Explaining Nuclear Weapons in Space Combat

Spacedock delves into the complexities of nuclear weaponry in science fiction space combat.

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[Spacedock]

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[warmachine]

Somehow the idea of using a nuclear weapon as the 'propellant' for a kinetic weapon never occurred to me. Probably because it's such an outlandish notion based on how we normally conceive of such a device. Despite the Orion Drive being right there.

[Santisima_Trinidad]

One final use of a nuclear device, sourced from an *incredibly* fun debate i had with someone many a moon ago about railguns versus missiles in spaceborn combat.
Rather than attempting to use the nuke to directly damage the enemies ship, you can optimise your nuke for outputting broad spectrum radiation, ranging from gamma to visible to infra red. You then fire the nuke ahead of a traditional volley of conventional missiles. The nuke detonates as it enters the enemies point defense fields, and the vroad spectrum radiation whites out the enemies sensors for a short time, preventing there piint defense from accurately targeting your relatively small missiles. Your missiles, already being locked onto a far larger and easier to detect target, can proceeded to close and impact onto the enemies ship largely unaposed.

[jaffarebellion]

I love Stargate's delivery method, even if they did have to immediately nerf it because the audience would just ask "Why don't you teleport a nuke onboard their ship?" every time there's a space battle.

Though I think my personal favorite use of nukes in sci-fi is Battletech, specifically the first and second Succession Wars, as well as the age before the signing of the Ares Conventions. Not for any clever implementation, but for the simple, terrifying concept of nukes being used so casually and so often as to render them "frankly, fucking boring", burning thousands of worlds beyond the point of habitability at the whim of incompetent nobles who no longer know any other way to fight.

[igncom]

I can only imagine the design of a cannon that uses nuclear bombs as the propellant for it's shells, with a wide array of shots from plasma to solid shot. Almost like a return to the good old days of sail!
LOAD THE NUCLEAR GRAPESHOT!

[Marinealver]

A realistic space battle would be akin to 2 Ballistic Submarines in different oceans trying to Bullseye each other.

[resurgam_b]

The game Children of a Dead Earth is the only media I've ever seen portray nuclear munitions in space realistically, it's definitely not for everyone being menu heavy and containing some rather obtuse gameplay systems, but there is certainly some satisfaction to be gleaned from being able to design then launch hundreds of nuclear projectiles the size of a soda bottles at several km/s towards your hapless foe, then watch as their pitiful point defense fires continuously for several seconds, even destroying a few of the devices before being absolutely obliterated when the remaining projectiles slam into the hull or detonate around it, vaporizing nearly the entire mass of the ship in a light show visible from the other side of the solar system :D

[thedragondemands]

I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed, but I _do_ say, no more than 10 to 20 million killed - tops! Depending on the breaks...

[SumBrennus]

Master Chief: "Permission to Disembark."
Commodore: "To what purpose?"
Master Chief: "To return the enemy's bomb."
Master Chief... most epic troll ever.

[quitreadingmyname]

I would thoroughly recommend the game Children of a Dead Earth, which uses only modern tech to show ultra realistic space combat, it should be a pretty interesting breakdown for the channel.

[saturnv]

My favorite is definitely the GENSIS in Gundam Seed. It essentially redirect the energy of a nuclear explosion into one direction, making it into a sort of Gamma-ray cannon. The animation also showed how sailors in the spaceship literally exploded because Gamma-ray vaporized all the liquid in their body.

[Sky_Guy]

Woo, Starsector shout-out! Everyone here should give that game a try, it's fantastic!

[TheArklyte]

Nuclear weapons in science fiction - underpowered and underused. Unless the story ends by using one, which characters aim to avoid. Then it becomes supernova.
Remember Davy Crockett? The one example of miniaturized warhead that is remembered as a joke due to range limitations of its recoilless rifle method of delivery? Nowadays any 150+mm ATGM, artillery shell, small cruise missile, MLRS munition or light drone can carry those(not that there is much difference left between light cruiser missile, attack drone and heavy ATGM with advent of loitering munitions concept, growing ranges and decreasing sizes). And deliver them with pinpoint precision over dozens of kilometers. Remember those dozen plus something ATGMs on attack helicopters like AH-64 or Mi-28? Now imagine all of them having a 0.01-10 kiloton warhead and 20km range on each of those. That's NOWADAYS tech. Something we can do even today. And in fiction despite however dire the situation is, we don't use it. And funnily enough, aliens don't use them either. They use clean ecofriendly solar powered planet busting beams that leave no radiation behind...
Nuclear weapons are somehow scorned at even in setting with normalized hyperefficient ie magical nuclear propulsion.
Remember episode of Stargate Atlantis where they can't defeat Wraith mothership juiced up on ZPM energy because its _biological_ armor "regenerates too fast"? Remember how a few episodes prior they've used oversized MIRV to destroy asuran homeworld(or at least "strictly justified military targets" on it)? Why wasn't said MIRV used in this situation again? You may ask "but what it'd do if more powerful sci-fi weapons are failing"? To which I'd answer - it'll give both the organic ship and everyone on board severe radiation poisoning. Then I'll just sit back and watch how said _organic_ ship turns into giant cancer cell every time it tries to regenerate its armor and hull Akira style:P

[reeceemms]

I do want to see a video on EMPs in space or EMP type weapons like the Ion cannon from Star wars, basically weapons designed not to do damage to a ship but to disable the ship

[carlofthekey]

One really interesting weapon is actually a purely anti-nuke weapon. The Neutron Stampeder used by ZAFT in Gundam Seed Destiny would cause runaway fission reactions in any nuclear weapon caught in it's effective range causing them to detonate prematurely. It was such a great defensive tool as not only could it intercept nukes but could instantly destroy any ship carrying them. Meaning now ZAFT's enemy was now not only blocked from nuking them to death but also they couldn't even load nukes onto their ships without risking the destruction of their fleet.

[Whalewraith]

Galactica tanking that nuke was totally bad ass. I love that ship, the way it never got fixed between episodes just kind of bodged back together.

[RogueBipolarDemon]

"We see you Honorverse Fans" this made me exceptionally happy as the series is not as popular as I feel it should be.

[Terinije]

Still love seeing more Gundam footage. Hopefully we see breakdowns of various mobile suits (especially the iconic Zaku II) and ships in the future.

[crgkevin]

Wow, nuclear explosively formed projectiles. This is a new and terrifying concept to me…

[ophidahlia]

I was hoping you'd mention Nuclear Relativistic Kill Vehicles, a totally plausible application where you simply detonate a regular nuclear bomb which you've accelerated to relativistic speeds. You still get all the extra energy from relativistic mass/momentum like your typical kinetic RKV, but the most horrifying part of the NRKV is that the radiation released is now *much* more energetic as it gets very heavily blue-shifted well into the extremely high gamma range (relative to the unfortunate target moving at non-relativistic speeds, who is going to have a *very* bad day in space). There's a great example of this type of weapon in Dennis Taylor's "We Are Bob" series of novels (I won't spoil it), it's probably one of the most shocking examples of fictional nuclear weaponry I've ever come across.