Given that this is the future and that Irradiated food is fairly commonplace in the game, i find it strange that there is no way currently to replicate this. Most foods (sans dairy products due to messing with texture) can be irradiated with little side effect. The process is fairly simple, expose the foodstuff in question to either Gamma, or X Rays in high dosage. This can be supplied from an electron beam device, an X-ray machine (feasibly) or even excited radioactive materials. The latter of which is generally Cobalt or other more tame radioactive material irl, however, since we have Plutonium, teleporters, and the like, i see no reason as to why not include a way(s) to do so. Although, i would probably recommend a high level electronics or fabrication level to hand-craft a device to do so.
(If this was already suggested, my apologies, as i searched the forums prior.)
Thoughts would be much appreciated.
[quote=“Sirbab, post:1, topic:6875”]Given that this is the future and that Irradiated food is fairly commonplace in the game, i find it strange that there is no way currently to replicate this. Most foods (sans dairy products due to messing with texture) can be irradiated with little side effect. The process is fairly simple, expose the foodstuff in question to either Gamma, or X Rays in high dosage. This can be supplied from an electron beam device, an X-ray machine (feasibly) or even excited radioactive materials. The latter of which is generally Cobalt or other more tame radioactive material irl, however, since we have Plutonium, teleporters, and the like, i see no reason as to why not include a way(s) to do so. Although, i would probably recommend a high level electronics or fabrication level to hand-craft a device to do so.
(If this was already suggested, my apologies, as i searched the forums prior.)
Thoughts would be much appreciated.[/quote]
You would need ALOT of plutonium to sterilize food with radiation (assuming you don’t, you know, detonate it). X ray machines also don’t really give off that much in the way of radiation.
However, ultraviolet radiation is another story all together. If you flatten food thin enough, you could expose it to intense UV light and, feasibly, kill off every living thing in it. They are also far easier to make and get ( you can get a considerably weaker one to sanitize counters at a convenience store. Stick a truck battery on it, and, if it doesn’t blow up, it might work).
The main thing that comes to mind is that canning and similar traditional food preservation techniques are on par with irridation and many, many times easier to perform. The industrial volumes that make something extremely high overhead like radioactive sterilization aren’t going to be present, so why would you even be interested?
Phrased differently, what’s the point?
That aside, can you source some documents outliking how improvised irridation would work and how it would be superior to other food preservation methods?
Well, given that many canning recipes current neuter the prior food of specificity (Eg; Apple -> canned fruit). Which prevents it from being utilized for certain recipes. that’s really a minor issue i suppose. The main reason i was thinking of, is for variety’s sake. Would it add significantly, or build upon the game? No. If that’s the bottom line, then i guess you have the answer.
As far as feasibility of an improvised Electron ionising electron beam generator?
Well, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation#Process
the low end of sterilization (For fruit) is 30 Gy, lab equipment level x-ray generator can output circa 300 Gy according to this study. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24842380
The high end of sterilization of packaged food is 70 Gy. Given that an x-ray machine is fairy simple to manufacture DIY style. I do not find it out of the realm of possibility that this could be achieved.
Feasible as far as i can see, the only real advantage with Irradiation over canning or other preservation techniques, is that it largely does not affect the taste, or consistancy of food. Potentially you could take your nice Luigi Lasagna, Put it in Tupperware, and irradiate it. it would allow for almost all consumables to have their shelf life expanded.
Edit: source on DIY X-ray http://www.noah.org/science/x-ray/stong/
DIY radiations spewers sound really dangerous.
And carrying Plutonium in your pocket isn’t?
That being said, you can of course use a material as a shield, even a thin layer of lead would suffice.
[quote=“Sirbab, post:4, topic:6875”]As far as feasibility of an improvised Electron ionising electron beam generator?
Well, according to Food irradiation - Wikipedia
the low end of sterilization (For fruit) is 30 Gy, lab equipment level x-ray generator can output circa 300 Gy according to this study. Effect of X-ray exposure on the pharmaceutical quality of drug tablets using X-ray inspection equipment - PubMed
The high end of sterilization of packaged food is 70 Gy. Given that an x-ray machine is fairy simple to manufacture DIY style. I do not find it out of the realm of possibility that this could be achieved.[/quote]
From Wikipedia, “Irradiation is a capital-intensive technology requiring a substantial initial investment, ranging from $1 million to $5 million.” contradicts your assertions by a great deal. Maintenance and power requirements of lab-grade equipment even can be quite high. We’re talking about something a lone survivor could cobble together, not something that requires a large-scale industrial project to get going.
Color me skeptical that a 35W x-ray device is going to be sufficient to effectively irradiate food in worthwhile quantities.
I’d be fine to include a reasonable DIY irradiation device if someone coded it up, but I’d have to insist on realistic performance, which as far as I can tell means it would be significantly more time/resource expenditure for mostly worse outcomes than traditional food preservation. I guess the primary exception would be if you were able to bring a lab housing an x-ray or gamma source online for some reason, then you could use it for something like this, but it would be like using a rifle to crack walnuts.
Irl, hospitals come equipped with x-ray machines. I have never bothered with them in cata as the zambo swarms were more than enough to murder me five times over, but I also know if anyone is gonna have a backup generator, it’s a hospital. It is the one instance I would not find it strange for such a high-powered device to still have a plausible accompanying power source.
I would therefor suggest delegating irradiated food recipes to the found-equipment-required category. Maybe you could argue the same thing for some of the science labs.
I would also find it hilarious if one were to stay in a radioactive area like a hazardous waste dump for way too long, if there was a really (easter-egg-worthy) slim chance of a food item in your inventory becoming irradiated. That’s not really useful or serious though. And it’d have to be non-abuseable haha. I’d just get a laugh if after being bodily damaged everywhere and sprouting tentacles and buggy eyes and a cat butt, I discover my lunch only becomes slightly more delicious.
[quote=“Pthalocy, post:8, topic:6875”]Irl, hospitals come equipped with x-ray machines. I have never bothered with them in cata as the zambo swarms were more than enough to murder me five times over, but I also know if anyone is gonna have a backup generator, it’s a hospital. It is the one instance I would not find it strange for such a high-powered device to still have a plausible accompanying power source.
I would therefor suggest delegating irradiated food recipes to the found-equipment-required category. Maybe you could argue the same thing for some of the science labs.
I would also find it hilarious if one were to stay in a radioactive area like a hazardous waste dump for way too long, if there was a really (easter-egg-worthy) slim chance of a food item in your inventory becoming irradiated. That’s not really useful or serious though. And it’d have to be non-abuseable haha. I’d just get a laugh if after being bodily damaged everywhere and sprouting tentacles and buggy eyes and a cat butt, I discover my lunch only becomes slightly more delicious.[/quote]
OK, so “X-ray unit” might be a fixed item much like the CVD forge, and have the Backup Power we know and love. Too bad it’s stuck in the hospital and can’t be moved. Seems awfully situational though, much like the forge. Still not sold on it.
(Radiated food is humorous, but yeah, also unlikely. Sorry, Pthalocy.)
(It’s all good, I figured if the idea didn’t fly it’d still get a chuckle or two here. 
)
What if you could dismantle a hospital x-ray machine and rebuild it in you’r car, it’d still be huge (I’m thinking like three parts minimum, x-ray power converter, x-ray generator and food irradiation enclosure) weigh a lot and use humongous amounts of power, (maybe half a large storage battery).
The pros and cons of having irradiation of food.
Pros
-It’s a hands of procedure or doesn’t take much time and no skill in itself.
-You could probably apply it to a lot of food not otherwise being conservable (my thought here being bone broth).
-It requires no cumbersome components per use.
Cons
-You’d probably have to be quite a wiz at both mechanics and electronics to set it up.
-Requires lots and lots of power, basically unusable in most cars (engine is likely having to be a gas engine and solar panels required too).
-Three or more components more susceptible to damage (a damaged enclosure will irradiate the vehicle while in use, a damaged power converter will make it require even more power and a damaged source (which may even be unrepairable) will give some chance of failure or longer times required).
/Zorbeltuss
Personally, if I was going to go to the trouble of mounting a powerful lensed radiation source on my vehicle, I’d probably just neglect the enclosure and attempt to turn it into an energy weapon… induce burns and destructive mutation in infected foes on high power, stack and sterilize foodstuffs at low power.
For medical puroposes x-rays aren’t lensed, also the low power for sterilizing food will probably be no less than maximum power for the device.
While it would theoretically be possible to construct a lens for x-rays you’d need at least a doctorate amount of studies to get there, maybe one could find one very rarely in science labs though, still I think it would be hard to aim it and conscidering you would have to aim it at the target for a while (minutes minimum) to get a visual effect that would Exacerbate the difficulty of aiming it.
Doesn’t mean it isn’t possible to weaponize it though, but because of the difficulty it might be way beyond the scope of the game.
/Zorbeltuss
i say let us irradiate food with a rare x-ray contraption.
the catch: apart from it being inefficient, overlarge, and potentially dangerous if damaged, the proccess is not 100% succesfull and is potentially dangerous.
I mean, how about 30% success, 40% of destroying the food, and 30% chance of mutating the food so that it will cause a disease like stomach cancer / leukemia (or even come to life and attack 0,001% of the time)
Irradiating water otoh could purify it maybe.
It all might be usefull for irradiating large-scale (like eveything in the machine’s tile? eg. vol. 650 stuff?)
Just a glimpse on my behalf - you’d build a ray emitter device only to pickle some food? With the simple goal of sanitizing, or merely preventing fermentation or spoilage? If you ache for such a techology, why not look into the whole MRE creation process, thus kicking it up a notch and calling it… ummm… MREparator? That, and the water clearly falls down from the sky…
Simply put, I don’t want to carry drinks and food separately, when I’m on foot I want to travel light, and I’m willing to work hard to minimize both size, weight and types of objects I need on a run to town for example.
Water from the sky doesn’t minimize that, if I want to use that, then I need a funnel, multiple water containers, a boiling implement and time, while a small waterskin of bone broth would have been enough, that is if bone broth didn’t rot faster than I could fill the waterskin. Also even if you got an MRE machine up it would likely a process more labour intensive than “put it in the sterilizer, take it out when it’s done”. 
/Zorbeltuss