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[Logan Fyreite]

I'm surprised my earlier thread made it to page 3. 

Now quick recap, Stillwater and EoM RPers apparently made some OOC contact and came up with an event that crashed a carrier on a small lowsec planet, massive casualties were reported. Perhaps to massive.

However the thing that makes me really wonder, is, perhaps these casualty numbers were inflated by Leo/Boma/and company to draw in RP. Perhaps a fact finding mission. It's been "active" for a few hours, nah near a day at this point.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=163603

is the thread in question. Now here's the trick(for me). I honestly believe Leo wants to engage people in RP here. In fact he invites a probe by the theology council, one that could be spear headed, by say, someone from PIE, or perhaps another interested party?

In fact just to ruffle some feathers I am going to make my own contribution to the thread to see if I can get things moving in a constructive direction.

[Silver Night]

[mod]Just as a quick note, the first thread is here, where you can view it in its catacombed glory to see the sorts of things that, if repeated in this thread, will result in formal warnings. I know this sort of thing inspires a certain level of passion, but please keep it inside the rules and guidelines.[/mod]

[Silas Vitalia]

*clears throat*

I'll repeat fantastic kudos to Stilwater and Boma who told me how excited he was to get this going.

+ Yay, space rp
+ Yay, Rpers putting assets and money where mouth is.
+ Yay for self-inflicted capital destruction in service of RP storyline

- Might have suspected people would be pissy about numbers, probably better to say 'massive casualties.'

+ Lowsec gets you much more leeway for this kind of thing as well - sparsely populated, unlikely to have planetary defenses preventing this kind of thing, etc etc

[Leopold Caine]

Oh look, I was banned from the OOC. Cute. 

However the thing that makes me really wonder, is, perhaps these casualty numbers were inflated by Leo/Boma/and company to draw in RP. Perhaps a fact finding mission. It's been "active" for a few hours, nah near a day at this point.

We kind of improvized on the run there, I was too busy with FCing and shooting and stuff to do the research on how much the kill count would actually be. I spoke with Boma afterwards and we settled for 3 millions as plausible, but of course, it might be less, it might be more. In terms of Skarkon having 20 million people, there's also a factor of it being a fringe system on the border of Republic/Thukker space, Akila is like a few jumps from Amarr (7 I think), and would thus probably be more densely populated. I'd say let's just go with Silas' variant and call it 'massive casualties', semantics wise, as there's no actual way to determine how many people live down there.

[NISYN Aelisha]

Just chucking a few numbers in to see if you guys want to (and if you do how you) use them. 

Assuming a direct 90 degree to surface impact, from a height equal to the orbit of the ISS (for ball park figure purposes of a realistic 'orbital descent before interception' scenario), we have a 1,057,500,000.00 kg mass operating under an 11.2mps acceleration (eve data regarding the planet in question) from a 433.4km height.  This assumes the carrier to be largely intact.

A direct hit, from kinetic energy alone, will dump the equivalent of 45% of the energy that went into making the Meteor Crater in Arizona.  With a barren planet such as this, it is unlikely that this will be mitigated in any way by a splash down (which would possibly actually result in more catastrophic long term ecological effects).  I will leave it to better people than I to theory-craft the effects of super-heated dust/sand/iron oxide or whatever in the long term. 

Put into perspective, the energy transfer is the equivalent of a directed 1.06 megatons of TNT.  Higher gravity may mean slightly decreased blast radius/effects due to pressure, but as we don't know the air mix down there, I am assuming that the energy gained from increased acceleration counteracts any mitigating pressure/gravity. 

If the full powergrid of the thanatos were active (unlikely after 'destruction' in orbit), it would contribute a mere 15 kilotons of TNT, potentially after the main impact event, assuming the full value of the powergrid (without skills) dumped in 1 millisecond.  This is 11 x Little Boy's blast energy.

All in all, a direct kinetic hit, unless you are extremely unlucky (and have a major city right on the dot), is going to really bugger up a select area and very likely going to generate a small army of phd graduates when observation of the climate and ecological effects is done.  Instead of poo pooing the idea of 3 million deaths (or a large number at least) outright, let's look at some scenarios:

1. A skidding impact could carry the main sections of the hull some way, increasing the area of effect and literally grinding everything in the skid's path to paste/rubble.  Driving a 1km long, 300m wide block of super structure through the middle of a metropolitan area, even if it bled speed on a cross-country crash course, is going to severely maul the population and infrastructure.  A post-landing explosion, or series of such, even on the order of 'Little Boy' level outbreaks of fusion failure, is going tto add to the carnage.  Also look at infrastructural failure - gas mains and power plants react badly to impact event kinetic energy. 

2. The air on the planet is toxic/thin/exposure can kill you within an hour.  Any earthquake (barren worlds are tectonically inactive generally - going on their description in game - thus architecture may not account for such activity) generated by impact might breach biodomes, collapse buildings etc.  Eitherway, even low levels of exposure to the impact event itself may destroy or disrupt the balance of local contained environments, causing deaths by proxy in a time frame we can consider 'immediately consequential'.

3. The break up scenario.  Large chunks of heated super structure hit the planet.  Combined with 2, this can lead to the containment failure of multiple biodomes. 

Please bear in mind this is just a bit of fun theory crafting, not ammo for refutation/denial/argument generation from either side of any OOC debate.  My intent is to provide a 'pseudoscience' framework that individuals of either side can use to 'build cases' in IC debate, should they wish.  On my end, running the numbers was something to do while off work sick and already crunching figures in wolfram alpha.

[lallara zhuul]

The ship is mostly made out of tritanium.

Last I heard tritanium disintegrates in an atmosphere.

[NISYN Aelisha]

Good point Lallara, though beyond that fact I have no idea how tritanium alloys react.  Is there any PF we can dig up for info - I know The Burning Life has some trit based 'salvation' devices that make use of trits instability in an atmosphere, but am unsure of any additional info. 

For reference I should probably state that the above post of mine is just concerned with the 'if it hit, how did it hit' scenario - materials science/science fiction aside. 

[lallara zhuul]

As I understand in re-entry situations to an atmosphere the angle is really important.

Too little, you bounce off, too much and its like hitting a brick wall, even in the optimal angle you get problems from friction with the atmosphere.
Without protection against that, there is no chance in hell that there will be anything resembling a solid mass reaching ground.

More likely a hail of hot metal and followed by slight black rain.

[Jev North]

Hey, cool. Guesstimating it, I arrived at roughly the same figures - equivalent to a nuclear blast of about one megaton, assuming no losses to atmosphere - a lot depends on how dense and structurally sound that carrier is. Assuming most of the energy makes it to ground zero, that's equivalent to a fairly large nuclear weapon blast right at the impact site. It could kill millions if it landed in a very densely populated area; maybe more if it hit a major city. Those tend to look like small pinpricks from space, though, and aiming a dead carrier at it could be difficult.

Not going to touch the "trit explodes in atmosphere" thing much; if it does, and is about equivalent to TNT in energy, and most of it makes it down to the ground, it would roughly double the megaton value of the blast. Due to the way these things scale, that wouldn't actually make the blast that much more lethal.

[Leopold Caine]

The ship is mostly made out of tritanium.

Last I heard tritanium disintegrates in an atmosphere.

I heard it just becomes unstable. I always thought the unstable part was losing its structural integrity, like steel does at +300 celsium temperatures.

[Leopold Caine]

On another note, thanks for Aldrith and Mitara for coming over to Akila, I was afk while you were visiting and making pick-ups, if I was there I would've RPed with you (or shot you for tresspassing ^^), kudos to getting some initiative going on in regards to the event.

[Leopold Caine]

And Boma Airaken hijacked a Stillwater Oracle and was shot down, but his pod got away, moving towards amarr highsec.

[Anxiang]

I remember reading Tritanium becomes stable in Mexallon and pyrite alloys. regardless, considering a thanatos is covered in very very thick armour plating, covered in heat resistant plating, even with the gaping holes that would be in it, surely allot of the mass of that is going to hit the ground very solid.

Personally I think three million dead due to the fallout of a bloody carrier falling on their heads is a conservative estimate since it's supposed to have hit a city of 20 million. then there is the little boy equivalent explosion and god help you if you get a carrier sized, intact power core blowing the hell up on you.

Anyway, there must be quintillions of people in Eden, why is 3 million so hard to believe?

Also can we please get back on topic? It's far to early for you lot to be pissing and moaning.

[hellgremlin]

The calculations for severity of impact are by mass alone? What about all the explodey bits, like the carrier's reactors and munitions stores?

[Jev North]

I'm assuming they mostly went kablooey in the initial destruction of the carrier, or that that any surviving particularly explody stuff is either inherently stable*, will fratricide each other if it does go off, or is comparable in power to conventional explosives - mostly insignificant on the megaton scale.

*: dropping a nuclear reactor or nuclear bomb from orbit, you're likely to end up with a very broken version of the same, not a giant explosion.