Gold at the end of the book

[Father Tanner]

At the end, Wayne takes a little of each metal along with the Lerastrium. He already is a gold feruchemist. Is there a specific reason he couldn't have stored a bit of health in the gold he swallowed, then burned it, compounding the effect to save himself from the blast? I know it was a huge blast and that would have only been a little gold, but compounding is crazy powerful. Don't get me wrong. I loved this book, especially Wayne's character arc at the end. Fantastic! My question is simply, could he have saved himself? Did he simply "not think about it" and Harmony didn't give it to him as a possibility because he wanted to keep Lerastrium a secret? 

Edited January 16, 2023 by Father Tanner

[Frustration]

The explosion was on the scale of mid sized nukes(I calculated), compounding wouldn't have done anything, even if both him and the gold weren't instantly evaporated.

[Trusk'our]

16 hours ago, Father Tanner said:

At the end, Wayne takes a little of each metal along with the Lerastrium. He already is a gold feruchemist. Is there a specific reason he couldn't have stored a bit of health in the gold he swallowed, then burned it, compounding the effect to save himself from the blast? I know it was a huge blast and that would have only been a little gold, but compounding is crazy powerful. Don't get me wrong. I loved this book, especially Wayne's character arc at the end. Fantastic! My question is simply, could he have saved himself? Did he simply "not think about it" and Harmony didn't give it to him as a possibility because he wanted to keep Lerastrium a secret? 

No, Wayne could not have survived the explosion, even with Feruchemical Gold. Even if he were to theoretically have enough health stored up, his metalminds would likely be either vaporized, or at least melted and blasted far from his body.

[WandererNearby]

Plus, there’s the fact that it might actually be too much damage. If I remember correctly, compounding works as a trick to make more Feruchemical healing. There’s a real possibility that nuclear explosion would require more healing than is possible to store in 50 metal minds plus the idea that it might destroy the metal minds before they were used. 

[cometaryorbit]

Yeah, this wouldn't work for several reasons:

- Wayne didn't have any health left stored after the big fall. The tiny amount he could store in the time available wouldn't be remotely close to enough (burning a goldmind with only a tiny amount of charge only gives health briefly, then goes back to Gold Allomancy effect).

- He probably did not have enough gold for that, even if he'd had his regular goldminds charged normally. Being near the center of an explosion this big is far more destructive than the mot extreme things we've seen Gold Compounding heal: Miles' point blank shotgun blast and stick of dynamite, and TLR's (possibly exaggerated) decapitation and burning building.

- Even in decapitation, goldminds remained attached to the larger portion of TLR's body. Being completely blown apart by a large explosion would separate the goldminds from the largest remaining body portion, so healing would stop. Even unlimited storage wouldn't save a Gold Compounder from that.

Powerful as Gold Compounding is, it has very definite limits. Even TLR couldn't survive conditions that would melt off his goldminds or explosions that would blow off his arms (thus separating his goldminds from his body).

It wasn't, technically, a *nuclear* explosion - but multiple tons of extra strong/Investiture-boosted chemical explosion is likely getting into the yield range of the largest thermobaric bombs or the smaller tactical nuclear weapons (both in the tens of tons of TNT range).

Edited February 3, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[alder24]

Yeah, gold won't help you here. My estimates, based on comparison of damage done by the explosion, give a yield similar to the Beirut explosion, which was 0.5-1 kt. That's still a huge explosion, one of the biggest non-nuclear man-made explosions. And it reached a temperature of 3000 °C at the epicenter. Gold evaporates at 2970 °C. So gold just vaporized with Wayne, before he could do anything. 

If this explosion had a yield in Mt, it would be even worse. Fat Man bomb (21 kt) produced a temperature near the epicenter of around 4000 °C, but the fission could reached even 1 million °C. 1 Mt nuclear weapon can produce temperatures of about 100 million °C at its center, about four to five times that which occurs at the center of the Sun. Wayne was standing right there, at the very center of the explosion. There is no way to survive such temperatures.

[cometaryorbit]

No way it was a megaton class explosion, the matter to energy transformation specifically was prevented- it was "just" the chemical harmonium-water reaction.

But three barrels of harmonium must be multiple tons at least, and harmonium-water reaction is more powerful than conventional chemical explosion due to pulling energy from the Spiritual component of the harmonium.

[Frustration]

16 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

No way it was a megaton class explosion, the matter to energy transformation specifically was prevented- it was "just" the chemical harmonium-water reaction.

It might well have been, based on a calculation I did I could have been up to 1.3MT, depending on how powerful standard harmonium water reactions are.

[alder24]

30 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

No way it was a megaton class explosion, the matter to energy transformation specifically was prevented- it was "just" the chemical harmonium-water reaction.

But three barrels of harmonium must be multiple tons at least, and harmonium-water reaction is more powerful than conventional chemical explosion due to pulling energy from the Spiritual component of the harmonium.

I do agree, the damage done by the explosion was far less than what it should have been if it was a Mt class. Thermal blast alone would burn half of the city, and it would certainly blind Steris, as she looked straight at it. “A 1-megaton explosion can cause flash blindness at distances as great as 13 miles on a clear day, or 53 miles (85 km) on a clear night."

If I recall correctly the original @Frustration estimate was in the range of Mt, so that's why I describe the temperatures of that yield.

In Beirut there was 2,750 tonnes of explosive material, so whatever the mass of those barrels was, with the investiture increasing the energy of this explosion, the yield could still end up in the similar range. I don't think barrels weight more than a tonne as Wayne was able to pushed them.

Edited February 3, 2023 by alder24

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

No way it was a megaton class explosion, the matter to energy transformation specifically was prevented- it was "just" the chemical harmonium-water reaction.

But three barrels of harmonium must be multiple tons at least, and harmonium-water reaction is more powerful than conventional chemical explosion due to pulling energy from the Spiritual component of the harmonium.

I ran some newer calculations here if you're interested

 

[IlstrawberrySeed]

16 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

The tiny amount he could store in the time available wouldn't be remotely close to enough (burning a goldmind with only a tiny amount of charge only gives health briefly, then goes back to Gold Allomancy effect).

1: Where is confirmation on the parens? I tried arguing this point in another thread, but couldn't find proof.
2: You should be able to fill a metalmind you are actively burning, so the "small amount" of healing doesn't matter, only the amount of gold.
3: He had more than enough time to compund enough healing to survive evaporation, if he could manage to tap it. He spent about a minute in the time it takes the fireball to proceed about a centimeter. If we assume that the buble would last a full second on the outside without the stress caused by sending things in and out, that should last way more than an hour on the inside.

[alder24]

1 hour ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

3: He had more than enough time to compund enough healing to survive evaporation, if he could manage to tap it. He spent about a minute in the time it takes the fireball to proceed about a centimeter. If we assume that the buble would last a full second on the outside without the stress caused by sending things in and out, that should last way more than an hour on the inside.

He didn't. He had just a few minutes when he made the bubble at best. As soon as he pushed the last barrel out, the bubble collapsed and he was consumed by the explosion. And no healing would help, when the explosion is hot enough to just vaporize your goldminds. What are you going to tap now?

[IlstrawberrySeed]

17 hours ago, alder24 said:

And no healing would help, when the explosion is hot enough to just vaporize your goldminds. What are you going to tap now?

19 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

..., if he could manage to tap it.

 

17 hours ago, alder24 said:

As soon as he pushed the last barrel out, the bubble collapsed

The way it was described in the book made it seem like the bubble colapsed due to the movement of things through the edge of the buble, rather than the duration running out. I believe his bendalloy would have lasted for at least a second in real-time based on previous examples. (Tangent below) I don't think it was only the barrels, as Wax never pushed on something outside of a speed bubble (iIrc) and there was stuff going on with the lights, so photons were likely a stress as well. If there is any evidence against the bubble colapsing because of the strain of things passing through the side, please let me know (or if there is evidence for the burn-time being in-buble, rather than out-of-bubble burn time).

Spoiler

In the past, durilium burning seems to have lasted about 1/2 a second, and though bendalloy burns fast anyway, he had more than enough to double the burn duration, assuming that D-burns are an increase in speed by several orders of magnitude, rather than a semi-instantaneous effect. Burn rate of durilum should logically effect your D-burns, though we don't have enough evidence to say wether it works the way I am describing or another way.

An intresting though experiment is D-burning/N-burning/DN-burning metals, especially aluminum. If you burn aluminum, all of your aluminum goes away, and so does the rest of your metals. If you burn durilium, then burn aluminum, does the aluminum disapear quicker? Does more of it get burned? If so, is this where the AoE effect from aluminum A-grenades comes from? What about necrobursting instead of durilium?

 

[alder24]

36 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

The way it was described in the book made it seem like the bubble colapsed due to the movement of things through the edge of the buble, rather than the duration running out.

He burned the bubble with duralumin, the time he had inside the bubble was predetermined, as he didn't have any more bendalloy to burn. And yes, each barrel he threw out of the bubble cracked it a lot. The moment he threw out the first barrel he was on 3 ticking clocks - first one for the bubble to collapse, with each barrel thrown out shortening this time, the other for the electrical signal, moving nearly at the speed of light, to reach the control panel outside of the bubble, and the third one for the explosion from the first barrel to reach the bubble.

So not only he didn't have enough time to compound gold, he didn't have enough gold for health needed to survive the explosion of that scale (the Beirut explosion made crater 124 m (407 ft) in diameter and 43 m (141 ft) in depth), and he didn't have a way to prevent gold from vaporizing in the instant.

Edited February 4, 2023 by alder24

[IlstrawberrySeed]

6 hours ago, alder24 said:

he didn't have enough gold for health needed to survive the explosion, ... and he didn't have a way to prevent gold from vaporizing in the instant.

I am not arguing that. He definitely didn't have enough gold. He wouldn't have been able to tap it if he did. What I'm arguing is that if he did and could, he should have been able to compound enough in the time he had.

6 hours ago, alder24 said:

the time he had inside the bubble was predetermined

Why do you say this? I see no evidence for or against the length of the bubble being effected by things moving through the side, we simply don't have enough data. The way it is described as (almost?) solid and cracking makes it sound like it was forces that caused it to stop - not the natural ending of it if in a black-box scenario. Unless there is evidence I am unaware of either way, I do not think we will come to agree at this point in time because our main pieces of info are interpretations of a single (short) chapter.

[Frustration]

5 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

I am not arguing that. He definitely didn't have enough gold. He wouldn't have been able to tap it if he did. What I'm arguing is that if he did and could, he should have been able to compound enough in the time he had.

Completely making a new body, probably multiple times as the heat and shrapnel would tear it to pieces even as he was healing, would take days to store, even when compounding.

5 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Why do you say this? I see no evidence for or against the length of the bubble being effected by things moving through the side, we simply don't have enough data. The way it is described as (almost?) solid and cracking makes it sound like it was forces that caused it to stop - not the natural ending of it if in a black-box scenario. Unless there is evidence I am unaware of either way, I do not think we will come to agree at this point in time because our main pieces of info are interpretations of a single (short) chapter.

Because that would be the first time anything other than the one who created it entering/leaving a bubble having had any effect on it

[alder24]

9 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Why do you say this?

Because the regular way bendalloy bubbles work is by burning bendalloy constantly, which makes a bubble. The moment Wayne stops burning bendalloy, the bubble disappears. This time he had a lot of bendalloy with him, and compressed the time he would get from it, and the time dilation, with duralumin, burning all of bendalloy in a single moment. That's what I meant. He didn't burn bendalloy anymore to uphold this bubble. The time the bubble would stay there was predetermined when he burned bendalloy with duralumin. We don't know how long it would last, it may stay there for days in bubble-time, or mere minutes, as much of the bendalloy's power was used to compress time dilation to near light speed levels, and that's why think it this is more likely.

This bubble was also so fragile that the objects passing through it cracked it, no other bubble behaved like this, and I remember a few moments like this, usually with bullets, but few times with people as well.

[cometaryorbit]

On 2/3/2023 at 3:11 PM, Frustration said:

It might well have been, based on a calculation I did I could have been up to 1.3MT, depending on how powerful standard harmonium water reactions are.

Well it's said in BoM that it's more powerful than dynamite, but not dramatically so.

Now they're comparing to city destroying explosions the Set wants, so slightly more could be pretty significant on the scale of normal chemical explosions. And there is WoB that it is more energetic than an usual chemical reaction due to extra from the Spiritual.

OTOH the Hunters' bomb was good enough to destroy a large stone temple. Now that's still way below MT levels - I think the largest non nuclear bombs (tens of tons TNT equivalent) could surely do that - but the Set may have been getting poor explosive yield as the reaction blew itself apart before all the harmonium was consumed.

Still, I think it's more plausibly in the order of magnitude of 10-100x normal chemical than the 100,000-1 million x normal chemical you'd need to get a MT class explosion out of a couple tons of explosive.

(IIRC, the best solid explosives are something like 2.5x TNT - though reactions that don't have to carry their own oxidizer, like fuel-air, can be more. So even 10x TNT would be well beyond normal chemical explosives. )

 

On 2/3/2023 at 4:33 PM, IlstrawberrySeed said:

1: Where is confirmation on the parens? I tried arguing this point in another thread, but couldn't find proof.
2: You should be able to fill a metalmind you are actively burning, so the "small amount" of healing doesn't matter, only the amount of gold.

1. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/98/#e860

 

2. Gold burning is still limited to your Allomancy burn rate. Wayne isn't a superstrong Mistborn like Elend, and even Elend's Allomantic burn rate wouldn't be nearly enough to survive this. Even Feruchemically charged gold + duralumin won't save him, because duralumin doesnt give extra power, just all of it at once... so it is limited to the amount of charged gold he has... which would be miniscule because of the first WoB (Wayne can't store for 30 seconds then count the entire piece of metal as "Feruchemically charged gold" for burning it).