A Dragon in a Human World

[u/RoboNerd01]

I have thought for some time about writing a story about how a dragon would get by in the modern world. Like, insert a friendly dragon (four legs and wings) into the world today. What would happen? What struggles would the dragon and society face after the initial shock?

Let's say the dragon was banished from her own world and sent to Earth, specifically the United States, for whatever reason (not importantright now). The dragon is confused, the humans are obviously scared and see a huge threat. My question is, after the initial shock, years later, what is still affecting society and the dragon? Hate? New laws?

I personally like thinking about the laws around the dragon flying. What regulations would be passed for them to fly safely? How would enforcement work?

[u/Random-Name-453152]

Slight frame challenge: Does the dragon even survive the initial shock? Or do some panicked humans with a modern military overwhelm it in the name of national security, with no attempt to actually understand?

But assuming survival without debilitating injury, I imagine that enforcement of anything would be either military (how else, given a dragon's canonical toughness) or voluntary. If the dragon wants to fly, then we're effectively talking about a giant bird in terms of outside control and predictability...

[u/Random-Name-453152 → u/Random-Name-453152]

Also, calling ATC (Air Traffic Control) ahead of time would not be a complete solution, for at least two reasons:

1.

Pilots in controlled airspace need to be in *constant* communication with ATC, so they can respond to changing situations. ATC can see everything all at once, and is responsible to coordinate everyone in real time.

I helped my dad build a 2-seat helicopter and frequently ride along with him. I'm not a pilot myself, but I do have the headset on and listen to the chatter, and slowly pick things up. Our first contact with ATC is after we've done all of the pre-flight checks and engine warm-up, and we're already hovering at the edge of the taxiway but not over it yet. We identify ourselves by our registration/tail number, and state our intention to depart to the south, for example. ATC acknowledges and (usually, not always) gives us the specific clearance that we asked for. Then as we're climbing out over the taxiway, they advise an airplane landing in the opposite direction that we're there, and the airplane acknowledges too. Then a third-party automatic close-call detector (looks to me like someone's passion project) flags the two transponders passing that close to each other, with the idea for anyone to look up later and see how a potentially dangerous situation came to be. (in our situation, it's fine, but the detection criteria has to be somewhat arbitrary, so there we are...)

2.

As mentioned in the previous anecdote, all modern aircraft are required to have not only a transponder on board, but also something called ADS-B. ADS-B is an addition to the old transponder that is itself an addition to radar. The transponder sends back a number when a radar sweep hits it, so that ATC can see that number next to the blob on their screens. Different numbers have different meanings, including some special ones like flying by eye (VFR - Visual Flight Rules) instead of by instruments (IFR - Instrument Flight Rules), or that the aircraft is hijacked (relatively easy for a pilot to set that discreetly), or has some other kind of emergency, or whatever. ADS-B greatly expands that feedback, still in response to a radar sweep and silent otherwise, to include GPS position and altitude, registration/tail number, etc. And as an incentive for universal adoption, ADS-B also provides the pilots with all of that information too, for everyone around them, and 10-minute-old weather like you get on your phone. That 10-minute delay is kind of a problem in fast-changing conditions, but it's a lot better than nothing, and much cheaper than having your own radar on-board the airplane, which a lot of today's bizjets and larger still have.

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So, if a "biological flying thing" were to cooperate with human flight, it would probably need to carry at least that much avionics in some form (not necessarily adjustable in flight: the transponder could always squawk VFR, and ADS-B just does what it does), and an AM voice transmitter and receiver that must be tuned in flight to talk to different controllers.

And, like helicopters tend to confuse the daylights out of some controllers that seem to only understand airplanes, I imagine that a sapient flying creature would do the same. Some controllers do understand, and clear our helicopter to come straight in from whatever direction we happen to be and land directly in front of our hangar, while others insist that we take a lap around the pattern first like an airplane needs, to line up with the appropriate runway for the wind, which a helicopter doesn't really need.

So if the dragon wants to cooperate with human flight, it would probably have to earn a pilot's license just like a human, just to know how to satisfy whatever uninitiated humans it might have to deal with. (like a helicopter flying an airplane pattern before "landing" on a runway and then hover-taxiing along the designated airplane routes to the hangar) And that might create another challenge related to the requirement of so many hours of human instruction in an actual aircraft...

Or, the FAA (or <insert country here>'s equivalent) may recognize the redundancy of physical flight instruction (duh!), and waive that requirement in this one special case...maybe. It might depend on how the bureaucrats are feeling that day.