Questions tagged [environment]
For questions about an environment or aspects of it such as geographical, atmospheric or climate.
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Ways to make an alien atmosphere breathable, but uncomfortable?
In the project I’m working on, sufficiently advanced aliens terraformed a large number of planets in the distant past, giving them an atmospheric pressure and composition similar to Earth. This “...
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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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Is my environmental map consistent?
This is the map of my alien planet's continents and I want to know if the environments are accurate.
The symbol at the top is the Arctic island. It's like Greenland and has some greenery or should I ...
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Passively redirecting air currents with forest gardening
A group of evil farmers have developed a technique for manipulation of the weather on a large scale whereby the land is altered to effect the temperature of the air above and to act as a trap for ...
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What would happen if a world is full of mountains? How would it affect the geography, environment, and gravity of the planet?
I was thinking of making a world that is filled to the brim with mountains. I'm not saying that the world is just mountains, but the area or terrain is so difficult that it's hard for land vehicles to ...
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Would there be any major weather events if all air pollution suddenly disappeared?
The mages have decided that enough is enough, and the second most powerful witch in the world decides to remove pollution from the atmosphere. She ties her life-force to intrinsically depend on all ...
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How could a planet logically have green clouds but still be habitable?
I am working on a game currently with some predetermined assets, and one of the areas I am developing takes place on a mountainous, lush jungle planet with low-hanging green clouds and a general green ...
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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 is the altitude limit at which plants can grow on a low gravity planet?
(My Universe Sandbox Almost Terraformed Mars)
How high can plants grow on a low gravity planet like Mars?
Since lower gravity planets tend to have a greater height differences in terms of geography ...
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How can I force humanity to retreat to the ocean floor
I'm looking for an mass-extinction level event that would cause most life on the surface of Earth to be forced back to the oceans, one that is not feasibly reversible for humanity, before societal ...
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How does ocean productivity vary with depth?
I'm trying to figure out the optimal sea depth on an artificial world (a Banks Orbital as it happens, though I think this would also be an important parameter for many other kinds of megastructure). ...
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How Long Would It Take For A Car To Erode Near-Seamlessly Into The Environment?
I'm writing a short story that takes place many decades into the future. A major plot point is that a car that was promised to a future archaeologist via inheritance has naturaly eroded to the point ...
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How could farmland be turned into a desert?
How would an agricultural world be desertified? I have a community of farmers, and the environment is working against them but they are making it work with nitrates (got the idea from Disney Zorro ...
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How long would it take for humans to evolve on different planets?
Here’s the breakdown of my story:
Humans have basically destroyed Earth, milked it of all its natural resources. We've set on finding new planets to find a new place to live. The result: The ...
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Depth of seas on a Banks Orbital
If one is building a Banks Orbital or other megastructure with a very large habitable surface area, it is not necessarily given that much of the area would consist of seas, but there are several ...
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Could giants fit into a forest?
In my fantasy world, the forests are massive, reaching for miles and miles over the country, full of amazing creatures and just wonderful things. The thing is, I want my world to be relatively young, ...
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What environmental or biological factors would result in assassination being more common and more respected than soldiering?
Essentially, I am imagining this scenario:
Somewhere there is a world where, in all the major civilizations, assassins are more numerous and more highly respected than soldiers. In such a world, wars ...
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How big could a nuclear war be without causing an apocalypse?
It is widely known that an all out nuclear weapon with modern nuclear missiles would probably cause a nuclear winter, billions of deaths, and end life as we know it.
On the other hand, two small (by ...
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How would a massive permanent updraft affect a rainforest?
This world has these massive tunnels in which large quantities of heat and air travel from one point to another, being permanently pushed by magic.
Their exits are basically massive updrafts coming ...
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An earthlike world is flooded with fantasy flora and fauna. What happens to the ecosystem, and how long does it take to recover? [closed]
Let's assume for the sake of argument that:
It's a 50/50ish split between new prey/predators herbivores/carnivores being introduced. So already a bit imbalanced.
The creatures/flora make sense ...
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How Can Crashdrake Live In a Pine Forest?
Crashdrakes. These dragons are, for just about any intent or purpose, a cassowary, or in other words they are big, flightless, highly aggressive and yet herbivorous death birds. Seeing that dragons in ...
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At what point does a human civilization on a dead planet require petroleum?
I’ve gone and designed an entire earth-like planet where life had never evolved. Oil can be reached if needed—the purpose of this question is to find how far they can go and avoid it. (Oil is ...
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Midway through Terraforming Venus
I was watching a quite interesting Kurzgesagt video, Here. How would the surface of Venus look after freezing the CO2 out of the atmosphere? At around 5:28, we see that the atmospheric pressure is 3 ...
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Cooking in a hyperbaric kitchen?
Let's say you're in Atlantis,
which happens to be 1 km below sea level
It's also at equilibrium with the sea. You have been born there and are fully acclimated to the pressure, in air which is made ...
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Would it be possible for a pre-industrial society to construct islands?
I am envisioning a scenario in which, probably for reasons of persecution or overpopulation, a people would begin to construct islands in the sea. Each island would be fairly close to the others and ...
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How could a galaxy be damaged by a civilization's industrial expansionism in ways that mirror our own current climate crisis?
There are several stellar environmental results from sentient industrial over-expansionism that I can imagine ie. star lifting that results in entire systems becoming frozen husks and debris from ...
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Is a harsh environment conducive to the evolution of a peaceful society?
The aliens I am writing are a very soft-hearted civilisation, lacking many of the aspects that make us (humans) pretty vile creatures depending on the perspective. This harmonious behaviour seems like ...
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Low G vs High G planets and floating species
So, i want to make a planet with these requirements:
A higher surface pressure than earth, and an atmosphere that could last long enough for intelligent life to appear.
(If possible), medium or large ...
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How could earths life adapt on a new planet?
I have read the comments and thank you. I'm new to this website and I will continue to fix my mistakes until you people don't get confused.
The planets gravity is 10.8m/s^2. I've read some where that ...
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What would a giant corpse island actually be like?
Context
There is an inland sea called the Poisoned sea (name subject to change), which is around the size of the Mediterranean sea. A vast majority of the land masses in the Poisoned sea are the ...
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How long can this planet hold its atmosphere?
Humans are looking for a permanent home. They colonized Mars and later terraformed it, temporarily, before being forced out of the solar system entirely when the Sun went all Red-Giant on them a few ...
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Is a rainforest (or any single-biome) planet feasible
Various sci-fi movies often have single-biome planets (such as Tatooine, for example). Obviously a desert planet is possible (witness: Mars), but what about a more complex ecosystem, such as a ...
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What causes the bubbles of marshes and swamps? [closed]
One of the common fantasy scenarios are swamps, marshes, bogs, tar pits or even sewers, with a dark and loomy atmosphere, and gas bubbles popping everywhere. What causes these bubbles? Is it the heat, ...
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UBER-BAMBOOs: The Baobab Bamboo
I want a tall tree. But I also want a fat tree. And I want a fast tree.
Now, tall and fast are covered by one plant that I have in mind: bamboo.
Fat is covered by another: Baobabs.
I want a tree/grass ...
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Earthquake-prone civilisation — could floating cities be the answer?
This question is fairly self-explanatory. The civilisation in my story is in an earthquake-prone area due to lots of tectonic plates. Could using magic to make their cities levitate and thus not be ...
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Would These Three Actions Allow the Ecoregions to Regrow?
This scenario begins with multitudes of vanishings from around the world, at the same time. All of the domesticated animals (dog, goat, pig, sheep, European cattle, zebu, cat, chicken, Guinea pig, ...
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Can an ocean and beach only planet exist with an O2 breathable atmosphere?
I'm creating a planet, and I want it to be:
A windy place, with ocean everywhere (like the earth)
The same pressure & composition at sea level (like the earth)
Only one biome: A beach. The entire ...
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What would the weather be like on a infinite gentle slope?
Imagine a Yorkshire hill. This place is like that Yorkshire hill in all aspects except for those I describe. Its size is 100km by 100km, with a slope of 0.5%.
When going up the slope and crossing the ...
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Would people still be able to utilize Iron Alloy tools, Structures, Weapons & Armour in a Medieval high-oxygen world?
So me and my buddy are currently working on a story that takes place on a different earth-like planet similar to when carboniferous life like the Meganeura dragonfly inhabit the landscape. A few ...
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How much biological overlap would there be between a mirror life ecosystem and an Earthly ecosystem?
Background:
Chiral molecules or ions are particles which cannot be made congruent to one another via flipping one or rotating one. For example, the same property applies to your hands, assuming that ...
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What would be the largest animal that could exist within a grassland ecosystem dominated by machines?
For the story that I am writing currently, it is set on a colonized planet thousands of years after machines wiped out most of the human colony that were established there, and would go on to form an ...
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What are the adverse environmental effects of using size enhancing vegetables?
The lilliputians have been growing magic cucumbers that, when eaten, temporarily lets them grow to the size of a normal person. They've all gotten addicted to their newfound gigantism, but either the ...
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Seasonal Weather in a Forest with Polar Night
I'm investigating the feasibility of a world where there are taiga forests located far enough north to experience a significant polar night, say, no civil twilight for at least a few months. Inside ...
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Would a species of giant ape be able to live in an taiga?
In my world, I plan on having a species (not a race) of giant apes that inhabit an island around the size of Italy. This island is still heavily forested in many places, although the development of ...
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Ecologically Correct Land Fish
The land fish is a species of fish that is, as the name implies, fully terrestrial. Their anatomy is still fish-like, though. Specifically, they have a wide head like a monkfish, with the mouth on the ...
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How could force fields be stopped? [closed]
My fantasy world has magic. Magic you are born with, and magic that can be learned. The mechanics of the force field the main characters are trapped in is that when you go in you can't leave. You are ...
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Are boomalopes possible? aka a species that produces a flammable fuel?
I was inspired by this creature in a game called rimworld the creature when killed explodes and leaves a fireball ,and a corpse , when it does. The sacks on it contain a liquid that can be used as ...
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Could vulcanic activities make polar regions more inhabitable?
My basic idea is a polar region in a planet that, for whatever* reason, has a obscene amount of geothermic activity. The question is, will this be enough to create a micro-climate large enough to ...
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What kind of wing shape might a butterfly develop for regular over-ocean flight?
I'm currently building a whimsical children's fantasy world; nothing needs to be 100% accurate or believable to real life, but I do want the creatures I'm creating to seem thought out for the world ...
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What Could Create the Remaining Two Types of Single-Biome Planets?
There have been numerous questions in this SE about single-biome planets popularized in the Star Wars mythos. Despite the criticisms, these worlds are plausible, and they all involve the right ...
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