Starfleet Jedi

Ciaphas Cain: For the Emperor - technical analysis thread

There's not much to get from Alex Stewart's book, but even the lowest amount of claims doesn't guarantee fewer errors and other odd interpretations.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 147 - Cain's laspistol removes "half the face" of a PDF lieutenant in a single shot. Whether this implies blowing half the head away or not is debatable.

The text says "taking out half the face". It's rather interesting that this turns into "half the head".

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 191-192 - Cain again mentions that lasguns cauterize the wounds they inflict, and that this means that anyone (human, at least) will normally not bleed to death, even from glancing hits. Anyn blood, therefore, likely comes from whatever flesh/tissue is blown out of the wound, or the blood is minimal. Of course, as I noted, this might vary depending on the pattern of lasgun or the settings (if they have settings), but most Valhallan lasguns (as those of regiments Cain has come into contact with) evidently do cause major cauterization.

That and Ork skin, for one, might require more energy to cauterize. This is worth the notice because calcs pop here and there, with mentions of cauterization.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 194 -

The distinctive crack of lasgun fire continued to echo through the roads around it, and as our field of vision widened, I could see the sparks of muzzle flashes inside the building, and puffs of vaporising rockcrete where other bolts were impacting around the upper windows.

- lasguns can "vaporize" rockcrete, although the quantity isn't exactly specified (though this might imply MJ range outputs, given the energgy input needed to vaporize 1 kg of silicon.. around 13.3 MJ)

Page 195 - Vehicle (in this case salamander) mounted flamers are capable of incinerating individuals. This indicates the capability to deliver hundreds of megajoules over a shorrt period of times (seconds likely at most.) Curiously, a puddle of burning promethium merely leaves a "blackened" patch of rockrete (as opposed to molten, which the cremation-level energies would imply. giving us an indirect idea of how strong the stuff is. Remember that lasguns were vaporising rockcrete...)

There's no indication that even one kilo of material was vaporized though.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 262 - Jurgen implies that a meltagun makes a decent weapon for clearing paths in tunnel fighting (implying a vey large area of effect, which we will see later on.)

...

Page 264 - Jurgen offers to use the meltagun to remove the hatch, which causes everyone to panic because it might do too much damage (IE bring the whole building down.)

"Velade, Holenbi, front and centre. Five rounds rapid." The twisted metal flashed into vapour under the combined power of the hellgun volley, and I clapped Jurgen on the back encouragingly.

....

I aimed my trusty pistol at it [the hole that was in the ground at their feet], but it was a pointless precaution; anyone waiting in ambush would have been vaporised along with the inspection panel, and anyone outside the hellgun' area of effect would have een shooting back by now.

- 10 hellgun shots (5 per gun) can vaporize a metal cover of unknown mass as well as at least one person beyond it. Disregarding the cover, vaporizing a human requires at least ~100-150 MJ, which means 10-15 MJ per shot, and this is VERY conservative.

Note, while we don't know the mass of the cover, ,we can guess at its dimensions. It has to be at least around half a meter in diameter (people can climb down it) and a half centimeter thickness (5mm) seems a very conservative estimate. Assuming a density of iron, the cover might be around 7 kg (at least), which would add at least anohter 50-60 MJ to the estimate, or another 5-6 MJ per shot. This is still conservative, as the fact that Kelp could not budge the cover may imply it masses several tens of kilos at least - the calc could be 2,3 even 5 times grater than my consevative estimate. And if there are several people there, the calc could easily extend into hundreds of megajoules.

Additionally, this quote does imply the rate of fire on a hellgun is at least 5 shots a second (per "volley")

If there's such an area effect, how can it be that the two guys plus Cain can stand close to the hatch that's being shot at? We know they wear carapace armour, which could be capable of stopping a las-bolt, and that's all. Hell, it seems they don't even have a decent facial protection. How are they supposed to withstand the nearby heat of metal vapour?
If people underneath would have been vaporized, we're talking about a large amount of energy in excess (is we take it literally).
Notice, though, that if the hatch wasn't pulverized by the rapid expansion of the fractions of vaporized metal, it is a proof that it was firmly held to the ground, which explains why it was impossible to pull.
Hellguns need very special power packs or high energy power cells, and are relatively large.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 274 - Cain notices the body of a "stocky fellow" who has most of his chest missing from enemy weapons fire. (Relevant for a weapons calc described later.)

Page 275

"I'm still trying to work out what killed the others," I said. The wounds were too heavy for lasguns, even the hellguns we carried. I'd heard them being fired though, I was sure about that.

In cain's estimation, a lasgun/hellgun could not create a wound sufficient to remove "most of the chest" of a stocky fellow. If we assume "most" means 2/3 of the chest this could mean affecting around 30-36 kg of flesh (assuming a very stocky individual.) and assume vaporization of the water content we could infer around 60-65 MJ (IF we assume creamation of the other 30% - 38-39 additional megajoules) This probably means that a hellgun (and hence a lasgun) cannot have much more than 60-100 MJ of energy. However, this isn't specific as to whether it is "per shot" or "full auto", and it is not specific as to whether all shots hit or not. And it may not include full cremation (though cauterization probably wouldn't be very far off.) Note that comparatively speaking, a lasgun is probably at least several times less powerful than a hellgun.

The question is, what about the word blast?
Do you really need to flash boil more than 30 kilograms of flesh's water content to get rid of that volume of a chest? I don't think so.
Besides, what do you think happens if you actually flash boil that amount of matter? Chances are that more than most of the torso would be gone.
As energy does not disappear beyond a given radius from the point of impact, if 2/3 of the torso was vaporized, actually all the torso and more would be gone because of the blast.
I'm also curious about where the data about chest weight comes from.
Chestjournal perhaps? :)
I wish he could cite the source(s) he uses a bit more frequently.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 275-276

It looks like plasma rounds to me," Jurgen volunteered. The toubt in his voice told me how unlikely he thought it, though; plasma weapons were big, bulky, and unreliable, and took an age to recharge between shots. You'd have to be mad to arm and enitre squad with them. Not to mention being rarer than an ork with a sense of humor. "Plasma pistols, maybe?"

"Maybe," I conceded. Those were even rarer, but suppose someone had found a whole cache of them from the fabled Dark Age of Technology?

- Jurgen identifies the weapon as a "plasma" weapon revmoing most of the chest of the guy above. Note that this probably means that the quote should be interpreted as a "per shot" estimate, but it also probably means that the lasgun/hellgun shots would probably not do much, if any, cremation (cauterization is likely, of course.)

Generally speaking, this probably places a Hellgun's "per shot" upper limit as around 60-70 MJ per "shot", with a lasgun being 2-4 times les powerful (15-20 MJ per shot, presumably.)

Of course, if it's a "plasma/melta" weapon, then the question is not how much energy was spent achieving the observed effects, but how the weapon works.
Still, you could always consider the likeliness of a remote explosive effect; the text only refers to a part of the chest missing... a weapon melting stuff would likely be worth a different description than what evokes just a gaping hole.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 286:

These were plasma weapons we were facing, ,and even the heavy body armour we were wearing would be all but useless against it

- Cain believes that the carapace armor he and his troops are wearing would be completely ineffective against Tau pulse/plasma weaponry. Given before that he believed it could stop a las-bolt (and later on, implying it could even stop a hellgun bolt0 we again see evidence that the tau weaponry is more powerful than Imperium las weaponry.

- Incidentally, the prior calc for the plasma bolt may suggest an upper-limit resilience of around 50-100 or so megajoules (maybe give or take a few tens of MJ).

A bolt of incandescent energy burst against the metal piping close to my head, just missing my face with a spray of molten metal. If profanity was a weapon our assailants would all have
been dead in seconds at that point, believe me. Stray pieces of debris ignited from similar accidents, suffusing the chamber with a flickering orange glow that only intensified my sense of disorientation.

The plasma weapons (pulse carbines, ,if I remmber pathfinder armament correctly) can melt a substantial but unquantified amount of metal from a pipe. Given cain was evidedntly using said pipe for Cover, we may infer it was fairly large and perhaps fairly thick. Interestingly, unless this is a kroot pulse projectile, the tau must have been using reduced settings when firing on Cain, given that even 50 MJ or so would introduce substantial melting in an iron pipe (to say nothing of outright vaporization, and Cain seems to be ab it too close to the pipe for his unarmoured face to endure vaporized metal.)

By all means, the shot landed rather close to Cain, almost a grazing shot. It seems to point to a very low-power shot. At best, sparkles from what would have been the impact of a bullet against a metallic pipe. It's hard to imagine metal suddenly heated up to melting point, not releasing tremendous heat beyond what would just drive the character into cursing.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Pages 323

I recognised the tactif from the cleansing of Keffia, and Jurgen evidently, did too, as he raised the melta before
fallign back. The blast of superheated air roared against my face, ,vaporising the oncoming stealer and chewing
a chunk out of the front few ranks.

- A meltagun can "vaporise" a whole genestealer (a purestrain I believe), and implying similar for the "first few ranks" (at least two others, possibly more.) If we know the mass of a genestealer, we can probably estimate its output. (I'd assume more than a regular person, so probably several hundred kg is possible, suggesting hundreds of MJ worth of energy at least, possibly low gj.)

We can ask if it's necessary to bring that much energy to blast apart a genestealer and affect the nearby creatures, in a typical tightly cramped swarm formation?
200 KG (low hundreds), that's almost 840 MJ. Consider two cars filled with 100 kg each (http://www.nctc.gov/site/technical/tnt.html).
Or take a look at this Type 63 rocket spamming. According to this source, the greater T-63 caliber comes with the equivalent of 3 kg of TNT per head. Each blast is rather considerable.
Now observe page 27 of this document, notably the effect on the wagon of a 10 kg TNT internal charge, with the wagon located in an open environment. A more exhaustive version of the subway wagon test: http://www.larcher.de/static/publicatio ... amtech.pdf
For the scale, 1 kiloton is ~4.2 terajoules, 1 ton(ne) a thousand times less, and 1 kg a million times less (4.2 megajoules).
Do we really need 200 kg turned into energy or more?
That's if you go with more or less conventional weapons, while again, the WH40K plasma variety is rather curious.
Besides, plasma weapons are not exactly high rate repeaters. They offer a few shots only and are very short ranged. They're the fancy "blob that glows" version of an ACME dynamite gun.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Pages 323-324

The firing continued, with las-bolts and bullets chewing up the masonry around us, and I felt a sudden blow against my chest. I glanced down; a las-bolt had impacted against the borrowed
armour beneath my greatcoat, and I blessed the foresight that had impelled me to requisition it.

- Lasbolt stopped by carapace armor.

Did the las-bolt previously pass through matter (chewing the masonry) before hitting the carapace?
Later references would suggest that it was a pure bolt, considering that the carapace armor could withstand several lasbolts.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 324

The explosive bolts detonated inside their chitinous shells, blowing their thoraxes to bloody mist.

- Effect of bolt pistol rounds on genestealers.

I'm not expecting any huge explosive capacity here.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 324 - Cain mentions having witnessed Purestrain Genestealers effortlessly tear open Terminator armour.

Their claws need to be really tough and sharp, otherwise they'd most likely break or even shatter against the armour.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 331-332

He raised the hellgun, aiming it at my chest. Incredibly, he still didn't seem to realise that I'd concealed armour there, or he'd have gone for a head shot I'm sure

- Cain is confident that a hellgun shot (or possibly a burst) at close range would not penetrate his carapace armor.

That's rather ridiculous, to say the least.
How a weapon, that would vaporize a metal hatch, or even be capable of toppling a building, be withstood by carapace armour, even it's considered heavy armour?
It can only be explained by Kelp having set the gun for a low yield shot, or the hatch being fairly light and small.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 332

"Jurgen, kill him," I said. The expression on Kelp's face was almost comical for the half-second or so that he still had one, then he exploded into a small pile of gently steaming offal.

- Doesn't precisely say "vaporize" here, but the fact that Kelp is "steaming" and he "explodes" implies at least partial vaporization. We may also infer Jurgen logically used a lower setting here (mentioned in First and Only, I believe) because of Cain's proximity to Kelp, so did not employ full power (and hence, not full vaporization.) The output would still be many tens of megajoules at least, as the water content in kelp's body is raised to the boiling point. It also disregards the fact Kelp was, I believe, still wearing carapace armor (not that it would neccesarily provide a HUIGE amount of protection, but that could add a few more tens of megajoules potentially, depending on how the effects work.)

Bear in mind this also occurs over about half a second or less, so that can at least double or triple the figure too.

...

Page 333 - mention of the dissipation of Kelp's "molecules", implying he might have been at least prtially vaporized, as postulated above.

Is it necessary to point out that the initial projectile is a form of plasma? So it's kinda expected that even if the body had not exploded, some skin would at the very least be crispy.
Tens of megajoules at least is totally over excessive. Besides, it's one of those weapons, meltas, that work at the molecular level of something to destroy their target, whatever the hell the necessary comment in another source was supposed to mean.

That said, shortening the timespan of the effect will only increase the weapons' power, not its energy.
I must also question how you can, with conventional heat and blast effects, "explode into a small pile of gently steaming offal" like if all that remained remotely solid, aside from the random gooey bit stuck to someone's boot, were smoking guts of the butchered man.
And a pile?

Had the man been partially vaporized, the blast would have been powerful enough to send the rest of the bones and meat all over the room. Several tens of megajoules, that's like ramming two kilos of TNT or more into the stomach of a man.

"Moscow. A blast tore apart a metro train car in Moscow during the morning rush hour. The train was traveling between the Paveletskaya station and the Avtozavodskaya station around 8:40am. The explosion occurred in the second car of the train, blowing out windows and causing metal pieces of the train to be strewn in all directions. The device had an explosive power of about 4–5 kg of TNT. The device was similar to that used in the commuter train attack in Yessentuki in 2003. Those who survived were forced to walk through the dark tunnel to exit the subway. At least forty people were killed and 122 injured. However, the death toll was expected to rise as many bodies had been torn apart during the explosion and were difficult to identify."

"Darnitsa. Two explosions occurred at the Darnitsa district court of Kiev, injuring eleven people, damaging the façade of the building, and knocking out the windows of nearby buildings. The explosive device was planted inside a toilet on the ground floor of the building and had an explosive power of 1.5 kg of TNT."

"Voronezh. An explosion occurred at a public transport stop in the center of Voronezh. Two people were reported dead and five wounded. The bus stop is near the city's Genetics Institute. The bomb was hidden in the trash bin near the bus stop. Its power was equivalent to 200-500g of TNT. The bus was damaged."

"Moscow. A female suicide bomber blew herself up outside of the entrance to the Rizhshkaya subway station and the Krestovskiy shopping center. The explosive device was equivalent to 2 kg of TNT. ... Eleven people were killed in the attack and at least fifty wounded."

Now let's remember that Cain was just a few meters away from Kelp, just not close enough to use a chainsword, and contrary to his torso, his head was exposed.

In other words, with the dissipation of molecules, it would take very little faith to claim an exotic effect here.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 339 - Jurgen's melta creates a hole in a masonry wall tall enough for a person to walk through, a meter wide and the wall "barely the width of" Cain's forearm. "wide as his forearm" may refer to length or width of the forearm (the latter implies .1 meters, the former .5 meter.) which may suggest between 450-2300 kg of material was affected. It is not known whether it was melting or vaporization, but melting seems likely given general melta descriptons and the absence of a larrge quantity of superheated rock vapor (as opposed to caves of ice) or superheated fragments. This would imply many hundreds (800+) if not thousands (1000-5000+) megajoules (an estimate, admittedly, but not varying by a dramatic amount, and consistent with other descriptions of capability.)

And of course Mister exposed face stands close, in a room, to a sudden relase of 800 megajoules of energy (191.2 kg of TNT), at least.

"Islamabad. 20-25 kilos of TNT, which was packed in a white Suzuki FX with a timing device and was parked behind the office of the provincial chief minister in the city center and 30 meters from the Afghan consulate, detonated. The perpetrator is unknown, but there have been reported low-level insurgency on government targets in the "resource rich" province of Baluchistan. Four people suffered minor injuries from flying glass when the car detonated. Windows were shattered and two homes were damaged."

It's clear that such weapons contain a sheer amount of DET that cannot be ignored, but it clearly appears to lack all the considerable blast effects that you'd expect with such amounts of energy.

Connor MacLeod wrote:
Cain takes a subsequent hybrid with a shot to the head, "blowing the fellow's brains out through the back of his skull". While not precisely "exploding" the head, this is close enough. At the very least, it implies partial (explosive) vaproziation and probable boiling of at least some of the water/fluids in the skull, as well as some cooking (not incineration, though) Should be worth a few hundred kilojoules at least by boiling, cauterization (a known las-weapon effect) and partial vaporization (another known effect) of the brain alone (about half a kilo by itself) more if other (IIRC, an adult human skull weighs about a kilo, so the other components aside from skul and brain might be affected.) it may go as much as a megajoule or more (especially with significant vaporisation occurring.)

A few hundred kilojoules at least? Equivalent to a blast of 47.8 grams of TNT, squarely in the head?
What about the increase of volume of smaller quanties of liquid water when turned into vapour?

Connor MacLeod wrote: As a side note, the novel "Drakon" describes a similar effect from a "multi-megawatt" plasma pistol. Not exactly concrete proof in and of itself, but it is suggestive as supplementary evidence.

As indicative that we already are working on exawatt lasers, but aren't capable of shooting exajoules over a second, since the releases happen within femtoseconds.
So with weapons that deal their damage within fractions of a second, in theory, that would give a bolt a yield in the kilojoule range for the plasma-pistol.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 364 - Jurgen shoves melta point-blank into the Patriarch's belly wound (from Cain's chainsword), and the entire midsection flashes to steam (vaporised water) and foul smelling "offal". It is evidently mortally wounded, but remains mostly intct (IE the blast does not cut it in half) Its hard to gauge precise effects, given that Kain was in hand to hand range of the Genestealer (and not severely harmed by the side effects), that the flesh was not noticably charred or incinerated, and the possibility that the patriarch's natural armour shell may have contained or redirected the effects away from Cain (hence why Jurgan stuck the melta into a wound, to bypass the lethal effects)] Assuming at least twice the mass (probably more like 3-4x) of a normal human and only the midsection affected (say around 50-60 kilos, at least) and ignoring vaporization in favor of boiling point alone we're probably talking at least 15-20 MJ at a bare-assed, end minimum (probably more like twice or three times that, once parrtial vaporization is facotred in, more if the body mass is grreater.)

The very fact that there was a large wound completely negates the idea that the blast would be sufficiently redirected, especially when considering the claimed violence of the explosion.
Yes, ignoring vaporization is again necessary to make sense of this event, especially since there is no mention of neither Cain nor Jurgen suffering any ill effect from blasting an entire mid-section so close.
Besides, it says the "entire midsection" in the book, so why should we exclude whatever tough skin or exoskeleton that would be present there and be part of said midsection exactly?
This would surely make the scene even less logical. Would we have to consider that "entire" doesn't mean "entire" but more something like "some"?

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 373 - A bolt pistol shot explodes/impacts against Jurgen's carapace helmet (oversized), shattering a good deal of carapace but failing to penetrate (though knocking him backwards and unconsious.)

Jurgen's comrades actually considered the failure of the las-bolt to penetrate the oversized carapace helmet either good fortune or a miracle (worth a mental praise to the God Emperor).
Clearly, the carapace that protects chests must be thicker otherwise several scores of las-bolts would clearly kill its wearer.
Jurgen had superficial bloody wounds. His skull was fractured.

That alone also makes you wonder if the author didn't have a brain fart earlier on about Kelp's hellgun.

Connor MacLeod wrote: Imperial plasma weapons (as he notes are also very unreliable and have severe cooling problems. This is in part due to their excessive power outputs. The tau (as the Codex: Tau book indicates) accept a lower damage potential for increasd reliability and greater stability/safety than Imperium Plasma weapons. (part of it is of course technology, since tau plasma weapons are more compact than Imperium ones, ,but only partly.)

Imperium plasma weapons are rapid fire as well, they're just not as rapid fire (nor sustainably so) as tau plasma weapons are (Again, its the reliability issue. prolonged periods of use for Imperium plasma weapons only increases their unreliability.)

Actually, there is an interesting bit that totally disagrees with that claim:

CC: FtE wrote: 'Sir. Inquisitor.' Holenbi gestured diffidently from the side of one of the corpses. 'I think you should see this.'
'What?' I moved to join him, Amberley at my side.
This one was killed by something else. He indicated the body, a young woman with a shaved head and a xenoist braid, who had apparently been eviscerated by a close combat weapon of some kind. I'd seen a lot of people killed the same way over the years, but the wounds the weapon had left were unfamiliar. That didn't necessarily mean much, of course - there are plenty of ways of mounting a blade, but there's usually a fair degree of consistency within a culture, and I hadn't seen anything here which looked that unusual.
'I'm still trying to work out what killed the others' I said. The wounds were too heavy for lasguns, even the hellguns we carried. I'd heard them being fired though, I was sure about that. By the insurgents, then; there were several lying around close to the corpses, so it didn't need an inquisitor to join those dots.
'It looks like plasma rounds to me' Jurgen volunteered. The doubt in his voice told me how unlikely he thought it, though; plasma weapons were big, bulky, and unreliable, and took an age to recharge between shots. You'd have to be mad to arm an entire squad with them. Not to mention being rarer than an ork with a sense of humour.
'Plasma pistols, maybe?'
'Maybe' I conceded. Those were even rarer, but sup pose someone had found a whole cache of them from the fabled Dark Age of Technology? That would be worth going to almost any lengths to protect, wouldn't it?

Takes ages to recharge them. And note that the evisceration of that woman was considered above what lasguns or even hellguns (heavy lasguns) could achieve.
These hellguns are those weapons which got some soldiers nervous about their firepower, and which could vaporize a metallic hatch. There's obviously going to be a limit to a hellgun then.