Bendalloy ageing

[lightsongthebold]

I am a big fan of the mistborn books and I think aol is one of sanderson's better ones - particularly with the humour

Anyway I have a question about bend alloy and ageing. If a slider uses a bend alloy regularly will he eventually age faster than people who can't burn bendalloy? To this effect could bendalloy be used to age faster on purpose? Is there a specific amount of time that can be compressed in a speed bubble or can it vary?

I would be very interested to see people's opinions on this particularly as we have little information on the new metals.

Edited July 2, 2015 by Jasnah Venture

[Guest]

*Bendalloy*

All one word.

Ageing: if Bendalloy is actually pushing on Time, then it would definitely cause a Slider to age faster. So far, we only know that Bendalloy APPEARS to push on Time.

Time Compression: the rate of Compression seems to be variable, since we see Wayne "Flare" his metal at one point in AoL. The exact speed is somewhat up for debate (I think people are in general agreement that it's around 10x when not Flaring)

Edit:

Just did some quick math, and I'm WAY off with that 10x unless Flaring gives more than 100x extra speed

The explosion takes about 20 seconds to cross Wax's planning room (call it 6m), and sound/explosions expand at about 300m/s... do that math, and Wayne was speeding things up by about 1000x, or maybe 500x if the scene only took 10 seconds

Edited July 2, 2015 by LabRat

[lightsongthebold]

*Bendalloy*

All one word.

Excuse my phones autocorrect.

Edited July 2, 2015 by Jasnah Venture

[Arook he/him]

So I talked with someone else about this in a different thread and we figure with the speed of burn on bendalloy that it would maybe take a few days or so off of a persons life maybe a whole month across their lifetime. I mean we are talking an extra 5 minutes here or there. If you figure that every day he used 5 minutes of time for 30 years you get like 38 days. I figure that is way more than most people would use and is a fairly small amount of time to loose. Things change of course when you start tub feeding someone bendalloy all day long and have them flair their metal continually, of course who knows what a bendalloy savant could do.

[Guest]

Excuse my phones autocorrect.

Clearly, your phone's autocorrect needs an allomantic upgrade... Hemalurgy the logic board?

[ecohansen]

Well, there are a few things to think about, but I think there's a pretty darn good chance that using Bendalloy intelligently could greatly increase your subjective lifespan.

 

First, there's a lot of debate about the relative impact of different factors on aging, but definitely at least some of the symptoms of aging are due to the slow accumulation of errors in our DNA across our lifespan.  The rate of DNA damage depends mostly on two things: faulty processes in our own cells and exposure to ionizing radiation.  Now, while you're in your bendalloy bubble, unless you have a significant radiation source in there with you, the amount of radiation hitting the bubble will be determined by the time rate of the outside world, rather than the time rate inside the bubble.  So you will experience lower levels of radiation inside the bubble.  Assume for the sake of argument that 20% of the effects of aging are due to exposure to ionizing radiation.  Also, for the sake of argument, assume that in your bubble, time moves at 10x normal speed.  You only experience 1/10 the radiation level, so you get 1/10 the damage: 2%.    So, if you live your entire life inside a bendalloy bubble, by the time you have subjectively arrived at the age where you would otherwise have died (100% damage), you have recieved the full 80% damage from non-radiation causes, but only 2% damage from radiation, rather than 20.  By the subjective age when you should have died, you will only have lived 82% of your life, and gain an 18% bonus on your lifespan (yes, I know this is lazy improper math, but proper math would only make things more confusing, and wouldn't change the fundamental point). 

 

Moreover, stress is both a contributor to aging and to more direct causes of death: it's linked to heart disease, obesity, etcetera.  If you have bendalloy, you can eliminate time-related stress from your life.  Sure, you'll still have to deal with things like social anxiety and existential angst, but I'd imagine that the loss of time pressures and deadlines would add a couple years to anyone's subjective lifespan.

 

But yeah, despite these benefits that allow you to live longer subjectively, from the perspective of everyone else sliders probably appear to have a shorter life in objective time.  Again, take the extreme case of living entirely in a permanent 10x speed bubble.  All things being equal, you'd expect to move towards death 10 times faster, and have 1/10 the normal lifespan in objective time.  Now, increase your lifespan by 18% because of protection from radiation, and add another 2% for protection from stress.  Now instead of appearing to live 10% as long as everyone else, you'll appear to live 12% as long.  If a normal lifespan is 80 years, instead of dying 8 real-world years after you're born, actually you'll die 9.6 real-world years after you're born.  But from your perspective, you'll live to 96! Not Bad!

Edited July 3, 2015 by ecohansen

[Arook he/him]

You failed to factor the stress from isolation in a bendalloy bubble.

[ecohansen]

I also assumed that whatever mechanism keeps light from dimming and redshifting doesn't apply to ionizing radiation.  Since none of us know what that mechanism is, I'm just leaving it aside.

 

And yep, the extreme case would definitely create hazards and stresses of its own.

[tobar14 he/him]

my head hurts when i start thinking too much about the time related metals.

[Ookla the Absent]

my head hurts when i start thinking too much about the time related metals.

Which is why we think about them.

 

 

I have a question about bendalloy and ageing. If a slider uses a bend alloy regularly will he eventually age faster than people who can't burn bendalloy? To this effect could bendalloy be used to age faster on purpose? Is there a specific amount of time that can be compressed in a speed bubble or can it vary?

I see a few options on this one: Yes, no, and ageing more slowly. One of the big questions is, from whose perspective? Like said above, from the allomancers perspective, probably not, so if they used it within reasonable amounts (it's also very expensive) it probably wouldn't change by a whole lot from either perspective.

 

What I really want to know is what the effect of being a bendalloy (or cadmium) Savant. If, as per ecohansen, you spent your entire life in a bendabubble you would indubitably become a savant. This gives you more power, but generally at a cost of reliance/addiction, but in this case could likely speed up your ageing rather significantly. I'd say that, assuming you age on your own time (rather than from outside perspective) you've probably got 6 years at most, possibly as low as 3, depending on just how fast you can go. Your time speeds up greatly and you die younger leads to a very short and weird existence. especially if you suddenly run out of bendalloy and have to live out your remaining few years physically dependant on a rare metal.

 

Of course, you could always die young of a freak accident.

of course, a bender with fast reaction could just dodge getting hit by most anything.