[RFC][Info] Playing with Boom-Boom (Or, Antimatter and You - A Children's Parable)

[Black Aeronaut]

There's a lot of extraneous information here.  The relevant equation here is E = m₀c², where m₀ is the rest mass and c is the speed of light.  Of course, not all of the mass will be lost, because you're going to produce some electron/positron pairs and neutrinos in addition to all the light.  But those are three orders of magnitude or more less massive, so we can safely ignore them for our purposes -- we're not writing physics papers.  Some will be lost to kinetic energy of neutrinos, most of which can pass through an entire planet without reacting with anything -- but they're so light-massed we're going to ignore that too.  Everything else counts as explosive power.

c² = (2.998×10⁸)² = 89880040000000000 = 8.988×10¹⁶ m²/s²

This is... a pretty big factor.  When you multiply that with kilograms, you get joules.  So for 1 gram of antimatter reacting with 1 gram of matter:

10⁻³ kg × 2 × 8.988×10¹⁶ m²/s²  = 1.7976×10¹⁴ J = 0.18 PJ

So yeah, the math is fine, but why is he screwing around with moles?  This guy sounds like a chemist pretending to do physics.

Huh.  Was kinda wondering if he was nuking it. (Navy slang.  Navy nuclear engineers tend to overcomplicate things because they apply their school of thought to everything, hence 'Nuking it'.  Can't say as I blame them, though, as they're practically programmed to live, breathe, eat, and sleep Nuke Eng.)

Anyhow, part of what's making my head spin is that I have no idea what each of those numbers represents.  I got a basic idea about E = m₀c²...  Lemme see if I can follow along...

Okay, first bit, you're calculating the square of C...  m²/s²?  I know I've seen that before...  *Googles*  OH.  Velocity in Joules of energy.  Got it.

10⁻³ kg?  OH!  That's one gram.  Duh.  Okay, I get it now.  An equal-parts annihilation of one gram of matter and antimatter will yield about 0.18 PJ of energy...  Or about 43 Kilotons-of-TNT explosive yield.  Okay, close enough for government work!  :V

Keep in mind, usage has effects on the quantity of the availability of neutral matter.

Even at the Kármán line, you have ~10mg/m³ of matter around.  And remember, you can always use your own blood as a matter source.

Well, this is kinda the point.  The idea I'm going with is that the antimatter and neutral matter are both made within the same organ from Ben's own water.  (Keep in mind, I'm kinda rubber-sciencing this while keeping it plausible enough that people aren't just gonna bail due to SoD Failure.)  Blood glucose to fuel the Fermion Inverter and other tissues except the reactor itself.

There are two primary issues Ben can run into.  For one thing, he will need to maintain a huge caloric intake - and in his case, sugar is going to be critical in his diet.  This will be mostly when he's in a state of 'replenishment' where his M/AM organ is replenishing its stockpile of AM, so in the days immediately following action where he had to 'exert' himself, he'll probably be sipping sugary drinks throughout the day.  Probably Kool-Aid because you can load it up with sugar, and it has very little salt.

The other issue is the fluids themselves.  While the projectiles will be small, shoot enough of them and Ben's electrolyte levels can be thrown into imbalance.

But then, I did used to do plasma donation for extra money - couldn't do it anymore because of my antidepressants.  My heart rate is naturally high, and the ADs make keeping it low enough where they'll take me for donation a hit-or-miss affair.  And for legal reasons they can't make any exceptions on that matter.

ANYHOW.  Thing is that I could make two 830ml donations in a week.  So I guess we can say that the absolute limit for Ben to lose in a single day is one liter in fluid volume, but that would be beyond the 'red line', which Washu would probably put at 800ml just to be safe.  But if he needs to go beyond that, then someone had better be dying.

The only other way to nerf this, I guess, is to reduce his stockpile limit to one gram of antimatter.  It would have been nice to go with fluids being his limit, because that would mean he'd always have AM to fuel the reactor.  But it would make the limits I've set far more believable.  In fact, think I need to look at that again with a one gram limit in mind.  Pardon...

Level 00 - 1 Gram - 1/day (must refrain from weaponized use for 24-hours prior)
Level 0 - 100 mg - 10/day
Level 1 - 10 mg - 100/day
Level 2 - 1 mg - 1,000/day
Level 3 - 1 μg - 1,000,000/day
Level 4 - 100 ng - 10,000,000/day
Level 5 - 10 ng - 100,000,000/day

....That's still too much.

Okay.  New idea.  Start with the minimum and work our way from there.  Special rules are gonna apply for the stuff that goes beyond the limits.

Level 3 - 10 ng (430 g-TNT) - 100/day
Level 2 - 100 ng (4.3 kg-TNT) - 10/day
Level 1 - 1 μg - (43 kg-TNT) 1/day
Stockpile Limit: 1 μg

This should do for the rank and file.  The only issue is that if he needs to go all out on someone, he needs to be ready in advance...

Hrmm... If we say it takes 24 hours to restock to his 1 μg limit... Just did the math, it'll be reasonable to say that he can restock 1ng/minute.  So, for however many Level 3 shots he gets off multiplied by 10, plus however many Level 2 shots multiplied by 100, and that will be his cooldown time before he can pull a Level 1 shot off.  And that Level 1 will pretty much leave him on empty.  He'll still be able to fire off a few more that day, but he'll need to wait 10 minutes for a Level 3, and 100 minutes for a Level 2.

Special Circumstances
To give him more firepower if it is felt that he needs it, he can build up a supply of ready-made shots.  Trouble is, this is like going around with a loaded gun.  And by loaded gun, we mean explosive device (not quite armed, but almost there).  And it's in his chest.

Granted, the M/AM Organ does a good job keeping everything safely suspended so nothing untowards would happen in most circumstances, but there's always that slight chance, and so this will not be something that will be done lightly.

His production capacity will still be topped out at a maximum of 1μg/day, so these larger yield shots will take some time to build.

Level 0 - 5 μg (215 kg-TNT) - 5 Days Prep
Supreme Fuck-Off Shot

Level 00 - 10 μg (430 kg-TNT) - 10 Days Prep
Davy Crockett Shot

Level 000 - 20 μg (860 kg-TNT) - 20 Days Prep
"Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru" Shot

I'll wait for Rob to check in here before I go and throw all this on the Wiki.

Any other thoughts or ideas?