List of planets 'killed' universally.

Struck me this morning there are rather a lot:

-Warhammer XI, c.2654
-Goddard, 2654
-Mylon II, unknown. (Do we know any more about when this happened?)
-Locanda IV, 2669
-Hyperion uninhabited planet, 2669 (name, anyone?)
-Sirius, 2669
-Warsaw, 2669
-Loki VI, 2669
-Kilrah, 2669

The list includes worlds that were not completely 'destroyed' - but have lost their entire population and/or have become uninhabitable to all life.

I've excluded Telamon, since that wasn't a complete bio-kill of the planet - but would be interested to hear about other planet deaths after 2669 if anybody has any.

Scoreboard

Kilrathi: 6
Terrans: 3 (including a homeworld)


These are off the top of my head, can anyone add more?

Wasn't McAuliffe nuked as well?

Nuked, but not de-populated. There's evidence it's still a major Confederation world by the time of WC1.

(Thanks for putting up a reply - my first thought at this thread and the word "universally" in the title was "You left out Alderaan.")

Big infrastructure losses, lots of marines killed and a few vessels destroyed - the first big black eye from the Cats, but I don't think the outpost was completely evacuated. I think if McAuliffe counted we'd have to include Earth, as it was scorched but not destroyed.

By the way - always meant to say thanks for your subcription to the YouTube channel!

Wasn't Hell Hole in Landreich sector hit by he Kats in the same way as Warsaw, Gilead and Sirius Prime during the Battle of Earth, or just before it? I remember in Action Stations Kruger commenting that the Kilrathi had attacked them and that the planet that the main base for the military was on was "a total write-off"

I think that's a discussion between Tolwyn and Polowski about 'the colonies' - referring to the recently nuked Sirius/Gilead, they do mention Kruger but as LOAF says ther're no specific references to Hellhole being completely decimated, it fits nicely though.

It's funny - on reflection they went to leaps and bounds to make it clear that Hyperion 'wasn't really empty' - even Rollins reminds you of that at the end of the mission, but it's only just dawned on me that this could be part of a bigger picture about the morality of Confed's targets.

On the other hand, blowing up a "not really empty" planet does kind of pale in comparison to the plan to blow up the enemy's homeworld. Easily a thousand times as many Kilrathi died with Kilrah as died in the Behemoth and T-bomb test runs.

IIRC there have to be dozens or hundreds more.
I remember somewhere in the books we are told that the old Varni planets are 'blasted worlds' or something after the Varni war. I had the impression that the Kilrathi bombed them into oblivion.
Also wasn't there some Independence Day style nomadic alien race that also killed the planets?
Or am I mixing two things?

The Hari did indeed leave planets as lifeless husks after they were done with them, but that wasn't as a result of warfare, that was just how the society worked. "A thousand blasted lifeless worlds" is how Hari space is described in Fleet Action.

Wasn't Hell Hole still being used during False Colours?

If someone still lives on that planet they have to wear rad suits (pun intended).

The temblor bomb seems morally indistinct from the Behemoth, and I think the games plays the morality in a interesting way.

More than the execution of Angel for Blair personally, Confed has and the fact that “the Kilrathi will be walking on Earth on six months, maybe less”. The story leaves little room for doubt: fail, and Earth falls. It’s not explicitly stated but it’s heavily implied that Confed throws everything on the last stand on the losing path and that the war is basically lost after that. So we do have a credible self defense rationale for the nuking of Kilrah. The part with Angel is important because we identify with Blair and that should make us care on a more personal level.

Of course the game only shows the emperor hopelessly watching as its palace crumbles over him, symbolizing the final defeat of the Kilrathi empire, as we hear the excellent, triumphant and reassuring orchestral soundtrack. What we don’t see is all those Kilrathi nurseries with baby Kilrathis, hospitals, temple and schools filled with civilians that are instantly vaporized.

I respect the dramatic reasons for making us win in such a desperate manner, even thought I would personally prefer a more conventional victory. The WWII metaphor departs somewhat from the pacific to Europe here, at least in the sense that the side that was about to be defeated in a conventional way ends up avoiding defeat with the use of superweapons, which was what Germany was going for in the end. I must admit that this connects perfectly with the plot of WCIV, as it makes much more sense for Tolwyn to fear that our victory was more of a fluke than the result of our superiority, even if I’m not sure I really agree with him. The novels adds a lot to his reasoning, but when you consider simply the games, this seems to be the major point.

There's one important distinction, although I'm not sure it's absolutely established as fact. I had always believed that the Temblor bomb was *only* usable against tectonically unstable planets, and that that represented a fairly small percentage of inhabited planets (including Kilrah), and also that using it required pretty extensive surveying and precise targeting. Whereas the Behemoth could destroy any planet. That's an important distinction--both were weapons of mass destruction, but one could only be used in very limited circumstances.

I do think WC3 was a little bit of a "Humanity descends to the level of its enemies" morality theme. The Kilrathi seemed to have no shortage of technologies for completely destroying all life on a planet if not the planet itself: the Sivar's PTC used against Goddard, the Strontium-90 warheads used in Fleet Action, and the bioweapons targeted against Locanda. To my knowledge, Confed had no such weapons mentioned until the Behemoth and Temblor bomb come along. Humanity had finally descended to the brutality of its enemy (very Nietzsche-ish). And the fallout of this was that in WC4, Tolwyn wanted to continue it with the Gen-Select technology.

Locanda IV was hit with bioweapons in 2669 according to the novel; the virus had a half-life of 500 years according to the game and the entire star system had to be quarantined even as its civilian population slowly died out.

So if Locanda IV's extermination led to the quarantine of the whole system, does that mean the virus was spaceborne or something? There were other colonies supposedly, did the Kilrathi strike those too in separate strikes? Evidently, the virus was not isolated to Locanda IV so how exactly did it spread further?

The novel expands more on describing the Behemoth, and IIRC it states that the Behemoth too requires tectonically-unstable worlds to be most effective (this conflicts with the game, where Tolwyn states that any target is destroyed). The reason the Behemoth is initially chosen over the temblor bomb is that the Behemoth can be used multiple times, while the temblor bomb is a one-shot deal. I'd also have to think that the temblor bomb would have to be specifically designed for the planet it is intended to destroy; in the briefing, Taggart mentions the bomb triggering an appropriate resonate frequency, which would be unique for each planet. On paper, the Behemoth should have been the easier option as well. If it had been fully complete and if operational plans had not been leaked to the Kilrathi, simply pulling it in range of Kilrah and opening fire sounds a lot easier than piloting a fighter down to the surface to navigate a trench and drop a bomb on the fault line.