Traveling through a place where sight and sound are impossible

[ericthered]

I am building a low tech setting and need ways that the locals have solved these problems:

I have an alternate dimension that functions much like a fantasy themed hyperspace: there are a number of permanent portals into it from a variety of worlds. Some route merely shorten distances (rome to china in 5 miles) and some routes are the only way to get to new worlds.

This dimension is sightless and soundless. light and sound do not propagate. bringing in a light source is useless-- the dimension will not carry light or sound.

The dimension has a thriving biosphere. The exact energy source of its autotrophs is left intentionally vague. They are about halfway between corals and traditional plants-- tough, hard, and lacking leaves. There are a variety of animals that navigate and communicate using touch and smell, including lion-sized predators that will attack and kill humans.

The rewards of navigating and traversing this place are great, but I'm wondering how feasible it is. My questions are as follows:

what is the best and cheapest way of establishing a route from a known portal to another? how do you keep people on the trail? how do you keep the people travelling safe from predators?

What is the best way of exploring new territory? How do you stay with the group? how do you detect obstacles and predators? How do you get back home? assume you can recognize a portal when within 20 feet of it and that portals are fairly common.

Is it possible for humans to live in such a place? can they post up around a portal that leads to a place that has no biological resources and survive from food they gather? what techniques would they use? Do they need such a portal to survive?

I'd like to solve these problems without using magic. Using animals is acceptable but be ready to address all the implications, such as securing, feeding, and training the animals.

[whswhs]

There is discussion of this in GURPS Underground Adventures. Caves often have at least darkness to contend with.

Bill Stoddard

[Flyndaran]

That level of sensory deprivation causes hallucinations when suffered for more than minutes. Hours would cause far worse problems.

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by ericthered

1. what is the best and cheapest way of establishing a route from a known portal to another?

2. how do you keep people on the trail? how do you keep the people travelling safe from predators?

3. What is the best way of exploring new territory? How do you stay with the group? how do you detect obstacles and predators? How do you get back home? assume you can recognize a portal when within 20 feet of it and that portals are fairly common.

4. Is it possible for humans to live in such a place? can they post up around a portal that leads to a place that has no biological resources and survive from food they gather? what techniques would they use? Do they need such a portal to survive?

I'd like to solve these problems without using magic. Using animals is acceptable but be ready to address all the implications, such as securing, feeding, and training the animals.

1. A heavy chain. You think forging a 5-mile chain is bad? At least you get to do it in a world where light exists. It's probably worth the trouble. Travelers would probably also have some kind of belting system to hook onto the chain while their hands are free.

2. Take some of the native fauna out, train them, and use them to guide and defend you. Alternatively, cover yourself in something they find repulsive: you can probably overwhelm their senses of smell. Alternatively, lots of heavy spiky armor. Works for porcupines... ish.

3. I have no idea. I wouldn't go in without a chain to follow.

4. It's possible for humans to try. I'm sure they'd turn into something that makes a great antagonist/boogeyman.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The dimension has a thriving biosphere. The exact energy source of its autotrophs is left intentionally vague. They are about halfway between corals and traditional plants-- tough, hard, and lacking leaves. There are a variety of animals that navigate and communicate using touch and smell, including lion-sized predators that will attack and kill humans.

Note that physics that somehow prevents sound should also prevent touch (and of course instantly kill anything from our universe that enters it), so it's a little hard to say.

I think as described, the answer is effectively no, low tech humans will not be able to survive the predators. If they weren't there, I still doubt a low tech community could explore a big enough area to find anything useful in it, much of the Earth has probably not actually had a human footprint on it even now.

If it were small enough to explore, you could string ropes or run railings guiding your between the portals. Rope guides probably would be the cheapest option for keeping you on a trail. They're also essential for explorers, as probably the only way to find your way back to your starting point would be to string a rope behind you anchored there. The fact nobody could explore more than a rope length from a point not only already explored but actually improved by adding a suitable anchor point with a trail back to your entry portal only slows exploration even more.

If nothing is likely to disturb the ropes, I imagine you'd extend your explored area by essentially building a net over it. Write some sort of coordinates in braille on the points you are anchoring down your web and you could potentially even navigate off it a bit provided you stayed in the interior (i.e. walk away from the line in a steady direction until you hit another line, follow it to an anchor and you've relocated yourself).

[ldj00]

Hello,

The easiest way to link portals? I would say ropes or chains, so touch could be used. Then laid stones for paths... I am reminded, kind-of, of the Ways from the Wheel of Time series, only even scarier.

Seismic sensing along with smell might be a way for hunters to find prey...

Does this setting have magic or psionics?

It could also be highly magical and magical senses might be a way to navigate and sense others within that dimension. The same with psionics.

If that is not an option, how about magnetic lines of force? Do compasses work? A compass that points, then by using a lever to lock the compass into place, it could be felt and thus direction determined...

But habitation, if no sound or light source can be used, sounds like it would only drive people insane and fall to prey predators who can navigate in that place.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by McAllister

2. Take some of the native fauna out, train them, and use them to guide and defend you.

I'm not sure the native fauna *could* guide you, even if it were trainable. Unless it has a ranged sense that does work here, it has no more idea of the distant environment than you do. Though I guess if something can make a living finding other big animals to eat there must *be* such an alternative ranged sense that can provide directional information (odor essentially does not, hunting distant moving targets by scent will not work well at all).

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by ldj00

Seismic sensing along with smell might be a way for hunters to find prey...

Seismic sensing is a kind of sound detection, so that won't work. Of course by a similar argument you can't breathe either, since it requires moving air in response to pressure.

If that is not an option, how about magnetic lines of force? Do compasses work?

If electromagnetic waves don't propagate, no they don't. Electrical or magnetic forces involve exchanging virtual photons, so no electrical or magnetic senses should work either.

[Anaraxes]

Does "light" include all EM radiation? Could you, for instance, feel a heat source? You might thus follow a heat source, like a line of torches. (A rope, chain, or road is a better permanent marker; I'm thinking of initial exploration. Also, it might be a clue for the predators and their presence -- their heat, not to mention their hot, moist breath on the back of your neck.)

What about smell? You're going to find your way to heaven is a rough and rocky road if you don't stop and smell the roses along the way.

Originally Posted by malloyd

Seismic sensing is a kind of sound detection, so that won't work

All the OP said is that sound doesn't propagate, which I took to mean pressure waves in air -- and even more particularly, of the right amplitude and frequency to be detectable by humans. He didn't say any sort of motion was impossible. Here, we're assuming additional constraints beyond the given ones. (Perhaps, for instance, the pressure-wave dampening effect is inversely proportional to density, so it doesn't affect propagation through rock as much as through air. Or it might scramble the frequencies of the waves, making "sound" in the sense of useful information like speech impossible, turning it into white noise, without preventing the motion of air molecules.)

Another unknown: the OP says he doesn't want magical solutions to the problem -- but he didn't say that magic doesn't work and isn't the cause of the effect of this dimension. So perhaps mana-based senses are possible, at least for those predators.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Does "light" include all EM radiation? Could you, for instance, feel a heat source?

If there is no em radiation, then your body's not going to radiate IR. So you won't have radiative cooling. That accounts for roughly half your body's heat loss, so you'll rapidly overheat, probably to the point of heat stroke and then death. Unless you sense the problem and get the hell out.

An average human body radiates about 58 watts per square meter and is around 1.8 square meters, so that's about 105 watts. A watt is a joule/second and a kilocalorie is 4187 joules, so you'll gain about 1.5 kcal/minute. If you figure a human body averages 75 kg and has the same specific heat as water, your temperature will rise 1°C in 50 minutes, or 1°F in roughly half an hour. That gives you a survival time measured in hours rather than minutes, but probably not many hours.

Bill Stoddard