Kaiju as Military Weapons

[Sea Skimmer]

At least one monster being referred to here achieves flight at least in part due to having the ability to levitate magnetically, namely Rodan, and I suppose this implies that other flying monsters have something similar going on as well. I imagine that a 50,000 ton kaiju putting out a magnetic field to assist its own flight would create a county-sized radar image or something like that.

The problem is since the earths magnetic field is weak as fuck in these terms the Kaiju magnetic field would have to be stupid high. I have no idea how high but you are asking for the powr to not just lift the thing, but propel it forward against aerodynamic resistance that's kinda like a 100mph motorboat hitting the water except worse because supersonic compression is involved.

So I'm pretty sure the magnetic field blanking out radar screens won't be a problem because a magnetic compass would track the monster anywhere it goes. But these kind of megatesla or even higher range magnetic fields would direct affect people in a fatal kind of way, and might remotely induce fusion reactions into vulnerable material as the monster flew past. Also the whole hypersonic shockwave thing remains in play.

Would be pretty awesome if anyone would actually give us that kind of monster doomsday on screen but movies tend not to be that way. Tokyo having a giant crater at the end of Final Wars was pretty utter, but still not what the hypersonic death aura monster would inflict.

It gets worse with things like King Ghidorah, who flies in part by controlling his own gravity/localized gravity field, or Hedorah, who flies with jets of SULFURIC ACID INTENSE ENOUGH TO MELT A MAN TO BONES IN SECONDS.

Toxic rocket fuel is best rocket fuel, but seconds? I mean if it can lift him, you'd kind of expect it to be more like it 'melt your building' in seconds. The bone will be on FIRE in a lot less then 1 second! More or less instantly. Small Godzilla is supposed to be 50,000 tons and King Ghidorah is much bigger. Even 50kt would require 66 Saturn F1 engines just to lift.

So you imagine every Saturn V first stage launch ever, bundled side by side, all firing together, and that still isn't enough thrust but it's close. If you flew around slowly like this at low altitude you should be constantly destroying and incinerating a several city block wide path as a minimal, and probably igniting a large proportion of buildings over twice that radius.

If King Ghidorah was 150,000 tons we'd need about 197 F1 engines, so a bundle of 14x14 of them plus 1.

High collateral damage just might result from that. Even if you accomplished it without heating a working fluid it'd still be like some constant F6 tornado under the thing.

It continues to seem to me that Kaiju tend to suffer from low strategic damage yields in canon, while in principle of 'existing' they ought to be hyper destructive if they wanted. This suggests kaiju seldom are actually aiming for destruction but more like confused drunken wandering getting into bum fights. A big problem for Japan if attacked constantly, but a lot less so on any wider scale. I continue to collect concepts for Tactically Decisive, Operationally Effective High Strategic Collateral Damage Monster Weapons. Why invent excuses not to use nukes, invent stronger monsters that destroy crap worse!

[Q99]

The problem is since the earths magnetic field is weak as fuck in these terms the Kaiju magnetic field would have to be stupid high. I have no idea how high but you are asking for the powr to not just lift the thing, but propel it forward against aerodynamic resistance that's kinda like a 100mph motorboat hitting the water except worse because supersonic compression is involved.

So I'm pretty sure the magnetic field blanking out radar screens won't be a problem because a magnetic compass would track the monster anywhere it goes. But these kind of megatesla or even higher range magnetic fields would direct affect people in a fatal kind of way, and might remotely induce fusion reactions into vulnerable material as the monster flew past. Also the whole hypersonic shockwave thing remains in play.

Would be pretty awesome if anyone would actually give us that kind of monster doomsday on screen but movies tend not to be that way. Tokyo having a giant crater at the end of Final Wars was pretty utter, but still not what the hypersonic death aura monster would inflict.

Oh, yeesh, you're right! That would be spectacularly destructive, I don't even know what 'death by passing magnetic field' would look like but it'd be a huge death aura.

[Sea Skimmer]

Oh, yeesh, you're right! That would be spectacularly destructive, I don't even know what 'death by passing magnetic field' would look like but it'd be a huge death aura.

At 'low' intensity you get dizzy/confusion/nausea transitioning into seizures and coma. Eventually the heart and lungs function would be disrupted and death follows. Large radars can induce the lower end of these effects.

But if this is a field that can loft a monster then I think the close range damage would be more akin to everything magnetic in your DNA is ripped out, breaking all your DNA everywhere, I'm fairly sure that would be somehow fatal, while all the iron in your blood is also removed at high velocity. So the Kaiju might be flying around dragging a cloud of human gore behind it that's being explosively heated by it's own shockwave. Something like that anyway.

Also everything made of iron on the earths surface is going to be affected. Like all the rebar being torn out of a concrete skyscraper at mach 5 might have detrimental to the surrounding human inhabitation.

[Solauren]

And after all that, suddenly the use of Kaiju as Military weapons not only makes sense, but seems like the route to go....

[Sea Skimmer]

But for what military purpose would still be the question.

Genocide, sure. Conquest for resourcs, maybe less so?

Worst case the magnetic monster is also literally destroying the local eco system by massively disrupting the soil and ripping up magnetic ores as it goes, landscape turned into rubble and giant mud holes and such. Besides killing everyone, all the animals and generally destroying everything in the most indiscriminate manner possible. A strategic nuclear strike is more controlled...at least it's not required to carve a path of total destruction from nuke point to nuke point.

The value of Kaiju like this kind of depends on if you want something that's like a normal Godzilla movie, or more like the high end Angles from Evangelion, some of the low end ones were nothing impressive except being supposedly hard to kill.

[Majin Gojira]

Ignoring Rodan who may or may not actually have magnetic power, the only one who had them actively is an Ultraman kaiju called Magnadon. Funnily enough, it was a peaceful beast who had to be destroyed because his magnetic field was so disruptive.

Unfortunately, it could also burrow at high speeds, breathe fire, and had a regeneration effect that was powerful enough to pull itself back together after being blown into large chunks.

Though Ultraman Jack blowing him into tiny pieces seems to have done the trick.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Rodan undoubtedly flies at least in part due to magnetic levitation, though not wholly; his wings would be laughably inadequate on their own but probably aren't just for decoration either. The whole reason he was confined to Monster Island during the far-distant future year of 1999 during "Destroy All Monsters" was because there was an artificial magnetic field surrounding the island preventing him from leaving, and this fact crops up often in fluff and other Toho publications as well.

And as berserk as the full panoply of effects that a multi-thousand megatesla magnetic field soaring around the planet at mach 5 has, Ghidorah can actually get up to around 250c or so, when he went from Jupiter to Earth in under ten seconds during an episode of Zone Fighter. The fact that Godzilla regularly fights a being who can summon his own personal Albecurrie drive and tear ass around the solar system casually (Ghidorah was weakened when he did this) and wins against him suggests that human efforts to stop him don't even merit his full effort or attention.

[Q99]

The strongest kaiju is probably Mothra Leo, who can go FTL as a method of time travel.

[Majin Gojira]

The strongest kaiju is probably Mothra Leo, who can go FTL as a method of time travel.

And that's before he spent 65 Million years underneath lava meditating like the Buddha and becoming Eternal Mothra/Armor Mothra. Which made the monster even more absurdly powerful.

[Q99]

The strongest kaiju is probably Mothra Leo, who can go FTL as a method of time travel.

And that's before he spent 65 Million years underneath lava meditating like the Buddha and becoming Eternal Mothra/Armor Mothra. Which made the monster even more absurdly powerful.

Beware the moths!

[Sky Captain]

Interesting monster would be one that contains large amounts of antimatter as fuel source, it can rampage for years on its internal power and if killed produces multi thousand megaton explosion when containment system is destroyed. Kill it in ocean and you get large tsunami, kill it on land and you get equivalent of world total nuclear arsenal going up in one place. Let it rampage and it will destroy stuff for many years. A no win scenario.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh, yeesh, you're right! That would be spectacularly destructive, I don't even know what 'death by passing magnetic field' would look like but it'd be a huge death aura.

At 'low' intensity you get dizzy/confusion/nausea transitioning into seizures and coma. Eventually the heart and lungs function would be disrupted and death follows. Large radars can induce the lower end of these effects.

But if this is a field that can loft a monster then I think the close range damage would be more akin to everything magnetic in your DNA is ripped out, breaking all your DNA everywhere, I'm fairly sure that would be somehow fatal, while all the iron in your blood is also removed at high velocity. So the Kaiju might be flying around dragging a cloud of human gore behind it that's being explosively heated by it's own shockwave. Something like that anyway.

Also everything made of iron on the earths surface is going to be affected. Like all the rebar being torn out of a concrete skyscraper at mach 5 might have detrimental to the surrounding human inhabitation.

So basically, "it's Magneto, and he's a lot more pissed than normal." Wow.

[Sea Skimmer]

Unfortunately, it could also burrow at high speeds, breathe fire, and had a regeneration effect that was powerful enough to pull itself back together after being blown into large chunks.

Though Ultraman Jack blowing him into tiny pieces seems to have done the trick.

Enemies like that you throw into the sun. Doesn't matter if they die if they gets stuck at the center!

And as berserk as the full panoply of effects that a multi-thousand megatesla magnetic field soaring around the planet at mach 5 has, Ghidorah can actually get up to around 250c or so, when he went from Jupiter to Earth in under ten seconds during an episode of Zone Fighter. The fact that Godzilla regularly fights a being who can summon his own personal Albecurrie drive and tear ass around the solar system casually (Ghidorah was weakened when he did this) and wins against him suggests that human efforts to stop him don't even merit his full effort or attention.

Well FTL drive means it'd be hard to kill the damn thing, but it doesn't necessarily convert into inflicting more damage. You don't gain KE from FTL! The effects of various drives could vary from no interaction with sublight matter at all to you can zip through a mountain and the mountain explodes as you do so from some kind of warp space shockwave. Gets pretty fictional pretty fast.

So basically, "it's Magneto, and he's a lot more pissed than normal." Wow.

Well what do you expect? MRI machines can kill with metal objects and they operate at about 2 teslas. 16 teslas can levitate a frog, but a point blank range to the magnet. This suggests that any magnetic field that could so much as make a giant monster hover 1ft above the ground should already be highly dangerous, if not at a very great distance. The strongest constant magnetic field we can make right now is around 45 tesla unless it's improved of late, but that's still not giving us flying cars. You put the monster up 100,000 feet, possibly over a 17,000ft deep ocean, that just has to push the need up orders of magnitude.

Even if 'only' 10,000 tesla strength is needed that's still into the induce fusion range of fields, and the kind of pulsed magnetic fields we've used to accelerate metal to over 20km/s. So that rebar might not be going mach 5. It might be trying to go more like 20km/s depending on how this is setup.

[Q99]

Well FTL drive means it'd be hard to kill the damn thing, but it doesn't necessarily convert into inflicting more damage. You don't gain KE from FTL! The effects of various drives could vary from no interaction with sublight matter at all to you can zip through a mountain and the mountain explodes as you do so from some kind of warp space shockwave. Gets pretty fictional pretty fast.

True!

Though even sans that, base-form Mothra Leo flies at mach 15.5, can boost up to mach 85 for a minute, has lasers, and various other powers.

Top moth.

[Sea Skimmer]

Still be vulnerable to attack by space shuttle bombers and possibly glider MARV type weapons, so we could at least TRY to kill it with nukes still. Mach 85 implies 25.5km/s to 28.9km/s speed depending on what mach altitude your using. 1 minute at mach 85 sounds impressive but at the high end of that scale it's 1,734km of Kaiju ultradash radius. So it's like crossing Western Europe, not the world.

That's still within the plausible divert footprint of something like the space shuttle bomber or a really high end hypersonic boost-glide weapon to engage, and actually run it it down before the hypersonic weapon drops below mach ~16 and can't keep chasing the Kaiju's cruise speed. This also assumes the Kaiju cannot use his dash more then about once every 45 minutes. If it's much more often then that it would become a problem (more squadrons of shuttle bombers, if we had 24 in polar orbit nothing is escaping). Of course this assumes we already had this stuff to fight back with.

If the monster cruise speed exceeds mach around mach 30 it'd quickly become impossible to engage it with a missile type weapon if it didn't blunder around in straight lines or otherwise allow head on attacks. It'd be faster then anything we can put in low orbit full time, and reentry vehicles attempting a terminal attack would just start to hit problems with burning up too much. Also about mach 33 is how fast any present service explosive explodes at.

Note that the neutrons thrown off by a nuke blast are in the 20-50,000km/s range though some mass is thrown off much slower then that, you need mach 147,000 to totally mitigate this threat, assuming it's not head on where your speed counts against you! Sadly gamma rays travel at C so this requires something about mach 881,742 to merely equal. FTL would be handy at that point, assuming you also got C speed reaction times to go with it.

[Starglider]

Diamagnetic levitation is different from normal electromagnetism in that it will levitate any object up to a certain density, given a certain gradient in magnetic field strength. Levitating large objects does not require a stronger field as such, what it requires is a gradient applied over a larger volume. Currently the only way to do that is to have a very strong magnet with poles at each end of the levitation volume, but if you are talking about creating magnetic fields out of thin air then in theory they could have quite low peak intensity, a long as they oscilated at high spatial frequency (to ahcieve the necessary local gradients). If you are restricted to creating one large uniform field then yes peak intensity would be ridiculous, but that doesn't necessarily mean huge stray fields, any more than a high-power transformer implies huge stray fields; we try to keep magnetic circuits as tight and closed as possible to maximise efficiency (as well as safety). Of course if you were going to the trouble of engineering this massive biological electromagnetic ability from scratch, you would probably make it as multi-purpose as possible, with self-levitation, telekinetic, directed EMP and broadcasr EMP modes.

[MKSheppard]

How should Kaiju be employed in a ancient, modern, or future/space military force?

Distractions. A World War II Era DISNEY bomb can deal with them easily enough.

[Q99]

Btw, one of the worst Kaiju types to fight- Gyaos from the Heisei-era Gamera films.

Made as a biological weapon, they are initially capable of being defeated conventionally, but grow increasingly more powerful with size. They are flying, rapidly-growing human eating, shoot laser, and reproduce fairly rapidly. A plague of kaiju is quite possible.

They also go dormant when food supplies run low, such as the time they almost drove humanity to extinction in this distant past.