Doctor Who's Reality Bomb Is the Most Powerful Weapon in All of Science Fiction
Suck it, Star Wars.
How many good nerd friendships have dissolved in the heat of a Mountain Dew: Code Red-fueled argument over character supremacy? Could a Dalek really take out a Jaeger? What about Han Solo’s blaster against a Noisey Cricket from Men in Black? The new hopes over at Fat Wallet have finally given you a tool to settle these bets once and for all.
Fat Wallet explains how it went about measuring the destructive power of the most popular weapons in science fiction:
“We worked with physicists and engineers on this infographic, which breaks down iconic weapons and their energy of devastation in joules, an energy measurement of “work done.” In some cases, we drew data from source material or compared the weapons to real-life versions. In others, we attempted to calculate energy requirements for destruction shown in movies and TV shows. And in the case of reality-warping, fantastic weapons from the limits of our imagination, we drew help from theoretical physics.”
Here are the official numbers on a chart elegant enough to be kept in your velcro wallet at all times, nuzzled between the Visa card and official membership in the Church of Jediism.
Did you forget about Hank Scorpio?
As you can see, nothing matches the “reality bomb” from Doctor Who for the raw power to nuke your imagination. Needing enough energy to both pull apart the universe’s atoms and magnify dark energy, Dartmouth theoretical physicist Robert Caldwell estimates it would cause the “Big Rip” in just 58 minutes, or about the length of a single episode. Which Doctor you want to end all of space and time with is entirely up to you.
Coming in dead last was the F-Ray Gun from Futurama, which would let the user see through anything including metal. Even the bone from 2001 was more powerful than that gun. But, Matt Groening’s creations redeemed themselves as best one-off Simpson character ever Hank Scorpio appears a bit higher, though the list fails to measure the fearsome destructive power of the show’s real doomsday weapon:
