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

[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?

[Emerald Cat]

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?

I could go either way. On the one hand, these are high energy photons that should do rad damage. On the other hand, we're talking about tight beam attacks. So the volume of rad damage may be too small to matter. Especially if the tissues in that area are getting fried.

[jeff_wilson]

IIRC, the rationale is that the weapon version produces a directed, damaging ray that destroys with focussed radiation (so rads are redundant, the irradiated bits of flesh or circuit are blown off like the outer layers of a popped corn kernel) while a torch works a bit more slowly, and irradiates a wider area of which more is expected to survive structurally if not biologically.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

IIRC, the rationale is that the weapon version produces a directed, damaging ray that destroys with focussed radiation (so rads are redundant, the irradiated bits of flesh or circuit are blown off like the outer layers of a popped corn kernel) while a torch works a bit more slowly, and irradiates a wider area of which more is expected to survive structurally if not biologically.

This is basically it, IMO. Weaponized lasers - including the x-ray and gamma frequencies - are essentially using the radiation to "cook" the flesh where it hits, whereas a close-range cutting laser torch is applying the radiation over a wider area at a slower or more constant rate.

[Fred Brackin]

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?

No, the beams for xasers and grasers are very narrow and anything in those paths gets ionized. Even most of the tissue damage is from expanding plasmas produced by the beams.

The standard for Gurps rads is whole body gamma ray exposure. Per the note on Brachytherapy from Bio-tech p.132 tightly confined radiation treatment can produce effectively no whole body rads.

[Bruno]

My mother got extensive radiation therapy for a cancerous tumour around her spine. She's not considered at higher risk of radiation induced cancers, and it didn't cause any signs of radiation sickness despite the dosages.

That's not nearly as tight-beam as a weaponized gamma laser or x-ray laser.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Bruno

My mother got extensive radiation therapy for a cancerous tumour around her spine. She's not considered at higher risk of radiation induced cancers, and it didn't cause any signs of radiation sickness despite the dosages.

That's not nearly as tight-beam as a weaponized gamma laser or x-ray laser.

It's also a much lower dose, and she probably is at a higher risk of radiation induced cancers -- just (a) the risk is way way lower than the existing cancer, and probably lower than we can reliably measure, and (b) given the lead time on radiation induced cancers, she'll probably be dead of other causes before it matters (if something might cause cancer in thirty years, that's a significant concern for a twenty year old. Not so much for a seventy year old).

Side note: there are three basic situations where weaponized lasers or grazers would cause a significant radiation dose. One is if the weapon has extensive side lobes (and this will probably only occur at very short ranges, similar to powder burns). Another is if the beam gets partially scattered on striking a barrier, such as armor. The third is if the target suffers multiple hits that fail to penetrate armor, but the armor either has poor radiation resistance, or penetration is sufficient to reduce the armor's radiation protection to poor (unlike a regular laser, where the beam is basically stopped by a layer of plasma that forms and must then burn its way through the target, X-rays and gamma rays will actually penetrate significantly beyond the point at which plasma formation occurs). Note that realistically, any grazer will just straight up do damage through low radiation PF armor, as a simple rule just assume it does non-penetrating injury equal to base damage / radiation PF.

[Flyndaran]

Haven't those in the know already stated that because air is opaque to anything past UV, these types of handheld weapons start from impossible tech?
If so, then really any explanation we or a specific GM comes up with wouldn't matter to any other game.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Haven't those in the know already stated that because air is opaque to anything past UV, these types of handheld weapons start from impossible tech?

While there are serious problems with producing and focusing high power short frequency lasers, penetrating atmosphere isn't that bad, you just have to drill an evacuated channel, the same way as you need to for a particle beam.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anthony

While there are serious problems with producing and focusing high power short frequency lasers, penetrating atmosphere isn't that bad, you just have to drill an evacuated channel, the same way as you need to for a particle beam.

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?
Okay, got you guys. My headache is making me a little denser than usual.