A Quick Word About Radioactivity

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Please include a quick blurb about radioactivity, their kinds, sources, and half-lives in Traveller, and how it doesn't just go away after even thousands of years.

 

[Garran]

Depends on what you mean by "doesn't go away". Things can stop being meaningfully radioactive after a certain amount of time because they aren't producing anything more than normal background levels - there are non-threatening levels of radioactivity in everyday materials and events (rocks, rain, etc).

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Jumpspace kills everyone if you want realism.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

No one was saying Jump-Space is radioactive.


I'm referring more to explaining what half-life means in the context of the exchange of nuclear missiles, a regular occurrence in certain types of space battle.

It might have been several thousand years since that space-hulk got nuked, but that radioactivity hasn't budged, because the half-life of nuclear warhead material is over 700 million years; that means that the radioactivity will have only gone down by half after over 700 million years. Giving GMs and players a realistic understanding of the gameplay implications of nuclear weapons is important.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

No one was saying Jump-Space is radioactive.


I'm referring more to explaining what half-life means in the context of the exchange of nuclear missiles, a regular occurrence in certain types of space battle.

It might have been several thousand years since that space-hulk got nuked, but that radioactivity hasn't budged, because the half-life of nuclear warhead material is over 700 million years; that means that the radioactivity will have only gone down by half after over 700 million years. Giving GMs and players a realistic understanding of the gameplay implications of nuclear weapons is important.

Just say it's still radioactive then.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

That's not the point; the GM and the players should be informed that it still would be radioactive, so they can construct reasonable adventures.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Chances are, the characters won't notice any change in radioactive decay during their lifetimes. So something is either radiating them, or it isn't.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Did you even read what I wrote? I posted this thread in the context of some relic from a long-forgotten war. In that context, a GM might naively assume that the radiation has faded away; and the sad fact of the matter is, this naive assumption is wrong. It is exactly the job of rulebooks to correct the naive assumptions players might have about a setting so that they can be properly equipped to engage those dangers properly.

 

[Belisknar]

Did you even read what I wrote? I posted this thread in the context of some relic from a long-forgotten war. In that context, a GM might naively assume that the radiation has faded away; and the sad fact of the matter is, this naive assumption is wrong. It is exactly the job of rulebooks to correct the naive assumptions players might have about a setting so that they can be properly equipped to engage those dangers properly.

Let's be fair, if a GM puts it there, he's going to decide how radioactive he wants it to be. It is afterall his story outline. I'm all for rules to explain necessary points of the system, but at most I'd have something added to the table on page 77. I wouldn't advocate for any new descriptions added in.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

If it was ever deadly before, it's still going to be deadly now. It's not going to stop being deadly in any reasonable timeframe. My point is that it should be made clear to GMs and players not to go trying to use radioactivity as something that meaningfully goes away over time, and gives players access after, say, a meager several hundred millennia; it does not work that way.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

this naive assumption is wrong. It is exactly the job of rulebooks to correct the naive assumptions players might have about a setting so that they can be properly equipped to engage those dangers properly.

Last I looked, it wasn't a rulebook's job. They don't teach how to drive either, by the way. Or what are good food choices for 2nd breakfast.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

It is a rulebook's job to explain hazards characters are likely to run into. Radiation being one of them. If nuclear missiles weren't a Traveller thing, you might have a point, but they are, so you don't.

 

[Belisknar]

It is a rulebook's job to explain hazards characters are likely to run into. Radiation being one of them. If nuclear missiles weren't a Traveller thing, you might have a point, but they are, so you don't.

So what exactly do you want put in the rulebook? do you have an outline idea of what should be put in place?

Radiation and it's effects are explained. It is up to the GM how those particulars are used. Myself and Shawn have come to blows on this board before about the level of GM vs Rulebook input into the game there needs to be.

But in this case I'm with him. It's down to the GM how Radioactive he wants something to be. The rulebook isn't here to give a science lesson.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

What I am asking for is for the longevity of radiation from sources found in Traveller materials to be properly explained, so that the GMs can properly understand that, if something was lethal only several thousand years ago, it will still be lethal today. If the GM wants to fudge the original lethality of this or that radiation source, and say it was historically exaggerated, or say that the source of the original radiation was mistaken as something worse than it really was, to allow the players to do go somewhere they shouldn't be able to according to this or that material, fine; but the book should encourage them to get the details right, and use that knowledge to make workarounds, rather than merely handwave things in ignorance.

Radioactive materials don't just "go away". They have half-lives with known values, some of which are apocalyptic. It's not the boom that's the problem... it's the aftermath.

 

[FallingPhoenix]

Most of the things I can find out about it online (only a ten or fifteen minute search, I admit) indicate that, aside from a small increased cancer risk, most places hit by nuclear weapons would be relatively safe as far as radiation after only a few months, especially using cleaner hydrogen bombs. Now if someone were to deliberately make dirty bombs you might have the long term radiation problem, but that seems like there's enough of a range of things there that a GM can pick and choose how much radiation is around.

Reactor meltdowns appear to have somewhat different long-term results, so if your ships use fission reactors, you might have a problem longer term.

 

[Garran]

In the case of something like a derelict ship, anyone going aboard is presumably going to be wearing a vacc suit, and those already need to protect the wearer from the ambient radiation they'll be getting if they're outside a planet's magnetic field and even more so if they happen to be outside the star's heliopause. Getting hit by a nuke right now would blow right through that, but years later the fallout from it would be lost in the background noise.

If Traveller reactors are supposed to be fusion based then, even if one did blow, it would again be an at-the-moment danger, but years later probably wouldn't make much of a difference.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

The natural forces on Earth that sweep radioactive material away don't exist in space. There's no "rain" and "wind" in a space-hulk to scrub it clean. What it gets contaminated with stays there until someone cleans it up manually. The same goes for any atmosphereless moon or planet.

The very fact that we have to look up answers to these questions elsewhere means the book isn't doing its job on explaining these dangers to players, and the extent to which equipment can and cannot overcome them. Even with the most hardened BattleDress, there's going to be an exposure limit rating that defines an upper limit for radiation exposure, dependent on the race of the sophont being exposed.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Stuff is either radioactive, or it isn't. It's just part of the setting. Send in a scrub team if you want to change the setting for the players. By the way, we don't have to look up any answers elsewhere.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Yeah, you do, because the book doesn't tell GMs and Players in no uncertain terms that radioactivity doesn't just "magically go away" after what seems to us meager humans as "a long time", but is ultimately meaningless to the half-lives of radioactive materials.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

The rules do not explain how characters survive traveling through a jump either.