Posts tagged society
Price's Law is a hypothesis that in an organization, or across an industry, roughly half the productive output is being generated by a number of people equal to the square root of those participati...
In a lot of stories there are fights between man and machine; rogue AI that has decided humans are inferior in some respect and chooses to wipe them out. What if the only chance for any remnant of...
The Story The year is 2027, singularity happened. A powerful AI (let's call it Eve) was created. In a matter of days, it escaped the control of its creators and hacked all the computers of the wor...
Setting: "One Big Lie" Sci-fi RPG The lies in this setting are an extension of relativity with a couple of extra dimensions allowing for FTL/Backwards Time Travel, and Thaumons. Thaumons (Magic B...
What would be differently perceived from a person with broader visual spectrum than normal? So I've seen this question, especially the accepted answer, and it certainly is not what I'm looking for...
We divide the year into months of ~30 days because that's roughly the period of the moon, adapted to fit a solar year. However, would a civilization living on a world with no moon but a year of ~3...
Extraversion and introversion are a central dimension in the Big Five personality model (or OCEAN model). Being introverted or extraverted may not be mutually exclusive, but, when averaging out ove...
Introduction I want my story, set in the modern day, to have a unique architectural feel. Part of my strategy - no skyscrapers. Wikipedia: The term skyscraper was first applied to buildings o...
An extension to another question about Why would humans be the dominant species? In my story Giants, humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to why...
Genetic chimerism is a condition in which a single organism is composed of cells with more than one distinct genotype. Elves inhabit this world, but do not possess magic in this reality. Instead, t...
In this world, humans have a strange way of reproducing. When partners decide to conceive, A female must be inseminated at specified intervals by a male in order to pass on her genes. However, male...
In modern day society, few or many people have been fascinated with integrating robotic parts to their bodies. But sometimes that idea is taken to the next step, in which people want to have their ...
In my setting, there are basically no biological life forms left, as everyone has either been mind-uploaded or is an artificial intelligence. It is supposed to take place at a very distant point i...
This came out of a discussion of an all female colony world, but I'm interested in the more general version of this question. Is there any function in society that requires male levels of strength ...
So there is an Antarctic like continent in my setting; and just like Antarctica it is the largest and most inhospitable desert in the planet due to how absolutely cold it is. But what if there wa...
So I was recently inspired by the answers that I saw on this stack exchange to the following question: Feasibility of H.G. Wells' Continuously-Exploding Atomic Bombs And it occurred to me that you...
I am looking for as hard science answers as possible, but I am willing to bend some rules for a good answer. Assume they need to move 10 million 100 million people off of a planet what technology...
So I'm working on a fictional planet which would experience a daytime sky similar to this. This particular picture is from the movie Valerian: City of a Thousand Planets. Fictional alien atmosph...
My question is as follows - let's assume our objective function is to have as many humans as possible living outside the confines of the Earth as soon as possible. For this, we need to provide thos...
I have been making a future colonization scenario where people have vast colonies on Mars and cloud top bases on Venus. These things are unbelievably large. I've already thought of a way to travel ...
When developing a medival fantasy realm, especially one with no known healing and restoration magic, one may need to develop the people's understanding of science and medicine. A unique example of ...
The goblins in my world are classical fantasy goblins. They aren't too smart, have primitive technology, live in tribes, and use tamed boars, wolves, and other wild animals. They usually have a bos...
The Megapodes are a family of birds in the galliformes order. They live primarily in Australia and are notable in being extremely precocial and laying more eggs than any other bird. They build larg...
Imagine a huge salt flat like Bonneville or Salar de Uyuni. Due to other logistical concerns, commerce between the economic powers on either side of the flat is forced travel across it. This has re...
In medieval times, news of dragons attacking the outskirts of the villages is flooding in. The King is losing patience. According to witnesses, these dragons can lift cows and occasionally elephant...
In my story, there is a planet that experiences near constant sunlight. Since sunlight so plentiful and reliable most organisms are, at least in part, photosynthetic. The only intelligent life on ...
We've just started 36th century, humanity is colonizing stars right and left. Technology is well developed, you know, typical Sci-Fi stuff. In 23rd century we finally were able to create true AI. ...
I remember reading this thing somewhere about how humans born in zero gravity environments would likely be taller than Earth-bound humans but also more fragile and unable to handle Earth's gravity ...
A long time ago a group of proto-giants moved high up into a the Sodo-Himalayas. Yetis commonly live up on high mountain plains some of basic characteristics of Yetis are: are as intelligent as ...
Sort of a follow up: What change in human biology would lead to wild gestational periods? In an alternate world during the middle ages, women are regularly with child for more than a year, with th...
I am an alien from outer space who is visiting a planet called Earth. The species living here, humans, have a very primitive and strange culture. They seem to spontaneously burst into dance and son...
I'm making a story where the main character travels the world. The world is made up of anthropomorphic animals. The animals would still have the urges of animals, But they become more sapient. Dog...
Coming from an earlier asked question, I was wondering how long it would take (potentially a range) for two human populations that are separated from each other to speciate enough that they would n...
How could blue soil exist, in a realistic earth-like world. The world may even be earth. First off is it even possible - could soil like this exist given the requirements below? (if not then why?)...
The basic concept of this planet is that, the planet has a tilted axis (you probably guessed that already) which results in the South Pole constantly facing towards the sun. This would result in th...
So I'm thinking here about the sort of setting like Eclipse Phase, in which virtually all of humanity lives in a wide range of space habitats because of an apocalypse on Earth. I am imagining a var...
Now a change from dragon questions: Let's move onto aliens based on mythological creatures! Most land creatures on the planet of Antiquoloci have a strange sensory system in place of a nose, doing...
The image is quite old so bear with me. This dragon is similar in shape and movement to a snake, with light-weight armor plating on its back. Flowers, which honestly look like antennae, blooming...
I am a complete amateur regarding biology, so please forgive me if this question is a little stupid. Could we ever create squids that have human-level intelligence and could serve as a replacement ...
Imagine a light spaceship capable of traveling at 0.999c is tasked to tow a radioactive cargo containing millions of tons of polonium and radium, however the container holding the radioactive mater...
I am writing a story, in which a mad scientist (based on Ted Kaczynski) wants to kill as many people as possible with an artificially created disease. The idea is, that more complex societies are ...
First, a clarification: Dwarfism is the umbrella term for 200+ medical conditions that result in short stature. Since this is Worldbuilding, my question refers to human beings with genetic dwarfis...
I have a world that isn't an exact analogue to medieval technology, closer to the late 1700s in terms of culture and agriculture/metallurgy, only without gunpowder. I have them ahead of real histor...
Setup: Earth developed in an alternate universe with small oceans and little water. A little before animals first left the oceans and began to walk on land, when all of Earth's land was barren sand...
I have a very simple question regarding a small problem I cannot find a single satisfying answer to. I am trying to create a country with a prominent Slavic culture. In my story, an alien world has...
Most of people knowing a bit about AI know the concept of paper-clipper, an AI that was meant to produce more paperclips and eventually turn the entire universe into paperclips at maximum efficienc...
Would a community of around 300 people be able to start producing plentiful food in ~5 years post a civil war and plague? They were an isolated quite wealthy community, in a sub-tropical area, mai...
Setting: Earth, in the future, near 2060 or 2100 Technology: a bit more advanced than ours Armies and police forces are already using systems for crowd control. Some devices can generate disco...
In my world, alien 'reactors' are discovered that are very efficient at creating power (around 1000x better than fission), as well as requiring little fuel, making them the perfect power source. H...
Most aliens tend to be humans with bumpy foreheads and/or pointy ears. Even when they do have differences then usually it is an entire species being portrayed as a particular brand of human. For ex...
