Are there any charts or paragraph regarding atmospheric decompression (being thown into space, or other total vacuum) in any SR book? Sound odd, but these guys have done strange things before...
Thanks in advance.
Full Version: Atmospheric Decompression
Yes. Decompression will kill you. There's no two ways about it - unless you're some kind of great dragon, the decreased pressure will make your blood boil, and you'll die. This is not the sort of thing for which you need rules.
| QUOTE (Morphling The Pretender) |
| Are there any charts or paragraph regarding atmospheric decompression (being thown into space, or other total vacuum) in any SR book? Sound odd, but these guys have done strange things before... Thanks in advance. |
It should be in Target: Wastelands, which I neglected to bring with me this weekend.
I don't recall how T:WL treated decompression, but it's not dramatic in RL. No messy body explosions. Here's some real life exposures.
And, no, you're blood won't exactly boil. Your veins actually exert enough pressure ("blood pressure") to keep blood a liquid at body temperatures. In some areas of the body (like the joints), you'll suffer the bends, but no dramatic boiling.
Nitpick: it doesn't suck, it blows 
~J
~J
IIRC, if you exhale very hard before being exposed, you will have on the order of 20-40 seconds of 'useful consciousness', with brain death occurring around the 3-4? minute mark. Expect bruising (lots) on exposed skin and probably damage to your eyes, teeth, and lungs. If you try to hold your breath, these numbers will get cut by about half, as the air tries to escape and damages your lungs.
If you try to hold your breath really well, expect these numbers to drop to nearly zero as your lungs rupture.
~J
~J
There was a cosmonaut that did open space with no gear on for about 40 seconds without anything worse than a bad, bad headache. IIRC.
So what makes sense then? 10M per turn, resisted by Body? and maybe -1 Power per 100 milibar?
your main problem unprotected is temperature... a few hundred degress in direct sunlight and negative a hundred and some change when not in direct sunlight. That and your eyeballs have positive pressure, so count on losing your eyes and eardrums almost immediaely, and permanently.
Considering that the only way you have to gain or lose temperature is radiation, the temp is almost irrelevant over the time periods that we are talking about.
Short term exposure would 'red-out' the eyes in a very short period of time, but they are pretty robust, I would make a random guess that you are getting permanent damage around the 2 minute mark, but you would be KO'd anyway. Your ears would probably rupture a bit faster than that, they might hold out for 30 seconds to 1 minute before really coming to pieces.
Also notice my earlier comment about damage to the teeth, cavities and fillings may mean broken teeth with more that around 1 minute of exposure, and a really sore mouth (in addition to the bruising) for shorter periods.
This is, of course, all pulled out of my rectal cavity. But it sounds good enough for a game.
Short term exposure would 'red-out' the eyes in a very short period of time, but they are pretty robust, I would make a random guess that you are getting permanent damage around the 2 minute mark, but you would be KO'd anyway. Your ears would probably rupture a bit faster than that, they might hold out for 30 seconds to 1 minute before really coming to pieces.
Also notice my earlier comment about damage to the teeth, cavities and fillings may mean broken teeth with more that around 1 minute of exposure, and a really sore mouth (in addition to the bruising) for shorter periods.
This is, of course, all pulled out of my rectal cavity. But it sounds good enough for a game.
| QUOTE (Cray74) |
| I don't recall how T:WL treated decompression, but it's not dramatic in RL. No messy body explosions. Here's some real life exposures. |
Excellent link. Kuddos.
| QUOTE (ialdabaoth @ Oct 19 2003, 06:59 AM) |
| 10M per turn, resisted by Body? |
Good suggestion. IMHO the damage would begin at a lower power but become gradually tougher per turn.
How's 4MStun with +2 to power every subsequent turn? Should there be a power cap?
| QUOTE (BitBasher) |
| That and your eyeballs have positive pressure, so count on losing your eyes and eardrums almost immediaely, and permanently. |
I haven't heard of any of the vacuum-exposed individuals (1 Gemini technician, 3 cosmonauts on Salyut-11) losing their eyeballs or otherwise suffering problems...though Target:Wastelands mentions distorted vision. Trouble with the eyes wasn't mentioned in the This Link With Hard Vacuum Exposure Data. Do you have a link about the problems with eyes in vacuum, Bitbasher?
I lied. I do have Target Wastelands with me this weekend. It was buried under other books. Here's the vacuum exposure rules:
| QUOTE ("Target:Wastelands @ pg127") |
| Character who are exposed to space suffer a +2 modifier to all actions and automatically take one box of Stun damage per Combat Turn. After ten boxes of Stun damage have been inflicted, the character will take one box of Physical damage each Combat Turn until dead. Holding one's breath will not help, and in fact damages the lungs, so the effect is the same. Characters are likely to pass out, however, when the flow of oxygen to their brain ceases. To represent this, at the end of each Combat Turn after the third, the character must succeed in a Willpower (6+Damage modifiers) Test or fall unconscious. If the character holds his breath (see p. 47 SR Comp) or has an internal air supply (air tank cyberware, oxy-rush nanites), he will not need to make this test until four Combat Turns after the air supply runs out (by which time the Stun damage will have gotten them anyway). If the GM chooses, exposure to space may also inflict 1 point of Stress each Combat Turn on implants. |
Then there's rules for suit and hull breaches.
Bizarrely, Shadowrun requires firearms to have air tanks to fire in a vacuum. That's one rule I heartily recommend you ignore. Gunpowder (including ye olde blackpowder) is oxygenated. Heck, the chemical composition of black powder (carbon, sulfur, potassium nitrate) is about 50% oxygen - it's all that nitrate (-NO3).
Whoa, Shadowrun characters are tough. They don't even risk death until they've been floating around in a vaccuum for a minute.
As embarassed as I am to say this, I have no link. I was told that information, including the temperature info firsthand from a space shuttle astronaut when I was at Space Camp as a kid. Obviously he was wrong 
| QUOTE (BitBasher) |
| As embarassed as I am to say this, I have no link. I was told that information, including the temperature info firsthand from a space shuttle astronaut when I was at Space Camp as a kid. Obviously he was wrong |
Temperature info was right, sort of. However, the whole vacuum angle does give even nude space walkers a great deal of insulation. Over the period between first exposure and suffocation, your bigger worry would be lack of air and maybe UV.
Thanks for the help; Thankfully, our GM has T:WL so maybe this crazy idea will work. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?
We screw up and all die, that's what.
We screw up and all die, that's what.
In the words of Black Adder,
"Die howwibly, howwibly."
-Siege
"Die howwibly, howwibly."
-Siege
| QUOTE (Zach21035) |
| Whoa, Shadowrun characters are tough. They don't even risk death until they've been floating around in a vaccuum for a minute. |
Well, in the link Cray74 provided, it says "It is very unlikely that a human suddenly exposed to a vacuum would have more than 5 to 10 seconds to help himself. If immediate help is at hand, although one's appearance and condition will be grave, it is reasonable to assume that recompression to a tolerable pressure (200 mm Hg, 3.8 psia) within 60 to 90 seconds could result in survival, and possibly in rather rapid recovery."
it also says that in animal testing, survival was the rule if recompression occurred within 90 seconds.
If you are a normal SR human, you irrevocably die after 23 combat turns - about 69 seconds - and a beefed up Troll won't die until after about 30 combat turns - 90 seconds. Seems they actually got the numbers right... apart from the holding of breath, which I think we all can agree should result in physical damage (not much different from a ruptured air tank, maybe...)
Now, about the 'interesting' rule requiring airtanks for weapons fired in vacuum... for ammo using casing I can't see this rule applying at all - but what about caseless ammo? (which is common in SR from what I understand) I have to admit, I have little knowledge of how explosives in a vacuum, but logically I could see more risk of problems withcaseless ammo...then there is, of course, the problem of the shooter being fired in the opposite direction...
| QUOTE |
| Now, about the 'interesting' rule requiring airtanks for weapons fired in vacuum... for ammo using casing I can't see this rule applying at all - but what about caseless ammo? |
Any explosive or propellant must be oxygenated, or it doesn't detonate. The expanding, supersonic shockwave would drive away any air in the gun barrel even in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, leaving the remaining propellant without air.
Caseless ammo will work just as well as cased ammo. After all, cased ammo stores maybe 1/1000th the air needed to burn all the propellant in the case - the oxygen comes from the propellant itself.
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