Leeching Aluminum

[Trusk'our he/him]

I was thinking about ways to help Invested individuals counter some of the deadliness of aluminum weapons, especially those that could get lodged in the body and prevent them from healing. 

What if your ally got shot right in the head with one and the bullet got lodged inside? That would normally kill them, even of they were a gold Compounding Savant.

However, if you, their ally, were to rush over and give them a Hemalurgic spike or an Unsealed granting the ability to Burn aluminum, you should be able to Leech it, I would think, as it is now a viable target for that Allomancy. Afterwards, an Unsealed Goldmind that automatically Tapped healing would bring them back.

Perhaps a future technology of a more automated process could be made, where automatically functioning Metalminds could specifically target aluminum lodged in the body with A-aluminum or Leech it without removing all other Investiture. Then you could pretty much negate aluminum's counter to F-gold healing. 

[Treamayne]

16 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I was thinking about ways to help Invested individuals counter some of the deadliness of aluminum weapons, especially those that could get lodged in the body and prevent them from healing. 

What if your ally got shot right in the head with one and the bullet got lodged inside? That would normally kill them, even of they were a gold Compounding Savant.

However, if you, their ally, were to rush over and give them a Hemalurgic spike or an Unsealed granting the ability to Burn aluminum, you should be able to Leech it, I would think, as it is now a viable target for that Allomancy. Afterwards, an Unsealed Goldmind that automatically Tapped healing would bring them back.

Perhaps a future technology of a more automated process could be made, where automatically functioning Metalminds could specifically target aluminum lodged in the body with A-aluminum or Leech it without removing all other Investiture. Then you could pretty much negate aluminum's counter to F-gold healing. 

Interesting. However. . . 

1. I'm not sure leeching Aluminum actually does anything, as soo n as it is Kinetic, it vanishes. Leeching means as soon as something else goes Kinetic, it vanishes. So to vanish, it needs to be burned - but being burned means it's gone before it can be leeched (at least that's my current understanding).
2. Seems needlessly complex, when you can just have an F-Gold/A-Aluminum  Medallion. Hand it to the person shot, and they can burn away thier aluminum, then tap their gold to heal. 

[therunner he/him]

Issue with that is that Aluminum used in bullets is not pure Aluminum (they must be alloy due to ballistics), and hence is not usable by Allomancers.

Best bet is F-Gold medallion to keep them functional, and then manually dig it out.

[alder24]

19 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

However, if you, their ally, were to rush over and give them a Hemalurgic spike or an Unsealed granting the ability to Burn aluminum, you should be able to Leech it, I would think, as it is now a viable target for that Allomancy. Afterwards, an Unsealed Goldmind that automatically Tapped healing would bring them back.

Yes, that might work. Complicated way, requiring you to have a spike ready (not a medallion as those don't grant Allomantic powers) and those aren't easily available. You can't mass produce spikes containing A-aluminum just to have one of them ready when your buddy got hit with an aluminum bullet. Not to mention that if your buddy isn’t a Bloodmaker, such a bullet hitting the right point would kill him in a matter of seconds giving you no chance to help him. And it’s hard to perform the precise act of Hemalurgy in a chaotic environment of an active gun fight. I deem this possible but highly impractical.

2 hours ago, therunner said:

Issue with that is that Aluminum used in bullets is not pure Aluminum (they must be alloy due to ballistics), and hence is not usable by Allomancers.

That's a good point. However, you still can burn impure metals, when they are close enough to Allomantic proportions, even when they won't give you any powers. The question now is how much of other things are in this alloy used for guns and bullets. Because it still acts as pure aluminum and can't be pushed or pulled, I think it's within limits to be Allomantically valid, even if impure. You might get a little ill, but that's better than being dead. TFE ch 7:

Quote

“Now, there’s something you need to know about Allomantic metals,” Kelsier said as they strolled forward in the mists. “The more pure they are, the more effective they are. The vials we prepare contain absolutely pure metals, prepared and sold specifically for Allomancers.
“Alloys—like pewter—are even trickier, since the metal percentages have to be mixed just right, if you want maximum power. In fact, if you aren’t careful when you buy your metals, you could end up with the wrong alloy entirely.”
[...]
“If the mixture is only off by a bit, you’ll still get some power out of it,” Kelsier said. “However, if it’s too far off, burning it will make you sick.”

 

Spoiler

Longshot_97

This question concerns Mistborn Era 2. Aluminum at this time is supremely rare and quite expensive, and Wax is seen lamenting his profound lack of aluminum guns and bullets fairly often. However, couldn't he fashion a "Poor Man's Aluminum" of sorts by coating his guns (and potentially bullets) in a thin veneer of iron, then Feruchemically charging it? You've noted that metalminds can still be pushed, but much less than un-Invested metal. This could help him, in the absence of aluminum. So, is there a reason he has not done that?

Brandon Sanderson

The layer you would get by just that little coat would be so small that it'd have very little effect. Now, there's a pretty good argument for putting it into bullets. The problem there is: are the alloys that make good bullets going to work very well? Now, granted, aluminum doesn’t make for great bullets either. But any aluminum alloy kind of gets the property of aluminum. Where any iron alloy does not necessarily get the property of being able to allomantically or feruchemically interact with it in the right way. Can you get there? It's an excellent question that I perhaps should explore. I like this idea. But it's harder than you make it out to be. It is a good idea, though; it's a pretty good idea.

r/books AMA 2022 (July 7, 2022)

 

[Trusk'our he/him]

21 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Interesting. However. . . 

1. I'm not sure leeching Aluminum actually does anything, as soo n as it is Kinetic, it vanishes. Leeching means as soon as something else goes Kinetic, it vanishes. So to vanish, it needs to be burned - but being burned means it's gone before it can be leeched (at least that's my current understanding).

Ah, yup, that's right.

For some reason my brain broke for a moment and thought that Burning A-aluminum yourself would be a slower process, so having it Leeched would instead be instantaneous. No matter whether it was Leeched or you Burned it yourself, the effect would pretty much be the same.

Still, I suppose Leeching them instead of them using the aluminum  Allomancy directly could be useful if they were incapacitated (i.e. bullet lodged in the brain).

21 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Seems needlessly complex, when you can just have an F-Gold/A-Aluminum  Medallion. Hand it to the person shot, and they can burn away thier aluminum, then tap their gold to heal. 

That would probably be more efficient in most cases. I guess the only time you'd want to do it for them is if they received a brain injury and couldn't do it themselves. 

3 hours ago, therunner said:

Issue with that is that Aluminum used in bullets is not pure Aluminum (they must be alloy due to ballistics), and hence is not usable by Allomancers.

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

That's a good point. However, you still can burn impure metals, when they are close enough to Allomantic proportions, even when they won't give you any powers. The question now is how much of other things are in this alloy used for guns and bullets. Because it still acts as pure aluminum and can't be pushed or pulled, I think it's within limits to be Allomantically valid, even if impure. You might get a little ill, but that's better than being dead.

As @alder24 mentioned, alloys of aluminum close enough to have their metallurgic properties should be Allomantically viable, meaning if you couldn't Burn them you wouldn't need to anyway and could just heal normally. 

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Yes, that might work. Complicated way, requiring you to have a spike ready (not a medallion as those don't grant Allomantic powers) and those aren't easily available. You can't mass produce spikes containing A-aluminum just to have one of them ready when your buddy got hit with an aluminum bullet. Not to mention that if your buddy isn’t a Bloodmaker, such a bullet hitting the right point would kill him in a matter of seconds giving you no chance to help him. And it’s hard to perform the precise act of Hemalurgy in a chaotic environment of an active gun fight. I deem this possible but highly impractical.

Good point on the Medallions not having Allomancy yet, I forgot about that little detail. Maybe once they crack that secret you could use them instead of Hemalurgy (BoM seem to suggest it can be done somehow).

As for the difficulty of using it. . . Yeah, it's not really super practical in a lot of cases. I suppose, as @therunner mentioned, it may be more effective in most cases of aluminum being lodged inside the person in question to tough it out until your in a safer place and you could use this convoluted process instead of rummaging through their insides to remove a bullet. 

Still, if you're on the battlefied and your buddy drops from an aluminum bullet to the brain, this gives them a chance to survive, despite the difficulty. 

I also do think that once more advanced Unsealed Metalminds are developed, it very likely may be a more practical process.

Edited June 2 by Trusk'our

[therunner he/him]

6 hours ago, alder24 said:

That's a good point. However, you still can burn impure metals, when they are close enough to Allomantic proportions, even when they won't give you any powers. The question now is how much of other things are in this alloy used for guns and bullets. Because it still acts as pure aluminum and can't be pushed or pulled, I think it's within limits to be Allomantically valid, even if impure.

Aluminum has a field effect, so theoretically even something like 50:50 alloy could still retain that effect. Duralumin though suggests that would not be engouh, as it is 96% Aluminum.

Nevertheless, impure metals must be veeery close to the Allomantic metal, since Steel is at most 98% Iron and 2% Carbon (and can go as low as 0.02% carbon to still count IRL). So anything that is less than 99% Aluminum would not count as 'impure Aluminum', and bullets are almost certainly less Aluminum than that (by simple requirements of ballistics).

4 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

As @alder24 mentioned, alloys of aluminum close enough to have their metallurgic properties should be Allomantically viable, meaning if you couldn't Burn them you wouldn't need to anyway and could just heal normally.

But bullets of 'aluminum' specifically don't have metallurgic properties of Aluminum, otherwise they would be useless as bullets.
 

Edited June 2 by therunner