# If a kaiju really emerged



## Bullgrit (Aug 5, 2013)

I took my sons to _Pacific Rim_ yesterday, and this thought came to mind afterward:

What if a kaiju really did emerge from the ocean, today, in this real world, with our real tech and social/political/military situations?

For those of you who haven't seen the movie, just assume Godzilla, or the _Cloverfield_ monster. They're all basically the same concepts.

A giant beast (~300 feet / ~100 meters tall) rises from the depths of the Pacific ocean -- say, the Mariana Trench -- and heads towards land -- say, Japan. How soon would it's presence be known? What would/could we do? How would the world react? How could it be defeated? How far would it get, how much damage would it wreak before being defeated? Its only motivation is destruction, (although we couldn't know that, at least in the beginning).

Assuming it gets defeated, how would our world change/react to the idea that such a threat exists/ed? Using modern tech, or tech that could be reasonably assumed to be quickly developed based on our current scientific knowledge, how could we determine if there are other kaiju in the depths.

And finally: if it were possible for such a creature to even exist, to move its own body weight, etc., would it be impervious to our current military tech? That is, if a creature could grow and live and wreak destruction at that size, (and come from 6+ miles below the ocean surface), would its body be too thick and tough for bunker busters and nuclear explosions?

Bullgrit


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## Umbran (Aug 5, 2013)

It is difficult to answer most of your questions.  The reason that we don't see living things that large in our world is because we *can't*.  They aren't physically possible, at least not with the materials and biology here.  So, if the monster exists, it has some things we don't know about.  That makes it difficult to determine its capabilities.


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## jonesy (Aug 5, 2013)

As much as I like the giant monster movie genre and related stuff, I do think that the effects of an airforce and airdropped weapons are grossly understated in them.

Have the aircraft not fly within ten meters of the monsters. Stay at the far edge of the effective firing range (and in modern combat that range is huge). If you really need close range supervision, send in the cheap kind of drones.

Something like a bunker buster super penetrator can go through more than six meters of reinforced concrete. I doubt a Kaiju could take one to its face and live. Accuracy in the new laser guided busters is within 6 meters. If the battlefield gets smoke interference or something like that, hit them with wire-guided munitions.


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## Hand of Evil (Aug 5, 2013)

I think the warnings would only be hours and be from the tsunami warning system.  People would be warned based on the level of wave the creature produced, which may not be much.  After that, it would be a rampage as options were discussed and the information passed up the chain of command. 

Then a physical assault using standard weapons.  Now, depending where it came ashore, more aggressive weapons (daisy cutters, bunker busters, chemical, etc.) would have to be request from another country (in most cases) and this would still allow more rampage.  

Nukes, well it world happen but only after some major discussion, odds are the UN will have to be informed, other countries and again, the chain of command.  It would be faster if it is in the middle of nowhere but major city, don't see it.  

After that, well if someone has a death ray or space based weapons, we are just food and headed back to the stone age or very deep bunkers.

I think people running down it's throat with 200 pounds of plastic explosives may be an effect killing tool.  It is like a trap I read about for polar bears, spike ball rolled into meat, the bear eats and its stomach acids eats the strings holding the ball and them it punches the gut, causing slow death.


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## frankthedm (Aug 5, 2013)

Well, biggest issue is it is still presunamaly organic material vs E=MC2. What kind of resilience would it _take_ for a critter to _not_ be punctured by a bunker buster?


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## RangerWickett (Aug 5, 2013)

I don't know how we'd trace them back to their portal, but if we could, we'd just place a couple nukes there, have sensors and failsafes, and blow them the instant something came through. In the movie, at least, the monsters were fairly widely spaced chronologically, so you'd have plenty of time to replenish your detonators.


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## Tonguez (Aug 5, 2013)

Omg Greenpeace would be sending in ships to oppose you bloodthirsty lot and turning the Marianas Trench into an international  sanctuary


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## Hand of Evil (Aug 5, 2013)

Tonguez said:


> Omg Greenpeace would be sending in ships to oppose you bloodthirsty lot and turning the Marianas Trench into an international  sanctuary



They die first -


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## Ed_Laprade (Aug 6, 2013)

Well, I never bought the trope that Godzilla couldn't be killed by the armor piercing weapons and high powered high explosive rockets of the 50s, so I'm not buying that modern weapons would be useless. Of course, as Umbran mentioned above, it just ain't possible in the first place. And Jonesy had some pertinent comments as well. But I expect that it would cause a lot of destruction before it got taken down. I think a good fight would be against Godzilla/whatever and a WW II Battleship. Yamato anyone?


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## tomBitonti (Aug 6, 2013)

Wouldn't the portal location be detected within the time it took for ground waves to reach detectors?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_tomography



> It is observed that wave velocity increases with increasing depth from 2–8 km/s in the crust up to 13 km/s in the mantle.




Figuring 4km/s, that would be 14,400 Km/Hr, or about 9,000 Mi/Hr.  For a surface wave, that would reach the most distant point in about 1.33 hours, or about 80 minutes.  Plus or minus a factor of 2 gives from 160 min to 40 min.

Telling what the disturbance is would be harder (I imagine), especially if it is deep underwater.

A creature of the sizes depicted walking along open ground would be detectable, and the track would be known within the time limits, above.

A creature swimming might not be detectable hardly at all.

I tend to agree that modern ordinance is hugely understated in movies, and would make mincemeat of the Kaiju.  However, for such a creature to exist, it has to use exotic materials (or perhaps it carries a field of other-dimensional physics).  We could make assumptions based on the required strength of materials and work from there.  That's beyond my skills.  Anyone able to figure this out?

Thx!

TomB


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## Umbran (Aug 6, 2013)

frankthedm said:


> Well, biggest issue is it is still presunamaly organic material vs E=MC2. What kind of resilience would it _take_ for a critter to _not_ be punctured by a bunker buster?




Well, bunker busters aren't generally nuclear.  And if you're considering nukes, you have the question of which is more damaging - the kaiju or the thing you use to kill it.

As noted previously - the kaiju present several issues in terms of physics.  For example, what we think of as normal materials simply cannot take the dynamic stresses involved in supporting an active moving thing that size, much less one that's walloping around and tearing down buildings.  If we have kaiju, we have materials unknown to current science, and we cannot guess what kind of stuff would be needed to penetrate its skin or otherwise damage it.

Presumably, getting it to eat a fusion bomb would be probably the most outright devastating thing we could do to it.


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## Umbran (Aug 6, 2013)

tomBitonti said:


> Wouldn't the portal location be detected within the time it took for ground waves to reach detectors?




The kaiju themselves are only on the order of the size of buildings.  The portal does not have to be much larger.  On scale of the ocean, even a kaiju is small.  One popping into existence in the deep ocean isn't going to cause notable seismic or tsunami effects.  

The sonar nets set up to detect submarines might catch one, if it when by.

The number of places where such a thing can come ashore without being noticed is small.  Presumably, folks would know about it once the first witnesses picked up their cell phones.  While one walking on land may well be detectable, on the scale of seismic disturbances it is still not large - they don't take down buildings just by walking next to them, for example.  I don't know if it would be at the level where it'd be detect long before human sightings of the thing.


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## Grumpy RPG Reviews (Aug 6, 2013)

Presuming a kaiju was killed in some manner which left enough remains to study - a nuke would likely vaporize it - then much could be learned about how it got around our understanding of biology and structural physics. Which could allow for the creation of jaeger. Which would quickly be used by law enforcement... for our own good. Such things as riot control, enforcing orderly elections, terrorism and drug trafficking interdiction and similar effects to ensure law and order are maintained for the duration of the crisis. Installing and maintaining sensors to detect the kaiju would be awarded in no-bid, secret contracts, as would jaeger construction... for our own good. Potentially problematic organizations, such as Green Peace, the Sierra Club and PETA, would be dismantled and the leadership placed in protective custody. 

Are you familiar with the Shirky Principle?

The kaiju attacks would continue. Forever.


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## sabrinathecat (Aug 6, 2013)

Why would the Jaegers be against "People for the Eating of Tasty Animals"?

There is still a nice, big, US base in Japan, so that would quickly deploy to either destroy or divert the monster (IF the base commander has some scientific background or advisers concerned with environmentalism). I think this would be when the "secret" projected energy weapon the US has developed that can affect people's mood/comfort would come into play very handily. If the creature survives first contact with humanity, someone would try to tag the creature if it leaves alive, just to find a way to track it and determine its intentions.

Aftermath: whole new divisions of science would open up. Extensive research would be done. The US government would declare the Kaiju to be terrorists in order to pump in massive military resources into wiping them out (especially if that is impossible), and then they could have a war on three fronts.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 6, 2013)

If kaiju emerge, I propose feeding them temporary singularities.

If nothing else, it will be fun to watch the result as the universe tries to divide by zero...


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## Tonguez (Aug 6, 2013)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> If kaiju emerge, I propose feeding them temporary singularities.
> 
> If nothing else, it will be fun to watch the result as the universe tries to divide by zero...




OMG  the sheer geekiness of that statement is blinding


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## Bullgrit (Aug 6, 2013)

I love these kinds of discussion, (and that's why I start them). But let's not restrict it to _Pacific Rim_. That's only one movie plot in a genre. Don't assume there's a portal where the kaiju came from, and don't assume there will necessarily be more based on the one movie plot.

Maybe the kaiju had been sleeping/hibernating in the depths. Maybe it spontaneously generated by some conjuction of pressure and temperature and alignment of the planets. Maybe there are more down there waiting. Maybe there is/was only one.

I would think the ascending kaiju would cause a tsunami that could be detected by all the ocean sensors the world has placed around right now. Would the sensors even tell the creature's direction toward Japan? I think those scientists watching for tsunamis and such would detect it and know where its going within a short time, even before it could reach land. But they'd surely only report a tsunami approaching, not a massive monster.

As for fighting it, I highly doubt anyone would nuke the creature as anything but an absolute last resort. And probably not even then while it was in Japan. If it were to finish with Japan and move on to China, maybe China would nuke it on Chinese soil. (I think the US and Russian would also be willing to nuke it on their own land, at least as a last resort.)

I kind of doubt that other nations would strike in another nation's territory. I can't imagine, for instance, China/Russian/US/any sovereign nation giving permission to anyone else to bomb the creature while in it's area. I don't think this kind of event would "bring the world together." At least not in fighting. Perhaps in researching the origin location and future detection. And it would be a competition between nations to learn from the creature. Everyone would want to examine the creature's carcass, and it might even lead to massive war between those competing for access to it. Like, what would happen if it were brought down in one nation after having trampled through one or more others? Or if it was finally brought down in a weak or "Wild West" nation like Afganistan?

As for taking it down, I agree that modern militaries are shown as unrealistically weak in these types of movies. Sure, humans, tanks, and fighter jets would probably be useless. Probably even the biggest non-nuke bombs might not hurt it much. But the penetrative munitions, (bunker busters), would be like a bullet to a normal human. 

Bullgrit


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## Grumpy RPG Reviews (Aug 6, 2013)

Bullgrit said:


> I can't imagine, for instance, China/Russian/US/any sovereign nation giving permission to anyone else to bomb the creature while in it's area.




What makes you think another nation would wait for permission? Why would Russia, China or the US wait for permission, from say Japan, to launch a nuclear attack on the kaiju, while it is still in Tokyo?

Edit; For that matter the nations might start blaming each other for the creation of the kaiju, either by accident or deliberately as a weapon. Further, the nations involved might attempt to corral and direct the beast towards a rival and hamper the ability of the rival to do something about the situation.


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## Umbran (Aug 6, 2013)

Bullgrit said:


> I would think the ascending kaiju would cause a tsunami that could be detected by all the ocean sensors the world has placed around right now.




Nope.  As I noted before, big as they may seem on human scale, they are still small compared to the ocean.  Kaiju are not big enough, and move at only modest speeds.  If it were asleep inside a rock in the asteroid belt, and fell from space and crashed into the ocean, that would probably be noted.  But just waking up and swimming around?  No.  You've got a better bet with sonar nets.

And I still say that you can't count on bunker busters.   This thing must be made of what we'd consider "exotic materials" to merely stand and walk.



> As for fighting it, I highly doubt anyone would nuke the creature as anything but an absolute last resort. And probably not even then while it was in Japan. If it were to finish with Japan and move on to China, maybe China would nuke it on Chinese soil. (I think the US and Russian would also be willing to nuke it on their own land, at least as a last resort.)




Assume that it is stomping around in Japan, and conventional weapons haven't made a dent (as is usual for kaiju), and the thing started stomping toward China... I am not at all convinced that China would not, in the name of saving their own people, try to turn it into a crater *before* it reached Chinese soil - and that'd probably mean getting it while it was sill on land in Japan.  

Remember, the thing is a walking natural disaster.  It levels entire cities.  The city it is in has probably already been destroyed.  Sure, the nuke would kill more people, and make the real estate unusable.  But, they can work out the diplomatic niceties later - it isn't like anyone would mistake it for a prelude to war - the real target is pretty darned obvious, and its potential threat clearly demonstrated already. 



> And it would be a competition between nations to learn from the creature. Everyone would want to examine the creature's carcass, and it might even lead to massive war between those competing for access to it.




That assumes there is a usable carcass.  If you need to nuke it, it (hopefully) vaporizes.  If not, it ends up highly radioactive, if it wasn't already.  You don't need, and probably wouldn't have, a war over it - the expertise (and raw number of people) needed to deal with such a thing doesn't rest in a single nation (even the US).  It'd be scientific consortium time.  And I don't foresee any blame being thrown around for its creation - see previous note about its material properties.  Nobody on the planet could currently engineer the thing, and everyone already knows it.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 6, 2013)

A kaiju may be plenty big enough to cause a tsunami-type wave under certain circumstances.  Namely, it would have to be in a confined waterway and it would probably have to jump or fall into the water, instead of rising up out of the water.

In other words, it would be acting like a massive landslide into a bay, lake or river such as occasionally happens in the Pacific Northwest.  There are records of such slides causing 30' tall waves that spread destruction for miles.


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## Janx (Aug 6, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Assume that it is stomping around in Japan, and conventional weapons haven't made a dent (as is usual for kaiju), and the thing started stomping toward China... I am not at all convinced that China would not, in the name of saving their own people, try to turn it into a crater *before* it reached Chinese soil - and that'd probably mean getting it while it was sill on land in Japan.




One should also consider actual political environment.  China and Japan don't quite get along.  I doubt China is secretly counting the days until it can nuke Japan, but on the other hand, I doubt they'll be too heartbroken over needing to "Nuke Japan before the monster gets to China"


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## tomBitonti (Aug 6, 2013)

Given a week or two, how feasible would it be to launch a few spikes of depleted uranium into orbit, then de-orbit them as kinetic missiles?  There is an aiming and guidance problem, but that would scale up the kinetic energy by a bit.  Or, a battleship mounted railgun (which I though was within our current technical ability).

Of course, the battleship becomes a target itself pretty quick ...

Thx!

TomB


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 6, 2013)

While a ship mounted Railgun is technically possible, it may not pack enough punch to penetrate the dermis of something that size.  A 100 ton whale has several feet of skin and blubber covering its body...a kaiju's skin must be several yards thick.

And with the square/cube law in place, that stuff has to be damn tough to contain the mass of flesh it covers...


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## Bullgrit (Aug 6, 2013)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Nope. As I noted before, big as they may seem on human scale, they are still small compared to the ocean. Kaiju are not big enough, and move at only modest speeds.



For the record, I don't mean a tsunami like seen in disaster movies, but rather a noticable swell. But just now looking up the size of various war ships, (aircraft carriers and battleships), I see my visualizations of the size of kaiju is off, considerably. The Nimitz CV is over three times longer than a kaiju. I was thinking that a carrier-sized object (100,000+ tons) rising with some speed from the depths would register on the ocean sensors. But a kaiju is not as big as I was thinking. I've been on two US carriers, and now kaiju seem disappointingly small. So, yeah, OK, no ocean detection of one coming.



> I am not at all convinced that China would not, in the name of saving their own people, try to turn it into a crater *before* it reached Chinese soil - and that'd probably mean getting it while it was sill on land in Japan. . . . they can work out the diplomatic niceties later . . .



That would be one hell of a job for diplomacy. There would be a lot of, "We had it contained and was working on killing it," versus, "It might have come after us very shortly and couldn't wait for you to end it." Possibly some nation would make a pre-emptive strike, but I highly doubt it would accepted by the rest of the world with a, "well, they had to do what they had to do." There'd be no end to second guessing. It's one thing for a monster to kill a million people over a few days, and something else for another nation to kill a million people in a second.



> It'd be scientific consortium time.



I don't know. Would Japan let in Chinese scientists if China just nuked Japan, even to target the kaiju? Would Russia want US scientists getting their hands on kaiju bone? Would the US want blackmarketeers getting kaiju blood? I think kaiju would be considered "weapons grade" everything, and everyone would want a part of one, and would want no one else having access to one.

Bullgrit


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## Morrus (Aug 6, 2013)

Bullgrit said:


> But the penetrative munitions, (bunker busters), would be like a bullet to a normal human.




If a Kaiju really emerged we'd have to acknowledge that the basic laws of physics don't work the way we think they do (either that, or that magic exists - though the two might be indistinguishable).  There's no logical way to deduce what a bunker buster bomb will do to something that breaks the laws of physics.  It's probably immune to them, just like it's immune to physics.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 6, 2013)

> I see my visualizations of the size of kaiju is off, considerably.




Depends on the movie, or worse, on a given scene within a movie.  Some films are very bad about keeping scale consistent.


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## Bullgrit (Aug 6, 2013)

> If a Kaiju really emerged we'd have to acknowledge that the basic laws of physics don't work the way we think they do (either that, or that magic exists - though the two might be indistinguishable). There's no logical way to deduce what a bunker buster bomb will do to something that breaks the laws of physics. It's probably immune to them, just like it's immune to physics.



This is a position that I have a hard time with. We build things massively bigger than kaiju all the time. Heck, look at the earlier mentioned aircraft carriers that *float on water*. We build structures many, many times bigger than kaiju, both in height and weight, that stand just fine, (even during violent natural events like earthquakes). We've discovered things at the bottom of the ocean that we thought were impossible, (I just learned about the inches-long amoebas that blew my mind). So maybe the kaiju doesn't break the laws of physics, but rather uses them in ways we haven't seen/considered yet.

Sea ships made of metal were once thought impossible. Airships heavier than air were once thought impossible. But humanity figured them out by playing within the laws of physics. I can imagine nature figuring out something like a kaiju within the laws of physics.

*Edit* Maybe the kaiju are not made of bone, muscle, and flesh.

Bullgrit


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 6, 2013)

Kaiju are made of Dork Matter.


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## Umbran (Aug 6, 2013)

Bullgrit said:


> Heck, look at the earlier mentioned aircraft carriers that *float on water*. We build structures many, many times bigger than kaiju, both in height and weight, that stand just fine, (even during violent natural events like earthquakes).




We build *static* structures that are larger.  The aircraft carrier floating on water means that no point of the structure has to bear much of the weight - load bearing is evenly distributed across the entire surface..  Also, it is mostly hollow (which is how it floats) so the aircraft carrier is surprisingly *light* for its size.  Both of these things are build with few to no real moving parts, and a great deal of thought put into distributing the weight evenly across the entire footprint of the object.  Large buildings are not built to do the Hokey Pokey.  Contrast this with a typical, bipedal kaiju (say, Godzilla).  It walks.  It can do the samba, and moves seen only in pro wrestling.  It has joints at ankle, knee, and hip.  As it walks, legs alternate bearing the entire weight of the beast - so those joints have to take shifting loads generated by the entire beast, rather than distributing them around like we do with a skyscraper or ship.

Here's the science.  The strength of a piece of material typically rises linearly with it's cross-sectional area.  So, it rises like the square of a typical dimension of the piece.  However, the weight of the object rises linearly with the volume of the object, so it rises like the *cube* of a typical dimension of the piece.  So, you have material strengths going like r^2, but the loads going like r^3.  This means that for any given material, there's a point of size beyond which it cannot support its own weight, and it will collapse.  And this is without considering dynamic loads on parts of a moving object, which can be several times greater than the thing's weight.



> We've discovered things at the bottom of the ocean that we thought were impossible




Yep.  But we thought they were impossible on biological grounds, not on physical ones.



> So maybe the kaiju doesn't break the laws of physics, but rather uses them in ways we haven't seen/considered yet.




Which is what I've already said, several times over - if we have kaiju, we have materials we don't know about, with properties we cannot reasonably predict.  Bunker-busters are built to penetrate good old fashioned reinforced concrete and armor plate.  These materials are balsa wood by comparison to what keeps a kaiju walking.  Ergo, we cannot clearly say that the bunker-buster is going to do a whole heck of a lot.


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## Derren (Aug 6, 2013)

Why the talks about nukes?
Some simple anti ship missiles would be enough to kill something like that (or torpedoes when still in the water). At worst, a cruise missile.


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## Janx (Aug 6, 2013)

Umbran said:


> ...snip science ...
> Yep.  But we thought they were impossible on biological grounds, not on physical ones.




Could we back the truck up and confirm that everybody's talking about the same scale of monsters?

I haven't seen Pacific Rim.  I assume the traditional Tokyo destroying monster is about the size of a Dinosaur (t-rex or allosaurus or whatever the big scary predator is called this week).

Clearly, we can get Dinosaur sized monsters that biology and physics can agree could exist (because they did).

So are Kaiju assumed to be even larger than a really big dinosaur?  Or should we assume when somebody says Kaiju, they mean something big like a dinosaur that is totally possible?

If the former, then of course we enter the mystery physics land of "that's not possible to exist, so if it does, it is extra harder to kill because there's more complex materials at play.

If the latter, then as we learned in Marvel Ultimate Alliance, nothing is immune to bullets.  A modern military most likely has the ordnance to take out a dinosaur-like monster be it 50cal rounds, missiles from jet airplanes or bombs from bombers.  Given that a man can throw a harpoon and penetrate a whale's thick skin, the upper end of our weaponry can pierce and kill darn near any biological entity.


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## Morrus (Aug 6, 2013)

Derren said:


> Why the talks about nukes?
> Some simple anti ship missiles would be enough to kill something like that (or torpedoes when still in the water). At worst, a cruise missile.




I disagree that anti-ship missiles would hurt a magic physics-breaking monster.  Not unless the anti-ship missiles were also allowed to break the laws of physics.


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## Grumpy RPG Reviews (Aug 6, 2013)

Umbran said:


> We build *static* structures that are larger...




Umbran is correct. It is also important even large, mobile battle structures - the super carriers - are not designed to take a pounding and shrug it off the way a kaiju does. Modern battleships do not smash into one another until one sinks, they employ aircraft, missiles and similar weapons. Yet kaiju give and taken tremendous physical punishment before dying. This is in addition to simply wandering around down-town Tokyo. 

I still say nations would use kaiju as an excuse to launch preemptive nuclear attacks on other nations and would attempt to direct the monsters at rivals.


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## Janx (Aug 6, 2013)

Derren said:


> Why the talks about nukes?
> Some simple anti ship missiles would be enough to kill something like that (or torpedoes when still in the water). At worst, a cruise missile.




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.

But this invulnerability is also what's used to make fighter pilots with an arsenal of long range weapons devolve their fight into short range pecking like an angry bird chasing a child away from its nest, that usually involves in dead airplane.


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## Derren (Aug 6, 2013)

Morrus said:


> I disagree that anti-ship missiles would hurt a magic physics-breaking monster.  Not unless the anti-ship missiles were also allowed to break the laws of physics.




Only because it is larger than is could be doesn't mean its invulnerable to weapons. As people said, the firepower (and range) of conventional weapons gets vastly downplayed in such movies.



Janx said:


> Could we back the truck up and confirm that everybody's talking about the same scale of monsters?
> 
> I haven't seen Pacific Rim.  I assume the traditional Tokyo destroying monster is about the size of a Dinosaur (t-rex or allosaurus or whatever the big scary predator is called this week).
> 
> ...




Haven't seen it either, but apparently thats what people are talking about.
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Category-VI-390546699


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## Janx (Aug 6, 2013)

Derren said:


> Haven't seen it either, but apparently thats what people are talking about.
> http://www.deviantart.com/art/Category-VI-390546699




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

But if giant rock'em sock'em robots can be built to fight these hand to hand, then giant high-tech guns and missiles can be built to take them out at a distance at probably a fraction of the cost.  We can propel a projectile made of Unobtanium with more force and accuracy at a Kaiju than the force generated by a punch from a mecha made of Unobtainium.

So I call BS.

The next Kaiju invasion will be turned back by heavy duty modern existing weaponry.  If that somehow fails due to their improbably superior physiology, then better bullets and missiles will be invented and launched in the same way their current counterparts are.  We are not going to invent giant mecha and overcome extra engineering problems to make that a reality, when the key problem can be solved with better bullets.


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## Morrus (Aug 6, 2013)

Derren said:


> Only because it is larger than is could be doesn't mean its invulnerable to weapons.




Doesn't mean it isn't, either.  We're breaking the laws of physics.  I guess you can pick and choose which laws of physics you want to apply to this particular impossible monster, in which case the question of whether conventional weapons can hurt it pretty much becomes:  I guess, if you want them to; or not, if you don't.

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


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 6, 2013)

I can just see a kaiju version of Jaws in my head...and applicable quotes.

Chief: "We're going to need a bigger Mecha..."



Mayor: "I don't think either of one you are familiar with our problems."
Scholar: "I think that I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and STEPS ON YOUR CITY HALL!"


Kaiju Hunter: "Julius H Geist, when I was a boy, every little squirt wanted to be a harpooner or a sword fisherman. What d'ya have there - a portable shower or a monkey cage?"
Scholar: "Anti-Kaiju Superweapon."
Kaiju Hunter: "Anti-Kaiju Superweapon- you go inside it?"
[Scholar nods]
Kaiju Hunter: "Superweapon goes in the water, you go in the water. Kaiju's in the water. Our kaiju.
[sings]  Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain. For we've received orders for to sail back to Boston. And so nevermore shall we see you again."


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## Bullgrit (Aug 6, 2013)

Janx said:
			
		

> Could we back the truck up and confirm that everybody's talking about the same scale of monsters?
> 
> I haven't seen Pacific Rim. I assume the traditional Tokyo destroying monster is about the size of a Dinosaur (t-rex or allosaurus or whatever the big scary predator is called this week).



_Pacific Rim_ kaiju, Godzilla, the _Cloverfield_ monster, Stay-Puft Marshmellow man, etc. vary quite a bit in size, but generally, a ballpark figure, could be, for the sake of getting on the same scale, about 300 feet/100 meters tall. 30 stories tall. (This is the figure given in _Pacific Rim_.) And throughout most movies, they seem to have similar power/destructive strength and endurance.



			
				Umbran said:
			
		

> Here's the science.



My argument is not with the science, but with the position that kaiju *must break* physics, and therefore we can't really discuss what ifs because all physical laws must be tossed out to even imagine such a creature. 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?

And yes, I understand how the science works with ships and buildings, and how they are fundamentally different than kaiju. 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. Can't we imagine, for the sake of a discussion, that maybe mother nature could figure out how to do something like a kaiju while still within physical laws. Mother nature is pretty wiley when it comes to making the impossible possible.

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.

Bullgrit


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## Bullgrit (Aug 6, 2013)

Dannyalcatraz -- that was the most amazing thing I've read in a good while. You win this thread.

(Can't give you more xp yet.)

Bullgrit


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## Hand of Evil (Aug 6, 2013)

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.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 6, 2013)

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?_


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## Bullgrit (Aug 6, 2013)

Hand of Evil said:
			
		

> 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


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## Bullgrit (Aug 6, 2013)

> 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


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## Umbran (Aug 6, 2013)

Janx said:


> 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.  



Janx said:


> 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.


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## Morrus (Aug 6, 2013)

Bullgrit said:


> 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)?


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## Hand of Evil (Aug 6, 2013)

Bullgrit said:


> Nitrogen?
> 
> Buildings?
> 
> ...



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.


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## Janx (Aug 6, 2013)

Umbran said:


> 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.


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## Umbran (Aug 6, 2013)

Morrus said:


> 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?



Bullgrit said:


> 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.


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## Morrus (Aug 6, 2013)

Janx said:


> 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.
> 
> ...




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?


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## Janx (Aug 6, 2013)

Umbran said:


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




Even ignoring that, a perfect digestive system is going to intake random elements and extract what it needs.  That means no Oxygen is wasted, or carbon molecule of the right configuration.  However, a big gaping nosehole and mouth are sucking in everything, so the non-useful materials will still need to be evacuated from the engine to make room for the next load of incoming fuel.

so whether by science or logic, if the thing intakes something for fuel, impurities will be in the mix, and the system will have to eject them or eventually clog up and quit working.


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## Morrus (Aug 6, 2013)

Umbran said:


> If you want us to stay with normal physics, this is not possible.




Exactly.


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## Janx (Aug 6, 2013)

Morrus said:


> 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?




Sounds good for arguing why bullets don't work, mechs do, by nature of an energy field, rather than innate biology/structure.

I was hoping to hear Umbran give some sciency stuff on why a kaiju with BetterMatter/Engineering has to be bullet proof no matter what?

I am not of the belief that something engineered to survive the deep and stomp around Tokyo also happens to be immune to bullets. Whales go deep, and they are quite vulnerable to bullets (well, aside from the shooting into water problem).  The engineering requirements to stomp around Tokyo do not need to include "being bullet proof" for free.

Note, I am not arguing that a movie maker can't say the monster is also bullet proof.  I'm quibbling that just because you built a giant monster using advanced technology doesn't mean the materials, strength, etc include bullet proofing for free.  Our planet is chock full of critters with tough shells, skin, etc and ain't none of them bullet proof or even proof from their own attacks.

I am more inclined to believe the monster is "just strong enough" to do move around and fight, but not much more. Like pretty much every other critter.


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## Bullgrit (Aug 6, 2013)

Morrus said:
			
		

> 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.



Those equations -- they tell us how to get a creature that big.  Those equations tell us what the creature needs to be that size -- how strong does its skeleton need to be, how strong its muscles must be, how strong its skin must be. The numbers for those equations do go up that high -- we have ships and structures that use numbers much higher.

You seem to be assuming the creature is just scaled up human-like flesh and bone. Normal flesh and bone at that size would collapse, yes. So a creature of this scale must have stronger material for flesh and bone. And the equations tell us what the strength must be. And the answer is not impossible, or infinite, or magical.

Bullgrit


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## Bullgrit (Aug 6, 2013)

Bullet-proofing doesn't necessarily mean bullets (projectiles) bounce off. Bullets don't bounce off wood, but it can be used to "bullet proof" something. You can stand behind a decent-sized tree and be fully protected from normal bullets. If the kaiju's skin was as thick/dense as wood . . .

Bullgrit


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## Morrus (Aug 6, 2013)

Bullgrit said:


> Those equations -- they tell us how to get a creature that big.  Those equations tell us what the creature needs to be that size -- how strong does its skeleton need to be, how strong its muscles must be, how strong its skin must be. The numbers for those equations do go up that high -- we have ships and structures that use numbers much higher.
> 
> You seem to be assuming the creature is just scaled up human-like flesh and bone. Normal flesh and bone at that size would collapse, yes. So a creature of this scale must have stronger material for flesh and bone. And the equations tell us what the strength must be. And the answer is not impossible, or infinite, or magical.
> 
> Bullgrit




OK, my point clearly wasn't made well, but I'm not going to belabour it. That wasn't it, though.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 6, 2013)

> The numbers for those equations do go up that high -- we have ships and structures that use numbers much higher.




Not really.

When a terrestrial animal with a solid skeleton moves, it generates forces in excess its own mass on its joints and supporting limbs.  And the faster it moves- or the faster it spins, or the higher it jumps or falls- the more force we're talking about...and in more than one direction.

While we have skyscrapers that flex or slide, they don't actually bend.  Compared to the forces on the joints of a living being, they are essentially static.  The materials we use for building skyscrapers and warships would snap.

That doesn't even address the elastic properties of their 'soft" tissues- those that function as the tendons, ligaments, cartilage and muscles that make it possible to move that mass without shaking apart.

Kaiju...they are such stuff as dreams are made of.


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## Janx (Aug 6, 2013)

Bullgrit said:


> You seem to be assuming the creature is just scaled up human-like flesh and bone. Normal flesh and bone at that size would collapse, yes. So a creature of this scale must have stronger material for flesh and bone. And the equations tell us what the strength must be. And the answer is not impossible, or infinite, or magical.
> 
> Bullgrit




I'd hate to argue on the side of Umbran, because he's always right... 

But, I think Umbran is saying the math says the materials needed don't exist (yet).  It is potentially possible that there's some funky poly-carbon matrix array thingy that makes for really light super strong bones that we don't know about.  But I think the math says we need it, and we ain't go it.

The Kaiju is impossible argument is pretty much the same as the BattleTech 'Mechs are impossible argument.  A 12 Meter mech that weighs 100 tons (Atlas) would need ginormous sized clown feet to keep from sinking into the ground.

Like in BattleTech, there's certain physics we have to ignore, in order to get to enjoy the rest of it.

I'm not sure we're all on the same page about which physics we're ignoring.

I would posit that if we're ignoring the normal biology size constraint (pretend the bones are more special than bird bones to enable the size), then you've got a mega-dinosoar with thick skin that big bullets can kill.

If the monster is made of "special" materials and molecular structures, to enable its size, I am not sure that that would include "being bullet proof" just to get the effect of stomping around Tokyo.


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## Janx (Aug 6, 2013)

Bullgrit said:


> Bullet-proofing doesn't necessarily mean bullets (projectiles) bounce off. Bullets don't bounce off wood, but it can be used to "bullet proof" something. You can stand behind a decent-sized tree and be fully protected from normal bullets. If the kaiju's skin was as thick/dense as wood . . .
> 
> Bullgrit




And certainly we can quibble about what kind of bullet it takes to penetrate any thing.  Let's assume I'm not talking handguns.  We're talking high power/callibre stuff and beyond if the mundane existing stuff don't work.  We'll make Cannons that shoot 1 ton Uranium slugs if that's what it takes.


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## Umbran (Aug 6, 2013)

Janx said:


> 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).




Because we are talking about something made of materials orders of magnitude tougher than elephants are.  We're talking about tensile and compressive strengths not just in excess of those found in flesh, but in excess of those found in concrete and steel.  Simply put, if it romps around trashing buildings apparently suffering no harm from that act, it must therefore be notably tougher than those buildings.



> 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.




Well, for the first appearance, there's no time to build anything - meaner bullet or mech.  You have to use what is on hand.  As noted, I figure the worst thing we can do to it is make it eat a fusion bomb.

What we do for the second appearance depends on what we learn from the first.  If we vaporize the first monster with a nuke, we don't learn much, and we resort to building better bullets.  

If we have a carcass, well, then maybe things change.  Maybe we make some leaps and bounds in materials science, such that building the carbon-nanotube fiberglass the thing uses for flesh, or whatever it is, becomes a possible.  Then, while better bullets may still be cheaper, the answer is in geopolitics, not physical sciences.  Better bullets can be used on human hard targets a whole lot more easily than mechas.  You can't hide the darned mecha on the move.  It is big, and relatively slow.  The nations of the world have deployed systems to detect big moving objects to find the kaiju, and they'll find mecha as well.  You can't smuggle mecha, build them in secret, or secretly hand them off to third parties to use against your enemies.  If you use it against another nation, everyone knows it.  And that nation has its own mecha for defense.  

In human terms, mechs are strategic, not tactical weapons, and are less dangerous than nukes, unless they become so cheap to build that they're as numerous as tanks or fighter planes.

How's that for an no-prize answer?


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## Hand of Evil (Aug 6, 2013)

Janx said:


> 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).




Just a side note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_gun quite interesting read


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 6, 2013)

> If the monster is made of "special" materials and molecular structures, to enable its size, I am not sure that that would include "being bullet proof" just to get the effect of stomping around Tokyo.




Besides the math saying it must be so, there is what we see on screen.  Even setting aside the weapons of the timy model armies, these things destroy buildings made of concrete and reinforced steel by walking through them, intentionally striking them, or falling through them due to conflicts with other kaiju.  They swat and bite vehicles and industrial complexes full of fuel, shrugging off both the heat and shrapnel of the resultant explosions.  They stop, grab and fling cargo & passenger trains massing hundreds of tons, move at great speed, with casual strength.

_...all while taking no more damage to their dermis than Jackie Chan going into a pile of cardboard boxes._

To do that requires skin impervious to pretty much everything in the conventional weapons arsenal.


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## Derren (Aug 6, 2013)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> To do that requires skin impervious to pretty much everything in the conventional weapons arsenal.




Except giant robot fists.
If we take their Hollywood movie performance for granted then we of course can't fight them unless we also suddenly be able to use Hollywood physics.
And as this is not possible in the real world which is kinda the point of this discussion we simply die, end of story.


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## Janx (Aug 6, 2013)

Umbran said:


> ..snip..
> How's that for an no-prize answer?




So bullets it is.... 

Or at least, I didn't see anything that made Mechas be the smarter thing to do to fight Kaiju.  Bullets and bombs of improving technology seem to be the straightforward solution.  If you can punch a kaiju to death with a mecha, you can shoot it to death with bullets made of the same thing (or better).  I don't see nukes as even being necessary if punching works.


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## Richards (Aug 6, 2013)

Janx said:


> A 12 Meter mech that weighs 100 tons (Atlas) would need ginormous sized clown feet to keep from sinking into the ground.



I don't know about anybody else, but now I want to see a BattleMech with ginormous sized clown feet.

Johnathan


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 7, 2013)

Richards said:


> I don't know about anybody else, but now I want to see a BattleMech with ginormous sized clown feet.
> 
> Johnathan



The Bozomech?

weem- where are you?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 7, 2013)

Derren said:


> Except giant robot fists.
> If we take their Hollywood movie performance for granted then we of course can't fight them unless we also suddenly be able to use Hollywood physics.




Mechs capable of going toe-to-toe with kaiju are almost always built of unobtanium alloys*, powered by "protoculture," and armed with impossible weapons...

Hence my first suggestion of feeding kaiju temporary singularities.












* which would include their fists


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## Bullgrit (Aug 7, 2013)

Janx said:
			
		

> I'd hate to argue on the side of Umbran, because he's always right...



I love Umbran and you, both, in these discussions.



			
				Janx said:
			
		

> But, I think Umbran is saying the math says the materials needed don't exist (yet).



Materials for a lot of amazing things we take for granted now didn't exist before we created/discovered them. 100 years ago, bullet-proof armor was far too bulky to be truly useful to a person, but now we have Kevlar, and every cop on the beat and soldier on the front line wears it. At some point, someone looked at the numbers for what would be required to construct a bullet-proof vest, and they eventually worked out the material.

(If it's not completely urban legend, it's been said that Mother Nature, in the form of spiders, showed us how strong thread can be. Thread can stop a bullet. That was impossible.)

That we don't currently have a material strong/flexible enough for a kaiju skeleton and tissue doesn't mean such beasts are impossible. *We* couldn't construct one at this time. But we can still look at the equations and numbers and see exactly what such a beast would require for hard and soft tissue, and we can, for the sake of a discussion, assume that nature figured it out so we have kaiju. 

Referring back to a reference I made earlier -- the strange creatures of the deep ocean. We can't/couldn't create material that could survive the Mariana Trench, but apparently Mother Nature managed it just fine, still staying within physical laws.

There wasn't this much argument against a premise when we discussed the Zombie Apocalypse, Martian neighbors, and lightspeed space travel. 

Bullgrit


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## Janx (Aug 7, 2013)

Bullgrit said:


> I love Umbran and you, both, in these discussions.



 And I enjoy these kind of discussions where I espouse something stupid and drive Umbran to give me a good explanation on the way things should be. He's always a good sport.



Bullgrit said:


> Referring back to a reference I made earlier -- the strange creatures of the deep ocean. We can't/couldn't create material that could survive the Mariana Trench, but apparently Mother Nature managed it just fine, still staying within physical laws.
> 
> There wasn't this much argument against a premise when we discussed the Zombie Apocalypse, Martian neighbors, and lightspeed space travel.
> 
> Bullgrit




Well., in this case, I am on the side of pro-monsters, anti-mecha, pro guns lobby.

I'll buy that Kaiju can exist through better physiology.

I won't but that we can practically develop large mecha to fight them that would be better than inventing better guns. 

Any robot we build will need joints and servos to equal what mother nature is better at building.  The stresses on that the robo-joints would result in the equivalent fight between a human and an orangutan.  Those buggers are basically smaller than humans and they can rip our arms out and beat us with them.

Why in the heck would we invest in perfecting giant robots with limited resources when we can more easily make better guns and missiles.  Heck, if punching a kaiju is so effective, we can make mecha-sized fist bullets and shoot them at the Kaiju from a tank or mining dump truck (those things are huge).


The cool factor of developing a Mecha isn't going to pass Congress's budget when a simpler solution is in order.


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## Bullgrit (Aug 7, 2013)

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> Besides the math saying it must be so, there is what we see on screen. Even setting aside the weapons of the timy model armies, these things destroy buildings made of concrete and reinforced steel by walking through them, intentionally striking them, or falling through them due to conflicts with other kaiju. They swat and bite vehicles and industrial complexes full of fuel, shrugging off both the heat and shrapnel of the resultant explosions. They stop, grab and fling cargo & passenger trains massing hundreds of tons, move at great speed, with casual strength.
> 
> ...all while taking no more damage to their dermis than Jackie Chan going into a pile of cardboard boxes.
> 
> To do that requires skin impervious to pretty much everything in the conventional weapons arsenal.



So it's possible that only a nuclear strike has a possibility of stopping a kaiju. It might take several nukes. What happens when nuclear explosions overlap or are centered at the same spot? Has that been tested?

After the kill, what if we discovered another (or more) kaiju in the ocean depths? What would happen to a nuclear bomb dropped into the Mariana Trench? Could it survive to be detonated? What would happen if it detonated?

What would happen in world politics? I imagine some parts of the world wouldn't care, and would continue their lives as normal. Like some far inland nations. Unless there were at least dozens of kaiju, scattered about the ocean floor, would this become an actual *global* apocalypse?

Bullgrit


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## Bullgrit (Aug 7, 2013)

Janx said:
			
		

> Well., in this case, I am on the side of pro-monsters, anti-mecha, pro guns lobby.



Yeah, I just don't see mecha being a realistic concept, even assuming an unrealistic premise. We can't build a good man-size mecha right now. But projectiles and bombs, we've got now and are good at improving.

Bullgrit


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## tomBitonti (Aug 7, 2013)

Ugh, a tad too much heat in the discussion.

We can do a physical model and figure out the minimum necessary strength of material to allow a Kaiju to walk around.

The movie provides good estimates of the creature's size, and we can infer the mass from the reaction to the giant robots, and from an inference of the robot's mass.

We see that they move roughly the same a person, but scaled up.

(Well, except that one flew, with relatively itty bitty wings, and carried up a robot, both up to past 50,000 feet.  Hmm, lets ignore that, since it doubles down and more on the physics.)

Doesn't matter that we can't make a material with the necessary strength.  We assume exotic matter that has the necessary properties.  We just want a ballpark on the material properties, so to infer what is necessary to damage it.

(Hmm, there is a second physics consistency problem, which is that a guy cuts his way out of one with a hand knife.  Let's ignore that too, since it implies the creatures are easy to cut through, so should be vulnerable to all manner of weapons.)

TomB


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## Hand of Evil (Aug 7, 2013)

tomBitonti said:


> (Hmm, there is a second physics consistency problem, which is that a guy cuts his way out of one with a hand knife.  Let's ignore that too, since it implies the creatures are easy to cut through, so should be vulnerable to all manner of weapons.)
> 
> TomB



That can be an answer there, gels reduce the energy from bullets, add a overcoat of ceramic body armor.  This could even explain how they survive the pressures of the deep, getting fatter as they get to sea level, the gel expanding.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 7, 2013)

Re: cutting out of a kaiju

Some materials and shapes are stronger in one direction than the other, sometimes significantly so.  Consider the chicken egg- strong enough to resist significant pressure from the outside, but a tiny chick can peck its way out.  Similarly, if you try to break an animal's rib cage pushing in, it is much more difficult than doing the same by pulling out.*

(Still kinda BS-ey, unless the knife is also made of the same kind of stuff as the Mecha...)






* for those worried, no, not based on vivisections or anything like that.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 7, 2013)

Double post.


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## tomBitonti (Aug 7, 2013)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Re: cutting out of a kaiju
> 
> Some materials and shapes are stronger in one direction than the other, sometimes significantly so.  Consider the chicken egg- strong enough to resist significant pressure from the outside, but a tiny chick can peck its way out.  Similarly, if you try to break an animal's rib cage pushing in, it is much more difficult than doing the same by pulling out.*
> 
> (Still kinda BS-ey, unless the knife is also made of the same kind of stuff as the Mecha...)




It was a baby, after all.  (And perhaps a bit early to be born.)  My best spur-of-the-moment explanations are that the young Kaiju is less tough than a fully grown one.  (The small one was about the size of a whale, so normal-ish materials seem possible there.)  And that they get a really tough hide when they are grown.  Or maybe they do have a field that they generate that this one didn't have.  Take your pick.

(This is an example of how hard it is to get stories *totally* consistent.  I've found physics implausibilities to be no more unreal than plot or causal implausibilities, so I've learned to live with both.)

Thx!

TomB


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Aug 7, 2013)

Umbran said:


> We build *static* structures that are larger.  The aircraft carrier floating on water means that no point of the structure has to bear much of the weight - load bearing is evenly distributed across the entire surface..  Also, it is mostly hollow (which is how it floats) so the aircraft carrier is surprisingly *light* for its size.  Both of these things are build with few to no real moving parts, and a great deal of thought put into distributing the weight evenly across the entire footprint of the object.  Large buildings are not built to do the Hokey Pokey.  Contrast this with a typical, bipedal kaiju (say, Godzilla).  It walks.  It can do the samba, and moves seen only in pro wrestling.  It has joints at ankle, knee, and hip.  As it walks, legs alternate bearing the entire weight of the beast - so those joints have to take shifting loads generated by the entire beast, rather than distributing them around like we do with a skyscraper or ship.
> 
> Here's the science.  The strength of a piece of material typically rises linearly with it's cross-sectional area.  So, it rises like the square of a typical dimension of the piece.  However, the weight of the object rises linearly with the volume of the object, so it rises like the *cube* of a typical dimension of the piece.  So, you have material strengths going like r^2, but the loads going like r^3.  This means that for any given material, there's a point of size beyond which it cannot support its own weight, and it will collapse.  And this is without considering dynamic loads on parts of a moving object, which can be several times greater than the thing's weight.
> 
> ...




Can we not reasonbly predict the properties? Just keep it basic - only give the minimum properties required to make such a thing walk and move and do back-flips and whatever it does. What kind of strength would such a material require? 

Also not to forget - not all parts need to be equally tough. An eye, for example, doesn't have to carry the whole load of the creature, so it could still be a weak spot, for example.


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## Hand of Evil (Aug 7, 2013)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Can we not reasonbly predict the properties? Just keep it basic - only give the minimum properties required to make such a thing walk and move and do back-flips and whatever it does. What kind of strength would such a material require?
> 
> Also not to forget - not all parts need to be equally tough. An eye, for example, doesn't have to carry the whole load of the creature, so it could still be a weak spot, for example.



and we get the...Tarrasque super sized


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Aug 7, 2013)

There is another defensive alternative (note that I'm on the side of "it's impossible because the physics of the creature don't work; if the creature works within known physics then it would be vulnerable to existing weapons").  The critter doesn't need to shrug off bullets -- it can absorb them.  If its vital organs are very, very small compared to its overall mass, you can pump the thing full of lead, penetrating the skin repeatedly, but not have any substantial effect on its operation.

As a comparison, a 120mm gun-fired APFSDS round can penetrate meters of thick, hard material ... but by itself it still only creates a 1" diameter hole through the target.  The damage to the target comes from the secondary spalling of hard material which then tears up other vital components, assuming the penetrator didn't hit something vital.  Being built of hard, tough material can thus be of greater danger than being soft and squishy.  

So if you can build a kaiji that can stand under its own weight, make it big and squishy, and give it a brain the size of a peanut.  You can poke it full of holes and it will keep coming.  Of course, it will eventually be brought down by the use of explosive projectiles that tear apart its ablative mass ...

... the only reason for mecha is: "the only think cooler than fighting giant monsters is fighting them with GIANT ROBOTS!"


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 7, 2013)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Can we not reasonbly predict the properties? Just keep it basic - only give the minimum properties required to make such a thing walk and move and do back-flips and whatever it does. What kind of strength would such a material require?
> 
> Also not to forget - not all parts need to be equally tough. An eye, for example, doesn't have to carry the whole load of the creature, so it could still be a weak spot, for example.




Even keeping it basic, a single foot or knee joint is still going to have to support several times the total mass of the creature so that it doesn't collapse when running or jumping.

And as for the eyes...remember, just like the rest of the creature, they seem impervious to damage from hypervelocity shrapnel and explosions, terminal velocity falls into buildings with tons of force behind them, etc.

That's all beyond the kind of force conventional weapons deliver.

Consider some RW terrorist attacks: the 9/11 planes were completely destroyed on impact and it took a long time to fell the towers.  According to some estimates I have seen, each plane had the _potential_ explosive force of up to 600 tons of TNT.  McVeigh's bomb was equivalent to about 1000 tons of TNT.  By way of comparison, a kaiju can do a face-plant into a skyscraper, bringing it down immediately and dust itself off as if it were the first punch in a bar brawl.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Aug 7, 2013)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Even keeping it basic, a single foot or knee joint is still going to have to support several times the total mass of the creature so that it doesn't collapse when running or jumping.
> 
> And as for the eyes...remember, just like the rest of the creature, they seem impervious to damage from hypervelocity shrapnel and explosions, terminal velocity falls into buildings with tons of force behind them, etc.
> 
> ...




Now you're going too far; I think. Pacific Rim established already that conventional weapons don't work against Kaiju. If we take that already into the baseline, then we know already that conventional weapons don't work, we just made this part of the definition of a Kaiju. There is not much fun to be had, unless you want to talk only about what we would build to get the effect of Jaegers, since Jaegers are probably bullsh*t. 

No, I would start with the basic premise that Kajuns of the existed size exists, try to extrapolate from there how tough they logically would need to be as a minimum, and then figure out what options we would have based on the resulting toughness.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 7, 2013)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Now you're going too far; I think.




How so?



> No, I would start with the basic premise that Kajuns of the existed size exists, try to extrapolate from there how tough they logically would need to be as a minimum, and then figure out what options we would have based on the resulting toughness.




I think I just did: beyond the forces involved in movement, kaiju flesh has to be strong enough to withstand forces of at least 1kt to do the kind of destruction seen on screen without injuring themselves.

The MOAB- with one of the biggest conventional warheads out there- has an explosive yield of 11 tons.  The B611-11 is a bunker buster bomb with a nuclear warhead. It has an explosive capacity between one third and six times a Hiroshima bomb.

IOW, conventional weapons ain't up to the task.


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## tomBitonti (Aug 7, 2013)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Consider some RW terrorist attacks: the 9/11 planes were completely destroyed on impact and it took a long time to fell the towers.  According to some estimates I have seen, each plane had the _potential_ explosive force of up to 600 tons of TNT.  McVeigh's bomb was equivalent to about 1000 tons of TNT.  By way of comparison, a kaiju can do a face-plant into a skyscraper, bringing it down immediately and dust itself off as if it were the first punch in a bar brawl.




Those figures are way off.  (Not sure how much to go by the figures below as being authoritative, but for the Oklahoma city bomb, the material quantity was about 12 or so barrels.  No way to get 1000 Tons of explosion out of that, without going nuclear.)

The Oklahoma city bomb was equivalent to about 2.5 Tons of TNT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing



> The effects of the blast were equivalent to over 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of TNT,[59][71] and could be heard and felt up to 55 miles (89 km) away.[69] Seismometers at Science Museum Oklahoma in Oklahoma City, 4.3 miles (6.9 km) away, and in Norman, Oklahoma, 16.1 miles (25.9 km) away, recorded the blast as measuring approximately 3.0 on the Richter scale.[72]




This talks somewhat about the 9/11 explosions:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/history/1833746-bomb-used-oklahoma-city-vs-planes.html

That is complicated by the inefficiency of the fuel explosion and a consideration of the kinetic energy of the planes (which was substantial).  But that give a figure of about 600 *pounds* of TNT, not tons, for the 9/11 attack.  But I thought the main problem of the 9/11 attack was weakening caused by the intense fire.

Thx!

TomB


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## Umbran (Aug 7, 2013)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Can we not reasonbly predict the properties? Just keep it basic - only give the minimum properties required to make such a thing walk and move and do back-flips and whatever it does. What kind of strength would such a material require?




In theory, yes, we could produce an estimate.  In practice... dude, I do have other things to do with my time, you know.  If I were writing a novel with this as part of the basis, I'd go through the math.  For this discussion, I'll go with, "we don't have the materials necessary," as sufficient.

A few notes on munitions:  There is a theoretical maximum speed you can reach with a bullet using chemical explosives, based on the speed of burn of the propellant.  Rockets/missiles of a given size have similar issues, based on the fact that they have to carry their fuel with them.  So, we have some limits of how much momentum we can impart to any given class of weaponry.  Specifically, the limits are stronger for smaller munitions - it you want to try to hit a moving target with something the size of an ICBM... well, good luck with that.  If their skin is really tough, "bullets" might not do it.

So, Janx, I think suggested we make things the size of mecha fists and launch them.  He seems to have missed the basic problem that they don't disappear once they've been launched - you still have this huge thing capable of damaging the kaiju, and therefore damaging the buildings around it bouncing around, hit or miss.  Now, sure, in this fight there's going to be collateral damage, but perhaps we want to leave the ricochets to a minimum.  Not to mention that truck-sized launching platforms do have a mobility and reloading problem...

I cannot give you a solid reason why mecha *must* be used - there's too much speculation involved.  All I can do is give you vaguely plausible reasons why it might be done that way.  I think the geopolitical answer is actually a pretty good one.  I can add a "spinoff tech" answer - a mecha program would be expected to create far more NASA-style spinoff technologies that can be used in the civilian sector than any plain old explosive rocket, missile, and bullet program.  In the long run, NASA more than pays for itself with tech spinoffs.  This could render the mecha program not just effectively cheaper, but outright profitable to the economies that engage in it.  You think that's going to happen from making better bullets?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 7, 2013)

tomBitonti said:


> Those figures are way off.
> 
> <snip>




You are indeed correct, sir!   but what's an order of magnitude between freinds, huh?

(This, kiddies, is what sometimes happens when night people- like myself- are forced to operate during the early AM.)

Still, even with the corrected figure of 3.5 tons of TNT, the OKC bomb didn't bring down the building.  Compare that to the casual way in which kaiju demolish skyscrapers without apparent damage to themselves.  I'd still assert those buildings are like cardboard boxes to them.


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## Bullgrit (Aug 7, 2013)

I should have posted these links earlier in the thread.

[video=youtube;CAZd0tu7jOg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAZd0tu7jOg[/video]

[video=youtube;Zcn3Mrzi2VE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcn3Mrzi2VE[/video]

[video=youtube;diLE4umndNM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diLE4umndNM[/video]

[video=youtube;kyY50rBet2U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyY50rBet2U[/video]

[video=youtube;zA92Rw6kNWw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA92Rw6kNWw[/video]

[video=youtube;ykPFc_SVnho]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykPFc_SVnho[/video]

Bullgrit


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## Janx (Aug 7, 2013)

Umbran said:


> So, Janx, I think suggested we make things the size of mecha fists and launch them.  He seems to have missed the basic problem that they don't disappear once they've been launched - you still have this huge thing capable of damaging the kaiju, and therefore damaging the buildings around it bouncing around, hit or miss.  Now, sure, in this fight there's going to be collateral damage, but perhaps we want to leave the ricochets to a minimum.  Not to mention that truck-sized launching platforms do have a mobility and reloading problem...




I was joking when I suggested launching rocket fists at the kaiju... 
Mainly that it is cheaper/faster to build the fists and shoot them at the monster than to build the whole robot.

In other avenues of approach, consider:
viral attack.  Odds are good we'll knock off a chunk of flesh during an early attack.  With the bio-sample, we can deduce a bio-warfare solution to kill the kaiju.  Then we'll just send a crop-duster overhead and spray the monster down with Kaiju-B-Gon.

Avatar Redux:
building a mecha requires huge factories to forge and assemble the parts.  Growing our own kaiju based on DNA samples and replacing their brain with a neuro transmitter wired up to a pilot hiding in Cheyenne Mountain is a bit simpler.

Send in the Drones:
Big animals ignore tiny insects.  Send in a drone to fly up behind it, land, and then deploy a burrowing machine to drill in and head for the spinal cord/brain. the drill could be a plasma torch or some other sci-fi cutting tool.  If you believe in mechs, then we can work small scale robotics to solve the problem in a stealthier attack.

Poison Pills:
Find out what they eat (people, skyscrapers, etc).  Plant some tasty treats.  Kaiju Eats.  Boom.  the insides of most critters are not as tough as their outsides.

Move Away:
The best defense is you no be there.  Move tokyo and other cities underground (or to flying sky cities).  These monsters seem drawn to the cities, so stop living in them.  Unless these monsters also like burrowing or can fly or swim, park your city where they can't go.  I would bet the Kaiju can't swim, they walk along the ocean floor.  So float your city in the middle of the deepest part of the ocean, and you'll be fine.


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## Grumpy RPG Reviews (Aug 7, 2013)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> IOW, conventional weapons ain't up to the task.




Pacific Rim states the first few kaiju were in fact taken down by conventional weapons. The first four or five appeared before the jaegers were built and the very first kaiju - which attacked San Fransico - died after days of attacks my missiles and similar weapons. Perhaps it is not a question of "Do normal weapons work at all?" as it is "How effective are they?" They might well work on the less powerful kaiju - categories 1 & 2, possibly 3 - but it requires considerable time for the cumulative effects to kill the beasts. In that period the kaiju destroys cities, inflicts massive property damage and kills many tax payers.


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## Hand of Evil (Aug 7, 2013)

Have to say this but if you can kill a kaiju with weapons of the day then you can kill Cthulhu with them and for some reason this game of "What If" makes me sad now.


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## tomBitonti (Aug 7, 2013)

Actually, the question of launching a fist using a rocket vs. the rocket powered punch as seen in the move seems to be a good question.

I am led to the question of what is different about what a Mecha delivers compared with what could be delivered by rocket.  Both would applications of raw force.  I fail to see a difference in character.  Small differences are problems of aiming, and problems of delivery.  Still, a medium sized rocket, laser guided by a spotting plane, seems most practical.

For delivery speeds, I'd think that bullets are limited by a combination of aerodynamics plus the materials necessary to contain the initial explosion (that propels the bullet).  A rocket should be able to exceed this, especially if there were a final stage acceleration just before impact.  But, even then, the rocket velocity would be less important than the payload, which could deliver the final kick using a shaped charge.  In any case, the size and shape of the missile seem to provide aerodynamics orders of magnitude greater than what is possible for a bullet.

This has some interesting answers: http://www.frfrogspad.com/miscellb.htm

With:



> The theoretical maximum velocity attainable from normal commercial propellant powder and "conventional" loading densities is limited by the maximum velocity of expanding powder gases.  Under ideal conditions this is stated as somewhere between 5700 f/s and 6000 f/s , and in conventional small arms between 4000-5000 f/s, by most authorities. Using specialized "solid propellants" the upper limit is theoretically about 13,000 f/s but at pressures way beyond practical.




Compared with typical air-to-air missiles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-to-air_missile

152 kg 	Raytheon AIM-120D AMRAAM 	 United States 	2008 	18 kg 	Blast/fragmentation 	180 km 	Mach 4

One mach is about 1,125 fps, so mach 4 gives about 4500 fps.

That is for a typical missile.  There are experimental missiles which are much faster.  For example:

http://www.economist.com/news/techn...-building-vehicles-fly-five-times-speed-sound



> More recently America’s space agency, NASA, has made progress with two experimental scramjet vehicles, both of which are dropped from a carrier plane and then accelerated using a rocket booster. The unmanned, hydrogen-fuelled X-43A scramjet accelerated to a record Mach 9.68 in November 2004. This was the first fully controlled flight of a scramjet-powered vehicle, though it lasted only ten seconds.




Mach 9.68 is about 10,800 fps.  I'd imagine that such a missile is larger by a factor of 10 or more than the AIM-120D, but perhaps not as dense.

Going completely kinetic, "Project Thor":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment



> In the case of the system mentioned in the 2003 USAF report above, a 6.1m x 0.3m tungsten cylinder impacting at Mach 10 has a kinetic energy equivalent to approximately 11.5 tons of TNT (or 7.2 tons of dynamite). The mass of such a cylinder is itself greater than 9 tons, so it is clear that the practical applications of such a system are limited to those situations where its other characteristics provide a decisive advantage - a conventional bomb/warhead of similar weight to the tungsten rod, delivered by conventional means, provides similar destructive capability and is a far more practical method.




That is 8 metric tons (8K kilograms, 9 tons of Tungsten) at Mach 10, or about 11,250 FPS.

I'm thinking the issue becomes a concentration of force problem: Getting the force concentrated into a small surface area.  That is, since drop a 10 ton bomb seems a lot easier than orbiting and dropping and a Thor kinetic kill package.

Edit:

Still figuring what are typical velocities for penetrators, e.g., depleted uranium anti-tank projectiles.

This has figures of 1.5 to 3.0 Km/s:

http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo4/no1/research-recherch-eng.asp

Here is a more detailed link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_penetrator

With:



> Typical velocities of APFSDS rounds vary between manufacturers and muzzle length/types. As a typical example, the American General Dynamics KEW-A1 has a muzzle velocity of 1,740 m/s (5,700 ft/s).[3] This compares to 914 m/s (3,000 ft/s) for a typical rifle (small arms) round. APFSDS rounds generally operate in the range of 1,400 to 1,900 m/s. The sabots also travel at such a high velocity that upon separation, they may continue for many hundreds of metres at speeds that can be lethal to troops and damage light vehicles.




Thx!

TomB


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## Janx (Aug 7, 2013)

Hand of Evil said:


> Have to say this but if you can kill a kaiju with weapons of the day then you can kill Cthulhu with them and for some reason this game of "What If" makes me sad now.




cthulu has non-euclidean geometry and reality warping powers.  When the warhead reaches cthulu's reality, it's already lost mass and chemical composition has morphed such that it can't explode.  It's like shooting daisies at him instead of daisy cutters.

Hopefully that will cheer you back up.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Aug 7, 2013)

Janx said:


> cthulu has non-euclidean geometry and reality warping powers.  When the warhead reaches cthulu's reality, it's already lost mass and chemical composition has morphed such that it can't explode.  It's like shooting daisies at him instead of daisy cutters.
> 
> Hopefully that will cheer you back up.




Didn't Cthulhu take notable damage from crashing with a boat? He just regenerates the damage ...


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 7, 2013)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Didn't Cthulhu take notable damage from crashing with a boat?



Only because it caught him in the mi-gonads.


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## Janx (Aug 7, 2013)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Only because it caught him in the mi-gonads.




Aaaggghhh!  It's driving me nuts!


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Aug 9, 2013)

It depends on whether you're assuming the traditional kaiju immunity to all conventional weapons.

According to the opening bit of Pacific Rim, those CAN be killed with immense effort and tremendous quantities of conventional weapons, which is actually better than usual - Japanese kaiju are usually just flatly immune to anything except other kaiju, kaiju-scale mecha and stuff, or one-shot prototype superweapons. And even then they usually don't actually _die_, just go dormant for a couple of years (with occasional exceptions, mostly in the older movies, like the original Godzilla and the Oxygen Destroyer ... and even that spawned a later kaiju).

In some movies Godzilla can "feed off" radiation, so even nukes may not be entirely reliable.

---

I agree kaiju require materials stronger than conventional bone, cartilage and muscle, but the numbers I've seen suggest that you don't need supermaterials on the carbon-nanotube-for-space-elevators scale. The bigger problems are:

1) ground support on anything but hard rock - this has been one of the big problems of "super tank" attempts IIRC
2) heat dispersal
3) food sources

How thick are Godzilla's legs? Showa Godzilla is 50 meters tall, which probably makes him about 2500-3000 metric tons, given that he's built much like a human but heavier (bulkier, plus tail) - a 1.8 meter, 90kg human scaled up to that size would be about 2000 metric tons. If his legs at the narrowest part are ... say 3 meters thick, and circular, that means an area of about 7 square meters. Thus, Godzilla's weight of about 25 megaNewtons is distributed over 14 square meters (at the narrowest point)  = 1.78 megapascals. That's only the standing force, multiply by maybe 2-3 for walking, and 2-3 more for safety factor ... say 10 MPa total. Not a materials scientist, how excessive is that?

Heisei Godzilla is 100 meters tall. That makes him eight times the mass = 20,000 - 24,000 metric tons, with legs... maybe 6 meters thick, with a total standing area of 56.5 square meters. 200 megaNewtons over 56.5 square meters = 3.54 megapascals, so allowing for walking and safety factor ... about 20 MPa.

The interesting thing is, since the leg area scales up as the square while mass scales up as the cube, the pressure put on the legs increases only linearly (less, if you make your legs more-than-proportionally thicker). That's why I don't think kaiju really need space elevator materials.

(Anguirus is the size of Showa Godzilla and a quadruped. He might actually be workable with conventional biological materials, assuming extreme use of lightening via air sacs and stuff, and very thick legs.)


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## Stormonu (Aug 14, 2013)

not only just standing up, consider the force it would take to pump blood through arteries in the body, especially up the legs to the brain.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 14, 2013)

Khisanth the Ancient said:


> I agree kaiju require materials stronger than conventional bone, cartilage and muscle, but the numbers I've seen suggest that you don't need supermaterials on the carbon-nanotube-for-space-elevators scale. The bigger problems are:
> 
> 1) ground support on anything but hard rock - this has been one of the big problems of "super tank" attempts IIRC




Yup- see Nazi Germany's Maus, for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus


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## Jhaelen (Aug 15, 2013)

Stormonu said:


> not only just standing up, consider the force it would take to pump blood through arteries in the body, especially up the legs to the brain.



Well, how do trees manage to get water up to their crown? Trees can be over 100 metres high. Couldn't a similar mechanism work for pumping blood? 

Since we're talking about 'what if' here, I'd also like to posit a Kaiju's brain could be located elsewhere in the body. Or it could have a secondary brain controlling locomotion (which was for a long time a prevalent theory for sauropods).


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## tomBitonti (Aug 15, 2013)

Jhaelen said:


> Well, how do trees manage to get water up to their crown? Trees can be over 100 metres high. Couldn't a similar mechanism work for pumping blood?
> 
> Since we're talking about 'what if' here, I'd also like to posit a Kaiju's brain could be located elsewhere in the body. Or it could have a secondary brain controlling locomotion (which was for a long time a prevalent theory for sauropods).




Well, blood would have to get to the creature's head, even if the brain wasn't there.

When I was in middle school, sap was described to move by osmosis.  However, the detailed mechanism is still (apparently, and surprisingly) not well understood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_sap

http://www.uc3m.es/portal/page/portal/actualidad_cientifica/noticias/sap_movement

But, we are able to pump water up tall buildings.  I imagine a Kaiju could do the same with lots of heart-like pumps and flow reversal stops.

Thx!

TomB


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## weem (Sep 12, 2013)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> The Bozomech?
> 
> weem- where are you?




Huh? Wait, what?

Sorry, no time so... let's see... Bozo Mech... found this for you...







...is that right?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 12, 2013)

weem said:


> Huh? Wait, what?
> 
> Sorry, no time so... let's see... Bozo Mech... found this for you...
> 
> ...




Look at all those color-contrasted missile ports!


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## Umbran (Sep 12, 2013)

Stormonu said:


> not only just standing up, consider the force it would take to pump blood through arteries in the body, especially up the legs to the brain.




How does a city get water around?  By distributing pumps all over the place!  So, the thing doesn't have one single heart, it has dozens of them.  Problem solved.


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## Stormonu (Sep 13, 2013)

Umbran said:


> How does a city get water around?  By distributing pumps all over the place!  So, the thing doesn't have one single heart, it has dozens of them.  Problem solved.




Is there any creature on earth currently that has multiple hearts like this?  If not, we might as well also start fantasizing about giant insect Kiajiu as well.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 13, 2013)

Stormonu said:


> Is there any creature on earth currently that has multiple hearts like this?  If not, we might as well also start fantasizing about giant insect Kiajiu as well.




Cephalopods and other large molluscs have multiple "hearts", as do some members of the worm family.


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## Janx (Sep 13, 2013)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Cephalopods and other large molluscs have multiple "hearts", as do some members of the worm family.




They call me Doctor Worm.


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## MBJwally (Sep 15, 2013)

I think there would be a lot less marine life in the ocean


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