Steve Higginbotham replies to
>"J.A.F.O.":
>>1) I recently shelled out on a copy of Hard Times (wot no virus?) and
>>was intrigued by part of one of the scenarios in which the evil (boo
>>hiss) pirate is tricked into stealing this ship with a nuclear damper
>>in the cargo hold, when said baddie stores his nukes in there this
>>device renders them PERMENANTLY inoperable
>>............ comments any one?
>>If this is the case in the Trav' universe then surely you might be
>>able to use one to tidy up radioactive messes?
>
>We assume so in our games. Standard Imperial policy after using
>nuclear weapons is to clean it up with a damper so the marines can go
>in.
But strangely enough there are Traveller planets that are radioactive.
Of course a half-way radioactive planet IS a dramatic locale for an
adventure. That's what I meant in a previous posting about situational
physics. When it's convenient you can and when it's convenient you can't.
One thing occurs to me, however. Nuclear dampers work by focussing a
'node' of a field on the material to be treated. That's why no nuclear
screens. Have anyone ever computed the amount of topsoil usually made
radioactive by a nuclear bombardment? How big is a damper node? (The
range of the field is a multiple of the distance between the two field
generators, but I don't think the size of the node is defined anywhere).
So how long would it take to focus a node on every cubic meter of the
affected area? How long do you have to keep it focussed? Perhaps cleaning
up a radioactive planet is not quite so easy as running a vaccuum cleaner
over a carpet.
>>2) A long while back I posted some queries about how many of you had
>>had cross species romance/physical liasons going on in your games and
>>how you reckoned soceity might view it. I got a deafening
>>silence..... anyone new out there got sommat to contribute.
>
>I suspect romance could happen, physical liaison probably not. Wrong
>sexual cues form the aliens - they are probably no more sexually
>exciting than a tree. Though I do have a human character who thinks
>female Aslan are "intriguing".
Given that human beings have been known to consort with goats, and that
the prime sexual organ is the brain, I don't think we can rule out any-
thing.
>>3) Additional point
>> Has anyone thought how dumb imperial archaeologists must be to not
>>have realised WHO the ancients were?
>
>I wonder how they EVER figured it out, myself. They have 421 (or
>somewhat fewer) DIFFERENT cultures and technologies. They don't even
>use the same kind of screws from site to site. So how did ANYONE ever
>leap to the conclusion that they all belonged to one race?
421 huh? You know, that is just one of the glaring holes in the whole
Grandfather story. "He kept careful count of his descendants and made
sure he killed them all". Yeah, sure. But what about the children that
they had unknown to him? Say during the second millenium of the war when
those surviving must've begun to suspect what he was up to, and in any
case needed allies. Not to mention all the programmed clones they must've
made to decoy Grandfather into killing a clone instead of the real thing.
Phoey!
Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
[email removed]
- ------------
"Free speech gives a man the right to talk about the
'psycology' of an amoeba, but I don't have to listen".
Elihu Nivens in 'The Puppet Masters'