Author Topic: "Pocket nuke" How big?  (Read 10477 times)

Liam's Ghost

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"Pocket nuke" How big?
« on: 20 April 2017, 21:31:40 »
So suppose you have a nuclear weapon that weighs six kilograms (about 13.2 pounds for those of us who refuse to embrace metric).

How physically small do you think you could make it? Backpack? Suitcase? Purse?

On a related note, you can create a lot of fun things with IO's generic nuclear weapon rules if you don't care about user survivability.
Good news is the lab boys say the symptoms of asbestos poisoning show an immediate latency of 44.6 years. So if you're thirty or over you're laughing. Worst case scenario you miss out on a few rounds of canasta, plus you've forwarded the cause of science by three centuries. I punch those numbers into my calculator, it makes a happy face.

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Natasha Kerensky

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #1 on: 20 April 2017, 21:41:37 »

This may help... the specifications for the W54 (the original Davy Crockett):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54#Specifications

FWIW...
"Ah, yes.  The belle dame sans merci.  The sweet young thing who will blast your nuts off.  The kitten with a whip.  That mystique?"
"Slavish adherence to formal ritual is a sign that one has nothing better to think about."
"Variety is the spice of battle."
"I've fought in... what... a hundred battles, a thousand battles?  It could be a million as far as I know.  I've fought for anybody who offered a decent contract and a couple who didn't.  And the universe is not much different after all that.  I could go on fighting for another hundred years and it would still look the same."
"I'm in mourning for my life."
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Daryk

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #2 on: 20 April 2017, 21:43:52 »
I think it depends on application to a degree.  If you actually want to carry the thing around safely until detonation, it'll have to be a bit bigger to accommodate some shielding.  If you're going to carry it inside a shielded magazine (as ammunition, for example), it could be smaller.

worktroll

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #3 on: 20 April 2017, 21:50:47 »
Remember, BT nucs ain't your granddaddy's fission implosion devices. THey're laser-initiated protium fusion. Yes, BT energy storage is that good that these can be reduced to "nuclear hand grenades".

SO your 6Kg device won't be dense like transuranics; it'll be more bulky. I'd suspect a 6Kg device might be the size of a two litre/quart bottle - mean density of 3. If you want a mean density of 5, then it's a 2/3 pint glass - it'll fit in your pocket, then rip the lining out :)

Hope that' useful for ideas.

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Liam's Ghost

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #4 on: 20 April 2017, 21:56:45 »
This may help... the specifications for the W54 (the original Davy Crockett):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54#Specifications

FWIW...

Only problem is that the W54 is an old style fission weapon, while the weapon in this case is a star league (equivalent) technology pure fusion device. It's also about a quarter of the mass of the SADM based on the W54.

I think it depends on application to a degree.  If you actually want to carry the thing around safely until detonation, it'll have to be a bit bigger to accommodate some shielding.  If you're going to carry it inside a shielded magazine (as ammunition, for example), it could be smaller.

What I was thinking was a sort of universal physics package that can be slotted into a specialized artillery shell, briefcase, small diameter aerial bomb, or naval missile (as part of a multi warhead system).

Remember, BT nucs ain't your granddaddy's fission implosion devices. THey're laser-initiated protium fusion. Yes, BT energy storage is that good that these can be reduced to "nuclear hand grenades".

SO your 6Kg device won't be dense like transuranics; it'll be more bulky. I'd suspect a 6Kg device might be the size of a two litre/quart bottle - mean density of 3. If you want a mean density of 5, then it's a 2/3 pint glass - it'll fit in your pocket, then rip the lining out :)

Hope that' useful for ideas.

W.

I desperately want it to be no bigger than a brick. For so many reasons. "heh, you Rifts guys think your fusion blocks are so impressive!"
Good news is the lab boys say the symptoms of asbestos poisoning show an immediate latency of 44.6 years. So if you're thirty or over you're laughing. Worst case scenario you miss out on a few rounds of canasta, plus you've forwarded the cause of science by three centuries. I punch those numbers into my calculator, it makes a happy face.

(indirect accessory to the) Slayer of Monitors!

Natasha Kerensky

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #5 on: 20 April 2017, 23:17:02 »
Only problem is that the W54 is an old style fission weapon, while the weapon in this case is a star league (equivalent) technology pure fusion device. It's also about a quarter of the mass of the SADM based on the W54.

Eh, pure fusion devices need lasers and power sources.  In the real-world, these lasers would be on the scale of NIF or various Z-pinch machines (i.e., the size of large buildings).  Even in BT, combat lasers weigh at least half a ton (quarter-ton for the Clans) and are powered by engines weighing multiple tons, sometimes attached to magical "power amplifiers" weighing a fraction of a ton.  Even with some imaginary one-shot BT capacitors, batteries, or other energy storage devices replacing engines and amplifiers, it's hard to see how any pure fusion device is made compact enough such that the system weighs a handful of kilograms.  Honestly, it's hard to see how any pure fusion device weighs less than half a ton in BT.  Even the Clans' small chemical laser with one shot of ammo weighs 516kg before adding the fusion material, reflectance material, and bomb structure.

BT lasers and fusion engines could probably easily produce lots of antimatter to act as triggers in pure fusion devices.  But at that point, just skip fusion and throw antimatter.

There may be some way to use an explosively driven electromagnetic pulse or the gamma emission from a nuclear isomer to ignite fusion.  Those techniques could be compact in theory, but so far that stuff is either rumored at best or been proven false so far.  It's more in the realm of Eclipse Phase theoretical future physics than 1980s BT physics.

I think to go compact somewhat realistically, even in BT, you gotta go fissionable.  But it's an imaginary universe, and lasers and associated power sources powerful enough to ignite fusion but small enough to be carried within a suitcase or grenade are ultimately up to the GM.

"Ah, yes.  The belle dame sans merci.  The sweet young thing who will blast your nuts off.  The kitten with a whip.  That mystique?"
"Slavish adherence to formal ritual is a sign that one has nothing better to think about."
"Variety is the spice of battle."
"I've fought in... what... a hundred battles, a thousand battles?  It could be a million as far as I know.  I've fought for anybody who offered a decent contract and a couple who didn't.  And the universe is not much different after all that.  I could go on fighting for another hundred years and it would still look the same."
"I'm in mourning for my life."
"Those who break faith with the Unity shall go down into darkness."

Liam's Ghost

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #6 on: 20 April 2017, 23:20:55 »
I'm not coming up with the mass off the top of my head. That's what the generic nuke mechanics say it should weigh. It's also not the first manportable nuke in the battletech universe.
Good news is the lab boys say the symptoms of asbestos poisoning show an immediate latency of 44.6 years. So if you're thirty or over you're laughing. Worst case scenario you miss out on a few rounds of canasta, plus you've forwarded the cause of science by three centuries. I punch those numbers into my calculator, it makes a happy face.

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Giovanni Blasini

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #7 on: 20 April 2017, 23:58:30 »
Question: can you make nukes small enough to replace LRM or SRM warheads?
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Liam's Ghost

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #8 on: 21 April 2017, 00:14:17 »
Just a hair over five kilograms is the absolute minimum mass (5.005 kg for a 0.01 kiloton warhead). So... maybe? 

Amusingly, such a warhead would only do two points of damage with a blast radius of one hex and a secondary radius of two hexes, so it would be highly usable even with SRMs, and still pretty lethal because of the secondary effect radius.

Also, each warhead would only cost 10,000 cbills. Spendy when you're talking about a full load of them, but arguably worth it.
Good news is the lab boys say the symptoms of asbestos poisoning show an immediate latency of 44.6 years. So if you're thirty or over you're laughing. Worst case scenario you miss out on a few rounds of canasta, plus you've forwarded the cause of science by three centuries. I punch those numbers into my calculator, it makes a happy face.

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glitterboy2098

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #9 on: 21 April 2017, 00:40:59 »
Just a hair over five kilograms is the absolute minimum mass (5.005 kg for a 0.01 kiloton warhead). So... maybe? 
for Fission, i assume? because a pure fusion weapon should be able to get smaller. (you just hit the issue of practical use when smaller)

isn't there mention of nuclear hand grenades somewhere in the old FASA fluff?

Liam's Ghost

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #10 on: 21 April 2017, 01:54:09 »
for Fission, i assume? because a pure fusion weapon should be able to get smaller. (you just hit the issue of practical use when smaller)

Fusion. Tech level E. I'm not sure you can actually make a viable weapon with a fission core that small. You can only implode so hard...

Unless you're referring to yield, in which case I think that's more an artificial limit meant to keep the rules from breaking down.

Quote
isn't there mention of nuclear hand grenades somewhere in the old FASA fluff?

Yep, stated up in Interstellar Operations as the Elias, a five decaton weapon. It's more of a satchel charge and also weighs a bit more than five kilograms. Also not particularly physically destructive, but the secondary effects mess practically everything within half a kilometer up.
Good news is the lab boys say the symptoms of asbestos poisoning show an immediate latency of 44.6 years. So if you're thirty or over you're laughing. Worst case scenario you miss out on a few rounds of canasta, plus you've forwarded the cause of science by three centuries. I punch those numbers into my calculator, it makes a happy face.

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Daryk

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #11 on: 21 April 2017, 02:49:22 »
Just a hair over five kilograms is the absolute minimum mass (5.005 kg for a 0.01 kiloton warhead). So... maybe? 

Amusingly, such a warhead would only do two points of damage with a blast radius of one hex and a secondary radius of two hexes, so it would be highly usable even with SRMs, and still pretty lethal because of the secondary effect radius.

Also, each warhead would only cost 10,000 cbills. Spendy when you're talking about a full load of them, but arguably worth it.
Now THAT sounds like something the Taurians would do...

Natasha Kerensky

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #12 on: 21 April 2017, 03:55:31 »
Yep, stated up in Interstellar Operations as the Elias, a five decaton weapon. It's more of a satchel charge and also weighs a bit more than five kilograms. Also not particularly physically destructive, but the secondary effects mess practically everything within half a kilometer up.

I think this is a reference to Elias Liao.  His followers were responsible for a number of fusion explosions in 22nd-century Beijing, forcing him into offworld exile and the founding of the Liao dynasty:

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Elias_Liao

I think the original House Liao SB reference used the term "fusion grenade".  Absent antimatter, I'm skeptical that a 5kg grenade could be a pure fusion device.  I don't see how lasers powerful enough and the associated energy sources shrink that small in the 22nd-century working forward from today's technology or backwards 800-odd years from BT lasers.

More realistically, I'd (re-)fluff the "Elias" as an implosion fission device using plutonium or californium, probably californium-252, which has a critical mass of 2.5kg:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass#Critical_mass_of_a_bare_sphere

Of course, some good fiction is necessary to explain how a religious terrorist like Elias got hold of weapons with such a rare, artificial element  -- or why anyone thought it was wise to make a nuclear device small enough for deployment by a lone, crazed infantryman -- in the first place...

FWIW...
"Ah, yes.  The belle dame sans merci.  The sweet young thing who will blast your nuts off.  The kitten with a whip.  That mystique?"
"Slavish adherence to formal ritual is a sign that one has nothing better to think about."
"Variety is the spice of battle."
"I've fought in... what... a hundred battles, a thousand battles?  It could be a million as far as I know.  I've fought for anybody who offered a decent contract and a couple who didn't.  And the universe is not much different after all that.  I could go on fighting for another hundred years and it would still look the same."
"I'm in mourning for my life."
"Those who break faith with the Unity shall go down into darkness."

Liam's Ghost

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #13 on: 21 April 2017, 04:40:31 »
That particular isotope of Californium has a painfully short half life. It's not the kind of thing you'd want to use in a warhead that you won't expect to use any time soon. Also, it's not just the mass of the fissionable material. The core a typical implosion weapon is relatively tiny. Even the original fatman had a core about the size of a softball and massed only 6.2 kilograms. Everything else was the implosion mechanism.

Also, lowering the yield doesn't strictly lower the mass of that core. In fact, the core gets bigger because the implosion mechanism isn't as capable. The US Military's W48 shell used a 13 kilogram hollow plutonium core (critical mass for a solid sphere being around 10 kilograms) to make it small enough to fit in an artillery shell. And the rest of the shell still weighed about four times that. The later W54 didn't particularly improve on that.

Fission is not the route you go for suitcase nukes.
Good news is the lab boys say the symptoms of asbestos poisoning show an immediate latency of 44.6 years. So if you're thirty or over you're laughing. Worst case scenario you miss out on a few rounds of canasta, plus you've forwarded the cause of science by three centuries. I punch those numbers into my calculator, it makes a happy face.

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JadeHellbringer

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #14 on: 21 April 2017, 08:07:49 »
Question: can you make nukes small enough to replace LRM or SRM warheads?

LRM? Maybe...

SRM? Bad idea, hombre.  ;D
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Giovanni Blasini

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #15 on: 21 April 2017, 09:21:04 »
LRM? Maybe...

SRM? BadBEST idea, hombre.  ;D

Fixed that for you. ;D
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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #16 on: 21 April 2017, 09:40:54 »
In "Betrayal of Ideals," two grown men were able to carry a Peacemaker-class warhead between them over rough terrain to their truck.
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JadeHellbringer

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #17 on: 21 April 2017, 09:46:13 »
In "Betrayal of Ideals," two grown men were able to carry a Peacemaker-class warhead between them over rough terrain to their truck.

"Good god, Phil, I thought you wanted me to help move a couch or something."
"There's a difference between the soldier and his fight,
But the warrior knows the true meaning of his life."
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Daryk

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #18 on: 21 April 2017, 10:09:09 »
Fixed that for you. ;D
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Natasha Kerensky

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #19 on: 21 April 2017, 10:11:10 »
Fission is not the route you go for suitcase nukes.

I dunno.  For me, it's easier to suspend disbelief that the explosives, electronics, and the rest of the triggering mechanism for a fission device could shrink by one order of magnitude by the 22nd-century than it is to believe that the lasers and power sources necessary for a pure fusion device could shrink by many, many orders of magnitude over the same time period.  Even more so given what we know about BT laser size.  Lasers and energy sources of the necessary power and size for a pure fusion grenade seem more like Eclispe Phase-type technology than BT, and beg the question of why they're not being used outside of pure fusion devices -- like fingernail lasers for Manei Domini or vehicle-grade chemical lasers that weigh kilograms instead of tons for the Clans.  Both approaches involve handwavium, but with the latter, my arm is as exhausted as a beauty queen at the end of a parade.  Of course, YMMV...

[EDIT...]

Just to illustrate, over the next century, it's must be orders of magnitude easier to turn this...



Into this...



Than it is to turn this...



Into this...



Again, YMMV...

« Last Edit: 21 April 2017, 21:13:04 by Natasha Kerensky »
"Ah, yes.  The belle dame sans merci.  The sweet young thing who will blast your nuts off.  The kitten with a whip.  That mystique?"
"Slavish adherence to formal ritual is a sign that one has nothing better to think about."
"Variety is the spice of battle."
"I've fought in... what... a hundred battles, a thousand battles?  It could be a million as far as I know.  I've fought for anybody who offered a decent contract and a couple who didn't.  And the universe is not much different after all that.  I could go on fighting for another hundred years and it would still look the same."
"I'm in mourning for my life."
"Those who break faith with the Unity shall go down into darkness."

Empyrus

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #20 on: 21 April 2017, 10:26:47 »
Real world nukes probably have theoretical maximum density of kilogram per 1 megaton (current devices are around 500 kg per 1MT at best). With BT tech, i'd imagine it should be possible to create a few kiloton fission device that is pretty light and compact, definitively in the suit-case territory.

It wouldn't be "clean" but then a pure fusion device is not really either. Neutron activation, gamma rays, whatever else leaves behind some contamination. A very small fission device probably wouldn't be much worse.

EDIT While BT doesn't really refer to anti-matter, i've always assume BT's fusion bombs are actually anti-matter initiated. A pure fusion device by other means is gonna be complicated. Of course, BT does have magic fusion engines for 'Mechs so a pure fusion bomb is not a big leap probably...
EDIT2 Also, anti-matter initiated/catalyzed fission devices would be really compact.
« Last Edit: 21 April 2017, 10:39:57 by Empyrus »

Maingunnery

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #21 on: 21 April 2017, 11:13:48 »

Fusion LRM/SRM ammo?

Now I have finally found an ammo that is worth cutting the number of shots (per ton) in half.

Maybe require Artemis for optimal missile spread?
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Arkansas Warrior

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #22 on: 21 April 2017, 11:22:03 »
It may have been on a lost iteration of the forums, but some time back someone had a thread theorizing that all BT "fusion" actually involves antimatter, that in essence the BT scientists just missed that there's matter-antimatter reaction going on in fusion reactors and boosting their yield.  Or something like that.  A quick search didn't come up with it, but maybe someone else remembers it better than me and can dig it up.




Edit: Found it, but I was misremembering.  It was about fusion engines actually being zero-point systems.  By the one and only ColBosch.


http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=40471.0
« Last Edit: 21 April 2017, 11:30:37 by Arkansas Warrior »
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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #23 on: 21 April 2017, 11:29:51 »
I did the math once, back in the dark ages.  Not even pure matter/anti-matter annihilation can account for the energy output of a BT fusion rocket.  It really is PFM.

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #24 on: 22 April 2017, 06:10:31 »
They got pretty small, but I don't think much smaller then a dozen kilos or so.
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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #25 on: 22 April 2017, 07:29:54 »
Also don't forget that BTech nukes tend to be quite 'clean' and unless a weapons been deliberately made the way we make outs now, a nuke going off don't seem to leave much radiation behind. The problem for all invovled near a bucket of sunshine being lobbed of course is the initial burst of radiation as well as a 'slight' increase in temperature.
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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #27 on: 22 April 2017, 10:39:21 »
Yep, stated up in Interstellar Operations as the Elias, a five decaton weapon. It's more of a satchel charge and also weighs a bit more than five kilograms. Also not particularly physically destructive, but the secondary effects mess practically everything within half a kilometer up.

You'll note that it's very carefully just enough damage to one-shot any mech in existence, at least until the advent of armors and other things can boost head armor past the 9-point normal max. :)
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glitterboy2098

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #28 on: 22 April 2017, 12:34:05 »
natasha, consider that in BT, they have taken this:


(including those trailer sized powerpacks behind it)

and shrunk it down to this:



the limit on laser induced fusion in real life is the fact our lasers are pathetically weak on by mass basis. BT does not have that problem. and it is a problem they had to overcome before viable mobile Fusion drives and engines could exist. which they discover fairly early on.
« Last Edit: 22 April 2017, 12:37:16 by glitterboy2098 »

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Re: "Pocket nuke" How big?
« Reply #29 on: 22 April 2017, 13:17:45 »
natasha, consider that in BT, they have taken this:


(including those trailer sized powerpacks behind it)

and shrunk it down to this:



the limit on laser induced fusion in real life is the fact our lasers are pathetically weak on by mass basis. BT does not have that problem. and it is a problem they had to overcome before viable mobile Fusion drives and engines could exist. which they discover fairly early on.

And said pistol has a per shot yield of 20 grams of TNT (or 100,000 joules, Tactics of Duty uses both)

Quote from: Tactics of Duty CH 8
There was no time to waste. Coolly, the other man tossed his needler to the floor at Pardo's feet, peeled off his gloves, then drew his other weapon, a heavy, military-model TK70 laser pistol. "Goodbye, Pardo."
He fired, sending a bolt squarely into the gunman's chest; one-tenth of a megajoule in a tenth-second pulse dumped energy equivalent to twenty grams of exploding TNT into the target. A fist-sized crater opened Pardo's chest in a burst of vaporizing blood and tissue

later on in CH 14 (end of)
Quote
He squeezed the trigger. There was a flash, and his external pickups caught the man's shriek as his clothing and kevlar armor caught fire. Alex shifted targets as the man tumbled backward off the wall; a second trooper running along the walkway took a pulse of coherent light squarely in the chest, and the explosion of vaporizing body fluids and tissue also pitched him backward and off the rampart.
...
An alarm was sounding somewhere in the depths of the Citadel's central keep, a rasping buzz that set the teeth on edge. Atop the gate tower, off to Alex's right, a quad-mount gun turret pivoted about with a mechanical whine, its twin pairs of autocannons dipping to bear on the invader. Alex triggered a shot from his laser, sending a blue-green pulse of light slashing through the night, searing off one of the gun barrels and boiling away a fist-sized crater in a burst of hot vapor.
Thats a Laser Rifle (pulse IIRC), capable of generating enough force from your own body vaporizing to move you (not the only time this shows up, a Pistol also dose this in Black Dragon), and can cut through a gun barrel and still leave a fist size crater in armor.