Timeline for How tall can a humanoid creature be without alerting the rest of the planet with earthquakes?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
29 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 23, 2021 at 22:18 | vote | accept | Pink Sweetener | ||
| Jul 17, 2018 at 15:59 | comment | added | Ian MacDonald | It may help to give an acceptable disturbance radius. | |
| Jul 17, 2018 at 0:07 | comment | added | Alexander | Magnitude 9 earthquakes (1,995 PJ of energy) would not be perceptible on another continent unless they are generating tsunamis. Getting above magnitude 9 is uncharted territory and we can only make educated guesses. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 20:06 | comment | added | JBH | :-) It's no problem. It's why you're getting answers between 6.5miles and lunar orbit high. The Earth can absorb a lot because it's so massive. You might have more luck with a roar, or a laugh, but read that article carefully... human-capable detection was lost after about 3K miles. It takes a LOT to affect antipode to the level you're interested in. And heaven help the people along the way.... | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:58 | comment | added | Pink Sweetener | @John Hm, that actually works... | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:57 | comment | added | Pink Sweetener | @JBH Huh, I didn't realize that. I suppose I could have phrased the question more broadly, asking if there are any effects of such a large creature that would be felt around the world. I assumed earthquakes would be the limiting factor, but I should have done a little more googling before posting this question. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:56 | comment | added | John | I think you will reach a size where the giant simply sinks into the planet because the ground cannot support it, before you reach the earthquake problem. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:50 | comment | added | JBH | The answers are having fun, but keep in mind that (for example) no earthquake of any size we ever expect could be felt on the other side of the planet. Source Anything that could would crack the planet on the impact side (think "oh, those poor dinosaurs..."). | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:28 | comment | added | Pink Sweetener | @John Oh sorry, misunderstood. I want the giant to be as large and (locally) devastating as possible without causing global devastation. "Local" devastation can be as great as rendering all of Continent B uninhabitable, but if this isn't possible without causing a few raised eyebrows on Continent A, then no dice. Thanks for helping me clarify. Will update question. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:25 | history | edited | Pink Sweetener | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:25 | comment | added | Pink Sweetener | @Carduus That's a fair point. The answer I am looking for here is a height. The mass (which determines how problematic a certain height will be) is proportional to a human's mass, if they were that tall. I'll add this to the question. The problem of gravity for the giant's body is magicked away. Problems gravity would create for the planet, however, would be useful info for an answer! | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:24 | comment | added | John | I was asking what you want the local effects to be, the largest earthquakes in human history are imperceptible on the other side of the planet. The Earth is big, you can carve massive craters in it with bolite impacts or nuclear weapons without people on the next continent noticing. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:20 | comment | added | Pink Sweetener | @John The earthquakes can be however big, so long as the giant's presence does not impact the planet in a way that it is felt by humans (without instruments) living on other continents. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:16 | comment | added | Carduus | Okay, I'll give you the breathing part, that was my bad. But if we're flubbing mass and gravity, is there enough data to come up with a real answer? | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:14 | comment | added | John | What magnitude of earthquake is your minimum, technically any impact can produce an artificial earthquake. and a barely detectable tremor on one side of the planet would be a cataclysmic shockwave at the origin. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:14 | comment | added | Pink Sweetener | @Carduus I feel that good fantasy/sci fi should in general take just a few discrete departures from reality, but otherwise stick to sound logic. I tried to make that clear in my question, which states "don't worry about the structural integrity of the giant. The giant is magic, but the planet's geology is not". | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 19:04 | comment | added | Carduus | Short answer? Your princess is in another castle. By the time you are worrying about a footstep that causes earthquakes, you've got a creature with enough size and mass that he'd have difficulty staying on the planet, let alone breathe. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 18:31 | answer | added | Daron | timeline score: 17 | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 18:25 | comment | added | Pink Sweetener | @NuclearWang I mean I suppose that's true to some extent, but if everyone subscribed to that line of reasoning worldbuilding.stackexchange wouldn't be the joyous, taking-fiction-way-too-seriously-for-fun place that it is! | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 18:17 | comment | added | Nuclear Hoagie | Agree with @manassehkatz - so much of the biophysics needs to be handwaved here, fudging the geophysics isn't going to make things any worse. Make the giant as big as you want and as loud as you want; people aren't reading fantasy stories with giants in them for the scientific realism. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 18:05 | answer | added | Tyler S. Loeper | timeline score: 40 | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 17:58 | comment | added | JBH | @Alexander I believe proof of that is what the OP is looking for... :-) Bear in mind that most of the Tsar Bomba energy was released into the atmosphere, not the ground. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 17:40 | history | edited | Pink Sweetener | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 16, 2018 at 17:31 | comment | added | Alexander | For giant's steps to be noticeable on the other continent (without instruments), each step must release energy equivalent exceeding that of Tsar Bomba. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 17:31 | comment | added | manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact | If you get to the point that there are measurable global tremors then the structure (e.g., bones, tendons, etc.) of the humanoid creature would have HUGE problems. Not to mention that above a certain size (think elephant or giraffe) "normal" animals will have issues with circulation, breathing and so many other things. Which reminds me: What do you get when you cross a kangaroo with an elephant? Potholes all over Australia. But I digress. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 17:22 | comment | added | Ash | Wow this is complex, the "step energy" is going to go up as a really weird function of height since at a given average density a taller biped will weight more but also their step will gain more gravitational potential energy due to picking up their feet farther and... I'm too asleep to even work out the full equation structure. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 16:48 | comment | added | Frostfyre | I will, however, point out that if the giant's movements can be detected at the antipole, then half the planet is uninhabitable due to constant earthquakes/tsunamis of a size not seen on Earth.. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 16:45 | comment | added | Frostfyre | I'm upvoting this just because the math gets more complicated the more I think about it. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 16:35 | history | asked | Pink Sweetener | CC BY-SA 4.0 |