Questions tagged [technological-development]
For questions about the progress of a society's technological state.
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If all humans of this era suddenly became fast enough to dodge bullets, how would this change the military's choice of weaponry? [closed]
Would they keep using guns, would they stick to melee weapons, or is there something else entirely that they could use with our current technological advancements?
There are two versions of this ...
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What problems will an intelligent species on a low gravity planet face advancing to space exploration?
From the information that I have found, low gravity planets will be able to produce taller/larger flora and fauna that will be lighter and more spindly in structure with flying, gliding and leaping ...
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How Would Human Society's Outlook Change if an Alien Type III Civilization Had Been Discovered? [closed]
The Kardashev scale divides civilizations into four types (0-3) based on energy consumption. No type II civilization has been discovered in our galaxy and no type III civilization has been detected in ...
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What trains would survive a post-apocolypse [closed]
My world is in the distant future. While there were nukes, they were not used entirely, and there were many bioweapons like the t virus. The world has a few major governments still standing, but are ...
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How to start an industrial revolution without textiles
My world does not have stagnant technology, and of course there is going to be an industrial revolution. In the real industrial revolution, it began with the need for textiles, which led to the ...
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How would this magic system affect the development of agriculture in a Stone Age world?
This post is an improved version of a previous post, which lacked sufficient specificity. I apologize again for the ambiguous wording, as well as for any rules I had violated in posting that question.
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Can useful second and third generation matter be synthesized?
The standard model predicts that beyond the normal matter made from up and down quarks and electrons the exist two other kinds of matter. Second generation matter is made from strange and charm quarks ...
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How would this magic system affect the technological development of a Stone Age world? [closed]
The magic system is known as shamanism, and is centered around entering trance states to communicate with spirits and make pacts with them. My world is an animist setting, so things like humans, ...
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Will Cobalt still be available on Earth in the year 2100?
I would like to know the state of cobalt on the earth in the year 2100, but I hear that it might run out in 2025 or 2030. Cobalt is used to make electronic components. In a world where most of the ...
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How could a magic casting device work?
In my story, mages are only able to cast spells through a technological device (I imagine it as something similar to a watch). The source of their magic is a region in the brain capable of producing ...
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What is the minimum population for a civilization to advance technologically, if given knowledge of math, physics, astronomy, etc
My civilization has global free energy, understands the physics of antigravity, etc.
It was able to advance technologically through its own efforts. Six separate civilizations become a confederation ...
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The plausibility of Orcs developing advanced prosthesis
The Context
Despite their seeming barbarity of the Orcs of my world they have developed prosthetics that rival that of modern non-electrical prosthetics.
Relevant information on the Orcs
It is not ...
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Why would a civilization's biotechnology be far behind all its other technology?
In the setting of a novella I am just beginning to write, computing and engineering are significantly ahead of our world, but biotechnology lags massively behind:
They have very efficient brain-...
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How to have these technologies with only mid-1980s-level computers?
So, in a semi-biopunk semi-atompunk world I'm planning to write a story set in, computers are no more advanced than they were in our world during the mid-1980s.
The problem is that they also have the ...
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Is a biotechnology-only civilization actually possible?
Countless times in science fiction I have seen civilizations that rely exclusively on biotechnology; These societies, often due to environmental factors, never invented certain basic technologies such ...
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How would computers work if the number zero wasn't invented?
I imagine a parallel world where people instantly went crazy and kill themselves whenever they try to conceptualize nothingness which we now known as the number zero, so no one I mean absolutely ...
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Future limits detecting the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)
I am working on a part of my story where a long-lived civilization is deciphering information in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). I have read that in the future as distant CMB light reaches us, ...
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What would be some social welfare systems of a first world developed nation with a GINI Index of 32.56? [closed]
GINI is a term that is used to measure income inequality (See here for examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality) and is a good indication on to what kind of society ...
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Replace pens by typewriters
It is 1950. I am a rich and crazy entrepreneur, who wants to replace pens with typewriters. I can try to influence (or lobby) any government in the world. I want my typewriter to be cheaper than pens, ...
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How to weaponize the dinosaurs [closed]
If we had the ability to recreate dinosaurs; what technology would be required to overcome the hurdles of using them in modern combat?
The things that came to my mind was cryogenic storage to reduce ...
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What would it take for aircraft to fully replace naval vessels?
Assuming technology within the next century or so, what would it take for aircraft to fully replace naval vessels such that a navy and air force could almost merge?
While surface vessels and carriers ...
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How would technological development be different on a lifeless planet?
Space is mostly empty. There are few planets which could be life sustaining and even on those we are unlikely to find anything living (unless we contaminate). This means that on planets beyond our ...
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How would an industrial revolution affect the Catholic Church's theology in a 1400s setting [closed]
How would the Catholic Church be affected by the industrialization of Europe.
How would this affect the Church's theology?
The start of industrialization starts in the late 1300s also in Western ...
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What would the internet/web look like if the Soviet Union had won the Cold War? [closed]
Supposing the capitalist bloc collapsed in 1990 instead.
The end of the cold War (actually) coincided with the beginning of the internet, with the Soviet Union being assigned a TLD (https://en....
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How would fully autonomous holographic killer drone work wirelessly?
Now we have drones capable of dodging missiles and sometimes evade radar detection and carry out assassination without ever exposing our soldiers to danger, given time could we fly holographic version ...
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On a world that is ravaged by Carrington Events, is there any way for the inhabitants to develop electricity?
Inspired by the question On an Earth regularly ravaged by solar storms as strong as as the Carrington Event, how would technology advance?
On a world that is ravaged by monthly Carrington Events, it ...
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How to justify small Hominids not being conquered by (anatomically modern) Humans?
So in my setting there's a group of Hominids distantly related to humans.
They live in a forested continent on the coast of which humans have created colonies.
They have patchy light brown skin for ...
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How would you rebuild a time machine in the wilderness? [closed]
In my game the player travels to a parallel dimension and their time machine gets heavily damaged. So now they have to use the resources in the world to rebuild/repair it. We can assume that the ...
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How do I make a steam engine work - with next-to-zero hydrocarbons, or, for that matter, biomatter - to use as fuel?
Let's say that my colony ship crash-landed on an atmosphere-less planet. Sure, there might be sub-surface pockets that have evolved primitive life, but sulfur and phosphorous are at a premium in the ...
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Manufacturing and interchangeable parts in a pre industrial world
Let’s assume this is a society that has some knowledge of advanced technology but is currently in the 16/17th century politically and technologically. How would a society before the industrial ...
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Recreating planes at an industrial level in the 15th century
A portal has opened up in our world, leading to a world which is similar to the technological and cultural level of the the middle ages(15th Century).The Government has figured out how to send people ...
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What materials would merfolk use to craft armor?
What materials in the environment could merpeople use to make armor? The merpeople live in the mediterranean sea and have contact and trade with humans who could provide resources and craft the armor ...
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Could a planet with only a population of 750 million achieve the technology to achieve hyper light travel? [closed]
To be clear hyper light travel is not the same as FTL travel. Hyper light travel works in a way that is similar to Issac Asimov’s hyperdrive, it transports the ship into another dimension in which ...
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Reasons why a high tech species does not have space travel
I am writing a story where humanity has advanced technology, but I want to give a justification for why they are still on their planet. Here humanity has advanced ai, superconductors, laser weapons ...
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Urban and suburban architecture on a perpetually stormy planet
In a setting I'm working on, a raised megacity the size of Switzerland (roughly 300,000 square kilometres) serves as the last refuge of humanity on a planet entirely covered by a global ocean. An ...
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Why would civilizations have no major technological development even after ten thousand years?
Basic Introduction (story background for anyone interested)
I have a character whose punishment for causing massive genocide was immortality for ten thousand years. To be more specific, after his ...
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Technology disparities between nations and internal organizations [closed]
I'm doing a series of world-building for an alternate world in a very low magic setting, basic premise is that 3000 years ago, in a dnd like a world, Wizards in order to prevent magical wars from ...
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Transportation in a fantasy world without wood
In my low-fantasy world wood is a very limited resource because all forests are haunted. Cutting a tree often means drawing the wrath of the creatures living in the woods, resulting in some very ...
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What is an expedience of sci-fi gliders? these machines flying near the very ground
What is an expedience of sci-fi gliders? these machines flying near the very ground.
It doesn't matter what they call them there (in different way).
No matter what specific principle they fly - what ...
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Development of a multi-color writing system
On earth, the first writing systems developed for accounting. You just cannot run an empire like Egypt or Mesopotamia without writing down who paid his taxes. Let alone organize mega-projects such as ...
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How well would a transplanted human civilization keep its technology and culture?
The people's of the 12 World's draw their lineage to various earthly civilizations.The magical 'events' that brought them to there new home's would also often bring along their belongings and ...
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Sailing Ships For The Vārẽn Sea
PROJEKT ' ABYDOS '
The (as of yet pretty ill-defined) setting of one of my worldbuilding projects is the Vārẽn Sea (working title). It's a large gulf that opens into waters with a large amount of ...
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Could a city's groundwater be isolated and manipulated? [closed]
On Earth, many cities and regions experience periods of drought, despite the fact that so much of of Earth's surface is covered with water.
With underground engineering and enough energy and ...
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Pre-Modern Shipping Containers?
Modern international trade basically runs on standardized shipping containers and the infrastructure developed to handle them. Looking at just a small part of it, using crane to unload full containers ...
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How would warfare differ in a futuristic world without satellites?
In my soft sci fi/science fantasy world, humanity lives in a hollow planet. A long, long time ago, an alien species put them there and created a field that prevents anything from entering the planet's ...
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People who are interested and some what experts of history and maybe tech, what would you do in this very isekai situation? [closed]
In this impossible hypothetical situation, let's say through some supernatural means, you are transported to the royal palace of a rather small but rich kingdom that are rich in resources/raw ...
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What is the most useful information to recover from an apocalypse?
The world ends tomorrow, you can't stop it and you will die. You can, however, put information on a hard drive(s). What information has the best ratio of "days until world back to pre apocalypse ...
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non-lethal military force [closed]
A non lethal military force goes both ways, it's not just about not killing the enemy while also capturing them, this is the easy part.
But also about not getting killed yourself, this is the hard ...
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how might look and be used the firearm hand weapon for four-handed humanoids?
i mean, our firearms, in many ways, are depend on this fact - that we only have 2 hands. What would the weapon look like, its ergonomics and its qualities and properties and usage - if the use of 4 ...
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How advanced should a science fiction setting be in terms of secondary technologies? [closed]
One thing I’ve been thinking about with respect to science fiction settings in the relatively near future is the question of the overall technology level and how much things should advance in fields ...
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