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So, I'm just curious why Nukes aren't more prevalent in 40k. The only appearance that I am aware of in the game proper is the IGs death-strike missal launcher, while in battle fleet gothic they seem to be absent completely. Seems like in a galaxy filled with titans and fleets of unstopable hunger the ability to vaporize dozens of miles at a time would be useful. Heck, in space combat it seems like it would be down right efficient (give the vastness of space and the size of some of the ships involved).
Probably because of the radiation. Why use nukes and make something uninhabitable for centuries, when you can just virus bomb a place, drop some cyclone torpedoes, and move right in?
djones520 wrote: Probably because of the radiation. Why use nukes and make something uninhabitable for centuries, when you can just virus bomb a place, drop some cyclone torpedoes, and move right in?
Skitarri vanguard would disagree with you ...
I believe the deathstrike missile launcher basically described in the fluff as a tactical nuclear weapon for the record.
Nukes are terrible in space and nukes rarely "vaporize" anything actually. Contrary to popular belief nukes are actually terrible wepaons for taking out hard targets as they do not focus their energy at an object, which is important when the big things always have void shields or some equivalent to them.
You don't really get anything better than relativistic projectiles fired at hypersonic speeds like macrocannons.
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
They're sometimes used to finish a target though, once any shields are gone and the missile can plow right into whatever it's aimed at. Or at least they were back in the original Space Hulk game. The fluff text described a couple of cruisers hanging back ready to pepper the space hulk with some incredible amounts of gigatons if the Blood Angels failed to secure it, probably more in a single missile than we have on Earth in total right now...
They're sometimes used to finish a target though, once any shields are gone and the missile can plow right into whatever it's aimed at. Or at least they were back in the original Space Hulk game. The fluff text described a couple of cruisers hanging back ready to pepper the space hulk with some incredible amounts of gigatons if the Blood Angels failed to secure it, probably more in a single missile than we have on Earth in total right now...
Torpedoes aren't normal nukes, they're HEAP nukes which penetrate the target first, then explode. When you talk about nukes you should specify if you mean your normal real life high explosive variety, neutron bombs, or something meant for armor penetration on a Battlefleet Gothic scale.
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
Nukes are used occasionally. But as mentioned, for many of the things the Imperium does nukes aren't great weapons. They're not effective in a vacuum. Space ships by the necessity of being in space are going to be well shielded against radiation, which is all a Nuke will do in space since there will be no shockwave(the primary damaging aspect of a nuclear weapon). And there is of course the fact that the Imperium has many weapons which are obscenely more powerful than nukes. The warheads on their torpedoes, lance battery strikes, etc... will all do way more damage than a nuclear warhead.
Nukes however as mentioned do get used within the setting. But they're truthfully viewed and categorized with conventional weaponry. They're not WMDs in 40k. They're just little pop guns. True 40k WMDs are things like Virus Bombs...
Virus bombs release a biological agent which destroys all life, turning it into sludge and gas. This mixture is highly flammable, and a single lance or bombardment cannon from an orbital ship will burn the whole planet's atmosphere like a massive fuel air bomb.
Cyclonic Torpedoes are even more powerful. Multiple torpedoes are launched, their warheads burrowing deep into the planet's crust and blowing it apart from the inside. The planet is turned into an asteroid field.
I imagine that any number of the weapons that are used constantly in the fluff leave large quantities of radiation behind, but I also expect that cleaning up radiation contamination would be quite routine for an advanced society 38k years in the future. Also, the dangers of radiation are somewhat overblown. Chernobyl was the worst nuclear disaster ever, worse than multiple atomic bombs. Yet today the place is actually relatively thriving, a few mutations in the local wildlife, but certainly it's not an inhospitable wasteland. And certainly none of the damage from the radiation would be enough that the Imperium would care about. So your local human population has a higher rate of cancer? Cancer got cured 10s of thousands of years in the past and is easily treated for those who can afford it, and for those who can't the Imperium hardly cares.
The aftermaths of a nuclear holocaust would not look anything like the Fallout games. 200 years afterwards and you'd have to be told that a bunch of nukes got dropped. Life may seem fragile, but it's actually pretty dang resilient.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2017/06/12 06:50:59
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
His pattern of returning alive after being declared dead occurred often enough during Cain's career that the Munitorum made a special ruling that Ciaphas Cain is to never be considered dead, despite evidence to the contrary.
djones520 wrote: Probably because of the radiation. Why use nukes and make something uninhabitable for centuries, when you can just virus bomb a place, drop some cyclone torpedoes, and move right in?
Of course there are nukes and there are nukes. Not all nukes make places uninhabitable for centuries. If it did I would be dead already having visited both Hiroshima and Nagasaki!
I sometimes feel as though people just blow off nukes as "just nukes", at the same time I don't have the aptitude or the patients to sit down and compare Mt or Jules of energy released. Indeed, I don't even expect nuclear weapons of the 40k universe to be similar to the ones we have today. At the very least I am sure they have advanced to pure fusion weapons. Nor do I see any reason for nuclear weapons to be "undirected" surely there is a way to get a nuke to preform as a shaped charge and direct all of its energy into a target. And finally, we aren't just talking about space battles, wouldn't a nuke be a rather handy way to take down a titan?
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
KayTwo wrote: I sometimes feel as though people just blow off nukes as "just nukes", at the same time I don't have the aptitude or the patients to sit down and compare Mt or Jules of energy released. Indeed, I don't even expect nuclear weapons of the 40k universe to be similar to the ones we have today. At the very least I am sure they have advanced to pure fusion weapons. Nor do I see any reason for nuclear weapons to be "undirected" surely there is a way to get a nuke to preform as a shaped charge and direct all of its energy into a target. And finally, we aren't just talking about space battles, wouldn't a nuke be a rather handy way to take down a titan?
A nuke as a shaped charge? Not really possible. A nuclear bomb pretty much vaporizes anything close to the actual detonation. Shaped charges also don't work like how you're imagining them. What a shaped charge is isn't the force of the explosion being contained and directed at a point, a shaped charge is an explosion which has a inverted cone of metal(usually copper) strapped to the front. The undirected explosion, due to how the spherical energy wave interacts with the cone, causes the cone to melt and turn into a single jet of molten metal. Shaped charges are used to trigger nuclear bombs, specifically fusion bombs, but you're not going to create a massive shaped charge with the nuclear bomb itself. It's going to direct all it's energy outwards in a sphere, and there really isn't anything you can do about it. No bomb fuselage you can create is going to actually contain a nuclear blast at point blank range, which is what would be needed to direct the blast.
A nuke could take on a titan, but it wouldn't be ideal. Nukes aren't very focused, so unless the bomb was detonated right next to the titan it's shielding and physical armor would likely allow it to survive. Maybe it's not going to be unscathed, but not the best plan of attack. Given that the Imperium has direct energy weapons like turbo-lasers and plasma weaponry, those are more effective options. In terms of energy directed at a single point, they'd be more destructive than a nuclear bomb.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
KayTwo wrote: I sometimes feel as though people just blow off nukes as "just nukes", at the same time I don't have the aptitude or the patients to sit down and compare Mt or Jules of energy released. Indeed, I don't even expect nuclear weapons of the 40k universe to be similar to the ones we have today. At the very least I am sure they have advanced to pure fusion weapons. Nor do I see any reason for nuclear weapons to be "undirected" surely there is a way to get a nuke to preform as a shaped charge and direct all of its energy into a target. And finally, we aren't just talking about space battles, wouldn't a nuke be a rather handy way to take down a titan?
If we assume big technological advances like that isn't it also logical there could be technological leaps that makes nukes inferior as a WMD? Don't see why nukes logically would be ultimate big weapon.
So maybe nukes just aren't efficient weapons for scale it would be used with better guns and bombs replacing nukes from use.
djones520 wrote: Probably because of the radiation. Why use nukes and make something uninhabitable for centuries, when you can just virus bomb a place, drop some cyclone torpedoes, and move right in?
Who cares about centuries when wars in 40k can last way way longer then that.
besides wouldnt a virus bomb REALLY make an aera uninhabitable?
djones520 wrote: Probably because of the radiation. Why use nukes and make something uninhabitable for centuries, when you can just virus bomb a place, drop some cyclone torpedoes, and move right in?
Who cares about centuries when wars in 40k can last way way longer then that.
besides wouldnt a virus bomb REALLY make an aera uninhabitable?
Depends on how robust the virus is. Bombing an area with the AIDS virus for example would be pretty useless because it is pretty damn fragile. You just can't kill it once someone is actually infected. Once there is nothing left for the virus to process it will die off. It would need to go into hibernation or something. For long term area denial persistent chemical or radiological weapons are probably what you want.
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
djones520 wrote: Probably because of the radiation. Why use nukes and make something uninhabitable for centuries, when you can just virus bomb a place, drop some cyclone torpedoes, and move right in?
Who cares about centuries when wars in 40k can last way way longer then that.
besides wouldnt a virus bomb REALLY make an aera uninhabitable?
..That's not how virus bombs work. Viral Bombs work by releasing a flesh-eating virus which rapidly decomposes all organic material on the planet's surface into methane gas, which is then ignited by a orbital bombardment, causing a global firestorm which incinerates the entire biosphere.
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
djones520 wrote: Probably because of the radiation. Why use nukes and make something uninhabitable for centuries, when you can just virus bomb a place, drop some cyclone torpedoes, and move right in?
Who cares about centuries when wars in 40k can last way way longer then that.
besides wouldnt a virus bomb REALLY make an aera uninhabitable?
..That's not how virus bombs work. Viral Bombs work by releasing a flesh-eating virus which rapidly decomposes all organic material on the planet's surface into methane gas, which is then ignited by a orbital bombardment, causing a global firestorm which incinerates the entire biosphere.
that would literally make a planet uninhabitable just from the deletion of vegetation and oxygen including ozone as the entire planet catches on fire.
djones520 wrote: Probably because of the radiation. Why use nukes and make something uninhabitable for centuries, when you can just virus bomb a place, drop some cyclone torpedoes, and move right in?
Who cares about centuries when wars in 40k can last way way longer then that.
besides wouldnt a virus bomb REALLY make an aera uninhabitable?
..That's not how virus bombs work. Viral Bombs work by releasing a flesh-eating virus which rapidly decomposes all organic material on the planet's surface into methane gas, which is then ignited by a orbital bombardment, causing a global firestorm which incinerates the entire biosphere.
that would literally make a planet uninhabitable just from the deletion of vegetation and oxygen including ozone as the entire planet catches on fire.
There's a reason why worlds subject to viral bombings are often classified as Dead Worlds afterwards, although some have somehow survived.
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
djones520 wrote: Probably because of the radiation. Why use nukes and make something uninhabitable for centuries, when you can just virus bomb a place, drop some cyclone torpedoes, and move right in?
Of course there are nukes and there are nukes. Not all nukes make places uninhabitable for centuries. If it did I would be dead already having visited both Hiroshima and Nagasaki!
The nukes used there, despite how horrible they were, were childs toys compared to the nukes we have today, let alone 40,000 years from now.
Nifty website for folks to use. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Give you a very clear idea of just how destructive these weapons have gotten since we last used them in anger.
djones520 wrote: Probably because of the radiation. Why use nukes and make something uninhabitable for centuries, when you can just virus bomb a place, drop some cyclone torpedoes, and move right in?
Who cares about centuries when wars in 40k can last way way longer then that.
besides wouldnt a virus bomb REALLY make an aera uninhabitable?
..That's not how virus bombs work. Viral Bombs work by releasing a flesh-eating virus which rapidly decomposes all organic material on the planet's surface into methane gas, which is then ignited by a orbital bombardment, causing a global firestorm which incinerates the entire biosphere.
that would literally make a planet uninhabitable just from the deletion of vegetation and oxygen including ozone as the entire planet catches on fire.
There's a reason why worlds subject to viral bombings are often classified as Dead Worlds afterwards, although some have somehow survived.
Im lost as to what we are talking about at this point unless you were trying to quote Djones.
djones520 wrote: Probably because of the radiation. Why use nukes and make something uninhabitable for centuries, when you can just virus bomb a place, drop some cyclone torpedoes, and move right in?
Of course there are nukes and there are nukes. Not all nukes make places uninhabitable for centuries. If it did I would be dead already having visited both Hiroshima and Nagasaki!
The nukes used there, despite how horrible they were, were childs toys compared to the nukes we have today, let alone 40,000 years from now.
Nifty website for folks to use. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Give you a very clear idea of just how destructive these weapons have gotten since we last used them in anger.
He means the radiation, not the blast power. Unless you drop neutron bombs or specifically detonate a nuke in the dirt to irradiate the ground it's not going to be much of a health hazard in a century, let alone several.
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
The sheer power of nukes is widely underestimated, I believe. It is important to remember that the central point of the fireball of a nuclear detonation reaches temperatures of 10^7 K, or 10 million degrees Fahrenheit. The (theoretical) highest melting point of any known material (a blend of hafnium, carbon, and nitrogen) would be 4400 K, or only 7460° Fahrenheit. The temperature within the fireball (assuming a 1 MT warhead detonated on the surface) would cause complete devastation within its 1.26km fireball radius, instantly vaporizing tanks, titans, and terminators with temperatures rivalling those of the interior of the sun.
Anything that could be damaged by a plasma weapon would completely disintegrate in a nuclear blast, as plasma is far, far relatively cooler than these temperatures.
The pressure wave would expand outwards from the fireball, turning living things into paste, crushing and flipping tanks, and rupturing armor. Fatalities within this pressure wave would be close to 100%, as even heavily built concrete/rebar buildings collapse under 20 psi of overpressure. This wave would hit anything within 2.18km of the blast, creating another ring of near-absolute lethality.
Anything within 2.5km of the blast would recieve a radiation dose of close to 500 rem, which can be expected to lead to death within a few hours to weeks.
Within 4.58 km of the blast, the pressure wave continues to spread, this time collapsing residential buildings, causing universal injuries, and widespread fatalities.
The majority of the thermal radiation released by the nuke would give lethal or severe third degree burns to anything within 10.7km of the detonation, essentially incapacitating an entire army. (useful against Orks/Tyranids!)
The sheer power of nuclear weapons and the relative ease of creating them should effectively instantly solve the Tyranid and Ork rok landing problem. Nuking large concentrations of Tyranids, in their landing zones, and hitting Ork roks with large warheads should be standard procedure. Even Necron tombs could easily be cleared with the force of cleansing nuclear fire. And yet, the Imperium doesn't do this. Let's run by the false reasons that they don't use nukes.
1. Civillians in the blast radius - ...Lol. This is the Imperium, remember?
2. Irreplaceable technology - Enemies don't just spontaneously appear in forge complexes. They have landing zones and emergence points. Plus, that forge complex you nuked isn't exactly unique. There are a million planets in the Imperium, and PLANETS ARE BIG. The galaxy is big. If that forge is unique in the galaxy, and small enough to be destroyed by a nuke, it wasn't doing anything useful anyway, and if the enemy holds it, it is already lost.
3. Lost Technology - As shown in Necropolis by Dan Abnett, regular Guardsmen recognize the signs of a nuclear blast. In Mechanicum, Mars is shown to have nuclear missile silos. In Armageddon source material, Armageddon is shown to also have (nuclear) missile silos. In The Beast Arises, nuclear weapons are heavily used in ship-to-ship combat. All these factors combine. Nuclear weapons are not lost, sacred archaeotech. They are just another kind of weapon.
The only true reason for nukes being used is simply this.
Nukes are boring narratively. Nobody wants to read "Warboss Thraka invaded a planet. His entire army was wiped out on their staging grounds by standard issue Imperial 200kt tactical nuclear missiles". Instead of Helsreach.
Peregrine - If you like the army buy it, and don't worry about what one random person on the internet thinks.
Atomics, especially as we know them IRL, are probably widely regarded by the denizens of 40K to be quite crude, unsofisticated weapons that have largely been replaced by more efficient, more effective weapons.
Also, the reason you don't see factions nuking everything is the same one you don't see them using their starships to blitz entire worlds into dust with far more powerful weapons than atomics during campaigns - namely they want to take the ground, not annihilate it.
Not always, of course. Sometimes they do indeed simply bomb the ever-living out of everything. But that's not exactly conducive to promoting and selling a tabletop wargame, or a story/narrative about infantry characters.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/06/13 23:23:02
Homebrew Imperial Guard: 1222nd Etrurian Lancers (Winged); Special Air-Assault Brigade (SAAB)
Homebrew Chaos: The Black Suns; A Medrengard Militia (think Iron Warriors-centric Blood Pact/Sons of Sek)
Anfauglir wrote: Atomics, especially as we know them IRL, are probably widely regarded by the denizens of 40K to be quite crude, unsofisticated weapons that have largely been replaced by more efficient, more effective weapons.
Also, the reason you don't see factions nuking everything is the same one you don't see them using their starships to blitz entire worlds into dust with far more powerful weapons than atomics during campaigns - namely they want to take the ground, not annihilate it.
Not always, of course. Sometimes they do indeed simply bomb the ever-living out of everything. But that's not exactly conducive to promoting and selling a tabletop wargame, or a story/narrative about infantry characters.
Bombarding someone's mountain into a flat plain is perfectly valid.
Its notna good game but it works in military sense just tongo fethnit and drop a bunch of tactical nukes on that stilibborn hill that's brrn holding up the guard advance for weeks.
Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.
"May the odds be ever in your favour"
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.
FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.
jhe90 wrote: Bombarding someone's mountain into a flat plain is perfectly valid.
Its notna good game but it works in military sense just tongo fethnit and drop a bunch of tactical nukes on that stilibborn hill that's brrn holding up the guard advance for weeks.
I have no idea what you just said. So I'll go with... yes?
Homebrew Imperial Guard: 1222nd Etrurian Lancers (Winged); Special Air-Assault Brigade (SAAB)
Homebrew Chaos: The Black Suns; A Medrengard Militia (think Iron Warriors-centric Blood Pact/Sons of Sek)
fide et honore 
Cadre Coronal Afterglow w1;d0;l0 
unless you were trying to quote Djones.
out of everything. But that's not exactly conducive to promoting and selling a tabletop wargame, or a story/narrative about infantry characters. 
Homebrew Chaos: The Black Suns; A Medrengard Militia (think Iron Warriors-centric Blood Pact/Sons of Sek) 
