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I'm making a human female who's size was multiplied by 10. I need to know what sort of accommodations she'd need to make up for any disadvantages. This is in the modern day, so 21st-century medicine and technology would be available to her.

Her new size is 15.14 m (49' 7 29/32") tall, and she was enlarged by a magical telescope, so square cubed law and thermodynamics are being ignored downplayed. Her vision wouldn't become blurry, due to the vision-based way the telescope works, but what other accommodations would she need? Edit: to clarify, I'm looking for medical accommodations, such as glasses, hearing aids, braces, and so on.

edit: Perhaps "ignored" is too strong of a word, she would feel heavier and stuff, but nothing to the extreme that keeping her alive would be more difficult and costly than disposing of a 91,000 lb cadaver.

Ashton Giertz
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  • Welcome to Worldbuilding.SE! We're glad you could join us! When you have a moment, please click here to learn more about our culture and take our [tour]. Your question is a bit broad. "Accommodations" can mean anything and this site requires specific questions (and it's OK to post additional questions). Are you looking for medical? housing? transportation? changes to infrastructure (like electrical distribution towers/poles)? printing? (her vision is OK, but I doubt she could read a normal newspaper). (*continued*) – JBH May 04 '19 at 17:20
  • You can't ask for everything at once or the question will be closed as "too broad." What specific issue are you having a problem with? – JBH May 04 '19 at 17:20
  • Welcome. So the word "accommodations" has more than one meaning. It can mean one's housing situation and the items that surround it. You have hotel accommodations, for example. Or a job might come with accommodations. It also means alterations made due to someone's disability. It can get very broad here as it can effect all activities of daily living (food, hygiene, dressing, ambulation, etc) and all aspects of working a job and/or going to school and all aspects of being out in the world, including shopping, socializing, entertainment, and plain old transportation. (more) – Cyn May 04 '19 at 17:50
  • Then there are things like her clothing, how to feed her, how to give her enough to drink. And so much more. We could write a novel answering your question. But that's your job! Like @JBH says, pick one of the above. If you have additional questions after you've asked the one and waited a few days for answers, ask another. You don't want to flood the site with a dozen related questions, but it is okay to break it up into multiple ones as needed. – Cyn May 04 '19 at 17:52
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    Sorry, my bad. I'm specifically looking for medical accommodations, such as glasses, hearing aids, braces, etc. – Ashton Giertz May 04 '19 at 17:55
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    The problem with compressive strength is that the compressive force changes quickly. For example, jumping and landing "badly" on your heels can generate multitudes of your bodyweight in force on your bones. Even if the giant can stand still, walking and even crawling has to be done slowly and carefully to prevent the bones breaking anyway. Use magic or a sciency bone replacement/reinforcement to avoid this. – Demigan May 04 '19 at 17:56
  • Is she an invalid? Or is she up and about like the 50 foot woman or the Monsters and Aliens lady? – Willk May 04 '19 at 18:28
  • @Willk “Invalid” can be an offensive or derogatory term when used to refer to a person. Whilst most people would understand your meaning, and can see you did not mean it with malicious intent, it is just something to keep in mind. – Liam Morris May 04 '19 at 18:55
  • She has to crawl on her hands and knees and generally remain low to the ground. So yes, you could say she's disabled. As for breaking bones by moving, remember that she still has a functioning nervous system that would warn her ahead if time if she's putting too much pressure on a specific body part. She might break a few bones at first, but as she gets used to her new size this will happen far less often. – Ashton Giertz May 04 '19 at 19:03
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    @AshtonGiertz You seem to be speculativley changing the rules as you go along with every comment. As such you need to have asked a clear question in the fist place, and not use the forum here as a place where you engage in polemic oneupmanship. Voting to close as too broad. – Escaped dental patient. May 04 '19 at 19:34
  • Ok, I'm pretty sure I hadn't introduced any new rules until after you made that comment, but whatever, I should probably start over anyways. I just voted to delete this question. – Ashton Giertz May 04 '19 at 19:42
  • I revised the question to make the magical nature of her transformation more obvious. – Ashton Giertz May 04 '19 at 21:08
  • @AshtonGiertz Please do not edit the question so as to invalidate existing answers. – Liam Morris May 04 '19 at 22:34
  • @LiamMorris, while it is not preferred to invalidate existing answers, the necessity of clarifying a question to keep it open can, and often will, invalidate answers. That's the price people pay for answering questions that aren't ready. In shorter words: it's OK to invalidate existing answers. (See this page in the Help Center, "Answer well-asked questions.") – JBH May 04 '19 at 23:13
  • Thank you, @AshtonGiertz! I appreciate your edit and clarification. I look forward to your future participation on the site! As this is your first question here, let me apologize for the somewhat rough ride you've been given. We've all gone through the learning process. If ever you have a question that you think does need some discussion before it's posted, you can use our Sandbox or ask about it in [chat]. Cheers! – JBH May 04 '19 at 23:16
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    @JBH You’re right, fault on my part. I should have kept that part of the help center in mind. – Liam Morris May 04 '19 at 23:36

3 Answers3

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Structural Support

Her entire body would need structural support, she would be far too big to for her muscles to support her own weight, this is known as the square-cube law. If you double something’s height, its surface area increases by four and its volume increases by eight.

If we take a 6ft human who weighs 180 lbs and can lift 180 lbs, his muscles are actually carrying 360 lbs as they are carrying the weight of his body plus the weight he is carrying.

The strength of muscles is dependant on their surface area.

If we double his height to 12 ft (6*2=12) his surface area increases to 1440 (360*4=1440) and his volume increases to 1440 lbs. What this means is all of his muscles are now supporting his own weight, any additional weight would be “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.

Your 50 to 60ft human* would not be able to support their own weight by any stretch of the imagination. They would be crushed under their own weight.

*Note that i am assuming you meant their size increases by 10 not by a factor of 10. If it were a factor of 10, thats 5^10 to 6^10 which is 9,765,625 ft to 60,466,176 ft. These numbers seem ridiculously large so this is why i assume you mean they increased by 10.

If you want to know more about giants, here is a question exploring the plausibility of giant humans and its subsequent duplicate:

What would be the tallest possible height for humanlike creatures in earthlike conditions?

Anatomically correct Giants

Liam Morris
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    @AshtonGiertz Thats not how it works. The surface area she covers has nothing to do with the surface area of her muscles. Thats like saying if someone was flattened with a rolling pin, they’d have superman levels of strength. Also, her distributing her weight across the ground will not stop her internal organs from collapsing in on themselves from their own weight. – Liam Morris May 04 '19 at 18:44
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    @AshtonGiertz I think you are vastly underestimating the square-cube law. If we were to multiply her height by 10, her surface area increases by 100 and her volume increases by 1000. I don’t need to calculate if the internal organs would be crushed if they were 1000 times heavier than they are, i know they would. You can’t just scale up biological organisms and expect everything to function normally. Also, you are wrong, the instant she is 1000 times heavier, she is dead. continued – Liam Morris May 04 '19 at 19:05
  • You might as well drop 1000 of her clones onto of her and expect her to survive as that is essentially what you're doing. It doesnt matter if you add them one at a time or all at once, eventually she would be crushed to death by all that weight. – Liam Morris May 04 '19 at 19:07
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    @AshtonGiertz Whilst something like an elephant has a heart substantially bigger and heavier than a humans, it evolved the structural support and strength necessary to allow it to function, a human heart has not. A human heart would be too heavy, the muscles would not be strong enough to pump the heart and allow blood to fill the chambers. Also, don’t forget this giant is 50 ft vertically, the heart would have to be immensely powerful to pump blood up such a long distance to the brain. Human organs as is would not be able to support 1000 times their own weight and still function. – Liam Morris May 04 '19 at 19:21
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    @AshtonGiertz You seem to be speculativley changing the rules as you go along with every comment. As such you need to have asked a clear question in the fist place, and not use the forum here as a place where you engage in polemic oneupmanship. Voting to close as too broad. – Escaped dental patient. May 04 '19 at 19:34
  • @LiamMorris I'm sorry, I should have been a little more specific with my question. I'm not asking for reasons why she wouldn't be able to live at that hight. Those can be handwaved by the magical nature of her transformation. I'm asking for accommodations for any OTHER disadvantages she may experience due to her new size. – Ashton Giertz May 04 '19 at 22:21
  • @AshtonGiertz And i stated that her body would need structural support, such a braces, splints, metal reinforcements essentially anything that would add structure to her body as, because she is so heavy, her body would not be able to support itself. Perhaps i should have clarified this more. – Liam Morris May 04 '19 at 22:29
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    Hmmm... the Sauroposeidon weighed 30+ tons and stood 18.5 meters tall... and neither it nor its internal organs collapsed due to its size or weight. The square cube law doesn't limit size at all. It's only an observation that when size increases proportionally, volume and surface area increase in mathematically predictable ways. Add to this the magical process, which was in the original question and this was a good first attempt. Please remember to use a little leeway with new users. – JBH May 04 '19 at 23:24
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Since you said the Square-Cube law was partially ignored (which is how I'm doing it for a similar story), I can give you some things that should help.

Let's first get the obvious out of the way. She'll need a lot of food, but it'll stay nearly relative. 10-20 times the amount as normal maybe? She'll need a giant house, massive clothes, etc. That stuff should be clear and simple, I'm sure you've thought of those.

Here's some less obvious ones. She will definitely need hearing aids. With sound waves, the height determines loudness. However, a sudden giant would be accustomed to hearing sounds at a relative height much larger than they hear now, so everything will sound much quieter. Similarly, she will be much louder, and also probably have a deeper voice as well.

The rest of them should be in this answer to another question by Gary Walker. Just reverse a lot of those properties, and you'll have a great starting point. (Although, they will be more extreme in yours than his.)

Murphy L.
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The accommodations needed would be a mop and a very large bucket because this woman's flesh would burst out of her skin instantly.

Tom O'Daighre
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