Posts tagged geography
I'm trying to write a story where the main characters discover the wreckage of a spaceship in the fields that border their town to the west. To the east, there's the end of a large mountain range. ...
When the old mining town was founded, nobody did think of this ever growing into much more than a coal-mining town. The deposits of iron-ore, aside from the already developed peat bog to the nor...
Scenario: While poking around in an alien ruin, scientists discover a gateway which offers instant transportation to an Earth-like world. The Observed World: The gateway leads to an area that is ...
My story takes place in an archipelagus in world X, inhabited by people X. In the shores of the capital city of that archipelagus, there is a bay of deep, dark waters. It's supposed to be dark and...
I am building a world that is mostly land but i need something to divide it all up a bit so i decided I'm adding an ocean. What i want to know is the following: Would it be even remotely possible...
I have been asking around a bit because i am trying to create a world for a story i'm writing. And after some loose questions i think the better way to get an answer will be to just list the crite...
Assuming an earth-like planet, but with several billion more years of cooling and settling (and with no moon to create tides). I'm imagining this planet would be geographically and tectonically te...
Europa's surface is marred with huge, curved cracks, called lineae, which may - depending on the thickness of its icy crust - expose the subsurface ocean to sunlight. Pictures like the one above...
Reality check: Protagonists of my story have a scientific device of a peaceful purpose. Unfortunately, despite the peaceful purpose, activation of the device, as a side-effect releases about 100 ...
I'm working on this map right now. Is this map realistic/believable? The continent would be about 5 million km² and lies in the temperate climate zone. (I intended it to be smaller than Australia;...
Instead of Earth as we know it, humans evolved on a slightly smaller, habitable earthlike planet with different geography. Due to the plot reasons, I would like to keep them confined to one (large)...
Airships are a hallmark of countless steampunk and dieselpunk constructed universes. Of course, in our world, they were around for a short while. I want to know what effects geographical circumstan...
Premise: Earth has a magical cataclysm that pulls up new mountains, pushes down parts of landmasses, and generally reshapes Europe enough to make it unrecognizable (to the average person looking at...
Everyone suddenly disappears from earth except 35 people randomly scattered wherever they were before everyone disappeared. How long would it take on average for 2 or more people to meet? What othe...
In the world I'm building, there is a single continent. However, in the deeper parts of the ocean, there are hydrothermal vents. They're pretty necessary to my story, but I can't figure out why the...
Ok, so I have determined my world can keep it's planetary ring system. YAY! Now I just need to clarify once and for how it would look like from the planet surface. I think I have it worked out, but...
So once again the world is in the Pangaea formation and the plates are moving on the same trajectory to form the continents that the world is in today (I'll refer to it as Modern). Instead of movin...
So, in this alternate Europe, there are some obvious differences. First off, the Baltic Sea is no longer a sea, but now the Baltic Plain. Also, the Low Countries are absent entirely. There are...
In my book series (link here), Aurea (a planet based on Byzantine Anatolia) is conquered by a group called the Tatians, who have access to technology that would not be out of place in Star Wars (fa...
The Bay of Fundy sees the world's highest tides, with ocean water advancing and withdrawing as much as 20 meters or more within a single day. Here is a list of the 50 tidal stations around the wo...
So, the Mediterranean Empire has succeeded in separating the entire Mediterranean Sea from the rest of the world's oceans. See this question for background and premise. There are now dams making su...
My Calisota, which is located in the north of what we know as California and largely resembles the universe seen in German-language Disney comics (Lustiges Taschenbuch), except for the absence of a...
Look at you all sitting here. Quite some of you have probably never ventured beyond the outskirts of this city, mayhaps not even past the wall? You've spent your whole lives in this place, but w...
So I'm writing a book and need help to better explain this island that sinks, more on that in a moment as I give you the basic build of the planet... First, its a world on a very tilted angle. the...
Inspired by this question, how might one determine the shape of the world given a cosmology with no cycles? The moon, sun, stars, and planets are all fixed. The Earth does not rotate. You can't ...
My islands (in the world I'm building) were formed from a volcanic hotspot. I want to build realistic islands, so I was wondering how tall volcanic islands are generally in relation to their area. ...
I'm creating a developed country in South America with its development similar to that of Canada or Australia (little behind the US) with population around 160M in 1850, growing to 346M in 1925 and...
Suppose we've colonized a planet with 99% of the surface area covered by oceans. It has submerged continental crusts, averaging 200-500m underwater, with the average depth of open ocean being 1000-...
In my world I have a region of desert, bordered on the east by the steep cliffs of a tableland or plateau. The plateau slopes gradually down to the east coast of the continent, a distance comparab...
I'm working on a map of a single continent or large island, and I want it to have some distinct biomes. What are some simple rules to determine which biomes could possibly be near/adjacent to one a...
I have a town, the capital of an empire. It covers 560 Hectares. What kind of natural barrier conforms to the following requirements: Is both heavily defensible and does not hinder trade all too...
The question: What realistic environmental signs would telegraph to the occupants of a floating landmass that their home was slowly losing altitude? The planet: I'm working on a story that takes p...
I'm writing a story, and in the story the protagonist designs a way to trigger artificial continental drift that takes place in 50 years, for all the continents to drift in the places he plans. Are...
Redoing an old map from scratch, want to get any problems with the coastline/placement/scaling of the land before I get to work on it. I am looking to make it as believable as possible. Here is t...
Is it possible that subterranean caves do/have existed on Mars? We know of the past existence of water on Mars. Which region (if any) of Mars would we likely find/expect to find a cave system bel...
I created the above map using Photoshop and used Wilbur to erode the terrain a bit and calculate possible river flows. Still needs work but I need to create a river mask before I can go on. My me...
The current worldbuilding project I have is going to be detailed - very detailed. It's about the life of an alien planet called Nemo 4, and I want to chronicle the evolutionary history of that lif...
So there is a mountain range. It is about 3000 miles long, 500 miles wide and the average height is 5,000 m. Now there is still quite a lot of land and I don't want to make everything behind the mo...
Note: an edit has been made to the main question at the bottom A couple of years ago, I had a worldbuilding project which I have recently revived. I was relatively new to worldbuilding back the...
Say I have a moon orbiting a planet. Due to tidal locking, if we model the moon as a sphere, there exists an axis which passes through the center of the moon which is always pointed toward the cent...
I've recently decided to revive an old project of mine involving an alien planet. Unfortunately, however, I was not as good a worldbuilder then as I am now, and that's having some consequences. Ba...
I'm currently playing with a geographical setting that's flat rather than round and thus doesn't follow a lot of the same rules as one modeled as a planet. I've found resources concerning climate i...
A caldera is usually the remnant of a volcanic eruption powerful enough to collapse the structure surrounding the magma chamber. Many of our examples, like Yellowstone, Crater Lake, Toba and even ...
Let's say I'm a secretive organization who's recently come into possession of two individuals of the genus, Giraffatitan (a sauropod similar to the more famous Brachiosaurus for those unfamiliar wi...
In my world, Southern Europe, Northern Africa and all the territories surrounding the Mediterranean belong to a single empire. The Emperor and his Council have decided that they are going to drain...
A ravine the size of the Mediterranean in area and ~15 miles (~ 24 km) deep on average opens up over the course of a few days in the Himalayas. A size comparison of the Mediterranean Sea to the U...
Here is a map I just produced of the plate tectonics of a world I'm working on. Does anyone familiar with the subject see anything wrong with it? If you can differentiate between the penciled and...
There is a lot of information on drying up a Mediterranean sized depression. However, there is not a lot of information on drowning such a large area or what sort of habitats could exist before the...
The mountain in question is about the same height as the french alps. The headquarters in the should hold 500 people, is this possible?
