Problems with floods and droughts
Region 2 is north of Region 1.
River and lake description:
In region 2 there is a crater lake on what used to be a huge mountain. 2 large streams go from the crater lake and merge into a little river 100 miles away from the lake. Another stream from further north merges with the little river to form the Black Sword River that the first civilization depends on. About 50 and 75 miles from there the Black Sword River branches off and terminates at lakes. It then starts heading southeast until it reaches the mountain range in region 1. Small streams from the mountains merge with the Black Sword River once it goes completely south. Then it gets wider and wider forming a delta that leads into the ocean.
Problem:
At the crater lake it doesn't rain often, not nearly as often as it does at the Black Sword River. There are years when the lake is completely dry and there are years when it floods.
This causes there to be years when the river is much lower than usual and years when it floods. The humanoids use positive charge as waterproofing(since water is attracted towards a source of static electricity if that source is negatively charged I figured the opposite would happen for positive charge) However when it floods the waterproofing is no good and water penetrates through it.
During the years that the river is much lower than usual it almost completely freezes over and there is no choice for big fish other than to move sideways(By that I mean that the sides of the fish are at the top and bottom and the top and bottom of the fish are at the sides. In other words, a 90 degree turn)
During the years that the river floods the humanoids' civilization gets soaking wet This is perfect conditions for a marsh to form in the humanoids' civilization.
Since this is an underground civilization potentially everybody would drown in a flood and would have to swim from 1 place to another instead of climb(since climbing through water is much slower than swimming up or down).
So since fish and other aquatic animals live in the crater lake when there is water in it how should I solve the problem of a drought? Have the fish lay eggs right before the drought and the frogs dig into the soil and hibernate during the drought? But then what about the tadpoles that are still developing? Would they know to go into the streams and head towards more permanent lakes like the ones branching off of the Black Sword River? Then there would still be problems with frog eggs drying out. Since humanoids depend on all water sources would the humanoids know to carefully carry the frog eggs to more permanent lakes as fast as possible or just let them dry out?
And what about the floods afterwards? This is aimed more towards the civilization.
Since the civilization is close to the bank of the Black Sword River and some are close to the lakes how would they prevent the civilization from getting soaking wet in case the static electricity fails to keep the water at bay? In case you didn't know the humanoids have a positively charged skin surface so they won't get shocked by positive charge. I don't think coating the outside and inside of all the homes and buildings with metal will work for 2 reasons.
1) Metal is cold to the touch and could cause burns in the summer and frostbite in the winter due to it being a conductor of heat(There is no such thing as a metal insulator) and cold.
2) Most metals oxidize in water and most of those oxides are porous.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/33726. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
0 comment threads