Do Antiparticle Beams Inflict Rad Damage?

[Ragabash Moon]

The description of antiparticle beams says...

Originally Posted by GURPS Ultra-Tech pg. 124

Antiparticle beams inflict crushing damage with a (3) armor divisor and the explosive, radiation, and surge damage modifiers.

But then on the chart it's just Xd(3) cr ex


So, is it purely what the chart says, or does it also cause surges and rad damage?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ragabash Moon

So, is it purely what the chart says, or does it also cause surges and rad damage?

Whichever you like? It takes so much superscience to produce those antiparticle beams that it doesn't much matter.

Realistically, any radiation dose strong enough to cause prompt burns will be instantly fatal to any tissue near the burn (the rest of you might survive, depending on how well focused the radiation is); there isn't anything really that will produce the modest but non-negligible levels of the Rad enhancement.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Whichever you like? It takes so much superscience to produce those antiparticle beams that it doesn't much matter.

Realistically, any radiation dose strong enough to cause prompt burns will be instantly fatal to any tissue near the burn (the rest of you might survive, depending on how well focused the radiation is); there isn't anything really that will produce the modest but non-negligible levels of the Rad enhancement.

Is there really any advantage to an antiparticle beam over a beam of the same terrene particles at a given energy level? The only real advantage I see is the annihilation reaction, but the mass of most particle beams isn't all that great, they do their damage the velocity, more or less.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Is there really any advantage to an antiparticle beam over a beam of the same terrene particles at a given energy level? The only real advantage I see is the annihilation reaction, but the mass of most particle beams isn't all that great, they do their damage the velocity, more or less.

You can't do damage with velocity alone...

You have to be going very fast, even for a particle beam, for your kinetic energy to be as big as your mass energy.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Whichever you like? It takes so much superscience to produce those antiparticle beams that it doesn't much matter.

The way they are produced has little bearing on how much damage they do, unless your proposed method produces some specific distribution of anti-particles. The question is just how much radiation would be produced (by type!) and how much would be absorbed by anything not already dead.

The first is tricky because we don't know how many anti-particles are actually produced for any given weapon. The second is even trickier. It may be that the radiation is more dangerous to those nearby than the actual target!

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

The way they are produced has little bearing on how much damage they do

Not referring to just producing the antimatter-- you also have to get a coherent beam of it, preferably in a way that doesn't irradiate the wielder, and then send it through atmosphere, which probably requires force fields.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Is there really any advantage to an antiparticle beam over a beam of the same terrene particles at a given energy level? .

LwCamp once said that for an efficient particle beam designed for space combat (I think it was using hydrogen atoms at .5 c)the antiparticles would add about 2% more energy.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

LwCamp once said that for an efficient particle beam designed for space combat (I think it was using hydrogen atoms at .5 c)the antiparticles would add about 2% more energy.

Not even close.

It's possible that they'd add about 2% useful energy somehow, but at that speed the kinetic energy is less than the rest mass of the particle.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Not even close.

It's possible that they'd add about 2% useful energy somehow, but at that speed the kinetic energy is less than the rest mass of the particle.

Mostly, the .5c was not even close. Absent superscience (force fields, etc), means of producing space combat beams (antiparticle beams in atmosphere are pure superscience) require a charge neutralizer that adds quite a lot of noise to the beam, and the only way to reduce that is running the beam at ridiculous particle energies.

[Joseph Paul]

I think the OPs question is more about 'does the description or the chart need fixing'. I don't think he cares about whether anti-particle beams are do-able or how many impossible things need to be swallowed before it can be done. I certainly don't.

So would an anti-particle beam be likely to produce surge and rad effects? Are those effects that we expect from an anti-matter explosion? Looking at the micro-AM warheads - it is. Why the beam would be crushing and not burning - you may need to ask the author about that.