The Big Freeze

[dragoon500ly]

Having to get up way to early and argue with a buddy about the Morrow Project, one of the items is the cyrogenics process used to freeze the teams. Flipping through th original source material, there is a surprisingly lack of any science explaining how the human body and more importantly, how chemical reactions were stopped in the food, medical supplies and explosives.

Most of the available information is fan-based. The rise of descriptions of the freeze chambers and stasis modules trying to cover this gap.

So, any thoughts?

[mmartin798]

There is no canon explanation as to the preservation of food stocks, medications or explosives. Both 3rd and 4th edition explain the human freezing process, pg 12 in 3rd edition and pg 26 in 4th edition.

The food should not be a major concern if it is essentially canned, like an MRE. Food scientists actually sampled a supply of canned foods that were 40 years old. The canned food was found on the sunken USS Monitor and was still safe to eat after 40 years. There were likely flavor changes and decreases in some nutrients, but you could eat it.

[dragoon500ly]

Granted the food, even freeze-dried and dehydrated should last for a long time.

But it's the chemical reactions in medicine, propellant and explosives that are the problem. Now, recovered .303 British ammo abandoned on World War One battlefields, when cleaned, can still be fired, although I have heard of "noticeable numbers of duds". German ammo from the same is still useable, while French and Russia Great War ammo is almost useless.

Arguments basically run that if quality control is first rate, ammo can last decades.

Maybe it's my experience in the green machine, but ammo deteriorates, primers go bad, propellant goes bad. Time is a real pain.

[mmartin798]

There is a small possibility if we give a generous read to the 4th edition. The "Unidrug" Universal Antibody/Antidote description details the nanotechnology used in it's creation. To have nanomachnes that can be programmed for cellular and sub-cellular repairs, the Morrow Project must have done a great deal of other research in nanotechnology. To that end, perhaps there is a group of additives that stabilizes explosives and primers by largely encapsulating the reactants in layers of graphine or Buckyballs. Further extrapolation could say that this is also effective for catalyzing the decay of certain medications to an equally slow rate, dictating which medication can be stored and which ones cannot, leading to the development of the Unidrug.

Like I said, takes a leap of imagination, but it lands in the realm of science fiction and not fantasy.

[dragoon500ly]

Have to admit I never considered nanos. It is an interesting little technological development that would certainly solve the concerns presented in this thread. They can even be used to explain the Project's Universal treatments work.