We tend to romanticize dragons a lot in human culture, glamorizing the awe-inspiring majesty of gigantic, fire-breathing, flying lizard-beasts, painting pictures of them for centuries in cultures all over the globe. Dragons get fetishized, feared but also admired, and, in some ways, even longed for. But that’s only because nobody is really thinking about how much it would suck to have skies filled with massive hungry carnivores that shoot jets of flame. It’d be miserable, inconvenient, and, very likely, expensive. If you believe in the idea of the multiverse, then somewhere out there is a world like ours, but with huge, hungry dragons flying around. With that in mind, the only reasonable question to ask is: “What would the cars be like in such a universe?”
Dragons or no dragons, people are still people, and as such we have places to be, business to do, trips to take, errands to run, booties on which to call, junkyards to scour. For all of these things we need our cars, and no stupid overgrown lizard with fiery halitosis is going to stop us.
So, we need to be logical about the Dragon Problem, and really break it down and see how to solve it. Fundamentally, dragons cause two main types of interference with the motoring public:
Flame attacks and “swoop and grab” events are the main issues. In the first, a dragon swoops down and attempts to incapacitate the car, filled as it is with delicious, soft, tangy humans, by blasting it with its flame-breath. An unprotected car would soon have its roof melted, leaving the well-cooked people inside effectively served to the dragon in a bento box that was once your car.
The second attack is closer to how other flying predators capture prey: by swooping down fast and grabbing the lunch with powerful talons. Dragons can swoop down and grab a car, carrying it off, then dropping it to kill the people inside before breath-cooking them and going to town.
An effective car for the dragon world needs to address both of these situations, and do so without becoming unaffordable, because I think the economic toll of a world full of destructive dragons will already be extremely significant. Maintenance for almost everything is likely orders of magnitude more expensive in a world with dragons, so we need to try to come up with solutions that are simple, robust, and sustainable.
With that, I give you the Dragon World Car:
Most obvious is the heat shield assembly on the roof. By design, the heat shield is fairly simple in shape, a series of five flat panels that are designed to be easy to replace by the owner with no special tools. Each panel has a DOT-mandated inspection lamp, so you can assess the condition of the heat shield before driving, even at night, as it is illegal to drive with a compromised heat shield panel.
Police are also on the lookout for heat shields in poor condition, and you will get ticketed if you have a compromised panel, or if the inspection lamp is out, so best stay on that.
The basic technology is essentially the same as that used as a heat shield material on space capsules like the Apollo Command Module. This type of heat shield has a structure that doesn’t require exotic materials: it’s a fiberglass honeycomb, filled with an ablative heat shield material like AVCOAT, which is silica fibers in an epoxy novolac resin.
This sort of heat shield can withstand up to 5,000° F, well within the range of what I just now decided a dragon’s fire would be. The disadvantage of this sort of ablative shield is that it does char and, well, ablate, so it should be considered a consumable, and will require periodic replacement.
Other more reusable heat shield materials are available, like the Space Shuttles’ tile-based Thermal Protection System (TPS), but these ultra-pure silica ceramic tiles are much more expensive and fragile than the fiberglass-and-resin ablative heat shield solution. For the daily rigors of automotive use, I think the ablative heat shield would be a better choice.
In worlds plagued with dragons, car heat shield panels would come in a few standard sizes, be mass-produced and sold cheaply at most big box home and garden stores, as well as Wal-Mart, probably. In general, they’re likely good for three big blasts from a dragon before requiring replacement. The inspection lamps are usually part of the replacement panels, since they tend to get melted off after a few attacks, but they can be changed independently, if needed.
Every driver needs to know how to swap a heat shield panel, and this is part of the standard driver’s test. But don’t worry, it’s pretty easy, usually not even requiring tools.
Slightly more complex is the swoop-and-grab problem, and while there’s a fairly simple mechanism to solve this, it does require a specific infrastructure to work. The infrastructure is a single channel down the middle of every lane, a channel with reinforced steel covers that forms an inverted T-shape in cross-section. These “anchor slots” are built into the lanes of most major highways and large city streets, but may not be present on smaller or secondary roads.
In the case of roads without an anchor slot, regulations mandate anchor slot pull-off areas every one to five miles, depending on the dragon population density of the region. As you can see, anchor slot pull-off areas are marked with a distinctive bright red zig zag line pattern.
The way the system works is like this. Every car has an inverted T-shaped anchor with rollers on the ends that is mounted to the frame of the car in a very robust manner. The anchor is spring-loaded so that its rest position is down and perpendicular to the car; that is, the locked position. The anchor is designed to require no motors or electric power or anything, and if the spring breaks while in use, the anchor will always end up in locked position, as a failsafe.
When driving on roads with no anchor or exiting a road with an anchor slot, a lever in the car allows the anchor to be rotated to be parallel to the car and raised up, allowing it to be removed from the anchor slot:
All parking spaces would be required to have an anchor slot in them as well.
While the car will undoubtedly sustain a good amount of damage, an anchor system in DOT-approved condition will hold the car to the anchor slot with enough security that at least 97.5% of adult domestic dragons will not be able to break the car free. The roller-based design of the anchor permits the car to continue to drive and accelerate while anchored in an attempt to break free from the dragon’s grasp.
Of course, on a road without an anchor slot, the driver will have to evade the dragon until an anchor slot pull-off area is found. Drivers are trained in tactics to confuse and frustrate dragons if caught on anchor slot-free roads, but this is at best a delaying tactic until an anchor slot pull-off can be reached.
Even though it’s just a basic slot in the road and a relatively simple anchor on the car, the materials required must be robust and must be maintained diligently if the system is to work, and that’s not cheap. There’s no room for rusty anchor mounts or anchor slot upper covers in a world of dragons; it’s literally the difference between getting to your book club or being a charred set of bones found in a huge pile of dragon scat by the side of the road, so please take maintenance seriously.
Forget your Magic cards and Lord of the Ring movies and all those seasons of Game of Thrones — there’s nothing fun about living in a world where dragons exist. It’s expensive and frustrating and you’re always nervous, scanning the heavens for that little dot that could all too quickly become your doom. Not being at the top of the food chain deeply sucks. Ask any rabbit you meet. Even so, we’re still going to want to drive, so I’m extremely happy there are solutions out there. Be careful, dragon-world motorists, and inspect those heat shield panels!
There is a fatal flaw in this design: A dragon could almost certainly rip the heat shield off if the car was secured to the road. This makes BBQing the occupants trivial after the first grab and remove attack.
What is needed is a re-think. Cars need to be designed to have nothing a dragon can grab on to. Think upside down bathtub with no feet on top or a turtle that has retracted into its shell.
A smart dragon would then try to smack the car from the side to roll it over, so the cars would have to have a self righting system to insure that if rolled over they always ended up right side up. This would make the vehicles pointless to attack and the dragons would learn to ignore them.
I love everyone’s ideas for improvements to protection/deterrents. However, I can’t stop thinking about people’s natural tendency towards regional pride/tribalism. Folks from Boston would loudly insist that New England Ice Dragons are the most vicious in the country while midwesterners would counter with tales of “that Plains Dragon roaring across the prairie interstate.” Texans would brag about how big and ornery their dragons are. Florida Man, of course, would inexplicably and repeatedly try to tame their dragons, leading to multiple reports of Swamp Dragons attacking semis delivering shipments Doritos and Red Bull – so, basically, like today. What I’m saying is that, like our current world, the automotive industry would have vehicles catering to regional preferences/dangers/delusions. People in cities never go to the mountains where they would see a real Ice Dragon (only the smaller city versions that are largely controlled by the extensive city Dragon Services). But, they buy the Ultimate Ice Dragon Package anyway, etc. And, of course, Torch exclusively collects quirky dragon cars from the Eastern European and Asian markets. Anyway, go Great Lakes Water Dragons!!
I’m not sure what I like best, the article or the comment section. Keep up the great work everybody!
Give the Autopian audience a half decent Miata and a little hillbilly ingenuity.
Pretty soon you’re imagined dragons will be looking at old maps recoiling in fear. There be humans.
First of all, inspection lights are nonsensical. Highlighting your armor to make yourself a better target would be ludicrous.
More likely would be something akin to cars designed for the Blitz. All vehicles would run full blackout pretty much all the time. Some lights below the shield would be allowed, and tail lights could be pointed low, but not directly at the road. They’d probably have wide fantails to direct their light in diffuse arcs behind the car, such to make nocturnal target identification more likely. Otherwise headlights and taillights would be almost nonexistent.
I know this is difficult for you, Jason, but please stay focused. Little to no exterior lighting at all.
Secondly, even a rail system would only provide the dragon with a new attack vector. The flying lizard could swoop down, grab the car, and shake the occupants to death. Linked as they are to the ground, the dragon could smack them apart. It would be similar to a MMA fighter’s ground-and-pound.
No, the better way to do things, and more profitable for the OEMs, is a fully removable but highly adhesive shield. The dragon swoops down, grabs the glue-shield, and suddenly gets a plate stuck to its claws. This would need to be replaced between every dragon attack, and could be a wear item, no doubt not covered by the warrantee. A common sales tactic would be first 3 shields replaced for free.
Dragon-rights activists would oppose such things much like animal rights activists currently oppose glue-traps for rodents. The real rednecks would mount immense traps, both spring loaded, hook-and-loop, and more exotic as beer, creativity, and the local junkyard allows.
That’s what I’m talking about!
See my other comments for my redneck build using current airbag technology to repel these sky rodents.
Repel? Rednecks would hunt them for barbecue meat and capture baby dragons to domesticate and use as flamethrowers.
What if dragons suddenly appeared in the sky, like alien invaders? What car would you choose to modify for survival in the this era of the new dragon overlords?
I’m going Toyota Camry, Saab 900 or Volvo 700 series.
“The cheapest car is the one already in your driveway” so I guess I’m modifying my X4… A buddy of mine builds his own batteries and tesla coils, so I’ll probably go the “stun it with electricity” route for my Anti-Dragon Defense System.
I can’t really afford a new car, so I’d just cover my 2-series in a thin layer of fire-retardant material just in case blans a and b fail, plastidip it flat gray to camouflage with the tarmac, keep the sunroof open and equip my girlfriend with binoculars to spot them at a distance and deploy the emergency goat if necessary.
I’m gonna go full hillbilly DIY in this world.
I’m picturing pikes like giant pigeon spikes mohawking my roof. Those pikes will run through holes drilled in the heat shield and attach at the base to a steel pressure plate underneath that goes off like an airbag if a talon grabs the roof.
My shitbox will also have a lever that releases a cooler full of cheap meat (roadkill, composting leftovers, whatever) from the tailgate or trunk.
The windshield washer sprayers will be altered to shoot industrial strength fire extinguishers through larger nozzles in the same spot, with the same switch.
I will paint the whole shitbox a color dragons find distasteful or gross.
I’m going for something between a porcupine and a skunk. Because in the world I know birds of prey don’t go after them.
Then I will make hundreds of thousands of dollars as a delivery driver because, Shit! There be dragons.
I’m gonna start the dragon world build with a Saab 900, because it already looks like a porcupine.
I can keep it running and if I coat the rear end in Vaseline them dragons be slippin. (No scientific research involved in that thought).
Just make a car that is slippery and round shaped like a turtle. Maybe a greased up Beetle?
Land Rovers used to have that roof as a factory option. Google land+rover+safari+roof. Worked great too!
The swoop-and-grab resistant cars sound fun. They will probably handle like slot cars, well because slots?
The only real problem that I see is when you come up behind a very slow moving car you have to wonder, is that very slow moving car being driven by a dragon’s trained human confederate tricking you into unhooking and passing?
I would think some sort of anti-dragon taser or electrocution device could (almost) handle both problems….if it had the range. Think a “lightning” cannon, possibly as an automated point-defense weapon. Small, unobtrusive, and powerful.
Capacitors. Big ones. Lots of them
And this is why I come to the Autopian! Deep dives into important philosophical issues that must be discussed! The mind of the Torch, automotive philosopher, must not be restrained!
Those anchor slots will need to be heated anywhere snow falls and water turns to ice.
Are the airbags connected to the anti capture locking anchor somehow?
In the event that some road debris gets jammed in there or it ice’s up it’s gonna be a rough stop.
This also solves self driving cars!
In this world, the cars would have been designed with the heat protection built in, not as an add-on. It’d be closer to the “Beast”, the good one, not the one where ANYONE can just reach over and grab the wheel in. Make it heavy enough the dragons can’t pick it up. There has to be a study done somewhere we can reference.
Asbestos would be a no-can-do in Australia, where classic car imports have been virtually blanket banned for the material alone for the past 5 years.
…unless you’ve got deep pockets to pay tens of grand more – usually much more than the car itself – just to have the ABF drill through EVERY nook and cranny for the carcinogen, whether it’s one of David’s Jeeps, Radwood material, or an uber-collectible 50s/60s exotic. Otherwise, you’re S.O.L. until cheaper and less invasive asbestos removal technologies appear.
Australian dragons would also be venemous
*venomous
Dang it!
Isnt it crazy?A friend imported a classic car about two years ago.It eventually got through but the paperwork was brutal and mechanical work expensive.
Basically everything had to be gone through and documented by experts before it left england, so no chance of saving money by replacing parts yourself.
IIRC this only added AUD5K to the price which wasnt bad considering.
Like the rest of the mega fauna we most likely hunted them to extinction well before developing cars. If cars and dragons coexisting is canon in this alternative reality, we would have slightly higher calibers in production and use. If I have a pissed off marine with a .50 and can not offer him six cans of white claw for each dragon … and if they taste anything like turkey it’s dodoville for dragons. Stone age humans dominated the entire planet. Industrial age humans would most likely kill all the dragons by accident.
MANPADS would have been invented by the mid-19th century. Probably by the Brits.
Google “Congreve rocket” :o)
Are the door handles on that teal car from the British Leyland parts bin?
AMC.
Late 70s PSA.
The Marina flap is pretty similar to the AMC flap, although the design language seems slightly more AMC? Either way, the apparent ongoing success of either AMC or BL (or both!) Might be a fair trade for dragons.
If there WERE dragons flying around, breathing fire and eating humans, would we really even have any heavy industry or above-ground transportation to speak of in the first place?
You wouldn’t happen to have loaded dice on another website would you? One and the same?
Nice! But, unfortunately, a little short-sighted. In such an alternate world road design would be very problematic! I mean, having multi-ton flying lizards roaming the landscape a-blowing fire and eating whatever large animal is around would certainly make the automobile change or die. I am thinking that car design would CERTAINLY change. Large armored trucks with heat shields and radar would be the norm. Forget about car paint, no one would waste their time and money on a nice coat of paint….unless we could find an optical print that would confuse the huge beasts…like circles and lines, sort of a camo pattern. Small, light vehicles would also be zipping about with countermeasures onboard, likely a loud horn (maybe a male dragon screech) and light bars with confusing dazzling lights.
Don’t forget an electronic shield to zap the beasts who try grabbing and flying away.
And you can forget about road maintenance in that world.
This union better pay me upwards of six figures a year if I’m gonna stand out there (next to the dragon infested watering hole) like aWildebeest with nothing but a “stop/slow” sign, reflective vest and a janky company issue (cheap as fuck) hard hat. No thanks.
Nobody will apply for that job. Once the old times leave the scene to retire (hide out) in their underground caverns.
Cars would be pointless full stop. We’d have to have well-run, heavily armed public transport: armoured trains and trams, with anti air weaponry on the roof, and similarly kitted-out battle buses.
I’ve been reading the Wings of Fire series with my son each night. It’s a world where dragons rule and people are considered wildlife/snacks. I can’t help but think that if our world was infested with dragons, things like cars, houses, buildings, would be totally different. Tanks, either with or without guns, would probably be the order of the day, if people traveled at all. Underground lairs and heavy defenses everywhere until the dragons (or the people) were hunted to extinction.
As I read over what I’ve written, it’s pretty damn depressing. I like your world better, Torch. Let’s live there instead.
Maybe this would get people using underground public transportation
So Elon’s Boring Company came from the dragon-verse?
About the only place it makes sense
But Dragons love caves for their pile of treasure, so they would repurpose those tunnels.
Subway cars would be a snack delivery device, a crunchy shell with fresh, meaty filling.
The tanks in Reign of Fire didn’t fair too well. 😉
So many options here (for those not in financial ruin because of dragons) – would there be convertibles with dragon-repellant turrets installed? Really fast, sleek cars that the dragons can’t grip their talons on/outfly? Cars disguised as smelly trashpiles, so they’re unattractive to dragons – assuming they aren’t scavengers.
Jason.
Dragons are also extremely intelligent and have literal mountains of gold.
Who do you think actually owns the companies making those heat shields and anchor systems?
Drive safe…
mMMM and why not an aggressive shield? For example, put the roof full of spikes, which will hurt the dragon’s feet if he tries to lift the car. If the dragons are smart enough, they won’t attack twice, the first time they’ll learn that those metal things that move do damage. Even after a few generations, dragons may have learned not to attack cars.
The behavior of dragons could also be investigated and see if there is anything in nature that they don’t like or run away from, for example, if they dislike certain smells, cars could be made to emit a similar scent to scare them away.
Dragons will quickly learn not to attack cars. They will also learn to circle high, like hawks, wait for the tasty morsels to come out of the shell, and then swoop like dive bombers and pluck their lunch. Then back to the lair, where the BBQ sauce is.
BBQ sauce? Yes. Everybody knows dragons have gold. Do they excrete it? Or collect it like magpies? It doesn’t matter. In no time at all, Heinz 57 will be selling BBQ sauce to dragons via fireproof trading posts with little push-out transaction windows like merchants in high-crime areas. Dragon drops gold in, door closes, reopens with BBQ sauce in the easy-open burn-the-top-off bottles.
I’m not sure it’s fair to assume the dragons are actively aggressive towards humans. I would be concerned that a bigger vector for interaction would just be lumbering across a road or just straight-up snoozing on the tarmac without concern for vehicular traffic. Sure, they may charge (and firebomb you) if you’re threatening their babies or whatever, but not without provocation. Sort of like larger, scalier elk.
The ablative shield is still a good idea, but if a suitable deployment mechanism could be designed, it wouldn’t have to be a permanent fixture. I can’t imagine the aerodynamic penalty would be small on these. Maybe something akin to the roll-down side doors linked in the Oldsmobile for Olds article: when dragon breath is detected, it swings up from underneath the body.
Furthermore, instead of (or in addition to, depending on temperament or frequency of interaction) the massive infrastructure build out required to anchor vehicles to roads, the ablative shield should breakaway like a lizard tail, allowing the car to escape to safety. Who knows, if the dragons are really out for blood, the detachable shield could have some stun capability since we’ve got all these high voltage batteries driving around these days.
This gives me a whole new insight into bird crap falling from the sky. Of course an investment in car washes is a good idea.
Good advice. Or just find a Chieftain tank like McConaughey did in “Reign of Fire”
Here be dragons
Here be anti-aircraft guns.
Great stuff from your pleasantly-manic brain, Jason. Alright, time for a design review!
For the heat shielding: this design is robust and user-centric, but it does unceremoniously murder the convertible. Do convertibles exist in this dragon-infestedvworld? Are they still around, the equivalent of riding a motorcycle without a helmet? I simply refuse to live in a world where Miata is, in fact, not always the answer.
For the car-to-road retention system: having just watched the McMurtry Speirling simply obliterate both the Goodwood Hill Climb and my functional understanding of the word “fast,” I must insist that every car in the dragon universe be a fan car. In leiu of your T-shaped retention bar, the fan’s downforce would obviously need to be immense to overcome the pull of a dragon, but this would lead to infrastructure savings and allow for most forms of road and track racing as we currently know them. Plus, you know fan car. FAN CAR. If you ever need to park the thing, include ropes and tie-down points with the vehicle.
I suspect Jason was down in his Basement-o-wonders playing with a slot car set, then Otto showed up with a toy dragon and attacked one of the slot cars. A few minutes later, Jason is entering these parameters into his C64 articletron using Torch AI(tm) to generate content for us to consume.
This whole dragon world is a conspiracy to get us all to use heavy covered public transportation.
Ah! I see someone has introduced you to the concept of a burrito.
I mean, uh. Nothing. Nothing at all. Please use mass transit more.
HE’S A WYRM! THEY’VE GOT A SPY! RED ALERT! RED ALERT!!!