Explosive Damage

[Hilary_155]

OK

I know this is picking at the rules. But I just happen to have been looking at safe distances from explosives in a industry manual and it seems to follow a 1/(x squared) as opposed to the gurps 1/x progression for damage (force of blast) reduction.

I don't really care. But I don't think having it be realistic would slow down game play. As long as the calculations are figured out in advance, and boiled down to a simple formula, it would be more realistic and just as easy to calculate.

I haven't figured out the whole thing yet. I know I want the progression to be 1/(distance squared) for folks and things not directly standing at ground zero for an OPEN explosion. For explosions inside a restricted environment, it would be reduced to 1/(distance) for a floor and ceiling but with an unrestricted wall (the explosion is smaller than the distance to the walls) and virtually no reduction for a tunnel or tube (Made of something strong enough to defy the explosion like stone walls)

This is because the explosion is basically a compressed wall of force expanding in free space by 4*Pi*(radius squared) <Surface area of a sphere>

The (distance) is not simply yards. The (distance) in the formula would depend upon the amount of material and its composition (ref). You would not divide the damage by 1/(yards squared) any more than you would divide the damage by 1/(inches squared) or 1/(kilometers squared). The drop off rate would depend upon the size of the explosion.

Anyway... feel free to ignore all this unless you REALLLLLLY want to reply. Don't feel obligated to help unless you have chewed on this before and want to put in your two cents. If so, I would certainly appreciate it. I did look for other threads talking about explosives/explosions. I could not find anything specific to damage drop off. If there is an old one out there link to it or something. Again, thanks.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Hilary_155

This is because the explosion is basically a compressed wall of force expanding in free space by 4*Pi*(radius squared) <Surface area of a sphere>

Since damage is proportional to the square root of energy, it comes out to roughly be what you are talking about.

Every X multiplier to distance gives 1/X^2 energy which yields 1/X damage.

[whswhs]

Actually, the energy of an explosion is inversely proportional not to the surface area of the wave front, but to the volume through which it has expanded; or, at least, that's what the U.S. government handbook on effects of nuclear weapons says about blast effects. So I take using "divide the damage by the radius" to be a gameable approximation to avoid "divide the damage by the 3/2 power of the radius," which would be a bother to calculate.

Bill Stoddar