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************************* SPOILER ******************************

If you haven't read the book and do intend on doing so (or do not want minor spoilers - STOP!!!)




SPOILER - Molech vengeful spirit slight spoiler!!!


You were warned!

Now The book is amazing and I just had one question or piece of criticism after reading the book. I wondered if anyone feels the same or can further enlighten me! It involves the death of the imperator class titan at the last half of the book. (I think it's the Paragon of Terra) Anyway - It's death in the book happens and at the hands of the knights, which seems unlikely but hey it's heresy! So lets assume it is feasible. Given my limited knowledge of warhmmer 40K. Which is mainly the heresy books. I still know that these titans are massive and some of the biggest in the army/legions right?

It's always given to us by the books that the reactor to these titans is "a caged star" which is a lot of f'n energy on a cosmic scale. Don't ask me for maths, let's just agree it's a lot. It powers energy weapons capable of leveling entire cities with one shot so once the reactor goes critical (with no reactor venting what so ever) as the book tells us. Why do we only get an explosion on that scale? It says everything within a 1500 meter radius? We are talking "caged star" here....... that isn't higher than the blast radius of the first ever nuke dropped in actual combat? Hiroshima in the 1950's generated a blast nearly 1.6 km alone. This is after the bomb was considered vastly inefficient (less than 2% of it's material actually fissioning) Lets assume the weapons alone on this titan can level a city. Why then is the resulting blast so small? Even in terms of cloud size it's tiny. In modern terms look for "tsar bomba" a then give me an honest feed back on how big you think the blast should be! Let's not air on the side of caution. It's science fiction. What about 10 square miles or fck it let's say 100 for the sake of over kill>? Well maybe not that high - but come on. This is the death of a titan reactor? It's blast should have reached greater heights than 13K above the earth. Basis for this claim - hiroshima and again the tsar bomba (which when tested was the largest by modern standards) So we can compare Tsar vs "the reactor empowering a titan was a caged star. Not a tamed one, never that"

Seems kind of weak?

Thanks for reading! Opinions?

Since the reactor is described as 'a caged star', let us compare the exploding reactor to an exploding star (a.k.a. a supernova).

This is some bar napkin calculus because it's too much of a pain in the ass to do because the power levels are so vastly different:
A Hydrogen bomb weighing about 1.1 Ton has an explosive power of about 1.100.000 tons of TNT and can easily level a city.
The first atomic bomb had an explosive power of approximately 20.000 tons of TNT. The first Hydrogen bomb had an explosive power of approximately 10.000.000 tons of TNT. So this bomb could've theoretically reduced about 9 cities to ruins.

Now for the mindblowing stuff:
A supernova has an explosive release of energy equal to 100.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 H-bombs.

Our sun is too small to explode but should it theoretically explode, it's safe to say the earth would be a charred piece rock IF it were to remain in one piece.
So yes, if a reactor with the power of a star would explode, the blast radius would be larger than 1500 meters.

P.s. Even if the 'caged star' we're talking about would have a diameter of 1 meter, the explosion would still be powerful enough to rip a planet in more than a dozen pieces.

Any time a titan of Reaver or larger dies to a full-on reactor breach it should be at least Heroshima, which was a very tiny reaction, as nukes go. These are reactors that are much larger than the ones in aircraft carriers or subs, at least.

But then again, lots of weapons like plasma cannons (or even frag missiles!) should result in larger explosions, too, at that rate.

you need another option for "it's actually too big"
describing the power planet as a mini star. now what that actually MEANS is the titan was powered by a fusion reactor. here;s the thing, given all modern science known the fusion reactor wouldn't explode like that apparently.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Any time a titan of Reaver or larger dies to a full-on reactor breach it should be at least Heroshima, which was a very tiny reaction, as nukes go. These are reactors that are much larger than the ones in aircraft carriers or subs, at least.

But then again, lots of weapons like plasma cannons (or even frag missiles!) should result in larger explosions, too, at that rate.

This was really the point of my post. It just seems kind of weak considering the size if the Titan and reactor size. It blast didn't even equal that of Hiroshima. It's the year 40k or just before (as it is the heresy right?) but still. The size of the melt down should have been massive compared with the blast in the book.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BrianDavion wrote:
you need another option for "it's actually too big"
describing the power planet as a mini star. now what that actually MEANS is the titan was powered by a fusion reactor. here;s the thing, given all modern science known the fusion reactor wouldn't explode like that apparently.

With nothing to vent the reactor. Having been betrayed from the inside. The reactor is anything but contained. It should have gone BOOM eliminating everything in a 10km radius ++++++
Then the cloud reaching only thirteen kilometers high? That's tiny. The tsar bomba sent a cloud 56 km heigh. That was back in the 1960's