The Factory Floor

Future Historian

3:00 PM

24?!

Oh no!!!!!

Wait.

That thing needs to launch all of them, correct?

Or just one out of 24 SLBMs?

Ferret Civilization

No, does not have to fire any of them.

Future Historian

I meant if the order was given to nuke the city.

How many SLBMs would be launched if the city was ordered to be nuked?

Would the USS Nebraska fire all 24 of its SLBMs at Seattle or just save the other 23 for different targets?

@FerretCivilization? How many SLBMs would be launched to nuke Seattle from a single nuclear ballistic missile submarine?

All 24 or just one?

James

Damn you steam...

Green

3:17 PM

@James discover you missed a sale or that all the games you want are now on sale and your wife will kill you if you buy them all?

Journeyman Geek

@Green the latter

lol

I'm 40 dollars in on my 100 sgd sale budget ._.

Green

@JourneymanGeek I wish I had time for gaming these days.

Journeyman Geek

bought cuphead and prey

@Green heh, when I work, weekends

at the moment, I kinda have the free time, in theory

Future Historian

Well, would you look at that.

World in Conflict and World in Conflict: Soviet Assault are no longer on Steam.

Arseholes.

Am I correct?

kingledion

@dot_Sp0T I used the decay rates, probability of decay by mode, and decay energies from a chart of nuclides to calculate it. I'd have to recalculate from scratch, to check the numbers

By the way, see that inline link :) :) :)

Man Worldbuilding is dead today. My quest for 200 rep is probably not going to happen again until after christmas

Journeyman Geek

3:35 PM

holiday season

winterbash is kinda meant to mitigate that a little

kingledion

Well, I'm a reputation whore, so I was going for 5k rep this month

But its getting tough!

Future Historian

So, @FerretCivilization? Any bright ideas for how long the radiation in Seattle would stay deadly?

Or not really?

kingledion

I really wanted 6k, since I pulled in over 700 points in bounties, but thats just way out of the question

Journeyman Geek

@kingledion we're not allowed to say rep whore any more

and lol, yeah, been chasing rep on another site and its a pretty lean period

Future Historian

@JourneymanGeek? Sorry if I interrupted, but how long can the radiation from a W88 nuclear device last after detonation anyway?

Especially the deadly kind?

Journeyman Geek

3:39 PM

how should I know?

Future Historian

Just asking, since @FerretCivilization is taking forever.

Journeyman Geek

@kingledion as a 100Ker on one site, and after getting 18k in the past year on the other...

just keep at it ;p

consistancy does wonders

Ferret Civilization

Ha, you really still need to work on that impatience thing. And just one would do, or the full salvo if you wanted.

James

@Green Every single game on my wishlist is on sale.... jackasses...

Future Historian

One it is, then.

Journeyman Geek

3:42 PM

@James MWAHAAHAHA

James

Speaking of jackasses, I opened the Switch I bought for the boys for Christmas and started playing Zelda last night.

Future Historian

@FerretCivilization? 8 W88s = how long does the deadly radiation last?

James

I wanted to make sure it was set up

Journeyman Geek

(also, pretty easy to get cards this year. Only most of them are dupes...)

@James and tested

but of course

lol

kingledion

@James What is a switch

Is that the newfangled kid-game-thing?

James

3:44 PM

@kingledion Nintendo's new console.

kingledion

I'm at the point where I'm a couple years past being a gamer myself, and couple years away from my kids being able to play

James

its a console and a handheld in one...its pretty genius actually.

Journeyman Geek

Its pretty neat seeming

Ferret Civilization

@FutureHistorian quora.com/How-long-does-nuclear-fallout-last along with all the other searches that question brings up, since you want fast, ha.

Journeyman Geek

but I'm kinda PC gaming master race for now

kingledion

3:45 PM

@JourneymanGeek ...like you're a PC gaming aryan/nazi?

I'm not sure what you meant

James

the controls connect to the handheld portion and can be used wirelessly. The handheld charges them and then there is a dock to connect it to the tv.

kingledion

@James Oh, I see, thats actually awesome

Future Historian

Ah, laziness.

James

@JourneymanGeek I generally am as well but the original Zelda is what got me into games in the first place.

kingledion

The controller is the whole console

Future Historian

3:46 PM

Why do I bother letting you live?

I am talking to my laziness, you know.

James

@FutureHistorian Murder is a lot of work.

kingledion

Welp, someday, maybe my girls will be into Zelda

But i'll try to get them into python first

James

This has gotten some pretty killer answers...

16

Q: How do we create an Anemone Tree?

Those of you who have been listening to the new podcast will know that Andy came up with an idea for an Anemone Tree. The idea is that this "tree" would prey on small animals for some of its needed nutrients. In a vein similar to the Anatomically Correct Series we would like some help making th...

Ferret Civilization

@kingledion You have to introduce them to Pong

kingledion

@James I know, man, stop making me jealous

James

3:47 PM

i let my 7 yo play the original zelda on my old GBA

kingledion

My eldest turned 2 yesterday, so some ways away here

James

@kingledion Its pretty cool when they start hitting 6/7 (as far as gaming goes) I am teaching him how to play DnD too.

kingledion

Oh wow, I didn't even think about DnD

We have some good friend neighbors, so I play board games with their kids; easy ones like Dragonwood or Splendor

I can't wait until mine are old enough to thrash them at Settlers of Catan or something

James

I tried to teach him Carcassone but that was a while back.

kingledion

I try to round up adults to play board games, but it never works out, everyone 'has to put the kids to bed'

Journeyman Geek

3:51 PM

@kingledion its a running joke about how PC gaming is better

kingledion

Come on man, what do you have a wife for :)

Journeyman Geek

tbh, I can't afford a kickass PC and a console setup, and a PC fits my usage better

kingledion

I actually played Carcassone with my 7 year old neice and she beat me and my brother, first game. I was somewhat surprised she could concentrate long enough to win

@JourneymanGeek I guess I'd be in the PC crowd then too, if I ever played any more

Journeyman Geek

yup

kingledion

I used to be quite the Diablo/Warcraft fanatic

James

3:54 PM

@kingledion I played through the star craft II campaign a couple weeks ago...good story

kingledion

I never did Starcraft II

James

@kingledion Its some good quality RTS.

Kinda the gold standard really.

kingledion

Blizzard's stuff is always quality, so I'm sure it is

Future Historian

4:11 PM

@FerretCivilization? Do you remember the name of the Visitor faction that thought the Invasion was a bad idea?

Ferret Civilization

No, did you not save it?

Future Historian

:(

Found it.

The Negotiators.

Ferret Civilization

Ah, good, ha, remember The Exterminators now.

Future Historian

Still, these are just the names the humans give them.

What would you say they officially call themselves, though?

Ferret Civilization

Didn't you say they had a language that we could not pronounce or something like that.

Future Historian

4:23 PM

I did.

I just meant a translation of their official native name in English.

Obviously, they have a rather difficult language to pronounce, much less master for a human, but if we tried to translate, what is the closest human translation you can think of?

Hmmmmmm.

Ferret Civilization

I'm not that creative, there would be a lot of cultural things to consider as to why they would have that name for themselves.

Future Historian

I am going to detail the assassination of Director Vicksson now.

So, where in the rebuilt Los Angeles do you think is a good place to build a gene therapy clinic?

Well, using the details of pre-Invasion Los Angeles, with a few changes to the street names and the names of specific parts of the city and the like.

NOTE: I am on Google Maps trying to find a decent spot to place the clinic, trying to find a route from the rebuilt Los Angeles International Airport and trying to find a good spot to have the Resistance assassinate the Director.

Preferably a building that could keep them out of sight in order for them to fly a drone to blow it up in the Director's limousine, set up sniper positions to terminate him just in case, as well as GPI guards or set up ambushes to take care of any GPI forces protecting the Director.

The LAC+USC Medical Center is a current day hospital and has been rebuilt, with a gene therapy clinic being created nearby as part of the Medical Center.

I am thinking that after the assassination, it is renamed to the Vicksson Medical Centre as part of his funeral and memorial.

So, I just renamed it after a traitor to humanity.

Great...............

Green

@James BAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!!

Future Historian

4:38 PM

@FerretCivilization? Is the Interstate 10 passing by the Los Angeles Convention Centre a good place to assassinate Director Vicksson?

Especially if you can set up ambushes, sniper positions and a way to use one of the GPI's own drones as a suicide bomb?

@Green? Any ideas for vantage points to assassinate Director Vicksson on the way to the rebuilt LAC+USC Medical Center?

Nevermind.

I changed the intended destination.

No wait.

I can just keep the current destination, but turn it into an ACTUAL hospital with the gene therapy clinic expansion being in the months before the attempt on Vicksson's life.

HDE 226868

@James I'm jealous, too.

Future Historian

4:54 PM

google.com.uk/maps/dir/…

See this route? @FerretCivilization.

I need you to switch to satellite and 3D view and see if you can find a decent vantage point.

James

5:09 PM

@Green What're you BAHAHAHAHAHAH'ing?

@HDE226868 Well I officially feel like a success.

Future Historian

5:39 PM

Well, @FerretCivilization. Director Vicksson's death has been written in full detail.

Now, I am wondering how the mood in the streets of the rebuilt cities would be in the immediate aftermath outside of Resistance sympathisers.

Would they just carry on with their "normal" lives or would the streets feel all moody and sad?

Green

@James The implications that you could save a ton of money on your game purchases but somehow it makes you made (hence, "jackasses").

Future Historian

@Shalvenay? Anything for how the mood would be in the streets after Director Vicksson was confirmed to be dead?

Joe Bloggs

6:22 PM

@Secespitus: nicely done. Glad to see worldbuilding expanding beyond just being one set of ideas.

Worldbuilding Meta

6:48 PM

0

Q: When the system prunes community events, why doesn't it prune the oldest?

We use community events to promote new blog posts. Because we've had a lot of activity lately (yay!), we're sometimes showing three events at a time. (I run each event for around a week, so there's usually a little overlap with the oldest post when we post a new one.) Because the URLs need to ...

bug community-events

James

@Green lol exactly.

dot_Sp0T

@kingledion oh ma I found something called eV (electron Volt) and it overwhelmed me

Worldbuilding Meta

7:05 PM

0

Q: Is "Convince son of Santa scientifically" too broad?

The question is Help me to convince my son that Santa Claus exists, scientifically. That question was put on hold as too broad. That question seems straightforward. The manner in which it was asked could be argued by purists that it is off-topic, but it could very easily be made on-topic by sa...

discussion

dot_Sp0T

I wonder if the codegolfers would go haywire if I invented a new language just to win a golf with 1byte

sphennings

@dot_Sp0T That's been done before, and is covered by the standard loophole clause.

@dot_Sp0T For instance I could create a metalanguage called "Eval the name of the language as a python program" and then every solution could be solved in zero bytes in a custom language.

dot_Sp0T

@sphennings yeah but who likes python

sphennings

I do. Of the languages I've used professionally it's the only one I like.

It's also gotten me a lot of free pizza and beer.

What language do you prefer?

dot_Sp0T

7:26 PM

I mostly work with Java and like it

Ruby is also neat

kingledion

@dot_Sp0T Anti python attitudes are grounds for excommunication from future nuclear engineering discussions :)

And electron-volts are easy, they are just a really really small Joule

dot_Sp0T

@kingledion yeah I got that, to some extent; but I was trying to get your Watt/kg ratings

@kingledion I just don't like it

kingledion

Ok, you gonna be on for a bit? I'll figure out what I did for radium and post here in a sec

dot_Sp0T

7:45 PM

no hurry

I'll be up for another 3 hours probs

I really like the whole science stuff and I hope to be able to detail the calc and thoughts behind the system in a question to A) poke for holes, and B) give ideas to people

kingledion

Ok, figured it out

@dot_Sp0T So here goes, first take a look at the chart of nuclides here specifically the decay information linked here.

What the second link tells you is three things: Ra-226 has a 100% chance to decay into an $\alpha$ particle (that is in the 'Decay Mode' column of the chart)

It also tells you that the half-life is 1600 years, in the 'Parent T_{1/2}' column

It also tells you that there are five different alpha decay quantizations possible, listed in the section 'Alphas'

The five quanitzations have an energy in keV listed in the first column, and an intensity, or percentage chance of happening in the second.

In this case, 93% of the alpha particles decay releasing 4784 keV of energy.

Now, to determine the energy released by one atom every second, you will convert the half-life to a decay rate. 1600 years = 5.05e10 seconds. Decay rate is ln(2)/half-life = 1.37e-11 with units 1/s.

That represents the chance that a single atom with decay each second

So, now multiply that rate by the energy released (lets round it to 4700 keV since there are five quantizations that we need to average together)

to get 6.6e-5 eV/s released.

Now, next thing is to covert from a per-atom rate to a per-kilogram rate. The atomic mass of Ra-226 is .... 226 grams per mole, and a mole is Avogadro's number (6.022e23) of particles. So 6.6e-5 * 6.022e23 /0.226 = 1.75e20 eV or 28 J

But wait! I got 168 J last time, not 28 what happened? Well what I calculated there was just the decay of Radium itself. But once radium decays, it becomes Radon-222, which has a half-life of just 3 days; and when Radon decays it becomes Polonium-218 with a halflife of just 3 minutes. So, as soon as the very long time span Radium atom pops, the rest of the decay change happens relatively quickly. Therefore, we can approximate the total energy released as the total energy of all decays

all the way down to the next decay that will take a timescale of years.

Well, that next decay product will be Lead-210, six more steps down the chain. Complicating this further, there are multiple ways to get there. Radium-226 only decayed one way, but Bismuth-212, for example can decay six different ways!

In any case, I used a total decay chain energy instead of the 4700 keV per atom that we estimated before. Wikipedia's decay chain chart shows estimated energies at each point. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain#Uranium_series

I'm not entirely sure what energy level I used for that calculation, as a quick substitute I estimated 27620 keV from that wikipedia chart

And plugging that in for 2700 in our original equation, it works out to 162 J/s/kg, which is pretty close to the 168 that I got in that answer.

I actually remember building a spreadsheet to do the decay math out for that answer, but I can't find it now, so I'm reasonably confident that 168 W/kg is a good estimate.

@dot_Sp0T Ok thats it, you get all that?

Secespitus

8:06 PM

@JoeBloggs Thank you very much! It was interesting to work on this little short story. Your posts gave me lots of ideas.

dot_Sp0T

8:25 PM

@kingledion sorry I needed to discuss some details about a party tomorrow, will start going through your explanations in a few minutes and you'll get the questions in like 20-30min i guess

dot_Sp0T

9:00 PM

@kingledion through it; will likely have to read up some more math to fully understand it, but the logic behind it seems sound.

Which would also bring me to think about how thermodynamics apply if I have a block of Radium. Will the heat released from the core of the block significantly influence the decay at the fringes for example?

this will be a lovely question (series)

Shalvenay

9:54 PM

hey there @Mithrandir24601

Mithrandir24601

@Shalvenay ni hao! Currently reading the Shining - good book :) and answering a question for the first time in about 10 months :P

Shalvenay

@Mithrandir24601 heheh, things are alright here. dealt with a little bit of Christmas shopping ;) also, now a good time to try our hand at the scene with the Lannisters getting told off in today's world?

kingledion

10:11 PM

@dot_Sp0T Decay rate is independent of temperature. It is a property at the atomic level, so the decay rate will be the same for a particular isotope no matter what temperature, phase state, molecular combination, etc the atom is in.

Mithrandir24601

@Shalvenay Go ahead, although I don't think I'll actually be any use to be honest :P

Shalvenay

hey there @kingledion

@Mithrandir24601 heheh, nvm then :)

Worldbuilding Meta

11:07 PM

0

Q: Notices for our traditions: Santa Questions

I just voted to leave open a half-dozen Santa questions. At this time I am aware of two kinds of "tradition" questions: Santa questions and "anatomically correct" questions. Yes, they're all off-topic for a variety of reasons, but they're also popular and fun. In other words, they're exception...

support on-topic specific-tag

0

Q: Notices for our traditions: Anatomically correct

After voting to leave open a half-dozen Santa questions and considering my previous question about anatomically correct questions, I'd like to propose the following. At this time I am aware of two kinds of "tradition" questions: Santa questions and "anatomically correct" questions. Yes, they're...

support on-topic specific-question

Shalvenay

11:32 PM

hey there @FerretCivilization

Ferret Civilization

Hi Shalvenay!

Shalvenay

how're things going?

Ferret Civilization

Okay, you, ready for Christmas?

Shalvenay

11:48 PM

@FerretCivilization just about

as you can see, finally sporting a hat xD

Ferret Civilization

Ha, last minute shopping?
A unicorn, ha, nice.

Shalvenay

@FerretCivilization well, not quite shopping per se

Ferret Civilization

Commercialization of Christmas not reach you yet, ha.

Shalvenay

@FerretCivilization :P I so want to let a band of elves lay into Krampus/Kringle for being a filthy elf slaver

I think he ended up on somebody's ~~naughty~~ (s)hit list this year...

Ferret Civilization

You know I wrote a story that was suppose to be write a letter to Santa for a high school assignment. Everyone wrote what they want and what not, some funny some sad. I wrote about how Santa was a trespasser on my property, how he broke travel laws, and to give bad children valuable coal that they would not know what to do with but it was too good for them when most toys are cheaper than what the coal is worth.

Shalvenay

11:55 PM

@FerretCivilization hahahaha :P

in this case, it'd be "Santa messed with the wrong elves this year -- getting carved up with a sword wasn't how he expected his recruiting trip to end!"

Ferret Civilization

Where the fat man recruiting? Ha, there some portal or are people just that blind to the Unicorns and Dragons and Fairies all around them.

Shalvenay

@FerretCivilization some portal xD

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