Most active questions
90 questions from the last 30 days
14
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12
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What can cause (military) rank DEflation instead of rank INflation
We've all heard the jokes about there being more admirals than ships in the fleet and we've all cracked quips about North Korean Flag Officers running around absolutely covered in medals. We've ...
- 939
12
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11
answers
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How to convincingly erase a population's memory?
I am a big fan of the "forgotten precursor civilization" trope, and the lesser-used trope of gods or major religious figures worshiped in the present turning out to be forgotten and ...
- 193
19
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9
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How deep could "dwarves" dig their mines with pseudo-medieval technology?
Premise: On an earth-like planet - let's call it Dwarfus - the dominant species is Homo pumilio, which for ease of imagination is a stocky, well-muscled, shorter human (with an average of about 1.5 ...
- 783
21
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10
answers
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Can opposite-chirality organisms coexist on a Klein bottle world without unstoppable disease?
The world I am creating has a strange topology. Its surface has locally positive curvature everywhere (i.e., it feels like a sphere at any given point), but the global topology is that of a Klein ...
- 1,022
9
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15
answers
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How could technological development be significantly accelerated without a major war?
I'm working on an alternate earth where technology is significantly ahead (Eg. technology adjacent to the things we have in our present day, stuff like kevlar, the internet, mobile phones, etc., ...
- 316
7
votes
16
answers
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Could a society develop modern computers (circa 2020s) without having invented or needing the internet?
I'm building a setting where an alternate timeline of humans have developed computers roughly equivalent to what we have around 2025 — multi-core CPUs, GPUs, advanced operating systems, and perhaps ...
13
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7
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How would a plant disconnected from the ground get nitrogen?
I’m working on a rogue planet with a Europa-like moon with life beneath the ice. I also want a plant that, instead of being connected to the ground, would float through the currents. To clarify, the ...
- 444
8
votes
12
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How to not get blood on you in close-quarters combat?
The pre-industrial humans of my world have noticed that if you intentionally do violence to someone and some of that person's blood gets on your person (including what you're wearing), a fairly ...
- 1,106
8
votes
2
answers
2k
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Would a higher altitude make solar power 'more effective'?
So my setting revolves around a sci-fi society residing at a very high-altitude above cloud cover. They use a lot of solar based power and renewable energy. Ie, solar capable rechargable powerbanks, ...
- 939
9
votes
8
answers
3k
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How to stop a genetically enhanced army from becoming a state within a state?
In a setting where a 'nation' was formed via warlord adventurism, and where genetic enhancements are hypercommon amongst the military (ie, improved immune systems, improved circulatory and respiratory ...
- 939
8
votes
5
answers
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Avoiding alligators with primitive technology?
In my setting, technology is inconsistent, nearly modern in some ways but primitive in others (perhaps similar to some places in the world today, which have modern knowledge but inconsistent or ...
- 400
19
votes
6
answers
3k
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R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn - Living inside stretched spacetime
The math
My question relates to objects with an unusual special geometry, specifically a three-dimensional object that is being stretched into the fourth spatial dimension, so that it contains more ...
- 192
5
votes
3
answers
3k
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How humid does it have to be for flamethrowers to start experiencing problems?
I'm writing a setting where the use of flamethrowers is 'reasonably pervasive' both for warfare and the clearing away of foilage and shrubbery. I'm not sure how much in-universe context I need to ...
- 939
7
votes
7
answers
1k
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Why would chemical weapons never be used in a science-fiction setting?
Chemical warfare isn’t a modern invention. How old it really is depends on what your definition of the term “chemical warfare” is, but archeological evidence of the first use of poisonous gas dates ...
- 601
3
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4
answers
3k
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How to ensure my giants remain undiscovered in the modern day?
My giants are around 2.7 meters tall, weigh ~240 kg, and have intelligence similar to a capuchin monkey. They are omnivorous mammals and take a digitigrade stance, with a stiff tail to support ...
- 2,032