Science Fiction

13617 readers

3 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

In the Dune universe, why not use laser weapons as bombs? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

55 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In the Dune universe, when a laser weapons hits a shield, both are destroyed in a nuclear explosion reaction.

So instead of building nuclear weapons, wouldn’t it be easier to tie a timer and a “parachute” to a laser gun and drop it from orbit onto your enemy’s city?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

There is a big difference between invading a foreign nation (Ukraine?) against established treaties and nuking a foreign nation. Mutually assured destruction is avoided by even those on the losing side until they're well aware they've lost and have been given a reason not to surrender.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Even IRL multiple different leaders have ordered MAD in multiple different circumstances, only stopped by some peon committing treason by disobeying launch orders.

You are giving conservatives far too much credit to their intelligence.

Iraq was invaded specifically because they had no WMDs. Any sane ruler would launch when faced with death. Real interesting how the rogue nations with proven nuclear weapons capability are the only ones still standing…

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I'm not sure I'm giving them far too much credit when you've sort of already proven my point by bringing up the multiple times it has been ordered and yet still avoided. I'm sure the situation would have changed if the person's responsible for launch believed themselves and their families to be dead already, but a chance at anything else is better than nuclear MAD. There's a hell of a lot of reason not to press that button.