Abusing the Kardashev Scale For Fun and Profit: Difference between revisions

[[File:rsz kardashev 2010 12 8 3891.jpg|frame|How advanced are you?]]

 

=== Comic Books ===

* In his most outrageous [[Silver Age]] incarnation, [[Superman]] could blow out stars with his super-breath, and reignite them with his heat vision. He was thus ''personally'' a Type II on the Kardashev scale.

=== Literature ===

* The ''[[Cordwainer Smith|Instrumentality of Mankind]]'' controlled a significant region of the Milky Way, including several Type I worlds, had effective immortality (though they limited lifespans to 400 years for most its history) and could intimidate other interstellar empires with ''<s>balloons</s> starships an AU in diameter''.

** It's explicitly stated more than once in-universe that creating a tachyon bubble (the faster-than-light travel method of the Lords) "consumes" a star. Whatever that means, precisely, it's almost certainly a ''lot'' more energy than simply using its entire power output, and is arguably sufficient to categorize them as Type III, though they don't seem to ''continuously'' require this amount of power. It's also possible... no details are really given... that the technology is extremely inefficient and most of the power is actually wasted.

 

== Borderline Type III: power use roughly equivalent to a galaxy's radiant output. 1E36W ==

=== Film ===

* The Galactic Republic/Empire of [[Star Wars]], a galaxy-spanning society with very fast FTL and at least a million heavily developed planets, is a very high Type II, possibly a Type III (at least when the guy with the underbite helmet pulls the lever).

** Post-Mending 'walkers are still powerful, but much less so. Still, they probably would easily exceed Type III.

** To put the sheer power of the typical <s> MtG player</s> Planeswalker, a crossover with Dungeons and Dragons would be nearly impossible, or at least hard to make sense of, since even achieving epic level (level 20 or above in 4e) is still only a fraction of the power MtG planeswalkers are capable (probably level 25 and above, in D&D terms).

* The Tyranids of [[Warhammer 40,000]] are an interesting case. If the statement that they've consumed multiple entire galaxies is true, they might be an unconventional Type III, though that depends greatly on the dormant metabolism of Tyranids drifting through space, as even if they have that much mass available,<ref>questionable even then, as they seem to only assimilate parts of planets rather than entire stars and nebulae</ref> actual power use is what counts. Their typical MO of removing a good chunk of terrestrial planets' mass and draining the heat from what's left operates fairly slowly, so probably represents a mid Type I power expenditure per planet being consumed. They may consume up to few planets at any given time, though hive fleets take a while to travel between systems, so this output probably isn't sustained. A full hemisphere-darkening invasion force probably represents about a Type I expenditure for each planet under attack.

** The Necrons and their masters the C'tan are also hard to pin down. The C'tan feed off stars, so might individually approach Type II, though they're not usually very active. The Necrons have the goal of separating the Warp from physical reality, a universe scale goal, though they seem to confine their efforts to one galaxy for now. They have the most advanced technology in the setting, and have fought on galactic scales in the distant past, but virtually all now lie dormant in buried tombs. Though their technology is very potent, they may be low on the Kardashev scale of the major factions of WH40K in the present setting due to their extremely small active numbers. Like the Tyranids, all bets are off if they become active en masse, particularly since they are known to possess at least one Dyson Sphere.

 

=== Web Original ===

 

== [[Schizo-Tech]]: For cases that appear contradictory. ==