I think you read my comment too quickly, I was making the same point you did to the poster I replied to, @Yogeekgirl - Soylent Green is dystopian but the rules that were evolving were probably ultimately practical.
Umm… the page you cited pointed out that Germany went to a total war footing in early 1943. They weren’t able to increase their production as much as they would desire by that time, because their industries were already subject to British and American strategic bombing, but they mobilized all available production for the war effort starting at that time, which is the definition of total war.
IIRC, even at the height of the war, German factories never operated 24 hours a day the way Allied armament plants did.
Star Trek and Doctor Who have a lot of societies that run on some wacky rule.
I recall the Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon” where two planets were fighting an endless war via computer simulations. After each “battle”, the “casualties” had to report to the disintegration chamber. Kirk blows up the computer…yada yada yada…the planets are now faced with the horror of REAL interplanetary war.
The episode ends on a hopeful note as the planets reach out to start peace talks (as the Enterprise “peace outs”). Although one might imagine the ambassador on the other side saying “wait,you’ve been doing WHAT after each sim battle for the past 500 years!?”
and in the real world ending, two days later they’re dropping actual bombs on each other, because they still actually hate each other, and those friends and families that died in the disintegration chambers are still actually really most sincerely dead as a result of the war, and the two planets bomb each other back to the stone age. But admiral Kirk never came back to check on their progress!
In the DC Comics Star Trek series Kirk was on trial for interfering with the internal workings of some society and the opposing council brought all sorts of witnesses to show this was a pattern. They brought a witness from the gangster planet and the only other one I remember is an official from the planet from “A Taste of Armageddon.” And in the comic at least, you have it right in that yhey started firing at one another with real missiles before finally being able to hash out a peace treaty. (Not that the comics are official canon or anything.)
Not to mention that apparently the Enterprise had enough firepower to obliterate at least one planet’s civilization from orbit. So clearly if they were interested in doing it right, the Federation could have simply enforced another “neutral zone” around the planets and hashed out a treaty.
As opposed to what seems to be the Starfleet SOP of sending some cowboy captain of a massive warship into a situation they don’t really understand, stir up a bunch of trouble, and then resolve the situation in 45 minutes through a combination of technobable, intense videoconferences, phasers, and photon torpedos.
Speaking of which - photon torpedos? So they emit really a really bright light?
Actually in a sense - yes.
Photon torpedoes are supposed to be matter-anti-matter bombs (at least they were when I was a kid), so particle annihilation upon detonation does release photons. Lots.
Naturally, as with all things Star Trek, this isn’t consistent across the episodes. Why isn’t what is used to destroy the gaseous cloud considered a “photon torpedo”? Why is ant-tee-mat-ter considered as the only solution for the space amoeba, when it is just another bomb?
Possible answer: Note that blowing up any kind of bomb in space doesn’t really do all that much. The damage from a “conventional” nuclear weapon on earth comes from the super heated to plasma air and the blast overpressure, none of which are a factor in space (In space, no one can hear your BOOM!). All you’re going to get is vaporized bomb casing parts, which isn’t that much against a starship hull, and some radiation.
If instead the “photon torpedo” was designed to be surrounded by some high density metal, a properly designed bomb could turn it into a giant plasma ball. An even better designed bomb could make a plasma jet, concentrating the entitre output energy of the bomb into a small area, but you’d need to be sure the jet is pointing at the target.
Yes, it appears so, sorry.
Sounds like the weapons in the Honor Harrington novels. Ships can use ordinary nukes, and there are a handful of situations where that’s just what’s called for, but the standard missile armament is x-ray lasers, where you channel most of the nuke’s energy into a narrow coherent beam to punch through enemy hulls.
Just an aside, I loved the technological development in the series that took place during a quarter-century of nearly uninterrupted war. By the time Manticore and Haven make common cause, the arms race between them has led to ships and weapons that make the vaunted Solarian League look like a 1905 navy facing a 1945 navy.