Would tinies, humans or nekos become too much of a hassle?

As for the radio idea. For any kind of long-range communication, you would need radio-towers...which they wouldn't have. There's a possibilty of CB Radios, but the range on those is limited, and you're talking about 100's of miles of jungle between villages. You would not be able to have any kind of long-range communications network in Felarya. Convoys and portal mages are about the only way information is travelling long distances.

As for the grenade, I doubt its effectiveness. Grenades do damage through shrapnel, little pieces of metal flying at high-speeds. I just think that with a pred, especially a tough, muscular organ like a stomach, the shrapnel will be too small, and the muscle too tough at its scaled-up size compared to normal tissue, for any kind of lethal effect. Would it be uncomfortable and irritating? Most likely. Probably like a really bad ulcer or something.

Your best bet is some kind of high-explosive. Dynamite, C4, etc.They would be very lethal...but that starts to go into the military/industrial grade level of explosives, and would be difficult or near impossible for anyone besides the more well-connected settlments to find and afford.

Also, as for the venom idea. You need to have a delivery system capable of introducing the agent into the victim's bloodstream. That means getting a 3-4ft poison-coated object through scaled up flesh and muscle. Not to mention gathering this venom in the first place is arguably more dangerous than fighting a pred. How would someone get Kensha or Gypsa venom in large enough doses to kill a pred? Then you'd need a dellievery system, likely a cannon powered by compressed air or gunpowder...more materials you would need to obtain.

if you get eaten, a far easier thing to use would be a laxative. sure it may be disgusting, but if you use something that forces a naga to force you up the other way she could just eat you again. a strong laxative and one of those leaves that halts digestion for an hour. i cant remember what they're called. use them in an rp, but im not sure whether its really canon or not.

rcs619 wrote:

As for the radio idea. For any kind of long-range communication, you would need radio-towers...which they wouldn't have. There's a possibilty of CB Radios, but the range on those is limited, and you're talking about 100's of miles of jungle between villages. You would not be able to have any kind of long-range communications network in Felarya. Convoys and portal mages are about the only way information is travelling long distances.

As for the grenade, I doubt its effectiveness. Grenades do damage through shrapnel, little pieces of metal flying at high-speeds. I just think that with a pred, especially a tough, muscular organ like a stomach, the shrapnel will be too small, and the muscle too tough at its scaled-up size compared to normal tissue, for any kind of lethal effect. Would it be uncomfortable and irritating? Most likely. Probably like a really bad ulcer or something.

Your best bet is some kind of high-explosive. Dynamite, C4, etc.They would be very lethal...but that starts to go into the military/industrial grade level of explosives, and would be difficult or near impossible for anyone besides the more well-connected settlments to find and afford.

Also, as for the venom idea. You need to have a delivery system capable of introducing the agent into the victim's bloodstream. That means getting a 3-4ft poison-coated object through scaled up flesh and muscle. Not to mention gathering this venom in the first place is arguably more dangerous than fighting a pred. How would someone get Kensha or Gypsa venom in large enough doses to kill a pred? Then you'd need a dellievery system, likely a cannon powered by compressed air or gunpowder...more materials you would need to obtain.

AM radio can go further than that, but that is subject to interference. You would want something like this JUST to, say, contact convoys that may be coming by. (To present them a sales opportunity, no doubt.) If you're 1000 miles away from anywhere... well, in Felarya that's pretty much fatal if you don't have a "nano-guardian" like Jade or Cypress to keep the preds away, but yes I know there are many towns that far out that have Plot-Shielding[tm] keeping them safe until Crisis is called in to wander by. In reality, though, total isolation that far out in that kind of jungle without a nano-guardian means death. Either by predators or by lack of genetic diversity.

Grenades are more powerful than that. The F1 or 4-second-fuse Mills Bomb type grenade would do the job. Even the M67 is devastating with a kill radius of 5 meters. If it explodes on the stomach floor you're going to produce quite a bloody hole. Have you ever seen one go off? And any of the above that explodes in the face, or worse in the mouth or throat are pretty much instant death unless said P/pred is a Kryptonian neko/human/fairy/naga/etc. Pulling a pin on pomegranate with a 4 second fuse means it is likely to explode in the mouth or throat; and if you're savvy enough you can throw or drop it in there to explode before you get there. Someone who is actually trained with these little things can be absolutely devastating. Woe betide the P/pred dangling someone over their mouth who can pull the pin on one of these things. The only problem with this is making one fit for a Tomthumb. And of course you could always carry and arm several at once; a grenade bouquet, in essence.

Kensha beast poison is a chemical and thus it can be synthesized. Someone catches one beast and then even amateur chemists can mass produce it. You may never have to take down more than one Kensha beast, ever, to make this a common commodity. It can in fact be delivered by crossbow or a knife right into the hand, eyes, mouth or on the tongue; what matters then is how much is needed to totally distract or incapacitate a P/pred. Once you have done that you can keep jabbing into a soft spot to deliver a fatal dose. IIRC there are also Felaryan stories with people who use poison blades for that purpose. Ballistas can be made with pre-Renaissance knowledge to deliver this poison under the skin. Or even better, if you have the local resources and someone of Iron-age intelligence, you could also build a Scorpio. Scorpios are a Greek-era ballista-equivalent that can in fact be operated by one person. It's a semi-stationary weapon but usually several are manned at once; 15 of them could launch 60 arrows a minute, all laced with synthesized Kensha beast poison. The Chinese repeating crossbow was developed before 500AD; some say it was even invented back in the 4th century BC. Arguably one could say they have the penetrating power to pierce a pred's skin, especially with a head shot. The Scorpio has a range of 100 meters for straight shooting and 400 meters for parabolic; that's out of some (or most) nagas' tail-whack range, although the closer you are, obviously the more accurate it will be. Torsion spring based weaponry is surprisingly powerful. You are so not living in a village in Felarya without at least that.

Raveolution wrote:

...lots of text...

AM radios/radios in general: The towers are not as big a deal as you might think; just find a tree that is taller than the others nearby and staple your antenna to it. For best results you are going to need to stable antennas on two or three sides of the tree, since the tree trunk itself will cast quite a radio shadow to the antennas that are placed right on it.

The major problem(s) with radios are: they require some time to setup, and a fixed post to man them. If they are automated (which requires more tech but is what I would do to avoid having to stay in one spot for long) they will still require maintenance from time to time. More importantly than that, large antennas require large and noisy generators. At the wattages required, solar power would take up a lot of space. A single wind turbine of moderate size could suffice, but that's more noticeable than a gasoline powered generator. Gasoline generators are noisy, smelly, and require refueling quite often. Nuclear power plants (either an RTG or a proper mini-reactor) require high tech levels and a place to dump waste heat, which will make the surrounding area noticeably warmer. Hydropower is very location dependent, and also noticeable, even a small dam. Also, can't Jaykay birds pick up radio signals? Not only does that make any non-encrypted communication completely un-secure, but a smart pred might be able to follow the jaykay's back to the radio source (IE: perhaps the stronger the signal, the more jaykay birds broadcast that channel. If so, walk toward the most annoying concentration of birds. )


Frag grenades: You overstate the penetration power of a frag grenade's fragments. Even at close range these fragments won't penetrate modern bulletproof vests, but high powered rifle shots will. This (roughly) means that the fragments are less lethal than high powered rifle shots, and will have a lower penetration distance. Modern rifle shots have human flesh simulant penetration depths of a dozen inches or a little more, so frag grenade fragments will (roughly) have a penetration depth of less than that. Thus we can see that while a frag grenade in a stomach would be unpleasant to say the least, it would not likely be fatal or even crippling for more than a few days (thanks to the healing effect provided by Felarya's soil. Still, as grenades are relatively low tech, I would expect to see a lot of them, mostly aimed at the eyes of preds.


On poisons: Chemically complex things are hard to synthesize even under perfect lab conditions here on Earth with excellent equipment and lots of funding. On Felarya I would think that synthesis of chemicals that require complex processes would be impossible: often to even synthesize the precursor chemicals requires very pure catalysts and high temperature and pressure reactor vessels, centrifuges, things of that nature. The only exceptions would be the complex chemicals that have a simple production process, like booze (though booze is grown, not synthesized, and then purified/refined.) It's also possible that once you synthesize a chemical you discover that it has a horrible shelf life: this is not a problem to a creature that produces it naturally, but is very problematic if you want to carry a vial of the stuff around with you.

As Malahite stated, you'd need to have the endurance and the capability to pull a grenade or activate explosives. There's also the availability of said technology, the only place where that seems to be in common is demuria, or whatever the name of that facility is called. Name mistakes aside, even in negav finding grenades would be hard. I can imagine going to a weapons shop:

*A customer walk into a weapons shop and in a glass case secured on a high shelf he saw within the box, a little grenade. above it bore the words "special item today! only 3,000 skevols!!"*

and there'd be one. If you cant build radio's you cant build grenades. The only people who could build tech like that are people from advanced civilization who have the job spefication and know how to create a grenade even remotely powerful enough to do that. Thats one reason why there are a lot of mages, its more akin to their "tech" level, and even then it takes many many years of training.

My point is that not every prey out there is gonna walk through the jungle with three grenades on his belt with AP rounds and a rifle.

As for acid, there's a lot of methods, but thats a bit easier to pull of than high tech. of course if you use acid and various alchemic methods, you can be sure the predators will have methods to counteract them. Just because they dont live in cities, doesn't mean that they haven't figured this out themselves, or shared methods with each other. they ARE sentient after all, they're not stupid.

Raveolution wrote:

Ah, so these towns would never have any contact with Negav City, not even through passers by, caravans, convoys, or anything? Or if they do, radio-equivalents would never be brought there by said visitors; or such technology is beyond the tech level of Negav, even its interplanetary once-and-future-empire Vishmital inhabitants? I'm sure some can communicate magically, but what about the nameless people?

Well... No. They wouldn't. The most the small villages would see is the occasional adventurer/explorer. Most villages would never have even heard of Negav, except perhaps as a rumor of some magical 'safe' city. There are no roving caravans or convoys. Any caravans or convoys will go from point A to point B with no pitstops at piddly little poor towns. And yes, there are radios and better, but nothing too great. No satellites around Felarya. Negav is a special case. It is the only huge city. The only one known anyway. Nameless villages are on their own. And, for the most part, they survive just well that way. Some get destroyed, either through carelessness or bad luck, but other thrive unseen, and when they get too big, they split up into more. That's just how Felarya works. There is no coalitions that span continents, no countries, nothing more that wild wilderness and frontier. Rules as intended.

Silent_Eric wrote:

Negav is a special case. It is the only huge city. The only one known anyway. Nameless villages are on their own. And, for the most part, they survive just well that way. Some get destroyed, either through carelessness or bad luck, but other thrive unseen, and when they get too big, they split up into more.

Major emphasis on bad luck. My sympathies to the Neera's 'Mathreemi' tribe.

About poison harvesting (note we're really starting to slip into the "Counter to Predators / Prey" thread territory): While it would be harder than getting from a Kensha Beast, why not harvest a Poisonous Creeper from the Grove of Carnivorous Plants? They'd kill a Giant Predator, and fast - just because it's only stated to be instantly lethal to small / medium enemies, doesn't mean it can't harm Giant prey. What do I mean? One spine, one scratch, instantaneous death to a humanoid (or, depending on how you interpret Medium, maybe even Kensha Beasts). The only problem would be delivering it into the Giant Predator's bloodstream - once there, even just the poison from a few spines would be excessively dangerous to a Giant Predator.

"How can a poison that kills what's comparatively a mouse kill a Predator too?" Consider for a moment that "instantaneous" is "very friggin' fast". As in "under half a minute" fast. Essentially, the poison is strong enough that the entire way back to the heart - and then the reaching of the heart - is a complete destruction of the internal organs and works. It's not like leaving out rat poison and finding a trio of dead rats a few days later. It's like leaving out some rat poison and the rat dying mid-bite. The only reason I can assume that they aren't lethal to a Giant Predator is that either they can't penetrate said Giant Predator's flesh (spines do include things as small as small slivers / maybe a thumbtack's tip at length), or that we have to throw out all concepts of poisoning Giant Predators as they can take what amounts to injecting pure evil into their bloodstream and merely get pissed.

Malahite wrote:

(note we're really starting to slip into the "Counter to Predators / Prey" thread territory)

Well, the "best tactical offence/defence" thread is about the BEST ways to do these things. Not everyone (read: practically no-one) has access to the best equipment. This is where this discussion comes in.
Are readily available alternatives still good enough to make humans and tinies too much of a hassle? I think the answer so far is no.

Oldman40k2003 wrote:

(comments).

I totally disagree about the effectiveness of grenades (unless the P/pred's stomach is made of iron?) and the difficulty of synthesizing poison. But Malahite is right about this, I don't have the desire to go so far as that other thread I made about countering preds. Plus I've been seeing where this is going for a while... reality in Felarya is rigged by a mish-mash of arbitrary decrees; specifically so that no survival solution is even fairly reliable except stealth, or being the physically largest being in the area. Smaller prey can occasionally triumph but on the whole if there's a confrontation then being bigger is the best bet overall and almost nobody's ever, ever going to acquire anything reliable that will make life hard on the P/preds chasing them. Renaissance level villages in the middle of a hellzone? Next to nations of giant mechs and Isolon eyes and massive predbuster cannons? Evolution apparently doesn't happen in Felarya; not even in the face of such dire threats to one's survival. Such a reality is impossible for sentients without someone going extinct. Darwin weeps, bitterly.

And since stealth is pretty much nullified by living in a stationary village in Felarya, and some P/pred is eventually going to find and prey on people, unless the townfolk of Felarya are just plain stupid, they're going to migrate out of Felarya and all you'll pretty much have are (oftentimes) idiot newbs coming from other dimensions, and smart adventurers from the Guild in Negav. Migration out of Felarya, or to the Jungle Bowl/Negav City/Jade, is a certainty if things are this completely rigged by plot-based fiat. Even the wily Akaptor peoples are going to migrate if they hear about a safer place to live - and in reality countless tribes around the world complain about their young people moving away to modern cities for far less motivation than would exist with time sharks prowling your desert. Never, ever, do you see humans staying in a major danger zone if they cannot fight back effectively or if they can get away.

And isolated villages? In Felarya? Yes, plot-based fiat says they survive, but in reality? No. For one you absolutely, positively have to have more than just occasional cultural and genetic intercourse with several other settlements, or inbreeding will work its way into the equation. Basically, immigration is key to such a town's survival. If a P/pred doesn't find these bowls of candy treats, lack of genetic diversity will eventually kill them off. Unless the human sized elves, Tomthumbs and neeras are not affected by inbreeding, that is; humans most certainly are. How many genetic degrees of separation can you guarantee in an isolated village where only a few adventurers come by now and then, and even fewer come to live? Basically if Silent Eric is right then these isolated villages will be wiped out without any P/pred ever visiting them. How do the Akaptor nomads manage to avoid inbreeding? How many are there?

And yes, humans automatically form coalitions for self-defense; maybe not continent-wide, but regional, at least, to protect themselves. But it is asserted that people stay isolated in Felarya, so there we go. But if humans (and thus also elves, nekos, tinies, and any other sentient species) cannot find alternatives to even make eating them too much of a hassle (because the rule of nom nom nom declares it) then it is a guaranteed fact of history and reality that they will migrate away. Unless humans in Felarya also forgot how to migrate (which even animals know how to do).

I just want to know... what species of native homo sapiens are these that live in Felarya that have no migration instinct, no ability or desire to form coalitions for self-defense, no ability to evolve technologically, and the ability to reproduce without any fresh infusion into their local gene pool? These don't even sound like humans. They sound like a species of sapient M&M's with the occasional intelligent mutant in their midst.

You don't need to worry about inbreeding in a world where everyone is essentially immortal. People aren't going to be pressured to reproduce to continue the village. Some people would reproduce, sure...but its not like reproduction to have the village survive is going to be a major issue like it would be anywhere else.

Also, I think Eric may have a point about some of the more isolated villages view of Negav. Given the massive distances, and lack of communication...Negav probably is just a legend to some of them. The ones that knew about Negav probably would try to move there.

I still think you over-estimate the power of a fragmentation grenade. The blast isn't large enough to burst the stomach, and the shrapnel would be smaller than a grain of sand to a pred. If it did penetrate the stomach wall, it wouldn't be large enough to cause lethal bloodloss. Would it hurt? Probably, but the damage is probably just going to cause some irritation and discomfort. Probably about the equivalent of a bad ulcer.

A fragmentary grenade would be bad inside a Predator's stomach. However, the point is that it wouldn't do enough in time to kill one. It'll cause internal bleeding, it'll tear apart pretty much all the stomach (even if you consider it only "grain of sand", then take it like someone rubbed the inside of your stomach with rough sandpaper), and so on. The catch is it's not going to blow up the stomach (now, if you used a weapon like an oxygen-tank sized container of compressed air, the ones that are comparative to our slug-sized ones that can make a basketball sized hole), and that the Giant Predator can recover as with the exception of a few creatures many beings don't need to eat at least once / 24 hours or die immediately.

I agree with rcs here, a frag grenade isn't going to do that much to a pred's stomach. (I'm holding one in my hand right now).

Quote from Wikipedia: The Mills bomb or F1 grenade are examples of defensive grenades where the 30–45 m casualty radius[14] matched or exceeded the 30 m that a grenade could reasonably be thrown.

Modern fragmentation grenades such as the United States M67 grenade have a wounding radius of 15 m (half that of older style grenades which may still be encountered) and can be thrown about 40 m. Fragments may travel more than 200 m.[15]

The grenade I have is a mills bomb, dating from around 1942. it looks a like this:

The shrapnel from this grenade aren't that big. at the most they would be about as big as the uppermost part of my pinky finger. that's nothing to a pred.
As stated in the quote, the more modern grenades are actually less powerful, but can be thrown further. So a squad equipped with modern weapons would have even less of a chance of injuring a pred with a grenade.

People seem not quite to get how explosions, regardless of scale, are still explosions. For instance - look at a firecracker. Look at how small it is to us. Look at how we could hold one in our hands, and light it with minor pain. It's nothing...

But now take that exact same firecracker, and hold it in your fist. Closed. I dare you to light it again, but don't cry to me or sue me when you're missing a significant portion of hand-mass. Now imagine that done inside your stomach. It just doesn't kill a Predator, as there's not enough immediately vital stuff in their stomach to matter.

To be fair, a pred-sized firecracker would be many times larger and more powerful than a hand-grenade...it'd be like 2-3ft long.

Easiest way to kill a lot of preds at once.

1- Somehow find a nuclear scientist in Felarya

2- Somehow be rich enough to fund a massive project

3- Somehow obtain large amounts of Uranium in Felarya

4- Somehow enrich said Uranium until you have enough U235 to make a weapon

5- Somehow build this apocalyptic device without getting bitchslapped by any Guardians who take notice

6- Somehow get the bomb to the desired location without getting killed

7- Somehow detonate the bomb

8- ???

9- PROFIT!!!





So yeah, Felaryan humans will never be a issue to the preds. :\

Raveolution wrote:

I totally disagree about the effectiveness of grenades (unless the P/pred's stomach is made of iron?)...

Grenades are not really that effective at crushing things into dust (IE: destruction via shock-wave), because they simply don't have enough explosive in them to do that. They are quite effective at what they are supposed to do, however, which is throw fragments. Hollywood almost never uses realistic grenade explosions in their movies, because those are small and boring.


It's not that their stomachs are made of iron, it's the combination of their relative largeness, and that their flesh is mostly water, which is dense. The fragments hit the flesh and travel maybe ten inches, causing damage the entire way, but being slowed down by hydrostatic drag caused by having to push the water out of the way. On a person, ten inches can go to the center of the their torso, hitting any vital organs along the way. On something that is 75 feet tall, 10 inches of penetration is no real danger, even when exploded inside the stomach.



I'm tired of seeing this argument every few months ("just drop a grenade in the preds stomach and they'd die!"), so I'm going to try to answer it definitively, once and for all. Unfortunately that means that this post will be rather large. (And watch-out "just use nerve gas on a pred and it will die!", I'm coming for you next!)




Lets do some math:

Human: 6 feet (1.8288 meters) tall
Crisis: 75 feet (22.86 meters) tall

Scaling factor: 12.5 to convert between the two.

Now, some quotes on the penetration abilities of fragmentation grenades: "...the fragments from a fragmentation grenade cannot penetrate a single layer of sandbags, a cinder block, or a brick building...", and "Fragmentation barriers consisting of common office furniture, mattresses, doors, or books can be effective against the fragmentation grenade inside rooms." (Citation)

AK-47 rounds will penetrate cinder-blocks (actually, they destroy them quite handily), so the AK-47 rounds are far more powerful than the fragments from a fragmentation grenade. (Citation)

This means that if we assume that the fragmentation grenade fragments are AK-47 shots fired at close range, then we will be vastly overestimating the damage a fragmentation grenade can do.


At close range (~10 yards, so the shot will have lost essentially no speed) a full metal jacket (IE: high penetration) AK-47 round will penetrate about 3 feet into ballistics gel, which is a decent approximation of human flesh. (http://thesurvivalpodcast.com/forum/index.php?topic=10879.0 see video 2)


Three feet is 0.9144 meters. Dividing by the scaling factor to convert it to human dimensions, we get 0.073152 (2.88 inches). So, if you ate a shrunken person who had a shrunken AK-47, their bullets (assuming they didn't hit bone) could travel up to 2.9 inches through your body.

I tried to find an anatomical diagram that showed both the heart and the stomach without showing the liver (which partially covers the stomach), but I didn't find any. The image I did find was this:


Image from here

Because I had to use an image with a liver, I had to guess what the shape of the stomach behind the liver was, based on other images.

In that image, the person is 413 pixels tall. If we assume that they are 6 feet tall, that means that a pixel's width is equivalent to 0.004428 meters. From before we know that a bullet might travel up to 2.88 inches throughout the body. That's On that picture, extending the borders of the stomach by 16.5 pixels (2.88 inches, to show the possible area of effect) covers most of the liver, some of the left lung, part of the kidneys, some space outside of the left side of the pred, and the lower third of the heart, among others. Also, while it is not possible to determine how far back from the stomach they are, there is an artery and a vein that travel past the lower left section of the stomach which are probably within range of the fragments.

So the organs that can be reached by the AK-47 round strength fragments are (though only a few of them are vulnerable to any particular grenade location): stomach, liver, kidneys, spleen, pancreas, part of the left lung, lower third of the heart, and possibly the vein and artery pair.


I'm going to use the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M67_grenade instead of the more iconic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk_2_grenade because the M67 has more surface area, and thus more lethality potential. The M67 has a diameter of 2.5 in (64 mm), and thus a radius of 32mm (0.032 meters).
Scaled down by 12.5, to represent what size it would be on a human torso, it has a radius of 0.00256 meters. A sphere's surface area can be calculated by the formula 4*pi*r^2, where pi is 3.1415... and r is the radius. The surface area of the scaled down M67 grenade is 0.000082354 square meters.


For reference, a BB. (cite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BB_gun) The BB has a radius of 4.39 millimeters, and thus a radius of 0.00439 meters. The BB has an “impact area” (the size of the hole it would make if you shot it through a piece of paper) of pi*r^2, or 0.000060545 square meters in this case.

To compare the two sizes, lets divide the surface area of the scaled down grenade by the impact area of a BB. If the resulting number was 1, then the surface area of the scaled down grenade was equal to that of a BB. The number is actually 1.3602, which tells us that the grenade has a little bit more surface area than the impact area of a BB. In other words, were you to cut a hole in a piece of paper just large enough to cover the grenade's surface, the hole would be only a little bit bigger than the hole created by shooting a BB through it.


So, to conclude the mathematical part of this post, with a super powered grenade you could damage flesh with a total volume equal to a cylinder a little bit wider than a BB, and 2.9 inches long, if scaled down to human size.

Given the list of organs that are within 2.9 inches of the stomach (the stomach itself, liver, kidneys, spleen, pancreas, part of the left lung, lower third of the heart, and possibly the vein and artery pair), what can be done to kill the pred?

The answer is: not much. Putting a hole the size of a BB in your stomach won't kill you, regardless if the hole is all in one place or spread out all over. It won't kill you if the same holes (either all in one place or spread out) are put in your liver. Your kidneys can survive holes in them, as can your spleen and your pancreas. These are all volumetric tissues with essentially no vital parts, and most of them heal rather quickly to boot. Your left lung warrants special mention, as lungs are very compartmentalized and thus very resistant to damage, so putting a small hole or many tiny holes in it is about the same as doing nothing.

What's left is the heart, and possibly the artery and vein pair. The heart, especially the lower third, which is the only part that can be reached, is thick muscle. Ballistics gel simulates average human tissue, not muscle, so any bullets that reached the heart would not penetrate as deeply as would be suggested, so it's entirely possible that the heart itself would not have any holes in it. But for the sake of argument, lets assume that they do penetrate. Any small holes are automatically plugged by the natural clotting agents found in the blood. If, somehow, every single fragments of the grenade somehow hit right next to each other all at the same time, then they could possibly create a hole the size of a BB in the heart. This is not immediately fatal to humans, though it does usually require heart surgery. For a Felaryan, however, it could probably be fixed in relatively short order by the healing effects of the soil. The last possibly vulnerable organ is the vein and artery pair near the back of the stomach. Small holes will be sealed up by either the clotting mechanisms in the blood, or by the natural sealing of the walls themselves. The same thing happens when you give blood, for example. As with the heart, it might be possible to create a BB sized hole in the artery or vein if you somehow managed to get all the fragments from the grenade going in the same direction all at the same time. This is probably actually more dangerous that a wound to the heart, because the vein and artery walls will not seal as tightly as muscle tissue will. It is probable, however, that Felarya's healing soil will fix this injury before death occurs, because the blood has no easy direct route to the outside; all possible exits are sealed with tight rings of muscle, so the predator will probably not bleed to death.


So, my conclusions. (1)Assuming that you have a hand grenade that is far more powerful than a regular hand grenade, and (2)assuming that you place it very carefully, and (3)assuming that you are somehow able to get every single fragment to travel in the same direction at the same time, and (4)assuming that the predators are internally identical to humans, but scaled up, you could possibly cause a semi-life threatening injury from inside of the pred's stomach. However, most of these conditions will never be true simultaneously, so grenades are not effective at killing giant preds.

Assumption #1 will rarely if ever be true; a hand grenade is a casing with some BB sized fragments inside surrounding an explosive core, and the explosive used is the most powerful but stable explosive that can be had. To get more explosive power would require a larger grenade, but that takes it out of the hand size category. You will not be able to accelerate the fragments to AK-47 round speeds, because the fragments are not surrounded by a barrel to confine the gasses from an explosion; as the grenade flies apart the still expanding gases rush PAST the fragments, a waste of energy that cannot happen when the gasses are trapped behind the projectile. Furthermore, the sheer number of fragments in a standard fragmentation grenade mean that they will have vastly less penetration than a solid round of the same weight traveling at the same speed. This is because many smaller fragments have a higher surface area to weight ratio, meaning that they suffer from drag more because they have more surface. Higher drag means lower penetration.

Assumption #2 will rarely be true; proper placement requires planning ahead (learning the vulnerable locations), the appropriate tools (a grenade and spikes to hold the grenade in place, a light-source to see by), and the mental fortitude to carry out the action (you have to not panic, and you have to be willing to commit suicide (see next assumption)).

Assumption #3 will never be true with a hand grenade, almost by definition. A fragmentation grenade is fragments surrounding an explosive core, which when exploding throws the fragments in all directions. To get that sort of directionality requires a gun; to get that sort of area of destruction requires a large mouthed gun; to get that depth of destruction requires a gun that can fire its shots as fast as an AK-47. Really, it would be a shrapnel cannon, with a barrel diameter of over 5 inches(!), and a kick strong enough to blow your shoulder clean off. (If you had a gun of that diameter you would be better off with solid shot) Because this argument will never be true, anyone who places and sets off a grenade inside the stomach is committing suicide, since there is nowhere to hide from the deadly cloud of fragments, and the prey does not have the benefit of meters of flesh to shield their vital organs.

Assumption #4 may or may not be true; nagas and other giant preds seem to be humans that are just scaled up, but I would expect evolution to work on any species that had been eating live prey for a long time and increase the strength of their stomach walls, possibly with cartilage “plates” and other things that would drastically change the ballistic performance of bullets traveling through them.


Summary of the conclusion (the conclusion's conclusion, as it were): hand grenades are not a viable method with which to damage a predator from inside of its stomach.



(Interesting side note: the penetration of a full metal jacketed AK-47 round is such that a person inside of a stomach could, in theory, shoot their pred's left elbow through the sides of the ribcage, assuming they missed the ribs.)

Malahite wrote:

People seem not quite to get how explosions, regardless of scale, are still explosions. For instance - look at a firecracker. Look at how small it is to us. Look at how we could hold one in our hands, and light it with minor pain. It's nothing...

But now take that exact same firecracker, and hold it in your fist. Closed.

That's only a problem if the volume enclosing the explosive is small enough that the extra volume of gasses that are produced by the explosion is enough to rupture the container. This is very much dependent on the size of the container, and how tightly it is sealed. For example, a hand grenade in a tightly sealed box will blow the lid and sides off. A hand grenade in a tightly sealed warehouse will not blow the doors off their hinges, because the additional gasses produced are a small fraction of the gasses already inside the warehouse, so the additional pressure is small. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_material#Volume_of_products_of_explosion . I could do the math, but I am rather sick of math at the moment, so instead I leave you with something to think about: would a hand grenade cause a room sized, air-tight, flexible and expandable bag, with two semi-tightly sealed exits, to explode from the pressure difference alone?

If anyone says TL;DR to the above post, I'll throw a grenade at them. (I have one)

Ah yes, but what about NUCLEAR hand grenades!

timing2 wrote:

Ah yes, but what about NUCLEAR hand grenades!

A more reasonable method would be a concussion grenade, where the killing power and method is derived from the explosive force not the shrapnel.

EDIT: I know enoguh that the enduring effects of an explosive shockwave depend on density of the medium: A shockave will dispurse much quicker in air than in water thus a concussion grenade or stick of dynamite exploding directly onto the stomach wall will cause alot more damage than if it exploded directly in the centre.

Oldman40k2003 wrote:

That's only a problem if the volume enclosing the explosive is small enough that the extra volume of gasses that are produced by the explosion is enough to rupture the container.

Reviewing my point, while I still stand that a grenade in the stomach is going to be worse than a grenade, say, in their hand, that a better spot for detonation would be the throat: Much, much tighter. Only problem here is that you're pretty much promised, besides requiring your hand stretched out, to sacrifice a full half of the blast's force against your body before hitting the Giant Predator.

Quote :

so instead I leave you with something to think about: would a hand grenade cause a room sized, air-tight, flexible and expandable bag, with two semi-tightly sealed exits, to explode from the pressure difference alone?

The room would be relatively small - remember that the average stomach isn't much bigger than one's fist, and if we scaled it up to a Giant Predator without throwing off proportions (as doing such would then skew other facts), it shouldn't be too bad as we've seen Giant Predator hand sizes.

The air-tight would be one of the biggest problems, how much I can't exactly say as there's multiple seals, I don't know the formulas for what happens if the force surpasses that necessary to force such open, and so on. Furthermore, remember that my point is that it would not kill a Giant Predator. Inconvenience them? Yes. Cause them a great deal of pain? Yes. Kill them? Not in the least, at least once Felarya's healing properties come into effect.



Onto this topic some more, to detract from things: Humans can be a threat to Giant Predators. It is all a matter of circumstances. There's high-tech, wherein there are weapons quite capable of harming (or, in some 'verses instances, killing) giant predators passed about on an infantry scale. There's "low tech", wherein extremely potent toxins (which there are a lot of on Felarya) could be used. There's brute-force magic, such as what would in D&D terms be an "Epic" Evoker. There's indirect magic, stuff like dangerous illusions and the like. And so on, and so on. However, people have to keep several things in mind during such things:
1) Threat does not necessarily mean kill. One who can injure, scare, disable, whatever a Giant Predator is a threat.
2) Not everyone has access to such. No, it should not be as uncommon as people make it out to be (Maybe one in a million adventurers will maybe have something that might draw a Giant Predator's attention maybe long enough that it decides to maybe kill you slightly faster than the others), but neither should it be made out as something that's passed around like candy on Halloween (And here's Jenkin's Stinger Missile, and here's Karl's E-Web, and here's Jane's Redeemer..).
3) What works on one Giant Predator, may not work on the next. Similarly, what works on Giant Predators, may be worse to use against the "regular" mega-fauna. Yeah, a high power rifle could do some harm to a Dridder. Could vent a hole in their heart. But what's that rifle going to do if an 'Ape horde comes after you? Or if you're attacked by a Diamond Naga?
4) Stories are no fun when the prey are helpless and removing the helplessness is due to a villain. Similarly, making Predators easy to conquer until a villain shows up is poor writing. If your Giant Predator is wading through dozens of gunships and treating the missiles like a gentle rain, and is not protected by some serious magical armor / spells, you're showing a failure in a few concepts. If you're having a team of Unreal Tournament players w/ 23mm Miniguns wade through Giant Predators like wheat to the scythe, you're portraying the Giant Predators like dumb fools who're refusing to acknowledge "23mm bad, don't charge head on" and use hunting tactics, common sense, and so on.

nonetheless, oldman's point still stands it looks like. Grenades wouldn't do too much, considering all the differences. personally I'm willing to accept oldman's explanation because I dont want to find the same amount of evidence to try and reubutt his arguement ^^

plus it seems detailed and sound enough to be proven true.

Again, the best defense against a pred is this.

Spoiler:

Thank you.

thanks pendragon. i think we've argued enough about this.

So who benifits from this argument exactly? Felarya is limited to our writing, art work and wahatever Karbo has up his sleeve. It's your choice as to what you include in your story or other artisitic medium. It's also your choice as to who survives what, but doing so just for the sake of promoting your character, well that's a different argument all together. Unless we are all on the same playing field when it comes to our knowldege on 'weaponology' or even magic, this argument wont be settled, it will just be a continuation of rebuttal after rebuttal.