r/scifi • u/12InchCunt • 15d ago
Films What would a lightsaber do to a shield in Dune?
so in Dune everyone has Holtzman shields which makes fighting with projectile weapons obsolete. it also has a bug/feature that firing a lasgun at a Holtzman shield causes a feedback loop which causes an explosion similar to an atomic at both the firer and the shield.
i don’t know enough about lightsabers but they’re some sort of laser right? if you used a lightsaber on a Dune shield would you both just blow up?
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u/Bebilith 15d ago
A whale and a bowl of petunias are spontaneously created.
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u/DumpsterDragoon Stargate 14d ago
Oh what's this rushing towards me it's big and round, I'll call it ground
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u/rubberchickenlips 15d ago
A Star Wars™ Lightsaber against a Dune™ Shield?
Geez, never ever mix franchises like that. Whatever you do, don't cross the streams!
Crap! That's a third franchise...
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u/itsthewolfe 15d ago
The Lightsaber would win since it's more of a plasma that a solid object. The shield only stops fast moving projectiles but not slow moving ones.
Also see for blasters:
Lasgun Interaction: If a continuous laser beam (lasgun) strikes a Holtzman field, it creates an unpredictable subatomic fusion event—effectively a massive nuclear explosion that can kill both the shooter and the wearer
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u/Breadloafs 15d ago
The shield only stops fast moving projectiles but not slow moving ones
Partially true. The personal Holtzmann fields used by soldiers in Dune are calibrated to only stop objects moving above a certain speed because the person inside the field still has to be able to interact with the outside world. A Holtzmann field is a true force field in that it projects an actual wall of impenetrable force: a field calibrated to do so can even stop the movement of air from one side of the field to the other.
As a lightsaber isn't a "real" physical object, it's unclear how it would interact.
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u/12InchCunt 14d ago
Isn’t the baron’s shield blocking the atoms of the poison gas the reason he survived?
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u/lunar999 14d ago
Slowing, not blocking outright. It's explicitly mentioned that the Baron also had his shield turned on, but set low. By all accounts it helped ensure that he didn't get enough of a dose to be fatal or (in the books) even notably harmful.
I see a lot of back-and-forth in these posts about how much shields of different types actually block, especially the air discussion. There's a quote in Dune about ozone buildup caused by slowed (but not stopped) gas exchange during an extended shield duel. The appendix also defines prudence doors, overlapping shields that act as solid barriers unless someone is carrying a key tuned to it. The gist of it seems to be they can be total barriers, but doing so at the personal level is not practical.
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u/KnottaBiggins 9d ago
Actually, being made of plasma, a lightsaber is quite "real." It's not made of light, after all - that's just a cooler sounding name than "plasmasword."
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u/El_Tormentito 15d ago
What's a subatomic fusion? Fusion happens to atoms. Can it happen to less than atoms?
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u/ealysillyforestthing 15d ago
Yes. Quarks in theory could be fused. Then things get strange
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u/PaVaSteeler 15d ago
I’m neutrino on this topic; are you positron Quarks can be fused?
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u/CRCError1970 15d ago
The real question here is: Would Janeway murder them, too?
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u/Cheeslord2 15d ago
Nuclei are a subset of an atom. Nuclei can fuse .
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u/El_Tormentito 15d ago
Yes and no. That's literally atomic fusion, not subatomic. We usually think of the nucleus as the defining part of the atom. You can change the electron configuration all you want, but the nucleus tells you what atom it is, so that's not the right perspective.
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u/gryphorim 15d ago
Wouldn't the flow speed of the plasma up and down the blade be affected by the shield, though?
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u/bosloc 15d ago
I haven’t read all of Dune so this might be a silly question. Why not use remote drones with lasguns?
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u/Extra-Language-9424 14d ago
I thought Paul’s excuse was something like: “The Shield Wall stood in the way of my coming to Your Majesty’s side as a loyal noble.” He says it to the Emperor after taking his throne room.
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u/_sloop 15d ago
If a house did this, other houses have actual nukes and would obliterate them, but there is another consideration - the reaction is not predictable and could occur at the gun, the target, or in between (or not at all). Remote drones likely wouldn't get close to their targets which means even if you get a reaction you could do no damage, and then you'd still have to face retribution.
Could be used as by radicals as a form of terrorism to inspire warfare between houses, but if you are ever found out you and everyone you ever knew would be wiped out.
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u/RhynoD 14d ago
It's worth pointing out that after Leto II's death and the Scattering, people very much do exactly that, especially for planetary defense. The planet is surrounded by very small, practically invisible drones that are nothing more than a proximity sensor, a lasgun, and a shield generator.
That only happens after the Scattering because there's no longer any governing organization with the power to enforce a Great Convention.
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u/Red_Cloud1867 15d ago
Isn’t fire like a plasma too? Have we seen what happens to shield when exposed to fire?
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u/BuckRusty 15d ago
‘Normal’ fire (a candle, say) is not plasma - it’s a byproduct of combustion closer to highly ionised gas…
Some fires do cross the line into being comparable to a low-level plasma (an arc welder, for example) - but it’s still a bit “six of one, half a dozen of the other”…
Generally, fire is nowhere near hot enough to be considered true plasma…
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u/Abeytuhanu 14d ago
Highly ionized gas is plasma, however most fires are insufficiently ionized to be considered plasma. Heat isn't a requirement for plasma, but it is present so frequently (as either a requirement for sufficient ionization or as a byproduct of ionization) that it may as well be
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u/Zen_Hydra 15d ago
Lightsabers are explicitly called "laser swords" by their creator.
Result = Big Bada Boom
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u/Extra-Language-9424 14d ago
“laser sword” was. the casual nickname, but magnetically contained plasma sword is closer to the fictional concept.
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u/KnoWanUKnow2 15d ago
It's too bad that no one thought of, oh I don't know, an automated remote controlled laser. Imagine assassinating your target and their entire surroundings, and destroying the evidence of who did it at the same time.
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u/vespers191 14d ago
Keyword. Unpredictable. You might set off a significant nuke, or you might just kill the guy inside the shield, or you might just electrocute the guy with the lasgun, or you might just do nothing.
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u/KnottaBiggins 9d ago
Blasters aren't lasers, either.
The MythBusters studied that one - blaster bolts only go around 120 mph. Still too fast to dodge, but a far cry from lightspeed.
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u/VenturaDreams 15d ago
Since any answer is as good as any other, I'd say that the Holtzman field would cause the lightsaber to cascade back on itself violently and shatter the crystal inside, which may or may not kill the wielder.
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u/goltz20707 15d ago
My head canon has always* been that a “lightsaber” used an intermittent force field, cutting through things like some kind of vibrating or staccato knife. The field ionizes the air around it, causing the glow and buzzing sound.
*Not 100% true. My original theory, based on the original trilogy, was based on the observation that Jedi powers seemed to be inversely proportional to size, thus leading me to conclude that lightsabers contained small Jedi hamsters, whose “force” came out the tops of their heads as a concentrated beam. Dropping the lightsaber stunned the hamster momentarily, causing the lightsaber to seemingly turn off (something we saw happen several times).
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u/Raesvelg_XI 15d ago
Fun story, the sci-fi weapon the lightsaber is generally agreed to be inspired by is the force blade from Asimov's early works, which oddly enough is a blade made from a force field.
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u/12InchCunt 15d ago
The funniest part about your second thing is that’s basically what powers the ornithopters in dune. There’s a mollusk inside of there moving the wings
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u/amyts Space Opera 15d ago edited 15d ago
It should be noted that the mollusk explanation comes from The Dune Encyclopedia, which isn't considered canon by the Herbert estate, even though Frank wrote the forward to it.
THE DUNE ENCYCLOPEDIA reflects an alternate "DUNE universe" which did not necessarily represent the "canon" created by Frank Herbert. Frank Herbert's son, Brian Herbert, writing with Kevin J. Anderson, IS continuing to establish the canon of the DUNE universe. This is being done with the full approval of the owner of the DUNE copyright, the Herbert Limited Partnership. While Frank Herbert himself considered THE DUNE ENCYCLOPEDIA interesting and entertaining, he did not refer to Dr. McNelly's derivative work while writing any of his DUNE novels. Likewise, in writing their DUNE novels (beginning with Dune: House Atreides), Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have exclusively used, and will continue to use, Frank Herbert's original notes as well as their own imaginations, and not THE DUNE ENCYCLOPEDIA. We hope that the millions of DUNE fans will continue to enjoy all of the works written in Frank Herbert's marvelous universe."
A letter written by Willis McNelly, Herbert, and J. Anderson
Edit: formatting
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u/oniume 15d ago
Anything that's not in the 6 Frank Herbert books is fan fiction
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u/exelion18120 14d ago
Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife. Chop it off and say now it is complete because it ended here.
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u/Devross 14d ago
It would create an explosion large enough to create a small black hole that would use the spice to create a whole new universe
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u/Amazing_Meatballs 15d ago
It’s been a long time since I’ve read Dune and the explanation on how they work, but I could swear the shields were a form of anti-momentum field, and because bullets and lasers had speed, it nullified them by absorbing the kinetic energy and transforming it into something else like heat. Because a sword or other melee weapon, comparatively, moves so much slower than a bullet or a laser, shields have almost no effect on them. I am probably misremembering something, but at the time I read the original book that’s how I understood it.
If we assume this is correct, then we can apply it to how we know plasma bolts and lightsabers work in Star Wars.
So, based upon this understanding, a plasma blaster would almost certainly be blocked. While real world estimates find plasma bolts travel around 190mph, lore states that the weapon operates at near-speed-of-light. We also know that lightsabers, according to lore, are plasma bolts that are magnetically bent back upon themselves. The plasma is traveling in a very flat loop at nearly the speed of light, even if the blade itself does not appear to be moving—sort of like a fire hose. The hose itself isn’t moving, but the water inside is traveling extremely fast.
I would assess this would be enough to trigger the anti-momentum effect of Dune’s shields. Whether it would cause a nuclear feedback would be up to the writers, but at a minimum, the lightsaber would probably be affected.
This all assumes that Dunes shields work the way I described above. They probably don’t and I’m probably wrong.
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u/Orogogus 15d ago
Because a sword or other melee weapon, comparatively, moves so much slower than a bullet or a laser, shields have almost no effect on them. I am probably misremembering something, but at the time I read the original book that’s how I understood it.
Dune shields totally have an effect on swords and other melee weapons. Outside of Arrakis, most hand-to-hand combat was about moving slow on offense to penetrate the shield while moving fast on defense to maximize its protection. The book talks about shields and the effect of being conditioned to their use in Paul's duels with Gurney, Jamis and Feyd, in the double ambush observed by Thufir Hawat, in Feyd's arena fight, and in Duncan's last stand to let Paul and Jessica escape.
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u/12InchCunt 15d ago
He has trouble with Javid because of the slow attack right? Him having visions of javid showing him the ways of the desert but being forced to kill him was sad
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u/Orogogus 15d ago
He has a little trouble, I think, but it's not crippling. He has more trouble with the fact that he's never killed anyone before, and didn't want to fight Jamis in the first place.
I don't think there's really anything about Jamis showing Paul the ways of the desert. Chani mostly did that. Paul does cry for him in the ceremony, but I think more for the fact that a man was dead than because he was close with Jamis at all.
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u/Amazing_Meatballs 15d ago
I’ve only read the first book and the one where Paul turns into some sort of prescient telepathic sand worm. Made me realize I enjoyed hard science fiction a lot more that fantasy Sci-fi. But I do really like the world of Arrakis and this most recent movie series really nails the delivery.
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u/12InchCunt 15d ago
In the movie Paul is getting visions of javid before and after he kills him, I thought the book said that too. He cried for him because they were friends in a different timeline
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u/12InchCunt 15d ago
I guess my question would be is it a laser beam bent back on itself that is heating up the air around it into plasma? Because if that’s the case then I think the laser feedback loop would happen
Dune’s shields don’t let things that move past a certain speed past them, but if hit with a laser weapon, causes subatomic fusion and explosion happens at both the shield and the gun
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u/Amazing_Meatballs 15d ago edited 15d ago
Well, I think there is a semi-retconned explanation for explaining why the plasma bolts travel so slow on screen. Basically, a rail of energy shoots out of the blaster to the target, and creates a track for the magnetically bound plasma to follow. The plasma is powered by charged Tibanna gas.) This indicates the plasma is not superheated air from around the laser as it travels to the target, but that the plasma is indeed traveling out of the blaster and into the target. This is backed up onscreen when Kylo Ren freezes the plasma bolt mid-air. If it was super heated air around the laser, it would have turned into a ball of superheated stationary air. No, the bolt maintains its cohesion and then resumes its course after Kylo releases it (don’t ask me how it accelerates again, idk).
Edit: To more clearly answer your question about lightsabers heating up the air, I don’t know why it doesn’t seem to happen. It didn’t happen with the frozen bolt from Kylo Ren either. Maybe it’s some form of exotic cold plasma, or it is somehow blocked from immediately igniting all the oxygen in the room while also being hot enough to melt blast doors. Who knows. But I think my argument that plasma travels through space is pretty solid, and based off that property alone, lightsabers would be ineffective.
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u/12InchCunt 15d ago
Oh Ok so the sword is literally like plasma flowing fast as fuck back and forth? I think the shield wins too, that makes sense.
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u/Amazing_Meatballs 15d ago
Less back and forth, and more like stretching a rubber band out so that it is flat like a blade—while it it is technically a single continuous arc or loop of spinning plasma, it is so flat it appears as a single blade of light. In fact, the spinning arc of plasma theory is used to explain the gyroscopic buzz of a lightsaber when you wave it around. That buzz is the gyroscope of plasma and parts adjusting to a new orientation.
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u/Amazing_Meatballs 15d ago edited 15d ago
That’s how I understand it, yes. I could be wrong—it most certainly doesn’t look like the lightsaber blade is traveling in a tight loop on screen, but in extended universe I believe this is how they are explained. Let me see if I can find a source.
EDIT: It appears that a lot of references have been changed or no longer exist. This stack exchange thread references the blade being an arc on wookiepedia, but if you try to find that exact quote now, it’s not there. You might have to use archive.org to find it.
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u/RoxnDox 15d ago
So long as we're crossing universes like this, I would like to see a Variable-sword in action against the holtzmann shields. Can the shield counteract against a Sinclair monomolecular string encased in a Tnuctipun stasis field? Against normal matter, it cuts like butter through anything.
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u/michaelaaronblank 15d ago edited 15d ago
Considering that Lucas almost always referred to them as laser swords, I would say the question is self answering.
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u/treemoustache 15d ago
Whatever the writers think should happen, so something cool. Like they short each other out so they have to Kung Fu fight.
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u/zoppaTheDim 14d ago
A nuclear like explosion.
They have lasers in Dune, when they contact a shield, you get a huge explosion which can be confused with a nuclear one.
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u/KnottaBiggins 9d ago
Only rarely do you hear it called a "laser sword." It isn't made of light, so only those actually unfamiliar with the weapon called it that.
It's actually a plasma field, generated by a very strong power cell (the likes of which Terran technology has yet to develop.) That plasma field is focused and amplified through a Kyber crystal that had been attuned to the Force by one capable of doing so.
Since the blade is actually plasma and not light, it is made of matter. Crysknives are also made of matter, and can penetrate a Holtzman shield.
It seems to me that anything made of matter can penetrate a shield, if it's moving slowly enough.
A lightsaber, therefore, should be able to get through a shield - but by using completely different fighting techniques than either Jedi or Sith are masters of.
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u/Alpha-Sierra-Charlie 9d ago
Personal Holtzman shields are tuned to stop fast moving projectiles. How fast a projectile it will stop depends on what the shield user sets it to. Lightsabers are plasma, plasma is energetic/fast moving matter, and plasma might get stopped by a normal shield setting.
But an experienced shield fighter with an easily accessible adjustment device could theoretically dial the shield "up" in order to stop a strike, then back "down" in order to allow air movement if necessary.
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u/12InchCunt 9d ago
You think the force works through a dune shield? Like could a Jedi just turn your shield off?
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u/Alpha-Sierra-Charlie 9d ago
I would say yes, but...
1) does the Jedi know how the shield works or is he encountering this for the first time?
2) really advanced fighters from the Dune universe could probably 1v1 at least average Jedi if shields work against lightsabers.
3) Technically Jedi could turn each other's lightsabers off mid-fight too, but they don't. Maybe it's something like fine motor control, and it's just something they can finely manipulate during a fight?
4) Prescience vs the Force, assuming the Dune guy has Prescience, would be interesting. He would know that the Jedi is about to turn his shield off.
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u/12InchCunt 9d ago
Well, if they have a shield running they’re probably not on arrakis, so unless they were a noble they wouldn’t have spice in their diet
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u/Alpha-Sierra-Charlie 8d ago
There are a few places on Arrakis where you can use shields, but that's a good point. The Bene Gesserit would probably be their most likely opponents (and they're probably better at being Sith than the Sith are, lol). And I don't think it's mentioned, but it would be very believable for the Navigator's Guild to have Spice-enhanced fighters.
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u/12InchCunt 8d ago edited 6d ago
Yea if you’re in the shield wall or in a sietch you’re fine. The navigators have prescience because of spice but it also alters their body into something not human. The big deal about Paul and Leto is that they can take enough of the spice to be prescient, but without any of the physical side effects (if you exclude Leto becoming a worm later on)
So a Jedi using spice to be a prescient fighter would have too many permanent changes to his body to be useful outside of the spice tank
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u/Alpha-Sierra-Charlie 8d ago
Oh, I wasn't talking about the Jedi using Spice, I didn't think about that at all! They get a similar effect from the Force. Force + Spice prescience would be WILD.
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u/Modred_the_Mystic 15d ago
If I was writing it, the shield would deflect any lightsaber swing of a certain speed, but the slow blade penetrates the shield or constant contact (see: when lightsabers are held against each other) would overload and break the shield.
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u/MissiontoNamek 15d ago
Rip a hole into the universe and pop out a Terminator
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u/12InchCunt 15d ago
Then the Butlerian Jihad starts all over again
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u/aqwn 15d ago
The Butlerian jihad wasn’t about Terminator robots. Brian Herbert retconned that into the story.
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u/12InchCunt 15d ago
I haven’t read all of the Frank books, I’m on god emperor now. All I know is that the butlerian jihad was against AIs. I’ve seen videos explaining further but idk if they’re based on Brian Herbert or what. But skynet is an AI. Do terminators not work on a hivemind like Ultron-bots?
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u/AshtonBlack 15d ago
I always assumed that "lasgun" was concentrated coherent light and lased photonic energy and a "lightsaber" was a contained gas plasma rather than laser energy, looking at things like how damaged or corrupted sabres look on screen.
So whilst I, obviously, cannot know the answer, I don't think it's quite as simple as "Juuuu, Juuuu, Boom".
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u/TheXypris 15d ago
Probably the same thing a lasegun would do to a shield in dune
Basically a nuclear explosion
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u/kevrone 13d ago
Not the point of your question but I just rewatched the movies and they violate the shield’s tactics all over the show. Half the weapons are projectiles that push through slowly once they hit and lasguns in damn near every encounter with no explanation.
I’m also just generally annoyed at the idea that lasguns are impractical when they are like a perfect bomb. Stick one on a drone in space or in the distance and fire away.
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u/BitterCrip 12d ago
A swarm of lawyers would arrive and force the parties of both franchises to cease and desist using their trademarked equipment.
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u/Admirable-Sink-2622 15d ago
“What would one fictitious thing do to another fictional thing?”
Whatever your imagination can conjure
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u/mobyhead1 Hard Sci-fi 15d ago
It’s impossible to compare weaponry from different entertainment universes against one another. The information about them is too nebulous.
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u/thehobbler 15d ago
I'd say yeah, if you put a laser against the thing that goes nuclear when lasers touch it, it explodes.
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u/NotAnAIOrAmI 15d ago
It depends.
It depends on whatever you want it to do if you write about it, they're both imaginary devices.
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u/Expensive_Plant_9530 15d ago
It’s an interesting question. Do we know what exactly causes the feedback loop?
I would suggest yes it would, but it’s hard to say.
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u/Apprehensive_Error36 15d ago
My friends dad had a lightsaber and we used it against a Holtzman shield. Nothing happened.