Random Questions Thread

What would a first-aid kit in the early 1900s contain?

Gauze; Mercurichrome or iodine, or both; a small pair of scissors or small knife or a five-pack of single edged razor blades; soap; a roll of cotton batting bandage; a tin of aspirin; a small tin of Vaseline and/or a tube of burn cream; possibly a styptic pencil.

At least, that's what was in the pocket first-aid kit that belonged to my great-uncle from around WWI. After 1920, there would probably be some adhesive bandages.

And I bet half of those names mean nothing to you.

edited 21st Sep '14 2:26:40 PM by Madrugada

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I know what most of those things are. Would there be any form of cast or sling?

edited 21st Sep '14 3:16:24 PM by BiggerBen

In the first aid kit? No, it takes more time and effort to make a cast; the gauze and bandages would be used to make a sling or splint.

There probably wouldn't be enough gauze for a sling. That's what the scissors, knife or razor blades are for — both to cut the gauze (which would be a roll of probably between two and four yards long for bandages) and to cut some other available fabric if a sling or larger bandage was needed.

Now, like I said, that was a pocket first-aid kit. a larger one that a medic would have along, or that someone might have in their vehicle could be more comprehensive.

edited 21st Sep '14 9:43:25 PM by Madrugada

Slings are mostly field-expedient, and as any US Boy Scout can attest, the triangular neckerchief works very well for that purpose when it's not being used as a bandanna. (Splints too are usually field-expedient; nobody carries them around with them.) Casts are simply right the hell out. As I've learned from firsthand experience, broken bones are painful as hell: the sling and splints are there to hold the arm until you can get it properly set, whereupon a cast is applied to immobilize it until the bone knits. There's no point having the materials for the cast unless you plan on setting the break there and then (which would also require a local anesthetic and preferably an x-ray machine, at which point you're not bringing a first-aid kit but a portable field hospital).

edited 22nd Sep '14 12:05:29 AM by SabresEdge

When I was taking first aid in the Boy Scouts I was taught how to field set a broken bone.

Let's say you take a horse out a long way from where you live (let's say it's something like the distance from Pennsylvania to New York) how long it took to get there doesn't matter, it's just that the land between them is contiguous and can be traversed by a horse. Let's say while you're in "New York" your horse gets cut loose and flees due to some danger in your area and you do not have the chance to catch it before it goes away. Would it travel back to it's home in "Pennsylvania?" Or would it stay somewhere in the area? Could someone else potentially catch the horse?

I'm not an expert on horses, but from my experience, if you were that far away, the horse would not get all the way home. It might try, but I don't think most horses would have the memory and determination to retrace a journey for that long. Assuming the area around this place is fairly suitable for horses, it would probably end up staying in the general vicinity, though making it home I don't think would be out of the question.

The second point I'm much more certain about. If the horse was well-domesticated (the kind of animal you'd want to be using as a regular riding horse anyway), it shouldn't be to difficult for someone else to catch it, particularly if they had some sort of food item.

Most horses would try to return to their owner. If they couldnt do that I think they would just wander around awhile, until someone found them. Interestingly, the plot of one of the Sherlock Holmes stories ("Silver Blaze") is based on this exact occurrence.

Would having a skeletal structure like wolverine give you metal poisoning in real life?

I suppose it depends on the metal. Some metals like titanium are pretty much nonreactive (probably why they're used in implants). Others, like mercury, you don't want anywhere near your body, even in trace amounts.

Since Adamantium is a made up metal, it can have whatever properties the writers want it to.

Adamantium's properties contains " extremely stable molecular structure" which implies that it won't be toxic - raw metals usually need to be chemically converted before they can be toxic.

And seeing as Wolverine isn't stomping around like an elephant I imagine adamantium is light as well. It sounds very close to titanium actually, both are light, strong, seem to osseointegrate, and are biocompatible (at least I assume, wolverine's regeneration would heal the damage but I imagine something not biocompatible would have some visible disruptions.)

edited 24th Sep '14 3:09:57 AM by Slysheen

What reaction would a girl get if her old boyfriend returns after 2 years? Oh yeah, he "died" in a car crash and he returned as a zombie/ghost thing. All I could think was "horror" but she used to like him a lot, and for the most part he appears human. (I would use her personality but its giving me no clear results)

(Sorry it's so specific, it's a fanfic)

After the initial horror wears off, she might desperately try to determine if she can restore him somehow.

Realistically speaking, what could Type II and Type III civilizations fight over besides ideology, having already mastered the kind of energy output any sane civilization could reasonably be expected to use? If a transitory Type I civilization somehow got mixed up in a war between Type II civilizations or a Type II and a Type III, would they even be able to survive at all, or would they be unknowingly annihilated before they even got a grasp on the kind of technology they'd need to compete/stay alive?

Would trans-universal travel be within the capabilities of a Type II, Type III, or a transitory Type II to begin with?

edited 26th Sep '14 9:27:22 AM by KSPAM

It seem to me that no Type II is going to stand up to a Type III in the first place. A Type I and Type II arent as far apart, so in a war between them, the TI might conceivably survive somehow. (The energy difference between the levels increases as the scales go up).

A Type I might be able to survive a conflict between more advanced civs through cunning (e.g. funnel basically all military resources to defense and use diplomacy and tricks to keep the centre of the conflict as far away from themselves as possible), but they're unlikely to gain anything unless their allies feel generous.

We have no idea if other universes even exist, let alone what it would take to get there, so that's anyone's guess.

I'm gonna operate on the assumption that the minimum requirement for breaching other universes is constructing an artificial black hole, since the concept of them emptying out into other universes is a fairly common one in fiction (even if there's no reason to suspect this is actually the case).

So Type I Is would get annihilated without effort by Type II Is? Also, would a Type II be able to funnel the energy of multiple hypernovas into superweapons and construct such black hole gates, or is that the realm of Type II Is?

edited 26th Sep '14 1:05:14 PM by KSPAM

My understanding is that the definition of a type II is that they only have access to the energy equivalent of a single star. So no.

How much would a human-sized spider weigh?

Is it scaled up proportionately? Because that would cause issues with the Square Cube Law.

Man, fuck the square cube law. Magic all up in this bitch.