Questions tagged [civilization]
For questions about groups of societies and their defining characteristics and achievements.
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How can an advanced civilization help another to overcome the first challenges of the space age?
An advanced civilization, like ours could be in a couple of hundred years, realized that the most challenging time in their history was when they had the knowledge to make global changes, but not the ...
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Assuming that the environment of Earth and Mars are similar, is there possible trading between Earth and Mars in current technology?
Let's assume that Mars has an atmosphere, oceans, plants, and animals, even there is some native civilization like John Carter.
Is there any possible trading between Earth and Mars?
I noticed that ...
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What if aliens recieved a rogue Earth?
Imagine:
You are a member of an alien species, uncomparable to most living things on Earth, and living on an arid planet, around country sized oases. During your version of the 1800's your star ...
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A functional fatalistic daredevil civilization in history?
I have been reading about fatalism: the belief that all events are predetermined and therefore inevitable. It made me consider designing a fictional civilization based around fatalism, but with the ...
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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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Why is this culture against repairing broken things?
This culture is approximately at the very early Renaissance levels of development. There is a cultural semi-religious taboo against repairing broken things - you are expected to take care of your ...
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Maintaining the element of surprise on a featureless plane?
I've been toying with this idea for a while now, it's by no means fleshed out yet but here we go:
So there's this featureless white plane. It stretches on infinitely in every dimension and is made of ...
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Can my civilization be totally isolated by deserts?
Is it possible for a dry planet similar to Earth* to be inhabited by an indigenous intelligent humanoid species that is restricted to a small area of the planet – perhaps 1000 miles x 1000 miles near ...
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How could a subterranean alien lifeform develop space travel?
I have a sentient lifeform populating an Earth-like planet in terms of gravity / composition. But since that world is close to an old K Type star, the atmosphere is evaporating and letting UV rays ...
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constructs of sentient plasma life in a brown dwarf
If plasma life did evolve in a brown dwarf and it did somehow become sentient, what kinds of things could they construct? Would they be limited to just pruning the bigger autotrophs or could they ...
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If dinosaurs had a civilization, how primitive must it have been to leave no trace in the present?
I am thinking of, yes, a simple story with intelligent dinosaurs, but I am not interested (And I sincerely prefer) that they are not sufficiently advanced in my history to be comparable to modern ...
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How far could civilisation develop within one lifetime - starting from nothing?
This question here asked if it would be possible to reach the moon within a lifetime for a civilisation starting with "nothing". The answer to that question, quite clearly, is: no way.
But ...
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How long would it take for a group of settlers to form a new civilization
In my world, sometime before the main events of the story, a group of about 100 explorers set out to cross the uncrossable mountain range that divides the continent and venture into lands unknown. ...
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What type of shelters would need / create this arboreal civilization, if any?
Currently building the civilisations of my world, I found myself stuck on a particular aspect of the arboreal civilization, and would be very grateful for any tip (Tall trees : selective pressure).
To ...
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How Would Society Rebuild After A Meteorite Impact? [closed]
In my book series, this planet called Aztlan is struck by a massive meteorite. The impact and ensuing fallout were basically identical to the Chicxulub impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. However, ...
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What Would the Uses of Domesticated Bunyips be?
In my book series, one of the main cultures has domesticated Diprotodon Optatum (called "Bunyips" in-universe). For those of you who don't know, here's what they look like (they're the herd ...
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Best and Worst Koppen Climate Types for Human Civilization?
I've already made a Koppen climate map of (the relevant parts of) my world (see below) and I was wondering where most of the civilization and agricultural development should arise here based on that. ...
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Are insectivores and carnivores viable to become sapient?
So, I had a species that primarily lives off meat and insects, but I came across numerous articles which seem to point out that sapience and civilization is near impossible without being omnivorous. ...
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Which professions/backgrounds can make better slaves for an improved alien society in case of a selective termination? [closed]
Let's say that an advanced alien society somehow annexed or conquered earth for its natural resources. Then they discovered that these "human"s consume so much resources and they need to be ...
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Jobs/tasks needed to maintain an underground society indefinitely?
When a nuclear firestorm engulfed the world in 2029, those who caused it, the politicians, military officials, along with some scientists and engineers, retreated deep into a large, underground bunker....
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Basing a civilization on maize, beans, and squash as staple foods?
In my world, an apocalypse happened, a nuclear war.
Fast forward to the future. In places like Vegas, New Fresno, and Lost Angels (post-apoc LA) I was thinking about agriculture, and after doing a ...
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What would a Bandit Kingdom look like and how will it survive? [closed]
this question on this platform. My question is that, "What would a Bandit Kingdom look like and how will it survive?" This question had me thinking as I watched a gameplay of a Mount & ...
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Fighting techniques in an arena of rings rotating in alternating directions
This might be a bit story based, but here goes-
I have an idea for an arena for one of my civilizations which involves about 20 rings a yard wide and rotating each other at different speeds. the outer ...
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What would be the technological limits of civilizations living under alien suns?
In this universe I am developing for a game, I would like to learn the limits of technological development due the prevalence of frequent solar storms that are much more intense than the ones from our ...
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Could an obligate relationship between a sapient species, and a species with appendages for manipulating its environment evolve?
I was thinking of a situation, in which there are two species, one with similar intelligence to humans, but no appendage for manipulating the world around it, and another species that is not sapient, ...
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What could be an energy source for an underground civilization?
A mostly autonomous city exists deep underground inside a mountain. They enjoy a modern level of technology and engineering. Other than nuclear power what energy sources could they harness to power ...
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Could the use of von Neumann probes by some precursor be a possible solution to the Great Filter? [closed]
I was thinking about including von Neumann probes as the Great Filter in my setting where humanity discovers that there are planets all over the place that have been turned into hollow bodies, ...
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Chaotic World: Large or Small Settlements?
Environment
There exists a strange dimension called the Margins of Reality. All supernatural things in the world come from here and are caused by what the natives call "Margin Spirits." In ...
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What can kill an interstellar civilisation? [closed]
It is a common trope that interstellar civilisations rise and fall, only to leave ruins behind. The origin of this idea seems to be a mismatch between empires and civilisations. Yet while (West)Rome ...
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Is a short lived race realistic?
So I have a species that has a life expectancy about half that of humans. In antique times, they mostly die around the age of 30 once they’ve passed the challenges of childhood. Their development is ...
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Ant colony in Zero Gravity [closed]
The image below is an Ant colony in the glass chamber. If the Ants in Chamber filled with soil can generate such structure of colonies. What would happen if the Ants are kept in the same chamber but ...
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Can my advanced civilization halt the expansion of the universe?
Do the laws of physics permit any chance for a Type III civilization on the Kardashev scale to halt or even reverse the expansion of the universe, or bring the galaxies back closer together, assuming ...
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Earth-like planet : the development of first civilisations
After building tectonic plates and today's continents shape of this earth-like planet, comes the time to put humans on it. On this planet, humans have expanded and traveled the same way Homo erectus ...
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How to teach the Mesoamericans seafaring?
I want to have a powerful Mesoamerican civilisation by the 1100s; one that decides to sail east and discover Europe. Earlier versions of the story had them contacted by Zheng He in the 1400s, but I ...
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What would the population and financial requirements be to create a self-sustaining country based on UBI that could be apart of the global economy [closed]
If a mega rich individual wanted to test the validity of UBI (Universal Basic Income) in the most efficient way possible and how it integrates into a global modern economy, what would the population ...
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Would a civilization living on a planet without a moon still come up with the concept of months?
We divide the year into months of ~30 days because that’s roughly the period of the moon, adapted to fit a solar year.
However, would a civilization living on a world with no moon but a year of ~365 ...
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How could liquid nitrogen weapons exist in a medieval society?
It’s been awhile since I’ve been on here, and in all that time, I’ve developed my fictional world by a lot.
But I’m still confused by something.
You see, the society of my world is one modeled on ...
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Is a modern dark age possible?
For context, I'm considering a story similar to the Netfilx TV show The 100 in which humanity has to recolonize the Earth following a major extinction-level event. I'm aiming for the society they ...
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Can a polytheistic culture survive even if surrounded by monotheistic centralized aggressive warlike cultures like Christianity and Islam? [closed]
Let's say a pagan polytheistic culture survives in the Middle East, with some fertile land and a couple hills to be able to defend itself, while still being a hub for trade. Would it be able to evolve ...
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New variables for the Drake equation? [closed]
Has any scientist or sci-fi writer proposed adding new variables to the Drake equation? Science in every area has progressed a great deal since the days of Enrico Fermi and his contemporaries, after ...
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Could a regularly erupting volcano create fertile soil for a fantasy empire to thrive?
I have recently learnt about the flooding of the Nile and the irrigation around it, enabling plentiful crops by depositing nutrient rich silt during bronze age Egypt. I have also learnt about volcanic ...
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How Would I Believably Wipe Out an Entire Planet's Population and Culture Without Destroying Said Planet?
In my story, there is a planet. The planet's name is not really important for the sake of this question, so we're going to refer to it as "dead planet".
Background:
Dead planet is entirely hot ...
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Civilization going backwards. How to? [closed]
When we talk about civilization rollback, it's usually some kind of post nuclear war scenario, where everything is in ruins but the knowledge isn't lost.
After some huge catastrophe, we'll still have ...
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How could a technologically advanced civilization in the ancient world leave no trace of itself? [duplicate]
Atlantis was the first great superpower of humanity, ruling the ancient world long before Alexander the great or the Roman empire came into play. It was dominant on all continents, leading a ...
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How can an alien civilization be so powerful that it can with almost 100% certainty destroy any other civilization without getting a scratch? [closed]
Context: There is civilization of God Seekers. They try to prove the existence of (a) God(s) by finding a god-chosen civilization that would be able to survive the genocidal attacks of the God Seekers....
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Intelligent life from trial by wildfires
In my question:
Sustainability of Regular Global Wildfires Due to Oxygen Rich Atmosphere
An answer was proposed for a kind of "Boom Bust Cycle".
The atmosphere has little CO2 but a lot of O2....
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World without ferromagnetism
In an alternative universe, Maxwell’s equations still apply but ferromagnetism doesn't exist. That is to say, the laws of electromagnetism are the same as in our universe, but things like iron aren’t ...
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Feasibility of a Super Crop
In my setting there is a civilization that has a decisive advantage in a fundamentally agrarian world; a crop of exceptional yield and nutritional value.
Would it be feasible for a plant to have ...
user71781
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How would Instant communication affect early Civilization Economy
There are three stones that allow basically instant communication. The brighter the stones the clearer the message. A brownish red stone wouldn't be as good as a bright red one. The way these stones ...
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Why would a flourishing land-based civilisation move under-water?
For what reason would a civilisation experiencing an almost golden age in industry and agriculture, experiencing no catastrophic plague almost all move underwater in as such that they live entirely ...
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