How to Win an Interstellar War
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited in discussions of cosmic rays and alien threats, especially the idea of sterilizing a planet from afar with an electron beam.
What it is
A Kurzgesagt video exploring how advanced civilizations might wage war across light years. It looks at weapons such as relativistic beams and what they would do.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2023 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends animatethrow · 2024-02 · on “GoPro Ride Through an Electron Beam Irradiator at Full Beam Power [video]”
Aliens could plausibly sterilise earth from light years away using an electron beam, according to a great Kurzgesagt episode: [this video] An electron beam seems to be the stealthiest of the three extermination options, the other two being a star laser and antimatter "rods from God."
Cites loufe · 2023-11 · on “The most powerful cosmic ray since the Oh-My-God particle puzzles scientists”
Kurzgesagt recently uloaded a video on hypethetical interplantary weapons ( [this video] ) which is the only reason I even know what the OMG particle is. They described an "Ultra Relativistic Electron Beam" which theoretically could travel much closer to the speed of light than the OMG particle. I'm left wondering if the proximity to the pure speed of light has any bearing on total delivered energy when comparing different particles.
Cites southernplaces7 · 2023-11 · on “Aliens Are Out There – But They Probably Don't Care About Us”
Sometimes we do, or to avoid all kinds of specially designated species. There are reams of complaints throughout construction history about being unlucky enough for your bright new infrastructure project to be heading right for some politically or socially de jour habitat that activists decide they want to protect. Who's to say that there doesn't exist a cosmic version of Greenpeace that has been actively pamphleteering some galactic government into not star-lasering(1) our little green and blue anthill to a husk for its latest celestial mega-infrastructure project? [this video]
Cites fhdkweig · 2025-10 · on “What do we do if SETI is successful?”
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell posted two videos studying the possible ways a malevolent society can cause problems without even leaving their star system at all. The Dark Forest solution to the Fermi Paradox (the first strike advantage): [LINK] How to Win an Interstellar War (without leaving home) [this video]