Conference noted::sf

    I'm rather proud of my Delocalizer Gun (tm) which operates by
    determining the target's momentum with excruciating precision. 
    According to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, its position
    is then radically indeterminate.  It blurs out into being nowhere
    in particular.  No doubt subsequent events will re-establish its
    location, but that need not be anywhere near its previous location.
    This amounts to a random teleport, for throwing your enemies away.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Suggest anyone who wants to "invent" a new weapon put in something
    of the mechanism that makes it do its thing.
    
    Example: in _Sixth Column_ Heinlein had a "disruptor" by which the
    surface tension of each body cell of the enemy's soldiers was released
    simultaneously, causing them to explode rather greasily.
    
    He had to invent a new energy spectrum to make it work, however...
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    	The Joke-Annihilator is a devastating weapon which has actually
    gone through numerous test runs with great success!
    
    	Essentially, it involves placing all of my worst jokes on a
    cassette tape, then playing them back through either a megaphone
    or by radio transmission.  The unfortunate listener is usually driven
    insane by the totally mind-warping effect.
    
    	This weapon can even be carried by troops in the battlefield,
    using a portable tape recorder and amplifier.  It is recommended
    though, that the one transmitting the jokes wear earplugs, as the
    weapon has been known to backfire on its user.
    
    	It is also recommended that only those who have been exposed
    to the jokes in small doses over very long periods of time should
    install the "ammunition" on the tapes, as they have built up some
    immunity to the jokes - though this can only come about by minor
    yet signifigant distortions of the cerebral hemmorage.
    
    	All in all, many do agree the Joke-Annihilator is certainly
    one of the most horrifyingly destructive weapons made since the
    A-Bomb; just ask some of it's unfortunate victims.......
    
    	Larry
    

       Good point Steve!  Let me amend the rules a bit...let's say that
    anything goes!  If you can imaginarily harness the power of "mini"
    black holes, white dwarves, suns, planetary magnetic fields, or
    whatever...go for it!  Unless of course you know some other devious
    power source.  
    
       Here's mine...I've constructed (in my mind) a super refracting
    crystal that harnesses the power of our sun and magnifies it to
    the the twelfth power (a little star trek term).  It then ionizes
    and focuses that power into a beam 5 inches in diameter.  Woe be
    to any aliens that get in it's way!
                                  
                                 
    				-O-         Phil
    
                                 

Well, there's the recursion gun...

A very simple weapon, using well-known and occasionally believed forces
of telepathy- This weapon projects a detailed and protracted discussion
of what it does and how it does it into the victem's mind. Since what it
does is project a detailed and protracted discussion of what it does, then
the discussion includes a detailed and protracted discussion of what it
does, namely, project a detailed and protracted discussion of what it
does and how it does it into the victem's mind. This discussion, in turn,
contains a detailed and protracted discussion of what it does,...

Victem is BORED to death.
Police baffled.

John O.

(As with taking a drop of poison "with a grain of salt", one might build
up a tolerance to the effects of this weapon by, for instance, discussing
teleportation problems in notesfiles... :^)

    By controling molecular attactration (using, lets say, a highly
    concentrated beam of a yet undiscovered particle...) you could direct
    every molcule of your opponent to move 0.5 inches apart.. Nasty.
    
    David.

    For those science fans out there who probably know more about what
    I'm talking about, please understand that this was purely an amatuer
    attempt on my part to create some kind of diabolical weapon.
                                 
    				OO
    				\/
    
    ps...if I'm just spinning my wheels at attempting to create a creative
    topic here, please let me know.  I'm just trying my hand at SF.
    I know a lot of you out there are very creative and you all show
    very good taste by subscribing to SF, so just give it a try.  Be
    creative!  Use your imagaination.
    
    					Phil
    

     
    My favorite weapon would be one that neutralizes the charge on
    subatomic particles, probably by hitting electrons with protons
    and vice-versa. Shoot someone with it and VOILA!! you get a pile
    of neutrons. The source of this weapon would be a fission-type reactor
    fueled by pure neutron matter. The neutrons would be split apart
    and the parts projected at your victim. I suppose size and shielding
    would be a problem, but not insurmountable. After all, this is fiction!
    
    Roy
    
    

    I had an idea about a psychic/physics weapon -- the user had the
    ability to reverse the atomic charges of 100 atoms; that is, electrons
    became positrons, protons became anti-protons.  One other thing-- the
    user got to choose which 100 atoms were reversed. 
    
    I always wondered what how much energy the mutual annihilation of
    200 atoms would generate -- inside a human eye.
    
    					andrew

    	That's a little too cruel!
    
    

	Re .3:

	 The Joke Annihilator can be "improved" upon rather efficiently. All
	 you have to do is replace the jokes with some Vogon poetry, read by
	 Prosthetnic   Vogon  Jeltz  of  the  Galactic  Hyperspace  Planning
	 Council.

	 This is the second worst poetry of all.

	 :-)

    	Or we could COMBINE the two for a weapon of unparalleled horror
    and destruction!
    
    	God, what humanity can devise is frightening!
    
    	Larry
    

    
    		How about a bubble gun?  It would fire a large bubble
    with a bit of some super active enzyme, when it hits, it envelopes,
    and the enzyme starts to work!  Maybe a bit too slow, but it COULD
    work.  The bubble would, of course, have to have to have a very
    high surface tension too, but this is just imaginary anyway!
    
    	Mike

    re -1
    You been watching too many Smurf cartoons on Saturday mornings.

    I've always been rather fond of my Positron Accelerator. This handheld
    weapon contains a port to an antimatter universe. I operates by
    accelating positrons faster than light (they have ngative mass so
    it's tough to make them go any slower) which causes them to arrive
    at the unsuspecting target before I fire the weapon. I didnt make
    up the Lorentz equations, its just the way the world is.
    	The sequence of events goes like this. My enemy does something
    life threatening to me and drops dead, I figure it best to avoid
    paradoxes and fire my Posiblaster. Later examination shows complete
    anhiliation of a capilary tube through my victim's skull surrounded
    by ultra-dense matter. Of course the tube is 1 electron diameter
    in width, so who'll notice.

    Re .16
    
    Not to rain on your ray-gun's parade, but...
    
    Would a line of annihilation one electron wide really hurt?  Perhaps
    the resulting gamma radiation would, though.
    
    As I recall the Lorenz equations, particles travel faster than light
    if and only if they have imaginary proper mass (i.e. multiplied by the
    square root of minus one).  Negative proper masses would have to
    stay below lightspeed, just like normal positive ones.
    
    Also, positrons probably have positive mass, just like electrons.
    At least, they yield positive energy when they annihilate with
    electrons, and it takes positive energy to create them.  Some folk
    have tried dropping positrons down evacuated holes to make sure
    they fall down, not up, and the results have been inconclusive (the
    damned things keep blowing up before you can measure what they do),
    but if positrons DON'T have positive mass, relativity is in big
    trouble.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Re .17
    
    I think an electron removed from each molecule clear through the
    chest would create havoc in the deserving villan's molecular structre
    since the hole created would cause an electron to be stolen from
    the next molecule ad infinitum. Maybe even to the point of "Jim,
    every cell in his body has been disrupted !". Well it was just
    another violent thought.
    
    You are right about the Lorentz equation , when you turn it around
    to solve for velocity from mass (not necessarily valid) you
    get
    	v = c * sqrt( 1 - (m0/m)**2 )
    but even if m0 (rest mass) is complex, the velocity would still
    wind up complex. Which would imply extradimensional motion (through
    time or frequency ?) not just in 3 dimensions. Which brings  an
    interesting particle, one with complex mas. Such an object would
    appear to us as a mass varying with time. So call James Hogan, we
    can send messages to the past.  ;^)


    Amr

    STAND BACK ! I alone posess the ultimate weapon - the VAXVMSV4.4-GUN.
    
    With a concentrated burst of psionic energy, it induces the 
    
    *entire* VMS manual into the victims brain. He acheives a 
    
    COMPLETE understanding of VMS and dies of loneliness.
    
    ***** TREMBLE, WORMS !! ******

    A very small but powerful gravity generator that would take all matter
    within a settable range of the generator and condense it into a quantum
    black hole.  Since this black hole is of such small mass, it instantly
    evaporates and effectively preforms a 100% matter to energy conversion. 

    This isn't a personal weapon but would make an effective bomb or mine. 

Re .20;
    
    If it isn't remotely controlled, it's a great suicide device.  Try
    E=MC^2 for any reasonable mass (like a few grams){

    One way of implemented total conversion would be by induced gravitic
    nucleon decay.  Nucleons, according to current theory, are made
    of trios of quarks.  If the three quarks should happen to get close
    enough together, their combined gravity makes them fall into a tiny,
    proton-sized black hole.  According to Steven Hawking, black holes
    evaporate by radiating a completely random assortment of particles.
    The radiation is matter and antimatter in equal quantities, and
    the smaller the black hole is, the faster it radiates.  So a proton
    or neutron that fell down its own black hole would instantly
    reincarnate as a random selection of particles, half matter and
    half antimatter (conserving mass-energy, spin, and charge, but not
    baryon number or any other quantum properties).  Do this to a fair
    fraction of the nucleons in anything and you have a highly explosive
    mixture.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    
    	What about a grenade containing a blackhole in stasis.  When
    it "detonates", the stasis field goes away.  Can you say, "SLURP!"
    
    The Mad Hacker
    
    

    Re .23:
    
    I think that might have the same problem as the nuclear grenade some
    genius in government said was now within our (technological) grasp.  To
    wit, the instructions are hard to follow:
    
    	Pull pin.
    	Throw grenade.
    	Run ten miles in ten seconds.
    
    I suppose the effects of a black-hole grenade might be more selectable
    than a nuclear grenade, but I'll wait until you test it before I use
    it.
    
    
    				-- edp 

    	Then you invent a teleportation belt to wear when using these
    particular grenades - that way you can set the grenade to detonate,
    and then activate your belt, which will whisk you beyond whatever
    the blast danger zone is.
    
    	Larry
    

    	So, the people at whom the grenade is aimed will either themselves
    teleport away (all things being fair) or will have some sort of
    modified teleport belt which can be "flung" onto the grenade to
    muffle it (ie: send it away).  Along the same note why not have
    a "teleport ray" that way you can send the bad/good guys to the
    middle of a mountain, a star, an ocean, a prison, et al.  Please
    note, this is NOT a flame...I am just an obnoxious personality.
    (split that is).
    
    brad

    
    Excuse my rusting Physics, but:
    
    Isn't the "Event Horizon" of a black hole Highly dependent upon
    its Size?
    
    I seem to remember reading that a Black Hole had to be of a minum
    Diameter before it there was a Slurp/noSlurp point at x distance 
    (called an Event Horizon).
    
    With out this, the black hole has to come into "contact" with the
    object in order to "slurp it up".
    
    I have the feeling that the in order for there to be the Event Horizon
    (finaly remembered what it is called) the black hole has to be
    astronomical.  But, if this is not the case, A black hole with a
    10 or 20 foot Event horzon radius would be a nasty weapon.
    
    Especially when it hit the core of the planet and started to grow....
    
    Anyone with a better grip on astro-physics care to explain this
    a little better?
    
    Clark.          

    Re .27:
    
    Black holes come in all sizes.  Density determines when an object
    becomes a black hole, and all vanilla black holes have event horizons
    -- which light cannot leave, thus the name.  By "vanilla", I mean
    uncharged, non-rotating.  The smaller black holes do evaporate quickly,
    but anything falling into their event horizons never comes back.
    
    Beyond the event horizon, gravity still has effect.  The black holes do
    not have to get you past their event horizons to make you feel
    uncomfortable and pull you in -- how would you feel if you were
    suddenly on the surface of Jupiter?
    
    When complications like charge and rotation are added, event horizons
    may change in nature and location.
    
    
    				-- edp 

:    Beyond the event horizon, gravity still has effect.  The black holes do
:    not have to get you past their event horizons to make you feel
:    uncomfortable and pull you in -- how would you feel if you were
:    suddenly on the surface of Jupiter?

As Larry Niven might point out, beware the tide (or at least 1/(r**2)) :-)

-Joe

    Didn't a fella bite the dust in a Niven story after coming in close
    contact with a quantum black hole?  The containment field collapsed,
    and it passed him ( or through him) on its way to the planet's core.
    I'm pretty sure it was one of the Known Space/Louis Wu stories.
    
    Where are my books when I really need them (grumble, gripe).....
    
    Eric Lee

    Re .30:
    
    I recall something like that, but it was a base on Mars, and one of the
    characters was rather nasty, so when he was under the right spot,
    another character "accidentally" released the black hole.  I do not
    think it was a Known Space story, and possibly not Niven at all.
    
    
    				-- edp

    Re .31:
    
    "The Hole Man", by Larry Niven.  I think that it is in the collection,
    "A Hole in Space".  It shouldn't be a Known Space story, since it
    ends up with Mars probably disintegrating in a few years.
    
      Scott

    "The Hole Man" is indeed the story, and no, it isn't a Known
    Space story. On the other hand, the last of the Bey Shaeffer
    stories, "The Borderland of Sol", does have a quantum black
    hole being used as a weapon.
    
    --- jerry

    Thanks for the Niven refresher course everyone.  Sometimes it's
    hard to put the right gadget with the right story. :-)
    
    Eric Lee

    Anesthetic gases are nothing new, of course, and they would make fine
    weapons if one could control the dosage.  But how about their inverse, 
    aesthetic gases?  Release them on unsuspecting soldiers and they are
    so struck by the beauty of the scene that capture is easy.  The weapon
    would be most effective around sunset or in flower gardens.
    Armies would have to be staffed by the most hardened philistines, 
    say, newspaper movie reviewers.  Who knows, the Russians may have 
    it already!  Draft them all now, I say.
    
    /jlr

    Re .35
    
    Umm... On a faintly more realistic note, Jack Vance described
    "hyperesthetic" drugs used as instruments of torture.  They didn't
    heighten the subject's perception of beauty, but they did increase
    the sensitivity of his senses, so that ordinary clothing becamse
    intolerably scratchy, ordinary lights became a blinding glare, ordinary
    sounds became a deafening blast.  Sort of like a hangover without
    the preliminary pleasure of getting drunk.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    And then there's that little-known isomer of ether gas, ethic 
    gas.  It was briefly experimented with during World War II,
    but found to be too dangerous.  Here's the description in the
    Britannica under "Principles of Principled Chemical Warfare":
    
    Diethyl ethic - a colorless non-volatile liquid with a distinct 
    odor and a strong sense of duty.  Induces severe self-examination
    even in small doses.  Discovered accidentally by a Swiss chemist 
    in 1937, who immediately quit his position in protest at high 
    pharmaceutical prices.  Was successfully used against SS troops
    in Malta in 1941.  The troops ceased to obey the orders of superiors, 
    citing reasons of conscience.  Unfortunately, the entire
    staff at its manufacturing center in South Westchester, Norfolk
    also quit around the same time, claiming that it was wrong to force
    people to act rightly.  The resignations were traced to 
    leaks in the containment vessels.  A team of logical positivists
    was sent in to deal with the spill, but were later found to be contaminated
    with utilitarianism.  Work on it has since ceased, 
    as it was deemed of little military value and great potential danger.
    Rumors of its use by Mahatma Gandhi against the British proved to be
    unfounded.  In a rare display of international unanimity, its
    production and use was banned in a treaty signed by every single member
    of the UN in 1953.

    /jlr

    Re .37:
    
    Did you write that?  Good job!
    
    
    				-- edp

  Re: .37

  Yeah!  Flesh the story out a bit and you'll have something comparable to
  Asimov's "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline."

  JP

    re: small black holes
    
    This was the subject of _Artifact_ by Greg? Benford.

    re .40
    
    I thought Artifact was about some wierd pair of particles that
    wanted to be close to one another and got separated.  They were
    not black holes as such (i.e., gravitational singularities).
    
    len.
    

    Re .40, .41:
    
    The book specifically states that these were in fact "gravitational
    sigularities" but were not black holes.  That is they were similar
    to black holes in that both were singularities, but the
    Artifact-singularities had different properties.  For instance they
    had to occur in pairs, that had unusal binding properties.
    
    --  Barry

    Yeah, I went back and reread the book; these particles were massive,
    but some kind of interaction between the pairs "cancelled" most
    of the mass so the cube containing one or both of them had a tractable
    mass.
    
    Were they in fact "elementary" particles, or were they "macroscopic"?
    I got the impression they were particles, not macroscopic
    agglomerations of particles.  Does it even make sense to talk about
    a singularity as a "particle"?
    
    len.
    

    re: .35, .37
    
    More readings from "Principles of Principled Chemical Warfare":
    
    After having relatively little success with aesthetic gas, and after
    the disaster at Norfolk in '42 with diethyl ethic, researchers
    were at something of a loss.  It looked as though philo-weapon research
    was at an end. The Ministry for Eccentric Projects, never a
    widely-supported department, was having serious questions raised
    about its charter. Funding was in jeopardy. 

    It was then that a French refugee existentialist, Jean-Paul
    Georges Ringeau, made the crucial connection.  If aesthetic gas
    heightened one's sense of beauty, and diethyl ethic increased the
    sense of goodness, why not try to meddle with one's sense of
    truth?  From this came one of the most important but least known
    discoveries of the war, sodium phenomenol. 

    The action of phenomenol is quite different from that of ordinary
    truth drugs.  Rather than getting people to say what is true, it
    affects their perception of what is true. Specifically, it blurs the
    distinction between internal and external truths, between what one
    believes is true and what one perceives is true. 
    
    The boundary between these two types of knowledge is normally quite
    clear.  What one perceives is real and solid, and far more likely to
    be true than vague thoughts and dreams.  However, as philosophical
    idealists have argued for centuries, the reverse situation is equally
    plausible.  Our senses are often in error, whereas thoughts can be
    examined directly by the mind. Thoughts, they argue, are the only
    objects one can have sure knowledge of. 
    
    Ringeau's key insight was that the balance between the correctness of 
    thoughts versus perceptions is quite fine in most people.
    The balance could be pushed one way or the other by chemical
    means.  A slight stimulus to the proper part of the cerebral cortex, 
    and people's beliefs became unshakeable.  No amount of contradicting
    physical evidence could sway them.
    
    The initial experiments on apes were unsatisfactory, for no one could
    tell what they believed to begin with.  Once the basic safety of the
    drug was proven, human trials began.  The subjects were chosen from
    the most hard-headed draftees from Scotland and Missouri.  (Curiously
    enough, recruits from California were found to already have traces of
    the drug in their bloodstreams.  It is apparently a natural component
    of the Los Angeles water supply.)  If subjects agreed to the trial
    after only hearing a description of it, they were immediately
    rejected.  Only those who demanded to see the labs were accepted. 
    
    Progress was rapid.  Before long, the subjects were accepting 
    statements like "The army has your interests at heart", despite 
    obvious evidence to the contrary.   Indeed, the researchers 
    became so convinced of the efficacy of the drug that there were
    suggestions that they themselves had been contaminated with it.  
    Later review of their records indicated that many anomalous results 
    had been disregarded.
    
    Nevertheless, the drug really did work.  Unfortunately, it was
    developed too late to contribute much to the war effort.  Its only use
    was in a misguided aerial spraying attack of Tokyo in '45.  The idea
    was that if the Japanese could be truly convinced that they were
    losing, they would surrender without a costly invasion of the home
    islands. The drug worked all too well.  The Japanese WERE convinced
    that loss was inevitable, and so resolved to die gloriously.  Only the
    rather overwhelming sensory evidence of the atomic bomb was able to
    break through the drug's effects. 
    
    The post-war history of phenomenol is still not clear.  Its
    existence was of the utmost secrecy, of course.  It is only
    through the secrets revealed by Anthony Sharp (the so-called
    "Sixth Man") that we know of it at all.  Still, there are
    tantalizing indications that its use has not been restricted to
    government labs.  The postwar period has been one of the most
    extraordinary times of economic growth in the history of the
    world.  Much of this growth has come because of wild increases in
    consumer spending.  One wonders what could have prompted such
    increases.   Does one detergent really wash whiter than another?
    Are the differences visible, or only believed?  Does everyone
    really need to have their own cars, or only think they do?  A
    detailed chemical analysis of TV dinners and fast foods may yield
    the answer, but until that time, phenomenol's ultimate usages will
    remain unknown. 
    
    /jlr

    Gee, "Norm", did you make that up?  I thought it was pretty clever,
    especially some of the names.  Got anymore?  Ever tried being
    published?
    
    len.
    

    No, I can't think of anything else to do on this line.  Maybe I'll
    combine the three and send them off somewhere. Thanks for the
    compliment! 

    /jlr

	How about a chemical weapon that attacks DNA? It's not very good for 
	battlefield use, but if you want to commit genocide, DNAase is just
	the thing. The affected beings cannot produce more cells, either 
	by mitosis or meiosis, so cannot grow, or reproduce.

	Actually, what about the 'Manna' plants that Haviland Tuf used in
	the last story of 'Tuf Voyaging' (George R.R. Martin). That produced 
	a strong contraceptive chemical.

	Or how about some of the monsters he used in that book. Nice. How would 
	they fare against one of the Bugs from ALIEN? :-)

				HRM

>       How about a chemical weapon that attacks DNA? It's not very good for
>       battlefield use, but if you want to commit genocide, DNAase is just
>       the thing. The affected beings cannot produce more cells, either
>       by mitosis or meiosis, so cannot grow, or reproduce.

Or the idea raised by Larry Niven in the short story "The Locusts"
(which I was reading in bed this morning)
.
.
Basically.. you find a nice planet ... perfect environment for you
BUT... its inhabited... so introduce a virus that changes DNA
such that you _can_ have children.. but they are 'throwbacks' .. IE
they wont grow up to have the intelligence to run a complex culture...
.. and so in a few generations all you have is cavemen.. and then
you move in and wipe up!!! You get the planet in good shape (undamaged
by war)  and even a few servants

OR

(as used by whats-her-name in the "Screw Tape Solution") feed in a virus
that changes the male-female 'interaction' so instead of mating you
destroy potentale mates ....bottom line?   an empty planet! (even quicker
than the above method)

    Re: .-1
    
> Or the idea raised by Larry Niven in the short story "The Locusts"
> (which I was reading in bed this morning)
> .
> .
> Basically.. you find a nice planet ... perfect environment for you
> BUT... its inhabited... so introduce a virus that changes DNA
> such that you _can_ have children.. but they are 'throwbacks' .. IE
> they wont grow up to have the intelligence to run a complex culture...
> .. and so in a few generations all you have is cavemen.. and then
> you move in and wipe up!!! You get the planet in good shape (undamaged
> by war)  and even a few servants
    
    Hmm, this wasn't my understanding of what was happening in "The
    Locusts". I thought the idea was that H. Sap. was a cyclic creature:
    that Man only became intelligent in order to spread itself to the
    nearby stars. Once this happens, we start having kids that are more
    like A. Africanus. (e.g. like locusts, which are mostly harmless, but
    every 10 years or so, a far larger and agressive generation is born.)
    
> (as used by whats-her-name in the "Screw Tape Solution") feed in a virus
> that changes the male-female 'interaction' so instead of mating you
> destroy potentale mates ....bottom line?   an empty planet! (even quicker
> than the above method)
    
    Racoona Sheldon, "The Screwfly Solution". 
    					- hbm
    

    

    

    re .46 (?) on a permanent contraceptive as a weapon for genocide;
    something comparable was done by a British writer back in the '60's,
    in a book called "Not With a Bang..."
    
    possible story spoiler (?)
    
    Caused humans to be able to have _only_ female offspring.  Story
    concentrated on the research efforts to find a counteragent, and
    to establish "breeding" stock of those few women shown to be resistent
    to the agent involved.  I think I would have preferred a bombing;
    the story was, to me, depressing and faintly (not_quite)nuaseating (I 
    was relatively young when I read the book).

    Dwight

    Was that by John Christopher ?
    
    In "The White Plague", Frank Herbert's protagonist create
    a virus which attacks and kills women. Unfortunately it
    goes far beyond his intended victims.

	We've had anti-personnel, anti-planetary, and anti-solar devices,
	but how about some anti-ship devices? They seem a little thin
	on the ground. Star-Wars (film, not SDI) fights are all very well, 
	but how do you destroy something moving at near c? (~.99c)

	Simple. Leave something in its path. That's, lessee, at .99c, err...
	(1 kg mass...err...square velocit...err...)
	About enough to boil 1.2*10^13 tonnes of water. (!?!)
	That's 12000 km^3.
	That's a lot of energy.  :-) :-) :-)
				HRM

    
    Anti-life viruses:  How about something that breaksdown the immune
    system of the host...
    
    Anti ship devices - alot of junk in its flight path...cheap and
    effective...
             
    grins,
    
    clark.

    Anti-spacecraft...
    
    Remember the ringworld meteor defense?
    					- hbm

    anti-spacecraft....
    
    do the attackers get deflector type shields, like those in Star
    Wars (the movies)?
    
    if not, then nobody is going to be chasing anybody else.
    
    role-playing game i have been in (2300AD) has some space combat
    rules....  most combat is between missile drones, which carry powerful
    lasers and particle beams.  ship defenses are similar, only more
    accurate due to being mounted on the ship (no lag time between aiming
    and firing).  so combat is trying to get in more drones than can
    be shot down.
    
    

    re: last few
    
    These all seem like good reasons why space dogfights are 
    impossible.   X-wing fighters are just too easy too track and too easy 
    to destroy.  But we're fans and we're hungry for drama so there 
    must be a way.
    
    How about this - people-size fighter ships are hopeless in space, 
    but so are people in general.  Get rid of them.  Dump your pilot 
    consciousness into a ship the size of a mosquito.  Much easier to 
    accelerate, much harder to find, and much harder to destroy.  
    It's limited with regard to energy supply, but that's OK; the 
    goal of its missions is not to destroy enemy planets, but to 
    infect them.  It's wasteful to blow things up in any case.   What 
    you really want to do is spread your genome.  Take over whatever 
    the most advanced species is on the planet and have it start 
    building more mosquitos like you.  The most successful (in a 
    Darwinian sense) space-travelling species are the ones that can reproduce 
    themselves as quickly and widely as possible.
    
    So now what happens when two such species meet?  Here's where the 
    dogfights come in.  They battle it out in orbit for control of 
    the planet below.  If they manage to land they can secrete 
    themselves anywhere.  Only in space is the visibility good enough 
    for defense.  Even there you'll have to clean out the random 
    small debris.  The whole of near-planet space is laced with sensors.
    Incoming invaders are met by anti-body ships of similar size.
    Long-range weapons like lasers don't cut it because the attackers can 
    manoevre faster than the speed-of-light delay of the tracking system.
    It may not be the Battle of Britain replay that Star Wars was, but it 
    has possibilities.
    
    /jlr

><<< Note 378.53 by COFLUB::WRIGHT "What do you call a Boomerang that doesn't return?" >>>
>
>    
>    Anti-life viruses:  How about something that breaksdown the immune
>    system of the host...
>    
>    Anti ship devices - alot of junk in its flight path...cheap and
>    effective...
>             
>    grins,
>    
>    clark.

I'm about 4 years behind in this file so pardons if discussed before.
But an "anti-life virus" as described above sounds like HIV!!! So have we
- been at war and didn't know it?
- had one of our defense agencys "loose" one of their experiments?
- had some vistors that weren't as sanitary as they should have been?
- ?
/jon

    re: .-1

    Don't laugh!  Many conspiracy-minded  people do think AIDS was a
    CIA experiment gone wrong.  Look who the most affected groups are:
    Haitians, gays, and IV drug users. It's like a Nazi concentration
    camp doctor's dream come true.

    But if you were over-inclined to metaphor, you could say that AIDS
    is a disease as characteristic of our age as others have been in
    the past.

    In the religious-minded Middle Ages the characteristic disease was
    the Plague, a direct and ghastly sign of the wrath of God. Bubonic
    plague is straight out of the Old Testament: disfiguring, painful,
    fatal.

    In the Victorian era it was consumption (tuberculosis), which left
    one romantically wan and was made worse by the air pollution of
    the satanic mills.  

    Through most of the 20th century the thing to fear was cancer, a
    disease of uncontrolled growth.  What better metaphor for
    over-industrialization?  The cancerous cells spread out through
    the body like shopping malls through the verdant countryside.

    Now it's AIDS, a disease where the body's normal defenses are so
    weakened that even slight foreign influences can harm it.
    Influences like, say, cheap VCRs.  Like illegal immigrants.  The
    body's normal mechanisms are so disordered that the roads no
    longer get repaired and people are sleeping in doorways.

    Since this is an SF conference, we have to ask: what comes after
    AIDS?  I vote for auto-immune diseases, where the immune system
    starts actually attacking the cells it's supposed to defend. It's
    the war of all against all.  It's "The Road Warrior" going on in
    your blood stream.  But hey, we can't let metaphors get us too
    carried away...
    
    /jlr
    
    PS I hope fans of Susan Sontag will forgive my vague memories of
    her book on this subject.

There are several diseases that provoke auto-immune reactions in the body.  The
one that comes to mind first is rhematoid arthritis.  

/Ted