Questions tagged [immortality]
For questions about the ability to live forever.
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Immortality by blocking programmed cell death [duplicate]
As per my understanding of biology, cells (and ultimately humans) die because they are programmed to die, i.e. they secrete enzymes to destroy the cell after a specific time period. For e.g. Caspases
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How can there be war/battles/combat in a universe where no one can die?
In my world, no one can die. There is no pain, no death, no injury, etc. Everyone has superpowers. Some people have pyrokinesis, some people have godlike strength, some people can read minds, some ...
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How would the prison system react to an (Unprovable) immortal inmate? [closed]
The year is 1922, in the (real life) United States. For a slew of particularly nasty criminal offences, a young man has been sentenced to 100 years in prison, without parole.
Fast forward 100 years, ...
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Could there be a romantic relationship between an ancient immortal and young mortal without a power imbalance? [closed]
Romantic relationships with serious age-gaps are controversial in real life. It is often seen as the older person is engaging in predatory behavior since they are generally both wiser and richer than ...
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How would marriage look like in a modern setting where there is a "force" that gives happily married couples the gift of biological immortality? [closed]
I'm actually quite interested in this topic and a consideration as to how people would approach marriage, from a world building perspective, if being happily married made you immortal. Allow me to ...
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Solutions for overpopulation for an immortal race
Imagine a city full of people that are immortal; they can't die by aging and normal weapons can't hurt or kill them. So the government needs to find ways to overcome its overpopulation issues.
After a ...
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I need to know if we can be immortal? In any way ! It could be either biologically or supernaturally [closed]
Immortality
Ancient Greek immortals
Philosopher's stone
Nicolas flamel
Secret potions
Majic
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Why are the good guys in my world hurting other people against their will to extend their own lives? [closed]
For the benefit of anyone who sees this and has a similar question. It seems like I should have asked this elsewhere. Maybe writing se or something.
The problem I'm trying to solve: a faction is ...
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What are some specific body parts that would irreversibly fail over time in a cancer-immune, biologically immortal person?
Let's say that you have a person who's, if certainly not immortal in the general sense, biologically immortal, as enumerated in this question - not only do their telomeres never shorten, they're also-...
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Near-biological immortality and cancer immunity via repurposing telomeres
TL;DR: I have solved aging and cancer with the power of handwaving and genetic science. All rejoice.
Yes, there is a question at the end of this all, but you have to read it for it to make sense.
In ...
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Would an immortal member of a species stagnate the species' evolution?
A member of a species becomes immortal, loss of senescence, incapable of dying from age-related issues. Otherwise it remains the same as other members of its species at the point at which it became ...
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A subset of humanity is immortal, how do I stop them from financially dominating?
Modern earth, no magic. Only difference is that a small percentage (~1%) of the population are biologically immortal, they can die by accidents/murder/etc but are immune to old age and disease (they ...
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Immortals and privacy: how do they protect their writings and drawings?
We are pretty used to read private letters of important and less important people who lived in a distant past: for example we can read the quite explicit letters that Mozart wrote to his wife and love ...
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How would a female immortal be able to hide while keeping their name down the centuries?
A common trope with immortality is that the immortal character hides their true nature by faking their death every so often and pretend to be one of their descendants. They end up adding a "III&...
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How can biological immortality lead to an increasing number of stillbirths?
The society of an island nation is led by a religion known as "The Church of the Eternal Mother", it is an ancient faith that adheres to a fertility goddess. This faith is led by five ...
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How would the punishment of murder change if people could just respawn?
In this world, since there has been writing, when someone dies unless they are pregnant, they kill themselves on purpose, or they die while asleep, they will respawn where they last slept, just like ...
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Could my deuterostome-like species exist? [closed]
I am writing a science-fantasy story that is set in a pseudo-post-apocalyptic Earth ten million years in the future, and it is about a strange creature that looks vaguely a deuterostome called Céleste ...
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How would an immortal go about conquering the world? [closed]
Bob Jennings is immortal. His abilities are such:
He is completely immune to bodily harm, i.e. bullets bounce off of him, he can't get killed by anything.
He does not have to breathe or eat.
He is ...
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What would happen after an immortal suffered brain damage?
Assuming the existence of an immortal being with almost instant regeneration, if he suffered brain damage and regenerated, his memories, personality, etc. would they be restored or lost? Would it ...
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What would an inhabitable world for a very long term immortal be? [closed]
I've seen a a lots of topics about short/mid term immortality, but I'm interested in very long term immortality in the range of millions of years.
The immortal character, a Homo Sapiens, has slowly ...
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Can a Digital Immortal Pass Away?
Digital Immortality
It is the virtual era, and mankind has progressed towards immortality, realized through conversion of the body and mind (and soul) into a digital form, allowing people to shed ...
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How does my society manage to not fall apart? [closed]
So, I am writing a story which is set in a world almost identical to real, except there is small difference, about ten percent of human population ages almost twice as fast as normal, they reach "...
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Why would some immortal beings choose to appear elderly?
In a magical world where mages can become immortal, why would some of them retain the appearance of being old (70s-80s), even though they can become young and beautiful? Even some mages who become ...
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In a space faring egalitarian civilization where immortality is the norm, how would you enforce an upper limit on age by region? [closed]
The premise is a space faring civilization that achieved post scarcity and immortality but not enlightened enough to be immune to petty feelings like jealousy.
In this post scarcity civilization, the ...
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Creature that increases its own lifespan by killing other members of its own species
There is an intelligent creature whose natural life span is around 50 years, during which they need to feed to not die of starvation, and after which they naturally die. But killing other beings of ...
user72862
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Possibly of achieving prolonged immortality
Death, most if not all of us fear it. However, it may be possible to postpone death for a while, and hopefully entirely. One major way of postponing death for awhile is through the biological route, I....
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Why must all deities visiting the realm of the living become mortal? [closed]
There are many states of being in this world, and some have managed to become immortal and gain the ability to manipulate nature at will to a certain extent. People called them deities and they are ...
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Could a Ruling Class of Immortals Lead to Significant Social and Technical Stagnation?
There is a land ruled by Alchemists who have used their craft and powers to cheat death itself.
Centuries ago they learned how to create artificial humans without conscious minds that were useful ...
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Biological Explanations for Aging Stopping in a 100% Human Being
So there's this man that was born 1,000 years ago, but today he's still living and he's (biologically) 28 years old. He just stopped aging at that age.
He is not immortal. He has been hurt in wars. ...
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Forgetting Curve of an Immortal Being
The older a memory is the fewer details we remember. The importance or impact of an event can also drastically affect how much we remember about it, but even the most impactful will, presumably, ...
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Is there any way that an immortal being could go without being ever noticed? [closed]
I've started this concept of a series of stories, in which an immortal being causes all of the conflicts for his own entertainment. The question is how could he go unnoticed by any modern government? ...
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How does an immortal vampire king hide his vampirism and immortality?
I am aware of this question, but I think my situation is somewhat different. In the low-fantasy setting I'm working on, the king is a vampire in a world in which vampirism is punished by death. But ...
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In a population of 30 million, how many people would a 3,000-year-old know?
In my universe, everyone is a few thousand years old (ranging from about 1,500 to 4,000 years) and the population is capped at around 30 million people. People live pretty spread out across a planet ...
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Immortal Passing Ritual [closed]
On a different planet, humanoid creatures called immortals have achieved immortality.
The society is built specifically for these immortals, so in general, the immortals enjoy and cherish their lives....
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How would a young girl/boy (about 14) who never gets old survive in the 16th century? [closed]
In fantasy setting, in medieval time, there are a disease, curse... for simplicity in this scenario, let's call it "vampire".
The victim who is afflicted with this "vampirism" does not get older. So ...
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How one can verify if they are protected by the system (universe) without taking any risks? [duplicate]
The observer should determine whether he is in some kind of game where the system will not allow him to die while at the same time hiding this fact from him. The system can use any unsuspicious means ...
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How would a society evolve if some people are immortal?
The setting is as follow. In a planet like earth, one day, 10% of the population suddenly becomes immortal. The "immortals" are not physiologically different from the "mortals" and initially it is ...
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How can an immortal surrogate pass on genes to a fertilized embryo?
I am part of a group of immortals from the planet Ziest. From the dawn of time we came…moving silently down through the centuries. Living many secret lives, struggling to reach the time of the ...
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How would the law enforce a ban on immortality? [closed]
I'm writing a fantasy story where magic is common and wizards follow a strict code of conduct. One of those tenets is "never stray from humanity and do not seek immortality or godhood." While I admit ...
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Why would an immortal man suffer indefinite imprisonment without trying to kill himself? [closed]
A group of men suffers a curse that makes them immortal (or undead, perhaps) but changes them into bloodthirsty animals basically, no longer rational human beings. For this reason they are imprisoned ...
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How would an immortal character amass a fortune? [closed]
As the title says how would someone who is immortal, and driven by collecting vast sums of money be able to exploit that to their own gain.
For context my main character was involved in experiments ...
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Limit immortality technology by cost
The setting is the modern day, US. All aspects (unless addressed by the question) can be assumed to be the same as our current, real Earth.
This question has the assumption that a technology exists ...
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Adverse Effects of Widespread Immortality [closed]
In a medieval high fantasy world where magic exists, if there is a geographic area in which living creatures mature and then stop ageing; what would the negative effects of this be; firstly on a small ...
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How small can a perpetual energy source be to run a far-future civilization indefinitely?
You are the leader of a far-future civilization - human or otherwise - that has endured for trillions of years doing whatever far-future civilizations do. You've surrounded stars with Matrioshka ...
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How can one manipulate elementary particles to make a person live forever?
Assuming that a person has the power to manipulate all elementary particles in any way (i.e. changing them from one elementary particle to another, nuclear transmutation, moving groups of them at a ...
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Why would an omniscient immortal needs to record history?
There is a powerful entity, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent that came into existence since Big Bang. The entity do not interfere with the order of the nature but to observe it unwinds in the ...
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What benefits would translucent full body armour do for immortal beings? [closed]
Set in present day Egypt, a race of immortal humanoid beings were seen with a translucent body armour covering from head to toe. They come in peace and harbour no ill intents, that said their kind of ...
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How can someone be immortal and still age?
I need an explanation for how one could be immortal and still age. If one was truly immortal one would remain an infant forever. How could this be explained?
I'm working on a character who is ...
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Why would a demigod born to a goddess not be immortal? [closed]
In this alternate world, demigods were human beings which gained divinity from a divine parent. A male deity would knock up a mortal woman, who would carry the child to term. This demigod would share ...
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What are some reasons a society might isolate its citizens for a few hundred years? [closed]
I hope I've narrowed down the general idea of my question enough--
Basically, I've started with the idea of a desert society with access to a hidden energy source ruled by a body of immortals.
At ...
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