From: Jeb Boyt [jeboyt@hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 9:24 AM To: blue_planet@lists.ient.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - various projectile rounds (was idle thoughts) ----Original Message Follows---- From: "David R. Crowell" Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 21:42:40 -0400 To prove that high muzzle velocity is not required for great stopping power and trauma go deer hunting with a black powder rifle! ================================= Ah yes, stopping power or force equals the mass of the bullet times the square of the muzzle velocity. So, stopping power can be increased by using either a larger round, as with most black powder weapons (.45-.65 cal), or by increasing the muzzle velocity, as with most modern firearms. The key is to find the balance between mass and muzzle velocity that best suits your purpose. Do you want a more conceable handgun that carries a large number of rounds (9 mm) or a big-ass handgun with a lot of stopping power (.50 cal Desert Eagle)? Jeb _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Shane.Mclean@t-online.de Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 4:58 AM To: blue_planet@lists.ient.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - various projectile rounds (was idle thoughts) > > Why should > > the 9mm seem to be weaker, yet more available and used, than 7.62mm? Just to add to Dave's excellent description and address Charles' last part of the question, the 9mm tends to be a pistol or SMG round, whereas the 7.62mm tends to be a rifle round. As the 9mm is fired from pistols & SMGs, which have shorter barrels, it tends to a lower muzzle velocity and worse ballistic performance. The 7.62, thought, is fired from (mostly) long-barrelled weapons, giving it a bigger muzzle velocity and greater stability, plus it is physically a longer projectile, with greater mass (IIRC). Velocity and mass have a great deal to do with the damage a round inflicts,and it's penetration, as does how much the round tumbles in flight, or how hard it is - a soft lead round expands more and causes more tisuse damage as it imparts it's kinetic energy to the bopdy (see Dave's post for info). It's unfair to say that the 9mm is more widely used than the 7.62, as they are used in different situations. Every Chinese AK-47 used 7.62, as did the rifles of most Western armies (or at least a very similar calibre) before they changed to the new 5.56 NATO round, so it got (and still gets) a fair bit of usage. The 9mm is a common pistol and SMG round because it's a good compromise calibre for people who don't want straight-out fatalities, or a lot of overpenetration. The 7.62 is used when you want the guy on the other end to be well and truly dead (or as good as). Hope this helps, Shane *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Christopher Gribbon [c.gribbon@dundee.ac.uk] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 10:28 AM To: blue_planet@lists.ient.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Explosive decrompression There was a lot of discussion previously about this on the list. I think that the basic upshot of all the discussion was: - your eardrums will probably burst - all the capillary beds under your ski will also burst - making you one enormous bruise (and possibly permanently damaging our eyesight as the vessels in your eyes burst. Yuk!). - all of the air in your digestive tract will vent itself (very embarrassing, if others were actually able to hear it) - *some* of the nitrogen in your blood will come out of solution (remembering the pressure difference is only one atmosphere - much less that what happens when you go deep-sea diving), forming bubbles and giving you a mild case of the bends (and possibly a heart attack or a stroke). The oxygen in your blood is all bonded to haemoglobin, so won't come out of solution. - as long as you haven't been silly enough to try and hold your breath, your lungs won't rupture quite *that* badly, so you won't drown in your own blood. However, you still only have the 3 or 4 minutes before your brain dies of oxygen deprivation. - you won't flash-freeze, because the only way to loose heat in a vaccuum is by radiation (as opposed to convection, etc.), which is very slow. Vaccuum flasks do work, after all. - however, if you are in the sun, then you probably will be badly burnt on the side facing it. - finally, assuming you are dragged back inside before you die, there is all the radiation poisoning to deal with. Possibly a quick death by direct radiation poisoning; or possibly a slow, lingering death by multiple cancers. Yummy! Christopher Gribbon Vision Research Laboratories Medical Sciences Institute University of Dundee Dundee DD1 5EH UK (01382) 344 229 ____________________________________________________________________ "A scientist is meant to be disinterested, pure; his ambition merely to descry the cement of the universe. He isn't meant to use it to start laying his own patio!" - WILL SELF, The Quantity Theory of Insanity *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Heivilin, Jim [banzai@missouri.edu] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 10:36 AM To: 'blue_planet@lists.ient.com' Subject: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - Other cetacians on Poseidon > -----Original Message----- > From: Andrew Whincup [mailto:shanhat@angelfire.com] > Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Other cetacians on Poseidon > > I can see no reason why only orcas and dolphins would be > uplifted, especially as belugas are the ones currently > cooperating with humanity in a professional sense (correct me > if I'm wrong). > Jeff and I and other members of the resurgent Red Sky playtest campaign were discussing this last night and it seems it was a conscious design decision. We (and when I say we in this case it means Jeff and Greg) didn't want a profusion of non-human player characters but the idea of cetacean characters was just too cool to not use. I mean with 62 (or so) subspecies of dolphins alone (not to mention all the lesser and greater whales) it would be way too many rules (and exceptions) without a great deal of addition to the game. So we constructed the time line such that nearly all other cetacean species had been killed off by mankind before uplift technology was invented. Some of you might remember that in 1st edition we had rules for uplifted sea lions. Jim Jim Heivilin, System Administrator, Open Systems, IAT Services, University of Missouri at Columbia mailto:banzai@missouri.edu, 884-3898 *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Heivilin, Jim [banzai@missouri.edu] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 10:55 AM To: 'blue_planet@lists.ient.com' Subject: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - various projectile rounds (was idle thoughts) > -----Original Message----- > From: Sir Charles [mailto:chalz@earthlink.net] > Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - various projectile rounds (was idle thoughts) > > > This leads to choice of weapon/bullet according to mission. > > gun smiths to come up with a 7.62mm 'sub-machine' gun. > Funny note; in 'Fallout Tactics', that's about how it > works as well ;) > How is that game? I played the demo of the original Fallout but never got it and the stuff I read about Fallout 2 made me shy away from that one. > The 9mm weapons will generally create less collateral damage, > while the 7.62mm weapons rip through just about everything. > ... Not that you can cause much /structural/ damage in FT. > That was one of the things I really liked about "Crusader, No Remorse". Nearly everything in a level was destructible in some fashion. After a bad day at work, start up the game, put in the cheat code for god mode and blast the bejeezus out of everything!! Many years ago (now) when I was stationed in Frankfurt I used to go to a shooting club outside Wiesbaden. (stop me if I've told this story before) They had the door from polezi car mounted on one wall of the range. It had been fired at with a number of different weapons in different calibers (even a .50 cal machinegun). A .45 automatic, a 9mm pistol, a 7.62mm, a 5.56mm among them. I remember that the .45 slug made a *big* dent in the first panel (but didn't penetrate). The .50 cal (of course) made a big (fist sized) hole through both panels. I also remember that the 9mm made a small (finger diameter), neat little hole through both panels. > Here's another question: How are measurements scored for 'caliber' > weapons, 44, 45, 357, 22 etcetc? 30.06 - 30.06 what? > I don't know that much about rifle rounds since when I used to shoot I mainly shot pistols as well as reloading the ammo. But with a round you have several significant elements. One is the size (caliber) and weight (in grains) of the bullet itself. Another is the weight (again in grains usually) of the powder. If you can get ahold of a pistol round and a rifle round you can see the obvious difference. With most pistol rounds the size of the shell casing is usually not much bigger than the bullet itself. Thus the amount of powder is limited. With a rifle round the shell is several times longer (and has a larger diameter) than the bullet. And so a great deal more powder can be used. However you have to match the amount of powder with the barrel length (and the burn time of the powder). If you put too much powder in (or a powder that burns too slowly, as I found out with the first batch I reloaded - the bullets kept getting stuck in the barrel because the powder didn't burn fast enough) then it doesn't all burn by the time the bullet exits the barrel. If you'll go down to Wal Mart and ask to look at pistol ammo (if they still sell it) the box will tell you how heavy the round is. I haven't bought any ammo in years but I want to say that 22 grains is a typical weight for a 9mm round. I forget off-hand how grains compares to ounces or grams. > How about with shotguns; what's the difference between a 12 > gauge and 20 gauge? > Again I don't know a great deal about shotguns but IIRC the larger the number the smaller the diameter of the barrel. So a 20 gauge shotgun is *actually* smaller than a 12 gauge. And if your shotgun has what's called a *choke* on the end of the barrel then the shot doesn't disperse as much (useful for hunting birds IIRC). Without a choke the shot scatters a good deal more (more useful for urban combat situations). Shotguns are good for close quarters fighting where you don't want over-penetration (like in spacecraft or underwater vessels or facilities, where a round penetrating the exterior would be a Bad Thing(tm)). > Why should the 9mm seem to be weaker, yet more available and > used, than 7.62mm? > This is like saying "Why does my apple not look like that orange?" One is a pistol (and SMG as others have pointed out) round and the other is a rifle round. A 9mm round is about an inch long. It also has a fixed diameter throughout. A 7.62mm round is about three and a half inches long. And the base of the shell casing is nearly twice the diameter of the bullet itself. So, according to my discussion above, there's quite a bit more powder in the 7.62mm round and thus the muzzle velocity is quite a bit higher (meaning it has more kinetic energy and thus will do more damage upon impact). And the bullet itself is probably heavier (which also yields more kinetic energy). Oh, and before anyone begins to argue with me concerning my facts, all of this is from hazy memories of when I was in the service and my job was to kill people and break things and so I needed to know all this sort of thing. If my numbers are off, feel free to correct me. Jim Jim Heivilin, System Administrator, Open Systems, IAT Services, University of Missouri at Columbia mailto:banzai@missouri.edu, 884-3898 *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Chris Sakal [c_sakal@yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 1:06 PM To: blue_planet@lists.ient.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Explosive decrompression At 03:27 PM 6/22/01 +0000, you wrote: There was a lot of discussion previously about this on the list. I think that the basic upshot of all the discussion was: - your eardrums will probably burst - all the capillary beds under your ski will also burst - making you one enormous bruise (and possibly permanently damaging our eyesight as the vessels in your eyes burst. Yuk!). - all of the air in your digestive tract will vent itself (very embarrassing, if others were actually able to hear it) - *some* of the nitrogen in your blood will come out of solution (remembering the pressure difference is only one atmosphere - much less that what happens when you go deep-sea diving), forming bubbles and giving you a mild case of the bends (and possibly a heart attack or a stroke). The oxygen in your blood is all bonded to haemoglobin, so won't come out of solution. I'm thinking that since you're going to 0 pressure (essentially), all of the nitrogen is going to come out of your blood. It's not the absolute value of the difference that's important in this case, it's the relative level, from 1 to 0 is worse than from 3 to 1.......at least as I understand it. And there is some oxygen dissolved it the blood, but not nearly as much as the CO2 and other gasses, the solubility of O2 in water is pretty low, which is why we have Hemoglobin in the first place.... If all of the capillaries in your eyes were to burst you would go blind. Period. To say nothing of the massive amounts of ischemic damage that would follow in the eyes, and all of your tissues. _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Sir Charles [chalz@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 12:24 PM To: blue_planet@lists.ient.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - various projectile rounds (was idle thoughts) > > > gun smiths to come up with a 7.62mm 'sub-machine' gun. > > Funny note; in 'Fallout Tactics', that's about how it > > works as well ;) > > > How is that game? I played the demo of the original Fallout but never got > it and the stuff I read about Fallout 2 made me shy away from that one. I love the Fallout series; ask Dave ;) I've beaten the first one, but the second one is much tougher and longer. 'Tactics' is pretty good, but different; instead of controlling a single hero with a special goal, you control a character who is the leader of a group of up to 6 total people, and you perform various missions. Ammunition and stim packs aren't as hard to come by as they are in the other games, but the enemy can be far more fatal. > That was one of the things I really liked about "Crusader, No Remorse". > Nearly everything in a level was destructible in some fashion. After a bad > day at work, start up the game, put in the cheat code for god mode and blast > the bejeezus out of everything!! Heh. I know what you mean. I had a job a couple years ago typing DMV court cases for the state (NY). The people in those cases were just so.... *arghs!* that I couldn't wait to get home and play Carmageddon 2 and splash a few peds... > Many years ago (now) when I was stationed in Frankfurt I used to go to a > shooting club outside Wiesbaden. (stop me if I've told this story before) I haven't heard it. Didn't even know you were in Frankfurt. Sprechts du Deutsch? > They had the door from polezi car mounted on one wall of the range. It had > been fired at with a number of different weapons in different calibers (even > a .50 cal machinegun). A .45 automatic, a 9mm pistol, a 7.62mm, a 5.56mm > among them. I remember that the .45 slug made a *big* dent in the first > panel (but didn't penetrate). The .50 cal (of course) made a big (fist > sized) hole through both panels. I also remember that the 9mm made a small > (finger diameter), neat little hole through both panels. Whoah. That's pretty trippy. In Tactics, most of my characters either carry an AK47 or a 'hunting rifle' (for sniping, until I can get a proper sniper's rifle), which both take the 7.62, or for short range a pistol - usually the Desert Eagle 'XXIV' ;) In Tactics, I think that takes the .44 ammo. > (useful for hunting birds IIRC). Without a choke the shot scatters a good > deal more (more useful for urban combat situations). Shotguns are good for > close quarters fighting where you don't want over-penetration (like in > spacecraft or underwater vessels or facilities, where a round penetrating > the exterior would be a Bad Thing(tm)). Heh. In 'Tactics', my medic started out with a 5-round single-barrel 12ga shotgun. His range is HORRID. So I usually pair him with a sniper; the sniper picks off people, and if someone gets too close, my medic gets up and splatters them. Usually most useful when dealing with a larger group. hehe. > Oh, and before anyone begins to argue with me concerning my facts, all of > this is from hazy memories of when I was in the service and my job was to > kill people and break things and so I needed to know all this sort of thing. > If my numbers are off, feel free to correct me. Heh. Good to hear, Jim ;) And I wanted to say 'Thanks!' to everyone who responded!! --Charles *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Wil [dreamweaver@keyway.net] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 4:39 PM To: blue_planet@lists.ient.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Explosive decrompression There is a lot (and a lot) of research into "vaccuum sickness". I posted one link, and there are articles in a couple Jovian Chronicles books on the subject. It boils down to that 30 seconds to a minute of exposure is survivable without permanent ill effects. Sudden exposure to vaccuum will cause painless and reversible swelling in your tissues but the jury is out AFAIK on the massive bursting of capillaries, in the eyes or anywhere else. Those individuals that have been accidentally exposed to vaccuum did not have it happen. There is the good chance of getting the bends. Having to expel all of the air from your lungs or risk permanent damage means you have about 15 seconds or so to help yourself. The water on your tongue and any sweat will boil, but your blood will not. Severe sunburn, with the possibility of more permanent and debilitating damage should exposure be longer than a minute, is guaranteed...but the side of you facing away from the sun will not flash freeze because there's no medium to conduct heat. But, so I doesn't seem like I'm talking out my ass, here's the link (and a few others): http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html http://www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis/vacuum.html "Don't be #5!" - Kevlar, resident idiot, Goths in the Inland Empire Yahoo! Club The Atomic Rumpus Room - http://www.atomicrumpusroom.net/ Tribe 8, Jovian Chronicles, Club Metro Survivor's Homepage and more! From: Shane.Mclean@t-online.de Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 6:33 PM To: blue_planet@lists.ient.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Explosive decrompression One of the guys on the Traveller list sent this: Shane >>>>> That was a question posted to the TML back in 94, though I'm sure that it's been asked plenty of times since then. I printed out a response that came from Geoffrey Landis, a NASA scientist. I can't seem to find the posting archived online anywhere but I'm sure answers can be found on sci.space.tech. In short, Mr. Landis says that Arthur Clarke got it right in 2001. "If you keep your mouth wide open to avoid rupturing your lungs, you can expect to stay conscious in complete vacuum for 10 -20 seconds. If you are recompressed within 1 to 2 minutes, you will probably survive the experience." An interesting excerpt: "...about a suit technician who spent 20 seconds in vacuum in 1966 when a suit umbilical came loose during a vacuum chamber test. The pressure drop was slowed somewhat by the remaining section of hose, so it wasn't fast enough to cause lung damage. He passed out, presumably from anoxia, after 12-15 seconds. Pressure began to be restored at 20 secs and was well up at 27 secs, at about which time he regained consciousness. He was apparently uninjured, and aftereffects were minor and temporary." "Small pockets of gas can be detected beneath the skin within 2 - 3 seconds after exposure. Gas evolution can also be detected in the abdominal cavity after 7 - 10 seconds, and within the heart and great vessels after about 20 seconds." "Vapor bubbles form in the bloodstream essentially instantaneously ... but are initially not serious enough to stop circulation. Eventually they are. Worse, these bubbles begin as water vapor, but then they start to pick up dissolved gases from the blood and redissolve much more slowly, and the resulting long-lived bubbles are potentially a very serious threat." He also mentioned this one experience on STS-37: "...the palm restraint in one of the astronaut's gloves came loose and migrated until it punched a hole in the pressure bladder between his thumb and forefinger. It was explosive decompression, just a little 1/8 inch hole, but it was exciting down here in the swamp because it was the first injury we've ever had from a suit incident. Amazingly, the astronaut in question didn't even know the puncture had occurred' he was so hopped on adrenaline it wasn't until after he got back in that he even noticed there was a painful red mark on his hand. He figured his glove was chafing and didn't worry about it. "The whole story didn't come out until the suits were back home and a suit technician was setting up to clean that glove; he discovered the dried blood on the outer TMG (thermal micrometeoroid garment) and then found the wayward palm restraint bar. What happened: when the metal bar punctured the glove, the skin of the astronaut's hand partially sealed the opening. He bled into space, and at the same time his coagulating blood sealed the opening enough that the bar was retained inside the hole." He adds at the end: "The best estimate we've been able to get from the flight surgeons about how long an astronaut might survive a catastrophic suit failure is 'several tens of seconds to very few minutes' with almost certainty for detectable permanent damage." I'd imagine that it would depend on the type of damage the astronaut's suit sustained. I don't know if that answers your question but I hope it helps. =) \_/ DED <<<<< *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Shannon Wiley [shannonwiley@home.com] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 7:09 PM To: blue_planet@lists.ient.com Subject: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - various projectile rounds (was idle thoughts) On a Side Note - 5.56mm Ammo is exactly the same diameter as .22 caliber ammunition, which is widely regarded as the least-damaging ammunition available. It's the same ammunition used in Olympic target shooting. It typically has a lower muzzel velocity and tumbles quite easily in flight. The standard U.S. Military 5.56mm round, however, is 'longer' that a typical .22 caliber rifle round. That. combined with the higher muzzle velocity afforded by the increased powder count in the shell makes military rounds actually dangerous in comparison with 'Saturday Night Special' ammunition. (And for those that don't know, Saturday Night Special is a generic term for a series of .22-caliber body pistols that cheaply and widely available on the street here in the U.S. It's estimated that something along the lines of 50 percent of all crimes involving handguns are committed with one of these lovely toys). It's unfair to say that the 9mm is more widely used than the 7.62, as they are used in different situations. Every Chinese AK-47 used 7.62, as did the rifles of most Western armies (or at least a very similar calibre) before they changed to the new 5.56 NATO round, so it got (and still gets) a fair bit of usage. The 9mm is a common pistol and SMG round because it's a good compromise calibre for people who don't want straight-out fatalities, or a lot of overpenetration. The 7.62 is used when you want the guy on the other end to be well and truly dead (or as good as). Hope this helps, Shane *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message.