The Old Guard implemented in OA

[Cray]

The Old Guard is a new Netflix film starring Charlize Theron. It revolves around several fast-healing immortals who wander the world inflicting violence on bad people. There's a touch of Highlander to it, but the immortals aren't hunting each other. They, and the modern world, are grappling with their immortality, and the movie examines that. In short: decent action film.

So, naturally, my first thought was, "Could you implement that sort of rapid regeneration in Orions Arm?"

Without resorting to nanoborgs, are there any biological augmentations in OA that could heal a neb or Superior body as fast as the Old Guard? (Or Wolverine, if you haven't seen the movie yet.)

[JohnnyYesterday]

No. Living cells can’t reproduce that fast.

For Wolverine-style healing, you’re looking at weeks to months, depending on the scale of the damage, e.g. regrowing an arm could take months. Regrowing a vital organ? They’re going to die.

[Achaz the Transavant]

Engenerated bodies in OA are generally bioborgs at first (before converting themselves into a "normal" body if that's what is desired) because you can't build a truly biological body that fast.

So a bioborg or vec probably could heal quite a bit faster although I have no idea how much (probably less than inside an engenerator).

[Drashner1]

You could design a body for the specific purpose of being highly durable - multiple organs for redundancy or maybe a vasculoid and similar systems to just eliminate the concept of a 'vital' organ entirely. But taking a nanoborg off the table means that you're limited by the speed of biology as well as it's more limited ability to handle waste heat.

Most biological sophonts in OA have (or can install) the ability to regenerate limbs and heal from wounds that would quite fatal to one of us. They can (if they wish) also control pain and could probably stay on their feet and moving (at least for a while) even if wounded to a level that would instantly disable one of us.

But they can't regenerate in seconds or minutes and still be limited to biology, unfortunately.

Todd

[stevebowers]

The vasculoid system would be a major advantage in this situation. Every bloodvessel could be lined with a tough artificial material and filled with artificial respirocytes, so that damage would not cut off the supply of oxygen to the tissues, and waste gases and other products could be absorbed and stored safely for later disposal. The artificial lining of the blood vessels could reassemble itself after trauma, and quickly reform into the original configuration. Assume that the user's muscles would be reinforced with artificial myomers, and the bones would be reinforced with ultrastrong and fracture-resistant diamondoid or similar, and you've basically got Wolverine.

Unfortunately the soft tissues and organs of such a user would still be subject to damage, so I'm afraid that they might suffer some pretty nasty internal injuries despite all these precautions. Reducing damage to the brain, liver and kidneys would require some pretty drastic redesigning.

[Cray]

The ideas about damage resistance and respirocytes are interesting. If you can keep the meat alive then it can heal. So, rather than making a nanoborg of it, what can healing implants and bionano do?

Can nanites floating in the blood (or just an implanted medic) simulate organ function for a while, providing in-situ processing of chemicals like the liver until a damaged organ is healed?

Can blood vessels be quickly patched around damaged areas so circulation is restored before respirocytes run out? This would give time for healing to occur.

What would be required to create temporary patches across cut muscles and tendons?

[Cray]

I suppose I could read some the EG articles on the topic to figure out their capabilities: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4e9ad3a4b9387

[Sovereignpotato]

If made out of omnicytes, yes to a degree. Omnicytes are one cell the performs all functions. They have multiple muscular arms for attachment and a triple cell membrane with limpet teeth like scales in the middle membrane. The whole body is a bone a muscle a nervous system and able to shapeshift. A viscoelastic fluid is the extracellular fluid they all reside in. It stores nutrients and helps to absorb blunt force. They have a body wide lung shaped like blood vessels for rapid delivery of oxygen and also as a fantastic coolant system.
The cells link up like origami. Bones are denser and rigid, muscles interweaved for application of force, etc. Little cilia on the skin allow colorshifting via structural coloration. The brain has to maintain a specific shape for the neural network, but long term memories can be stored genetically. Not in the genome, but an extra cellular organ that translates memories for high data storage and redundancy Incase the brain is damaged.

A being like this could appear to have wolverine like regeneration by having damaged cells move inward and healthy cells move out and link up. Actual cell replication can have a doubling time faster then human cells but slower then bacteria due to omnicyte complexity.
This is hard science. There is nothing theoretical about it. It is a fact that the above can exist if properly designed.

[Drashner1]

Hi There - Welcome to OA

Please feel free to join in on any discussions that may interest you or start new ones if you wish. If you have any questions or concerns about the OA setting or the wider project, please feel free to ask.

Regarding your specific post below...

If made out of omnicytes, yes to a degree. Omnicytes are one cell the performs all functions. They have multiple muscular arms for attachment and a triple cell membrane with limpet teeth like scales in the middle membrane. The whole body is a bone a muscle a nervous system and able to shapeshift. A viscoelastic fluid is the extracellular fluid they all reside in. It stores nutrients and helps to absorb blunt force. They have a body wide lung shaped like blood vessels for rapid delivery of oxygen and also as a fantastic coolant system.

You start out by saying that an 'omnicyte' is one cell, but then describe it as possessing muscular arms and various other other features. Muscles, teeth, lungs, etc. are all multi-cellular structures made up of millions or billions of cells and are all much much larger than a single cell. How are you going to implement these kinds of structures in a single cell?

Also, while generalization has its place, speciallization is almost certainly going to do better at any given function. So while it might be possible to engineer some kind of cell or multi-cellular construct that can generalize it would likely run into various situations where it would not perform as well as a system of specialized organs or devices working together.

The cells link up like origami. Bones are denser and rigid, muscles interweaved for application of force, etc. Little cilia on the skin allow colorshifting via structural coloration. The brain has to maintain a specific shape for the neural network, but long term memories can be stored genetically. Not in the genome, but an extra cellular organ that translates memories for high data storage and redundancy Incase the brain is damaged.

'Storing memories genetically' sounds cool and is an SF trope that is used here and there but I'm not aware of any evidence that the term actually means anything. If you mean storing memories in some sort of biological equivalent to a hard drive or via DNA data storage/molecular memory (which is a real thing and has been done in the lab IIRC), then sure.

That all said, if you're concentrating all that in a specific organ, all you're really doing is creating a different organ that can be damaged or destroyed by those who know it exists and where to aim for it. Of by sufficiently violent accident, I suppose. Increased redundancy, but not unlimited or even necessarily all that much greater depending on circumstances.

A being like this could appear to have wolverine like regeneration by having damaged cells move inward and healthy cells move out and link up. Actual cell replication can have a doubling time faster then human cells but slower then bacteria due to omnicyte complexity.

Waste heat would still be a factor and a limitation on this sort of thing. Possibly even a much larger factor since the increased complexity of the cells (or 'cells' since again, it's not clear how this is supposed to work as described without lots of cells being involved) would likely require much more effort to grow them (with greater energy input to btw - how is a person/entity using this supposed to power the process?). Cooking oneself to death while healing super fast is probably not desirable.

This is hard science. There is nothing theoretical about it. It is a fact that the above can exist if properly designed.

Please provide real world citations and references to support this assertion. Links to online versions are preferred, but we are also OK with hardcopy sources if sufficient information is provided to allow us to potentially track the source down and review it.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts above. We look forward to hearing your response to the points raised here. And once again - Welcome to OA!

Todd

Administrator - Orion's Arm Universe Project