Planet Buster weapons?

[zero]

Has anyone statted out or figured the weapon output for a weapon to wipe a planet out?

Been watching Lexx recently and I wondered if you could assign planets, moons or asteroids HP or whatever against weapons.

We're probably talking about something that a Capital Ship would have to handle, but has anyone wondered about that?

Also theres the Death Star from Star Wars, with its main laser. I'd like to place something like that as an obstacle in my games - "stop the planet buster before its too late!!"

Any comments and opinions welcome, but yeah I realise its not very realistic and takes alot of energy, but its probably the most destructive thing that can be put in a game.

 

[DFW]

Has anyone statted out or figured the weapon output for a weapon to wipe a planet out?

Been watching Lexx recently and I wondered if you could assign planets, moons or asteroids HP or whatever against weapons.

We're probably talking about something that a Capital Ship would have to handle, but has anyone wondered about that?

Also theres the Death Star from Star Wars, with its main laser. I'd like to place something like that as an obstacle in my games - "stop the planet buster before its too late!!"

Any comments and opinions welcome, but yeah I realise its not very realistic and takes alot of energy, but its probably the most destructive thing that can be put in a game.

The Krakatoa the eruption was equivalent to 200 megatons of TNT (840 Peta Joules). It would take many thousands of those to wipe the surface of Earth. Even at that, it wouldn't "bust" the planet.

 

[Jeraa]

If the Darrian Star Trigger can trigger supernovas and so destroy entire systems, surely something can be designed to destroy a single planet.

Of course, any such weapons would be plot devices, an so wouldn't need detailed stats beyond what it takes to mount on a ship.

 

[BP]

... I realise its not very realistic and takes alot of energy, but its probably the most destructive thing that can be put in a game.

Nah - that would be PCs. :lol:

Seriously though - you can change that 'not very realistic' to 'not at all realistic' (basically pure fantasy). But this is a game, so game on...

The scale of this is way beyond Traveller (excepting the Grandfather bunch) - other than maybe the Darrians star buster thingy (which I know nothing really about... I doubt it did more than 'wipe out' surfaces), if that.

Even black holes won't really do it (not at all like the recent ST movie) without being ridiculously big (for a weapon)... though nothing stops you from using the 'red matter' fantasy approach.

A micro black hole that creates a worm hole to a quasar (thereby channeling a massive amount of stellar energy) would sound cool and scifi-ish enough that I could get players to go along with it... [groans]

As for stats - not seeing a need for that - I mean you chunk it at a planet and boom... dust's ville. Which means anything else is toast too... unless planetary features (molten core...) are a required element, etc.

P.S. - in the RW there is the theoretical 'planet busters' - salted H weapons that if used along continental faults (ring of fire), could, from a surface perspective (habitability wise) be referred to as a 'wipe out'.

 

[BP]

Triggering a change in a star actually sounds more plausible... (he says while suspenders of disbelief are madly slapping in the stellar wind...)

Seeding a planetary core with nanite replicators that turn the iron (whatever) into a trigger-able critical mass might be another way - but even with exponential growth that would mean tons and tons and tons of seeded nanotech (through the crust and into the core) for anything to happen within a given time frame...

An interesting 'attack' followed by a very long period of - nothing - then boom!

 

[Jeraa]

The scale of this is way beyond Traveller (excepting the Grandfather bunch) - other than maybe the Darrians star buster thingy (which I know nothing really about... I doubt it did more than 'wipe out' surfaces), if that.

Basically, it was an accident involving using meson communication to communicate with a probe they sent into the star.

Caused a disruption that made the star shift, casting off its outer layers. An electromagnetic pulse was generated that travelled at the speed of light and blew all electronic components (and which eventually effected all worlds within 10 parsecs).

The wave of expanding gas which was cast off, when it reached the planet, heated eveerything to 250 degrees or higher, "scalding basins. evaporiting shallow seas, burning forests and grasslands, and destroying populated areas. Approximately 20% of the population survived (most of those lived in under-sea habitats.)" Quotes are from the Darrien suppliment for... Classic Traveller? I think.

The real trouble the Darrians had from this was that they still relied on their main world for most of their supplies and things. So with it gone, the colonies regressed in tech as they wern't able to sustain themselves well. And half of their fleet was destroyed, so what supplies they could get they would of had a hard time moving around (and of course, their ship-building facilities were also destroyed, so no new ones could be created).

 

[BP]

I suspected it wasn't a 'total obliteration' thing... that's plausible enough fiction. 8)

Planets are just big... real big... and even bigger than that!

IIRC, the Tigress is a million dton ship - doubt you could see it on land from the ISS with unaided eye in daylight (heck probably couldn't see hundreds or even thousands of them...)

 

[rust]

Hmmm ... if I had to design a weapon able to destroy a planet I would
probably not think of something like the silly brute force approach of the
Death Star. My idea would be some method to influence the planet's mat-
ter on a more fundamental level. The Traveller setting has nuclear dam-
pers, so a manipulation on this level is not completely beyond the techno-
logy of the setting. Add to this some space opera technobabble, and it
should be possible to describe a ray or field which destroys the planet -
what about an induced proton decay chain reaction, for example ?

True, it is also a silly idea, but while it is immediately obvious that the
Death Star's laser is pure nonsense, many players might find something
dealing with the hard to comprehend fundamental forces of nature easier
to swallow.

 

[Jeraa]

You don't need to destroy a planet, just the inhabited parts. And most systems contain what you need to do it - rocks. Big rocks. Just strap engines on them and aim them towards their targets. Or fire them from a ship.example

 

[BP]

Ah - perhaps you refer to the spin inverted fermionic haydron reasonance inducer that sets up planetary scale harmonic disruptions that magnify the electroweak forces causing an exponential cascade of planetary atomic matter to change phase into a plasma state within femtoseconds, obliterating the planet in a spectacular aurora like display visible from lightyears away?

Or maybe not... :roll:

 

[rust]

You don't need to destroy a planet, just the inhabited parts. And most systems contain what you need to do it - rocks. Big rocks. Just strap engines on them and aim them towards their targets.

An asteroid big enough to do serious damage has a lot of mass, it requires
a drive of the kind used for the biggest capital ships to hit the planet with-
in the timeframe of the average campaign, and it is easy to spot and easy
to get rid of - just send someone there to disable the drive and it will miss
the planet.

 

[rust]

Ah - perhaps you refer to the spin inverted fermionic haydron reasonance inducer that sets up planetary scale harmonic disruptions that magnify the electroweak forces causing an exponential cascade of planetary atomic matter to change phase into a plasma state within femtoseconds, obliterating the planet in a spectacular aurora like display visible from lightyears away?

Yep, ah ... precisely that. Or so. I think ... :shock:

 

[Solomani666]

From Space Opera the RPG

PlatetBuster: The PlanetBuster Missle is a 250 ton weapon that utilizes a series of nuclear shaped charges allowing it to burrow it's way into the planetary crust before detonating its 10,000 megaton main warhead, usually at a depth of 100 kilometers.

Then it goes on to state the various effects based on a percentile die roll such as:
* Creating a sinkhole up to 1000 km in diameter.
* Cracking the crust and releasing part of the planets molten core while flinging a region of up to 1000 km in diameter into low orbit.
* And if the planet is 5000km in diameter or smaller, possibly creating a new asteroid belt.

BTW, The main warhead is an anti-matter charge.


Does this fit the description?


.

 

[BP]

...An asteroid big enough to do serious damage has a lot of mass, ... and it is easy to spot and easy to get rid of ...

Definitely!

That's why I suggest a gigantic roll of thermal-ablate counter-detect nanocoat treated TP spooled out in gossamer layers beyond the target planet's orbit, in a carefully orchestrated fashion leveraging system gravity to spiral in so as to TP the entire surface of the planet using its axial spin for maximal effect.

Planet-Wipe TM - wipe out your opponents one system at a time! (Starship not included.)

 

[zero]

Ok, so you wont be statting something that could potentially break a planet...

I kinda wondered along the lines of what number of lasers and how big they would be to damage a planet and if numerous blasts would crack one.
Just curious if someone had done something like that, besides the asteroid drops (btw, how many Size 0 objects could crack something at a bigger Size in that fact?).

Anyways... I'm also toying with the fact of an Asteroid being hollowed out and used as a Capital Ship in my games - I can see one that looks like that in High Guard, through flicking (havent looked properly at it yet).

How many dtons (or Capital Ship Hull Class) would such a ship have if... the ship part was secret (to outsiders) and had as its front, a domed colony big enough for 1000 colonists on it (crew would be taken out of these people)??
I have a plan of an asteroid secretly being a huge ship.

... and yeah, I'm bringing EPIC to my Traveller :roll:

 

[BP]

From Space Opera the RPG

PlatetBuster: The PlanetBuster Missle is a 250 ton weapon that utilizes a series of nuclear shaped charges allowing it to burrow it's way into the planetary crust before detonating its 10,000 megaton main warhead, usually at a depth of 100 kilometers.

Then it goes on to state the various effects based on a percentile die roll such as:
* Creating a sinkhole up to 1000 km in diameter.
* Cracking the crust and releasing part of the planets molten core while flinging a region of up to 1000 km in diameter into low orbit.
* And if the planet is 5000km in diameter or smaller, possibly creating a new asteroid belt.

BTW, The main warhead is an anti-matter charge.


Does this fit the description?


.

The 10,000 Mt sounds about right (~43 Mt per Kg of AM IIRC).

The results sound plausible (for upper crustal, almost surface detonations)... till that last one - which is way, way over the top.

The Indian Ocean earthquake in '04 was ~ 10,000 gigaton i.e. 1,000 times more energy than this (but almost all buffered by the crust - so the surface equivalent was < 25 Mt I think - so no lava/atmo debris)

So maybe a 10,000 times larger, but more likely 10 million times larger - which means the weapon would be more like 2,500,000 tons or 2,500,000,000 tons (metric) of AM...

 

[BP]

...I kinda wondered along the lines of what number of lasers and how big they would be to damage a planet and if numerous blasts would crack one.

A LOT of spinal mounts might do some 'crustal' thermal damage (probably after a lot of refueling...) - regular weapons - not likely (see previous post about AM...)

If you want to calculate - prior Traveller had MW which could be used (calculate Joules) to compare to RW earthquakes/volcanoes...

Shoemaker impact on Jupiter is probably the biggest we've witnessed (over trillion tons I believe...)

...Anyways... I'm also toying with the fact of an Asteroid being hollowed out and used as a Capital Ship in my games - I can see one that looks like that in High Guard, through flicking (havent looked properly at it yet). ...

Yep - a hollowed out asteroid hull is one of the configs... there are reduced pricing (and usable tonnage) as well as natural armour values...

... and yeah, I'm bringing EPIC to my Traveller :roll:

Its a game - have fun!

 

[TC]

I'm partial to the Bethe Cycle-Solar Phoenix weapon otherwise known as the Hellburner is quite destructive. Drop in an ocean where it has a ready supply of Hydrogen and it will have a longer than normal duration. The atmospheric heating has to be seen to be believed. Drop a couple and its lights out.

 

[saundby]

Here's a site that goes into a significant amount of detail on destroying the Earth:

http://qntm.org/destroy

Lots of fun reading.

 

[rust]

How many dtons (or Capital Ship Hull Class) would such a ship have if... the ship part was secret (to outsiders) and had as its front, a domed colony big enough for 1000 colonists on it (crew would be taken out of these people)??
I have a plan of an asteroid secretly being a huge ship.

The space required by a habitat for 1,000 persons would depend a lot
on their idea of comfort, but about 4,000 dtons for the quarters and twi-
ce that for infrastructure, for a total of 12,000 dtons, should be an accep-
table average. This gives you 162,000 cubic meters or a flattened dome
with a base of about 70 meters diameter and a height of about 23 meters.
The asteroid could then have a length of, for example, 300 meters and a
diameter of 150 meters, giving it a total of about 5.3 million cubic meters
or 400,000 dtons if it is roughly cylindrical.