Hazardous Cargo: What's in yours?

[rlvargas]

My PC's have taken to carrying hazardous cargo in an attempt to make their monthly payments and save for improvements. They are making a lot of money and so far they have been very lucky. I did not tell them the exact chance of something going wrong, preferring the vague term "not-uncommon".

So when the inevitable failure occurs, what kind of nasty consequences should that entail? I was thinking of the obligatory radioactive or biological cargo, with accompanying disease and quarantine. The problem is that I feel microorganisms, like bacteria and viruses, have been done to death.

For their first failure I was inspired by the Cowboy Bebop episode in which a mutated lobster terrorizes the crew by moving through the maintenance and ventilation ducts and attacking them when they least expect it. Maybe some form of alien macroorganism that is being shipped with cryogenic technology, which of course fails and when the pissed off organism escapes it wants to take it out on the PC's. Some nasty foot-long critters. Mayhem ensues...

So what are other ideas to include in the hazardous cargo category?

 

[Rover]

Snoflow

Could this also include transporting a wanted or convicted criminal. Did you see ConAir? how about a dangerous macro organizm al al Aliens.

or a rare artifact that people would kill to posess. Maybe from the ancients or a rembrandt painting.

My .02Cr

 

[rlvargas]

I guess a second question is what should be in the category of security cargo, which pays 5000Cr/ton, and hazardous which pays double that? My own arbitrary definition, loosely based on the descriptions on p. 355 Bulk Cargo, is that hazardous cargo has to be intrinsically dangerous versus security cargo which is just very valuable and a nice target for others.

I would probably put valuable art objects in the security category. Prisoners are definitely inherently dangerous, but I probably wouldn't put them in the bulk cargo category. That would be it's own can of worms (by special arrangement?), in my opinion. Would prisoners be transported in low berths?

 

[gardclan]

In my game (recently shot full of holes at

http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000636

The ship's resident wheeler and dealer managed to track down twenty tons of concentrated hydroflouric acid... and then purchased the lot.

For the non-chemists... flourine is one of the most reactive elements known to man. Hydroflouric acid will eat just about anything (except cuprous oxide, which it makes on contact with copper) and has to be stored in copper containers. Getting the stuff on your skin results in nasty nerve damage and a whole host of other not so nifty reactions to boot.

Who knows... maybe Doc can sell the stuff at Junction.

 

[Loki]

What about an ancient artifact being shipped as "hazardous material" to keep prying eyes and fingers off while the artifact is in transit? Somewhere along the way, someone gets curious and goes prying and opens a can of worms, leading to several possible further adventure strings.

Or, the "artifact" comes alive while in transit, and breaks out of it's container. It becomes very disturbed over being held captive and seeks revenge on the nearest target (your party). If it takes control of the ship, who knows where it might want to go to regain it's freedom. If it is truly an ancient artifact, it might want to go somewhere it remembers was a haven (of course that was thousands of years ago) and that place is now populated/deserted/destroyed/overrun, etc giving you again several different directions to go. Just an idea.

 

[womble]

Darth

There are two other materials I can think of which will contain HF: PTFE - poly tetrafluoroethylene (aka Teflon) and paraffin wax. So if they develop containment problems you can let them find alternatives...

 

[Liam Devlin]

Hazardous Cargoes vs Security cargoes..
Hmm.

HAZMAT can be anything toxic, flammable, both, carcinogenic, etc.

Unhealthy to organic life, ususally has an industrial use. Like acids,(as above), certain poisons used in alloy work/ blueing finishing (postassium cyanide has such an application!), Rare gases gleaned from Gas giants(With low molecular count, and might easily break seals, and leak into ship-helium (flammable) -but for levity-makes everyone's voice squeaky!

Security cargoes:
some examples: rare art works, or a load of Old Imperial credits on their way to the subsector/ sector capital to be destroyed! (at the sub/ sector Mint's orders); bullion (gold, silver, precious stones); antique furniture, rare wines (Tokaj hijackings?!)...

some ideas fer ye Slowflow!

 

[Ben W Bell]

How about just the religious group who think Jump Space is their god and travel to be near him. Eventuallly they decide they wish to be near him forever so decide to try and sabotage the jump engines so the ship never leaves jump space again.

 

[Jame]

Perhaps the cargo's something like the sphere, in Michael Crichton's _Sphere_. Or maybe some sort of time travel device!

 

[kewplum]

Originally posted by Slowflow:

So when the inevitable failure occurs, what kind of nasty consequences should that entail? I was thinking of the obligatory radioactive or biological cargo, with accompanying disease and quarantine. The problem is that I feel microorganisms, like bacteria and viruses, have been done to death.

For their first failure I was inspired by the Cowboy Bebop episode in which a mutated lobster terrorizes the crew by moving through the maintenance and ventilation ducts and attacking them when they least expect it. Maybe some form of alien macroorganism that is being shipped with cryogenic technology, which of course fails and when the pissed off organism escapes it wants to take it out on the PC's. Some nasty foot-long critters. Mayhem ensues...

So what are other ideas to include in the hazardous cargo category?

Well, I will be GM'ing my first Traveller D20 and the first thing that came to mind was a company called Urine Lucky shipping urine samples to other planets...

. Remember, even when hazardous, it can be comical clean up and after an many disapointed customers at the recieving planet for false urine samples....

 

[Jame]

Mmmm, hazardous urine

. Anyway, a lot of fiction - not sci-fi - has a lot of cargo ideas. Maybe like robots made up to look and act like Roman charioteers.

 

[gardclan]

How about "25 tons of live tribbles (or tribble substitute)"? Don't forget to feed 'em!

Then there's bacterial or viral cultures...

military grade tamped californium (in their damper boxes)...

self contained prison transfer modules!

and really irritated large carnivores for the zoo on the next planet over.

 

[trader jim]

as everybody should know, stagnat COFFEE JUICE is by far the most reactive chemical in the Cosmos.
in one form you can drink it, in another form you can blow up a planet with one cup!!!...sooooo, a warning to you all.....DONT let your COFFEE JUICE get cold!!!....or else!!!

 

[gardclan]

The previous message was brought to you as a public service anouncement from your friends at:

Trader Jim's Liquer and Guns, inc. Purveyors of fine rotgut and coffeejuice.

Remember, at Trader Jim's "everything leaves loaded!"

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Darth Sillyus:
The previous message was brought to you as a public service anouncement from your friends at:

Trader Jim's Liquer and Guns, inc. Purveyors of fine rotgut and coffeejuice.

Remember, at Trader Jim's "everything leaves loaded!"

Oh great! Loaded shooters with loaded shooters drinking loaded shooters under the table seeing who can drink the most loaded shooters and still load their shooters and shoot the other loaded shooters outa the hands of the other loaded shooters without getting loaded or shooted, I mean shotted, damn I need another shot and a few more shots for my shotter, er, shooter, aw shoot, I just dropped my shot for my shooter in my shooter, stop shouting, I can't hear ya over all the shooting anyway.


With apologies for straying off topic and cluttering this respectable forum with random gunfire.

I think TJ's fine establishments all deserve an immediate Red Zone rating from TAS

 

[sinbadsam]

Well how a just plain dangerous cargo....

Stacks of bound Imperial Currencies, that have to be delivered to vairous stops to final destination. You know bundles of 100 Imperial Credits Notes in bound bundles of 100's.

I have aquaintence's wife who did just that was courier for the US Gov, and used commericial airlines to move her cargo or US currencies.

Just think of the players greed, parania, etc...is everyone out to take it from us...

 

[Liam Devlin]

Or.. aload of small arms and ammunition, confiscated by Police forces on a high Pop/ high law world to be trans[ported elsewhere & be destroyed (say said planet is owned by another one).

Rebellious factions on the Hi pop want the guns!
The law wants em rid of!(destroyed).
Hmmmm.
there's a normal cargo with hazardous means to an end!

 

[vegascat]

Inspections for haz cargo transports are quite intensive. Everything has to be up to spec. The paperwork has to be completed, checked, double checked, then reaccomplished.

Mishaps with explosives are always chain reaction events. Explosives are basically a chemical compound awaiting an impetus to react. This could be a shock or spark. Explosives in transport mode are always protected against anything which may cause it to detonate. Part of the checklist for the dirver/ pilot always includes what to do in case of accident which may cause a detonation. In a starship this would probably be decompression of the cargo bay. Other methods could be the installation of a high volume water misting system, foam sprayers, for WP munitions, sand or mineral water tanks.
Any ship designed to carry explosives would be built with these idesa in mind.

An explosive mishap would probably follow this time line;
An electric short sparks causing a fire in flamable materials which wasn't supposed to be in the bay to start with.
The fire would not be detected because the fire detection systems were out of commision.
The fire would spread to the cases of teh wxplosives.
The fire would raise the bay heat.
The fire would suffer as teh oxygen wsa consumed.
A crewman would run in thinking to find a way to stop the fire, but instead wuld give the fire fresh oxygen causing it to flare up.
The temperature would reach the ingition temperature of the explosives causing a point detonation.
The detonation wave will travel through the explosives raising the pressure and temperature in the bay beyond structural limits.
The unfortunate ship begins travel in many different directions at once as it is ripped apart.
The crew realizes that vacuum is exceedingly difficult to breathe before expiring from exploive decompression.

This chain could be broken at any place in the sequence by simple actions such as decompressing the bay, keeping the bay clean of flammables, doing required maintenance when needed, or knowing how to fight a fire involving exploives.

Some types of exploives are more sensitive than others. Some create hazards of their own as they get older and begin to decompose like magnewium/WP flares which generate hydrogen gas under pressure in the container when older.

I have been working with explosives daily for the last twenty years and have seen many different mishaps involving explosives. Several mishaps caused injuries, but only one involved a fire which nearly caused several deaths. Part of the training includes past mishaps such as Ben Wah and the Forestal incident. It is a very safety conscious group of workers that know the consequences of accidents. The number of accidents on the 4th of July should give you an idea of what happens when explosives are handled by untrained people.

 

[womble]

Hi Vegascat

Don't most explosives contain their own oxidant, rather than relying on atmospheric oxygen? This makes evacuation of the cargo bay useful only in that the exploding combustion products have to fill the void of the bay before applying their mechanical force to the bulkheads and hatches... I'd expect munitions carriers to have devices to eject the cargo before it gor to critical stage... (?called SCRAMming?).

 

[trader jim]

geeeez, thanks guys, doncha just love well satisified customers....shooters fer my shooters....FUNNY, FUNNY!!!...have another!!!