Exploring Exotic Weapons in Sci-Fi: From Droplets to Hyperspace Engines

[GTOM]

Warning maybe minor spoilers:
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I pretty much liked the droplet from Dark Forest, basically a superatom that can ram battleships and continue its lethal path. (Maybe certain anime battles was inspirative to Cixin Liu)
I less liked the sophons, they were pretty magical, also as someone noted, if Trisolaris could develop them, others could have totally invalidated the Dark forest theory long ago, the galaxy would have turned into a bright field, where it is pretty possible to police civilizations without weapons of mass destruction.
I also disliked Molecular dispenser from Enders Game, i felt it is overpowered magic.
In Space battleship yamato, i liked that hyperspace engine could actually power a really destructive cannon too.

What other examples?

Personally i speculate about nano stuff, that can disable machines just like chemical and biological weapons can disable humans.

 

[Bab5space]

Warning maybe minor spoilers:
.
.
.
.
I pretty much liked the droplet from Dark Forest, basically a superatom that can ram battleships and continue its lethal path. (Maybe certain anime battles was inspirative to Cixin Liu)
I less liked the sophons, they were pretty magical, also as someone noted, if Trisolaris could develop them, others could have totally invalidated the Dark forest theory long ago, the galaxy would have turned into a bright field, where it is pretty possible to police civilizations without weapons of mass destruction.
I also disliked Molecular dispenser from Enders Game, i felt it is overpowered magic.
In Space battleship yamato, i liked that hyperspace engine could actually power a really destructive cannon too.

What other examples?

Personally i speculate about nano stuff, that can disable machines just like chemical and biological weapons can disable humans.

Antimatter particle beam.

SF makes it possible to be cheap enough to produce to use as a weapon. SF also allows a spacecraft to fire it at near lightspeed velocity... without the massive radiators that would dwarf your vessel that IRL current science entails.

A gram of antimatter hitting anything should do massive damage.

A charged particle beam can be deflected with a powerful enough magnetic field, but it won't matter if is a neutral partice beam, since magnetic fields do not effect those. And there are ways of doing that IRL... just not the AM part without radiators that dwarf the vessel.

 

[DEvens]

Some weapons from Larry Niven's "Known Space" series are quite interesting.

A variable blade is a mono-molecular filament strengthened by a stasis field. The force required to cause it to pass through a steel tank is grams. In order to tell where the tip is, it has a small red ball fixed to the end. It's called "variable" because a setting on the handle allows you to extend it as you like. The actual blade is so thin that it is very hard to see.

A tasp is a device that let's you remotely trigger your target's pleasure centers in his brain. The result is, briefly, the target is totally incapacitated. They are not *directly* harmed. But the experience is grotesquely addictive. Biologists have done experiments where they implant electrodes in a rats brain, and give the rat a lever to push. When the rat pushes the lever they get a jolt in their pleasure center. Rats were observed to push the lever until they passed out from thirst or hunger. The Puppeteer species used tasps, both as defensive weapons, and as psychological weapons to try to control targets.

Those were fairly subtle. Niven also went in for much more brute force type weapons.

In one of the Ringworld series, we find that one of the protagonists used a small moon to get the attention of his competitor. He smashed it into the bottom of the ring world. This created a gigantic crater. The current "boss" of the ring world was forced to show up to do repairs. The moon-wielder then attacked and captured his competitor, becoming boss of the ring world.

Niven had many stories that involved ships that used photon propulsion. They'd point a HONKING big laser backwards, and ride the force produced. However, such a laser is necessarily also a weapon. So, when the Kzin showed up near Earth, and saw a lot of little ships flitting around on laser propulsion, they were unconcerned. Then the laser ships started cutting up the Kzin ships with their lasers.

Again from Ringworld. The ring could use magnetics to pull out a solar flare, straighten it, pressurize it, and cause it to lase in the ultraviolet. This was then a many giga-watt near x-ray laser that could be made to fire for hours. It was originally designed as a meteor zapper. But it worked excellently as a ship zapper as well.

The Outsiders had a planet-mover for sale. It was *VERY* expensive. But if you installed it correctly it would allow you to move something Earth-sized at a non-trivial acceleration. The Puppeteers were moving their entire planet, and several agricultural moons, to another galaxy at sub-light speed. But, if you messed with the drive the chances were excellent it would explode with a very drastic large explosion. To the point of being similar to a small super nova, blasting a region about a half light year across. So the Puppeteers had not learned to reproduce the planet drive. But they had learned enough to reproduce the explosion. So they could put one of these things on a small moon, drift the moon into a star system, and set it off remotely. POW! No more star system.

 

[Klystron]

Many fans might agree with the OP that Ender's molecular disrupter, AKA M.D. (thus the 'little doctor') worked too well and thoroughly to zap the Bug home world system. Methinks the author just needed to perform the final genocide as quickly and cleanly as possible in order to complete the novel. Up to that point the child warriors still believed battle school was a simulation; prelude to actually destroying the enemy. Ender and many of the protagonists dedicate their futures to preventing genocide and restoring Bug civilization in sequels after accepting the results of their skills.

One of the more interesting unintended nano weapons in modern fiction occurs in Glenn Cook's 1985 combat SF novel "Passage at Arms". Loosely based on Lothar-Gunther Bucheim's brilliant and poignant WWII submarine novel "Das Boot" (The Boat);

Spoiler: vessel becomes nano weapon

The crew of the tiny Climber vessel 'climbs' to achieve minimum cross-section to avoid detection. Low on ordnance, the commander guides his speck of a ship in and through the fusion engines of a gigantic disabled Ulant war ship destroying the mighty but wounded Leviathan in spectacular fashion.

 

[SPL]

The ultimate weapon is time travel. You are just undoing all your foes, unfruitful realities, etc. Like in Interscission Proj.

 

[Klystron]

"The warrior's ultimate weapon is located between their ears; provided it is loaded."

Spoiler: explanation

The trained warrior adapts to conditions using whatever is available. Almost anything can be used as a weapon. Mental and physical preparation make an ordinary object deadly in trained hands. On the contrary, thoughtless action can render superior position into defeat.

The biblical story of Goliath and David tells not that a small stone defeats a large sword, but that hubris and anticipation lead Goliath to drop his guard when little David approaches swinging his sling; out of range of a sword thrust but in strike distance of a well aimed speeding stone.

A warrior remains cool in battle because they have thought through each encounter and chosen the optimal position given conditions. If defeat appears inevitable; make them pay.

 

[phinds]

What other examples?

The utterly absurd "red matter" in Star Trek (2009).

 

[member 656954]

The ultimate weapon is time travel.

If you have it, your foes have it, so it's just another type of warfare. Neal Asher's Cowl is a time-travel warfare story that describes threads of history being unraveled by the protagonist / antagonist as they fight across deep time.

I don't think there is an 'ultimate' weapon. There are merely weapons one side has that the other doesn't...yet! If the battle is too asymmetrical, the underdog has to have a way to fight back, whether via covert means like terrorism or by stealing the aggressors tech, because unopposed genocide make for bleak storytelling.

 

[hmmm27]

I don't think there is an 'ultimate' weapon.

"salting the earth" weaponry - making territory uninhabitable for both victor and vanquished (and, of course native flora/fauna) are a different level.

 

[phinds]

"salting the earth" weaponry - making territory uninhabitable for both victor and vanquished (and, of course native flora/fauna) are a different level.

see post #7

 

[some bloke]

I really liked the old explanations of Gauss weaponry in the warhammer 40k universe.

The gist of it is that the beam strips layer after layer off of the target, drawing the matter back to the gun and using it to fuel itself. The guns would essentially destroy any matter, layer by layer. The main weapon was called a "Gauss Flayer", for obvious reasons!

 

[hutchphd]

"salting the earth" weaponry - making territory uninhabitable for both victor and vanquished (and, of course native flora/fauna) are a different level.

A small interlude with Gen Buck Turgidson:

 

[hmmm27]

see post #7

re: "red matter" - I didn't pay much attention to the Star Trek 90210 franchise - got distracted by all the lens flares ; in the context of SF, the same as "grey goo" (nanotech eats everything), I guess.

 

[DrStupid]

The ultimate weapon is time travel. You are just undoing all your foes, unfruitful realities, etc. Like in Interscission Proj.

With the Novikov self-consistency principle it wouldn't be that easy. And it wold be quite risky without it. You could even undo yourself by incident.

 

[member 656954]

A small interlude with Gen Buck Turgidson:

And it wasn't even science fiction

 

[Lren Zvsm]

Let's not forget another Niven weapon. It's a gun that disintegrates its target by canceling the charge of the electrons in the target, reducing it to "monatomic dust."