What stats would you give depleted uranium lacing, Less strength but about 5 times denser,. Options

[JaronK]

Ceramic Bone Lacing seems pretty obvious as a choice. Titanium/Rubidium Alloy Lacing would be stronger than titanium, but heavier. Some sort of advanced Polymer Lacing would pass MAD scanners and provide extream resistance to breakage, plus very little weight, but probably wouldn't increase damage at all.

JaronK

[Cray74]

[JaronK]

I brought it up because as I recall, Titanium Rubidium alloy steel is a far stronger form of steel. From chemistry class, I believe that adding more rubidium to the mix raises the hardness, but also the brittleness of the metal, and makes it harder to work with. The weight thing was just a guess because I knew titanium was very light weight (comparitively)... I don't actually know that Rubidum Titanium alloy is heavier.

It's been a long time since chemistry class, though.

[Nikoli]

Funny thing is, our bones do already contain magnesium and potassium, and many folks ingest it on a daily basis, bannanas anyone?

[Traks]

There was some major breakthrough about making metal harder than diamond.
At least there was such information in few places, but maybe they decided that it costs too much to use widely. It was such a long time ago that I do not remember any more details.

[kevyn668]

So, why not Dikoted Titanium (or aluminum)? Could you apply the Dikote before the surgery and then slap it in?

[JaronK]

I remember that. Basically, the metal was alligned so that all the molecules faced in one direction... or something like that. The end result was that the metal was far far stronger, though they had a tough time doing it to anything much larger than a penny. Side effects included transperency in some metals (I think copper did that?) and a few other unusual characteristics. I believe they did that about 4 or 5 years ago, maybe more.

If you laced with that, you'd be far far stronger... but the cost would be astronomical. I could see rules for a spur made like that, probably with bonuses greater than that of a Dikoted spur, but of course you couldn't put the Dikote process over the top of it (since it would actually make it worse, like coating titanium with copper).

JaronK

[kevyn668]

I don't know anything about chemistry and less about metallurgy. I was just tossing ideas out there.... :)

[JaronK]

Well, I'm asuming here that Bone Lacing means integrating the material into the bone itself. Therefor, there's really not a surface to Dikote. Maybe you could Dikote the bones themselves, but bones need to be porus to allow blood to get through them, so that wouldn't work either.

JaronK

[Arethusa]

Wouldn't aligning all the molecules also create a noticable magnetic effect?

In any case, you can't dikote bone lacing because installing bone lacing is not a process of scopping out your favorite internal organs, pulling out your bones, coating them, and putting you all back together. Only sane way to do it is with nanites and a reservoir of raw material. I guess you could conceivably diamond lace your bones, however, using about the same process.

[JaronK]

Magnetic Effects would be under the category of "other unusual characteristics." I'm not sure what kind of effect they'd have... possibly a huge personal magnetic field that would cause all MAD scanners within a 12 mile radius to go off, or possibly none at all... it would depend on the metal (from what I remember, the effects were very different on different metals... I can't remember which metal did what though). It would be up to an idividual DM to make up what happened with this process with different metals... could be a lot of fun to come up with ideas, I should imagine. Remember, however, that the process is very difficult in larger objects, and that it's hard to shape the metals finely. Might make a really neat knife though.

Remembering more of the process, I believe the theory behind it was that metal is essencially made of crystal-like chunks, which are very small. They used intense preasure to crush those chunks into even smaller molecule sized bits, then allign all those bits with intense magnetic fields or something along those lines. I'm not sure why that makes it stronger, but evidently it does. Some things turned transperant, some became strangely flexible, some even gained object memory (bend them a little, they bend back to how they were). All became very difficult to break and most became very hard to move at all. We're talking increased stress resistance by a factor of 50 or more... you can imagine how fun that would be to try and shape into anything useful. The process required huge roomsized machines just to work with penny-sized objects... but of course in the future you could assume that advancing technology made the process cheaper, and capable of being used on larger things.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I know they now have materials that have very good object memory (there was some satelite idea where they'd shape the satelite out of this stuff, crush it flat, launch it, then let it out of the box and it would return to satelite shape and start operating). That might be fun to lace with... maybe it would follow the rules for plastic lacing, but it would set off MAD scanners, and would increase your healing rate from any serious or worse wounds because your bones would set themselves automatically.

Well, it's a thought, anyway.

JaronK

[Cray74]

[Cray74]

[JaronK]

I seem to remember it was a much more dramatic strength increase than 2-3 times... but again, this is working from distant memory. I think I read it originally in Discovery or... I think it was Science News? It would have been at least 5 years ago, come to think of it. I wouldn't know where to find it exactly, I just remember them talking about penny-sized copper being really funky, and lots of stuff with preasure and crushing things into really small bits. Anyway, assuming future tech gets better, we can assume the process gets more interesting, so the GM could have a lot of fun with rules for such technology.

I think the best bet, though, would be some advanced Ceramic lacing. It would be lightweight and strong, and it wouldn't set off MADs.

JaronK

[Fygg Nuuton]

-4 intelligence to any runner who asks about it :)

[cutter07]

I love how people get hot headed over what is "dangerous" in a make-believe game where you can take a panther cannon in the face and live. :rotfl:

Depleted uranium is depleted of radiation, hence the name. It can hold a very small amount but less then your TV/CRT gives off. Even then it could be shielded.

While you armchair radiologists are at it figure out you can ceramic lacing put on your bones considering its neither flexiable and requires intese heat from a kiln to make.

[A Clockwork Lime]

[cutter07]

Lime I hate to inform you your a victum of urban myth.

M1A1 tank rounds as well as some artillery use depleted uranium shells with no protection gear. Yes a small percentage of Gulf War GIs have been affected (ie Gulfwar syndrome) but its been tested as safe for unprotected handling (ie bear hands).

If you don't want it in your game, fine. I didn't ask if you would allow it, only what stats it would have. Don't make shit up to excuse it.

As for its properties its about as hard as straight iron. Sorta brittle but heavy, more so then even gold/plat/lead. Getting hit by someone laced with it should hurt.

[Kanada Ten]

Cutter, why don't you do some reasearch before claiming something?

[Panzergeist]

Here's the stats I would give depleted Uranium lacing: Every day, roll body, TN of 12, do not use the rule of six. If you fail, you die, because Uranium is a heavy metal, like lead, which makes it highly toxic. Oh, and the constant low-level radiation would give you cancer. Oh, and if anything hit it at high velocity, such as a bullet, depleted Uranium vaporizes, ensuring that it would be absorbed into your body and poison you to death.

[Kanada Ten]

[Arethusa]

Uh, cutter, are you aware that U238 is not the only thing that makes up depleted uranium? DU may be primarily U238, but it's only depleted to a point of economic infeasiblity. It may be useless in a reactor, but it's still got plenty of radioactive isotopes (like, say, U235) hanging around to be an issue. The reason no one cares about it being used in tank rounds is that getting hit with one tends to give you more immediate problems than cancer. The blood poisoning, the guaranteed cancer, the fact that it's heavy enough to warp your bone structure, the fact that it is pyrotechnically ignitable, the fact that it is not terribly strong anyway, and the fact that it is stupid are pretty much enough to make it one very solid bad fucking idea.

Also, Cray, I'm aware that not all metals have the right electron configurations for magnetism. Just seems like it'd be a common issue in a lot of metals that you would see for the types of uses that were proposed. Sorry that wasn't clear.

[JaronK]

Cutter, while the radioactivity of DU is not as bad as many people think, the reason it's reasonably safe to handle is that your skin can absorb a great deal of radiation, enough that DU isn't such a problem in that way. However, if it were inside your body, the radiation would easily be leathal.

But as I said earlier in this thread, it's not the radiation that would kill you... that would take too long. It's the toxic effects that would do it, and very quickly too, because DU behaves much like lead in your body. The problem with DU rounds in the ground in many countries is not the radiation (you'll take some damage from that, but it's not much worse than many other souces), but rather that powdered DU can be breathed in, and it will kill you from inside your lungs.

Anyway, DU being placed inside the human body would easily be leathal, though it is worth noting that a radio placed in your head would likely have similar effects (hell, a cell phone next to your head has a high rate of cancer causing... imagine one that's always on and inside your head!).

As for ceramic lacing... I don't know how you'd do it. That's the Science Fiction part... I'm not even sure how you'd get any of the other materials into someone's bones without killing them. However, assuming you could somehow get it into their body, it would be pretty decent. It would be very strong, light weight, and non-magnetic. If I were GMing and I wanted an very advanced material that was being used in an experiemental new bone lacing process, I'd probably say it was an advanced ceramic bone lacing. Unlike others involved in this thread, I'm not actually a materials engineer (computer scientist, actor, and theatrical technician, actually), but I have a bit of scientific background, and it's enough to make a half decent guess.

JaronK

[cutter07]

[Kanada Ten]

Wouldn't the lead casing kill the person? Sure, it would protect against radiation, but not lead poisoning. The cortex bomb is made with high resistance trigger requiring double the body's normal charge (thus requiring a simple capacitor to detonate). Don't get struck by lightning though.