Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mainiac]

What if instead of decreasing oxygen, it did something to change nitrogen and oxygen to NO2 (I dont do chemistry, so what do I know)

Nitrogen dioxide has a positive molar energy.  O2 and N2 both have molar energies of 0 (base state, it's just a matter of convention).  So that means that you need to add energy to them to split apart the bonds and form new, higher energy molecules.  You need about 1 and 2/3rds kilojoules of energy per gram of oxygen put into NO2.  And that's just the energy that isn't wasted.  So your waste energy is probably going to be more destructive then your weapon.

[H4zardZ1]

You would kill people from carbon monoxide poisoning way before you would make them suffocate.

It is well known effect from using flamethrowers in bunkers.

And some dudes who did suicide.

If you want people to suffocate without actually decreasing the pressure at the room meaningfully, i'd suggest a filter grenade that slowly filters out oxygen into a really small gas tank and let nitrogen out of it, in which case you can't sense it until it is too late.

[USEC_OFFICER]

I think the problem with a rail shotgun is that on a railgun you want a single projectile to be shot from the rails (not sure how you could fire multiple projectiles with just the single gun) so you would need a projectile that would stay as one when fired but upon leaving the barrel it would split into multiple (flechetes, rods, cubes, spheres, what have you). Though my knowledge on this is very limited and I don't know what I'm talking about so what I'm trying to say is I don't know and don't believe me XD

That's an easy problem to solve. Have a sabot around the projectiles that keeps them together as they're fired from the railgun. Afterwards the sabot would fall apart since it's no longer held in place by the barrel, allowing the projectiles to spread apart and the entire thing to act like a shotgun. Quite simple to impliment and use.

[MonkeyHead]

I think the problem with a rail shotgun is that on a railgun you want a single projectile to be shot from the rails (not sure how you could fire multiple projectiles with just the single gun) so you would need a projectile that would stay as one when fired but upon leaving the barrel it would split into multiple (flechetes, rods, cubes, spheres, what have you). Though my knowledge on this is very limited and I don't know what I'm talking about so what I'm trying to say is I don't know and don't believe me XD

Easy. Discarding sabot flechette rounds. Basically what used to be called canister shot back in the day. Oh, this has already been covered...

As for your oxygen burner idea... it is not really feasible. However, let us play around with atmospheres a little. Let us consider an alien race that breathes a methane (or other hydrocarbon/volatile) atmosphere. A canister of pressurised oxygen and an igniter of some form would really ruin their day, replacing all theat lovley breathable air with CO₂, H₂O and fire. Kind of like a reverse napalm fuelled by their atmosphere, maybe?

[Dansmithers]

As for your oxygen burner idea... it is not really feasible. However, let us play around with atmospheres a little. Let us consider an alien race that breathes a methane oxygen (or other oixidizing) atmosphere. A canister of pressurised oxygen methane and an igniter of some form would really ruin their day, replacing all theat lovley breathable air with CO₂, H₂O and fire. Kind of like a reverse napalm fuelled by their atmosphere, maybe?

The weapon would work just as well there with oxygen as it would here with methane. (assuming that the moles of O2 and the moles of CH4 are equal)

[My Name is Immaterial]

What if instead of decreasing oxygen, it did something to change nitrogen and oxygen to NO2 (I dont do chemistry, so what do I know)

Nitrogen dioxide has a positive molar energy.  O2 and N2 both have molar energies of 0 (base state, it's just a matter of convention).  So that means that you need to add energy to them to split apart the bonds and form new, higher energy molecules.  You need about 1 and 2/3rds kilojoules of energy per gram of oxygen put into NO2.  And that's just the energy that isn't wasted.  So your waste energy is probably going to be more destructive then your weapon.

What about Nitric Oxide -> Nitrogen Dioxide? When Nitric Oxide is exposed to Oxgyen, it quickly turns into Nitrogen Dioxide.
The main problem, however, is that it takes 2823.5 m³ to turn a room of Oxygen into NO₂. If you were to compress that down to .5 m³ and then release it, it would like the force of six sticks of dynamite, all at once. That said, let it release over a minute, just throw it into a room, seal the door, and wait. It should work just fine.

[mainiac]

You also need to bring in huge amounts of gas.  Why not just release tear gas or something which is effective in smaller quantities?  Or pump the air out.

[MonkeyHead]

As for your oxygen burner idea... it is not really feasible. However, let us play around with atmospheres a little. Let us consider an alien race that breathes a methane oxygen (or other oixidizing) atmosphere. A canister of pressurised oxygen methane and an igniter of some form would really ruin their day, replacing all theat lovley breathable air with CO₂, H₂O and fire. Kind of like a reverse napalm fuelled by their atmosphere, maybe?

The weapon would work just as well there with oxygen as it would here with methane. (assuming that the moles of O2 and the moles of CH4 are equal)

Yeah, I appear to have simply reinvented the fire bomb. *shrug*

[My Name is Immaterial]

You also need to bring in huge amounts of gas.  Why not just release tear gas or something which is effective in smaller quantities?  Or pump the air out.

I agree 100%, but the condition was " burn up the oxygen in a room rather than burn those inside".

[Insanegame27]

For the railshotgun, I think it would work better as a coilgun (Guass) rather than a railgun. and have it just fling it out magnetically. Again, not an expert, although my physics class starts projectile motion unit after next. (currently on medical physics, then we do something on Space, then projectile motion)

[ChairmanPoo]

As for your oxygen burner idea... it is not really feasible. However, let us play around with atmospheres a little. Let us consider an alien race that breathes a methane oxygen (or other oixidizing) atmosphere. A canister of pressurised oxygen methane and an igniter of some form would really ruin their day, replacing all theat lovley breathable air with CO₂, H₂O and fire. Kind of like a reverse napalm fuelled by their atmosphere, maybe?

The weapon would work just as well there with oxygen as it would here with methane. (assuming that the moles of O2 and the moles of CH4 are equal)

Yeah, I appear to have simply reinvented the fire bomb. *shrug*

Someone beat you to the idea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dust_of_Death

[MonkeyHead]

For the railshotgun, I think it would work better as a coilgun (Guass) rather than a railgun. and have it just fling it out magnetically. Again, not an expert, although my physics class starts projectile motion unit after next. (currently on medical physics, then we do something on Space, then projectile motion)

Coilguns suffer from serious performance issues relating to inefficiency and heat as they require a very rapidly growing EM-field to work as a weapon, which causes all sorts of induction shenanigans in the firing mechanism. Railguns, due to how the magnetic fields produce the accelerating force do not suffer such limitations, even if the rails get rapidly chewed. Coilguns could be used to produce accelerations that could be fine tuned if one so wishes, but railguns tend to produce al "all or nothing" acceleration, far better suited to a pure weapon system. Coilguns are also rather delicate in terms of how aligned the series of coils need to be (with currents in the coils needing to by synched to muzzle velocity - an added complication), so not suited for rough and tumble combat operations. Railguns are a lot more forgiving in that respect, needing only 2 roughly parallel rails, rather than large numbers of well aligned coils. Though, that said, a coil gun could fling a cloud of ferrous projectiles directly rather than in a sabot.

[Virex]

The suffocation grenade does actually work. That's what happens if you toss a white phosphourous grenade (usually used to make a smoke screen) into a confined space. Of course the white phosphourous will also cause some superficial burning to anything it touches but it will not ruin things that are sufficiently fire-resistant.


The rail shotgun is exactly what happens when you fill a coil gun (not a rail gun, must be a coil gun) with shrapnel.


The "hot bullet" thing is essentially a High-explosive incendiary round: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-explosive_incendiary. Usually they are filled with a pyrophoric material such as triethylaluminium.


The jet cutter-flame thrower sounds really short ranged. Any material that I can think off that you could use as a fluid jet cutter would fan out really quickly.

[MonkeyHead]

The jet cutter-flame thrower sounds really short ranged. Any material that I can think off that you could use as a fluid jet cutter would fan out really quickly.

Having used plasma cutters in the past, I can testify for the effectiveness of a plasma jet at cutting.... well, anything. Now, it is really short range, but if we are going OTT sci-fi, we could enhance it through clever use of strong magnetic fields to pinch/focus/stretch the plasma jet into a very long and narrow "beam" of hot ionised material in order to chew through armours like they are not even there. Said magnetic containment of plasma could even direct said plasma into a more diffuse cloud to act as a flame thrower, or into "globs" to fire at and splash over targets...

[Virex]

I know, plasma cutters and water-jet cutters are very, very effective as cutting tools, but they only reach a foot or something before their cutting power drop off. However, if we were able to confine plasma at long distances well enough to use it as a beam weapon, using it as a beam weapon would be a pretty trivial apllication compared to, say, building an open-air fusion reactor.