Killing Kaiju?

[biostem]

For the amount the world collectively spent on sci-fi robots, just imagine how many conventional nuclear subs you could churn out. Large enough fleet to surround the breach and have regular rotations to keep supplies and morale up, certainly.

Kaiju appears, launch a few dozen purpose-built nuclear torpedoes. If that doesn't put it down, somehow, launch a few dozen more. Rinse and repeat.

Given the speed and maneuverability of the Kaiju, I don't think subs and torpedoes would be the answer. Since the breach doesn't move, just ferry in millions of tons of concrete that can set under water, and dump it onto the site, until you've basically built a mountain over it, (during the periods when it's closed, of course).

Another option would be to place something akin to a nuclear mine over the breach, if it couldn't be buried for some reason, and just detonate it each time something comes through. Heck, given how both edged weapons and extreme heat proved effective against the kaiju, you could probably use potent conventional explosives - I wonder if you could make some sort of thermite/shrapnel bomb that could do the job.

[Simon_Jester]

Torpedoes that go at 300 or so km/hr would be practical; are kaiju supposed to be faster than that?

[Venator]

Torpedoes that go at 300 or so km/hr would be practical; are kaiju supposed to be faster than that?

I certainly wouldn't think so. They're big, pointy, and not terribly hydrodynamic creatures that rely on land-animal-like swimming motions for propulsion. By comparison, the Russians have their supercavitating >300km/h torps, the USA is reportedly working on ~200km/h ones, and according to the font of all truth, Wikipedia (>.>) Germany is working on an 800km/h torpedo.

[biostem]

How long did it take the kaiju to get from the breach to the coast? Regardless, an unmanned mine, (or network of mines), would require less overhead than having to maintain manned subs around the breach 24/7. Still, I suppose they could maintain a small fleet/patrol of subs armed with nuclear torpedoes as a secondary measure.

[Zaune]

I certainly wouldn't think so. They're big, pointy, and not terribly hydrodynamic creatures that rely on land-animal-like swimming motions for propulsion.

In that case, a few destroyers or maritime-patrol aircraft armed with nuclear depth charges might be better than submarines.

[Darksider]

There's something i've always wondered about the film.

Does the breach always open in the same spot? I can't be certain, but it looks like the initial "tear" in the prologue is in a different spot than the breach at the end. If it always opens in the same spot and Jaegers can move underwater, there's no reason whatsoever to intercept Kaiju at the "Miracle Mile." The Hong Kong shatterdome was supposed to hold 30, there's no reason not to have a constant patrol of five or six at the Breach at all times. Maybe the Breach opens in different locations in a small area of the pacific, and they don't know exactly where until the monsters come out?

[Sea Skimmer]

Na that shot with the breach opening makes it very clear that its a static spot, and just physically widens to let Kaiju through. As well they says they've tried to send stuff down before and it didn't know, so the location isn't a short lived surprise.

Even if it was a small area of uncertainty, why not have a couple Jaegers forward deployed on the decks of container ships? This gets even easier since the Jaegers can be lifted by Chinooks by some kind of magical Chinook power. This would also set it up for being a 'new' thing that the Kaiju begin sinking the base ships or some such. Hell not like its hard to think up a billion ways to make the movie less dumb without even changing the basic premise in any way that only Jaegers can fight them. The movie never, ever tried and goes like it was written as a bunch of unlinked cliches, which I think is exactly what was done. Guillermo del Toro seems like a very visuals oriented director, and well, I wonder if he ever even read a full copy of the script before shooting.

[Simon_Jester]

I certainly wouldn't think so. They're big, pointy, and not terribly hydrodynamic creatures that rely on land-animal-like swimming motions for propulsion.

In that case, a few destroyers or maritime-patrol aircraft armed with nuclear depth charges might be better than submarines.

Debateable; a nuclear submarine can theoretically remain on station for months, aircraft for only hours. Destroyers somewhere in between (days? weeks? months?), assuming on-station refueling.

And if the monsters swim in very deep water, torpedoes will hit a lot more reliably. Depth charges have no guidance, and time to sink, if nothing else. If you drop one on a monster that's somewhere near the sea floor, it'll take minutes to arrive.

[Darth Tanner]

I just never understood why they didn't mount the plasma cannon or giant rockets on a tank chassis. The fact the chinooks had no difficulty flying the robots half way across the pacific should mean you could mount it on a modified chinook too.

If the plasma cannon works so well though I don't understand how nuclear weapons could be ineffective.

The world already has hundreds of submarines though, the combined navies of the world could easily block up a single attack vector with what naval assets we already have without having to build new ones.

Obviously giant robots need to punch, otherwise why have giant robots.

[Venator]

I don't think nuclear weapons were ever inneffective against the Kaiju - just posed too much collateral since the militaries never thought to deploy them before the beasties made it to major population centres. The first Kaiju was finished off with one or more tactical nukes, after all.

Honestly, considering how much the Jaeger program would have cost - making bipedal robots stand and move at all is still somewhat tricky for us - and to say nothing of the sea wall - they could probably have come out under budget if they saturated the breach with biostem's mines, surrounded that with my nuclear torpedo subs, reinforced those with seafloor bases with R&R facilities, squash courts and plasma cannons, and thrown in a reserve fleet of plasmacopters like Tanner suggested.

The movie's own tagline was "go big or go extinct", and if there's no kill like overkill, why not have heavily redundant overkill rather than putting all your eggs in a giant robotic basket?

[Sky Captain]

I don't think nuclear weapons were ever inneffective against the Kaiju - just posed too much collateral since the militaries never thought to deploy them before the beasties made it to major population centres. The first Kaiju was finished off with one or more tactical nukes, after all.

Sensible action would be to use nuclear weapons as soon as the kaiju emerges from breach not wait till it reaches populated areas. In open ocean there would be much less radiation hazard than from nukes used on dry land and no collateral damage from blast effects.

1 Mt nuke not enough? So what? throw few 50 Mt ones at the thing. If kaiju can be damaged with huge sword they are not that durable. A guided bunker buster bombs dropped from high altitude then would go right through the thing if sword can cut it.

[Kitsune]

The movie's own tagline was "go big or go extinct", and if there's no kill like overkill, why not have heavily redundant overkill rather than putting all your eggs in a giant robotic basket?

Of interest, it is usually the smaller creatures that survive extinction events

[SilverDragonRed]

I certainly wouldn't think so. They're big, pointy, and not terribly hydrodynamic creatures that rely on land-animal-like swimming motions for propulsion.

In that case, a few destroyers or maritime-patrol aircraft armed with nuclear depth charges might be better than submarines.

Debateable; a nuclear submarine can theoretically remain on station for months, aircraft for only hours. Destroyers somewhere in between (days? weeks? months?), assuming on-station refueling.

Destroyers are capable of operating independently for a month at most before they need to refuel and take on stores of food. It's a little over a week if the destroyer has helicopters onboard.

[Sea Skimmer]

Debateable; a nuclear submarine can theoretically remain on station for months, aircraft for only hours. Destroyers somewhere in between (days? weeks? months?), assuming on-station refueling.

With refueling a surface combattant will kick the crap out of anything but a Typhoon class for time on station. ~6 months at sea is entirely commonplace for frigates and destroyers, while submarines are typically intended for 50-70 days. And they need a lot more work between sorties too.

And if the monsters swim in very deep water, torpedoes will hit a lot more reliably. Depth charges have no guidance, and time to sink, if nothing else. If you drop one on a monster that's somewhere near the sea floor, it'll take minutes to arrive.

Tests have been done with guided depth charges, a silly idea in this context but not out of the question. They just steer with fins as they go down to make a basic course correction. Course people have also tested rocket boosted depth charges for optimal intermediate design concepts, and rising mines that rise on rocket power.

The problem with torpedoes from the surface or a submarine is depth slows them down. Particularly depth slows down any form of thermal torpedo which must expend energy to pump its exhaust overboard. The radically high speeds quoted for many modern torpedoes like the 82 knot Spearfish are the result of trying to make them merely able to catch 35 knot subs at several thousand feet.

The supercativating torpedoes are incapable of operating at significant depths because the water pressure will collapse the gas bubble. Very annoying. Also the gas bubbles don't really scale up (much has this been tried!) so we can't brute force that with a 20 ton torpedo rocket. The Russian's export Shkval is rated for only 100m depths, and even assuming the commie spec nuclear one might be capable of more, its likely not radically so.

I think what we'd have to do is build unmanned batteries controlled by a redundant cable network or coded sonar pulses of custom and very large electrical torpedoes so they down have to waste time swimming down ~15,000ft. Or else just back to giant conventional bombs as moored or bottom mines. Those seem like the cheapest and quickest option, and require no new technology.

A surface torpedo could be effective if it was big enough and electric, but it seems like a lot of trouble for the result in the depth ocean. Modern electric torpedoes are already using stupid high power sodium batteries, so this isn't something we can improve with lithium ion tech. Though nanotech sodium sure would work awesome if it didn't get so hot it exploded. Operating temperature for those sodium types can already be ~400 degrees. Many of them actually have to cycle the electrolyte through a heat exchanger to avoid exploding as it is, so I'm not sure releasing the energy even fast is going to work out well!

[biostem]

Here's a somewhat related question:


If *you* were writing the script for a movie that involved giant robots punching giant monsters, how would you write off that said punches, swords, and the like, would work, but conventional weapons wouldn't?


Would you say that the robots utilized some sort of exotic materials that couldn't be delivered via conventional means? Would you make the disparity between what a giant robot could do and regular hardware so wide that anyone or anything caught in the crossfire is utterly wiped out? What do you think?

[Kitsune]

Trouble is that giant robots look cool but they are just not practical.
With modern special effects, I might try a good power armor movie however.
There are a number of books which it could be based off as well.

[Darmalus]

Here's a somewhat related question:


If *you* were writing the script for a movie that involved giant robots punching giant monsters, how would you write off that said punches, swords, and the like, would work, but conventional weapons wouldn't?


Would you say that the robots utilized some sort of exotic materials that couldn't be delivered via conventional means? Would you make the disparity between what a giant robot could do and regular hardware so wide that anyone or anything caught in the crossfire is utterly wiped out? What do you think?

I wouldn't explain anything, its a movie about giant robots punching monsters and that's what will happen.

If anything, I'd probably stick little bits of fluff on random computer screens or print outs that said stuff like "Kaiju awesome field renders them immune to bullets! Those sprint missiles just bounced right off! Holy shit!" as nerd bait.

[Sea Skimmer]

Here's a somewhat related question:
If *you* were writing the script for a movie that involved giant robots punching giant monsters, how would you write off that said punches, swords, and the like, would work, but conventional weapons wouldn't?

Giant monsters emit anti nuclear ray field and stupid field, leading to construction of giant robots that crew giant flying tanks. Tank treads (which are also air propulsion!) jam crushing giant monsters and the main gun runs out of skyscraper bullets as well as having its bayonet broken off, requiring the robot crew dismount and do battle with melee weapons, space trashcan lids and anything else at hand. Also the monsters are the size of the moon and punches blowup cities which already got destroyed by tidal waves caused by the gravity of the moon monsters walking around. Everyone wins in this movie.

Would you say that the robots utilized some sort of exotic materials that couldn't be delivered via conventional means? Would you make the disparity between what a giant robot could do and regular hardware so wide that anyone or anything caught in the crossfire is utterly wiped out? What do you think?

Its hard to think of an exotic material that could ever make more sense delivered by a giant robot then another form of vehicle if you had a choice in the matter. A small robot sure, with small including things maybe a fair bit larger then humans, just not larger then helicopters, but not a giant one.

I see several large scale approaches to take in general terms.

First and easiest, just ignore the problem, and avoid giving any reason why you use the robots except 'they work'. I personally have no problem swallowing this if the story/movie is entertaining, I do have a problem just being fed inconsistent BS as an excuse instead of more monster fighting in a film taking itself serious. Why even waste time on it?

Second, the robots are an insane spinoff DARPA plan that got funded by clerical error or because a congressman from a key district wanted it funded for vote buying (or insert similar concept) and for every robot they kill, the regular forces are killing 10,000. Good for a comedy approach. In fact at this point maybe the giant monsters aren't even the real enemy, but a side pest in the rear area and most modern weapons are so overpowered you wouldn't dare bring them into the same star system as a populated world. If humanity got rich enough we'd sure start funding dumb stuff on the side,

Third, the robots were built for something else, this is an emergency. The higher tech and richer civilization you go the more plausible this is of course. Merges with option two easily.

Four, a highly demilitarized future in which the industrial base to build large scale weapons has vanished but people do xxxxxxx with giant robots. One might even muse that most if not all heavy industry might go extinct in certain situations. Relics could be all that are left. I'm sure this is already a dozen different animes. Reasonable for upwards of months of combat before people would start being able to cobble together weapons. Requires very strong monsters, otherwise you could just crash a plane into one of them. Bonus I think if you combine this with a bunch of cliche fighter pilot crap because say, one XFVM-80 hyperfighter is left as a warbird to fly support or something with a 14 year old catgirl pilot.

Five, aura option, something unique to giant robots is involved in power. See Evangelion and others, many ways to spin that, you just need a bit of review to smellcheck it such that it really does have to be unique to them. This can be very easy, or more complicated.

I'm sure many others can be thought up, I forgot at least one while typing this. Its not impossible or even that hard if you want a real reason and not the ignore button, but it does require actual thinking. Considering Pacific rim has an introduction that takes up a non trivial chunk of the entire movie it certainly didn't have running time as an excuse for why it couldn't have a less stupid explanation for itself.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Here's a somewhat related question:


If *you* were writing the script for a movie that involved giant robots punching giant monsters, how would you write off that said punches, swords, and the like, would work, but conventional weapons wouldn't?


Would you say that the robots utilized some sort of exotic materials that couldn't be delivered via conventional means? Would you make the disparity between what a giant robot could do and regular hardware so wide that anyone or anything caught in the crossfire is utterly wiped out? What do you think?

To hell with a rational explanation, I'd just have the character in charge of the kaiju response say that it's because giant robots are goddamn awesome and such a ridiculously costly project is just the thing the floundering economy needs to get back in gear.

That or wizards powering the giant robots. The kaiju are weak to magical attacks, and obviously a robot the size of a skyscraper can't function under physics as we know them. So magic. Bam.

[madd0ct0r]

On the magic side, the kajiu are various lower level demons and their ilk who use archaic weaponry because that's what they are used to. Guns don't affect them because they don't recognise them as weapons - you can only harm them if they believe you to have done. As for nukes, 'We were born in hellfire, why should bathing once again harm us?"

[Zeropoint]

The kaiju generate and are supported by an AWESOME field. This field warps reality, suppressing non-AWESOME things and boosting things that are AWESOME. Scientists the world over can be found crying into strong drinks. Conventional weaponry and military vehicles look good on paper but fail when attempted in the localized non-reality. When things look grim, some eccentric engineers decide to try fighting fire with fire, and build a stupid and impractical but awesome giant robot. Instead of a power reactor, it has an MP3 player full of hard rock. When a kaiju approaches, the robot's eyes light up and a suitably cool song starts playing, and the robot goes out to kick the kaiju's tail with weaponized AWESOME!!!

[Xess]

The kaiju generate and are supported by an AWESOME field. This field warps reality, suppressing non-AWESOME things and boosting things that are AWESOME. Scientists the world over can be found crying into strong drinks. Conventional weaponry and military vehicles look good on paper but fail when attempted in the localized non-reality. When things look grim, some eccentric engineers decide to try fighting fire with fire, and build a stupid and impractical but awesome giant robot. Instead of a power reactor, it has an MP3 player full of hard rock. When a kaiju approaches, the robot's eyes light up and a suitably cool song starts playing, and the robot goes out to kick the kaiju's tail with weaponized AWESOME!!!

I'm pretty sure you just described the plot of Macross 7.

[Formless]

On the magic side, the kajiu are various lower level demons and their ilk who use archaic weaponry because that's what they are used to. Guns don't affect them because they don't recognise them as weapons - you can only harm them if they believe you to have done. As for nukes, 'We were born in hellfire, why should bathing once again harm us?"

I'll do you one better. The robots are outright divine intervention. The monsters are hell beasts representing the 666 heads of The Beast; the giant robots were constructed in heaven by angels.

[Metahive]

On the magic side, the kajiu are various lower level demons and their ilk who use archaic weaponry because that's what they are used to. Guns don't affect them because they don't recognise them as weapons - you can only harm them if they believe you to have done. As for nukes, 'We were born in hellfire, why should bathing once again harm us?"

I'll do you one better. The robots are outright divine intervention. The monsters are hell beasts representing the 666 heads of The Beast; the giant robots were constructed in heaven by angels.

*cough* *cough* Neon Genesis Evangelion - kinda' *cough*

[Block]

On the magic side, the kajiu are various lower level demons and their ilk who use archaic weaponry because that's what they are used to. Guns don't affect them because they don't recognise them as weapons - you can only harm them if they believe you to have done. As for nukes, 'We were born in hellfire, why should bathing once again harm us?"

Do the red ones go faster?