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[Bohandas]

What I'm saying that a Tsar Bomba dropped on the surface would probably do more damage to an underground warren than detonating one of those little mini-nukes right in the middle of it.. It is over a million times more powerful. Unless those tunnels go very deep indeed it would force the roof down (as in actively push it down in many places, not just collapse it) and squish anything in them like a giant boot; except for the tunnels near the surface, they would be vaporized along with anything in them.

There's a reason the common infantry are equipped with such powerful weapons, because they're most effective when deployed inside these underground areas. A surface detonated anything has limited effect on stuff below the ground (usually the point of surface detonated weapons since if you're deploying these you generally want to hurt stuff on the surface). Most of the force of the explosion moves upwards and horizontally, because there's a big, relatively flat, hard and massive surface (the earth) there to deflect it. You'll get the big crater but it's not big enough to destroy an enemy that's possible hundreds of meters beneath a planet's surface. Also this is assuming they have enough Tsar Bombas to saturate bomb the entire surface of the planet, probably three separate times if they actually wanted to get deep enough to unbury all of them. :v

Also, I'd like to draw a comparison to Americans trying to bomb their enemies in tunnels during Vietnam and how completely and totally ineffective that always turned out to be. :I

Imagine that you have two little models - each about the size of a pool table - of a portion of the landscape and the tunnels under it. You throw a few bang-snaps at the first one, and detonate an MK-3 concussion grenade in the middle of the second one. Do you think that the damage to the tunnels will be similar in both models?

[Jopax]

Also, if you want to wreck the tunnels you don't do a surface detonation. Earthquake bombs are armoured for a reason. And underground detonation will cause a lot of trouble for anything that's not heavily reinforced and even then, several succesive hits will most definitely destroy it.

Also also, even if they are underground bugs and all that, they still need food and air I think, if you keep burying them they really won't have easy access to either so it's only a matter of time.

[Culise]

Any sort of science-fiction control panel that is just unlabeled buttons and blinky switches, or something that doesn't even look like an interface. Any time I see it I think "How is anybody supposed to use that?". LCARS from Star Trek is the worst offender; most buttons are completely unlabeled, and people somehow enter complex information without any sort of keyboard/pad or even distinguishable number keys.

It's all actually cybernetic eye implants in every crew member. Because the physical buttons aren't labeled it lets any button be relabeled on the fly depending on both the context of the current menu and the authority of the button presser, and it helps keep a valuable military weapon out of enemy hands since they can't control it.

To be fair to the first generation Star Trek, it was a low budget deal because 60s.

For TNG and onwards, no idea, maybe because such a detail would be too small to see on film/tv?

That was a significant contributing factor, which is why LCARS in general is so redonkulously big.  Mind you, they did actually have labels, except that since they were too small to see on film/TV; they usually came out as little black blurs.  Also, due to the need for reuse of props (especially since this was still before CGI, so they were literally cutting blocks out of black film wrapped over colored film lights), they also weren't very specific - a lot of LCARS displays have number labels instead of actual lettering.  In fact, mostly because they couldn't be read on the screen, the art staff was always fond of slipping little in-jokes into the okudagrams; for instance, the hamster that runs the warp engines on the USS Enterprise-D, several incarnations of the Doctor in one big family tree, and references to Gunbuster and Dirty Pair.   

[Neonivek]

Mind you not that cheapness ever really bugged me.

I remember watching a episode of Voyager where they were in a holodeck program called Captain Proton which is basically a black and white era sci-fi and they pointed attention to the differences between classic sci-fi and modern one (for example the forcefield is called the lightning shield)

and I said to myself "Wow, I'd actually watch this" and my dad said "Me too"

[itisnotlogical]

Any sort of science-fiction control panel that is just unlabeled buttons and blinky switches, or something that doesn't even look like an interface. Any time I see it I think "How is anybody supposed to use that?". LCARS from Star Trek is the worst offender; most buttons are completely unlabeled, and people somehow enter complex information without any sort of keyboard/pad or even distinguishable number keys.

It's all actually cybernetic eye implants in every crew member. Because the physical buttons aren't labeled it lets any button be relabeled on the fly depending on both the context of the current menu and the authority of the button presser, and it helps keep a valuable military weapon out of enemy hands since they can't control it.

To be fair to the first generation Star Trek, it was a low budget deal because 60s.

For TNG and onwards, no idea, maybe because such a detail would be too small to see on film/tv?

That was a significant contributing factor, which is why LCARS in general is so redonkulously big.  Mind you, they did actually have labels, except that since they were too small to see on film/TV; they usually came out as little black blurs.  Also, due to the need for reuse of props (especially since this was still before CGI, so they were literally cutting blocks out of black film wrapped over colored film lights), they also weren't very specific - a lot of LCARS displays have number labels instead of actual lettering.  In fact, mostly because they couldn't be read on the screen, the art staff was always fond of slipping little in-jokes into the okudagrams; for instance, the hamster that runs the warp engines on the USS Enterprise-D, several incarnations of the Doctor in one big family tree, and references to Gunbuster and Dirty Pair.

Still, there's nothing that even looks like a keyboard. Three rows of tiny square keys with a big one for the spacebar would look like a keyboard, even if you couldn't see the letters. Although I can accept the simplification of things for flow and narrative convenience, I'm still mystified how they type in names or search terms without any visible keypad.

[Bohandas]

Any sort of science-fiction control panel that is just unlabeled buttons and blinky switches, or something that doesn't even look like an interface. Any time I see it I think "How is anybody supposed to use that?". LCARS from Star Trek is the worst offender; most buttons are completely unlabeled, and people somehow enter complex information without any sort of keyboard/pad or even distinguishable number keys.

It's all actually cybernetic eye implants in every crew member. Because the physical buttons aren't labeled it lets any button be relabeled on the fly depending on both the context of the current menu and the authority of the button presser, and it helps keep a valuable military weapon out of enemy hands since they can't control it.

To be fair to the first generation Star Trek, it was a low budget deal because 60s.

For TNG and onwards, no idea, maybe because such a detail would be too small to see on film/tv?

That was a significant contributing factor, which is why LCARS in general is so redonkulously big.  Mind you, they did actually have labels, except that since they were too small to see on film/TV; they usually came out as little black blurs.  Also, due to the need for reuse of props (especially since this was still before CGI, so they were literally cutting blocks out of black film wrapped over colored film lights), they also weren't very specific - a lot of LCARS displays have number labels instead of actual lettering.  In fact, mostly because they couldn't be read on the screen, the art staff was always fond of slipping little in-jokes into the okudagrams; for instance, the hamster that runs the warp engines on the USS Enterprise-D, several incarnations of the Doctor in one big family tree, and references to Gunbuster and Dirty Pair.

Still, there's nothing that even looks like a keyboard. Three rows of tiny square keys with a big one for the spacebar would look like a keyboard, even if you couldn't see the letters. Although I can accept the simplification of things for flow and narrative convenience, I'm still mystified how they type in names or search terms without any visible keypad.

I'm pretty sure that LCARS uses a touchscreen. And voice recognition.

[Parsely]

Also also, even if they are underground bugs and all that, they still need food and air I think, if you keep burying them they really won't have easy access to either so it's only a matter of time.

They can survive on the surface of asteroids.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Put up a solar shade then. No matter how hostile an environment these bugs can survive in, I'm pretty sure that they can't violate the law of conservation of energy.

[Parsely]

Cue the arachnids destroying the solar shade with plasma. :v

[Neonivek]

Put up a solar shade then. No matter how hostile an environment these bugs can survive in, I'm pretty sure that they can't violate the law of conservation of energy.

If you were aware of the extended universe...

Yeah they could

[chevil]

I just saw the movie FURY and I liked the characters, their interactions and that one tank vs. tanks fight.

But charging Anti-tank artillery with tanks and the whole third act was just stupid.
[sarcasm] Everyone knows that the Nazis heavily used blank cartridges and charges to scare the enemy into surrendering! [/sarcasm]

[Parsely]

They didn't have any infantry to do that for them?

[chevil]

They didn't have any infantry to do that for them?

The infantry was hiding behind the tanks.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Cue the arachnids destroying the solar shade with plasma. :v

-snip-

Which is why you:

A. smash the surface of the planet to dust with an asteroid or two first.

B. Set up the solar shade in a orbit out of reach of the plasma bugs. Or, you know, just repair the shade after they damage it or set up a new one. The energy output required to destroy the shade is far more than the energy they'll receive in the meantime.

If you were aware of the extended universe...

Yeah they could

...

F- this, I'm out of here.

[Loud Whispers]

In regards to the harry potter nitpicking about Wizards just not getting muggle tech at all; Somewhere out in the world are Slav wizards doing magical squats and accioing vodkas. Just saying.