Explosions create heat, wich can melt metal. Also explosions are excessive force, wich, if there is enough force, and it is used correctly, it can be used to melt certain solids.
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The force melting metals maybe, but water is so good as dissipating heat you’d need a constant pulse of explosion. More like thermite than snapping your claws.
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Which is again where the consistency of the heat comes in, and the idea of how would they coordinate to make it happen?
I thought of maybe accidental smelting during conflict, but then the sapient would be more likely to have all of the ‘soldiers’ fire at once instead of one after the other.
Maybe if they used tactic similar to bowmen, various lines firing one after another for a constant fire rate? Problem is with a weapon like the pistol shrimps the repetitiveness isn’t necessary
Edit: the problem I’m running into is how they would know to coordinate to smelt, not them coordinating
Well more metal to be smelted it needs to melt. Only metals that occur in a pure form can be worked into parts useful for much of anything without melting them. Thankfully, this includes iron, but, iron won’t get you into space. So we’ll go with melting iron to make steel. To melt, the metal has to be heated. Detonating a nuke wont melt much iron with the flash alone, as the heat lasts a second and can only heat on layer. When you aren’t dealing with superweapons but shrimp, this becomes much harder still. Metal has to get heated, like, the whole thing has to go up in temperature, and while they later that is hit by a shrimp will be heated a little, not all of the heat will have transfered, and the little heat that did will dissipate into the water and metal. There is a reason the critters irl don’t try to melt or burn stuff. You can bop your finger on a fire, imagine if the interaction was far shorter. It won’t transfer that much heat.
Evidence to support the electrical//metal forging system,
" If a process is started at room temperature, say 72°F, and the application process temperature is 500°F, then ΔT is 500°F - 72°F, or 428°F. Below are some good guidelines for heating different materials in different situations. Example: To heat 50 lbs of steel by 250°F in 1 hour; . 05 x 50 x 250 / 1 = 625 Watts." - How Much Wattage do I Need? | Tutco-Farnam
and lets say 6000 electrocytes are able to produce 500 watts, then to make up the difference we use 60000 electrolytes, since the pacific sea floor averages a temperature of 38.3 °F (3.5 °C). Then It is possible to do it theoretically, this is without tweaking the structure of the planet.
and for those who say that it won’t have the same over time affect-
Most of the time, electric eels produce lower voltage shocks just strong enough to stun prey or deter a threatening animal. When threatened, electric eels can produce intermittent electric shocks for at least an hour without showing any signs of getting tired.
so what if you hook them up in series, you can get huge amounts of energy flowing through something almost iron like, and if you do hook them up is series, you get a sort of tesla coil approach to it.
--------now that its possible lets check out the practicality
To make this easier lets say this is a sort of jellyfish, which can hook up to other jellyfish to create circuits of defense, this would allow them to keep at bay while their food falls beneath their feet, but in order to become a sapient species you need brainpower, so lets make them crabs, nice shell and powerful ligaments, perfect for a sapient species, now lets expand the body of this crab to the size of an adult human, since each adult human has around 37 trillion cells it would be more than enough to fit this electric organ in, and to make it simpler, we will make the current flow from one claw to another.
Now you might ask how would one get that many resources to sustain such a body, and that is where electricity comes in, they can use their powerful jaws to break apart bones, not only that they can make tools out of them too. now comes their sight, they can use electric pulses to navigate, as well as use them for prospecting! as the different resistances are from different materials.
Theoretically, this species is not only able to survive the stone age but thrive past it. (
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also think of it like this @TwilightWings21, u know they use explosions in tanks to make them round, and that big explosion, so why not is smelte le metal?
In fact, it might make it ever tougher, and what about the shockwave you create underwater, how will that effect others?
link Shock hardening - Wikipedia
weird crab smelte ritual intensifies
I take this as a win
Nah, your argument is just so wrong that no one wanted to answer it
I agree with what you are saying, both you and deathwake, though still think this strategy is viable.
However, I will drop this line of thinking and am trying to develop other ideas.
bruh
I was going to suggest to evolve an extremophile, so that you can get near the “Thing-that-shall-not-be-named”, but considering my luck, someone would answer me that they already disscused extremophiles and concluded that is imposible for those creatures to reach sapience, so, i will suggest the “Sim Earth” approach: you can evolve a sapien aquatic creature, but to get metalic tools, you have to travel to land.
So, my solution is that we have to conform with semi-aquatic Civs.
Both have been discussed. Amphibious speicies definitely work, as does trading with land civs. Extremophiles are unlikely due to the fact that the term necessitates preferring the extreme environment, but some creatures capable of getting close to vents would work- except vents aren’t hot enough. Not even close.
You can generate enough heat to smelt metal underwater in lots of ways. And you could just live in shallow water. Im confused why you said this.
its complicated.
buuuut what you are saying right now is what i thought before i was bombarded by logic.
(i still think it could be possible, just with never before thought of unique ways)
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The problem is how and why these ways were discovered in the first place.
For example, there are chemicals that would burn when in contact with enough heat to melt metal, but why wouldn’t said chemicals have burned up eons before the sapient species came around?
Also, not sure what a sapient living in shallow seas would accomplish differently towards metal smelting than any other underwater Civ
The creatures could generate enough heat to make glass, which would let them make buildings (which if in shallow water wouldn’t get crushed) the buildings could be filled with air from the surface, and metal could be smelted within them, allowing them to get better technology.
I’ve been on these forums for the past four years and every time I’ve seen this post pop up on the feed I can’t for the life of me figure out how a debate long considered to be settled even before I joined is still going on.
We need atleast 50 easter eggs dedicated to underwater civs in Thrive so the debauchery going on in this thread can be worth something in the end.
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I can’t either. And have you seen the plant civ advocates? I guess that’ll also go on forever. But I suppose if the underwater talk never stops, the sentient plants talk can’t overtake it as the longest running pointless thing.
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could do a toolbreader kinda thing from all tommorows or make houses out of corals and seaweed like things
lol i just joined had no idea this argument(?) had been going on for so long. But is it useless because is already been resolved or is it terrible idea because sentient plants sound impossible but underwater civs seem plausible
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