this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
200 points (92.4% liked)

Greentext

4616 readers
2287 users here now

This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

Be warned:

If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 100_percent_a_bot 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The shields don't just protect against kinetic weapons, they also tend to cause energy weapons to blow up in a thermonuclear explosions iirc

[–] Heavybell 12 points 1 year ago

Specifically it causes the explosion at both ends, so firing a laser at something you aren't 100% absolutely positively sure is unshielded is suicidal.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sounds like a drone dropping an energy weapon on a shield users head would do the trick then.

[–] TheDarkKnight 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

iirc computing is pretty gimped in Dune as well because of previous issues with AI, humanity limited development on that front and focused on developing human capabilities instead, which is where spice came into play…it like super charged your cognition in order to navigating ships through space or something like that. Someone familiar with books please correct that I’m sure it’s not perfect.

[–] Heavybell 19 points 1 year ago

That's right. There was a war called the Butlerian Jihad in which humanity wiped out anything close to AI. Since then it has been high-treason-level illegal to "make a machine in the image of the human mind".

[–] CADmonkey 10 points 1 year ago

That's why they have "Mentats".

Also, the book was written in the 1960's. At the time, you still communicated with a computer using a teletype because nobody had thought to put words on a screen yet. You can also see this in the original Star Trek - they never show a screen with text on it.

[–] UnculturedSwine 14 points 1 year ago

There are cultural implications. For the same reason that thermonuclear warheads are stockpiled but not used these days, they avoid using lazguns because you simultaneously blow up more than you would need and turn everyone against you. There are laws in the empire that prevent a military power from intentionally triggering one of these reactions for obvious reasons.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Anyone who does that is getting immediately dog piled by the rest of the houses.

[–] blanketswithsmallpox 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Isn't the thermonuclear bomb a Foundation thing, not a Dune thing?

Is it both? I can see why op said he may be mixing them up lol.

[–] 100_percent_a_bot 6 points 1 year ago

Usually whenever I ask myself "is it X or Dune?" I default to Dune, since it is just that old and has inspired so many things in sci fi.