Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "Plainly Difficult"
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@firstresponderren9546 ah, so you altered the laws of physics and chemistry while my attention was diverted!
Previously, phospholipid membranes were attacked by detergents, killing microorganisms. So, how do we extract DNA in this novel universe?
Feel better, my scrotal contents! Modern soaps and even legacy soaps are detergents and destroy phospholipid compounds, which pathogens require to do that living thing. Alcohol does a similar function, but both work quite well and soap actually works a bit better, which is why surgeons still scrub down with detergents, rather than alcohol. And sanitize skin with an oxidizer that destroys said phospholipid membranes.
Do you really want to go into biochemistry with me on this? Bad hill to die on.
My medical education was... A bit more advanced, due to specific duties in specific types of units. Actually understanding pharmacology and chemistry was part and parcel of said education and experience.
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The overpressure isn't a fixed magical figure, it depends upon context of what one is protecting against.
A 3 PSI overpressure from a shockwave is enough to collapse many residential structures that aren't reinforced concrete, at 5 PSI, everything but reinforced concrete, 10 PSI most concrete buildings are destroyed or demolished and at 20 PSI, utter destruction - from the outside, upon the entire structure.
Inside, it becomes a different matter, as one is essentially talking about one flat or in this case, one room in one flat.
That said, failure of the flat itself shouldn't have allowed the entire structure to experience a progressive collapse of that segment. One flaw is a lack of design to protect against progressive collapse. No building codes existed to mitigate against it at the time, no effort was made to design protection in, frankly, it was a rubbish practice and protection needed to be codified.
But, corner cutting of such a degree, with bloody newspapers used in place of concrete, that stinks to high heaven of corruption somewhere, as inspectors should've spotted that a mile off during construction! It's not as if only one man pours concrete to join segments!
In this case, I'd have looked for a design with nonstructural panels designed to blow out without compromising the structural integrity of the entire building or segment of the building. I'd also want the fucking thing put together properly. And in this case, I'm forced to question the quality of all construction in the borough at the time, as obviously inspection was either absent or badly lacking, allowing heaven knows what to get built at grave risk to the populace.
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@Magicpete1 and what experiences that they had! ;)
Every new technology has its growing pains, but few had audible growing pains if things went wildly wrong. I'd suggesting asking one of the workers in the reactor building at Chernobyl, but they've been gone for quite some time. Steam explosions are loud.
Still, at least in the west, we want our operators to understand reactor theory and what does precisely what. So, if one's reactor got stuck in an xenon pit situation, they recognize it and don't just keep pulling control rods out until the power increases again. We can't say that of Chernobyl, where precisely that happened and once the xenon decayed, the reaction rate spiked and a steam hammer dismantled the reactor. When the xenon pit problem wasn't recognized, they kept pulling control rods until power increased to where they wanted it, but at that level, the xenon was transmutated by the neutron flux, the reactor resumed behaving normally - but with the rods insanely far withdrawn.
Amazing what a lot of knowledge can prevent!
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Yet another privatization success story, where all of the skills needed to maintain the rails for well over a century got stripped away and discarded, leaving managers that didn't now a rail from a quail in charge.
Who could predict a failure under such a system, they're all qualified managers?!
Meanwhile, we still don't fully understand the processes involved in such metallurgical failures and such remain a field of highly active study as a matter of critical importance in multiple fields. That solid steel isn't quite as solid as you think it is, with carbon and manganese grains migrating on stress, electrical shot, mechanical shock, vibration, heat or simple repeated impacts. It's nothing new, look up the term work hardening for just one example of changes just from repeated loads and impacts upon steel - it's causing migration of grains inside of that steel. At the mid-life of a rail, it'd make quite literally, one hell of an anvil. Toward its end, great for recycling. Wait too long, it shatters and we get this. A few light fines, look the other way, ignore the dead people. But, those managers get to go back and Krazy glue rails back together...
Keep on privatizing, soon we'll end up with DIY brain surgery and we can all become royalty!
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A bump in antibodies could be from both the number of cells signalling that they're dying and from malformed proteins making their way to the cell surface, triggering an immune response.
Let's face it, with massive irradiation of a body, all kinds of cellular malfunctions would be happening as DNA in protein forming genes is damaged and producing wrongly coded proteins. Add in T cells malfunctioning, heaven knows what antibodies could end up produced by some!
The lack of GvHd makes sense though, the host immune system was essentially destroyed, the marrow likely watery and cell free or dying cells only. But, in experimental animals, blood types were literally switched after marrow irradiation with great success, with the host acquiring a new blood type after the irradiation. Not a clue how GvHd was avoided though, unless the host thymus somehow accepted the new white cells...
Still, if things were easy, we'd not need scientists and medical professionals.
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@majermike true, you can convert between units, but as an example, 32 psi comes out to 4608 psf, whereas 30 psi comes out to 4320 psf, a bit of a loss of precision. Of course, that's a bigger deal in large structures, compared to single family dwelling sized structures, doesn't account for gusts and going into resonance effects, therein lies the pathway to migraines.
I'm only glad what I had to keep upright was that way until we launched the rocket, but that was only as a hobby. Although, if it collapsed after ignition, well, more interesting things can happen than a collapse.
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@alexturnbackthearmy1907 nobody uses HF as rocket fuel or, more accurately, as an oxidizer. Just as nobody uses chlorine trifluoride for a rocket oxidizer, which would be incredibly efficient, save for it turning rockets and their oxidizer storage facilities into toxic bombs from hell. The latter being so nasty, even the Nazis left it alone.
But, is in use in cleaning nuclear reactors, as it dissolves uranium into uranium hexafluoride, which is the input feed in nuclear fuel processing.
HF remains in use in etching glass though, as well as in industrial paint strippers and other highly specialized industrial chemicals and remains highly hazardous. And it's a byproduct of Halon type fire extinguisher usage after the agent is superheated in a fire. Major incidents in the latter were in Afghanistan, where several mine resistant vehicles were attacked by RPG directly into their fire suppression system, resulting in significant crew losses and a major medical debacle on the ground.
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