Questions tagged [apocalypse]
For questions dealing with events during an apocalypse scenario. Do not use for post-apocalyptic settings.
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What long term effects would an eruption of the ring of fire have on Earth? [closed]
We all know about the ring of fire, and we all know what happens when a volcano erupts.
For context: this is set in the near future, with humans living in high-tech protective domes during/following ...
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How close Earth must be to Milky Way's center to undergo a modified 2012 film's scenario?
The 2012 apocalypse film features a premise that there are neutrinos from the sun that heat the Earth's core and thus leading to the end-of-the-world scenario.
Inspiration
Recently, a paper was ...
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How does the world rebuild after an apocalypse? [closed]
140 years ago, the world was nearly torn apart as rifts to other realms sprung up across the continent. Former societies of elves, humans, dwarves, halflings, and more were devastated, and now new ...
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Radios and walkie-talkie [closed]
In a solar punk if there are radios and walkie talkies being used regularly by a very poor post-apocalyptic society...does it sound believable that there are no airplanes and flying vehicles nor cars, ...
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Gas or Electric for a Zombie Apocalypse [closed]
This question is referring to tools, like chainsaws and weedwhackers.
Gas would be easier to get, being a liquid form that can be stockpiled, but gas tools are loud and leave fumes.
Meanwhile, ...
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Can Earth have blue skies and diverse clouds yet never a drop of rain?
I'm trying to figure a threshold of environmental conditions where the Earth hits a point of no return on falling rain. The thought seems preposterous to me, but recently I saw some movie that claimed ...
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Alternate Bullet Propellants [closed]
For my world, I want there to be many types of ammunition due to the world being an apocalyptic-anarchy kinda thing. Mostly land combat, little to no spacecrafts or vehicles. Anyone know any good ones?...
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How much and how powerful would a "phlebotinium" bomb launched from orbit be to create an artificial sea? [closed]
I am writing a setting for an unspecified goal, whether I will end up doing a video game or a novel out of it all, but I am still working on the worldbuilding aspect.
Lore-introduction, (you can skip ...
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The Frozen Star - Can U-238 reactors be used as a energy source for 10,000 years?
I was watching this Minecraft Animation video based on a scientific concept about what would happen if we froze the Sun - What happens if we Freeze The Sun- Portrayed by Minecraft.
In this video, ...
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How do we stop a gray goo disaster? [duplicate]
Let us imagine a scenario where the apocalypse has come in the form of gray goo: tiny nanotech replicators that are set to consume all the biomass on Earth while replicating themselves. Humans, oddly ...
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Is this asteroid apocalypse scenario realistic?
So, in response to my own earlier question: Disasters to prompt the bettering of civilisation, I have decided to go with an asteroid impact which decimates much of civilization, with an added twist ...
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What kind of explosion could explode the whole Earth? [duplicate]
I want to make technology that can explode the whole Earth. The problem is that antimatter explosions and nuclear explosions just don't have the juice needed to blow up the planet. Conventional ...
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How much attrition could human civilization survive? [closed]
The pandemic has demonstrated how even a small reduction in capacity can produce downstream disruptions in supply lines.
The standard model for an apocalypse is that mankind's population drops below a ...
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The Earth is teleported into interstellar space for 5 minutes. What happens?
Humanity has just developed a star drive and begun sending their first probes, and have now discovered an unstoppable force of doom approaching to destroy the solar system. Their only option is to ...
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What should an underground shelter, bunker or “regular” home look like if it’s designed to keep two people isolated for at least two years? [closed]
I’m asking this question because I was just thinking of how people would actually survive in the medium term in an apocalypse scenario with “reasonable and realistic” limits. The key world being ...
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What are some things that could destory humanity? [closed]
I trying to think of ideas for the destruction of humanity/civilization that are not the usual (nuclear war, extreme viral/deadly disease, global warming, overpopulation, etc). Something that would be ...
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A meteor falls in a Mediterranean-like sea: what is the impact?
A meteor with a diameter of 300 meters crashes into the middle of a circular sea with a radius of 1500 km and with a speed of 30 km/s.
Civilizations (and humanity as a whole) that are situated around ...
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What would be the ideal date and time for a magical zombie apocalypse to occur to cause the most death and destruction?
An invisible eldritch entity has enveloped the entirety of modern planet Earth. As a result of this, any human who dies becomes a zombie. This is not spread by bites or anything like that, death of ...
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What could cause a small enough magical apocalypse?
In a world with spirit magic, what could cause a big enough magical accident to destroy a large city and devastate a wide area around it?
Spirit Magic
In this world, all things have a spirit and ...
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population growth from a person alone [closed]
for context: an apocalypse has happened. Everyone dies with the exception of this one man. Assume that this man is able to stumble upon a cloning machine. Said machine can hold up to 10 babies. We ...
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Lightspeed organics eliminator?
Assume that 'Oumuamua was a Von Neumann Berserker, which, at the detection of civilization, triggered a bomb that exploded at lightspeed.
From the perspective of Earth, due to the speed of the ...
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How to write the initial robot apocalypse [closed]
I am currently planning a dark-humor story about the robot apocalypse (Mostly inspired by Robopocalypse and other robot uprising works, of course), and for a while, I’ve been struggling with just how ...
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How would the general public be kept unaware of a zombie outbreak? [closed]
Consider a zombie outbreak beginning in March 2020 rather than the Covid-19 pandemic we have today.
This pandemic has started intentionally by a secret world organization to lower down the human ...
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What Size and Likelihood Of An ET Impact Would Destroy A Small County Sized Region But Not Our Species?
Motivation
The question is inspired by the astronomy journal preprint released publicly today, entitled: From impact refugees to deterritorialized states: foresighting extreme legal-policy cases in ...
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Most of Solar System is colonized but Earth dies with most of knowledge and technology. What the colonists may do to rebuild the civilization?
Suppose it happens some 250-300 years in the future.
There are some (medium-sized) cities on Mars, settlements throughout Solar System, an interplanetary communications network, many orbital space ...
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In the event of a strategic nuclear war that somehow only hits Eurasia and Africa, would the Americas collapse economically or socially? [closed]
Let's say that there's a strategic nuclear war in Europe, Asia, and Africa - only - and does not involve nuclear weapons hitting Australia, the Americas, the Pacific islands, etc. What would the ...
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How could a world empire prevent rebellions with minimal bloodshed?
In the world I've thought of, monstrous beings more or less ended civilization on my planet. From the fires of this apocalyptic event, the world empire arose. It took over territory either by force or ...
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Forest fires for heat
I am writing a work of fiction in which, circa 2030, the global average temperature of the Earth falls by 150C (~270F) over the course of five months. This upends the way societies work as people ...
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Writing a timeline for the robot apocalypse
Can anyone help with a robot apocalypse story?
Wall of text incoming…
I am planning to write a dark, slightly comical novel that chronicles the events of a robot apocalypse (mostly from the ...
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Where should compounds be built for an impending "zombie" apocalypse? [closed]
I have been working on a post-apocalypse world where over 90% of the world’s population died in a “zombie” apocalypse (technically living zombie trope). This apocalypse occurred around 125 years prior....
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Riots break out after the general population realizes that the government can't save them from an asteroid. Would wars also break out?
A follow up to this question about an asteroid (which I will give 48 hours before picking an answer).
Consensus was that I was being way too optimistic, and that only a small population will survive ...
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How plausible is this volcanic eruption event? Dark Age without total extinction of Stone/Bronze/Iron Age people?
At the end of the desert's westward Great River (think the Nile in Egypt) there is a volcanic island called Harek-Set. Its black mountain is a hotspot volcano which produces obsidian and makes the ...
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Why would The Machines not hunt humanity?
The Slow War is almost over. The Machines appeared almost twenty years ago, and since then we've all but lost humanity without them firing a single shot. Instead they won through brute industrial ...
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Minimum Safe Distance From Planet-Destroying Event
Okay, I have this villain who's able to create supernova-like explosions from his body that release a total energy of 1.67x10^39 J, and the heroes stop him from destroying Earth by portalling him away ...
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How feasible would humans beings wiped out by plant aliens be?
In my world, the population of mankind has been all but wiped out by the accidental introduction of extraterrestrial plants brought to earth by scientists who were attacked by them. The plants ...
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What worldbuilding conditions would need to exist to allow a terrorist organization to inadvertently destroy their entire civilization? [closed]
Here is the question that most contains the scenario for this new one because it’s a continuation so I would recommend reading the scenario in that question.
Note: this is about the Venus society ...
user84509
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I need to be able to turn individual people's gravity off
I'm writing a book to redefine the horsemen of the apocalypse. My first book concentrated on a new "Death", who reveals that there are in fact 7 "horsemen", not 4 - war, death, ...
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How fast can a cockroach scaled up to 1:72 scale(72 times bigger) run and move barring the square-cube law? [closed]
I had a passing idea for a world where giant cockroaches attack a city and was wondering how fast can they run at this scale. I know that even normal-sized cockroaches are fast, so must be even more ...
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Would this combination of pathogens make excellent zombies?
For the creation of the perfect zombies I have a "zombie-making mix" in mind. How good would it be for a zombie apocalypse? regardless of the level of realism in its creation.
I've separated ...
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Why would the military use tanks in a zombie apocalypse?
So usually the use of tanks is to shoot at other tanks or fortifications. So would a tank be useful against zombies? Would they just use it to crush the Zs?
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How many species does a virus need to infect to destroy life on Earth? [closed]
Okay, let's say that there's a virus that can infect multiple species, is very hard to cure, extremely contagious, can linger asymptomatically for long periods of time, and likely to be deadly. It ...
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what is the most devastating location for an asteroid to hit?
I've been wondering for a while and have seen conflicting results, so I'm asking. "if an asteroid were to hit an extremely earth-like planet, would it cause the most damage when hitting the water,...
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How to Build a "Believable" Fall of Civilization? [closed]
Nice to meet you all.
Inspired by Star Trek: Discovery's Season 3 and "The Burn", I've been re-reading materials where there has been a "Fall of Civilization" scenario and it seems ...
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A 1 kilometre wide sphere of U-235 appears in an orbit around our planet. What happens?
Let's suppose that after seeing aliens get portrayed negatively in science fiction and wishing to end the discrimination, the ancient H'andh'wh'a'vians decide to destroy Earth and humanity.
As they ...
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Could a terrorist organization destroy most of Earth's population? [closed]
A small, but wealthy, terrorist organization, (or "freedom fighters", or "savoiurs of the world", if you use their own language) sees the world as full of "sinners", and ...
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What If A Positively-Charged and a Negatively-Charged Planet Collided?
Let's say we have two planets. Both are around the same mass and radius as Earth, and are 1 year away from colliding with each other, each traveling at 20 km/s. At first. Planet 1 has a sufficient ...
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Could This Method Create a Zombie Apocalypse
Background: Let's say a "failed" (they thought it failed, at least) government experiment created a portal that a necromancer existed from. The necromancer has the following abilities:
He ...
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How could a civilization survive a continent splitting cataclysm? [closed]
Say the lost continent of Lemuria was real, and was home to an ancient sophisticated civilization that like the Atlanteans, dabbled in high technologies and forbidden magicks. Due to their fatal ...
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How could zombies infect the population of an entire town? [closed]
There is a zombie apocalypse scenario where one zombie appeared in a small town in America. Would it be possible or plausible for them to take over? My problem is that the military would just quickly ...
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I need to destroy the Earth. Is this what it might look like?
This is a small but critical part of my story; I need to kill off most of humanity (leaving a 5- or 6- digit number of survivors) and render the planet uninhabitable long-term, but survivable for a ...
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