Doomsday Device ex Boredom · 7:22am Jul 7th, 2016
So, I've been heavily contemplating the wisdom of employing the creation of a "Doomsday Device," so-called, created merely out of someone's boredom.
Mind you, this will be a (usually,) good/neutral character.
As such, I shall get to the point. I am looking for ideas as to the following:
A) The intended result of the device. ie, blowing up the planet, collapsing it into a microsingularity, turning it into a giant rubber chicken, etc. The only limits are these: it has to be localized to the particular planet in question, and no (major) time-travel-related effects, like making it never have existed/ wiping it from the timeline(s).
B) How it works. ie, internal mechanics. How individual parts interact with each other. Silly/serious sound effects and/or component names are welcome.
And, potentially, C) a name for the device, if you feel up to it. Be silly, be serious, be exceptionally loquacious. If I like it, I'll consider using it in some way.
I'll also credit those whose ideas I choose to take inspiration from.
The whole idea for this was inspired by the story "Anypony for Doomsday?", which is not one of mine. I only wish I could be as good as the original author when it comes to humor...
Go check it out, it's hilarious!
"Who the hell keeps a city-sized Doomsday Device capable of destroying a planet in their back pocket?!" Someone asked, incredulously.
"Well, they were always telling us 'be prepared!' In Boy Scouts..." I replied. "Besides, I was bored, so... why not?"
"Now, me, I'm a dishonest man. And you can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest." Said Captain Jack, as he carefully stepped over the piles of gold. "Honestly. It's the honest folks you've got to watch out for. You never know when they're gonna do something incredibly... stupid..."
Orbital Solar Cannon. It hangs in orbit between the target planet and its primary star. Then, through a complicated process that probably involves mirrors, it channels the light of the primary into a searing beam of destruction. When concentrated enough, it manages to puncture the planet's crust. Obviously, planetary destruction would still take a while, so it would need powerful shields to protect itself in the meantime.
4076342
Hmmm, nice thinking. A bit like the Death Star, or Starkiller Base, but still good. Solar death rays are always a good idea.
4077109 It pretty much operates on the magnifying-glass-cooking-ants principle.
Any similarities with Starkiller Base are entirely coincidental, as I made this thing up well over a decade ago. It was intended to be a weapon the Abonians (don't bother looking them up, I made them up, too) would just tow into orbit around any planet they didn't like and then sit back and watch.
4078101
Well, I kinda assumed it worked like that anywho. Lasers and light-based weapons go back for ages.
Remember Archimedes, and the mirror array of death?
Oh, and to anyone else who reads this, please let me know how you found this post. I'd like to see all inroads to my personal corner of this site...
I would suggest anything that doesn't fall into the go to doomsday weapons, if only to make it more interesting/unique, and to avoid the whole obvious doomsday weaknesses.
one that i would suggest personally is a design that my friend and i came up with that is completely plausible in our own reality. its basically a small (by the usual idea of doomsday weapons) electromagnetic/photon projection cannon that fires a large crystallized lead-glass shell containing a non-Newtonian protective fluid that contains a highly radioactive and unstable element (think of your common nuclear fission reactive element, only turned up to eleven) with a just critical mass pellet (basically an object of sufficient density to size ratio to form a black hole)
the critical mass pellet will not completely form into a black hole due to the energy stabilization caused by the rapid nuclear decay within the shell.
when the shell is fired, the crystallized lead begins to breakdown due to its less than optimal atomic arrangement coupled with electromagnetic stress and the bombardment of photons. this allows for the containing fluid to begin to dissolve from the outside in, once enough of the fluid has broken away and the energy stabilization breaks down, the critical pellet collapses into a black hole.
Optionally, if you want to go for a more destructive and scifi rout, instead of a black hole, the shell contains a white hole and the containing fluid is a plasma that can cause nuclear fusion, this would cause a violent mass ejection once the shell breaks down.
If you need anything else about this, just ask.
4095583
Nice. Me like.
Sounds like a real-world "red matter" bomb.
4095695 it was just something that started when my friend asked "what if we tried to make a snowball gun shoot a black hole?"
it was a fun few minutes