[Scenario Seed] Destroying A Solar system for Fun and Profit

[Catsmate]

Destroying A Solar system for Fun and Profit.

Inspired by this article here are some suggestions for really big disasters for your players to prevent, witness or cause.

1. A Particle Accelerator Disaster
Well despite the hype CERN's probings into the deep structure of matter hasn't Destroyed Life A We Know It. But maybe an future experiment (or one on a different planet with a similar level of technology) is about to Go Horribly Wrong and the PCs need to prevent the catastrophe. Or maybe ensure it does happen as history records.
A sub-set of this is the idea, used in the Doomwatch revival, of using a particle accelerator to create a really tiny black hole for use as an energy source, or waste disposal.
What could possibly go wrong?


2. Stellar Engineering
A botched attempt in the future to 'fix' a problem with the sun. Maybe this was the cause of the cooling of the Earth and the new ice age in The Ice Warrior?
Or, for something a little less futuristic, it's been postulated that the Earh's current problems with climate change could be remedied by huge orbital mirrors used to deflect solar energy away from the planet, perhaps to be used for space industry (for example heating metallic asteroids as part of a programme to convert them into large habitats by inflating them with steam).


3. Igniting Jupiter.
Jupiter is a largish gas giant, but too small for even dueterium fusion let alone 'proper' carbon cycle fusion. This could be 'fixed' using either a very powerful gravity generator or a small black hole. Both have the potential to go wrong, seriously endangering all life in the solar system.
The idea of such ignition was a major plot point in the EU novel Lords of the Storm.


4. Changing orbital dynamics.
A tricky prospect without very advanced technology, unless of course Mondas did it already or humanity (or the Ice Warriors, Silurians et cetera) acquire a GodEngine.


5. Warp drives.
While FTL systems in the Whoniverse don't have the projected side-effects of an Alcubierre drive perhaps someone's experimenting with a different system for moving around the universe, like the KK drive in Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series and it's huge artificial gravity wells.
The FASA scenario The Lords of Destiny is a useful reference for such huge scale devices.

6. Artificial Wormholes.
Or perhaps an attempt at emulating the Gallifreyan manipulation of stars and artificial black holes.
Was there a second Hand of Omega? Where is it?


7. Shkadov Thruster
The Shkadov system is a fascinating idea, moving an entire star (and it's attendant planets and other bits) using a giant mirror. Perhaps the ultimate solution for a society that's either unwilling to leave home (bring the planet with you!) or hasn't developed FTL travel. And, as the Kzin learned, any such propulsion system is also a powerful weapon.


8. Aliens.
A perennial favourite.


9. Mutated von Neumann Probes
If humanity doesn't go out into space maybe robotic probes, capable of self-replication, are sent. Possibly to prepare for humanity following on (as with the Mechanoids). And as anyone with a computer knows, software bugs are inevitable. Hopefully not ones fatal for humanity though.


10. Grey Goo.
Related to the previous idea, rogue nanotech could also spread, potentially even across the universe attached to ships or probes. A plague for your PCs to fight (and maybe they're the carriers).
Or maybe it's deliberate; did the Cybermen release such 'spores' to infect a galaxy, was that why the Human Empire destroyed the Tiberian Spiral Galaxy?


11. Rogue AI.
A bit of a hackneyed plot device these days, but always popular. Whether it's Colossus, WOTAN, Gold, The Machine, BOSS, WOPR, SkyNet, the Berserkers, such computers always seem overly interested in enslaving humanity and taking over.


12. Gamma ray laser.
My own contribution. Theoretically (based on work by Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Burbidge) a powerful gamma-ray laser could be focussed on a star, over interstellar distances, long enough to create a fusion hot-spot, causing it to destabilise and explode in a nova. A good way to destroy a star system remotely, and without easy countermeasures given that the beam would be travelling at light speed (probably for years) before it could be detected.

[senko]

Hmmm some interesting ideas there. I'm just heading to bed so I only had time to skim it but I'd like to add one. . .

13. Dimensional Wall Breach.
Experimental technology doesn't just provide a link between dimensions it breaks down the walls. As realities bleed into each other things warp and twist people dissapear or return from the dead, buildings change, landscapes twirl and if the realities are different enough who know's what may bleed through. In a best case scenario a building goes from dillapidated and rundown to state of the art, in the middle range you have entire suburbs and the people living there vanish only to be replaced by a new structure and new inhabitants (who may live elsewhere at the same time causing its own problems), in a bad case you get something like the inferno timeline where lava and green heat monsters suddenly replace downtown parks and start slaughtering and spreading out from there while the armed forces mutate into something rather than being able to fight back, in a really bad case you get a Cthuluesque entity that finds non-eucledian geometry sensible and broadcasts telepathically constantly driving everyone within a certain radius mad and in a worst case you get something world ending as entire parts of the landscape just explode as two different realtiies try to occupy the same space and other world ending threats appear everywhere. Well ok in a worst case scenario its not just limited to one planet.

[Catsmate]

Sept 13, 2016 10:44:46 GMT senko said:

Hmmm some interesting ideas there. I'm just heading to bed so I only had time to skim it but I'd like to add one. . .

13. Dimensional Wall Breach.
Experimental technology doesn't just provide a link between dimensions it breaks down the walls. As realities bleed into each other things warp and twist people dissapear or return from the dead, buildings change, landscapes twirl and if the realities are different enough who know's what may bleed through. In a best case scenario a building goes from dillapidated and rundown to state of the art, in the middle range you have entire suburbs and the people living there vanish only to be replaced by a new structure and new inhabitants (who may live elsewhere at the same time causing its own problems), in a bad case you get something like the inferno timeline where lava and green heat monsters suddenly replace downtown parks and start slaughtering and spreading out from there while the armed forces mutate into something rather than being able to fight back, in a really bad case you get a Cthuluesque entity that finds non-eucledian geometry sensible and broadcasts telepathically constantly driving everyone within a certain radius mad and in a worst case you get something world ending as entire parts of the landscape just explode as two different realtiies try to occupy the same space and other world ending threats appear everywhere. Well ok in a worst case scenario its not just limited to one planet.

I like it. Didn't Voyager have an episode using something like this?
ETA: not really, the ep I was thinking of was Time and Again and it had a somewhat similar premise but not that close.

I like the idea of intersecting realities, maybe from different alternate universe or time periods.

[Catsmate]

Another idea that struck me (no serious injury) is why destroy a solar system deliberately? Assuming it's not just to kill off an enemy, actual or potential.
A supernova might be triggered in order to create exotic materials; potentially stable transuranic elements could be formed in such an explosion and, in the Whoniverse, other useful exotica like Taranium, Zeiton⁷, Isocryte, and Konton crystals might be formed in such space wrenching conditions.

[jay042]

On Stargate SG-1 they once made a sun go supernova by dropping an active stargate into it. The gate was connected to a planet within the range of a black hole, so the sun's mass was getting sucked away until it lost gravitational equilibrium and blows up.