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 Update 12And now we're off on our adventure with Danse, after a considerable amount of looting a police station. Mostly it's him absorbing incoming fire and us doing the important bits that actually allow us to progress, but at least he makes a nice mobile shield. After tomorrow's video we'll have an important choice to make. Tax Refund posted:I watched your stream (after the fact, as I wasn't able to get on while it was live), and the echo is completely manageable. If it's a choice between that small amount of echo and watching you play with no situational awareness, I'd choose the echo in a heartbeat. In the second stream, I remember a moment when there was gunfire going on outside and Dogmeat was yelping in pain, and you were searching the room completely oblivious to it all. (Since, of course, you couldn't hear any of it). That was... frustrating to watch, even though I knew why it was going on. It's much more fun for me to watch when you're able to actually hear what's going on, so I'm glad you have a decent audio solution now. I think we've pretty well settled on what we used this time as the final audio setup. I'm sorry about that particular bit in the second stream since the only thing I don't like about Dog Meat is when he starts crying because he's hurt. That's usually what makes me go with a human companion, because their suffering is a bit more bearable. Cathode Raymond posted:Dogmeat's the best companion ThaGhettoJew posted:Plus you can invest in all the useful Lone Wanderer feat stuff and not have to hear the same handful of voice clips over and over (barks notwithstanding). That said some companions are pretty interesting for specific quests and I'm pretty sure you get some pal-flavored perks for maxing out their favorability. I'd hate to have to try them all out long enough to figure a best-choice story path though. I think after this weekend's stream I'll start asking for input on companions to decide who should go with us. You definitely get some nice perks for maxing out friendship with certain companions, but they aren't necessary. The best one had a bug that got fixed, so they're all just nice little bonuses now. Planning on heading to Diamond City since by the end of last night's stream we'd pretty much exhausted the easily accessible early game content before that first big city.
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Sep 14, 2016 14:09
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Update 13 I might have, just possibly, maybe a little bit... uh.. kind of set Danse on fire. Only around the edges. But what good is power armor if it can't protect you from a little thing like that? Next update is going to be the Corvega Assembly Plant, but in the meantime we build a chair for an old woman and then pump her full of drugs. Oh, and make some much needed weapon improvements. Now, a bit of talk about Factions. There are four groups that you can join in Fallout 4, and so far we've got a pretty solid idea about three of them: The Minutemen, the Brotherhood of Steel, and the Institute. Right now we're not going to be bound to any of them if we work with them, but eventually a choice will have to be made. The Minutemen will happily work with anybody, but every one of the other three factions can't stand each other. In today's update, Danse made us an offer - should we Join the Brotherhood of Steel? It means lots of orders and missions and military discipline (that we can potentially flout) as well as potentially some sweet gear. I'll also go ahead and give a minor spoiler - Preston Garvey is going to want us to become General of the Minutemen. Should we take him up on his offer? This will mean helping out settlements in trouble and spreading our banner all over the Commonwealth. The good news is that in case we'll be at least nominally in charge.
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Sep 15, 2016 15:02
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Missions, and military discipline to flout? Sounds like that would be right up Archer's alley. At least as long as they keep giving him rewards. I assume we'll learn about the fourth group well before we have to make a permanent choice, so this is only a temporary decision. If that's the case, then definitely Join the Brotherhood of Steel, if only because Archer will get some cool toys out of it. And since it does seem like Archer, as assholish as he is, actually does care about helping people (at least this version of Archer), I guess I'll vote for re-establishing the Minutemen as well.
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Sep 15, 2016 22:21
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Now that Institute has been namedropped as joinable faction, I very much see Sterling Malory Archer joining for the vibes some in this thread may already know. If not, it'll just have to wait and I hope that's vague enough.
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Sep 15, 2016 23:07
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Join the Institute. the only way to be sure that they won't make more robots is to work your way up the ladder and order them to stop production yourself.
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Sep 16, 2016 00:34
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Do Minutemen missions only if they sound like good fights 'cause they're just the boring goodguy crew, and tell the Brotherhood to go to hell. It's cool they like powerarmor suits and big machines, but that's not a good enough reason to be dicks all the drat time. The Institute are wacky fun times with lazerdroids, but they're kind of lame too. I say put off joining up with anybody for a while.
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Sep 16, 2016 07:36
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Update 14 Today we're storming the Corvega Assembly Plant, and seeing what a difference proper equipment can make. This is one of the biggest early game challenges, but if you're properly prepared and aggressive enough it's still possible. We're looking at all kinds of raiders, and a link back to Preston Harvey and his crew. Today turned out to be a bit late because I was on a jury and it went pretty late, but tomorrow's update will be when I wake up. Planning on streaming tomorrow night and getting us to Diamond City as well as a few other odds and ends. Looks like there's no real consensus at this point about whether we should join the Brotherhood or lead the Minutemen, and we'll handle the Institute in due course. I suppose I'll make the final decision based on any input that comes in today and tomorrow before streaming.
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Sep 17, 2016 03:23
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If you want more input, I can talk a little bit more about my thoughts. I don't really know enough about the Institute yet to know whether I'd want to vote for joining them, but I do have a guess. There was that one recording we found, where someone named ... drat, I can't remember his name. Anyway, he was apparently part of some kind of underground railroad, because he was helping some guy named H4-something get away. (And he sacrificed himself to buy H4-something some time; the last thing we heard on the recording was him being shot and the H4-something guy going, "Noooo!") And my thought was, "Okay, that sounds like a robot designation, but this person sounds human. Is there some sort of thing where fully-sentient robots are being treated as slaves?" And now that we've met the synths made by the Institute, it sounds like the Institute are the ones creating fully-sentient AIs as slaves. So I'm guessing that the third faction is this underground railroad type of group, who are helping free the sentient synths from the Institute's slavery. If my guess is correct, then I would vote to NOT join the Institute, and instead join whatever this underground-railroad faction is called. Once we meet them, that is. Because so far, this LP seems to be going in the direction of "sarcastic, drunk, womanizing jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold who's a good guy deep down". I.e., at that one encounter at the diner with the drug dealers, Archer didn't even pretend to attack the woman whose son owed them money. As soon as he heard what they wanted, he pulled out his gun and shot the first dealer in the head, multiple times. If that's the kind of character you're running for this LP, I think he'd end up getting involved in freeing the slaves. So eventually I think I'm going to vote for the third faction. For now, it sounds like the Brotherhood are the closest this place has to civilization, so I think Archer would join them. Free loot, and besides, if you're going to get whiskey made you need some kind of civilization, otherwise it's just raiders all the time who steal your whiskey, get drunk, and shoot up the distillery for fun. And then you have no more whiskey, ANYWHERE -- and that's a calamity! So in order to keep the world safe for
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Sep 17, 2016 03:44
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I'm going to also throw in a vote for do not join with any faction yet. Let's explore a bit more and learn about the world. There's probably going to be plenty of time to come back to the factions and decide on whether or not to join up with one. Regarding the latest video, I also have an interesting Jurassic Park story. I used to have some of the Jurassic Park comic books published by Topps that loosely followed up on the first movie. One of them was called "Jurassic Park: Raptors Attack", a four issue series that featured Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler tracking down 3 raptors in the Colombian jungle (long story short: a previous two issue comic, "Jurassic Park: Raptor", had several raptors stolen by a rival company to InGen, and the plane transporting them crashed with Grant and Sattler on board). Issue 2 features Ian Malcolm, fully recovered from his injuries in the movie despite roughly a week having passed since the first film ended, trying to organize a rescue operation with the local military because a mathematician can totally do something like that. The military is reluctant to go because the area the plane crashed is home to a local drug lord (who wants to turn the aforementioned raptors into trained guard dogs), but then out of nowhere Robert Muldoon shows up completely unscathed from the raptor attack he suffered in the film. Naturally, Ian is surprised since normal people don't survive raptors mauling your face off, but Muldoon casually hand-waves his survival on knowing the raptors' hunting patterns. And no, there is no further explanation as to why Muldoon survived in either "Raptors Attack" or its sequel series, "Raptors Hijack". So yes, DC and Marvel are not the only comic book people that pull bullshit resurrections out of their asses; Jurassic Park can do it too.
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Sep 17, 2016 05:23
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Archer will do missions for anyone who pays him unless his self-image is on the line. And doing missions for anyone will get access to more gear or cash or settlement pals, plus the precious XP for Archer-related character feats. I don't want to accidentally influence anyone's choices with my smug spoiler-bating game knowledge, so I'm good with anybody for the first few tasks. We won't have to marry any one group (and piss off their rivals) for a while anyway. dd and ddwife, name your weapons and do more drugs please. Combat drugs own and your guns are your friends who don't bark and interrupt your looting all the time.
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Sep 17, 2016 05:30
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Update 15 I suppose that waiting until Something Awful got out from under that DDOS attack works as an alternative to putting this up when I woke up this morning - I'm thinking of shifting toward streaming on Saturday and then putting up the videos Monday through Friday, although there'll be at least one week with two streams in the near future to build up a bit of a backlog. This update concludes last week's stream and the clearing out of the Corvega Assembly Plant, although we might be back here at some point. It's got Raider Love, an accidental anti-climactic "boss" fight, and a magic dog who walks on air. I don't know what else you could ask for. ThaGhettoJew posted:dd and ddwife, name your weapons and do more drugs please. Combat drugs own and your guns are your friends who don't bark and interrupt your looting all the time. We'll probably have to do some drugs just for the fun of showing what they do - and good point about the gun names. I think that's something we'll talk about a bit as far as what weapons actually need names and what they should be. AradoBalanga posted:Jurassic Park Story That is amazing, and I wish that they'd put it to film in some way, shape, or form. Based on what I'm hearing and what I've been thinking we'll probably want to at least dabble in each group, but the best stuff to show off the Brotherhood of Steel won't actually be available for a bit so we can hold off on them. We might take over the Minute Men at some point just to have a few missions, but I think that can wait too as I still have to turn in the Corvega quest. Then again, Preston Garvey might not give me a choice if I go back and talk to him. He's... persistent. ddegenha fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Jul 3, 2017 |
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Sep 17, 2016 23:17
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Stream completed. It was all going so well until the end there... and now we need new drinking glasses. Do you want a shopping trip? Because this is how you get shopping trips. ddegenha fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Sep 18, 2016 |
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Sep 18, 2016 02:21
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ddegenha posted:We'll probably have to do some drugs just for the fun of showing what they do - and good point about the gun names. I think that's something we'll talk about a bit as far as what weapons actually need names and what they should be. See if this gets you started- the pistol you keep two-shotting mooks with I've been thinking of as Two-Buck Chuck and your starter sniper rifle is clearly "Missy". May need some Archer character names too (or Bob's Burgers/Home Movies for additional H. Jon Benjamin hype). Probably only much-used or unique types need it though, since you'll probably come across way too many piles of weapons to care about more than a small percent of them. I find named weapons make it slightly easier to offload all the random long-named pickups onto companions without mis-clicking my upgraded or favorited ones. It's really more a problem for me because I am a disgusting packrat and am constantly hovering near my carry capacity with trash I think I'll sell or break down later. I've still got Skyrim PCs who've had every available stat boost sent directly to carrying capacity because I just can't not pick up stuff.
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Sep 18, 2016 07:07
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Update 16 We’re opening up this week’s set of episodes by disappointing Preston Garvey and starting toward Diamond City, although there’s an unexpected distraction on the way that takes up most of this episode - our first encounter with Super Mutants. Lots of lock-picking excitement and skullduggery in this one. Skipping ahead a bit, we’ve unlocked a TON of quests by going into Diamond City and as such I’m very interested in your input on what you want to see. Keep these in mind as updates come out. This is what’s on the plate: Curtain Call - a washed up actor is trapped on top of a tower and needs a rescue. Lots of Super Mutants here. Special Delivery - We’ve been offered a job by Edward Deegan. This one will take a while to get to, but it’s a multi-part quest. Out in Left Field - Moe wants us to retrieve some baseball memorabilia, although who knows what he’ll make of it when we get it to him. Unlikely Valentine - There’s a private dick in hot water, and he needs our help. This is the next story quest. Road to Freedom - At last we’ll track down and find the mysterious Railroad… by trekking all over Boston. I mean, sure, I COULD skip right to the end but what fun would that be? Bring a Mutated Fern to Solomon - Supplying the local drug peddled with some herb. Nothing can go wrong here! Explore the Combat Zone - There’s a raider only club we’ve heard about that we can explore, although this might be a rougher bar than we’d like. Search for Caps in Walden Pond - Somebody left a secret stash in a place where a man once stayed out in the woods for a couple months and wrote a book. We’ve also heard a bit about Vault 81, which is evidently nearby. Broadly speaking we can also break it down to East and West. If we head West we can cover Out in Left Field, Bringing a Mutated Fern, Walden Pond, and Vault 81. East takes us in the direction of Curtain Call, Unlikely Valentine, Road to Freedom, and the Combat Zone. Next up, we have a choice in companions for the next stream. Available options (in order of acquaintance) right now are: Dogmeat Preston Garvey Paladin Danse Piper Vote Here! Finally, I think we should definitely name our weapons. I’d like to really concentrate on naming weapons that we’re going to use for a while. So with that in mind, what should we call our Sniper Rifle and Combat Rifle? I’d name our 10mm, but there’s actually a far more appropriate pistol that we’re going to acquire.
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Sep 19, 2016 14:24
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ddegenha posted:
West then go East Call the sniper Long Distance Relationship.
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Sep 19, 2016 15:14
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I hate supermutants. They're big HP sacks with terrible loot and bad dialogue. They are a fairly decent combat challenge though. And I noticed that each time you got that cap stash under the desk it gave you a different number of caps. I guess most loot container types are some kind of per-session RNG instead of based on the character. I've never actually tried save-scumming for particular drops, but that might be possible if you were hard up for a specific material. Anyway, East first. I like those missions more. And the sniper could be Wesley Snipes, or possibly REM's Michael Snipe. Combat rifle... hmm... McGuirk. Or maybe Nancy's Boy.
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Sep 19, 2016 20:59
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And after all that effort to elude the Super Mutants, you still forgot the Guns & Bullets magazine in the end. Then again, you got your rear end handed to you about several times by them, so I don't blame you for not going back for it. Almost makes me wish for the hilariously busted Chinese Stealth Armor from Fallout 3's Operation Anchorage DLC to appear. Also, I vote for going East first. As for guns, let's name our Combat Rifle Serpentine and the Sniper Rifle Deadshot.
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Sep 20, 2016 05:58
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Update 17 At last, Diamond City! Well, there's some random raiders on a boat before we get there along with a few super mutants, but Diamond City. A fruitless search before we start exploring the town. Luckily we're properly dressed for the occasion. Right now Piper is leading the poll, but I'll keep things open until we record. I've put the poll in the OP and I'll just change the link each week as we change polls. The plan is that whoever wins the poll this week will be removed from next week's poll. Right now I'm surprised to find we might be going East but I won't progress the main quest beyond rescuing Nick if we go that way. Still plenty to do out in that direction, and we'll have to see if the Combat Rifle I picked up helps even the odds. AradoBalanga posted:And after all that effort to elude the Super Mutants, you still forgot the Guns & Bullets magazine in the end. Then again, you got your rear end handed to you about several times by them, so I don't blame you for not going back for it. Almost makes me wish for the hilariously busted Chinese Stealth Armor from Fallout 3's Operation Anchorage DLC to appear. drat it, I did forget to grab the magazine after all that. We'll have to go back for vengeance at some point. ThaGhettoJew posted:I hate supermutants. They're big HP sacks with terrible loot and bad dialogue. They are a fairly decent combat challenge though. Wesley Snipes, not bad. Nancy's Boy for my co-commentator? Eventually I start to love super mutants as encounters since they're big targets and once we get a better short range weapon they go down fairly easily. ultrabindu posted:West then go East I don't know if Long Distance Relationship would fit, but it made me smile.
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Sep 20, 2016 15:12
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Update 18 Today's episode is mostly just wandering around Diamond City, being a sarcastic jerkass, telling lies, and gathering up quests. Necessary to proceed, but perhaps not the most exciting thing to watch. Loving the suit and the sunglass combination. I've got today off and Friday, so I may go ahead and stream tonight or tomorrow in order to build a bit of a backlog before I move. Not sure how well streaming would work from a hotel room, since the internet in those is uniformly terrible.
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Sep 21, 2016 17:34
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And we're done streaming for today - we picked up two companions and pretty much finished everything we can immediately do in the East, as well as getting three Bobbleheads. Next stream I intend to go West, and then we'll see what happens. So now it's time for the next character poll. Piper is out for this one, so vote on our options here: Next Companion Poll. ddegenha fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Sep 22, 2016 |
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Sep 22, 2016 01:57
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Some random stream notes for the random fragments I caught: All cats are Lickers, really. Valentine owns robones. I can't unsee Piper as a pre-Jessica Jones version of Krysten Ritter. Florida is a hellhole, even the pretty bits. So if you find the magazine that gives you flamingos be sure to do up Sanctuary right. When you've got big enemies hiding in small places, don't forget your sizeable stash of frag grenades. They're your friendship eggs!
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Sep 22, 2016 04:58
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Update 19 This time around we're helping a loser radio DJ by fixing a bar fight, because there's nothing that could possibly go wrong with that scenario. Our clean up takes us out a bit west, where we stop to murder some people over paint on the way - not to worry, on the last stream we did end up going East and cleaning up that area so we have a few new companions available. Vote for this weekend's stream here. Nick is temporarily off because we can't freely get him as a companion until we continue the main storyline quest, but he'll be on there in the future. If you're new to the game Cait is a druggie who inexplicably has an Irish accent and Strong is a super mutant. ThaGhettoJew posted:Some random stream notes for the random fragments I caught: Valentine owns so much robones that he's pretty much got an entire DLC dedicated to him. I can see the Piper thing - it'd probably be even more obvious if she weren't wearing that hat. I'm actually using grenades more often than I usually do in this playthrough, so maybe I'll keep it up and get more proficient with them. We might have to vice up Sanctuary if I find that magazine.
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Sep 22, 2016 15:20
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The episode cut off in the middle of rambling storytime with Nancy!
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Sep 22, 2016 17:21
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After listening to your story about that drink, I had an epiphany: name your pistol 10 Little Monkeys, or 10 Mini Monkeys.
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Sep 22, 2016 20:13
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Thesaya posted:The episode cut off in the middle of rambling storytime with Nancy! We ended up with a weird time split... either that, or it's a clever trick to make sure you watch Update 20 when I post it tomorrow.
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Sep 23, 2016 01:08
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I just started watching the stream (not live, of course), and about 18 minutes in, Nancy comments on a radiation gun that's shown during a loading screen, and how it works in the game. She mentions that it's weird that if the radiation that that gun fires hits a wall or something, the wall isn't irradiated, "which is really, really weird, because radiation doesn't just dissipate like that." Which has me going, "Okay, then. It's  time!" Caution: HUGE wall of text ahead, but hopefully it's interesting.So, radiation. First thing I'll mention is that there are two different meanings of the word. There's what scientists mean when they say it, and there's what the average person means when he says it. When a scientist says "radiation", he usually means any kind of energy that goes out from its source in a straight line — for example, the light from a flashlight. All light — radio, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays — is technically "radiation" by that definition. What the average non-scientist means when he says "radiation" is the dangerous stuff that's emitted by radioactive material like uranium. (Scientists call this "ionizing radiation", for reasons I'll get to in a minute). And that — the dangerous stuff emitted by radioactive material — is what I'm going to talk about for a bit. When thinking about radiation, you always have to remember that there are two distinct categories: there is radiation, and there is radioactive material. Radiation is the energy given off by radioactive material, and it usually comes in four distinct forms. Three of them are referred to by Greek letters: alpha, beta or gamma radiation. The fourth one is called neutron radiation. Alpha radiation, which is often called an alpha particle, is a helium nucleus without electrons — two protons and two neutrons, stuck together. It's a relatively large particle, as atomic particles go — which is why when it hits solid matter, it almost never penetrates to any distance. Solid matter usually has a pretty dense structure (relatively speaking). For example, here's a link showing the structure of a sodium chloride (table salt) crystal, showing each sodium and chlorine atom as a sphere. (I know the "billard ball" model of atomic structure isn't really accurate, but to understand radiation and how it affects matter, it's a good enough model). Now, a chlorine atom has 17 protons and (usually) 18 neutrons, and a sodium atom has 11 protons and (usually) 12 neutrons. So a helium nucleus is about 5-6 times smaller than a sodium atom. If you look at that photo and imagine the chlorine atom as being the size of a softball, and the sodium atom as being the size of a baseball, the helium nucleus would be about the size of a marble, maybe as small as a BB. (The atom would have electrons around the nucleus making its effective size quite a bit larger). Imagine setting up a solid grid of those softballs and baseballs, in the same arrangement as the sodium and chlorine atoms, with invisible (and intangible) wires holding the grid in place. Now shoot a few BBs at it without aiming at any particular spot. If the thickness of the grid you set up was just a few dozen layers deep, then it's very likely that the BB would go straight through without hitting any of the softballs or baseballs, right? But if you set up that grid to have five hundred thousand layers in it, then unless you happened to fire that BB exactly parallel to the grid structure, it's almost guaranteed to hit one of the balls in that grid before it gets through to the other side, right? And it just so happens that an average sheet of paper is (at a rough estimate) about 500,000 atoms thick. Which is why alpha radiation is usually stopped by a sheet of paper — because the helium nucleus (the BB) will hit one of the atoms in the sheet of paper (which are mostly carbon, hydrogen, or oxygen) before it gets through to the other side of the paper. When alpha radiation does hit something (which is usually as soon as it makes contact with any thickness of matter, whatever that matter is made of), it carries a relatively large punch. It's likely to knock the atom out of alignment inside the solid matrix, which will make it "push" against the other atoms, transmitting energy into the matrix in the form of more vibrations. In other words, heat. But it might also knock the atom it hits clean out of the solid's matrix, damaging the solid a little bit, and creating one free-floating atom of oxygen, or carbon, or whatever. And a free-floating atom (or a number of them) is basically a gas. Meanwhile, the paper (or whatever the alpha particle hit) now has one less atom in it. If this happens a lot, the sheet of paper will eventually look "pitted" if you could look at it with a powerful enough microscope. Finally, there are two other things that the alpha particle might do, if it comes in at just the right angle to hit the nucleus of another atom. It could get stuck in that atom's nucleus (and that atom would now have two more protons and two more neutrons), or it could split that other nucleus in two. More on these two possibilities later, when I talk about radioactive material. Beta radiation, often called a beta particle, is a single electron (or, rarely, a single anti-electron, which is usually called a positron). It's much smaller than an alpha particle, because electrons are about two thousand times smaller than either protons or neutrons. So a beta particle will usually penetrate through a single sheet of paper, but it will be stopped by a thicker amount — say, a stack of 100 sheets of paper. Or it will be stopped by a thinner layer of some denser substance: a thin sheet of aluminum foil will generally stop beta particles, because aluminum has a denser atomic matrix than paper does. Lead is especially dense: a paper-thin sheet of lead will generally stop all beta (and alpha) radiation. Gamma radiation is not called a gamma particle, because it's actually light, in a very short-wavelength (and high-energy) form. The shorter the wavelength of light, the higher the frequency, and the more energy it carries. Visible light has wavelengths in the range of about 390 nm (purple at the edge of what humans can see) to about 700 nm (red at the edge of what humans can see). Ultraviolet light is in the 10-400 nm wavelength range, which is starting to get short (and high-energy) enough to damage your body if you're exposed to too much of it. For example, the sun naturally puts out a certain about of light in the UV spectrum, and if your skin absorbs too much of it, you get a sunburn. (But if your skin contains a lot of melanin, the melanin tends to protect you from UV by going through a chemical change that makes it darker, which is why most people get a tan from moderate amounts of UV light. If you stay in the sun past the point where your melanin can absorb UV energy, though, then you'll start to get a sunburn. And if you're like me, with genes from the United Kingdom, your skin probably has very little melanin and you sunburn super fast.) Gamma radiation is similar to UV, but with far shorter wavelengths: its wavelengths are typically around 0.01 nm. And, like UV, it will tend to damage your cells if you absorb too much of it at once. But since it's not actually a particle but a wave (well, a photon, but let's not get into that), it's actually got a decent chance to go all the way through you without hitting any atom of your cells, and without imparting its energy. You know how X-rays tend to go through you unless they hit something dense and solid like bones? A gamma ray is even more likely to go through you without hitting anything. But if it does hit an atom of your cells, it will usually knock that atom out of place, thereby changing the molecular structure of that molecule. And depending what that molecule was, it could have almost no effect on the cell, or it could kill that cell, or if it hits just right, it could alter that cell's DNA. That last part is where mutations and/or cancer usually come from: a cell whose DNA has been altered by random chance, usually by absorbing some high-energy form of light. Could be UV (you can get skin cancer from too much sunlight, although UV usually doesn't penetrate much past the skin), could be X-rays if you get too much of them ("too much" is usually in the range of thousands and thousands of medical X-rays, which is why the nurse usually stands behind a lead shield: you're only getting one X-ray dose, but he would be exposed to hundreds in a single day if he didn't use that shield). Or it could be gamma radiation that caused that mutation or that cancer. If you stand too close to radioactive material for very long, you'll absorb a lot of gamma radation, and the effects could be lots of damaged or dead cells (this is usually called radiation burn, because it works a lot like sunburn), or if you're unlucky, some permanent changes to the DNA of some of your cells. Neutron radiation is a neutron that's come loose from some atom's nucleus and is flying around. It will usually act kind of like alpha radiation, but with one difference. An alpha particle has a charge of +2 e, where e is defined as the amount of charge on a single electron (but with a positive sign: the charge on one electron is -1 e). And a beta particle is usually an electron, with a charge of -1 e, or sometimes it's a positron with a charge of +1 e. Either way, alpha and beta particles are charged, which means they will be either attracted to or repelled by other charged particles. And whether they're pulled towards matter, or pushed away from matter, it greatly increases the chance that they'll interact with matter. Neutron radiation, on the other hand, has no charge, so it's not attracted to or repelled by other atoms. And so it has a much greater chance of passing all the way through a solid object (say, your body) without effect. But if it does hit some atom's nucleus, it's probably going to cause that atom to become radioactive. Why? We're about to get to that, because it's finally time to talk about radioactive material. Radioactive material is anything that tends to give off energy in the form of radiation. But why does it do that? Well, remember when I said that a chlorine atom has 17 protons and (usually) 18 neutrons, and a sodium atom has 11 protons and (usually) 12 neutrons? I said "usually" for a reason. The thing that makes any atom that kind of atom is the number of protons in its nucleus, because that affects how many electrons it needs to have a stable charge, and that in turn affects what kinds of bonds it can form with other atoms. But that's getting into chemistry, and I'm going to stick with particle physics for this explanation. Basically, if the nucleus has 17 protons, it's chlorine. Doesn't matter how many neutrons it has, it's still chlorine. If the nucleus has 6 protons, it's carbon. 8 protons, that's oxygen. And so on. And in general, atoms "like" to have about as many neutrons as protons in their nucleus (and sometimes one or two more neutrons than protons). If there are quite a few more neutrons than normal, that nucleus is generally "unstable", and is going to lose a neutron or two at some point. But an atom can actually have any number of neutrons in its nucleus and still be, say, carbon. The usual form of carbon has 6 protons and 6 neutrons. Since a proton and a neutron weigh basically the same amount (a proton weighs about 99.86% as much as a neutron, so basically the same), you usually say that this form of carbon has an "atomic weight" of 12, and it's usually called Carbon-12. If the carbon atom had 8 neutrons instead of 6, its atomic weight would be 14, and that's called Carbon-14. (These are called "isotopes": Carbon-14 and Carbon-12 are the two most well-known isotopes of carbon). Most atoms have one or two stable isotopes, and usually one is far more common than the others (Carbon-12 and Carbon-13 are both stable, but about 99% of carbon you find in nature is Carbon-12, and only about 1% is Carbon-13). The unstable isotopes usually "decay" by losing a neutron (which shoots out from the nucleus in the form of neutron radiation). When this happens, they keep the same number of protons so they're still the same element, but their atomic weight goes down by one — so if, say, Beryllium-13 (4 protons and 9 neutrons) decays by shooting off a neutron, it becomes Beryllium-12 (4 protons and 8 neutrons). However, radioactive material can also "decay" in a different way: by losing an electron (which shoots out as a beta particle). When that happens, the electron isn't actually lost from the atom's "normal" set of electrons: instead, a neutron generally "transforms" into a combination of a proton, an electron, and a tiny particle called a neutrino (which I won't mention again since it's not relevant to radiation). The proton stays in the atomic nucleus, and the electron shoots out as beta radiation. (Which is why this decay mode is called "beta decay") But the important thing is that a neutron has just turned into a proton, and this actually changes what the element is! Carbon-14, which I mentioned earlier, usually decays through beta decay rather than neutron decay: it usually has a neutron turn into a proton (and shoots of a beta particle, an electron, in the process). When it goes through beta decay, it goes from 6 protons + 8 neutrons to 7 protons + 7 neutrons. If you look at a periodic table, you'll see that the element with 7 protons is Nitrogen. And since Nitrogen-14 (7 protons + 7 neutrons) is stable, that means that once Carbon-14 goes through beta decay and turns into Nitrogen-14, it's going to stay that way. That nitrogen atom isn't going to become anything else. (At least, not on its own. If a neutron hits it and "sticks", then it'll turn into Nitrogen-15, which is also stable. But if that gets hit with ANOTHER neutron, it'll become Nitrogen-16, with 7 protons and 9 neutrons. That atom usually beta-decays into 8 protons + 8 neutrons, which is Oxygen-16, the most stable (and common) isotope of oxygen). One more thing: the various isotopes of different elements tend to have different chances per atom of going through some form of decay. The higher the chance, the more atoms will decay per second -- but with each atom that decays, there's less of the radioactive material left (because it's turned into some other material, either a different isotope or a different element) and so on average you'll have to wait just a tiny bit longer for the next atom to decay. This is why people use the term "half-life" about radioactive materials: that's the average time after which about half of the atoms in that material will have decayed. In other words, if you took 1 gram of, say, Iodine-131 (which has a half-life of about 8 days) and stuck in a sealed lead vault, when you opened the vault 8 days later you'd find about half a gram of Iodine-131, and about half a gram of Xenon-131. Wait another 8 days, and you'll see about .25 g of Iodine-131, and about .75 g of Xenon-131. (But since the process is random, you probably won't get exactly those amounts, just approximately those amounts). The shorter the half-life of an isotope, the more of its atoms decay per second, and therefore the more radiation it produces per second. A half-life of 8 days is actually kind of short as these things go: Iodine-131 is way more radioactive than uranium! Uranium-238, the most common isotope, has a half-life of 4.5 billion years! And Uranium-235, the stuff that's used in nuclear weapons, is also not that radioactive. Its half-life is a "mere" 700 million years. The reason there's radiation "left over" after a nuclear bomb, however, is what happens to U-235 when the bomb explodes. When a U-235 bomb goes off, it doesn't actually decay. Rather, a U-235 nucleus gets hit by a neutron and splits into two other nuclei (both of which are radioactive isotopes), plus three neutrons. Those three neutrons go hit other U-235 nuclei, which produce three neutrons each, and you get a chain reaction if there's enough bits U-235 in close proximity to each other. The big problem is those two other nuclei that split. They are both radioactive isotopes with really short half-lives, which decay into other isotopes, and eventually you end up with some isotopes like Iodine-131, which has a half-life of 8 days. A half-life of 8 days means that Iodine-131 will stick around for a while, but it'll also be releasing radiation into the environment around it at a fairly high (and steady) rate, until there's not enough of it left to matter (which can take several 8-day cycles). And here's the thing about Iodine-131: it's iodine. Which is an element that the human body wants to have. Any iodine you eat gets concentrated in the thyroid. And if enough of it is Iodine-131, then your thyroid is taking a concentrated dose of beta radiation over the next several weeks. Normally, beta radiation tends to hit something within a few millimeters, so if the source of Iodine-131 is outside your skin, then most of it is going to hit the outer layers of your skin (which are dead cells). Some of it will penetrate into live cells, or the subcutaneous fat layer, but usually not enough to matter. But if you've absorbed Iodine-131 into your body (and specifically, your thyroid), then those few millimeters it hits, and the cells it damages, will all be live cells inside your thyroid. And since Iodine-131 is one of the byproducts of a nuclear explosion, that's why Japanese people who lived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and survived the initial blast by being far enough away) ended up with higher rates of thyroid cancer*: the iodine they ate over the next few months had much larger proportions of Iodine-131 than you normally find in nature**, and so they had a bunch of Iodine-131 in their thyroids. That Iodine-131 gave them much higher doses of radiation than the thyroid normally gets (any radiation found in nature usually ends up either passing straight through, or hitting your skin), and so a lot more of them got thyroid cancer than normal. * Among many other problems, of course: Iodine-131 isn't the only radioactive isotope that sticks around, it's just the one that I've chosen to focus on because it's relatively easy to understand how it causes cancer. ** The normal amount of Iodine-131 you find in nature is pretty close to zero, since a half-life of eight days is a blink of an eye on a geological scale. Phew, that was a lot of . But here's the short and pithy summary:Radiation comes in alpha, beta, gamma and neutron versions. The stuff that damages your cells (and might give you cancer or kill you if you get enough of it) is usually beta or gamma radiation. But beta and gamma radiation usually have no effect on dead materials (dead layers of skin, stone walls, etc). They might give it higher energy, or damage the material by knocking bits of it off or changing its molecular structure, but it won't make the material radioactive. The only things that cause non-living matter to become radioactive are neutron radiation and nuclear fission (which is what happens in nuclear explosions, whether they're deliberate like Hiroshima or accidental like Chernobyl). And the biggest threat to human health isn't usually the radioactive material outside your body (unless you're standing inside the core of a nuclear reactor, in which case the heat has already killed you before the radiation can get to you). It's the radioactive material like Iodine-131 that gets absorbed into your body by breathing, or drinking water, or eating food — and once it's in your body, all of its radiation is going to get absorbed by your living cells, damaging or killing them. (Rather than most of it being stopped by your clothing or the dead layers of your skin cells). And that's why a radiation gun wouldn't make walls radioactive. Because it would be designed to harm humans, and would therefore probably fire concentrated amounts of gamma radiation (and MAYBE some beta). But gamma radiation doesn't cause non-living matter to become radioactive; only neutron radiation can do that. And a radiation gun that fired lots of neutron radiation would be useless in combat: it would kill you slowly over the next several days or months, but not fast enough to be a useful weapon.
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Sep 23, 2016 13:44
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Update 20 The conclusion to storytime with Nancy and the conclusion to our quest to save an inexplicably Russian (or maybe just vaguely eastern European) moonshiner and make a DJ cool. Also the tragic demise of one of our drinking glasses - farewell noble vessel, who I received from an event I never wanted to go to and had no use for until we started making Long Islands at home. You were briefly missed, and then replaced for $3.99 at TJ Maxx. Poll for companions is still open here. We'll be streaming again tomorrow night, but sticking with posting updates during the week. We're going to be moving over the next two weeks and might have patchy internet in the meantime. Tax Refund posted:I just started watching the stream (not live, of course), and about 18 minutes in, Nancy comments on a radiation gun that's shown during a loading screen, and how it works in the game. She mentions that it's weird that if the radiation that that gun fires hits a wall or something, the wall isn't irradiated, "which is really, really weird, because radiation doesn't just dissipate like that." Yay, ! This brings back memories of all the information about nuclear weapons (some of it I'm sure very wrong) that was crammed into the Fallout and Fallout 2 manuals that none the less got me very interested in the subject at the time.bman in 2288 posted:After listening to your story about that drink, I had an epiphany: name your pistol 10 Little Monkeys, or 10 Mini Monkeys. That's actually a pretty good one... might do that until we get a more appropriate pistol later on.
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Sep 23, 2016 14:21
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The best way to remember how to handle the three main types of radiation is Pocket, Throw, and Swallow. That is, Alpha is stopped by clothes so you can stick the source in your pocket and be fine. Beta can't, so when confronted with a source of Beta your best bet is to get it the hell away from you, hence Throw. And if you've been confronted by a source of Gamma you're most likely already hosed so you may as well Swallow it.
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Sep 23, 2016 17:45
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It's like I'm back in college again. I'm totally okay with particle physics talk. So much so, I forgot to eat my lunch. I'm hungry.
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Sep 23, 2016 18:51
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So, a few things. First, in my wall of text about radiation, I forgot one thing. I said I'd explain why scientists call it "ionizing radiation", and then I forgot to explain that later. Well, they call it ionizing radiation because when it hits an atom, it usually turns that atom into an ion. If it's a gamma ray, it usually has enough energy to knock an electron loose from the atom, giving that atom a positive charge (since it just lost an electron, which carries a negative charge). As far as I understand it, that electron usually doesn't fly out at high speeds as a beta particle, but rather just hangs around as an extra electron in whatever material it's in (giving that whole material a slight negative charge, though that usually has a negligible effect). But I could be wrong about that one; anyone with more knowledge of how that particular process works is welcome to correct me. And while I didn't want to get into the chemistry of it too much, here's one way that that could damage cells. Let's say you have some salt dissolved in your blood stream. Salt is NaCl, and when it's dissolved, it's found as Na+ and Cl- — that is, the sodium ion is positive (is missing an electron) and the chlorine ion is negative (has an extra electron). Chlorine ions are relatively stable (in a chemical sense, not in a nuclear sense), because their outer electron shell has a full eight electrons and so they don't have a tendency to bond with other atoms or ions. They have a negative charge, because they have one extra electron (chlorine atoms in their natural, unionized* state have just seven electrons in their outer electron shell), so they make a decent conductor of electricity, but they don't tend to form molecular bonds. But chlorine atoms, with just seven electrons, do tend to "want" an eighth electron to fill out their shell — and they have a tendency to bond with other chlorine atoms, sharing an electron with each other to form what's called a "covalent" bond in chemistry. So if two chlorine ions that are "near" enough to each other (whatever "near" means at this scale) have their extra electron stripped off by gamma radiation, they will tend to bond with each other. And now instead of two ions of Cl-, an electrolyte that is healthy for your body to have (in the right quantities), you now have one molecule of Cl2, or chlorine gas, dissolved in your bloodstream. And Cl2 is toxic. There are lots of other ways that gamma radiation can harm you, but almost all of them involve a similar process to the one I just outlined. The radiation hits an atom that's part of a helpful molecule, and by changing it into a negative ion, breaks up the helpful molecule (and its subcomponents may be toxic, or interact with other molecules in undesired ways, or whatever). Or the radiation hits an ion that's part of a helpful set of dissolved ions, like the Cl- ion in my example, and turns it into an atom (or turns a singly-charged positive ion into a doubly-charged positive ion by stripping off a second electron) which has different chemical properties and may "want" to form molecules that are harmful to the body. Basically, gamma radiation messes randomly with the chemistry of your body. And your body's chemistry is actually a pretty complex, finely-tuned operation; randomly messing with the controls of any well-designed chemical plant is not likely to produce good results, and neither is randomly messing with the chemistry of your body. * That's un-ionized, not union-ized. Although given chlorine's tendency to form a "collective" with other chlorine atoms and turn into a molecule, you could argue for either reading. :-) The fact that chlorine molecules are also toxic in their "collective" state is an interesting part of this analogy, at least if you've ever had up-close-and-personal contact with the kind of union that won't let you plug a power cord into a socket because that's the job of an electrician (and you have to fill out a work request and wait for one to show up). Second thing is that that entire wall of text is about real-world radiation and how it works. But one thing that real-world radiation definitely does NOT do is create ghouls, or interact with any sort of virus to create super-strong green-skinned giants who engage in cannibalism. (If you consider regular humans to still be the same species as Super Mutants, which is a debatable proposition). So we're not actually dealing with real-world radiation here, we're dealing with Fallout-world radiation, which is basically comic-book radiation. And that means that the radiation rules really are whatever the plot wants them to be. If a radiation gun hits a wall, it wouldn't make the wall radioactive in real life — but in Fallout-world rules, who knows? It's not actually implausible for that to happen if you're going by comic-book rules or Fallout-world rules — it's only implausible (actually, impossible) if you're going by real-world rules. Third thing I want to say is completely unrelated to . I noticed in the latest stream that you have Archer passing up all kinds of fedoras that enemies had been wearing because they're not in perfect condition: they're either worn, or battered — or worse, some of them are actually trilbies, which are not fedoras at all. But I took a quick look at a Fallout 4 wiki (just on the "hats" page since I don't want to spoil myself on story) and saw that there doesn't seem to be any item called plain "Fedora" in the game. There's an item called "Yellow Fedora", but that wouldn't fit very well with the gray suit you have him wearing. I do think that a Battered Fedora would be a cool look for the character — and you could probably justify it. It's not worn out, it's just got that comfortable, lived-in look. It's up to you, of course, but I'd enjoy seeing you add a fedora to the gray suit and sunglasses.
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Sep 23, 2016 23:54
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Tax Refund posted:* That's un-ionized, not union-ized. Although given chlorine's tendency to form a "collective" with other chlorine atoms and turn into a molecule, you could argue for either reading. :-) The fact that chlorine molecules are also toxic in their "collective" state is an interesting part of this analogy, at least if you've ever had up-close-and-personal contact with the kind of union that won't let you plug a power cord into a socket because that's the job of an electrician (and you have to fill out a work request and wait for one to show up). I'm really glad I scanned that wall'o'science because this is a fantastic burn and I love everything about it. Tax Refund posted:Third thing I want to say is completely unrelated to Not sure why people are trying to put Archer in a hat. He doesn't wear one. (Outside of Trucker hat, when situationally appropriate)
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Sep 24, 2016 00:02
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RickVoid posted:Not sure why people are trying to put Archer in a hat. He doesn't wear one. (Outside of Trucker hat, when situationally appropriate) In my case, because every time I watch Casablanca, I think "I should get a fedora". Then I remember that though it does look good on Humphrey Bogart, it wouldn't look good on me. But it would look good on a Fallout 4 male character. However, I never saw the actual Archer show, just read about it. So if the "real" Archer doesn't wear a hat, then that's a very good argument for not putting a hat on this one.
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Sep 24, 2016 00:09
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Although good armor can go a long way on survivability, FashionOut 4 is definitely cool and good and dressing up Archer in location-appropriate disguises is quite in character.
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Sep 24, 2016 01:25
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Stream complete - we finished all the initial content to the west and picked up a new companion. We'll pick up in a bit once we've moved.. may possibly start streaming on weekdays instead, since it seems as though turnout is better during the week. In the meantime, enjoy the stream and the videos as we put them up. ddegenha fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Sep 25, 2016 |
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Sep 25, 2016 01:37
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Alright, I went back and watched the stream and... uh... if any of you are going to watch that, I'd like to apologize for doing my best impression of Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own right there at the end. I didn't think that the microphone would pick that up, and I was wrong. That part is DEFINITELY getting cut out when I post it on Youtube.
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Sep 25, 2016 16:47
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ddegenha posted:Alright, I went back and watched the stream and... uh... if any of you are going to watch that, I'd like to apologize for doing my best impression of Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own right there at the end. I didn't think that the microphone would pick that up, and I was wrong. That part is DEFINITELY getting cut out when I post it on Youtube. I caught a collective 5 minutes of the stream before I had to go meet some people. Guess which minutes.  
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Sep 25, 2016 16:52
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ThaGhettoJew posted:I caught a collective 5 minutes of the stream before I had to go meet some people. Guess which minutes. Because of the circumstances, the only time I saw a person signed on was at the beginning so I was really hoping the answer would be "the five minutes you spent roaming around in Sanctuary trying to find Codsworth but when I went upstairs and reported this conversation to my wife she said "Oh, so that's who that was." I was flabbergasted that she hadn't told me, but she made the very good point that I was already in a different room and hadn't listened when she said that I should turn off my mike so why would I listen if she told me that somebody had signed on? Long story short, I think we might shift to doing a weekday stream so that there's more of a chance for people to watch during the actual recording and chime in. There's a slight possibility for a stream on Tuesday night, but that's going to depend on us having everything ready for the movers to come Wednesday morning.
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Sep 25, 2016 19:16
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Sorry about ghosting like that; I've never bothered to made a Twitch account so I can't follow or chat or anything useful for feedback purposes. Just happened to spot the "we're streaming" link in the thread when I was near my desktop and briefly incremented your viewer count. I'll make a bit more of an effort to actually plan and sit down for some scheduled streamstuff instead of just happenstance next time.
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Sep 25, 2016 21:34
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ddegenha posted:Because of the circumstances, the only time I saw a person signed on was at the beginning so I was really hoping the answer would be "the five minutes you spent roaming around in Sanctuary trying to find Codsworth but when I went upstairs and reported this conversation to my wife she said "Oh, so that's who that was." I was flabbergasted that she hadn't told me, but she made the very good point that I was already in a different room and hadn't listened when she said that I should turn off my mike so why would I listen if she told me that somebody had signed on?
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Sep 25, 2016 21:46
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I was at a party that I really didn't want to be at, so I couldn't really join the stream. Let me tell you what, though: no matter how bad your impressions, it would have been better than what I had to sit through.
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Sep 26, 2016 02:22
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