Questions tagged [cataclysms]
For questions about an event that causes a major disruption in a world or area.
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The Lost Continents of Atlantis and Mu reappear: Disruption to Transport
In a single event, the lost continents of Atlantis and Mu arise from the deeps over the course of about half an hour, accompanied by a low-magnitude earthquake felt worldwide.
For the purpose of this ...
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If 30% of global military spending for the next 30 years were instead spent on an "intelligent life" backup colony, where should we site it and why? [closed]
Some industry leaders have proposed that AI poses a risk of extinction. Suppose some kind of an AI-related incident occurs that really scares humanity into action, and that this causes the world's ...
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Is it plausible for a landmass to shatter in a tectonic/volcanic cataclysm?
In George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the land of Valyria was transformed from peninsula to archipelago by a volcanic cataclysm followed by earthquakes, tidal waves, a miasma of smoke ...
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How many impacts to kill 90% of the human race?
Present day Earth is attacked by a volley of relativistic impactors. Each is designed to hit the surface1 with a yield of 1 gigaton TNT equivalent. They're also poorly aimed. None are destined for any ...
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A 1:1 tidally locked world begins to spin. What sorts of non-solar natural disasters occur?
As stated a tidally locked world that has complete 1:1 begins to spin slowly. It starts slowly, a 2:1 ratio that steadily ramps up over the course of a month to one rotation every month, which would ...
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How long would it take for the air to escape from a punctured dome habitat?
It’s the 26th century, and scientists on a barren planet have decided to make the Alpha Centauri Book of World Records by conducting the galaxy’s largest social experiment.
These scientists construct ...
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How to make advanced future humans extinct/get rid of them? [closed]
Before you VTC, some things to address:
Yes I know, this question has been asked before, but my question has some specific requirements, and I haven't seen a good answer to fits the requirements in ...
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what cosmic event could teleport a solar system? [closed]
In a project I am mulling over, humanity now inhabits the dense core region of a globular cluster. They did not colonise this cluster; some cosmic event actually teleported the sun, moon and earth (...
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How do we stop a gray goo disaster? [duplicate]
Let us imagine a scenario where the apocalypse has come in the form of gray goo: tiny nanotech replicators that are set to consume all the biomass on Earth while replicating themselves. Humans, oddly ...
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Disasters to prompt the bettering of civilisation [closed]
so, being a cynic as well as a speculative biologist and all-round sci-if fan, I believe that the scenario I want to reach in my project, where humanity has restored the Earth’s biosphere and climate, ...
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Would this fire-based magical catastrophe turn a forest region into a desert?
A massive magic ritual involving the nation's greatest spellcasters utilizing an entire city as their focus, either through miscalculation or sabotage, inadvertently open a massive portal into the ...
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How can plants spread to an extraterrestrial body without human assistance? [duplicate]
The plants can sense worsening ecological conditions in 2022. They need to germinate beyond planet earth. Assuming they can survive in space, germinate in extraterrestrial soil, and the like, how can ...
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Jupiter-Earth wormhole cataclysm
I'm revisiting an old worldbuilding project of mine where enormous, Lovecraftian monsters arrive at Earth through a wormhole with one endpoint embedded in Jupiter's atmosphere, and I'm unsure about ...
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Moon hit strong enough to put it in a slow spin?
I’m building a world nearly equal to earth; i need a catastrophic event that make the moon start spinning breaking the tidal lock, a really slow spin, like 500 years for a full spin. i thought about a ...
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What could cause the land masses of earth to move freely around?
In the story I'm making that takes place on an alternate reality of earth in the 1300s, there is an all powerful being that makes all humans immortal. later on he gets angry that not everybody is ...
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