Worldbuilding Stack Exchange
Worldbuilding Stack Exchange

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1500 questions
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9 answers

What species should be used for storage of human minds?

The business of mind storage became a profitable one, after the discovery of a magical process that allows the memories and personality of a living being to be transferred into another body. Consciousnesses are stashed in animals (or rented humans,…
Rivershard
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How can changes in personality/values of a person who turned into a vampire be explained?

Vampires don't die from old age; They aren't born, and all vampires were humans at some point in their life. After being bitten, a human can turn into a vampire (although the chance is very low, otherwise vampires would run out of food). They're NOT…
KarmaPeasant
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17 answers

Can the number of letters in alphabet suggest how advanced civilization is?

Let's suppose we intercepted a message in an unknown language. We were not able to decipher it, but we were able to decode it. Meaning we know the letters but not the meaning of the words in the text. Assuming the text is sufficiently long, we now…
lsrom
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What kind of weapons would a much smaller species use to fight humans

I have a group of pixies fighting a group of humans. The pixies are about 4-6 inch tall humanoids, which seems like it puts them at a big disadvantage unless they seriously outnumber the humans, or are using guerilla tactics, both of which I would…
Tesset
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What prevents wielders of action-at-distance-type superpowers from destroying internal organs of their enemies?

Telekinesis, pyrokinesis, matter transmutation, bringing tiny chunks of stuff into existence, etc... If no special rules apply, it seems that wielders of such superpowers might easily defeat their enemies by attacking their ultimate weak spot -…
Danijel
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17 answers

What would a space fighter look like?

In Sci-fi, space fighters often look like exotic versions of fighter jets: wing shape is often different but the general shape is most of the time kept. However this seems unrealistic: the shape of fighter jets is almost always the same, because it…
Maxime Lucas
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16 answers

Can telepathy and telekinesis exist in biological creatures?

I would like to create a sentient creature with telepathy and/or telekinesis. Can either (or both) of these concepts exist biologically? If yes, what would the biological mechanism be? Would a specialized organ of some sort be needed and how…
James
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9 answers

How long does it take to build a medieval city wall?

There is a medieval city that, for multiple reasons, doesn't have any kind of structural defense, but they decided to build a wall now as there is risk of a war in the bordering kingdom, which can make the city a strategic target for an attack. Now,…
Julian L
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26 answers

How could a state without a military defense exist?

I've just started out with worldbuilding and got this idea of a state/country that has no need for any armed forces as they don't want to go to war because of religious reasons, and no other state would want to attack them. But during what…
bork
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21 answers

Plausible cause of a family only giving birth to females?

I had an idea about a lineage supposedly cursed so that the women only give birth to more women, but I'm thinking that some outside force purposefully mutated/altered their DNA to cause the effect without their knowledge. What mechanism might be…
Preg-Fan
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How would a society of chaotic evil individuals work?

Imagine an orc-like species of violent sociopaths: they are sadists taking pleasure in the suffering of others, have fits of violent rage, see altruism and empathy as contemptible weakness and are all around complete jerks. It is a truism that…
Eth
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Only Three Books: Restarting Chemistry after civilization collapses

Global famines have dropped the population to 1 billion people and global civilization has collapsed. In an effort to save future civilization some time, you want to provide some information to kick start civilization's regrowth. You have to choose…
Green
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10 answers

How can I destroy a gas giant planet?

We have already discussed how difficult it would be to blow up a planet like Earth, basically deciding that you can't do that with any reasonable amounts of energy. But what if I don't need to blow up the planet (as in, cause a…
user
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6 answers

Fantasy map that has minimal land at the equator. What does this mean for rainforests and the world as a whole?

I created a fantasy map a while back, but only recently have I realised it may have a major problem. There is next to no land at the equator although some land between 0-30 degrees. The vast majority of land that exists is 30 degrees and above. They…
OCA2blu
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21 answers

What would stop a company able to sell lifespan expansions from ruling the world?

Let's assume few things: There is a difficult technology that allows making someone's body an arbitrary number of years younger, or reset it to, for example, the state of "young adult" - a point when puberty has ended and growing old has not yet…
Mołot
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