Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

[Zeropoint]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

I think the big sticking point for most people is the perception that hitting anything containing explosives will make it explode

 

Heck, if people have seen a movie or TV show or two, they have the perception that hitting ANYTHING will make it explode.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

Heck' date=' if people have seen a movie or TV show or two, they have the perception that hitting ANYTHING will make it explode.[/quote']

 

Point taken.

 

That reminds me of a movie I saw back in the mid-'80s that my buddy and I turned into a drinking game. Every time a car exploded without hitting anything, you took a drink. Cars were flying off the road right, left, and center, and every time it was *drives off a cliff* then *BOOM!* about three seconds after it became airborne. We could not deduce any logical reason these cars could've had for exploding like that. I just suppose the laws of physics in that world stated "Airborn Car=Explosion".

 

That or "People, the pyrotechnicians have arrived and they doubled our order for explosives. Someone in accounting paid them in advance and they have a "No Returns" policy. I want everybody in re-write in fifteen minutes so we can figure out where we can add more explosions."

[/hijack]

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

Oh, I almost forgot. Almost half a conventional bomb's weight is explosive (rough figure -- do not try at home). I suppose a nuke has at least a quarter of it's total mass as explosives. The rest would be the bomb casing, the nuclear materials, and the triggering mechanism. BTW, these are all guesstimates. Like any good scientist I expect my figures to be within an order of magnitude of the correct figures.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

Oh, I almost forgot. Almost half a conventional bomb's weight is explosive (rough figure -- do not try at home). I suppose a nuke has at least a quarter of it's total mass as explosives. The rest would be the bomb casing, the nuclear materials, and the triggering mechanism. BTW, these are all guesstimates. Like any good scientist I expect my figures to be within an order of magnitude of the correct figures.

 

So, if you estimate that one quarter of the bomb's total mass is explosives, then you are pretty sure that the actual amount of explosives is somewhere between .025 and 2.5 times the bomb's total mass?

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

So' date=' if you estimate that one quarter of the bomb's total mass is explosives, then you are pretty sure that the actual amount of explosives is somewhere between .025 and 2.5 times the bomb's total mass?[/quote']

 

Absolutely! (I minored in Astronomy -- within an order of magnitude was, at the time at least, "close enough!" of course, it's been 30 years since I attended college so things might've changed in the meantime.

[Oruncrest]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

 

Repeat after me everyone: "In a supers game, nukes are not unstoppable magic death artifacts."

 

( actually, they aren't in the real world either. . . )

 

...And I {might disagree}, too, in part because I've only seen one other use of a nuke-like weapon in comics (against Supes in the DKR sequel, and Supes survived because, well, he's frakin' Superman, though IIRC it did put a serious hurt on him)...

 

IIRC that was a 'special' nuke, powerful enough to wipe out electronics halfway around the planet, so it was likely to hurt a little more than the 40 megaton Nuke Supes took in SUPERMAN v2 #9 (Sept. 1987).

 

Not that Supes was a slouch back in the '40s, either. During one battle with Lex Luthor tries to get rid ofe the Man of Steel with an 'atomic bomb'. Needless to say, he failed.

 

... and in part possibly because I'm not exactly understanding what you're saying' date=' and even in part because I don't know as much about nukes and other WMDs as I might like to think. Based on what I do know (of both nukes and the HERO System game), the stats for a nuke explosion in the [i']Equipment Guide[/i] seemed perfectly fine.

I mean, for starters, how many supers comics (or other fiction/genre) characters have survived a hit from a nuke, even if just barely?

What percentage of real world people who were caught in a nuke blast survived (even if just barely)?

What do you think the stats for a nuke should be, and why?

 

I've always fond of the stats Steve Long wrote up in the HERO Almanac II; they cover all the effects of a nuke instead of just saying 'The PC takes 20d6 KA accumulated damage from all the effects.' (Yes, I know about the desire to KISS, but it's not unheard of for a player character to be immune to one effect (say the fireball) but would be ripped to shreds by the pressure wave. How do you represent that with a single dice roll?). My only bone was that I felt the stats were a little too high. I mean the 3 major effects (Fireball, Shockwave, & Pressure Wave) were each 20d6. To be fair, Steve said he erred on the side of Overkill, but Daaayyynnnggg...

 

So I tweaked and modified his writeup and when HERO went to 5th ed, I tweaked it again and when the subject of nukes reared it's head in 2004, I posted it.

 

Since then, I've realized that I've underestimated the deadliness of this monster. My test victim in the prior post was the Abhrams Tank from FRED (16 /20 DEF, 19 BODY) and it's crew (0 rDEF, 10 BODY). I believed that the crew could benefit somewhat from the 20 DEF & 19 BODY of the tank, but I forgot that the Indirect advantage would enable the heat & fire to ignore not only the higher DEF, but once it breached that DEF, the BODY as well (I.e. the crew took full damage, not blunted by the tank's DEF or BODY). The crew was reduced to free-floating particles (-36 BODY) on the first segment of the explosion. The tank itself followed (losing 25 BODY in the first segment, and another 144 in the next, reducing it to -150 BODY) the next segment. With this bomb, if your PC doesn't have a rDEF of 40+, you might as well start making up a new character.

 

Oh, and it you're wondering if the Abhrams from The Ultimate Vehicle would've fared any better, I have to say yes - it was only reduced to -144 BODY...

[Oruncrest]

Law of Inherent Combustibility

 

Heck' date=' if people have seen a movie or TV show or two, they have the perception that hitting ANYTHING will make it explode.[/quote']

From the Laws of Japanese Animation:

 

#11 - Law of Inherent Combustibility

Everything explodes. Everything.

 

First Corollary -

Anything that explodes bulges first.

 

Second Corollary -

Large cities are the most explosive substances

known to human science. Tokyo in particular

seems to be the most unstable of these cities,

sometimes referred to as "The Matchstick City".

[Metaphysician]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

Pretty much what they said. Local radioactive contamination is a mix dispersal of the portion of the bomb that didn't fiss, fission byproducts, and neutron-induced instability in random nearby matter. I'm honestly not sure which would produce more raw radiation, though my instinct is to say the first two are the worst. After all, before the the stuff is blown up, the mass of the fission core acts to shield against its own radiation.

 

As for supers and ambient radiation, really, even if they don't have LS: High Radiation, the guy with CON 30+ really should be less effected than the average CON 8-10 human.

[Alliertes]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

For our campaigns, we have a simple rule for such situations--we call it the "enough rule". "How much damage do I take?" "Enough." The essence of KISS.

 

A couple more factors to consider though, folks, if it's Nazi's buying the bomb--is it a WW2 era design? If so--it used a hollow cylinder/plug design, and was NOT sub-critical mass. The conventional explosive was to drive the plug into the hole in the cylinder, thereby achieving critical mass. Therefore, if a brick tried to use the old "pound it flat to disarm" method--and hit it in the wrong spot, it could quite possibly trigger the full nuclear detonation. Time to check for unluck, though I'd recommend that one be a straight GM call.

The other thing to consider is--the soap and water decon is for fallout, not plutonium. The field manual treatment for plutonium contamination is immediate high amputation of the contaminated limb. Plutonium is one of the most deadly substances known to science, and the lethal mass is about the side of a pin head. Even supers wouldn't be casually shrugging that off.

[Hagadorn]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

yeh, check any of the characters for radiation immunity.

 

Then tell them to draw up new characters as their old characters hopefully die quickly. The unlucky brick might be tough enough to have to endure a month long death as her body shuts down and every cell in her body slowly dies as he immune system attacks the irradiated cells. Her body literally devouring itself from the inside out as she is driven insane from the pain...

 

Heaven help her if she has a body regen. because then she'd stuck in a constant state of dying/healing. forever cursed to live in pain and misery until she ends her own life or someone else ends it for her...

 

But then again, I'm a nasty horrible person, you might just want to stick a set amount of damage on it and call it day, make it big enough that people without specific defenses Vs radiation are quite likely to be close to dead and any who are unlucky enough MIGHT die. Otherwise you could end up with the 'Invulnerable PC' syndrome.

 

I'm of the opinion that If my players mess with nukes, I get to punish them for gross stupidity.

[Superskrull]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

So, I take it you don't ever intend to have nukes involved in your game at all?

[Hagadorn]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

Not as a major part of the story, no. They did encounter a massive biological warfare ICBM. But they did the intelligent thing and let the Tony Stark rip off try and abort the launch sequence.

 

If they go looking for nukes and trouble, I'm sure its well within their powers to find some.

[TrinSarda]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

Look, if you want a realistic game about nukes and how to stop them/not die from exposure to them, why are you looking in a Champions board?

Just give them all -1 Str, Body & Con, then double it the day after exposure, then leave it. If they get cleaned thoroughly within a week then they are fine. Any kind of residual radioactivity, such as them giving someone radiation poisoning an hour from now with a handshake, doesn't happen because they're Superheroes. This is the kind of stuff Superheroes do. (And if you don't mention the 'clean up within the week and your stats go back to normal' then remember-the players are entirely capable of electing a new GM and keeping the game running without you. But I'm sure you're not so foolish as to do that.)

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Wait - you punch WHAT?!? (or what would the damage from an atomic bomb be?)

 

Good thread. However, I think one fundamental aspect of all this needs to be mentioned.

 

In KODT, it is quoted as 'Gary Jackson's Fourth Law Of Player Dynamics'. Any nuclear weapon in any RP scenario will inevitably be set off by a Player-Character.

 

In simpler terms, you let your PCs near a nuke? What were you THINKING????????????????