Molecular Disrupter Device

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The Molecular Disrupter Device is a fictional weapon of mass destruction featured in the Ender's Game series of science fiction novels by Orson Scott Card. Given the awkwardness of saying "molecular disrupter device" or "molecular detachment device", the name was abbreviated to "M. D. Device", which mutated into "The Little Doctor" and "Dr. Device".

Motivation for creation

After the devastation caused by two invasions by an ant-like extraterrestrial race known formally as the "Formics" and informally as the "Buggers", Earth's military and scientific minds sought a way to permanently neutralize the Formic threat. All attempts at diplomacy and communication had failed. Humanity picked up several important pieces of technology from the Formic equipment, including gravity control and the possibility of faster-than-light communication.

Mechanism

A basic explanation of the function of the Little Doctor appears in Ender's Game. The device produces two beams whose focal point has the ability to disrupt the bonds between atoms in molecules. The device also creates a field in which nearby molecules are also destroyed, and each dissolved widens the reach of the field. In the absence of nearby mass, such as the vacuum of space, the field dissipates rapidly, but a tightly-clustered formation of ships could be easily destroyed. Its more devastating ability is the power to destroy planets--because a planet consists of tightly clustered mass, a single beam will destroy it.

In Ender's Game, the only thing said about the weapon's physical characteristics is that it employs a directed energy beam; "it can't shoot around corners," Ender deduces. Three thousand years later, in Children of the Mind, the device has been scaled into the warhead of a missile, small enough to fit inside a small room. Upon "detonation", the field effect is started within the missile itself and uses the weapon's mass to jump-start a chain reaction. A removable section of casing allows it to be shut off, and instructions on how to do so are printed all over its surface (turning it on, a military officer explains, is the difficult part).

Deployments of M. D. Devices

The M.D. Device was dispatched with several interstellar fleets heading towards the Formic homeworld. The ships were also equipped with ansibles, allowing Earth to develop the strategies and leaders needed for battle while the fighting force was still in transit. From Command School, Ender Wiggin remotely ordered the use of the Device on the enemy planet, resulting in the planet's complete destruction. It had not been previously tested on an object of such scale. Ironically, Ender used the Device on the planet in order to flunk himself out of Command School: deceived into thinking he was attempting to pass his final exam, he decided to prove himself too dangerous, too uncivilized to actually command against the Formics. Ender carried this guilt with him for many years.

In Speaker for the Dead, Starways Congress deploys the Evacuation Fleet to the planet of Lusitania. Lusitania is not only host to a sentient species known as the pequeninos, but also an extremely infectious and destructive virus, the "descolada," which, if allowed contact with life on any other planet, would cause planetwide extinctions and ecological disaster. Despite this, the pequeninos have demanded their right, as sentient beings, to spread out amongst the stars. Despite violating Congressional law forbidding the donation of technology to less advanced life forms, the human scientists on Lusitania (and, later, the revived Formics) have agreed to help them spread out. With the colony now in rebellion and harboring an extremely potent bioweapon, Congress (in Xenocide) authorizes the Fleet to use the Little Doctor. But by the end of Children of the Mind, however, Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-mu, with the help of their allies, convince Congress to change its mind, and xenocide, via the use of the Little Doctor, is averted.

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game series
Anton's Key | Battle School | Command School Dragon Army | Formics | Hierarchy of Alienness | International Fleet Molecular Disrupter Device | Pequeninos | Philotes | Philotic Web | Stark
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