The Quick Questions About World Building Thread

Similar to an EMP, a solar storm can induce variations in the magnetic field of Earth that in turn induce electrical currents in power lines, especially long ones and ones running over terrain with low electrical conductivity. Most power lines are very sensitive to perturbations as a safety measure; thus they trip when overloaded. A historical example and some discussions on mechanisms.

Having said that, a global blackout would require an extraordinarily strong solar storm similar to and perhaps stronger than the 1859 solar storm (also known as the "Carrington event") and 2012 solar storm (which missed the Earth). The AD774-775 C14 spike is sometimes considered to be the strongest solar storm known, for the sake of comparison.

So I'm writing a story that spends a significant amount of time in a port city. One of the neighborhoods that the protagonists spend time in is built on the edge of the city and used to be a center for the whaling industry. The explanation was that the city leaders didn't want whaling to go on within city limits. However, is it realistic for something like this to happen? If it isn't, what an industry that the city leaders would insist on taking place outside of the city limits? Note, this neighborhood was build during the late medieval/renaissance era.

Edited by ShawnRi on Nov 3rd 2018 at 10:54:42 AM

Well, why would there be any whaling within city limits in the first place? The whalers would likely have to sail out to known migration routes and hunting/mating grounds in the open seas; it's unlikely for whales to flock to city limits, since they present a hostile environment with a lot of human traffic, pollution and overfishing.

If you're talking about the processing of whale products, then it's possible for it to be kept outside city limits to avoid polluting the city with its byproducts. This is doubly applicable if your society has a cultural/religious stigma against it: for example, the Shintō faith in Japan traditionally ascribes uncleanness (kegare) to those who deal with death, necessitating activities like butchery and leather tanning to be relegated to the Burakumin outcast caste. Other primary/resource extraction industries like mining, woodcutting, farming and hunting would usually be set outside city limits as well.

I know this is a weird question, but would people in the future play dodgeball? To give some context, I'm writing a sci-fi story set in the future. At one point, someone mentions playing a game of dodgeball at school and even describes what happened. I showed a draft of this story to one of my friends to look over. They had a problem with the reference to dodgeball, thinking that sports in the future would be more advanced. They suggested the school would incorporate vr technology in physical education. Would that be the case, that future schools wouldn't play dodgeball and instead use some kind of vr?

That's an interesting world-building question, but I don't see any absolute reason why future societies would eschew raw physical exercise / sport in favor of simulations. Someone who tells you that's the "inevitable path of progress" is a bit too full of themselves, I think.

Human beings will always need to exercise! Maybe your friend just felt like dodgeball is such an unfair game, there's no way they'll continue to play it in the future XD

I get the impression that the friend in question isn't suggesting that schools would eschew physical exercise, but rather that they would have physical exercise that doesn't involve throwing an actual ball at anyone.

As to plausibility, I think that if it becomes very cheap indeed, then it's possible that schools might incorporate VR or AR into physical education: after all, it seems likely to be easier to enthuse children about physical activities if it's made to look cool.

That said, I can also see the simplicity and durability (that is, the lack of easily-breakable parts) of standard sports being quite attractive to schools.

In short, I think that I could see it going either way.

It's obvious: Schools of the future will have their children play dodgeball that incorporates augmented reality. That is, they will throw actual balls at virtual opponents. Take that Sonic!

Or maybe instead of our "primitive" dodgeball, the people of the distant future play a Fictional Sport that is basically dodgeball in three dimensions — i.e. people are not simply standing on a single 2-dimensional surface. They might use floating, possibly-mobile platforms (a hoverboard works as well), or even outright flying in the air instead of standing on any surface.

And if personal superpowers are commonplace, they might spice it up with superhuman moves like a Super-Strength-powered throw or being too hard to hit due to Super-Speed (requiring Super-Senses or a superpower that makes the ball a Homing Projectile as a counter).

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 18th 2018 at 12:12:36 PM

And the virtual opponent explodes when you hit them.

I'm looking for some help to workshop ideas around the economy so a world repopulating from The Plague?

I was looking to create a future sci-fi world where humans are forced to rely on androids to fill gaps in the labour market/resource production.

The largest conceptual problem is that, after a major population die-off, high tech industries will probably dissolve a lot more thoroughly than low-tech ones. These are the most dependent on infrastructure, skilled labor, and industrial value chains, and will be the most disrupted as basic services collapse and people flee cities.

In order to have robots (androids, whatever) supplant human labor...

• The robots would have to already exist and be in use prior to the die-back.
• The industry manufacturing them, including its labor force, supply chain, and infrastructure, would have to somehow be immune to or at least shielded from the disaster.
• It would have to be cheaper to replace labor with robots than to make more people the old-fashioned way.

At that point as a reader I'd start to smell a rat: how convenient that the supplier of replacement labor wasn't affected by an event that destroyed a lot of the labor force.

Of course, the problem then is that with the world's economies shattered, there's very little profit to be made in selling worker bots. They're extremely expensive, and there's no value to be found in having them pick fruit or clean streets unless there is literally nobody else available to do it. Economically, you don't replace cheap labor with expensive automation. You only automate jobs when it's cheaper to do that than to pay workers.

Also, why androids? You don't need complex humanoid robots to cook food or clean houses. Right now, the major use for androids is in healthcare settings where having something that looks and acts as much like a human as possible is the most important factor. Specialized machinery would be far more efficient for most jobs.

Economically, robots don't need to be paid (unless they are self-aware and desire independence, another can of worms), but there is a large up-front investment, plus maintenance, power/fuel, and depreciation. You need a large technical class to support them. In a post-apocalyptic future, this seems unlikely.

Rather, you may be looking at a post-post-apocalyptic dystopia created by a privileged scientific class that weathered the disaster better than everyone else. This carries echoes of Fallout 4 for me. They aren't using the robots to help the common folk, but rather to supplant humans in the supply chain to guarantee themselves a standard of living without dealing with pesky meat people who get sick and demand rights.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 3rd 2019 at 9:30:49 AM

Ok, this is my first time asking any question here.

So, I was trying to build I world and I came across this concept of blood:

The blood of any individual will affect their offspring at the time that their are conceived, this affect a child's general appearance only slightly while mostly affect the child's race and ability.

And of course the blood type doesn't mean anything, and you can drink or get blood transfused from a dragon and get dragon power and appearance, or demon, or just any other race.

The stronger the blood, the more it effect it will have on others.

Does this seem too far fetched?

Offhand, and in and of itself, I don't think so. (Presuming that this takes place in a fantasy setting.)

I do have questions: for example, if one imbibes dragon blood, and thus takes on some of the power of a dragon, does one's own blood change? And is the change thus passed on to one's offspring? If so, is the population of the world a huge melting pot of attributes, with almost no unaltered humans?

"Blood inheritance" is one of those concepts that has been passed down from ancient times, from before people understood the concept of genetics. If it is literal in your story — that is, having a particular kind of blood in your circulatory system gives you special power, then you can run with that, but don't try to get too scientific about it, because it simply is not accurate to reality.

In other words, if you're going to write a fantasy story with magic blood powers, you don't have to worry about scientific accuracy. Just maintain internal consistency and you're good.

That said, we could try to draw up scientific rules for blood-based powers. For one thing, if one's own body doesn't naturally generate the super blood, then you'd need an ongoing source of it as it would get replaced over time. For another, simply ingesting it wouldn't work, since any "power" in the blood would be destroyed or at least reduced by the process of digestion. You'd need transfusions to obtain the best results. I imagine banks of super blood harvested from whatever beings produce it, being transfused into specially trained people before they are sent off on missions.

You'd have to screen people to make sure they can handle the blood: immune rejection could be a serious problem. Some kinds of blood could be incompatible: if you give someone the blood that grants fire powers and the blood that grants ice powers, the conflict might be lethal. These sorts of details can help flesh out your world building.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 10th 2019 at 10:55:32 AM

The stronger the blood is, the stronger the effect is, and the strength of one's blood can be measured in universe, "Bleeding power", it's called, the power for one's blood to bleed into others'.

Out of all the stats that can be measured by the Adventurer's Guild: Strength, Endurance, Agility, Soul, Willpower, Blood, etc. Blood is the only stats that cannot be trained and is set at birth.

The strength of one's blood is mainly different because of race and heritage and has nothing to do with one's other ability, so chances are if you're just an average Joe, your blood is not likely to change anyone at all, and if you're and average Joe with powerful blood, nobody is going to want your blood anyway.

Demons, dragons, wildkins and giants tend to have stronger blood, among them demons and dragons blood are consider "Strong blood", and demon are the strongest, and none of their blood works the same, for instance: demon's blood can be ingested and still get full effect albeit slower since demons feed their young with their mother's blood, drinking the blood of other races will only work temporarily.

Because the way "bleeding" affect one's blood, no matter how much blood one imbibed, as long as they get past the threshold, the effect will stay the same, if you want more change you will need to find an individual with stronger blood.

And don't worry about normal people's blood being affected by demon blood, since it usually demon drinking human blood, but there has been the case of demon temporarily became half-human by eating a human with extremely powerful blood.

Demon-Hunters know best about this subject, they've been using demons as blood cattle, they found out strong blood are addictive and can drive mad individual with not enough willpower when transfused, so instead of trying to get blood transfused past the threshold, they make their initiates drink it in small amount each time and train while they are in effect to build up their tolerance and allow them to train themselves past the limit of normal human body easier.

They also bring flasks of demon blood and needles when they're out on mission in case they need it. They can get enhanced power by injecting themselves with demon blood, as long as they remember not to get past the threshold to not make any permanant change.

Edited by Andermann on Jan 11th 2019 at 3:27:36 AM

EDIT: Ignore me!

Edited by ThriceCharming on Feb 9th 2019 at 8:04:22 AM

Hello, I'm new here! There's a question that has been on my mind, so I'll ask here.

I want to write a sci-fi story, and I have been kicking around two separate world ideas. One is a civilization based around the Dyson swarm, and is a Type II civilization on the Kardashev Scale. The other is your standard Space Western. I want to merge the two ideas into one world, so you have rugged individualism and outlaws in a Dyson Swarm civilization, or they are at least at that level of power. Is this feasible?

Also, how would I go about justifying the Space Western elements in such a setting if a Dyson Swarm civilization is a post-scarcity society? Others have told me that just because people have everything they need doesn't mean crime would go away.

Thanks!

The most basic, and somewhat trite, answer to that question is: you can write whatever you want; don't worry about justifying it unless justifying it is important to you. However, since you are asking, I assume you want to justify it and are looking for advice.

First point: Just because a civilization is super advanced and powerful does not automatically mean anything about its culture. To judge by human history, it doesn't matter how many cool gizmos and technological advancements we have; there will always be people who want to live off the grid, who value rugged individualism, who hate society and everything it stands for. Heck, this philosophy may even become stronger in a Type 2, post-scarcity society, because the influence of government and social manipulation would be more prevalent than ever.

Second: Just because a civilization has access to awesome technology and massive resources doesn't mean everyone, everywhere will benefit from that. It's not too hard to imagine a human future in which we do build Dyson Swarms and similar things, but the benefits of those accrue mainly to the super-wealthy and the super-elite. There is a secondary question of what, exactly, a society would do with all the energy from a Dyson Swarm, but that's something you can address in your world-building.

Third: is this going to be a Space Opera with FTL Travel and interstellar colonization, or are you keeping it harder on the Mohs scale and restricting travel and communication to sublight velocities? If the former, then the Type 2 power would presumably be used to fuel that interstellar society, but access to hundreds or thousands of solar systems would leave lots of room for people to live "off the grid".

If the latter, then any colonization effort would be limited to the local stellar neighborhood and there'd be a lot fewer places for people to go (and thus hide), but travel (and communication) times would be so great that colonists would have to solve their own problems, and thus be more generally self-reliant.

There are lots of reasons why piracy would be impractical in space travel regardless of tech level, and we've discussed them a lot in this topic. However, smuggling would certainly be possible, and outlawry in general would be enabled by the distance between authorities and citizens. It's not hard to imagine havens for "independent-minded" folks springing up, who eschew the benefits of advanced technology for the perceived value of self-reliance. However, they'd live under the constant threat of annihilation if they cause too much trouble.

Edited to add: If you're looking at Wagon Train to the Stars: a replication of a Western pioneer environment in space colonization... that's a lot harder to justify in any realistic setting, never mind one with a Type 2 civilization. The technology and skill requirements to launch and maintain a colony ship are just plain incompatible with the "rugged cowboy" concept.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 16th 2019 at 11:49:18 AM

Question about stars: first of all, does a star have to be a certain 'type' in order to be capable of possessing an earth-like planet in its orbit, or at least one capable of supporting a lot of complicated life forms (I'm thinking mostly of forests, here)?

Secondly, if the answer is no, what different colours can a star be and do they necessarily match up to specific phases of a star's life? I'm mostly asking because I wanted my sci-fi system to have a blue star, or if not blue then some other novel colour. :V

Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on May 11th 2019 at 1:24:38 PM

I don't know every single star type by heart to tell you exactly which ones do what. I can tell you that there are two main factors that determine the habitability of a star's planets: its temperature and its stability.

On the main sequence, a star's color is determined by the black body spectrum of its surface temperature, which is a function of its mass. Therefore, a red star is less massive, cooler, and radiates less energy than our Sun. Its habitable zone (the inner and outer radii within which water can remain liquid) is very close. A blue star is larger, hotter, and radiates more energy; its habitable zone is correspondingly much farther out. Our Sun emits most of its light in the green part of the spectrum, but we see it as white for evolutionary reasons. Stars become hotter, and thus brighter and bluer, as they age, up until they reach the ends of their lives, at which point all sorts of violent things happen.

Some stellar types can have very large fluctuations or cycles of energy output. Such stars would be very bad places for life to exist, because on cycles ranging from days to thousands of years, any potentially habitable planet would be alternately frozen and cooked, which is not good for evolution. As one example, red dwarfs, particularly in their early life, tend to be violently unstable, with periodic flares, increases in temperature, and the like, which could wipe out any life trying to get a foothold, especially since any planet close enough to be habitable would be very near the star, as close as Mercury is to our Sun, and also tidally locked. I don't know much about the stability of larger stars.

Another factor is lifespan. A red dwarf can live for a trillion years or more. A star like our Sun can live for about ten billion years. A blue giant star only lives for a few million years because its core is so hot that it consumes its hydrogen fuel many orders of magnitude faster than a less massive star. Given how long it took life to evolve past the single-cell stage on Earth, this is probably not enough time for anything complex to evolve on a planet orbiting such a star. A spacefaring civilization might briefly inhabit a world like that, but it would be a transient stay on an astronomical time scale.

There is a theorized type of blue star called a blue dwarf, which occurs when a very old red dwarf has exhausted most of its fuel and is approaching the end of its life span. Such a star could not exist in our universe since it's too early for any red dwarf to have lived that long.

Unusual colors can occur for very massive stars entering the end of their hydrogen cycle as they begin to fuse other elements, like helium, carbon, and oxygen, but these would not be suitable for life at all as they'd be blasting their outer layers off into space, fluctuating in brightness rapidly, and generally being bad parents.

Edited by Fighteer on May 11th 2019 at 1:14:08 PM

Interesting. There is a spacefaring civilization, and it's human in origin - so based on this understanding, if they were to stumble upon a world in orbit of a blue giant with forests (for example) on it, they'd find that a bit weird?

This setting has no intelligent aliens - as far as anyone knows - so perhaps scientists of the time would take this as evidence that an alien civilization visited the system in the not-too-distant past and messed around with the planet (since there's other weird things going on, like a magnetic field that makes giant chunks of continent float in the air), or alternatively, they were so advanced they found a way to extend the sun's lifespan. I'm just wondering if that'd be a bit of a leap of logic for scientists to jump to if there could be some other explanation. I don't suppose there's just the possibility of 'life evolved really fast here'? :V

Ah, that's not quite correct. A star's core may become hotter but the outer layers actually cool in the later phases of a star's life. Brightness is actually governed by ''two' factors, temperature and size. Hotter stars emit more energy per square kilometer of surface area but when a star takes it's first trip up the red giant track on an H-R diagram, the increased surface area more than compensates from the lower amount of light per emitted square kilometer.

But the short version is that stars actually get redder as they get older (though some particularly massive and luminous stars would still fall in the blue colour category)

Very. A giant star is by definition off the main sequence and thus entering the latter stages of it's life, so unless it's just off off the main sequence and hasn't experienced any significant reddening yet, it would be extremely weird. Because any star massive enough to be a blue giant is going to be hot, massive and have a life span measured in only tens of millions of years.

To give an idea of how weird finding a forest on a planet orbiting such a star would be, Earth took a billion years for life to develop enough to show up in the fossil record and another two and a half billion before it started seriously colonising the land.

Also if you want colour terms, O and B are blue-white, A is blue, F is yellow-white, G (including the Sun) are yellow, K are orange and M (and it's specialist sub-classes) are red.

I didn't want to go into a long digression over the relationship between stellar mass, energy output, radius, and surface temperature, but the point is that stars' total energy output increases as they get older, moving the habitable zone slowly outwards. This process occurs more rapidly for more massive stars.

Another thing I didn't mention is that the radiation flux and solar wind from a blue giant star would be so intense that it would probably strip off the atmospheres of its rocky planets in short order, or at least make it impossible for life to survive outside of those planets' oceans. More massive worlds could hold onto their atmospheres better, so you might find habitable "super-Earths" with surface gravity of 2 to 3 G, but there still wouldn't be enough time for complex life to evolve independently before their stars died.

To encounter a forested world around such a star would almost certainly be evidence of terraforming and/or colonization.

Edited by Fighteer on May 12th 2019 at 11:16:57 AM

I see. How regular would these solar flares be? Are we talking regularly in astronomical terms, or regularly in human terms?