Questions tagged [nuclear-weapons]
For questions about bombs that derive their power from nuclear fission or fusion, within works of science fiction and fantasy.
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Short Story: Physicist Discovers how to fuse a common element
A lone Physicist discovers how to fuse a common element, probably Iron.
He is debating whether he should suppress the knowledge by not submitting a paper.
He reflects on his life and how 'Hell is ...
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Looking for a book about stock trading Ai that predicts terrorist attacks
Story begins with a man and a woman meeting in a cafe in China right as it gets blown up.
After that, narrative switches between two characters - Female that works at stock trading company and is ...
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Sci-fi book; nuclear bomb destroys the Panama Isthmus
Book probably from between 1950 and 1980. A nuclear bomb destroys the Panama Isthmus. The Gulf Stream stops, disastrously changing the world's weather.
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Short story - US and USSR "trade" cities after accidental bombing
This is a short story I read in the 1980s in an anthology. It's a satirical story inspired by "Fail Safe", I think. In the story, US bombers accidentally destroy a Soviet city (Leningrad, I ...
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Asian movie where the final scene shows a family having dinner immediately before the nuclear apocalypse
I'm looking for a movie that I saw on the German TV station Kabel Eins probably in the early 2000s. The movie itself should be much older - from what I remember about the look, I'd guess that it's ...
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Scientists send a nuclear bomb to Mars (to study the plume by spectroscopy) but destroy the unique martian populated area
I used to believe that this story was part of The Martian Chronicles but it is not. I would love to find the author/title. Sounds a bit like Fredric Brown's ideas.
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Short story about a society where people cast electronic votes on the topic of nuclear retaliation
Recent events have had me thinking about nuclear war and I had a vague memory of a short story I read where society has begun voting for all topics from an electronic device. The main character is ...
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Multi-trunked elephants invade Earth
I read this novel at least 25 years ago, maybe more. I don't remember the cover.
There is a joke:
How does an elephant come down from a tree ? It sits on a leaf and waits for autumn.
Well, this is how ...
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WW2-era bureaucrats escaping nuclear war into Lovecraftian dimension
There was a short story I must have read before 2010, about a group of WW2 American bureaucrats who escaped from a nuclear world in their dimension, into a Lovecraftian dimension. The story ended with ...
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Character goes back in time, tries to prevent Vietnam War, fails horribly
Almost certain it's a TV series, although it could have been a movie. 1980s. (Could be early 90s.)
A character, I believe a male in his 30s, manages to meet President Lyndon Johnson, offers proof he's ...
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Einstein "quantum leaps" into young Japanese girl
I recall a short story I read in the 80's or 90's (might be older than that). The premise is that Albert Einstein (pretty sure it was him, might've been another scientist associated with the ...
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short story, post-WW3, a girl, a lost letter
I've used the search function for phrases that, to me, should find results if a question about this story has been asked before. But sorry if this is a duplicate and I just didn't search well enough.
...
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First sci-fi based explicitly on the Hiroshima bomb?
Reading the synopsis of Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965), it involves a feral child who was affected by the bombing of Hiroshima. (It really sounds kind of intriguing despite apparently goofy ...
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40-60s short story: nuclear explosions slow time
Read this short story in a collection of classic scifi stories I'll guess published 1940s - 1960s.
During an atomic war, 3 simultaneous nuclear explosions happen over a small American town. The exact ...
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70s or older story about a sentient forest who discovers the A-bomb
In this story I read long ago, the trees of each forest are all connected (through their roots ? by some psychic power ? I forgot). Each tree is thus just a "body part" of the forest he belongs to, ...
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What book is this? Pre 80s book about a captain who hijacks a military spaceship and takes school kids hostage?
I got this from my middle school library back in the 80s but the book seemed to be from the late 50s to mid 70s. This was a young adult targeted novel about a captain who hijacks a military spaceship ...
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Nuclear explosion in lunar city [duplicate]
I utterly forget the plot of this tale, but it includes a vivid description of a nuclear bomb going off deep inside a large, underground lunar city of many levels. The explosion, set off in secret, is ...
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Old Sci Fi Mag Short Story: Nukes/Heavy Artillery Introduced to and Used by Norse Gods for Ragnarok Battle
SF short story I read as a kid in Galaxy or similar mag, I read it in late 60s/early 70s but story may have been older.
A guy is transported, via some means which I don't recall, into Asgard at the ...
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Movie: Scientists travel to the future to avoid nuclear war, last surviving one is used as fuel by future humans
My family used to rent a lot of VHS tapes over the school holidays when I was young, and this movie was amongst them, which would make it pre-mid 90's, (possibly 70's or 80's from what I remember of ...
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How did the nuclear reactor in Aliens (1986) explode like a nuclear bomb? [closed]
According to various supplementary sources, the atmosphere processor on Acheron was powered by a fusion reactor. As far as I know, it is not physically possible for a fusion reactor to explode like a ...
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Story with time-traveling vampires
Lately I've been trying to remember a book I read a while ago, about a group of time-traveling vampires and (possibly) including the one and only Count Dracula himself.
The book was written in ...
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Movie identification: A lady who could stop time
This movie or possibly TV episode (I saw it on TV) was set during the Cold War. The main character was a lady who could stop time for about 15 minutes or so.
There are a bunch of relatively mundane ...
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ID: Duck-shaped aliens accidentally cause nuclear war and winter, wiping out humanity
Short story or novella from a few decades ago:
A Russian woman, the last surviving human as far as she can tell, has been so far surviving an extreme nuclear winter by traveling in a heavily ...
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Why could starfleet officiers not beam (ancient) nukes aboard a borg ship? [duplicate]
We have seen several times starfleet officers beaming aboard Borg vessels and do their thing. As long as they are not a threat. The Borg only assimilate things that are worthy of assimilating. To my ...
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Book about post-nuclear war in America
I read this book about 25 years ago and I can't remember the name. I remember a couple of "scenes", but that's about it. The main character was traveling around the US and interviewing people. One ...
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Is there a spell that would protect against nuclear radiation?
Say that a wizard had to walk through nuclear fallout for whatever reason. Is there any sort of spell that would protect against nuclear radiation? It seems that most of the protection spells (e.g. ...
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Which Sci-Fi work first showed Nuclear Weapons?
We see the use or mention of nuclear weapons in sci-fi world all the time. Examples can be Terminator, Star Trek, X-Men etc.
There are two related questions here:
Which Sci-Fi work first mentioned ...
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Trying to identify 50s/60s story about nuclear weapons delivered to US cities by truck
This is a short story I remember reading in some anthology many years ago. The basic plot is that a nuclear adversary of the USA (it might have been China), lacking the necessary missile technology, ...
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Can't remember short story, post-apocalyptic retaliation
In the story, there has been a war, and 'the other side' has won it decisively. There's some kind of long-term consequence for the losing side, disease or nuclear fallout, and it's implied that the ...
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Why didn't The Ark scientists know about the season 3 finale before the big reveal?
Why didn't the sensors/scientists on the Ark station (when it was still in orbit) pick up the nuclear radiation storms brewing all over the world?
Or did they only form after arkfall? Surely the ...
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SF Short Story: alien apes invade during nuclear war
Trying to identify a science fiction short story from an anthology likely published before 1991.
Aliens invade during a nuclear war (which would be World War III, WWIII, WW3). The warring nations ...
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Post nuclear war comic
There was a comic that told the story of a society based in Iceland. The one story line featured an oil tanker stranded in a desert that a military force was extracting oil from. The militay force was ...
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Did "The World Set Free" inspire the creation of nuclear weapons?
I recently discovered that the term "atomic bomb" was from the H. G. Wells novel The World Set Free.
Although not the intention of the novel, did it inadvertently inspire the creation of such weapons?...
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Can a nuclear reactor be used as a space-based weapon? [closed]
Imagine you have a ship, running on nuclear reactor. We will assume this ship uses some kind of advanced technology that allows nuclear reactors to function in gravity-less environment.
This ship is ...
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How could people survive the nuclear attack in the Terminator movies?
In the Terminator movies, Skynet attacked mankind and its first step was the nuclear strike. In T-3 we see the blasts too.
But a few people survived the attack, so because of this, Skynet started to ...
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Why Did They Take Eight Nukes?
I was watching Deep Impact the other night and I was struck by the fact that the Messiah mission takes eight nukes to the comet, but only has the manpower to plant four of them. Not only that, they ...
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How did the Galactica survive an atomic weapons hit?
During the opening salvos of the second Cylon war, the Battlestar Galatica was engaged by several Cylon basestars. During the engagement the Cylons launched an atomic weapon which struck the Galatica ...
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Effects of nuclear explosions in space? [closed]
In the Honor Harrington universe, ship-to-ship combat takes two forms: missiles and direct energy weapons.
Missiles come in two forms - bomb-pumped lasers and contact nukes. Both use multi-megaton ...
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Why do science fiction movie writers love to use nukes to solve Earth crises? [closed]
I've noticed that there is a reoccurring theme of sci-fi movies that solve problems by using nukes:
In Sunshine (2007), the solution to our dying Sun was to send the entire Earth's payload of nukes ...
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