Nuclear War

Nuclear arms have been an omnipresent force that has affected a wide range of different military and social technologies, philosophies, and ethics since their first use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Countless films have portrayed nuclear holocausts. From blockbuster titles and ones even less known there are a plethora of movies, books, scifi games, and stories about nuclear attacks. Titles  such as the Terminator series, Dr. Strangelove, Black Rain, and countless others permeate out society and the entire modern world as a whole.

Nuclear weapons are a device that uses either fusion (the combining of atoms), fission (the decaying of atoms), or a combination of the two to create a sizable burst of radiation. This explosion typically results in a massive amount of heat at the site of the detonation, which for stronger weaponry can totally obliterate miles of substance, forming craters of dust, ash, and glass. Lesser weaponry typically release much less heat and may only be capable of contaminating an area with radiation. These smaller bombs can cause electrical damage, melting, cancer, and polluted water however, as there is no such thing as a "weak" nuclear bomb.

The side effects of those exposed to nuclear bombs are similar to that of radiation, however as much nukes release lots of infrared light (which decays into heat on contact with matter) many who are exposed to a blast will also show sighs of sever burns.

Depending on the potency of the nuclear weapon, the blast would be respectively large or smaller. Generally a nuclear explosion will follow the following effect guidelines.

Ground Zero: (~0 feet from detonation)
Total annihilation. Massive heat and radiation exposure.

Immediate Area: (~1 mile from detonation)
Structures severely burned or toppled by shockwave. Most buildings destroyed.
All personnel killed by exposure to heat, shrapnel from shockwave, or radiation overload.

Surrounding Area: (~5 mile from detonation)

Structures heavily burned or toppled by shockwave. Possibility of building not collapsing.

Personnel subjected to extreme heat, shrapnel, and shockwave unless shielded. Also exposed to ultimately lethal amounts of radiation.

Neighboring Area: (~10 mile from detonation)

Structures heavily burned or toppled by shockwave. Most buildings destroyed.

All personnel killed by exposure to heat, shrapnel from shockwave, or radiation overload.

Countryside (>100 miles of detonation)

Water sources contaminated with radioactive fallout. Most/all vegetation killed from heat.

Mutation and Radiation!

Putrid shambling blogs, GIANT overgrown flies, crazy superpowers, what hasn't been attributed to mutation in scifi, and how much of it is really true?

First off, radiation is the energized phase of all matter. Anything can become radiation if sufficient energy is applied to it (i.e. disintegration ). Most radiation can be categorized into two groups, artificial and natural. Radiation doesn't necessarily mean radioactive decay. Light is considered radiation and so are radio waves, but neither of those cause geiger counters (a tool used for detecting radioactive decay) to go off or cause cancer in people.

Natural Radiation: Radiation isn't an entirely artificial process and has existed in the universe since the beginning of time. People are constantly exposed to radiation from many of these sources and most of it isn't harmful.

Solar Radiation: Our sun and other stars are huge sources of radiation. Stars are colossal sources of fission, fusion, and burning and can easily provide enough radiation to kill a person billions of times over every second and keep emitting that level of energy for millions (or even billions) of years. However, most stars are far enough away that the level of radiation that reaches us isn't strong enough to hurt.

The Earth: Our planet itself is moderately radioactive in its core, which is a byproduct of its formation as a planet. However since we live here, it obviously isn't radioactive enough to be lethal and the amounts of radiation released by our planets core is rather small and shielded from us by rock.

Elements in the Environment: Many elemental substances are innately radioactive or have radioactive forms. Examples of this that are common are Carbon-13 (also known as C13, C-13, etc.) which is a radioactive form of normal carbon which is Carbon-12. Carbon isn't particularly radioactive but it is very common, in fact Carbon 13 is so common that it is what is used to date how old pottery, artifacts, bones, and fossils are and is very useful because it is so common and radioactive.

Uranium: This renown metal is actually rather rare and even if you live in an area in which there are Uranium mines or deposits, you have little to fear as it is usually buried underground and isn't concentrated enough to cause harm.

Plutonium: Just as uranium, this renown metal is also very uncommon and only those who work around it ore itself have any threat of becoming contaminated by it.

Radon: This radioactive gas can be a severe health hazard to many people world-wide as it seeps up from the bedrock and through the soil, entering peoples basements and filling it with radioactive decay. If you live in an area where you suspect Radon may be present in the topsoil or bedrock, you can purchase or rent a Geiger Counter and test the area. This machine will tell you how much radioactive decay is occurring near it and you can see if there is invisible Radon gas in your basement.


Artificial Sources of Radiation:

Light Bulbs: Passing electricity through a metal filament in these glass bulbs causes light to fill a room (radiation). Light bulbs are very common, but since the light they generate doesn't involve any radioactive metals you can't get cancer from them.

Laser: Be it a laser pointer or an industrial grade metal cutting laser, the light that is released from a laser is radiation, though not cancerous it is quite powerful and can cause blindness

Microwaves: Microwaves are machines that use a form of radiation known as micro-waves that penetrate into food and cause it to heat up. You cannot get cancer from standing near a microwave, as they don't release that kind of radiation and they are surprisingly safe to be around.

Jewelry: Some green jewelry back in the 60's used to glow in the dark. It turns out that the green paint used in these pieces was actually Radium, a radioactive green metal. No american jewelry and very little foreign jewelry nowadays uses radioactive substances.

X-Ray Machines: These machines fire a powerful focused burst of x-ray radiation. This radiation can penetrate through flesh easily, but are deflected or absorbed by bones. This allows doctors to see the bone structure without having to do surgery to see the bones. X-Ray machines are a very focused device and are not harmful because they are infrequently used.

Nuclear Power Plants: These facilities employ rods of radioactive metals to heat up water and generate steam, producing electricity. Nuclear Power plants are quite safe and there is no contamination to the outside environment unless the reactor room is breached, in which case radioactive water or energy can leak out.



Effects of Radiation:
Since radiation constantly hits us in many different forms and giant bugs or lizards aren't terrorizing cities or devouring people whole, what does radiation do to us?

Radiation such as Light, Ultraviolet Light, Microwaves, and Radio Waves are not powerful enough to damage our bodies and cause virtually no effects to a person.

Radiation such as a radioactive metal decaying or a nuclear bomb going off can cause mutations and cancer.

Radioactive dose is measured in Centigrays (or Grays) and is abbreviated as Gy. Here is a list of the levels of Gy and what happens to a human when exposed to it.

70 Gy           Nausea, Vomiting, no sig. risk of cancer                                        0% fatalities
150 Gy           Moderate Vomiting, 33% Infertility, Long-Term Cancer hazard      0% fatalities
250 Gy          Severe Vomiting, 50% Infertility, Fatigue                                       50% in >15 days
2000 Gy      All above signs within 5 minutes                                                     75% in >15 days
5000 Gy      All above signs within 5 minutes                                                    100% in >48 hours
18,000 Gy   Immediate symptoms                                                                       100% in >25 hours


Radioactive mutation is a very common, but subtle occurrence. Though cancer is very common, most cancer is not malignant and is merely benign. Examples of this are moles on skin. It takes millions of years for these tiny mutations to affect evolution and create changes in a species. Simply exposing a creature to a large amount of energy will not make it mutate, grow, or evolve. It will almost assuredly kill it if the dose is high enough.

Steampunk and our Technology

An interesting idea about the course of history and technological creations that have taken place is that it is all a unique chain of events that relate to each other. Just as the coming of the bronze age made stone and bone tools obsolete, so did the advent of guns make rows and rows of heavily armored knights obsolete. The invention of sewing machines and tailoring factories allowed the mass production of textiles and affecting the prices of clothes and their accessibility.

But what if this rigid set of historical events happened in a different way? What if the invention of the airplane happened during the renaissance? What if steampowered tanks rolled across the known world in the name of Caesar?

Ideas such as this are what comprise the genre of Steampunk. Generally themed around the mid to late 19th century, the science fiction genre of Steampunk originated from several sources in the late 1970's. Originally about a victorian-esque 1800's world where steam powered appliances and ornate, Baroque devices often have gears or components visible. The concept of steampunk is a unique blend of victorian art, 1800's society, and scientific discovery.

But what are the odds of history having had a different course? Well, it's not like we can go back in time (yet) and change things and then zip into the future and see how things worked out differently, but what can be said definitively is that what HAS happened is a very specific chronological line of events that happened in a very specific way, and should something have happened differently then we would most likely have ended up with a very different product, and that product would be our history.

Taleweaver!

In the light of the moment I've decided to write a short science fiction story about my favorite college!


Our story takes place many years in the future in the year 201,000 in the distant star-nexus of Philo. Deep in the black void of space near a star system known only as "The Illadelph" three factions battle for control of Philo as enemies clash and alliances are formed amongst the stars.

Orienta-Un:
The nation in which our story is centered. Though now the most powerful of the colonies in The Illadelph, they hold their own and seek above all the cease violence and bring negotiations to the table, stopping the Orien-Framanian War.


Vlad Diback: The president of Orienta-Un and the main character of out story. he is attempting to stop tensions between the Framanian Baronies while assisting the Palmonians in their mission in the system.
Wico-Sama: An aged practitioner of arcane studies, he is the guru of our story and the high councellor of the Orienta-Un council. Though wise beyond measure, many of his decisions are frowned upon by the less experienced.
Gin'Dujis: A techno-scribe who is the head of the Orientan holo library. She serves to proliferate data throughout Orientan colonies and strives for excellence and purity in knowledge.
Criep: An aged nubian descendant from the Swernet Ghothut colony, his role in our tale can be summed with the phrase "Unremembered history repeats itself."


Palmo-Theologicon:
A collection of ex-monks with multi-dimensional diversity that express deep holistic understanding. They are long-standing allies of the Orientians and are seen as a peaceful people though their political power in the system is small. Lead by Walowan Cha-Sthim, the Palmonians seek to spread their beliefs throughout the system and remain a peaceful and politically neutral organization.


Framanian Baronies:
A band in interstellar mercenaries who have recently settled into The Illadelph. These tyrants coax innocent settlers of the fringe worlds into joining their glorious society, known only as "The Establishment" where their bodies are subjected to addicting chemicals, thus fueling a need to serve and get their fix. Lead by Overlord Joa'Fn, the Framians are a loosely knit series of baronies at their heart, leading out the seas of chemically addicted mind-slaves to conquer the galaxy.

Apolalypse!

Stories of the wold ending are far from new in the realm of fantasy. The word Apocalypse comes from Revelation, which is probably one of the first stories that depicts the world ending. The legend of Atlantis may also be a root for tales of the apocalypse, being that it is the story of an entire continent being destroyed by Poseidon.

Apocalyptic stories are quite prevalent in modern fiction. From movies like 2012, Armageddon, Knowing, Waterworld, The Matrix and Akira, Hollywood and beyond have used the end of the world as a recurring source for audiences. Even more films such as The Terminator, or Avatar imply an apocalypse. Books as well imply a destructive end of the wold quite frequently. Obviously Revelation being the most transparent of these examples (it being the root of the word, and probably the largest source of world-ending material) but books such as Mary Shelly's "The Last Man", The War of the Worlds, and After London discuss a variety of ideas of how the world will end. In fact, with such an abundance of different earth-bane tales its hard to find a scifi story where the world isn't blown up.

Scifi typically falls into one of these categories:
Catastrophe: Earthquakes, Lava, Meteors, Global Warming at its finest!
E.T. Threats: Aliens blastin' all the humans to bits.
Technology Failure: Science has failed us!
Pandemic: Zombies want your braaaaains!
Nuclear War: Nuff said.

Though it's difficult to say *why* audiences like stories about the world ending and I dont know enough about the sociological reasoning behind it, a lot of it probably stems from a subconscious understanding people have that this world is temporary. Especially with the rise of Global Warming, more and more people hear those two words on a frequent basis and they kinda get ingrained with the concept of the world coming to a close.

So the next time your out walking your dog, doing your homework, or just talking to someone, remember. That could be your last.

Weapons of Science Fiction

A long standing interest of our race has been the creation and use of new and futuristic weaponry. From some of the earliest science fiction books (written in as early as 1900) stories of "land ironclads" crawling across the countryside by foreign armies and annihilating their technologically inferior enemies.

Often a stunning revelation is that these strange new implements of destruction are created in writing before they are physically made in the world. An example being the atomic bomb being envisioned by H.G. Wells in 1914, 30 years before its creation and use in the second World War.

Weapons of increasing popularity with shows such as Star Trek, Star Wars, and the writings of Arthur C. Clarke are energy weaponry. Primarily envisioned as beams of light or heat that can disintegrate things, from their invention as an idea in the 1950's they rapidly became one of the most popular scifi themed weapons, particularly in the 60's and 70's. Five years later in 1965 the laser was invented, though of course nowhere near as powerful or impressive as its authors had forethought it, this fledgeling technology would have impacts in surgery, data recording, music, architecture, landscaping, and even photography.

A Better Shield

Building off of the horrors of Character Shield, one recurrently common and intriguing theme in scifi are energy shields. Since the 1920's science fiction authors have been using all sorts of different shields to protect alien spacecraft, starships, trap prisoners, or just deflect stuff. Theres a lot of different names but they're all very similar in concept; glowey shield surrounds something and stuff cant go through it.


Much less spectacular than hollywoods creativity gives testimony to, natural energy shields exist in the world today. In fact our planet has one of the strongest in our solar system. A long time ago (long before there was life) the earth was just a ball of rock until a huge iron asteroid hit it. The force of the impact made a lot of heat and energy, forming our moon from pieces of the earth that were dislodged. This resulted in our planet getting an iron center and a magnetic field that goes pole to pole. In fact the poles are the + and - sides of the Earth "magnet". You can see this force field by picking up a compass. The tiny magnetized needle (made of iron) is small enough (and balanced enough) to get pulled and pushed on by the Earths energy shield and gets pulled in a direction to point north.


The biggest difficulty with making a large energy shield like we see in movies and games is mainly energy capacity. Our modern technology doesn't have the strength to make to make a shield that big or the power to hold it for any time at all. Maybe in future years someone will find a way to refine the natural shielding process and make it more realistic, but until then were stuck with hiding behind armor plating or concrete during alien invasions.

Character Shield!

Know what I hate? Character shield. Whats that? Well you've probably seem it in a movie and thought about it without knowing the fancy name but Character Shield (also known as Plot Shield) is when a writer is too clingy to let somebody in their story die and lets them miraculously survive against impossible odds.

Plot Shield has gained a lot of attention (unfortunately) in hollywood and the gaming industry recently. A great example of this is Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Zooming around in his spaceship to destroy the deathstar ships are getting blown apart left and right but his miraculously manages to not burst into flames and crash in a fiery, screaming wreckage. A more recent example of Character Shield is in Avatar when Jake Sully survives being repeatedly torn apart by beasts, shot, blown up, crushed under undeterminably large amounts of wood, or otherwise killed in a variety of ways that stretched the entire length of the film.

The more times a character is put into a dangerous scenario and they come out unscathed, the less the audience associates that character being in actual danger. After a main character survives the velociraptors the 18th time the audience stops seeing the dinosaurs as a threat and more of a boring interlude to the next scene.

It's not a good idea to kill off characters too quickly either. Doing that gives the audience the idea that those characters are meaningless, expendable, and don't matter in the overall plot of the story. Especially in horror movies there is a cast of blatantly expendable people such as:

-Nerdy Guy with glasses
-"I'll punch the serial killer" Jock
- Unintelligent and Physically Attractive Blond Girl
-Ethnic Minority Kid
-Generic "We must study the monster!" Scientist/Doctor
-Obese ADD kid who wanders off for no apparent reason
-Whiny Girl who screams at every little thing

Though I can't vouch for every director or all of these stereotypes, much of this grief of repeat cast comes from unimaginative script writers and character designers. Yes it's fun to be able to anticipate with surgical precision who the next bloke's face to become tangent with the aliens claws will be but seriously, unnamed/minor characters being swatted down like flies gets old. Fast.

The Sky Calls to Us...

"If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars." - Carl Sagan

Laying down in a soft, dew-filled meadow on a warm summers night one can find themselves lost in a myriad of awe looking up at the heavens. Towering above us in all imaginable dimensions is a veritable sea of stars that the naked eye can only glimpse a passing visage of. With the colossal distances between stars one sometimes develops the impression that space is a void; a black expanse of nothingness that simply filled in the nearly unending gap between a few points of light. But simply stars are not all that fill the universe. The cosmos if full beyond measure. Clouds of dust and gas larger than the collective distance every human has traveled combined, swirling oceans of metals, rock and crystals, stars of all sizes, classes, ages, and congregations, massive collections of matter in microscopic points we know as black holes, and of course other worlds permeate places that we call space.

With the knowledge of what lies beyond our diminutive homeworld it is only logical that one would want to ask the question: "How do we get there?". As a child wandering around and exploring so do we have the desire to travel from our home and wander around the backyard of our universe.

The primary difficulty of interstellar travel is the large distances between points of interest. A prime example of this is the

Alpha Centauri is an important star in human history and probably the future of our race. The Centauri star system is  the Centaurus constellation and is the third brightest star in the night. Being one of the most visible stars during any given night, Alpha Centauri has been widely known for centuries around the world as a navigational reference. In actuality what we call Alpha Centauri is really three separate stars, Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri A and B are main sequence stars and are both around the same age, size, and color of our own Sun. A and B are what is called a binary star system, which is two stars that are close enough that they actually orbit each other. Proxima Centauri is what is called a Red Dwarf, a light-weight star that emit mostly infrared light and sometimes release strong pulses of energy such as x-rays.

Because of the relatively short distance of the Alpha Centauri star cluster to our own world many see it as the most realistic step towards space travel beyond our own solar system. Just as it was a goal to put a man on the moon, so would it ultimately be a goal to put a man on a planet near Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately  even though it is the closest, the distance between our system and the Centauri system is quite large. From our sun to there is 4.4 light years or 44,000,000,000,000 km away.

Because of the difficulty of traveling this massive distance, it is generally accepted that with our current technology it is impossible to attempt interstellar travel. With our modern propulsion systems to travel through space it would take 100 times the energy output of the entire earth to reach Alpha Centauri and the time required would be several decades if not centuries. Also other problems exist as a vessel would travel through space. The vacuum, radiation, weightlessness, and debris all pose imminent threats to the survivability of spacecraft. Anyone knows the dangers of crashing into things, especially someone who has driven a car before. Space travel however is greatly amplified from just hitting a deer at 40 mph. A shuttle for example, hitting a speck of dust only a few millimeters across at even a tenth the speed of light would be more than enough to completely obliterate the entire vessel and everyone and thing inside of it.

Still the question remains, will we bear witness to an age where people live on other worlds? Only time will tell.

Cordycepts: Mind Controlling Fungi

Mind control is a widely used concept in science fiction. Especially when conjoined with the omni-chiche body infesting parasites, it's difficult to have a good scifi story (let alone series) without some kind of brain-sucking or body dwelling monstrosity. From popular video games such as Halo, Half-Life, and Starcraft, to movies like Alien or Star Trek, there is a plethora of beasties that will crawl inside you and do some nasty, nasty things.

Interestingly enough the strangest fiction seems to be fact.

Throughout Asia (China, Korea, Thailand, and Japan especially) there are several strains of fungi called  Cordycepts that infect roughly 400 different species of insects. Cordycept fungi are roughly club-shaped mushrooms that are parasitic and actually grow inside whatever species they're intended to parasite on. Before you get the heebie-jeebies, there are many fungus caused infections in people on a regular basis and don't cause any major harm such as Ringworm and Nail Fungus. Unless you have a disease that cripples your immune system, the only real danger a human has from fungi is eating a poisonous one or an allergic reaction.

Asian insects however aren't so lucky. Fungi reproduce by making a fruiting body (such as a mushroom like you find in the grocery store) and then shed spores. When a Cordycept spore lands on it's intended host, the it grows a tiny root-like mycelium into the hosts body. As the spore continues to grow inside of the host, it follows the insects nerve cord up into it's head and actually starts to control it's mind. Once in partial control of the unfortunate creatures body, the fungus directs it to climb as high as it can and attach itself (with mandibles, pincers, or legs) to the top of a building, blade of grass, vine, or tree and then die. The fungus continues to devour the deceased host's tissue and eventually a mushroom bursts out of the victims head and sprouts upwards, releasing a cloud of spores to infect others.


Cordyceps unilateralis (featured in the video below) infect ants and can eradicate entire colonies of billions of members. The fungi can reach pandemic levels inside nests very quickly and unless the infected are removed and carried away it can mean certain doom.

Cordyceps: Attack of the Killer Fungi - BBC

When one analyzes the main concepts of parasites it becomes increasingly clear as to why the idea of foreign things inside our bodies is so terrifying and captivating. Just as having an incurable disease is so debilitating, many science fiction parasites are incurable or work swiftly enough that there isn't time to cure them. It is a basic primordial weakness of ours to have foreign things inside us, that we cannot do much (if anything) to stop them. If you get a splinter in your hand you can put a bandage on it or get tweezers and pull it out. But if you have tiny, microscopic Andromeda in you can only hope your body is somehow strong enough to fight it off.

Yet another trump card of internal parasites is the recurring theme of mind control. We are mental organisms and our minds our are greatest strength. Just as other animals have evolved and specialized over generations and focused on a trait that will allow them to survive, so have we and our intellect and reasoning is that trait. We lack sharp claws, wings, or hard exoskeletons to protect ourselves and we need to use (and have used) our highly advanced brains to get where we are in the world. Something that affects our minds be it a chemical, biologic, or psychological harms us by taking away our greatest advantage and tool.