Wow, that is an incredible view.
If Tiamat is like a positron-electron annihilation, explosion is going to be mostly gamma rays, which like lasers, defensive screens won't be very effective against. If it's like a proton-antiproton annihilation, then it's going to be more of a complicated mess of gamma rays, pions and other subatomic particles. Their screens still probably won't provide a good defense, and judging by the amount of visible damage to the station, their armor plating wasn't quite up to the task, at least not in all locations.
I imagine if the inertial dampening got knocked out a split second before the engines did, that could cause a pretty jarring experience, on top of whatever super heated and/or ionized gas the explosion produced. The station's mass acting as a shield aside, they were practically right on top of the explosion, as far as space combat distances are concerned.
Alex is beginning to pick up a bad habit of being too close to giant explosions. But it's a good thing he wasn't looking at that one, or I imagine he'd have the image forever burned into his retina.
I would think suffocation first. Freezing isn't really that pressing a problem in space, unless you've got an operational radiator you can't close the coolant valve on.novius wrote:...Likely life support is gone, too. So the clock is ticking on them - what would happen first? Suffocating or freezing?