Science Fiction

13644 readers

62 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

Tenthrow

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

submitted 7 months ago by sudo42 to c/sciencefiction

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 (2 children)

IIRC, this is actually done at some point in the books.

[–] ours 18 points 7 months ago

Fremen setup some shields in the desert to punish the Harkonen for randomly firing lasers at the sand trying to smoke them out. Or something like that.

[–] Nacktmull 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

spoiler

You do remember correctly. Bashar Miles Teg at one point utilizes a variant of that technique. They mount pairs of shields and lasguns on anti-g platforms and use them as surprise tactical nukes in a battle against the Honored Matres. That is one of the many epic af moments in the Dune saga. I think I will have to read it for the umpteenth time now :)