[Ogre] Re: Nuclear cannon

[David Morse]

Chris French wrote:
> [technical issues of nuclear shells edited]
> 
> This is why we'll not be seeing nuclear-tipped cannon shells, or
> pretty much anything else described in the OGREverse flavor
> text; what's the point in fighting the war if the result renders
> whatever one was fighting over a NBC dead-zone? 

I thought the flavor text had the following justification:

Yes, the mini-nukes had rediculous firepower.  Yes they spread 
radiation.  But: the half-life of the radiation was remarkably short - 
on the order of hours or days, so that ground wouldn't be permanently 
contaminated after a battle.  Hence the term "green nukes".

> (Old-line _Car Wars_ players call this "The 3DP Conundrum". :) )

Explain, please.

> Plus, these things are flat-out too darned expensive -- who needs
> billions of dollars in armor, when the same effect can be achieved
> by leaving a fertilizer-and-gasoline bomb in a trash can at the
> local market?


Today in Japan there is a Nissan plant that assembles finished cars and 
only has two people total on the factory floor.

Half-way through the last war the economy of the world went through a 
change as big as the industrial revolution or the invention of the 
assembly line.  Self-repairing sentient auto-facs could take raw 
materials as input, and produce tanks as output.  Perhaps their drones 
even handle prospecting, mining, and transporting their own raw materials?

Given that radical an upending of economics, to say something "costs 
more" than something else means something completely different from what 
we mean when we make the same statement today.  I'm not even sure 
exactly what it means.

So, what I'm getting at is, in 2089 building a Jaeger Heavy tank might 
"cost as much" as making the equivalent mass of fertilizer, gasoline, 
and trash cans.