Slashdot Mirror
The Best Fictional Doomsday Devices
Ostracus writes to tell us that Wired has an interesting summary of some of the best fictional doomsday devices. These devices have featured heavily in movies, television, and fiction; their list includes favorites from Dr. Strangelove to Futurama. What devices have they missed? "By the time Futurama's sci-fi satire hit the scene, creator Matt Groening had the doomsday-device shtick down. Case in point: the Spheroboom. This highly explosive space/time-bending device isn't just the prized jewel of the show's mad scientist, Professor Farnsworth. It also destroys anyone/anything not wearing a 'Doom-proof Platinum Vest.'"
In Babylon-5 Harlan Ellison came up with mass drivers as an immoral weapon of mass-destruction on a planet-wide scale. The idea is that you grab nearby asteroids and bombard a habitated planet with them at very high speed. Not only does it indiscriminately kill the population, but the dust kicked up prevents proper plant growth over the entire planet for years, perhaps decades.
The best doomsday device has to be the Shadow planet killer. Why? Because jms forecast cloud computing could destroy the world *years* before RMS came out with the idea. ;)
In his novel, Rainbow Six, eco-terrorists design a virus which will wipe out all of humanity and plan to release it by spreading it at the Olympics. The athletes will take it back home to the host country, where it will multiply and kill everyone (except for the ecoterrorists, of course, who will live in a biosphere).
It's a nasty concept, made all the worse because it's not unachievable.
Has everyone forgottten the Dalek Reality Bomb which was designed to destroy the entire Universe?
Smivs on the intertubes!
From the end of the fourth season of the revived Doctor Who . . . The Osterhagen keys, when enough are presented at disparate sites, unlock the detonator to a set of nuclear devices implanted in the Earth's crust. Its purpose is to terminate the entire planet if the suffering of humankind is a fate worse than death.
www.wavefront-av.com
Anyone actually watch the Extended Director's Cut (DVD) of James Cameron's "The Abyss"?
(Mental Note: Do not piss off the deep sea dwelling aliens... Check!)
in the book Deep Storm. the weapon is not named per-say, but the idea is, you have two black holes. one composed entirely of anti mater, and the other, of its opposite normal mater. these two black holes. through means not understood by humans in the book, are locked in orbit around one another. it is learned by the end of the book, that these black holes are weapons, and whatever it is that keeps them orbiting each other can be turned off, allowing them to merge. the results of this of course, are on the order of the destruction of solar systems at minimum. this is the best one i've ever heard of.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
What about Unicron? He would eat the death star for breakfast. And shit it out by lunch.
I like planet eaters!
Maybe this is the wrong crowd for this, but in the Marvel Comics universe there is a character who is an elemental force of death who calmly goes through the universe devouring planets. His name is Galactus, and the Silver Surfer is one of his "heralds". Both characters of epic amounts of cool. Osh
what about the descolada from Enders Saga?
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
It is a thinly veiled Quantum of Solace promo. Because, there are not enough of those already.
From TFA:
Love affair-turbulent-popular-James Bond-love-feel safe-exhilarating.
PAUSE
The opening of Quantum of Solace on Friday-nostalgic-fun.
Subliminal much?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The ever more potent weapons of Doc Smith's Lensmen. First the Sunbeam, where the entire solar system is turned into a vacuum tube and the suns output is focused into a single beam. Then we have the Negasphere, a planetary sized chunk of anti-matter you toss at an enemy planet (with a tractor beam, because it's antimatter, see). The Nutcracker, two planets from another dimension, travelling in opposite directions, both exceeding the speed of light and then collided with the enemy planet in between. His ultimate weapon is so cool, I won't give it away, just in case you haven't read the books. You should read the books, if only to see who was playing with these ideas about 50 years before Lucas did Star Wars.
Look, if you're going to do a post about Lensman, you gotta do it right. You need more exclamation marks, you've got to gush constantly about how amazing it all is - and if you can work in a few words in all caps, all the better. Be sure to reiterate at every opportunity:
Bow-ties are cool.
The MD Device, also known as the Little Doctor
I wouldn't mind you in my head, if you weren't so clearly mad -Lews Therin Telamon
What about the Genesis Device?
You make it sound like reddit is way worse than here. I don't really see it. Anything that makes it on slashdot, I usually saw on reddit two days before. Of the other stuff on reddit that doesn't make it on slashdot, sure, some of it is drivel, but some of it is interesting and frankly should make it on slashdot. And you should be able to skim over the drivel easily enough, no? I like the idea of editors for quality control in theory, but let's face it: the editors here don't do even the most rudimentary quality control anyway. Glaring typos in headlines, same-day dupes, factually incorrect/flamebaity headlines/summaries, etc.
Which leaves only the old stalwart, "ah, but the magic of slashdot is in the comments". Yeah. Used to be true. Not so sure any more. I remember when I first started reading slashdot, there'd be a story about space exploration, and up would pop a bona fide rocket scientist. Story about maths - here's a comment from a mathematician working in that field. Now, it's just an endless cycle of the same old topics and the same old groupthinky comments. Oh look, yet another story about the RIAA, yet another +5 insightful for someone calling them the MAFIAA, hilarious. Frankly I think the mod system has bred a certain kind of pomposity here, many of the insightful/informative comments reek of holier than thou / comic book guy, so most of the comments I really enjoy here these days are the funnies. And reddit has equally funny, if not funnier, funnies.
Frankly since I discovered reddit it's become my first choice, and I no longer check slashdot every day, as I have done for the last 7 or 8 years...