Questions tagged [civilization]
For questions about groups of societies and their defining characteristics and achievements.
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What is required to support a 1950's era society? [closed]
In a collapse of civilization, some recovery technology level would be needed to estimate the likelihood of recovery success.
Has anyone parsed out the build of say a power station through to raw ...
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How much time would it take to build a small medieval city/village/town with a wall surrounding it? [closed]
What I'm asking is how many months would it take for around 50,000 people to build an urban medieval settlement that is circular and surrounded by a wall made of brick/stone to protect against magic ...
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How stable would a rogue star system be?
By some means, artificial or naturally occuring, a human inhabited star system has been flung from the Milky Way. Prior to being ejected from the galaxy, the system bears at least one Earth-like ...
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Is it possible for a group/clan of 10k people to start their own civilization away from other people in 2050? Like the Amish but with more technology?
They are a group of fed up people in a third world country who somehow acquire/buy land in a remote place near the Himalayas.
Ignore the powers like China trying to conquer them.
Is this possible in ...
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How can kaiju exist in nature and not significantly alter civilization?
I'm building a world where kaiju-sized creatures exist alongside regular-sized creatures. How these kaiju don't crumble under their own weight doesn't matter, and can be explained away by them being ...
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Would it be at all possible for a civilization to not have a concept of a god real or fake?
Now I know the cheeky answer would be "of course it's possible, it's your world, you decide what happens in it" but I'm asking this from a general point of view.
Is it really inevitable that ...
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Cultural identity in an Multi-cultural empire
I'm world-building for a universe. I just came up with Deals Best Kept, and I realized I wanted to have a bunch of fantasy races interact, be very culturally diverse and mixed, and also account for a ...
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Would it be possible for a civilization to create machines before wheels?
I know wheels have been a pivotal part of every invention and machinery for hunmankind. But currently I'm making an alien civilization with access to floating rocks due to superconductivity. Thanks to ...
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What could Kaiju do to stop us from travelling into deep space?
The world's overrun with Kaiju but, while they kill many and cause much destruction, our civilization continues, migrating inward, away from the coasts where the Kaiju typically occupy.
Question is ...
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Fastest possible space faring civilization from cavemen [closed]
Let's say I have an Environment, called eden
Abundant amounts of any resources needed to become a space faring civilization, as long as they are non-synthetic or man made resources
filled with ...
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How might humans and their civilisations deal with living in a narrow band between a hot 🔥 face and cold ❄️ face of a planet? [closed]
Inspired by this answer.
How would the humans and their civilisations deal with things like:
The almost 1D direction of travel within a habitat zone
The limited liveable space
Having to go near the ...
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Why might a civilisation of robots invent organic organisms like humans or cows?
In a civilisation of robots (of unknown origin) on an isolated, desolated planet, what motivation might they have for purposefully trying to invent organic organisms?
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How would having decent/good/great ability to fly naturally affect a species air, land, and water vehicle creation and usage?
I had posted a similar question about this not too long ago, only it was just asking about aircraft. It got closed for whatever reason. I am asking a similar question, because I realized that air-...
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Urban Planning on a Tidally Locked World
I'm in the early stages of a project involving a habitable tidally locked world, this one a fairly Earth-like (large ocean) around a K-class orange dwarf. And using this study for reference, where the ...
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How to build a giant city in a harsh environment?
In my world, there is a magic civilization. They are on a far away continent, but it is harsh and snowy. In the current time, they have now giant cities, the main ones being a mix of both steam and ...
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Justifying why nonhuman sapients would not develop civilisation [closed]
I am imagining a project where the development of more advanced brain-computer interfaces allow humans to communicate telepathically with animals, and so discover that numerous species on Earth are ...
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How Well Would Humans Fare In A Romero-Styled Zombie Apocalypse? [closed]
The Story takes place in the modern world, and starting from one day anyone who recently died with their brain intact will revive as a zombie to feed on living flesh.
In this question we will not ...
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What sort of founder crops and/or domesticable food plants can be found in the tundra/subarctic, specifically the Alaska interior?
Another attempt at a broad question I asked here earlier. My aim here is to build another cradle of civilization from the ground up, in an area that never did (for fairly obvious reasons) and in an ...
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How could a nomadic society establish a stable civilization?
In my world, there is an entire nomad-based society. While they have some influence based on gypsies, they are mainly based on Mongolian Horsemen. At some point in my fictional history (ca. 12th-13th ...
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What would be the climate of a planet with very frequent hurricanes?
I'm writing a planet where the weather is always stormy. This planet has hurricanes and monsoons and huge thunderstorms and tornadoes on a weekly basis. The good news is that there are very few ...
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Nibiru hypothesis [duplicate]
Starting from the infamous "Nibiru hypothesis", I'd like to craft a world identical or at least similar to the one described within the works (more SF than Hard Science if you ask me) of ...
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How could a misotheistic society kill belief in powered gods?
In my setting there is a religion of giants (gaians) who believe magic/the supernatural are an affront to nature and must be exterminated by any means necessary.
For magic users this isn't to much of ...
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Can there be an Underwater Advanced Civilization? [closed]
After watching Aquaman and, most recently, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which features Namor and his underwater empire, I got curious about the feasibility of an underwater civilization composed of ...
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At what point should I halt humanity's development so that they don't start destroying habitats? How can I achieve this? [closed]
I'm creating a world where it's impossible for human civilization do develop to the point that they could start seriously destroying habitats. I'm not even talking about the industrial revolution. ...
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Could a single, hyper-advanced civilization develop among many unadvanced societies?
In my world, there is a confederacy of citystates, ruled by witches and Pagans. They left to escape persecution from Christians (of my world) in the 13th-14th centuries, though they do not know that ...
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Why would an advanced civilization keep slavery? [closed]
In my world, there is a country made up of mostly demons (a species) and ghouls. Their economy is both capitalistic and mercantilistic, and their government is a constitutional dictatorship. Currently,...
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Could a pure sign language society be as advanced as a speaking society?
I remember reading about how a lot of the early paleolithic societies and proto-human species like Neanderthals and Homo Erectus used sign languages before spoken languages. It made me wonder how a ...
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What would a post-humanity civilization look like? (Bystanders vs. Instigators) [closed]
I’m going to propose two ideas for a near-future scenario. In both scenarios, a lab company engineers a new intelligent species. For now, we’ll call this new species Homo postea, also known as “...
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How to Counter Mosquito-Borne Diseases in a Premodern World
In a setting I am working on there is a civilization based in a tropical floodplain that’s dependent on paddy field agriculture to maintain its population. Problem is that all the standing water and ...
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Could anyone give me a scientific explanation of how a planet/creatures would have purple-ish hue?
so this is related to a different planet/civilization me and my friend have in mind.
The civilization is an intelligent life living far from earth, but what I have been thinking of is making the ...
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What natural ocean resources can be used to make into clothing?
I have a civilization that lives not exactly underwater, but completely surrounded by water in which their cities are both submerged underwater or built floating right on top of it. Almost all of ...
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Could an alien civilization discover electricity before fire, if their planet lacked significant oxygen but did hold common storms?
Let’s say there was an early alien civilization, not yet advanced. They hail from a planet with little to no oxygen. If this planet had electrical storms relatively frequently, could they harness the ...
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If Aluminum was non-reactive, could there have been an "Aluminum Age" instead of a Bronze Age?
Aluminum is the most common metal on Earth. Despite this fact, this element wasn't discovered until the 19th Century. This is because Aluminum is never naturally found in the ground. Instead, aluminum ...
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What is the earliest point in human history that gold could be hoarded?
I am currently brainstorming the history and logistics of the dragon species in my urban fantasy story about immortal mythical creatures. The way I currently envision them, dragons have their ...
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What are the advantages and disadvantages an underwater civilization has over a terrestial one?
In my world, mankind isn't the only intelligent species around. Merfolk are present in all of the oceans. The Merfolks look like a cross between humans and dugongs. The Merfolk also have long hair ...
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Would intelligent humanoid carnivores start a civilization?
Let's say in an alternate world, Homo Sapiens died out but another Homo species evolved. Homo Carnivorous is very similar to Homo Sapiens with one big difference. Homo Carnivorous can only digest meat ...
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Would a civilization advance faster in technology if they had access to much easier energy sources? Such as, say, fusion with 1800's tech? [closed]
Suppose we go to some hypothetical world that has 1800's technology, and then give them (via handwavium) some technology that is on par with fusion or better (may be more handwavium), and also make it ...
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How do people live in bunkers & not go crazy with boredom?
This is a problem I ran into while writing a piece set into a post-apocalyptic urban fantasy future.
For a short background: I proposed a world where a large Island-country had disaster struck and ...
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When many animal and plant materials are comparable to modern materials, why would any civilization develop metal working?
So, in the setting I've created, there are many animal and plant materials which are comparable to modern materials and some even greater than what can be made today.
For example, there are molluscs ...
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Is there any practical reason to keep a primitive civilization on an artificial habitat
A planet with an early civilization (Middle age like) is doomed to be destroyed by an unstoppable event. So an advanced civilization decides to do a planetary evacuation to save the species and their ...
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How can a foreign power make great friends with another country without altering its government, people, or autonomy? [closed]
To keep it short and sweet, this is a fictional world with a country called Vertercrank. They're an overseas empire with dangerous neighbors, taking the role of pirates and thieves. Jehor is a country ...
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How would a medieval kingdom survive a zombie outbreak [closed]
In my world, there is a zombie infestation that destroys and takes out many kingdoms, citystates, and villages. These zombies are fast and like the ones from zombieland. It is possible to get cured, ...
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How can civlization industrialize amidst a zombie outbreak?
In my world, there is a zombie pandemic that happens. The zombies are fast, but can be defeated by a large army. My world a little before the outbreak was close to having an Industrial Revolution. ...
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Is it possible for another European-style medieval society to be on a separate continent?
In my world there are multiple continents with many cultures. In a far away continent, there are kingdoms that exist there. I was wondering how could they be medieval style like the mainland, and if ...
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What trains would survive a post-apocolypse [closed]
My world is in the distant future. While there were nukes, they were not used entirely, and there were many bioweapons like the t virus. The world has a few major governments still standing, but are ...
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Why would a society be matriarchal instead of patriarchal after the development of agriculture?
My (admittedly limited) understanding of why most human societies became patriarchal basically is that as people developed agriculture and the resources to defend themselves, power shifted to men as ...
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How would a mermaid jail work?
I'm trying to write a mermaid civilization, although I have one major roadblock when developing a criminal justice system. My mermaids are air breathers (like cetaceans) so I'm not sure how I would ...
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Why would a desirable technology remain forbidden despite progress of time and civilization?
Around 1100 years in the past, a great empire spanned most of the known human world. At its center was a great city of learning and discovery, where humans first developed methods to channel ...
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Why would animal people wear clothes?
In my world, there are anthromorphic animal people, similar to the ones in Skyrim. There are many types, so I will just call them all this. Due to them having fur, most specifically the cat people and ...
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How long would it take to build an underground city?
In my fantasy world, there is a race of ghouls. They are a knit-tit community, and while they built underground cities, including reforming abandoned mines as living places, they eventually kept ...
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