Wapsi Square Forum

Sidhekin wrote:

zachariah wrote:If these crystals are so tough then how could the explosion have destroyed them when Malaposi blew up. Doesn't that mean there are now millions of empty crystals scattered around the area just waiting to be found? This makes it seem like the self destruct was only there to destroy the controls and kill intruders without loosing the data.

The crystals are, as you note, empty. Atsali had released the Etheitians. So the data would have been lost not in the scattering of crystals, but (with Atsali) as the intruders were killed.

I also note that while a supernova is said to maybe being capable of "ending" the "torture", there is also conjecture that "someone" could break the crystal, thereby "multiplying" said "torture".

The Mapimi explosion may have scattered billions of (empty) shards around the area.

I think we need to have some closure in what exactly happened at Mapimi... Was it an explosion, or a meltdown. Judging by the results, you might not thing there is much difference, but the distinction is important. Atsali stated a meltdown was in progress and a conglomeration of uranium density large enough to achieve critical mass would do just that... melt down. A critical mass explosion is somewhat different and totally differently arrive at. There are two types of triggers for nuclear explosions... a gun type trigger that fires one sub critical mass into another sub critical mass to almost instantaneously achieve critical mass in such a short time that massive amounts of energy are released (The Little Boy Bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a Uranium 238 gun type device.). The second type is the implosion device. sub critical masses are arranged in a sphere with a sphere of shaped charge explosives around it. The detonation of the shaped charges compresses the sub critical masses into a critical mass almost instantaneously. (The second WWII device, Fat Man, was an implosion device using Plutonium for it's sub critical masses.).

The criticality also depends on the purity of the fissionable materials. According to Wiki, 20% U-235 would require 400 kilograms to achieve spontansous criticality, while 15% U235 would require over 600kg. (1kg = 2.2 pounds).

That being said, the release of the Ethetians initiated the reaction... Meltdown is the most likely candidate here as an explosion would have been instantaneous, leaving no time to react whatsoever. In a meltdown, the fuel slowly reaches a critical state, heats up and begins to melt everything around it (hence the term). The more fuel added to the critical mass, the hotter it gets and the more dangerous it becomes. Unless it was lead crystal, the chances that Kath and Atsali received lethal doses of radiation are pretty high.

Jabberwonky wrote:I'd like to think that if I were to go to that extreme for revenge that I would take the time and effort to tailor the invidial revenge motif to the individual trangression.
I'd like to be remembered for personal. thoughtful service.

A true prince of quality you are, sir!

On the subject of revenge - I'm not at all sure that anything that Lily, or Kath did here was done out of a desire for revenge. Remember, Lily hadn't known what the Nu Gui was, or what it had done (to her, her children, or the Etheitians) until after the Nu Gui had been Hoovered into the no-way-out storage crystal. Kath knew what it was, and some of what it had done, but not much about what it had done to her personally... and there's no evidence yet that Kath knew that the ghost was targeted for a one-way trip into Thupville.

Even Bud, who was able to deduce a lot more about what role the Nu Gui must have played, doesn't seem to me to have been driven by a desire for revenge (at least, not primarily).

Instead, the primary motivation seems to have been "stop it from doing even more harm!". Expel, contain, and control.

Yes, they'll have their (poetic) revenge... the evil spirit has been hoisted by its own petard. But, they weren't seeking revenge. It just worked out that way.

This is very different than the Nu Gui's vengeance upon the Lanthians, which was deliberately chosen and meticulously planned and worked out over a period of thousands of years... revenge served so cold it was frozen helium-ice solid.

If there's any one of the Six who might have made a deliberate choice to be vengeful, it might be Brandi. She was the one who must have placed the empty crystal in the stargate, where Lily and Suzi would find it... and it seems likely that she would have had a choice between a carved write-only memory and a fully-functional one. Her selection might have been vengeful, or just some Let's Be Really Sure It Stays Caught pragmatism.

eee wrote:Um... No, all those involved are NOT all dead and souls free. If I understand Atsali's babbling correctly, Lily is one of the six mothers of the quads. She was dumped in the desert to die with the other five, and did; but came back as a vampire. She's had thousands of years of suffering because of the NG.

Yes, and those in the crystals also have thousands of years of suffering, probably worse since they couldn't get out. Also, Lily could have ended her suffering at any time by destroying herself. It can't be all that hard since they seem to get knocked off by other supernaturals all the time. All she had to do was tee-off someone like Phix. She didn't. So she is also responsible for her own state of being. The Etheitians didn't even have that option.

eee wrote:There's also another problem. You seem to be assuming the Na Gui is just a misguided soul. In the Wapsiverse, it appears to be a force dedicated to evil and harming others. She a rabid beast who CAN'T stop biting others. Released after a billion billion years she'll STILL try to inflict pain on those she regards as enemies. Eternal imprisonment until the end of time would appear to be the only option...

This may be true, but I don't know what NG is. All I know she is a self-aware being of some sort who is intellectually aware of her confinement and situation. Imprisonment may be the only viable solution at present, but that does not mean it has to be one of torment. Surely there is a way to lock her up and knock her out as well. I would think it possible, in billions of years someone will find a way to make her/it well. If not, then destroy her outright. What is the point of torture if rehabilitation is not possible, ever? While putting her through what her victims went through may be satisfying, it makes you no better in the end as you enjoy her suffering. Remember, the GGs did horrible things and were a "force of evil" as well. And look at them now.

Sidhekin wrote:

zachariah wrote:If these crystals are so tough then how could the explosion have destroyed them when Mapimi blew up. Doesn't that mean there are now millions of empty crystals scattered around the area just waiting to be found? This makes it seem like the self destruct was only there to destroy the controls and kill intruders without loosing the data.

The crystals are, as you note, empty. Atsali had released the Etheitians. So the data would have been lost not in the scattering of crystals, but (with Atsali) as the intruders were killed. I also note that while a supernova is said to maybe being capable of "ending" the "torture", there is also conjecture that "someone" could break the crystal, thereby "multiplying" said "torture". The Mapimi explosion may have scattered billions of (empty) shards around the area.

All of which makes me wonder, what DID the crystals contain in the first place? The soul (essence of the individual) only, or that, and some sort of data matrix containing the entire physical body requirements. A machine would then reconstitute the body from available elements. So it's not the same body, but one just like they had. Maybe force grown from DNA data even. They were data crystals, so I would think it would be something like that. But who knows.

DilyV wrote:You always played the Paladin in D&D when you were a kid didn't you? LOL

While I was, and am still, a nerd, I never engaged in that sort of nerdatude. I rarely play games of any kind. But that does remind me of a couple of jokes I saw. I'll condense them into one here:

Reasons you don't have a dating life:
... You're a 10th level Paladin.
... Clitoris? I'm not familiar with that Pokemon.

Jabberwonky wrote: I'd like to think that if I were to go to that extreme for revenge that I would take the time and effort to tailor the invidial revenge motif to the individual trangression.

I'd like to be remembered for personal. thoughtful service.

Heh.

Let Christopher Lee explain it all...

KnightDelight wrote:... Clitoris? I'm not familiar with that Pokemon.

I now have a new SlashDot tag line. Thank you!

Oh no.


O gods...



Bud.

I thinks "Sweet Dreams" would've made a better title.

The spider crystal will likely either end up on display in the museum, to be gawked at by endless field trips of bored fidgeting kids and bored texting teenagers.
Or put in a crate next to other crates piled upon more crates in a non-descript warehouse in an "Area" we don't talk about.

Those storage crystals sound tougher than natural diamonds. Probably Golem made.

Holo-Moriarty.
HA, One of the best STNG holo-deck episodes.
I vaguely recall that, that was the first, but not the last time, that the Enterprise "birthed" an AI. The second was the computer's own plan and the AI was free-roaming.

Clitoris?
Isn't that a new Bey-Blade?

Yamara wrote:"Oft evil will evil mar."

I recall an interpretation of the Lord of the Rings that pointed out how often the villainous intentions of the baddies led to good side effects--Saruman roused Rohan by his attack, Sauron's work to destroy the Army of the Lords of the West forced Sam and Frodo to march close to Mount Doom, Gollum's attempt to betray Frodo and get the ring after Shelob was finished led to the orcs of the guard tower to kill one another trying to get the mithral coat, allowing Sam to rescue Frodo and slip into Mordor, and so on.

Dave wrote:

Wdot wrote:Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Nü Gui crystállum aráneam wgah'nagl fhtagn. (With apologies to H.P. Lovecraft)
They get out. They always get out. Punishment yeah, but rehabilitation is better in the long run. If it's not possible, then death/oblivion. Because if not, billions of years from now, some beings are going to be running around trying to prevent the foretold resurrection of the dread SpiderGoddess, Nü Gui, from destroying the world.

Buffy: This is how many apocalypses for us now?
Giles: Oh, uh, well, six at least. Feels like a hundred.

You have a point, Wdot. "Forever" and "never" are such absolutes, and the world doesn't actually seem to deliver on them all that often. There's always a loophole, it seems.

And, when it is promised (as in the Christian Heaven and Hell), many object to the idea as "unfair."

"Pete - I'm seeing a lot of people on the streets that I told you not to let in. What's going on?"

"Boss, I tried. But when I tell 'em they can't come in, they sneak around to the side door and your mom lets 'em in."

DilyV wrote:

Sidhekin wrote:. . .

The Mapimi explosion may have scattered billions of (empty) shards around the area.

I think we need to have some closure in what exactly happened at Mapimi... Was it an explosion, or a meltdown. Judging by the results, you might not thing there is much difference, but the distinction is important. Atsali stated a meltdown was in progress and a conglomeration of uranium density large enough to achieve critical mass would do just that... melt down. A critical mass explosion is somewhat different and totally differently arrive at. There are two types of triggers for nuclear explosions... a gun type trigger that fires one sub critical mass into another sub critical mass to almost instantaneously achieve critical mass in such a short time that massive amounts of energy are released (The Little Boy Bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a Uranium 238 gun type device.). The second type is the implosion device. sub critical masses are arranged in a sphere with a sphere of shaped charge explosives around it. The detonation of the shaped charges compresses the sub critical masses into a critical mass almost instantaneously. (The second WWII device, Fat Man, was an implosion device using Plutonium for it's sub critical masses.).

The criticality also depends on the purity of the fissionable materials. According to Wiki, 20% U-235 would require 400 kilograms to achieve spontansous criticality, while 15% U235 would require over 600kg. (1kg = 2.2 pounds).

That being said, the release of the Ethetians initiated the reaction... Meltdown is the most likely candidate here as an explosion would have been instantaneous, leaving no time to react whatsoever. In a meltdown, the fuel slowly reaches a critical state, heats up and begins to melt everything around it (hence the term). The more fuel added to the critical mass, the hotter it gets and the more dangerous it becomes. Unless it was lead crystal, the chances that Kath and Atsali received lethal doses of radiation are pretty high.

I don't have the maths for it, but I also recall Tom Clancy's novel The Sum of All Fears, with a nuc in Denver Stadium that, due to the terrorists' bombmaker's incompetence, was only a fizzle. Instead of destroying Denver, it merely fried everyone in the stadium...

Thing was, there were so many satellite uplinks outside the stadium that the EMP knocked most of them out - rendering most of the US "blind".

bmonk wrote:

DilyV wrote:

Sidhekin wrote:. . .

The Mapimi explosion may have scattered billions of (empty) shards around the area.

I think we need to have some closure in what exactly happened at Mapimi... Was it an explosion, or a meltdown. Judging by the results, you might not thing there is much difference, but the distinction is important. Atsali stated a meltdown was in progress and a conglomeration of uranium density large enough to achieve critical mass would do just that... melt down. A critical mass explosion is somewhat different and totally differently arrive at. There are two types of triggers for nuclear explosions... a gun type trigger that fires one sub critical mass into another sub critical mass to almost instantaneously achieve critical mass in such a short time that massive amounts of energy are released (The Little Boy Bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a Uranium 238 gun type device.). The second type is the implosion device. sub critical masses are arranged in a sphere with a sphere of shaped charge explosives around it. The detonation of the shaped charges compresses the sub critical masses into a critical mass almost instantaneously. (The second WWII device, Fat Man, was an implosion device using Plutonium for it's sub critical masses.).

The criticality also depends on the purity of the fissionable materials. According to Wiki, 20% U-235 would require 400 kilograms to achieve spontansous criticality, while 15% U235 would require over 600kg. (1kg = 2.2 pounds).

That being said, the release of the Ethetians initiated the reaction... Meltdown is the most likely candidate here as an explosion would have been instantaneous, leaving no time to react whatsoever. In a meltdown, the fuel slowly reaches a critical state, heats up and begins to melt everything around it (hence the term). The more fuel added to the critical mass, the hotter it gets and the more dangerous it becomes. Unless it was lead crystal, the chances that Kath and Atsali received lethal doses of radiation are pretty high.

I don't have the maths for it, but I also recall Tom Clancy's novel The Sum of All Fears, with a nuc in Denver Stadium that, due to the terrorists' bombmaker's incompetence, was only a fizzle. Instead of destroying Denver, it merely fried everyone in the stadium...

Yes... too much... tritium was it? Something about the design that was borked and caused more of a lower grade detonation that was intended.

DilyV wrote:too much... tritium was it? Something about the design that was borked and caused more of a lower grade detonation that was intended.

Helium poisoning.

Some of the tritium (Hydrogen 3) had undergone natural decay into Helium 3. Helium-3 is a neutron poison... that is, it tends to capture neutrons during a nuclear reaction, but the neutrons don't trigger fission or fusion... they're lost from the nuclear cascade.

In the Clancy novel, the tritium used by the rogue bomb-builder had been stored for long enough for a significant amount of He-3 to accumulate. He was planning to filter and purify the tritium before loading it into the bomb assembly (one of the last steps), but hadn't mentioned this steps to the terrorists who were having him build the bomb. They murdered him (to silence him) and loaded the contaminated tritium themselves, and as a result the weapon "fizzled" when fired... the primary fission explosion was cut off before it reached full output, and tritium fusion did not occur. It ended up behaving as a "boosted" A-bomb rather than as an H-bomb.

I was rather surprised to learn recently that in many "hydrogen bombs" relatively little of the actual energy release comes from the hydrogen fusion. Rather, the main purpose of the fusion is to release a large number of neutrons, which are captured by the "tamper" (a shell of uranium, often U-238 which need not be "enriched" with U-235). The tamper then undergoes fission, and it's this later-stage fission which releases the bulk of the energy.

"Neutron" bombs omit the tamper, so you end up with a large burst of neutrons being released from the fusion reaction, but (comparatively) little heat and blast.

Dave wrote:

DilyV wrote:too much... tritium was it? Something about the design that was borked and caused more of a lower grade detonation that was intended.

Helium poisoning.

Some of the tritium (Hydrogen 3) had undergone natural decay into Helium 3. Helium-3 is a neutron poison... that is, it tends to capture neutrons during a nuclear reaction, but the neutrons don't trigger fission or fusion... they're lost from the nuclear cascade.

In the Clancy novel, the tritium used by the rogue bomb-builder had been stored for long enough for a significant amount of He-3 to accumulate. He was planning to filter and purify the tritium before loading it into the bomb assembly (one of the last steps), but hadn't mentioned this steps to the terrorists who were having him build the bomb. They murdered him (to silence him) and loaded the contaminated tritium themselves, and as a result the weapon "fizzled" when fired... the primary fission explosion was cut off before it reached full output, and tritium fusion did not occur. It ended up behaving as a "boosted" A-bomb rather than as an H-bomb.

I was rather surprised to learn recently that in many "hydrogen bombs" relatively little of the actual energy release comes from the hydrogen fusion. Rather, the main purpose of the fusion is to release a large number of neutrons, which are captured by the "tamper" (a shell of uranium, often U-238 which need not be "enriched" with U-235). The tamper then undergoes fission, and it's this later-stage fission which releases the bulk of the energy.

"Neutron" bombs omit the tamper, so you end up with a large burst of neutrons being released from the fusion reaction, but (comparatively) little heat and blast.

On the other hand, look at Castle Bravo... a miscalculation in the amount of Lithium 6/7 available turned a 6 mt shot into a 15 mt shot. I think Upshot Knothole shot Harry was a pretty bad one too... lots of downwinders got contaminated by fall out. Indeed, Most of the fallout went over Saint George Utah. The entire cast of the Movie "The Mongols" Starring John Wayne was contaminated during the dusty battle scenes where fall out was kicked up. Nearly all of the cast died of Cancer in later years.

DilyV wrote:I think Upshot Knothole shot Harry was a pretty bad one too... lots of downwinders got contaminated by fall out. Indeed, Most of the fallout went over Saint George Utah. The entire cast of the Movie "The Mongols" Starring John Wayne was contaminated during the dusty battle scenes where fall out was kicked up. Nearly all of the cast died of Cancer in later years.

Um, no. IMDB doesn't list any film called The Mongols for Wayne. It lists a 1961 Italian film by that title (shot in Serbia) starring Jack Palance.

Ah - the actual title is The Conqueror (i was sure that i did remember something with Wayne and Mongols). The Straight Dope (about which i am sometimes a touch cynical, having caught them badly out in he past - though at this remove i can't recall on what) says

Of the 220 persons who worked on The Conqueror on location in Utah in 1955, 91 had contracted cancer as of the early 1980s and 46 died of it, including stars John Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead, and director Dick Powell. Experts say under ordinary circumstances only 30 people out of a group of that size should have gotten cancer. The cause? No one can say for sure, but many attribute the cancers to radioactive fallout from U.S. atom bomb tests in nearby Nevada. The whole ghastly story is told in The Hollywood Hall of Shame by Harry and Michael Medved.