Questions tagged [technology]
For questions about the creation, use, and application of all types of technology.
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Ways and reasons for AI and genetic engineering to be absent when cyborgs are commonplace?
So, I want to create a world where cyborgs are commonplace but genetic engineering is absent and AI has not progressed much beyond what was available in the late 2010s; at first, I thought that a ...
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How can farming be used to gain energy that powers a crystal?
This is for the video game I'm developing called Skullborn.
In this game there are large crystals that have energy that the player can harness. Claiming a crystal is essentially how the player claims ...
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How can civlization industrialize amidst a zombie outbreak?
In my world, there is a zombie pandemic that happens. The zombies are fast, but can be defeated by a large army. My world a little before the outbreak was close to having an Industrial Revolution. ...
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How to Sneak Von Neumann Probes Past the Enemy?
150 years into the future, a space faction is in a confrontation with a stronger rival. Our faction is a Kardashev Type I civilization and has a similar technological level to its rival, but the rival ...
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Storing bulk metals for centuries
If you are building a megastructure like a Banks Orbital, it will be necessary/useful to provide it with reserves of various useful metals for the use of the civilization inhabiting the structure.
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Lift 10 Billion Tons of Material From a Planet (Every Second)
150 years into the future, a space faction found itself in a Nicoll-Dyson beam arms race, where it must build a Dyson swarm as quickly as possible. The basic situations they face are as follows:
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Viability of solar furnace/smelter in pre-industrial society
I am trying to figure out how plausible it would be for people without electricity or steam power technology to use the sun to smelt and forge iron and steel. The people developing this solar furnace ...
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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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Energy sheathed bullets: What's the point?
In many sci-fi worlds, though mostly Star Wars, the main weapon of choice is some form of "laser" weapon that fires bolts that are way below the speed of light. In said universes, some ...
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How to justify guns being advanced earlier
In my world's history, firearms were developed in their medieval period, much like our world. However, they have things like culverins in the 1300s, and handgonnes that work better than in real ...
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Aluminum in a renaissance era civilization
While trying to figure out how a civilization with 16-17th century technology could make airships I started to wonder how the wide availability of aluminum would affect a civilization. In our timeline ...
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What would this combination lubricant/cleaning solution smell like and taste like?
On an alien Dyson Sphere up in space, there is a blackish-blue slime that is everywhere on the sphere. It's slippery to the touch and is basically a combination of cleaning fluid, disinfectant, and ...
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Minimize Mass Required To Colonize A Planetary System
In the early 22nd century, sending humans to other planetary systems is still too costly to be realized, so the first interstellar missions will be piloted by AIs. An AI piloted probe will be sent to ...
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How would a mermaid jail work?
I'm trying to write a mermaid civilization, although I have one major roadblock when developing a criminal justice system. My mermaids are air breathers (like cetaceans) so I'm not sure how I would ...
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Why would a desirable technology remain forbidden despite progress of time and civilization?
Around 1100 years in the past, a great empire spanned most of the known human world. At its center was a great city of learning and discovery, where humans first developed methods to channel ...
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Would a quantum locked maglev magnetic shield protect the user in a useful way?
Let's imagine that in the future we have a way of creating room temperature superconductors that can be used to have electric magnets that can create quantum locks.
So the design is a shield made out ...
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Can the 1980s US government recreate a smartphone?
Inspired by this question.
A time traveller appears in two situations in the year 1985
in front of Steve Jobs and other Apple high ups
in front of few federal and us army officials
The time ...
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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 to sell things that have been brought back from another world
The MC from our modern world (2016-ish) has been iseikaied to another world of swords and magics. But after the MC defeated the big bad, she declined the invitation to stay in that world and insists ...
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Evacuating earth in favor of a off-world habitat: Just how many people can be saved?
In 2024, NASA detects a pair of planetoids, each the size of the earth's moon, careening towards our solar system. The good news is that they're set to enter earth's orbit without any collisions (how ...
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Political Concerns of Laser Propulsion System
Now it's 2085, and human civilization has started to reach the planets. Using the most advanced fission rockets, we can travel from Earth to Mercury in 8 months and from Earth to Jupiter in 1 year. ...
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What would be the advantage of a device that can only let a person travel forward in time? [closed]
Context
The Helix Corporation is an evil mega-corporation where everything they make always has some sort of strange twist to it.
Their latest product was the Relativity Rocket Alarm Clock. It was ...
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Could a Preindustrial State Control an Entire Planet?
The Aurean Dominate is an empire controlling the entire planet Aurea and a scrap of the neighboring planet Awal (known as the Exarchate of Tifinagh). Aurea is around Earth-sized (although all of the ...
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How would dwarves build a combined underground kiln, forge and bakery oven
These dwarves are making steel tools and weapons, bricks, plates and other ceramics, as well as (and most importantly for this world) bread all underground crucially from the same structure. Any ...
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What would it take to, in 1998, soundproof a room against someone with the hearing of a wolf?
So, my story, set in America in 1998, has werewolves. I'm not quite sure how good their hearing is going to be, but bare minimum, even when in human form, they can hear as well as a real-life wolf can....
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How can AI know that all humans are dead?
This question is indeed inspired by I Am Mother movie and Horizon series, but scenario I envisioned is different.
Below is the in-world intro, feel free to skip it.
Hello, I'm Refa. Full name: ...
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How long would it take to build an underground city?
In my fantasy world, there is a race of ghouls. They are a knit-tit community, and while they built underground cities, including reforming abandoned mines as living places, they eventually kept ...
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How might these advanced humans restrain their dragon test subjects?
THE DRAGONS
When standing on all fours, a typical full-grown dragon is about 3 times as tall as a human. They are quadrupedal with opposable thumbs, with four legs and two or four wings, and can ...
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What perk only benefits users who spent more than a decade in cryonic sleep? [closed]
People are put into a suspended animated state using a cryonic sleep chamber, their brains neither are in deep sleep nor flatline.
Since subjects do not feel anything throughout the entire process, I ...
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What reasons might these advanced humans have to abduct and then dismember, traumatize, and possibly even kill dragons? [closed]
THE DRAGONS
When standing on all fours, a typical full-grown dragon is about 3 times as tall as a human. They are quadrupedal with opposable thumbs, with four legs and two or four wings, and can ...
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Do we have a solution if oxygen runs out [closed]
I'm not a scientist but I know at the moment we don't have a huge amount of Oxygen in our atmosphere but what would happened if the Ozone layer was broken and all the oxygen escaped how could we ...
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How would a human organization get 20-foot tall fire-breathing, winged, sentient and intelligent lizards to comply with experimental procedures?
THE DRAGONS
When standing on all fours, a typical full-grown dragon is about 3 times as tall as a human. They are quadrupedal with opposable thumbs, with four legs and two or four wings, and can ...
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Industrial scale Tritium production from Helium3?
Currently Tritium is produced by neutron bombardment of Lithium. I was looking into alternatives and learned that Helium3 has a rather large cross section for reacting with thermal neutrons. From what ...
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What year would technology be advanced enough to spot advanced aliens a dozen light years away from us
I'm planning to write a story and I was wondering if it would be possible to find aliens of interplanetary levels of technology at most a dozen light years away.
I know that the first exoplanet was ...
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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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Why does a hypersonic missile need to cruise Earth at low altitude before hitting its mark?
Imagine a certain nation tested a hypersonic nuclear-capable missile and it was designed to make a few trips around the Earth at low altitude before striking the surface. Don't they need to worry ...
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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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How would a secret tunnel be kept entirely secret?
The world this is set in is located in a valley and doesn't allow anyone to leave.
They are very strict about this so there are many watchtowers along the top of the valley sides, and soldiers ...
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What kind of technology would a dragon-like species have during the golden age of piracy?
The world I'm working on contains multiple "sub-species" of sentient, European style dragons. When standing on all fours, a human comes up to your typical dragon's shoulders, and they are ...
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Reality Check: Are these aliens feasible?
I'm working on a Space Opera novel featuring a group of aliens that call themselves Species 0001. Here's what you need to know about them:
They are a species of squid-like aliens that evolved on a ...
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Is it radio silence between 2 Alcubierre drives?
Suppose we grant a 1 time scientific miracle for exotic matter to power Alcubierra wrap drive, then could two such drives communicate with each other? The drive discharges exotic matter particles ...
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Are jumping ships feasible? (Not jump drives, but ships that jump)
As mentioned above this is not about jump drives, this is about ships that physically jump.
Writing science fiction, trying not to handwave too much, so I want to check if this is a feasible tech.
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How to explain magic scientifically? [closed]
I'm writing a story and I'm having trouble finding credible explanations for certain elements of it.
Basically, in the late 2090s, technology has advanced to the point that it is possible to ...
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How to maintain large ships in hostile atmosphere?
The simplest effective method for maintaining large flying vessels is needed
My society is a pirate haven which has low technology and resources. They have jury-rigged some system to keep the fleet ...
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How do I create a secret steampunk navigation scheme?
I need a hidden outpost to have signs that only a certain real-world technology can see and comprehend. These are basically road markers, or navigation aids, that won't be understandable by normal ...
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A variable-ammo post-apocalyptic projectile-weapon
Needlessly long names aside, how would this weapon work?
Made from scratch with junk scavenged from a 21st century world, post nuclear apocalypse. Assume nothing was specifically preserved, only the ...
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How would a community of people living in densely packed treehouses receive food to their treehouse?
In my novel, the characters live in treehouses that are practically piled on top of one another, so there is little room to climb down to pick up food, and it would be a challenge trying to take it ...
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Could my Anti-Regeneration spear technology work against this creature?
My story (set in the far future) has a bear-sized monster with a tough shell. The human settlers fighting it realize their ballistic firearms are not effective in killing it; though they may pierce ...
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Psychic/Telepathic Piloting System
Comic artist. I'm looking to mess around with the 'floating islands' trope to see just how 'hard' a magic system I can make it. The idea is to finally explain "what keeps the islands up" and ...
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What would need to change to make living comfortable in a world with limited cars?
My world is a futuristic soft sci fi with humans but not set on Earth (though planet is earthlike). In it, the world has been ravaged by a monster driven apocalypse multiple times. It has been 400 ...
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