Your favorite Sci-fi WMD?

[Covenant]

I'm voting for the Giant Hurtball as well, nothing says ENDGAME like a giant weapon capable of physically blasting just about anything into pieces. No nonsense, all glory!

I get annoyed at these wierd bombs and things that say they can blow away whole starsystems, but seem to be getting their energy to do so out of some variety of Hammerspace. With the Deathstar you at least have no reason to call Bullshit on the idea of it being able to dismantle a planet in one nice shot.

[The Grim Squeaker]

The Dweller planet-killer from the Algebraeist: A planet surreounded by a swarm of moons, each surrounded by a swarm of asteroids, each surrounded by a swarm of rocks and so on, all going at about 99% light speed, giving the average person on the target planet enough time to say "What the f-"

The best bit of that is that the Dwellers simply don't care that it will take tens of thousands of years to arrive (no FTL in The Algebraist), they just launch the thing and consider the problem "dealt with".

Exactly how do they get this mess up to 0.99c?

Unspecified.
The civilization in question has a billion year tech-base and lives inside just about every gas giant in this galaxy (and very arguably, the other galaxies), and they have some decently twinked out tech. My guess is gravity manipulation and a heck of an accelerator, since they don't even need planets (And gas giants have enough moons).

The key here is to maintain their mystique via insane theatrics without needing to pulverize everyone (Most people thought they were a joke, until, well, let's just say that a trick or two mentioned here for destroying planets/gas giants didn't work out so well against them ).

[Sam Or I]

A "black egg", or better yet the Crystal Planet itself. (From the original starflight)

[Darth Ruinus]

The Death Stars get my vote. Reading this thread, I see that they arent the strongest (what this about throwing galaxies and blowing up parts of the Milky Way?) but it just sounds so fucking badass.

It supplies all the energy needed to destroy a planet (in excess) and doesnt rely on some fancy way of getting that energy from outside sources, it supplies all of it itself.

Oh, and it can also survive the poor planets debris colliding with it, and can travel millions of times c, can conquer star systems with its stormie complement, can repel fleet attacks, and has a cool name.

That, and I love SW.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Krikkit bomb, or just miss-using an improbability drive is also fun...

then again is it a weapon of mass psychic destruction if I just Teleport everyone's clothes away during a press confrence?

[Norade]

I'm personally for the World Devastators there's just something about a swarm of ships slowly consuming your world to add to their own might that appeals to me.

[Nyrath]

"Rotating" a planet out of the universe, it appeared in some Heinlein books, I believe.

Robert Heinlein's Have Space Suit, Will Travel.

"Are the facts sufficient to permit a decision?"

Almost immediately the voice answered itself: "Yes."

"What is the decision?"

Again it answered itself: "Their planet shall be rotated."

It didn't sound like much-shucks, all planets rotate-and the flat voice held no expression. But the verdict scared me. The whole room seemed to shudder.

The Mother Thing turned and came toward us. It was a long way but she reached us quickly. Peewee flung herself on her; the solid air that penned us solidified still more until we three were in a private room, a silvery hemisphere.

Peewee was trembling and gasping and the Mother Thing comforted her. When Peewee had control of herself, I said nervously, "Mother Thing? What did he mean? 'Their planet shall be rotated.' "

She looked at me without letting go of Peewee and her great soft eyes were sternly sad. ("It means that their planet is tilted ninety degrees out of the space-time of your senses and mine.")

Her voice sounded like a funeral dirge played softly on a flute. Yet the verdict did not seem tragic to me. I knew what she meant; her meaning was even clearer in Vegan than in English. If you rotate a plane figure about an axis in its plane-it disappears. It is no longer in a plane and Mr. A. Square of Flatland is permanently out of touch with it.

But it doesn't cease to exist; it just is no longer where it was. It struck me that the wormfaces were getting off easy. I had halfway expected their planet to be blown up (and I didn't doubt that Three Galaxies could do so), or something equally drastic. As it was, the wormfaces were to be run out of town and would never find their way back-there are so many, many dimensions-but they wouldn't be hurt; they were just being placed in Coventry.

But the Mother Thing sounded as if she had taken unwilling part in a hanging.

So I asked her.

("You do not understand, dear gentle Kip - they do not take their star with them.")

"Oh-" was all I could say.

Peewee turned white.

Stars are the source of life-planets are merely life's containers. Chop off the star . . . and the planet gets colder . . . and colder . . . and colder-then still colder.

How long until the very air freezes? How many hours or days to absolute zero?

[Adrian Laguna]

Stars are the source of life-planets are merely life's containers. Chop off the star . . . and the planet gets colder . . . and colder . . . and colder-then still colder.

How long until the very air freezes? How many hours or days to absolute zero?

[/quote]

That's survivable, not forever, but survivable.

[NecronLord]

[Warsie]

The Little Doctor. Yes, it's awesome in a can for planetbusting. Yes, it can be used in fleet battles. But the reason I love it is it inverts all previous understanding of tactics; to survive it, you must avoid bunching up your assets.

Can you post me a link for this? I don't know much of these weapons as well; can some post pics?

[darthbob88]

The Little Doctor. Yes, it's awesome in a can for planetbusting. Yes, it can be used in fleet battles. But the reason I love it is it inverts all previous understanding of tactics; to survive it, you must avoid bunching up your assets.

Can you post me a link for this? I don't know much of these weapons as well; can some post pics?

No pics; it's a weapon from the Ender's Game series of books. Wiki.

Basically, the intersection of two beams creates a field which disintegrates any matter in the area. Furthermore, as more matter is disintegrated, the field expands. Thus, you can take out any "single" mass, from a planet to a formation of ships, to a single ship alone in space.

[Gustav32Vasa]

I agree with NecronLord on my second favourite WMD.

[OmegaGuy]

I'm voting for the Giant Hurtball as well, nothing says ENDGAME like a giant weapon capable of physically blasting just about anything into pieces. No nonsense, all glory!

I get annoyed at these wierd bombs and things that say they can blow away whole starsystems, but seem to be getting their energy to do so out of some variety of Hammerspace. With the Deathstar you at least have no reason to call Bullshit on the idea of it being able to dismantle a planet in one nice shot.

So hypermatter doesn't qualify as "hammerspace"?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Yeah, there's nothing physically mind-numbing about a barely moon sized battle "station" that isn't entirely made of antimatter that goes and blasts planets apart. And can do so once a day for years.

Face it, people, the DS is as, if not more so, wanked out than anything else listed. At least moving suns, RKVs and giant fusion bombs are within the realms of reality without new physics.

[Starglider]

Currently I'm a big fan of the Mark IX Horizon weapons delivery system in Stargate Atlantis.

Hardly the most powerful WMD, even in that show, but man does it look cool when it MIRV's and gigantic mushroom clouds push out past the atmosphere....

Stargate does has several cool planetkillers. There's Carter's 'drain lots of stellar mass through wormholes into a black hole to induce a nova' trick, the 'turn an entire planet into replicator blocks', the Asgard 'lock a whole planet in a stasis field then collapse the system's star into a black hole', the Ori 'squeeze a planet into a black hole using the enemy's weapons to power the crushing field', the Asgard 'fuck it lets blow our own planet to smithereens', the Project Acturus 'oops we blew away three quarters of a solar system' reactor failure, the tainted ZPM capable of destroying earth, the 'give your enemy the gate address of a black hole' tactic, the extremely nasty Prior and Aschen bioweapons (viruses and those flesh-eating quick-reproducing bugs), the planetbusting stargate exploder weapon, the good old Ancient BDZ (as implemented on the Asurans), Anubis's ID4-ripoff mothership, the Ancient 'your fleet go bye bye' super drone defence platform, the one-shot-kill Ancient defence satellites (and similar Ori ship prime weapons)...

Plus the best two weapons in SG-1;
* The Dakara device capable of destroying all life in the galaxy, with enough selectivity to target specific species or disable specific types of robot, as well as having the ability to reseed the galaxy with life afterwards to your own specifications.
* Merlin's weapon, capable of instantly destroying every transdimensional being in an entire galaxy.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I think SG-1 and SG:A turned into projects in how one could wipe out life in the universe in ever more interesting ways.

I forget, how does the Dakara device work again?

[Gustav32Vasa]

That was more the Ancients job. My favourite was the exploding tumors.

[Warsie]

No pics; it's a weapon from the Ender's Game series of books. Wiki.

Basically, the intersection of two beams creates a field which disintegrates any matter in the area. Furthermore, as more matter is disintegrated, the field expands. Thus, you can take out any "single" mass, from a planet to a formation of ships, to a single ship alone in space.

ahh...thank you.

Also I have thought of this interesting system...place several warships in orbit of a shielded world in a circular formation; something like at least 6 ships with one ship over one side of the world; and they all shoot a powerful laser at the shield; weakening or eventually taking down the shields.

Kind've thought of it now; and it's like the Independence Day thing.

[fusion]

Wait a minute does gird-fire count?
The Uber-badass weapon of the Culture, which can destroy stars out of sheer firepower!!!

[Starglider]

I forget, how does the Dakara device work again?

It emits a wave of raw, unbridled technobabble, most of which is channeled into the local stargate and transmitted immediately to every other stargate in the galaxy, using the handy 'conference call' feature.

It probably uses the same kind of physics that ascended beings' powers are based on.

[Lord Relvenous]

I'm gonna go fro sheer originality here and say: sandtrout.

Drop millions of sandtrout on a planet's surface, blockade it, and watch as all the water in the bioshpere is encapsulated by sandtout. Sure it's slow, but it would be fun to watch the citizens panic and fight for something they have taken for granted their whole lives as the desert grows around them.

[SylasGaunt]

I'll nominate the larger buster machines along with the others.

The Goldion Crusher gets one as well simply for being a hammer so huge you can bash sun-sized devices apart with it.

The Quark Level dissociator from the Young Wizards books is probably less a Weapon of Mass Destruction and more a Weapon of Thorough Destruction, but that's only because 70% of the spell is dedicated to keeping it from blowing up everything nearby after it temporarily abolishes the atomic strong force on the target and then nukes any gluons and force carrier particles to make sure it doesn't reconstitute later. According to the official ErrantryWiki it's about as close as you can get to actually destroying matter.

The Nodos from Heroic Age qualify though they vary but they include at least one planet devastating poison gas and a planet-busting beam.

[DogsOfWar]

DSII and Eclipse. Gotta love the superlaser.

the Ancient 'your fleet go bye bye' super drone defence platform

Seconded. Nothing quite like seeing a cloud of flying, glowing squids ripping the enemy fleet to shreds.

[LapsedPacifist]

Wait a minute does gird-fire count?
The Uber-badass weapon of the Culture, which can destroy stars out of sheer firepower!!!

The only thing Gridfire has ever been demonstrated doing is cutting apart an orbital. There's an implication that careless engine fields can waste planets. it does NOT destroy stars through sheer firepower.

LP

[Starglider]

There's an implication that careless engine fields can waste planets. it does NOT destroy stars through sheer firepower.

Well it might. Several stars were destroyed in the Idirian war, mechanism unknown. There's no obvious upper bound to how big gridfire weapons can be made, and the absolutely enormous gridfire-like effect produced by the Excession does suggest that it can be ridiculously destructive in principle. We just haven't seen it do anything more impressive than slice an orbital to tiny pieces in minutes (at most).