Grrl Power #622 – Whatever the opposite of Gas-X is
“Hey team, let’s split up so we can search this abandoned bunker faster. If you find anything, signal with a massive explosion that threatens to cave the whole place in on top of us…”
…is not quite the instructions Maxima gave the team. But that’s how Dabbler would paraphrase if asked to repeat them. She’s just frustrated she hasn’t been able to use much lethal force lately.
You know how when you’re playing a video game and killing wave after wave of evil gangsters, then a few hundred evil corporate security guards and then two dozen battalions of evil PMC soldiers and by the end of the game you’re the technically the hero, and you’ve saved the day, buuuuut you’re also history’s greatest mass murderer because the body count in most action video games is in the thousands? That’s a lot like most of Dabbler’s previous adventures.
Don’t worry, they were all bad.
I like the idea of explodey gas, but I’m not sure it would be more effective than just firing a rocket or a grenade in the room. Obviously, it’s not spraying aerosolized kerosine in there, it’s Dabbler’s own special super science blend. But again, you can bet Dabbler’s grenades drop the bass like DJ Davvincii. Get turned up the death! At least I could make the excuse that the gas gets into all sorts of nooks and crannies and when it explodes it’s like 10,000 years of erosion in 1/10,000th of a second.
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Not sure what “viscous” has to do with its explosive properties … perhaps you meant “volatile”?
It is not to do with its explosive properties. Sydney described it as “marshmallow foam” and Dabbler corrected her. The explosive properties she felt were better explained using the maxim of “don’t tell, show.”
Like Sydney said, it’s kinda sticky and gooey, like liquid marshmallow
I’m really confused about what ‘viscous’ gas is.
If gas is sticky and gooey, it’s not gas, right? It’s like saying ‘solid liquid’ (instead of just saying ice, which is a solid, not a liquid)
Oh well, it’s Dabbler. She probably has some super-sciency reason for how gas can somehow not be gas but still be called gas.
when I said ‘ice’ I meant ‘frozen’
It’s (a made up) type of gas that coalesces around itself. Instead of diffusing equally into the surrounding atmosphere. It’s the gaseous equivalent of pouring oil into water. It doesn’t mix well and has a surprisingly high surface tension. Surprising in that it has surface tension at all.
With those properties it would make a lousy fuel-air explosion, because the whole point is to fill the air (which provides the O2) with a finely dispersed accelerant.
Not if you want a contained area of destruction that won’t put everyone in a confined space such as this in danger. A explosive foam to empty out a room without turning the nearby hallways into defacto flame tunnels and pressured tubes would be preferable in this situation.
A good point, but not mutually exclusive, as you suggest.
As an analogy think of steel wool. It is a (relatively) rigid structure with a lot of gaps between it. Steel is not known for being easily flammable, normally requiring a forge operating at an extremely high temperature (over 1,000 Celsius/2,000 Fahrenheit) to even get it malleable, let alone set fire to it.
Yet if you check out survival videos it is often recommended as a good way of improvising fire starting in an emergency. You use your car battery to start a short across the steel wool, and it provides an instant vigorous fire source.
Having the steel in long thin strips, with a lot of air contained in between each one, is what makes all the difference (and the electricity providing an intense heat in a small spot). A ‘viscous gas’, which behaved in a similar way,* would do the trick.
*Although, technically, if it was doing that then it is more like a fluid or a solid. But if the gaps between the molecules are still spaced out far enough that it did not otherwise exhibit properties more common to those states, then the term would still be appropriate.
Shaving foam is something that ‘viscous gas’ may serve well to describe. Given that it is not clearly either a gas, a liquid nor a solid. It blurs the categories.
Oh and it is highly explosive.
A self condensing gas in other words?
Sounds like a prototype idea I heard of once for a combat trap foam. Stored as a gas in canisters, exposure to the air would cause it to quickly condense and even solidify *and was very sticky*.
Problem was some thermodynamics issues regarding trapped body heat and volatile chemical reactions, getting people out of it…and the pretty descent chance of a horrific death of suffocation of the target making the idea of it being non-lethal rather moot.
Of course if you want to make a version of this that is basically component A of an explosive, it would be rather affective if not a tad sadistic.
I don’t see the confusion.
the first thing you described we’d call a gel or slime.
as for the gas, heavier than air gasses with a sticky texture are a thing, yeah one may argue they could be thought of as air born dispersed liquid. But otherwise its basically a sticky fog.
it’s likely an aerosolized non-newtonian fluid, like if you created a spray version of water and cornstarch. Not a bad idea, as the volatile particless would gather on whatever you wanted to blow up. sort of like mixing napalm and a fuel-air bomb!
ok, on reading all the replies then reading the comic again, I see where my confusion lies, the timing of the quick convo between Sydney and Dabbler threw me off, but I get where it was going now. I conflated two different questions and it confused the answer, heh. As someone else noted, not sure that type of gas would be flammable at all (or even called a gas … aerosol gel, perhaps? … a gas by definition wouldn’t have a high viscosity under normal temp/press …) due to impeded air mixture.
Could hand-wave it off as magic (it’s Dabbler, after all) but that would throw a wrench in her gimmick of “yes, I’m magic, but I love mechanical toys” she has going on with using a grenade instead of some kind of spell.
No matter what, I’m here for the ride, love your work bud. Took a hiatus for a while and had to spend a couple nights catching up a 2 year backlog of comics but other than that been reading since there was only a dozen or so comics posted – been fun watching how both your artwork and your storytelling evolve and keep getting better. Wouldn’t miss this for much of anything! :D
Nice to have you back in the community.
And lovely to have you complimenting DaveB‘s art. We get so used to it that it goes all but unremarked much of the time. Which is a crying shame, given that it is often gallery-worthy material!
Fancy piloting an 8.5 meter (28 feet) tall, 7 tonnes, humanoid robot, from onboard? Complete with a working (if not deadly) weapon. No problems, just pop over to Japan!
Japan, do you have to be so zxcvqwrt cool all the time?
Yes, they do have to be that cool all the time.
On the plus side, the turtle in my back yard could outrun that robot. (It moves less than 1 kmh, and can’t even leave the building without being dismantled first because it’s taller than the entrance.)
On the other hand, outrunning the 140 kph spongeballs would be more difficult.
When you think you have made something awesome you will soon find out they did the same thing but better last year in Japan.
And/or bat-shit crazy. Only occasionally are the two combined into the same mania.
Lol.
Japan excels in making dreams a reality, or turning them into nightmares.
Just don’t ask to take part in a live-action Hentai movie :P
Because being smacked with a rubber hose covered in lube that spews melted cream by a stage hand has to be a little awkward.
Especially if your mum attends the premiere.
-you couldn’t have at least done voice work for a quality hentai that at least looked better and more erotic than this?
(Trust me, live action tentacle hentai exists…and I can only imagine because people need something to laugh at. It is nearly impossible to pull off in live action, even CGI it would be comical).
Ugh, don’t remind me of that. I’ve seen one – it wasn’t even So bad it’s good kind.
*shudders* Reminds me also of Futanaria or however those fake shlongs were/are called.
But we Americans have those too! Just google “Eagle Prime” or “Iron Glory”
To be fair, maxima’s first mistake was putting dabble and Sydney together unsupervised.
X is supervising them. It is her only job.
Generally speaking, most games won’t care about how much mooks you had to go through to finish it.
Unless it’s a No Kill session.
Although past certain point you might be reluctant to spend time killing mooks since avoiding them would be faster (especially if you’re not required to kill them for whatever reason) or resort to rocket hops with God Mode on (aggro everyone let them come to you and then Hop!)
Gas that lights up from lightning sounds like a great idea to push those fancy Nvidia graphics cards to the limit in some FPS. I’d play that.
Although last time there was some gas involved was in Evil Within, and a spark was instant death (duh).
Talk of these always reminds me of the Prototype games, especially the second one that tried to give the protagonist more of a heart…but in the end the story and game mechanics didn’t exactly…meet up. Going on a mission where the guy was like, “those sick corporate psychopaths are turning innocent civilians into zombie mutants, I have to stop them”…when during game play I could eat about three neighborhoods worth of people on the way over there for health…or kicks, drive an ATV down a sidewalk, capture a helicopter, mow down the unaffected sector and then jump out and let it crash down their heads.
yeah a tad bit of a disconnect in those games.
I loved the first game for the fact that it was very different from everything else – “Memory holes? Let’s bash someone to a bloody pulp and fill them up!” “Health on a decline? Let’s eat a bunch of dudes!” “Whole base of enemies but you can’t trigger the alarm? Move that truck in the line of sight, and eat them while no one is looking.”
And then the big reveal in the end, and I’m like “Well damn, we were a monster all along” duh.
And after feeling for the hero all this time, we get a sequel where he’s the villain again… wth.
I think Dabbler aught to remember that Sydney can offer words of wisdom, by simply expressing an observation. Dabbler could upgrade her munition by converting it to explosive marshmallow foam!
All the advantages of her current canister, and it provides a tasty nutritious snack in an emergency or extreme party situation!
A thermobaric explosion is a really good idea here. Even though the mannekillers won’t be affected by the vacuum, the extreme overpressure and sustained shockwave will be much more effective against them than a regular high explosive.
Cue Arnold in True Lies, “But they were all bad guys.”