Science Fiction Distant Future Weaponry

Hello everyone!

I've been attempting to develop a space opera recently, set in the very distant future (including a civilization close to technological sublimation). I wanted to create a thread and throw out a few ideas for weaponry based in the far future, if a civilization were able to have a very strong understanding of matter and it's laws.

My idea: A planet sling.

Planet Sling

The ability to use small planets and their moons as projective weapons by hurling them in the direction of a target.

The planet sling itself could be a relatively small discus that creates very strong gravitational fields in in front of the planet so that the planet essentially accelerates indefinately in that direction.

Looking forward to seeing your ideas!



[edit on 10-8-2009 by Oscitate]

[edit on 10-8-2009 by Oscitate]

reply to post by Oscitate


Good idea.
Maybe with a gravity field strong enough?

Hmm gravity bomb pulls moon out of orbit..into orbit of meteor?

Not such a far out idea.
The US has actually looked into it.

Space Weapons For Earth Wars

Even the notion of purposely diverting an asteroid toward Earth as a weapon was examined by RAND specialists. "For nations that already have nuclear arsenals, asteroid weapons might be of only academic interest," the study notes.

There is no doubt, the study explains, that asteroids have acted as big bruisers in the past. The Earth has the scars to prove the point. However, to use asteroids as natural bombs, the scale of the undertaking would be grander than that required to build the first A-bomb via the Manhattan Project in World War II, the RAND report points out.

black hole generator? kill a sun make a big hole.
i really cant think of anything more devastating

I love sci-fi (mostly hard sci-fi and far flung space operas, which is an odd combination) and weaponry is always an interesting aspect.

First, some recomendations to help get those mental juices flowing:

Olaf Stapledon (spelling may be off), wrote a book called "Star Maker" and the idea of a 'planet sling' was used as a form of highly-technical travel (using artificial or naturally occuring celestial bodies). Take a look, it is worth seeing how some of sci-fi's greats thought about it.

I would also recommend Dan Simmons "Hyperion". Besides it being one of the greatest works of fiction ever to have graced my brain, it also has some amazing far-future tech and some of the weapons (deathwands for instance) are incredibly disturbing. The deathwand destroys you at a molecular level and well...imagine being blown up from the atom up.

The Forever War is another bit of fiction worth checking out.

Now, some things that I have been pondering:

Nano-tech makes so many wonderfully evil things possible. For instance, a swarm of nano-machines modeled after honey bees, house flys or other common insects would make some formidable surveillance equipment. And there is no reason that a self-replicating bit of controlled 'grey-goo' couldn't find it's way into someone by way of those incest machines.

I have always been a fan of any type of "flechette gun". I think it started with my interest in all things Civil War. When I was young my father took me to Gettysburg and I will always remember the tour guide explaining how long lengths of metal and handfulls of scrap were fired from the cannons in order to inflict massive amounts of cutting and bleeding damage.

It is such an evil and terrible thing to use as a weapon, which is what makes it perfectly adaptable for fiction. I always envisioned a rifle or handgun sized weapon which would project a small container of fillament sized flechettes. The idea of a barely visable wall of ::insert material here:: ripping through things is truly scary.

Hmm, perhaps some hyper-thin lengths of superheated wire? It would be an interesting take on stringing wire across a road in order to disable/kill open air vehicle (bikes, speeders, etc).

I am sure I will come back to this thread later and spill out other ideas, but I am ready for some sleep.

Great thread.

would it be a hoot...

you want to build a sling...

you go to the planet to be thrown... and give the people there.. technology

free energy! ... it converts gravity in to electricity !

little do they know ... the same gravity that holds them to their own sun , is being used to light their citys and heat their homes

all the while

the planet being targeted ... is doing all they can to return the hapless pawns back to their original orbit....

but in the story... the target guys are the bad guys
trying to shut down the free energy , blaimed for doing all the bad stuff that is happening .

by the way ... the greatest wep , is deception , illusion , misdirection , and friendly fire .

cancer is the body turning on itself , chemo is poisoning the body , in hope of leaving only the strong .

madness on a grand scale , but a good tactical studies lesson.

Tesla had some pretty cool ideas that could be adapted to weaponry. There is speculation that his ideas are being used to manipulate weather, and there is a clandestine "weather war" being waged on Earth as we speak. And there is also speculation that the "Tunguska event" in Siberia was caused by one of Tesla's experiments gone wrong. He was charging up the planet itself, using the earth's crust as a capacitor, and reportedly intended a discharge at the North Pole as Commander Peary arrived, as a demonstration of what his technology was capable of. Except he missed, and essentially nuked Siberia by mistake.

reply to post by Oscitate


You might want to look into the physics of how a planet (dust ball, terrestrial, or gas-like) would react being hurtled thru space at high speeds. The planet may or may not survive the long trip to its target. Ask yourself these quetsions:

- What happens to the planets core when it is disturbed in such a way?
- Would the planet crack, split or disintegrate during its long voyage to its target (assuming it has to travel light years)?
- How long would it take the planet to accelerate to lightspeed? What is the top speed for the planet? Distance to target?
- Can the planet in acceleration alter course to avoid other celestrial objects? If not, what would happen?

Hurling a planet as a weapon is a novel idea. But, in practical terms, it requires a huge amount of time and power to implement. Depending on the planet's speed, the war could be over by the time it reaches its target.

Easier methods could be used. But if you still want to use a planet as a weapon, why not do this:

- Instead hurtling the planet towards its target thru the vastness of space, have the weapon warp (wormhole, spacefold, hyperspace, whatever) the planet to its target. Two large celestrial objects in close proximity can cause havoc. Plus, the larger object would eventually attract the small object to itself. This method still requires a lot of power. But time is cut down many-fold.

The problem with planetary slingshots, black-hole generators, and sun-guns is that, while they make great terror weapons (from the same school of thought as the Death Stars so beloved of the Star Wars Empire), they're of questionable military use.

Physically destroying a planet (or a solar system) isn't functionally different from depopulating it or reducing it to a non-threatening level of technology, at least from the military perspective. In either case, the threat of that particular system has been neutralized. However, from the economic perspective, if a system is worth fighting over, the loss of that system (by destruction) is almost as big a defeat as leaving the system in hostile hands.

What's needed are weapons that can neutralize a system, but still leave it intact enough to be recolonized by the victors in a war, or at least exploited by them. That's a bit trickier than the "Doc" Smith / Lensmen "Planet Smashers".

If you're really into the whole "celestial billiards" riff, try using smaller rocks, and going for kinetic kills against major population centers and infrastructure nodes (bridges, rail yards, space ports).

Detonation of (relatively) small anti-matter charges at medium-high altitude over population centers could also fill the bill...gamma radiation will clear out most of the population, and cut down on the reproductive rate so that future reinforcements will be scarce.

Genetically tailored biological weapons, engineered to have long latency and a high rate of mutation could be devastating to a race of just about any tech level...by the time they realize the attack is underway, it will (thanks to the long latency) already be spread around the globe...and the fast mutation rate will make certain that what cures it today won't be worth a pitcher of warm phlegm next week. The only problem with this approach is stopping the plague when you want to move into the newly vacant neighborhood.

maybe a 'solar focus', which would collect ionised partiles from a sun and funnels them into a small beam (using magnets), something like a laser. It would obviously be able to break through the magnetosphere and burn holes through earth

reply to post by Brother Stormhammer


Some similar points to mine, Stormhammer. And I do agree mass drivers are a far more efficient anti-planet weapon. Same goes for genocidal weapons and plain old "nuking from orbit".

Hell, if you want to keep the planet, use neutron bombs -- high initial radiation, low radiation effects. With a neutron bomb, you can kill all living things while keeping cities intact. Pretty lethal we humans developed decades ago.

But I think the OP wants a terror weapon similar to the Death Star. At least the OP is doing his research... Unlike some people we know George Lucas.

In Babylon 5, the Shadows had a planet killer which fired thousands of nukes. These nukes drilled deep into the planets core and detonated. This caused cataclysmic results on a planetary-scale as the surface erupts with magma.

I believe the OP doesn't care about the target planet. Whoever has the weapon would not bother colonizing the target planet since they just want it utterly destroyed.

reply to post by Oscitate


Oscitate, is this weapon more for psychological effects?

you can never go wrong with a death ray

Ultimate science fiction weaponry is a wide open field. For instance, you can seed the enemy world with nano-machines designed to reduce all organic compounds to simpler components. Or inject huge amounts of fine particulate matter (such as moon dust) into the atmosphere to drop surface temperatures and stop photosynthesis.

You might simply guide in big rocks from orbit (FOOTFALL) to selectively wipe out cities and bases, or accelerate rocks to higher speeds so their entry creates not only craters, but also killing bursts of x-rays due to collisions with atmospheric molecules. Why not excite the sun to a higher activity level by injecting it with particular types of asteroids to cause some real global warming.

Try using a time machine to hunt down ancestors of your present day enemies (a la Saberhagen's Berserkers.) Introduce a mutagenic agent into the food or water to turn your enemies into something different. Create ecologic disasters by bringing in Earth organisms that will outcompete native life forms. Engineer a quick-killing aerosolized plague with limited replicability and let it go.

Drop anti-matter bombs to generate massive bursts of radiation from above. Release a tiny black-hole nearby, which will inevitably guide itself to the enemy world's core and eat it from the inside out. Make a tactical strike against a tectonic weak point and set off massive waves of vulcanism (can you say Siberian Traps?) Fry them with immense orbital solar mirrors or out-of-system lasers pumped by the energy of an entire star.

For more stealth, selectively take over the minds of key enemy figures who can guide their society in directions to weaken it's defensive and offensive capabilities. Sneak in android duplicates programmed with your own objective to replace leaders.

In my opinion, E.E. "Doc" Smith is the king of future weapons technology on the gigantic scale, culminating with scenes in SKYLARK DUQUESNE where extra suns are sent crashing at trans-light speeds into the systems of enemy planets across an entire galaxy, creating an object like a quasar, but immensely brighter and deadlier.

Or, for a ground-pounding approach, what beats Keith Laumer's Bolos? On the smaller scale, why not create ultimate troops to win your battles? Anything from Gordon Dickson's entirely human Dorsai to Timothy Zahn's technologically augmented Cobras to Steve Stirling's biologically engineered Draka may fill your needs. As a mega-biological weapon, the movie series' Aliens, with their acid blood and horrific reproductive cycle are hard to match.

Just some thoughts.

reply to post by Oscitate

I think mass-based weapons are a bit old hat. There is evidence that asteroid-sized chunks of stuff have been used this way in the past - even on earth.

I think what the future holds (our future - other societies have already been using it) is thought-based "weapons." But you get a situation where weapons are so powerful that if they are used they destroy the whole game in the process, and you have to start over from scratch. So the future also holds various technologies for keeping the peace.

If you want space opera - look into the past! Though we may be doomed to repeat all those eons of inter-galactic war, I really hope we can come up with something a bit more constructive to do with our spare time.

how about this a gun that fires a beam that disrupts the strong and weak nuclear forces that hold matter together wait a minute we already got disintegrator guns. how about a weapon that people drik that makes them lose intelligience wait wait already got that too its called beer.

How about Using Controlled black hole as Weapon of Mass Destruction?

A giant "tazer" that shocks the whole planet, killing every living thing.

Or.. Self replicatin nanobots feeding on organic material.. After a while theres no more fuel and the process will terminate.. This would of course make the planet a bit "plane"..

If you had a wormhole generator, that could be very nasty if not a bit lopsided. Put one end right on the surface of some star, and the other above whatever you want to get rid of. But that kind of tech is probably too lopsided to make a good story of. (Unless you come up with some epic way to defeat it before activation. But then it's just another "Death Star" story.)

Likewise a teleporter could be just as mean, depending on what's being teleported. Not just bombs or raiding partys, but nanobots, chemicals, or biologicals could cause chaos at the target destination. Yet few popular sci-fi storys ever use the device this way.

Throwing a planet seems difficult, and if you could do things at that scale there may be better ways to assault your opponent. And if your opponent can defend against an assault on a star system, they may be able to deflect this kind of attack as well. However within a system, using a mass thrower on smaller bodies (like asteroids) seems logical. And has been used to good effect in other works of fiction.

For shorter range, there's your typical energy weapons. Lasers, phasers, and energy bolters and blasters of various sorts. Creativity is in explaining how they work and making it sound plausible. (One of my ideas is an electro-dynamic induction gun, that's an evolution of Tesla tech that shoots ball lightning. In which other exotic matter may be encapsulated if the discharge itself is not destructive enough. But working it into a story is another thing.)

And of course for up-close and personal there's the guided and kinetic weapons that are a seeming obvious evolution of current technology.

If you want to consider something odd, you might go for something that seems innocuous and possibly hard to detect. For example if you somehow figured a way to direct an interstellar gas cloud at a target, they may not notice what is going on. But then when it starts condensing in their planet's atmosphere and raining down volatile hydrocarbons upon them...
Nasty, huh?

With advanced technology, weapon spam is also an attack strategy. Consider robotic replicators, that build up elsewhere before homing in on the main target. Then the trick is defending against a countless onslaught. Are they hackable? Or is there some other unusual weakness?

There could also be chaotic attacks with memetic weapons that disrupt social order (either with infiltration or broadcasts), or releasing technology that is unexpectedly simple yet very dangerous upon an unadvanced society. This seems to happen in some sci-fi fiction, but on occasion it also backfires too.

In soft science fiction space operas, one of your best bets in weaponry is simply using the spaceship engines that allow for exciting stories to drive an unmanned spacecraft into a planet after accelerating until it has no more fuel. In space operas, ships can pretty much accelerate for as long as they want, and a pretty decent clip, so they should be able to impact with civilization killing force.

It's really kind of a problem in writing, really, because that means any little spaceship that protagonists ride about in can be used as a superweapon to destroy entire continents. Most authors just ignore this completely.

The other, weirder solution that is often used is giving the spaceships a hard speed limit that's a bout 300 miles an hour, and have them fly about like WW2 capital ships and fighters in space.