Implementing Underwater Civilizations

Underwater (and space) cities were one of the worse ideas from call to power. ctp had some good ideas, but this wasn't one of them. Besides, it is way too futuristic

Both of those ideas have been discused on this same thread.

First one: The star would die long before you get something usefull.

Second one: That is called beeing anfibious, and we alredy said that it was possible, but it doesent fit here, as that would mean an anfibious civilization.

Please, read the whole post before posting something alredy sugested, especially after scio's message

StarshockNova wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

specialk2121 wrote:

Xenopologist wrote:

The fact remains that we never found a way around the problem that underwater civilizations can't develop fire, and therefore can't shape metal, and therefore can't do a lot of the stuff we associate with civilization at all.

These "aquatic people" could use heat vents that are on the bottom of the oceanfloor to shape metal

More heat is required.

But seriously, those vents are nowhere near hot enough to be used for this. There is no fire substitute, much like there is no water substitute. This has been debated millions of times, and the underwater civilisations always lose.

However, there's no reason an intelligent creature like the octopus couldn't have evolved to be less solitary and started to build communities that all hunted together and built cities for their tribes out of rocks they have collected. They could even have religion and wars, but everything would be stone-knapped.

Well, what about this: The aquatic civilizations create vehicles ranging from submarines to spaceships not out of metal, but from a form of either organic substances such as sturdy sponge-like structures that are impervious to the elements of space when treated with chemicals, or is in fact amphibious, and so while they must live under or near water to survive, but can come out of it to create fire and thus cook food, forge alloys, and create metal tools and vehicles, then return to the water to dwell and procreate.

Read the post above you. Be thankful that you're new, or I would act upon it.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

MeowMan1 wrote:

I do understand that, but could these aquatic species go up to land for a short time, make fire, make a casing of naturl resources to protect the fire, carry it into the ocean, and use the protected fire another source of heat and eventually use it for heating raw food, that is once they are sentient? because if the fire is protected enough not to go out, then couldn't they then have fire underwater? If they can breathe for a little while on land also?

Fire needs oxygen in a gaseous form. Sure, you can seal a glass bubble full of fire, but it will put itself out when it runs out of oxygen. Also, it would float.

Extinction time in sealed environment is under a minute per cubic foot of air. Physics says no.

Ok, i risk this being a prementioned thing, but oh well
Fire, as a flame, does not require oxygen in gaseous form as such.
I doubt i'm the only one who's heard of magnesium.
all they need is to find some magnesium (mining is actually quite possible for them to develop) and an underwater volcano. they could then have "steam rooms" in underwater caves where they prepare the metal they wish to melt, and chuck a lot of burning magnesium, which will boil the water into steam, and eventually melt the metal.if they prepared it well, they could soon be making rough molds out of stone, which would later be refined by the act of using rough metal tools, and then you could make better quality tools, then better molds, and so on. magnesium was simply an example-there are obviously other metals that may be better in this regard, but my point remains.

This has already been covered extensively. From my limited knowledge of this scenario and this topic, the water/steam would have to be SO hot to actually smelt the metal that any living organism would be twice dead before they could get within the vicinity.

NickTheNick wrote:

This has already been covered extensively. From my limited knowledge of this scenario and this topic, the water/steam would have to be SO hot to actually smelt the metal that any living organism would be twice dead before they could get within the vicinity.

no, I'm not saying the steam would melt it, the flame created by the magnesium would do it. and all they have to do is light the magnesium and run, leaving premade molds to do the work.

Is this fire taking place in water? Or is it in an air pocket?

Also, how would they get the magnesium to burn underwater?

NickTheNick wrote:

Is this fire taking place in water? Or is it in an air pocket?

Also, how would they get the magnesium to burn underwater?

as i said, an under water volcano would supply enough heat. they'd have to be careful, and you'd have to evolve to endure higher heats, but as i keep saying it is possible.
the burning would be an underwater flame, but after a bit the water will have boiled up in the underwater cave where you would do this, and it'd be taking place in steam.
This could be terribly inefficient, but if they gave it a bit of work, it could happen...if you lashed a cauldron to the roof of an air pocket, and set the flame at the waters surface, in which case they could also burn fish oil and dried sea weed which they could throw over rocks in the cave. they could eventually lower the metal, which would cool in the water and tada! metal tools/shapes etc have been made!

Danul83 wrote:

NickTheNick wrote:

Is this fire taking place in water? Or is it in an air pocket?

Also, how would they get the magnesium to burn underwater?

as i said, an under water volcano would supply enough heat. they'd have to be careful, and you'd have to evolve to endure higher heats, but as i keep saying it is possible.
the burning would be an underwater flame, but after a bit the water will have boiled up in the underwater cave where you would do this, and it'd be taking place in steam.
This could be terribly inefficient, but if they gave it a bit of work, it could happen...if you lashed a cauldron to the roof of an air pocket, and set the flame at the waters surface, in which case they could also burn fish oil and dried sea weed which they could throw over rocks in the cave. they could eventually lower the metal, which would cool in the water and tada! metal tools/shapes etc have been made!

Also, they could simply use potassium as an ignition, by mining it through oil and laying it amongst the fuel, and the oil would run off eventually and bang, fire.

it really all comes down to how much detail you put into the biomes, and if you make these metals available.

Underwater volcanoes don't supply enough heat for that to happen. Also, I don't think fires can burn in water. Air pockets would run out of air, and aren't an ideal place for smelting metals.

If the case is that they go back and forth between areas with open air and without, then that is perfectly feasible, since amphibious civilization is possible.

Also, try not to multi-post, use the edit option to add to or change your posts.

EDIT: Also those metals are unlikely to be added, even later in development.

Well, i believe he meant the magnessium would provide the heat (it burns at 3100ºC, hot enough), and the volcanoes would provide the heat to start the reaction. I see some problems. First of, 470ºC to start the reaction means that they can't get close enough to a static heat source, they need something else than a volcano, and magnessium burns so fast that they would need huge amounts to melt tiny amounts of metal. Also, i'm not sure if magnesium is avaible without chemical treatment first.

doesnt anyone read the warning here?, we stopped discussing this thing many months ago, i even tried to come with my own solution. its no use guys, maybe in an expansion or something like that.

Well, the warning also says that in case a good idea is found, and if that idea has not been discussed yet, the post is still up. And i dont think the magnesium thing was mentioned earlier.

Still, there are some things that could make that idea not possible:

• How easy is it to find pure magnessium underwater? (if it is not pure, the heat that it can produce will be much less)
  
• How well does magnessium burn underwater? (althrough it can, its temperature is probably much lower, as there is not enough oxygen. It also needs to burn for long, in order to heat up the metal)
  

I can alredy think of a few more alredy, but this are the ones that are more important.

~sciocont wrote:

ANYONE WHO POSTS SOMETHING ON HERE WHICH HAS ALREADY BEEN DISCUSSED WILL BE BANNED FOR A SMALL AMOUNT OF TIME.

Danul83 wrote:

NickTheNick wrote:

Is this fire taking place in water? Or is it in an air pocket?

Also, how would they get the magnesium to burn underwater?

as i said, an under water volcano would supply enough heat. they'd have to be careful, and you'd have to evolve to endure higher heats, but as i keep saying it is possible.
the burning would be an underwater flame, but after a bit the water will have boiled up in the underwater cave where you would do this, and it'd be taking place in steam.
This could be terribly inefficient, but if they gave it a bit of work, it could happen...if you lashed a cauldron to the roof of an air pocket, and set the flame at the waters surface, in which case they could also burn fish oil and dried sea weed which they could throw over rocks in the cave. they could eventually lower the metal, which would cool in the water and tada! metal tools/shapes etc have been made!

Magnesium can't be found as a native metal because it reacts quite violently with water, quickly with air, etc. The low availability of such reactive metals has been discussed before.

Enjoy your three day ban.

From my understanding, the underwater civilizations would be lacking in the ability to progress their technology, due to lack of metalworking, etc.
But did anyone think of maybe some alternative materials?

What about corals, or something similar? On earth, corals to build their exoskeletons use calcium extracted from water right? Would it be possible to use that? I know, Calcium Carbonate isn't the most useful thing, but still it could be used to build underwater cities of sorts, and even craft primitive weapons, like spears and stuff.

Sorry if this was already mentioned

Juodvarnis wrote:

From my understanding, the underwater civilizations would be lacking in the ability to progress their technology, due to lack of metalworking, etc.
But did anyone think of maybe some alternative materials?

What about corals, or something similar? On earth, corals to build their exoskeletons use calcium extracted from water right? Would it be possible to use that? I know, Calcium Carbonate isn't the most useful thing, but still it could be used to build underwater cities of sorts, and even craft primitive weapons, like spears and stuff.

Sorry if this was already mentioned

No, no one though of any of that in this entire 10 page thread. You're a genius.
Enjoy your ban.

~sciocont wrote:

ANYONE WHO POSTS SOMETHING ON HERE WHICH HAS ALREADY BEEN DISCUSSED WILL BE BANNED FOR A SMALL AMOUNT OF TIME.

Hey everybody! I have a few ideas. One, after your underwater creature creates a tribe, (you don't need metal working to create a basic civ like that) you could maybe discover a material as you're foraging that, when mixed with something else becomes malleable for a short period of time and is able to be cast into a weapon or whatever you're making. I mean, guys, these are alien worlds, how do we know what is going to be on them? Hell, we don't even know what's on the bottom of OUR ocean. And two, I know people are going to get pissed off about this, but just read to the end of the paragraph before you ban me. On the topic of volcanic vents, people have said that they are way too cold to use for metals, right? BUT, again, these are alien worlds. Couldn't the core be way hotter than ours? That would make hydrothermal vents useful for metallurgy. And the argument that it would cook the animal? Well, if, like someone said awhile back, they had they're cities centered around the vents, than they would have some way of resisting the heat in some form or another, just like the tubeworms that call them home today, on earth. Also, what if the liquid on their planet was something other than water? Perhaps then the tables would have turned. Ban me if you wish, but I just think that there is literally a whole universe of possibilities out there.

Also, with the bio-technology, I don't know if you guys are familiar with warhammer 40000, but it's kind of this sci-fi universe right. In it there is this race called the Tyranids. They're like an ant or temite or whatever colony on bathsalts, pumped with steroids and given way too much sugar to eat. Anyways, they constantly evolve and adapt to kill and consume their foes. They pretty much scour entire planets of life and consume the biomatter to make bigger and even more powerful swarms. They are all commanded by one otherworldly thing from some other galaxy called the Hive Mind, which would be the queen in an ant colony. Anyways, they are pretty much able to engineer creatures in their
spaceships, by mixing and matching DNA and create these ultimate soldiers. So, if the underwater creature was able to read and manipulate the DNA of other creatures through some freaky power it evolved, they could theoretically create a civ.


I merged your two posts for convenience. Try to use edit to add more to your posts, not new posts.
-NickTheNick

What material? Could you please be specific?

It has already been agreed that planets need liquid water to sustain life. I don't think the oceans could be made of anything else, with life in it.

The city solution, the problem I see with that is that the house would make the creature safe from the heat, presumably, but then how would that same heat reach the metal?

Quote :

So, if the underwater creature was able to read and manipulate the DNA of other creatures through some freaky power it evolved, they could theoretically create a civ.

And if only my frog creature evolved a gatling gun on its wrists, it could beat all the other creatures on the block!

I don't think that is very practical.

NickTheNick wrote:

What material? Could you please be specific?

It has already been agreed that planets need liquid water to sustain life. I don't think the oceans could be made of anything else, with life in it.

The city solution, the problem I see with that is that the house would make the creature safe from the heat, presumably, but then how would that same heat reach the metal?

Quote :

So, if the underwater creature was able to read and manipulate the DNA of other creatures through some freaky power it evolved, they could theoretically create a civ.

And if only my frog creature evolved a gatling gun on its wrists, it could beat all the other creatures on the block!

I don't think that is very practical.

Sorry, I should have clarified. I didn't mean the city protects them from the heat, I mean that if they had lived around the vent long enough to form a city, then they would have developed resistance to the heat, just like how today giant tubeworms live on them and they can withstand the intense heat because of a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria. So, these animals could do just fine with the heat. Also, for the material that could be chemically forged, we've never found something resembling it, but there are hundreds of galaxies out there and we haven't even fully explored our own planet, so there could be something like it. Maybe a coral or a rock, I haven't completely thought it out, it's just an idea. And sorry about the edit thing, I haven't been on the forum for a while and am a bit rusty with the controls and whatnot.

Ohh. I am not sure they would be able to evolve such a high resistance to heat, though.

No coral or rock could ever match the qualities of a metal. They would be stuck in the Stone Age if they didn't improve upon coral/rock tools.

No living thing (other than unicelular extremophiles) can survive that temperatures. Such temperatures destroy all the substances that form cells long before they are able to melt any metal. Althrough you are right, other planets could have higher core temperatures, meaning hotter vents.

About the unknown material: There are elements. Roughly around 100 stable elements. And no more. Any material you can come up with, has to be formed from that elements. And humans have been mixing them in any way possible for a lot of time, especially latelly, with all the tecnology, and if such a material existed, we would know. The only way such substance could exist, if if there was some other element we never tried before, but there is not such thing, no matter how alien the world is.

Daniferrito wrote:

No living thing (other than unicelular extremophiles) can survive that temperatures. Such temperatures destroy all the substances that form cells long before they are able to melt any metal. Althrough you are right, other planets could have higher core temperatures, meaning hotter vents.

About the unknown material: There are elements. Roughly around 100 stable elements. And no more. Any material you can come up with, has to be formed from that elements. And humans have been mixing them in any way possible for a lot of time, especially latelly, with all the tecnology, and if such a material existed, we would know. The only way such substance could exist, if if there was some other element we never tried before, but there is not such thing, no matter how alien the world is.

Hmm, I'm a it confused. So, no creature could ever possibly evolve such resistance to heat? I mean, maybe I'm just being dumb, but there can't be some rule as to what temperatures life can evolve to. Also, for the unknown material, I'm practically 136.333% sure that there are thousands of other elements out there in the universe. There's no way we could be sure we've found every single element on a single planet. Also, to answer NickTheNick, it could be some sort of metal, that just has a much lower melting point than anything we've ever found, or it could be shaped using my new brilliant idea, CHEMICAL FORGING *scary lightning sounds*. I think we should at it to the game, because although it may be unlikely, it's still scientifically feasible and underwater civs would make a great addition to the game. If we can, why not?

What do you mean if we can? You have yet to explain how to add it.

It is the general consensus of the scientific community that all stable, common elements have been found. If you want to dispute that, go to a science forum.

Dani raises a good point. It is not a specific rule, it is a natural trend based off of the limitations of the chemical compositions of organisms.

What do you mean Chemical Forging?

I'm basically repeating the same as nick here, but i feel i must say it anyway.

There are no more elements. An element is defined by the number of protons in its nucleus, and as you can't have half protons, only full ones, the number of protons is always 1, or 2, or 3, or any other whole number. That means that there exists an infinite number of elements. Yes, but not in practice. Once the amount of protons in the nucleus gets big enough (around 80 protons), it is so massive that it dissinterates spontaneously into smaller nucleus. That means that nearly anything over 80 protons is doomed to break into smaller chunks in short time, irradiating deadly energy in the process. There are conjectures that some elements with around 230 protons might be stable, but the energy necessary to create a single atom is unimaginably large, even worst to create enough to make tools.

If for chemical forging you mean some kind of chemical able to burn underwater and to create enough energy to melt something, it was alredy discussed and discarded as no usable material was found.