Posts tagged technology
Premise In a world set 10^40 years from now, or in cosmological decade 60 (a cosmological decade is a long term measure of time such that each successive increment represents a ten-fold increase i...
Ok, so this is an very odd little question. I've been working out the economy of an industrial age world; figuring the major industries, trade routes, etc. I have a tropical region I was consider...
I am writing a DnD module where fishmen are invading island nations. The islands would naturally have adapted to this in some way as the raids have been happening for years. What method would these...
In this world, there are two trans-human species that are emerging at the same time. They vehemently despise each other and conflict is fast approaching. I would like to make the struggle between t...
In my world there is a neolithic civilization of people who inhabit earthen trenches. The people first soften the earth with ... fluids ... and dig out 6 - 12 foot deep trench systems that extend o...
The time: January 27th, 2017, 7:00 AM local. The place: New York City and environs. Jormungandr, the Snakebot of Doom, has just finished steamrolling New York City into something more closely res...
There is a device in my story that »steals« memories from a person (I had some sort of transmitter in mind, but this can easily be modified, as long as it uses powerful long-range signals to achi...
I want to contrive a scenario in which 23rd century humanity faces a dire crisis due to an extraterrestrial von Neumann ecology that rapidly consumes Nitrogen as a part of its life cycle. So rapidl...
I have designed an alien species similar to octopi (Tetrapus Sapiens) who live in the tropical waters of a fertile, lush world known as Iridia. The octopi (more like tetrapi) have moved past the hu...
In many scenes you see something like this: If I was designing a world for a culture living in a rain-forest and their land was cut through by many vast ravines then what sort of spans could the...
My world has lots of civilizations which, due to geography, have little access to the kind of sea travel as a means for trade, exploration, and conquest. I think the people of this world may be dri...
My question is about a far off and seclusive colony in the reaches of the Orion nebula. As they are relatively isolated they have resorted to harvesting the nebula itself for resources. What I wa...
A common trope in science fiction is the idea that a human's consciousness and intelligence can be downloaded onto a computer. I recently had the idea that maybe in some apocalyptic scenario, mill...
A seawall is basically a coastal defense to prevent waves and tsunamis. Let's suppose there is a town that is located in a lagoon next to the ocean, a sea version of Esgaroth, the lake town. In thi...
The Scenario: My late Victorian Era mad scientist wants to domesticate the dinosaurs and mammalian megafauna of his "Lost World" island getaway, for use as companions, guardians, draft animals, and...
Short of strapping a giant lightning pole to someone's forehead or covering them in a suit of metal, is there anyway of making a person a susceptible target for lightning in a storm? Prerequisite...
I want my world to be set in early to mid Industrial Age but for various reasons that I won't go into here I don't want there to be any gunpowder based weapons. Is it possible for a society to adv...
The current technology around this subject is somewhat hard to gauge. For obvious ethical reasons, there is not a lot of empirical precedents. Also, given that it's subliminal, it is by nature diff...
If you've never been in a shower fight you cannot possibly imagine the pain a wet towel can inflict.. Pete Williams, 12b Avergreen Road, 4th grade, likes Brussels sprouts1 A towel can b...
I'm writing a medieval/post apocalypse world stricken with horrible dust storms that last days or weeks at a time. Would it be possible, using medieval technology, to: protect yourself from such...
Through a short amount of research it seems most blood is cleaned in the liver and most toxins are neutralized before being passed into urine or the bowels. If this is how most toxins are excreted ...
I'm asking this question about an already-built world, in accordance with Are questions based on movies okay?. One of the most famous props on the television show Doctor Who is the sonic screwdriv...
In many sci-fi scenarii, most often when mechs are involved, it is not uncommon to see such a technology, usually called heated blade. Supposedly, it would make the blade even more efficient at cut...
Logically a born and raised on a planet with Earth-like gravity would move slower on a high gravity planet, and would be both faster, and possibly clumsier in low gravity. In my world humanity has ...
I just detected a strange object in space, and it appears to be of alien origin! Telescope readings seem to indicate it is some sort of deep space probe, with a golden disk of some sort attached to...
There's a person who has enough working knowledge of our current real-world methods of cryptography (e.g. knows how a few modern algorithms work and could implement one or two from scratch). That ...
In my world, having a nuclear reactor at your own house is legal, in fact government donates money in the form of subsidies ( So no constraints of funds). This might have been practical because of ...
I had a dream the other night about an alien invasion. In this dream, I was one of the first people to be aware that the aliens had landed, and of course I wanted to warn others. The aliens were lo...
I'm imagining an intelligent race of beings with only one major difference from humanity: that they share one mind. Biologically speaking, they're identical to humanity, and their world is, by all...
As the title suggests, I'm trying to make the bunker viable in the arms race again. Note that does not mean it has to be indestructible. While some may contend that the bunker will lose the arms r...
Let's assume that humanity in near future develops an AI capable of solving problems. The AI hardware/ software was placed in an underground bunker (solid walls, Faraday cage, no tools to manipulat...
In many sci-fi settings magnetic boots are used to help astronauts walk in microgravity. However, not all materials are ferromagnetic. Titanium, aluminum, the most form of carbon and silica can not...
I am looking for a (at least somewhat) plausible organic matter, which is able to store massive amounts of energy. After reading up on biobatteries and so on, I am aware that I would need something...
I am designing a world where humans have achieved FTL by means of the Alcubierre warp drive and are colonizing the stars. Originally I had communication pegged as being done with quantum entanglem...
I want to make a powered light armor for my sci-fi setting. The candidate material is carbon, as it's lightweight and has a whole rainbow of different allotropes with different properties. I want...
I was rereading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I came across an interesting passage: Flare riding is one of the most exotic a...
Using my world changing invention and my massive intellect I have created the perfect defensive tool for myself and any minions valued friends I deem might need one. The tool is a super suit that ...
Setting: In a fantasy setting much like World of Warcraft (where huge liberties are taken regarding the level of technological sophistication), an evil emperor rules from a castle in which there ar...
This is set in the same universe as my Andromeda galactic war question (same tech level). In this question, I had somewhat purposely labelled the galactic core as "off-limits" (black holes and oth...
Let's say a human engineer comes across an alien electronics lab. It occurs to me that electrons are electrons, if the aliens are at a similar state of development to us then at least the simples...
Nowdays we have biometric doors that can scan your eye, palm, fingerprint, ear, etc, etc... But all of them rely on electronic readers and computers to match the sample against the stored pattern....
I'm (slowly) working on a semi sci-fi world, set in a WWII-ish tech level (Semi sci-fi being how they got to this world). Except in this world, aircraft have developed significantly later, and batt...
So, here's the setup. Spaceship emergency lands on a habitable planet in the middle of a desert. Being a desert with decent wind movement, the ship quickly ends up being buried under the sand. A f...
A scientist creates device that allows some degree of communication with the afterlife. The communication is very difficult and the dead can only pass small bits of information on, so there is a lo...
In my near future of manned Mars exploration, NASA/ESA/etc have a dozen or so rovers spread out around Mars. For scientific purposes, the rovers 'talk' to each other via low and high gain antennae...
Welcome to this fun little series, that will explore all the classic sci-fi tropes and attempts to turn them into reality with the ALMIGHTY POWER OF SCIENCE! Today's topic is: The Force Field ...
I'm currently working on a story and I'm having some interrogations about the plausibility of a civilization. Quick backstory: Humans had to abandon Earth a few thousand years ago for the classic ...
So basically there is this ionocraft thingy and it would be used frequently by one of my stories, mainly by a lightweight character (6.3 kg). Now the question: If I were to use nanotechnology to c...
I have a creature that can transform itself from matter into energy. Some scientist try to trap it by tricking it into a cage. But what kind of cage will hold an energy being? This take place in ...
So in (a lot of) sci-fi we have magic gravity that gives up and down and layer-cake decks, and nice and easy set design for the TV studios. I'm actually pretty much okay with this, but what rubs me...
