed to deal with it. For example, a quantity of potassium chlorate is placed on a rubber membrane stretched over a suspended iron hoop. Mercury fulminate is added, then the mixture stirred with a feather. If (when) a batch explodes, damage is minimized. Frankly, this isn't the sort of thing most modern gunsmiths would know, and developing the knowledge cost a considerable number of lives.
Mass production of the cups is something of an art, too, although not too much of a problem.
A major contribution a history-minded gunsmith might make is the minie ball. This allows muzzle-loaders to effectively use rifling, and greatly extends effective range. The phrase "Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes" was a reflection of the accuracy of muskets. Smoothbores have a lot of trouble hitting a man beyond 50 to 60 yards. Muzzle-loading rifles can be good out to 400 yards or more (specialty sniper rifles could reach 1000 yards), although aiming is a problem. Black-powder rifles have a low muzzle velocity, and compensating for range gets difficult.
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I'm not a gunsmith nor am I a precision machinist, so my opinion may be worth what you paid for :P
[Although the concept was around long before they became widely used, breech loaders didn't become popular until some manufacturing problems were solved.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breech-loading_weapon#History)
>
> Although breech-loading weapons were developed as far back as the late
> 14th century in Burgundy, breech-loading became more
> successful with improvements in precision engineering and machining in
> the 19th century (see Dreyse needle gun).
>
>
> The main challenge for developers of breech-loading weapons was
> sealing the breech. This was eventually solved for smaller weapons by
> the development of the self-contained metallic cartridge. For weapons
> too large to use cartridges, the problem was solved by the development
> of the interrupted screw.
>
>
>
Breach loading firearms have some, no $h17, you really have to satisfy design constraints.
1. Your breach must be strong enough for the powder load - or your gun
blows up in your hand, killing you.
2. Your breech tolerances must be tight enough that the powder doesn't
blow out the breach instead of the pushing the projectile down the
barrel - or your shot blows hot burning gun powder back into the
face of the person wielding the gun, blinding you.
**Breech strength**
The first requires a great deal of knowledge, skill, & quality control of the metals (probably steel) used to construct the weapon. Too little carbon and the steel will be too soft - allowing the breach to erode and limiting the life & utility of the weapon.
Too much carbon (or other impurities) and the steel becomes too brittle and shatters upon impacts (or big explosions) - killing the weapon wielder.
The difference in carbon percent between these two states isn't all that large.
**Breech sealing**
Sealing the breech requires pretty tight manufacturing tolerances but is aided by the use of brass cartridges. These are made of much softer metals and are designed to fit into the breech, expand, and seal the breech upon firing. The breech tolerances must still be tight enough to provide support to the cartridge casing or the casing will rupture and allow hot gases to escape anyway.
To solve this problem, the gun smith will need to develop high precision machine tools out of very hard & durable metals (probably machine tool steels). Meaning he needs to develop new machining metals as well as the metals for the gun.
**Summary**
I would think *any* gun smith from our era would know how to do the necessary manufacturing using the tools from our era. But perhaps only a gunsmith with an affinity for how weapons where made in prior eras might have the background necessary to begin developing new (to that era) metals and machining practices.
Even so, I would expect the gun smith to have to begin a series of tests over time to develop a final end product that would work for him. It might take him a year or much more.
Alternatively, he might be able to entice others from the period with the necessary background to begin developing those things to support the gun smith's endeavor (with promises that it would help them in their trade).
He could provide the smiths with necessary / desirable properties and a set of processes to follow to try develop them. He'd probably also give the smiths a set of tests to conduct at various stages of the process to see if the samples were turning out the products that he needed.
This might speed things up significantly.
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There are several problems that need to be solved whenever you have a time-traveller trying to bring knowledge of the future to the past. Modern guns are made of specific alloys that have been refined over centuries. They are precision-made using a production line that involves many people and processes from when the metal is first mined to when the final gun is assembled. Different processes and materials are used to manufacture each component. The knowledge required spans multiple disciplines, from mining, to materials science, chemistry, manufacturing, etc. Many of these advanced processes are impossible without advanced tools whose construction also relies on similarly-complex systems.
Consider [this TED talk](http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch), where Thomas Thwaites tries to build a toaster from scratch. Even a simple toaster consists of over 400 components, each specifically made using modern processes. Something like a gun is even worse.
That said, your gunsmith would need to know, essentially, a detailed history of firearms; he'd need to know what was invented, and when, and what the early problems were. He'd find any obvious inventions probably stymied by manufacturing issues, such as quality control in the strength of the steel, or tolerance of the sizes of components that fit together, or dangerous manufacturing processes, and this all assumes that he actually knows how to manufacture the raw materials necessary. I can tell you many things about the manufacturing of computers: how lasers etch silicon using masks, how transisters are made from doped semiconductors, how transisters arrange to form logic gates, how logic gates arrange to form computational units, how computational units arrange to form computers. But there is simply no way that I know enough about this to actually manufacture a computer from scratch, not even without time-travelling. Your gunsmith would be in a similar predicament, and would probably have to rely on introducing one or two concepts that provide a lot of improvement. Maybe there's one specific thing that isn't being done yet, that's not obvious, that he can provide as an advantage (other posters have suggested rifling with Minie balls). If, at the point in time where your gunsmith finds himself, the main bottleneck for gun technology is manufacturing, there may not be much he can do alone.
Also, consider the problem of [interchangeable parts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchangeable_parts). Even when it's possible to manufacture, say, a breach-loading rifle, you still face huge difficulty scaling the manufacture of one working gun up to an army's worth of guns. Our modern society's technology is global. It takes the whole world's worth of knowledge and cooperation and advancement to make possible the inventions we have here. Getting even close to what we have would be impossible without a team of specialists working together for years.
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I am going to give a contrary opinion here. In Northern Pakistan there are gunsmiths who can essentially recreate *any* firearm with not much more than blacksmith's tools. Some of these weapons are so good that you have to be very careful when buying an "antique" firearm (a friend and I looked at a "Martini Henry" in a shop in Afghanistan, and it took several hours of close examination, reference to a guidebook and quite a lot of tea before we recognized it as a forgery. The would be gun dealer took it with a grain of salt, but we ended up getting some nice rugs instead. Of course the first "hand woven" rung we looked at had even, machine tied knots when we flipped it over...).
Talking to people who were closer to the action (so to speak) we discovered that you could get a fully functional AK, SKS or even a copy of a Russian heavy machine gun from these sources.
There were two keys here that need to be kept in mind, however. First off, the Pakistani gunsmiths reverse engineered these weapons from existing models they could take apart, examine and measure. Second, they had the existing ammunition as well, which is important since they used this as the guide to ensure the weapons could function properly (especially establishing the headspace between the bolt and the chamber). Having access to modern steel blanks to forge the metal parts helped, and with Russian weapons, a lot of it is stamped sheet metal, which is also easier to deal with.
So *if* the gunsmith has access to superior (for the time) metals, lots of time and patience and some good reference materials, he *may* be able to manufacture a functional weapon (singular) after a prolonged period of time. Much of the time will be spent learning the use of tools and techniques from the time period he is in (and possibly training a lot of assistants), and most likely reinventing a few very critical tools, like a lathe. Teaming up with a top flight swordsmith is probably a good idea, the smith would already have access to good quality steel and know the proper techniques for working that particular metal.
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I'm not an expert but I can think of some issues:
1.Material, hard steel is important unless you like a big and heavy gun.
2.Primer, your gunsmith need a bit chemistry knowledge.
3.Rifling, necessary for accuracy but if you want musket just ignore this.
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Doubble22 mentioned the primer. Let me add casings of an uniform diameter, or at least cartridge bases -- the cartridge walls could be paper similar to a shotgun shell. Each of those will be hand-made and making them fit will be hard work.
The alloys for bullets would probably make problems in high-velocity rifles, but they could be workable in a revolver.
Contemporary black powder will foul the barrel relatively quickly, but again manageable in a revolver.
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A lot depends on your the circumstances your protagonist finds himself in. Primarily it comes down to this:
Is the need urgent and is he/she short of time? i.e. are they for instance trying to 'bootstrap' firearm production for their local community in the face of an immanent invasion/war? Or are they thinking of settling down and inventing/tinkering with an eye on introducing innovations in firearm tech while making a living?
The former has been done a lot in SF. The latter less often. Your character will also have to have a basic understanding of chemistry because you can't modernize firearms without it.
Assuming he does have this knowledge and time *is* of the essence you character might consider;
* work on improving the powder (grain size etc) and introducing percussion caps
* in the absence of efficient (consistent) rifling technology consider rifling 'bullets' for smooth bore muskets (how much of an improvement in accuracy would this make over rifled muskets you'd have to ask a firearm's expert) but smooth bores would be easier and quicker to make in mass.
* side tech; work on producing an efficient hand grenade and things like basic percussion triggered claymore mines and pressure trigger land mines.
If rifling is well established go straight to work on the strongest simplest breach design you can find via historical research and brass cartilages. And in the interim introduce the 'minie ball'.
The point is if your story contains a lot of mass fighting to be realisticvyou are going to have to do some serious research on historical firearms and weaponry as well as early industrial manufacturing and perhaps read some SF works by authors like Weber and Forstchen whose characters do the same. If its about a man working a trade you have to dive into research on the art of handcrafting firearms instead - making the journey from raw materials to finished masterpiece a big part of the story.
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One of the problems, the hero would face is getting the proper tools for the job. He might have to invent the lathe (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathe>) early to be able to produce gun-parts with the required precision.
The first fully documented, all-metal slide rest lathe was invented by Jacques de Vaucanson around 1751
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A character needs to build a computer out of raw materials in a bronze age.
He has a nano scale factory, so manufacturing chips and such from silicon is possible, but I'm not sure of the best way to power it without resorting to something stupid like "And then he built a fusion reactor".
I've considered some kind of battery (like the Baghdad battery) but it seems voltages would be to low to be believable.
I've also recently considered some kind of vat grown biological computer, powered by protein and glucose, but once again don't know if that makes sense.
Edit:
The factory is kind of a grey goo style nano-tech. Break down raw materials to build other things, but unable to provide power to anything else.
Edit 2:
The character is from an advanced civilization, studying a bronze age civilization. It only resembles StarGate in the broad description.
Edit 3:
Apparently my creativity was jammed up worse than I thought!
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If you have the nanotech to build a computer, you should be able to create chargers from heat. We don't really have nanotech that can build major things, but we do have beginning tech that might soon trickle charge a cell phone [from body heat](https://web.archive.org/web/20140417113034/http://news.discovery.com/tech/alternative-power-sources/body-heat-could-charge-future-wearable-tech-140415.htm).
Being able to create a system that can do this should be possible with the nanotech. could even make it to convert from a hot source such as a fire.
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Manpower! If there is one thing the bronze age has, it's plentiful muscle...unless Hollywood lies to me. I find something pleasing in the idea of using a bunch of muscle bound brutes pushing on wooden levers to turn a gigantic turbine (Conan the barbarian style) to power something as futuristic high tech like a nano factory...and you wouldn't have an initial power need like hydrogen fuel cells, just basic components that are quite likely in use already.
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It looks like the focus of this question is not on the creation of the computer itself, but on **how to reliably provide power for it**. So, I'll answer that.
As alluded to in a [comment](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9275/building-and-powering-a-computer-in-a-bronze-age-world#comment20435_9279) on another answer, an **array of [thermoelectric modules](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator)** would be a great solution for providing a nice clean supply of electricity, and would run off pretty much anything you could burn to create a sufficient temperature differential. However, they're made of **exotic semiconductors**. Now, if you are also constructing the computer, then you can build these easily, or the same kinds of doped semiconductors that **photovoltaic cells** are made of, and then you're done -- but that's boring! What if your nanites could only do more simple construction? The problem is two-fold: **power generation & power storage**.
For power generation, the main things you’ll need are **copper wire** for the stator windings and **permanent magnets** for the rotor. Getting a sufficient quantity of refined copper to work into wire would definitely be a challenge *(see the later part of my answer for a possible solution)*, but my gut tells me that permanent magnets of sufficient size and quality might prove to be your biggest challenge; you could use perhaps try have your nanites refine naturally-occurring [lodestone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodestone). \* *applies handwavium* \* Presuming that you could manufacture a simple electric generator, the problem then becomes one of turning the rotor.
You've got several options for this; obvious choices would be a **water wheel** or a **windmill**, depending on the topography & weather of your location. Strictly speaking, the Bronze Age began around 3000 BCE and the earliest examples of this technology being practically applied were the [3rd century BCE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_watermills) and the [9th century AD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wind_power#Early_Middle_Ages) respectively, so you'd definitely need to bootstrap some local advances in woodworking & stonemasonry, but your time traveller has obviously brought with them other advanced engineering concepts, so these would not be incongruous.
Other than that, a clever low-tech method would be **harnessing gravity**. A heavy weight, winched to the top of a tower, could pull a line connected to simple wooden gearing, ultimately turning the generator's rotor -- a rough, large-scale version of a weight-driven clock mechanism. Another possibility would be constructing a [**Stirling engine**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine), but I suspect that even a crude one would require things like sheet metal or basic machine tools.
Providing a steady, reliable flow of power is also going to be important, so let’s look at building some batteries. [Voltaic piles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaic_pile) are quite simple in terms of battery chemistry -- alternating discs of copper and zinc, separated by cloth soaked in salt water. However, they're not rechargeable! So, let's look the oldest and most venerable rechargeable battery chemistry in the book: the **lead-acid battery**.
Sulfuric acid was available to medieval chemists, and is pretty straightforward to make -- a later 17th century process was simply burning sulfur with saltpeter in the presence of steam. No need for handwavium here! As for the lead plates, you could set your nanites to work **precipitating the metal from water**. It might take a while, though; [according to one source](http://www.lenntech.com/periodic/water/overview.htm), lead is only 2-30 parts per trillion in seawater. Freshwater is an order of magnitude better, 3-30 parts per billion. A gram of lead in a liter of water is a billion PPB -- so at an average of 15 ppb, you'd have to go through **67,000 L of freshwater to get 1 gram of lead**. That's 2,366 cubic feet of water, so be prepared to wait!
Power consumption of computers ranges pretty widely. ARM-based boards like the Raspberry Pi use ~2W; a home theater PC would use, say, 13W; a laptop, 2x-4x that depending on the chipsets, and a desktop PC, potentially double again that of a laptop. Furthermore, power consumption under load vs. when the computer is idle can make a huge difference. So, when your power system is built, pick your computer hardware carefully!
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I don't know how you are powering your nano factory, but if it advanced enough to create computers, you can go the Fuel Cell route (which is far less complex than a computer).
Fuel Cells can use Hydrogen as a fuel, so if you have water you are good to go. The initial power to do some electrolysis and start the engines can be obtained by a muscle powered dynamo. You can even use wind as a power source, using some windmills to run dynamos! Running water is also an option.
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**Turn a beach into a solar cell array.**
It's simple. Just let your nano-factory loose on a beach and turn the whole thing into an array of solar cells. This will provide you with the DC power you need for your computer. You can also create super capacitors for amble storage of energy for use after dark, or leave those out if you need to add a 'ticking clock' to your computational needs.
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One thought I had is that mechanical computers are possible with limited materials. The assembly and specifications are fairly detailed as they have lots of gears with very precise tolerances. That might be more feasible if power limits are an issue in the given setting. Mechanical computers are powered by mechanical force, although they are much slower and larger than electrical ones.
Another thought would be to use steam power to make a generator to power a battery array for traditional computers made with nano tech. Or, still working on the thought of pressurized steam, a fluid computer might also work, it's similar to a mechanical computer, but based on liquid rather than gears or electricity.
TLDR:
Mechanical and fluid computers require very few advanced materials, but do require precision in their assembly, so this may be an option to keep in mind.
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[The first computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease) was completely mechanical. The only part of it which needed electricity was the electric motor which drove the whole machine, which could be easily substituted by any other form of power (water wheel, windmill, manual labor, whatever you have available).
The machine consisted of lots of gears. The main challenge might be to manufacture these with enough precision using bronze-age technology. The protagonist might have to invent reusable metal casting for it. Alternatively you could substitute precision with size and just build big. In that case you might use wooden gears instead of bronze ones to reduce material cost.
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If he can make batteries from ultra acid fruit or sulphur, he can make lead acid batteries all day long. Then you just have to recharge the battery with fruit juice. scientifically fruit is not that strong, but he can make sulphuric acid if he lives near a volcano and have a giant vat of sulphuric acid going in and out of a battery, enough to last months.
Windmills and water reservoirs if he can use copper and mangets.
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Hello again :) My first questions had some wonderful answers, but brought me to the following problem:
Although (in my eyes) really dull, the Cpt. Geary series (the Lost Fleet) tends to depict the relativistic issues with space combat quite well (timescales, speed distortion etc.)
Is there anything I can do to combat these circumstances?
Which means I want a kind of atmospheric fighter-dogstyle-combat in space with engagement ranges of several miles (instead of light seconds).
I could just 'make it so'. But I'd like to have a possibility to explain, why my space-combat is not like you would expect.
How would I justify something like that?
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The simple answer is that you can't, but the more complex answer is that if you stretch a few things you might be able to get close.
First lets look at the main "problems". The things that stop space combat being like what you want. These are the main 3, although they are not the only ones but you can follow the same process to isolate the others too if they become a problem.
1. AI - spaceships would be controlled by computers with superhuman reflexes and g-force tolerance.
2. Velocity - spaceships have no real maximum speed, instead they have maximum acceleration and can achieve a maximum speed based on that.
3. Ranges - with no maximum velocity and no air resistance engagement ranges are huge
There are a lot of ways to solve this but the simplest are:
1. Development of electronic warfare has reached the point that enemy computers beyond a certain complexity can be shut down. It's just not possible to shield them enough to work. Organic brains are resistant and while people have experimented with organic computers to control spaceships they have not managed to get them working yet.
2. Either accept this as unavoidable, set things in a crowded environment (for example a planetary ring) where there is no space for maximum speed, or have some sort of new drive system. If you had a drive that didn't need reaction mass but which operated on the fabric of space, essentially giving you velocity relative to the nearest gravity well, then you could get spaceships that fly like planes (or even like cars but in 3 dimensions). This is similar to how ships in Eve and Elite: Dangerous work, having a top speed and turning like an airplane.
3. The crowded environment might explain engagement ranges, if people are hiding in the planets rings, etc. In addition the advanced electronic warfare might make long range engagements very hard. Basically if you are more than a few miles from the target then you just cannot get a reliable weapons lock.
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I'm a pilot, just arrived in a hostile system. They see me three light minutes away. Why can't they just slag me now? Because I know they're going to try, and while going in the general direction I want I'm accelerating randomly. This means they're going to have to fill the space I could be occupying three minutes from now (when their projectiles arrive) with shots, which is a lot of space if I have decent acceleration and use it randomly.
Note that I have to change the direction of acceleration on timescales shorter than the light travel time, or I'm a sitting duck. This means that as my opponents get closer, the volume of space they have to shoot shrinks (especially if I'm doing anything other than accelerating randomly in different directions every second), and I'm dead.
What if you have an extremely rapid way to move unpredictably? Maybe an FTL technique that never worked out for travel because it only works over 100m, but it's effective for jumping out of the way of projectiles. In that case you're not so much trying to shoot the opponent down directly as you are trying to *checkmate* them. You want to force them into a situation where there is nowhere to jump to that isn't going to be occupied by weapons fire. And then shoot them, of course.
You'll need something that can sense relativistic slugs incoming and activate this jump extremely rapidly - maybe ships with better computers can dodge faster incoming shots.
This also suggests a superweapon: a 'dark' projectile which is harder/impossible to detect.
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First things first. You aren't going to get anything that *looks* like WW1+2 dogfighting in space. Atmospheric craft push against the air to turn. That is how they can turn without losing speed. Spacecraft can't do that. If you are traveling 100 km/h in one direction, then you want to travel perpendicularly to your flight path you first have to decelerate until stopped, then accelerate in the direction you wanted to turn. If you don't stop before turning (you can stop your forward momentum while you are turning, if you want - that's no problem) then you won't be traveling 90deg along your original path, you will be flying 45 deg along it.
There's 2 ways around this.
1. Work with it. Battlestar Galactica did. You may not be able to turn, but you can rotate and fire behind you while still flying straight. I'm sure you can make interesting and compelling action scenes.
2. A lot of handwavium. You have a magic drive that makes atmospheric style flight possible outside of an atmosphere. Maybe Einstein was wrong, there is a rest frame, and you can push against it.
Now get over that little 'book-keeping' we get to the interesting bits. How to bring down the range of combat. First we need to look at why the ranges are so long to begin with.
1. Lasers can go really far without any air to absorb and dissipate them. Projectiles will go forever.
2. Space is big. If a ship is flying from one star system to another, even at best sublight speeds, it will take years. That is years for the defenders to ready and to take potshots at the invaders. If they are using some sort of jumpgate, it will only take days to get from the outer to the inner system. That's still a long time for defenders to shoot at you.
3. If you are traveling at best sublight speeds, an engagement in the range several kilometers will be over in femtoseconds. Two ships traveling towards each other at near c are closing at nearly 600,000 kilometers a *second.* Almost too fast for computers to handle, never mind people. Then after they've passed each other, they need to slow down and turn around, who knows how long that will take. And all one side has to do is not turn around and the other force won't be able to catch them.
You can't have near c travel, combat, and ranges of several kilometers. If you have a laser that shoots several kms, and you and your target are traveling at c, its is little better than not having weapons and just hoping for a collision. Space is that big, several kilometers is that small. If two satellites are in GEO and their orbits differ by a tenth of a degree, they are hundreds of km away from each other.
If you are going to have people flying from one side of a system to the next, and not traveling at near c, you are looking at 50 year time spans.
Your best bet is to find some way of keeping things slow (low orbit speeds) and small (not flying across the whole system to get from point A to B). You can, I'm sure, come up with a lot of ways to do this, but some sort of 'jump' drive is probably easiest. You are in orbit around a planet and you calculate a jump to another planet, and then instantly, or sometime later, you pop out at the calculated position traveling along your same path. Star Wars has this type of drive. Star Trek had something similar that would work. You just 'go to warp'. You aren't a target for days or years while flying where you are going. From the perspective of someone at your final destination, you just appear.
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Lets propose a drive system that admittedly has no basis in reality:
It reacts against the basic fabric of the universe. (And I don't believe this goes against Einstein--relativity could be a simplification based on an inadequate observation point.) It creates only a pseudo-velocity--you move but you do not have the kinetic energy associated with that velocity and you will return to your original velocity the instant the drive is shut off. (The Lensman, Starfire and Fifth Imperium universes use a drive of this nature and I'm sure there are more that don't come to mind right now.)
Now lets add another kink to the situation: The maximum attainable velocity is a function of your drive power and the local gravity gradient. Out between the stars you zip along at FTL velocities and combat is effectively impossible due to the difficulty in locating what you want to shoot at. Only when you get deep enough into a gravity well can you bring the enemy to bear. Missiles aren't used because in any reasonable engagement you can't hope to get them through the enemy's point defense. Long range beams aren't an option because the target can jink out of the way.
Thus you end up with all combat being short range beam weapons used in the proximity of a planet.
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Fight in a gas cloud.
While cosmic gas clouds are still incredibly thin, at relativistic speeds they will anyway cause considerable friction to your space fighter, so I'd expect more or less the same sorts of maneuvers as in air to be possible. It also means that going faster will cost more energy, and that with your drive off, you'll slow down.
It will *not* bring the scales down, however, but then larger distances are compensated by larger speeds. There's still the problem of space ships being very small compared to the ranges, but this can be ovwercome by just having a tactical display in your ships that shows the ships much enlarged just to help the intuition of the fighter (because, after all, in the actual space you'll not really see the ship with bare eyes), and weapons that actively steer towards the ships close to their way, so that a shot in the approximate direction (just accurate enough to hit the displayed image if it were not controlled). This would also solve the problem that you don't know exactly where the ship will be when the weapon arrives.
Note that on those distances, lasers would not work because you couldn't sufficiently focus them, and even if you could, aiming them at a far target would be too difficult, especially given that in the time it takes the laser to get there, the ship may already have unpredictably moved to a slightly different place. Also, at large enough distances, also the laser will be weakened by the gas cloud, so its effective range would be reduced. So you'd actually fight with some sort of relativistic missiles. Lasers might be useful for fighting against incoming missiles, however, provided you can detect them sufficiently in advance (which, however, is unlikely unless you're currently retreating in relativistic speed, so the relative speed is low).
So in the end, you'd have a fight that *effectively* looks similar to a fight in an atmosphere, although part of that similarity is through technical means (enlarged displays, self-steering missiles instead of bullets).
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Your FTL warp field could be an actual planetary size bubble created by a leading ship and the field could be filled with an aetheric substance that slows down craft inside of it -- and serves as the "atmosphere" by which sublight dogfitting becomes possible.
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I have two solar systems in my world that I'm not sure would be stable. I'm not concerned about whether they could evolve naturally (they didn't), just whether they would be stable if set running.
The first would be if there were two earth-like planets in the same orbit at each other's L4 and L5 Lagrange points. I know that most likely there was a planet in one of Earth's Lagrange points, Theia, that was pushed out of orbit by the gravity of the other planets and became the moon, but if there were no gravitational influence from other planets, would it be stable?
The second would be a binary star system with a planet orbiting the barycenter, but between the two stars. The stars are reasonably far apart, and the planet has a very small orbit in the center. If it only works with the planet not moving exactly in the center, that's fine too.
I've tried modeling these situations in Universe Sandbox with inconclusive results. Would these be stable in the long term?
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The first scenario is not stable. Lagrange points are only stable if you neglect the gravity the satellite exerts on the other two bodies, which requires that it be much less massive than them. For instance, a Trojan asteroid's gravitational pull on Jupiter or the Sun is practically nothing. If the satellite is similar in size to the planet, it will perturb that planet's orbit around the sun until you end up with double planets, similar to Pluto and Charon.
The second scenario is stable *if and only if* the planet and the two stars are the only bodies in the system, and if the planet is positioned with great care precisely between them. The slightest perturbation towards either star will be exaggerated over time by the stars' gravity - the further from dead center it is, the stronger the pull of the closer star, in a positive feedback loop that will eventually end in it being flung past that star and most likely ejected from the system altogether. Obviously this won't last any time at all (astronomically speaking) in nature, but if you want a sufficiently advanced alien art exhibit, it might be feasible, for awhile.
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EDIT: Thanks to all the commenters for making me question statements I've made below. Both of shown graphs must be taken with a grain of salt - they do not account for Coriolis forces, and thus cannot describe complete picture.
Unfortunately, **all three-body gravitational systems are unstable**.
Well, to be completely honest - there exist configurations, that are stable. But a tiny deviation from one (which ***will*** occur in real world) brings system back to chaos.
If you are to dig more into that, look for "three body problem".
Now, onto exact systems you proposed:
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> two earth-like planets in the same orbit at each other's L4 and L5
> Lagrange points.
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At math perspective, stability is presented by local minimum of potential energy. So, to check if proposed system will be stable, we must check if planets are going to be in a local minimum of potential energy. This can be done with calculus, but it looks quite complicated, so here a nice graph it took from "Lagrange point" Wikipedia page:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ua4tq.png)
Here you can clearly see, that L4 and L5 points are at **local maximum**, not **local minimum** energetically. This implies, that an object is able to stay here, but space is going to feel "slippery" for it - any deviation from L4/L5 point will keep growing, if not negated by some sort of engine.
EDIT: This is exactly where Coriolis force comes into play, as it actually can negate some momentum deviation and thus make position stable. The key word here is "some momentum" - a planet is going to have lot more than that.
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> binary star system with a planet orbiting the barycenter, but between
> the two stars.
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Same approach here, we need a graph of a potential energy. Here's what I found:
[source](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-contours-of-constant-effective-potential-U-x-y-x-0-y-0-on-the-plane-x_fig1_334624438)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ntLXl.png)
Despite it being an illustration for black holes, a main trend stays the same: there is no local minima, or "gravitational well" to orbit on between the stars. But if you look to the boundaries of a chart, you'll see a couple of co-centered rings - this is where a "gravitational well" exists, and this is where planets can have reasonably stable orbits.
EDIT: Same here. Can't really predict the way Coriolis will react here.
To sum up: unfortunately, these charming landscapes of several stars and planets in the sky, often imply that the system is totally unstable, and will soon face several catastrophic cosmic events.
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You cannot have two equal-mass planets at each other's L4/L5 points. That configuration [is only stable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point#Stability_2) if the mass ratio between the larger and the smaller body is at least 25:1, and 1:1 is clearly less than that.
However, what you *could* have is two [co-orbital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-orbital_configuration) planets of similar mass in stable [horseshoe orbits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_orbit) with respect to each other, similar to the orbits of Saturn's moons [Janus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_(moon)) and [Epimetheus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimetheus_(moon)).
I don't know what, if any, theoretical stability limits there are for horseshoe orbits, but the fact that we have an example of two similar-mass bodies in such a mutual orbit in our own solar system suggests that they cannot be *too* unstable.
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**Ps.** The difference between a horseshoe orbit and a Lagrange point orbit is that the distance between the planets (or moons, as in the case of Janus and Epimetheus) in a horseshoe orbit doesn't remain constant.
Rather, one of the planets will orbit the sun slightly faster and slowly catch up to the other, at which point they will "switch orbits" so that the slower planet becomes the faster one and starts pulling away from the other one. Eventually the now faster planet will complete (almost) a full extra lap around the sun and again catch up to the other one, at which point they switch orbits again and the cycle repeats.
(This is super weird unless you have a good intuitive grasp of orbital mechanics, and specifically the counterintuitive fact that a force pulling an orbiting body forward along its orbit will lift it to a higher orbit and thus cause it to orbit *slower*, not faster.)
Viewed from the surface of one of the planets, the other one would appear as a "morning / evening star" depending on the mutual position of the planets in their orbits, a bit like Venus appear from Earth. However, whereas Venus moves from ahead of the Earth (i.e. visible at dawn, since Earth rotates prograde) to behind the Earth (i.e. visible at dusk) and back every 1.6 years, the corresponding period for a horseshoe orbit would be measured in decades, centuries or even millennia depending on the difference in the orbital periods. (For comparison, a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation based on [this illustration of Janus and Epimetheus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimetheus_(moon)#/media/File:Epimetheus-Janus_Orbit.png) indicates that they take over 4000 orbits around Saturn to complete a full horseshoe cycle.)
The two planets would be closest to each other (and thus appear brightest from each other's surface) at the midpoint of the orbital switch. How close they'd get to each other, how long the closest approach would last and how frequently they'd occur all depend on the difference in the orbital radii. Qualitatively, the larger the difference, the faster the horseshoe cycle would be, the closer the planets would get to each other during closest approach, and the quicker that approach would be. But too large a difference will make the system unstable and likely lead to a quick collision or ejection of one of the planets. (AIUI, too small a difference is only unstable in the sense that random perturbations will tend to increase it.) You'd probably have to run some orbital simulations if you'd like some actual numbers.
Depending on the length of the cycle and the variation in orbital radii (and thus period), the change in year length between the "slow" and the "fast" portion of the cycle would likely be measurable by even prehistoric astronomers, at least if they had a change to observe an orbit swap (which should also be a conspicious celestial event in its own right, at least to someone carefully observing the sky and comparing it to old records) or several. Of course, the change in the position of the "morning / evening star" in the sky relative to the sun would also be observable, although a correct interpretation of it might be tricky without a good understanding of the solar system and its heliocentric nature.
Actually explaining the physics behind the orbit swap, of course, also requires at least a Newtonian understanding of gravity and some insight and calculation on top of that. (I suspect Isaac Newton could probably have figured it out, at least qualitatively, had he lived on a planet where the question was relevant. At least he had most of the mathematical tools available.)
The change in that planets' orbital radii throughout the horseshoe cycle would also likely drive a climate cycle of some kind, perhaps similar to the Earth's [Milankovitch cycles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles), and associating these cycles with the appearance and disappearance of the morning / evening star would be a fairly obvious conclusion. Even if the relative difference in orbital radii between the "slow" (further from the sun) and "fast" (closer to the sun) parts of the cycle was small (say, around 0.01% to 0.1%, as they are for Janus and Epimetheus), even a tiny change in insolation over a sufficiently long time is likely to have noticeable climate effects. And the smaller the difference was, the longer the cycle would take.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 12 months ago.
This post was edited and submitted for review 12 months ago and failed to reopen the post:
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[Improve this question](/posts/240822/edit)
In a dystopian world where all citizens are tracked through a small device under their skin, how might one go about "outsmarting" the technology to move about unimpeded? My only thought is that some might physically cut it out and carry it around, leaving it behind when desiring to move about.
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You mentioned (in a comment) that the device itself "may be rather crude", so I'm going to suggest the device is a fairly straightforward transmitter that simply says something like "ID 2568729" and local receivers detect this and know roughly where you are (likely within a relatively narrow area, say, 50 meters -- weak transmitter but a pretty fine net of receivers).
Given that constraint, it should be fairly simple: when the protagonist needs a night out on the town, he covers his transmitter. Search for "faraday fabric". I have actually tried one of these and it does work, at least for common frequencies that a transmitter like this would likely use. The transmitter is in his arm, he wears a faraday fabric wrap there and the signal can't be detected. As he does this, he activates his device, which is simply a recording of his own transmitter, set on a loop. Possibly he makes this switch while in the shower. Water tends to interfere with signals (also how your microwave oven works -- the interference manifests as heat within water) and I think it's at least plausible that a weak transmitter would be even weaker in a shower (or bath), so any "blip" of his making the switch should be easy to write off, given a primitive system to begin with.
The important thing is that he appears to be at home while any nefarious deeds go down, and his wrap-and-repeater plan should be good enough.
As for the flesh pocket, "go for it". I have no idea how realistic it is but it seems plausible and it's not uncommon in sleuth stories. [GURPS](https://gurps4e.fandom.com/wiki/Flesh_Pocket) even has a rule for it. I imagine a real one would be like any piercing: use it or lose it, because the body keeps trying to close it up, but it is otherwise a healed up pocket. But the faraday fabric makes it fairly unnecessary. Getting caught with the fabric is probably a lot like being caught with your transmitter in a flesh pocket, so the solution is probably a personal preference for you.
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* Bribe a clerk in the surveillance office. Of course the clerk might not stay bought.
* Carry some sort of jammer in the pocket. Either the jammer sends white noise on the relevant frequencies, or it sends a false signal with higher power than the genuine signal. Being pocket-sized and not implanted, the jammer will have a bigger antenna and battery than the tracking beacon, which should help. This would be a black market item, and last year's gizmo might no longer work against this year's receivers.
* Cause a failure of selected tracking receivers, through 'ordinary' valdalism or 'routine' wear and tear. Kind of difficult when everybody is tracked.
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I don't want to dig out the miniature device embedded in my arm - that sounds painful, risky and may leave a scar.
Instead, I am going to forge 200 more of them - all transmitting my id, and hide them in the belongings of other people.
The authorities won't know which one is me.
Wait, but they will know *I* am up to no good, even if they don't know where I was.
So, I am going to make 40,000 more, sharing the ids of 200 random people. I may need a bit of a conspiracy to spread these around, but with a few volunteers to help (perhaps in return for having their id used in the mix), the authorities won't know which of us were up to what shenanigans, and which were innocent bystanders.
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Technology, as everyone knows, is *awful*.
The range of a tracking *implant* is limited. It doesn't have any space for a decent power supply or antenna, and given its size and location it can't be expected to transmit far and so will be challenging to read from a distance. They won't be speaking to distant infrastructure like mobile phone masts or satellites, and they won't be doing complex things like recording your movements for later upload. You need something mobile-phone sized to do that kind of tracking, and whilst you *can* put mobile-phone-sized objects in various parts of people it gets a bit uncomfortable a bit fast, and there are issues of charging and signal attenuation and so on. Very short range implantable [RFID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rfid_tag) [microchips](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_implant_(human)) are probably the things you'll be working with... not really *tracking implants* but merely ID chips that computer networks will use to do tracking... an important distinction.
This means in order to track people effectively, you need a huge number of scanning devices. In practise you might only fit them at "choke points"... entrances to shops or places of work or vehicles and public transport and so on. In a busy city, those scanners require an even shorter range, because deciphering multiple overlapping return pings becomes increasing impractical. In less urban terrain sensors might be quite widely separated, so going "off grid" is one option, though it comes at the expense of being limited in your ability to do stuff
You can therefore avoid being tracked in public if you a) avoid places with scanners, so your implant doesn't get triggered, or b) you remove or shield the tracking implant and make sure to only visit crowded places which don't have turnstiles (big shops, fine, public transport, probably not fine) giving you plausible deniability that your implant didn't ping.
There's simply too much data out there to be able to audit every person and every ID ping, and the collection processes will be unreliable. All you have to do, then, is avoid your trail of ID pings looking "suspicious". Your friend (or an unsuspecting plant) can carry around a pocketful of ID tags, and so long as the tags are never associated with any crimes the chances of anyone auditing security camera footage and discovering that the clump of really intimate people who hang around together all the time is slim. Audits are expensive and time consuming, and there are literally billions of boring people out there doing boring things boringly. No-one can check up on all of them.
Just make sure that your ID is associated with regular comings and goings at your house and at the shops and you should be beneath suspicion. You don't have to be at home or shopping, but instead doing whatever nefarious thing you don't want the authorities to know about. Work is trickier, as people might notice if you're not doing your job, so you probably need to be there in person, but maybe you should get a better job?
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If I were an evil dystopian enforcer, looking for unusual scars or healing marks around the site of the implant would be high up on my list of of things to do with dissidents.
Tampering with implants is likely to be a serious crime. If I'm suspicious of you (and of course I would be), and I'm suitably immoral (probably a requirement of my job), I can take a pocket knife to your implant location. Not to dig it all the way out, but just to make a bit of a mess. Boom, next time you get stopped and checked the next enforcer will see the scars and you can be arrested and jailed. Not a very clever means of framing people, but quite expedient.
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There are already good answers, so I will try to approach your question in different (and likely, less helpful) manner.
Let's take a closer look at this situation.
"In a dystopian world where all **citizens** are tracked through a small device in their arm"
This is the key word. We need to figure out how to stop being a citizen. I see two ways.
1.Renounce your citizenship. You stop being a citizen, thus you are not required to carry said tracking implant anymore.
2.Fake your own death. Dead people aren't citizens, thus the System stops wondering "where is citizen X?", as from its point of view said citizen just stopped existing, rendering tracking meaningless. You're not a part of the System anymore.
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If you want to counter a device, get into the mind of the device builder...
Suppose you want to track where people are. You could have each device respond to a central service. This might mean we have dead areas. Or the devices might report which other devices they are close to, like Bluetooth devices. This may mean you can cross-check the location from other devices. This might be helpful if you want to track a lot of people crowded on a train going through a tunnel, where reception is poor. If no-one gets off the train, the devices have little to report, and the bandwidth can be used effectively.
The devices might also detect what you are doing, from your heartbeat, from your acceleration, from any geolocation signals, and by communicating with nearby devices, and from the occasional direct checks from authority. The sudden disappearance of a device should trigger alarms from neighbours.
So, how would you counter this? You might somehow screen your device from any incoming signals, and use some broadband 2-way transmission, so you relay all the signals from your device at point A to point B, and return all the signals from point B to point A. This way your device and all the devices at point B would be convinced you had actually been there. You would have to be fairly close to pull this off but it might work.
A more risky approach might be to use AI to simulate signals from point B to your device at point A, and a second device to simulate signals at point B as though they were from your device. You would be found out if anyone checked your device history against the people you were supposed to have passed. But, if you are one ordinary person in a crowd, why would they?
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**Tracker will be in service animal.**
It could have been a service dog but I actually have a service wombat. I put my tracker in the wombat. It was ok with that. The tracker usually corresponds with my general location because Woms goes almost everywhere with me, providing service as it does.
There is a bar ("The Less Dystopian") I sometimes go to by myself because Woms harbors a grudge against one of the waitresses there. When I am at the bar it looks to those tracking me like I am still home, and actually home in bed because if I am not there to shake the can full of pebbles the bed is where Woms goes.
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Well, let's say this is a weird planet (not ours of course!) where devices can find where they are by receiving radio signals off of a network of satellites with atomic clocks in geo-synchronous orbit. How such a network might work is explained in more detail [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Principles). We'll call this the "Planetary Positioning System" (PPS).
However, on this weird planet they also have aircraft travel. That can be somewhat dangerous, so training the pilots is important. To help create these trainers, it's nice to use the same equipment that's on the real aircraft as much as possible, including their PPS systems. This is just one example, as anyone testing any device at all that contains a PPS system may have this issue.
So anyway what people making these trainers do is buy devices that can be programmed to send the same signals as the PPS satellites in a way that the tracker they are placed near will calculate to be at a location of your choice. Created correctly, they will produce the strongest signal to the nearby device, but not strong enough to mess with any other further away device.
So the trick here in this weird world would be getting one of these devices redirected from engineering tasks to personal use.
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In my world, during their equivalent to the age of absolutism, dragon riding becomes very common. They can be too expensive to personally own, so they are mostly used in general warfare and transporting goods and merchants. However, the technology of my world eventually reaches to the point where there flying vehicles that are not dragons. For airships, they stay because they can be used for rest-stops, hold powerful artillery, and so on. They soon get to the point where airplanes, but the practice of riding dragons and farming them is still alive and well. In the end, if there is dragon-riding, why manufacture airplanes when you already have dragons? Sure, it would be cool, but it could eventually become useless and unnecessary.
Worldbuilding notes:
* These dragons' average size is about 3 times the average size of a skyrim dragon.
* The two common breeds for riding are the classical 6-limb creature and wyverns
* The storage capacity on the back is big enough to carry the amount of cargo a van could.
* The airplanes are similar to the ones built between 1901 to WW1.
* While there are spikes on the back, they can be sawed off without hurting a dragon, and a platform or saddle(s) could be placed on top.
* Their bones are hollow, and they can handle extra weight.
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## Machines are more convenient and malleable
In the real world we still have horses, so why do we have ~276 million cars on the road (in the U.S.)?
Working with a horse requires a bunch of skills that must be taught, developed, and then applied regularly. Driving a car also requires skills, but there are fewer of them, and most of us choose to delegate the performance of those tasks to specialists.
Also, crucially, the horse is a living creature that has finite capacities and also moods, and these are realities that you have practically zero power over. Cars also have finite capacities, but the ones we care about are orders of magnitude greater than those of horses, and cars have no real moods or personalities that must be accommodated.
All of this transplants neatly onto your situation with dragons and airplanes.
Riding a dragon requires learning how to interact with that kind of animal, which is a project that requires time and effort and (obviously) *access to a dragon*. You can't practice on a wooden dummy.
Dragons are living creatures with needs and moods, and being large and physically powerful, it is no easy thing for a human to simply disregard them. If your dragon doesn't feel like flying you to the convenience store in the middle of the night to get funyuns, *you aren't going to have funyuns.* Airplanes are more pliable: as long as you put it away properly the last time you used it, it goes when you want to go. And the airplane has nerves of steel: you can perform terrifying, dangerous maneuvers with it, or even shoot guns right near its steering column, and it will not freak out. Not so with horses or dragons, who have an instinct for self-preservation.
Learning to fly an airplane is harder than learning to drive a car (and probably harder than learning to ride a horse). But a lot of it can be taught in the absence of an actual plane (and, indeed, pilots-in-training do a lot of boring book work before they start training in the real machines). And a training airplane doesn't get moody if 12 students in a row take it out for lessons with their instructors, whereas a single dragon probably will. So, acquiring airplane skills will be easier than acquiring dragon skills, resulting in more people being able to personally fly an airplane than can fly a dragon.
Airplanes can also be designed for a range of special tasks: passenger planes, cargo planes, reconnaissance planes, etc., and the differences in their designs have an enormous impact on their fitness for those roles. This is much harder with animals.
Yes, animals can be selectively bred for different tasks, but it can take a long time and there are limits and drawbacks -- just look at dogs: yes, we have very many specialized breeds, but many of them are prone to specific kinds of serious health problems because the breeding process necessarily prioritized target characteristics over holistic health.
Finally: airplanes in storage create less trouble than dragons in storage. You can mothball your plane for a decade and completely ignore it; when you unpack it, you'll need to replace some parts and do some maintenance, but it will fly again. A dragon will cause real trouble if you ignore it for longer than it normally goes between meals.
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Without very specific information about your dragons and the kind of planes you're thinking of, it's pretty hard to give you specifics.
I'll assume you're talking about the stereotypical dragon from books and games, and post-WW2 airplanes. If that's the case, here's a few possible reasons:
* **Speed**: planes are incredibly fast, and even older models are probably faster than a dragon's flight speed. That's good for everything, from transporting goods and people, to warfare.
* **Quick assembly**: planes can be mass assembled within a few months or years. Dragons usually have very long lives, which often means it takes decades before they grow up.
* **Transporting people**: airships do a good job with that, but it's safe to assume planes are faster. The military might use them to transport Quick Response Forces, or large amounts of troops from one continent to another, or paratroopers... lots of possibilities!
* **Reach higher altitudes**: dragons need to breath, airplanes don't. This means you can reach much higher altitudes with it, which means fewer things can hit you and you can drop bombs from way up high.
* **Scouting / spying**: planes can carry lots of instruments, from simple cameras to sophisticated spying technology. Add the fact that they are fast, can be built for stealth, and can reach very high altitudes, and you got the perfect spying tool.
* **Ease of use?**: you can learn to fly a plane pretty quickly. Is learning to ride a dragon easier or harder?
These are just a few ideas.
It's kinds of like asking why develop the car if we had the carriage already...
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# Price:
A dragon eats, is trained, must be supervised, can cause random problems if not under control, can get sick, and must be supported in old age (unless you send old dragons to the glue factory). An airplane might have some similar needs, but it can be custom built for single jobs. If you need something better, scrap it and build a better model.
# Fuel:
If you have lots of petroleum, plane food is cheap and doesn’t compete with humans for food. Dragon food can't store at room temperature for long periods without using its own food.
# Replaceable:
If all your dragons are killed, you have no dragons. If all your planes are shot down or bombed, you build more.
# Agreeable:
An airplane never refuses to work because it’s mad, or doesn’t have a full tank. An airplane doesn’t disagree with you about what to do. It flies to the scrapyard without complaint.
# Upgradable:
It takes generations of careful planning to make small changes to your dragon population. Then, it is tricky to go back if you don't need the new model. Planes keep getting better with each generation, and you can always build an old model if you decide you liked it best.
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**Why are Automobiles Common When There is Horse-Riding?**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/X03Qk.jpg)
Dragons are to airplanes as horses are to motorcars.
The Dragon must be trained and bred. This takes ten years for the dragon to grow to full. The airplane can be manufactured. The process can be sped up if you have extra materials or workers. The dragon takes another five years to train. You can train a human pilot in one year because people are smrter than dragons.
The plane is faster and has more seats than the dragon. The dragon requires stabling. The airplane requires only the space to store it. The dragon must be fed -- even when not using it! The airplane needs only fuel when you make it go. Otherwise it sits in the hangar.
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## Good dragons ? then it will take more time for aircraft to become common..
I can't put a frame challenge, *eventually* they will prefer aircraft..
Potential advantages of aircraft are:
* scalability (passenger count)
* they don't need to be fed
* they don't need to be tamed
* you don't have to wait for it to grow up
* aircraft may be stalled, dragon should be in captivity
BUT.. you set a time..
I wonder if aircraft go main stream soon, when
Q: *"The storage capacity (of a dragon) on the back is big enough to carry the amount of cargo a van could."*
Q: *"The airplanes are similar to the ones built between 1901 to WW1."*
**Too early**
The aircraft of 1914-1918 were made of wood, Blériot was one of the best. The record flight of a Blériot involved crossing the Channel from France to Britain. You had near zero cargo capacity and very slow speed.
These dragons you describe are great with cargo, I must say.. Humans on Earth, without dragons at their disposal, took another 20 years of development, to create aircraft that could transport a van's cargo. Your people *don't need* that capability. As a result, aircraft development on your world will be slowed down and it will take more than 20 years before people prefer aircraft over dragons, or start building passenger planes allowing for "common" citizen to travel by plane. It could take them a century, instead of 20 years !
**Safety**
Another reason not step into a WW-1 aircraft for the average "common" civilian would be safety: dragons are able to land on their own, aircraft are not. These early aircraft were quite dangerous.
**Less fascination (and drive) for flying with aircraft**
Something that would slow down development is that these dragon-people are familiar with flying from A to B. Until 1903, humans flew with balloons, with no specific target. These aircraft were *fascinating* .. for the dragon-people, the aircraft is only a substitute for a thing they already have. It's better than a dragon, potentially.. but.. how long will it take, before they trust it ?
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## Reproducibility
The lovely gold and silver dragons that are all the rage never breed true, and their offspring are often feeble. If you make an airplane to spec, you have only to worry about bad parts, and even those are replacable.
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Do you want to delay it? Because it's doable.
While everyone here is against dragon, and for many valid reasons, I think there is much much more to this than merely: airplane best
Did cars make all other modes of transportation useless? Well. Depends.
To this very day horses and donkey are used in the mountains, forests, swamps, agriculture settings...etc.
It does not matter that an air conditioned truck with the newest gadgets exist, you are not gonna just destroy your crops riding it, or magically get it to levitate to the top of the mountain.
Also people seem to judge based on 2022 first world standards. In tech, scale, logistics, economy...etc.
I will offer some points that you might find interesting and want to adopt.
Also the biggest thing of all is that history is changing. In few decades we went from no cars to some cars to a lot of cars, you can set your story at any point.
So. Lets break this down to, mostly, self contained parts.
## Airspace.
Dragons are in control of the airspace. Early adopters can't get a license to even test their flying machines. The guild of dragon navigators, or a reference to another media besides Dune, is the one with the exclusive rights to "fly" anything.
There is some, this is mostly context of course, historical bases for this. Like certain people or communities blocking rail roads from being made in their place. In the capital of my country there is an upper class city that to this day blocks the metro line from expanding because, literally their reasoning, it will bring undesirables to that city.
## Global system
Remember that in order for our modern day society to function
we use, and abuse of course, resource from around the world in an incredibly complex global system. We all saw what a pandemic or a local war or even a stock market crash can do. And it seems to me you are building that. I mean you did not specify that they already have our system. So. I'm assuming you are just starting to build our modern society around 1920s
**fuel**
Is fuel that plentiful? Airplanes are not just dragons you can feed whatever. They need "aviation kerosene" according to a quick search. Not difficult to imagine a problem there
**Technology**
In order for our marvelous technological flying machines to exist in their current state, we had to invent a lot of frigging technologies.
Sure. Even in fallout they had planes. But what if your world is not not up to that level, it won't be easy.
**Materials**
Again. If access to high quality metals and other materials is not available or difficult then airplanes become more and more difficult to get to a stage that competes with the already available state supported method.
## Environmental reasons.
Constant solar flares? electric storms? Incredibly high mountains? Winds of crazy speeds? the air is filled with flocks of birds that a dragon is naturally capable of avoiding while an airplane can't? Heck. Acid rains that birds evolved to resist but metals will suffer?...etc.
## Magic
Just high magic activity that messes up with airplanes. Not really difficult.
All in all I know that we can argue about the specifics of each point. The purpose of my comment is mostly to offer some points that you might want to adapt to explain some parts of your world. Especially since this is a place of magic.
Also remember that you don't have to make it impossible for airplanes to fly.
just highly impractical for that point in your world.
Sure a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is better than a dragon. But I think you can see how it being superior to a dragon is not applicable to a world with 1920s tech and so on.
Lastly the whole story can be about the changing of times. The collapse of the old systems and all that. Would be as interesting as anything. All about execution.
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There is a planet orbiting a binary system inside the Goldilocks zone. The problem is that the binary system is of a violent kind. It either regularly explodes and sterilizes a portion of the planet's surface ([recurrent nova](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova#Recurrent_novae)) or constantly bombards the planet with X-rays ([X-ray binary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_binary)).
Can carbon-based life survive in these conditions?
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# It needs to be calmer
You said yourself that the novas regularly sterilize part of the planet (I assume the suns-facing side). Unless this event occurs very infrequently (like, once per tens of millions of years), you will not have any life on the planet.
For life to exist, it needs an environment it can survive in long enough to reproduce and evolve. If single-celled organisms happen to appear, they will have to be lucky enough to not get blasted for the millions of years it takes them to spread around the planet, or else one nova can be a 100% extinction event.
Even if they make it past that point, regularly Thanos-ing the planet will make it very, *very* difficult for any form of intelligent life to develop, civilize, and advance. This further highlights the requirement for such an event to be extremely rare. Life on Earth, let alone Humanity, would never be able to get to this point if half of the Earth got set back to 4 billion B.C.E every thousand years. And this isn't even acknowledging the constant X-Ray bath, which would be constantly turning genetic code to Swiss cheese and giving everything cancer.
**EDIT**: As @jdunlop pointed out, recurrent novas are not an instant burst that would sterilize half the planet, but are in fact a sustained brightness increase of, according to your Wikipedia article, 8.6 magnitudes (400,000,000x), for days or weeks. So, *all* life, not half of all life, would be sterilized. This means your proposed planet is not *almost* uninhabitable, it is entirely uninhabitable. Every time this happens the planet's surface would melt and maybe vaporize.
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Maybe.
If life evolved under those recurring conditions, it is possible that it can adapt to them, in the same way some life forms have adapted to thrive when exposed to oxygen, which is otherwise toxic for others.
Even on our planet we keep finding life forms where we would not expect them to be, so we cannot exclude that what we deem unfit for life actually is totally fit for a life adapted to it.
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**Hydrothermal Vents**
Complex life exists in the deep sea. Half a dozen miles of salt water should provide insulation from the radiation storms. [To quote my earlier answer:](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/227951/14322)
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There are already ecosystems on Earth that are separated from the sun. For example tube worms feed off the energy released by hydrothermal vents.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YunjW.jpg)
Of course a tube worm cannot snatch a human out of its shoes. But it's not just tubeworms down here. Look closer -- there is a ghost crab and some small orange Pokemon hiding in there.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/38E1N.png)
Your Night Land Monsters have as the bottom of their food chain something akin to smokers. I leave it to your imagination how the smokers got so close to the surface that the denizens ever encounter humans.
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**Deep life**
I am thinking of earth before the ozone layer formed. It was a rough place topside. Down by the black smokers in the deep ocean it was comparatively placid. Less hard radiation, water to moderate the temperature, a steady supply of tasty sulfur and iron carried up from the energetic depths by the water cycle. It was not until things really got started in the ocean and ozone could block the UV that Earth life could get going on dry land.
Minerals are good protection against radiation. In your world the crust plays the role that the oceans did on earth. Deep in your inhospitable world, life is sheltered from the hard rays. Life forms are treated to tasty energy-rich molecules generated on the surface by the radiation and transported to the depths by the water cycle.
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Life can survive using a couple of methods of coping with increased radiation. First off, radioresistance varies across organisms and can be quite high. Look at some of the pictures of how the wildlife around Chernobyl has rebounded despite the radiation. Since radiation causes cellular damage, repairing the damage quickly is one such method of how an organism can adapt to handle higher radiation amounts. Another method would be the evolution of shielding. Lifeforms inside thick exoskeletons are potentially less likely to be effected by external radiation. Molting after being hit by radiation could allow organisms to avoid most of the negative effects. A combination of these two factors could easily give you organisms capable of thriving in such an environment.
One issue such a planet would face is the rate of exposure. Too long between exposures can be just as bad as too short. But a short time between radiation pulses is only an issue for lifeforms which have not adapted over time to resist it. In order to adapt to radiation, organisms must be exposed to it often enough to kill off the less resistant offspring and allow the more resistant offspring to procreate, but if the periods between exposure events are too long, less resistant organisms will thrive and weaken the genetics of a species. If such exposure is predictably cyclical, then organisms could hibernate underground during the radiation storms.
If we have the initial organisms on your planet evolve in the deep oceans, then over time those which adapt a slightly higher radioresistance will move into shallower water. Higher radiation means more mutations, until organisms develop genetics, or biological defenses, capable of resisting harmful mutations. The process continues, with organisms adapting to enable their expansion into previously inaccessible niches. Perhaps one of these organisms evolves a thick shell to protect itself and is the mother to a new evolutionary line which branches into thousands of new species. Maybe plants evolve extra bark or a thick canopy which is rapidly replaced after a large radiation dose. Look at how plants have evolved to deal with wildfires as an example.
As long as the ancestor organisms evolve a resistance to high radiation, that trait can be passed on to their offspring. Wait a few billion years and you will have a world full of organisms perfectly adapted for their radiation soaked environment. An environment deadly to a human being could just be another day in the life for your planet’s natives.
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### Mutant Tardigrades
Extremophile life is real. If life evolved in that planet, it most probably is extremophile organisms, who are able to enter a cyst state to survive the extreme heat and whose bodies aren't suceptible to x-ray radiation.
Earth's Tardigrades already to this:
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> **Tardigrades Can Survive X-Ray Bombardment by Deploying a Protein Shield** [(ref)](https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-just-figured-out-how-tardigrades-survive-x-ray-bombardment)
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> A study in 2016 discovered that a protein unique to tardigrades called Dsup (damage suppressor) could suppress X-ray-induced DNA damage in human cells by approximately 40 percent.
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As for the sterelizing heat, picture ants walking inside a working microwave oven without getting cooked. They are too small to properly capture and keep the heat.
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So, you have the surface constantly bathed in x-rays, and the surface is regularly obliterated by its star.
First off, the planet is constantly bombarded by x-ray radiation. I think this is the lesser problem, as with the right adaptions, life could thrive in the high radiation environment, although the life would probably have to originate underground and evolve the x-ray resistance later. How about these organisms have exoskeletons to shield themselves from radiation, or how about there is lots of lead on the planet, which the animals could use to cover themselves, a biological lead apron. The plants could even use the x-ray radiation to their advantage, maybe they can harness the x-rays to use along side light energy. There are many possibilities.
Now, the bigger problem(in my eyes) is that the planets surface is wiped clean every couple years. Now assuming the whole surface is wiped out, and not just one hemisphere, and lets assume the pessimistic, that it happens every 2 years(the most frequent ones happen every 1 year). How about some sort of **hibernation**. Some animals on earth hibernate during the winter months and emerge in the summer. Animals on this planet could go deep down, hibernate, and reemerge when the nova is done. The plants meanwhile could maybe have very deep roots and embed seed pods underground, which could sprout back up after the nova along with the animals. Or maybe they have some completely different way of surviving through the apocalypses that happens every couple of years. Again, many possibilities.
All in all, I think carbon-based life seems probable on this planet, although it would need the right adaptations.
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**Yes, up to a point.**
Water is good protection. It has high heat capacity and blocks much hard radiation. Because it has a maximum density at 4C and because ice floats on water, it takes a very long time for surface heat to reach the depths. Many miles of deep if you need it.
Life evolved in the oceans. The Chixulub impact didn't have nearly such catastrophic impact on marine life as it did on terrestrial life.
So, because of more frequent catastrophic upheavals, life on this world never loses its ability to survive deep in the oceans. When it gets too cold, or too hot, or too "hot" with radiation, everything dives into the ocean and swims down out of harm's way while the terrestrial environment gets a big reset. Depending on timescales, life may need to go into deep hibernation down there. Life will have evolved senses to sense the approach of the hot or cold, and the easing of such that will allow emergence from hibernation.
The situation of the "spiders" in Vernor Vinge's *A Deepness in the Sky* is almost exactly like this. Their star regularly flares and gives the terrestrial environment a brief hurricane of steam, then slowly cools down, and down, and down, until they have to hibernate deep underground for ~200 years until the next flare. (Reasons = Spoilers). Oh, and they've acquired a technological civilisation, and they're starting to think about breaking with the natural cycles which nature and evolution imposed on them.
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