welsh
Posts: 200
Joined: Sun 29 Nov 2020, 15:53

Re: [SPOILERS] "Armageddon" Encounter Question

Wed 30 Dec 2020, 18:25

I was curious, so I checked. Australia's atomic tank was 320m from ground zero of a 9.1 kt ground burst (tower height 100 ft). This would have subjected it to >20 psi overpressure.

The hatches were blown open & the crew would have been killed, but this generation of tank was not designed to survive a nuclear blast. It was facing the blast and was pushed back 5 feet. Vehicles oriented perpendicular to the blast, especially lighter tracked vehicles such as M113, may be flipped on their sides. (Two such vehicles were flipped on their side in a test of a 1 kt equivalent explosion at Suffield AB in the 60s, but I can't find out how far they were from the blast.)

One point for GMing this encounter is that the area is probably marked with warning signs or flags left by one side or the other, and because of radioactive decay those flags would be outside the present danger area.
 
User avatar
omnipus
Posts: 742
Joined: Mon 22 Jun 2020, 20:58

Re: [SPOILERS] "Armageddon" Encounter Question

Wed 30 Dec 2020, 22:47

Huh. Fascinating.

In the context of a larger war, it's easy to see how any such vehicle, if taken out of action but not "destroyed," could easily end up expeditiously scrapped for spares or abandoned. Or maybe the PCs find that magical vehicle that's totally intact (but leaking gamma -- would you want to ride around in that cursed Abrams, if you can't find a decontamination station somewhere? Sounds like an adventure thread!)

In the bigger picture of year-2000 survival, it doesn't seem like you should be running into these sudden craters for long, unless they are new or you are just totally lacking area knowledge! It would be a pretty high-priority mission of anyone living anywhere in the surrounding area to catalog and map all such places, after all. Then again, maybe that's a job for the PCs...
Author, Central Poland Sourcebook -- now available on DriveThruRPG
 
User avatar
CherryC0p
Topic Author
Posts: 122
Joined: Tue 29 Dec 2020, 00:08

Re: [SPOILERS] "Armageddon" Encounter Question

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 00:06

Also, I would likely just fudge those rads. Game rads are a big fudge anyway -- the radiation rules are trying to create short-term effects to satisfy player expectations, when in fact the effects of dallying around that crater would be long term effects. The big question to ask is, how close to that hole are you willing to go? I think players are likely to steer well clear, especially if they get a graphic picture of the scale of the damage.
You underestimate my players lol. They were low on water and were seriously considering drinking the lake at the bottom. They rolled like shit for starting gear and got like 12 water rations between the 6 players.

But yeah good point on the fudging of Rads, I think I may house rule that all the craters are weak radiation zones and are +1 rad per shift instead of stretch or round.
I do this in real life for fun on the weekends. #SurviveOmega #DoMoreWithLess
 
User avatar
CherryC0p
Topic Author
Posts: 122
Joined: Tue 29 Dec 2020, 00:08

Re: [SPOILERS] "Armageddon" Encounter Question

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 00:14

In the bigger picture of year-2000 survival, it doesn't seem like you should be running into these sudden craters for long, unless they are new or you are just totally lacking area knowledge! It would be a pretty high-priority mission of anyone living anywhere in the surrounding area to catalog and map all such places, after all. Then again, maybe that's a job for the PCs...
I think that's why they have varied radiation levels, some of the stronger ones are going to be newer.
I do this in real life for fun on the weekends. #SurviveOmega #DoMoreWithLess
 
welsh
Posts: 200
Joined: Sun 29 Nov 2020, 15:53

Re: [SPOILERS] "Armageddon" Encounter Question

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 00:15

I suggest you should never run into a crater by surprise, really. Not into the danger area. For three reasons:

1. Nuclear weapons make a big mess. If you are looking at a 200 m radius crater (~150 kt ground burst), you are looking at an event that left marks over an area bigger than an entire travel hex. Although that event was now at least 18 months ago, so grass and weeds have hidden the signs, your trained eye will notice things....
- six kilometres out, not a single window will remain. Now, that won't be unusual in areas that have been fought over, but if you pass through a village that's otherwise largely untouched, it should attract notice.
- about 3.5 kilometres out, the damage will be more characteristic of a major blast. Window frames will be blown in, doors will be blown off their hinges, roofs will be damaged. Homes will be inhabitable, though if you could find a building inspector, they would be condemned. The siding and roofs of steel-frame buildings will be bowed.
- about 2.5 kilometres out, houses will be flattened, and steel-frame buildings reduced to their frames. Only concrete structures will remain intact. 90% of trees will be blown down, which will be concealed by the weeds ... until you try to walk through such an area and find yourself tripping and stumbling over the trunks at every second step. Wood facing the blast will be charred and there will be widespread evidence of fires -- at this distance, the flash was intense enough to set dry wood alight.
- one kilometre from the crater, nothing will remain standing, unless you happen to find a reinforced concrete bunker.
You will know something big happened here before you run into the crater itself. You may actually go through the area without actually seeing the crater.

2. Armies mark radioactive areas. For the safety of their own troops, both NATO and the Soviets would have marked dangerously radioactive areas soon after the strike. The NATO standard is a white inverted triangle with the word "ATOM" in black lettering. Now, these markings will be faded, tattered, and fallen, but you will still likely see some. And because of point 3 below, they'll be well outside the danger area.
http://navyadvancement.tpub.com/14325/c ... rs-373.htm

3. Radioactivity goes away. You're not encountering chunks of hot plutonium here. Many radioactive elements decay much more quickly. The rule is 7/10: for each sevenfold increase in time, radioactivity declines by a factor of 10. 1000 rads per hour (immediately fatal) at T +1 becomes 100 rads/h after 7 hrs; after 2 days, 10 rads/hr, and so forth, so you're actually going to get something like 0.01 rads/hr after a couple of years. That's way above occupational health guidelines, but it's way below radiation sickness levels. So the danger area has shrunk. (In fact, the game rules make radiation a way bigger immediate danger than it should be. But that's okay: we expect radiation to be dangerous, and the game makes it dangerous in more immediate ways than it would really be, because dying of leukemia four years into the campaign might be realistic, but it's not how people want it to work.)

One other big effect, by the way, is that the 100 rads/hr fallout area from this strike, based on my current local weather, extends ... 87.8 km downwind. Meaning that you would have a swathe of abandoned villages and towns where people had either all died of radiation poisoning, or fled, or both, extending downwind from the crater in the direction of your choice, and that some of those villages will be marked with little white "ATOM" flags. Which is a great encounter to throw at players in place of a crater, imo: "Yes, you can scrounge this village if you like, but you might take a rad ... and by the way one of the things you find, in an upstairs bedroom, is a child's skeleton with a mouldering teddy bear, so here's a point of stress for your trouble."
 
User avatar
CherryC0p
Topic Author
Posts: 122
Joined: Tue 29 Dec 2020, 00:08

Re: [SPOILERS] "Armageddon" Encounter Question

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 00:45

Yeah once I realized how bad it would be with my then-current understanding of RAW, we retconned them scavenging the area and I had them take the travel/time penalty to get around it safely.

I'll definitely use descriptors you mentioned next time I draw a crater encounter.
I do this in real life for fun on the weekends. #SurviveOmega #DoMoreWithLess
 
User avatar
omnipus
Posts: 742
Joined: Mon 22 Jun 2020, 20:58

Re: [SPOILERS] "Armageddon" Encounter Question

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 02:42

Another good, obvious sign would be charred or defoliaged trees out for potentially many many kilometers, depending on how bad the fire was and how long it burned, among other things. Of course you wouldn't necessarily know if you were getting closer to the crater, or running parallel, or whatever until you noticed that the trees themselves seemed more clear-cut, and so on.
Author, Central Poland Sourcebook -- now available on DriveThruRPG
 
AEB
Posts: 171
Joined: Sat 19 Sep 2020, 06:01

Re: [SPOILERS] "Armageddon" Encounter Question

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 02:52

As a aside the Atomic Tank is now a Gate Guard sitting on display outside a base in South Australia.

Of course as Australians we are used to everything trying to kill us so crewing a radioactive tank through the apocalypse is what we would call Wednesday.

Monday - Everything is on fire
Tuesday - Everything is under water
Wednesday - post-apocalypse survival
Thursday - deadly snakes and spiders
Friday - sharks and crocodiles
Saturday - fighting off marauding motorcycle gangs dressed in homoerotic leather outfits

And Sunday we have the day off to thank God that we live in such an amazing and beautiful country.
 
Oddball_E8
Posts: 442
Joined: Sat 14 May 2016, 20:13

Re: [SPOILERS] "Armageddon" Encounter Question

Thu 06 Oct 2022, 11:14

As a aside the Atomic Tank is now a Gate Guard sitting on display outside a base in South Australia.
Not only that, but the crew drove it almost all the way back from the test site without any protective gear before it was decontaminated.

And after that, it was used in the Vietnam War.

Now, 12 of the 16 people who worked on the tank did die of cancer, apparently, but you can't really fully prove that it's from the tank.

Still...

EDIT: Sorry for the necro.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests