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As it's my first attempt at writing an SCP, I would be open to any suggestions or constructive criticism that people have to offer.
SCP-770 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-770.
Why Fe-56, and not something lighter (unless it also does fusion, not just fission, as you suggest)? Off the top of my head, I could say aluminium, that's good enough for containing slime mold. Construct the enclosure of pure aluminium, by vacuum-depositing it onto another substrate, insert the mold, and seal it hermetically, say by soldering it shut: keter to safe.
Also, you could perhaps quote a sievert dose, so we know what we're dealing with. LD50 can vary wildly from person to person. I suggest you take a look here. About 10 Sv should be enough for a "Holy shit, that's hot!"-type of reaction, at least from me.
I simply chose Fe-56 because it is the most stable. I originally thought of the mould doing both fission and fusion, but decided against it. However, maybe some bright spark at the foundation has decided that if a mutation of the strain arises, the stablest isotope is the best choice.
As for not quoting a seivert dose rate, as someone who has worked with nuclear industry associates for some time now, hearing seiverts mis-quoted makes my skin crawl. Minor rant incoming:
Seiverts applied in this scenario are a human equivalent dosage measurement, based on a variety of different impact factors. For example, if the majority of the radiation given out by a source was in the form of alpha (which has a substantial weighting factor) , we might get a combined human effective dose rate of several Svmin-1, which one might think would cause radiation sickness and death. However that would largely be to the skin, due to alpha not being highly penetrating. In reality, we would have to be talking about the effective dose, which also happens to be measured in Sv (confusing eh?), which requires the application of further weighting factors depending upon the tissue that is absorbing the radiation. Skin has a different weighting factor to internal organs, meaning that the effectivness of the dosage could be lower.
tl;dr: Seiverts are actually quite a complicated unit that even many radiation health specialists tend to make mistakes with. let alone the media. I'd rather not have to justify that in the SCP, and stick with a simple, and more accurate (if less precise) measurement of approximately how long it takes before you have a 50% chance of death.
Do you understand what LD50 actually means? Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make you feel bad, I'm just trying to give you some kind of idea as to what it means.
LD50 is the dose of a substance that's lethal for 50% of the population. Therefore, LD50 does not vary "wildly" from person to person, and cannot. That said, I would also recommend some kind of Sv dosage, so that physicists can point and laugh people reading this can get some concept of the sheer amount of radiation coming off this thing.
Not being versed in the various units used in radiation terminology, an Sv dosage reading would mean nothing to me unless it was explained in the article. I don't want to have to refer to Wikipedia for an article that is perfectly good without that technical stuff.
if your reading this your gay
Very interesting. I'd like to see that incident report, though.
Upvoted, regardless.
I enjoyed this SCP for its scientific nature and originality. The concept isn't super exciting, but it is well written and well made. Upvoted.
I like this, a lot. Especially the cascade effect it will have on the biosphere if it gets out. Upvoted. Two two things and a typo: 1) You might address what was containing it when it was discovered. 2) You might mention that most experimentation is looking for a good way to deal with this in the wild.
Typo:
After SCP-653 has been returned to storage, the atmosphere of the laboratory must be purged, and any materials or instruments that have come into contact with SCP-770 are to be destroyed in a high temperature plasma arc furnace.
I remember back in the day, a lot of D&D DMs would try to make up for the fact that players often didn't bother with torches by supplying their dungeons with phosphorescent moss or molds. I often wondered what process could possibly lead to the glow.
I wish I'd thought of this back then. It would have been interesting to see if the players worked out what the problem was before the hair loss and bruising got all the way to loss of teeth and breakdown of internal tissues…
This is the most original thing I've seen on here in a long, long time.
Upvoted.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
