Aberrant RPG - Unnatural Disasters

[Centimane]

Why thank you! ::takes a bow:: ::happy

,,

I are an evil genius aren't I? ::tongue ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!!!

Evil being the operative word there. Really Sky, I had no idea of your deviousness!

Um...you did remember to grab all your various RPG books before you left to destroy the world, right? ::unsure

[SkyLion]

Oh...well, Im not actually leaving the Earth to destroy it until I reach Quantum 8. That way I can learn Quantum Mastery (Mastery 2) and make all my favorite gaming buddies Novas and take them with me. I'm at Q6 now... ::wink

[Blue Thunder]

I don't mean to be a downer, but the surface of the Sun is MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH cooler than the "heart of the Sun" like you mentioned Warping to, originally. Plus, you'd be focusing it into an attack so it wouldn't be an environmental factor anymore; if the nova is standing around on Earth, then a wave of Heart-O-The-Sun (or the less espensive Surface-O-The-Sun) plasma nails them in the face, I doubt Adaptability will kick in. It's no longer an environmental factor, it's a focused attack. That would be like using Adaptability to survive a blizzard, them claiming it can protect you from that giant block of ice that was just hurled at you by another nova. Nuh-uh.

Plus, the Adapatability enhancement suggests the ST make the nova spend quantum points to maintain Adaptability more often for things like vacuum exposure. The book suggests one quantum point every round, even, based on campaign flavor. And seeing as to how the heart of the Sun is MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH more dangerous to human/nova existence than the vacuum of space, this should be every round in my opinion, if one were to even count it as an environmental factor.

[SkyLion]

Apparently you didn't read my post correctly. Standing on the surface of the Sun, and then maxing a warp into the very heart of the Sun that opens on Earth. We are talking a q5 nova with warp 5 and m per 5. thats plenty to open it in the heart. The rest of the Max goes to the permability extra...

,,

And you are correct, some STs may want to require quantum point cost for Adaptability, though if it were me i would weigh it against the characters concept. ie enegy beings, bodymorphers, those with impervious gravitic forcefields etc....

[Centimane]

So how are you opening a Warp at the heart of the sun - that opens on Earth - if you're standing on the surface of the sun? I'm wondering if I missed something cuz Warp's range is limited to meters, and standing at the surface of the sun and opening a warp at the heart of the sun is a couple thousand kilometers....

Now if you mean that you're warping to the heart of the sun itself (not the surface) and then opening another, maxed warp back to earth, then I see no real problem (aside from being enormously expensive and possibly suicidal that is).

[SkyLion]

er...yeah youre right..I read the range table as the warp range...

,,,,

der. Oh well...you could do it with mastery Q6 ramnges but this is beyond the parameters for this exercise. Still though...the surface of the sun or even a warp opened in a soalr flare is going to devastate the planet...imagine letting gravity get through the permealilty, let alone the force of the flare and the radiation spike...plus youre doing it within Earths atmosphere....In which case it still sux to be human!

[metaphysician]

Just an aside, but: vacuum is vastly overrated as a health threat. There is no "cold of space," vacuum is a near perfect insulator. Direct sunlight exposure can be dangerous, but its potentially dangerous mostly irrespective of if you are shielded from the vacuum or not. And the zero pressure itself mainly causes. . . skin bruising, and lung damage *if* you hold your breath.

By far, the most dangerous part of the vacuum of space, is the simple lack of oxygen. Exactly the same threat as under water.

[Centimane]

Heh. Yeah, very true.

And I like your idea about gravity. I'd imagine the effect would be highly localized given the brief timeframe of the warp being opened, but it'd still be pretty freaky to see (though if you also let through a solar flare, I think that would probably negate the attractive force of gravity as it blew away everything in its path).

It occurs to me that a person might (somewhat understandably) come to the conclusion that we're all a bunch of sick jerks for devoting an entire thread to creative ways to generate mass destruction. ::ohmy

::unsure

::sad

::indifferent

::happy

::smile

I can live with that. ::devil

[Blue Thunder]

The real damage of letting gravity through is that it won't just make everyone in the area float around, it'll seriously muck up Earth's whole magnetic and gravitational field. Powers like Gravity Manipulation go around this, because a nova's quantum energies compensate for such effects (through the wonderful power of Q-energies) but this would be uncontrolled gravity. Earth would suffer serious problems.

Re: Vacuum

You're understating radiation. Radiation is a serious threat in a vacuum. On Earth, we have an atmosphere to protect us (mostly) but in the vacuum of space, you're not so lucky. It's not something that'll kill you off after a few seconds of exposure, but the threat is still there, and can cause long-term damage (as radiation tends to do).

[SkyLion]

um...shyeah! Thats like, um, *totallee what we're ter-EYE-ing to do BT... ::tongue

[Alex Green]

RE: Vaccum

Just for fun in high school we made water boil at room temp by lowering the presure.

RE: Radiation

My back of the evolope says open a gate to the middle of the sun and everyone instantly dies from neutrino radiation.

[metaphysician]

You sure? I thought even the densities at the center of the sun aren't high enough to physically impede neutrinos ( outside of a collapsing star, where you get the neutrino "bump" that results in supernova ). Yeah, you have a hell of alot of neutrinos, but their interaction rate is practically nonexistent.

[Alex Green]

You sure? I thought even the densities at the center of the sun aren't high enough to physically impede neutrinos ( outside of a collapsing star, where you get the neutrino "bump" that results in supernova ). Yeah, you have a hell of alot of neutrinos, but their interaction rate is practically nonexistent.

Right now you can make a tank of water and have one neutrino pop in every few weeks or months. Let's assume 1000 liters (a 10m^3 room) of water gets hit once a month by one neutrino.

Pretty near all neutrinos we experience are created by the sun.

The sun is 149,597,892 kilometers away. Call it 1.5 x 10^11 meters.

Amount of radiation goes down by the square of the distance, i.e. if we were one meter away from this neutrino generator then the number of neutrinos we'd be zapped with would increase by 2.25 x 10^22.

Number of seconds in a month, 2,592,000 (2.6 x 10^6).

Size of human brain? 1 liter? So that's 1/1000 of our original tank (1/10^3).

The human brain has about 100 billion (1^11) neurons and 100 trillion (1^14) synapses.

So at a distance of one meter, every synapse in your brain gets hit every second by a neutrino. And every neuron gets hit by 1000. Every second.

That's deep into overkill. Granted, the number goes down if you are on the other side of the world, but the mass of the Earth doesn't provide much (i.e. any) shielding against neutrino radiation, so the only thing you have is distance, not shielding.

[Blue Thunder]

Damn you and your science.

[metaphysician]

He's right, though. Would be an embarassing way to go, though, killed by the weak force. . .

[Centimane]

Right now you can make a tank of water and have one neutrino pop in every few weeks or months. Let's assume 1000 liters (a 10m^3 room) of water gets hit once a month by one neutrino.

Pretty near all neutrinos we experience are created by the sun.

The sun is 149,597,892 kilometers away. Call it 1.5 x 10^11 meters.

Amount of radiation goes down by the square of the distance, i.e. if we were one meter away from this neutrino generator then the number of neutrinos we'd be zapped with would increase by 2.25 x 10^22.

Number of seconds in a month, 2,592,000 (2.6 x 10^6).

Size of human brain? 1 liter? So that's 1/1000 of our original tank (1/10^3).

The human brain has about 100 billion (1^11) neurons and 100 trillion (1^14) synapses.

So at a distance of one meter, every synapse in your brain gets hit every second by a neutrino. And every neuron gets hit by 1000. Every second.

That's deep into overkill. Granted, the number goes down if you are on the other side of the world, but the mass of the Earth doesn't provide much (i.e. any) shielding against neutrino radiation, so the only thing you have is distance, not shielding.

And all of this isn't even taking into account the explosive force that would be unleashed by an exposure to the sun's core of even a fraction of a second. At the sun's core is a constant fusion reaction of unimaginable power, but the only thing that actually keeps it stable is the gravitational force generated by the sun's own mass. In essence, the center of the sun is constantly trying to blow itself up into something that would look much like a supernova, while the rest of the sun is constantly pressing "down" on the center of the sun and keeping it from doing so. By providing an opening for the very heart of the sun to escape from, you've just created something similar to a crack in a high-pressure steem valve, except it'll be an explosion that'll make any nuclear warhead on the planet look like an M-80 (if that) that'll come popping out of the crack instead of steam.

As Alex has pointed out, it'll be the neutrinos that do in most (if not all) life in a big ugly hurry, but it'd be a destructive nuclear explosion probably surpassing the effects of Quantum Inferno that would destroy the planet.

[Blue Thunder]

The Jedis would definetly feel that one.

[metaphysician]

Bumped because this topic actually came up in-game recently.

Some background: the PCs are basically intervening in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Aberrant Edition", trying to help one of the contenders for the imperium ( White Crane ) win, because she's the only one that is decent and honorable ( as opposed to all the others, who *suck horribly* ). Unfortunately, virtue is a disadvantage sometimes, like when one of your enemies decides to attack one of your other enemies with a horrid army of monstrousity, thats basically going to render the land a ruined wasteland and all the people in it dead. So, White Crane is intervening, and the PCs are trying to find a way to *not* lose half her forces in the process.

My character, Hermes, suggested what amounts to orbital bombardment- have the team brick, Artemis, fly some very big rocks into orbit ( ''borrow" the tops of mountains, stuff like that ), and aim them at the various armies o' monstrousity that are marching ( diving attack with drop towards the bottom, so you can hit an army sized target ). Would have entirely helped wipe out a few armies, or at least decimate them.

White Crane's general then asked what we were going to do when we had taught everyone *else* how to fight wars with man-made meteors, and they started tossing them at our cities. He then threatened to chop Hermes in half with an axe. Despite his brusqueness, the point was well taken, and Hermes turned to other ideas instead.

[Alex Green]

He has a point, but another point is "how many flying M-Str 5 near-gods are out there"?

And actually this might not be the ultimate in "hose an army" type stuff for this era. Any of the Elemental Mastery/Animas, Weather Manip, etc. Not all that long ago the Prof pointed out that Elemental Mastery's storm technique doesn't do dice of damage, it does levels of damage, i.e. autosucc.

As I recall your game basically gives out 5 dots in one power... so if someone has elemental mastery: Fire, then every baseline inside a storm effect drops dead.

[metaphysician]

Ah, no, its not *the* ultimate, but it wasn't a bad move against the armies in question. Basically, they aren't armies of mortal humans, so much as bio-mechanical monsters created by a fairly high end mad scientist type. So, most things that hose mass groups of mortals, won't work as well on them. Plus, the things do have escorting novas, which generally speaking means stalemate for mass battles ( that is, either the novas cancel out, or they massacre each others' mortal troops equally ), and the monsters are in huge number and exceptionally expendable ( even by the ruthless standards of our opposition ).

As for how many Mega Str 5 fliers there are. . . not *that* many, but it is easier to come up with a Mega Str 5 flier than a Q6er capable of just shooting at a city and blowing it up. And with proper preparation ( carrying up and placing a bunch of rocks in orbit ), you could saturate any likely defense short of "Mastery level Force Field". Its the 'unstoppable' element that really bothered the guy ( who is a high end general in the setting, but of conventional mindset ).

I find it amusing, though, that the guy responded much less harshly to contemplating usage of *time travel* as a weapon against the enemy. . . and as is, my character is basically going to be spending three weeks mass producing various Area-enhanced temporal weapons to help turn the tide. . .

[SkyLion]

He has a point, but another point is "how many flying M-Str 5 near-gods are out there"?

And actually this might not be the ultimate in "hose an army" type stuff for this era. Any of the Elemental Mastery/Animas, Weather Manip, etc. Not all that long ago the Prof pointed out that Elemental Mastery's storm technique doesn't do dice of damage, it does levels of damage, i.e. autosucc.

As I recall your game basically gives out 5 dots in one power... so if someone has elemental mastery: Fire, then every baseline inside a storm effect drops dead.

,,

would those auto-successes be soakable Alex?

[Alex Green]

would those auto-successes be soakable Alex?

For Novas? Sure.

But Fire is a lethal effect and baeslines don't soak it.

For that matter if you have 2 dots in EA:Earth then you're doing 4 levels. Typical bashing soak for a baseline in an army might be higher than 4, but he's still going to take a level from ping damage.

Maybe, maybe, maybe they're wearing enough armor to help some, and maybe the ST will let them use artifical soak. But that's not the way to bet.

[metaphysician]

Of course, on the flip side, my GM has now more or less established that if Hermes hits time with antitime, it busts a hole in the space time continuum, which could *entirely* be weaponized into a form able to send most of an army into the White Void, if you care to risk the wrath of multiple time travellers and at least one axe-wielding god-general. . .

[Alex Green]

...it busts a hole in the space time continuum, which could *entirely* be weaponized into a form able to send most of an army into the White Void...

You're assuming the same thing happens every time on the same scale. The results, both in effect and in scale, might be unpredictable.

So you do your thing and end up merging your world with "The Mist".

[metaphysician]

Well, yeah, thats exactly why Pendaran allows such. Give us enough rope, and eventually Hermes might break history.

( its so obvious on the face, and yet its just too fun to pass on the chance. . .

. . .at least if we could *get AIM to frickin' work* )

[SkyLion]

Right now you can make a tank of water and have one neutrino pop in every few weeks or months. Let's assume 1000 liters (a 10m^3 room) of water gets hit once a month by one neutrino.

Pretty near all neutrinos we experience are created by the sun.

The sun is 149,597,892 kilometers away. Call it 1.5 x 10^11 meters.

Amount of radiation goes down by the square of the distance, i.e. if we were one meter away from this neutrino generator then the number of neutrinos we'd be zapped with would increase by 2.25 x 10^22.

Number of seconds in a month, 2,592,000 (2.6 x 10^6).

Size of human brain? 1 liter? So that's 1/1000 of our original tank (1/10^3).

The human brain has about 100 billion (1^11) neurons and 100 trillion (1^14) synapses.

So at a distance of one meter, every synapse in your brain gets hit every second by a neutrino. And every neuron gets hit by 1000. Every second.

That's deep into overkill. Granted, the number goes down if you are on the other side of the world, but the mass of the Earth doesn't provide much (i.e. any) shielding against neutrino radiation, so the only thing you have is distance, not shielding.

Im not sure which back of which envelope you are using Alex but in point of fact 50 Trillion solar neutrinos pass through the human body every second....and so far we aint dead from it yet...

[Alex Green]

Im not sure which back of which envelope you are using Alex but in point of fact 50 Trillion solar neutrinos pass through the human body every second....and so far we aint dead from it yet...

The problem isn't "passing through". When that happens there's no interaction. The problem is "hits".

In order to record their passing, i.e. get a "hit", we need a big tank of water and a lot of time. Increase that number of "hits" by 10^22 and we get my reasoning.

[Rorx]

I follow your figures Alex, but that still only makes it 1 hit per second on a neuron AT THE SUN. Reducing back for the distance to Earth, gives us 10^22 to make up. Say 10^10 for the population of the planet, 10^7 for seconds in a year, which leaves 10^5.

So one person on the planet gets a neutrino in a neuron every hundred thousand years, and it probably has no effect.

[SkyLion]

Uh...actually every second, about 70 billion (7×1010) solar neutrinos pass through every square centimeter on Earth. You may be thinking of some other particle but Neutrinos are harmless. Not sure what you mean.

[Alex Green]

I follow your figures Alex, but that still only makes it 1 hit per second on a neuron AT THE SUN. Reducing back for the distance to Earth, gives us 10^22 to make up

The whole argument is based on what kills us first if we open a warp gate to the sun.

Uh...actually every second, about 70 billion (7×1010) solar neutrinos pass through every square centimeter on Earth. You may be thinking of some other particle but Neutrinos are harmless. Not sure what you mean.

They are harmless because they pass through us without interaction... most of the time. This also makes detecting them a pain.

However, in that tank of water experiment, the neutrinos *do* interact with the water a certain (very small) amount of the time. When they *do* interact with us, I dare say they aren't harmless any more. Multiply a very small amount of the time times a very large number and we don't have a trivial thing that happens once in a life time or so.

[SkyLion]

How is 50 trillion per second hitting our bodies a small number?

[Rorx]

How is 50 trillion per second hitting our bodies a small number?

Because ~3 orders of magnitude more go through that same tank of water used for detecting them, and still only triggers an interaction event once a month.

Having said all this about the calculations, the actual effect of an interaction within the body would probably be negligible since neutrinos of one kind or another are also produced in every beta particle decay. I believe that the neutrinos biological effect rating is the same as that for Gamma/x-ray radiation = 1, and since the interaction cross-section for gammas is much higher than for neutrinos, being hit by a neutrino is going to do a lot less than the normal background radiation does to each on of us every day.

[SkyLion]

Not to mention that neutrinos also come from other sources, including our own atmosphere....

[Alex Green]

How is 50 trillion per second hitting our bodies a small number?

You're confusing "hitting" with "interacting". Those 50T particles don't actually interact with us but once every few years, and even then they are small enough that it doesn't matter.

50T results in a very, very, small effect. That's not the same as "no effect". 50T times 10^22 and all of a sudden our very, very, small effect isn't so small any more.

Note I'm assuming that the bulk of particles that hit us come from the sun, and that the sun's effects drown out any other naturally occurring ones. If that's not the case then we won't see a 10^22 increase.