Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

How to hide the fact that you're in an O'Neill cylinder?

+0
−0

Let's say you've either cloned yourself a native population (the ethical option) or taken a bunch of volunteers and wiped all their memories of modern technology and society (the slightly more morally iffy option), then taken your fresh batch of blank slates and dropped them into a closed, simulated environment mimicking Earth (in this case an O'Neill cylinder spun up to either full Earth gravity or an appreciable fraction thereof) to see how they develop on their own.

This social/anthropological experiment is going nicely if you, a staff member, can stomach the slightly dodgy ethics of breeding an entire native population for what is essentially glorified roleplaying with the project overseers as the DMs/de facto gods of this neat little fantasy world you've encapsulated. For funsies, you've even genetically altered and segregated the population into three distinct species occupying different "levels" of the cylinder, which is built like an onion. But you, in your godhood, now have a problem you must address.

How do you prevent your new, primitive occupants from realizing they're living in an artificially-made cylinder? Do you come down from "heaven" to tell them the truth yourself, and risk contaminating the experiment? Do you attempt to cleverly hide it somehow by either altering the landscape to hide it or simply transferring them to a larger cylinder where the curvature would be less noticeable? Or do you simply not bother to disturb the subjects and allow them to draw their own conclusions, reacting with amusement as they form entire religions and creation myths to explain why the Earth is curved? Is there a better/best option?

History
Why does this post require attention from curators or moderators?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/93272. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

0 answers

Sign up to answer this question »