Character with the power to redistribute kinetic force?

I've been mulling over powers for one of my characters, and one of my latest ideas for a defensive ability has been a weird take on a force field.

What if I give this character the power to redistribute force applied to any point on their body to their whole body instead. For instance, if the character is shot in the head with a bullet, they could control how the force of the bullet is applied, spreading it out over the entirety of the body, which should make the projectile non-lethal should it not?

I thought about this power for a while longer and it occurred to me that if the character knows how much force to distribute to each part of the body, and if they could do it on an atomic level they could become invulnerable.

I thought to myself, death is caused by structural damage to the brain, but if force from a projectile is applied properly through out the whole body, even if the character was hit by something like a rail gun, the even distribution of force would keep the structure of the brain in tact, the whole thing would move at the same speed, in one piece.

IS there something I am missing? or am I thinking this through correctly? Any thoughts?

Keep in mind: lethaltiy is more then just how hard your hit, it's also about what your hit with. A large caliber bullet does little actually damage since it just goes in one side and out the other, A smaller one enters then starts to tumble going sides or even bouncing around inside a body, a hollow point spreads the force around and tears a great hole in the target. Giving a high caliber bullet a larger surface area may actually mean it does more damage without some other secondary power.

Further more even if you can spread the force around (Assuming your mind worked fast enough to do with bullets) at some point enough force, even evenly disturbed around the body well snap bones and pulp organs, you right in that as long as the brain is alive we are alive, but if you lose your body's support system to keep it alive then your capital 'd' Dead regardless.

To be sure you can likely increase the caliber of bullet you could take, against things like small arms you could likely spread the force across your body, but against rifle cartridges or heavy machine guns rounds like the M2 browning (or even just massed small arms) the odds of being 'bullet proof' go down.

And of course if your up against prepared villein then they may not even try to use bullets and just use something as simple as pepper spray on you.

So in a more limited application it won't do so well against larger caliber rounds. I see what you are saying, a larger caliber round is less lethal because so little of it's force is transferred to the body when it passes through.

In a more perfect application though, wouldn't this power lead to invulnerability? If the character is shot with a .50 caliber and they redistribute the force so that it applies force evenly across every atom of the body, wouldn't that negate all structural damage from the impact?

negative, I think.

saying 'it's spreads across every atom of my body' is the same thing as saying 'it's evenly spread across every part of my body,' so it might mean it's the same effect.

a more interesting application would be to direct all the force to one part of your body, have it explode but leave the rest of you intact. "the bullet? ya it blew the top layer of skin off my hand (which was dead anyway because that's how skin works) but I'm fine." Of course enough force may make a part of your body explode, like literally explode like a Prince Rupert drop (which refuses to format correctly so just google it and look up it's wiki page) , which may be strong enough to cause damage to the rest of you beyond what you can redistribute.

on the other hand, well, I'm sure you could find a use for being able to make parts of your own body explode just by storing up the kentic energy a human gains by walking.

edited 17th Oct '15 3:30:21 PM by dragonkingofthestars

I don't think physics are on your side on this one.

The amount of force a single bullet imparts is still significant. Even when you spread that over a large enough area to make it less-than-lethal with a 'vest, you still bruise and/or fracture bones, especially with the larger and faster rounds. (That's taking a bullet-sized point of force and spreading it out over a slightly larger area. Spreading a .50 cal over the 1.5 to 2 square meters of skin we all have would make it survivable... I think, but I'm working off of muzzle energy and my math isn't great, so someone else should check my numbers.) I get that you're doing the atom thing over surface area, but it still sounds like it would cause problems to have all your atoms shift slightly like that.

There's also the question of how that force actually dissipates, with the "atom" explanation. Maybe your guy just heats up slightly every time it happens, to burn off the excess energy? (At this point you've got your OneBigLie, no harm done.)

And: what happens when your guy is hit multiple times, at a high rate of fire? He's really likely to feel that.

I'd also like to point out that a "Inertia(l) Canceller" isn't a new thing in sci-fi (though when the concept is used it is often assumed to be interchangeable with momentum...), and some ability to cancel out a projectile's force before your guy's Kinetic Communism () kicks in would A) greatly improve his survivability and B) not be entirely out of place in a story where a guy like that is running around and getting shot at.

Humans aren't harmed by acceleration so much as we're harmed by the deformation due to acceleration. If you can accelerate every single bit of the human body at the same time then no deformation can occur.

This still makes you vulnerable to crushing though.