Planet Buster weapons?

[alex_greene]

Perhaps one only needs a small catalyst, such as a capital ship's meson beam directed towards the weakest point of a junction between undersea tectonic plates, or disrupting the cap of a magma pocket beneath a supervolcano, to trigger cataclysmic events.

 

[rust]

Perhaps one only needs a small catalyst, such as a capital ship's meson beam directed towards the weakest point of a junction between undersea tectonic plates, or disrupting the cap of a magma pocket beneath a supervolcano, to trigger cataclysmic events.

While this is true, the attacker would need precise and reliable data for
this. Provided he has these, the supervolcano would probably be the best
choice, because it could also poison the planet's entire atmosphere and
trigger a "nuclear winter" - together much worse than a series of heavy
earthquakes.

 

[lastbesthope]

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

Not necessarily, a star is a finely placed dynamic equilibriium that stops it destroying itself, one need only disrupt that to tip the reactions a little too far in one direction.

EWhereas a planet is, in copmparison, a fairly stable entity, you need to apply significant brute force to actually destroy the planet.

Of course you could have a planet killer like the Shadow missile cloud from B5 that renders the planet uninhabitable and kills everything on the surface but doesn;t actually destroy the planet.

LBH

 

[phavoc]

Do you want to wipe out life, crack the planet in two, or totally shatter it into a new asteroid belt?

We know that making the biosphere unusable is not particulary hard when you have the ability to move 1,000,000Dton starships around. Get a few nice-sized asteroids and drop them onto a planets surface and most life will perish.

But cracking a planet, or shattering it completely takes an awful lot of energy. It might be easier to use a large planetoid or moon (maybe one the size of ours?) and alter its orbital path to smack into your target. Of course this may take an extraordinary amount of time to do so. But its pretty much a guarantee to change the planetary body for a few million years.

 

[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?


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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...

Earthquake energy and thermonuclear blast energy have totally different effects.

The last result is only a 01% chance and only with smaller planets.

The weapon was only used once, on a bug world, and it did create a new asteroid belt. Go figure.


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[BP]

... a star is a finely placed dynamic equilibriium that stops it destroying itself, one need only disrupt that to tip the reactions a little too far in one direction.

EWhereas a planet is, in copmparison, a fairly stable entity, you need to apply significant brute force to actually destroy the planet.

Yeah - and we have some decent theories which provide conceptual ways of triggering a star to destroy itself - so, for Sci-Fi it has a higher degree of 'believability' over destroying a planet.

Of course, if one actually does the math assuming a trigger/catalyst the numbers become overwhelming - stars being so big... bigger than that... keep going...

But, at least a star is a dynamic, fluid system, bursting with stored and released energy (with some avoidance of neutron stars...).

A crude analogy would be a star as a huge pool of water (a great lake might be best). Current science gives us a theoretical garden hose (minus fittings )

Given a downhill depression of adequate size and the garden hose of adequate length - moving the water is no problem. A human simply fills the hose and moves it below water line to begin siphoning and lets gravity do all the work. (I.e. we trigger something that nature already does...)

A planet, on the other hand - is like a multi-ton, insulated concrete box filled with molten iron sitting in the middle of the pool. With only the hose (and no place to attach it/use for pulley action) the human ain't moving the box.

Bet bet is to use the water from the previous pool (i.e. - a star) or find a big boulder precariously perched above it (i.e. - hit it with something big and moving).

 

[rust]

The weapon was only used once, on a bug world, and it did create a new asteroid belt. Go figure.

Even a probability of 0.1 % seems magnitudes too high. On a planet with
a diameter of 5,000 km a warhead exploding at a depth of 100 km is just
4 % of the way from the surface to the core, and the results would there-
fore be very similar to a surface explosion.

 

[Solomani666]

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

http://qntm.org/destroy

Lots of fun reading.

Be careful that you are not labeled as a terrorist threatening to BLOW UP THE WORLD.

If the Feds think that Jose Padilla, who is borderline mentally retarded and without a high school education, can actually make a dirty bomb, they just might lock you up for conspiring to attempt this. The guy who wrote that article is probably in Guantanamo Bay right now.




.

 

[Solomani666]

The weapon was only used once, on a bug world, and it did create a new asteroid belt. Go figure.

Even a probability of 0.1 % seems magnitudes too high. On a planet with
a diameter of 5,000 km a warhead exploding at a depth of 100 km is just
4 % of the way from the surface to the core, and the results would there-
fore be very similar to a surface explosion.

Did you take into account that a sizable chunk the crust might be ejected into space, followed by a good portion of the molten core also being ejected to into the atmosphere/space under pressure, leaving a partially hollow core which then causes the crust to implode due to gravitational forces like a hollow egg shell? Hmmm?...


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[rust]

The guy who wrote that article is probably in Guantanamo Bay right now.

Or he has been hired by DARPA, they are always looking for people with
creative ideas to destroy stuff ... :lol:

 

[Solomani666]

The Ender series had a weapon called a "molecular disruption device" or "molecular detachment device," the name was abbreviated to "M. D. Device," which gave rise to the nicknames "Dr. Device" and "The Little Doctor" as a joke.

A basic explanation of the function of the Little Doctor appears in Ender's Game. The device produces two beams whose focal point has the ability to disrupt the bonds between atoms in molecules. The device also creates a field in which nearby molecules are also destroyed, and each dissolved molecule widens the reach of the field. In the absence of nearby mass, such as in the vacuum of space, the field dissipates rapidly, but a tightly-clustered formation of ships could be easily destroyed.

The device is capable of destroying essentially any single object, or cluster of objects that are close enough together. It can destroy something as small as an enemy spacecraft, or something as incredibly large as an entire planet.

Later the device had been scaled into the warhead of a missile, small enough to fit inside a small room. Upon "detonation", the field effect is started within the missile itself and uses the weapon's mass to jump-start a chain reaction. A removable section of casing allows it to be shut off, and instructions on how to do so are printed all over its surface (turning it on, a military officer explains, is the difficult part).


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[DFW]

Even a probability of 0.1 % seems magnitudes too high. On a planet with a diameter of 5,000 km a warhead exploding at a depth of 100 km is just 4 % of the way from the surface to the core, and the results would there- fore be very similar to a surface explosion.

Correct. Also the blast energy is spherical so most energy is absorbed by the planets mass. Using the explosion to put a huge section into orbit wouldn't happen with an explosion that small. Much less turn it into an asteroid belt.

 

[AndrewW]

While this is true, the attacker would need precise and reliable data for
this. Provided he has these, the supervolcano would probably be the best
choice, because it could also poison the planet's entire atmosphere and
trigger a "nuclear winter" - together much worse than a series of heavy
earthquakes.

Not to mention their could be earthquakes as well.

But then it wouldn't work if it was a dead world (geologically speaking).

 

[rust]

Did you take into account that a sizable chunk the crust might be ejected into space, followed by a good portion of the molten core also being ejected to into the atmosphere/space under pressure, leaving a partially hollow core which then causes the crust to implode due to gravitational forces like a hollow egg shell? Hmmm?...

If you assume an explosion in a depth of 100 km and an explosion cone
directed upwards from there, the "sizeable chunk" would still be only a
tiny percentage of the planet's volume, and I see no reason at all why
any part of the molten core should be ejected, because the explosion
would happen above almost 100 % of that molten core. The result could
be a major earthquake on the hemisphere where the explosion happens,
but overall it would remain far below the level of destruction caused by,
for example, the cretaceous impact which ended the age of the dinosaurs
with its ca. 100 teratonnes of TNT equivalent (more than 10,000 times the
power of the AM warhead).

 

[Solomani666]

While this is true, the attacker would need precise and reliable data for
this. Provided he has these, the supervolcano would probably be the best
choice, because it could also poison the planet's entire atmosphere and
trigger a "nuclear winter" - together much worse than a series of heavy
earthquakes.

Not to mention their could be earthquakes as well.

But then it wouldn't work if it was a dead world (geologically speaking).

That was another side effect of the before-stated PlanetBuster that neglected to mention.

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[zero]

What TL are we looking at for the use of an anti-matter weapon? Would there be one already in Traveller and would it work as a Spinal Mount?

Also, what would be a feasible amount in Energy Values, for example, for a weapon capable of this?

Also, what kind of armour rating would a planet have (lets say based on Size, I never actually stated Earth would be a target) if attacked by a Spinal Mount -as in any standard one-?

Basically - would it be possible for a Spinal Mount, built to be a planet cracker to do this effect after repeated shots?

 

[rust]

Basically - would it be possible for a Spinal Mount, built to be a planet cracker to do this effect after repeated shots?

Frankly, no. As mentioned above, the cretaceous impact had an energy
equivalent of 100 Teratons of TNT (1 Teraton = 1,000,000 Megatons),
yet its effect as a "planet buster" was so unimpressive that our science
had extreme difficulties to prove that this impact ever happened. Your
spinal mount would obviously need an output equivalent of considerably
more than 100,000,000 Megatons of TNT to cause any significant dama-
ge, and I very much doubt that this could be done within Traveller's tech-
nology framework.

 

[Jeraa]

I would say a planet, even a small one, would be just too big and tough for any current spinal mount to harm, even with multiple shots.

Simply generating enough power to do something like that would be impossible. (For instance, the original death stay was 160 kilometers in diameter, and most of its interior was to support the superlaser and its required power plant. A power plant with an "output equal to that of several main-sequence stars" according to Wookieepedia. No Traveller ship is anywhere near that large, or can generate anywhere near that power.

And, is it absolutely necessary to destroy the planet? Killing the inhabitants is a far easier way to neutralize a planet.

Also, from what I can find, the earth is 1,097,509,500,000,000,000,000 cubic meters in volume. At 14 cubic meters per displacement ton, that would be 78,393,535,714,285,714,285.7 displacement tons. That means, if the Earth were a spacecraft under Mongoose Traveller rules, it would have 783,935,357,142,857,142 hardpoints, and 1,567,870,714,285,714,285 hull and structure points. According to High Guard, the Type D Meson spinal does 450 damage. Do a little math, and it would take 6,968,314,285,714,286 hits from the most powerful spinal mount in High Guard to totally destroy the Earth.

 

[AndrewW]

What TL are we looking at for the use of an anti-matter weapon? Would there be one already in Traveller and would it work as a Spinal Mount?

Alien Module 3: Darrians has some antimatter torpedoes at TL17.

 

[rust]

Alien Module 3: Darrians has some antimatter torpedoes at TL17.

Yep, but their maximum damage is 12d6 = 72, worlds below what would
be required to do significant damage to a planet sized object.