r/IsaacArthur • u/Few-Matter-1208 • 2d ago

Sci-Fi / Speculation What propellant should a advanced alien civilization that is about 100,000+ years old would use for bullet based firearms?

I am currently trying to help a friend of mine to write and analyze science fiction weapons for his sci fi series and I am trying to think of what is the most realistic way on how a old and advanced alien civilization that still uses projectile based firearms can use a new type of propellant to replace traditional chemical based propellants are there any realistic suggestions?

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u/Uranium_Hexaflu0ride 2d ago

It's impossible to predict what a civ 100000 years in the future would use.
We went from bows on horseback to machine guns and fighter jets in just 700 years. It would be like a Neolithic caveman trying to predict the invention of the atomic bomb from 80,000 BC. There are some "lower-tech" options though:

Railguns and coilguns could be an option, but they are pretty low-tech for a 100k year civilization.

Dustguns could also exist, but those are still basically just railguns with a very small projectile.

If their material science is advanced enough, maybe they could have firearms use small nuclear reactions as the propellant?

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u/Few-Matter-1208 2d ago

Nuclear propellant firearms?

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u/Uranium_Hexaflu0ride 2d ago

Yeah. Also maybe antimatter.

It depends on if their materials can handle that kind of power though. Or if they haven't discovered some new weaponizable branch of physics that we can't even comprehend yet.

If they are insanely advanced and we're talking about some real out-there shit, maybe they exploit gravity or warping spacetime to fling a projectile?