Questions tagged [alternate-reality]
For questions in which reality is different than it is in real life. This may range from small, historical changes to absolute revisions of the laws of physics.
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How Can You Explain Elements We Don't Have in our World? [closed]
I am creating a world in an alternative universe to ours, and I want to have unique elements and compounds with different properties than we have here. The thing is, I can't just plop these metals and ...
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Image Intelligence concerning alien structures on the moon
Meta-Background
Follow-up question to: How do you hide an investigation of alien ruins on the moon during Apollo 11
I got notice on WB:Meta that there is another approach on the question, which I ...
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Do mini-humans need a "real" Saturn V to reach the moon?
What if humans would not be in the scale we know, but being much smaller. If they wanted to go to the moon in the 1960s, would they have had to build a "real sized" Saturn V because of the ...
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How could the switch from steam to diesel locomotives be delayed 20-30 years?
In real life diesel locomotive production largely supplanted steam locomotive production in the 1940s and 1950s, and steam locomotives largely disappeared from mainline service in developed countries ...
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Evolution of classic giant mushroom forests [closed]
How would the classic fantasy trope of giant mushroom forests evolve?
In an alternate, Earth-like reality, how would fungi grow into dense, lush 'forests'?
Mushrooms decompose things, so to have ...
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Society with random teleportation [closed]
In a parallel-universe jumping setting (akin to Rick and Morty or Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness) we enter a universe where people teleport to a nearby location at some reasonable rate (...
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How can the stars be wrong, so that an observer realises they're not in our world anymore?
There is a common trope in fiction: when a character find themselves in a dark place out of this reality (somewhere in the eldritch realms, dreamscapes, lost cities of Carcosa or R'lyeh, etc), at ...
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Alternate Triassic dinosauriods
In a hypothetical alternate Earth where the Triassic extinction didn't occur, I envision dinosaurs taking to the trees to avoid the massive crocodile species that were prolific at that time (sorry for ...
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Would a world twice the size of Earth be able to have similar weather patterns?
The TLDR for this is if I have a planet that is twice the diameter of Earth, (so four times the surface area), would continental distribution have more effect on the weather patterns than the sun and ...
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Advice/Feedback on building a working Ocean Current model for my fictional world
after much umm-ing and ahh-ing and head scratching, I've decided to seek some advice about my worldbuilding project for the novel I'm writing.
Im looking for feedback/critique on what I've done wrong ...
user106164
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How should I determine the properties of keels and ether?
I was reading this PDF on the speed of sailing ships, and it occured to me that I need to determine the physics of the flying sailing ships in my world. Being flying sailing ships, there will be no ...
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Why is "magic" possible in the Elidrian side of reality but not on Earth? [closed]
TL:DR:
"Why is "magic" possible in the Elidrian side of reality but on our terrestrial side of the universe? "
I'm creating a game and attempting to breathe life into a story that
...
user104995
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Practicality of engine-mediated magic
In another universe in which humans may exist but did not evolve, the laws of physics allow phenomena that we in this universe would call magical, where matter and energy may be moved, transformed and ...
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Help solving the issue of how the existence of a giant uninhabited continent change the history of my world?
I'm writing a story (not sure if it's speculative fiction or low fantasy or sci-fi) that is set in a fairly realistic world except that there is a parallel dimension which humans colonized in what ...
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Would it be possible for someone to have his prosthetics that were made from steampunk materials back in the 1930s?
Edit #1: As I was asked to define the steampunk materials, I should’ve clarify that by this term, I mean materials that consist of metallic elements in general, such as gold, might as well have bronze,...
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What kind of scanner can detect a hidden chip in someone's body?
So it's the lead-up to what might be World War III and the enemy is kidnapping and implanting mind-control chips into our people, one by one, to turn them into sleeper agents, to all attack en masse ...
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What would fungal technology look like? [closed]
In a setting I've created it's modern Earth just like you see around you every day except there's an area deep underground reminiscent of D&D's Underdark or Skyrim's Blackreach in that it's a ...
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Any way of having a breathable atmosphere with zero gravity in free space?(and universal directionality?)
Inspiration
This is heavily inspired by sunless skies in that sunless skies' world allows for the use of steam engines as space ship- equivalent (using steam jets as thrusters, while still able to ...
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What replaces Mr/Mrs/Ms as a title courtesy/respect in a world that cares less about gender?
I'm trying to create a mildly utopian setting. When my characters need to address someone formally and I realised that the default English "Mr" or "Ms" I was using is full of ...
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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 ...
user100394
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Balancing people from another world with people from the mother-world
Average adult male weakling from the mother-world: can bench (larsen press style, so no arch and no leg drive) a pathetic 300kg/661lbs without ever training.
Average adult male from our world: can ...
user100394
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Can I warm up outer space?
My universe was created without stars, of any kind (which includes the sun!), and has continued that way for about 2000 years. To clarify, all life (intelligent life) was created by the deities around ...
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Can I get away with lowering gravity so that the usual solar masses in our universe are simply planetary masses in the setting's universe?
I want the world to have an extremely long age of discovery, such that even if they were to use a ship to travel in a straight line across their planet's ocean for hundreds of years they'd still be ...
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What If Bears Evolved Speech, What Would Their Voices Sound Like? [duplicate]
What if in a alternate reality,
every bear on planet Earth
suddenly evolve and became sapient like humans, and evolve the ability of speech, but realistically, what would their voices sound like?
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user98060
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How fast can a tidally locked planet be sped up without causing noticeable discomfort?
This question is about an Earth-like planet that doesn't rotate around its own axis.
Normally the sun and moon rotate around the planet, providing a day/night cycle, but this has stopped for reasons. ...
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Can an alternate physics system be devised in which the weak force is reduced or eliminated entirely?
Like, is there a modification to the Standard Model you could make, or some sort of alternate gauge theory that only unifies the strong and the electromagnetic interactions?
Edit: I am not asking for ...
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Why do people want to immigrate to North Korea? [closed]
In the alternate reality, no one escapes North Korea. In fact, no one wants to. On the contrary, people around the world want to immigrate to North Korea.
North Korea is a non-democratic state ruled ...
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Could 2 versions of a person from alternate universes be different ages? [closed]
Pretty much what the title says. I have 2 characters who are technically the same person, just from different universes, but for multiple reasons they have to be different ages. Can this make sense? ...
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Discriminatory policies that are outwardly non-discriminatory
The setting of the story is similar to a 1970 to 1980 Earth.
There is a special faction of people, and we call this faction A. A looks human, but has animal ears and tails (in the sense of if you ...
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How should I build an additional periodic table?
Recently, I was going through the magical materials that existed in one of my fantasy settings. It was all going swimmingly, when a thought occurred to me: "You know, I should figure out how ...
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What could reduce sunlight on an Earth-like planet?
I want to create a world where there is very little sunlight during the day -- at noon the light would be about the same as an Earth sunset. The planet would be Earth-like until something causes the ...
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How would life develop/adapt in an Earth-like planet but with less sunlight?
Here's the setting:
Advanced human civilizations of an ancient time destroyed the ozone layer of the planet. They managed to create an self-sustaining artificial layer which would function exactly as ...
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Feasibility of an Empire with advanced ecological knowledge making Chott Melrhir a permanent lake?
What is the feasibility of a North African based Roman Empire turning Chott Melrhir into a permanent lake?
The Empire has a population of around 8-10 millions, controls all of North Africa from ...
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How to make pagan religions popular again [closed]
In my medieval fantasy world, Christianity, or at least it's parallel universe equivalent, is the most dominant religion. However, later in my world, pagan beliefs start to become popular again and ...
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Lava overgrown by plants
The problem:
I want to have a volcanic island with an everlasting lava outflow completely overgrown by (jungle) plants. It therefore follows that plants should also grow above the lava.
I know that ...
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What weeniest single future change can merge contiguous states of the USA? [closed]
I am asking about the future, not past. At least every year, someone proposes merger of these abutting US states. Common examples are
North + South Dakotas,
Virginia + West Virginia,
North + South ...
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Could A Planet with Fiery Rain Survive?
The Idea
I'm creating a planet where rain is small drops of fire, and anything in its way will be burnt. (No idea how this happens, and the technicalities don't bother me, either)
Every night the wind ...
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Which would be the Koppen-Geiger climate distribution of this map?
The existence of closed seas makes it difficult to me, especially the East one. I have it clear that in the souteast region the climate would be influenced by monzoon, but if the world has only one ...
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What would the sky look like on an infinite plane?
The world is an infinite plane with an Earth-like surface. It has an atmosphere, but it has finite height
Because of this, and how fields work, this should give us the same gravity all the way up, ...
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What would keep demons existing within pocket realities from entering human domains?
Planet Earth exists as two sides of a coin, with one side containing humans and the other containing demons. These two realities are separated by a barrier that keeps both races from interacting with ...
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How common are men with feminine features and gynecomastia in a future where gender roles has become obsolete? [closed]
There is already a trend that gender roles are not as "serious" as they used to be and the criminalization of homophobia (here in Brazil at least) has helped many men to express femininity ...
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Everything is normally light. It is dark waves that travel and cause darkness - how?
In an alternative universe with alternative physics; light, by default, is everywhere at all times. Rays of 'dark' from a dark sun, are initially the only way to dispel the light. This provides day ...
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No one wants to reproduce because it's disgusting, how does the species avoid extinction?
One of the species in my world is very asexual. In this species, males and females are rarely if ever attracted to other individuals. It is something that developed through the past few decades and ...
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Focus mode side effects
Premise :
The brain is expensive to maintain, 20% of your food expenses go to your brain so it doesn't rot and die of hunger, just to maintain an idle brain. Focusing on something burns way more ...
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Can trolls create chimeras with their renegeration ability?
TL:DR = trolls exist, troll cells are universal stem cells on steroids, specifically bred trolls are more powerfull and used to fuse different animals together with their regenerative properties.
In ...
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A long lasting society
A while ago, the richest men and women in a country got together and came up with a type of society that could endure long enough until it became advanced enough to launch space conquering missions.
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What kind of environment would exotic matter with negative-mass properties be in?
A Prelude: Let's say, for the sake of argument, exotic matter comes from exotic places. These exotic places are alternate dimensions/parallel universes, etc., but are accessible via wormholes. Perhaps ...
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How can a moon be always full (no other phases)?
I'm writing a system where the moon is always full from the perspective of the Earth-type planet--it does not go through phases. Short of the moon itself being luminous, what would it take for this to ...
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What teeniest lone change would have actualized transcontinental High Speed Rail in the USA?
The high speed train (HST) must be one of the high-speed trains currently or no longer in service. The HST should run at its max operating speed as much as possible and practicable, to save time. HST ...
user91827
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How much could/what would the average human be able to lift/carry if they were in a world where they are equivalently 1 inch tall?
So I have this semi-old story concept where people are somehow teleported via a mysterious portal(I might change it to a door) to this dimension where everything is 72 times bigger and the day/night ...
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