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RoadWarriorFWaNK wrote:They dont nuke anyone because it would make for crappy books.

Coalition Wars Siege on Tolkeen Book 1: 1 Page. "The CS Nukes Tolkeen. Everybody there dies. Chi-Town rejoices. THE END."

Not true.

The Coalition did originally attempt to nuke Tolkeen during the early stages of the war, although their magical defenses (such as opening Rifts to swallow missiles, and the Triangular Ley Line Defense Grid) rendered such attacks moot.

After Holmes's forces performed surgical strikes during the final siege, the CS nuked Freehold.

~ Josh

Josh Sinsapaugh wrote:

RoadWarriorFWaNK wrote:They dont nuke anyone because it would make for crappy books.

Coalition Wars Siege on Tolkeen Book 1: 1 Page. "The CS Nukes Tolkeen. Everybody there dies. Chi-Town rejoices. THE END."

Not true.

The Coalition did originally attempt to nuke Tolkeen during the early stages of the war, although their magical defenses (such as opening Rifts to swallow missiles, and the Triangular Ley Line Defense Grid) rendered such attacks moot.

After Holmes's forces performed surgical strikes during the final siege, the CS nuked Freehold.

~ Josh

Use suitcase nukes, carried in on foot.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Josh Sinsapaugh wrote:

RoadWarriorFWaNK wrote:They dont nuke anyone because it would make for crappy books.

Coalition Wars Siege on Tolkeen Book 1: 1 Page. "The CS Nukes Tolkeen. Everybody there dies. Chi-Town rejoices. THE END."

Not true.

The Coalition did originally attempt to nuke Tolkeen during the early stages of the war, although their magical defenses (such as opening Rifts to swallow missiles, and the Triangular Ley Line Defense Grid) rendered such attacks moot.

After Holmes's forces performed surgical strikes during the final siege, the CS nuked Freehold.

~ Josh

Use suitcase nukes, carried in on foot.

See now that could have worked.

Although, there is still a large chance it would be thwarted.

~ Josh

Use suitcase nukes, carried in on foot.

thats when poor yorik stops being cryptic and says HEY! that guy has a bomb!

besides, suitcase nuke in tolkeen's hands+teleport lesser+ley-line meens bad day for the CS

rat_bastard wrote:

Use suitcase nukes, carried in on foot.

thats when poor yorik stops being cryptic and says HEY! that guy has a bomb!

besides, suitcase nuke in tolkeen's hands+teleport lesser+ley-line meens bad day for the CS

Sure, but it wouldn't be too tough to keep it from falling into enemy hands.

Josh Sinsapaugh wrote:

RoadWarriorFWaNK wrote:They dont nuke anyone because it would make for crappy books.

Coalition Wars Siege on Tolkeen Book 1: 1 Page. "The CS Nukes Tolkeen. Everybody there dies. Chi-Town rejoices. THE END."

Not true.

The Coalition did originally attempt to nuke Tolkeen during the early stages of the war, although their magical defenses (such as opening Rifts to swallow missiles, and the Triangular Ley Line Defense Grid) rendered such attacks moot.

After Holmes's forces performed surgical strikes during the final siege, the CS nuked Freehold.
~ Josh

hey, what's that flying above you? Oh yeah, It's my point.

hahaha. True. It was after all the books were out that the nukes fell. NOT the very begining, which i agree would make for some lame books.

And those nukes that were used were very small for the most part.

Aramanthus wrote:And those nukes that were used were very small for the most part.

Well, they did want to CONCOR Tolkeen. not just destroy it, occupy the territory. which is hard to do if you irradiate the entire place.

That is the purpose of Neutron warhead. Kill the people, leave the buildings standing, low level fallout, radiation is gone in days.

Aramanthus wrote:That is the purpose of Neutron warhead. Kill the people, leave the buildings standing, low level fallout, radiation is gone in days.

True, True.


though we are left with a fun question:

Can magic cure radiation poisoning?

As far as your question Nekira, I'd say yes. But it would be very powerful atlantean magic. Such as the Phoenix tattoo.

First off about the radiation healing. Why wouldn't some of the more powerful healing or curative magics be sufficient to repair the physical damage of radiation poisoning? I mean its not so much the radiation killing the person as the damage that was done to the person's cells by the radiation. Remove the radiation the damage stays but should be able to be repaired by the appropriate spells (Not having played too many magic users in palladium I'm not sure what the appropriate spells are, in D&D I'd say a cure serious or better would work.) or nothing like that.

And as for the toxic/radiation waste eating bugs I found the reference in the Energy Research newsletter of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory archives for 1998. (Also in Nature magazine of the same time.)

A bacterium that can survive exposure to more than 1,000 times the amount of radiation that would kill a human may one day be put to work breaking down toxic organic chemicals at radioactive waste sites. Named the World's Toughest Bacterium by the Guinness Book of Records, the large red spheres of Deinococcus radiodurans (translation: strange berry that withstands radiation) can not only endure acute radiation doses of up to three million rads but more remarkably, can actually grow when exposed to radiation continuously. This unusual organism survives because it efficiently repairs the damage to its DNA that the radiation causes. Within 12 to 24 hours after radiation exposure it completely repairs each of its chromosomes that have been broken into more than 100 pieces, and life goes on. Geneticists are now exploring ways to put D. radiodurans to use in cleaning up toxic chemical wastes in radioactive environments.

Maybe by the golden age they got the little critters to be useful, controllable and effective.

There are cures for it!

R Ditto wrote:

Ickus wrote:
On a side note, I don't know why the CS hasn't taken to doing multiple large scale tactical warhead strikes (non-nukes) against any of their targets that they know where they are. Especially the non-human ones.

There are plenty of convential non-nuclear options which would be use to half flatten (if not destroy) any hives they could locate. This would atleast severely hamper their growth?

They could consider there to currently be a bufferzone between them and the bugs and they just dont have to worry about it yet.


First of all, missiles aren't cheap, especially the big ones (something like 500,000 credits each for LRMs iirc).
Second, missiles can be detected on radar or otherwise seen visually, and shot down.
Third, missiles are not easily "renewable", once one is used, it is gone until another one is made to replace it. With things like mini-missiles and grenades, amounts/costs aren't much and mass production is easy, rail guns use easy to mass produce metal slugs, and energy weapons can be easily recharged just about anyplace with a good power source of some sort.
Even artillery like 155mm EM Howitzers are a cheaper alternative to using missiles for bombardment, even if they do have much shorter range.

As for not blasting hives into pieces with missiles, if someone did bombard something like a Xiticix hive with LRMs, the bugs would probably be smart enough to know that they could go swarm in the direction the missiles came from and locate the threat to their hive.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:
why not? have you looked at how little damage a real nuke DOES in the CS navy? beyond the fairly small ground 0 radius it dosn't do much MD damage. a gargoyle would EASIALLY survive it, and now you just ruined the land for yourself.


I agree that real nukes seem really weak in Rifts, especially close to ground zero, where damage should be much higher, but it does make some sense that damage will be much weaker farther out.
The main "punch" of a real nuke is its blast force and extreme heat at ground zero, the father from ground zero, the weaker the force/heat is because of being more spread out. If you are far enough away, about the only thing you need to worry about is radiation burns and dodging large chunks of debris being thrown into the air by the overpressure, or perhaps getting knocked off your feet by the shockwave.

Wrong R Ditto...

First Nuclear weapons are the most destructive devices conceived by man alone. A single nuclear warhead of 2+ megatons could destroy/atomize several kilometers of land. The shockwave caused by it would destroy 30 times more area not to mention the radiation. The nukes presented in CS Navy are simple too weak to even notice. Those would most probably be the actual low wield tatical nukes that are so much talked about in several pieces of SciFi literature, with less damage, radiation and overall destruction area compared to the actual full power nuclear weapons.

Psionics can, purge self...the way it is written...maybe, make a special savings throw.

Nightmaster wrote:R Ditto wrote:

Ickus wrote:
On a side note, I don't know why the CS hasn't taken to doing multiple large scale tactical warhead strikes (non-nukes) against any of their targets that they know where they are. Especially the non-human ones.

There are plenty of convential non-nuclear options which would be use to half flatten (if not destroy) any hives they could locate. This would atleast severely hamper their growth?

They could consider there to currently be a bufferzone between them and the bugs and they just dont have to worry about it yet.


First of all, missiles aren't cheap, especially the big ones (something like 500,000 credits each for LRMs iirc).
Second, missiles can be detected on radar or otherwise seen visually, and shot down.
Third, missiles are not easily "renewable", once one is used, it is gone until another one is made to replace it. With things like mini-missiles and grenades, amounts/costs aren't much and mass production is easy, rail guns use easy to mass produce metal slugs, and energy weapons can be easily recharged just about anyplace with a good power source of some sort.
Even artillery like 155mm EM Howitzers are a cheaper alternative to using missiles for bombardment, even if they do have much shorter range.

As for not blasting hives into pieces with missiles, if someone did bombard something like a Xiticix hive with LRMs, the bugs would probably be smart enough to know that they could go swarm in the direction the missiles came from and locate the threat to their hive.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:
why not? have you looked at how little damage a real nuke DOES in the CS navy? beyond the fairly small ground 0 radius it dosn't do much MD damage. a gargoyle would EASIALLY survive it, and now you just ruined the land for yourself.


I agree that real nukes seem really weak in Rifts, especially close to ground zero, where damage should be much higher, but it does make some sense that damage will be much weaker farther out.
The main "punch" of a real nuke is its blast force and extreme heat at ground zero, the father from ground zero, the weaker the force/heat is because of being more spread out. If you are far enough away, about the only thing you need to worry about is radiation burns and dodging large chunks of debris being thrown into the air by the overpressure, or perhaps getting knocked off your feet by the shockwave.

Wrong R Ditto...

First Nuclear weapons are the most destructive devices conceived by man alone. A single nuclear warhead of 2+ megatons could destroy/atomize several kilometers of land. The shockwave caused by it would destroy 30 times more area not to mention the radiation. The nukes presented in CS Navy are simple too weak to even notice. Those would most probably be the actual low wield tatical nukes that are so much talked about in several pieces of SciFi literature, with less damage, radiation and overall destruction area compared to the actual full power nuclear weapons.

uh, not quite. CS Navy has megaton-yeild nukes, and they do several MD to a fairly large radius.

but here's the thing, it dosn't NEED to do much MD in order to vaporite our current SDC enviroments.

so while the terrain is blown to hell, a gargoyle will barely notice it.

glitterboy2098
I guess I was wrong about minimal nuke size.
Since the source I had looked at talked about WWII nukes, I guess that the limit was just during WWII.

Last time I looked at stuff about portable nukes, I must have missed that thing about the yields (I used to think those suckers were rated in kilotons, not tons...)

But still, at a 10 ton yield, that should be enough , to do thousands of MDC at ground zero with (assuming 20,000 pounds of TNT at 1D4x10 per pound)


Nightmaster
About nukes, I was thinking of your typical tactical nuclear weapons, the ones rated at only a few hendred kilotons, city busters and such. I wasn't thinking of multi megaton or even the big several dozen megaton strategic thermonuclear weapons.

But there are still other factors to think... a laser pistol can more or less vaporize a good chunk of a person or a chunk of ground, but will onyl "scratch" or otherwise leave a minor burn mark on MDC materials.
Flashing something to past its melting or vapor point is one thing, but flashing it to its melting point or under won't have as nasty results to MDC materials.

I've seen old footage of earlier nuke blasts. If you are a few miles from a small nuke blast, you don't vaporize, you just have to worry about the overpressure, some heat, and less than lethal amounts of radiation. Even the radiation isn't enough to cause short term problems (iirc, many of the people near the early test blasts took a few years or even decades before it became evident they were suffering from long term effects of radiation)..

If you want a big nuke... assorted data online suggessts a Heavy Particle Beam from Macross/Robotech is the equivilant to a 65 megaton blast when fired at a planet... and other sources say they do millions of MDC to the target area (1D6 to 4D6 times 1 million MDC), leaving a crater dozens of miles wide (1D4x10 or 1D6x10) and hundreds, if not over a thousand) feet deep (3D6x100 foot crater depth).

But that is something that is over 250 times more powerful than a city buster and which already hits a large area to begin with. That kind of stuff would vape a Gagoyle... and slag a GB, or explode a DHT, or turn an Impervious to Energy being into a pasty goo (they might be impervious to energy, but they are not impervious to all the other stuff happening and the effects of material subjected to such energies... that and it is technically a "nuclear" attack, with ItE doesn't protect against).
The fun thing about thermonuclear weapons (other than the mass destruction), is that the only radiation is from a small nuclear device that is the "ignition" for the whole thing, so fallout would be minimal but widely spread over a wide area, and the majority of the radiation (iirc) is very short lived.

Back to the main subject...

I don't see why the CS just doesn't upsize their Fusion Block/Micro-Fusion Grenade tech and make a "clean" tactical nuke, maybe not as big of a punch as a city buster, but enough punch to do some hefty damage if they need it. And if they do want more punch, they should be able to make a clean version of a city buster using a fusion warhead. Heck, even fusion warheads for LRMs or heavier MRMs could do wonders for them.

Although, I do wonder... like why there is almost a complete lack of nuke/fusion weapon tech in Japan, yet their Hawkeye GB has fusion warheads available for MRMs... (not much, just 4D6x10 MD, although they failed to lack blast radius...)

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

uh, not quite. CS Navy has megaton-yeild nukes, and they do several MD to a fairly large radius.

but here's the thing, it dosn't NEED to do much MD in order to vaporite our current SDC enviroments.

so while the terrain is blown to hell, a gargoyle will barely notice it.

well Nekira, you are forgeting to think in scale, mainly because the Rifts setting is a High Level MDC word (i will explain). Using the Macross/Robotech setting, the main cannon of a M1A2 Abrams tank would do a resonable MDC damage. In the Rifts setting, because of a large quantity of MDC creatures and the fact that humans worn MDC armor and wield MDC weapons, the numbers have been increased to allow that players dindt simple blast away their foes. This lead to the actual damage numbers we see in the CS Navy about nuclear weapons. Although it is right to say that "dosn't need to much MD in order to vaporize our current SDC enviroments" you are forgeting that most nuclear bombs (simple 10 time more strong than hiroshimas bomb) release energy on the scale os a small star, and even gargoyles and most MDC creatures would be vaporized easy by it. Thinking with that scale factor, the blast generated by the bomb would most probably kill the gargoyles too.



R Ditto wrote:

About nukes, I was thinking of your typical tactical nuclear weapons, the ones rated at only a few hendred kilotons, city busters and such. I wasn't thinking of multi megaton or even the big several dozen megaton strategic thermonuclear weapons.

But there are still other factors to think... a laser pistol can more or less vaporize a good chunk of a person or a chunk of ground, but will onyl "scratch" or otherwise leave a minor burn mark on MDC materials.
Flashing something to past its melting or vapor point is one thing, but flashing it to its melting point or under won't have as nasty results to MDC materials.

I've seen old footage of earlier nuke blasts. If you are a few miles from a small nuke blast, you don't vaporize, you just have to worry about the overpressure, some heat, and less than lethal amounts of radiation. Even the radiation isn't enough to cause short term problems (iirc, many of the people near the early test blasts took a few years or even decades before it became evident they were suffering from long term effects of radiation).

well sorry for the wrong terminology, but the fact is that the CS nukes are not "earlier nuke blasts" they are most probably already kiloton wield blasts that would kill/destroy anyone and anything just a few miles from the blast.

to give a resonable example from someone that knows more about nukes than myself go to this page: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/8976/missiles.htm

Nightmaster wrote:Nekira Sudacne wrote:

uh, not quite. CS Navy has megaton-yeild nukes, and they do several MD to a fairly large radius.

but here's the thing, it dosn't NEED to do much MD in order to vaporite our current SDC enviroments.

so while the terrain is blown to hell, a gargoyle will barely notice it.

well Nekira, you are forgeting to think in scale, mainly because the Rifts setting is a High Level MDC word (i will explain). Using the Macross/Robotech setting, the main cannon of a M1A2 Abrams tank would do a resonable MDC damage. In the Rifts setting, because of a large quantity of MDC creatures and the fact that humans worn MDC armor and wield MDC weapons, the numbers have been increased to allow that players dindt simple blast away their foes. This lead to the actual damage numbers we see in the CS Navy about nuclear weapons. Although it is right to say that "dosn't need to much MD in order to vaporize our current SDC enviroments" you are forgeting that most nuclear bombs (simple 10 time more strong than hiroshimas bomb) release energy on the scale os a small star, and even gargoyles and most MDC creatures would be vaporized easy by it. Thinking with that scale factor, the blast generated by the bomb would most probably kill the gargoyles too.

uh, no nuclear bomb ever invented releases any reasonable fraction of even a small star. while it's true the most powerful hydrogen (fusion) bombs have the same KIND of reactions as powers a small star, the amount of material undergoing fusion is a rediulously minute fraction of the amount exploding in hte heart of hte smallest stars. the amount of energy released isn't even on the same order of magnitued

So are you trying to argue because the durabilit of everything in rifts has gone up the power of nuclear bombs has mysteriously increased as well just to keep up? if so, obviously they havn't.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

uh, no nuclear bomb ever invented releases any reasonable fraction of even a small star. while it's true the most powerful hydrogen (fusion) bombs have the same KIND of reactions as powers a small star, the amount of material undergoing fusion is a rediulously minute fraction of the amount exploding in hte heart of hte smallest stars. the amount of energy released isn't even on the same order of magnitued

So are you trying to argue because the durabilit of everything in rifts has gone up the power of nuclear bombs has mysteriously increased as well just to keep up? if so, obviously they havn't.

Well Nekira if you are right, then all my sources of academic physics are wrong. But nuclear weapons does release (for a very brief moment) radiation and heat like a small star core. That is wasted in seconds but the result is the shockwave that follows the blast of the nuke.

And no i never said that. I just said that the scale of a lot of things in Rifts were very wrong. Today we already have MDC structures and weapons, you just need to take a look around to find then. A minor exemple is a aircraft carrier of today like the USS Enterprise. It can survive torpedoes impacts and bombs in it hull, bombardment from aircrafts and other ships, but a simple 5 kiloton nuke would destroy it just easy.

There are other examples of today MDC structures and weapons, but i am too lazy to write then down. The main fact is a nuke would destroy those things easy. The same dont happens in Rifts not because of the description but because of game rules and numbers set wrong. Just that

Ooh ooh! I just thoguht of somthing, if you get bitten by a radioactive xitixic do you get super powers?

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

Aramanthus wrote:That is the purpose of Neutron warhead. Kill the people, leave the buildings standing, low level fallout, radiation is gone in days.

True, True.


though we are left with a fun question:

Can magic cure radiation poisoning?

At least in the Rifts novels, magic or psionics could not cure radiation. But regardless, I'd probably rule that they could heal radiation damage in my game.

I still say check out the Phoenix Tattoo.

Hannibal wrote:

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

Aramanthus wrote:That is the purpose of Neutron warhead. Kill the people, leave the buildings standing, low level fallout, radiation is gone in days.

True, True.


though we are left with a fun question:

Can magic cure radiation poisoning?

At least in the Rifts novels, magic or psionics could not cure radiation. But regardless, I'd probably rule that they could heal radiation damage in my game.

I'd go further than that - in my games all the PPE has neutralised most of the background radiation left over from the cataclysm.

One interesting thing about nukes in Rifts, is that their blast radi are (in a way) nonsense as far as damage.
The farther you are from a blast, the less damage it is going to do, as the energy gets dispersed over a wider and wider area.

Nightmaster
I checked the one link, recognized it, and got a good laugh...

One missile (light warhead) did 1D6x1000 MD... past a 1.4 mile radius... where everything is more or less destroyed at 1.4 miles or less...
So... at ground zero you are dead if you are in a PA in a tank, but a mile away, you are still dead if you are in a PA in a tank... even thought the overall energy of the blast should have disipated... if you are past the instant kill mark, at the max blast radius of 2.1 miles, you still have a good chance of being dead if you are a GB in a big armored APC in a DHT... Past 4 miles, you probably won't even get sunburned (???)

Heck, the closest I can find to that kind of destruction was a nuclear test of an effective 15mt yield thermonuclear bomb that left a crater 6,500ft wide.

The blast radi, damage, and other stuff for the big stuff on that one site are interesting, but their blast radi/damage just seemed messed up.
Ok, either I've lost the ability to do math, or that just makes no sense at all...


Small laser pistol can vaporize a path clean through a good foot or two of solid steel (considering effective armor on a tank), and they only scratch MDC materials... indicating that the MDC materials at least can handle extreme temperatures for brief periods of time... You need a overkill laser or plasma weapon to crack some armos in a single shot (or blast a hole clean through a row of a dozen or more tanks), and it still isn't going to do much to tougher MDC things...


Me, personally, would prefer a scaled system for actual nukes...
e.g, 5D6x100 MD to a 200ft radius, -10% damage per 100ft past that, or -1D6 for every 200ft, or some other similar thing.
It kills anything close, but will only sizzle something not so close to the blast...

For some kind of related stuff (as far as energy and heat and whatnot...)
I forget where it was, but there was some stuff once regarding MD energy weapons, and their effective BTU... something to do with how much water would be blasted into steam if someone shot an energy weapon into water... but anyways, it gave an impression of just how much heat MDC materials can handle. (unrelated. If an eclip holds 28,000 watthours of energy, that equals roughly 95 million BTU, maybe enough energy to raise 12,000,000 gallons of water one degree, or enough to boil over 80,000 gallons of room temperature water... or perhaps somewhere around enough to get a plasma gun at 1D6x10 MD and 6 shots from an e-clip to boil 14k gallons of 70 degree water with a single blast... that's a max of 16 million btu, which is a LOT of heat, considering many stoves and grills might only be rated in thousands or tens of thousands of BTU...)

On a far fecthed side note, if I got the conversions right, the effective energy release of a 1 megaton blast is roughly... 4,300 trillion joules, or about 4 trillion BTU... Yep, that's roughly "core of the sun" hot at ground zero, but I doubt it's going to pack enough firepower to slag a GB or a CS Firestorm a few miles away...

Nightmaster wrote:Nekira Sudacne wrote:

uh, no nuclear bomb ever invented releases any reasonable fraction of even a small star. while it's true the most powerful hydrogen (fusion) bombs have the same KIND of reactions as powers a small star, the amount of material undergoing fusion is a rediulously minute fraction of the amount exploding in hte heart of hte smallest stars. the amount of energy released isn't even on the same order of magnitued

So are you trying to argue because the durabilit of everything in rifts has gone up the power of nuclear bombs has mysteriously increased as well just to keep up? if so, obviously they havn't.

Well Nekira if you are right, then all my sources of academic physics are wrong. But nuclear weapons does release (for a very brief moment) radiation and heat like a small star core. That is wasted in seconds but the result is the shockwave that follows the blast of the nuke.

I think we misunderstood each-other here. Yes, the very core of a nuke can be as hot as the suns core in the same way as the center of a lightning bolt can be 100 times as hot as the surface of the sun (and yes, I know there's more in a nuke than heat, that's just an exsample). my point was actually that amount of raw energy in a nuke was not equal to the amount of energy being put out by the ENTIRE MASS of the core of the sun, which is what I thought you were trying to say. it's just hot enough to be part of the core and be the same over force, to which I say "duh" sinse it's the same reaction.

And no i never said that. I just said that the scale of a lot of things in Rifts were very wrong. Today we already have MDC structures and weapons, you just need to take a look around to find then. A minor exemple is a aircraft carrier of today like the USS Enterprise. It can survive torpedoes impacts and bombs in it hull, bombardment from aircrafts and other ships, but a simple 5 kiloton nuke would destroy it just easy.

While it's partially questionable about the Aircraft carrier, lets just assume it is. it's not really super-super tough alloys we'd come to expect from MDC, so even if it IS MDC, the entire ship wouldn't have more than 50 or so. And I don't really think it IS MDC besides, based on what can damage it. Super-tough SDC, sure, not MDC.

Ballad wrote:we have ceramics today that can handle the heat inside the core of a reactor (look into the DHTE reactors that GE is working on) So ya I would guess MDC material could survive a blast. Especially when you consider that we do have blast resistant buildings today that will survive close to ground zero of a detonation(few hundred yards I believe but I am not sure on the ratings...nor do I know if they have been fully tested.). Hell look at the pictures of the cities that have been hit by nuclear bombs. Not every thing was flattened, while it was all rubble, parts of buildings where standing and these where sdc materials.

That's because not everything in the blast radius takes full damage. By Palladium rules, only the target hit would take full damage and everything else would take half, but a more realistic ruling for a large explosion like a nuke would be the rules from Ninjas & Superspies, p. 28.
According to the rules there, volatile explosives do a base damage of 3d6 SDC for one pound, with 1d6 SDC damage to everything else in the blast area.
For each doubling of the explosive's mass, the range is increased by one standard unit.
1 lb affects 10'
2 lbs affects 20'
4 lbs affects 30'
And so on.

The damage just stacks as normal.
10 lbs of explosives inflict 30d6 to the main target, and everything else within 40' takes 10d6.

And realistically, the damage would continue out from there, growing less and less with each range increment. The farther away from the epicenter of the blast, the less damage it would take.

Furthermore, not everything would take even the full damage for the range it was at. In a city, for example, most buildings are going to be behind other building; the ones closest to the blast will shield the ones further away.

Lastly, buildings have a LOT of SDC. A cinderblock wall has 300 SDC per 10 square feet. I don't feel like calculating the surface area of the standard exterior of a large building, but feel free if you want a clearer picture (then you can figure out total for interior walls).
While you're at it, you can easily calculate the explosive force (in game terms) of a nuclear blast.
1 Mega-Ton is 1,000,000 TONS of TNT. Consider 1 lb of TNT as a Volatile Explosve and use the rules from N&S that I listed above.

R Ditto

Ok, this page is not the best example out here (i doub i can find one) but you get the main picture. The fact that in the Rifts setting you see human size MDC body armor is the thing that screw everything. With that base for the entire setting, a human dressed in a 100 MDC body armor, when designing vehicles, personal weapons, structures and monsters, you have to increase by two to three times the resonable number of MDC that thoise things would have to simple put a "balance" and allow that things to survive against players characters and so on.

My first experience with the MDC rules were with Robotech/Macross and in those games the MDC rules were mean to be a combat system left for vehicles. The only MDC weapon i have see that was for a human size character besides a missile launcher was a laser rifle that does only 1D4 MD!! and it was a experimental weapon. The overall scale of MDC in those games were much more resonable and i would have loved if that scale were used in the Rifst setting.

R Ditto wrote:

For some kind of related stuff (as far as energy and heat and whatnot...)
I forget where it was, but there was some stuff once regarding MD energy weapons, and their effective BTU... something to do with how much water would be blasted into steam if someone shot an energy weapon into water... but anyways, it gave an impression of just how much heat MDC materials can handle. (unrelated. If an eclip holds 28,000 watthours of energy, that equals roughly 95 million BTU, maybe enough energy to raise 12,000,000 gallons of water one degree, or enough to boil over 80,000 gallons of room temperature water... or perhaps somewhere around enough to get a plasma gun at 1D6x10 MD and 6 shots from an e-clip to boil 14k gallons of 70 degree water with a single blast... that's a max of 16 million btu, which is a LOT of heat, considering many stoves and grills might only be rated in thousands or tens of thousands of BTU...)

well, i dont know where you got that numbers, but they seen a bit overrated in my opinion. The fact tha eclips power the MDC weapons of rifts/phase word dont mean that they store that lot of energy to begin off. The entire weapon system could be 100 times more energy efficient than today, so the eclips could house a considerable amount of energy, but not that much.


Nekira Sudacne

well misunderstood aside, i dont agree with you in the matter of today MDC structures and weapons. Putting the example of the carrier, when i say "it can survive" i mean little to no damage at all.

several vehicles of today are what i can say to be MDC vehicles. The M1A2 Abrams main battle tank for example can resist without even a worry several impacts of TOW missiles as was seen in tests so far. This tank is suposed to enter service in some years after some bugs are resolved and we are not even near the time of the rifts. And even this tank would not survive a nuke, and i dont mean the ground zero of it.

Ballad wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Ballad wrote:we have ceramics today that can handle the heat inside the core of a reactor (look into the DHTE reactors that GE is working on) So ya I would guess MDC material could survive a blast. Especially when you consider that we do have blast resistant buildings today that will survive close to ground zero of a detonation(few hundred yards I believe but I am not sure on the ratings...nor do I know if they have been fully tested.). Hell look at the pictures of the cities that have been hit by nuclear bombs. Not every thing was flattened, while it was all rubble, parts of buildings where standing and these where sdc materials.

That's because not everything in the blast radius takes full damage. By Palladium rules, only the target hit would take full damage and everything else would take half, but a more realistic ruling for a large explosion like a nuke would be the rules from Ninjas & Superspies, p. 28.
According to the rules there, volatile explosives do a base damage of 3d6 SDC for one pound, with 1d6 SDC damage to everything else in the blast area.
For each doubling of the explosive's mass, the range is increased by one standard unit.
1 lb affects 10'
2 lbs affects 20'
4 lbs affects 30'
And so on.

The damage just stacks as normal.
10 lbs of explosives inflict 30d6 to the main target, and everything else within 40' takes 10d6.

And realistically, the damage would continue out from there, growing less and less with each range increment. The farther away from the epicenter of the blast, the less damage it would take.

Furthermore, not everything would take even the full damage for the range it was at. In a city, for example, most buildings are going to be behind other building; the ones closest to the blast will shield the ones further away.

Lastly, buildings have a LOT of SDC. A cinderblock wall has 300 SDC per 10 square feet. I don't feel like calculating the surface area of the standard exterior of a large building, but feel free if you want a clearer picture (then you can figure out total for interior walls).
While you're at it, you can easily calculate the explosive force (in game terms) of a nuclear blast.
1 Mega-Ton is 1,000,000 TONS of TNT. Consider 1 lb of TNT as a Volatile Explosve and use the rules from N&S that I listed above.

This si another bit I agree with you on. the maker of that website greatly overestimated the damage a nuclear bomb would do, in rifts terms high mdc creatures would survive. (infact I think that is explicitly stated in CB2)

Well, if they were caught point blank by a nuke, any creature damaged by normal mega-damage weapons would be killed.
But against creatures like xiticix, not all of them would be.
A nuke would destroy or severly damage all of the towers, but the majority of the hive is underground. Tunnels would be collapsed, bugs would be buries, but those deep enough underground or far enough away from the blast (and/or shielded by buildings and such) would have a good chance of living.
Of course, it would still be a devastating attack, but it wouldn't entirely wipe them out.
Although the radiation likely would.

Nightmaster wrote:R Ditto

Ok, this page is not the best example out here (i doub i can find one) but you get the main picture. The fact that in the Rifts setting you see human size MDC body armor is the thing that screw everything. With that base for the entire setting, a human dressed in a 100 MDC body armor, when designing vehicles, personal weapons, structures and monsters, you have to increase by two to three times the resonable number of MDC that thoise things would have to simple put a "balance" and allow that things to survive against players characters and so on.

My first experience with the MDC rules were with Robotech/Macross and in those games the MDC rules were mean to be a combat system left for vehicles. The only MDC weapon i have see that was for a human size character besides a missile launcher was a laser rifle that does only 1D4 MD!! and it was a experimental weapon. The overall scale of MDC in those games were much more resonable and i would have loved if that scale were used in the Rifst setting.

R Ditto wrote:

For some kind of related stuff (as far as energy and heat and whatnot...)
I forget where it was, but there was some stuff once regarding MD energy weapons, and their effective BTU... something to do with how much water would be blasted into steam if someone shot an energy weapon into water... but anyways, it gave an impression of just how much heat MDC materials can handle. (unrelated. If an eclip holds 28,000 watthours of energy, that equals roughly 95 million BTU, maybe enough energy to raise 12,000,000 gallons of water one degree, or enough to boil over 80,000 gallons of room temperature water... or perhaps somewhere around enough to get a plasma gun at 1D6x10 MD and 6 shots from an e-clip to boil 14k gallons of 70 degree water with a single blast... that's a max of 16 million btu, which is a LOT of heat, considering many stoves and grills might only be rated in thousands or tens of thousands of BTU...)

well, i dont know where you got that numbers, but they seen a bit overrated in my opinion. The fact tha eclips power the MDC weapons of rifts/phase word dont mean that they store that lot of energy to begin off. The entire weapon system could be 100 times more energy efficient than today, so the eclips could house a considerable amount of energy, but not that much.


Nekira Sudacne

well misunderstood aside, i dont agree with you in the matter of today MDC structures and weapons. Putting the example of the carrier, when i say "it can survive" i mean little to no damage at all.

several vehicles of today are what i can say to be MDC vehicles. The M1A2 Abrams main battle tank for example can resist without even a worry several impacts of TOW missiles as was seen in tests so far. This tank is suposed to enter service in some years after some bugs are resolved and we are not even near the time of the rifts. And even this tank would not survive a nuke, and i dont mean the ground zero of it.

You seem to be forgetting that something dosn't have to be MDC at all to absorb MD level hits--just high SDC.

Ballad

The M1 Abrams can withstand the impact of a 120mm HEAT round without using reactive armor.
I've even heard that one M1 in Iraq took well over 100 RPG rounds with little problem.
The Chobam armor is a composite of several materials and is meant to resist such attacks without the crew being injured at all. Specifically, it was meant to protect against chemical energy attacks, a.k.a., stuff like HEAT rounds and anti-tank missiles.

I saw some test footage once (History Channel, show about tanks) with a camera outside and inside of an M1 during a life fire test of the armor using HEAT weapons. When a HEAT round hit the tank, the only thing you see inside the tank is the camera getting shook up a little.
And that was without any reactive armor at all.


Nightmaster

E-Clips do store that much energy.
Some estimates using some books come out with estimates upwards of 54,000 watt hours of energy.

The most accurate estimate comes from CB1 (the original one) as it has the conversion for the HU2 power of Energy Absorption, and it specifically mentions the power has a capacity of 1 gigawatt of energy, and that said amount was roughly equal to 10,000 car batteries or 10 e-clips. That comes out to 27,777 watt hours (which I rounded up to 28,000)
That is a LOT of energy, and considering how much energy you need to make steel or other material effectively vaporize, you would need that energy.
I compare it to taking the heat of a 100 watt light bulb in 1 second, and multiplying it by tens of thousands of times to try an visualize just how hot a laser blast might be.

I do agree that Robotech was good with MDC... (until you get to Invid Invasion, then MDC weapons and armor are coming out of the woodwork...)

About vehicles... I agree with increasing damage of vehicles. You know there is something wrong with vehicle weapon damage when a man portable laser (ATL-7) can do three times more damage than a massive laser rifle carried by a 50ft robot vehicle (Triax Devastator).
I've done estimates that say a 12.7m/.50 cal MG should do upwards of 1-2 MD per round, or 1D6 for a 20mm, or 2D6 for a 30mm, or upwards over a thousand or more for a tank gun.

Thinking of SDC games... someone sets up a dozen pounds of TNT, the blast sends you flying. In MDC armor, person and armor weights are the same, the same blast does nothing, not even knocked off balance, because it's barely even basic MD.
You probably agree that if something like an MD explosive Mini-Missile can blast a car into tiny little bits or otherwise send the flaming hulk flying a good distance with the force of several dozen pounds of TNT, that the same blast should have an effect on someone in armor similar to them being tossed with a small catapult.

I did some estimates one relating to the M1 Abrams, it came out to an effective 30,000 SDC (or 300 MDC, but more like actuall MDC since the armor resists more or less any infantry scale anti-personnel weapon)
Although the armor would likely survive a nuke blast, the turret would probably be ripped off by the overpressure, exposing the interior... then you have have something that looks like someone took a plastic model of an M1 and partially melted it somehow...

I sometimes think that Rifts should be more about role playing and less about roll playing... if someone wants to go up against a freaking tank, on foot, with just infantry weapons/armor, they should be dead meat, period, without having much effect on the tank unless they had a portable anti-tank weapon. Similar does goes for other games when the knight in full plate armor wants to go solo against a really big giant with a tree for a club or a big nasty dragon that can swallow the knight whole.

R Ditto wrote:

E-Clips do store that much energy.
Some estimates using some books come out with estimates upwards of 54,000 watt hours of energy.

The most accurate estimate comes from CB1 (the original one) as it has the conversion for the HU2 power of Energy Absorption, and it specifically mentions the power has a capacity of 1 gigawatt of energy, and that said amount was roughly equal to 10,000 car batteries or 10 e-clips. That comes out to 27,777 watt hours (which I rounded up to 28,000)
That is a LOT of energy, and considering how much energy you need to make steel or other material effectively vaporize, you would need that energy.
I compare it to taking the heat of a 100 watt light bulb in 1 second, and multiplying it by tens of thousands of times to try an visualize just how hot a laser blast might be.

Well that contradict lots of miscelaneous equipment that are presented in the Rifts books that work for some weeks (2 or 3 at most) on e-clips. That makes me think that E-clips does got a great energy capacity (around 100 times the capacity of some Lithium batteries used in some machinery) but that alone is not enough to vaporize anything. The another fact that makes me be certain that energy weapons are incredible energy efficients are the fact that the same e-clip will power diferent energy weapons but the number of shots you got is varies too much. That and even the Chipwell Battle Armor that runs on e-clips for 24 hours is a fact that acertain that e-clips dont hold that much energy.

And finally someone have see the bottom fact that the M1 Abrams is a today MDC vehicle (not even personal missile launchers still dont have much chance of even killing it)

cornholioprime wrote:

grandmaster z0b wrote:Because of the severe environmental damage and they are worried it may set off another PPE surge that created the Rifts in the first place IMO.

Virutally NOBODY on Rifts Earth knows exactly what happened on 22 Dec 2098.

Maybe A.R.C.H.I.E.

Maybe a few Atlanteans who were aorund but survived the centuries and who would probably know what a worldwide "PPE-Bomb" would "look" like.

Maybe even Angel Herrinsel (a.k.a. Mindwerks' Angel of Death), who was around and MAY have been able to get what little news still existed in 2098.

The U.S. Official Records (that is to say, what is today known as Coalition "intelligence") know that it wasn't a Nuclear War, but they sure don't know that it was a PPE Surge that brought the whole thing on.

Otherwise, Z0b is right on.

The Coalition doesn't just have those super-tidy Nukes that God (Kevin) designed that 'magically' limit their most dangerous effects to a few piddly feet, but super-dirty Golden Age Nukes that make our Real World ones look like firecrackers.

If the Coalition ever sets off Nuclear Winter, the only people that they'll be hurting in the long run is themselves, what with significantly reducng worldwide Human Populations and all.

Not to mention pissing off Splynncryth when the Fallout reaches his Continent and kills off his beautiful, beloved forests.

off topic but there is a few. Some that lived throughit and all.

Nightmaster wrote:Well that contradict lots of miscelaneous equipment that are presented in the Rifts books that work for some weeks (2 or 3 at most) on e-clips. That makes me think that E-clips does got a great energy capacity (around 100 times the capacity of some Lithium batteries used in some machinery) but that alone is not enough to vaporize anything. The another fact that makes me be certain that energy weapons are incredible energy efficients are the fact that the same e-clip will power diferent energy weapons but the number of shots you got is varies too much. That and even the Chipwell Battle Armor that runs on e-clips for 24 hours is a fact that acertain that e-clips dont hold that much energy.

And finally someone have see the bottom fact that the M1 Abrams is a today MDC vehicle (not even personal missile launchers still dont have much chance of even killing it)

27,777 wath hours can be a LOT of energy, as that equals 100 megawatts.
For the e-clip with 27,777 watt hours, It could sustain 1,000 watts for a day, a 100 watt light bulb for 11 days, etc.
Or it could discharge 100,000,000 watts of energy for a single second.
For a typical laser that gets 20 blasts from a regular e-clip, that's a good 5 megawatts of energy discharged in a second or less, per blast.

Maybe my older estimates were better, they came out to roughly twice as much energy, about 54,000 watthours (or a good 200 megawatts) for an e-clip.

Based on the Power Leeches (in Psyscape, I think) and their ability to drain energy, and they gave basic MD "ratings" for diffirent power supplies, including car batteries and e-clips, with an e-clip having 100 times the energy of a car battery.
I dug up some details on car batteries, and came up with the following, which I have in my notes on power supplies and such.

car battery (12 volt) 30 watthours per kilogram, with average lifespan of 2-3 years.
average car battery is 40 pounds (18kg?) for an average power output of 540 watt hours.
e-clip (in Rifts) has 100 times the power capacity (54000 watt hours? or 194,400,000 watt seconds?)


On a side note, who cares about contradictions in Rifts?
RIfts is so full of them that you can't take a few steps without tripping over one sooner or later.

R Ditto wrote:

On a side note, who cares about contradictions in Rifts?
RIfts is so full of them that you can't take a few steps without tripping over one sooner or later.

Who cares?!?!? I care because its not because there are contradictions that we players and GMs cant correct things we see as exagerated info and nonsense.

In fact that is OUR job to do.

RPG is a game that uses the mind and imagination, so is OUR SACRED DUTY to think and doing so correct ******** and nonsense that appear in the books because the writer either had a bad source of info or because he exagerated the numbers either to low or high levels.

Nightmaster wrote:R Ditto wrote:

On a side note, who cares about contradictions in Rifts?
RIfts is so full of them that you can't take a few steps without tripping over one sooner or later.

Who cares?!?!? I care because its not because there are contradictions that we players and GMs cant correct things we see as exagerated info and nonsense.

In fact that is OUR job to do.

RPG is a game that uses the mind and imagination, so is OUR SACRED DUTY to think and doing so correct ******** and nonsense that appear in the books because the writer either had a bad source of info or because he exagerated the numbers either to low or high levels.

See the in my last post?
It is there because I was trying to be sarcastic and funny.
Apparently, I failed miserably in my attempt at humor...

(but then again, being down with a gut bug doesn't help things much when it come to trying to be funny...at least lemon-lime soda is allowed... not that there is any mention of how much I should limit myself to...)

To heck with nukes, lets get some high powered mages, have them summon some spheres of annihilation, put the spheres in a vacuum sealed containment units with powerful EM fields, toss out dispel magic, and harvest some anti-matter to put in some EM modified hand grenades.
A single microgram of the stuff should pack the punch of 80 pounds of TNT, or a milligram to have the punch of 40 tons of TNT...
Better yet, make it a Mini-Missile, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near the blast point...

gelidus wrote:

cornholioprime wrote:

grandmaster z0b wrote:Because of the severe environmental damage and they are worried it may set off another PPE surge that created the Rifts in the first place IMO.

Virutally NOBODY on Rifts Earth knows exactly what happened on 22 Dec 2098.

off topic but there is a few. Some that lived throughit and all.

no. Nobody on rifts earth knows what caused the disaster. some people know what happened "Here," and others know what happened "Over there," and this guy, he knows what happened "Down thisa way," but nobody knows that it wasn't any one of those events that caused it. Nor do they know that they all happened simultaneously, or that it was that simultaneousness that cause the coming of the rifts. Hell, nobody in orbit knows it either. nobody in game, in any of the settings compatable with the Megaversal system, knows exactly what happened to cause the comming of the rifts. Someone might be able to figure it out, but it would require a very high IQ character, and it would be the subject of a Quest, most likely Epic in nature... and all to answer a question that ultimately doesn't matter. there really isn't anyway to undo the damage that's been done because of it. the only thing possible is to go forward, so what does it matter?

Freefall

I have to disagree. I mean, IRL we've made pretty solid theories that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor impact tens of millions of years ago, and that the moon was created in a much larger impact by an object with the earth nearly 4.5 billion years ago (and no, these guys don't all have "very high" IQs, at least not by Rifts standards. In real life, an IQ of 160 is very good, as opposed to Rifts where 1 in 8000 people have an IQ of 300). Maybe they could never "prove" it, but I think that at this point, it should be obvious to many people (at least ones with some pre-P.A. history knowledge and PPE/Ley Line knowledge, like Erin Tarn or Victor Lazlo), that something did happen all over the world, in a very short amount of time, and it somehow caused the PPE levels to jump through the roof so that now demons are bullet proof, ley lines can be seen at night, Rifts open up all over the place, and ley line storms are rather frequent. I think they could come up with a reasonably close theory of what happened, which could be done largely with a lot of book reading, thinking and debate. Although they could go on an archeological expedition to try and gather supportive evidence, which may or may not be epic in scope, depending on where it is.

Totally agree. They just need to think about it and look at the various sources of knowledge they have at they dispposal

WonderingMind wrote:

torjones wrote:

gelidus wrote:

cornholioprime wrote:

grandmaster z0b wrote:Because of the severe environmental damage and they are worried it may set off another PPE surge that created the Rifts in the first place IMO.

Virtually NOBODY on Rifts Earth knows exactly what happened on 22 Dec 2098.

off topic but there is a few. Some that lived through it and all.

no. Nobody on rifts earth knows what caused the disaster. some people know what happened "Here," and others know what happened "Over there," and this guy, he knows what happened "Down thisa way," but nobody knows that it wasn't any one of those events that caused it. Nor do they know that they all happened simultaneously, or that it was that simultaneousness that cause the coming of the rifts. Hell, nobody in orbit knows it either. nobody in game, in any of the settings compatable with the Megaversal system, knows exactly what happened to cause the coming of the rifts. Someone might be able to figure it out, but it would require a very high IQ character, and it would be the subject of a Quest, most likely Epic in nature... and all to answer a question that ultimately doesn't matter. there really isn't anyway to undo the damage that's been done because of it. the only thing possible is to go forward, so what does it matter?

What dose it matter?

Look at it this way: people in real life are always trying to figure out what happened in the past, and for a variety of reasons. Take the JFK assassination, ask 5 people and get 5 different answers…

But still, people are looking for the truth of the situation. Now I can't blame people from attempting to learn the true history of the coming of the rifts. And yes… It would be epic. But so what? Isn’t that the reason to go off and adventure? I think so anyway.

I'm sorry I didn't make my opinions clear... For the most part, I agree, it is possible to take a PC group and search for the answers, and in the course of doing so, you'dprobablyy wind up talking with Victor Lazlo and Erin Tarn, and those nice folks in Hiroshima, and maybe even Mindwerks, and a whole lot of others to boot. Yes, PCs can go looking for the answers should they want them. I wasn't trying to dispute this, I was trying to say that this is what would be needed in order to have someone on Rifts Earth know what the heck was going on. As of 101 or 109 PA (by the books at least) nobody has yet done so.

I also think that that knowledge in certain hands, such as the Coalition and Triax/NGR, would be extremely bad for the planet. As I understand it, one of the major reasons why they don't use nuclear weapons is due to the fact that they believe nuclear weapons caused the coming of the rifts. Yes, the radiation is a bad thing, but no where near as bad as starting another global disaster like what happened when the rifts came. If they weren't so worried about causing another disaster like that, they may be more willing to use nuclear weapons against other enemies, like the Xiticix, or the Splugorth. Any such actions would at the very least be a double edged sword...

*sigh* ok, by now I'm sure that we can all see that the possibilities of "What would happen?" are really endless. Everyone is going to have their own opinions on each set of possibilities. Most people aren't just going to agree no matter what. This is the way it should be. it is not a bad thing.

Now, I'm going back to my 139PA game, where the coalition has learned this lesson, and why they needed Tolkeen and the federation of magic, but no longer has them, and so had to resort to nuclear weapons or North America would belong to the Xiticix and Archie 3...

Freefall wrote:

torjones wrote:no. Nobody on rifts earth knows what caused the disaster. some people know what happened "Here," and others know what happened "Over there," and this guy, he knows what happened "Down thisa way," but nobody knows that it wasn't any one of those events that caused it. Nor do they know that they all happened simultaneously, or that it was that simultaneousness that cause the coming of the rifts. Hell, nobody in orbit knows it either. nobody in game, in any of the settings compatable with the Megaversal system, knows exactly what happened to cause the comming of the rifts. Someone might be able to figure it out, but it would require a very high IQ character, and it would be the subject of a Quest, most likely Epic in nature... and all to answer a question that ultimately doesn't matter. there really isn't anyway to undo the damage that's been done because of it. the only thing possible is to go forward, so what does it matter?

I have to disagree. I mean, IRL we've made pretty solid theories that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor impact tens of millions of years ago, and that the moon was created in a much larger impact by an object with the earth nearly 4.5 billion years ago (and no, these guys don't all have "very high" IQs, at least not by Rifts standards. In real life, an IQ of 160 is very good, as opposed to Rifts where 1 in 8000 people have an IQ of 300). Maybe they could never "prove" it, but I think that at this point, it should be obvious to many people (at least ones with some pre-P.A. history knowledge and PPE/Ley Line knowledge, like Erin Tarn or Victor Lazlo), that something did happen all over the world, in a very short amount of time, and it somehow caused the PPE levels to jump through the roof so that now demons are bullet proof, ley lines can be seen at night, Rifts open up all over the place, and ley line storms are rather frequent. I think they could come up with a reasonably close theory of what happened, which could be done largely with a lot of book reading, thinking and debate. Although they could go on an archeological expedition to try and gather supportive evidence, which may or may not be epic in scope, depending on where it is.

I'm not saying that that knowledge isn't important, only that there are other things that are far more important to the survival of humans on Rifts Earth. I'm also not saying that it isn't possible to collect the knowledge, just that most PCs wouldn't really know who to ask or where to collect the information. If one goes strictly by the book, then it would require some very well thought out characters in order to pull this off.