Why don't the attackers just crack the planet?

[Scifi fan]

I have never read a satisfactory reason for this. In many stories, the invaders or intruders or whatever come and have to land forces to take out the defenders. The defenders can be good guys or bad guys, but they're always well entrenched, and a fight ensures, with lots of action.

The question that I've always asked is, why not just blow the planet up? If the planet has something of value, like prisoners who have to be rescued or valuable plantlife, then that is a good reason, but, often, there isn't a good reason. I guess having a planetary force field is a good explanation, but, if there is a force field, then the invaders can't land troops.

What's a good reason for not cracking the enemy's home world?

 

[chrispenycate]

Energy considerations. It's easy enough to render the surface of a planet uninhabitable, but actually cracking the core and making the bits fly off requires literally astronomical amounts of energy, more than you can conveniently transport.

Furthermore, even if you can destroy the planet, you're losing a lot of potentially valuable real estate (and possibly even some biologicals you could use). There can't be that many habitable planets around, and if you've taken the time to go out and destroy them, you might as well get something for your investment.

But admittedly, standing off and dropping a couple of dinosaur-killer sized asteroids on it would seem a wise first move, unless you wanted a few of the inhabitants for something.

 

[Scifi fan]

I think we agree - IF there is something important, like valuable real estate of biological material, then they wouldn't want to destroy the planet. We don't lob nukes against each other partly for that reason.

As for energy considerations, that is one explanation, but not used very often. In Starship Troopers, the protagonist said that they didn't have nova bombs initially and so couldn't crack Klendathu, the homeworld of the enemies; but, later, when they did have it, they couldn't use it because of the human POW's interred there.

I think that it would be very possible for a star faring civilization to crack a planet or get the sun to go nova, so power (or lack thereof) wouldn't be a good enough reason. There has to be something else, namely something the invaders want.

 

[chrispenycate]

When you actually do the figures, persuading a star to go nova, or a planet to crack open requires quite spectacularly large quantities of energy. Accellerating a multi-megaton spaceship up to near lightspeed requires more energy than has fallen on Earth since mankind came down from the trees; plunge it into the sun and you might get a solar flare. Crash Earth into the sun, you wouldn't get a nova; I'm not sure you could manage one with jupiter, even if there were enough energy to accelerate it anywhere.

But a chain fusion reaction in a planet's oceans or something like that could render the place uninhabitable for a thousand years or so, and surely that would be enough for any half-way reasonble war? So would a worthwhile solar flare; it's one thing to go down into deep shelters for protection, a completely different one to live down there fifty generations.

And there might even be an interstellar Geneva convention; any species contrvening it would be annihilated by all other sapient life-forms in the galaxy...

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Well it could be they have a civilised approach to taking over planets. Maybe there's a 'Gemini convention' on interstellar warfare that prevents the use of nasty weapons.

 

[Scifi fan]

An interstellar convention would work. David Brin's Startide Universe does seem to imply something like that, though such an idea is not often mentioned in other works.

Jack Chalker, in his Diamond quadrology, does have the human destroy one planet, and they imply they also have the ability to force the sun to go nova. And, of course, Arthur C. Clarke's 2010 did have the aliens turn Jupiter into a sun.

So the idea of destroying a planet is quite often used, but, in military science fiction, that is one issue to be addressed, and it often is not. What I would like to see, in the prologue or something, is an explanation why they don't do it - and the explanation must be credible. For example, I can see, in the Star Wars saga, why the Rebels wouldn't destroy the Ewoks' planet in Episode VI, Return of the Jedi; but I don't see why the Empire didn't do it to the ice planet Hoth in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. You don't surely think that the Empire, after having destroyed Leia's homeworld, would be deterred by some convention, do you? The Rebels, yes, not the Empire.

And, in Ender's Game, there was no such compunction towards exterminating the entire species of Buggers.

By the same token, I've read many lower end stories which parrallel the campaigns in WWII, but the writers follow history too closely, and they don't deal with the idea that the Second World War is different from the Fifteenth Interstellar War.

 

[dekket]

For example, I can see, in the Star Wars saga, why the Rebels wouldn't destroy the Ewoks' planet in Episode VI, Return of the Jedi; but I don't see why the Empire didn't do it to the ice planet Hoth in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

Considering that there wasn't an operational Death Star at the time might have had something to do with it.

A planet destroying weapon requires a lot of resources, and requires time to build.

 

[Pyan]

Quite apart from the practical and moral side of the idea, it would bring the story to an abrupt and premature end...

The Invaders!

Chapter One

Tom was working in the barn when his wife rushed in.

"Come and look, Tom! There's a funny shiny saucer-shaped thing in the sky and -"

BANG!


The End

I wouldn't buy it....

 

[Scifi fan]

LOL! Good ones, Pyan and dekket, good ones.

But Pyan, there should still be an element of credibility. But the issue would still come up in the readers' minds, and should be dealt with. As in, the enemy is entrenched on that planet, and we want to destroy them. Why not just slag the planet instead of going down and slugging it out?

By the way, this happened in the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942 - the Japanese holed themselves in caves, and the Americans sealed the caves. End of story.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Pyan:

It's got potential and it's a good first effort.

Though I think you should try and develop the characters more.

Whats Tom's motivation in the scene. If it's just to be disturbed so his wife can draw our attention to something in the sky then it would seem a little pointless since he apparently plays no further part in the plot.

It would be just as effective if the woman just observed the saucer and wondered what it was. There's also the problem that since the wife plays the vital role in the work I think it would be fair to at least give her a name or else you might be accused of sexism.

 

[Pyan]

it would seem a little pointless since he apparently plays no further part in the plot.

Actually, if you read on, you'll find that no-one plays any further role in the plot....

If there's anything I hate, it's people that don't read to the end.

 

[Dozmonic]

But Pyan, there should still be an element of credibility. But the issue would still come up in the readers' minds, and should be dealt with. As in, the enemy is entrenched on that planet, and we want to destroy them.

It wouldn't cross my mind, as a reader. A planet is a valuable resource and the chances that someone would put that much effort in to destroying one just for the single and sole reason of destroying the people on it is pretty much unthinkable.

There will always be an ulterior motive, and whatever they want from the planet, it is going to be easier to get when the planet is whole, rather than blasting it across the solar system in little chunks.

For them to want to destroy the whole planet they would need a bloody good and justifiable reason for me to believe that.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Pyan

LOL

That doesn't mean the characters don't deserve a proper consideration of their feelings.

They took the effort to struggle onto the page to play their part and it isn't very nice that you just discard them in this callous manner.

For instance if you didn't introduce the Tom character the carnage would be drastically reduced. If this fine tale is ever made into a film the sensors will notice this too and I'm sure they will suggest that it has too high death rate per scene and you should reduce it by 50% and leave the Tom character out of the story.

Plus you need to think about the children that may watch and how frightening it will be to have both main characters wiped out so late in the film when they have just spent the majority of the time getting to know them.

They will associate with Tom, no doubt he will remind them of there old grandfather and his nameless wife will be the twenty six year old money grabbing bitch he moved in with when Nana died.

 

[Scifi fan]

It occurred to me that, in Empire Strikes Back, the Imperial Fleet couldn't destroy the planet because they were detected too quickly - that's why Darth Vader killed the first Admiral.

Pyan, I think your characters are well fleshed out, but you should describe the scenes - add sights, sounds, and smells, as in, what animals were in the barn, what kind of work was Tom doing (shovelling hay or cow manure), what did his wife look like, and so on.

 

[Ursa major]

Maybe there's a 'Gemini convention' on interstellar warfare that prevents the use of nasty weapons.

* Wonders, idly, which planet Earth is twinned with. *


If you really want to read some fiction where the concept of planet-destruction is both a means and an end, Scifi Fan, you might try the Revelation Space trilogy: Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap. (I won't go into more detail as that would consitute a spoiler.)





(Oh, and isn't cracking a planet unsafe? )

 

[Pyan]

The Invaders!​

Chapter One

Tom was working in the barn, fixing the wheel on the left-hand side of the hay-rake - the one that always squeaked and pulled to that side - which was only to be expected, as he'd caught it on a gate-post ( the one on the entry to the top forty-acre field, that had come into the farm when his uncle had died - him that married a widow from over Hillhouse way, and never had a day's peace since - well, it was only to be expected, as she'd talked her first husband to death, they said - them being the local coterie of gossips and naggers that you get in any farming area) the very first time he'd tried to get it into the field - eventually, he'd had to move the post, as it'd always been a narrow entry - you had to sort of start to turn, then back up a ways and twist the wheels of anything larger than the dog-cart to get in there at all...anyway, he'd bent the stub-axle on the hayrake, and it'd never been right since, so as he had a few spare hours - and that was something that was rare indeed in a farmers life here in the far reaches of the Realm, as anyone can tell you that's tried to scratch a living from the soil - if that's what you'd dignify with that name, as most of it was as dry as dust and blew away with the slightest hint of a breeze (and a breeze in itself was a rare thing around there - it was usually either stifling hot and totally calm, so everyone baked in the sun, as was right and proper for the sort of poor peasants that all the locals really were, or it blew a hurricane, and all the topsoil, along with what was struggling to grow in it just disappeared over the horizon...so, he'd managed to get the axle-cap off, and was examining the end of the stub-axle with a worried expression on his honest, if somewhat careworn face - the usual sort of face you find in the countryside, when his wife rushed in.

"Come and look, Tom! There's a funny shiny saucer-shaped thing in the sky and -"

BANG!


The End

That better, then?

 

[Ursa major]

Now all you have to do is sort out is the title, Pyan.



From Wiktionary:

to invade (third-person singular simple present invades, present participle invading, simple past and past participle invaded)

1. (transitive) To move into. Under some circumstances police are allowed to invade a person's privacy.
2. (transitive) To enter by force in order to conquer. Argentinian troops invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982.
3. (transitive) To infest or overrun. The picnic was invaded by ants.

 

[Pyan]

..for goodness sake...

The Destroyers​

Chapter One

Tom was working in the barn, fixing the wheel on the left-hand side of the hay-rake - the one that always squeaked and pulled to that side - which was only to be expected, as he'd caught it on a gate-post ( the one on the entry to the top forty-acre field, that had come into the farm when his uncle had died - him that married a widow from over Hillhouse way, and never had a day's peace since - well, it was only to be expected, as she'd talked her first husband to death, they said - them being the local coterie of gossips and naggers that you get in any farming area) the very first time he'd tried to get it into the field - eventually, he'd had to move the post, as it'd always been a narrow entry - you had to sort of start to turn, then back up a ways and twist the wheels of anything larger than the dog-cart to get in there at all...anyway, he'd bent the stub-axle on the hayrake, and it'd never been right since, so as he had a few spare hours - and that was something that was rare indeed in a farmers life here in the far reaches of the Realm, as anyone can tell you that's tried to scratch a living from the soil - if that's what you'd dignify with that name, as most of it was as dry as dust and blew away with the slightest hint of a breeze (and a breeze in itself was a rare thing around there - it was usually either stifling hot and totally calm, so everyone baked in the sun, as was right and proper for the sort of poor peasants that all the locals really were, or it blew a hurricane, and all the topsoil, along with what was struggling to grow in it just disappeared over the horizon...so, he'd managed to get the axle-cap off, and was examining the end of the stub-axle with a worried expression on his honest, if somewhat careworn face - the usual sort of face you find in the countryside, when his wife rushed in.

"Come and look, Tom! There's a funny shiny saucer-shaped thing in the sky and -"

BANG!


The End

Better?

 

[Scifi fan]

I think we've found a new Isaac Asimov. I presume there won't be a trilogy?

 

[Vladd67]

Of course the planet could just be destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass and the only survivors could be oh I don't know sort of galactic hitch hi....hang on this rings a bell somewhere.