Morbid question--how much energy to vaporize living matter?

[megaplayboy]

I tried to figure this out on my own, but the problem is that living tissue isn't made of a single compound or element, like water or carbon. My offhand guess would be that to "disintegrate" or "vaporize" a living being or object(zombies are dead organic tissue, yes?), you have to convert the solid to a gas--i.e., heat of enthalpy/vaporization. This is usually expressed in kilojoules/mole, which isn't terribly useful to me. More useful is kJ/kg. Any ideas?

[Scott Baker]

I found these two pages that talk about it. I didn't read them in detail to check the math or anything, but they do agree with each other.

 

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/excerpts-from-the-mad-scientiste28099s-handbook-so-youe28099re-ready-to-vaporize-a-human/

 

http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/09/13/2122208/it-takes-299-gigajoules-to-vaporize-a-human-body

[megaplayboy]

Sooo...3 gigajoules to "ionize"(break all the molecular bonds) the average human, and around 300 megajoules to "vaporize" (turn the water and "long pork" into gas) one.

 

Great, thanks. Now I just have to work out how many damage classes that works out to...ballpark, 20 to 30 damage classes(between enough to instakill a 10 body human and enough to make the body "unrecoverable").

[L. Marcus]

Huh. That's neat.

[Cancer]

That assumes you put all the input energy into the vaporization and ionization: no losses to radiation (the flash), sound (the bang), collateral damage (spraying clothing, possessions, etc., in all directions at speed), etc. My guess is those three are listed in decreasing order of importance.

[megaplayboy]

So, maybe 5 GJ to be on the safe side, assuming 60% efficiency.

[Old Man]

Did you have anyone specific in mind?

[L. Marcus]

I could provide a list!

[Cancer]

So, maybe 5 GJ to be on the safe side, assuming 60% efficiency.

That's at the target. Transmission losses from weapon to target etc. are on top of that.

[megaplayboy]

That's at the target. Transmission losses from weapon to target etc. are on top of that.

Hmm. Good point. At short distances, maybe 6-8 GJ. At longer distances, you might need 20GJ or more. Perhaps a Reduced by Range limitation would be appropriate.

[NuSoardGraphite]

20 damage classes is 6 1/2d6. Max dammage is 39 body. Average damage is 23 body, so that sounds about right for vaporization..9

 

So I have disintigrater type weaponry in my campaign setting. Generally speaking, they dont do anywhere near 20 damage classes....probably they max out around 12 damage classes, or an average of 14 Body. Enough to kill, but not enough to atomize the target.

 

SFX considerations in mind, I usually have them just disintigrate the flesh and muscle on an impairing wound to the location in question..which can heal over time, but a disabling wound, it disintigrates the entire section hit including bone and cartilage. Thus hits to the chest, vitals or head are deadly. The location then must be replaced (it wont heal back naturally unless the character can regenerate lost limbs)