So my characters have a problem. The story has just started, and an event that will come to be known as "Gridfall" happens. There's a massive flash of light, and all of a sudden the entire earth is covered in a spherical grid of massive, golden, transparent walls, stretching up to the sky as far as the eye can see. They can be passed through (most of them), but every resulting 2x2 mile "square" of the world is subjected to a different supernatural gimmick, and in most of these squares, electricity doesn't work at all. Most of these squares are extremely dangerous or even just outright instantly lethal, and my characters find themselves in the unfortunate situation where the square their hometown wound up in, which makes all humans fall west instead of down, is actually the most livable square for miles around. And they have to find out a way to work with it. Now, a casual glance outside makes it pretty apparent that when you rotate gravity 90 degrees, it becomes practically impossible to get around without a ton of climbing. Thankfully Gridfall also gave superhuman abilities to every human over the age of 13, and now not only is the average person capable of feats previously exclusive to Olympic athletes (to say nothing about what said Olympic athletes are now capable of), but everyone also has an additional ability unique to them. Several of these abilities are the only reason anyone can initially "climb" the suburbs at all, but they're pretty quickly going to have to set up ways for people who can't wall-cling or double-jump to get around, and that's what this question is about. Obviously, ideally in the long term they'll be constructing proper platforms out of sturdy materials, with sideways stairs and sideways guard rails and sideways ladders. But they're going to need some quicker fixes in order to get any momentum adapting the town to sideways life at all, and they're going to need to do it with tools and materials that would be reasonably likely to be on hand and available in a suburban town where electricity doesn't work. Anyone have any ideas of some stuff they could do to help people safely get around the town?
I am assuming you are the person that posted a similar concept on the world building stack exchange? I would have a few questions before I could answer this, namely: Are the walls diverging from a point at the centre of the earth? If so, the grid will only be 2x2 at a set radius, and as the earth isn't a sphere that will not at the surface everywhere. Following on from that, it means that the walls will not be perpendicular to west. People and objects will roll to the top of the wall and out. Can they get any traction on the wall? Which brings me to... The walls on WB:SE had a height. Is that the same here? If so, potentially lots of deaths when people plummet into that enclosure. With or without a limit on the height of a wall, all the air we breath will want to flow west. A limited wall height will create a higher air pressure in the next square, and reduced pressure in the current one. With unlimited (or at least very high) walls, all the air will move away from the earth's surface. They all suffocate. All free liquids will be lost as they flow away from the earth's surface, either into the next enclosure or space. Note that this will happen whether the walls diverge or not. I hope there is lots of bottled water. Buildings are designed to stand against gravity, I think most would crumble in this scenario. So first thing would be: Avoid getting hit by flying debris, landslides, sewage, sliding to their death into the next enclosure (or falling the 2 miles from the other side of this enclosure), suffocating. If I am lucky, the crust could withstand the sudden change and lava wouldn't start sliping up the east wall and rain down on me. Supose I did all that and I am now stood on the west wall. There is a mountain of brick and earth in front of me with no water, no rain, no food and little surviving vegetation. I would probably look to move to another enclosure pretty quickly. That probably isn't the answer you are after...
Having said all that, it is entirely possible that the supernatural gimmicks only apply to humans (with the walls applying to everything). In that case, and assuming wall traction is a thing and people survived the aftermath of moving to the wall then the things i would want immediately are: Shelter. Most buildings wouldn't be designed for huge numbers of people sitting, walking, sleeping on the walls. Probably the safest bet would be basements or actually on the wall. Gravity pulling your shelter down (and the rain) but you west makes that a logistical problem. Toileting. Assuming that pee falls down makes for some interesting effects for men and, I would imagine, messy times for women. Make sure you have the right orientation of solids. Latrine pits away from your living quarters might be the better option. Water and food is where things start to become more difficult. I think the most likely option would be ropes set up between buildings but I don't have a feel for distances between buildings. Cooking at 90 degrees to your food/heat source would be odd. Sleeping bags would be essential or the bedding would fall down. Anyway, your story so good luck. Interested to see how this all pans out.
Yep! The "Fishtank" square I described is in fact directly west of "Westfall", and so the 100 foot barriers around the Fishtank serve as the "floor" that anyone who takes a massive fall in Westfall will eventually smack into. Yeah, it's roughly 2x2 miles at sea level, and the "walls" are directly parallel to north/south and east/west like latitudinal and longitudinal lines. Ah, so, just to be clear: as I said here, most of the time the walls aren't actually walls. You can pass through them. In the Fishtank the walls function as actual walls (essentially permanently immobilizing every molecule initially caught in them, dirt, rock, wood or air) up to a height of 100 feet so that the water raining down actually fills up the place. Is this true? Why couldn't a wall shaped like a latitudinal line be perpendicular to my west-falling gravitational pull? As for traction, the way I imagine it, yes, it has friction and traction (and is also extremely sharp at the top of the wall due to only being a few molecules thick), though for "balancing" purposes the wall-clinging character's power doesn't work on it. Most of this is answered by the walls not being actual walls in most cases, more just massive "you are entering a new square" markers, but also, as I said, only people fall sideways. Nothing else, except the things they're wearing after a few minutes, if they're small enough that every part of them is within 3 inches of their bodies.
My initial reaction to this was similar to @John McNeil - it just seems too impractical to try and adapt to this rather than move to a different area. Also, what about rain and drainage? Does rain flow through the rightmost face of the cube and then just drop once it passes the threshold? I also have questions about the behavior of structures and even trees. Trees have roots providing some stability when the tree experiences external forces like wind. But after the rotation, it's almost useless. Does the 'bottom' of this cube get filled with stuff that wasn't anchored well to the ground? Most houses (well, where I live) are built on concrete slab but I'd think the whole structure would just be ripped from the ground if it were rotated 90 degrees.
As I said, Westfall only changes gravity for humans. Structures still have normal gravity, as do plants and animals and water and the like. So in 50 days time when the rain finally fills up the Fishtank to the west of Westfall, the water entering Westfall will not experience any change in gravity at all. It'll spill down the sides normally, though not go much further than that because the area that becomes Westfall is built on a slight hill.
I could see how this could work, but what happens if I need to drink a glass of water ? Or drop my wallet? Do they experience regular gravity? There was a part in The Expanse similar to this where a rapid decelerating force only affected organic matter and not the actual spacecraft. But as this seems to be an important part of the setting, you'd need to have a good explanation of the effects.
