Questions tagged [environment]
For questions about an environment or aspects of it such as geographical, atmospheric or climate.
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Habitat that would enable brood parasitism in humans?
There are a multitude of human species in my late-medieval setting, including some who practice brood parasitism. Instead of raising their own offspring, they replace human ones with their own when ...
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Does the slow reproductive rate of large mammals make them unable to compete with dinosaurs?
I have a fictional world where mammals coexist with dinosaurs, and I am currently fleshing out the details of the ecosystem. I don't really have a vision for what specific animals I want in my story, ...
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How humid does it have to be for flamethrowers to start experiencing problems?
I'm writing a setting where the use of flamethrowers is 'reasonably pervasive' both for warfare and the clearing away of foilage and shrubbery. I'm not sure how much in-universe context I need to ...
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What could have led to a city/planet that is covered in toxic smog where 'everyone' lives on the top levels of decrepit megastuctures
what circumstances would be necessary for a planet/city where the lower altitudes/lowlands are just a toxic cloudy hellhole inimical to human life.
Basically in my setting, people are living, hint, ...
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Water cycle without sun on an Earth-like planet?
My world is made up of large caves that everyone lives in. The planet is roughly twice the size of Earth but the cave floor is around the same distance from the core, so gravity is similar. The caves ...
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How could I hide an ecosystem? [closed]
I want to have a sprawling, undiscovered ecosystem to go unnoticed in the modern world. It has to be aboveground, large enough for a visible ecosystem to develop (predator, prey, producers, diseases, ...
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How cold might it get below an enormous floating island?
On an otherwise Earth-like world there's a floating island, a vast, levitating sheet of land that hangs above a mid-latitude region of coastal plains and hills. The island in most places is one to two ...
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Bringing back lake megachad
So I am the African Union and I want to green the sahara, unfortunately, I find only (key word: ONLY) using genetically engineered flora and fauna quite boring (I can use genetically engineered flora ...
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How would this magical biosphere impact human civilization?
I'm building a world with the "perfect" conditions for very biodiverse and competitive ecosystems, with vast and old rainforests dominating the global picture (though not ubiquitous). This ...
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How different can the concentration of atmospheric oxygen (at ground level) in different places on one planet be?
I'm wondering about this for a speculative evolution project I'm working on. I know atmospheric oxygen concentration affects combustion and the maximum size of animals that breathe certain ways, but I'...
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How could a tropical saltwater lake, turned to freshwater, become salty again?
I'm looking for information on how feasible it is for a large, freshwater lake to become salty, at least to a level where the people, animals and plants that live around and rely on it can no longer ...
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Perpetual War in hostile environment [closed]
So in my world there are these massive fleshy veiny mushrooms that have sprouted up all over the land, that when touched, give a completely fatal disease that slowly limits your movement until you ...
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Manathermy: effects on the ecosystem [closed]
In the animal kingdom we have endotherms, ectotherms and a few things in-between. These are the methods by which animals thermoregulate themselves to survive.
But in this world there is a new kid in ...
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How many hours of daylight can a planet in an elliptical orbit receive?
We have a very specific issue. My friends and I have been working on a world-building passion project for the past few years. One core theme of the planet is that it is almost entirely snowy, has no ...
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Maximizing Population Density for Hunter-Gatherers [closed]
How can we maximize population density for a strictly hunter-gatherer population, considering optimal climate, geography, fauna, and flora while making full use of resources from both land and sea? ...
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