@Paperclipped @Velorien @eaglejarl
After thinking about it, I would like to forward an argument for why RER bombardment should more-or-less instantly kill all of Akatsuki in their fortress, with no opportunity to dodge or survive.
I know, that sounds very unbalanced. I agree actually, that very much
isn't balanced. From a combat perspective, it's comically unfair. Nonetheless, I've come to the conclusion that there are
strong simulationist reasons why everyone in the fort should simply be reduced to a red mist:
Our current gameplan is to fire RERs from a distance onto the fort from a concealed position at their maximum range. We will use saturation bombardment, ensuring thorough coverage of the fort and, in all likelyhood, landing at least one shot inside the fortress itself. These shots will be fired simultaneously. And, if all goes according to plan, they will be fired from ambush; RERs create a large and visible effect at the position of the rune, but this can be concealed. At the target position, there is no effect whatsoever before the explosion manifests.
Consider a ordinary explosive seal; you prime it, tie it to a kunai, and toss it at your enemy. Crucially, your enemy can see this, and so they can dodge. Maybe you toss it from behind your enemy when they aren't expecting it. But explosive tags sizzle, and kunais whistle through the air; a attentive opponent still gets a chance to dodge, or they could turn around at a opportune moment. But imagine you made the tag and kunai silent, you tossed it arbitrarily fast, and you were absolutely concealed beyond all possibility of detection. Dodging has, from a simulationist perspective, become utterly impossible. Why would a opponent react to nothing?
This is what we have accomplished with RERs. You can hear a explosive tag, hear a technique callout, or see a ominously glowing boulder in the same zone as you. You
cannot see a RER before the blast wave manifests in the same zone as you. There is
zero indication; the only possible way you can react is if you can react to the explosion itself.
And you can't dodge the
explosion, either. It's approaching you at a minimum of
mach 1. 300 meters per second or more. If it appears on the opposite end of the zone, you have a tenth of a second
at best to see the explosion and get out of the zone or into cover. Human reaction time has a
hard limit; neural impulses only move so fast, and beyond a certain point is it physically impossible for the necessary information to travel through your eyes, set off a cascade in your brain/spinal column, and reach your limbs in time. 'Faster' reaction times are, actually, precise prediction of the timing of a future event. Which you can't do if taken by surprise.
Cover doesn't really help. Not at close range. Cover will stop shrapnel, because shrapnel are physical objects thrown by the explosion that hurt you. Like a bullet, or a kunai, or a random rock.
A blast wave is a blast
wave. It reflects, diffracts, and is attenuated
but not stopped entirely by passing through solid materials. Hiding behind a sturdy object will only really protect you from shrapnel; if the blast wave was enough to thoroughly kill you, it will go around your cover and
still be enough to kill you. The sort of 'cover' that protects against a explosion is massive, covers all angles and is reasonably airtight. AKA, a bunker or a tank.
And even that is not perfect.
Armor also doesn't really help. EOD experts famously wear a giant and very bulky suit of armor. This
isn't blastproof. This provides a degree of protection from the blastwave, and much more protection from shrapnel. Close proximity to a blast will still kill you via massive trauma anyway. Modern materials are incapable of saving you if you are anywhere near a 'large' explosion.
I am a particular fan of this scene from the movie Hurt Locker, which is (by my understanding) well researched, and does a excellent job of depicting the genuine danger of explosions (mild blood warning):
View: https://youtu.be/XobAuWXP_P4?t=530
By hollywood standards, he dodged that explosion. The physical, visible debris was nowhere near him. And it was not even all that much explosive, maybe a couple kilograms of it. And he was wearing a EOD vest. He still died.
Explosions are far more deadly than media typically gives them credit for. At close range, shrapnel is not the danger. The shockwave is.
A shockwave travelling through a human body puts physical stress on all tissues it passes through. AKA, the entire body. If the shockwave is severe enough, you get tearing and rupturing of the everything. This is fatal. A comprehensive list of how it kills you would be disgusting, but you could summarize it as 'popping a water balloon'. Massive trauma to the everything everywhere, causing death by a whole lot of things at once.
If it doesn't kill you, it
will incapacitate you. Injury is most pronounced to structures with large density gradients - AKA, anything containing air. It will hit your brain, your lungs, your ears, your eyes, your digestive track. Your balance will be destroyed, you'll be discombobulated and concussed such that staying coherent and focus is physiologically impossible. Your eyes may have popped. Bleeding will be widespread. You will also shit yourself. If this happens during combat, you are
beyond a sitting duck; it would be remarkable if you could
stand.
Ninja have enhanced physical durability compared to baseline humans, but they are not made of iron. Moderately enhanced durability will not help if you are
very thoroughly killed. Given the textual evidence available, I do not believe ninja are anything more than mildly more resistant to overpressure injury.
It is worth noting that functionally, explosive runes and derivatives are qualitatively very different to explosive seals. Explosive seals are close to a concussive hand grenade. The blast wave is small enough that physically dodging to escape injury is plausible. At least, if you are a ninja.
Explosive runes, however, are
far larger. The lethal radius is measured in zones. Drawing a conclusive comparison to real explosive power is difficult, but most likely they are equivalent to hundreds of kilograms of high explosive. The 'safe' distance, for values of 'safe' equal to not instantly dying, is greater than the maximum size of a zone. The idea of 'dodging' such a explosion without changing zones is ludicrous.
A explosive rune could be described as instantly killing any humanlike target within,
at minimum, the same zone. And likely nearby zones as well. Survival without the assistants of esoteric chakra techniques is impossible.
So, how
could you survive a effect which is so fast that it is impossible to react to, and which is not stopped by that cover you couldn't reach anyway, and which kills you so thoroughly that no amount of physique will save you?
Simple: cheat.
Chakra enables many abilities which could, in principle, allow you to survive in this scenario. Barrier techniques which don't act like ordinary matter. Intangibility. Physically impossible reaction times. Literal time manipulation. Non-human physiology. Rapid regeneration. All of these break the rules in just the right way that you could survive this particular scenario of certain death.
We have seen many or all of these. Akatsuki has some of them. What a shame we caught them by surprise in a ambush.
So, we're going to ambush Akatsuki with giant explosions while they're sitting in/near a fort.
- There are so many explosions that statistically, the entire base, inside and out, will be saturated with thoroughly lethal overpressure.
- These giant explosions will teleport within literal meters of them instantly, such that the first opportunity they have to react is when a blast wave is barreling towards them.
- Dodging is physically impossible without specific chakra abilities.
- Cover will not help, and infact being locked in a reinforced room with a explosion will do the opposite of helping.
- The blast wave is sufficiently lethal to instantly kill any humanlike being, as well as most non-humanlike beings.
- Having caught them flatfooted, they will not be using expensive chakra techniques that could let them respond to this, and they do not have opportunity to activate them.
There are some ways that they could incidentally survive. If we get spectacularly unlucky, Itachi might be using literal precognition at that instant and reverse summon. Konan might live if in paper form and already distributed. Hidan's regeneration
might allow him to survive Total Body Disruption. Any of them might have decided to take a nap in a small, perfectly airtight, indestructible, and immovable coffin.
Barring these unlikely possibilities, I posit that this should be a instantaneous TPK. If you wish to determine if anyone lives or dies, a dodge roll or TN is the wrong question to ask. You should be asking specifically if the circumstances at that instant would permit any particular member to survive a instant death effect or predict the future.
