Colonial Marines to appear at E3?

[Neltharion]

Its not actually "cold" as in how we would describe it. It is still several thousand degrees. I think you may be talking about the Intracluster Medium. Which is still roasting hot.

The reason it is called "Cold" Plasma is that it is not fully Ionized, just a small fraction is ionized, while "Hot" Plasma, it is pretty much all fully Ionized. Both will still melt your face off.

[deezelboy]

There was still a mushroom cloud...but I suppose the rock may have deflected the blast upward, sparing the colony some of the force of the explosion.

Yes, I like to imagine that the initial explosion vaporised the AP and much of the surrounding rock.  Hence the fireball/mushroom cloud.  The good news for Hadley's would be that most of the explosion's energy is spent either vaporising the rock or spewing straight up into the heavens (where it can't even drop a dropship!).  Wouldn't expect anybody to survive in Hadley's, but it'd still leave ruined traces of the colony.

Although 1km from an estimated 40mt blast is massively pushing it, I admit!

[Rich]

Kind of like the difference between the atomic bomb being set off on the ground or under it and the atomic bomb being set off mid air?

[deezelboy]

Yeah.

Airbursts - like Hiroshima or Nagasaki - tend to be more destructive over wide areas, while surface and subsurface blasts tend to be more concentrated over a narrow area.

[beckmen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHAAmdskBqU#t=39s

[BishopIII]

If Hadley's Hope could survive the explosion in reasonable condition, enough for xenomorphs to survive, then what of the derelict? I'm sure it's going to be covered in the game, but wouldn't that mean that a certain Dr Wren has been wasting a huge amount of taxpayers money?

[Company Man]

This poor thread is just about Ready Line material..

Did someone say airbursts?

[deezelboy]

If Hadley's Hope could survive the explosion in reasonable condition, enough for xenomorphs to survive, then what of the derelict?

I guess it would be completely fine, even outside of the game's Hadley's-still-intact scenario.  It's a long way from the AP.  Can't see how a 40mt blast would affect it much, unless the nuke triggered some seismic activity or something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHAAmdskBqU#t=39s

You could always turn the question around, and ask yourself how deep you'd have to build a bunker, or how far away a dropship would need to be, to survive such a nuclear blast.

[Hieronymus]

If Hadley's Hope could survive the explosion in reasonable condition, enough for xenomorphs to survive, then what of the derelict? I'm sure it's going to be covered in the game, but wouldn't that mean that a certain Dr Wren has been wasting a huge amount of taxpayers money?

Could be that the derelict will be destroyed by the end of the game - thus making it unavailable to Dr. Wren in the future.

[BishopIII]

Could be that the derelict will be destroyed by the end of the game - thus making it unavailable to Dr. Wren in the future.

True, but the game didn't exist even as an idea when A:R was released. As Deez said, the derelict would have been more or less intact (at least, in the same state as the Jorden family discovered it). The derelict, being an interstellar starship, would require pretty strong radiation shielding, thus protecting at least some of the eggs within from fallout (although that's assuming that the eggs are vulnerable to radiation). If the game didn't exist, this point still stands: The fourth installment in the franchise should have seen a return to the derelict site anyway, instead of the hokey clone-with-genetic-memories-of-Ripley storyline. 

They could have done so much with it, maybe even set an entire movie in and around the derelict, but no! We have a story that glosses over exactly how specific memories can be encoded into DNA! That's why I don't count that movie as canon, it's bad Science-Fiction! I digress.....

On the subject of Hadley's Hopes' survival, wouldn't such a colony be built like an above-ground nuclear bunker anyway? I mean, it would have to withstand any indigenous radiation or asteroid/meteorite impacts, so why not a subsurface nuke blast?

[Hieronymus]

If the planet was subject to asteroid bombardment or high levels of radiation, sure - but that would have made it much less suitable for colonization in the first place.  It seems more likely to me that the Company just dropped a bunch of somewhat-sturdy, but very cheap, prefab modules on-planet.

[deezelboy]

In fairness to Wren, nobody found the Derelict even when LV-426 had been surveyed and had people living on it for 20+ years.  Apparently without the beacon or grid co-ordinates it's quite an easy thing to overlook.

On the subject of Hadley's Hopes' survival, wouldn't such a colony be built like an above-ground nuclear bunker anyway? I mean, it would have to withstand any indigenous radiation or asteroid/meteorite impacts, so why not a subsurface nuke blast?

I think if WY had been concerned about the colonists' safety, Hadley's would have been established a long way away from the 'fully automated' AP.