Questions tagged [health]
For questions on the limits of human survival or on ways to stay alive under extreme conditions. Generally, "evolve new abilities" is not an answer to these questions. These questions are about humans as we are today.
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Using Lithium pills to reduce Nitrogen Narcosis in a thick atmosphere
My planet’s atmospheric dry air composition (not including non-toxic trace gases)
My planet’s atmosphere has a very high partial pressure of Nitrogen, which will cause humans to have Nitrogen Narcosis ...
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How long could a brain theoretically survive if properly cared for?
I saw a similar post here, however, the discussion became too based on immortality in general and how memory would be affected over millions of years. Let's say a figure like Bill Gates who is getting ...
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How many airborne bacteria can I put into the air while keeping it breathable?
I have a setting where I want the atmosphere to basically be filled, heavily and consistently, with a bunch of small, airborne bacteria-like cells/microscopic biomatter. For the sake of keeping the ...
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How much stuff can I alter using the weak force before I kill myself
Weak Nuclear Alchemy, that is the power I am asking about today, a power that was already discussed in What Would Powers Based of the Weak Force Look Like, but I am asking a more specific question. ...
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Would a brain transplant suffer immunorejection if the new body was cloned from the original?
So, having rejected mind uploading in their quest for immortality, the people of my worldbuilding project now seek to develop brain transplanting.
The main problem is immunorejection; if you simply ...
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Can a Cigarette be Mostly Safe?
I have a story that is set in a world with a 1910's to 1940's style going on.
So fitting to that era I have quite a few characters who smoke.
Now I have a scenario where one of the main characters (...
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A genetic disease that is characterised by both gigantism and intellectual disability [closed]
In an Of Mice and Men parody I want to write, Of Rats and Women, there is a 30 years old woman named Léonie Petit (her surname is ironic, because petit is a French adjective that means small/little/...
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Health effects of spending a decade under vampire mind control
The vampires in my setting have the ability to control human minds when looking them right in the eyes. While lots of them generally only use this ability to make humans forget masquerade-breaking ...
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A dementia that develops ONLY in humans under 25 years old
In my story, there is a 24 years old human who, despite being an adultescent (aged between 18 to 24 years old), shows Alzheimer's-like symptoms: he forgot the name of his best friend forever, he is as ...
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How could people survive teleporting into the atmosphere while surrounded by vacuum?
In my planned fantasy story, the protagonists must escape a dangerous situation by teleporting the ship they're on (a kind of steam-powered ocean liner) into outer space, then back to the ocean ...
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A genetic disease that makes humans have much more brown fat than the average human being
I wonder if the disease I invented is realistic or a total fiction.
In my story The Transcendence of Adolescence, there is a 17 years old homosexual (or lesbian if you want) transgender woman named ...
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A genetic disease that makes humans unable to produce adrenaline
I wonder if the disease I invented is realistic or a total fiction.
In a white drama/lighthearted tragedy (the opposite of black comedy/dark humour) web-series for a teen audience in mind I want to ...
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Why would a species from the Homo genus have overwhelmingly B negative blood type?
In my story (go to see What evolutionary pressures would lead to Ogres?), there is a massive species from the Homo genus called ogre. They mostly have B negative blood type (I do not mean Rhesus null, ...
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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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If endotoxemia and proteins denaturing are no longer problems, what's the next overheating-related threat to an organism?
Let's say that it's impossible for a hypothetical organism's proteins to denature - unfolding and loosing their structure - due to high heat, and that, as such, temperatures equal to those required ...
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Why wouldn't all wizards be buff?
So in my universe, magic (and especially magical healing) are commonplace, and an applied application of healing magic can heal almost every injury at the cost of some "mana". Any healing ...
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Is radiation from collisions with interstellar material a serious threat to occupants on a system sized ringworld?
I want to know if living on a ring-world with an outer velocity of 1200km/s would be survivable by humans or would you get baked from the constant collisions with stray hydrogen and space dust?
I'm ...
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Is it healthy to only drink rain water?
I read that it is perfectly fine to be drinking collected rain water as long as the air and the container are not polluted. However, would it be possible for a civilization to
survive and
live ...
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If Yellowstone goes up, how far away could a person be without being immediately injured?
Let's say that the Yellowstone supervolcano has a (for it, quite small; some of Yellowstone's past eruptions are ~5 times greater in volume than this) VEI-7 eruption, ejecting five hundred cubic ...
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Anvillicious Illnesses: Too lethal for humans?
Anvilworld is a world just like ours, except for one difference: the world is suffused with a magical force called the Anvilforce. Anvilforce is not directly perceivable by homo sapiens and interacts ...
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Genetic disease that makes thermoregulation voluntary
I wonder if the disease I invented is realistic or a total fiction.
There is a real life genetic disease called congenital central hypoventilation syndrome (or Ondine's curse, if you want). People ...
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Naked mole-rat people [closed]
After dropping in childhood, the human death rate in adulthood rises exponentially, doubling every 8 years like clockwork until the number of survivors is so low that the statistics breaks down (...
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What's the closest bodily damage there is to simulating the effects of "cast from lifespan" magic?
A very common trope in fiction is the concept of some powerful, forbidden spell/martial art/etc., which is said to have a cost paid in the user's lifespan. Now, oftentimes this literally physically ...
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A genetic disorder that makes people unable to feel itch
I know that congenital insensitivity to pain exists and is autosomal recessive. There is a village in Sweden where 40 cases of this rare genetic disease were reported.
I am writing a story with a ...
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How much energy would a hypothetical organism require to regenerate mild to semi-moderate trauma via pluripotent stem cells?
So, we have this heavily-altered human that can regenerate from stem cells. Let's say that they suffer a "flesh wound" - in this case, let's say an ugly stab wound through the hand with a ...
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Chance of a breathable atmosphere of any given planet in our galaxy
It is a common trope of science fiction that a space ship or shuttle crashes on a nearby planet, and for the human occupants to step outside and comfortably breath the planet's atmosphere.
My question ...
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Soldier hit unconscious [closed]
A character who is close to the explosion of a mortar shell has a concussion and his lights go out.
In this situation would it be possible to lose consciousness without a loss of blood?
If so how ...
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How much time before going completely insane? [closed]
If a human being was put into a stasis, where they experience time significantly faster, how long would it be until they go completely insane?
In the stasis, everything is pitch black, and there is ...
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How realistic would it be if it survived to turn into a land invertebrate? Like an Earth octopus? [closed]
Two superheroes are fighting a battle.
The First one breaks the second one's spine, above and below, breaks the ribs, pulls out the spine, and leaves.
The Second has the ability of bio-kinesis, he can ...
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How to survive a fall from a skyscraper by having super powers to turn yourself into mushrooms?
Given:
The character falls from a skyscraper, 200-300 meters high
The character has a super-ability to transform their muscles and tissues into yeast, mycelium, fungi, slime molds, spores, and ...
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Realistic Healing Magic [closed]
Probably the toughest challenge in having my fantasy world depicted as realistically as possible is to define how healing works. So far I managed to establish several key rules, but I can't help but ...
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Non-Cancer deadly illness affecting 10-13-yr-old girls, without genetic engineering insta-cure?
Like Non-Cancer terminal illness that can affect young (age 10-13) girls?, I have a major girl that needs to have a likely-terminal, repeatedly hospitalized, disease, but has a healthy sister. And it ...
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Using spray cans to close up bleeding wounds?
Ryan the privateer is tragically dying on the battlefield, bleeding wounds all over his body. As he sees the light fading away in the memories of his childhood, his faithful cabin boy Gumptree runs in ...
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Why are my soldiers weapons so ineffective, or the rarity of one-hit kills
Intruder alert! Intruder alert!
The alarm blares in the control room. The security cameras focus on a group of people who shouldn't
be there, who are carrying ...
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What is the minimum and maximum gravity level that nearly all humans can sustain over a 5 year period?
There are several questions related to effects of different gravity levels on the human body, but none adequately answer a fundamental question: What is the maximum and minimum gravity that nearly all ...
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Could a marine plant have a salt-filtration system for when plants suck up the sea-water (providing a source of fresh water?)?
In a world I want to make, sailors would travel at sea for many years, perhaps up to ten, on sail boats. Obviously, they'd normally be stricken by scurvy and such, but I was thinking of some kind of "...
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Oxygen-carrying vascular nanobots [closed]
People in my setting can have artificial red blood cells (they're nanobots or something similar). These are designed to fulfill the same role as regular red blood cells but have a much higher oxygen ...
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How would the strong magnetic field of a white dwarf affect humans inhabiting a planet that orbits such a star?
Magnetic white dwarfs (MWD) comprise almost 2 % of all white dwarfs and they are characterized by having a strong magnetic field, whose strength varies between 1 T and 100 kT. Compared to the Earth's ...
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How large can differences in gravity be without being overly dangerous to humans?
Let's imagine a planet that is 5000 km in diameter but has the mass of the Earth. I'd imagine standing on that planet might feel similar to standing on the Earth, because the gravity would be ...
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Long term fever in humans
Scenario :
Due to the effects of a magical overload, there are people in my world who lose their magic. Those that don't go outright insane are left with damaged nervous systems and a high body ...
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Why would rapid-fire firearms do less damage than slower-firing ones?
It's a common trope in first-person shooter video games for the stopping power of a firearm to be inversely proportional to its fire rate and/or magazine capacity. This is done for game balance, in a ...
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What would the health effects of a giant, proportionally-scaled human be?
I was reading a few answers to this question about anatomically correct giants, and it got me wondering.
In order for giant humans to evolve, many things would need to be changed.
As summarized from ...
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Could two separate creatures' health, or life, be dependent on each other?
This is a question for an alien species.
Is there anyway to scientifically justify having two separate beings/creatures that depend on each other for life? In other words, two separate bodies that ...
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Cauterizing a wound with metal?
I am wondering if scientifically it is possible to cauterize a wound using molten metal.
I was thinking of a character whose wounds and scars were healed with metal, leaving her with spots and ...
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Born and raised on a world with longer days and years - would it impact life expectancy
If humans found a habitable world and access to it, what would the effects be of a longer day to those who were subsequently born and raised there?
Is there any evidence that a longer day cycle (of ...
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Why is long-term living in Almost-Earth causing severe health problems? [closed]
The people of Magical Almost-Earth needed the Chosen One to be brought from our world. Now that the day has been saved, Chosen One would have liked to stay, marry some royal sibling and enjoy life in ...
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Can a human born & raised in zero gee survive on a earth like planet for a short while
I've been toying with an idea of a epic space fantasy where a certain area of the milky way is controlled by decedents of humanity that are born, live & die in spaceships, said "ngees" as the "...
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A character who self-inflicts damage to become stronger/more effective
What is a good term to describe a characteristic of wounding ones self in order to heighten your damage inflicting abilities?
Side note: I need this character mainly as a foil to another character ...
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Non-Cancer terminal illness that can affect young (age 10-13) girls?
One of my major characters is between the ages of 10-13. She is supposed to be terminally ill and she's supposed to die at some point during the story (while still within that age range). The problem ...
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Amputees, cardio, and flying humans
How might the cardiovascular health of someone with both legs below the knee missing be affected? Would people be able to engage in activities that involve sustained cardio, like flying?
Background: ...
