[Torg] Weapons and long range contradictions

[Kansas Jim]

Hubert writes:

> Well, it raises a question in me. Why, in low tech axiom realms such as 
> LL or Aysle, do buildings crumble because they have a high tech axiom?
> It's the creating process that it a contradiction, not the product. So 
> the buildings should be as safe as when they were in a higher tech reality.

Products can also be contradictions - for example, anything made of
concrete is a contradiction in the Living Land because concrete is
a contradiction in the Living Land. So technically, yes, the material
that a bullet is made out of can make it as much of a contradiction
in the Living Land as the gun that fired it, and eventually the bullet
will be transformed into a non-contradictory material by the Everlaw
of One. The odds are infinitesimal that it will happen in the time it
takes the bullet to travel from gun to target but even if it did
happen, it doesn't matter. Getting hit by a fast-moving piece of
material, contradictory or not, is a product of the gun being fired,
not a property of the bullet itself. As the rulebook says, axioms don't
apply to the unliving interacting with the living and you can always
be hurt by a bullet fired from a gun (p92 original, p140 R&E).

That said, there are bullet types which produce extra effects when they
hit a target and these are different cases from just being hit by a
fast-moving piece of material. Explosive rounds are an obvious example,
they may require a long-range contradiction in order for the bullet's
extra function, exploding, to go off when it hits a target. But even
without a LRC the bullet would still cause damage when it hits, it just
wouldn't also explode when it hits.

-- 
Kansas Jim, Torg guru (ksjim (at) sdc (dot) org)
Torg website: http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/index.html