Random Questions Thread

Not quite sure I understand you, do you mean you want a meteor that could destroy the city but only detonated high enough to not.

Or do you want a meteor that could destroy the city from where it detonated? I assume it's the former but in the event of a blast that big, it's not just going to break windows, it's going to crush anything less than a fortified flak-tower into dust.

The former, yes. A close call, more or less. Of course, considering who sent the damn thing in the first place and what it's real purpose is, maybe I should just stop worrying about it.

edited 8th Dec '14 9:00:44 PM by KSPAM

Alrighty then, 100KM should put it at the edge of the atmosphere, close enough to smash some flimsy things but not enough to level the city, (I used 18 gt's.) This would also destroy most aircraft in the area and some satellites. The thermal output would also be considerable, third degree burns near the epicenter and maybe some fires though you could probably handwave that if you wanted as I had to jury rig the simulator. It also assumed a nuclear device so the thermal output may be different as I am also no meteorologist.

edited 8th Dec '14 9:18:23 PM by Slysheen

According to Impact Earth!, if the object impacts the surface, everything is pretty much destroyed at 25 miles radius (that approx's 2500 sq miles) with a 1.5 km asteroid traveling at 22 km/sec, producing 1.82 x 10 to the 5th Megatons of energy.

edited 8th Dec '14 9:23:59 PM by demarquis

/*whistles*

So yeah, a big bloody asteroid. To be truthful it breaks up on contact with the atmosphere because it was designed to do that. It's supposed to cause minor structural damage to buildings on the surface (enough to impede but not destroy the local infrastructure) and scatter the meteor fragments in a gigantic circle encompassing the city, effectively creating a "ring" or border that cannot be crossed.

More or less, this is what Sufficiently Advanced Aliens deem as a crowd control weapon, and one of these things quarantining Shanghai is what sets off my story.

Another random question: Would it be feasible for an emperor's late-teens/early-twenties daughter to be fluent in five languages? She IS emphatically one of the imperial family's most intelligent members (which says something, since she has nearly a dozen siblings and half-siblings thanks to her father's concubines). It's not common knowledge that she knows five languages—her language tutors are held to secrecy outside of the imperial family, and the emperor brings her along for imperial business as a secret translator so nobody can try to fool him.

They also actively cultivate her appearance as his sweet and dutiful favorite daughter, so of course she'd always be riding with him or talking to him first thing in the morning. (Not that it's JUST an act.)

edited 9th Dec '14 2:29:03 AM by Sharysa

*suddenly remembers that DoaRG's last post was in July 2014, towards the end of the Tumblr Exodus of '14 (which has been blamed on the admittedly minority SJW population), and realizes she'll never respond to that question* DAMN YOU SJW CLOWNS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...Head, meet wall. I should've known that a Tumblr solution was never going to work due to the few bad eggs ruining Tumblr for a lot of people, myself included.

edited 9th Dec '14 2:36:46 PM by ryanasaurus0077

What's it called when the hero of gets a good punch in or attack and it's shown three times, from different camera angles/cuts with the third cut showing the aftermath?

Repeat Cut?

So, in my setting a number of people (around 50,000 - 100,000) has been inflicted a condition, and will have to spare a designated (known to them) fifteen minutes every day to connect to the Mind Hive. During that period their consciousness basically shuts down, and their body will appear to be sleeping/spacing out to the unsuspecting person. This condition occurs in an otherwise ordinary modern life. Their condition is unknown to others, and this isn't about to change.

The question: How are their lives affected? I imagine this will force pilots and public transportation drivers with the condition out of their jobs (Ordinary drivers can just pull over and stop for fifteen minutes), but I haven't considered other things. I'd like input on the idea, as well.

edited 14th Dec '14 3:39:47 AM by FlowingCotton

It sounds to me like that condition behaves like treatment-resistant epilepsy. I am not an expert on job opportunities for treatment-resistant epilepsy but it may be a place to look at.

A good point. Only the difference is you the person with the condition knows exactly when the attack will come ("Oh, it'll be six o' clock tonight. I better make sure I'm not doing anything dangerous then") and the fact that it occurs exactly once a day, although the hour varies day to day.

Maybe they can even pass it off as epilepsy. Although diagnosis will reveal that there's nothing wrong with their brains.

I imagine most office desk jobs will be unaffected, being able to excuse themselves for a bathroom break. Jobs that require one to be on the move (sales managers, public relations) will have to pay really close attention to their schedules, lest the attack coincides with one of their important meetings. Students will have some odd moments coming out from this. People on the countryside have literally nothing to worry about, except if they happen to be operating heavy machinery at the time.

Diagnosing the reasons for epilepsy is a tricky thing, to my knowledge. Plenty of cases end up with "no reason can be found".

That said, if it happens so frequently, I have to wonder whether they'll end up institutionalized in some way. It's less likely if the attacks follow a predictable pattern, though.

I'm thinking about a character in your standard medieval European fantasy setting who is jester. I like the idea but I don't want the jester working for a king or lord and being tied down. How could I fit a wandering jester into the story?

Well wandering minstrels were a thing, not so sure about jesters.

Just checked The Other Wiki, and from the first sentence (emphasis mine):

So wandering jester totally doable. However, more likely to move in lower circles. I think court jesters picked up too much information to freely travel, plus once you're a court jester that's a pretty steady gig.

edited 14th Dec '14 9:34:37 PM by Luthen

Okay thanks. Technically, this is two questions but what would be a good motivator for a jester like that to want to go out and adventure?

To obtain more story material for his performances. Which would affect how he approaches these adventures and what he does while in them.

Or, he has a really brutal and sharp sense of humor, which gets him kicked out whereever he goes.

What were wheelchairs like in the early 1900s?

Largely as they are now, only with wooden rather than canvas seats and backs. They used main tires more similar to bikes of the time as well, lots of very thin spokes, thin rubber, innertubes.

And, Bigger Ben, it would do you some good to learn to Google before asking. Just searching for "1900s wheelchair" gives plenty.

One of the keys to being a good writer is learning how to research. Which includes asking others, but it's best to have done a bit yourself first so you can ask more advanced questions.

If there was a cure for conditions like down syndrome, but it caused things like facial reshaping and sterility, do you think parent would still use it?

That would raise thorny consent questions, I think - rearranging someone's face and reproductive ability is a massive change. Besides, either is a big side effect - not sure if regulatory agencies would approve it at all.

That is without going into questions about whether such a cure is plausible or whether people would look for other ones, of course.

edited 23rd Dec '14 7:44:07 AM by SeptimusHeap

Does anyone know of a good efficient way to make a random choice between a fixed number of things? Like, say, a program that allows you to specify a number of options (say, blood types), assign a random unique number to each one, and then use a random-number generator to pick one of them at random? It would make it easier to assign such traits randomly for characters in one's stories (be they original ones, or existing ones that haven't had that trait defined in canon) rather than resorting to cliched devices such as Personality Blood Types.

edited 23rd Dec '14 8:21:08 AM by MarqFJA

Wikipedia seems to suggest that those with down syndrome have low fertility anyway, so not so much of a bit change there. Also a true 'cure' would cause someone face to change shape anyway given that suffers have a distinct face shape.

I imagine that some parents would justify using it to give their child a 'normal' life.

edited 23rd Dec '14 8:35:15 AM by MCE