Frequent Questions
7,852 questions
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A list of worldbuilding resources
We are occasionally asked for advice about the worldbuilding process. By its creative and imaginative nature, the process of worldbuilding doesn't have a single obvious starting point or a step-by-...
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What is the minimum human population necessary for a sustainable colony?
How many humans are needed in order to sustain and grow a steady population in a habitable area? Assume resources are adequate and the environment is favorable.
To further refine this question, let'...
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How can I move a planet?
There are a lot of answers on Worldbuilding about how to destroy planets - just as an example - and they seem to be the method of choice for many people intent on destroying the world. My objection to ...
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How many people can you feed per square-kilometer of farmland?
Questions about how to feed a large population keep popping up on this website quite frequently. One obvious option is farming. But how many people can you feed per square-kilometer of farmland?
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How could dragons be explained without magic?
Dragons are a grand classic of fantasy. For this question, let's assume we're talking about the following stereotype:
hatches from an ostrich-sized egg and can grow to mountain size if nothing limits ...
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Are there any ways to allow some form of FTL travel without allowing time travel?
Faster than light travel is a really cool thing to have in sci-fi settings. It allows humans, in relatable time scales, to travel the galaxy and see a variety of worlds. It allows for conflicts ...
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How would having multiple moons affect tides?
We know that planets can have multiple moons, sometimes quite a few (like Jupiter). Assuming that a planet with several moons were habitable in the first place and has significant oceans (greater ...
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Can you simply scale up animals?
There have been a number of questions focusing on mythical creatures where the logical approach to answering has been to scale up an existing animal. For example dragon's wings can be extrapolated ...
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Could two planets be tidally locked to each other so close they share their atmosphere?
Could two planets be tidally locked to each other at such a small distance from one another that they share their atmosphere, and material is floating around between the two?
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Stealth in Space: How realistic is it?
This has been considered other places on the net, but I thought it would be good for the hard-science challenge, since it is often an example of the subtle difference between soft and hard science.
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The opposite to Worldbuilding: World Destruction
I am looking at different ways to destroy a planet - because a society within my setting wants to destroy a planet. I am assuming the planet is of a similar size and composition to the Earth just to ...
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Anatomically Correct Angels
As part II of anatomically correct myths here we have the Angel. Angels appear in many cultures and are most commonly seen as simply winged humans. Is there a realistic way that angels could evolve? ...
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How would winds behave on a tidally locked planet?
If an earth-sized planet were tidally locked to a star, and was in the life zone of its star with an earth-like atmosphere, what would its wind patterns be like?
The planet would have one hot ...
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Other blood colors
Many people know that our blood is red because it is iron based. Many people also know that blood is blue or green if it is copper based. I'm wondering what color blood would be if it was let's say ...
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Could underwater living organism create technology?
Could underwater creatures with the intelligence of human cave men or possibly the intelligence of apes create technology (that is, more complex technology comparable to what we have now rather than ...
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