# Most powerful weapon in sci-fi or fantasy?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [January 6, 2016, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303 "2016-01-06T07:15:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/1 "2016-01-06T07:15:44Z")
It could be an electro-mechanical-chemical-nuclear contraption. Exclude beings with super or paranormal abilities, and who are willing to wield those powers.
My candidate: The Hammer that Smashes Suns (yes, that’s its real name.) It’s some sort of a bomb hurled using a giant crossbow-like contraction, used by Osiris against his enemies in “Creatures of Light and Darkness.”
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/2 "2016-01-06T07:25:42Z")
It’s cheating a little, but Cordwainer Smith’s ninety-million-mile long gold-colored spaceship was a very powerful weapon.
In the same story, Smith described a “chronopathic idiot,” a person who had a personal psionic power of jumping backwards slightly in time. That would be a pretty unanswerable weaponized power.
Time travel in general is a hellishly powerful weapon. Not only do I cause you to no longer exist…I cause you never to have existed at all. I don’t just kill you: I kill your entire time-line, affecting everything in your causally-linked cosmos. (And, who knows, it might affect everything in the entire cosmos.)
Didn’t Doc Smith’s Lensmen throw galaxies around? Anyway, they had pretty damn powerful weapons.
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### Author:  [@Wolverine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolverine)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/3 "2016-01-06T07:29:00Z")
Beware the [Ultimate Nullifier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Nullifier). It is the only weapon to put fear into Galactus.
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### Author:  [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/4 "2016-01-06T07:39:56Z")
> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> In the same story, Smith described a “chronopathic idiot,” a person who had a personal psionic power of jumping backwards slightly in time. That would be a pretty unanswerable weaponized power.
>
> Time travel in general is a hellishly powerful weapon. Not only do I cause you to no longer exist…I cause you never to have existed at all. I don’t just kill you: I kill your entire time-line, affecting everything in your causally-linked cosmos. (And, who knows, it might affect everything in the entire cosmos.)
Creatures of Light and Darkness also had beingse who could travel forward and back in time (temporal fugue, an acquired skill) but I excluded those.
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### Author:  [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/5 "2016-01-06T08:50:15Z")
In Kurt Vonnegut’s _Slaughterhouse-Five_, the entire universe is accidentally destroyed when a Tralfamadorian pilot tested a new type of rocket fuel. Imagine the destruction it could cause if it were weaponized.
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### Author:  [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/6 "2016-01-06T08:56:52Z")
Starkiller Base. Blows up multiple planets for the price of one!
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/7 "2016-01-06T09:57:55Z")
Hard to think of anything more powerful than [Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann](http://gurrenlagann.wikia.com/wiki/Tengen_Toppa_Gurren-Lagann), which is a mecha 10 Million Light Years big (\*\*\* 100 times the size of the Milky Way galaxy!!!\*\*\*).
it is topped by the 52.8 billion light years tall \*Super \*Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in the movie (that’s 58% of the observable universe, kids!) but that’s much more of an energy being, not a sorta-mecha-sorta-energy construct like the smaller one.
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### Author:  [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/One_And_Only_Wanderers)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/8 "2016-01-06T11:50:13Z")
Iain M Smiths Lazy Gun
> **[Against a Dark Background](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_a_Dark_Background#Lazy_Guns)**
>
> Against a Dark Background is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1993. It was his first science fiction novel not to feature, or be set in, the Culture.
> The main protagonist is Lady Sharrow, a former military pilot and antiquities thief. She lives on Golter, a planet orbiting a star in an isolated planetary system with no nearby galaxies. A cult named the Huhsz is granted permission to assassinate her, believing that their messiah can not be born until ...
> [@](#):
>
> Lazy Guns[edit]
>
> The eight Lazy Guns were mysterious ancient objects, discovered together a long time before the events of the book. A Lazy Gun is roughly half a metre long, 30 cm wide and 20 cm tall. The Lazy Gun is “light but massy”, and weighs three times as much when turned upside down. The Lazy Gun is the only weapon known to display a sense of humour. When fired, some calamity or cataclysm will befall the target on whatever scale is necessary to assure its destruction. The effect is random and in no way limited by its own implausibility, ranging from (for example) an inexplicable wild animal attack in the case of humans to a spontaneous cometary impact in the case of a city. In addition to being susceptible to ordinary damage, tampering with the Guns usually results in a mundane but profoundly powerful explosion that destroys the gun and everything in the vicinity.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/9 "2016-01-06T12:01:02Z")
> [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](#):
>
> Iain M Smith
Iain M _Banks_
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/10 "2016-01-06T12:39:05Z")
the **Zinder Nullifiers** , from Jack Chalker’s _The Return of Nathan Brazil_. These essentially erase reality. They’re originally built to prevent beings named Dreel that “take over” bodies (a la The Thing in John W. Campbell’s story _Who Goes There?_ and Carpenter’s adaptation of it, _The Thing_) from taking over galactic civilization, but then they lose control of it, and it threatens to destroy the universe.
I suspect that the Ultimate Nullifier (which **Wolverine** brought up) that The Watcher sends Johnny Storm after in Fantastic Four #50, but its use and power wasn’t discussed there, and I haven’t kept up with more recent comic book mythology on it.
> **[The Return of Nathan Brazil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_Nathan_Brazil)**
>
> The Return of Nathan Brazil is the fourth book in the Well of Souls series by American author Jack L. Chalker.
> A viral species named the Dreel, originating from outside the Milky Way galaxy, invades human territory. The central human government, known as the Com, attempts to fight back, but finds that their resources are inadequate to repel the invaders. In desperation, the records of the work of Gilgram Zinder (who had discovered the superimposed Markovian reality and built the sentient super...
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### Author:  [@MacTech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacTech)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/11 "2016-01-06T12:48:37Z")
Davros’s Reality Bomb from Doctor Who
The creator of the genocidal Daleks created a “bomb” that breaks the atomic bond of all matter, reality would simply “fall apart”
A bomb that destroys the universe…
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### Author:  [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/One_And_Only_Wanderers)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/12 "2016-01-06T12:54:44Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> Iain M _Banks_
Doh!
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### Author:  [@Your\_Great\_Darsh\_Face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Your_Great_Darsh_Face)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/13 "2016-01-06T13:23:15Z")
The [Ultimate Weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_the_Universe_and_Everything) from _Life, the Universe, and Everything_ connected the cores of all stars in the Universe together instantly, causing them all to go supernova – or at any rate it would have had it ever been deployed.
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### Author:  [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/14 "2016-01-06T13:26:45Z")
“Doc” Smith’s Lensman series from the 30’s-50’s have been mentioned, what with armored planets moving at multiples of lightspeed, negaspheres (planet-sized masses of ‘negative energy’ or anti-matter, and other goodies, but another series of his (The Skylark of Space) had a good one.
In effect, they could move SUNS from one place to another. The final battle was moving Billions of suns from one galaxy to another, placing them next to an existing sun so that they would explode (it’s the 1950’s folks, we were still learning), thus destroying the all-encompassing EVIL. Yep, destroy a galaxy by using another galaxy. It might not be the top, but you have to admit, it’s a good one.
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### Author:  [@TCMF-2L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TCMF-2L)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/15 "2016-01-06T14:58:25Z")
In the uneven but frequently very good TV show **Lexx** the titular space ship is the most powerful weapon in the two universes. It is an organic based creation and feeds by destroying planets and eating the debris.
TCMF-2L
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/16 "2016-01-06T15:28:19Z")
In a somewhat less fantastic vein, the one-ton iron spheres detached from a Bussard ramjet at .99 C and which impacted the planet Wunderland in one of the “Man-Kzin Wars” books were pretty damned devastating.
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### Author:  [@Richard\_John\_Marcej](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_John_Marcej)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/17 "2016-01-06T15:31:29Z")
Well, we know it’s **NOT** the Death Star. 😉
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### Author:  [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/18 "2016-01-06T16:40:21Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#):
>
> In Kurt Vonnegut’s _Slaughterhouse-Five_, the entire universe is accidentally destroyed when a Tralfamadorian pilot tested a new type of rocket fuel. Imagine the destruction it could cause if it were weaponized.
If weaponized, it wouldn’t just just destroy it ALL, it would destroy MORE of it all!
Any weapon that destroys everything has to be the most powerful. But like infinity, they are all equally powerful.
So I’ll nominate The Great Gazoo’s doomsday weapon, which would have destroyed the universe with an explosive ZAM.
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### Author:  [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/19 "2016-01-06T16:48:13Z")
Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
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### Author:  [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2016, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-powerful-weapon-in-sci-fi-or-fantasy/742303/20 "2016-01-06T17:02:43Z")
Let’s be honest. This all a sci fi / fantasy wank off, so any opinion is just as meaningless than any other.
But I’m not impressed with weapons that are impressive JUST because they are absurdly big.
The ones that impress me as a sci fi wanker are the ones that are clever, or work in a way that would have not occurred to you, or ones that if the sci fi magic actually worked make you think “yeah, that would do it”.
A crappy example. You are fighting a very long lived race who breds very slowly. The enemy devises a virus that causes them to remember pretty much everything they experience. Pretty soon they are all driven crazy/overwhelmed/stopped in their tracks and the civilization comes to an end.
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