If a kaiju really emerged

[Hand of Evil]

As to the missile and such against the Kaiju skin...it is capable of withstanding the pressures of the deep, 19000 PSI...and it does not explode when it comes to the surface, that is impressive. This could be interesting limit in tech v.s. armor; ie, weapons are designed to be effective against current armor.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Kaiju seemingly violate all kinds of laws- what do they breathe? Given their size, it almost has to be something more plentiful than oxygen,


What do they metabolize...what do they eat?













What do they POOP?

 

[Bullgrit]

As to the missile and such against the Kaiju skin...it is capable of withstanding the pressures of the deep, 19000 PSI...and it does not explode when it comes to the surface, that is impressive. This could be interesting limit in tech v.s. armor; ie, weapons are designed to be effective against current armor.

This is the kind of observation and wondering I like in these discussions.

Basically, assuming X works, what does that mean for Y?

Bullgrit

 

[Bullgrit]

Kaiju seemingly violate all kinds of laws- what do they breathe? Given their size, it almost has to be something more plentiful than oxygen,

Nitrogen?

What do they metabolize...what do they eat?

Buildings?

What do they POOP?

Nothing? They use everything and waste nothing?

Bullgrit

 

[Umbran]

And that's pretty big. I don't know how big that is compared to a dinosaur.

A T-rex was perhaps 12 feet tall at the hip, 40 feet long from nose to tip of tail.

When we say kaiju, think Godzilla. A monster that is taller than many urban buildings. In Pacific Rim, the monsters are on the order of 200 feet tall - much larger than any known dinosaur.

I agree. The assumption that monsters are made out of anti-weapons material is always dubious and usually a plot device by the GM to force you to find the one secret vulnerability of the monster.

See note about the size. By physics, the thing does not stand up and move around unless it is made out of something with greater physical strength than materials known to man. If it has what we'd consider a normal skeleton, then the flesh also have to have superior physical characteristics, because it has to hold itself onto those bones. If it has an exoskeleton, well, then that stuff has to be tough to hold it up. Either way, it is not just a bag of normal flesh. It'd collapse into a big blob on the ground if it were.

 

[Morrus]

It's sort of like saying, because a rocket ship can't actually reach the speed of light, we can't really discuss what happens in a rocket ship traveling at the speed of light. Because a rocket ship traveling at lightspeed breaks all physical laws, who knows what could happen in such a situation?

It's not, and we have equations which tell us what would happen in that situation. Einstein wrote about relativity a century ago, and people have been writing about it ever since.

We also have equations which tell us what would happen if a creature was that big. It's basic structural integrity stuff.

My point was/is that we, humans, have figured out how to build immense things that were once impossible, but we figured out how to work within physical laws.

We didn't break the laws of physics. But yes, OK, if you want cluster bombs to hurt kaiju, they hurt kaiju. There's nothing to say otherwise. Nothing to say they should, and there's nothing to say they shouldn't, either. If you're talking about doing things which are impossible, it's whatever you want!

For myself, I want the cluster bombs to turn kaiju into flying unicorns. We just happen to think it's impossible now, but, like you say, we figured out how to do things that were once thought impossible.

Haven't we had discussions on zombies? Without someone saying, well who knows what weapons would work to kill a zombie, because zombies are magical.

That's not a refutation of any logic here. The only reason we haven't has that discussion is - simply and only - because nobody wants to. We can have that discussion if you want to. But there hasn't been a recent movie with indestructible zombies. If there was, I'm sure we'd be having the discussion; but you're right - who knows what weapons would work to kill a zombie (or a vampire or a werewolf or a fairy)?

 

[Hand of Evil]

Nitrogen?

Buildings?

Nothing? They use everything and waste nothing?

Bullgrit

If we go by the movie, the waste material was a toxic sludge, which only makes killing them more problematic as you are salting your lands every time you kill one.

 

[Janx]

See note about the size. By physics, the thing does not stand up and move around unless it is made out of something with greater physical strength than materials known to man. If it has what we'd consider a normal skeleton, then the flesh also have to have superior physical characteristics, because it has to hold itself onto those bones. If it has an exoskeleton, well, then that stuff has to be tough to hold it up. Either way, it is not just a bag of normal flesh. It'd collapse into a big blob on the ground if it were.

So, under the asssumption that the Kaiju is made of NewMatter in a NewConfiguration (like the various ways we find better structures out of carbon, spider silk, titanium, etc), the Kaiju must be designed to survive high pressure under deep water AND be able to survive "normal" pressure on the surface. A layman would asssume the latter is irrelevant if it's sturdy enough to survive the former, but let's assume we at least don't have a jelly fish problem (where outside of water, the thing can't support itself).

Within that framework, why do we assume the kaiju is indestructible? Being able to withstand large pressures and strains spread across the surface or joint is not the same as being immune to penetration attacks.

Elephants are big, bulky and have thick skin. A .50 cal still drops them because high mass, high velocity rounds are still VERY small in comparison to the surface they are striking. A surface that was designed to resist a broad force and stress, rather than a high force, small surface attack (like .22s penetrating bullet proof vests).

In any event, I'd like to see sciency refutation or support of the point that we are more likely to build a better bullet to kill a kaiju than a battle mech to kill a Kaiju. the kaiju's system is more likely to withstand rough and tumble brawling (as it can with its own kin and original environment) than faster, massier bullets fired at it. Especially given that if a kaiju has special design/materials that enables it to exist, we're less likely to master that in time to build robots capable of the same, than we are to build a better gun.

 

[Umbran]

Attempted application of logic to what is essentially magic feels like a rather fruitless exercise, though.

Most of science fiction is based off of taking current science, moving into a place where it is fantastic, and asking, "What if?" Application of logic like this is how science fiction happens, Morrus.

If you don't find anything valuable in the exercise, that's fine. But could you stop raining on the parade, please?

Nitrogen?

A terrestrial creature breathes to do two things - bring in a chemical agent that makes its metabolic processes work, and expel the results of those processes. Nitrogen is neither a strong oxidator, nor a strong reducer. It does not stand well at all as a part of a chemical energy metabolism. While you can build energetic metabolisms on other gases, what we have is oxygen. Unless it is carrying a huge tank of some other agent, that's what it has to work with, so it better at least be able to use the oxygen, or not need to breathe at all.

Nothing? They use everything and waste nothing?

If you want us to stay with normal physics, this is not possible. Thermodynamics requires there be waste. No process is 100% efficient.

 

[Morrus]

So, under the asssumption that the Kaiju is made of NewMatter in a NewConfiguration (like the various ways we find better structures out of carbon, spider silk, titanium, etc), the Kaiju must be designed to survive high pressure under deep water AND be able to survive "normal" pressure on the surface. A layman would asssume the latter is irrelevant if it's sturdy enough to survive the former, but let's assume we at least don't have a jelly fish problem (where outside of water, the thing can't support itself).

Within that framework, why do we assume the kaiju is indestructible? Being able to withstand large pressures and strains spread across the surface or joint is not the same as being immune to penetration attacks.

Elephants are big, bulky and have thick skin. A .50 cal still drops them because high mass, high velocity rounds are still VERY small in comparison to the surface they are striking. A surface that was designed to resist a broad force and stress, rather than a high force, small surface attack (like .22s penetrating bullet proof vests).

In any event, I'd like to see sciency refutation or support of the point that we are more likely to build a better bullet to kill a kaiju than a battle mech to kill a Kaiju. the kaiju's system is more likely to withstand rough and tumble brawling (as it can with its own kin and original environment) than faster, massier bullets fired at it. Especially given that if a kaiju has special design/materials that enables it to exist, we're less likely to master that in time to build robots capable of the same, than we are to build a better gun.

They have skintight bio-forcefields like Superman, which provide resistance in proportion to the kinetic energy of the attack. So a bullet bounces off, but a slower punch hurts it a bit more. Problem is if you slow stuff down too much, the bio-forcefield doesn't help it, but its skin is tough enough to withstand slow stuff like that. As it happens, the sweet point of max damage is the amount of kinetic energy provided by a giant robot punch - not so slow as to bounce off the skin, not so fast as to be nullified by the forcefield.

Something like that?