Your favorite Sci-fi WMD?

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2007-09-19 09:39am

Ye ol' Death Star. Why need subtlety when you're blowing up a planet anyway?

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2007-09-19 09:44am

Alternatively, when you have more time, drop a couple of Von Neumann machines and sit back

OmegaGuy · Post by **OmegaGuy** » 2007-09-19 10:15am

Von Neumann Staplers for maximum hilarity

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2007-09-19 10:20am

A Hawking D-sink from Hamilton's Void Trilogy seems also quite elegant. A portable black hole, useful to get rid of incriminating evidence, attack enemy ships as well as destroy complete planets and transportable to boot

Gustav32Vasa · Post by **Gustav32Vasa** » 2007-09-19 10:46am

Dahak wrote:A Hawking D-sink from Hamilton's Void Trilogy seems also quite elegant. A portable black hole, useful to get rid of incriminating evidence, attack enemy ships as well as destroy complete planets and transportable to boot

Yes, but that gives them time to evacuat the planet while the blackhole eats it from the inisde. As they could have in the book if they still had a ship and Cat wasnt waiting for them.

Gustav32Vasa · Post by **Gustav32Vasa** » 2007-09-19 10:48am

kinnison wrote:Hey, anyone who thought up a system-defense weapon powered by a stellar flare can't be all bad!

The motiles from Pandoras Star?

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2007-09-19 11:30am

Gustav32Vasa wrote:
Dahak wrote:A Hawking D-sink from Hamilton's Void Trilogy seems also quite elegant. A portable black hole, useful to get rid of incriminating evidence, attack enemy ships as well as destroy complete planets and transportable to boot
Yes, but that gives them time to evacuat the planet while the blackhole eats it from the inisde. As they could have in the book if they still had a ship and Cat wasnt waiting for them.

Well, this isn't the only system to do that, in this thread...

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-09-19 12:01pm

Starglider wrote: You are a bottomless pit of inhibitor wank. No, we do not know exactly what would happen when a superlaser beam hits an inhibitor swarm, but I'm betting it won't be good for the later.

Probably not as much as you think, since the beam would either miss or get deflected (they shrug off moon shattering blasts with zero effects at least) or, even better yet, not matter when the Inhibitors don't sit still in planet sized masses doing jack shit. But this is OT

This is the most idiotic cop-out I've ever seen in versus. You're trying to handwave away the mere existence of your enemies, when they're defined as having existed for centuries, millenia etc. Versus comparisons always involve some kind of bridge or transport between alternate universes because a) the incompatible physics usually preclude the existence of at least one faction if they developed in the same galaxy and b) in many cases the physical proximity would preclude them. It particularly doesn't work against the GE as they are defined as being in a far away galaxy, not one that includes Earth.

Wow, no shit. Thanks for the pointer there, Captain Obvious. And maybe if this was a VERSUS THREAD, you'd have a point as well. Too bad it isn't, so you can blow that out your ass.

I guess your reading comprehension is not good enough to notice the blatantly obvious smiley I put at the end of that statement, y'know, the one denoting "I'm not being 100% serious here". Jesus.

Starglider wrote:
Ok sorry thread hijack. I have a bad reaction to Revelation Space wankage. I'm ok with Culture and even Xeelee smackdowns because they're properly detailed. The Inhibitors always get far too much from no limits wankage (and not even the vaguely tolerable kind of no limits, e.g. genuine reality hacking).

Yeah, nearly as intolerable as "ZOMG!!1 Nanotech aNd AIs to the rescue!11" or the hilarious fact that you attack the Revelation Space universe then turn around and go on about the GE with a millennia of trouble free time building thousands of Eclipses (LOL!) and having fucking FTL and beams from tiny space craft that vape whole planets, but oh no, Reynolds' work is off the scale in technobabble because of a simple trick with inertia. Your hypocrisy is fucking distressing to behold. Next time you pull that Inhibitor wank shtick, how about acknowledging that there's MORE magic in Star Wars than the RS novels, yes? I'll ignore that the Xeelee can alter their own time-line and the Culture can become gods.

And pull that stick out of your ass. It gets decidedly dull with you nitpicking every friggin' statement time and time again.

Ford Prefect wrote:
I've always been more of a fan of the good old 'What was that?' followed by swift, merciless destruction. One minute you're a happy little stellar civillisation and the next second everything has been smashed into craters.

True enough, that suddenness is always disturbing too, but it's better someone survives to see what they're dealing with and to spread the fear. The 2005 version of WOTW is great for the whole tripods-coming-out-the-ground-one-day aspect, which was totally unexpected. Not a WMD on planet blasting grounds, just really damn cool and freaky.

Lost Soal · Post by **Lost Soal** » 2007-09-19 05:11pm

I personally like the Farscape Wormhole weapons. Suitable for all scales whether transporting your fleet right on top of the enemies world for total surprise, shooting stars at them, or going the whole hog and swallowing the galaxy (giving enough time anyways).

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2007-09-19 05:14pm

Gustav32Vasa wrote:
Dahak wrote:A Hawking D-sink from Hamilton's Void Trilogy seems also quite elegant. A portable black hole, useful to get rid of incriminating evidence, attack enemy ships as well as destroy complete planets and transportable to boot
Yes, but that gives them time to evacuat the planet while the blackhole eats it from the inisde. As they could have in the book if they still had a ship and Cat wasnt waiting for them.

Must be because it's not a real portable black hole. One of those would make it impossible to evacuate the planet as soon as it's activated, everyone would be too busy being crushed into a thin paste.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-09-19 05:24pm

Adrian Laguna wrote: Must be because it's not a real portable black hole. One of those would make it impossible to evacuate the planet as soon as it's activated, everyone would be too busy being crushed into a thin paste.

That depends on size. Even a football sized black hole won't be doing much but falling to the centre of the planet and growing there, taking a long time to do so. I've yet to read Hamilton's new trilogy, so I've no idea on the size, but portable to me sounds like briefcase/suitcase size (for personal use, whatever you'd be doing with a personal black hole).

NeoGoomba · Post by **NeoGoomba** » 2007-09-19 05:51pm

Sounds like Futurama-tech to me, where creating singularities is a primary school science lab.

Cubert: "That was easy!"

Solauren · Post by **Solauren** » 2007-09-19 10:16pm

For me, in order

#1 Death Star - Simple, straight foreward, and direct

#2 Unicron - Nothing says "HOLY SHIT" then an artifical planet the size of saturn (according to the original G1 comics) that eats other planets, and turns into one big ass robot.

#3 Cerebro (X-men movies). Wipes out the native sentient species, leaving everything else intact.

Lord Relvenous · Post by **Lord Relvenous** » 2007-09-20 02:03am

You know i was gonna mention Cerebro. Definately a WMD, but you have to trick someone into using it wrong... so kinda unreliable.

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2007-09-20 04:02am

Hugbot[/url]

MJ12 Commando · Post by **MJ12 Commando** » 2007-09-20 04:54am

Third Armament Kos-Mos.

A WMD packaged oh-so-prettily. Who apparently blows up a significant portion of a galaxy in one possible future.

And yes, Inhibitor Singers are mucho awesome.

The R-Bombers and Iron Bombs in Iron Sunrise by Stross are great, and Tony Ballantyne's Von Neumann Swarms are also neat.

For cutesy: The anthropomorphic grey goo in TastyPlanet (some little shareware game floating around). It grows from nanometer sized... to eating an entire galaxy. :p

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » 2007-09-20 08:23am

Admiral Valdemar wrote:True enough, that suddenness is always disturbing too, but it's better someone survives to see what they're dealing with and to spread the fear. The 2005 version of WOTW is great for the whole tripods-coming-out-the-ground-one-day aspect, which was totally unexpected. Not a WMD on planet blasting grounds, just really damn cool and freaky.

I'd think wiping out all life on a planet would be horrific enough to general stellar society, even if your species is ridiculously prolific. Admittedly, with the stellar flamethrower, it's not like anyone would know for decades, given the lack of FTL travel or communication ... still, if it's pointed at the planet I think it's pointed at, scaring the populace really wouldn't matter, would it - none of them could get away, and they're all going to die.

Third Armament Kos-Mos.

A WMD packaged oh-so-prettily.

Speaking of pretty WMD, how about Nono from Diebuster? She was pretty cute (also a redhead!), and cutting Titan in half was also pretty stylish.

Speaking of black holes, I'm reminded of a weapon suggestion given in a thread I made called 'realistic weapons'. The ideas was that you put a smallish black hole (made by shooting some really dense matter with LASERS, for added awesome) into orbit around ap lanet, and bathe the surface in perfectly wonderful Hawking radiation.

I'm also reminded of the singularity warheads used in a Caliphate submarine in Dan Simmons' Olympos. The were intended to kill the world, but they never managed to launch.

OmegaGuy · Post by **OmegaGuy** » 2007-09-20 09:21am

Ford Prefect wrote:Speaking of pretty WMD, how about Nono from Diebuster? She was pretty cute (also a redhead!), and cutting Titan in half was also pretty stylish.

I see and raise you Yuki Nagato.

Gustav32Vasa · Post by **Gustav32Vasa** » 2007-09-20 11:27am

Admiral Valdemar wrote:
Adrian Laguna wrote: Must be because it's not a real portable black hole. One of those would make it impossible to evacuate the planet as soon as it's activated, everyone would be too busy being crushed into a thin paste.
That depends on size. Even a football sized black hole won't be doing much but falling to the centre of the planet and growing there, taking a long time to do so. I've yet to read Hamilton's new trilogy, so I've no idea on the size, but portable to me sounds like briefcase/suitcase size (for personal use, whatever you'd be doing with a personal black hole).

It was designed for use as defence in battle man to man.

spoilers for Void 1of3
In the book one guy use several of these when he is breaking into a memory vault.

Ariphaos · Post by **Ariphaos** » 2007-09-20 11:36am

Admiral Valdemar wrote:That depends on size. Even a football sized black hole won't be doing much but falling to the centre of the planet and growing there, taking a long time to do so. I've yet to read Hamilton's new trilogy, so I've no idea on the size, but portable to me sounds like briefcase/suitcase size (for personal use, whatever you'd be doing with a personal black hole).

A black hole with twelve Earth masses is going to seriously mess up just about anything short of an ice giant in very short order.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-09-20 12:04pm

Ford Prefect wrote:
I'd think wiping out all life on a planet would be horrific enough to general stellar society, even if your species is ridiculously prolific. Admittedly, with the stellar flamethrower, it's not like anyone would know for decades, given the lack of FTL travel or communication ... still, if it's pointed at the planet I think it's pointed at, scaring the populace really wouldn't matter, would it - none of them could get away, and they're all going to die.

The hard SF frontier like scenario makes it a little more mysterious and alarming, since you can't tell anything is going on until light has reached you (and maybe shortly after, a fleeing ship). Every system is cut off by at least a few years of time, so one system can be exterminated before anyone else realises and forms a counter-force or evacuation plan on any real scale.

Xeriar wrote: A black hole with twelve Earth masses is going to seriously mess up just about anything short of an ice giant in very short order.

Really not the sort of thing to go carrying on your person. A black hole of atomic size would be a cute thing to have on you and plop down on a target planet (then wait a long time, not exactly practical). Anything that has such massive tidal forces would be a pain to handle if anything.

Just throwing one at the planet, if dense enough, should be more than enough rather than gobbling the whole thing up. Retrieve and repeat.

Aaron · Post by **Aaron** » 2007-09-20 12:24pm

Definetly the Imperium's Nova Cannon. Nothing like a weapon that takes up the entire spine of a Battleship and needs hundreds of deaf slaves to reload. I believe the yeild is equivalant to several hundred plasma bombs, enough to take a chunk out of a Hive Ship.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2007-09-20 04:33pm

Gustav32Vasa wrote: spoilers for Void 1of3
In the book one guy use several of these when he is breaking into a memory vault.

He is not. He is using Nilling-sponges, using the same effect as Nilling d-sinks. It's no Hawking m-sink.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2007-09-20 04:36pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:
Adrian Laguna wrote: Must be because it's not a real portable black hole. One of those would make it impossible to evacuate the planet as soon as it's activated, everyone would be too busy being crushed into a thin paste.
That depends on size. Even a football sized black hole won't be doing much but falling to the centre of the planet and growing there, taking a long time to do so. I've yet to read Hamilton's new trilogy, so I've no idea on the size, but portable to me sounds like briefcase/suitcase size (for personal use, whatever you'd be doing with a personal black hole).

The device is small enough to be carried aboard a small personal ship and able to be moved around by a grav sled.

Gustav32Vasa · Post by **Gustav32Vasa** » 2007-09-20 05:00pm

Dahak wrote:
Gustav32Vasa wrote: spoilers for Void 1of3
In the book one guy use several of these when he is breaking into a memory vault.
He is not. He is using Nilling-sponges, using the same effect as Nilling d-sinks. It's no Hawking m-sink.

Are you sure? I though it was when ANA heard about the break in that got ANA worried that their blackhole tech had escaped from them.