Posts tagged society
I fear this may be too broad, but I am looking for reasons earthborn humans would be considered inferior to those born on various space colonies. For example, it is important to reference the disti...
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...
Presume a decade of darkness, after a several months of steadily shortening daylight. Assume that the temperature and weather patterns remain (inexplicably) fairly unchanged. Ten years later, whe...
Premise The Dunning-Kruger effect is a sociological / psychological phenomenon whereby low-skilled individuals mistakenly think they are good at something. In other words, individuals lack the met...
In a world where science has advanced to the point of a healthy understanding of particle physics, scientists have begun working towards remote matter manipulation. In theory, it seems that one wou...
The most recent common ancestor of the HIV-1 M group, responsible for the HIV pandemic, dates back to the Belgian Congo city of Léopoldville (modern Kinshasa), circa 1910. And the genetic history ...
I'm writing a short story that takes place on an imaginary planet that is 88% ocean. The planet has two moons and one continent that is regularly flooded under 500 to 1500 feet of water. The tides ...
I'm having a bit of trouble with this one. I'm trying to justify why a once scientifically advanced human outpost on an alien planet went the way of the Planet of the Apes and became a schizophreni...
I have a race of mainly insectoid aliens known as the Erepo who have virtually bioengineered a ecosystem around themselves. Now I currently have them using either organic systems they can "grow" or...
Due to the outcome of this question (Is there any way to Terraform Ceres?) I am now working on the concept of shell worlds. Docking would be done by large spires with adjoining rings where once th...
I'm ready to reduce a certain amount of scientific rigor for a good story. In my world, some person invents a theory of everything. Is there a way that scientists would test the theory, to prove t...
I'm worldbuilding for a story in which a certain portion of the population relocates to a slightly habitable planet due to the complete inhabitability of Earth. It takes place several generations a...
Humans have grown fat, complacent and cock-sure of the certainty of future progress, arrogantly expecting to build minds in their own image. They even dream of building themselves a city, with a to...
EDIT: Since many people think this question is unclear, let me rephrase it: Can a species with only specialists survive unassisted for a long period of time? Specific applications: A Robot group...
The Background On a single fairly sizeable continent live two intelligent species. Regular humans, and a species of intelligent wolf-people. The latter aren't actually descended from wolves, but ...
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...
So when making my space stories I have put them in a technological time in history where gravity manipulators are available to the common creature and you can use it to go to other planets and live...
I'm trying to find a way to explain an alien species' ability to control plants, specifically plant growth for crops, without it being 'magic.' So they can ensure the health and size of the plants ...
We are used to a world where humans are basically an apex predator; we don't really need to worry much about becoming some other animal's next meal. If that wasn't the case, and humans had to be w...
I am developing a (magical) first-millenium CE alternate history based on an extension of historically matriarchal societies, and am trying to decide how this would affect the stereotypical male pe...
The Context I have a group of genetically engineered people known as 'crows'. Their genome has been meddled with significantly enough that they are unable to successfully reproduce with humans, bu...
So this is a question I've been meaning to brainstorm for a project I'm planning on. Its inspired by evolutionary biology and how circumstances defined by nature, has the potential to shape life. T...
After I reworked my map, I have a big plain (roughly 1165500 square miles). Can I still credibly divide the plain into different kingdoms and cultures or would a big empire with few cultures inevit...
Starting with about 500 humans and allowing for 900 years to pass, about how many people would there be at the end? (Just asking for a rough estimate, maybe a range.) Assuming: People are general...
Suppose an alternate reality where each human Society (country, clan, tribe, kingdom, or whatever) only give birth to one male per generation. That entire generation depend solely on that one male ...
When I played Zelda: Breath of the Wild and met the heavily redesigned Ritos, I took an immediate liking to their designs. Although the fact that they're fully bird-like helps, it's mostly because ...
There is a species that is quite sentient. Its members know about the world, they have hopes and dreams and great aspirations of what they might do with their lives. They are intelligent, creative,...
I want to have a strict and complicated caste system in my future space society (on a planet or a large space station). What would be the reasons and how would the system develop? Possible reasons...
The movie Back to Future revealed that Mr. Fusion (MF) produced by Fusion Industries (FI) was in widespread use in 2015. What the movie did not reveal was the FI was privately funded by Bill Gates....
I'm making five habitable planets the size of earth as moons for a gas giant the size of Jupiter. Then I want to add many more smaller moons, Our Jupiter has 67 moons, I want as many small moons...
I'm working with a city that has cut itself off from the surrounding area. There may be as many as 10,000 people within it, or as few as 1000. I'm trying to be as realistic as possible. How long...
Trying to consider how a walking, socially-active sapient plant would evolve and the world it would live in. More specifically, how would something which is essentially a walking tree living in a d...
As stated in the topic: I would like to have Project Olympus-style space stations served by Apollo-like spacecraft in a world where neither nuclear power (and weapons) nor transistors were develope...
Let me explain further the idea. Nowadays (as thousands of years earlier) many people bound themselves in their mind to a particular nation, country, town, neighborhood etc. And very often these p...
One of the inspirations for this was Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis, where I liked their depiction of slithering, combat-worthy mermaids. I've been trying to develop mermaids who make pilgrimages t...
I was wondering what kind of planet would lead to aliens being significantly larger and stronger than humans. From my understanding, a planet with lighter gravity would lead to larger creatures, b...
What would be a situation in modern times where normal, healthy people would want to get infected by a non-curable, but non-lethal, virus? A virus that would have pretty nasty symptoms. There...
I was wondering if it is plausible for a civilization to go from the end of the stone age to the space age from 6,000 years to 10,000 years. I was thinking this planet's star was starting to die, a...
If an FTL experiment created a black hole or keugleblitz within 100 au or less of our sun, what would it's post creation statistics have to be to consume the majority of our solar system within 10 ...
Imagine a society. Every member of the society is indoctrinated in different ways by their parents, the education system, media and friends. One can think of this society as a collection of i...
Flash news: Dr. Handwave have discovered a way to store energy, without loss, and for unlimited time. The battery has the following characteristics: Electric: Can be charged by any electric sou...
Scenario The straits of Gibraltar never quite opened and the entire Mediterranean basin is dry land apart from a few large salt water lakes at the lowest points ~5% by area. The Europe "“ Africa la...
Premise: Assume that one man has a genetic mutation such that his gametes (sperm) never have an X-chromosome. Unlike most men (who have a roughly 50/50 chance to sire a male or a female child) t...
A large igneous province is a very large area that has been covered in igneous stone due to some catastrophically large volcanic even or something similar. In my story, a large, futuristic, city h...
Spiders produce silk, a protein fibre able to construct webs and dens. But is there an existing animal (preferably a vertebrate) that would be able to evolve a similar ability of producing a silk-l...
Imagine alien prospector wanting to build "space highway" through our solar system. There could be another route, but the one leading to our system is "the best" Such prospector also wants to use ...
A sub-group of Orcs have settled into an area that is occupied by humans who culturally resemble the Greeks from the Hellenic period. These Orcs, who physically resemble Orcs from The Elder Scrolls...
I'm imagining a universe where interplanetary, but intrasystem, space travel is common (e.g. at a similar level to The Expanse books/TV show) - but not necessarily our local solar system. Perhaps w...
What would cause the temporary migration of a carnivore/scavenger avian species, normally inhabiting a temperate to tropical region, to a much colder one. It's a seasonal migration, but also a r...
Basically I am trying to build a mass surveillance and MRI mental condition analysis network to manage law enforcement at small and medium scale inside threats to national and civilian security. I...
