Ok, I have to preface this with the fact that I don't know a damn thing about physics other than that things tend to go down, for some reason. But I WILL say you've been grossly misinformed about RAND. They're not run by aliens. I think you got it the wrong way around, chief. American imperialism at its finest. Afghanistan, Iraq, rumblings about Iran, Syria, and Haiti. And Mars. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that we're going to need actual plans to govern the places we conquer in the future. What better group to do this than a non-governmental entity formed by the very branch of the military that first came into contact with the enemy in 1947?

I'm sorry. I just feel someone should post something to that effect every time RAND is mentioned on the internet.

http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/faq_17apr.htm

Yes shortbus, there are different types of radiation. Read the above link and you'll see that its safe from alpha if shielded properly.

Yes the skin protects you from alpha radiation (which is 1, not many). I never said it didn't, just that it isn't much protection (ie the beta gamma still can harm you). Yet I fail to see why other materals wouldn't couldn't protect you on the inside *Cough* lead *cough* coated by protective materal (as I mention umteen pages ago). I never suggested using DU unshielded, raw under the skin. Listening to you we need to wrap all Du in human flash to protect otherselves Get a clue or get a cork for your mouth.

As far as DU being lead I'm not sure where you got this info. Its heavy like lead, and sorta brittle\soft like lead but its not lead. So not sure where the whole lead poisoning from DU comes from. The looks like a duck, sounds like a duck formula doesn't work here.

Arethusa, as for you all I can say is be a good little sheep and follow the other self-proclaimed experts behind the bandwagon. No need to think, just spouting insults is required.

Yes, didn't you get the news flash? Rand bought State Department and NRA bought the DoD. Free Mak90s for all republicans! Woot!

cutter, once again you're not a very attentive reader. No one said you'd get lead poisoning from DU - the point is that just like lead, Uranium acts like most heavy metals do: Among many other things, it denaturates the enzymes necessary for stuff like, oh, I don't know, synaptic activity, digestion, oxygen transport, basically every inter- and some intracellular activities.

Also, how do you propose to "shield" the DU? What kind of shielding would you use? Because, if that shielding should crack, (something that might happen in a firefight; I hear they're quite common in Shadowrun) whoever got himself loaded up with a toxic, radioactive material is going to be one sad camper. But if you installed some sort of "crack-proof" shielding, wouldn't that make the DU redundant, since you already have a super-strong lacing on top of the potentially hazardous DU?

One more thing. Maybe you picked the habit up while you were serving your country, but could you please refrain from insults, or at least be a little more subtle about it? "Shortbus"? Come on!

[Edit] I have a sneaking suspicion. You said

Cutter, from your responses I gather that not only are you not really reading anyone else's arguments, but you are misinterpreting what little you are reading, setting them up as straw men. Noone said that DU was the same thing as lead; although someone might have made the point that DU lacing, like lead lacing, probably would be pretty useless for structurally enhancing bone because it's "heavy" and "sorta brittle/soft"--if I may borrow your own descriptions for a moment. In fact, lead lacing would be a good way to get whatever kind of benefit you are trying to get out of DU lacing, with the additional benefit that you "only" have to worry about biological toxicity, rather than toxicity *and* radiation.

And don't you tell me that DU isn't radiologically dangerous when it gets under your skin. As the web site you referenced states, the primary forms of radiation from DU are alpha and beta particles, with gamma rays being a distant third. The problem is, while alpha and beta particles don't get past your skin (alpha) or clothes (beta), once inside the body alpha particles--the principal form of DU radiation--are about 20 times more biologically harmful per rad than gamma rays.

Now, on to shielding material. All the lacings in the BBB and MM work because they are biologically inert; titanium in particular is already known to be fairly safe to add into the body, as we already do it for many medical proceedures. DU--or lead, for that matter--is most emphatically *not*. Oh, but you counter that by saying that you can have shielding and whatnot, to protect the body from this highly toxic substance? Well, sure, I guess you can, but then you run into several practical problems.

First off, this shielding material has to be fairly thick in order to keep your organs from being irradiated and you from being poisoned, say a millimeter at least. You may not think that is very much, but remember that the lacing itself, having to be constantly regenerated and maintained in order to properly interleve with natural bone, can't be all that thick anyway. Remember that you're not completely replacing your bones; you can't do that, because your bone marrow is rather important to the production of blood cells, among other things. Lacing has to interleve itself through the hard compact bone without interfering with the marrow. This gives you very little room to work with, and inevitably you will be faced with the fact that your shielding is taking up at least as much if not more room than your DU is, so unless it's at least as strong as the surrounding bone your lacing will end up *weaker* than normal bone. This is, of course, assuming that DU lacing is itself stronger than bone, which I find unlikely the more I study the structure of bone itself.

Whew, this was more in depth than I intended to go. I have lots more arguments (these were just the objections that first popped into my mind), but I frankly don't have the time nor the inclination to go on. So, let me summarize my points:

1. DU is fairly useless as a bone lace, as it prvides little apparent benefit, other than its density which can be mimicked using lead with far fewer drawbacks.
2. DU is, in fact, very dangerous when inside the body, both from a radiological standpoint and a biological one.
2a. Other lacings described in cannon rules are, for the most part, biologically inert. DU is most emphatically not.
2b. The amount of shielding you would have to use to include DU in your bones would make the shielding far more significant to the lace than the DU itself.

And now I will probably abandon this thread, because I seriously doubt there will be any more serious discussion here.

Cutter, if you'd read the website I linked... or any other halfway competant source, in fact, you'd see that Alpha is blocked entirely by skin, and Beta is blocked mostly by skin as well (it penetrates to deep levels of the skin, but stops there). Alpha radiation is nothing more than helium ions (two protons, two nuetrons), while Beta radiation is electrons. This is the radiation DU eminates. So your little BS about .45s and tissue paper was uninformed nonsense. And of course, you repeated it. GO LEARN SOMETHING MAN!

Now, I've quoted my initial sources and education, but just to throw in another... my girlfriend is a physist, who just took upper division Nuclear Physics. Her comment about your understanding of radiation was something to the effect of "he's an idiot." (I like a plain talking girl!)

Putting Depleted Uranium in your body is a terrible idea. Putting it in the ground, as we have been doing in our wars, isn't too good either... while the radiation doesn't do much (since it's not often in the body) the poisonous effects are about what you'd expect by painting a house with lead paint... eventually it's going to get into your body, and things start getting nasty. Of course, that's talking about small bits of it in your system... putting enough to lace all your bones would be brutal (and without the skin to protect you, that radiation shows up again). Shielding it is downright silly... just use the shielding material as the lacing and you'd do much better. Go learn some materials engineering, some nuclear physics, and some biology, then come in here insulting people who actually know something.

Now, I suggested Ceramics because it's biologically inert (read: unlike DU and lead, it won't interfere with bodily processes), it's currently used in today's surgery, and advances in technology continue to make it better, plus it wouldn't set off MAD scanners. There's been some other suggestions made in this thread that were pretty darned good too. But not DU!

JaronK

It is? Bah. I only have the main rulebook. Well there... I can predict the game designer's thoughts, go me!

JaronK

What are you talking about? EVERYONE has proved otherwise, just about. You just keep countering their arguments with asinine insults. You say that nobody listens when you say it would be shielded, but take a minute to look at how many people have addressed the issue of this shielding? If you're going to ost this many times, you should fill the posts with more facts to defend yourself against arguments with, like what this shielding substance would be. You are the one who hasn't provided much in the way of factual evidence to back yourself up. When you actually prove that this could work, I'm sure a lot of the rest of us will shut up. Until then, we're going to say stuff like "No, cyberware DOESN'T have a lot of lead in it, if your games involve a lot of unsealed soldering in cyberware, you might want to kill your street doc."

Cutter: Since when have characters in Shadowrun had lead in them? The problem with your shielding idea is it's retarded. The shielding material would have to be about as strong as the DU, and a lot heavier, due to the way lacing actually works (the DU would have to be in very thin strands, and the shielding would have to be around a milimeter around, meaning you'd have far more shielding than DU). Thus the DU does nothing but add weight. You'd end up with maybe a 1/4 milimeter diameter thread of DU with a 2mm diameter casing of sheilding around it... and what are you planning to make this shielding out of anyway? This is some seriously enourmous lacing, and most of it would have to be shielding instead of DU. Now, I'll buy a small amount of radioactive material in some cyberware as a power source, like for a radio, and that it's shielded. In that case, you're looking at a total radioactive surface area of maybe a milimeter, with a total amount of shielding of about 3 cubic milimeters. But in bone lacing we're talking about a surface area in the yards, and putting a milimeter of shielding over that is going to an enourmous amount of the stuff. It's a terrible idea, and if the shielding is ever damaged (by, say, a gunshot... these are combat modifications, remember), then the runner would die very quickly of DU poisoning, with a nice bit of radiation leakage to make life miserable. And since the purpose of this particular bit of cyberware, unlike headware or other such, is to take serious hits, that shielding damage would happen extreamly fast. I'd rather break a bone than take a massive hit of DU into my bloodstream, thank you very much.

Yes, my girlfriend is a physist, I'm a computer scientist/actor/theatrical technician, and my grandfather really did invent a few kinds of artificial hip. Is this so shocking? It's not like there's anything I'm saying that you shouldn't have learned in high school or at least college (assuming you went, I'm guessing at this point that you didn't, or at least didn't take any science courses). You can find all this information, on the nature of radiation (especially Alpha and Beta radiation, which is what's relevent here), on the toxic effects of Depleted Uranium, and everything else I've said from respected scientific works either online or at your local library. Newsflash cutter: some people out there actually know what they're talking about, and are actually informed. They know how to do proper research... in fact they get majors in it. I've sighted my credentials... what are yours? So far it looks like you've just found a few websites online, without checking the validity of the research on those sites, and spat back out some crap from a lobby group. I'm seriously unimpressed.

JaronK

Guys, let's stop this before someone else stops it for us.

Everyone agrees that the DU would need shielding. However, the shielding would have to be so think as to require extreme deformation to the bones and would run the constant risk of leakage from cracks. Everyone also agrees that DU is just a bad idea all around, no matter how you look at it.
Not everyone has more than a passing knowledge of Wave/Particle physics, and hell, depending on the physhics person you speak to, the answers you get might just be different.

DU=Bad idea, even with shielding; it might however make for a funny "mysterious cyberware" flaw in a NPC, but that's about it.

People, stop posting and just let it go. I think we've all given this insufferable child more attention that he ever deserved.

<thumps his chest> Represent!

The one reason I'm still reading is because I want to know what level of education cutter's had. Of course, you could come out and say "I'm the boss of my own government funded thinktank" - I mean, I've heard less believable stories that just happened to be the truth all the same. It wouldn't make me feel very comfortable knowing that the US government funds this kind of operation, but at least we'd have something to work with.

What I'm getting at is this: If you look at this thread, cutter has already come a long way: He's now acknowledging the facts that skin does protect from some kinds of radiation, he's affirmative that heavy metals do poison your body, and he's even said right out that the radiation you'd suffer from prolonged exposure to unshielded DU lacing would kill. The only thing left for us is to convince him that his idea of shielding the DU might not be a feasible practice.

I'm just not ready yet to accept the possibility that cutter could be shielded against reason. I mean, is anybody?

...says the guy with the cool signature. But like I said, he's come a long way; I guess we'll see how much farther he can go.

Anyone else getting the Polaris vibe?

~J

...What?

No, a CRAZY myth is when you spread the good word that some 2000 year old zombie's going to come back and make us all fight each other so the world can end.

What the people here are saying is that there's no good reason to use depleted uranium as a bone lacing. If you want to call that crazy, tell people what your background is like they've been asking you to for a couple days now. Otherwise, I don't think you have very good grounds to be calling physicists stupid.

Everyone has made their point, you just choose to ignore the facts and come back with insults. Not even very GOOD insults, either.

[EDIT]: Nice use of the edit button, too.

hecklers, lol

People, stop posting and just let it go. I think we've all given this insufferable child more attention that he ever deserved.

And yet you still reply Arethusa,...

I know DU happens to be the most durable and longest lasting armor and weapons material that's around today, but I don't think it practical for any lacing purposes whatsoever:

1. You are lacing bones and/or organs with this material. Flexibility and lightness is a must or the enhanced human would feel very stiff at the joints. Just how malleable is DU? And for that matter, how heavy is it?

2. DU in it's pure, unshielded form is still radioactive enough to cause damage, despite the fact that it's just 'little above background radiation' as the US army loved to put it sometime back; the reason why soldiers can live with handling DU ammunition is because it's shielded (the same reason why anyone working in the vincinity of a well-maintained nuke doesn't feel any ill effects). If you lace it without shielding, your internals will suffer in the long run.

3. The lacing process is probably reminescent of what Marvel's Wolverine experienced when his bones were laced with adamantium (how else do you expect to plate the bones without removing them from the body?). In that case, how feasible is DU lacing? We already know point (2), so we can't simply just give the guy a once over. We have to go through the process no less than 2 times: Once to bond the protective material, and 2nd time to bond the DU itself. Which may cause the problems described in point (1). Furthermore, we'll have to bond EVERY ORGAN IN THE BODY or problems described in point (2) will be encountered. Take heed if cost is an issue.

I'm out of touch with the military for some time now, and Shadowrun may sometimes not follow the conventions of common sense, but still, using even mildly radioactive material as a bone lace material is just plain stupid. HOWEVER! It WOULD make good internal structure material for Cyber-zombies or Humanoid Robots....if it hasn't already been blown out of the water by any new-fangled material that's less dangerous, yet provides better protection.

DU is decidedly NOT the "most durable and longest lasting armor and weapons material that's around today." It's comparatively soft (for its density), in fact. The advantage of DU is that it is extrordinarily dense, and relatively cheap to get (in fact, it's a waste product of sorts). It also heats up quite a bit with friction. The desity and heat characteristics make it very nice for shooting people with, and the cheapness is very attractive for making weapons with, plus as armour it's simply hard to shift, being so dense.

So to answer your questions to the best of my knowledge:

1. DU is extrodinarily heavy... that's it's main function, in fact. It's really really dense. It's pretty maliable too.

2. Actually, soldiers handle the stuff without much in the way of shielding, if anything. Luckily, it's not THAT radioactive. But inside your skin... ouch. I think we all agree at this point that unshielded DU inside your skin would be nasty as all heck.

3. Bone lacing is just on the bones I assume, but yeah, all that stuff applies.

JaronK

This isn’t “my baby”. I even said it’s not the best solution. If you read, you’d see that. The point was it could be done, not that its better then available solutions. Only plus side is the sheer dense mass would allow for great strikes if the person even had the strength to move under such weight. I'll even say due to the negatives outweighing the positives its a dumb idea. But it could still be done and still be reasonably safe.

I could care less if you like me, I’m not here for your approval. I’m getting a good laugh on the people who seem to think radiation is some magical power that cannot be contained. But I’ll leave you with a last thought:

Of the dozen or so who clearly don’t think for themselves your not going to read this anyway. To you the world is flat. No amount of reason will change your mind. But in the narrow chance you will read I’ll say this about your previous posts.

What your saying is this:

1.) Lead or other shielding will not protect you from radiation.

2.) A water-tight/air tight seal cannot protect you from a biologically hazardous material.
3.) That other cyberware systems that use computers/electronics (which are loaded with lead and mercury, just as lethal) have no harmful side effects as you feel DU does.

You can conveniently stretch your mind for things that make no sense in a fantasy game (like finding space in the human skull for a cranial bomb) but when someone proves you can do something here and now you can’t buy it. Technically alluminum lacing would probably kill you from oxidation unless it too was sealed.

Think what you want, its up to you. It’s easy to join the hecklers and stick your head in the ground. <shrugs> But I guess I'm a "child" because I read and research before I post. Forgive me for disagreeing with popular opinion

Bone lacing, because of what it is, necessarily has more stringent restrictions on the amount of space that it can take up and the types of materials that can be involved than many other types of cyberware. Also, all types of cortex bombs except the area-effect ones are perfectly feasible; hell, even the area-effect ones could probably be packed in, as they no longer need to be within the actual brain proper.

~J

I would think the area effect ones could actually be put inside the brain, as well. I might be wrong about this since I'm not a doctor, but if people can live with brain tumors the size of baseballs (something which I'm basing solely on an episode of Law & Order: SVU), then I would think you could put a chunk of explosives the size of a baseball inside someone's brain. It might turn them into a pedophile, but if you're putting an area effect cortex bomb in someone, you obviously don't care a whole lot about their life taking a positive direction.

On another note, I AM here seeking everyone's approval. I could be wrong, but I assumed the purpose of this forum was to create a Shadowrun COMMUNITY. It seems to defeat that purpose if we all have a place to share ideas about how crappy we think the rules are, but in the end we hate each other.

I don't subscribe to the baseball sized cortex bomb idea, if only because having something like that in your brain will definitely debilitate you in more ways than you'd think. Spasm, epileptic seizures, blackouts, but also paralysis, or psychological effects such as decreased ability for audiovisual pattern recognition, and to top it all off maybe some emotional disorders for good measure... You could survive, but not live. At least not without intensive care.

I always pictured area effect bombs as a regular cranial bomb and some explosive modules spread throughout the body.

Erm, cutter... I'm having difficulties finding a post where someone says that "Lead or other shielding will not protect you from radiation", and that "a water-tight/air tight seal cannot protect you from a biologically hazardous material". Could you please be so kind and point me to where you read that? Or are you just paraphrasing?
Also, just to make sure we're both referring to the same texts, could you please give me and the others a page number where it states that cyberware contains such substances as "lead and mercury", that would be super. Thanks!

And I'm still curious as to what level of education you've received. What college / university did you go to?

[Edit] Damn you, Great Chicken! Damn you and your mega fast forum reflexes! [Edit]