Vaporizing a Small Town

2046 · Post by **2046** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 1:50 am

This topic has been touched on in a thread or two here and back in the day at STrek, but I've composed a page wherein the RotS novel line about turbolaser bolts powerful enough to vaporize a small town is seriously considered.

http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWvapetown.html

I was curious to know what others felt about the criteria I've used. I feel it's quite fair given the layman's use of the term "vaporize" (such as in reference to Hiroshima).

I'm basically wanting to make sure I'm being fair. I mean, if the 2008 Trek movie said that the Enterprise could vaporize a small town in a single phaser shot, would my criteria be the ones that you'd employ? Or would you be more generous or more conservative?

Just wondering. Any and all feedback welcome. And pardon me, JMS, if it seems I'm page-whoring. ;)

Post by **Jedi Master Spock** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 7:47 am

If you feel guilty about it, we have an entire forum section dedicated to page-whoring. And then one just for me. So... don't worry. Once I get all the current projects on my plate sorted out, I'll probably be page-whoring myself with a vengeance.

As to the usage... I call it fair enough myself. It's a pretty loose phrase, and we could have easily heard the same thing in Trek. Solid page.

Mr. Oragahn · Post by **Mr. Oragahn** » Sun Dec 24, 2006 2:24 pm

Well, besides Alderaan's destruction and some asteroid vaporization derived from horrible CGI, that's the most direct description of a high level firepower capacity.

It seems quite low though, but if you think in EU terms, and look back millenia ago, during Knights of the Old Republic, there was that fleet of whatever capital ships built from the Starforge I think, and the level of destruction resulting from a heavy bombardment, exectued in the intent of destroying a whole advanced world, all that seen in a cutscene, didn't look particularily impressive in comparison to ROTS' sentence.

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign · Post by **AnonymousRedShirtEnsign** » Tue Dec 26, 2006 10:54 pm

Good page, can't see how Warsies are going to try and rebuke it, other than claim a small town in the Wars universe has at least 100,000,000 people and spans >1000 sq.mi. and every building in them is made of neutronium hardened ferracrete and durasteel. Since it's not like we actually see any towns or small cities on Tatooine :)

2046 · Post by **2046** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 9:35 am

Actually, A.R. . . . oh snap you have a bad acronym. Ahem ... actually, AnonymousRedShirtEnsign, you inspired me a bit.

I remembered Mos Eisley as a more or less nondescript distant kludge of blocky whatevers near the horizon. But in fact there are discernible objects there.

I skipped even checking before 'cause Mos Eisley is identified as a town in the ANH novelization, one larger than Anchorhead and sufficiently big to require folks to move about in the daytime, being a center of commerce.

Since it wasn't a "small town", but instead just a "town", I didn't even bother with it.

But as noted, one can identify things in the distant view . . . such as that funky crashed ship sitting cattywompus in the dirt.

The funky crashed ship has scalable people nearby. And it casts a shadow about ten degrees off straight up, meaning the top of the ship (not visible in the close view of it) can have its height estimated.

If we know the height, then in the distant view where we can see the whole bloody thing, we can scale the whole bloody town.

And although I haven't done all the math and pixel-counting yet, I can tell you this much . . . Mos Eisley is frakking small. The ship is in the ballpark of 25 meters tall. That means Mos Eisley is less than a kilometer wide.

If that's a Star Wars not-small town . . . well hell. Even 6.25 megatons is probably overkill.

Back to the drawing board.

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign · Post by **AnonymousRedShirtEnsign** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 6:16 am

Yeah, I realized the ARSE thing about a day after I created the account. The statement about Anchorhead being smaller makes sense, if we assume Anchorhead hasn't changed much in 4,000 years or has a very strict urban-growth-boundary. Mos Espa appears to be quite a bit larger than both Mos Eisley and Anchorhead (it has at least 100,000 people in the general vicinity of the city). My guess for why there are so many people in Mos Eisley is that the majority of the people there live in farms and houses spread throughout the dune sea, and that most of the buildings in Mos Eisley proper are commercial or industrial in nature.