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[Question] [ In the book [*He Drank and Saw the Spider*](http://alexbledsoe.com/books/he-drank-and-saw-the-spider-an-eddie-lacrosse-novel/), a poison is talked about in a metaphorical way: A person can be poisoned by putting a specific kind of spider into their cup, but the poison only works if you drink and then see...
[Question] [ **Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- **Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/10017/edit). Closed 5 years ago. [Improve this question]...
[Question] [ I am posting this in behalf of a friend of mine from a distant world. Here is his message properly translated to English: > > Hi, Sol3αlings1. My name is $ѬӚᕕƨ⧬௵44ħ$. We are peacefully and we need your help. I am a scientist/engineer from the planet $⋒◥27⟑▓⍫⋒இǪ$. We calculated that our home star, alread...
[Question] [ I know a submarine would NOT make the greatest spaceship in the universe, but could it allow people inside to live in space? A submarine can resist pressure, can hold oxygen inside, and there is a heating system... I think radiation would cause some issues, but is it the worst problem my poor hypothetica...
[Question] [ After the [Brexit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum,_2016) vote, one of repeating themes was: "If only knowledgeable people were allowed to vote and dumb people were not allowed to vote!" Let's have look at this political system closer: **Assume:** * Every...
[Question] [ How do you check if a room behind a door aboard a spaceship has an atmosphere and pressure? This is so that you would not accidentally open a door to a room which is open to space. I imagine there would be some sort of sensor on the door. However, this would probably require electric power. What if the ...
[Question] [ Note: this is an in-universe explanation, not media in general. Media in general tends to have magic written in archaic, usually dead, languages. In my world, magic is best described as fickle; most known spells are "iffy" with many having unintended consequences. For example, a spell to cure a lame limb...
[Question] [ I always get very annoyed if a writer is sloppy with maps and travel-distances. E.g. "They left city Y and arrived in city X 5 days later." When you look at the supplied map Y and X are a 1600 kilometers apart. Must have been really special horses. So I like to avoid doing the same. Problem is that I d...
[Question] [ It's a common staple of science-fiction films (e.g *The Terminator* or *Robocop*) to have a [POV shot from a robot or cyborg's perspective with a HUD being used to observe its surroundings](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RoboCam). This can be hand-waved by the fact this is a convenient way fo...
[Question] [ > > **Moderator notice:** Everything that follows in this question, including the fake notice at the bottom, is an intentional joke. Please don't [take it seriously](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4532/627); it's meant in jest. > > > --- Imagine internet site. And keep in mind we are ...
[Question] [ Most of our world is now ruled by Representative Democracy. People vote for representatives and those representatives then decide on laws and make executive decisions. The only certainty in life though is change, and the power structures of countries are no more immune to that than anything else. There a...
[Question] [ # The Situation A colony of 100 teleporters (between the ages of 20-40) have been hidden away living like monks for 1000's of years to prevent their detection. With the death of their old leader, a young new leader takes control and wishes to push the colony out into society and break the shackles of the...
[Question] [ Just last week while developing a new CCTV camera system I accidentally produced a free energy generator. I know, what are the odds? So now I'd like to make some money. Unfortunately, this device is so simple and effective that I cannot release the plans - the destructive potential is too great. I seriou...
[Question] [ Imagine that human beings in a parallel world evolved with hive mind, so that they can communicate telepathically almost instantly at infinite range. To put thoughts into writing requires effort and not only does it slow down thinking process. It is also hard to describe thoughts in plain words sometime....
[Question] [ Help! I've been transported back in time to London in 1303 AD. After saying hi to the flock of other worldbuilders who have inexplicably travel back in time to Medieval Europe, I decide to set out to get something to drink. Luckily, there are plenty of things to drink in the middle ages. Three days later...
[Question] [ Imagine a theoretical scenario where I am transported backwards in time 500 years with nothing but a mobile phone containing all of human knowledge. Clearly I want access to this valuable resource but darn I forgot to bring my charger. Using only things readily available in the 1500s (and let's say in th...
[Question] [ Encrypting texts is a very old technique, which is known already from the time of the Romans, if not earlier. Now a simple text cypher is easily done with low-tech means, as long as those trying to break the code also have to rely on low tech. Now medieval maps were often secrets. Therefore one might ima...
[Question] [ I understand that it's long been a tradition in American fictional works, especially movies and TV, to use a '555' phone code for any numbers that needed to be displayed on-screen, as that prefix doesn't exist, and so there was no risk of the writers unwittingly using a real number. As a writer of storie...
[Question] [ I am looking at different ways to destroy a planet - because a society within my setting wants to destroy a planet. I am assuming the planet is of a similar size and composition to the Earth just to keep things simple. I am starting at boiling the atmosphere to the point where it turns Earth into a dead ...
[Question] [ I have a super luxury space hotel. It has artificial gravity in the living and shopping area and 0g in some parts of the recreational area. There is a 0g pool available for the guests. I want it to be a large ball of water 10m in diameter. Can it work? I know water can be kept together by surface tensio...
[Question] [ **This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information. # In...
[Question] [ You have a trillion dollar/year military budget. You can buy all the toys (that are physically and financially possible to build with current technology). You can hire the manpower, command the airpower, harness the firepower, fire up the research labs. You've had years to prepare and train. Before you s...
[Question] [ **This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information. A [l...
[Question] [ In *The Walking Dead*, the survivors have seen plenty a wall. From Woodsbury, to Wellington, to Alexandrea, they are all different and they all have their advantages. One issue that none of them have managed to fulfill yet is the gate though. Every wall in the walking dead, and in history, has one major...
[Question] [ Let's assume that humans can now run 40 mph and the human body can handle it. I know and understand that this is not feasible, but let's just play pretend. Naturally people would have all kinds of fun, but as we all know most people are wild, panicky idiots. I imagine that there would be millions of peop...
[Question] [ How Long could an "Eternal" Fire last? At some point there is a fire very spiritually important to a certain people - so important that they build a city around it, and begin developing an empire with one of their main motivations being to provide fuel to the fire. They believe that if it burns strong, t...
[Question] [ Related, and in continuation to [The Challenge of Controlling an Advanced AI](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/6340/the-challenge-of-controlling-a-powerful-ai). At this point in my story, I'm assuming a got-out-of-the-box-AI scenario, where no [singleton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin...
[Question] [ I'm designing a tidally locked world around a red dwarf star. The habitable ring is an Earth analogue. The atmosphere and gravity are similar to Earth's, and we're going to pretend [the wind](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4850/how-would-winds-behave-on-a-tidally-locked-planet) is negl...
[Question] [ I walked this morning and met a street fortune-teller. This old gypsy invited me to get my luck told, and she just blabbed those old nonsense phrases about how this day will be my lucky day and such. I gave her $5 for the morning encouragement (not really), smiled, and waved goodbye. To my surprise, she ...
[Question] [ So, assuming that the technology is readily available and that we could build these mecha as easily as we build modern tanks or planes. What would be a good advantage in using a legged (not necessarily bipedal) combat mecha over using conventional tanks and planes? I don't need scientific reasoning (thou...
[Question] [ I'm writing a traditional fantasy novel (minus the cliches). I have a land that the novel takes place in. The land does have a name, which sometimes sounds all right, but most of the time sounds kind of stupid. Being the author, it might just be me, but I was wondering if there was some way I could ensur...
[Question] [ On [our world](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/139907/what-species-should-be-used-for-storage-of-human-minds), human minds can be transferred intact into animals. It was originally intended for people with medical conditions, but [some genius](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1...
[Question] [ > > * An interesting setting conducive to telling many stories in? *Go!* > * Well thought out inhabitants in this setting with diverse cultural > backgrounds? *Go!* > * A proper noun for any of it? *Houston, we have a problem....* > > > This is a common problem for me. I can develop a world in every ...
[Question] [ I'm trying to come up with characters whose backgrounds allow them to have homes, histories, and skills, but will still enable or encourage them to travel in a typical medieval setting. I've never really liked "Adventurer" as a job, and would like my story to have a kind of unlikely-hero vibe. besides th...
[Question] [ Suppose we detect a stellar black hole passing near the Solar system, and we have technology and time to send a manned mission to study it. Are there any experiments or observations that would help us learn more, maybe test some of our theories or the whole mission is pointless? I would like to use this ...
[Question] [ Most settings with a magical component, whether this means wizards, magical races, or something similar, seem to be parked at a medieval level of development in terms of technology and society. Is this just because that's how the "high fantasy" genre developed, or is there some fundamental reason that ha...
[Question] [ Questions about how to feed a large population keep popping up on this website quite frequently. One obvious option is farming. But how many people can you feed per square-kilometer of farmland? Interesting would be a comparison depending on the farming method used: * prehistoric methods * medieval metho...
[Question] [ **This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information. Star...
[Question] [ > > Stark: What's the vibranium for? > > > Ultron: I'm glad you asked that, because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan... > > > - *Avengers: Age of Ultron* > > > A pervasive trope throughout literature, television, and film is that the Big Bad Supervillain must *always* take sever...
[Question] [ Merlin the wizard has a problem. Sure, it was a piece of cake to move forward in time to the 21st century, procure a sword that was made with the highest 21st century standards, go back in time, and stick it in a pile of cement. The sword's handle, of course, is imbued with DNA detectors and personality ...
[Question] [ This is, for the record, the same universe as in [Is space piracy orbitally practical?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/62937/627) and [How can I prevent Kessler Syndrome among space stations?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/63923/627). In my world, circa 2100, space stations orbitin...
[Question] [ Following on from [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/3714/how-would-an-aquatic-civilisation-forge-tools) and assuming the race in question had developed the ability to create tools how would they approach the need for mass calculation. Our early computers were used to calcu...
[Question] [ While coming up with a medieval era world, I suddenly realized that there was pretty much no defense against thievery except for patrolling city guards which to be honest probably isn't very effective. This is because by the time the shop owners report about the thievery, the thief has most likely gotten...
[Question] [ Those of you who have read Game Of Thrones will know that in the GOT world seasons do not have a fixed duration, e.g., a winter might last three times longer than the previous one. I find most interesting how can this be possible (if it can), from a physical point of view. I have thought about it, and I ...
[Question] [ It's a fairly common trope in fantasy worlds/stories that dwarves don't use cavalry. But is there any real reason why? Off the top of my head the two most likely ones seem to be: 1. Their size. Except children ride horses, and jockeys tend to be quite short. And elephants have been used as mounts (though...
[Question] [ Imagine a world where every time you wake up you wake up in a randomly selected body from among the bodies that were asleep at that time. There are some limits—the body should be in at most a roughly 5 mile radius of the body you went to sleep in. People maintain their memories, personalities etc when sw...
[Question] [ The concept behind this lies in three primary points: 1. It has been theorized that one could increase the heat of Mars' atmosphere to a suitable level by guiding meteors into the atmosphere and crashing them into the surface. Assuming this is possible through pure mass, it should also be possible using ...
[Question] [ I'd like to have a realistic idea of how, and how accurately, ordinary people in a rural low-tech (medieval-equivalent) setting should expect to hear news from outside their own communities. If you don't personally travel (which, I believe, most did not in our own medieval period), by what means does the...
[Question] [ This really gets to me when I watch modern-day Christmas movies. These movies usually present the notion that Santa exists and adults don't believe in him. From what I've seen, it's either because of one incident where someone didn't get what they wanted or they simply grew out of it. This creates a para...
[Question] [ In my world, humanity reaches their new home among the stars by way of a portal that pops into the solar system one day. This portal instantaneously transports those who enter to a place that is located a jaw-dropping 6 gigalightyears (six **billion** lightyears) from Earth. But the astronauts traveling ...
[Question] [ Imagine it. I've invented the single greatest thing since Fire. A machine that can turn matter into energy and energy into matter with almost absolute efficiency. Sure, it violates a couple of the laws of thermodynamics and yes, you can get around a couple of conservation laws, but it's otherwise perfect...
[Question] [ **This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information. This...
[Question] [ As per the cliché, after getting hit by a truck, our protagonist finds herself in a 'swords and sorcery' fantasy world. Also as per the cliché, she is granted an overpowered ability to make her new life easier. In this case, she gains the ability to summon/create anything she can imagine as long as she h...
[Question] [ I'm thinking of a world that values freedom but rates intelligence and logic so much that it dominates the entire society. Pupils take tests during school and this is averaged out and then given a value. Various SCI-FI cultures are based on logic (Vulcan for one example) This voting system would be propo...
[Question] [ An alien robot comes to Earth and determines that part of his plan here involves geting set up with a lot of cash in as short a time span as possible. He has a number of physical and mental attributes exceeding that of the average human to assist him with this; namely: * As a non-fleshbag, he does not fe...
[Question] [ So a [declaration of war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war) is made when you wanna go to war with someone else (duh). For example, country A hates country B's guts. A declares war on B. A and B go to war. One side wins, unless the whole world gets embroiled in it, then things get way mor...
[Question] [ Think of a more or less traditional medieval fantasy world: multiple races, magic, some alchemy/magitech that is of comparable power and reliability to ordinary magic. And in this world there exists the Loveland, where all the people are pacifists and do not accept violence towards other people for any r...
[Question] [ In my stellar empire, the sapient life of the home world are arachnids. Due to an oxygen-heavy world with certain evolutionary characteristics, spider-like beings developed intelligence and formed society, leading them (eventually) to start looking toward the stars. This led to the development of space s...
[Question] [ One night a spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin crash-landed in the densely populated city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The force of the impact leveled the entire city within a radius of 1 kilometer from the crash site. The death toll is unimaginable; the total casualties have been estimated around 3...
[Question] [ **Is it possible for a plant to have the ability to fly?** More exactly, the plant would either need to live without having any roots (and it would never need to touch the ground), or with the ability to re-root itself in another location from time to time, or maybe a plant that has a permanent pedestal/...
[Question] [ I am preparing world for my novel. One of the races in my world is elves. To make my world believable I would like to incorporate the Elvish language. I am big fan of Tolkien or Sapkowski's Elvish language. However as their work is copyrighted I believe I cannot use these. Is there something like an Elvi...
[Question] [ I've got a new invention which I think could revolutionize the transportation of people and goods: it's a teleport unit, which can transmit matter from one portal to another regardless of what is in between the portals. Unlike most teleports, though, it isn't instantaneous. It takes exactly as long as it...
[Question] [ I've been trying to write a book for years about a post-apocalyptic society entirely run by children, in which all of the adults died off and the children have to figure out how to survive and, eventually, rebuild. However, I cannot figure out a plausible way for all of the adults to have been killed off...
[Question] [ Necromancy is a type of magic that forces a soul back into a body after it has been killed. Through a dark ritual, the soul is forcefully removed from its eternal rest in the afterlife and is anchored back into the mortal world. The soul is under the complete control of the necromancer, and is a form of ...
[Question] [ **Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://w...
[Question] [ Let's say that an ancient race of beings locked away some sort of evil that could destroy the world if unleashed. Let's also say that unleashing it would be relatively easy to do if not warned of danger. Using only Aztec or Ancient Egyptian level technology, how could the race warn the future not to mess...
[Question] [ Inspired by today's [XKCD](https://xkcd.com/2038/) comic [![hazard sign](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fGOu8.png "The warning diamond on the Materials Safety Data Sheet for this stuff just has the \"üò∞\" emoji in all four fields.")](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fGOu8.png "The warning diamond on the Materials ...
[Question] [ In a lot of science fiction series, such as *Halo*, *Mass Effect* and *Gears of War*, they show alien technology that is flatly human with a few added-on bells and whistles. It lacks the awe or feel of truly alien technology. How can I make an alien civilization's technology, such as their vehicles, buil...
[Question] [ In many science fictions we see planets which are designated by a particular terrain type. For example, Dagobah is a swamp planet, Tatooine is a desert planet, and Kamino is an ocean world. However, Earth has a much more varied and interesting geography with all kinds of environments stretching from ocea...
[Question] [ **Setup:** The year is 2018. Malicious virus escaped secret lab and managed to kill 99% of all humans between January and April 2016. Not-so-average Joe spent his last two years of basic survival with the rest of people who are immune to the virus. Joe managed to gather about 500 survivors and they live ...
[Question] [ In an environment in which acute radiation hazards are common what tools or techniques could be employed by primitive people to detect and thereby avoid radiation exposure? These people do not understand what radiation is, but they do understand that there are invisible forces that make them sick. I’m es...
[Question] [ > > In a capitalist Society, you work, you earn money and you buy a shovel to dig a hole > > > In a communist Society, you are given a shovel and told to work > > > [Alt History Hub](https://www.youtube.com/user/AlternateHistoryHub) Communism was a major rival of capitalism, both being on opposite ...
[Question] [ Imagine a world similar to medieval Earth (technologically), populated by humanoid beings. For all intents and purposes, they are humans - they talk like humans, think like humans, have human-like culture - with one exception: they are all immortal. Wars will still happen because these immortal people st...
[Question] [ "Magic and science coexist." A tired phrase by now, because it's found in so much fiction. But can it make sense? Assume a world broadly parallel to our own. It has experienced its Age of Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. There is also magic (type yet undefined). It should allow human magicians wh...
[Question] [ I'm currently writing up a world where every thing and concept imaginable is represented by an immortal Being/God. Assuming Gods don't grant powers to their worshipers, but may interact with them; why would people devote themselves around a clearly malevolent God of Murder? What would cause organized w...
[Question] [ Is it safe for my civilization to launch rockets full of hazardous material into the Sun? This question applies to all stars, really, not just the sun. By hazardous materials, I mainly mean radioactive waste. Just so I don't get answers about how the rockets need special materials and it's not very cost ...
[Question] [ I have seen a few stories use the programmable magic trope. The most well known I believe is the wiz-biz series, though it's rather old now. The idea is that magic works just like a programming language, you put together words that have meaning and give it power and the spell is compiled and cast immedia...
[Question] [ ## QUESTION In the real world, the [history of law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history#Ancient_world) in pre-industrial states is as sprawling and complex as can be imagined, and includes all kinds of unique and fascinating systems, from the Code of Hammurabi to the Gragas, and much else besides...
[Question] [ A new species with technological potential is starting to multiply and subjugate the Earth. What resources can it harvest from human (our) cities which were destroyed 30M years ago (humans are gone now)? Assuming some of the ruined cities still remain close to the surface and were not buried miles undern...
[Question] [ **Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- **Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/57989/edit). Closed 7 years ago. [Improve this question]...
[Question] [ A mad scientist creates a machine that simulates the world with very high precision. The machine is capable of running several slightly different simulations simultaneously, the difference being some action that the user of the machine can do. Then, it calculates the result of each simulation according t...
[Question] [ The moon landings actually happened, and there's plenty of contemporaneous evidence of it. But what if the United States government wanted to fake a moon landing now? We have the technology to create [pretty convincing images](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Man_(film)) of a moon landing. But is it e...
[Question] [ So aliens find Earth to be suitable for colonization and disregard humanity's claim. Not because they are racist, but because they are so different biologically and psychologically that humans simply don't fit their definition of people. Animals, certainly, but not sapient beings deserving of the right t...
[Question] [ Assumptions : * This person (let's call him Bob) lives a normal life and ages normally, and dies of natural causes as well * Once Bob dies of any cause, his mind, memories, and thinking all transfer to a new body of a child in someone's womb * He can be reborn anywhere on Earth, as either a male or femal...
[Question] [ It is the near future and insectoid aliens pass our planet. They are shocked and dismayed to find that disgusting fleshy creatures seem to be in charge. Using their alien technology they imbue all of the insects on earth with swarm intelligence. This creates one enormous distributed super intelligent bei...
[Question] [ There are a lot of answers on Worldbuilding about how to destroy planets - just as an example - and they seem to be the method of choice for many people intent on destroying the world. My objection to this is that this is extremely difficult; moving a massive, orbiting planet isn't like picking up a marb...
[Question] [ A colony ship headed for its new home countless light-years from Earth suffers an unfortunate malfunction on the final part of its descent phase and crashes onto the planet. Thankfully, the ship crashes near its intended landing zone which is ideal in terms of fresh water/arable land. The ship impacts, k...
[Question] [ Let's not debate whether is there any friction while traveling inside vacuum space and assume all ships can brave a perfect storm brewing inside the giant molecular cloud. OK let's get down to business and tell me why my generation ship turns into a tuna? I remembered asking for a tetrahedron to save tri...
[Question] [ The military of (insert nation here) has finished training its latest asset: an adult dragon. Let's call him Private Firestorm. He's got everything the top brass wants from a soldier: he's professional, loyal, skilled, follows orders to both the letter and the spirit and goes along with his fellow soldie...
[Question] [ While playing old games, I encountered a friend I knew from [SciFi series](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Merculite_rocket) and [games](http://masteroforion.gamepedia.com/Merculite_missile) alike, the *Merculite* missile. While thinking about what *Merculite* might actually be (and linking it to a mi...
[Question] [ So I and two others are working on a time machine, and I accidentally press a wrong button and whoosh, all my friends and I are in 17th century Salem, Massachusetts. Nobody sees us appearing out of thin air, so we aren’t burned to death on sight. But we are all wearing modern day clothes as we weren’t a...
[Question] [ As a Duke in the Kingdom of Weselton, I've been commanded to exploit the riches of our trade partners and cement our dominant economic status. It was my good fortune to attend the coronation of our most mysterious trade partner Arendelle's new queen. During the after party, newly crowned Queen Elsa revea...
[Question] [ Joe has a slightly embarrassing issue. Simply put: Everything he says is true from that moment on until Joe himself contradicts it. For example: If Joe were to say that hundreds of people turned up at his birthday party the very fabric of reality would be altered such that, for whatever reason, hundreds ...
[Question] [ While doing research, I stumbled across the alloy "[arsenical bronze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenical_bronze)", in which copper is smelted with arsenic instead of (or in addition to) tin. This apparently gives you "a stronger final product and better casting behaviour" than ordinary bronze, but w...
[Question] [ Say I were an AI, how would I prove to the general internet that I am an AI in 2021? I was thinking I might just do some complex math or something that proves I have above average intelligence but everyone would probably assume I looked up the answer. So how would I prove that I am in fact a computer pro...
[Question] [ Okay, so I know this sounds like a joke, but it's not. I am 100% serious. So my world has this kind of... squirrel expy, that is somehow intelligent enough to use weapons + have some sort of society. Otherwise they're basically your average red squirrel (but slightly longer and chubbier). I was thinking ...
[Question] [ Don't go into the bonegrass. Seriously, unless you want to be dead. You go in there, brush the grass with your clothes, start to feel sleepy... Before too long your limbs will go numb, then you're on the floor in a heap. Then you're dead but you don't know it yet. The grass you crush as you fall will gro...
[Question] [ I’ve seen a description of how a group of *notes* is chosen, so the concepts starting with the *octave* are based on [natural phenomena and principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_(music)). For example, an object will vibrate with a fundamental note and overtones that are *integer multi...
[Question] [ There have been a number of questions focusing on mythical creatures where the logical approach to answering has been to scale up an existing animal. For example [dragon's wings](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/313/how-could-dragons-be-explained-without-magic-which-characteristics-are-i...
[Question] [ The Conjoined Alliance of Space Travellers (Nope, not [that one](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/United_Federation_of_Planets)) is a ~~generally nice~~ completely peaceful ~~group of heavily armed species~~ exploratory organisation. Using ships such as the [Exciting Undertaking](https://worldbuilding....