In the Dune universe, when a laser weapons hits a shield, both are destroyed in a nuclear explosion reaction.
So instead of building nuclear weapons, wouldn’t it be easier to tie a timer and a “parachute” to a laser gun and drop it from orbit onto your enemy’s city?
My understanding is that such a technique is known, but the first person to do it is going to get dog piled by the other houses. MAD
Given the basic premise from the very beginning, where the emperor wants to destroy house atreides, I doubt it. If the houses were going to honor their promises, they already should have
There is a big difference between invading a foreign nation (Ukraine?) against established treaties and nuking a foreign nation. Mutually assured destruction is avoided by even those on the losing side until they’re well aware they’ve lost and have been given a reason not to surrender.
Even IRL multiple different leaders have ordered MAD in multiple different circumstances, only stopped by some peon committing treason by disobeying launch orders.
You are giving conservatives far too much credit to their intelligence.
Iraq was invaded specifically because they had no WMDs. Any sane ruler would launch when faced with death. Real interesting how the rogue nations with proven nuclear weapons capability are the only ones still standing…
I don’t think you can assume that would be easier than building a nuke
IIRC, this is actually done at some point in the books.
spoiler
You do remember correctly. Bashar Miles Teg at one point utilizes a variant of that technique. They mount pairs of shields and lasguns on anti-g platforms and use them as surprise tactical nukes in a battle against the Honored Matres. That is one of the many epic af moments in the Dune saga. I think I will have to read it for the umpteenth time now :)
Also, afaik, the reaction isn’t consistent or predictable - its more of a risk thing, which doesn’t make for a great weapon.
The reaction between a shield and laser is completely random, not knowing wether you are going to vaporise a few molecules, an entire city or everything in between makes it very unreliable for warfare purposes.
And you’d probably find the whole Landsraad against you, as using atomics is outlawed. While a bomb like that isn’t an atomic weapon by definition, the effects are the same and it stands to reason that they’ll therefore still retaliate in full force.
The reaction between a shield and laser is completely random
Is this mentioned in the book? I can’t recall.
As far as I know it is random in the sense that the shield-lasgun interaction can either annihilate the target, the laser operator or just culminate in a giant nuclear-like explosion. Therefore you don’t know whether your move will have the intended effect or whether it obliterates only yourself while the enemy is fine. I think this is mentioned early on in the first book.
The whole lasgun-shield interaction concept is one of the hand-wavy parts of Dune, kind of like the eagles in LOTR, or the ridiculously inaccurate laser blasters in Star Wars.
Shields in Dune are common defensive technology, which means that lasguns would almost certainly have to be outlawed altogether to prevent some random encounter from turning into nuclear apocalypse.
In the first movie, I think Villeneuve deals with it somewhat haphazardly. The use of a lasgun at the agricultural research station perhaps makes some sense because shields can’t be used in the open desert without attracting worms. On the other hand, they show lasers being used at the first Battle of Arrakeen in close proximity to other ships that are shown to have active shields.
