ttestagr said:
Delta Green Friendly said:
I'm just wondering if the Nations of Earth are going to decide to say "FUCK IT." to the Council's laws about WMD and just nuke some of the Reapers with the weapons with the firepower needed to crack their shells.
Because in the end, we are petty, vengeful sore losers who ARE willing to burn ourselves to ashes to deny our enemies victory. Theoretically, Humanity should have enough nuclear firepower to make any victory on Earth a Pyrrhic victory for the Reapers. Sure, Earth would be lost, but the Reapers would likely have lost more of their own then they ever did for a single planet.
Remains to be seen if the nuclear option will be remembered.
Nuclear weapons are weaksauce. Remember that a dreads main gun puts out similar firepower every two seconds.
For one-shot bombs of mass destruction, the Citadel treaties ban matter/anti-matter reaction bombs. Much more destructive, and direct exposure to anti-matter will handily waste a Reaper.
A dreadnought's gun fires 38,5 kilotons per shot (that hits). Strategic nukes can dish out in the dozens of megatons, if not a hundred megaton (with an unrestrained Ivan/Tsar Bomba design).
Nukes are not "weak sauce". To give scale, a dreadnought can do 2 Hiroshima's (12-15 kt) per shot. A Castle Bravo device was 15 Megatons, the currently most powerful warhead in service in the US is a 9 megatons device.
Sure, anti-matter warheads are more efficient in their reaction, but Humanity should still have some righteous piles of nuclear ordinance in stockpiles in addition to anti-matter warheads.
And I believe you missed the last part of my wondering, that is the possibility of Humanity incinerating themselves to spite the Reapers. (We would totally do it if there was no hope of victory.)