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1500 questions
40
votes
7 answers
I was thrown into the middle ages, how do I power my time machine?
I forgot to charge my time machine and now I'm sitting in medieval Europe and need to recharge the batteries. Luckily, those are only car batteries and not the old plutonium powered ones.
What's the easiest way to generate a sufficiently stable…
DonQuiKong
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40
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16 answers
How can asymmetrically powerful states be balanced? (AKA why don't legendary heroes rule the world)
We've all heard the stories. The unbelievably chaste Sir Prancealot having the strength of ten men. The undefeatable members of the Kung Few, equal to any five hundred lesser mortals. The frankly amazing feats of the 299.5, who held off an army of…
Joe Bloggs
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40
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16 answers
Fundamentally, what are the pros and cons of fleet vs mega ship (warfare)?
You have an advanced space faring civilization tons of resources, and you could build one massive, heavily armored mega ship, or with the same resources, build thousands or hundreds of thousands of smaller ships. And I'd like to look at a gradient…
J.Todd
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40
votes
11 answers
A world without natural time measures
An intelligent race evolves on a planet with no moon or axial tilt, which is tidally locked to its star, and has a very hazy atmosphere.
So there are no seasons, no day/night cycle, and the stars are not visible either. The planet has a permanently…
Michael Borgwardt
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40
votes
24 answers
Realistic Future Jobs for Men and Women
I'm trying to figure out realistic futuristic jobs for my characters. We're in a verge-of-singularity world, 15-25 years in the future.
Convolutional neural networks and their even more awesome near-AGI successors will increasingly be able to do any…
Serban Tanasa
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40
votes
10 answers
Do all devices go out at the same time in an EMP attack?
Is there an order in which different kinds of (unshielded) electric devices go out in the event of a high altitude EMP? For example, first small gadgets, then electric vehicles, then grids. Or do all unshielded devices go out pretty much at the same…
VilleJP
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40
votes
8 answers
Cartoon vs Real Life Bores?---(Pointy vs Flat kind)
Yes, I know that this is quite a BORING question (get it ;) ), but I really DIG this kinda stuff (no really).
If you have watch an action children's show or a cartoon of some kind, we have all seen that moment when they use some large drill to…
John Hon
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40
votes
20 answers
Can I Have A Destroyed Civilization with No Ruins?
I'm working on the timeline for my world, but I keep getting stuck at the origins. I want to have had an advanced civilization (modern levels, maybe a bit beyond) that was destroyed in a vaguely defined cataclysmic "end of the world" event. I'm…
CoolCurry
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40
votes
16 answers
How powerful would the church become if demons regularly visited Earth?
Setting: the walls between Dimensions have grown thin. This allows malevolent creatures, who for lack of a better term we shall call demons, to enter our world.
Details:
The demons are on unkillable and extremely powerful both physically and…
Bryan McClure
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40
votes
16 answers
What could humans do to render the earth uninhabitable?
If a hostile group wanted to render Earth or an Earth-like planet completely unfit for human life, what could they do to go about achieving that end?
By uninhabitable, I mean a planet on which humans are unable to survive in the open for the…
ckersch
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40
votes
11 answers
How disarmed does a nuclear bomb get by shooting it?
A Simple scenario; you have a guy with a gun (a very big and loud gun), and a ticking nuke with seconds left. All the controls, buttons, and wiring on the thing are in a different language, and he’s just as likely to push the “explode now” button as…
Marky
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40
votes
20 answers
Zero Emission Tanks
When we look at the future with our sci-fi glasses on, most new weapons are electrically powered, such as coil guns, railguns, laserguns. But what about vehicles?
In 2014, Tesla released all patents making them available to everyone; so why not take…
Magic-Mouse
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40
votes
12 answers
Where could a person from the 14th century appear such that they would not notice modern technology for a week?
In this case, a person from a world similar to ours, at a time and technology roughly equivalent to our 14th century, but with magic. Through some odd spell, this person was teleported far away from home. They think it is to a different region in…
kirkpatt
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40
votes
14 answers
How much havoc can a small amount of people cause in a metropolis?
Our forces have surrounded the modern city of Vale; a large metropolis of over 5 million citizens who all have decided to try and rebel against us and form their own country. The city has large dams and industrial cattle farms; food and water are…
TrEs-2b
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40
votes
6 answers
War between two type III civilizations from the perspective of a type II civilization
In my setting we have two Kardashev type III civilizations who have been at war a long time and their war has now shifted into our neighborhood. These civilizations are until now unaware of human existence (Humans are type II by now). Humans,…
Suhrid Mulay
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