When the sky turns black gray and white It's a sign that They arrive Towering titans of plight And the Last Great Stronghold set alight -----Triangulum Collective
I found an article written by physicist George Ellis that confused me a little.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.498.4569&rep=rep1&type=pdf
At some part, he says:
3.2 Non-uniqueness:
Possibilities There is non-uniqueness at both steps. Stating “all that is possible, ha...
Subject of the morning: what kind of crapsack situation/world cannot be made worse by adding zombies? As per this closed post
1) Awating certain doom. The solar flare is on its way; the world-killer asteroid is on short final; aliens are slowly sterilising the entire world... zombie at this point is a blatant "Meh, whatever... hand me the drugs and booze... might as well party while we can".
Define "humans need to be able to survive any scenario you suggest". If all we have left in the end is Alice and Bob, standing on top of the cinder, that technically fulfills the criteria.
@MichaelK Also I think it's better to look at the question as "which situation can be made better with zombies", because the're a lot of situations where zombies wouldn't make any difference
It seems pretty clear to me that it means "humanity", as in lots of humans, and should be considered long-term for at least a couple dozen generations.
Having Alice and Bob be wiped out last and choosing this specific point in time to say "there were humans who survived until this second" seems like a weak workaround for the requirements put forth in the question and against the spirit of the question.
I am still unsure if the following question is out of topic for worldbuilding :
How could a medieval army defeat Sauron army?
Sauron army was one of the most powerful of Middle Earth in the Second and Third ages.
According to this SE question Sauron army consisted of 50000-75000 with mainly Or...
@Gryphon Not bad! I finished my summer work last week - well, kinda, we're still doing stuff, just back at home - and am planning on enjoying these next 2.5 weeks before school starts again.
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@Secespitus OK, I got one. world wide flood of biblical proportions. Humanity is on giant fleets of floating cities. Pretty bad, but survivable. And the zombies are the Drowned. Annoying, but not too bad.
@SamCoutteau You technically can, but it doesn't typically work (although I've said: "Everything I post should be starred", and had it starred multiple times).
Specifically, "Unrelated to any other extant tongue, and based on just eight consonants and three vowels, Pirahã has one of the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possesses such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations."
Make a really simple symbol set then let the meaning emerge from there.
The fallout from Worse than zombies, part 1, has reminded me that I keep meaning to ask to what extent one can ask question about things they are curious about rather than issue they need answers to. As I'm writing this I've asked 44 questions on the main, of which only 15 are actually about anyt...
@Hosch250 Flails take a lot of skill to avoid bashing yourself in the head. Kinda like nunchucks. A FuBar seems like a decient melee weapon. Or mace. or an ax.
@MikeNichols I see you beat me to bountying your question. If you still don't like any of the answers you get when it's done, let me know and I'll add a bounty of my own.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. – Arthur C. Clarke
Question
There are two planets, A and B. A is a global state with little conflict, while B is a medieval warlord state with constant conflict. A has advanced technology, while ~0.1%...
I honestly think that this should be our model for sending missions to potentially habitable exoplanets. Sure, they have a 99% chance of failure, but they also have the world's best scientists and engineers backed by a multibillionaire.
@JavaScriptCoder It's from models by Eric Mamajek and others, one of the more comprehensive grids I could find. I was surprised to find anything so detailed, especially given that it runs the gamut for main sequence spectral types.
I was thinking of a related mission concept I read about where they come back.
FWIW, we don't have the resources to beam the data back from a device that small, or to receive a signal that weak from that distance coming directly from the direction of a star, do we?
I honestly think that this should be our model for sending missions to potentially habitable exoplanets. Sure, they have a 99% chance of failure, but they also have the world's best scientists and engineers backed by a multibillionaire.
@JavaScriptCoder Why does having the worlds best scientists and engineers backed by private funding that doesn't have to worry about politics and red tape make it more likely to fail?
B) Mesh network. You send one, and a bit later send another, and then another, and so on, so you essentially have a string of them in transit. And they just relay the signal back like a bucket chain. Keep them close enough together that if one gets taken out they can still transmit across the gap. Also, the antenna could be more carbon nanotube, very thin and light, but really long.
C) If space debris is ionized then maybe magnetics could do it...
Just look at the history of technology. Every time someone says something is impossible, it's a sure sign that we'll have them by the dozens in a decade or less.
I generally am an optimist. Take Star Trek. A TV show from the 60's when the smallest computer would fill a room. Now a lot of the stuff they envisioned has actually been made, and people are working to make all of it a reality. Some stuff like teleportation and warp drive might not ever happen, but a surprising amount of it has. If something can capture enough peoples imaginations, they'll figure out a way to make it work eventually.
I think the important word in that conversation is "yet". We can't do it yet. We don't have the materials yet. We don't have the math yet.
But all it takes is one person to get lucky, or have a flash of brilliance, or just be standing in the right place under the right apple tree, and science leaps forward again.
I read an article about some particle that they found in one of the nutrino detectors that they tracked back to some black hole 16 billion light years away, that came across all that space, and passed through an area a few hundred feet on a side. Now if that had been a stranglet, or a micro black hole, or whatever, then there might be no more earth. The best idea is to just plan like we'll be here forever, and of course do our best to make sure that it turns out that way within our ability.
@AngelPray It's just not worth worrying about. If something like that happens, we won't be able to stop it, we wont even see it coming. So it's not worth worrying about.
@AndyD273 Sure, I agree with you that it's not worth worrying about something we can't change, but that's not the same thing as it not mattering because we personally won't be present to witness humanity's doom.
@JavaScriptCoder Yet. Fusion power is getting closer and closer all the time. Gene therapy is really really close with Crispr. And Elon Musk isn't going to stop until we have a colony on Mars.
@AngelPray Probably not. I'm indifferent. I think his heart is at least in the right place, and at least he's doing something, which is more than most people.
Those are the plans. When we are in such an era of enlightenment, science inevitably develops. The only difference is the rate of increase. We thought Gene therapy was going to come ten years ago. We thought about Mars colonies even in the 80s. Fusion power even earlier.
@AngelPray Having more resources does give him more opportunities to do good, but look at all the people who had resources and didn't do good. And every person has, to one extent or another, opportunities to do good. The important bit is what you do with those opportunities.
@AndyD273 But have one major world event disrupt that, one bad war, one thing that resources need to be more focused on, and then science slows or stops.
@Ash you also can't judge what errors and adverse events may set it back
As I said before, I am of the opinion that science progresses erratically, but always regresses to the mean progress (no intuitive leaps or adverse events), whether that is linear or exponential. I don't want to rely on having unexpected breakthroughs in my predictions of when things will happen.
So a man calls three trusted employees in and tells them "Hey, I have a project for each of you. Here's some money. Go do something with it." He gives $1,000,000 to the first employee, $100,000 to the second employee, and $10,000 to the third, then sends them on their way. The first employee goes out and buys a bunch of property in an up and coming area, which greatly increases in value over the next year. The second employee buys some shipping containers and starts importing goods, which takes off. The third employee takes the money and puts it in a desk drawer.
Having lower expectations for the world may mean that I don't reach my full potential, but better that than continually watching schedules being pushed back, launches being delayed, and earnings decreased.
@AngelPray hmm
but the question is not the resource count, it's how effectively they use them
I guess time will tell. Whenever I hear X is 10 years away I just smile and nod, and think "well, that would be nice." And once in a while I'm pleasantly surprised. And sometimes I'm happily surprised. But taken as a whole, things have been progressing faster and faster upward.
I found an article written by physicist George Ellis that confused me a little.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.498.4569&rep=rep1&type=pdf
At some part, he says:
3.2 Non-uniqueness:
Possibilities There is non-uniqueness at both steps. Stating “all that is possible, ha...
I am still unsure if the following question is out of topic for worldbuilding :
How could a medieval army defeat Sauron army?
Sauron army was one of the most powerful of Middle Earth in the Second and Third ages.
According to this SE question Sauron army consisted of 50000-75000 with mainly Or...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. – Arthur C. Clarke
Question
There are two planets, A and B. A is a global state with little conflict, while B is a medieval warlord state with constant conflict. A has advanced technology, while ~0.1%...
The Factory Floor
The Factory Floor