Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
Just blast the cap off a supervolcano or two (like Yellowstone in the US). If that puppy goes, civilization is gone, mass extinctions all over the planet and North America becomes uninhabitable very quickly.
Planet Crackers
- Thread starter alex_greene
- Start date
alex_greene
Guest
It worked for the Darrians.GypsyComet said:
One tungsten ball inside their star + two meson beams intersecting in the middle = the Darrian civilisation's TL halved overnight.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
Now we're going in circles. Stars are not planets.
Stars are big balls of unstable, held in place by gravity alone.
Rocky planets are smaller (but still big) balls of stable, with a bit of help from gravity.
Stars are big balls of unstable, held in place by gravity alone.
Rocky planets are smaller (but still big) balls of stable, with a bit of help from gravity.
alex_greene
Guest
With rotating cores of liquid and semi-liquid iron generating magnetic fields and producing tectonic activity great and small.
A high tech device that could accidentally trigger a Deccan Plain eruption, destroy a planet's ozone layer or melt a polar ice cap would not be beyond the bounds of possibility.
And I believe that even Mongoose's spiel concerning Fighting Ships mentions planet boilage somewhere, so I'd like to err on the side of the possibility of meson-induced planet splittage.
Knowing that it could, theoretically, be done is something that keeps Naval weapons designers awake at night, and gives player characters something to strive to get their hands on.
'Course, it doesn't make it actually feasible ... there's still that rumour mill: "Hey, you know that the gas giant in orbit around Yarfel's Moon at 0606 in Warfle subsector used to have thirteen moons? Well, now it's got twelve and a brand new ring. And there's one big meson cannon going up for sale at auction next month, and the rumour says that this big gun's the reason why one of Yarfel's moons is missing.
'We need crews and ships to patrol the system where the auction's taking place. Want in?"
A high tech device that could accidentally trigger a Deccan Plain eruption, destroy a planet's ozone layer or melt a polar ice cap would not be beyond the bounds of possibility.
And I believe that even Mongoose's spiel concerning Fighting Ships mentions planet boilage somewhere, so I'd like to err on the side of the possibility of meson-induced planet splittage.
Knowing that it could, theoretically, be done is something that keeps Naval weapons designers awake at night, and gives player characters something to strive to get their hands on.
'Course, it doesn't make it actually feasible ... there's still that rumour mill: "Hey, you know that the gas giant in orbit around Yarfel's Moon at 0606 in Warfle subsector used to have thirteen moons? Well, now it's got twelve and a brand new ring. And there's one big meson cannon going up for sale at auction next month, and the rumour says that this big gun's the reason why one of Yarfel's moons is missing.
'We need crews and ships to patrol the system where the auction's taking place. Want in?"
Supergamera
Mongoose
Now would be a good time to mention the "How to Destroy the Earth" web site:
http://qntm.org/?destroy
http://qntm.org/?destroy
Jeff Hopper
Mongoose
Supergamera said:
Ooooo, I like the pretty thing! I must add it to my links....
ShadowDragon8685
Mongoose
Shattering a planet should be pretty hard.
Scouring one clean of life, however, should be less so. Even a relatively small warship should be able to do this. The ways it can be done are numerous and legion.
The first, and most obvious, is nukes (and later, antimatter.) Combined with your spinal mount guns, glassing a planet's surface shouldn't be too difficult.
You could also just settle for "destroying civilization as the inhabitants know it." This takes a lot less time and energy than glassing the whole planet, and involves selective bombardment of cities and key ecosystems - as mentioned previously, blasting the cap off a couple of supervolcanos, frying polar ice caps, eradicating O2-producing, CO2-scrubbing forests...
You may not manage to wipe the civilization out to a man, woman and child, but for the people who survived down below, they just stopped playing Traveller and started playing Fallout 4.
Besides, blowing a whole planet up isn't going to work that well, even as a terror weapon. It's the kind of thing people won't really believe at first, and then when they do, it'll instantly galvanize the lot of them against you. (See also: Tarkin's Folly.)
Scouring one clean of life, however, should be less so. Even a relatively small warship should be able to do this. The ways it can be done are numerous and legion.
The first, and most obvious, is nukes (and later, antimatter.) Combined with your spinal mount guns, glassing a planet's surface shouldn't be too difficult.
You could also just settle for "destroying civilization as the inhabitants know it." This takes a lot less time and energy than glassing the whole planet, and involves selective bombardment of cities and key ecosystems - as mentioned previously, blasting the cap off a couple of supervolcanos, frying polar ice caps, eradicating O2-producing, CO2-scrubbing forests...
You may not manage to wipe the civilization out to a man, woman and child, but for the people who survived down below, they just stopped playing Traveller and started playing Fallout 4.
Besides, blowing a whole planet up isn't going to work that well, even as a terror weapon. It's the kind of thing people won't really believe at first, and then when they do, it'll instantly galvanize the lot of them against you. (See also: Tarkin's Folly.)
As pointed out elsewhere there is massive magnetic energies built up in Earth's core and surrounding the planet as well as those fields interacting with the suns magnetosphere. As for iron fusion, that's what happens at the end of a star's life just before a supernova. Sure, your going to cry "apples and oranges" again about a star not being a planet, but inducement of iron fusion is a real world occurance and just because it's a planets core doesn't mean it would be that much less destructive.
A poxy little meson gun isn't going to induce any iron to fuse (even if meson guns actually worked, which they don't).
As shadowdragon pointed out (and as I pointed out repeatedly on the asteroid belts thead), it's much easier to wipe out a biosphere than to blow up a planet. And blowing up a planet is a largely pointless exercise anyway.
As shadowdragon pointed out (and as I pointed out repeatedly on the asteroid belts thead), it's much easier to wipe out a biosphere than to blow up a planet. And blowing up a planet is a largely pointless exercise anyway.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
Thlaylie said:
Not quite. I said Iron fusion is a "losing proposition". It isn't a break-even process. It requires energy to maintain. As such, it can't "run away", and the causes that lead an iron fusing star to nova only apply to stars, since planets are already "collapsed".
Simple explanation: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Supernova#Supernova
If the molten core of a planet were energetic enough to start and maintain iron fusion, it would already be doing so.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
Thlaylie said:
:twisted:
That still won't "blow up" the planet. It will make the planet go away, sure...
Blowing apart planets is strictly Space Opera. End of.
Plot devices which characters believe might blow a planet apart, well that is something else... (here on earth people believed that the USSR had a nuclear device 'big enough to crack the planet' for a while, in spite of the calculations to conclude this was not possible being relatively trivial).
Plot devices which characters believe might blow a planet apart, well that is something else... (here on earth people believed that the USSR had a nuclear device 'big enough to crack the planet' for a while, in spite of the calculations to conclude this was not possible being relatively trivial).
alex_greene
Guest
To quote Zoe from Firefly (to Wash): "You live in a spaceship, dear."
Traveller is about people zipping about in crummy, barely spaceworthy cut'n'shut spaceships, rubbing shoulders with fellow space pirates, robots, aliens and slumming space princesses.
Hell, all you need is a camp droid, a Grand Admiral who looks like Peter Cushing and some mumbling buffoon with his houseboy in tow, going on about weird mystical powers, and you might as well have a planet cracking dreadnought the size fo a small moon - your setting will have everything else
Traveller is about people zipping about in crummy, barely spaceworthy cut'n'shut spaceships, rubbing shoulders with fellow space pirates, robots, aliens and slumming space princesses.
Hell, all you need is a camp droid, a Grand Admiral who looks like Peter Cushing and some mumbling buffoon with his houseboy in tow, going on about weird mystical powers, and you might as well have a planet cracking dreadnought the size fo a small moon - your setting will have everything else
alex_greene
Guest
And then they bump into the Hiver Ambassador at a reception, being picked upon by the Droyne Ambassador, and all that grittiness goes out the window.
alex_greene
Guest
The thing is, there's a really good scenario or two - even a whole campaign - about the possibility of such a device being invented, or at least inventable.
Say, some scientist on a lowly TL 8 world comes up with the principles behind the nuclear damper. All well and good - but while nuclear dampers do exist in the Imperium and elsewhere, and their principles have been documented independently in countless places, this is a rather more backwoods kind of world, and they've never imagined ND technology.
At this point, with ND stations in every major city and every military base, nuclear war becomes a non-viable prospect. Even a dirty bomb's fallout can be efficiently dealt with by a damper. This changes the world.
But the scientist working on the project develops it further. Inadvertently, he develops the refinement of the technology which allows him to create a nuclear damper which disintegrates stable matter.
All at once, this world just a little over half the TL of the Imperium becomes a major power. Because disintegrator tech can be developed into a spinal mount weapon capable of reaching deep into the magma chambers of volcanoes or supervolcanoes, and removing the plugs keeping them from erupting; it can be used judiciously to weaken certain stress points along tectonic plates, triggering earthquakes and megatsunami; and, if you want to ramp up the tension, the scientist finds a way to tune in the disintegrator beam such that the denser the medium it strikes, the more damage it does.
And rocky cores are very dense indeed.
All of a sudden, while still remaining true, your scientist develops TL 16+ technology before his species is capable of wielding it sanely or safely.
And then the scientist disappears, only to emerge a dozen light years away, on a world in the Zhodani Consulate ...
If the possibility exists, whether or not your characters can make it happen, then you can make the game epic in scope, without even trying.
Say, some scientist on a lowly TL 8 world comes up with the principles behind the nuclear damper. All well and good - but while nuclear dampers do exist in the Imperium and elsewhere, and their principles have been documented independently in countless places, this is a rather more backwoods kind of world, and they've never imagined ND technology.
At this point, with ND stations in every major city and every military base, nuclear war becomes a non-viable prospect. Even a dirty bomb's fallout can be efficiently dealt with by a damper. This changes the world.
But the scientist working on the project develops it further. Inadvertently, he develops the refinement of the technology which allows him to create a nuclear damper which disintegrates stable matter.
All at once, this world just a little over half the TL of the Imperium becomes a major power. Because disintegrator tech can be developed into a spinal mount weapon capable of reaching deep into the magma chambers of volcanoes or supervolcanoes, and removing the plugs keeping them from erupting; it can be used judiciously to weaken certain stress points along tectonic plates, triggering earthquakes and megatsunami; and, if you want to ramp up the tension, the scientist finds a way to tune in the disintegrator beam such that the denser the medium it strikes, the more damage it does.
And rocky cores are very dense indeed.
All of a sudden, while still remaining true, your scientist develops TL 16+ technology before his species is capable of wielding it sanely or safely.
And then the scientist disappears, only to emerge a dozen light years away, on a world in the Zhodani Consulate ...
If the possibility exists, whether or not your characters can make it happen, then you can make the game epic in scope, without even trying.
