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1500 questions
50
votes
8 answers
Can plants survive without animals?
Could a world with no animals whatsoever (not even insects, no humans, etc) still have plant life? These plants do not have to include all the plants in our world, or even any of the same plants. I can think of these problems that would need to be…
Devsman
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3 answers
How early was the Earth liveable for today's humans?
Say you were to drop a (bunch of) human(s) at some past era of our Earth. I'm assuming they might encounter a few problems such as the composition of the air not being breathable, the water being too rich or too poor in some chemicals, some diseases…
Sheraff
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50
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19 answers
How to add tactics and maneuvering into space warfare
I have a setting with space fleets fighting, the include both capital ships and human flown 'space fighters', which I already put some work into justifying: How to keep humans pilots instead of AI in sci-fi future?
I want to encourage smart tactics,…
dsollen
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21 answers
Most valuable resources from houses?
In a post-apocalyptic scenario a group of circa 100 people is looting houses to gather resources for their survival. They are the only ones in the region, and resulting from this have no issues with defending themselves (against other humans) or…
Pacapo
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4 answers
Moons of Moons of Moons
My question is simple: How many nested moons are physically possible?
If our moon had a moon, that would be a nesting of 1.
I'm assuming it's easily possible for a really big moon to be orbiting a gas giant and have its own moon. If the dimensions…
Varrick
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votes
15 answers
What good are herbivores in an animal army?
This is a multi-species animal army with predators of all shapes and sixes, foxes, lions, bears, tigers, leopards, wolves, lynx, eagles, falcons and so on.
The herbivores have been excluded from the army because they appear to serve no apparent…
Green
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28 answers
Why would The Machines not hunt humanity?
The Slow War is almost over. The Machines appeared almost twenty years ago, and since then we've all but lost humanity without them firing a single shot. Instead they won through brute industrial might. We could destroy thousands of their harvester…
Joe Bloggs
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50
votes
18 answers
Help! Mage stuck inside a wall!
When teleporting an aura of magic covers your body and this aura works as a coating portal.
Instead of you entering a portal, the portal eats you.
The portal is created magically and eats the user in less than a fraction of a second
Thus it is…
user83266
50
votes
5 answers
What is the amputationility of a monomolecular wire weapon?
Monomolecular wire weapons are a somewhat common element in science-fiction.
Including in this this fantastic image I found while looking into this:
Is the only infeasible thing in this image that the octopus would need bones to stand like that,…
Samuel
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50
votes
8 answers
Travel for fairies
My fairies need to travel very far as they are nomadic, however they can only fly for around five minutes without getting tired. They most likely couldn't tame creatures due to their size and the fact that most things that they could tame would just…
Username reset
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5 answers
How would the existence of large rideable flying creatures have changed the design of castles?
I'm thinking not only of the impact they would have had on how you would defend from an aerial attack, but also that they could be used for much more specific bombardment by dropping large rocks and such. For simplicity, let's assume that no more…
Mourdos
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25 answers
With what liquid should I fill my dead, intraversable seas?
My planet has interesting geography; there are large islands, each with a unique civilisation of people. But separating them are impassible barriers; they consist of a double range of tall, steep mountains, and between them a sea of "dead…
KeizerHarm
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19 answers
How can I justify a Type III civilization using planetary jump drives instead of FTL starships for galactic commerce and travel?
I have this idea for a science fiction story (It actually came to me in a dream.). In the distant future, the inhabitants of the Milky Way have formed a galaxy-spanning civilization similar to the Republic in Star Wars. However, instead of using FTL…
Mark Morales II
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votes
20 answers
How to make this "friendly war" plausible?
I'm trying to come up with this scenario in a sort of "medieval fantasy" setting.
There are two towns. One, Caertydin is a large city with all the appropriate tropes, while the smaller town, Siege is a sort of satellite town.
The reason Siege…
komodosp
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50
votes
20 answers
Killing a star safely
A messenger from the stars just arrived in peace but has brought horrible news.
A vast swarm of planet devouring phototropic insects are approaching from deep space and our only hope is to obscure or snuff out our sun until they pass by.
The…
Henry Taylor
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