The Quick Questions About World Building Thread

That's interesting to know about.

No problem.

I'm writing about this powerful space fairing race that has mastered hyperspace using mater/antimatter energy. They attempt to design a more powerful form of energy, but it gets out of control and blows up their planet. What are my options for a form of energy more powerful than a matter/antimatter reaction? My first instinct was to have them try to make an artificial singularity, but those require huge quantities of mass and I'm not sure where all the mass would come from.

You may get more answers on the SciFi Weapons, Vehicles, and Equipment Thread, but for a quick intro: According to random youtube videos, ostensibly based upon national geographic and the like, inflationary instability in the center of black holes is the most powerful force in the universe. \\(Getting at that gets back to your previous problem). Sidestepping that for now, light sailing will eventually get them up to an appreciable fraction of C. (Power depends upon exactly what you mean).

As for your own idea, they don't need the mass, directly.^note Mass and energy are interchangeable per relativity One of the ideas floating around is to create artificial singularities with lasers. Isaac Arthur is helpful with SciFi things. And that particular video mentions creating black holes, but I don't remember where at all.

How big does an extraterrestrial threat towards China is needed for the CCP to allow secession of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao? Is deploying kill sat aimed at all military bases and government offices at a range outside of any conventional Earth weapons and blow them one by one enough?

Why would one imply the other? (And isn't Taiwan already seceded?)

Sorry for leaving out the details.

Taiwan has joined an extraterrestrial organisation as Taiwan, which pissed China off enough that they demanded the organisation to kick Taiwan out. The organisation refused and decided to force China to give up claims on not just Taiwan, but Hong Kong and Macao as well by any means necessary.

I need a cool name for a secret government project where computer back-up copies are made of important politicians' and military leaders' minds. Something that's a reference to some mythology would be good, but not a requirement.

Project Firebird. On the surface, it is a reference to the Phoenix rising from its own ashes. But if the project is more sinister, you can reference the Russian ballet and the men with their personality backups resemblance to Koschei the Deathless.

I'm creating a universe set in a punk analogue of the 1960s and I was wondering if there was any knowledge of the quirks/ trends/ aesthetic of technology of the decade I should be aware of. I'm more familiar with the 40s from which I expect there to be big differences between the two but my work isn't set in The Future like raygun gothic either.

edited 2nd Jul '17 4:40:51 PM by Bend-It-Like-Zuko

Oh, that's not bad. And I'm a fan of the Koschei story. Even used that as my name in Dark Souls.

I also like the idea of speculative fiction based in what previous decades thought the future would be like. Let's see, tech in the 1960's... Maybe these might help.

edited 2nd Jul '17 7:00:53 PM by WillKeaton

In a cyberpunk story of mine, it has a economy base on socialist economies. How might buying things or getting upgraded work? And also, I have a suit used by assassins that's made out of Balanchine riders that change to adapt to the detriment around them.

It depends on the kind of Socialism the economy is based on.

In a socialist economy without money, you obviously can't buy things at all. Instead you'd have to convince whatever worker's collective(s) producing what you want that you need it (or that it benefits society for you to have it).

In a socialist economy that still uses money, you'd simply use your share of the income of whatever worker's collective you belong to to buy it.

One of the most important elements of cyberpunk, the concept of national governments being all but replaced by massive corporations actually works surprisingly well with socialist ideology. The only tweak needed is that each MegaCorp is run more or less democratically, with all employees getting an equal vote in how it's run and management being elected internally to implement what the employees voted for, rather than being run by an upper layer of wealthy shareholders. (In fact that's exactly how the Soviet Union was originally supposed to function until a wide variety of factors proved it to be unworkable for the situation the former Russian empire was in at the time).

in my setting, people use credits, points earned as they do certain things for the community. If someone helped create a new form of cure they get alot of credits. If someone help with getting garbage cleaned up, they get about 1000 in credits. If the did a minor contribution they get 60. But, if you behave and follow the rules set by you or others, it's a easy way to get credits overtime. Also this is post cyberpunk for the most part. So, there's no corrupt megacrop, just neutral ones. Although, at some point, one of them tried to do a project on creating genetically engineered beings meant to be killing machines until it was shut down, putting them in stasis.

Is it really a socialist economy then, or is it simply a social-democratic and/or state-collectivist economy? Because you may be using an imprecise term.

That's not a criticism, most people don't know or care about the difference, so they'd get what you mean, I'm just trying to make sure I get what you're aiming for.

Hi, I hope you could give me a feedback for an element of a story I'm working on.

The setting is a fictional world with roughly a late bronze age/early iron age level of technology and sociopolitical development. One of the populations has a mystical/shamanic religion (not sure about the terminology, I'll work it later) in which the mystics/shamans/priests can actually access (what they think is) the world of spirits (that is, this 'world of spirits' is real).

They claim to get two powers from this contact with the spirits: the power to see the future, and the power to cure diseases. The foretelling is bullshit, and at the time of my story is considered like astrology in our world: some believes it, many are skeptical, but in the end there's no proof.

The healing power on the contrary is absolutely true and recognized as such. Since it is such a huge game breaker I thought to put some (a lot) of constraints on it, to keep my bronze/iron age society, while justifying this power as being useful. Briefly, I thought of the rule that only bacteria/viral diseases can be cured with this system (of course, people in my settings know nothing about bacteria and viruses... I have also to think about the explanations they are going to give).

To elaborate:

• They cannot bring people back from the death.
• They cannot 'cure' aging. People will die of old age no matter what.
• They cannot cure wounds, traumas, injuries etc. I had to set this rule otherwise war would be completely unrecognizable. But they can do something against wound infections, so these healers are still very valuable for any army.
• They cannot cure cancer or similar illnesses - anything whose cause lies in the organism itself.
• I had to put some sort of limitation on epidemic diseases, since epidemics are a large part of pre-modern demographic equilibrium. Since I wanted to keep the 'medical' rule simple and straightforward, I thought about limitations on time and resources. Healing is not a 'snap of the finger' magic, is a long and difficult rite, so there is a time limitation against fast course diseases like the bubonic plague. And healers are quite rare, so there are simply not enough of them to heal an entire population. They still can slow the diffusion of the epidemic.

As I said, healers are rare, so this supernatural power is not a cheap resource to fix any plot hole at will. I don't think of poor wandering shamans which cure any disease for a bowl of soup, but rich and powerful sanctuaries to which ill people will go on pilgrimage bringing very rich offerings.

The effect I expect is an overall healthier society, in which health is partially also a privilege for rich people, an in which healers are respected and sought of professionals. The other neighbor populations will try to use, buy, control and even steal those professionals. On the other side, other demographic constraints (famines, wars, and up to a certain point even sudden bursts of epidemic plagues) will work and will avoid an overpopulation.

What do you think? Can it work? Is there anything I missed?

the latter.

So, about Assyrian times? Seems coherent. The healers can still be quite the gamebreaker. Disease regularly killed more people in war than trauma until the 20th century, and disease also kept cities from having self-sustaining populations until about the same time. ^note Cities needed constant immigration from the countryside to keep up their population. The infant mortality rate will also dip, although you state there weren't many healers. (One way to limit their game breaker status would be to have them dealing with births all the time). In any case, said society should definitely have more people than its neighbors and more population density by far.
A few things:

• Is it just bacteria and viruses? (That's not nothing, but there are famous fungi and protist diseases: malaria for instance. There's also environmental diseases like mesothelioma from asbestos and allergies from more or less inert things...)
• Can they just cure humans of pathogens? (Getting rid of blight on crop would prevent many a famine and probably elevate your healers to gods in their fellows eyes).
• Are the healers themselves immune to communicable disease? (If they're not, they hardly need a built-in weakness. Even priests eventually avoided plague infected denizens in late medieval Europe.)

Thank you very much for your feedback. The increase of population is an effect I'm trying to achieve. There are four populations which have a role in my setting: two rich, powerful and populated empires (Assyria could be a good example); a population of mountain and forest dweller, with primitive agriculture and few commercial settlements; and some nomadic invaders. My healers belong to one of the empires.

About the questions: fungi and protist can be included, environmental diseases should be better avoided, to stay on the safe side.

Only human beings can be cured. The rite of healing involves both the healer and the patient 'traveling' (in dream? in spirit? I have yet to define the details) to the 'world of spirits'.

Healers are not immune to the disease. For this reason I thought about cure given in sanctuaries (which work like hospitals, basically), where more than one are present at the same time, instead of wandering healers. Of course there could be healers who would give home visits, but mostly to wealthy patients.

I haven't thought about infant mortality, I have to admit. I must be very careful in thinking about the consequences of this.

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but how effective would a thick cloud cover (of the type like, say that are caused by large-scale nuclear bombardment) be at protecting a planet's surface from solar flares?

Very.

Or, well, it's at least plausible enough for fiction.

What exactly do you mean by protecting? Solar flares pose little to no danger to a planet's surface, unless you've got electronics there (and then a cloud cover won't do jack).

Repeated solar flares can heat the planet, though.

Here's a question. In a world where robots and drones are a thing, is there any excuse to have piloted aircraft as part of the setting? I'm asking this because one of my stories takes place in a setting like that, but also has an important scene where one of the characters flies a jet fighter.

edited 28th Aug '17 11:22:43 PM by ElSquibbonator

You can have both working side-by-side. Unless your drones have good enough AI to fight an aerial battle without human input, they'll need some degree of human control and supervision. The radio link is susceptible to lag, noise and signal loss, in addition to the enemy employing electronic warfare measures such as jamming or even injecting malware into the drones' computers. With that in mind, it might help to send out a manned fighter or two (maybe in a two-seat configuration) as the "local" Mission Control for a larger drone swarm, each of which is capable of pulling larger G-forces and carrying more weapons than their squishy counterparts. The manned craft would mainly hang back, send out real-time tactical input to the drones, detect/identify enemy electronic warfare craft and hit the factory reset switch on any drone that malfunctions - only occasionally lobbing a missile or two from behind the drone formations. Try to look up real-life fighters that were adapted for the electronic warfare role, like the EA-18G Growler or the MiG-31BM.

So I've been working on an Asian-inspired setting with spirit magic, and there are a few things that I'd like some input on:

• What are some viable economic models for nomadic steppe peoples? I'm working on a loose group of nomad cultures inspired by the Mongols, Manchu, Cossacks and Tatars. They reside on a stretch of plains bordering the core Imperial realms that boasts extremely fertile soil and herds of magical megafauna, though it's mostly unsuitable for agriculture due to a lack of irrigation (and the freak weather patterns caused by the annual brawl between the volcano and swamp spirits). But I want the group to have a different feel from real-life Mongols (never mind fictional, war-crazy caricatures like the Dothraki), so I really don't feel like lifting the herding-and-raiding model wholesale. So far I have:
  • A tribe that's largely assimilated/intermarried into the border towns and work as travelling merchants.
  • A tribe that follows the path of migratory birds, smoking them out of the sky en masse and using the meat, feathers and guano for economic purposes.
  • A fiercely territorial tribe that herd a bunch of giant yak-beasts that can regrow their fur at a supernatural rate.
  • A tribe that enchants their pack animals to be able to grow mushrooms and berries out of their fur coat.
  • A tribe that operates semi-permanent mining settlements at the foot of an active volcano, using spirit magic to refine gemstones and develop metalworking techniques like case hardening.
  • As a rule, all the tribes are mainly pastoral nomads. The stronger tribes may periodically raid the weaker feudal holds to the south, while keeping trade agreements with the stronger lords and monasteries.
• What are some of the possible ways magic could be used in warfare, other than the standard fireball-and-lightning? The setting's magic system isn't very well-defined right now, and I've been looking into operational-level uses like calling thunderstorms onto the enemy's marching route, causing fresh pastures to grow and disappear overnight and sight-jacking into wild animals for scouting purposes. I'd really love it if anyone could help me come up with better, wilder ideas.

A way to justify Easy Logistics. Portal networks to ferry people/supplies around, food preservation for supplies, emergency healing/repair, that sort of thing.