Science Fiction

13669 readers

58 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 7 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] 22 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It’s sort of like the nuclear weapons situation in our world. Everyone who has the weapon know they can use it, but they won’t, unless there’s somone crazy enough cough Muadib cough to do it, because it all but assures complete destruction of your house by the rest of the great houses. It’s an unspoken rule.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

That's not their question though. Their question is about why build nukes when you can achieve the same effect with a shield and a lasgun.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

They did answer the question. Anyone who tries it without some SERIOUS protection would be utterly annihilated once word got around they intentionally induced nuclear detonations. Using nukes of any kind is a major taboo in universe, everyone is able to do it but when you break the taboo nothing is stopping your enemy from repaying in kind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

You can just people do neither