Posts tagged humans
Set in the near future, the interior of the spaceship is coated with thin layers of Teflon approximately 10mm average thickness on top of titanium alloy which in case you are wondering it is weakly...
May be the wrong site, but researching for a writing project... What effect would there be on a group of humans living in a lightless and cramped environment (assume underground) for nearly 800 yea...
I'm building a world with humans being genetically engineered species, created by certain advanced Alien civilization ("gods", Creators etc ...) like in the Sumerian hypothesis, but with a twist: t...
I'm writing a sci-fi story with some fantasy elements, and I'm trying to keep even the most outrageous moments grounded in the laws of our universe. This is one of those moments. The Situation ...
God had decided that humanity as a species is an overall disappointment. After wiping out all life with a flood, he decided to start from scratch. Humanity's new environment would be constantly cha...
How different would a human-like creature be in order to need only half the calorie consumption that we need? Constraints: The species must be capable of surviving in an Earth-like planet. The d...
This is a follow up question to one that I made earlier. Basically, after God wiped out all life after the flood, earth has changed into a lush but dangerous environment. Every living thing, from ...
Say there is a plant-based toxin that causes what is essentially a state of deep sedation but has no other real effects. In this world there is one animal that is immune to this toxin (the plant is...
Lots of human cells are constantly dying and being replaced. How different would a human-like creature be if most cells (excluding brain cells) had longer lifespans (5 times longer, or even more)? ...
Assuming humans remained hunter-gatherers, would it be anatomically possible for us to evolve digitigrade legs? Or, is our anatomy too specialized and are we stuck the way we are? I am not asking ...
I am building a country in today's Argentina (32°-40° latitude) where Europeans would have settled in 10th century. Would their skin color change over that period?
The main character in my setting is a human with red irises. I know that severe cases of albinism can cause somebody's eyes to appear red, but that's actually caused by light reflecting off the blo...
In which wilderness area on modern-day Earth would it be easiest for a lone human to survive year-round? What resources are available there and what tools and skills would be necessary? What is t...
Can we make a human brain and body the size of a mouse's while still retaining the same level, if not more intelligence? Like how tech has evolved to be smaller but more efficient or how cars are...
Many science fiction stories, movies, and shows involve characters undergoing explosive decompression, the technical term for a rapid drop in pressure, usually all the way to a vacuum. Frequently,...
In real life, humans get pregnant for only nine months. Once born, the baby has a long way to go before it can stand, walk and talk. But don't tell that to Mwindo! The African saga of the hero M...
I'm in the rough outlining stages of this story, and found myself a bit stuck trying to turn this particular corner. Firstly, here are the basics of this world: In the future, it's a common prac...
So, my setting, as of now, is a singular supercontinent, with a large mountain system running across one of its sides, basically the fantasy equivalent of the Andes. On paper this (or at least its ...
Newborn humans are born in a very undeveloped stage compared to other mammals. This is because if they stayed any longer in the mother, their head would become too big to fit through the birth cana...
The scenario described below is for a role-playing game. The setting is Earth-like but with a healthy dose of sci-fi. Even though the setting is sci-fi I would prefer answers be largely based in re...
As part of the story I am writing, an individual has been frozen with relatively crude cryogenic technology, then preserved as well as possible. Given the constraints of biology, what would waking ...
In fiction that tries to provide a wide diversity of cultural stances on the collectivism-individualism stances, there is often a trope that self-reliant, no-nonsense, rugged individualists (as a d...
I take no credit for the image below. All artwork and information belongs to Blue-Hearts on DeviantArt: (click on image for a higher resolution) I'm personally very impressed at her level of d...
So, there are birdpeople/birdfolk in my setting. They're ~170 cm tall bipedal humanoids with a pair of functioning wings, slightly below the shoulders. They're covered with feathers, except for the...
In this question, we're looking at a humanity that has adapted one of the most conspicuous ways of keeping cool--larger ears. Desert animals usually have larger ears to have more room for blood ca...
The Dreamlands are a vast, alternate dimension that can only be entered via dreams. They are divided up into several sections, all of which are inhabited by monsters who serve the idiot elder god A...
I'm working on setting in which a prison ship crashes on an unexplored/unknown planet, and due to infighting and environmental factors the prisoners return to tribalism at best or feral animals at ...
If a person is sent out of their hermetically sealed community and in the process becomes immune to a deadly disease. When the person returns will the immunity make them a carrier and infect/kill a...
I'm writing a short story that focuses on an area with high thermophile activity, like a hot spring. There are known thermophile viruses, but thermophiles aren't able to transmit these to humans be...
At the climax of my story, most of the people on the planet have the way they interact with gravity magically altered. Until a week passes or they die (whichever comes first), instead of being pull...
One of my characters suffers an injury where a spike pierced his lower jaw and severed his tongue. Ignoring the fact that he may not have survived this wound under normal circumstances (eldritch p...
I read some time ago about terraria (singular: terrarium), which are basically small ecosystems of plants, isolated from the outside world (they get just energy from outside, not water or oxygen). ...
I am toying with an idea which requires a human to be stuck in a dark box for the rest of their life. They receive regular exercise of the arms and legs, air, food and water and their bodily funct...
In a near-future sci-fi world, I described a disease with the following characteristics: Affects human female children (not necessarily exclusively). Is a neurodegenerative or similar disorder,...
Humans are the equivalent of bacteria to planet-eating monsters. And since, as we all know, eating humans is dangerous business, these monsters have decided to cook our great planet Earth before ea...
Mod Note: Some people may be squeamish about this subject, please keep all responses clinical rather than vulgar. So, in my world, I try to play the "immortality" trope with twists that make it su...
Many believe that sex before a competition can have a negative impact on performance in combat, speed and strength sports in males. Athletes from strength and speed sports showed decreased perf...
This is about "giants" inhabiting a fictional earth-like planet somewhere in the Universe (like those in the movie Prometheus, for example). Assuming that all the conditions (temperature, gravity,...
What conditions would have to happen to re-animate a mummified person to come back to life with consciousness fully restored? What would the conditions of the mummification be and biological/techni...
For visual reference: Apes are visual species who rely more on their eyesight than any of the other senses. As a result, they see the world in three shades of color, whereas other mammals see i...
After Cain killed his brother Abel, he was cursed by God to wander the earth forever. On his travels, he met a sympathetic woman named Lilith. They discovered that they had a mutual beef with their...
In my world there is an old human guarding something of great significance. All chemical reactions in their body have been slowed down to a microscopic fraction of what is deemed usual*. Once the ...
What would humans look like if they lived 50-100,000 years 20,000-30,000 feet / 6 to 9 km above sea level? Or 500,000 years? Would we have bigger lungs / chests? Bigger wider noses? Thicker skin a...
Once a long long time ago a guy called Newton came up with a law he called his 3rd law. "The laws of motion" Everyone knows about "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" My question her...
If humans had wings, let's just say in the classic angel position. It's pretty obvious that we don't have the muscles or aerodynamics to actually fly with them. I was looking at hang-gliders, and I...
I am writing about a blood magic cult, and they drink/paint with collected blood to preform rituals and bursts of magic. Most of their supply is garnered through the use of human cattle, but in a p...
In my world, officials dealing with sensitive information have their tongues amputated. Naturally writing and a special, government-only sign-language are the main forms of communication, but crea...
My character is male and eighteen years of age. He has no health issues. 'Gold' can be replaced with any type of metal - silver, bronze, steel, iron, it doesn't really matter to me. The ideal type...
For context, I'm currently working on a short story series centered on a young man living in a dystopian America. This U.S. government keeps its 'undesirables' in medically-induced comas (long stor...
Can we increase life expectancy by replacing important organs for life such as the heart, kidneys, young blood, etc. (but not the brain)? Most organs can fail and, for the ones which we already hav...