Quick Question: X-rays, Gamma rays, and rads.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Cinematic with its glossing over of drawbacks rather than superscience like disintegrators?

It's typical for the non-superscience TL 11-12 stuff -- we have no idea how to do it, or whether it's actually possible, but it's not obviously forbidden by physics as we understand it, and its effects are not ridiculous.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

So absurd and wasteful of the energy available rather than impossible? But also still MUCH shorter ranges than bullets' with but a tenth of the energy.
Cinematic with its glossing over of drawbacks rather than superscience like disintegrators?

They already have very limited ranges as written...

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

They already have very limited ranges as written...

Ah, but from what others have suggested and at least one home site, even these short ranges are overly optimistic with portable energy cells.
Either way, I'm still too scrambled and uneducated on the physics involved to criticise much.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Tallor

In ultra-tech, x-ray and g-ray cutting torches have the triad of burn-rad-surge, but the x-ray lasers and grasers only have burn and surge.

I'm certain that blasting someone with weaponized x-rays/graser beams would do radiation damage!

(Which would also make for interesting plot twists for a high-tech After The End adventure, but I digress)

I'm thinking this was just a minor oversight. What do you think? Rad damage for x-rays and grasers?

You can get fairly close to the GURPS x-ray laser using a beam of soft x-rays. These would have a very short range in air - on the order of a centimeter or less, and about 1000 times shorter than that in tissue. In order for the beam to actually get through all that air you would need to use the front end of the beam to ionize the air to transparency so the rest of the beam could get through (along with other tricks like shooting out pulses so the air heated as the first pulse is absorbed has time to expand to a near vacuum before the other pulses go through, so as to minimize Thompson scattering off the air electrons). However, once the beam hits its target, any scattered x-rays will be absorbed in less than a millimeter, localizing damage to the wound track and preventing whole body radiation exposure.

Gamma rays, on the other hand, are a different beast (as are hard x-rays, for that matter). A gamma ray can go through about a quarter kilometer of air, or about 25 centimeters of living tissue. When the beam hits your body, you will get Compton scatters of the gamma rays off the electrons in the beam path, causing those gamma rays to leave the beam path and plow into your living organs where they will cause radiation exposure. You will also have ionized atoms from photoabsorption or Compton scatters (or positron annihilation, if the energy is enough to allow gamma ray absorption via pair production), which will emit core-shell x-rays into your body (not to mention the annihilation photons if you have pair production). So a gamma ray laser would definitely cause lots of radiation dose to anyone unfortunate enough to be hit (and some radiation dose even if the beam just passes by near you, or if the beam hit something close to you).

So ... net result: Soft x-rays, no rad. Hard x-rays and gamma rays, rad.

Luke

[Flyndaran]

Cool, but it just all goes to show you that it's easier to hurt that guy over there with energy by using it to throw someTHING at him fast than to just throw the energy itself.
But by golly, we want our bzzt bzzts and pew pews rather than bang bangs.

[starslayer]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Cool, but it just all goes to show you that it's easier to hurt that guy over there with energy by using it to throw someTHING at him fast than to just throw the energy itself.
But by golly, we want our bzzt bzzts and pew pews rather than bang bangs.

Not true at all.

From logistical standpoints pure energy weapons are a godsend. It changes from a beans and bullets logistical system to just beans. If the troops have food and fuel they also have ammo (and equipment having on board generators may even remove the fuel requirement)

There number of conflicts lost due to supply line issues is staggering, and even given inferior performance direct energy weapons will be favoured for removing that possibility.

This does not even touch on the concept of weight, but stopped energy is likely to be lighter than ballistic ammo as well, which also has far reaching implications.

That of course assumes that mass accelerators are more effective, which is not guaranteed- gurps assumes that mass accelerators continue to get better, but for the most part we have not seen major increases in penetrating power or total delivered energy since the invention of smokeless powder ect/etc are likely exceedingly generous in terms of the increased damage they deliver (as well as multiplying your logistical requirements as you note require bullets and gun gas) and there may be insurmountable limits to mass accelerators in an atmosphere due to fluid dynamics.

[Tallor]

Originally Posted by starslayer

Not true at all.

...

I had a long reply but lost it, so I'll sum up.

You are correct on all accounts, but let me add a few amendments!

1. Lasers in GURPS are objectively better at comparable tech levels. Their higher accuracy, ammo capacity, lower recoil and rechargability make them more effective both tactically and logistically.

2. Lasers have one big weakness--haze. Fog, rain, snow, and most of all, smoke. The latter-most is controllable using smokebombs and smoke artillery--used on a battlefield, both sides may be able to SEE each other with hyperspectral goggles, but lasers would be at a hefty damage penalty. Underwater campaigns aren't necessarily a tide-turner, since bullets actually work worse than blue-green lasers available in the same era.

2.1. PS You could make combat more balanced by making laser batteries naturally volatile, making them utterly grenade-like if damaged in combat. But that's more of a pulp sci-fi idea, since rechargable cells probably wouldn't be made of "explodium".

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Tallor

2.1. PS You could make combat more balanced by making laser batteries naturally volatile, making them utterly grenade-like if damaged in combat. But that's more of a pulp sci-fi idea, since rechargable cells probably wouldn't be made of "explodium".

Oh no, it's very much a hard science idea. Whatever holds the energy and releases it to directly power the laser is containing energy (and a lot of it). If you violently destroy that container the energy is no longer contained.

This is certainly true for superconducting storage loops and probably ultracapacitors as well.

Things that don't have to have the extremely short release period of weapon cells might not do more than catch fire but weapon cells have to contain energy in a form more dense than gunpowder and release it ina comparable if not shorter time frame. That's not going to just "go away".

[Tallor]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Oh no, it's very much a hard science idea.
...

...

...weapon cells have to contain energy in a form more dense than gunpowder and release it ina comparable if not shorter time frame. That's not going to just "go away".

My brother once stabbed a phone battery with a screwdriver and it started smoking. I guess this is the next logical step.

On a more serious note, could it be possible to armor-up ammo packs, making them bulky but less explosive? What about a scaled-down version of an anti-blast magazine? o:

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Cool, but it just all goes to show you that it's easier to hurt that guy over there with energy by using it to throw someTHING at him fast than to just throw the energy itself.
But by golly, we want our bzzt bzzts and pew pews rather than bang bangs.

Not necessarily. Lasers have some definite advantages too (if your tech is up to using them practically). But it's probably true that the super-high frequencies are poor choices for work in an Earth-like environment.