Tarmor's Terribly Tantalizing Tarasque Terrrifying Random Banter #234

[Fyraltari]

Thinking about this a bit more:

"The Valeyard working with the Black Guardian."

We've been due for a valeyard origin story for a while now, and the more I think about it, the more having the Black Guardian as the one who created him makes sense. Might be my new headcanon going forward. It's too bad neither of these characters have shown up in ages.

Although I fully foresee the next showrunner at the very least setting up a New Gallifrey that a significant portion of the Time Lords died to. The greatest species in the universe reduced to refugees could be interesting, and is the perfect stepping point for one of the founders to rise again.

That's a pretty neat concept, kudos.

[halfeye]

If I have to choose a weapon, either an air rifle or subsonic railgun. There's a lot of advantages to being at range and relatively quiet.

SUBsonic railgun? The whole point of railguns is that they fire their shot very, very fast. Something like Fallout3's steam cannon (I forget what they actually call it, I know it's not that) is not the same thing at all.

[Anonymouswizard]

SUBsonic railgun? The whole point of railguns is that they fire their shot very, very fast. Something like Fallout3's steam cannon (I forget what they actually call it, I know it's not that) is not the same thing at all.

I'd rather avoid the sonic boom, it tends to lead to bad games. I mean draw zombies to your position.

In all seriousness, ideally you'd have some sort of adjuster to vary the speed.

[Peelee]

I'd rather avoid the sonic boom, it tends to lead to bad games. I mean draw zombies to your position.

In all seriousness, ideally you'd have some sort of adjuster to vary the speed.

I missed the subsonic part. Most bullets are supersonic, a subsonic railgun is going to be... less effective than I previously envisioned.

[Fyraltari]

I missed the subsonic part. Most bullets are supersonic, a subsonic railgun is going to be... less effective than I previously envisioned.

Considering that that you are shooting at a dead body brought to a mimicry of life by paranormal agents, I think the effectiveness of bullets is already in question.

[Anonymouswizard]

I missed the subsonic part. Most bullets are supersonic, a subsonic railgun is going to be... less effective than I previously envisioned.

You're expecting me to know anything about guns?

[Peelee]

Considering that that you are shooting at a dead body brought to a mimicry of life by paranormal agents, I think the effectiveness of bullets is already in question.

And yet they keep putting them in all the zombie games and movies.

You're expecting me to know anything about guns?

Know thy enemy?

[Tvtyrant]

I missed the subsonic part. Most bullets are supersonic, a subsonic railgun is going to be... less effective than I previously envisioned.

Depends on round size. A subsonic railgun would fire very large slugs. The reason ammo rounds got smaller was cartridges weigh a lot, and as rates of fire went up accuracy went down so more ammo had to be brought. This led to them increasing the rate of fire so accuracy went down so they shrank the rounds so....

Which is how they went from a thumb size conical to a .22 being the standard in 100 years. A railgun firing thumb sized rounds would be better at killing targets, quieter, and the ammo would be way smaller and lighter. Depending on the size of the railgun it could easily be the better option generally.

On a math note, small bullets have problems. They tend to either waste energy deforming or waste it zipping through (based on material of bullet and or target) and for maximum energy imparting you want deflection.

[Anonymouswizard]

Know thy enemy?

I don't have infinite time. I can either learn about guns or convince people to take their clothes off.

Of course if I switched to the first I might actually be successful.

[Rater202]

Wait, do mechanized warfare vehicles count as weapons?

Becuase f so... There's gotta be a tank, APC, or something somewhere in real life or fiction that is pilotable by a single person and big enough on the inside hat it can function as a mobile shelter.

[Keltest]

Wait, do mechanized warfare vehicles count as weapons?

Becuase f so... There's gotta be a tank, APC, or something somewhere in real life or fiction that is pilotable by a single person and big enough on the inside hat it can function as a mobile shelter.

I mean, probably, but i did specify that you need to be able to carry it under your own power. While admittedly i have not met you, it seems improbable to me that you can carry an APC around.

[Rater202]

I mean, probably, but i did specify that you need to be able to carry it under your own power. While admittedly i have not met you, it seems improbable to me that you can carry an APC around.

You'd be surprised what you can move if it's in neutral.

Point taken. that slipped my mind... There's gotta be something man carriable that functions as a weapon but can also be used as shelter though...

[Jasdoif]

I missed the subsonic part. Most bullets are supersonic, a subsonic railgun is going to be... less effective than I previously envisioned.

It probably depends on the specifics of the ammunition. Interestingly enough, System Shock (1)'s dart gun and rail gun both use explosives in their ammunition (darts are lined with explosives that detonate inside whatever they puncture, rail gun rounds are basically grenades). Also interestingly enough, the lightsaber laser rapier is represented as well....Then again the game's humanoid mutants are like zombies and the cyborgs basically are zombies, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

Considering that that you are shooting at a dead body brought to a mimicry of life by paranormal agents, I think the effectiveness of bullets is already in question.

And yet they keep putting them in all the zombie games and movies.

I think that's more because the genre is primarily defined by responding to unforeseen outbreaks by using what's/who's available, and bullets are ubiquitous beforehand. (Also because the genre is at its best when the zombies are a constant background threat and the actual antagonists are as vulnerable to bullets as they living creatures that they are, but I digress)

[Keltest]

You'd be surprised what you can move if it's in neutral.

Point taken. that slipped my mind... There's gotta be something man carriable that functions as a weapon but can also be used as shelter though...

Possibly, but i feel like if you need a portable bunker, you are maybe going about things really, really ineffectively. A tent and a healthy awareness of your surroundings might serve you better.

[Tvtyrant]

To be honest, in most settings you would be better off with medieval equipment against zombies then with guns. They can't bite through metal or leather armor, you can chop them up easily enough, and you can form a shield wall so they can't bum rush you.

Also people are truly terrible shots, so unless you are waiting for melee range anyway you are going to waste most of your ammo on the ground.

[Anonymouswizard]

So what you're saying is get a group together, mad as much mail as possible, and rush out some spears and shields?

Like, I know that axes will probably be better for actually taking them down, but spears should do will enough and a shield wall is good.

[Peelee]

To be honest, in most settings you would be better off with medieval equipment against zombies then with guns. They can't bite through metal or leather armor, you can chop them up easily enough, and you can form a shield wall so they can't bum rush you.

Also people are truly terrible shots, so unless you are waiting for melee range anyway you are going to waste most of your ammo on the ground.

To be honest, in most settings you would be better off locking your doors and waiting a few days. Zombies can't heal, so every bit of wear and tear is going to reduce their mass. Trees, thorns, flora, fauna, anything and everything is chipping away at them. Break a window to enter a building? They'd gone get sliced up so over. Sure, it may not hurt them, but it all adds up, and without the pain they don't really care and so that just speeds it up since they don't avoid it. A zombie apocalypse would last maybe a week.

[Tvtyrant]

That's be honest, in most songs you would be better off locking your doors and waiting a few days. Zombies can't heal, so every bit of wear and tear is going to reduce their mass. Trees, thorns, flora, fauna, anything and everything is chipping away at them. Break a window to enter a building? They'd gone get sliced up so over. Sure, it may not hurt them, but it all adds up, and without the pain they don't really care and so that just speeds it up since they don't avoid it. A zombie apocalypse would last maybe a week.

Yeah agreed. The swarms of flies eating them would be more dangerous in the long run then the zombies.

I honestly don't know if there is a number of unarmed humans that can rush a bear and hope to kill it, but that number must be absurdly high. The number of carnivores like crocodiles that would just become massively overfed would be enormous, ignoring that bugs would just eat the dang things and weather would erode them.

[Mystic Muse]

Don't most "actual dangerous" zombie theories involve what is basically super-rabies, for the exact reason that rotting corpses are really only threatening short term?

[Peelee]

My autocorrect is really being mean to me these days.

[Mystic Muse]

My autocorrect is really being mean to me these days.

Is it only doing one 'e' on Wookiee? Or worse, only one 'o'?

[Peelee]

Is it only doing one 'e' on Wookiee? Or worse, only one 'o'?

If you want to know the worst of it, getting new phone to learn I'm not typing "peeler" is a headache, I tells ya. Fortunately that's a handful of months behind me now so the next time I need to deal with it is years away, but this onboard dictionary still has a ways to go.

[Mystic Muse]

If you want to know the worst of it, getting new phone to learn I'm not typing "peeler" is a headache, I tells ya. Fortunately that's a handful of months behind me now so the next time I need to deal with it is years away, but this onboard dictionary still has a ways to go.

Yeah, that's rough.

Hope it improves quickly.

Though, given how Google/Youtube's algorithm can't figure out that I don't want to watch any Seth McFarlane animation, I'm not holding my breath.

[Rater202]

Possibly, but i feel like if you need a portable bunker, you are maybe going about things really, really ineffectively. A tent and a healthy awareness of your surroundings might serve you better.

Too much risk. When death is on the line, even a 0.0001% chance of hostiles getting to you in your sleep might as well be 100%. zombies that realize you're in a tent can get through a tent, and you can never be certain that you've got them all unless you're setting off Czar Bombas in the middle of major cities and camping out in the irradiated crater in which case... Why?

A large enough armored vehicle, meanwhile, can with effort have sleeping arrangements and a battery-powered mini-fridge placed in it, allowing it to serve as both weapon and mobile shelter. If properly locked up, zeds aren't getting through reinforced steel plating. You'd really only have to leave in order to restock and depending on the specifications of the vehicle in question may even be able to clear out a large number of Zeds at once.

The hard part is finding an armored vehicle that's man carriable without, you know, compromising its functionality as an armored vehicle.

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah, that's rough.

Hope it improves quickly.

Though, given how Google/Youtube's algorithm can't figure out that I don't want to watch any Seth McFarlane animation, I'm not holding my breath.

if its on youtube, then scroll over the vertical three dot thing next to it, click on it and scroll down to "Not Interested" and click on that option. blocks the video instantly.

[Rater202]

After a little bit of introspection, I think that most of the reason I'd like to be a dragon or have superpowers or something is to get over my sinusitis and/or headaches.

Those are the things that have the most direct impact on my day-to-day life. I can deal with everything else, the other health problems I've cited, but it's a pain in the ass to concentrate on a book or on writing when your head hurts.

[Anonymouswizard]

Too much risk. When death is on the line, even a 0.0001% chance of hostiles getting to you in your sleep might as well be 100%. zombies that realize you're in a tent can get through a tent, and you can never be certain that you've got them all unless you're setting off Czar Bombas in the middle of major cities and camping out in the irradiated crater in which case... Why?

A large enough armored vehicle, meanwhile, can with effort have sleeping arrangements and a battery-powered mini-fridge placed in it, allowing it to serve as both weapon and mobile shelter. If properly locked up, zeds aren't getting through reinforced steel plating. You'd really only have to leave in order to restock and depending on the specifications of the vehicle in question may even be able to clear out a large number of Zeds at once.

The hard part is finding an armored vehicle that's man carriable without, you know, compromising its functionality as an armored vehicle.

At this point why both just pick an orbital space station in the L4 point. With integrated railgun so it counts as a weapon?

It's mean carriable, just push it upwards, but only as long as it remains in a vacuum. I never said you could move it quickly.

[Rater202]

At this point why both just pick an orbital space station in the L4 point. With integrated railgun so it counts as a weapon?

It's mean carriable, just push it upwards, but only as long as it remains in a vacuum. I never said you could move it quickly.

That feels like cheating.

At that point, I might as well choose a symbiote-dragon(which were engineered as weapons) and see if I can terraform Mars into something theoretically habitable before I reach the point that the symbiote can't recycle my co2 back into c and o2 anymore.

I figure that if they can make it from an unknown point in the andromeda galaxy to earth in four weeks tops while taking dozens of pit stops and at least one detour then it'd only take a couple minutes to get to Mars.

A symbiote dragon is strong enough that I should be able to grab some asteroids and push them down to the planet's core, raise the gravity and infuse th core with more iron and nickel, see if we can get a magnetosphere going.

If the higher gravity and potential magnetosphere work, then oxygen becomes the bigger problem... With only one man, the solution would seem to be to come back to earth and steal a hell of a lot of potting soil, fertilizers, freshwater, and the heartiest plants I can get my hand on, try and get a decent-sized patch of land that earth plants can grow in and see what takes. With a symbiote food and water aren't an issue for me, only breathable air

With any luck, eventually, any plants that survive in that patch would eventually start spreading to the martial soil and eventually start adapting to it but that's not a guarantee. I could theoretically keep coming back to Earth to re-up on fresh Oxygen and collecting water, soil, and plant samples, but eventually something would have to happen or I'd just be stuck in a loop.

[Anonymouswizard]

That feels like cheating.

At that point, I might as well choose a symbiote-dragon(which were engineered as weapons) and see if I can terraform Mars into something theoretically habitable before I reach the point that the symbiote can't recycle my co2 back into c and o2 anymore.

I figure that if they can make it from an unknown point in the andromeda galaxy to earth in four weeks tops while taking dozens of pit stops and at least one detour then it'd only take a couple minutes to get to Mars.

A symbiote dragon is strong enough that I should be able to grab some asteroids and push them down to the planet's core, raise the gravity and infuse th core with more iron and nickel, see if we can get a magnetosphere going.

If the higher gravity and potential magnetosphere work, then oxygen becomes the bigger problem... With only one man, the solution would seem to be to come back to earth and steal a hell of a lot of potting soil, fertilizers, freshwater, and the heartiest plants I can get my hand on, try and get a decent-sized patch of land that earth plants can grow in and see what takes. With a symbiote food and water aren't an issue for me, only breathable air

With any luck, eventually, any plants that survive in that patch would eventually start spreading to the martial soil and eventually start adapting to it but that's not a guarantee. I could theoretically keep coming back to Earth to re-up on fresh Oxygen and collecting water, soil, and plant samples, but eventually something would have to happen or I'd just be stuck in a loop.

If you're going to cheat you might as well go all the way. What use is breaking the rules if you're not in a position to do an evil laugh?

[Peelee]

Though, given how Google/Youtube's algorithm can't figure out that I don't want to watch any Seth McFarlane animation, I'm not holding my breath.

The more we talk the more awesome you get. It's remarkably consistent.