this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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It has been a while, but I'm pretty sure the bladed weapons are needed because the shields specifically block objects with high kinetic energy. I also recall one of the houses on arakis getting bombed, but only after they were able to turn off the protective barrier. I might be mixing up Sci fi books, though.
You’re not - it’s pretty explicitly the point. The technological arms race has gotten so advanced that everyone has devolved into fighting with knives.
And even then, the training focuses on slow, deliberate moves, as even a fast knife can be deflected.
The shields don't just protect against kinetic weapons, they also tend to cause energy weapons to blow up in a thermonuclear explosions iirc
Specifically it causes the explosion at both ends, so firing a laser at something you aren't 100% absolutely positively sure is unshielded is suicidal.
Sounds like a drone dropping an energy weapon on a shield users head would do the trick then.
iirc computing is pretty gimped in Dune as well because of previous issues with AI, humanity limited development on that front and focused on developing human capabilities instead, which is where spice came into play…it like super charged your cognition in order to navigating ships through space or something like that. Someone familiar with books please correct that I’m sure it’s not perfect.
That's right. There was a war called the Butlerian Jihad in which humanity wiped out anything close to AI. Since then it has been high-treason-level illegal to "make a machine in the image of the human mind".
That's why they have "Mentats".
Also, the book was written in the 1960's. At the time, you still communicated with a computer using a teletype because nobody had thought to put words on a screen yet. You can also see this in the original Star Trek - they never show a screen with text on it.
There are cultural implications. For the same reason that thermonuclear warheads are stockpiled but not used these days, they avoid using lazguns because you simultaneously blow up more than you would need and turn everyone against you. There are laws in the empire that prevent a military power from intentionally triggering one of these reactions for obvious reasons.
Anyone who does that is getting immediately dog piled by the rest of the houses.
Isn't the thermonuclear bomb a Foundation thing, not a Dune thing?
Is it both? I can see why op said he may be mixing them up lol.
Usually whenever I ask myself "is it X or Dune?" I default to Dune, since it is just that old and has inspired so many things in sci fi.