In the Dune universe, why not use laser weapons as bombs? - eviltoast

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?

  • sudo42@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    32·
    7 months ago

    I’m pretty sure the answer is that building a lasgun and a shield is more expensive than building a nuke.

    I proposed to drop a (inexpensive) laser gun on the enemy’s (existing city/fortress) shield. Simple, cheap and (overly) effective.

    • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      7 months ago

      I’m not entirely sure how you would rig the lasgun to fire in a way that hits the shield, while it’s falling from the sky. And I believe it’s random whether or not the shield blows up, so you’d need to drop several for safety.

      But at the end of the day, deliberately engineering explosions using shield-laser interactions still contravenes the convention against atomics. The great houses all have plenty of nukes, they really don’t need bootstrap solutions. The problem is political, not technical.