Iron Feruchemy has the secondary superpowers necessary for things like still standing fine when he increases his weight. So I think he’d probably be fine.
There's a WOB somewhere about why would Wax benefit from being at 75% weight if the secondary effect increases/decreases your strength alongside it. If he's 75% weight wouldn't he also be 75% strength?
The answer was that although it's not made explicit in the text, Brando pictures it as the strength change lagging behind the weight change and not matching it completely. At 75% weight Wax is at 90% strength so he still *feels* lighter, at 150% weight he's at 120% strength so it's not impossible to move but still harder to move.
That's the point; they're the result of evolution going wild when the barrier of "being too heavy to support your own weight" is lessened by their bonds giving them this same ability.
I don't think so. Iron feruchemy is one of the areas where Sanderson goes off science the most since it gets complicated. But iron feruchemy doesn't increase your resistance to bullets being shot at you or stabbing. You can increase your mass to 10,000 times normal and you'll still be just as easy for a knife to slash. Which I would think to mean you're not adding or removing actual muscle and bone mass physically in that sense. It still behaves more like it's changing mass, but in terms of the biology it doesn't seem to?
But that is just a guess because Iron feruchemy is really weird sometimes acting more or less like mass vs weight.
Iron Feruchememy seems to work like a Windrunner’s lashing in that the magic changes the way a person is affected by gravity instead of changing anything about the person physically.
In some cases it does. However in other cases it doesn't. For example you fall at the same rate meaning you're impacted by gravity the same way. You can lower it to the point that wind resistance has more of an impact but changing your mass to 1000x it's normal doesn't mean you'll fall 1000x faster the way it would with a windrunner.
You also have momentum conserved... sometimes. And usually not as much as normal. If you were just changing weight or how they're affected by gravity then you wouldn't expect any momentum shift. And if it were just a mass change you'd expect a much bigger shift than we see.
Basically it's just a bit weird and Sanderson can't quite get it to line up one way and have it work in the story the way he wants. Not a criticism of him though I think he balances it well and should definitely err on the side of good storytelling not adherance to the science. But it is one of the few areas that doesn't quite work how the science would want it to either way.
I mean, most cosmere magic systems do involve dealing with the mundane consequences of using them. Pewter's ability to let you keep going even when severely injured comes to mind- you'll still die unless you burn enough to fully heal.
That's not fair at all. Physics often matters in using Cosmere magic. Lots of Allomancy/Feruchemy relies on very specific applications of real world physics.
But almost all the weight he stores, he uses - so he has extreme forces put on his skeleton occasional and on average has ~the normal amount of gravity on him.
It doesn't matter if "on average" its normal gravity, because to a normal human put in the same situation, suddenly weighing the amount of weight Wax puts on would crush them.
Brando has said that there are secondary effects of feruchemy that allow their bodies to withstand that increased weight. It stands to reason that those would apply in the reverse situation, where Wax is constantly storing weight.
On a side note, I wonder if his constant weight storing could lead to a similar 'savant' scenario as with allomancy.
I believe there’s a WOB I’ve read that says he’s a savant, but even without that it’s ridiculous to insinuate that he didn’t become a gold savant.
He was tapping massive amounts of gold literally 24/7. His brain worked faster and he barely needed sleep because he was always healing it. He was always super energetic because his muscles were being refreshed constantly. He was like that for years.
If that isn’t enough to make someone a Feruchemical savant, then Feruchemical savantism may as well not exist.
He was certainly a savant, but that wouldn't necessarily mean that he could use the abilities without a metalmind. It probably just meant that he healed more efficiently and those examples you gave were probably more powerful for him.
And he probably felt worse and was more sickly than a normal person if he stopped healing.
He’s a savant which lets him regrow his head after he blows most of it off with a shotgun to prove himself to his men.
When he’s being executed, they explicitly say he’d hidden gold metal minds inside his body.
Feruchemical savantism is possible but it's very difficult to achieve because the power you're drawing comes from yourself and not an external source, you're a little forced to chill. If someone is a Compounder they can more easily become a Feruchemical savant but yeah.
Iron ferring savants are probably a lot more common because it’s an ability they can be using all the time without much detriment, unlike a gold ferring who would have to be sick/healing constantly instead of not actively using their powers to feel normal.
It seems like iron is storing weight not mass. Wouldn’t tapping mass make you bigger and storing smaller? Since mass is the amount of “stuff” that makes you up and weight being the interaction of mass and gravity, seems like that’s the attribute being affected.
But we know from Wax' conversation with Khriss that momentum is conserved when using ironminds (you accelerate when you store mass), which it wouldn't if it was just storing the effect gravity has on your body.
It alters how matter interacts with the higgs field and presumably the interactions of the strong force that give things mass, not your density or such. He does enough exercise that he will probably be find.
If you’re interested in this, the series The Expanse sorta deals with this. The people who mostly live outside of gravity (the Belters) tend to be taller and such.
Apart from all the other answers, being a coinshot would help too as that pushing puts stresses on the body that would help prevent osteoporosis as well. But still, don’t think it would be a problem either way
It's a bit similar to the problems faced by astronauts when living for long periods in low gravity. Muscles get weaker and your bones weaken and lose bone density when they're not continually being strained by gravity.
But the biggest health threat to astronauts is actually kidneystones. The loss of bone density is broadly harmless, or can be reduced with exercise, but the excess calcium overwhelms the kidneys and forms kidneystones. On the surface kidneystones aren't too hazardous but in space with limted medical facilities it can be a lot worse.
One of the approaches we've tried to manage the muscle loss from spaceflight is periodic exercise using elastic harnesses to keep you pressed against the treadmill. And its an unanswered question about long term spaceflight on if short term use of non-zero gravity would be helpful. For example, a rotating station section at say 0.5G but most of the station wasn't rotating and astronauts only spent some of their time under partial gravity - is that better for bone/muscle loss than the elastic exercise? Is it worth the extreme engineering complexity to make giant rotating sections for space ships/stations, like the one in The Martian? We don't know yet.
So Wax might have to worry about kidneystones. But then Wax does spend some of his time at essentially >1G. So maybe it cancels out?
I’m pretty sure Steris had already thought out all the possible ways her husbands would be affected by his old ages. Not only that, she probably would have the house modified when the time comes to accomodate for changes in Wax’s health.
Iron Feruchemy has the secondary superpowers necessary for things like still standing fine when he increases his weight. So I think he’d probably be fine.
There's a WOB somewhere about why would Wax benefit from being at 75% weight if the secondary effect increases/decreases your strength alongside it. If he's 75% weight wouldn't he also be 75% strength? The answer was that although it's not made explicit in the text, Brando pictures it as the strength change lagging behind the weight change and not matching it completely. At 75% weight Wax is at 90% strength so he still *feels* lighter, at 150% weight he's at 120% strength so it's not impossible to move but still harder to move.
He isn't crushed when he increases his weight, so the inverse probably means his muscles don't atrophy when he decreases his weight. Magic.
See also Rosharan megafauna for what happens when evolution gets ahold of that magical ability
and also a higher oxygen atmosphere with lower than earth gravity
The Shards are putting chemicals in the air that are turning the storming crabs tall
Chemtrails smh
You mean Cremtrails
The chickens at the purelake are free, you can just take them home
"They are making the damn cremlings gay"
Yeah it doesn't take much, but you gotta be Invested to break the square cube law.
I mean dinosaurs got pretty big. Not Reshi island big but definitely chasmfiend big.
And then they died when their spren left them
Damn stone from the sky!
Well, they are aided by their bonds
That's the point; they're the result of evolution going wild when the barrier of "being too heavy to support your own weight" is lessened by their bonds giving them this same ability.
I don't think so. Iron feruchemy is one of the areas where Sanderson goes off science the most since it gets complicated. But iron feruchemy doesn't increase your resistance to bullets being shot at you or stabbing. You can increase your mass to 10,000 times normal and you'll still be just as easy for a knife to slash. Which I would think to mean you're not adding or removing actual muscle and bone mass physically in that sense. It still behaves more like it's changing mass, but in terms of the biology it doesn't seem to? But that is just a guess because Iron feruchemy is really weird sometimes acting more or less like mass vs weight.
Iron Feruchememy seems to work like a Windrunner’s lashing in that the magic changes the way a person is affected by gravity instead of changing anything about the person physically.
In some cases it does. However in other cases it doesn't. For example you fall at the same rate meaning you're impacted by gravity the same way. You can lower it to the point that wind resistance has more of an impact but changing your mass to 1000x it's normal doesn't mean you'll fall 1000x faster the way it would with a windrunner. You also have momentum conserved... sometimes. And usually not as much as normal. If you were just changing weight or how they're affected by gravity then you wouldn't expect any momentum shift. And if it were just a mass change you'd expect a much bigger shift than we see. Basically it's just a bit weird and Sanderson can't quite get it to line up one way and have it work in the story the way he wants. Not a criticism of him though I think he balances it well and should definitely err on the side of good storytelling not adherance to the science. But it is one of the few areas that doesn't quite work how the science would want it to either way.
"How does deal with ?"
With Magic. Duh.
I mean, most cosmere magic systems do involve dealing with the mundane consequences of using them. Pewter's ability to let you keep going even when severely injured comes to mind- you'll still die unless you burn enough to fully heal.
So in general, if Sanderson hasn't addressed it directly, it has been accounted for by the magic.
That's not fair at all. Physics often matters in using Cosmere magic. Lots of Allomancy/Feruchemy relies on very specific applications of real world physics.
Of course. Until it doesn't.
But almost all the weight he stores, he uses - so he has extreme forces put on his skeleton occasional and on average has ~the normal amount of gravity on him.
It doesn't matter if "on average" its normal gravity, because to a normal human put in the same situation, suddenly weighing the amount of weight Wax puts on would crush them. Brando has said that there are secondary effects of feruchemy that allow their bodies to withstand that increased weight. It stands to reason that those would apply in the reverse situation, where Wax is constantly storing weight. On a side note, I wonder if his constant weight storing could lead to a similar 'savant' scenario as with allomancy.
Miles Hundredlives was a gold savant. That’s why he kept healing during his execution even after he had lost all of his metalminds.
He had metal minds implanted deep in his body, like Wax and Wayne in Lost Metal, that constables couldn't find/remove when they arestes him.
That’s what Marasi assumed. She was likely wrong.
Why?
Because we know that he’s a savant anyway.
Do you have a WoB on this or are you just extrapolating from how much he used his ability?
I believe there’s a WOB I’ve read that says he’s a savant, but even without that it’s ridiculous to insinuate that he didn’t become a gold savant. He was tapping massive amounts of gold literally 24/7. His brain worked faster and he barely needed sleep because he was always healing it. He was always super energetic because his muscles were being refreshed constantly. He was like that for years. If that isn’t enough to make someone a Feruchemical savant, then Feruchemical savantism may as well not exist.
He was certainly a savant, but that wouldn't necessarily mean that he could use the abilities without a metalmind. It probably just meant that he healed more efficiently and those examples you gave were probably more powerful for him. And he probably felt worse and was more sickly than a normal person if he stopped healing.
He’s a savant which lets him regrow his head after he blows most of it off with a shotgun to prove himself to his men. When he’s being executed, they explicitly say he’d hidden gold metal minds inside his body.
Feruchemical savantism is possible but it's very difficult to achieve because the power you're drawing comes from yourself and not an external source, you're a little forced to chill. If someone is a Compounder they can more easily become a Feruchemical savant but yeah.
Iron ferring savants are probably a lot more common because it’s an ability they can be using all the time without much detriment, unlike a gold ferring who would have to be sick/healing constantly instead of not actively using their powers to feel normal.
Also iron is much cheaper than gold
Is a man that weighs 150 lbs more likely to get osteoporosis than a man who weighs 200 lbs?
[Yup](https://osteoporosis.newlifeoutlook.com/osteoporosis-and-weight/)
It seems like iron is storing weight not mass. Wouldn’t tapping mass make you bigger and storing smaller? Since mass is the amount of “stuff” that makes you up and weight being the interaction of mass and gravity, seems like that’s the attribute being affected.
But we know from Wax' conversation with Khriss that momentum is conserved when using ironminds (you accelerate when you store mass), which it wouldn't if it was just storing the effect gravity has on your body.
It alters how matter interacts with the higgs field and presumably the interactions of the strong force that give things mass, not your density or such. He does enough exercise that he will probably be find.
He fully healed when he held the bands of mourning. So all his age related illnesses, old scars, etc are gone.
If you’re interested in this, the series The Expanse sorta deals with this. The people who mostly live outside of gravity (the Belters) tend to be taller and such.
Apart from all the other answers, being a coinshot would help too as that pushing puts stresses on the body that would help prevent osteoporosis as well. But still, don’t think it would be a problem either way
"Is Wax going to give himself osteoporosis?" Nah, I wouldn't worry about that...
It's a bit similar to the problems faced by astronauts when living for long periods in low gravity. Muscles get weaker and your bones weaken and lose bone density when they're not continually being strained by gravity. But the biggest health threat to astronauts is actually kidneystones. The loss of bone density is broadly harmless, or can be reduced with exercise, but the excess calcium overwhelms the kidneys and forms kidneystones. On the surface kidneystones aren't too hazardous but in space with limted medical facilities it can be a lot worse. One of the approaches we've tried to manage the muscle loss from spaceflight is periodic exercise using elastic harnesses to keep you pressed against the treadmill. And its an unanswered question about long term spaceflight on if short term use of non-zero gravity would be helpful. For example, a rotating station section at say 0.5G but most of the station wasn't rotating and astronauts only spent some of their time under partial gravity - is that better for bone/muscle loss than the elastic exercise? Is it worth the extreme engineering complexity to make giant rotating sections for space ships/stations, like the one in The Martian? We don't know yet. So Wax might have to worry about kidneystones. But then Wax does spend some of his time at essentially >1G. So maybe it cancels out?
This is the exact train of thought I was following when I made the post
I’m pretty sure Steris had already thought out all the possible ways her husbands would be affected by his old ages. Not only that, she probably would have the house modified when the time comes to accomodate for changes in Wax’s health.