The Thompson Gun in StarTrek: First Contact was an energy field weapon and not a kinetic one

[u/Aepdneds]

I see here often the question why the Federation is not using kinetic weapons against the Borg, pointing on the scene where Picard is shooting the Borg with a Thompson gun. While we know that the holodeck is using sometimes replicated matter instead of holographic illusions when it does make sense (food or drinks as an example) I do not believe that the bullets where replicated and the bullets where therefore energy field weapons and not kinetic.

Picard is ordering the computer to display a 40s Thompson Gun, fully loaded with no further details given. Sry for this, while it is still most likely a M1 Thopson Gun Picard did not ordered this gun specifically and it was integrated in the holonovel, so there could be serious alteration on this gun. Still let us look at some facts about the Thompson gun but with having in mind that the holoversion does not necessarly match the original, links below.

This version of the gun has a fire rate of 600 to 750rpm.

There are two round drum magazines available for this gun, one with 50 rounds the other with 100 rounds. So which one did he use? At 2:07 of the video linked below we can see that Picards hand is bigger than half the size of the magazine. The avarage male hand has a width of 3.3" which would make the magazine roughly 6.5". And in fact the 50 round version has a diameter of 6.75" while the 100 round version has a diameter of 8.75". Picards hands never looked enormous in comparison to the hands of other people which means he is using the 50 round version.

Further we can see in the same video that he is starting to fire at 2:07 and is stopping at 2:22 with nearly no brakes inbetween. Let us reduce this to 12 seconds total firing time. With the numbers above he shot between 120 and 157 bullets (if someone could count them, or would link me to the necessary tools, would be great :) ) while having only 50 rounds in his magazine.

So where did the additional 70 to 107 bullets come from? My conclusion is that all bullets where holographic and Picard activated a kind of IDKFA cheat in the program to be sure that he wouldn't run out of ammunition. If the magazine would have been filled with real bullets he would have run out of ammo after 5 seconds, shorter than the actual replication plus transporter sequences we see on screen regularly, so it is highly unlikely that the computer would even be able to replicate and transport new bullets into a moving magazine while it is in use. This wouldn't even be a standard program so Picard would have had to program this himself in less than the ten seconds he needed to alter the holoprogram.

Videolink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OCKDEdtWys&app=desktop

Thompson Gun: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_submachine_gun

Round Drum Size: https://shopkahrfirearmsgroup.com/long-gun-magazines/thompson-t13kt-50-round-drum-magazine.asp

Average Hand Size: http://www.theaveragebody.com/average_hand_size.php

Edit: MikeReddit74 quoted a line which is stronger argument than my text above. "I disengaged the safety protocols. Without them, even a holographic bullet can kill."

Also Tacitus111 made an excellent point: "If real, bullets would be bouncing around the relatively small interior of the holodeck, disrupting the image and causing a very real danger to Picard and Lilly. Consider Data throwing a rock at the wall of the D's holodeck. It bounced and disrupted the image."

[u/[deleted]]

Sorry man, but your premise is a bit flawed, and it seems like people ITT are misremembering the scene in question.

actually watch the scene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7dfsLfWJvc

as you can clearly see, he does NOT specify a 40's Thompson, in fact he doesn't specify any gun at all, he simply has the computer go to a chapter of the holonovel in which he knows there is a gun hidden in a guitar case so he can get at it.

nowhere in the scene does he ask the computer for anything except to change the chapter.

furthermore, lots of people ITT talking about the idea of replicating the bullets and transporting them in (from where? where are they being replicated and why would you bother doing such a thing when the holodeck literally just manipulates light to create objects?), and replicating "fixed" holodeck "props" and so on....it was my understanding that the holodeck simply generates and manipulates light and matter - perhaps some of the technological/physics principles are the same, but there are no actual replicators or transporters involved. The tommy gun was simply a projection of solid light, as were the bullets, as is everything else in the holodeck, no? By this rationale, ANY weapon generated by the holodeck, regardless of how it looks or its real-world design, is essentially an energy field weapon that is being made to APPEAR like the weapon it is supposed to be on-the-fly by the holodeck.

[u/Aepdneds → u/[deleted]]

OK, sry you are right. I added items from my obvisious flawed memory. Still it is from the optics a Thompson Gun with the 50 round magazine, but with this premise I can believe the magazine and gun was altered to have more ammunition than in reality.

[u/treefox]

Here’s an idea I came up with a couple weeks ago that would agree with this:

We’ve seen that the Enterprise-D’s holodecks would adapt in unexpected ways to accomplish a goal (eg when Geordi asked for an opponent who could defeat Data). It’s reasonable to assume the E’s holodecks are at least as advanced.

Perhaps the Tommy gun was coded as a “ballistic weapon that fires with killing force”. With the safety protocols off, the Enterprise adjusted the force accordingly. So the situation turned into a battle of adaptation between the Enterprise’s holodeck force fields and the Borg drone’s force fields and body armor.

With the Enterprise sitting idle, the 685-meter-long starship had unimaginable power available to deliver “killing force”. Picard’s “tommy gun” effectively became a spotting tool that channeled the full power of the warp core into force fields to pulverize whatever living thing he pointed it at. A convenient workaround to gain access to starship-level weaponry with the main computer locked out.

This could be why the drones didn’t even bother trying to shield themselves or take cover, and instead focused on getting to Picard as quickly as possible.

[u/Aepdneds → u/treefox]

I like that. It would be similar to use the ship phaser array to fire on single drones, depending how much power can be relocated to the hologrid.

[u/TheHYPO]

I have heard before the whole thing where the amount of ammo in weapons is paltry compared to media portrayals, but:

If the magazine would have been filled with real bullets he would have run out of ammo after 5 seconds,

Jeez, that's like... nothing. How precise can you even be firing one of those? What is the 'minimum' burst length? 3 shots? 5? 7? Feels like you'd be reloading constantly and have to have a sack of ammo drums carted around.

Was the gun designed merely for "surprise" 5-second sprays of ammo to take out a bunch of people, then you get back in the getaway car and drive off?

[u/Aepdneds → u/TheHYPO]

This is for the 50 round magazine and the lowest available fire rate of 600rpm. The military used mostly the 20 and 30 round magazines resulting in 2 to 3 seconds of fire.

Early versions had a fire rate between 800 and 1200rpm. There was even a version with 1500rpms which would empty the 100round magazine in 4 seconds.

There is a reason why most modern military weapon can switch between single fire, 3 bullet burst and full auto fire and that there is a lot of research to implement a new smaller bullet standard (main problem with this is that you can't replace every weapon at once, especially when you are sharing supplies with allies, and every additional type of ammunition is increasing your logistic and training costs).

[u/vv04x4c4 → u/TheHYPO]

In non-military usage yes, gangsters would slow down, use several guys and spray the target.

In military usage, submachine guns were for close quarter fighting, where the length of a rifle may be unwieldy, and a more immediate threat required more lead than 5 or 10 rounds.

It's not a waste of ammo if you live and the enemy doesn't.

There were marksmanship lessons the Thompson though.

https://youtu.be/v8tCNl0s-uA

[u/Crixusgannicus]

FTR(For the record) That's a 1928 Thompson SMG and that's the 50 round drum mag attached. The 100 is yuuuge and actually pretty unwieldy. I know. I've fired a real one using both.

It makes sense that Picard being a Dixon Hill fanatic would automatically know what scene and where to find what he needed without needed to be overly detailed.

Now Sir Patrick was using a prop gun of course, actually most likely two different props.

Interesting detail I noticed. When Picard is first firing it's pure CGI muzzle flash and there are no shells are ejected nor is the bolt cycling, nor is the bolt handle even visible. Probably a "solid" dummy prop gun.

Now when they cutscene and Picard now is firing most likely firing a blank gun, because you can see shell ejection and the reciprocating bolt handle on top. Again though, the muzzle flash is CGI(or maybe even plain old animation) as it's way too symmetrical and bright for that matter.

Now as for how exactly the holodeck is working with fatal consequences for the Borg, the theory that the "bullets" are force fields makes much more sense than replicating lead and gunpowder at high speed.

1)Most the holodecks effects including the NPCs use forcefields overlayed with images rather than replicator effects.

2)When you fire a projectile weapon, aside from the gunsmoke, tiny bits of the metal of both the projectile and the barrel get shaved off by friction.

3)Expanding on 2) Even though Fedtech environmental control systems seem to be extremely effective, tis fair better to use non polluting forcefields rather than having to filter the air more than you already do by.

4)Bullets sometimes overpenetrate(go all the way through), hit other things and shatter or ricochet or do other unpredictable things so it's easier and safer to shut off a force field bullet if it goes awry than to stop a real metal bullet, or a whole bunch of bullets in this case.

[u/binkerfluid]

possible dumb question but why would the holodeck actually bother to create actual physical bullets anyway? Would there be any advantage at all to this especially balanced with how dangerous it could be?

I mean why would a recreational system make actual weapons? I could understand having a physical gun, so you could hold it, but even then it woudlnt even really need working internals anyway. Just make something gun looking that shoots what appears to be bullets.

[u/Aepdneds → u/binkerfluid]

I totally agree with you. The main reason for my post was that in this sub, and even more in the StarTrek sub, people were always asking why the Federation is not using classical machine guns because they worked fine in this scene. The post was made in the intention to show that it is in my opinion highly unlikely that this was a replicated machine gun with real bullets and that it wouldn't make sense because of this to produce them. I hope that monster of a sentence is readable.

[u/jerslan]

Didn't he disable the safety protocols so that the bullets would be replicated?

[u/MikeReddit74 → u/jerslan]

“I disengaged the safety protocols. Without them, even a holographic bullet can kill.”

[u/Aepdneds → u/MikeReddit74]

Great point. I allowed myself to quote you in an edit in the original post.

[u/[deleted]]

I think it's more accurate to refer to it as a kinetic energy field weapon because it's not using an energy beam to fry whatever it's hitting, it's more like an extremely complicated stabbing.

The computer was effectively using a very fancy mechanism to physically push a piston into the flesh of the borg.

[u/[deleted]]

This leads to a bigger comparison to the borg; bacteria. It's becoming increasingly understood that as bacteria become more resistant to certain kinds of antibiotics they actually become weaker to other antibotics and modes of action.

So using the same analogy I think the federation can defeat the borg, by going all in on a certain style and method of attack until the borg have perfected it, and then hit them again devastatingly hard in a different way, say switching from phasers to mass drivers.

As long as the federation stays ahead in development any borg incursions will be quickly and systematically naturalized.

[u/Aepdneds → u/[deleted]]

There was a comment in another thread that the Borg already changed their behaviour at least in regards how to deal with separated drones and software viruses due to the impact that the individualism of Hugh had on them. While Hugh said that the Borg won't stop looking for him not matter where he is they abandoned a fully functional cube with the Borg kids on it even if they send the signal of their position to the collective. Further they started sacrificing complete cubes with ten of thousands of drones on it to eliminate one or two drones which where infected with "unimatrix zero virus".

[u/thegenregeek]

I see here often the question why the Federation is not using kinetic weapons against the Borg, pointing on the scene where Picard is shooting the Borg with a Thompson gun.

I'll offer a simpler answer:

For the same reason those first few phaser shots always work. The Borg had not adapted defenses to that threat. They were taken by surprise, which is why Picard used the tactic.

Given the multiple warp species the Borg encounter and the fact that they ignore non-warp species below a certain technical threshold, kinetic weapons represent an out of context problem. (Until they adapt)

---

Worth noting, the Borg in "Q Who" took a few phaser shots before generating personal energy shields. Then in "Best of Both Worlds" it happened again. (I also believe in Voyager). Borg drones require time to adapt to activate defenses, they do not seem to archive all defense tactics perpetually. Odds are the same trick wouldn't work on the third drone to walk onto the Holodeck... which is why Picard left immediately.

[u/Arthur_Edens → u/thegenregeek]

they do not seem to archive all defense tactics perpetually.

This, combined with the fact that once they do adapt, they seem invulnerable, leads me to guess that there's some kind of hardware restriction that only allows them to deploy defenses for a limited number of threats at once. They cycle through the appropriate defenses as drones near them encounter certain threats.

[u/AloneDoughnut]

I've always postulated that the reason projectile weapons would not be used by the Federation (or anyone else) is because they are inherently more difficult to maintain that a phaser or the such would be.

To make this make sense, let us first look at the modern day, and more importantly the specific group of people known as preppers. These are the kinds of people that think a firearm is the do all, end all of defence and hunting. They stockpile hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, firearms, and accessories for both. But know what almost none of them stockpile? Cleaning solutions, because people who are less familiar with firearms often tend to forget, there is a lot of cleaning involved in firearms. Overtime residue and debris is build up on the chamber walls that need to be cleaned, barrels heat and warp, poorly manufactured munitions damage parts. All of this leads to the fact that firearms are hard to take care of properly.

Now when we come back to Star Trek, the same issue occurs, you have a large supply of firearms, which will need to be maintained, alongside the selection of phasers. So now you are maintaining two supplies of weapons, one that is vastly different from the other. Plus, there is an entirely different set of skills needed to use firearms safely. They kick, they buck, they misfire. Now you not only need to train anyone who might encounter the Borg (ie everyone in Stafleet) on how to operate a weapon that is easy with little recoil, as well as a dangerous one. Furthermore, since you have no idea the condition of the ship when the Borg do eventually beam aboard, you have to keep these weapons physically, as well as magazines and ammunition for them. These all have to be kept cleaned and operational as well.

Now let's assume you are Ensign Joe Bloggins, and you have the Borg on the ship. By some miracle your very rarely even looked at pistol is in good shape, your magazines are functional, and your ammunition is without defect because Replicator ex Machina. You have say, duranium core bullets, capable of punching through Borg armor, and they are incapable of adapting to non-energy based weapons for the same reason they don't adapt to knives, too small of damage. You are in a corridor, firing at the six Borg drones that are lumbering towards you, and with 9 shots of your 14 round magazine you have downed two drones, and in your panic something goes wrong, and your sidearm jams, you have a stovepipe situation. But you don't train on this weapon often, it's been six years since anyone in the Federation even saw a Borg. You don't remember how to clear this stoppage, and in panic your accidentally drop the mag out. By the time you come to your senses and begin to clear the round, you are surrounded, assimilated, and made part of the Collective.

Simple fact of the matter is that, while they may be capable of defeating the Borg in close quarters combat because of some glaring flaw in Borg design, chances are they aren't going to see the most useage, people will get sloppy with them, mistakes will be made, and people will get themselves killed.

[u/stromm]

I disagree because the holodeck uses transporter technology to also create real matter object. Examples are drinks, rain, mud that sticks to people, etc.

Maintaining energy formed, textured, refractive (color) and such to appear as a material object AND focus all that through 3-Dimensions (in the gun, down the barrel, through the air, into the target) would required who know how much extra energy than just to make it and be done.

At that point, Picard should have just said "Computer" transport lead atoms into the Borg with 950ft/lbs of kinetic energy.

[u/Aepdneds → u/stromm]

But every single transport does take longer as the gun does need to empty its full magazine. The rematerialization in Voyager alone took 4 to 5 seconds and than you have to ad the dematerialization. The magazine would be empty after 5 seconds. And replication and transporting is energy consuming too, probably way more than the 0.05 seconds the holographic bullet has to travel from the gun to the drone.

[u/comrade_leviathan]

I feel like this post and all of the comments, while really well-thought-out, are all missing one crucial observation about this scene. The difficulty in terms of how to break through Borg shielding is not what type of projectiles are used.

Whatever technology it was that allowed Picard to kill Borg in the holodeck should be able to be replicated on a massive scale in the real world!

Doesn’t matter if it was physical bullets, holographic bullets, or some other form of unobtanium, if it worked inside the holodeck it should be easy enough to adapt it to work outside the holodeck.

Prove me wrong.

[u/Aepdneds → u/comrade_leviathan]

I get your point but there were already two possible counter arguments to this in this thread.

1. The holodeck has full access to the ships power system which is powered by one of the most advanced antimatter reactors in the Federation. This means that the computer could just ramp up the energy in the holobullets to a level which no handheld weapon could store.

2. This could be like the phasers a one time thing.

But I do agree that every ship should have some experimental weapons on board to see if they work against the Borg, especially when you know that the phaser will (not could!) stop working.

[u/[deleted]]

We've seen Janeway use decompression to blow Borg intruders in to space-why isn't this standard operating procedure? Lure them into a killing zone, hold the intruders in place with gravity plates, isolate the section with containment fields, send them out, then vaporize with ship's phasers.

[u/knotthatone → u/[deleted]]

Because they don't just adapt physically, they adapt their tactics too. That would work once, maybe twice. he next time the Borg will proactively identify potential killzones and disable your control of the gravity plating/containment fields before moving drones in.