The Quick Questions About World Building Thread

Depends how much in-depth you want to showcase. There's a thread for describing your world in a few sentences. Generally speaking, if you start a thread it's best to have questions, or at least a call for criticism.

What would US (or any powerful nations) do in and outside of UN if an interstellar community invites Earth to join them but China vetoed it during a security council meeting over said community recognizes Taiwan as an independent nation?

Not give a shit because China is a nobody compared to NATO or Russia when it comes to military and economic power.

edited 5th Jul '16 8:31:07 PM by LeGarcon

Does the interstellar community require the entire planet to join? in which case a veto from china is a veto. The earth remains independent until the next vote.

For the question, Earth can only join as UN, since that it is considered as the governing body of the planet.

Hello, I'm new to the forum and the site, the final incentive to join was the chance to talk about and discuss a constructed world I had come up with, as well as the bare bones of a story set in that world, so I could finally do something with that idea beyond having it in my mind (and just now I'm writing it down).

My question is this: What do you think would be an average amount of time for genetic admixture to take a visible effect on the general population of a non-human race?

The race I'm talking about is feline-based, they used to be full Cat Folk , until the established government made an alliance with a human kingdom after said kingdom helped them in a civil war, part of said alliance was the cat-people giving a part their country's territories for the humans to settle and grow food from it, since humans had a food shortage at the time. Eventually, the cat-people and the humans started interbreeding, and by the current time, most of the cat people tend to be human-like, with several feline features. Some pure-blooded felines still exist, but they are rare, usually aristocrats, royalty, or people of high class.

I hadconsidered around 300-600 years, up to 1000 years. Is it too short time?

Humans live about 80-100 years, so 300-600 years would be 3-6 generations and maaaybe 5-8 if it's a time or place with shorter lifespans. There would also be second and third-generation progeny to balance it out, but depending on how large the human population is, their appearance would overall still be feline.

1,000 would probably be better to get enough appearance dilution.

300 years is probably too short a time, but it will depend on many factors. Even a small degree of resistance to interracial marriage can prevent even mixing for a long time. Also of relevance will be the starting sizes of the two populations, and how much migration occurs between population centres. Also of relevance will be the length of a generation, which is the average age of parents having babies. This will be about 30ys for richer human populations and 20ys for poorer human populations. Also of relevance may be whether the feline features are mostly dominant or recessive. But this won't be much of an issue for racists, who may rely heavily on genealogy for their prejudice.

300-600 years is closer to 10-20 generations. Humans don't reproduce at the very end of their lives.

Note also that the interbreeding won't necessarily result in a gradual transition from feline features to human features. A lot of genetic features are on-or-off. To take a simplified example: if a population of brown-eyed humans start interbreeding with a larger population of blue-eyed humans, their eyes won't become paler and paler until they are blue. They'll be either blue-eyed or brown-eyed, but with blue becoming more and more common. (I think. I am not a biologist.)

edited 29th Jul '16 2:51:00 AM by Aetol

I think your society may also violate the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium - unless one type of feature is advantaged over the other, you'd end up with a mix of people with varying degrees of felinity and humanity.

If the original populations are equal sized, because blue eyes are recessive, One quarter of the population will end up with blue eyes long term.

So, I should put about 1000 years, and a decent part of the population would still be completely feline. Did I get it right?

Yes. Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in action. That is, if feline features have no advantage or disadvantage over human ones.

Aetol: Thanks for the reminder! I keep forgetting human fertility only lasts for about twenty years.

In a medieval-like setting, what would be the approximate population of a village 1 hectare (2.5 acres) in size? What would be the size of the garrison of a fortress of the same size?

From what I know of medieval civilasation, you either built in the space available, if you were on an island or in a canyon of some sort, no matter how squishy, or you built out haphazardly, until the journey to the town centre became tedious.

More useful measures would be the amount of farmland that would be serviced by the town, and determine the population required to service that amount of land at the technology level. Since villages that small were almost always farming towns. The numbers could be harder if it were a mining town or something. Again, then the number of people living there would be the number working the mines, plus about 200% for SOs and children, and +20% compounded for support personnel.

A quick bit of math shows that about fifteen modern homes will fit in 2.5 hectares. And that is about the density a medieval community will use if feeling no density pressure.

For farmland, see Furlong for calculating how much land one family will own.

15-ish homes would be about 45-75 people (with families of 3-5 members). According to Brittanica.com, 15 families are the bare minimum of support that a low-ranking noble would need.

HOWEVER, that hectare-large fortress is not the home of a minor noble with the bare minimum of subjects. One acre is 208-209 square feet, so a fortress the size of a hectare (2.5 acres) would cover a city block (520-522.5 square feet). My two-story apartment complex has about ten apartments and 1-2 bedrooms per family. Split them into single-story apartments and you've got 10-20 rooms that can hold somewhere around 20-30 people, and 30-50 if you allow for the living rooms to hold another 1-2 extra people. We're nowhere NEAR a block's worth of people.

You don't reach a castle that size without being insanely rich. The garrison would probably need at least 50-100 men, if only to keep everyone from running/jogging the equivalent of a few miles a day just to make their security rounds. I'd say only half of that space would be buildings—the other half would be courtyards, training yards, and probably a garden if there's good soil, or if the family is rich enough to afford a greenhouse or elite gardeners.

That fortress would need at least 100-200 families (one mid-sized village or two small ones) just to keep the garrison fed and equipped, let alone the servants and the noble family.

edited 7th Aug '16 7:59:09 PM by Sharysa

Maybe the castle was just built to show off? At least in Switzerland, castles and fortifications were status symbols, not necessarily actually useful.

Yep, twenty or thirty security guards would need a lot less support than a real fortress garrison. They might still need a few dozen servants to keep it show-off-able, though.

I don't even know if a Swiss castle would hold that many guards. Maybe a big one such as Dorneck or Chillon but most aren't of that size. They are more like big houses with walls than something that would resist an even small attacking force.

Aetol did imply it's an actual fortress thanks to using "garrison," in which it would have needed decades to centuries of gradual expansion to reach a hectare of land. Windsor Castle is 5.3 hectares, so I went looking around for how many men it normally garrisoned. This website mentions it used "three companies," and a company is said by Wikipedia to be 80-250 men, so three of those mean 240-750 men. They also mentioned that the garrison got reduced to 200 men at one points (about 2 modern companies). Divide the normal amount by five, and your fortress' garrison would be 48-150 men (70-80 men average, which is one modern company or a couple of modern platoons).

One of my fairy-castles in Moonflowers covers a little more than a hectare (480 by 570 feet, which would make a 530x530ft square), since fairies made it and they don't have to worry about walking ten minutes just to get to the great hall. I have a document devoted to its important areas, the staff needed to keep it running, and the garrison, and it does work out close to my above calculations (although the guards' number is pretty high, since this is the seat of a queen and physically located at the border).

how can i make the idea of people being born with multicolored hair in the future plausible?

edited 12th Aug '16 4:29:21 PM by ewolf2015

genetic engineering

physical anomalies caused by any number of elements specific to your setting

magic

any number of ways really. as for how to make it plausible...i wouldnt worry about it. sometimes people just hear a detail about a setting and just go "well thats how it works in that reality".

effort on how to make something plausible would probably be better spent on larger, more important details of the setting.

oh thanks

People have multicolored hair in the future. Period.

Unless it's actually important for your story to explain the reason without breaking suspesion of disbelief. Otherwise, do the Mad Max: Fury Road and rock on fire just because.