Mod Idea: Radiation Realism

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Mod Idea: Radiation Realism

Postby MeanderingBeing on 08 Feb 2010 00:18

Just an idea... If I do start working on it, it won't be for a long while as I currently have 2 other projects going. But I thought I should post the shiz here and see what you folks think.

Mind you, this is all based on real life exposure cases, so I really don't know how this would affect gameplay... but merged into me RFP and other mods like AMK or SmP, I think it would make things very interesting... Also, another thing to note is that the lack of medical treatment in the zone would REALLY affect your decisions when it comes to exposing yourself to radiation... One last thing to take into consideration is that the game is fiction, but based on the movie, I would say that it is safe to assume that STALKERs have been gifted by the zone with a resistance to background radiation or internal exposure, as they are constantly eating radioactive animals, yet they aren't dying wholesale from the amounts of contamination they just swallowed... (Caesium137 is found in the muscle structure of indigeonous life in Chernobyl today, which is a radioactive isotope of Caesium formed by fission.) Anyways, more on the different isotopes later...

Anyways, onto the shiz that I was thinking about...

*Different types of radiation, ie, alpha, bete, gamma, and infrared.

*New measurements: I am assuming the default system of radiation density measurement is rads, the roentgen system is more pertinent as it pertains to radiation exposure to organisms.

*Fractionized exposure vs. prolonged exposure: If you are in garbage, for example, and decide to loot the heaps, it would be safer to run atop them to grab an artifact, then turn around and run, only to come back later. But if you were to walk up there, and spend some time looking around, your chances of fatality would drastically increase... even if you got a smaller total dose. This is because when an organism is exposed to radiation, cell fatality is at a near 90% in severe cases, and more or less half in moderate cases. But if you recieve a larger dose, but it is broken up over different times, your cells have a moment to recover and regenerate.

*Dosimeter built into PDA, tells you your current exposure levels...

*Different effects from different levels of exposure: This would be measured in "Levels" where your total radiation expsoure over the course of the game is measured. Yes, this means that each time you get irradiated, you are essentially increasing your chance to randomly die in the middle of the game. Hence why I say this will really affect your decisions... game symptoms will be based on real life symptoms but adjusted for the purpose of gameplay, while real life symptoms will be in (parentheses).

-Level 1: 15rem prolonged, 20rem fractionized... No effect
-Level 2: 40rem prolonged, 50rem fractionized... No effect (white blood cells count goes down)
-Level 3: 85rem prolonged, 100rem fractionized... Slight health loss, dizziness, and slight nasuea 6 game hours after exposure [oh yes, that means you'll be hearing marked one gag...] (increased chance of infection, possible sterility)
-Level 4: 180rem prolonged, 200rem fractionized... Slight Health loss, dizziness, occasional vomiting, and fatigue for those sleeping bag mods [yep, I want to animate stalkers vomiting!] 6 hours after exposure, followed by a period of ten days without symptoms... only for them to return in a more mild case. (fatigue, infection, sterility
-Level 5: 275rem prolonged, 300rem fractionized... Moderate healthloss, mild vomiting 4 hours after exposure, 30% chance to randomly die in 30 game days, 8 day latent period (hair loss, fatigue, infection and illness, spontaneous sterility)
-Level 6: 370rem prolonged, 400rem fractionized... Moderate health loss, bleeding orifices, mild vomitting 4 hours after exposure, 6 day latent period, 40% chance of dying in 30 days (same as last level, but with bleeding)
-Level 7: 565rem, 600rem... Moderately severe health loss, bleeding, common vommiting, dizziness 2 hours after exposure and lasts 2 days, 3 day latent period, after which level 6 symptoms return for short time, 80% chance to die in 30 days (infection, bleeding orifices, internal bleeding, sterility)
-Level 8: 700rem, 1000rem... Severe health loss, vomiting, bleeding, inability to move, severe dizziness 30 minutes after exposure lasting 2 days, 5 day latent phase followed by death by bleeding. 100% chance of death after 14 days. (pretty much the same)
Level 9: 3000rem, 5000rem... Spontaneous projectile vomiting, severe dizziness, profusely bleeding orifices, internal bleeding, burning immediately after exposure. Latent phase of 7 days, followed by death by projectile diarrhea, bleeding, urination, intense pain, and coma... Chance of dying after 7 days is 200%... You will not survive this level of exposure. (pretty much the same)
-Level 10: More than 5000rem... Death within 24 hours by combination of all above symptoms... except way worse. This level of exposure will be very brief, but high in density. If you thought level 9 was bad, you'll probably find yourself exposing yourself to this level of radiation for the sole purpose of seeing how horrible this is...

Unfortunately, I have to cut this off here. Gotta run to work. When I finish my homework on radioactive isotopes, I'll come back and update this....

Cheers!
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Re: Mod Idea: Radiation Realism

Postby 3040Krag on 08 Feb 2010 02:06

I'm a registered Nuclear Medicine Technologist. Checking my texts, a simpler and more realistic table could be (each higher exposure generally includes the symptoms of the preceding lower exposures) as below. When discussing dose, the rem (Roentgen Equivalent Man) is not as precise a measure as the rad (radiation absorbed dose) as it takes into account actual radiation absorption. I also assume you're addressing acute radiation affects and not stochastic (random) effects such as eventual cancer. The values are generally listed in ranges because general health affects the required dose:

Acute Radiation Lethality

Prodromal, dose 100 Rads: Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, leukopenia (low white blood cell count)

Hematopoietic, 100-1000 Rads: Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, decrease in red and white blood cells, decrease in platelets. hemorrhage, infection. Death in 6-8 weeks

Gastrointestinal, 600-1000 Rads: Severe nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, lethargy, anemia, leukopenia, hemorrhage, infection, electrolyte imbalance, and emaciation. Death in 3-10 days.

Cerebrovascular, 5000 Rads and above: Same as hematipoietic and gastrointestinal, plus excessive nervousness, loss of vision, confusion, lack of coordination, burning sensation on the skin, loss of consciousness, disorientation, shock, periods of agitation alternating with stupor, edema, loss of equilibrium, meningitis, prostration, respiratory distress, vasculitis, coma.

Latent, 100-10000 Rads: No symptoms, after initial symptoms like those above, a period of time begins with no symptoms. This can be minutes to weeks in length, depending on the absorbed dose. For all but the prodromal dose, death is certain after the period of no symptoms ends.

The range between 1000 and 5000 Rads hasn't been well studied due to lack of accidents, but the prognosis is death in any case.

Gamma rays - like x-rays, it takes a certain amount of lead or other material to sheild you. Gamma rays act like light, all that's required for exposure is a source. Of the three, causes the least damage to the body.
Beta rays - an electron of an atom that's travelling at a high speed. Stopped by a sheet of plexiglass. Beta only causes problems when beta emitters are inhaled or ingested. Damage is great, but not as great as alpha.
Alpha rays - a neutron of an atom that's travelling at a very high speed. Stopped by a sheet of paper. Alpha only causes problems when alpha emitters are inhaled or ingested. The most damaging form of radiation.

The three ways to minimize exposure to radiation are time, distance and sheilding.

Time is linear - the longer you spend time near a source, the more you get.

Distance varies by the inverse square of your distance from the source. 2x farther away gives 1/4 the exposure. 4x farther away gives 1/16 the exposure.

For gamma rays, shielding can be lead, tungsten, even earth. The more dense the substance, the more shielding it gives.

For beta rays, shielding is a thin piece of plexiglass. Beta requires intimate contact with cells to damage them, the outer layer of our skin is ample protection against environmental beta. Inhaled or ingested beta emitters can cause great damage.

For alpha rays, shielding is a piece of paper. Otherwise, they cause great damage when ingested just as do beta.

Radiation sickness is actually quite complex. You might want to keep any game model as simple as possible to avoid highly complicated scenarios. As you can see in the chart I copied, anything over 100 Rads most likely results in death. Since we all want Strelok to live, you could model it as simply as enough to make you sick and enough to kill. Any finer distinction really doesn't matter as there's nothing Strelok can do except be ill.
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Re: Mod Idea: Radiation Realism

Postby MeanderingBeing on 08 Feb 2010 03:37

Damn dude. I spend weeks doing research for my homework, and you single-handedly outshine my knowledge.... :) THANKS! :) Please share some more! :P I fiend for knowledge! :P

Er... >> Anyways, I appreciate the help, mate.
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Re: Mod Idea: Radiation Realism

Postby 3040Krag on 08 Feb 2010 05:27

After two years drubbing it into the peanut I call my brain so I could pass my board exams, I'd better know.

To simplify my long ramble, the simplest way to add radiation would be to add two levels: sick and dead. What parameters must be met to reach either aren't so much medical as they are related to gameplay. Set the parameters so as to make the game "interesting" in the manner firebites make NEWSA+Simbion "interesting."

Two ways to get irradiated: by coming near to a gamma source, or by eating food contaminated with alpha and/or beta emitters. You might want to start with this kind of simplicity, and get it working. Then you can consider other aspects.

Such as, do you want to include short decay nasty radionuclides like Iodine-131 (8 day half-life, beta emitter), medium decay nuclides like Cesium-137 (30.7 year half-life), long decay nuclides like uranium-238 (half-life 4.47 billion years :mozilla_surprised: ), or a mix? Since we already have anti-rad drugs, I like the Iodine-131 as a candidate. It can destroy the thyroid gland, which is the only reason why non-radioactive Iodine salt is given to people exposed to nuclear fallout - the iodine salt saturates the thyroid gland so it doesn't incorporate I-131. But the body still gets radiated until it's eliminated, and 8 days for the dose to reduce by half is an eternity in STALKER.

Do you want to consider effective half-life? For instance, the body eliminates I-131 through the urine, tears and sweat, plus I-131 decays. So, the effective half-life of I-131 is an inverse product of the biological half-life and the physical half-life.

Cesium settles into the bones, and with it's long half-life tends to suppress bone marrow (by killing it) for a long time after ingestion (effectively the rest of the person's life). Radioactive radon gas decays into 7 different daughter radionuclides, each of which is either an alpha or a beta emitter. This is why radon is such a nasty gas to breathe.
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Re: Mod Idea: Radiation Realism

Postby 3040Krag on 08 Feb 2010 05:47

Carrying it further.

While there aren't many, if any, for radionuclides, you might want to consider an expensive "cure" using chelating agents. Kind of like the virus cure in Oblivion Lost (or was it Priboi Story?). Chelating agents are used (for instance) to rid a body of lead. They're a compound that have an affinity for lead that transpose a benign compound for the lead stored in the body and leach the lead onto them. Proper chelating agents can be eliminated by the body, so giving them to a lead-poisoned patient allows the lead to be "drained" from the body.
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Re: Mod Idea: Radiation Realism

Postby ket on 09 Mar 2010 03:34

This is a great idea, but its not going to be very easy to implement. I can say from personal experience of polishing X-Ray to the point you need sunblock and sun glasses, its a real challenge implementing everything you want to create a ultimate realism experience. Fundamentally the game can handle it, but X-Ray just loves to prattle around in the background and bug out on non-issues. If you get a working version of this going I'd love to see it :-bd
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