Fantastic Nuke: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[Naruto]]'', the Bijuu and [[Person of Mass Destruction|Jinchuuriki]], [[Kaiju|giant monsters]] [[Energy Beings|made out of chakra]] and humans with [[Sealed Evil in a Can|the things sealed within their bodies]], are treated like nuclear weapons by the ninja villages that don't simply shun and fear them. The First Hokage, the guy that at one point had control of them all, even gave most of the bijuu away to other villages to prevent them from shifting the tide of war too heavily and help grant stability. Pain and his organization have been kidnapping all the Jinchuuriki, intending to extract their bijuu and use them to rapidly start and stop wars to convince the other nations of their power as part of their plan to [[Take Over the World]]. {{spoiler|However, his real plan turns out to be to create a superweapon capable of wiping out an ''entire countries'' instantly, available to any country who's will to pay, and likely to be used if one side doesn't have ninja. [[Utopia Justifies the Means|After being used once he thinks people will stop war altogether out of fear]], until someone uses it again, repeating the cycle.}}

** There is also the main heroine's Starlight Breaker <ref> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONO1J-K3kdQ here used by another charctercharacter] without the usual "safety mode" that turns it into a [[Deus Ex Nukina|stun weapon]]</ref> that can level enire cities and can be used by a sufficiently powerful [[Magical Girl]] [[Person of Mass Destruction|on her own and without anyone's approval]].

* The titular Otome of ''[[Mai-Otome]]'' are weapons thatwho can singlehandedly win wars and determine a country's military strength. In the one major conflict since their creation, an entire country was wiped out, the survivors and their children suffering from debilitating illnesses. The underlying technology, if used peacefully, would improve the lives of millions. In the OVA, the various nations get together for Strategic Otome Limitation Talks (S.O.L.T.). And they're all [[MoePerson of Mass AnthropomorphismDestruction|entirely non-nuclear, nanomachine-powered, magical-girl maids]].

* ''[[Fairy Tail]]'' has a [[Magitek]] [[Kill Sat]] called the Aetherion, which supposedly delivers nuclear-level blasts.

* In ''[[Fallout Equestria]]'' and its derived works, "balefire bombs" were instrumental in causing the postapocalyptic world described in the stories. They are clear analogues to nuclear weapons.

** Referenced in ''[http://www.fimfiction.net/story/877/Under-The-Northern-Lights Under The Northern Lights]'', an otherwise unrelated ''Friendship Is Magic'' fanfic. Twilight Sparkle stops a bomb-throwing assassin who seems to be destroyed by his own bomb when Twilight traps him and the bomb within a forcefield. Media and gossip make this into a "balefire bomb" to the ire of Twilight because balefire bombs are just theoretical weapons, no assassin is stupid enough to use a nuke-equivalent to kill someone, and nopony could contain a balefire blast like that.

** The Science of Discworld involves the magical equivalent of a nuclear reactor, designed largely from information contained in scrolls found in a cave in a dangerously magical area (everyone who went there died of rare, magically induced diseases) in the form of a bowl-shaped valley surrounded by rings of mountains. When the thing begins to overload, Ponder Stibons says he thinks that the reactor at that site probably was shut down in this state, so they need to come up with a way to bleed off the magic FAST''fast''.

** Although, strictly speaking, Saruman DID''did'' create his own Ring, although it was never used as more than an indication of how mad he had become.

** The city-killer (aka Hecatomb) in ''[[Iron Council]]'' is beyond even colourbombs (another kind of fantastic nuke) for sheer alien annihilation. It ERASES''erases CITIEScities''. And casts ripples of destruction BACKWARDS''backwards INin TIMEtime''.

* The ''[[Wheel of Time]]'' has Balefire, which obliterates the target [[Ret-Gone|in the past]], leading to a whole load of complications when linked circles with ''[[Amplifier Artifact|sa'angreal]]'' started using it to blow up cities during the War of the Power.

** The Choedan Kal, a pair of [[Amplifier Artifact|Amplifier Artifacts]]s exponentially more powerful than any others in existence, also tend to invoke this trope. {{spoiler|While one eventually melts during the Cleansing of the Source, Rand ultimately destroys the other precisely because the destruction even one alone can cause is too great.}}

* Making a volcano erupt in the ''[[Codex Alera]]'' series amounts to this. The series has several [[Person of Mass Destruction|Persons of Mass Destruction]], including one [[Complete Monster]] and one who's always ready to [[Shoot the Dog]], so volcanoes get used as weapons in the series.

* The war between wizards that was part of the ''[[Heralds of Valdemar]]'' backstory resulted,ended when the combatants blew up their castles, in two huge craters now known as Lake Evendim and the Dhorisha Plains. I don't recall seeing a scale or any specification of distances, but based on how it compares on the map to the surrounding countries, I'd be astonished if the Dhorisha Plains is less than 200 kilometers across.

** The secondary effects were definitively global (some of the destruction was caused by waves of the effect ''coming back from the opposite cardinal direction'') and produced so many [[I Love Nuclear Power|dangerous mutants]] and [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|invisible, sickening or lethal emanations]] that some of the worst-hit areas are still uninhabitable the better part of a millenium later. The detonations also "shattered the crystal lattices of magic" according to a prologue in one of the earliest ''Valdemar'' books, apparently fundamentally changing how ''magic itself'' operated.

*** It also ''broke time'' and started to happen again, in reverse, in the modern age -- rolling back from the most distant affected areas to the twin epicenters and building from the weakest aftershocks up to the cataclysm itself. It is less obvious how this might parallel nuclear devestation... It still speaks pretty strongly to the apocalyptic treatment of the whole affair, though!

* The Andadt from ''[[The Long Price Quartet]]'' make nukes seem like pop-guns. The Andat "Sightless" {{spoiler|blinds the entire world, right down to the insects}}.

* In Lawrence Watt-Evans' ''[[Ethshar]]'' novels, there is a simple spell that can permanently negate magic within a huge volume. This is a bad thing in a world that heavily depends on magic and is one of the reasons that no one makes flying castles anymore. Naturally, the wizards of the world have gone to great lengths to expunge knowledge of it from the world.

* In ''the Silver Tide'' By Michael Tod the real reason given for why Grey Squirrels so rapidly displaced Reds in Britain in the 1960's1960s is that as they can ''count in binary'' -- they can use numerology to tap into "stone power", creating squares that give ofoff waves of energy, making anyone inside nauseous with small squares (sixteen stones) or killing ''everything'' inside with larger squares (4096 stones), disrupting ley-lines with its power, and sending waves of nausea and evil across the landscape. When one of the Red’sReds learns to count (base eight, non-binary), they retaliate with numerology powered [[Beam Spam]].

* [[David Weber|David Weber's]]'s ''Wind Rider'' series had a group of spells used to "strafe" the continent of [[Throwaway Country|Kontovar]], killing everything not under the most powerful black wizards' shields.

* Inverted in ''[[The Dresden Files]]'', where involving vanilla mortals into a supernatural conflict is likened to using nukes; in part because humans have regular old nukes, in fact. (theThe other reasonreasons are, in order, that the sheer force of numbers means that whoever gets the humans on their side basically wins, and pretty much the entirety of human folklore consists of a long how-to guide on dealing with -- that is to say, ''killing'' -- the supernatural).)

** In 3.5, a wizard can use a number of feats to make almost any spell dangerously explosive. Combine this with the spell "Locate City", which has a range of HUNDREDS''hundreds OFof MILESmiles'', and the results speak for themselves. The "locate city bomb" works like this: take Locate City (range: 10 miles/level), apply Snowcasting (making it [cold]), apply Flash Frost (adding 2 cold damage to everything in the area), apply Energy Substitution to make it electric, apply Born of the Three Thunders to change damage type and add a reflex save to avoid half the damage, then apply Explosive Spell, forcing a Reflex save vs being blasted to the edge of the area, taking 1d6 of damage per 10 feet traveled (so, at the center, it's 5280d6/level of falling damage). It's actually much trickier for a Wizard to pull this off than for a Sorcerer to do the same, owing to the interaction of feats which can't be applied until the spell is actually cast and a Wizard's need to prepare spells in advance.

*** A variant (and less rules questionable) is to apply fell drain (negative level to anyone hurt) which turns anyone in the radius with 1 hit dice (most small animals, including vermin, count and, depending on the DM, most NPCs, qualify) into [[The Virus|wights]] which promptly killskill anything left and make more wights, instead of everything after Flash Frost.

* The tabletop RPG ''[[Hackmaster]]'' has a spell named "Fireball: Nuclear Winter".

** Its range is several hundred ''feet'', while its area is several ''miles''. Needless to say, casting it is a bad idea unless you're immune to fire.

* ''[[Mage: The Ascension]]'' had a set of items called selective mines. Each of them looked like a large landmine and when properly activated, would totally devastate everything in a large radius -- except for a small group of people selected by the user. Handy.

* The apocalypse in ''[[Deadlands]]: Hell On Earth'' came about with ghost rock bombs, nukes made with irradiated [[Green Rocks]]. The physical destruction from a "city buster" is fairly limited, but it then releases a storm of damned souls that kill everyone within a 100-mile radius.

** From the same era, the original ''[[The Bard's Tale Trilogy|BardsTaleBard's Tale]]'' games had a spell named ''Gotterdamurung''. The four-letter codeword used to cast it? "NUKE."

* ''[[Might and Magic]]'' has the Armageddon spell (whose icon is a mushroom cloud...). itIt doesn't do that much damage, but it deals damage to ''everything living on the map''; since most NPC'sNPCs have very littlefew HP it is known as the "Town killer" spell.

* Lots of ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' examples.

** Many summons in ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' arguably qualify. That is, if their damage actually lived up to [[Cutscene Power to the Max|the animation]].

* The Destroy All spell available to Liches in ''[[Dungeon Siege]]: Throne of Agony''. The icon is, of course, a mushroom cloud.

* Bring It On Home from ''[[Brutal Legend]]''. It summons a flaming Zepplin to crash-land and explode at your location. It's kind of a [[Wave Motion Gun]], you're vulnerable while jammin' out the long and complex spell and it has a five minute recharge.