The 1.5 megaton myth

[Sothis]

It's June, it's supposed to be summer, so can anyone tell me why we've had so much rain here lately??? But I digress.

My referral to Darkstar's interpretations of certain phrases and events is relevant because interpretations are at the heart of this 1.5MT business. By assuming that the author does not mean vaporisation, despite using the term, and,by assuming small town must refer to a totally different planet, we are muddying the water. Small town can mean many things. Stevenage is most certainty small compared to some places out there. Yet it is large compared to others. Birmingham can be interpreted as a large town or small city. Southend might be regarded as somewhere in-between. Rather than assuming the author is referring to a small,backwater on a different planet, is it not more reasonable to think he is referring to something people can relate to?

[Picard]

Scientific vaporization and common vaporization do not have much in common. Town vaporized in scientific sense would have all buildings reduced to dust and vapor. Town vaporized in common sense would look something like this:





And since writer is talking (OK, writing) to common people on Earth, and not Coruscant scientists, using common definition of vaporization and small town only makes sense.

I used it, and Darkstar used it. And if you had actually read Darkstar's page instead of relying on SDN / SBC propaganda, you would have seen this:

Using a canonically-identified larger town of robust construction in Star Wars, we find that a bolt powerful enough to vaporize a small town could be as powerful as about 400 kilotons, give or take.

Giving some wiggle room and using a larger modern American town, we find that a bolt powerful enough to vaporize a smallish town could be as powerful as about 1.5 megatons, give or take.

And this:

Thus, we can peg those few heaviest shipboard weapons of Star Wars at about 1.5 megatons, high-end.

[Mr. Oragahn]

It's June, it's supposed to be summer, so can anyone tell me why we've had so much rain here lately??? But I digress.

My referral to Darkstar's interpretations of certain phrases and events is relevant because interpretations are at the heart of this 1.5MT business.

No, and I already explained why. If you have a problem with Darkstar, try to solve it with him in a duel.
You cannot dodge the reality of the interpretation of the description just because someone, somewhere, for something completely different, interpreted some words in a given way.
Somehow, if this isn't clear, then let me take another example.
Let's say someone is new to the STvSW thing and agrees that the interpretation must not be taken literally. Are you going to annoy that person with that bullshit argument about what some other dude (RSA) this person never met nor talked to decided to argue about a totally different topic?
No, just get real. It's fucking silly.
It's just a cheap dodge, no more, no less.

By assuming that the author does not mean vaporisation, despite using the term,...

That's just so absurd. How do you know that? How do you know that in his head, vaporized wasn't equal to leveled?
See, you don't know that. You're just projecting. So this is pointless. Don't extrapolate and go with what we know for sure.

... and,by assuming small town must refer to a totally different planet, we are muddying the water. Small town can mean many things. Stevenage is most certainty small compared to some places out there.

Compared to other towns? Not so much.
As pointed out, it's not like the vast majority of major cities in SW are large anyway, either going with the movies, the TCWS or even with the EU. Most of the background is filled with places with small cities, towns and what have you. Even if we were to pick some of the most successful pieces of the EU, like the Thrawn trilogy, most of the visited places have nothing exceptional that warrants ditching what we know of towns in favour of some mega construct because CORUSCANT!

Yet it is large compared to others. Birmingham can be interpreted as a large town or small city. Southend might be regarded as somewhere in-between. Rather than assuming the author is referring to a small,backwater on a different planet, is it not more reasonable to think he is referring to something people can relate to?

Those people being?
Readers. So a small town is already smaller than what you picked.
But the product is mainly North American.
Or, eventually, in universe, your average SW sentient being, member of the galactic republic or the empire. Meaning that, anyway, picking a planet like Coruscant, which has no cities or town but just one endless paste of industrial wastelands and urban nests as the sole reference is not correct.

[Praeothmin]

Honestly, seeing that all most of the planets we've seen in the SW movies and in TCW show us small cities, and that a planetary city like Corsucant is a rarity, I really have a hard time believing the author meant "small town" as in "a small part of the fuckingly huge city-planet Coruscant which encompasses millions of inhabitants"...

When they mention or show us towns in the SW movies or TCW, they look like small towns on Earth, period...

[Sothis]

Right, after pondering for a bit, and weighing up whether or not I have the time, I have decided I am quite happy to debate anyone who wants to in a one-on-one fashion. Since I am the one issuing the challenge, I will abide by the rules laid down by the challenged party. I can't promise to stick to a schedule, as I have a wife, baby daughter and stepson, not to mention a full-time job (which involves shift work).

One thing that I won't dispute is the brilliance of Liverpool football club. Apart from that, name your topic.

[Praeothmin]

Sothis, I thinkn the best thing to do is to start a new thread, select which topic you wish to debate, what sources are allowed (with the knowledge that higher canon trumps lower canon), and who you wish to debate with.
Then we will create a commentary thread to allow people who aren't in the debate to comment on it...

Is that ok for you?

[Sothis]

Sothis, I thinkn the best thing to do is to start a new thread, select which topic you wish to debate, what sources are allowed (with the knowledge that higher canon trumps lower canon), and who you wish to debate with.
Then we will create a commentary thread to allow people who aren't in the debate to comment on it...

Is that ok for you?

Sounds good to me.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

The 1.5 megaton figure does not work out. Here are the assumptions that darkstar makes:

1. The turbolasers are heavy turbolasers. He uses the logic that the turbolasers were visible from such distances that they must have been heavy. However:

a) Individual starfighters were visible as gnats, so therefore, it is entirely reasonable for light or medium turbolasers to still be visible.

b) The entire sky was full of turbolasers. Based on ds's power generation/HTL ratio, realistically HTL's would take minutes to recharge given the other systems that require power; the only way for this to work with the entire sky being saturated with turbolasers is either for there to be millions or even more ships or for the turbolasers to have been light or medium ones.

c) Both the novel and the film heavily imply that HTL's were down; shields were down in the films, and power was largely down in the novels. A single HTL would have destroyed either ship in the film, yet they weren't used; they were so desperate they had to use flak cannons as cap ship weapons!

2. That a small town in SW is the same as in real life.

a) Suspension of disbelief and the fourth wall.

b) Mos Eisley is a small town by Tatooine standards, not by developed SW planet level. Why would a poor, rural desert planet have high standards for settlement sizes?

3. That the town was figuratively vaporized.

a) He can reasonably claim figurative vaporization, but then he cannot even begin to claim that his calc's are in any way high end or even a median calc.

b) Where did he get his formula for figurative vaporization? How does he know when something is "destroyed" and when it's "figuratively vaporized"? Where did his formula come from?


A more reasonable calculation would be, for example, using the claim in LOTF: Revelations that many towns have populations exceeding 4 million. Even if a small town were an order of magnitude below this; 100,000 or so, it would correlate to about 115 km^2 in land area; or about 10.7 km in radius, requiring a 3 gigaton blast to vaporize.

Or, even using Bastrop, a literal vaporization would imply 400 megatons. A figurative vaporization of the near total destruction of buildings would imply 5 megatons.



Moreso, the asteroid vaping calcs establish a lower limit on light turbolasers as megatons; this is using the asteroids that were vaporized in the same frame as the Falcon; these are quite easily scaleable, are described as rocky asteroids and clearly glow in a bright light implying and supporting vaporization.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The 1.5 megaton figure does not work out. Here are the assumptions that darkstar makes:

1. The turbolasers are heavy turbolasers. He uses the logic that the turbolasers were visible from such distances that they must have been heavy. However:

a) Individual starfighters were visible as gnats, so therefore, it is entirely reasonable for light or medium turbolasers to still be visible.

Yes, in contrast to the planetoids which the shiny hairlines connected. The bolts fired by fighters are notoriously smaller than the fighters themselves.
This goes without saying that no such weapon as the laser cannons used by fighters ever fired anything as long as a shiny hairline that could connect capital ships.
However, we saw this in ROTJ. We also saw a SPHA-T beam do that.

b) The entire sky was full of turbolasers. Based on ds's power generation/HTL ratio, realistically HTL's would take minutes to recharge given the other systems that require power; the only way for this to work with the entire sky being saturated with turbolasers is either for there to be millions or even more ships or for the turbolasers to have been light or medium ones.

The movies and TCWS seem to suggest that they can be fired at greater rates. Not to say that the sky was also filled with warships, which would explain there were so many TL bolts.
Is it said that the sky is saturated, or merely filled?
Because it's easy to fill a sky with flak or even artillery fire as it was done in Iraq.
Yet that's nowhere a concentration that would require millions of gun pieces.
You might be overexagerating.

c) Both the novel and the film heavily imply that HTL's were down; shields were down in the films, and power was largely down in the novels.

Let's see evidence of that first.

A single HTL would have destroyed either ship in the film, yet they weren't used; they were so desperate they had to use flak cannons as cap ship weapons!

Flak? That's absurd. None of the broadside guns could fit the flak role, especially not the totally fix guns on the Invisible Hand.

2. That a small town in SW is the same as in real life.

a) Suspension of disbelief and the fourth wall.

SW has largely shown a wide variety of small towns.
It works.

b) Mos Eisley is a small town by Tatooine standards, not by developed SW planet level. Why would a poor, rural desert planet have high standards for settlement sizes?

Theed is a developed and rich city. It's actually a capital city, that of Naboo. Yet it's hardly huge.

3. That the town was figuratively vaporized.

That's they way the layman uses the term. That's hardly a reason why the low megaton yield can't be correct.

a) He can reasonably claim figurative vaporization, but then he cannot even begin to claim that his calc's are in any way high end or even a median calc.

b) Where did he get his formula for figurative vaporization? How does he know when something is "destroyed" and when it's "figuratively vaporized"? Where did his formula come from?

IIRC, he calculated the energy required to vaporize a man at a distance of x meters.
That would actually give a high end since that much energy could only be provided by stretching the fireball that far.

A more reasonable calculation would be, for example, using the claim in LOTF: Revelations that many towns have populations exceeding 4 million. Even if a small town were an order of magnitude below this; 100,000 or so, it would correlate to about 115 km^2 in land area; or about 10.7 km in radius, requiring a 3 gigaton blast to vaporize.

That would be a good point if for the small problem that Hiroshima, before the bomb, had a population of 360,000 souls.
That would largely fit the bill of a small town. Remember how much it took to vaporize Hiroshima?
Thirteen to eighteen kilotons.

Or, even using Bastrop, a literal vaporization would imply 400 megatons. A figurative vaporization of the near total destruction of buildings would imply 5 megatons.

Calcs ?

Moreso, the asteroid vaping calcs establish a lower limit on light turbolasers as megatons; this is using the asteroids that were vaporized in the same frame as the Falcon; these are quite easily scaleable, are described as rocky asteroids and clearly glow in a bright light implying and supporting vaporization.

Damn, this one never gets old.
Those white blobs never were asteroids to begin with.
Please read this and stop mindlessly parroting SDN:
Asteroids vs Flak Bursts on USVSD
There.

[Praeothmin]

Moreso, the asteroid vaping calcs establish a lower limit on light turbolasers as megatons; this is using the asteroids that were vaporized in the same frame as the Falcon; these are quite easily scaleable, are described as rocky asteroids and clearly glow in a bright light implying and supporting vaporization.

Gee, another unsupported BULLSHIT claim without any calculations, and once again ignoring the fact these asteroids blew up by themselves when they collided at low speeds...

THIS is an example of you failing to acknowledge evidence...
Do you want me to frame it for you?

[Picard]

Moreso, the asteroid vaping calcs establish a lower limit on light turbolasers as megatons; this is using the asteroids that were vaporized in the same frame as the Falcon; these are quite easily scaleable, are described as rocky asteroids and clearly glow in a bright light implying and supporting vaporization.

Asteroid vaping calcs give them 2-digit kilotons at most, for medium TL's. Your "light TL vaping asteroids" idea is old Warsie myth, and literal bullshit.

Take a look:
http://picard578.hostoi.com/startrek-vs ... asers.html

part regarding sizes of bolts. Heavy TL bolts are 400 meters long. Medium TL bolts (ones we see vaporizing asteroids) are 3.6 meters wide and probably around 16 to 20 meters long. Light TL bolts are 0.4 meters wide, and around 5 - 7 meters long.

[mojo]

Moreso, the asteroid vaping calcs establish a lower limit on light turbolasers as megatons; this is using the asteroids that were vaporized in the same frame as the Falcon; these are quite easily scaleable, are described as rocky asteroids and clearly glow in a bright light implying and supporting vaporization.

Gee, another unsupported BULLSHIT claim without any calculations, and once again ignoring the fact these asteroids blew up by themselves when they collided at low speeds...

THIS is an example of you failing to acknowledge evidence...
Do you want me to frame it for you?

this kind of thing must make it absolute hell to debate for the star wars side. SO MANY things in sw happen just because somebody thought they would look cool, or because lucas has backed himself into a corner and rather than trying to find a logical way to unfuck himself he just goes with whatever crosses his mind first, or in the case of the prequels, because the plot of the OT requires that certain things happen regardless of whether or not they make the slightest amount of sense.

SOMEONE THOUGHT IT WAS COOL:
1. asteroids exploding when they bump into each other at 2 mph.
etc, etc..

LUCAS HAS BACKED HIMSELF INTO A CORNER:
1. our heroes have banded together with walking stuffed animals, and since the main characters can't die, the ridiculously primitive ewok weaponry must be able to defeat futuristic imperial forces.
etc, etc..

OT PLOT REQUIRES THIS:
1. anakin must lose his duel with obi-wan and have his limbs hacked off while his entire body is on fire so that he can become 'more machine than man', even though he has been shown to be the more powerful jedi and duelist time and again.
2. obi-wan is required by his code to perform a mercy kill on anakin but chooses to walk away and leave him to burn to death, screaming in horrible agony. obi-wan's best friend ever.
3. padme must die so that she's out of the picture in the OT. seriously though? death by broken heart??
4. obi-wan takes luke to tattoine and hides him with his family, regardless of the fact that anakin has visited them before.
etc, etc..

jeezum crow!

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Yes, in contrast to the planetoids which the shiny hairlines connected. The bolts fired by fighters are notoriously smaller than the fighters themselves.
This goes without saying that no such weapon as the laser cannons used by fighters ever fired anything as long as a shiny hairline that could connect capital ships.
However, we saw this in ROTJ. We also saw a SPHA-T beam do that.

Strawman; I did not claim that the shiny hairlines are from the fighters, but that they are light turbolasers from the capital ships.

The movies and TCWS seem to suggest that they can be fired at greater rates.

Implicit agreement: darkstar is wrong on this.

Not to say that the sky was also filled with warships, which would explain there were so many TL bolts.

Even if they were, you would only see 2 or 4 shiny hairlines connecting each planetoids at a time. The quote implies that these hairlines are repeatedly propagating.

Is it said that the sky is saturated, or merely filled?

Semantics. Does it matter?

Because it's easy to fill a sky with flak or even artillery fire as it was done in Iraq.
Yet that's nowhere a concentration that would require millions of gun pieces.
You might be overexagerating.

No, artillery fire would not fill the sky. You'd hardly even see the artillery fire before it hits.

Let's see evidence of that first.

Although I do not have novel quotes with me at the time, in the movies the shields were obviously down. If the shields were down (and shields are described in LOTF: Fury to "dissipate excess turbolaser energy") then a single HTL could have destroyed a capital ship had they still been up. Obviously, they weren't, because we don't see any!

Flak? That's absurd. None of the broadside guns could fit the flak role, especially not the totally fix guns on the Invisible Hand.

Official literature describes the guns as flak cannons.

SW has largely shown a wide variety of small towns.
It works.

Like where? Where have small towns been shown to be no larger than Bastrop?

Theed is a developed and rich city. It's actually a capital city, that of Naboo. Yet it's hardly huge.

And Naboo is hardly populated, nor does being a capital city equate to being large. Ottawa is pretty darn small.

That's they way the layman uses the term. That's hardly a reason why the low megaton yield can't be correct.

They could be, but then you cannot claim that this is an "upper limit" as much as it's a lower limit assuming the lowest possible calculation (figurative calculation, RL small town, HTL's, etc)

IIRC, he calculated the energy required to vaporize a man at a distance of x meters.
That would actually give a high end since that much energy could only be provided by stretching the fireball that far.

So he calculates the energy needed to vaporize a man at X meters, but neglects to calculate the energy needed to vaporize...I don't know metal or construction materials at X meters?

That would be a good point if for the small problem that Hiroshima, before the bomb, had a population of 360,000 souls.
That would largely fit the bill of a small town. Remember how much it took to vaporize Hiroshima?
Thirteen to eighteen kilotons.

Hiroshima was not vaporized, figuratively nor literally.

Calcs ?

Simple; estimate the radius of Bastrop and plug it in with the SDN nuclear weapons calculator, first for literal fireball radius and then for a near total fatalities airblast (which would be the figurative approximation of vaporization).

Damn, this one never gets old.
Those white blobs never were asteroids to begin with.
Please read this and stop mindlessly parroting SDN:
Asteroids vs Flak Bursts on USVSD
There.

A flax burst of energy in space is not going to glow brightly in a self contained sphere like it does.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Is it said that the sky is saturated, or merely filled?

Semantics. Does it matter?

Fucking ay.
See below.

Because it's easy to fill a sky with flak or even artillery fire as it was done in Iraq.
Yet that's nowhere a concentration that would require millions of gun pieces.
You might be overexagerating.

No, artillery fire would not fill the sky. You'd hardly even see the artillery fire before it hits.

Artillery, missiles, interception fire, the point is the same. If it's visible, the effect would be the same.
All we're told is that they fill the sky.
Using Google can quicly put to rest your claim:
http://www.google.com/search?q=artillery+filling+sky

Let's see evidence of that first.

Although I do not have novel quotes with me at the time, in the movies the shields were obviously down. If the shields were down (and shields are described in LOTF: Fury to "dissipate excess turbolaser energy") then a single HTL could have destroyed a capital ship had they still been up. Obviously, they weren't, because we don't see any!

Let me arrange your sentence here:
"If the shields were down (...) then a single HTL could have destroyed a capital ship had they still been up."

Am I supposed to understand anything here?
:/

Flak? That's absurd. None of the broadside guns could fit the flak role, especially not the totally fix guns on the Invisible Hand.

Official literature describes the guns as flak cannons.

Official literature. ICS, per chance? Because any asstard who wrote that never opened a book about what flak is about.
Clue: it certainly has nothing to do with fixed gunpoints lobbing shells at subsonic speeds from the broadsides.
Even the shells themselves didn't reveal any sign of behaviour that would potentially make them relevant as a form of flak.
The reality is both for a Venator and the Invisible Hand, those cannons just make fuck sense at all. The best I can think of is some kind of uss in boarding operations, to deal local damage to enemy gun pieces to avoid your own ship getting damaged, as well as transportation boats or connection tubes, if there's anything like that. Which I have not seen evidence of, as far as the later is concerned.

SW has largely shown a wide variety of small towns.
It works.

Like where? Where have small towns been shown to be no larger than Bastrop?

The small towns and cities are featured in TCWS. I know this was already pointed out by others before me.

Theed is a developed and rich city. It's actually a capital city, that of Naboo. Yet it's hardly huge.

And Naboo is hardly populated, nor does being a capital city equate to being large. Ottawa is pretty darn small.

And there you just shot yourself in the foot. Ottawa, a capital city, in a nation of 34 M people, is already quite small (although it's actually very close to Gatineau, which explains the lack of expansion in a certain direction, and the lack of overall exclusive influence in the region).
As for Naboo, you either get 600 M or more than 4 billions, which is all I need anyway. It largely surpasses Canada, and in one case comes close to Earth.
Plus we already worked with your definition of towns from that series of books, which still don't allow for large areas. And it said towns had pops of hundreds of thousands iirc, not small towns.

That's they way the layman uses the term. That's hardly a reason why the low megaton yield can't be correct.

They could be, but then you cannot claim that this is an "upper limit" as much as it's a lower limit assuming the lowest possible calculation (figurative calculation, RL small town, HTL's, etc)

The lower limit if close to the nuke that blasted Hiroshima. Below two dozen kilotons.

IIRC, he calculated the energy required to vaporize a man at a distance of x meters.
That would actually give a high end since that much energy could only be provided by stretching the fireball that far.

So he calculates the energy needed to vaporize a man at X meters, but neglects to calculate the energy needed to vaporize...I don't know metal or construction materials at X meters?

He didn't go with a hyper literal application. He wanted to obtain an already absurd high end within the confines of his interpretation of "vaporize".
We know that if you go down the route where even houses and random buildings are all turned to hot particles, you'll have to aim for an event that actually puts a city sized crater into the ground of the planet.
One could say that if the TLs could do that, the author would have said so instead of fixing himself to a description that would easily sound less impressive.

That would be a good point if for the small problem that Hiroshima, before the bomb, had a population of 360,000 souls.
That would largely fit the bill of a small town. Remember how much it took to vaporize Hiroshima?
Thirteen to eighteen kilotons.

Hiroshima was not vaporized, figuratively nor literally.

Figuratively, it was. We provided plenty of evidence of that. It's all over the Internet for crissake. Don't you ever read people's posts?

Calcs ?

Simple; estimate the radius of Bastrop and plug it in with the SDN nuclear weapons calculator, first for literal fireball radius and then for a near total fatalities airblast (which would be the figurative approximation of vaporization).

Did you know that the nuclear calculator will never provide a figure for the hyper literalism you're going for?
Tss tss.
Now, let's look at how you proceeded.
RSA said a circle that's 4.9 km. It means 4.9 km wide. You used the diameter as if it were the radius.
Radius is 2.45 km.
You need about 24 megatons (instead of 400) to get a fireball that's roughly 2.45 km wide on ground contact (because that's what it is, a ground contact explosion).
The near total fatalities over the same radius is 700 KT, instead of your 5 MT.

Heck, even the craterization figure from his asteroid busting calculator returns only 21.3 megatons for a 4900 meters wide hard-granite rock. That, of course, would technically take care of the entirety of the city.
Of course, if we wanted to be honest and look at the true vaporization figures, knowing that they're for a single bomb placed inside a closed environment, instead of an open and flat surface, we would already get 452.1 gigatons.
Don't you think that with such a yield, the author wouldn't have described the potency of the weapons as something more capable than just vaporizing a small town, huh?

Damn, this one never gets old.
Those white blobs never were asteroids to begin with.
Please read this and stop mindlessly parroting SDN:
Asteroids vs Flak Bursts on USVSD
There.

A flax burst of energy in space is not going to glow brightly in a self contained sphere like it does.

Neither will an asteroid that doesn't exist to begin with. I'd rather go with technobabble flak weapon than invent rocks out of thin air like SDN has been claiming for more than a decade. But feel free to mindlessly copy Wong's hosted page again.

[Mike DiCenso]

Damn, this one never gets old.
Those white blobs never were asteroids to begin with.
Please read this and stop mindlessly parroting SDN:
Asteroids vs Flak Bursts on USVSD
There.

A flax burst of energy in space is not going to glow brightly in a self contained sphere like it does.

Neither will an asteroid that doesn't exist to begin with. I'd rather go with technobabble flak weapon than invent rocks out of thin air like SDN has been claiming for more than a decade. But feel free to mindlessly copy Wong's hosted page again.

Just a quick point here. The white flak flashes do not necessarily indicate at hit against a solid object as we see flashes and even brightly contained spheres during the exchange of fire between the Tanative and Devastator in the opening of ANH as seen here, and later when the Falcon breaks the Tatooine blockade. Pay close attention to the circular flashes as seen from the Falcon's cockpit windows at 2:19 onwards.

I don't think in either of those two cases you can claim there were any asteroids there to be hit. At best you can claim shield hits.
-Mike