Realistic Playing with Fire and Shock and Awe powers

I know that the required secondary powers page has some decent advice for shock and awe, but here's my question: How would these two powers work, in a scientific or at least artistic license/willing suspension of disbelief way. Molecule manipulation? Control of thermal energy? I want to have at least a basic understanding of how they could work

I think that the answer to this would depend heavily on such things as the specifics of the power, how great a break from current science you're willing to accept, etc. Even then, there are probably a few ways to implement it.

You refer to two powers, but only mention one (Shock and Awe—which is one power (an electrical power), I believe); what was the other power? Playing with Fire?

Yes, it was playing with fire.

So for Shock and Awe i'm looking for something that is either the typical trope with the required secondary powers to make it look right and what those would need to be, OR something that would look like shock and awe but isn't actually electricity/lightning.

For Playing with fire, i'm looking for a (semi) scientific way to explain how it works, why the human flamethrower doesn't get burned, and if the concepts behind playing with fire would equal any other abilities.

Basically what's on the required secondary powers page, but a more in depth, theoretical way to explain how it could work

The problem here is: what do you mean by realistic? It's kind of hard to think of a realistic way for someone to shoot lightning out their dangly bits.

Do you just want a good-quality jargon explaining what they're doing?

Both could be a subset of spontaneous plasma generation, acting by ionizing the air in controlled ways. Then you could simply hand wave pyrokinesis as the production of low-energy plasma, for instance.

edited 27th May '14 11:02:09 PM by Poisonarrow

Realistic= something that won't get a "physics do not work that way" reaction, which seems to be the main complaint about powers like these. I'm trying to figure out something that would provoke a "Huh, that actually makes a bit of sense"

I mostly want to know how it works so I can accurately describe it, how it moves, what it looks like, how it would affect the environment around it.

Edit: This sums up the problems i'm having with "Playing with Fire" :

"Cryokinesis / Pyrokinesis - Manipulators of heat energy are kicking the laws of thermodynamics in the nads. Either they are explicitly creating/destroying energy (that's the Law of Conservation) or - in the case of those channeling the energy around - they're violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics by 'decreasing entropy.' This sort of violation might not be a full-fledged secondary power, but it's worth thinking about for Harder or Deconstructive works. Secondly, being immune to their own powers is quite important to prevent self-inflicted frostbite or burns. If the power is described as the ability to create and destroy heat energy, instead of explicitly heat or cold, it implies the character should be able to pull double-duty as both a cryokinetic and pyrokinetic.

edited 27th May '14 11:37:22 PM by whymia

Hm... if it helps any, keep in mind that voltage is a result of the difference in potential between two points (hence why it is also known as potential difference). Part of the problem for Shock & Awe is that air is a good insulator. So if your character can create a channel of ionised air, and they can create a difference in potential between themselves and the target, you should probably be able to get a lightning bolt.

As an aside, being able to control electricity will also allow them to generate electromagnetic fields. Why? Because a conductor with an electrical charge moving through it will induce a magnetic field (which is known as inductance), and if placed close to another conductor it may induce a charge in the other conductor (mutual inductance). So with a little thought any enemy with significant amounts of metal on their body are going to be having a really bad day.

Another thing to consider is that generally it's not the voltage that kills - it's the current. A current of as little as 50mA can kill. So to be a threat your character doesn't necessarily have to pump out kilovolts.

A lot of this is simplified and may be incorrect, so please double check! Hope it helps.

As for playing with fire, there's two way to go about it.

1. If your character moves heat and doesn't just "generate fire", logically they would be able to make cold as well by pushing all the heat out of an area. How they move that heat is up to you: consider looking up real life cooling and heating systems.

2. If they just make fire, they'll need to produce some sort of catalyst or fuel to do so. Controlling the fire could be just making fuel trails. Also, consider looking up the traits of asbestos and other fire-retardant objects.

On a related trope there are a few real-life people with ridiculous electricity survivability, so examining their traits could prove interesting. (see [here http://www.cracked.com/article_19661_6-real-people-with-mind-blowing-mutant-superpowers.html] Yes, cracked is a real source, shut up! )

Also, I'm not sure a rubber suit would help you survive shock and awe powers. if they could generate enough power, they could probably make it heat up enough that it would burn you or melt to you.

edited 28th May '14 4:05:03 AM by doorhandle

Not just that, but if it's powerful enough they can simply cause the insulator to break down (or the electricity will arc). Even circuit protective devices such as fuses can only take so much current - known as their breaking capacity - before the electricity will simply arc and keep flowing regardless. Resistive heating is something to keep in mind though, yes.

Electricity is nasty stuff.

edited 28th May '14 4:54:15 AM by Flanker66

All I can say is if you've got a guy who's got fire powers, make sure he can turn them off and can't burn himself on his own fire, otherwise this will happen:

I dunno much about the subject matter, but I think it would be pretty interesting if there weren't any immediately obvious secondary powers, and the hero can burn or electrocute himself if he's not careful. Makes him more of a analytical thinker aware of his surroundings. Of course, some sort of protection is quite necessary, but I'm just saying you don't have to make the protection utterly perfect. It seems somewhat more realistic, given you're going for some sort of Deconstruction here.

To have Playing with Fire, in addition to some sort of energy manipulation, you would also need to manipulate some sort of fuel. You can't just make a fireball in the air without some sort of fuel. All you'll get is some very hot oxygen.

This would give you gaseous manipulation. For example, you could suck the air out of someone's lungs. Or suffocate them in methane.

edited 28th May '14 11:49:27 AM by Washington213

@ Flanker—So would something like this http://youtu.be/RLWIBrweSU8 be a workable idea? Having the character be able to create a channel of ionized air, and make the target react with a positive streamer? And possibly being able to make it much smaller so it's controllable and doesn't fry things he didn't mean to fry?

For the magnetic field stuff, could I get that in layman's terms? and your second comment...

Awesome stuff, thank you!

@ doorhangle What kind of fuel or catalyst would be needed?

And the cracked.com stuff was brilliant, especially the electric shock proof guy. Sweeeeeet! Thank you!

@ max video not working, what is it?

@ nadir so having them be resistant to it up to a point would force them to find a way to protect themselves or suffer burns? I agree, i think that'd be a cool subversion

@ washington super heated oxygen huh? Sounds like a subversion of Convection Schmonvection waiting to happen. That actually sounds really awesome. *goes off to hunt through tvtropes....*

My video was of Cody Impossible, a minor character from The Venture Brothers; he's a parody of the Human Torch. His "power" is that every time he's exposed to oxygen, he bursts into flame. He can't control it, and he feels every agonizing second of it. For a long time, he was kept in a deprivation tank to keep him from the pain, but eventually his ex-brother-in-law Professor Richard Impossible found a use for him, trapping him in a big tank at the center of Impossible Industries to provide 100% green energy to the whole building.

Thaaaaat is horrifying. Talk about blessed with suck.

I think so, but you should always double-check what I'm saying. I might be learning to do electrical engineering, but that doesn't mean I don't mess up occasionally.

But yes, I think it would be possible, since by ionising the air it would allow a stream of electrons to flow more easily through it - and if the voltage or current is high enough, expect to see a bolt of electricity.

It may be useful to look at videos/images of electricity arcing, and try to visualise the flow of electrons through the channel.

If your character can control his output, yes to that first bit. However, it will be more difficult to control where the electricity goes. As you probably already know, electricity follows the path of least resistance. So if it's travelling from A (your character) to B (the opponent), and there's an object nearby to the ionised channel with a low enough resistance, the electricity might decide to arc to that object instead, since it's a more "attractive" option than B.

So your character should probably have fine control over ionising the air, or at least keep in mind nearby conductive items when preparing to zap something.

Sure.

Imagine a coil of wire. The coil is your conductor. Now imagine current (or a charge) flows through the coil. If the current changes (i.e. increases/decreases), this will cause a back emf (think a "reverse" voltage opposing the voltage flow) to flow. This is known as self-inductance, or the ability for a conductor to induce a charge in itself. Any conductor with a steady charge flowing through it will produce an electromagnetic field (this is known as Oersted's Law). And, of course, it logically follows that a changing electromagnetic field can create a charge in a conductor.

Now, imagine the coil's placed next to another coil. If the first coil's current changes, this will induce a current in the other coil. Why? This is because its magnetic field will interact with the second conductor. This will create a current - or charge - in the conductor, and demonstrates the interaction between magnetic fields and electricity. This phenomenon is known as mutual inductance, as the conductor is causing a mutual voltage in the other coil. It's also the basis of modern transformers - they use this effect to step up (increase) or step down (decrease) voltage for transmission.

I hope that was simple enough - I'm still a student, so I probably got some stuff wrong.

Hopefully you can also see how your character's control of electricity could probably allow him to affect magnetic fields. Though if he's not careful, significant currents/voltages may cause nearby metallic objects to distort due to the intense magnetic field (this is part of the reason why short circuits are bad - it causes a lot of current to flow, and this exerts powerful magnetic forces that severely damage things like switchgear).

No problem! But seriously, I can't stress this enough, double check what I'm saying against what others say. I don't want to give you incorrect ideas!

You also said that current is what kills people and not amount of voltage. Could you explain that too, please?

What makes an object/ person have a lower resistance? This may be something he would need to avoid

My college fu is somewhat rusty, but I remember the classic analogy to a water pipe. Basically imagine a water pipe with a pump. The water flowing through the pipe is the current, while the voltage is force exerted by the pump.

What you don't want is the "water" getting into a person's body; I forget the exact amount but low currents can already disrupt cardiac activity. On the other hand high voltage wouldn't matter if there's no "water" to pump through the pipe.

The classic example: being wet.

As 'little' as 10-30 mA (0.01-0.03A) can kill and that's pretty much the same current a normal LED is driven at. But to get that one need the voltage to "push" it through. So a car battery that could give tens or hundreds of amps at ~12v is pretty much harmless to a human as it lack the voltage.(Well, unless you lick the terminals or something.)

edited 30th May '14 7:00:39 AM by m8e

Thank you!

So if it's a foggy morning, that would be a very bad time to use those powers?

edited 30th May '14 10:36:47 AM by whymia

Would you mind question from me? What about thunder? How loud would be few meters long lightning bolt? Would character have to use ear plugs?

Ninja'd, but basically what Fillerdude said (it's also a very useful way to picture voltage and current!). A little google fu told me it was a bit of a chicken and the egg type question: the current is what does the damage, but current is related to voltage (the exact equation is V=IR, or Voltage = Current x Resistance).

On that note, it's a bit misleading of me to say that current is solely the deadly thing - a high voltage is still going to really ruin your day. So if you want to be nitpicky both are killers.

• Materials: if he is wearing/holding an item with a low resistance - i.e. a conductor, such as many metals - this will be a problem. Insulators such as rubber have the opposite effect.
• Wetness: As someone else said, if an object is wet it conducts electricity more easily.
• Temperature: Some materials conduct electricity more easily at certain temperatures.
• Some rather more esoteric stuff: In the case of human beings, our resistance can range anywhere from a few thousand ohms to tens of thousands of ohms IIRC. Our resistance will depend on our body type, age, gender, etc. Unfortunately I cannot say just how much it changes things.

I believe there's something of a "scale", though it's by no means 100% correct at all times:

• Perception occurs at currents of 1-5mA. This means you can feel the current, but nothing more.
• Voluntary muscular contraction occurs at 10mA. Basically what happens when you get a shock from static electricity and draw away because it's painful.
• Involuntary muscular contraction occurs at 15mA and above. Your muscles contract uncontrollably and you may end up being forced to hold on to whatever is electrocuting you. Flailing may lead to injuries. You will probably need someone else to remove you from the electrical source.
• Ventricular fibrillation: occurs at 40-50mA. Your heart is disrupted by the electricity and so it "flutters", unable to produce a strong, consistent heartbeat. For obvious reasons this is highly dangerous!

An important thing to keep in mind is that depending on the currents/voltages involved, you might get away perfectly fine only to drop dead a few days later due to kidney failure. This is because your kidneys have a high water content, and so electricity is likely to take a path through the kidneys as it goes through your body. Internal burns are another less well known hazard of electrocution. Also expect severe external burns as well.

I took the current figures from online, since my college fu was weak.

I know that there have been cases where people struck by lightning have suffered burst eardrums.

A quick search online reveals that thunder produces 120dB. I believe this is above the safe threshold for human hearing. To give a sense of perspective, this is as loud as an aircraft taking off nearby.