Fallout 3 - Official Site Launched

Why did you people stopped talking about vaginas? That was a lot more interesting. Prime should write one of those technical documents to explain how V.A.G.I.N.A.S. work. I guarantee nerds all over could benefit from that knowledge.
 
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Regarding the mini mushroom clouds, you have a convincing argument, and apparently you can create small mushroom clouds even with conventional explosives (and without using trickery as in the case of the gasoline explosion).

Regular high explosives don't produce fireballs, so you won't get a mushroom cloud either. Incendiary munitions do. A fertilizer bomb produces a spectacular one. The gasoline-and-gunpowder trick is a type of simple incendiary bomb.

I messed with explosives a fair bit back when I was in the army. I was in combat engineering, which was mostly about blowing stuff up, so I got to see up close what they look like. White phosphorus at night look just plain lovely, like a big silver fountain...
 
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@Prime Junta: heh, I see you know what I meant with the "sufficiently advanced technology argument". I might point out that the device seems not to be able to create a chain reaction, and the energy used for mass neutron spallation (worsened by the fact that the neutrons go in all directions, not only to the center) would have to come from somewhere, but I am sure that the "Sufficiently Advenced Technology Corporation" can produce anything it wants, with components designed to do exactly what it wants them to do, as long as they want them to do it. Funny way of describing a mini nuclear bomb with components ten times more unrealistic than itself, though.

@all: Shame on you all for scaring away my good friend SexyLady!
 
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Funny way of describing a mini nuclear bomb with components ten times more unrealistic than itself, though.

Yeah, well, there is that. :)

I guess my real point is that Fallout isn't big on technological realism. If you start looking at it from that point of view, it falls apart pretty quickly. It's not even intended to be realistic: it's a pastiche of the Gernsback-style retro-futurist vision you had in the 50's. (I'm surprised they didn't include food pills.)

IMO you can make a better argument against the nuclear catapult from the setting consistency angle. However, without actually seeing what it's like and how it fits into the game, I think it's a bit premature. It's quite possible to devise a reasonably credible in-game rationale for it, after all.
 
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This goes for pretty much all sci-fi games/movies, because the people making them are not scientists. Personally I don't think it would be as fun if they were - realism can really ruin creativity/fantasy. The most fascinating fantasies are often those of a child, because they are never limited by what is possible and what is not.
 
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Hmm did a typo on the age entry and accidently got somkind of permaban from the official fallout site. Now I need to hassle around with proxies if I want to read the official site. Feels kinda stupid.
 
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zakhal said:
Hmm did a typo on the age entry and accidently got somkind of permaban from the official fallout site. Now I need to hassle around with proxies if I want to read the official site. Feels kinda stupid.

Have you tried simply erasing your cookies?
 
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@Prime Junta: regarding the G.E.C.K. it might well be an electronic library of sorts

Sidenote : The almost-died out German word "geck" means in English "dude" or "dandy" or so, as far as I know.
 
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@Prima Junta and @Maylander: I am still uncomfortable with the idea that nuclear weapons might be trivialised in the next Fallout game for the sake of the retro science fiction setting, whereas previous Fallouts took more of a thinking man's approach regarding the consequences of using them, but I agree that realism can not be the deciding argument here. Unfortunately, whether it fits the setting or not, complaining about it when the game is about to be finished will almost certainly achieve nothing, since at that point the main priority will likely be to remove bugs.

@Alrik Fassbauer: 'Geck' indeed is a word for 'dandy' in germany - 'dude' does not convey the same negative connotations as far as I know - and as you said, it is mostly extinct, occasionally appearing in classic literature, e.g. 'Nathan der Weise' by G. E. Lessing <== wisenheimer comment of the day
 
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About that nuclear hand grenade -- I did a bit of "research," and it appears that it's not that far beyond what we can do now. You could theoretically make a fission grenade out of Californium or Curium (although the shielding would be a significant technical challenge, and of course the stuff is absurdly expensive). More interesting, however, is an "isomer bomb" -- something that's based on triggered nuclear isomer decay (Hafnium 178m2 was mentioned) rather than fission, and has no lower size limit. This is being seriously researched by DARPA (among others). Theoretically, a golf-ball size bomb could release as much energy as 10 tons of TNT.

[ http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4049 ]

So, trivial or not, fitting the setting or not, a nuclear grenade doesn't appear to be physically impossible -- and a good deal more plausible than many objects known to be in the game.
 
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Another tidbit, about Davy Crockett that coyote mentioned: [ http://www.guntruck.com/DavyCrockett.html ]. Now *that's* a Fallout weapon if there ever was one!

The page also has a picture of a mushroom cloud from a 10-ton yield nuclear explosion.

I had better stop, or I'll get to the point of not just believing that a nuclear grenade is plausible, but actually wanting to *own* one...

KABOOM! hi-hi-hi-hi...
 
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Argh, now I do want one: [ http://www.paricenter.com/library/papers/gsponer.php ]

In a nutshell: another possibility for a nuclear grenade would be a pure fusion bomb. You'd need some way to trigger the fusion reaction without using the fission "detonator" that current thermonukes use; however, it appears that there are possibilities for managing just this. (Fusion doesn't have a critical mass, of course.)
 
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Thanks. The above three pages are an interesting read, with varying levels of madness.

Reading the last article, I got the impression that Dr. Andre Gsponer is trying the impossible by arguing against 4th generation nuclear weapons proliferation and insistently fishing for nuclear weapons research funding at the same time.
 
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