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[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Not in that size, I'm talking about space stations that fire 30,000 ton tungstein rods near the speed of light

[scrdest]

A better question would be: 'how to do anything destructive without applying acceleration?'

Oooohh, oooh! I've got one! How about laser beams? Light moves at a constant velocity so by definition it can't be accelerating! Assuming the person started directly in the sights of the laser beam gun you could kill them without acceleration!

Another method would be suffocation by changing or replacing the air through a chemical reaction. Someone being stuck in the room with a big block of dry ice would work, for example, or in the room with something that chemically pulls the oxygen out of the air.

You had to accelerate your own body somehow to trigger the laser gun. If it isn't a pure solid-state weapon there was even acceleration with only one degree of separation rather than two.

That's kinda cheaty, though.

But yeah, laser damage works by very much ACCELERATING particles - we commonly refer to such kind of an acceleration 'heating'.

[Flying Dice]

A better question would be: 'how to do anything destructive without applying acceleration?'

Oooohh, oooh! I've got one! How about laser beams? Light moves at a constant velocity so by definition it can't be accelerating! Assuming the person started directly in the sights of the laser beam gun you could kill them without acceleration!

Another method would be suffocation by changing or replacing the air through a chemical reaction. Someone being stuck in the room with a big block of dry ice would work, for example, or in the room with something that chemically pulls the oxygen out of the air.

You had to accelerate your own body somehow to trigger the laser gun. If it isn't a pure solid-state weapon there was even acceleration with only one degree of separation rather than two.

That's kinda cheaty, though.

But yeah, laser damage works by very much ACCELERATING particles - we commonly refer to such kind of an acceleration 'heating'.

Fair enough, I was just trying to avoid the obvious bit.

But yes, you can justify just about anything as involving acceleration.

[Graknorke]

Using antimatter to annihilate the person in question.
No acceleration is (integrally) involved in the destructive process, at least.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Graknorke]

Quantum tunneling on a ridiculously improbable scale? As far as I know that doesn't count as acceleration, since velocity doesn't change.

[Flying Dice]

So effectively if you want to kill someone without involving any sort of acceleration you need to have functioning magic?

[Putnam]

Yes. All of your options are basically manipulation of probabilistic quantum effects and/or particle interactions that involve no no acceleration.

Or you can wait for a long, long time.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I didn't think magnetic accelerators had any recoil.


Also the station itself is gigantic.
The tungsten rod wouldn't be nearly as heavy as the station

[Graknorke]

I didn't think magnetic accelerators had any recoil.

They're not magical, so yes they have recoil.
And a bunch of 30000 ton rods would be pretty heavy, I can't imagine a station near human capabilities to build being heavy enough to not be affected by that. For reference, the ISS is only 300 tons.

[Andres]

Out of curiosity, why do you need these?

For an RTD called Roll to Magic. Everyone gets to choose a magical affinity and mine is acceleration. I managed to kill someone by accelerating the speed my punch was going at, blowing up my target's chest. 99.6% chance of failing and 99.8% chance of dying, there.

Does anyone know what would happen if light were accelerated? Can UV rays be accelerated to do deadly deeds?

[Graknorke]

You can't accelerate light. Unless you manage to change the medium it's in, anyway.

[i2amroy]

Not in that size, I'm talking about space stations that fire 30,000 ton tungstein rods near the speed of light

If you want to launch the station the opposite way, sure!

You'd need one hell of an engine to stop it launching the station backwards. Or a secondary MAC.

No see the recoil is a feature! Assuming the station accelerated the rods to .99c they would have kinetic energy alone equal to 2x the Chicxulub impact, and that's before all of the crazy multipliers you get from relativistic and fusion effects. You only need one rod to put a rather nice hole going down to the mantle and cause mass extinctions all over the planet, so the fact that it launches your spaceship backwards is just designed to get you to your next target!

[Bauglir]

But wouldn't it be even faster to fire two rods, each in opposite directions? Sooner or later, the other one will hit a target.

[i2amroy]

But wouldn't it be even faster to fire two rods, each in opposite directions? Sooner or later, the other one will hit a target.

Yeah, but then you can't get visual confirmation on the performance of your second exterminatus.