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Do EMP bursts affect nanoswarms inside a person?

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Mon, 2015-03-16 14:43
#1
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
Do EMP bursts affect nanoswarms inside a person?
Fairly simple question, but one that is, I think, important. Do EMP grenades affect a nanoswarm which is inside a person? For instance, their Medichines, Nanophages, Nanotoxin/Nanodrug implants, Skin Link implants, etc? I can see reasons both for and against, and both yes and no have game implications. If the answer is 'yes,' you can be absolutely guaranteed to strip someone's nanite-based protection systems by setting off eight EMP grenades next to them, and more realistically you can expect the job to be done with four. This also means that if you act fast after someone gets attacked by unpleasant nanites, you can wipe them out, all of them, by cooking eight EMP 'nades next to them. If nanites inside someone are vulnerable - and there is precedent, given that your mesh inserts' radio can also be damaged by this - would implanted hives offer protection for friendly swarms from EMP? Would they rebuild the swarm after the existing one gets nuked into oblivion, and if so, how long would it take?
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Mon, 2015-03-16 15:23
UnitOmega UnitOmega's picture
Mesh inserts are disabled
Mesh inserts are disabled because there's a radio antenna which can't be shielded because it needs to work as an antenna. I believe when discussing the nature of the EMP, it mentions that implants/nanos inside a person are sufficiently shielded by that person's body and are not disabled or take damage. The EMP effect does not penetrate the person or many other solid objects at all. Otherwise, there would have to be some damage and AP associated with such an action. If the detonation occurs inside the body itself? I don't know, that would probably depend on the exact location and tissues and that kind of technical stuff.
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Mon, 2015-03-16 17:30
Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture
Most kinds of EM radiation
Most kinds of EM radiation don't penetrate very far into the human body (centimeters at best), so nanoswarms within a body should be pretty safe (nanotats might be damaged, as they're quite close to the surface, but I'm not sure how well they're shielded). In theory with the right energy levels and frequencies should penetrate, but an X-ray burst which can kill a nanoswarm is basically a x-ray weapon, which has a lot of side effects on the body itself.
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Tue, 2015-03-17 18:02
ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
I'd probably rule it as a
I'd probably rule it as a damage threshold value. anything greater than x can disable and anything greater than y permanently shuts down the swarms
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Tue, 2015-03-31 02:05
Chrontius Chrontius's picture
I'd suggest that a medical
I'd suggest that a medical EMP device designed to destroy implants should be doable - some kind of extra-thin sleeping bag, attached to an EMP grenade like expendable pulsed transmitter should be easily doable. You might want to fill them with nanophages and medichines immediately after that, however; I suspect any decent distribution will include syringes of both.
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Tue, 2015-03-31 03:19
Jim_Callahan Jim_Callahan's picture
I think this is a "no", more
I think this is a "no", more because this is a situation where game balance wins over real-world physics than anything else. Generally speaking one-hit-kills or shutdowns of a player's entire set of capabilities with a single unpreventable cheap shot is a bad idea unless it's something that's got a huge wind-up and lots of opportunities for them to prevent, or they've taken an explicit weakness that they knew would make them vulnerable in advance (e.g. robot morph).
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Sounds legit.
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Tue, 2015-03-31 04:18
NimbleJack3 NimbleJack3's picture
Chrontius wrote:I'd suggest
Chrontius wrote:
I'd suggest that a medical EMP device designed to destroy implants should be doable - some kind of extra-thin sleeping bag, attached to an EMP grenade like expendable pulsed transmitter should be easily doable. You might want to fill them with nanophages and medichines immediately after that, however; I suspect any decent distribution will include syringes of both.
That's a really interesting idea, and one I'd expand upon, except that nearly all EP tech explicitly runs on optical signals and computation. An EMP will not fry a fibreoptic computer, but it will fry radio antennas (which will always be long electrical conductors) and bring down the local mesh at worst.
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Tue, 2015-03-31 06:45
Chrontius Chrontius's picture
So why not shape the pulse to
So why not shape the pulse to couple to known EMP design paradigms - bonus points if you know what TITAN nano looks like under a nanoscope - things like the energy storage system, or unusually long buckytube structures and such - and charge them, such that pH gradients generate reactive oxygen species and acid-base gradients that attack the nanomachines (and, to some extent, the tissue around them, but there's a lot more of you than there is the nano!). Or try to couple resonantly to the power-storage and reception structures if they run on anything more exciting than glucose hydrolysis. If they run on anything as boring as glucose hydrolysis, IgM pentamers could explicitly target glucose binding sites surrounded by graphene moieties, so you can also flood someone's system with monoclonal antibodies during the emergency pulse clearance.
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