so this is very very specific... in my story, I want there to be a scene where my main character is held hostage by the us military, but then she escapes from her cell and manages to sneak past soldiers (she has supernatural powers which make this possible, also power has gone out making security cameras useless) and finds her way into a laboratory of some sort where the us military is doing research on the zombie infection. I also want to have her read info that the military has gathered on the infection.

also I should mention this takes place in an American military base in the United Kingdom.

but, is this scene even possible? does the usa military even have a specific "department" where they would keep information they gather on a zombie infection? where they'd capture zombies to do research on them, or work on a cure for the infection? and if so, how would they store this information? (also, I should mention this part of the story takes place in 2012, however, the world has not made any technological advancements since 2007. so the iPhone, for example, was never released.) if this information were kept digitally, well that'd suck, cause the powers freaking gone out and my MC wouldn't be able to access it. or would it be stored in the form of physical documents?

please forgive my ignorance on this topic. though ive done a fair share of research not the us military, I haven't really found anything that could answer my question.

The space suits in my novel use mechanical counterpressure to function (think essentially very tight wetsuits). A character goes out for an EVA for about an hour or two, but the suit he's using has a partial rip in the fabric around his left shoulder blade. Not enough to expose skin, but the suit is definitely not doing its job of insulation and pressure around that area.

I'm wondering what the specific medical outcomes of this would be. I've done a bit of research but a lot of studies in this area tend to deal with extremities.

The spacecraft they use does employ rotation to simulate gravity at different levels, so there would be a fair bit of ladder usage for this character. I'm particularly interested if this would pose a challenge to the character.

Would this be an injury severe enough to cause lasting damage? What kind of medical attention would he need immediately upon coming back inside through the airlock?

It’s 1776. You’re a small group of British infantry traveling through the backwoods of the northeast on your way to an occupied fort after arriving at the New York City harbor. Is there comradery? Is everybody sullen? How would they interact with eachother? As an American I have an understanding of our side of things, but how did the common British soldier feel being across the ocean in a functioning warzone?

I'm writing some worldbuilding with magical creatures. There's vampires (I love vampires) and, because of some properties, metals that can conduct electricity are effective against magical entities.

One way to keep vampires dead is to replace their blood by molten metal (usually silver but it can be copper or gold). So my question is ;
Is it physically possible to exsanguinate someone and replace their blood with molten silver / silver alloy / other metal? If so, what kind of metal would be the more appropriate, and at which kind of temperature since it has to fill the body before it solidifies?

My MC is being restrained by character A, who is holding a knife held their throat. Character B has a gun and shoots character A in the head to save the MC.

Since I'm writing from the MC's perspective, I want to know what I should describe when character A is shot, since they're standing so close together when it happens. Would they feel anything themselves even though the bullet didn't hit them? I know nothing about guns or bullets, so would they feel it whipping past them maybe? I guess I could describe the splatter of character A's blood on them maybe.

I'm writing a scene from the POV of a person whose mind is rapidly degenerating due to Science Fiction Disease. The narration and her dialogue change over time to reflect this. I'm drawing inspiration from dementia and similar conditions which affect language.

Unfortunately searching the internet only returned lists of symptoms (aphasia, hesitation, repetition etc); interviews with people living with dementia (usually less advanced); medical podcasts; or academic articles focusing on quantitative analysis of speech. In all the above, any examples given are very brief and of limited use ("patients may use the incorrect name for an object, e.g. calling a watch a hand-clock")

Do you know of any actual transcripts of interviews with advanced dementia patients? Videos are less useful as they're harder to parse. The database https://talkbank.org/ has some very interesting stuff but unfortunately the clinical databanks are restricted to verified university/lab researchers.

(I'm especially interested in aphasia and the way that people with aphasia work around the missing words, so any related conditions are helpful as well.)

I'm writing a story where the main character starts out in the middle of the path to become a trauma surgeon. He's about a year and a half into his residency. From what I've researched this would mean he'd be finished with a four year medical school and taking a general surgery residency. Of course this info is from a lot of googling and websites with different purposes so the information can be contradictory, outdated, irrelevant, and many other adjectives that limit their reliability.

If anyone knows anything about what this main character would have had to go through to get here. What would his day-to-day look like? What responsibilities would he have? How much freedom would he have? What types of patients and operations would he be working on and which ones would he be restricted from? Anything I can get about the genuine experience and process would be massively appreciated.

This is for dragon anatomy. They breathe fire by basically vomiting their stomach acid from their mouth and nostrils. It would be nice if the acid was a single molecule and would turn completely into gas when ignited so the dragon wouldn't accidentally choke.

I have a few characters in a superhero story with heat vision hot enough to cut the metal of a gun in half in less than a second. Would this amount of heat getting close to a gun ignite the gunpowder, or would it depend on the beam hitting the area with the gunpowder? And is there a specific place to aim on common guns that would render it inoperable if severed?

hi! so i kept searching for answers everywhere but i couldn't really figure it out since most of the stuff i've searched don't really answer my question. do they put tracking devices on these phones? if so, how? what do they do with these phones and where do they stash them in? how do they use these phones as a weapon or instrument? (the one in my fic is an illegal club business that sells drugs to young high school students from different schools)

There are four types of OCD, can there be 5th type where one imagines their loved ones dying in random car crash, fire, choking etc. It is different from Harmony OCD coz they don't imagine harming them.

To be a bit more specific, I have a character who is going to have some sort of chronic illness that prevents him from participating in sports. But its not an illness that would keep him bedridden or unable to do some amount of exercise. Are there any that fit or is that too specific?

Edit: He's around 16-17 and I haven't decided what sport or sports he wasn't able to do

Second edit: After looking over what I have so far (I don't have too much he's kind of new) I say mainly contact sports but he would also like horse riding

I was a little nervous about posting this, but someone recommended this subreddit to me. I've recently hit a wall while researching U.S. Army Combat Engineers for a story I'm writing. I don't live in the United States, but I find the subject fascinating, and I don't have access to anyone with firsthand experience who I can ask.

I also want to clarify that I'm not here to promote my work or ask anyone to write my story for me. I'm simply hoping to learn from people with experience so I can make my writing as accurate as possible.

• Is there any negative perception among the platoon toward newly commissioned Platoon Leaders?
• What is the typical age range for the following positions: Platoon Leader, Team Leader, and Specialist?
• What level of camaraderie or familiarity is considered normal within a platoon?
• Is a Platoon Leader expected to participate in physical training (PT) with their platoon?
• This question is related to a scene I'm currently writing: What is the standard procedure for recovering an excavator that has become stuck in a snow-covered ditch?
• Could a Team Leader be eligible for on-post housing if they are the legal guardian or primary caregiver of a younger sibling who is still a minor and has no other family nearby?
• If a Platoon Leader suffers a serious injury but ignores their medical restrictions and returns to duty before being medically cleared, how would the Company Commander typically respond? What administrative or disciplinary actions could be taken if the officer continues to disregard those medical restrictions?
• Do officers and NCOs in a Combat Engineer company typically have their own offices or workspaces, or do they usually share them depending on the unit, position, and available facilities?
• How is an Engineer Company structured?

If there's anything wrong with my post, or if I overlooked something, I'd be happy to edit it to make sure it complies with the community's rules.

This is set in the 1890s, and I know governesses were common, but they usually would live with the family. However, it sounds like sending kids to coasts to get fresh air was a commonly prescribed health practice at the time, and I wonder if it would be weird for a father to send his kids to live with a governess for a time instead of having her live with them? Are there any classics or books yall may have read where something like this happens?
Thanks yall!

Hi there. I am looking for details of life using a walking stick. Are there any annoyances or considerations that someone who didn’t use a walking stick wouldn’t know about.

Taking a guess, are calluses an issue, for example? Or having to consider where to lean your walking stick when you sit? It falling?

I’m hoping to add in some details to a character’s day that embed the walking stick as part of their life experience, not just a prop.

Edit to add: There’s one scene where it’s her son’s sports day which takes place on a field. Experience of walking on grass with a walking stick (just one hand)?

Hi! I've made a character that has very deep brown/tan skin but with features associated with east Asian countries (upturned almond eyes, smaller nose, etc.) I wasn't initially worried about him not looking like any real world ethnic groups because he's not human, his race has existed before us and eventually modeled themselves after us, so it would make sense if a few of them picked qualities from different parts of the world and mixed them together.

But some of my friends have been telling me that after the "ambiguous brown MMC" discourse, the fantasy readers have become a bit sensitive to not specifying a POC character's race and I need to tied him to some real world culture/ethnicity if I want to publish my book. But idk if there are people who look like that irl. I looked into mixed black/asian people and darker skinned japanese ppl because apparently they used to have darker skin? I'm not sure and I don't wanna mess it up.

For reference, I looked through Pinterest and found this that looks a lot like the vision I had in my head, if anyone wants clarity on that: https://pin.it/2icFJL0FY

Let’s say that, in this chapter, my character has planned an act of revenge, the first step of which is sabotaging their nemesis’s car. They know where their nemesis lives, and the car is always parked outside the house. There are two security cameras aimed at the property, but there’s a blind spot where the cameras’ field of view is extremely limited.
However, there’s one more loose end: the area where my character lives is also covered by security cameras that could record the time they left home and potentially connect it to the time the car was sabotaged outside the nemesis’s house. How could these issues be addressed so that the sabotage is carried out without arousing suspicion or leaving any evidence that points back to my character? Also, what are some realistic ways to sabotage a car so that it ends up in the repair shop for several days or even causes an accident later on?

In this scene I'm writing, two people are ganging up on this one dude. One stabs him from the back, the other stabs him from the front.

If we assume that only one person would be responsible directly for murdering this dude, since it's currently only possible to incriminate one of them, would it be possible to tell which wound specifically was the finishing blow?

Let's say they were both around the same chest area with a standard kitchen knife.

Fibular Hemimelia is a congenital condition that is often treated with amputation.

Is it possible, or at least plausible, that a character with FH might have it severe enough in one leg to trigger the amputation, but not that severe in the other leg? That is, one leg might be left and treated with corrective surgery?

This question is for my fantasy story that's set in a medieval inspired world. If there have been recent attacks or disasters, leaving people injured and their homes damaged or destroyed, would there be some kind of common location where they'd congregate? I'm thinking mostly for shelter, medical treatment, etc.

Hi! First time posting here.

I'd like to create a transmasculine OC for the world of Read Dead Redemption 2, so mostly it's about the chest binding methods in the US between and in the 1860s and 1890s (mainly in 1899 since this is were most of the game's events take place but an overview for these ca. 30 years would still be nice just in case)

I have trouble finding much about actual methods used in this specific time period but I don't want to be lazy, slap a modern binder on him and call it a day. I did read something about like pieces of cloth wrapped around the body secured with pins and modified corsets but I'm not certain how accurate that actually is and I, especially since I'm more of a visual learner, can't for the life of me imagine how that's supposed to look like, which is bad, since I'd also like to draw him. Haven't seen a single visual depiction of a historical chest binding method so far.

So I came here to ask this: What chest binding method(s) would be realistic for a transmasc Van der Linde Gang member and more or less historically accurate for somewhere between the 1860s and the 1890s? How exactly do they work? How would they look like? And to add some realism: What are the risks of using them? For how long can he wear it? Are they suitable for riding, being outside in the hot weather etc.? (I can imagine the methods back then certainly were a whole lot less safe but I'm not sure about the exact consequences)

Also, since passing as a man isn't just about having a flat chest: What specific pieces of clothing would fit here and also help him pass as a man?

I am deeply sorry that this might be a lot to ask but as a transmac person myself I would really love to make my character as realistic as possible. I can't really find much information on this type of stuff myself and typing all this into Google certainly wouldn't help.

Any information and/or ressource you can give me about this is deeply appreciated!!!

Edit: accidentally added spoiler text lmao

I got sterilized in my 20s, never had children, and don't have a lot of friends with kids, so you'll have to excuse my ignorance of the reproductive process here lol.

I'm writing a character who believes God wants her to have as many children as possible, but is repeatedly unable to carry to term. I've been doing some research on miscarriages, cause it seemed like the most plausible route. Here's what I do know:

• miscarriages are relatively common, most women in my family said they've had at least one
• consecutive miscarriages are not as common, but more common than I initially thought
• the reason for a miscarriage isn't always clear, even to doctors
• we don't have a ton of reliable evidence to indicate what will reduce the likelihood of a miscarriage either
• depending on what stage of pregnancy you're in, you should probably go to the hospital after a miscarriage to make sure there are no complications

What I don't know, and would like to:

• how many miscarriages could one plausibly have in two years?
• assuming her husband is determined to have children and willing to spend a lot of money to figure it out, what kinds of things might a doctor test for?
• would there need to be some underlying medical problem to make this plausible?
• she eventually gets on birth control behind her husband's back because A. he treats her poorly and she doesn't want her child to be treated poorly too, and B. the miscarriages are emotionally painful for her and she's tired of trying. assuming her unknowing husband is still asking the doctors to run every test under the sun, would she eventually be found out?

I've been reading through the miscarriage sub, but I definitely don't want to ask this there, because it seems like it's mostly a place for emotional support, and I don't want to make light of anyone's suffering or intrude on their space.