Is it theoretically possible to 'glass' a waterworld?

[klopkr]

Aquatics is coming out and I guess it got a question turning in my head.

If I had a fleet primed to nuke a Kamino type world to glass a species of underwater fish people would it work? Would I have to design some kind of nuclear torpedo to dive to the ocean floor? Would just sending endless nukes at the surface make much of a difference for life on the planet? Is the water acting like a force field?

 

[Quinzal]

Water does have a tendency to absorb radiation, but considering you get antimatter and quantum missiles, lightning guns, and hot plasma launchers not even that far into the game, my guess is that it's probably a non-issue.

If you shoot enough of anything at anything, wet or not, it's going to die. You just need a lot less antimatter to achieve that than you would nuclear bombs, which feels weird to say.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

Hmm good question.

I would guess the water will act as an isolation if you just nuke the planet. So if you don't deliver your nukes to the cities / buildings you want to destroy you would need a lot of them. At some point you will probably have boiled away enough of the ocean, but the energy needed would be immense.

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

probably possible to punctually create crystal sand, though to do so with the whole ocean floor would require an amount of energy that would vaporise the whole ocean leaving all kinds of molten salt glass crystals and sand, and even molten rocks after the greenhouse effect warming from the vaped water kicks in

it's much cooler though to turn an aquaworld into an ice world by shielding it from the sun

 

[treb]

Aquatics is coming out and I guess it got a question turning in my head.

If I had a fleet primed to nuke a Kamino type world to glass a species of underwater fish people would it work? Would I have to design some kind of nuclear torpedo to dive to the ocean floor? Would just sending endless nukes at the surface make much of a difference for life on the planet? Is the water acting like a force field?

You wouldn't so much glass it as evaporate the oceans. The thing is once you start it it will become becomes a self sustained reaction as water vapor is a very potent greenhouse gas which heats up the planet which evaporates more water, if it becomes runaway the planet would most likely turn into someting akin to venus, as the water causes the surface temperature to become so high the water can't reliquify.

 

[rubert]

Throw enough rocks at it and you can glass anything.

 

[Telenil]

I assume you use "glass" as a synonym for 'nuke', not in the litteral sense of covering an area with molten sand?

Nuclear weapons do work underwater. It will vaporize a chunk of ocean, without any radioactive fallout as far as the ocean dwellers are concerned (a pile of nuclear waste under a couple meters of water is completely safe as long as the water doesn't boil away). Then the shockwave, which is the part that does the real damage on a nuclear attack, will propagate even more effectively because water can't be compressed (which would absorb a bit of the blast over large distances).

I don't think you could cause a nuclear winter, because the rocks that form the ocean floor are too deep to be blasted out of the water. But destroying underwater cities with nuclear weapons is very much possible, if anything, the bomb would be more destructive.

 

[LegacyCWAL]

If you can throw enough energy at a planet to glass it in the first place, then you probably have enough spare energy to dry it off first.

 

[klopkr]

So maybe I just have to be more creative with the glassing. I guess enough nukes would just boil the world.

it's much cooler though to turn an aquaworld into an ice world by shielding it from the sun

That's so cool. I was looking at all tomorrows and one of the species ends up blocking out the suns of worlds. It'd be a cool 'slow' planet cracker by installing a space mirror ship in front of the planet turning them into a frozen world. Take it off later and unthaw your brand new blank canvas of a world.

I assume you use "glass" as a synonym for 'nuke', not in the litteral sense of covering an area with molten sand?

Nuclear weapons do work underwater. It will vaporize a chunk of ocean, without any radioactive fallout as far as the ocean dwellers are concerned (a pile of nuclear waste under a couple meters of water is completely safe as long as the water doesn't boil away). Then the shockwave, which is the part that does the real damage on a nuclear attack, will propagate even more effectively because water can't be compressed (which would absorb a bit of the blast over large distances).

I don't think you could cause a nuclear winter, because the rocks that form the ocean floor are too deep to be blasted out of the water. But destroying underwater cities with nuclear weapons is very much possible, if anything, the bomb would be more destructive.

I didn't consider the shockwave. I wonder how many nukes/size of nuke would be large enough to create a shockwave powerful enough to kill everything on the planet.

 

[Bezborg]

I always thought the best way to destroy and aquatic world is introduce some agent, biological or otherwise, that would turn the water to a gel, and suffocate the water breathers

 

[Slaughter]

With Torpedo Nukes, sure. If you're shooting lasers into it, you will probably need more energy until you start boiling the ocean.

 

[Ussnorway]

well you could lower a really big straw and just suck it up!

 

[Kapitalisti]

All is possible with enough teratons.

 

[Surimi]

So, assuming your aquatic species are physiologically similar to terrestrial fish, the chances are they don't live all that deep under the water, particularly if they had the energy to develop big brains.

Aquatic ecosystems are still almost entirely dependent on sunlight for energy. While it might take a bit longer for the effects of a nuclear winter to filter down into the deep ocean, it's going to happen eventually.

 

[fr-rein]

So, assuming your aquatic species are physiologically similar to terrestrial fish, the chances are they don't live all that deep under the water, particularly if they had the energy to develop big brains.

Actually that's not entirely true. They can easily use artificial lighting, create artificial warm water streams and etc as they develop society to go deeper. Especially ocean megapolises. Only pressure will be stopping them... but nothing stops them from creating a racially segregated society with some castes living on different depths.

This said, there is no doubt that "nukes" will be devastating for them.

 

[Surimi]

Actually that's not entirely true. They can easily use artificial lighting, create artificial warm water streams and etc as they develop society to go deeper.

True, but that would be kind of like us going to live at the top of the Himalayas (only quite a bit more extreme). Sure, you could do it with advanced technology, but you probably wouldn't want to do it unless you'd completely run out of space elsewhere.

 

[fr-rein]

True, but that would be kind of like us going to live at the top of the Himalayas (only quite a bit more extreme). Sure, you could do it with advanced technology, but you probably wouldn't want to do it unless you'd completely run out of space elsewhere.

It depends on how limited is space and whether building underwater skyscrapers is preferable to building skyscrapers into ground.

 

[Zenicetus]

As said earlier, with enough energy in a beam weapon you can just vaporize the ocean, but that's doing it the hard way. Other ways:

• Torpedoes loaded with Ice-9, a solid form of water that transforms anything it touches to more Ice-9 (h/t Kurt Vonnegut).
  
  
• Move a small black hole into the ocean, swallow the water and cause massive tidal disruption at the same time.
  
  
• Create a Gateway inside the ocean with the other side in vacuum space, same results as above.

 

[Ch4rybde]

Contrary to the comon belief, be under water as a protection for an explosion is not a good idea, in fact it make it worse, especialy if the explosion is coming from the water itself. The reason is that water is more dense than air, so mechanical waves will propagate faster, making them even more destructive.

 

[Ridixo]

Found this and actually is quite interesting:

Underwater explosion - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

As for glass a waterplanet i think that is something that can be ignored to keep the game running. On one of the Necrons codex for warhammer 40.000 it said that any poison, gas or biological agent that wouldn't affect the Necron for being inorganic is just changed pre-battle for more effective munition like acids, chemicals or other things. We also don't know how aquatics will work. Will they use ocean worlds or some kind or waterworld. In any case someone surely will a way to nuke them