How did Sheppard and Zelenka survive?

[Lord batchi ball]

When I saw that the size of the explosion was apparent, which I thought it should have been bigger than what it was but any way.

What suprised me the most was the fact they were not cooked to a crisp by the radiation. It was essiantially the tail end of a massive nuclear explosion, so one would presume that radiation was to follow, but I guess they have magic powers to protect them.

[nx01a]

As Jill said, it's The Hair TM, R & C. All of The Product TM, R & C on Shep's cowlick absorbed the leftover radiation, while that healthy shine reflected any light that might cause sunburn and ruin Shep's tan.

[Quadhelix]

When I saw that the size of the explosion was apparent, which I thought it should have been bigger than what it was but any way.

About 99.999% percent of the blast was absorbed by the shield. It might seem a bit odd that the shield would pick that moment to fail, when it had already absorbed so much, but it only seems odd assume a linear rate of decay of power, which was almost definitely not the case. Since the rate of heat diffusion is proportional to temperature difference, the shield probably dissipated something like 50% (random number) of the blast in the first couple of seconds, but absorbed less and less as the temperature difference across the shield dropped until the contained blast eventually cooled enough that the shield was barely dissipating any energy at all.

What suprised me the most was the fact they were not cooked to a crisp by the radiation. It was essiantially the tail end of a massive nuclear explosion, so one would presume that radiation was to follow, but I guess they have magic powers to protect them.

Firstly, the shield probably absorbed most of the radiation from the blast. Second, nuclear weapons leave radioactive fallout because the warheads are made from radioactive elements, unlike the Stargates (if naquada was radioactive, then eventually, enough of the Stargates would decay to render them non-functional).

[Lord batchi ball]

I really don't think a energy shield can absorb radiation, its chemistry.

And I all ready posted a respose to the first, i mean come on, duh, you just restated what they said in the show. but I mean a explosion was super nuclear, and even .001% of that explosion would enough to destroy the whole tower.

[PantheraLeo]

an energy shield can filter out radiation and also heat..
look at the episode The Daedalus Variations, they needed the shields to keep out the sun's heat

[Quadhelix]

I really don't think a energy shield can absorb radiation, its chemistry.

There are three types of nuclear radiation: alpha particles (high energy helium nuclei), beta particles (high energy electrons and positrons), and gamma rays (high energy photons). If the shield slows the alpha and beta particles while absorbing the gamma rays, then there should be no radiation leak. As for radioactive materials, there is no indication that a gate detonation produces any radioactive isotopes.

And I all ready posted a respose to the first, i mean come on, duh, you just restated what they said in the show. but I mean a explosion was super nuclear, and even .001% of that explosion would enough to destroy the whole tower.

Okay, so the actual explosion when the shield failed was about, let us say, 1 ton TNT equivalent (which Wikipedia cites as the equivalent of one bunker buster bomb). If we take the original blast to have been 1 gigaton TNT equivalent, about 1,000,000,000 times the energy of the final explosion, this means that the shield must have absorbed 99.9999999% of the initial explosion.

My earlier post, wherein I picked 99.999% at random, was pointing out why the shield failed before it could absorb the last 0.0000001% of the blast. About two minutes elapsed between 'Gate detonation and shield failure, 100 seconds for simplicity. Using an equation E(t)=e^(k*t) and setting E(100)=10^-7, we find that k is about 0.16118. This important because if we take (dE/dt)/E, we find that k is the portion of the remaining energy that the shield absorbs each second.

In short, if the shield bubble were able to absorb about 15% of the energy contained every second, we would get a result consistent with that shown.

[John W]

I agree. Although the shield contained at least the majority of the lethal heat, there should still have been scorch marks of some sort on the people or equipment. All I saw was dust and rubble.

On a side note, the next episode better not have the gate room fixed in to perfect working order, even after getting a new gate. That explosion should have caused heavy damage to all the control room equipment, especially after the rubble that was on top of them.

I actually thought it was pretty cool how they dressed the set to look so distressed like that. But I do agree with you about the long-term effects of the damage. It was a bit of a cop-out that they just say at the end of the episode, "Oh, we're going to get one of the gates from the Gate Bridge to use." It would've been nice to have had at least one episode where they have to cope with not having a stargate and have to go out and procur one. They could've built a whole story out of that.

Another cop-out is how everything always manages to be perfectly repaired in the next episode or so. An SG-1 example of this is in "Foothold" where the gate-room is totalled by an explosion at the end of the episode yet is fine in the next one. They used to do that on Star Trek Voyager where the ship could be in tatters one week and absolutely spotless the next week. Thank goodness they finally changed that for Season 3 of "Star Trek Enterprise" and actually left the ship damaged for a quarter of the season with repairs being gradually done over the course of several episodes.