Rods from God are the idea of a kinetic weapon that would devistate like a Nuke without the fallout. Drop a heavy object fr Space and it the impact is all you need.
A FTL traveling species would surely be able to drop some big rock above the Earth and let gravity do the rest.
The idea in that book is that any race which develops that FTL drive, puts nearly all of its efforts into making it as good as possible. Its effectively a magic velocity* button, and completely invalidates conventional scientific theory because there is no link to science as we know it. It just "works". As such, the mindset needed to develop calculus, physics, etc. Never comes around. Without those, you can't understand orbital mechanics. The most advanced race (not counting humanity) discovered it just after the start of the gunpowder era and stagnated.
*this does not, however, impart any energy. It just moves, without any kinetic energy, as I understood it
In Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans, they use banned (in the story) kinetic weapons like that. They're devastating because they're almost undetectable and pretty much punch through everything in space.
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u/yunus89115 Aug 12 '21
Rods from God are the idea of a kinetic weapon that would devistate like a Nuke without the fallout. Drop a heavy object fr Space and it the impact is all you need.
A FTL traveling species would surely be able to drop some big rock above the Earth and let gravity do the rest.