Neutron Bomb: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

''It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done."''|'''[[Dead Kennedys]]''', "[[Kill the Poor]]"}}

 

The Soviet Union described the Neutron Bomb as "a capitalist weapon" because it was designed to destroy people while preserving their property. (And because they didn't have one of their own.)

 

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* In the ''[[Trigun]]'' anime, [[Amoral Nihilist|Knives]]' weapon is apparently one (or at least its fictional version), making the whole population of a town disappear without trace but everything else is intact. [[Technical Pacifist|Vash]]'s one is the opposite, destroying everything when activated but living things - but Vash himself doesn't know it ([[Crapsack World|not like people usually survive much there after the town is hit with it anyway]]).

== [[Film]] ==

* The film ''[[Repo Man]]'' revolves around a car with one of these in the trunk. Or maybe shrimp-aliens who vaporize people. Or David Bowman. Or some combination of the three.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* In David Graham's ''[[Down To A Sunless Sea]]'', in addition to several countries throwing nuclear weapons at each other, a major military base on an island is apparently the target of a neutron bomb. Some people show up and supposedly all the buildings, equipment and structures are intact, it's just that everything living is dead. Apparently nothing is alive above ground, not even worms, because the pulse killed everything, to a distance of ten feet below ground. The only survivor was a man who was in the vault of the military base, 60 feet underground, at the instant of the blast.

** This is partially due to the [[Phlebotinum Bomb|fictional element solinium]] not to mention the fairies' time-stop capabilities. Essentially, because the blue-rinse detonated in an isolated area of time-space, everything outside it remained unharmed while everything inside died horribly.

* In ''The Survivalist'' series by Jerry Ahern, the Soviets use a neutron bomb on Chicago so that they'll have an intact city from which they can direct the [[Invaded States of America|occupation of America]].

* The [[Kurt Vonnegut]] novel ''[[Deadeye Dick]]'' revisits "Midland City", the terminally dull town from ''[[Breakfast of Champions]]'', and destroys it with a neutron bomb. (Vonnegut admits in his introduction that the way he wrote it [[You Fail Nuclear Physics Forever|isn't the way that a neutron bomb would actually work]], but is based instead on pipe-dreams of Cold War strategists.)

* In the Dale Brown novel ''Chains Of Command'', Russia's campaign to reconquer the Ukraine begins with a bombardment of neutron bombs against the main Ukrainian Air Force bases, killing three-quarters of the pilots, thousands of civilians, and destroying the bulk of the aircraft. In this case, the weapon was selected to take out an air base with one shot (impossible with conventional weapons) while leaving the cities a couple of miles away mostly unscathed (impossible with a full-scale nuclear bomb). The bases themselves were leveled.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* Implicitly used in [[Battlestar Galactica]], as part of the Cylon plan to preserve cities such as Delphi for re-settlement. That said, the level of damage varies. Over the course of the series, we see cities that are completely destroyed, cities that are damaged and [[Depopulation Bomb|cities where not even the windows are cracked]].

== [[Music]] ==

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* The plot of ''[[Metal Gear Acid]] 2'' revolves around a terrorist who wants to detonate a neutron bomb, so as to wipe out civilians, but leave the infrastructure of the world's technology (such as the Internet) intact.

* ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' has the N-Bomb, a grenade designed to explode in a sphere of darkness rather than fire so that it kills anyone in the blast zone and leaves their supplies behind.

[[Category:Atomic Hate]]

[[Category:Neutron Bomb]]