Questions tagged [alternate-earth]
For questions relating to radically changed Earth. This alternate Earth could be a post-apocalyptic Earth, or Earth with major changes in the current social/political/economical schemes.
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Landscape of Indefinitely Old Earth
If we somehow fix the Sun's luminosity indefinitely at current levels, stabilize the Moon's orbit so that it no longer drifts away, and match the solar tides precisely with lunar tides so Earth's ...
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Medieval Europe without animals [closed]
I'm working on a setting that in some ways looks like medieval Europe without domestic, or in general agriculturally significant, animals, and I'm trying to figure out what the implications would be.
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Social implication of lion-people living with normal humans and how to make them into free folk and not slaves while maintaing their role as defenders [closed]
Lion-people are kidnapped at birth from humans. Why?
Because Lion-folk prey on humans as a form of sport and entertainment
Kidnapped cubs of lion-folk are groomed in ''loving'' families in order to ...
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What would my Sun look like to fit the properties of my Earth? - Part 2
Continuing on a previous post of mine (link: What would my Sun look like to fit the properties of my Earth?) where I wanted my planet to orbit around its Sun in 365 (Earth-)years. However this did not ...
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What key invention allows the exploration of my hot humid world?
I want to know what key invention would allow my civilization to travel down to and explore its world at sea level. This is similar to my previous question* but this time does not assume metals are in ...
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How can my fictional race of humans extend the area of their world they can explore?
This world is an alternate Earth similar size, mass and distance from its star to our Earth. The atmosphere is similar in composition to Earth except at 5000m altitude the pressure is two bar and the ...
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How to calculate temperatures on my world given different pressures and altitudes
The fictional world is Earth-like with 1g gravity and similar solar radiation to Earth but the inhabitants only live on very high plateaus at around 5000m where the pressure is already 3bar. How do I ...
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Super hot tropical forest
Consider an Earth like world except much hotter with extremely hot and wet tropical rain forests.
Assuming 100% humidity, how hot might the alternate Earth tropics get and still support tree like ...
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Are airships practical in a world without much metal?
Following on from my previous question about airship engines, I was planning to limit the development of the internal combustion engine and much modern technology in my world by greatly restricting ...
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How to slow and limit the scope of the internal combustion engine in powering an airship
I need to limit the development of the internal combustion engine so that it is only available in small numbers to few individuals and does not progress technically, or at least only progresses slowly....
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Is predictable time, type and amount of precipitation on a global scale a risk for ecological damage?
On Earth, we have problems with rain and other forms of precipitation: either it's absent for too long and it causes droughts and ecological disasters, or it's way too plentiful and it causes massive ...
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Maximum size of an Earth-like planet that's as close to reality as possible
EDIT: by 'larger' I meant a larger radius
EDIT 2: Relaxed the elemental similarity criteria, as that is incompatible with the 1G criteria
I wanted to have my story take place on a huge, alternate ...
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A Pangaean civilization has its land split apart by something
I want to write a story that has a Pangaean like world, but human civilization already existed during that era. Basically, the earth just has one giant piece of land while the rest is the sea.
People ...
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Would it be possible to turn off a small country's internet from the outside? [closed]
Let's say a country is going through political turmoil because a big enough part of the population wants to split off from it and form their own national identity, and they succeed. Let's call the ...
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Ideal conditions for Star Trek cultists with nuclear weapons to force the rest of the world to roleplay with them [closed]
A handful of extremely intelligent and resourceful Star Trek fanatics have, over the course of 2-3 generations assembled an arsenal of nuclear weapons in secret. Upon completion, they plan to ...
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How would a planet having a high concentration of metals like an asteroid affect it's ecosystems?
I am working on a Sci-Fi/ Fantasy world called Atterra which is an very alternate version of earth that has been artificially injected with metals and materials from the asteroid belt. Long story ...
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What would the rest of the oceans look like in this scenario?
The scenario being this:
The red band extending 15 degrees from the equator is a dead zone, too hot for complex, multicellular life to thrive. How hot are we talking? The equator in this scenario ...
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Would the sort of tectonic activity described below shorten Earth's lifespan?
The unfortunate truth is that hundreds of millions of years in the future, Earth will have used up all of its radioactive materials. And when that happens, tectonic activity will stop and magma will ...
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How might a lower gravity planet sustain a warm, earth-like atmosphere?
I've already posted something similar recently, but I don't think I was really asking the right question. I'm designing a hypothetical lower-gravity planet with 0.47M, 0.79r and 0.76g, with a similar ...
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If Earth was less massive, with 25% less gravity and an atmosphere scaled down proportionately, how would that affect climate?
Everything else being equal, how would reduced planetary mass and gravity affect the behavior of the atmosphere and the climate?
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Would these changes alter the effects of Tornado Alley?
Here is how the meteorological danger zone called "Tornado Alley" is made:
Warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico mixes with cold, dry air from the mountains and warm, dry air from the ...
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What's the impact of an Australia-sized continent near South America?
I have an idea for a story set in an alternate world where an Australia-sized continent exists near South America, near Chile.
Question: what would the climate of this world would be, if this ...
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Which marine organisms would survive this longer Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum?
56 million years ago, Earth underwent the greatest rise in temperature in the last 100 million years. In just 20 to 50 millennia, the global temperature had risen by five to eight degrees Celsius (...
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How far across the sea can mosquitoes disperse?
One of the more interesting facts about the biogeography of Hawaii is that mosquitoes were not always present; they only arrived in the early nineteenth century, as stowaways aboard oceangoing ships. ...
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Most hospitable biomes for living off the land
I'm trying to figure out which are the most hospitable biomes for living off the land.
Say we have a small spacecraft fallen through a time warp that takes it sideways in time, where it finds itself ...
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What changes to a humans physical form would occur if society lived inside the Earth?
(Mandatory I am new here, hello, nice to meet some fellow world builders, sorry for any mistakes, yikkity yak and all that)
In my "world", it has been 500 years since the majority of human ...
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What Would Be The Technological Limitations of a Civilization That Never Developed the Concept of Zero? [duplicate]
I have been brainstorming a short-story idea about an advanced civilization that develops on earth 60 million years after humans go extinct. Said civilization discovers time travel and decides to meet ...
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Is this sort of life cycle on a megamangrove feasible?
Point of departure--56 million years ago, in which the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum lasted three to four times longer than it did in our timeline. Today, on this alternate Earth, the twilight ...
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These Primates Don't Look Like Primates. How to Fix Them
For years, I've been building and rebuilding an alternate Earth. The point of departure is 56 million years ago, when the hottest episode in the last 100 million years, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal ...
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Could a river civilization develop in a cold desert climate?
There seems to be a trend with the oldest civilizations (Civilizations being urbanized societies with a government and social heirarchy) starting around river valleys surrounded by desert; the ...
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Could a hypothetical planet composed of a neon-oxygen or argon-oxygen atmosphere with Earth-like pressure levels sustain life?
I'm trying to create a hypothetical planet scenario, where there is a planet that has a similar atmospheric pressure to that of Earth, but in this case, it has a gas different than that of nitrogen. ...
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Would a longer PETM make Earth hotter than it was?
Sometime between the Paleocene and Eocene epochs, there was a mysterious, sudden, dramatic rise in global temperature. This moment in time was known as the "Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum",...
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What would the equator be like if Modern-Day Earth were as hot as the Cambrian?
This is a map of Earth's climate today:
This is how the Koppen classification colors the particular climates, so I don't know why the lower latitudes were dominated by several shades of the color ...
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Can a new geological material (specifically, a metal) be formed no older than 56 million years ago?
There is an alternate Earth that I've been building and rebuilding for years. The canonized point of departure is 56 million years ago, specifically a Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum that is four to ...
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Could a coalition of powerful corporations protect itself from a hostile neighbour?
This is an alternative Earth-like world, which has just entered the rough equivalent of Cold War. The primary contenders are the large quasi-socialist country with a strong command economy, opposed by ...
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What's the minimum height of a mountain resolvable to the human eye from 800 miles on a flat Earth?
The Taniquetil / Oiolossë (Mount Everwhite) on the eastern shore of Aman is the tallest mountain on Arda. Far higher than the other Pelóri, it could be seen from the mountain Meneltarma on Númenor ...
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What is the habitability of an Earth- like habitable planet that do not have any cloud covering?
Let's say I imagined a world that is as habitable as Earth and has the same oxygen levels, land to ocean ratio and similar average temperature. However it has no clouds at all. How different its ...
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How can these people fight these monsters? [closed]
On an alternate earth, lethal Pliosaurs size creatures infest the ocean, making sea travel impossible. Their cousin species tries to invade the surface every five years.
The advantages of this ...
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Reasons why a high tech species does not have space travel
I am writing a story where humanity has advanced technology, but I want to give a justification for why they are still on their planet. Here humanity has advanced ai, superconductors, laser weapons ...
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Ice coverage of a horizontal torus planet
How much ice would a torus planet be covered in if it rotated horizontally without a tilt such that its inner region never sees sunlight?
It's basically earth but as a torus and a completely '...
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Ranges of aurochs, bison and wild horses
I'm working on a setting where one of the large continents is similar to North America before the arrival of humans, including a biome containing the three large grazing ungulate species: aurochs, ...
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Would You Fit All the Domesticated Animals on This One Continent?
There is an alternate Earth somewhere in the multiverse, one in which there are three continents, all separated by an interconnected network of seaways that make up only 45% of the planet's surface (...
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What would the climate and ecosystems be like if instead of water, land would be 71% of Earth's surface?
According to the Bureau of Reclamation, water covers about 71% of the Earth's surface. Everything from microbes in the ocean releasing greenhouse gases into the air, to the immense amount of water ...
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In a world of groovy super spies, how would a spy cross a ravine?
I'm developing an alternate Earth where super spies exist. Men and women of extraordinary skill with extraordinary gadgets who act in extraordinary ways to protect the proverbial "King and ...
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Nesting abilities of migratory interdimensional creature
I'm waving hands a fair bit here, and I am doing that because I believe that it is internally coherent, so if you accept these things, you shouldn't need the story to suggest answers. I'm including as ...
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Substitutes for lead-acid batteries
I'm writing about a setting which will be developing an industrial civilization on a planet similar to Earth in relevant ways, except that certain heavy metals such as lead, are much rarer. (Other ...
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How to Turn Protoceratops Into a Real-Live Griffin
It was believed that the discovery of a small, herbivorous dinosaur named Protoceratops was the inspiration for the creation of the iconic griffin, a belief challenged in 2016 by paleontologist Mark ...
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Preserving information for future humans
I'm conceptualizing a sci-fi short story. In it, the main character will find an obelisk type object which has been half-buried for who knows how long. Well, the answer is about 20,000 years. The ...
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Could a second Trojan moon orbit Earth, as in, a second moon orbiting Earth from the same distance as our moon?
Here's the basic gist about our moon--it's one-quarter the width and one-eighth the gravity of Earth, it's rocky, it has no atmosphere and it orbits Earth from a distance of approximately 240,000 ...
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Effects of a sudden change in magnetic poles
In my verse the Magnetic Poles of the planet underwent a sudden shift due to the construction of a great tower imbued with great amounts of Magic. This shift made it so that the poles shifted to the ...
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