Leonard Erickson sez:
> Just a note, but Scott should check the *time* until death associated
> with the LD50 he quotes. Last time I checked, it was around 30 days, and
> the time until 50% dead were reached was halved every time you doubled
> the dose (and vice-versa, which led to the interesting observation that
> approximately 50% of the people exposed to "background" levels of
> radiation would die after 70 years. :-)
>
> Another factor is that this is the *absorbed* radiation dosage. People
> don't absorb X-Rays and gamma rays very well.
Well, my point was that the Traveller hand held x-ray laser (be it pistol
carbine, or rifle) is going to hit a person with many many many orders
of magnatude more x-ray energy than an LD50 of 67 calories. You can't
even heat a milliliter of water to boiling with 67 calories, nevermind
vaporize someone's skin with it. I would estimate that it would be on
the order of more than a THOUSAND times the LD50 value. Probably more.
Probably much more.
And in order to do as much damage as those lasers are supposed to do to
actual body tissue (burn off and or vaporize arms, legs, heads and other
useful extremities...) We are clearly working with energy densities where
the radiation absorbed IS a thousand times more than LD50.
I admit that I am only a week into the Grad program here in Radiological
Sciences (Medical Physics) but the time scale we're talking about here
says death occurs in hours to days.
Someone else (who's name I forget unfortunately) pointed out that the
dose of x-rays was incidental to the initial damage done. Who cares
about radiation poisoning when you have all that medical tech hanging
around at those Tech levels. Well, I'd say that the x-ray laser of TL13
is rather like the cyanide coated bullets of today. If it hits you, you
need treatment IMMEDIATELY or you will die. If it hits you in the hand,
or the foot, you are just as dead as if it hits you in the chest.
A low powered x-ray laser would make the perfect assasin weapon. You hit
someone with a tiny x-ray laser. They don't see it or feel it. (Not if
LD50 is only 67 calories) Unless they're carrying an x-ray detector on
their person, and unless the beam hits the detector, they won't even know
they've been hit till they start feeling sick. (Too late) And if you
can put an x-ray laser inside a pistol that can punch holes in walls, I'd
guess you could put a low power one inside your hand computer or digital
watch.
Scott 2G Kellogg