Dear Blizzard,
Hi! It’s me, Austin! Actually, you probably don’t know who I am. I’ve never written
to you before, but I have played most of your games. Warcraft I, II, III, World OF Warcraft,
Starcraft, Starcraft II, Diablos 1 through 3, and now, finally, against my better judgement,
I bought Overwatch, because I just can’t help myself when it comes to you.
The first thing I noticed upon booting up the game was dat ass. Erm. I mean. Um. The
interesting and diverse cast of characters you’ve compiled, like if Pixar were to build
a murder squad out of loveable and cute, and confusingly sexy characters. Yes, even Roadhog.
Anyway, after I returned from the dark recesses of the internet and wiped my desk down, I
finally got started into the game, and noticed that this unique cast of characters also come
with a host of interesting and absurd powers, and the very first thing I thought was:
Oh fucking boy, I can’t wait to tear these apart.
My favorite weapon of death in the entire game so far, from a scientific standpoint,
has got to be the Lucio’s sonic amplifier, which shoots out sonic pulses of death at
enemies, and is capable of actually killing them through the use of soundwaves. Is this
even fucking possible? The answer may surprise you.
First, in order to look at whether or not sound can kill you, we have to look at what
sound actually is. We think of sound as what we hear with our ears, but it’s actually
quite a bit more complicated than that. Sound is a vibration in the form of a wave traveling
through a medium, either a solid, a liquid or a gas, and if you zoom in close enough
to this wave on a molecular level, sound is the transference of energy from particle to
particle, kinda like a row of dominos knocking into one another. Every sound has a source
of energy that creates it, either in the form of a speaker, or something striking something
else, or something getting hot very, very quickly. The louder the sound, the more energy
was used to create it. What we hear is just this vibration reaching our eardrums and transferring
energy into them, causing them to vibrate. Nerves then take those vibrations, turn it
into a signal, and send it to our brains. Tons of sound exists, though, that we can’t
actually hear. But it’s still there.
So it stands to reason that if you just build a speaker and put enough power through it,
eventually, those molecules bumping into each other will transfer enough energy to disrupt
the operational ability of your organs and impart enough shear force to tear you open.
So how much energy does Lucio’s sound amplifier have to output to be as dangerous as, say,
a bullet?
Let’s take something small. A 9mm round. Small, but effective, a 9mm is more than capable
of punching through your flesh and slicing organs and blood vessels. A 9mm delivers a
surprisingly tame energy of 500 joules--the key is that this 500 joules is contained in
a very, very tiny package, so the actual energy-density of the ballistic weapon is quite high, which
is why it can cause so much damage to your body if it makes contact.
SO! How loud would our little stereo blast have to be in order to deliver 500 joules
of energy to its target? Believe it or not, this is a surprisingly tricky thing to figure
out. Loudness is measured in decibels, which we’ll get more into in a bit--what you need
to know for now is that decibels are measured in watts, which for those of you who are frequent
watches of my show will remember is joules-per-second, so for the sake of easiness we’re going
to presume that all that energy is delivered over the span of a second, which means our
500 joules is now 500 watts. Now, to get how many decibels you’d need at sea level to
deliver that amount of force to a target, we’re going to have to do some math. Decibel
formulas are a little depressingly complicated, so I won’t bother you with the details,
but here, look at it. Look how pretty it is, with its logarithmic functions and all that.
Anyway. Plug your numbers in, pull the lever on your mechanical calculator and BOOM, you
get your answer. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Nope. Nope nope nope nope. NOPE. Nope.
Sigh. Sorry. That’s just. In order to understand why 270 decibels is certifiably ludicrous,
we’re going to have to talk about decibels.
So this formula has a “log” in it. That’s not log as in “log cabin,” but rather
“logarithm,” which is a mathy way for saying that something increases logarithmically.
Okay, that’s still mathy. Okay, so, how about this: for every 10 decibels you increase,
the power of the soundwave is actually increasing ten times. So 20 decibels isn’t actually
twice as powerful as 10 like you’d think, but rather 20 decibels is ten times more powerful
than ten.
For example:
15 decibels is the sound of a pin dropping. 40 decibels is the sound of a quiet whisper.
60 decibels is normal speaking volume. As you start to get higher, the volumes start
to get intense.
Scientists at the European Space agency have a speaker capable of producing sounds as loud
as 154 decibels, which they use to test satellite equipment to make sure it can handle the raucous
sound waves produced during space shuttle launches. This speaker is the size of a goddamn
car, and simulates the amount of noise created by a space shuttle. Sounds of this volume
can easily burst your eardrums in seconds of exposure.
Which brings us back to the 270 decibels required for our sound gun to deliver the energy of
one bullet. As I mentioned earlier, sound is created by energy, like the tapping of
your finger upon a desk, or electricity sending pulses to your speakers and making them vibrate.
The energy required to create a sound wave of 270 decibels: a nuclear. Fucking. Bomb.
In fact, several nuclear bombs, because the sonic boom created by a nuclear weapon, which
produces winds in excess of over 300 miles per fucking hour clocks in at only 230 decibels,
several hundred times less power than our pesky 9mm bullet gun. Each pull of the trigger
of this thing should be like fucking Hiroshima or Nagasaki all over again--in fact, the least
of your worries would be the fucking sound waves.
This is a bit extreme though. So let’s dial it the fuck back. As little as 200 decibels
can actually kill a person from the sheer force. During World War II, victims in London
were found dead with no external injuries. When autopsies were performed, it was discovered
that shockwaves from the bombs being dropped on the city had eviscerated their organs.
So, yeah, we don’t need a nuke to kill people with sound, we just need a fucking ariel assault
bomb. That’s the stuff. Every time you pull the trigger, it’s like a fucking World War
II carpet bomb exploding in the barrel. And there’s no fucking way that gun is holding
all that energy, hell no--for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction,
and the kickback alone should be ripping your arm off, and the explosion would be blowing
your body apart shortly after, successfully killing your opponent with soundwaves, sure,
but making sure that you and your team are piles of mulchy goo in the process. DO. NOT.
MESS. AROUND. WITH. THIS. TECHNOLOGY.
Sigh.
Okay. So. The reason that killing with sound doesn’t work particularly well is because
all sound is created from an energy source, and the source is always significantly more
powerful than the sound it creates. So any sound you make that’s going to be powerful
enough to kill someone is going to come from a force that’s powerful enough to kill many
someones. And, ultimately, the sound will be the least of your problems.
But that’s okay, Blizzard. I’ll still play your game. Although I’ll probably keep
it on mute.
Sincerely, Austin
P.S.
Hey. Do you want a Shoddycast shirt? Or a phone case? Or a personally sculpted dildo?
Well. You can’t have that. But you can have a shirt! We’re planning on making some Shoddycast
stuff, but we need your input. Cool fact, we’re actually making the merchandise through
Crowdmade, which lets fans submit and vote for designs that they like, which means you
will get to pick the swag that represents us. Before we get started though, we have
a quick survey that we need you to fill out that lets us know what you’d be interested
in. Just click the link in the description, or type this long and complicated google link
into your browser, and fill it in. Let us know what you want!