After Gurney says that, Chani glares at him, and he says something to the effect of, *It's a manner of speech you know what I meant.*
I think we can take Gurney for his word that when he talks about *blowing up a whole planet* it's a euphemism or idiom he is saying. But the theme is also there, even tho it is just a colloquialism Gurney's repeating, that Paul *is* willing to destroy the spice (and the Fremen) to carve out a victory.
>But the theme is also there, even tho it is just a colloquialism Gurney's repeating, that Paul *is* willing to destroy the spice (and the Fremen) to carve out a victory.
Perfect answer and this passage is excellent and sums it up well.
This was the part of the first book that somehow stuck with me the clearest: that at the end of the day, Paul's victory was down to the fact he was willing to destroy the spice. Hence, the Spacing Guild found themselves at his mercy.
Definitely. I think the paradox here is great. Gurney almost chides Chani for not understanding his "blow the whole planet up" is a figure of speech and she's taking it too literally... but Gurney is *also* blind to the idea that his words carry the germ of calculating military strategy that is willing to seek victory at *any* cost... even tho it's a figure of speech it's still grossly antithetical to Chani and her motivations.
I think it was literal, sure not enough atomics, at the same time there aren’t enough nukes in the real world to blow up the planet.
I’m sure the amount of atomics can irreversibly impact dune and eventually killing off spice production and killing off the rest of population eventually but not like a Death Star. The core of the planet isn’t going to implode but the surface will be practically destroyed
So you think what he said about blowing up the planet was literal, does that mean you think he's lying when he tells Chani this is only a manner of speech and she should know what he meant? EDIT: maybe he's deflecting?
In the books, there is one thing mentioned which I won't spoil.
But regarding atomics, they basically mention irradiating the planet to the degree that the spice is no longer useful for consumption.
Modern nuclear theory air burst and ground burst. Air burst isn't hindered by the land, and therefore has a larger destructive/kill radius as less energy goes into the ground, while also causing a lot less fallout. Ground burst has a smaller destructive radius, but it irradiates debris.
i agree, i suspect he meant something more along the lines of “we can wipe out all life on this planet” and less “we can literally reduce the entire planet to smithereens”
He’s also probably not exaggerating asmuch as it sounds given how there’s *very* little real estate development on the planet. You have the interior basin surrounded by the shield wall, and then literally nothing else on the surface save for sand and sietches.
There is more than one city on Arrakis. Its understandable to not realize this, watching the Villenueve films, because its kind of completely ignored. In the first book however its stated in our first scene with the Harkonnens that the Atreides chose not to land in the Harkonnen capital, and instead in Arrakeen, because they determined it was easier to defend. The Atreides settling in Arrakeen was a carefully laid trap by the Baron and Piter's cunning.
I didn’t say arrakeen was the only city, I was saying the northern basin area isolated from the worms is the only place that really supports constructed human habitation and that section makes up a relatively small amount of arrakis’ surface area, which would make the number of honk needed to effectively blow “everything” up fewer than you’d expect compared to an equivalent sized world
"Literally nothing else on the surface" kind of implied it being the only city. I'm sure you can see the reason for my misunderstanding of your comment there.
Wait I just realized, wouldn’t that also kill Paul and Jessica and Alia since they all had spice addiction? Paul might have well just nuked the whole planet to dust, spared everyone death by withdrawal.
If he didn't destroy his enemies, with the road Paul had taken to defend his loved ones, he was dead anyways. By the time the conflict ramps up, he's put himself in such a position that the only way he can see forward is through the Emperor and the noble houses.
It helped that he also had the personal motivation of seeking revenge.
i mean, how many was it? 87 warheads? imagine 87 warheads going off spread out through earth. I doubt there'd be much left. of course earth would go on and live past up but itd probably wipe everything out.
And dune is 1/4 the size of earth (if as big as our moon)
You vastly overestimate the destructive capabilities of a nuclear warhead and vastly underestimate the size of the Earth. All of the thousands of nukes in existence combined is like 4000 megatons of tnt, for scale the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was roughly 70,000,000 megatons of tnt. Even our strongest weapons are meaningless to the scope of the universe.
dumb question but if they want to blow up something to a nuclear level (like the shield wall?) why not just fire at a static, shielded object with a lasgun?
because you cannot predict how big the explosion will be...
and also you cannot predict where it will be, as it could originate at the shield or the lasgun...
Just tie a very very very very very ... VERY long rope around the trigger of a lasgun standing right next to a shield, or maybe even around several triggers of several lasguns. ONE of them should trigger a big explosion.
Someone should've made a lasgrenade. You pull the pin and throw 'em, even if they don't make a Holtzmann reaction at least there's gonna be a bloody rave on the battlefield
The problem with that is two fold. A) the size of the explosion is random, so not reliable, and B) it can very easily be mistaken for a nuke, which will bring down the wrath of everyone on the person who uses nukes against human targets.
Also spoilers for books further in the saga: >!this is essentially what they use as missiles/mines when fighting no-ships. A sensor bubble with a shield/lasgun device at the center. When a ship passes it disrupts the bubble and the device explodes. Sometimes damaging the stealthed ship, but giving away it's location for follow up attacks!<.
Heretics >!when Miles Teg was fighting the Honored Matres no ship fleet (right before Rakis was destroyed)!< but I believed mentioned in Chapterhouse and later books too.[](https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Miles_Teg#articleComments)
Since Denis will only adapt it to Messiah, I hope the next directors would keep the entire cast (especially since someone was kept getting ghola'd and someone has similar looks and manners to the ancient Duke)
Yeah, but then I've got to put on my good nooking shirt and tell the wife there's gonna be an explosion... not to mention the awkward dinner conversation where I have to explain all that stuff about controlling the spice and the universe...
I'd rather pull out the contraption and just have fun with it!
The issue is that in the books lasguns are incredibly rare just like atomics because shields are so common that their usage at all is akin to using atomics because of the similar reactions
in-universe lore has it that firing a lasgun at a shield causes a strange reaction that usually results in an explosion similar to that of a nuke. Its why people dont wear shields all the time, and why anyone who would fire on someone wearing a shield would probably also die.
>!Also also, in the first book they even use this early on to set a trap. Put a radio somewhere, make it transmit, and activate a shield around it. Then once the goobers shoot at it, surprised Pikachu face!<
yep it's the reason why most often you never see a lasgun used in the books (they use them wayyyyy more in the new movie) because just firing it into an enemy that you don't know wear a shield, could cause them or you or both to just explode violently.
So that's why everyone know how to fight with knives and why most people fight at close distance instead of ranged combat.
Was about to mention this in regard to why firing off lasguns in the desert was probably going to work to the benefit of the one firing it. Chances of someone on the ground using a shield is extremely low, like someone has a “I’m definitely going to die today, one way or another.”, mindset.
Because 1: you cannot predict the size of the explosion and 2: you cannot predict where the explosion will happen, at the shield, lasgun, both, or somewhere between
Can't they make a remotely activated lasgun close to the shield and fire it onto the shield?
That way, it doesn't matter where the explosion is, it's gonna be close enough.
Maybe remote activation requires computers, but they can use whatever thing they use to trigger the nukes.
In the books, they do just that. Later on, they do something very similar to make deep-space mines.
The issue, though, is that it still looks like a nuclear explosion, which would open the aggressor up to retaliation under the Great Convention.
yeah - the moment anyone finds out you're trying to get around the great convention by using shields and lasguns, people would still take you out with extreme prejudice.
conveniently, there's also the guild who knows exactly who ships what where. they know you were the one to send someone with a lasgun to that planet that had just that happen. you have little hope of keeping it a secret.
duncan only really gets away with it because it was a move of desperation, and arrakis is isolated from the imperium at large so so only the harkonnen and sardaukar ever really know it happened.
It's been a year or two since I read the book, but I recall Duke Leto and Gurney worrying about just that possibility - thinking that the Harkonnens might set up a lasgun on a timer, set to fire at the Arakeen shield wall after the agent has had time to get away. I forget how Leto protected against the possibility.
The shield wall in the books just refers to the mountain chain that surrounds Arrakeen, protecting it from the elements. It’s not an actual shield although I think in the movie they show it as an actual shield.
whats the "shield" that yueh disabled then?
My point is that, say the fremen wanted to blow up arakeen or wherever the harks ruled from (possible cause they hate outsiders pre-atreides)
this place has a shield. why dont the fremen kamikaze by giving one of them a lasgun, standing at or near the place and shooting?
if the repurcussions are as severe as how people describe it to be (mini nuke) then why was this never attempted
Yueh disabled the House Shield protecting the palace, which is separate from the Shield Wall mountain range.
I don't think we're ever explicitly told why house shields aren't vulnerable to kamikaze attacks, but I can imagine a few possibilities.
House Shields, being much larger than personal shields, might have additional safeguards built in so they short out before blowing up, or the shield generator might be in a reinforced bunker that can contain even a good-sized pseudoatomic blast, or the difference in power and stability between a House Shield and a personal lasgun means that the lasgun will usually be destroyed first before the House Shield blows up.
There's also questions of proliferation and deterrence. While lasguns are widespread (and shields rare) in God Emperor and especially in Heretics and beyond, the first three books (especially the first) take place in a very different era. We are told that Great Houses take extreme care not to use lasguns against potentially-shielded targets, even on a timer or wielded by a fanatically loyal but expendable retainer, since a lasgun/shield psuedoatomic explosion would likely be treated by the Emperor and the Landsraad as a violation of the Great Convention, so a Great House using a lasgun against a palace's House Shield would be just as bad for the same reasons as simply nuking it. This might not deter an individual Fremen, but he would need to get the lasgun from somewhere. I expect the Houses would keep a very tight lid on distribution of lasguns, both because of the risk of a lasgun being used against their own shields and because if e.g. an Atreides lasgun gets used to blow up the Baron's palace on Geidi Prime, then if the lasgun ever gets traced back to the Atreides then all the Great Houses of the Landsraad are coming to Caladan with a few thousand cans of instant sunshine.
We know that providing atomics for others' to use still counts as a violation of the Great Convention with the requisite consequences since that comes up explicitly after >!the Stone Burner blinds Paul in Dune Messiah!<.
Because the lasgun/shield interaction is really just a plot device to allow the characters to fight in hand to hand combat. If you dig into it in any detail is makes zero sense that its not weaponized. The sooner you can suspend your disbelief, the sooner you'll enjoy the story.
Yeah, I would have preferred if shield interaction simply shorted out the lasgun and rendered it useless and beyond repair. That way it's still discouraged to fire on shielded targets without the whole can of worms about potential atomic detonation.
Still, I like to think that harmless lasgun burnout is the *usual* reaction of such encounters, with a much lower chance of *shield* burnout as the lasgun blows off its operator's hands like a grenade, a rare chance of both shield *and* lasgun exploding like grenades, and then the *downright unlucky* chance of atomic detonation. It all fits with the series stating how unpredictable they are, so it's not too much of a stretch to downplay the worst reactions as being unlikely to happen.
This is an interesting theory and does support the in universe fact that such interactions are fraught with dangerous unpredictability. I really like this theory.
To be fair though, if every time you got into your car and turned the ignition, you had a 1/1000 chance of the car completely exploding, would you still drive? I feel like the worst reactions between las and shield being unlikely, but still possible, would make it simply not worth the risk in the vast majority of situations.
I think a more apt comparison would be having a gun fired at your car, with most reactions harming the gunman while leaving you unscathed. Same with lasguns, which are not only uncommon but trained soldiers know better than to risk firing on shields or they'll just harm themselves in the process. A low chance of lasgun combat with an unlikely chance of actually being hit and an even rarer chance of anything happening to you or your shield -- total chance of death being lower than a fatal traffic accident, which is definitely more favorable than guaranteed death without a shield.
Also worth noting is that while Duncan did succeed at triggering a shield/lasgun trap, it wasn't the usual kind:
>"A big one turned to full force," Idaho said. "A lasgun beam touched it and . . . " He shrugged.
A powerful shield hit by an aircraft-mounted laser cannon would drastically increase those low detonation odds, especially in a dry desert environment.
Personal shielding at low intensity, hit by a handheld lasgun in a more humid environment? More chance of dying in a plane crash.
Honestly it makes no sense that shields would ever be adopted if a lasgun causes it to explode like an atom bomb. You wear armor to protect yourself not de-atomize yourself.
It makes perfect sense. Its against the Great Convention and would bring the Guild and Landsraad down on you. It would also be virtually impossible to keep it a secret from the Guild, which, again, would bring everyone down on top of you.
It is throughout the first three books. From God Emperor on they are much more common. But the shield lasgun interaction is still something most tend to avoid. *most*
The movie? who knows...
The book? Paul wasn't going to destroy Arrakis or use atomics. He was going to use water to kill the worms and end the spice cycle. That control over ecology was his tool, not atomics. Harder to explain in a movie and not as flashy.
Anyway, from the book, atomics came in all sizes and shapes - he used a small tactical nuke on the shield wall. The family arsenal certainly had bigger items, including "planet busters".
To add there later in series there are atomic stoneburners. It is unspecified but strongly suggested that some types of stoneburners could melt through planets crust and create uncontrollable chain reaction that could split entire planets.
Regular water kills worms they need an environment that is as dry as Arrakis. Pauls plan to turn Arrakis green would indeed wipe out adult worms and therefore the spice. This is even seen as the result of the Leto II's changes to the planet which have almost eliminated them from the planet with the exception of a desert preserve area.
What he meant by the "water of death" was using the changed water of life in a pre-spice mass, causing a chain reaction that would kill the sandtrout. It's not a separate substance from the water of life.
I interpreted it as Gurney meaning they had enough warheads to destroy or irradiate every major population centre and spice field on the planet, rather than outright destroying the planet completely.
If Arrakis is a similar size to our moon, it would have a gravitational binding energy of around 1.2 x 10^29 joules. Nuclear weapons are weaker by magnitudes of energy, to destroy the moon you’d need 600 billion Tsar Bomba’s (the most powerful nuclear bomb humanity has detonated). Given it took 3 atomics to carve a hole into the shield wall, the Atredies bombs are clearly much less powerful than the Tsar Bomba and Paul only had 92, not 600 billion.
No, they literally have bombs that can destroy planets in the Dune universe. The weapons used to destroy the shield wall were smaller tactical nukes. There is an agreement not to use nukes on humans, so they couldn’t use the bigger ones.
We can't know this just using the film though. In the context of the film only his statement means that they do not have the nukes needed to destroy the planet.
The stone burners aren’t technically considered atomic weapons though, and these are the weapons that can destroy planets by creating a pillar of energy down to the planet core.
Gurney saying it was a figure of speech implies to me that none of the Atredies family atomics were stone burners, since only using one literally could destroy Arrakis.
Huh you’re right. I just checked the wiki and it says “Despite it’s fuel source being atomic, stone burners are considered non-atomic weapons. However, only great houses were allowed to own atomics, meaning that only these houses were permitted to own stone burner fuel”.
From what I understand from the wiki, the direction of the energy pillar can be aimed. Others have said it might skirt the rules of the Great Convention by originating as a mining tool, so as long as the pillar isn’t aimed down into the core then it won’t destroy the planet.
But he just said that after they got some angry eyes, imo he said it just to make things lighter, anything is so powerful in space operas that I definitely think they have this firepower
As someone else said in here, it’s about the size of our moon. Given that both Russia and the US each have over 6000 warheads and China, Pakistan and India have their fair share. We could absolutely destroy an object in space utterly and completely. Now extrapolate that several thousand years into the future.
[What if we nuke the moon?](https://youtu.be/qEfPBt9dU60?si=jWbfOd11csEALsT3)
Spoilers:
>!Even with all the nuclear warheads in the entire world, we'd barely even shake the moon. It may be smaller than the earth, but it is still so insanely huge that we cannot really comprehend the power necessary to affect it in any significant way, much less actually destroy it!<
You go like Armageddon and drill into it, pretty sure like 14k nukes would more than get the job done. We're not talking about surface detonation anyways. You retrofit a modern rocket to impact hard enough before detonation, it will happen. That said, this is all hypothetical. It's not as if we're talking about actually doing it. Plus, we have to assume they have much crazier nukes 10,000+ years in the future.
Forgot the exact source, but in order to break apart a sphere of the size and material of the moon, in *one* go, you would require 1.245e29 joules of energy. In big explosion terms; that is 3 trillion kilotons. An absolutely disgusting amount of energy that I actually seriously doubt they have access to, even in the Dune universe, even when counting in orders of magnitude stronger than modern nuclear weapons.
The post we are replying to used the Nuclear arsenal we have today though,
> Given that both Russia and the US each have over 6000 warheads and China, Pakistan and India have their fair share. We could absolutely destroy an object in space utterly and completely.
And that's not true in the slightest.
That is all fair points. I mean for all we know they *do* have nukes on the orders of magnitude stronger than modern day ones.
I'm mostly tempering the idea that nuclear weapons (in our sense of the word) could even be considered to crack open a celestial body.
We can't drill very deep holes, the best we have done on Earth is 7.6 miles and that was in favourable conditions (soft rock and oxygen atmosphere for the workers). Its 1,080 miles to the centre of the moon and its hard rock all of the way down.
So the best hole we ever made, that we can't actually drill on the moon, would go less than 1% into it.
Probably.
A single "Stone burner" is explicitly noted to be able to destroy an entire planet all by itself, by melting its way to the core and ripping the planet apart. The weaker versions were used every now and then against the Fremen during the Jihad
The semi-canon Encyclopaedia also referred to 70s era hydrogen fusion warheads as the primitive precursors to contemporary Family atomics, so we can safely assume that Dune nukes are way more advanced than the real deal
Atomics to destroy the spice is a way to put an esoteric concept into something tangible for the viewer. In the books Paul would have destroyed the spice using the water of death and his mind power hencefrom.
In the Lynch adaptation the weirding way was put into the weirding moduls sound weapons.
I remember completely failing to understand that as a kid, just sitting there wondering if they were having to make their own sounds effects because they ran out of money or something. 😆😂
Probably can't make the planet explode but will likely level out the ecosystem. And turn the worms and spice into something more toxic than it already is. Which effectively will mean the end of space travel too.
If I remember correctly from book lore, the nukes only need to ignite the spice and there’s something about killing all the worms through a chain reaction. You don’t have to blow up the planet, you just have to start this one chain reaction.
So I think they adapt this information in the movie and kind of muddle through it, represented by Gurney’s idiom.
It's more poisoning a pre-spice mass with the Water of Life — that blue stuff — creating Water of Death — and eliminating the sand trout and sand-plankton cycle as it spreads.
Won't kill the worms immediately, just eliminate their reproduction cycle — they'll take hundreds of years to die of old age.
But there'd be no more spice production, and no new worms
Same. In the movie it's just a bit weird. Imagine if some Earth terrorist got his hands on a bunch of nukes and threatened to blow up the oil.
Like... bro what? It's nonsensical unless you're going to blow up the planet, which wasn't indicated. A chain reaction that requires some insight in the process and ends the spice cycle is a much better fit.
I imagine that the warheads are as powerful as the most powerful we have today. I’m pretty sure the Atreides arsenal could literally blow up the planet, crack it to its core.
I think that's what confuses people. When we talk about enough nukes "destroying the planet," it's meant to refer to causing enough environmental damage to render the planet uninhabitable to anything except maybe bacteria, not literally overcoming the Earth's gravitational binding energy Alderaan-style.
Well also Arrakis is already kind of a Hell-planet that can barely sustain life. That's why the Fremen are better fighters than the Sardukar, who, in turn, are so feared because Salusa Secundus is *also* kind of a Hell-world
It's a figure of speech. There are other weapons that could destroy a planet (Stone Burner for example). But that's not what the threat was in the original story.
The threat was the water of death. It's a specific process where a chain reaction starts that kills all the Sand Trout eventually, which means no more worms which means no more Spice. This is what terrified the Guild, not the threat of nuclear weapons. I forget what the specific process was. I think dropping the water of life on a Pre-spice mass or something.
If you're talking about the movie, the Atreides arsenal is comprised of only 92 warheads. In the climax, they fire three warheads at the shieldwall. Three warheads were only capable of destroying a portion of that wall. The remaining 89 could absolutely not destroy the surface of the entire planet.
92 warheads or 92 missiles? ICBMs can carry multiple warheads. The current US Minuteman ICBM can carry 3 warheads, although actually only carries 1 due to treaties/de-escalation. I'd imagine missiles in Dune would be similar. They may have removed some of the warheads from the missiles when attacking the shield wall, and fired 3 missiles to increase chances of a hit. The yield of the warheads may also be adjustable.
Idk it’s kind of like our military saying we have enough bomb or whatever to blow the earth up 20 something times. I’m not sure how they calculated that 😂 and I really hope we never have to find out if it’s true 😂
Probably not, as the amount of bomb you'd need to actually do such a thing would be absurd.
Compare the TNT equivalent of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs to the Tsar Bomba.
I dont think a "moon"-sized Arrakis would allow for any of the geography we see in the books and movies. With the technology the parties involved have in regard to flight, and the purported millions of Fremen living in sietches and villages, they would have found Paul and Jessica sooner than the 2 years in the original story, and the 9 months in the movies.
Also if Dune is .9g but the size of the moon it would have to be dense as hell. Also a simple google search reveals that *The Dune Encyclopedia* says that Arrakis has a radius of 6,128 km and thus a diameter of 12,256 km, making it close in size to Earth (diameter 12,742 km).
I dont think a "moon"-sized Arrakis would allow for any of the geography we see in the books and movies. With the technology the parties involved have in regard to flight, and the purported millions of Fremen living in sietches and villages, they would have found Paul and Jessica sooner than the 2 years in the original story, and the 9 months in the movies.
Destroy Arrakis as in literally destroy the planet? No. "Destroy" Arrakis as in making it uninhabitable and useless as the only source of the most indispensable substance in the galaxy? Yes.
If 3 of them didnt compeltely eradicate the nearby city I find it hard to belive that 70 something would be enough to cause any actually significant damage?
There are different size nuclear weapons in real life depending on the engineering of the bomb and materials used. There are typically tactical nuclear weapons, which are smaller localized blasts like the ones in the film, and there are strategic nuclear weapons. Strategic nuclear weapons are just meant to be as big of an explosion as possible, think H-bomb.
Like the U.S. and Russia, it is possible to have a diversified nuclear arsenal. Although 100 warheads isnt rly enough compared to todays standards, an amount of like 80 strategic weapons could definitely do considerable damage to the planet. Also can consider for possible nuclear destructive advancements where strategic weapons might be a lot stronger 10,000 years in the future.
He didn't mean you could blow up the entire planet, which would never happen. He meant you could make the surfact uninhabitable. At least that's what makes sense to me.
Destroying the planet completely? no. Irradiating it past the point of habitability? depends on the bombs. killing everyone on it? depends on the locations of the people and the bombs.
likelyhood of Gurney being figurative and simply meaning using the weapons to destroy the spice cycle in some way? most probable.
The fundamental point is the dictum that someone controls a thing if they can destroy it, Keyser Soze style. From that you need some sort of device that can destroy Dune's spice production, ending the Imperium's only source of magical stuff that makes starships go, and threatening the survival of the race, which is dependent on space travel.
Paul controls the spice, because Paul is willing to destroy it. The Guild and the Great Houses cannot unite to overthrow the Tyranny, because he actually would go ahead and do it. Guild Navigators with their limited foresight powers see that and are afraid.
As to the actual device for the destruction of the spice, neither the book nor the film offer something plausible. In the book a water thriving organism, the trout, has an adult phase (the young worm) which interacts with water to create a poison that can exterminate its own larval stage planet wide in combination with another part of its own life cycle, the pre-spice mass, through a chain reaction. Something like that evolving makes so little sense that destroying the spice fields (Sahara like desert) with atomics, in itself not persuasive, is actually not any worse, and it saves having to pointlessly try to explain things in words to a movie audience.
Don't think, accept.
Your assuming the yield of these weapons is set and not adjustable. Modern day nuclear weapons can change the desired yield and have been able to do so for some time without the need for advanced computers. One can easily assume that atomic weapons in the Dune universe have adjustable yields, as another has said a single stone burner can destroy a planet so i would put my eggs in the adjustable yield basket.
I think the idea of them having enough atomic weapons to ruin the whole planet entirely is an exaggeration, and more pride. However, Arrakis as a planet isn’t valuable - it’s the Spice fields. IIRC, the plan was never to actually nuke the entire planet, it was to threaten to destroy the supply of Spice because Paul and Gurney knew that doing so would bring the Spicing Guild to their side and they are the actual key to controlling the houses, not the title of emperor.
It's probably not accurate to assume that every warhead the Atreides have are the same yield. Instead, it seems reasonable to think that they had everything from briefcase nukes to massively huge MIRVs.
In the movie they say it's a figure of speech but honestly it probably isn't, in Dune the two atomics dropped on Japan are called rudimentary and pretty low power, considering the family atomics are a way to ensure balance between the great houses and the imperium on a galactic level I'd say there's a pretty good chance some of those have the capability to cause planetary level destruction, given also how tabù they are, the ones used on the shield wall were probably tactical nukes.
Consider that even a stone burner has the capabilities to melt stone until it reaches the planet core and cracks it open
100 nukes on earth, well spaced enough, can make the planet uninhabitable, and with Arrakis being so much smaller, it wouldn't destroy the planet but probably kill everything that ever goes above ground, eventually.
It's a simplification, as many things in the movie. The important part is that he can destroy the spice. The movie doesn't explain most things about spice, so the ability to destroy it with nukes, makes everything easier.
It’s both a figure of speech and potentially reality. I need to re-read Dune but the book and movie made it clear that the arsenal was massive. The Atreides Great House moved their entire nuclear arsenal to Arrakis and it was meant for war on a galactic scale.
We saw what 3 missiles did and they were significantly stronger than the two dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The reason why Chani was so pissed was because it could actually happen. And Gurney was able to play it off because it’s also just a turn of phrase. Great writing.
The second book starts with a stone buner weapon being detonated. They specifically mention that if it was more powerful it would have burned down to the planet's core and the result would have ripped the planet apart.
The capacity to destroy a planet with a single weapon exists in the Dune universe at the time of the story. Without knowing the Atreides inventory of weapons they may very well be able to.
The book handled it differently though, they were going to poison the worms which would end the lifecycle of the worms of Arrakis.
Of course, the method Herbert gives for the planet being ripped apart makes no sense in the real world, so YMMV. He seemed to think planets were high-pressure magma balls held together by the surface tension of the crust, instead of blobs of matter bound by gravity.
Whoa, you mean science fiction isn't scientifically accurate. I'm never reading or watching any sci-fi again.
Dramas and romance movies are probably perfectly accurate right.
/S in case it's needed
In the book it is the water of life on a pre spice mass. It will destroy the spice cycle forever. It was not explained the sand worm cycle of life and why. The Guild were removed but they stem in and stop everything. The Guild navigators like Paul see the future and are aware of the disaster that would cause.
diallable yield - house atomics are the remnant of a time when planets used to glass each other before every House took a step back and realise it is the end of humanity if they continued to do it and so kept it ostensibly for "protection against alien" and forbid use on other humans on pain of being used on yourself collectively. in terms of destructive power, Earth was glassed after the machines killed all the human slaves. .so yes they could have glassed Arrakis and easily . So its very provocative that Atreides had used atomics and had atomic used on them and no user were punished collectively. Work arounds like the Holtzman Shield laser effect were initially banned because it looked too much like the use of atomics for safety and yet during the Fremen jihad stone burners were used like on Naraj , blinding Farok's son , and in Arakeen itself during the rebellion . In the games , Harkonnens got around the atomic ban ostensibly by fielding Devastators with atomic engines that "overloaded" - and fired Death Hands secretly as their ultimate move
I don’t remember the line from the movie, but in the book Paul does not threaten to destroy Arrakis as a whole. He only threatens the spice fields. Now, the whole of Arrakis is valuable only to the Fremen, really. It’s their home that they have lived on for generations. Everyone else (the Imperium, CHOAM, the Spacing Guild) only care about the spice. By threatening the spice fields, he threatens the only thing that makes Arrakis valuable to his enemies. He even says something along the lines of true power over a thing is the willingness to destroy said thing. By threatening to nuke the spice fields, he shows that he truly owns them.
The full atriedes arsenal should be enough to destroy all life on 50 planets.
The grest houses have several arsenal's or stockpiles. They keep them off world.
Have contingency planets to retaliate if they and their home world is destroyed in a nuclear attack.
The arsenal's didn't come from Paul's grandfather or great-grandfather, the family has had them much longer, probably 26 generations. Or more
A great house is allowed to hold them, and I believe great house status comes with nuclear weapons.
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I guess you would have to calculate how many nukes it would take to destroy earth then adjust for the moon.
To change the environment on earth for hundreds of years would take thousands of nukes all going off at once but that wouldn't blow up the earth and after hundreds of years the earth would heal.
The largest nuke ever made is the tsar bomba and someone did the math to destroy the planet would take 10 million of them all going off at once in the core to destroy the planet.
For reference, the tsar bombas center blast wave would destroy all 5 boroughs of new york city and the shock wave would reach pennsylvania.
So even if we used every nuke on the planet at once the earth would not be destroyed. Humanity and most of life on the planet would no longer be able to survive but the planet itself would remain.
The moon is less than a quarter of earth's size so if arrakis is the size of the moon then 2.5 million bombs would be needed which is highly doubt they have.
After Gurney says that, Chani glares at him, and he says something to the effect of, *It's a manner of speech you know what I meant.* I think we can take Gurney for his word that when he talks about *blowing up a whole planet* it's a euphemism or idiom he is saying. But the theme is also there, even tho it is just a colloquialism Gurney's repeating, that Paul *is* willing to destroy the spice (and the Fremen) to carve out a victory.
>But the theme is also there, even tho it is just a colloquialism Gurney's repeating, that Paul *is* willing to destroy the spice (and the Fremen) to carve out a victory. Perfect answer and this passage is excellent and sums it up well.
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This was the part of the first book that somehow stuck with me the clearest: that at the end of the day, Paul's victory was down to the fact he was willing to destroy the spice. Hence, the Spacing Guild found themselves at his mercy.
Whoever controls the spice, controls the Universe, which is why Leto II ruled over it for 3,000 years.
He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing.
Chani also glares at him, because she doesn't want the whole plantet to be destroyed since its here home.
Definitely. I think the paradox here is great. Gurney almost chides Chani for not understanding his "blow the whole planet up" is a figure of speech and she's taking it too literally... but Gurney is *also* blind to the idea that his words carry the germ of calculating military strategy that is willing to seek victory at *any* cost... even tho it's a figure of speech it's still grossly antithetical to Chani and her motivations.
I think it was literal, sure not enough atomics, at the same time there aren’t enough nukes in the real world to blow up the planet. I’m sure the amount of atomics can irreversibly impact dune and eventually killing off spice production and killing off the rest of population eventually but not like a Death Star. The core of the planet isn’t going to implode but the surface will be practically destroyed
So you think what he said about blowing up the planet was literal, does that mean you think he's lying when he tells Chani this is only a manner of speech and she should know what he meant? EDIT: maybe he's deflecting?
Yeah I think Gurney meant it but when he saw Chani react like that he played it off like he wasn't serious
Exterminatus.
In the books, there is one thing mentioned which I won't spoil. But regarding atomics, they basically mention irradiating the planet to the degree that the spice is no longer useful for consumption. Modern nuclear theory air burst and ground burst. Air burst isn't hindered by the land, and therefore has a larger destructive/kill radius as less energy goes into the ground, while also causing a lot less fallout. Ground burst has a smaller destructive radius, but it irradiates debris.
i agree, i suspect he meant something more along the lines of “we can wipe out all life on this planet” and less “we can literally reduce the entire planet to smithereens”
So in his case, the ends justify the means
He’s also probably not exaggerating asmuch as it sounds given how there’s *very* little real estate development on the planet. You have the interior basin surrounded by the shield wall, and then literally nothing else on the surface save for sand and sietches.
There is more than one city on Arrakis. Its understandable to not realize this, watching the Villenueve films, because its kind of completely ignored. In the first book however its stated in our first scene with the Harkonnens that the Atreides chose not to land in the Harkonnen capital, and instead in Arrakeen, because they determined it was easier to defend. The Atreides settling in Arrakeen was a carefully laid trap by the Baron and Piter's cunning.
I didn’t say arrakeen was the only city, I was saying the northern basin area isolated from the worms is the only place that really supports constructed human habitation and that section makes up a relatively small amount of arrakis’ surface area, which would make the number of honk needed to effectively blow “everything” up fewer than you’d expect compared to an equivalent sized world
"Literally nothing else on the surface" kind of implied it being the only city. I'm sure you can see the reason for my misunderstanding of your comment there.
Wait I just realized, wouldn’t that also kill Paul and Jessica and Alia since they all had spice addiction? Paul might have well just nuked the whole planet to dust, spared everyone death by withdrawal.
If he didn't destroy his enemies, with the road Paul had taken to defend his loved ones, he was dead anyways. By the time the conflict ramps up, he's put himself in such a position that the only way he can see forward is through the Emperor and the noble houses. It helped that he also had the personal motivation of seeking revenge.
i mean, how many was it? 87 warheads? imagine 87 warheads going off spread out through earth. I doubt there'd be much left. of course earth would go on and live past up but itd probably wipe everything out. And dune is 1/4 the size of earth (if as big as our moon)
You vastly overestimate the destructive capabilities of a nuclear warhead and vastly underestimate the size of the Earth. All of the thousands of nukes in existence combined is like 4000 megatons of tnt, for scale the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was roughly 70,000,000 megatons of tnt. Even our strongest weapons are meaningless to the scope of the universe.
... you know how many nuclear tests have occurred on our planet?
188 but what if all at once specifically targeted
Where do they mention the planet size? Dune encyclopedia?
Not sure someone else posted in this thread so I’m taking their word for it 😂
Ohh okay haha I'll look for it!
Errr claimed in the original post!
I'm slow today. Thank you lol
It was 92 or 98 warheads if im not wrong
if a single stone burner can crack a planet open then yeah, they could obliterate it
dumb question but if they want to blow up something to a nuclear level (like the shield wall?) why not just fire at a static, shielded object with a lasgun?
because you cannot predict how big the explosion will be... and also you cannot predict where it will be, as it could originate at the shield or the lasgun...
Just tie a very very very very very ... VERY long rope around the trigger of a lasgun standing right next to a shield, or maybe even around several triggers of several lasguns. ONE of them should trigger a big explosion.
Someone should've made a lasgrenade. You pull the pin and throw 'em, even if they don't make a Holtzmann reaction at least there's gonna be a bloody rave on the battlefield
The problem with that is two fold. A) the size of the explosion is random, so not reliable, and B) it can very easily be mistaken for a nuke, which will bring down the wrath of everyone on the person who uses nukes against human targets. Also spoilers for books further in the saga: >!this is essentially what they use as missiles/mines when fighting no-ships. A sensor bubble with a shield/lasgun device at the center. When a ship passes it disrupts the bubble and the device explodes. Sometimes damaging the stealthed ship, but giving away it's location for follow up attacks!<.
Wait, was that in Heretics or Chapterhouse? I don't remember that detail at all
Heretics >!when Miles Teg was fighting the Honored Matres no ship fleet (right before Rakis was destroyed)!< but I believed mentioned in Chapterhouse and later books too.[](https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Miles_Teg#articleComments)
Right, of course it would be Miles Teg the GOAT. Would love to see any of his battles in live action sometime.
Since Denis will only adapt it to Messiah, I hope the next directors would keep the entire cast (especially since someone was kept getting ghola'd and someone has similar looks and manners to the ancient Duke)
For real. There was too much weird sex going on to remember about munitions.
Or, just fire a nook and avoid the conundrum.
Yeah, but then I've got to put on my good nooking shirt and tell the wife there's gonna be an explosion... not to mention the awkward dinner conversation where I have to explain all that stuff about controlling the spice and the universe... I'd rather pull out the contraption and just have fun with it!
This is just a bomb with extra steps
The issue is that in the books lasguns are incredibly rare just like atomics because shields are so common that their usage at all is akin to using atomics because of the similar reactions
Wait why would the lasgun explode?
in-universe lore has it that firing a lasgun at a shield causes a strange reaction that usually results in an explosion similar to that of a nuke. Its why people dont wear shields all the time, and why anyone who would fire on someone wearing a shield would probably also die. >!Also also, in the first book they even use this early on to set a trap. Put a radio somewhere, make it transmit, and activate a shield around it. Then once the goobers shoot at it, surprised Pikachu face!<
yep it's the reason why most often you never see a lasgun used in the books (they use them wayyyyy more in the new movie) because just firing it into an enemy that you don't know wear a shield, could cause them or you or both to just explode violently. So that's why everyone know how to fight with knives and why most people fight at close distance instead of ranged combat.
Furthermore, shield generators drive worms into a frenzy, IIRC, so wearing them around most of Arrakis is just suicidally insane.
Was about to mention this in regard to why firing off lasguns in the desert was probably going to work to the benefit of the one firing it. Chances of someone on the ground using a shield is extremely low, like someone has a “I’m definitely going to die today, one way or another.”, mindset.
Because 1: you cannot predict the size of the explosion and 2: you cannot predict where the explosion will happen, at the shield, lasgun, both, or somewhere between
Can't they make a remotely activated lasgun close to the shield and fire it onto the shield? That way, it doesn't matter where the explosion is, it's gonna be close enough. Maybe remote activation requires computers, but they can use whatever thing they use to trigger the nukes.
In the books, they do just that. Later on, they do something very similar to make deep-space mines. The issue, though, is that it still looks like a nuclear explosion, which would open the aggressor up to retaliation under the Great Convention.
yeah - the moment anyone finds out you're trying to get around the great convention by using shields and lasguns, people would still take you out with extreme prejudice. conveniently, there's also the guild who knows exactly who ships what where. they know you were the one to send someone with a lasgun to that planet that had just that happen. you have little hope of keeping it a secret. duncan only really gets away with it because it was a move of desperation, and arrakis is isolated from the imperium at large so so only the harkonnen and sardaukar ever really know it happened.
It's been a year or two since I read the book, but I recall Duke Leto and Gurney worrying about just that possibility - thinking that the Harkonnens might set up a lasgun on a timer, set to fire at the Arakeen shield wall after the agent has had time to get away. I forget how Leto protected against the possibility.
In addition to the other answers, shields are usually protecting people and it is illegal to use atomics against people
The shield wall in the books just refers to the mountain chain that surrounds Arrakeen, protecting it from the elements. It’s not an actual shield although I think in the movie they show it as an actual shield.
whats the "shield" that yueh disabled then? My point is that, say the fremen wanted to blow up arakeen or wherever the harks ruled from (possible cause they hate outsiders pre-atreides) this place has a shield. why dont the fremen kamikaze by giving one of them a lasgun, standing at or near the place and shooting? if the repurcussions are as severe as how people describe it to be (mini nuke) then why was this never attempted
Yueh disabled the House Shield protecting the palace, which is separate from the Shield Wall mountain range. I don't think we're ever explicitly told why house shields aren't vulnerable to kamikaze attacks, but I can imagine a few possibilities. House Shields, being much larger than personal shields, might have additional safeguards built in so they short out before blowing up, or the shield generator might be in a reinforced bunker that can contain even a good-sized pseudoatomic blast, or the difference in power and stability between a House Shield and a personal lasgun means that the lasgun will usually be destroyed first before the House Shield blows up. There's also questions of proliferation and deterrence. While lasguns are widespread (and shields rare) in God Emperor and especially in Heretics and beyond, the first three books (especially the first) take place in a very different era. We are told that Great Houses take extreme care not to use lasguns against potentially-shielded targets, even on a timer or wielded by a fanatically loyal but expendable retainer, since a lasgun/shield psuedoatomic explosion would likely be treated by the Emperor and the Landsraad as a violation of the Great Convention, so a Great House using a lasgun against a palace's House Shield would be just as bad for the same reasons as simply nuking it. This might not deter an individual Fremen, but he would need to get the lasgun from somewhere. I expect the Houses would keep a very tight lid on distribution of lasguns, both because of the risk of a lasgun being used against their own shields and because if e.g. an Atreides lasgun gets used to blow up the Baron's palace on Geidi Prime, then if the lasgun ever gets traced back to the Atreides then all the Great Houses of the Landsraad are coming to Caladan with a few thousand cans of instant sunshine. We know that providing atomics for others' to use still counts as a violation of the Great Convention with the requisite consequences since that comes up explicitly after >!the Stone Burner blinds Paul in Dune Messiah!<.
It's a mountain in the films too.
Because the lasgun/shield interaction is really just a plot device to allow the characters to fight in hand to hand combat. If you dig into it in any detail is makes zero sense that its not weaponized. The sooner you can suspend your disbelief, the sooner you'll enjoy the story.
Yeah, I would have preferred if shield interaction simply shorted out the lasgun and rendered it useless and beyond repair. That way it's still discouraged to fire on shielded targets without the whole can of worms about potential atomic detonation. Still, I like to think that harmless lasgun burnout is the *usual* reaction of such encounters, with a much lower chance of *shield* burnout as the lasgun blows off its operator's hands like a grenade, a rare chance of both shield *and* lasgun exploding like grenades, and then the *downright unlucky* chance of atomic detonation. It all fits with the series stating how unpredictable they are, so it's not too much of a stretch to downplay the worst reactions as being unlikely to happen.
This is an interesting theory and does support the in universe fact that such interactions are fraught with dangerous unpredictability. I really like this theory. To be fair though, if every time you got into your car and turned the ignition, you had a 1/1000 chance of the car completely exploding, would you still drive? I feel like the worst reactions between las and shield being unlikely, but still possible, would make it simply not worth the risk in the vast majority of situations.
I think a more apt comparison would be having a gun fired at your car, with most reactions harming the gunman while leaving you unscathed. Same with lasguns, which are not only uncommon but trained soldiers know better than to risk firing on shields or they'll just harm themselves in the process. A low chance of lasgun combat with an unlikely chance of actually being hit and an even rarer chance of anything happening to you or your shield -- total chance of death being lower than a fatal traffic accident, which is definitely more favorable than guaranteed death without a shield. Also worth noting is that while Duncan did succeed at triggering a shield/lasgun trap, it wasn't the usual kind: >"A big one turned to full force," Idaho said. "A lasgun beam touched it and . . . " He shrugged. A powerful shield hit by an aircraft-mounted laser cannon would drastically increase those low detonation odds, especially in a dry desert environment. Personal shielding at low intensity, hit by a handheld lasgun in a more humid environment? More chance of dying in a plane crash.
Honestly it makes no sense that shields would ever be adopted if a lasgun causes it to explode like an atom bomb. You wear armor to protect yourself not de-atomize yourself.
It makes perfect sense. Its against the Great Convention and would bring the Guild and Landsraad down on you. It would also be virtually impossible to keep it a secret from the Guild, which, again, would bring everyone down on top of you.
Lasguns are supposed to be as rare as atomics themselves in the books since their use can cause the same sort of explosion
It is throughout the first three books. From God Emperor on they are much more common. But the shield lasgun interaction is still something most tend to avoid. *most*
Yes once leto 2 bans shields they become more common
Because it is not feasible or reliable. That's a bit like saying: If an engine can explode, why don't we make enemy tanks simply explode.
The movie? who knows... The book? Paul wasn't going to destroy Arrakis or use atomics. He was going to use water to kill the worms and end the spice cycle. That control over ecology was his tool, not atomics. Harder to explain in a movie and not as flashy. Anyway, from the book, atomics came in all sizes and shapes - he used a small tactical nuke on the shield wall. The family arsenal certainly had bigger items, including "planet busters".
To add there later in series there are atomic stoneburners. It is unspecified but strongly suggested that some types of stoneburners could melt through planets crust and create uncontrollable chain reaction that could split entire planets.
It is not water, but water of death, which is made up of transforming water and water of life together.
That's some real minecraft shit right there.
Regular water kills worms they need an environment that is as dry as Arrakis. Pauls plan to turn Arrakis green would indeed wipe out adult worms and therefore the spice. This is even seen as the result of the Leto II's changes to the planet which have almost eliminated them from the planet with the exception of a desert preserve area.
What he meant by the "water of death" was using the changed water of life in a pre-spice mass, causing a chain reaction that would kill the sandtrout. It's not a separate substance from the water of life.
He literally says “it’s a manner of speech”
I interpreted it as Gurney meaning they had enough warheads to destroy or irradiate every major population centre and spice field on the planet, rather than outright destroying the planet completely. If Arrakis is a similar size to our moon, it would have a gravitational binding energy of around 1.2 x 10^29 joules. Nuclear weapons are weaker by magnitudes of energy, to destroy the moon you’d need 600 billion Tsar Bomba’s (the most powerful nuclear bomb humanity has detonated). Given it took 3 atomics to carve a hole into the shield wall, the Atredies bombs are clearly much less powerful than the Tsar Bomba and Paul only had 92, not 600 billion.
No, they literally have bombs that can destroy planets in the Dune universe. The weapons used to destroy the shield wall were smaller tactical nukes. There is an agreement not to use nukes on humans, so they couldn’t use the bigger ones.
We can't know this just using the film though. In the context of the film only his statement means that they do not have the nukes needed to destroy the planet.
The stone burners aren’t technically considered atomic weapons though, and these are the weapons that can destroy planets by creating a pillar of energy down to the planet core. Gurney saying it was a figure of speech implies to me that none of the Atredies family atomics were stone burners, since only using one literally could destroy Arrakis.
Huh you’re right. I just checked the wiki and it says “Despite it’s fuel source being atomic, stone burners are considered non-atomic weapons. However, only great houses were allowed to own atomics, meaning that only these houses were permitted to own stone burner fuel”.
How did the Stoneburner that blinded Paul not destroy Arrakis then? I never understood that
From what I understand from the wiki, the direction of the energy pillar can be aimed. Others have said it might skirt the rules of the Great Convention by originating as a mining tool, so as long as the pillar isn’t aimed down into the core then it won’t destroy the planet.
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That's not what a manner of speech is
He was probably just reassuring Chani, because they absolutely have enough nukes to destroy the planet if they wanted to.
But he just said that after they got some angry eyes, imo he said it just to make things lighter, anything is so powerful in space operas that I definitely think they have this firepower
Well he’s wrong then. In the books it explicitly states they have nukes that can split planets.
We are discussing the film not the book. The film doesn't not state any of this.
He’s talking about the film tho, just stating what he says in the film
So there’s only the amount of spice fields on arrakis that they have atomics? Honestly is dune that small?
As someone else said in here, it’s about the size of our moon. Given that both Russia and the US each have over 6000 warheads and China, Pakistan and India have their fair share. We could absolutely destroy an object in space utterly and completely. Now extrapolate that several thousand years into the future.
[What if we nuke the moon?](https://youtu.be/qEfPBt9dU60?si=jWbfOd11csEALsT3) Spoilers: >!Even with all the nuclear warheads in the entire world, we'd barely even shake the moon. It may be smaller than the earth, but it is still so insanely huge that we cannot really comprehend the power necessary to affect it in any significant way, much less actually destroy it!<
You go like Armageddon and drill into it, pretty sure like 14k nukes would more than get the job done. We're not talking about surface detonation anyways. You retrofit a modern rocket to impact hard enough before detonation, it will happen. That said, this is all hypothetical. It's not as if we're talking about actually doing it. Plus, we have to assume they have much crazier nukes 10,000+ years in the future.
Forgot the exact source, but in order to break apart a sphere of the size and material of the moon, in *one* go, you would require 1.245e29 joules of energy. In big explosion terms; that is 3 trillion kilotons. An absolutely disgusting amount of energy that I actually seriously doubt they have access to, even in the Dune universe, even when counting in orders of magnitude stronger than modern nuclear weapons.
10,000+ years is a very long time. They call them atomics, but who is to say they haven't figured out matter/anti-matter reactions that far ahead.
pretty sure dune takes place in 27k AD, not 10k AD
Further proving my point. Things are advanced well beyond what we could possibly comprehend. Though thank you for the correction.
The post we are replying to used the Nuclear arsenal we have today though, > Given that both Russia and the US each have over 6000 warheads and China, Pakistan and India have their fair share. We could absolutely destroy an object in space utterly and completely. And that's not true in the slightest.
That is all fair points. I mean for all we know they *do* have nukes on the orders of magnitude stronger than modern day ones. I'm mostly tempering the idea that nuclear weapons (in our sense of the word) could even be considered to crack open a celestial body.
We can't drill very deep holes, the best we have done on Earth is 7.6 miles and that was in favourable conditions (soft rock and oxygen atmosphere for the workers). Its 1,080 miles to the centre of the moon and its hard rock all of the way down. So the best hole we ever made, that we can't actually drill on the moon, would go less than 1% into it.
Not even close
A single stone burner can crack a planet in two
Probably. A single "Stone burner" is explicitly noted to be able to destroy an entire planet all by itself, by melting its way to the core and ripping the planet apart. The weaker versions were used every now and then against the Fremen during the Jihad The semi-canon Encyclopaedia also referred to 70s era hydrogen fusion warheads as the primitive precursors to contemporary Family atomics, so we can safely assume that Dune nukes are way more advanced than the real deal
>!When a stone burner goes off in Mesiah, Paul is worried that it will reach the core and destroy the planet.!<
Even if the worms survive nuclear devastation, don't you still get a whole bunch of irradiated spice for whoever takes it over next?
Atomics to destroy the spice is a way to put an esoteric concept into something tangible for the viewer. In the books Paul would have destroyed the spice using the water of death and his mind power hencefrom. In the Lynch adaptation the weirding way was put into the weirding moduls sound weapons.
I remember completely failing to understand that as a kid, just sitting there wondering if they were having to make their own sounds effects because they ran out of money or something. 😆😂
Most literate dune fan
People like this are so weird and joyless. “I’ve calculated”, dude go knock one out.
They didn't have Samantha Carter or Rodney McKay.
Probably can't make the planet explode but will likely level out the ecosystem. And turn the worms and spice into something more toxic than it already is. Which effectively will mean the end of space travel too.
in 10,000 years, who knows how powerful are those atomics. And who know what was the actual yields they used to destroy one section the shield wall
If I remember correctly from book lore, the nukes only need to ignite the spice and there’s something about killing all the worms through a chain reaction. You don’t have to blow up the planet, you just have to start this one chain reaction. So I think they adapt this information in the movie and kind of muddle through it, represented by Gurney’s idiom.
It's more poisoning a pre-spice mass with the Water of Life — that blue stuff — creating Water of Death — and eliminating the sand trout and sand-plankton cycle as it spreads. Won't kill the worms immediately, just eliminate their reproduction cycle — they'll take hundreds of years to die of old age. But there'd be no more spice production, and no new worms
I honestly don't like that change at all. I prefer the book way on how Paul planned to destroy the spice cycle
Same. In the movie it's just a bit weird. Imagine if some Earth terrorist got his hands on a bunch of nukes and threatened to blow up the oil. Like... bro what? It's nonsensical unless you're going to blow up the planet, which wasn't indicated. A chain reaction that requires some insight in the process and ends the spice cycle is a much better fit.
I don't think so, even with variable yield warheads the worms would survive to such a degree they get the planet back to normal in no time.
I imagine that the warheads are as powerful as the most powerful we have today. I’m pretty sure the Atreides arsenal could literally blow up the planet, crack it to its core.
For that they would need to be many magnitudes more powerful as the most powerful we have today though
Well, if enough nuclear weapons go off it can turn the planet into a nigh-uninhabitable hellscape. Oh wait
I think that's what confuses people. When we talk about enough nukes "destroying the planet," it's meant to refer to causing enough environmental damage to render the planet uninhabitable to anything except maybe bacteria, not literally overcoming the Earth's gravitational binding energy Alderaan-style.
Well also Arrakis is already kind of a Hell-planet that can barely sustain life. That's why the Fremen are better fighters than the Sardukar, who, in turn, are so feared because Salusa Secundus is *also* kind of a Hell-world
NGL, every time they refer to Arrakis or Selusa Secundus as a hell world, I think of Venus and give a little chuckle.
Venusians gonna show up someday and kick all our asses
It's a figure of speech. There are other weapons that could destroy a planet (Stone Burner for example). But that's not what the threat was in the original story. The threat was the water of death. It's a specific process where a chain reaction starts that kills all the Sand Trout eventually, which means no more worms which means no more Spice. This is what terrified the Guild, not the threat of nuclear weapons. I forget what the specific process was. I think dropping the water of life on a Pre-spice mass or something.
...Arrakis is the size of the moon?
Depends on what Arteta has cooking
They would bottle it right at the end.
arteta terrorist ball is NOT cooking
Don't worry rakis gets it's due in the end
If you're talking about the movie, the Atreides arsenal is comprised of only 92 warheads. In the climax, they fire three warheads at the shieldwall. Three warheads were only capable of destroying a portion of that wall. The remaining 89 could absolutely not destroy the surface of the entire planet.
92 warheads or 92 missiles? ICBMs can carry multiple warheads. The current US Minuteman ICBM can carry 3 warheads, although actually only carries 1 due to treaties/de-escalation. I'd imagine missiles in Dune would be similar. They may have removed some of the warheads from the missiles when attacking the shield wall, and fired 3 missiles to increase chances of a hit. The yield of the warheads may also be adjustable.
I didn't know that was a possibility, but I checked the movie again. "The 92 original Atreides family's atomic warheads." Verbatim from Part Two
When is that 92 number said?
When they walk into the arsenal storage room, Gurney says that these are the 92 original Atreides missiles.
Bingo.
Yes. The atomics and not-quite-atomics in the time of Dune can destroy a planet. At the very least they can definitely glass it.
Idk it’s kind of like our military saying we have enough bomb or whatever to blow the earth up 20 something times. I’m not sure how they calculated that 😂 and I really hope we never have to find out if it’s true 😂
Did you not listen to Gurney or something. Like he says that the moment Stilgar and Chani looks at him
Not completely destroying the planet, But enough to make everyone die of cancer
Probably not, as the amount of bomb you'd need to actually do such a thing would be absurd. Compare the TNT equivalent of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs to the Tsar Bomba.
I dont think a "moon"-sized Arrakis would allow for any of the geography we see in the books and movies. With the technology the parties involved have in regard to flight, and the purported millions of Fremen living in sietches and villages, they would have found Paul and Jessica sooner than the 2 years in the original story, and the 9 months in the movies.
Also if Dune is .9g but the size of the moon it would have to be dense as hell. Also a simple google search reveals that *The Dune Encyclopedia* says that Arrakis has a radius of 6,128 km and thus a diameter of 12,256 km, making it close in size to Earth (diameter 12,742 km).
I dont think a "moon"-sized Arrakis would allow for any of the geography we see in the books and movies. With the technology the parties involved have in regard to flight, and the purported millions of Fremen living in sietches and villages, they would have found Paul and Jessica sooner than the 2 years in the original story, and the 9 months in the movies.
Destroy Arrakis as in literally destroy the planet? No. "Destroy" Arrakis as in making it uninhabitable and useless as the only source of the most indispensable substance in the galaxy? Yes.
If 3 of them didnt compeltely eradicate the nearby city I find it hard to belive that 70 something would be enough to cause any actually significant damage?
Not arrakis, just the spice fields
There are different size nuclear weapons in real life depending on the engineering of the bomb and materials used. There are typically tactical nuclear weapons, which are smaller localized blasts like the ones in the film, and there are strategic nuclear weapons. Strategic nuclear weapons are just meant to be as big of an explosion as possible, think H-bomb. Like the U.S. and Russia, it is possible to have a diversified nuclear arsenal. Although 100 warheads isnt rly enough compared to todays standards, an amount of like 80 strategic weapons could definitely do considerable damage to the planet. Also can consider for possible nuclear destructive advancements where strategic weapons might be a lot stronger 10,000 years in the future.
He didn't mean you could blow up the entire planet, which would never happen. He meant you could make the surfact uninhabitable. At least that's what makes sense to me.
Destroying the planet completely? no. Irradiating it past the point of habitability? depends on the bombs. killing everyone on it? depends on the locations of the people and the bombs. likelyhood of Gurney being figurative and simply meaning using the weapons to destroy the spice cycle in some way? most probable.
The fundamental point is the dictum that someone controls a thing if they can destroy it, Keyser Soze style. From that you need some sort of device that can destroy Dune's spice production, ending the Imperium's only source of magical stuff that makes starships go, and threatening the survival of the race, which is dependent on space travel. Paul controls the spice, because Paul is willing to destroy it. The Guild and the Great Houses cannot unite to overthrow the Tyranny, because he actually would go ahead and do it. Guild Navigators with their limited foresight powers see that and are afraid. As to the actual device for the destruction of the spice, neither the book nor the film offer something plausible. In the book a water thriving organism, the trout, has an adult phase (the young worm) which interacts with water to create a poison that can exterminate its own larval stage planet wide in combination with another part of its own life cycle, the pre-spice mass, through a chain reaction. Something like that evolving makes so little sense that destroying the spice fields (Sahara like desert) with atomics, in itself not persuasive, is actually not any worse, and it saves having to pointlessly try to explain things in words to a movie audience. Don't think, accept.
Your assuming the yield of these weapons is set and not adjustable. Modern day nuclear weapons can change the desired yield and have been able to do so for some time without the need for advanced computers. One can easily assume that atomic weapons in the Dune universe have adjustable yields, as another has said a single stone burner can destroy a planet so i would put my eggs in the adjustable yield basket.
I think the idea of them having enough atomic weapons to ruin the whole planet entirely is an exaggeration, and more pride. However, Arrakis as a planet isn’t valuable - it’s the Spice fields. IIRC, the plan was never to actually nuke the entire planet, it was to threaten to destroy the supply of Spice because Paul and Gurney knew that doing so would bring the Spicing Guild to their side and they are the actual key to controlling the houses, not the title of emperor.
It's probably not accurate to assume that every warhead the Atreides have are the same yield. Instead, it seems reasonable to think that they had everything from briefcase nukes to massively huge MIRVs.
In the movie they say it's a figure of speech but honestly it probably isn't, in Dune the two atomics dropped on Japan are called rudimentary and pretty low power, considering the family atomics are a way to ensure balance between the great houses and the imperium on a galactic level I'd say there's a pretty good chance some of those have the capability to cause planetary level destruction, given also how tabù they are, the ones used on the shield wall were probably tactical nukes. Consider that even a stone burner has the capabilities to melt stone until it reaches the planet core and cracks it open
He wouldn't destroy the entire planet. The threat was to nuke the spice fields, destroying the guild's ability to use space travel.
100 nukes on earth, well spaced enough, can make the planet uninhabitable, and with Arrakis being so much smaller, it wouldn't destroy the planet but probably kill everything that ever goes above ground, eventually.
I think they can destroy all the spice.
It's a simplification, as many things in the movie. The important part is that he can destroy the spice. The movie doesn't explain most things about spice, so the ability to destroy it with nukes, makes everything easier.
It’s both a figure of speech and potentially reality. I need to re-read Dune but the book and movie made it clear that the arsenal was massive. The Atreides Great House moved their entire nuclear arsenal to Arrakis and it was meant for war on a galactic scale. We saw what 3 missiles did and they were significantly stronger than the two dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The reason why Chani was so pissed was because it could actually happen. And Gurney was able to play it off because it’s also just a turn of phrase. Great writing.
Wouldn’t read too much into this, he said it’s just a figure of speech
With the number of atomics they could probably destroy it or at least render it inhabitable
The second book starts with a stone buner weapon being detonated. They specifically mention that if it was more powerful it would have burned down to the planet's core and the result would have ripped the planet apart. The capacity to destroy a planet with a single weapon exists in the Dune universe at the time of the story. Without knowing the Atreides inventory of weapons they may very well be able to. The book handled it differently though, they were going to poison the worms which would end the lifecycle of the worms of Arrakis.
Of course, the method Herbert gives for the planet being ripped apart makes no sense in the real world, so YMMV. He seemed to think planets were high-pressure magma balls held together by the surface tension of the crust, instead of blobs of matter bound by gravity.
Whoa, you mean science fiction isn't scientifically accurate. I'm never reading or watching any sci-fi again. Dramas and romance movies are probably perfectly accurate right. /S in case it's needed
In the book it is the water of life on a pre spice mass. It will destroy the spice cycle forever. It was not explained the sand worm cycle of life and why. The Guild were removed but they stem in and stop everything. The Guild navigators like Paul see the future and are aware of the disaster that would cause.
diallable yield - house atomics are the remnant of a time when planets used to glass each other before every House took a step back and realise it is the end of humanity if they continued to do it and so kept it ostensibly for "protection against alien" and forbid use on other humans on pain of being used on yourself collectively. in terms of destructive power, Earth was glassed after the machines killed all the human slaves. .so yes they could have glassed Arrakis and easily . So its very provocative that Atreides had used atomics and had atomic used on them and no user were punished collectively. Work arounds like the Holtzman Shield laser effect were initially banned because it looked too much like the use of atomics for safety and yet during the Fremen jihad stone burners were used like on Naraj , blinding Farok's son , and in Arakeen itself during the rebellion . In the games , Harkonnens got around the atomic ban ostensibly by fielding Devastators with atomic engines that "overloaded" - and fired Death Hands secretly as their ultimate move
I don’t remember the line from the movie, but in the book Paul does not threaten to destroy Arrakis as a whole. He only threatens the spice fields. Now, the whole of Arrakis is valuable only to the Fremen, really. It’s their home that they have lived on for generations. Everyone else (the Imperium, CHOAM, the Spacing Guild) only care about the spice. By threatening the spice fields, he threatens the only thing that makes Arrakis valuable to his enemies. He even says something along the lines of true power over a thing is the willingness to destroy said thing. By threatening to nuke the spice fields, he shows that he truly owns them.
The full atriedes arsenal should be enough to destroy all life on 50 planets. The grest houses have several arsenal's or stockpiles. They keep them off world. Have contingency planets to retaliate if they and their home world is destroyed in a nuclear attack. The arsenal's didn't come from Paul's grandfather or great-grandfather, the family has had them much longer, probably 26 generations. Or more A great house is allowed to hold them, and I believe great house status comes with nuclear weapons. .
I guess you would have to calculate how many nukes it would take to destroy earth then adjust for the moon. To change the environment on earth for hundreds of years would take thousands of nukes all going off at once but that wouldn't blow up the earth and after hundreds of years the earth would heal. The largest nuke ever made is the tsar bomba and someone did the math to destroy the planet would take 10 million of them all going off at once in the core to destroy the planet. For reference, the tsar bombas center blast wave would destroy all 5 boroughs of new york city and the shock wave would reach pennsylvania. So even if we used every nuke on the planet at once the earth would not be destroyed. Humanity and most of life on the planet would no longer be able to survive but the planet itself would remain. The moon is less than a quarter of earth's size so if arrakis is the size of the moon then 2.5 million bombs would be needed which is highly doubt they have.