Re: COLONIAL WEAPONS

Flak Magnet wrote:

> I have only read the 2nd Ed Full Thrust rules so far, but it mentions
> that the battery weapons are most likely particle accelerators.  So
> what kind of traumatic "stopping power" would a personal particle
> accelerator have?
>
> We don't know.  We haven't built any yet.  Are they able to be made
> effective weapons for an infantryman/colonist?  Dunno.  Would they be
> too fragile for colonist use?  Dunno.

It turns out that the IEEE report on the therac-25 medical accelerator
is the first
link provided google.  Although the therac-25 is not an infantry weapon
and was most
certainly NOT designed to kill more than tumors, six accidents due to
poorly
designed software resulted in deaths.  Further research would be needed
to determine
if anyone else has been killed by particle beams.  The individuals
received
localised doses of between ten and twenty-five thousand rads (LD50 for a
whole body
dose is 500rads).  The patients did experience sensations similar to
mild
electrocution, but the report does not go into whether the patients
suffered any
immediate, short term incapacitation.  The particle beam consisted of
electrons
accelerated through a potential difference of twenty-five million volts,
but I would
have to find the correspondance between rads and joules, and worse
(given that I am
sure that a rad is damage per unit volume) coroners' reports describing
the extent
of the damage, before any calculations could be performed to determine
the energy
delivered to the target.

The cause of death in each case was complications of tissue necrosis and
the
patients endured for several weeks before succumbing and the full extent
of the
damage took several days to appear.  Based on this, it is not proven
that particle
beam weapons would have any stopping power at all.  As anti-tank
weapons, they kick
ass, as that fine beam is turned into a claymore as it passes through
the armor, and
resulting cascade particles will have an even stronger intraction with
the
occuppants than the original beam.  Vehicles will need VERY thick armor
and not
enough armor is significantly worse than none.

>
>
> (Here's where people line up to say that I'm wrong and start citing
> hard sci-fi about particle beams and the physics behind them, trying
> to stop, you see.)

Who needs hard sci-fi when the lawsuits have already been settled out of
court.
Particle accelerators have already killed people.