Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Hortun]

Whenever a heard of idlers rush out the doors to clean up after a siege, I watch them pave a road in vomit to the aftermath. It occurred to me that in an aged fort, only wood cutters, plant gatherers, and occasional haulers would really even see the surface.With tower-caps and subterranian crops, a fortress could theoretically seal off the surface altogether. A dwarf could live out his years without the light of day, but living in the dark wasn't what concerned me.

Dwarven fortresses can become thriving underground metropolises with only one breech to the surface for the trade depot. Never have I needed to cut ventilation shafts in order to sustain my dwarves, and I doubt that air can penetrate 10 Z-levels of stone. Dwarves sealed away from the surface entirely seem to only be adversely effected in the fact that they can no longer trade (that is, unless there were an underground tunnel cut all the way to the next dwarven outpost).



This leads me to question- do dwarves actually need air to survive? And what about dwarven plantlife? Let's explore the possibilities.


1. O2-efficient dwarves. It could be possible that dwarves only need a trace amount of oxygen in order to survive. If they had super-dwarven metabolisms, needing only a minute amount of oxygen to survive. Their infrequent eating habits, having scarcely a meal per season would support this idea. Subterranean plantlife, fungi included often also need oxygen in order to survive. This could indicate that there is some amount of air being produced underground. In the cases of forts near the surface, some air can possibly diffuse into the fort through permeable stone and faults. Where is the air being produced, though? Or is enough of a breeze coming through the front door to supply the entire fortress?

2. Plump Hemlets - Oxygen Factories? Very little is known about the mysterious plump hemlets; perhaps they could produce massive amounts of oxygen for dwarves to breathe? This would lead one to question how this plant could possibly produce this much oxygen? Perhaps they secrete an incredibly powerful ichor that dissolves minerals present in soil, releasing oxygen along with heaps of other pollutants. Could plump hemlets have a way of drawing air through the soil walls leading up to ground level? Or perhaps in digestion, these magic cave plants release oxygen into dwarves' blood streams? Further research on these strange plants is required.

3. Gas Bladders. If dwarves have hyper-efficient metabolic processes that require only a tiny amount of air, perhaps dwarves use their lungs as gas bladders to store oxygen in? It's well known that damage to lungs cause dwarves to suffocate, but that does not necessarily mean that dwarves actively breathe. This would mean that surface-going dwarves would need to gather air in their ventures outward and exhale portion of it in a meeting hall or possibly supply it directly to other dwarves through sexy makeouts CPR. This would also mean that pregnant dwarves would likely need extra O2 to supply their offspring with, so that when they are born, there is enough air in them to survive long enough to be given oxygen by some other dwarf.

4. Anaerobic Dwarfism. Anaerobes as we know them are typically tiny microbes and simple plants, but what if deep underground, a race of stone-men evolved who needed no air to subsist? The would need to use anaerobic respiration or fermentation in order to survive. The former would require a hearty supplement of inorganic matter to be the final electron acceptor in the electron transport chain. This is doable, considering dwarves likely have a hearty amount of minerals in their diets. Possibly plump hemlets provide these inorganics, or dwarven lungs actually pull inorganic material out of the air to use in their metabolism. Dwarves would then amount to walking air-purifiers. Perhaps dwarves carry out lactic acid or ethanol fermentation on such a large scale that all of their energy is derived from it. With lactic acid, they would probably have constant intense full body cramps from the build-up of this acid. In the case of ethanol fermetation, they would need some kind of intestine that mimicked yeast- or perhaps dwarven innards are just internal stills, full of actual yeast, possibly obtained from plump hemlets. This would mean they break down food into low-grade alcohol, which would need to be excreted. Yes, this means dwarves would piss beer. A dwarf could never ever drive a car due to exhaling so much alcohol. In the event of this, it would be unknown as to why a dwarf would possibly want to drink more alcohol.


What is your input, forumites?

[The Architect]

Plump helmets are generally thought to be fungi, not plants. Unlikely to be oxygen factories.

I propose that dwarves are actually some sort of humanoid lizards with gas bags or an unheard-of organ in which liquid is stored containing vast concentrations of oxygen for later use. It would be much more efficient than gas bladders. Being lizards, they could require little to no food, water and oxygen over long periods of time. However they are much too active for the lifestyles of lizards exhibiting these traits. Consider perhaps that they use alcohol as a fuel source thanks to the processes of certain bacteria in their rather unusual digestive systems, and you'd even get past lizards' aversion to alcohol!

My main question would be: why this? Unless it's just perhaps because such a question has not been asked before? More striking to me are the dwarves' abilities to create booze without water and to complete many tasks without requisite tools (although perhaps the existance of such tools is implied, and if so I am grateful for one less insignificant, unnecessary thing for my computer to choke on as DF tracks it).

[Firnagzen]

How do they drown, then?

[Sensei]

It does, of course, take about a day for a dwarf to drown... but dwarven time is an abstraction.

Anyway, it's not implausible for plump helmets to form a huge mycelium.

[Wimdit]

Ah, more speculation on dwarven biology. Excellent. Before getting into complex physiologies, I think we should look at applying some simpler concepts, like basic physics.

Okay. Consider that a dwarf locked in a chamber deep underground needs only some plump helmet spawn, a barrel, some moisture, and a rock to make a still out of. If his food was given to him, he wouldn't even need these to survive until the end of his natural lifespan, and if he had an exceptional gold statue or something he'd be deliriously happy about his decades of isolation and loneliness too.

Now, a dwarf does not produce excrement. Hence, this sort of closed ecosystem would seem to be impossible: where do the plump helmets go after being eaten? Where does the spawn get enough matter to mature? One ridiculous explanation that just came to me was this: the plump helmets are turned directly into energy. Booze is required for this process, though water can be used as a less efficient stand-in. Now, when dwarves do stuff, they don't produce waste heat of any sort: the kinetic energy could therefore be turned into some other form of energy, which disperses across the planet. When plump helmets grow, they turn this energy directly into matter. This would require some tinkering with the energy-to-matter conversion ratio, however.

That's ridiculous, but perhaps the matter gets there some other way. Dwarves reproduce using spores or possibly telepathy, right? What if matter is transmitted to crops in a similar way? The latter would require teleportation, and the former would mean clouds of stuff floating around that dwarves would probably breathe in (hey, reason why dwarves die when their lungs are damaged: the lungs are their method of expelling waste and reproductive spores, and without them, their body gets all clogged up). The clouds of waste might work, but perhaps they get there another way. Remember purring maggots? Dwarves could live in symbiosis with them: the things live in their intestines or whatever, and when they're full, they crawl away to the farms. The matter is stored in the form of dwarven milk. I don't see what the maggots get out of it, however, so maybe it's more like commensalism than mutualism. I don't know, maybe the maggots are created by dwarves, like little waste delivery drones?

As for how the plants give the dwarves energy when no energy comes to them, this has been worked out by wise men already. When the matter gets to the plant, it is combined with water (that's why irrigation or soil is necessary to grow subteranean crops) to make perpetual motion machines. As the plant matures, the energy produced is used to convert the machines into some molecule that contains chemical potential energy. When the potential energy is converted into kinetic energy by dwarves, it dissipates because friction doesn't generate heat.

All of that relied on conservation of mass and energy, even though I completely ignored it in the last paragraph. Oh well. So yeah, I guess I ignored the question of respiration and how the chemical potential energy is released, but I'm not going to think about that. I refuse to.

[The Architect]

That is the first time I've ever read something completely confusing and absolutely illogical which wasn't composed by an idiot, but by someone with significant intelect and reasoning ability. I'm not even going to ask how you did that. It's more of a mystery than the one created by the gaps in DF currently, including perfect vision in absolute darkness and the lack of waste/excrement you mentioned (partially "fixed" in the next version, btw, though I don't see the benefits of adding something insignificant and ultimately useless for our computers to track given the current lag issues, even if it does fix a gap in reality).

[Gothmog]

Q: "Do dwarves actually need air to survive?"
A: Yes, but it's not fully implemented, yet

/thread

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In all seriousness, talking about how dwarves don't need to breath is like talking about how they power a screwpump with a waterwheel that is power by that screwpump... one of those glorious future releases is going to fix that.

It's interesting to read the theories though, so don't mind me.

I especially like the "oxygen-filled Gas Bladder" thing, it would be hilarious in adventure mode.
"You strike the dwarf in his upper body! It is cleft in twain!"
"The gas shoots out of his Gas Bladder!"
"Urist, cheesemaker, has been struck down!"
"The flying Oxygen strikes the wall-mounted torch in the flame!"
"Your socks are on fire!"
"Your hair is on fire!"
"You are burning alive!" x20
"You have been struck down!"

[Timst]

Maybe dwarven alcohol contain a special matter that allow them to extract the oxygen from the water composing the booze.

But then, why does human booze (or, to a lesser extent, pure water) works too ? Maybe every race adapted to dwarven standarts. More research is probably needed.

[bombcar]

I've always kind of assumed that details that are not modeled are too small to use an entire square for -  a shaft big enough to let air in does not have to be big enough for a dwarf, or a torpedo, either.

[EvilTwin]

Maybe dwarven alcohol contain a special matter that allow them to extract the oxygen from the water composing the booze.

But then, why does human booze (or, to a lesser extent, pure water) works too ? Maybe every race adapted to dwarven standarts. More research is probably needed.

It could also be, that Armok, while creating the first dwarves, in his wisdom decided to let them breathe evaporated alcohol. This would explain why they always drink from a whole barrel, the surface the alcohol evaporates from is bigger and they feel more comfortable. Of course they can use the alcohol they drink to breathe, too, but the way that works is actually complicated biology and to explore it isn't the task of dwarveologists, we should actually concentrate on an easy to understand way of explaining things.

But what about the water, one might ask. Why can dwarves live from water, too? As we know, the amount of work done when the booze is out decreases and decreases, and this might be the reaction of the dwarven body to under-alcoholization.

Note that these are only axioms and need to be proven by some other fearless dwarveologists.

[jaked122]

now lets see, the oxygen may be taken from pockets of air that exist in the rock they mine out. perhaps the plump helmets and other underground microbes can take in infrared or other forms of radiation. or my favorite theory I just came up with is that CO2 in DF is lighter than O2, therefore it rises out of the tunnel and O2 is drawn in. Maybe the concentration gradient that affects all forms of fluid dynamics in DF and presumably the universe is far more of a driving force in DF than in real life.

[Gothmog]

now lets see, the oxygen may be taken from pockets of air that exist in the rock they mine out. perhaps the plump helmets and other underground microbes can take in infrared or other forms of radiation. or my favorite theory I just came up with is that CO2 in DF is lighter than O2, therefore it rises out of the tunnel and O2 is drawn in. Maybe the concentration gradient that affects all forms of fluid dynamics in DF and presumably the universe is far more of a driving force in DF than in real life.

Okay, bear with me if I'm wrong but wouldn't that mean that Carbon has to have a negative weight?
I admit that I ditched chemistry back in 10th grade but I don't remember my physics teacher talking about negative-weight atoms in nuclear physics later. 

Or is there a chemical reaction that makes Oxygen shoot out some thousand electrons (since they are roughly 2000 times heavier than protons, and you got to keep the protons in their core or else Carbon won't be Carbon anymore)? I find that unlikely.

That would be cool, though. It would be like... burning Hydrogen and getting water and "pure" electricity (or negative charges at least). Maybe that's how they power their perpetual motion waterwheels. 

[The Architect]

now lets see, the oxygen may be taken from pockets of air that exist in the rock they mine out. perhaps the plump helmets and other underground microbes can take in infrared or other forms of radiation. or my favorite theory I just came up with is that CO2 in DF is lighter than O2, therefore it rises out of the tunnel and O2 is drawn in. Maybe the concentration gradient that affects all forms of fluid dynamics in DF and presumably the universe is far more of a driving force in DF than in real life.

Okay, bear with me if I'm wrong but wouldn't that mean that Carbon has to have a negative weight?
I admit that I ditched chemistry back in 10th grade but I don't remember my physics teacher talking about negative-weight atoms in nuclear physics later. 

Or is there a chemical reaction that makes Oxygen shoot out some thousand electrons (since they are roughly 2000 times heavier than protons, and you got to keep the protons in their core or else Carbon won't be Carbon anymore)? I find that unlikely.

That would be cool, though. It would be like... burning Hydrogen and getting water and "pure" electricity (or negative charges at least). Maybe that's how they power their perpetual motion waterwheels. 

You definitely shouldn't have ignored physics and chemistry. CO2 would only need to be less dense than O2, which is not inconceivable except that it breaks other less obvious laws. You were actually misled by the comments of the poster you quoted, who wanted CO2 to rise by making it lighter. It's all about density, man. For a quick demonstration of the Archimedes Principle and fluid dynamics in relation to gravity: steel is heavier than water, but battleships don't sink.

[Hungry]

The only plausable way dwarves could survive a non oxygen enviroment like said deep tunnels would require a powerful dwarven alcohol dehydrogenase that would break down the alcohol into carbon, hydrogen, and a slight amount of oxygen... the dwarves would then need to breath to take in oxygen to remove carbon, while taking water would also suffice for this, the absorbsion rate of water into the dwarven system would be too slow to remove enough carbon alone and the dwarf would die of carbon poisoning, if fully submurged, after a while...

While this explains the lack of the dwarven need of air it also explains the reason work slows while booze is scarce...dwarf lacks oxygen...

While plump helmets would have to explain the vitamins and minerals, as they would contain energy...and soil.

As for where this came from...*shrugs*

[Gothmog]

now lets see, the oxygen may be taken from pockets of air that exist in the rock they mine out. perhaps the plump helmets and other underground microbes can take in infrared or other forms of radiation. or my favorite theory I just came up with is that CO2 in DF is lighter than O2, therefore it rises out of the tunnel and O2 is drawn in. Maybe the concentration gradient that affects all forms of fluid dynamics in DF and presumably the universe is far more of a driving force in DF than in real life.

Okay, bear with me if I'm wrong but wouldn't that mean that Carbon has to have a negative weight?
I admit that I ditched chemistry back in 10th grade but I don't remember my physics teacher talking about negative-weight atoms in nuclear physics later. 

Or is there a chemical reaction that makes Oxygen shoot out some thousand electrons (since they are roughly 2000 times heavier than protons, and you got to keep the protons in their core or else Carbon won't be Carbon anymore)? I find that unlikely.

That would be cool, though. It would be like... burning Hydrogen and getting water and "pure" electricity (or negative charges at least). Maybe that's how they power their perpetual motion waterwheels. 

You definitely shouldn't have ignored physics and chemistry. CO2 would only need to be less dense than O2, which is not inconceivable except that it breaks other less obvious laws. You were actually misled by the comments of the poster you quoted, who wanted CO2 to rise by making it lighter. It's all about density, man. For a quick demonstration of the Archimedes Principle and fluid dynamics in relation to gravity: steel is heavier than water, but battleships don't sink.

I never said I ignored physics now, did I?   

But yeah you're right, I totally forgot about the density of things, oh well.

Another idea:
How about dwarves as walking mushrooms or moldmen?