Questions tagged [weapon-mass-destruction]
For questions that deal with weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
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What wild mammals could survive a nuclear winter? [closed]
I'm writing a story that takes place after a nuclear winter that lasts for at least 25 years, and which caused much of the surviving population to become hunter-gatherers as a result of crop failure ...
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Good reasons the powerful good guys don't fight the powerful bad guys
It's a typical trope in stories, but why don't the powerful good guys fight the powerful bad guys? Usually a group of nobodies need to grow in power to the point that they're able to face the powerful ...
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What would a small Death Star look like? [closed]
Most of us know the Death Star from Star Wars - a huge planet like structure built in order to destroy planets (160 km in diameter Google says). Now building something that big seems like an overkill.
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Can a floating launch platform be built and deployed quickly?
In my story, the supervillain loads ICBM missiles onto a ship and fires them from sea. He can't use a naval ship with missile launchers; that'll arouse suspicion. He uses a civilian cargo ship.
Could ...
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Could Tesla coils be used for missile defense?
Some facts about the real world, Terra 2023: tensions between Russia, NATO, China, DPRK, India etc. are high. These powers keep trying to get the edge over each other to establish missile supremacy. ...
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Turning a star into a black hole
**(context, skip over if you want)**Imagine a type II alien civilization that spans a large portion of its galaxy. The only reason it’s gotten this far is becuase of their aggression, but there is ...
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What sorts of powers would a superhero and supervillain need to (inadvertently) be knocking down skyscrapers?
A seminal event in a story I'm working on requires a tragedy that will kill hundreds (or maybe even low thousands) of innocent bystanders. This occurs in a large American city (I haven't chosen one ...
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Stellar Radiation Detons- Cosmic Weapon
In this setting, Humans have done multiple advances in technology and are nearly on the verge of being a Type III civilisation, They have nearly colonized the Milky Way and have tapped energy from ...
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Obliterating the Earth, *without* throwing rocks? [closed]
In this case, I don't mean "make the Earth uninhabitable", I mean "make the Earth a debris field". This has been asked before, of course, but the answers always seem be be some ...
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What would be the quickest way to sterilize a planet from several light-years away?
I'm thinking of a couple main ways, but they seem pretty unreliable for complete sterilization. I'm imaging a pretty reclusive hermit civilization around their solar system. They see intelligent life ...
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How large must a solar furnace be in order to sweep a planets surface melting everything in its path?
To melt a planets surface erasing all traces of civilisation, I figured a solar furnace would do the trick. It is more elegant than nuking a planet, not to mention leaves no nuclear fallout. Perfect ...
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Why does a hypersonic missile need to cruise Earth at low altitude before hitting its mark?
Imagine a certain nation tested a hypersonic nuclear-capable missile and it was designed to make a few trips around the Earth at low altitude before striking the surface. Don't they need to worry ...
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Lightspeed organics eliminator?
Assume that 'Oumuamua was a Von Neumann Berserker, which, at the detection of civilization, triggered a bomb that exploded at lightspeed.
From the perspective of Earth, due to the speed of the ...
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How do I ensure my piranha solution chemical weapon will only eat the target and not me?
I want to use piranha solution to kill a large, horrible thing that I really don't like.
Piranha solution is an acid that makes organic substances not exist and can dissolve elemental carbon. You ...
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The most entropic-friendly way to wipe out Earth
I’m writing a short story where a species of aliens wipe out all life they encounter because they see life as a threat since it accelerates entropy. However, many of the methods used for destruction, ...
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How weight and volume-efficient can you make a high-yield nuclear weapon for setting off a volcano?
Let's say that we need a nuke that can fit into a very small space while also providing a very large boom.
Now, the US's B-41 nuclear bomb was quite mass-efficient indeed; it put out 22 petajoules, or ...
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How rapidly can small nuclear weapons be produced?
In my setting, there is a ban on nuclear detonations greater than one kiloton in magnitude. This ban is enforced with a supranationally controlled strategic nuclear arsenal capable of essentially ...
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What are the chemical characteristics of a chemical weapon that kills in the short term and melts biomatter into slurry in the long term?
This substance must:
be usable as a chemical weapon (i.e. deliverable via bombs, shells, mines, grenades, canisters, mortars, etc., and won't explode/denature/etc. when you synthesize it)
within ...
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What are some sociological or military justifications for localized nuclear warfare?
I'm not talking about world-ending, global-scale thermonuclear war, nor about massive salvos of missiles being fired at countries by other countries. I'm talking about, say, a few divisional-level ...
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Any realistic ideas for a suction-based weapon?
I’ve been looking for real-life examples of suction-based weapons or weapons that work like a vacuum, violently sucking up the surrounding matter, but my search hasn’t generated any decent results. ...
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Could near light speed space ships be used to destroy a civilization?
I once saw in a reply to a comment to a youtube video, someone suggesting that as a fermi paradox solution, once civilizations get the ability to create near light speed spaceships, a few nutcases are ...
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What animals would most likely fill large land animal niches after a mass extinction that wipes out 99% of life caused by nuclear war?
Before the Permian extinction synapsids occupied large land animal niches. After the permian extinction some synapsids occupied large land herbivore niches, but most large land animal niches were ...
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Minimum Safe Distance From Planet-Destroying Event
Okay, I have this villain who's able to create supernova-like explosions from his body that release a total energy of 1.67x10^39 J, and the heroes stop him from destroying Earth by portalling him away ...
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What does it take to vaporize (Or possibly put a hole through) a planet? (G.R.B.C. Part 2/2) [closed]
Now, like, 40 minutes ago, I asked a question concerning a possible Gamma Ray Burst Cannon. And I was disappointed, to say the least, with the answers. So, it's time for Gamma Ray Burst Two: Electric ...
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Is a Gamma Ray Burst Cannon possible? (G.R.B.C. Part 1/2)
Now, for a little context, L.G.R.B.C.s, or Lesser Gamma Ray Burst Cannons, are extremely powerful weapons that are used almost exclusively by the Karan, a race of religious automatons that wish to ...
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Lowest tech level to blow up the solar system
Background
The year is XXXX, or maybe XX,XXX (or maybe even XXX,XXX, though that'd be less than ideal). Humanity has been prospering for the past few millenia, and has stretched out to the stars. I ...
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A 1 kilometre wide sphere of U-235 appears in an orbit around our planet. What happens?
Let's suppose that after seeing aliens get portrayed negatively in science fiction and wishing to end the discrimination, the ancient H'andh'wh'a'vians decide to destroy Earth and humanity.
As they ...
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Could an evaporating micro-black hole serve as a useful weapon?
According to Wikipedia and Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, micro-black holes are expected to evaporate quickly due to Hawking radiation, releasing a burst of final emission equivalent to ...
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Science-based WMD styled weapons? [closed]
I've been thinking about possible super weapons for a little while now, but I'm not really sure of any ideas that could fit into a semi-realistic setting. One idea I had was firing out a slug of ...
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Ideal way to deactivate a Sun Gun when not in use?
I came across one space weapon, known as the Sun Gun, which uses a concave mirror on a satellite to concentrate sunlight onto a small area at the Earth's surface, making a hot beam of death. ...
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How to nerf gatling gun capable of firing armour-piercing bullet imbued with spacetime magic?
Set during the industrial revolution, the German military is developing an overpowered gatling gun prototype that can shoot enchanted bullets.
Each armor-piercing (ap) bullet is created by performing ...
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Does my “Bombardment cruiser” make any sense?
In my universe 500 to 700 years the navy is deployed to eliminate the cult stronghold on the planet of OgallyBoogally. The bunker is a kilometer below the surface and covered by lots of armor and ...
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What happens if 1 cm of Cosmic String impacts Earth?
I have seen in different science fiction use Cosmic Strings (1-dimensional defects in spacetime) as weaponry, and it made me interested to make the most feasible way to weaponise them. Of course, I ...
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Hard sci-fi super weapons?
So in my questions about the intergalactic highway and simulated ship quarters I established a universe where the navy fights a cult of alien worshipers over star gates. 500 to 700 years in the future....
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Effects of being hit by an object going at FTL speeds
This will be a question that I am fine with having less realism in. I was thinking of a weapon, like a spear, that can go at FTL (faster than light) speeds. To be clear, the spear is FTL due to ...
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How long would it take for a liquified surface of the planet to stop visibly glowing?
In my story one faction in the past used it's Dyson Spheres (they have several) to make a Nicol-Dyson beam (Basically you temporarily redirect a significant portion, or even all of it, of the star's ...
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Chameleon Particles: Space Weapons?
Dark Energy is a force said to be responsible for cosmic expansion, and one of the theorised carriers of this force is the Chameleon Particle. To describe its effects, due to its non-linear self-...
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Nano-storm horror, and how to defend against potential warcrime tech [duplicate]
Preface:
The setting is a homeworld exoplanet of an alien species, abandonded (save a hibernation cycle-style subterrainian research settlement) for conservation after a 10 000+ year prior climate ...
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What happens if I shot a blackhole pellet point blank at someone?
Imagine I had a sophisticated gun that is capable of producing a micro blackhole on contact with a target, that blackhole is designed to be completely evaporated as hawking radiation in exactly 1 ...
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Mostly realistic weapons to assault a planet from orbit
I'm looking for a few weapons which I can use to attack a planet from orbit.
I'm not looking to destroy it or make it uninhabitable, just wreck a few things until the occupants stop launching anti-...
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Can a charged particle as big as a soccer ball create destruction equivalent to an atomic bomb?
Charged particles such as protons are associated with the strong nuclear force and coulombic interactions, but as they're tiny, we can only perceive them through static. If a proton gets as big as a ...
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What can kill an interstellar civilisation? [closed]
It is a common trope that interstellar civilisations rise and fall, only to leave ruins behind. The origin of this idea seems to be a mismatch between empires and civilisations. Yet while (West)Rome ...
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Cons of Antimatter Weaponry
In the story I'm creating, a major weapon type of humanity will be Antimatter based weaponry. This is a fairly new technology, as antimatter production facilities have just reached the size and ...
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Is this a reasonable way to enforce a ban on exotic weapons in an interstellar setting?
In the late 23rd century certain groups of mankind stared down the barrel of what may be possible in the future: cross galactic relativistic kill missile storms, gamma-ray Dyson Beams, Kugelblitz ...
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Eradicating tobacco crops with a synthetic agent
Is there any possibility that some advanced biowarfare program could conceivably make a contagious agent of some kind (Parasitic? Viral? Fungal? Your choice) that affects the growth of tobacco crops?
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Space-based black hole weapon effects
For the fluff of my story one of the space-ships is equipped with what I hope is one of the biggest F-you weapons in ship-to-ship combat: a miniature black hole launcher.
The launcher fires a whopping ...
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How much TNT do I need to blow up Mars' moon Deimos? [closed]
Specifically I want to blow it up into lots of little bits, not just nudge it towards the planet so that it de-orbits on its own.
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How to fix this superweapon's plotholes? [closed]
So I have this superweapon. He's a powerful lifeform made to devour other races so this one race can colonize their worlds. He's given a near unrelenting hunger as persuasion to do so. The problem is ...
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Feasibility of Gundam's GENESIS
I was looking at various superweapons in Gundam, and recently came across a Gamma-Ray Weapon in Gundam SEED known as the GENESIS.
Here is a description of how it works:
"GENESIS is a huge gamma ray ...
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How to "burn" Oxygen (Exterminatus) [duplicate]
A year ago, I asked on the possibility of Teller Nuclear Bombs, where the bomb is hot enough to fuse oxygen and cause a runway reaction that destroys Earth by using the air as "fusion material". This ...
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