The damage is stun as opposed to physical, the spell is physically-based instead of mana-based. Different meanings of "physical".

As for the monofilament, a katana is pretty sharp, and the reason that it doesn't cut through things is friction on the flat part of the blade. While a "perfectly" sharp monoblade would slice better, there's no help on the blade friction.
And I think monfilament whips are weaker than they might appear is because they have negligible weight, so they don't cut very deep. You'd have to loop it around something to cut efficiently, which is hard for something like a barrier.

Dumpshock goes around and around on this particular ride every so often. Subjectively solid cases can be, and have been, made for both Physical and Stun.

Basically the answer is: "We don't know, please errata/FAQ it FanPro. In the meantime, our group declares it to be ____."

They are weaker than they might appear because for whatever reason science fiction writers have decided that it's superhard when it really just has a high tensile strength -- not the same thing. Kevlar and Spectra are "stronger than steel", but there's no way you're going to cut through steel with strands of Kevlar, no matter how thin.

Ah, ok. I never noticed that!


Thanks for the answers, guys!

It wouldn't neccessarily be too hard, if you held the whip by the handle and the balance tip and used it that way, so the balance tip doesn't get in the way.

After looking at the barrier stuff again - since the damage against barriers counts toward putting meter wide holes in stuff - I guess it would make sense to have the low DV. If you were trying to just cut through it, it would probably be decently easy.

One thing to remember about Monofilament wire is that - although it's technically only about a molecule in size and therefore unbeleivably thin, it's still wire.

Monofilament wiring does havoc on organic components because it's soft tissue. So, monofilament is good for skin, muscle, bone and even wood or plant matter, but against metal it will bend and even snap it it can't cut through the material's hardness.

If you start considering real physical factors, then you can chuck this idea right out as well. To quote Cray74 again, a single molecule-thick strand, or even a micron (1/1,000,000th a meter) thick braid, will "snap if you stare at it cross-eyed" -- with a force of less than 0.05 Newtons.

I agree on both points. I remember in the Street Sam Catalog, that there was a comment about shoelaces being monofilament as well. It's not mono-molecular.


Regular whips work by snapping the tip (at the speed of sound). These would work by wrapping around a limb (or other extremity ) and tension pulling the wire against/through it.

you, sir, have struck the nail on the head. monowire isn't monomolecular, it's monofilament.

If it were as thick as a human hair, then at least it would able to withstand some tugging, to the tune of 600 Newtons -- equivalent to a hanging mass of ~61kg. On the other hand, to make a strand as thick as a human hair cut clean through an arm (assuming it's hard enough to actually cut through bone, but that's another problem altogether) you'd have to pull on it pretty damn hard.

So what kind of damage would this explosion do? And if I throw my mono-whip at a bad guy and yell "Oh noes! That whip makes no sense for X, Y, and Z reasons!" Will it explode in his hands, thus making a deadly weapon even deadlier?

I don't think it's like that. If it would have "edges" it would have multiple of them along the strand, so that you wouldn't have to worry about which part of the whip you'd have to attack with.


Maybe partially off-topic, but for a nice visual of the whip, I'd suggest checking out Johnny Mnemonic.


EDIT: Just found this page that someone wrote up:

http://www.intercom.net/user/logan1/engfun4.htm

No. The explosion wouldn't harm anything. It would simply punch a gigantic hole in the fabric of the universe through which everyone who has even been maimed or killed by monowire will appear miraculously unharmed.

Maybe multiple edges? I don't know how bucky balls look, but what if the cross section of the whip looked like a star, or a gear? That would give it a number of micro-edges to cut with.

Yeah, uhh... Do you want to know all the parts of that page that don't make any sense, or will you settle for simply knowing that it's mostly crap?

The strand itself is the "blade". Buckyballs are, well, balls, they don't have sharp edges.

Stuff like this = minor fleshwounds? Yeah, sure it could. But cut through bone, plastics, let alone metal or any sort of armor?

Because graphite cannot cut through most metals, no matter how much force you apply. You just end up smearing graphite on the metal.

Well for the movie, I think they did that so the viewer would know what was going on. It just looks like really hard to see wire in the short story (which, as far as I know, is what the shadowrun monowhip is based on)

AMPUTATION.

I know you can't cut steel with graphite. You'll notice I was speaking AGAINST doing that.

As for cutting through bone, plastics, etc... what I'm trying to point out is that while it may be a ROUND cutting edge, that round shape may, in fact, be thinner than any edge on a knife you could ever really hope to achieve, by way of simply being a smaller number of molecules across. If this is the case (since I don't know how thick a really sharp knife edge is), it sounds feasible to me that if a knife could do it, a "sharper" loop of line could do it, too.

I'm not saying this is at all feasible in real life. I'm just trying to make it a little less "absolute bullshit." Kinda like how most non-hard-scifi stuff manages to make things like ships going to light speed in a few seconds work without turning the passengers into a molecule-thick paste... liberal application of bullshit as padding.

You implied cutting a lock out of a door would work if you could simply apply force to it properly. I figured you weren't talking about a light wooden door.

I realize that 100 microns (around human hair thickness) is still relatively thin, and can cut into skin and flesh. No problem there, even though you'll have to really drag it in there, it won't just magically sink in. But, as Cray74 has pointed out so many times in threads like these, it makes no difference how thin your cutting edge is if the material you are cutting with is much softer than the material you are cutting. AFAICT, buckminsterfullerene tubes are about as hard pencil lead -- can you imagine cutting through bone or plastics with a pencil lead knife, no matter how sharp?

That, at least, I agree with.

Maybe if for the dikoting process you used nanos to apply it?

So, if my ally spirit manifests as a dikoted monofilament drop bear, I have to make sweet, sweet love to it?




Eh, might not be so bad.

I take it you didn't Google it, then. I hit lots of articles like this (PDF), saying that buckminsterfullerene bonds like graphite and acts under pressure like graphite. There is also one widely quoted article, which says that the compressibility of solid buckminsterfullerene is about the same as that of graphite, although it increases as the crystals deform under heavy pressure -- not a particularly useful effect in a whip.

Wikipedia has this to say: "CNTs are not nearly as strong under compression. Due to their hollow structure, they tend to undergo buckling when placed under compressive, torsional or bending stress." This is easily affirmed with a Google for these terms. Also, for what it's worth, there are plenty of research papers available which conclude that the shear modulus of carbon nanotubes is very close to that of graphite.

In any case, the "Monowire. What is it?" article contains plenty of obvious bullshit. They ignore that nanotubes do conduct electricity brilliantly, they get the diameter of SWNTs wrong, they have no idea how easily something as insanely thin as a few nanometers across will snap, they fail to realize that regardless of how thin the cutting edge is you still need a lot of force to shear hard materials like steel, etc. etc. Fortunately they include the disclaimer that "this article is a mix of materials science, articles in magazines, cyberpunk fiction, supposition and guesswork." I guess we know who wins when "materials science" and bullshit collide.

Fine, I'll revise my conclusion:
I guess we know who wins when "materials science" and silly myth collide.

Ignorance makes me angry, I can't help it. I keep trying to sort the fact from the fiction, but whenever I think I've managed to explain something to one guy someone else comes along and says something like ".22 cal is the most lethal round in the world because it bounces around inside the skull", and then I get upset. I just think the world would be a much better place if people appreciated facts a bit more.

Can you guess I'm a fan of the Colbert Report?

Buckytubes are viable for plenty of uses. Even in a monowhip-type application, using a pretty thick strand, it might make for an interesting, if not effective, weapon. Carbon nanotubes will definitely be a big hit in several industries, and there's plenty of research going on to create more applications for it. But it is not the kind of wondermaterial it's described as in SR.

On the contrary, as a monowhip is a blade, not a whip.
The effect would be negligible on the macro scale, yet ensure stability of the cutting edge.

That's not really what I found when reading that paper.

Yet that's reversible.

Keep in mind that the mono-whip application would put the material mainly under tension, as the relative radii are enormous.

BTW, both your sources mainly focus on the lubrification qualities - in which case, buckyballs are of course interesting (and similiar to graphite), as they are hard to compress, yet flexible and... round.

I'll freely admit that I do not fully understand how the bonds in a nanotube work. I'll also admit that when I first read through the article I missed the part about the molecules and clusters re-forming on their own soon after the pressure is lifted. But it seems to me that if all the molecules go through severe deformation when under pressure, then the strength of the whole strand would be compromised. I assume this is basically the same effect as what the "CNTs are not nearly as strong under compression." bit is referring to.

Now, if you happen to have the whip wrapped around some poor sod's forearm and pull on it hard, the molecules in the whip will be doing some serious buckling while you're exerting a powerful stretching force on it. The whip will momentarily be "not nearly as" capable of withstanding a tensile force, and *snap* it goes.

I was pretty much quoting right out of it:
"5. Conclusions
Bonding similarities between graphite and C(60) combined
with experimental evidence that solid films composed
of C(60) clusters maintain many of the molecular
properties of the individual clusters suggests that this
system may be useful as a solid lubricant or molecular
packing material."

Yes, isn't it amazing how little research there is as to the potential weaponized forms of fullerens.