i do have an autistic interest in nuclear power, so i know more than the average person. But like, it only makes it funnier
“You know what’s funny?” Asked KillingTimeItself while flicking another match into the brush. “If we had the demon core here and I threw it and hit someone with it in such a way that it momentarily reached prompt criticality, it would be like stabbing them with the world’s slowest knife. Heck, even if you missed, it would still be like a cancer knife that would get them years later.”
FlyingSquid looked on incredulously. “Man, that’s fucked up.”
Just then, the brush caught fire, setting the active battlefield alight and casting a glow on TheFartographer’s face, who was jealous because he forgot to bring matches or a lighter. All three friends giggled and snuck away from the fire.
Just then, TheFartographer got shot in the ass two inches from his butthole and died immediately. FlyingSquid and KillingTimeItself took TheFartographer’s shoes and looted his body, using the valuables to buy more matches in town. They really hadn’t gotten that close to TheFartographer in their time together and he could be a bit of a bastard.
If you tried to make one the size of the moon, it would blow up a bit past the time you got it to the size of an atomic bomb core. Or, if you did it slowly enough, it would go critical but stop being pure enough to explode.
except for the fact that it would be more like 50m at most, assuming that you count still living for 20 years, and the fact that the person wielding the weapon has already melted into a puddle of goo by that point, yeah. It’s a weapon with a ranged attack.
Melee area effect weapons. There’s a wand of fireball in Balders Gate 3 that is bent and has melee range. This is like that, but the fire is only analogous to fire and the effect lasts longer and does damage slower
Look up demon core on Wikipedia. It was the core from a nuclear weapon. Some dumbasses decided to play with it in very dangerous and stupid ways and died.
The folks exposed died a few days after. So it wasn’t instant. Very slow and horrible probably as all their organs and cells died at a molecular level and skin fell off.
So damage over time and can not be healed. Would be accurate.
Slotin knew he fucked up as soon as it happened too. Apparently, he would always use a screwdriver to hold the thing open and was warned multiple times he was gonna kill himself. He did use himself as a human shield, though (not sure if it was deliberate or just happenstance), and ended up being the only fatality in that incident, iirc.
In fairness, several others in the room died years-to-decades later of leukemias that were arguably attributable to their exposures. That said, the Slotin criticality accident is one of those cases where nuclear disasters end up being both completely horrifying and a lot less deadly than you think they ought to be.
My favourite thing about that story remains that even if everything had gone to plan and he hadn’t fully dropped the second half , it would still just be a couple of dudes with PhDs only slightly irradiating their own junk.
Demon Core. It was meant to be part of a third nuclear bomb to be dropped on Japan, but after their surrender, the core was used in two experiments which both killed several people via exposure to lethal doses of radiation.
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