Rebunking "Die Is Cast"

[Darth Wong]

Given the tendency toward inaccurate terminology and scientific discussion in Star Trek, I wouldn't be surprised if they thought "crust" meant "surface" and "mantle" meant "crust", with buried explosions and seismic shockwaves constituting the "destroy" operation.

In any case, this explanation can be rationalized with the visuals and with other episodes, unlike the interpretations of pinheads who make absurd claims about these ships having literally millions of times more firepower than has been observed in other situations.

[Praxis]

Well, if you smudge some mud on a pair of glasses and put them on your face so everything appears blurry, those puffs of dust just MAY look like massive explosions...

[The Silence and I]

Exactly, they don't need to vaporize or even melt the surface to claim it's been destroyed. I don't know how much firepower you'd need to fragment a planet's crust, but specially made orbital strike weapons could easily carry a few GT worth of antimatter, if you take away all ability to maneuver, most sensors, and other necessities that force the size of a Photon Torpedo's warhead down. And immersment in gamma radiation cannot be considered "good" for any lifeform on the surface.

Combat veterans really should have some idea what their weapons can do, and I think it's conceivable that 30 starships with mission-specific weapons can sterilize the surface of an Earth-sized planet, and that may be all destroy means in this case, sterilization.

[Ender]

Exactly, they don't need to vaporize or even melt the surface to claim it's been destroyed. I don't know how much firepower you'd need to fragment a planet's crust, but specially made orbital strike weapons could easily carry a few GT worth of antimatter, if you take away all ability to maneuver, most sensors, and other necessities that force the size of a Photon Torpedo's warhead down. And immersment in gamma radiation cannot be considered "good" for any lifeform on the surface.

Combat veterans really should have some idea what their weapons can do, and I think it's conceivable that 30 starships with mission-specific weapons can sterilize the surface of an Earth-sized planet, and that may be all destroy means in this case, sterilization.

Only if by sterilization you mean in the nuclear winter type scenario. As I pointed out, no matter what TDIC must also harmonize with established results from other episodes. This points to their weaponry being single digit MT to very low double digit MT

[The Silence and I]

There is the possibility that the weapons used were mission-specific, allowing greater yields than can be expected from the standard arms aboard a starship.

And nuclear winter is sort of what I was getting at, but leaning more towards the side of heating up the surface to several hundred degrees, bathing everything in hard radiation and adding lethal disruptor particles to the mix, any nuclear winter afterward would be an afterthought.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Given the tendency toward inaccurate terminology and scientific discussion in Star Trek, I wouldn't be surprised if they thought "crust" meant "surface" and "mantle" meant "crust", with buried explosions and seismic shockwaves constituting the "destroy" operation.

Well, there's a new idea. But it is kind of like saying Kilometers had been changed to something equivalent to Meters in Star Trek to rationalize away most of the visuals.

In any case, this explanation can be rationalized with the visuals and with other episodes, unlike the interpretations of pinheads who make absurd claims about these ships having literally millions of times more firepower than has been observed in other situations.

That's the entire point for them. If they can't push through an explanation that gives them a huge increase in weapons power, why bother debating the episode and doing calcs?

BTW, using existing calcs, how much damage would 30 ships be able to do? Figure they carry 300 10MT torps each on average. That's 9000 torps. Assuming VERY generously they can turn it all on seismic, they can generate 9000 Magnitude 7 earthquakes. The problem is I don't know how close to "destroying" the crust that could get, or even how I might crudely calculate it.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Exactly, they don't need to vaporize or even melt the surface to claim it's been destroyed.

The problem is that they also want the "mantle". You don't cause a bit of damage to the crust and get the entire mantle.

I don't know how much firepower you'd need to fragment a planet's crust, but specially made orbital strike weapons could easily carry a few GT worth of antimatter, if you take away all ability to maneuver, most sensors, and other necessities that force the size of a Photon Torpedo's warhead down. And immersment in gamma radiation cannot be considered "good" for any lifeform on the surface.

Thermonuclear quantities of High frequency energy like gamma, AFAIK, in atmosphere, tends to be absorbed in an ozone smog.

Thus you would probably get something nuclear like - lots of blast wave.

Combat veterans really should have some idea what their weapons can do, and I think it's conceivable that 30 starships with mission-specific weapons can sterilize the surface of an Earth-sized planet, and that may be all destroy means in this case, sterilization.

If you think that it takes a "combat veteran" to know what their weapons could do, then even "combat veterans" may not know.

You see, if the information about the damage their weapons could do was in their Academy textbooks, they would hardly need to be combat veterans to know. By saying that it takes a "combat veteran" to know, you mean their textbook is crap and they are getting their estimated damage information like us, by seeing the explosions in combat for real.

In that case, if most of their service was in anti-ship work, they may not know, for the same reasons we can't get any hard data from on-hull detonations. If they don't know the yield of the weapons, they probably won't know the resillience of the "super-materials" (by our standards) and SIF reinforcement making up the hull. Without that knowledge, no yield calc is possible.

[Darth Wong]

Given the tendency toward inaccurate terminology and scientific discussion in Star Trek, I wouldn't be surprised if they thought "crust" meant "surface" and "mantle" meant "crust", with buried explosions and seismic shockwaves constituting the "destroy" operation.

Well, there's a new idea. But it is kind of like saying Kilometers had been changed to something equivalent to Meters in Star Trek to rationalize away most of the visuals.

No it isn't. Their use of the word "meters" is too widespread, unlike this one-time utterance. Moreover, you would have to explain how a planet's mantle would only take six times longer to "destroy" than its crust; a preposterously low ratio. The 6:1 ratio is far more easily reconciled with a surface/crust operation than a crust/mantle operation.

That's the entire point for them. If they can't push through an explanation that gives them a huge increase in weapons power, why bother debating the episode and doing calcs?

Indeed.

BTW, using existing calcs, how much damage would 30 ships be able to do? Figure they carry 300 10MT torps each on average. That's 9000 torps. Assuming VERY generously they can turn it all on seismic, they can generate 9000 Magnitude 7 earthquakes. The problem is I don't know how close to "destroying" the crust that could get, or even how I might crudely calculate it.

90 GT would be insufficient to completely sterilize the planet under normal circumstances, but given that the population lives in a giant oceanic surface liquid film which is linked together, you could probably kill them all off with such an operation. Not that they would use them this way; they'd probably use phasers to destroy the surface life, since they are known to be very good at that sort of thing, and use the torps entirely for subterranean bursts.

Besides, not to belabour a point, but the word "destroy" does not necessarily mean 100% annihilation. No one disputes that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both destroyed by nuclear weapons in 1945, but there were huge numbers of surviving residents and even structures.

[Connor MacLeod]

No it isn't. Their use of the word "meters" is too widespread, unlike this one-time utterance.

Hasn't it been suggested before that "kilometers" in ST might mean "meters?" (EG, "Yesterday's Enterprise?)

Moreover, you would have to explain how a planet's mantle would only take six times longer to "destroy" than its crust; a preposterously low ratio. The 6:1 ratio is far more easily reconciled with a surface/crust operation than a crust/mantle operation.

You mean given that the mantle tends to be about 150 or so times more massive than the crust is, it should take alot longer than a mere 5 hours to do what it took an hour to do to the crust?

[Ender]

There is the possibility that the weapons used were mission-specific, allowing greater yields than can be expected from the standard arms aboard a starship.

There was no visual difference between them and standard weapons.

And nuclear winter is sort of what I was getting at, but leaning more towards the side of heating up the surface to several hundred degrees, bathing everything in hard radiation and adding lethal disruptor particles to the mix, any nuclear winter afterward would be an afterthought.

Even the heating of the surface one degree would take an insanely massive amounbt of energy, one totally inconsistent with what we have seen. Read Mike's BDZ page.

[The Silence and I]

There is the possibility that the weapons used were mission-specific, allowing greater yields than can be expected from the standard arms aboard a starship.

There was no visual difference between them and standard weapons.

Farther up the page it was pointed out the torpedoes looked bigger than normal.

And nuclear winter is sort of what I was getting at, but leaning more towards the side of heating up the surface to several hundred degrees, bathing everything in hard radiation and adding lethal disruptor particles to the mix, any nuclear winter afterward would be an afterthought.

Even the heating of the surface one degree would take an insanely massive amounbt of energy, one totally inconsistent with what we have seen. Read Mike's BDZ page.

That is quite true, I will be doing some calculations of my own to get an idea of the disparity, which is why I have only mentioned ideas, like using the radiation to do much of the dirty work; seizmic disturbances equalling 'destroyed' is another idea.

[Striderteen]

As I pointed out, no matter what TDIC must also harmonize with established results from other episodes. This points to their weaponry being single digit MT to very low double digit MT

I think the idea that they were using some type of specialized ground-attack torpedo or bomb has merit, although the yield of such a weapon could not exceed one or two gigatons at the very most (more likely triple-digit megaton).

[SPOOFE]

Which is problematic given in that "The Search" Kira and Sisko were walking around like they were under normal gravity (normal = earth, for the purposes of this point). Can a planet the size of pluto have that much gravity?

Was it the same planet? I thought that the TDiC planet was NOT the actual Founder's homeworld. Has there EVER been a size stated for the planet targeted in TDiC?

If not, I see no reason why we can't assume a smaller than Earth-sized world. That's really the only way to reconcile TDiC with the rest of the series, outside of assumption of screwy dialogue.

[Pulse]

Which is problematic given in that "The Search" Kira and Sisko were walking around like they were under normal gravity (normal = earth, for the purposes of this point). Can a planet the size of pluto have that much gravity?

Was it the same planet? I thought that the TDiC planet was NOT the actual Founder's homeworld. Has there EVER been a size stated for the planet targeted in TDiC?

If not, I see no reason why we can't assume a smaller than Earth-sized world. That's really the only way to reconcile TDiC with the rest of the series, outside of assumption of screwy dialogue.

I think it is the Founders homeworld, the visuals show it to be in a Nebula, which we know from "The Search" their homeworld is in.

After this ep I think they moved to a new planet. The one visited at he end of S4 when Odo was ill looked different. Reasons for moving: Either the TDIC planet was rendered unihabitable or that they wanted to move to someplace no-one knew about.

[Gandalf]

After this ep I think they moved to a new planet. The one visited at he end of S4 when Odo was ill looked different. Reasons for moving: Either the TDIC planet was rendered unihabitable or that they wanted to move to someplace no-one knew about.

I believe they did, the homeworld is at first established to be in the Omarion Nebula, then the Rom/Car alliance attacks that planet.

In Broken Link the Jem' Hadar use some gadget on the Defiant's navigational computer so the computer doesn't log where they're going. Plus I think they mention moving to a new planet.

[Praxis]

Yes, in that episode the changeling implied that they wanted no one to know of their homeworld's location, so the same thing wouldn't happen again when they weren't expecting it.