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Old 12-07-2005, 11:03 AM   #241
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Originally Posted by Anthony
Then why say anything about 'most lethal' at all? Just say 'typical' or something of the sort.
I'll bet that the intention was to say "Most lethal.." instead of "The most lethal". That seems to make more sense in the context of the insert.
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Old 12-07-2005, 02:12 PM   #242
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
'The most lethal radiation accidents actually inflict less than 1 rad/second'?
[snip]
In the Louis Slotin incident, he received an estimated 2,000 rem in the time required to pull apart a criticality sphere with his hands (again, time unknown, but apparently only a few seconds).
In the Louis Slotin incident, someone rolled an 18 on their Armoury skill while hand assembling a protoype nuclear bomb and created a semi-critical lump of plutonium literally at hands length, with no shielding. He then pulled the darn thing apart with his bare hands!

That's not a typical "radiation accident" - that's a "whoops, I nearly nuked myself" accident - the 12,000 rem case you mention doesn't spring to mind, but again, someone's lucky (well, for a not particularly great value of "lucky") not to have been blown to subatomic particles instead of only taking 12 kRem (there's a unit you never want to see).

Short of sticking your head into a running reactor, most "accidents" that do more than a rad or so per second are likely to kill you during the explosion.
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Old 12-07-2005, 04:37 PM   #243
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fnord-Fnairlane
That's not a typical "radiation accident".
True, but the text didn't mention 'typical', it mentioned 'most lethal'. Looking through a list of lethal radiation accidents, an awful lot of them involved short exposure times at very high doses, due to criticalities or incidents with devices designed to produce large radiation doses (food irradiators, components of medical radiation sources).
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nucl...accidents.html
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Old 12-07-2005, 06:37 PM   #244
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Default Re: More powers excerpts

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fnord-Fnairlane
In the Louis Slotin incident, someone rolled an 18 on their Armoury skill while hand assembling a protoype nuclear bomb and created a semi-critical lump of plutonium literally at hands length, with no shielding. He then pulled the darn thing apart with his bare hands!

That's not a typical "radiation accident" - that's a "whoops, I nearly nuked myself" accident - the 12,000 rem case you mention doesn't spring to mind, but again, someone's lucky (well, for a not particularly great value of "lucky") not to have been blown to subatomic particles instead of only taking 12 kRem (there's a unit you never want to see).

Short of sticking your head into a running reactor, most "accidents" that do more than a rad or so per second are likely to kill you during the explosion.
That's an "Oops! I did nuke myself, but at least I didn't take everyone else with me." That exposure killed him, I think it was weeks later.
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Old 12-07-2005, 06:48 PM   #245
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Amy
That's an "Oops! I did nuke myself, but at least I didn't take everyone else with me." That exposure killed him, I think it was weeks later.
Yes, but he didn't nuke himself, ie. the device did not go supercritical. He merely irradiated himself.
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Old 12-07-2005, 08:15 PM   #246
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Originally Posted by Kromm
The radiation benchmark was normed to an ordinary bystander in the area of a large-scale accident, not to contact exposure to a strong source. Space in the box kept us from saying it that verbosely.
Erm...wouldn't many radiation attacks be similar to contact exposure with a strong source?
I mean, Plutonium Man probably qualifies as a strong source.
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Old 12-07-2005, 10:01 PM   #247
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Originally Posted by gjc8
Erm...wouldn't many radiation attacks be similar to contact exposure with a strong source?
I mean, Plutonium Man probably qualifies as a strong source.
You are correct. That sentence is poorly worded for what it should be trying to express. Sorry that that one didn't get caught in playtest.
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Old 12-07-2005, 10:33 PM   #248
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GURPS is a game - radiation, especially at high doses, is irretrievably fatal at non-superscience tech levels. It isn't much fun to tell your PCs:

There's a brief blue flash, you all take 3d6 kiloRads. You're immediatly hospitalised. Over the next few weeks you all die horribly of acute radiation poisoning. Roll up new PCs.

However there's a lot of roleplaying potential in dealing with reactor accidents, eg: being Spock saving the Enterprise. Or worrying about how long you can stay in areas that have been nuked, or deciding how much risk you'll take trying to fix your starship's Tokomak before you give up, vent it to space and call for a tug.

As a GM I'd never allow a PC to have radiation inflicting powers.
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Old 12-07-2005, 11:32 PM   #249
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Default Re: More powers excerpts

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fnord-Fnairlane
GURPS is a game - radiation, especially at high doses, is irretrievably fatal at non-superscience tech levels. It isn't much fun to tell your PCs:

There's a brief blue flash, you all take 3d6 kiloRads. You're immediatly hospitalised. Over the next few weeks you all die horribly of acute radiation poisoning. Roll up new PCs.

However there's a lot of roleplaying potential in dealing with reactor accidents, eg: being Spock saving the Enterprise. Or worrying about how long you can stay in areas that have been nuked, or deciding how much risk you'll take trying to fix your starship's Tokomak before you give up, vent it to space and call for a tug.

As a GM I'd never allow a PC to have radiation inflicting powers.
Except for games where realism is a premium and radiation events occur, I think the best approach to radiation is that it's toxic in doses that don't do dice of damage but don't bog down in detail over what sort of toxicity effects it causes.
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