History Main / WeaponOfMassDestruction

* A subplot in ''[[ComicBook/LutherArkwright The Adventures of Luther Arkwright]]'' is the threat of the "Firefrost", an alien artifact that annihilated the ''entire galaxy'' where it originated, then drifted across space until it entered our Milky Way galaxy and then ended up on Earth.

* A subplot in ''[[ComicBook/LutherArkwright The Adventures of Luther Arkwright]]'' is the threat of the "Firefrost", an alien artifact that annihilated the entire galaxy where it originated, then drifted across space until it entered our Milky Way galaxy and then ended up on Earth.

[[folder:Anime]]

A specific type of MacGuffin. It is a thing that is just really, really ''bad'' for children and other small, living things. It may destroy entire cities or countries with the press of a button, it may just wipe out all electronics or something. Either way, expect massive amounts of damage if it's ever used, hence why it's rarely done.

We are sure, though, that it is at least as powerful as the WaveMotionGun. It is found to be in the hands of the BigBad, or being sought out by the BigBad, or being assembled by the BigBad's minions.

* Spirit based weapons from ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra''; the one Varrick made on accident had enough power to blow a hole through a nearby hill, the fully operational one Kuvira built was strong enough to ''melt'' a similarly sized hill, and [[spoiler:when mounted on a HumongousMecha, she is able to wipe out the entire United Republic Navy with only a few shots. And when it overloads... PhlebotinumOverload's trope picture shows you what happens.]]

For more on a certain type, see AtomicHate or DeadlyGas.

* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' has the [[LostSuperweapon WarShips]], which are ''enormous'', heavily armed ships with the capability to jump up to 30 light years every two weeks. In the ''[[Franchise/BattleTechExpandedUniverse Twilight of the Clans]]'' series, a [[BigBad Clan Smoke Jaguar]] [=WarShip=] opens fire on the city of Edo in retaliation for a prison-break, killing one million inhabitants instantly. The [[AwakeningTheSleepingGiant entire Inner Sphere]] then proceeds to [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge kill every Jaguar warrior they can find]]. Once they reach the Jaguar homeworld, use their Warship's [[MagneticWeapons Gauss Rifle]] and [[LightningGun Particle Projector Cannon]] to [[CurbStompBattle completely destroy several battalions of Jaguar warriors]] as they gather for an attack on the Sphere's ground forces.
** The [[MachineCult Word of Blake]] uses artificial viruses and nuclear bombs - both banned by ''all'' the nations after the horrors of the [[ForeverWar Succession Wars]] - in their attacks against manufacturing centers and population centers. Naturally, the rest of the Inner Sphere respond in-kind, [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge by nuking every Wobbie facility they can find.]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* ''Series/StargateSG1'':
** The Dakara Superweapon, capable of disintegrating a lifeform of your choice by a giant wave that wraps around the planet. (The wave can be altered to target any lifeform while leaving others alone; for example, choosing between organic lifeforms and replicators.) In fact, it can even be used to delete life in the entire ''galaxy''.
** Carter used a gate to force [[RememberWhenYouBlewUpASun a star to go nova]], wiping out the entire star system.
* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'':
** The "Attero" device disables faster-than-light travel for the series's Big Bads, destroying the ships as they attempt it. The downside is the device makes stargates explode. Mid-season six of ''SG-1'' revealed that a stargate explodes with enough force to annihilate a planet, and the device does this passively to the ones in an entire galaxy.
** Then there's Project Arcturus, a failed Ancient Manhattan Project that uses the principles of a ZPM on a larger, less controlled scale to power a great big energy cannon. Throw in the fact that the power source itself is uncontrollable and ends up overloading. When [=McKay=] tries to get it working, he ends up blowing up most of a stellar system.
* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' has wormholes. As the MadeForTVMovie conclusively proves, they're not so much a "weapon" as they are the interstellar equivalent of shaking an etch-a-sketch.
-->'''John''': Wormhole weapons do not make [[UsefulNotes/PeaceThroughSuperiorFirepower peace]]. Wormhole weapons...don't even make ''war''. They make total destruction. Annihilation. Armageddon.
* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': The Cardassian-built, Maquis-captured/modified ATR-4107 'Dreadnought', a self-guided strategic missile armed with a 2000 kilo matter/antimatter charge (enough to destroy a small moon like Phobos or Deimos, or make a [[ApocalypseHow Class 1-2]] mess of a planetary surface) with its own defensive weaponry and a highly sophisticated computer system capable of adapting to any circumstance. Unfortunately, it was pulled into the Delta Quadrant along with ''Voyager'', and headed towards the first inhabited planet fitting its target profile... Then there's the long-range tactical armor unit the crew encounter in "Warhead", which is so intelligent it's not only programmed, it's also fed with propaganda on its ruthless and hostile "enemy". Plus, the Krenim temporal weapon-ship in "Year of Hell", which can erase a species from ever having ''existed'', and nine Species 8472 bioships linking up to destroy an entire Borg planet in "Scorpion".

** Lampooned in the episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E5WorldWarThree "World War Three"]], in which alien gangsters in disguise manage to gain control of the Western nuclear arsenal [[spoiler:in order to reduce Earth to radioactive rubble]] simply by threatening Earth with a [[spoiler:(non-existent)]] alien battle fleet armed with "Massive Weapons of Destruction".
** This trope is taken to its logical extreme by [[MadScientist Davros]] in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd "Journey's End"]]: [[spoiler: his planet-sized Dalek starship, The Crucible, is equipped with a "Reality Bomb", essentially a jumbo-sized, ''planet-powered'' disintegrator that can cancel out nuclear cohesion, reducing matter to nothing. One blast from it can propagate throughout the entire Universe, wiping out everything but the Crucible itself. And by setting it off next to [[OurWormholesAreDifferent The Medusa Cascade]] the blast would spread throughout TheMultiverse, wiping out ''everything'' that could possibly exist, ''ever'', leaving the [[OmnicidalManiac Daleks]] as the only [[AbsoluteXenophobe things left in existence]]]].
** In [[Recap/DoctorWho50thASTheDayOfTheDoctor "The Day of the Doctor"]], the weapon the Doctor used to end the Time War was one of these called the Moment, also known as the Galaxy Eater, developed by Gallifrey's Ancients. [[spoiler:It was so powerful that it became sentient and developed a consience so the Time Lords never dared use it because how do you use a weapon of mass destruction that can pass judgement on you? It took the form of the Bad Wolf to try and persuade the Doctor '''not''' to use it, because it didn't want to kill the children still on Gallifrey during the War.]]
* A somewhat tongue-in-cheek example, Gaius Baltar of ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' tends to cause a lot of destruction every time he gets laid. [[http://wiki.frakr.com/en/Baltar%27s_schlong WikiFrakr]] refers to this phenomenon as [[BiggusDickus "Baltar's Schlong."]]
* ''Series/{{Warehouse 13}}'':
** Shown in the season 2 finale, the Minoan Trident (also known as Poseidon's Trident), which when stabbed into the ground three times opens the fault lines below. Among other things, it's capable of triggering volcanoes, even ''super''volcanoes. In fact, it's even referred to as "The ''first'' WeaponOfMassDestruction."
** There's also, from the season 3 finale, the tile from the British House of Commons that absorbed the full concentrated [[ThePowerOfHate power of hate]] of the ''entire Nazi regime''. When hooked up to a bomb, it creates an explosion large enough to [[spoiler: destroy the entire Warehouse]] requiring a ResetButton being hit the following season.

* Spirit based weapons from ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra''; the one Varrick made on accident had enough power to blow a hole through a nearby hill, the fully operational one Kuvira built was strong enough to ''melt'' a similarly sized hill, and [[spoiler: when mounted on a HumongousMecha, she is able to wipe out the entire United Republic Navy with only a few shots. And when it overloads... PhlebotinumOverload's trope picture shows you what happens.]]

* In Myth/HinduMythology, the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmastra Brahmastra]] is essentially a nuclear bomb, a weapon that can destroy an entire army, can kill anything from Brahma's creation (ie anything) and causes massive environmental damage in a huge area. There's even a second version that's four-squared times as powerful, which never gets used; at one point, Arjuna and Ashwatthama attack each other using the four-square-as-powerful version. They're forced to retract their attacks, because if the weapons collided it would ''destroy the entire universe''.

* ''Literature/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea'': At the state of technology in 1869, [[CoolShip the Nautilus]] is this: a submarine could easily destroy any ship in the sea without possibility of being persecuted when it submerges in the sea. Nemo’s KickTheDog moment show how terrible its destructive power really is.

* In ''Literature/HaloFirstStrike'', we have the NOVA Nuclear Cluster. Admiral Whitcomb described it as a "Planet Killer", and was originally to be used to even the odds against the Covenant in space battles. We get to see it used in ''Literature/HaloGhostsOfOnyx'', where one is enough to vaporize a fleet of hundreds, scorch half a planet, and ''shatter a moon''.

** The eponymous Caliphate has hired several American scientists to create [[spoiler:the ultimate bioweapon]] to wipe out their enemies, without any concern for who else -- including themselves -- that would be harmed [[spoiler:by an engineered virus that's 97% fatal -- and possibly mutilating the remaining 3%.]]
** In the backstory for the book, Islamic terrorists deployed nuclear weapons against the cities of several western countries, including the US and the UK. The three that detonated in the US[[note]]the other four targeted on US cities failed to detonate due to poor maintenance[[/note]] were sufficient cause for the election of [[PresidentEvil President Buckman]], who later nuked almost all Islamic holy cities in retaliation for the various attacks on the US over the years.
* ''Literature/RevelationSpace'' has numerous very powerful weapons on board the [[CoolShip Nostalgia for Infinity]]. One could potentially shatter a planet. Volyova uses one of the smallest of the ship's weapons to threaten a planetary government, a "surface supression element" that merely has a teratonne-yield nuclear warhead.

** And a particularly unusual one is done by Saxifrage Russell, a quietly spoken, nerdy terraforming scientist. In [[spoiler: revenge against the police who torture him, ultimately leaving him brain damaged]] he releases some terraforming biota that increase the oxygen level of the atomsphere a little faster than expected, and plants a lot of carefully engineered seeds which germinate after a fire in some soil rich in metals and oxidising chemicals. The [[spoiler: prison]] is then hit with an incendiary weapon which ''sets the ground on fire'' in an raging inferno that torches thousands of square miles of wilderness, and then sprouts an impenetrable thicket of thorn trees. BewareTheQuietOnes, indeed.

* Goliath, the eponymous superweapon in the third ''Literature/{{Leviathan}}'' book, is the cause of TheTunguskaEvent. [[spoiler:...Possibly. It's a massive electromagnetic generator, and Tesla intends to use it on Berlin, but scientist Barlow believes he was delusional and the actual meteorite that caused the Tunguska blast is found in Tesla's possessions, meaning that either 1. it was a monumental coincidence (as was the sky changing color in his second test) and he hid the evidence or 2. the device really summoned a nickel-iron asteroid. We'll never know, since Alek killed Tesla and the device was destroyed]].

* In the ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' comic, the Mandalorians [[spoiler:devastate a planet with good old-fashioned nuclear missles]] four thousand years before the movies. Makes you wonder why the Death Star was even necessary.

* [[Franchise/Nasuverse Fate]] has a few of it's Servants have Noble Phantasms, weapons or deeds immortalized during their lifetimes, be this. The primary ones being [[WorldsStrongestMan Gilgamesh]]'s Ea, which can literally reduce the world to the state of Genesis and [[HumbleHero Karna]]'s Vasavi Shakti, which's mere summoning causes his surroundings to repeatedly boil, explode and erupt before he even fires the all-killing death blast that it is.

* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' has the [[LostSuperweapon WarShips]], which are ''enormous'', heavily armed ships with the capability to jump up to 30 light years every two weeks. In the ''[[BattleTechExpandedUniverse Twilight of the Clans]]'' series, a [[BigBad Clan Smoke Jaguar]] [=WarShip=] opens fire on the city of Edo in retaliation for a prison-break, killing one million inhabitants instantly. The [[AwakeningTheSleepingGiant entire Inner Sphere]] then proceeds to [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge kill every Jaguar warrior they can find]]. Once they reach the Jaguar homeworld, use their Warship's [[MagneticWeapons Gauss Rifle]] and [[LightningGun Particle Projector Cannon]] to [[CurbStompBattle completely destroy several battalions of Jaguar warriors]] as they gather for an attack on the Sphere's ground forces.

* The Poor Man's Rose in ''Anime/HunterXHunter'' resembles a small nuclear bomb. [[spoiler: Netero uses it in a SuicideAttack in order to take down the Chimera Ant's leader Netero, as well as two of his guards and his MoralityPet Komugi]]

-->'''John''': Wormhole weapons do not make [[PeaceThroughSuperiorFirepower peace]]. Wormhole weapons...don't even make ''war''. They make total destruction. Annihilation. Armageddon.

* In the ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' comic, the Mandalorians [[spoiler: devastate a planet with good old-fashioned nuclear missles]] four thousand years before the movies. Makes you wonder why the Death Star was even necessary.

* The ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries'' has the Concept Killing Spear, the single most dreaded weapon in all creation. Created by a ChildProdigy to kill Love itself, it has the ability to [[RetGone erase whoever it kills from creation]]. This is played for every bit the horror as one would expect: when she killed [[DemiGod Cupid]] with it, everypony who existed because of Cupid was erased. This amounts to the single largest amount of destruction to the universe ever known until [[spoiler:Nightmare Eclipse repeatedly erasing an ''entire'' universe several thousand times]] finally surpassed it. That was the first and only time the weapon has ever been used. The deities took it and kept it stored in Strife's domain (one of the most dangerous locations in all creation) because even ''she'' (the Concept of ''Conflict itself'') believed it to be too dangerous to remain in the mortal world. [[spoiler:Rancor, while likely holding back, managed to mortally injure a fully powered Discord in one hit with it.]] It's so deadly that the only reason the Concepts didn't destroy it was [[spoiler:Destruction was dead and he was the only one capable of destroying it. Most of the time the moment they can do so upon regaining his power in some way, they do.]]

* The various Slayers in ''Anime/Fairy Tail'', allowing humans to take on demons, dragons, and even gods.