Fantasy/Ancient WMD Ideas?

[psychotick]

Hi,

Another idea occurred to me. A firestorm. It doesn't have to be magical at all, but it is tricky to create one. Bombers did it well in Germany in WWII - eg Dresden and Hamburg. The cities were destroyed and tens of thousands killed.

In essence what you have to do is create a ring of fire around a city, hoping that there is enough combustible material within the ring for the fire to spread inwards. Then somehow set the middle of the ring alight. If you do it right the fire in the centre of the ring will consume so much air by combustion and thermal effects that heat the air and cause it to rise, that a wind / suction will be generated, sucking the outside flame in towards the centre incinerating everyone and everything.

My thought would be that say you have one big building in the heart of a city that can be burnt - say a temple or castle, you set it alight maybe through bombardment or else sabotage. Then have archers putting flame arrows into wooden structures at a set distance from the building. It might work, but as I say it is tricky to pull off with ancient weaponry.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Scribble]

Here's a kooky idea I just came up with....

Fire Angels

Essentially, these are Chinese lanterns you float over the enemy, coaxed by wind and/or giant fans in the direction you want.

They carry a small sealed payload of poisonous mushroom spores, which the candle slowly burns through, releasing it (hopefully) over the enemy. The fungi are safe when they are sealed up, but an enzyme is added to the mix that starts the process of developing the spores. When they are "ripe" the container changes color, thus indicating the fungus has entered it's toxic phase. The container is sealed with wax, acting as the candle.

Timing and wind is critical to successful deployment. The spores rain down on the enemy. After inhaling them, it takes anywhere from minutes to an hour for air passages to become locked up. Where it lands on the skin, painful boils erupt.

Very dangerous to handle, risky to deploy. A large bellows like launcher encourages the lanterns to float in the desired direction. A shift in wind could be problematic.

 

[ink.]

I think it would be worth considering what kind of world you are basing your story in. For example, a world where grain is abundant across all parts of the nation would not suffer to greatly from a plague of locusts, but a nation with limited grain resources would suffer greatly, thousands would die. Also worth considering the climate, people in colder areas would be much better off if there was a locust outbreak than those in warm areas, as locusts cannot survive well in the cold.

The same applies to the geography of the land, for example in GOT there is the Dothraki sea, a vast grass plain. If a wildfire was to break out an such a massive expanse of grass, with the right wind the whole plain basically becomes tinder which could be devastating.

In a mountainous region the most obvious answer is avalanches or rockslides, since most settlements are built within a valley and not on top of the mountains it would be possible to try and trigger simultaneous avalanches on many sides of a settlement, with the capacity to cause massive damage. Conversely, a big explosion in a mountain range wouldn't be very effective as the mountains would absorb most of the shockwave.

So yeah, depends on the region.

 

[psychotick]

Hi Scribble,

In Wildling I used a similar weapon. Basically mushrooms with halucinogenic qualities. I released the spores by heating them gently over a fire so that the musrooms swelled and guided them through gentle wind currents. I.e. I had my MC heat them over a tiny flame upwind of a campsite while the enemy was sleeping. But in order to use them effectively the wind had to be just right, i.e. gentle and the spores had to be released over a period of time so that the concentration was sufficient to do more than give a few soldiers bad dreams.

My thought is that using Chinese balloons would be too awkward as a means of dispersal. You'd have almost no chance of getting your spores to be released in the right place at the right time in sufficient concentration. If you wanted an airial attack system you'd be better off putting your mushrooms into some sort of sealed container - a corked pottery urn maybe - heating them, then putting them on a catapult (very, very gently) so that when they hit their target the pots would crack open and release the spores. And you'd still be at risk of some of the containers cracking open as you fired them.

Cheers Greg.