9 Little-Known Science Facts That Make Fallout Even Cooler

3. Energy Weapons - More Powerful Than Lightning

When you've got a Radscorpion charging towards you, it's helpful to have a weapon to hand that will reduce it to an angry pile of ash, but how much energy does it take to vapourise an adversary?

The peeps over at Nerdist did the sums, and it turns out that the answer is "a metric sh*t-tonne" or, more precisely, 2.8×10^9 kJ.

In order to vapourise anything, you essentially have to eliminate the water in their body, and you do this by breaking the molecular bonds that hold the oxygen and hydrogen atoms together. It's not as complicated as all that, you do it every day when you boil water for your morning coffee, but as humans are around 70% water, you'll need a lot of energy to turn it all into a gas.

This is about the same amount of energy as is contained in two lightning bolts, all contained in your modest little energy weapon.

Just remember to keep the safety on.