This reminded me of something
[video=youtube_share;wI_8I0BoJr4]https://youtu.be/wI_8I0BoJr4[/video]
300 mega-ton fusion bomb? Are you serious? (GalNet)
- Thread starter CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost
- Start date
This reminded me of something
[video=youtube_share;wI_8I0BoJr4]https://youtu.be/wI_8I0BoJr4[/video]
A grain of sand fired at 2001 x C would have a similar effect.
That's assuming it is a bomb or a missile warhead and not a device placed somewhere within the target. In the later case the effect of the shields would be very, very interesting to know (if the shields would be able to reflect or contain the energy of the bomb and therefore increase the effectiveness.)
That 35 Km was the area of total destruction, the effective destruction would have been larger. Even a 50-60 mega-ton bomb is absurdly powerful. 300 mega-tons are, in my opinion, overkill in the completely absurd range.
The resistance of spaceships against heavy radiation from suns and against plasma weapons and good old kinetic energy is indeed remarkable. So maybe cities are build of the same handwavium as our ships.
I would be happy if this was a typo, and they meant to write 300kT instead of MT, but I don't think that's the case. I think the writer just didn't know what yield limits are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield#Yield_limits
Elite writers, please know what you are talking about before you talk about it. Yes, I know it's the future, and technology changes, but there are some hard limits to technology, and you should understand them. The piston airplane engine was as good as it was ever going to be by 1943, for example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield#Yield_limits
Elite writers, please know what you are talking about before you talk about it. Yes, I know it's the future, and technology changes, but there are some hard limits to technology, and you should understand them. The piston airplane engine was as good as it was ever going to be by 1943, for example.
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Kind of hoping this isn't just more meaningless GalNet fluff.
A serious attack on a major system or station anywhere in the bubble would be a hell of a way to shake things up.
A serious attack on a major system or station anywhere in the bubble would be a hell of a way to shake things up.
Guess it really depends though.. I’ve showered an outpost or two in missiles and weaponized plasma and have so much as scratched the paint, so maybe 300 megatons is what it takes.
Founder's World, or any other of the "goodie" stations.
Don't think they *wouldn't* do it.
Was that from Aliens? Seems familiar..
[video=youtube;aCbfMkh940Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q[/video]
There are actually no upper limits to thermonuclear designs. The usual design is Fission primer, fusion stage and fission tamper. That goes up to about 15MT IIRC.
But nothing prevents using such a thermonuclear device as a primer for a larger one. (That's what they did with the Tsar bomba, they just put an inert second stage tamper to limit yield to 50MT and strongly reduce the fallouts).
Damage from the pressure wave goes down with the third root of the distance, which is why a bunch 300kT MIRVs are more destructive than a single larger warhead. While being way harder to intercept.
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Edit: I got ninja'd!
Your own link says there's no upper limit for fusion bombs. It only discusses limits of yield to weight ratios. The GalNet also doesn't state the mass of the device, just its yield and that it's "movable" which is somewhat vague. Seems to me nothing has been said that means they don't know what they're writing about, or breaking any hard limits.
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For a weapon intended to be used against soft targets, I completely agree.
However, I can think of several plausible targets (a command post with 500km of rock and ice on top of it, or one inside the heart of a large nickel-iron asteroid, for example) that could make even vastly larger yields practical. What's absurdly powerful in the context of 21st century Earth based targets could be woefully anemic with even the most conservative of extrapolations to many extra terrestrial environments and defenses they could allow.
I think the GlaNet article was simply trying to place the destructive power in a broad layman's context and it's simpler to say "enough to destroy a whole city" than to say "enough to deliver one megapascal of overpressure to a surface target on a planet with a 3atm atmosphere at a distance of 20km", or "enough to deliver a shock amplitude that could liquefy flesh of targets at the bottom of a 60km deep ocean when detonated in contact with the 20km thick ice sheet floating on it".
Given how out of control ED's economy is, I'd expect such weapons to all be antimatter catalyzed (potentially allowing a single fusion stage of arbitrary size, with no fissile material needed), even if they have to produce the antimatter with 21st century particle accelerators.
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They forgot the demo of their audience.
I was assuming that NPCs with the IQ of a potato were also part of the audience, but you may be correct.
Founder's World, or any other of the "goodie" stations.
Don't think they *wouldn't* do it.
Only if Founder's World gets a better station as replacement... I am sure the system is quite secure, on the one hand not everyone has access to it and therefore can get involved in the aftermath, on the other hand the Founders themselves might get annoyed.
The power home systems however...
Shinrarta is crawling with (attempted)murderous reavers and there are three wanted ships docked at Jameson Memorial at any given moment during prime hours.
Someone with a couple canisters of fusion weapons could just dock anonymously while avoiding a few half-hearted scan attempts and it would all be over in a flash.
1,000 years ago, the world's most populous city had approximately 1,000,000 inhabitants.
Today, Tokyo has almost 30,000,000 in its administrative region (~15million in the City proper).
Apply that growth rate to the future...
Today, Tokyo has almost 30,000,000 in its administrative region (~15million in the City proper).
Apply that growth rate to the future...
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With ED ships all you need to do is push something to an acceptable velocity and let go of it at the right time. Anything from tungsten rods to asteroids would be enough and you can design orbits to deliver them weeks, months or years in advance. For a tungsten rod an afternoons driving would be enough to manufacture your Rod from God.
[video=youtube;kbcoOqGKFi8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbcoOqGKFi8[/video]
And Megacities are pretty big places too.
And Megacities are pretty big places too.