Questions tagged [military-defense]
For questions about strategies and structures for defending from a particular type of attack
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Nomad's camp defenses
This is some kind of follow-up to this question. TL;DR for the question : There are multiple small (10-15 members) nomads that must travel from place not to be found by monsters that hunt them.
This ...
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How do I defend an island nation from attackers with 15th century technology?
Apologies in advance that my bullet points got away from me and turned out a bit long, but I'm trying to give as much information as I can to ward off initial questions.
Imagine the following ...
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What kind of natural defense could a planet have?
I have a galaxy with many civilizations each with several planets. Many of the civilizations are at war with their neighbors, and use technologically advanced weapons in battle.
My question is about ...
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How to deal with our giant?
I come from a small costal town, and recently we've been having some giant trouble.
This particular giant isn't particularly evil, but he eats cows like crisps and frankly we're all rather worried ...
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"Movable" armor in space battles
Imagine in the far future that there are space battles. In this question user: m t said that in the future it would be too expensive to do stuff in space so people would focus on "offense, ...
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Defensive strategies against teleporting dragons
I have finally found an edition of the Dragonriders of Pern trilogy - living in Italy, I only had access to it thanks to my father's old books, and he doesn't own the complete series - so I have been ...
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Should castle walls be circular or square?
In many medieval portrayals, the walls of castles are always portrayed as square. But would the castle be better off if the walls were circular instead of square?
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Fending against asteriod assembled using only Lego® bricks [closed]
One fine day a Norse god, Loki assembled an asteriod resembled Chicxulub impactor using numerous Lego® bricks(the same one we have on Earth) in Jupiter's orbit. He wanted to duplicate the event that ...
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How to fight a kitty army?
Let's imagine an alien life form attacking Earth.
Their technology and their number do not overtake very much human ones, but they have a very powerful weapon: when a human looks right at one of them, ...
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Sci-fi Instant Wall Foam
It seems I've been seeing a lot of uses for foam on this site, from a weapon to a spaceship defense mechanism. However, the details on what the foam is made of and how it works always seem lacking to ...
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Can magnetic eddy currents stop a bullet?
This is theory for a science fiction scenario. For the sake of speculation, suppose that power is not an issue.
I've done reading on eddy currents, and I know they can exert drag forces on objects ...
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What are some tactics for the ancient Greeks to defeat alien invaders?
Context
It's the 4th century BC, Alexander the Great has just passed away and his empire has been divided amongst his generals. Now the successor states of Egypt, the Seleucid Empire, Macedonia, ...
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What would the fortifications of an underwater city look like?
Merpeople, along with other similar underwater humanoids, are often depicted as living in great cities beneath the waves. These cities have many positive things going for them: plenty of real-estate, ...
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SEAL Team Six versus Mages [closed]
Setting
Set in present day Washington D.C, USA.
Scenario
A group of special operation task forces gathered at a history museum to safeguard a relic believed to be from a lost civilization in ...
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What would happen if Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo
Okay, so the Napoleonic wars are raging. Many men are dying in Waterloo. It appeared as if the Duke of Wellington and his allied army would prevail, but Napoleon rallied his troops at the last ...
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Deflective properties of a forcefield
I have always though of three basic ways that force fields function.
The first way is that the force field projects an indestructible shell that oncoming objects can never break. Further, the ...
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A T-90 tank in WW2
A russian scientist wanted to develop a new superweapon : Time travel.
So he arranged for a experiment to be made. A tank and its crew was transported back in time to 1941. But there was a problem : ...
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To assault a dwarven city
Imagine a dwarven city, a fairly backwater one, completely unlike the likes of Erebor or Moria. This one scrapes together barely, and is only as large as it needs to be, which is to say 5 feet tall ...
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Dinosaurs VS arquebuses: effectivity of early gunpowder armory against giant lizards
In 1495 European sailors discover america, and found the nasty surprise that dinosaurs had survived in this continent and are the dominant species.
Can an early arquebus kill or damage a large ...
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Shielding system that blocks projectiles based on speed on wet navy ships
So right now I am thinking about a shielding system that would be added to a 20 minutes into the future scenario on naval ships. This shielding system would allow objects moving slower than 400 km/h ...
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How would cities be designed that were threatened by dragons?
The dragons aren't all that common but they live in the nearby mountains and after a harsh winter are more likely to come looking for easy prey to fatten back up on. What are the major design ...
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Effects of copious amounts of spider silk
What would be the effects of copious amounts of spider silk be on a highly militaristic country? The country is somewhere between renaissance and industrial as far as development, and has had access ...
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World Ending Asteroid
[Introduction]
Set in present day Earth, several space agencies and military across the globe had been closely tracking many near earth objects for many years using deep space telescopes and also an ...
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How do I build a wall to repel World War Z's fast zombies?
What would be the best wall profile and size for a prepared anti-zombie fortification? I am trying to protect against fast zombies like the ones in the movie adaptation of World War Z, who can climb ...
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How could an airplane defend against an electromagnetic pulse attack from another airplane?
Two nations are at war over something rather trivial, but offenses have been perpetrated here and there such that the conflict has escalated from a couple of guys shooting each other to massive ...
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Orbital mines to protect a planet?
My idea for protecting whole planets from enemy landing craft are orbital mines. The mines are very small and are located in very low orbits, thus having a larger kinetic energy due to bigger orbital ...
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Space, the final frontier … to defend
OK, so you've got an empire in space. And that empire has a frontier. Now on Earth, we have many ways to defend a frontier. We can build border fences or even walls, we can build watch towers, and of ...
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How would space battles alter combat tactics?
A thought occurred to me while watching Ender's Game.
Why are these two fleets in space lining up like two armies during the revolutionary war (or pick your war of the musket/volley era)?
Thinking ...
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How can I encourage storming a castle to be more practical/safer/better rather than slowly sieging it down?
What kinds of techniques or mechanisms, fantastic, magical or scientific, would make it so that an attacking army would take far less losses storming a castle/walled city than it would by standing ...
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Could a Mars colony use asteroids as weapons against the earth?
If a future Mars colony declared war on the Earth, would asteroid manipulation be a feasible option as an effective weapon against the Earth from a Mars colony? How would this be accomplished? Are ...
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How to fight an Eldritch Abomination
The Situation
The fantasy world of Terrearth is once again threatened by the Shadow, a sentient, but completely unintelligible being composed of Absolute Evil, whose sole purpose is to destroy the ...
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What would a colonial military on another planet near a wormhole look like?
Imagine an off-world colony of maybe 100,000 people, governed at least partially locally, partially on Earth. What would the permanently assigned military for this colony look like? How would physical ...
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In a world of magic, why would cities still find high walls useful?
In a world where magic exists. A large army can hire several mages that able to cast spells as, or even more, powerful than a 16-19th century cannon. The city walls will not keep out a determined mage ...
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What would an avian "castle" look like?
How would avians build a defensive structure? What would be the equivalent of walls, a drawbridge, a dungeon, etc.
If two avian / arial cultures were at war, say birds vs. dragonflies, how and where ...
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How could trading posts be defended against pirates?
I got many little trading posts all over my worlds and orbiting around them. Everyone can trade in there, nice guys as well as scum of all kind. The trading posts are rich places.
How could a system ...
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Tactical influences of an entirely electricity-based arsenal on starships?
Assuming a world where starships don't use missiles and bullets in combat much. They only carry those as a final strike or for convenience. Their arsenal is almost entirely composed of electricity-...
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Why would you build underground defensive structures in an an alternate world medieval europe?
Assuming a world otherwise like ours and at the same technological level of medieval Europe, what change in the world might have caused people to build defensive structures underground rather than ...
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How would the design of a habitable underground fortification differ to that of a castle?
As a follow up from riding flying creatures to attack castles, let's assume that the practice is now so prevalent that a standard castle is no longer defensible.
How would the fundamental design of a ...
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How would sails from a fireproof material affect ship's performance?
Related to: How would rudder protection against water elementals affect ship's performance
In a world with ordinary magic, military ships should be prepared for enemy fireball-hurling wizards. Is ...
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How would the existence of large rideable flying creatures have changed the design of castles?
I'm thinking not only of the impact they would have had on how you would defend from an aerial attack, but also that they could be used for much more specific bombardment by dropping large rocks and ...
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What would be the most effective way of keeping a psychopath with a spaceship from wreaking severe havoc in a suicide crash?
Any spaceship over several hundred tons is an extremely dangerous weapon in the wrong hands, particularly if it's intended for reentry. Made mostly of metal and possibly shaped to be able to breach ...
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