Phlebotinum Bomb

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A Phlebotinum Bomb is a Weapon of Mass Destruction, minus the "Mass Destruction." Instead of destroying everything within its blast radius, it only destroys certain things, like life forms or computers, and leaves everything else miraculously untouched.

Name comes from a dream one Troper had, in which he built "a Phlebotinum Bomb" from various bits of Phlebotinum to cause a planet-wide wave that would destroy all the evil shadow-monsters.

A Sub-Trope of Trick Bomb. May also be a Wave Motion Gun.

Examples of Phlebotinum Bomb include:


Anime and Manga

  • The Death Mask from Astro Boy: The Omega Factor was a gigantic Mayincatec-looking Kill Sat that could generate a worldwide EMP that would kill all the robots on Earth, created as a contingency plan incase a Robot War broke out. Unfortunately its powersource, Omotanium, could also emit radiation that was harmful to humans, making it possible for the device to eradicate humanity instead, leading to extremists on both sides trying to gain control of the weapon.
  • Markarov's Fairy Law in Fairy Tail only hits those the user sees as enemies. It also has about a city sized radius.
    • Laxus can use it too.
  • In the Trigun anime, Vash can manifest an energy weapon powerful enough that it leveled an entire city in one massive explosion, but miraculously did not directly kill any of it's inhabitants. It is even implied that nobody died from, say, getting crushed by debris during the explosion. However there is mention of many people starving to death or dying from violence after the destruction.
  • Not a bomb, really, but a terrorist organization in Cowboy Bebop developed a virus known as "Monkey Business" which targets only the two percent of human DNA that makes us different from other apes. As for what it does... I hope you like bananas.

Comics

  • In Archie Comics' version of Sonic the Hedgehog, in the 21st century (which was ten thousand years before Sonic's plot started), an alien race known as the Xordas didn't take kindly to human scientists murdering and dissecting their peace-bringing emissary. They responded by detonating "gene-bombs" across the Earth, which specifically targets all of its organisms' DNA; if they're human, they were to die (a tiny fraction survived and devolved over 10,000 years into the Overlanders, like Robotnik and such), but as for non-human animals, they evolved into the Mobians during said period (ex: Sonic and pals), and were meant to be the new dominant species of the planet.
  • In the Eclipso comic book series from The DCU, there was the sun bomb, as 'Eclipso zombies' were vulnerable to the sun. Handwaved by a previous crossover having the DC super geniuses working long hours on sun weapons, the device simply covered every inch of the local area with the sun's rays. Someone needs to send this stuff to Superman.
  • The short lived Guy Gardner comic book series. One of his many, many changes involved a bizarre alien heritage (Discontinuity) allowing him to generate, from his own body, any weapon he could think of. His body was his power ring. He creates a sticky nuke which only fries that which it is touching (Major Force).
  • In the Incredible Hulk comics, at least the Marvel Adventures version, the gamma bomb is apparently supposed to be the anti-Neutron Bomb - destroy inanimate material, leave living things aside. That's not quite what happens, but you can say this about the end product - he doesn't specifically go after civilians, and can be persuaded to try and save them. Indeed, a recent story claimed that the Hulk's rampages have never killed an innocent person. Yes, even when he knocks over entire buildings.

Film

  • Arclight's shockwave in the third X-Men movie. She was able to target only the soldiers' guns. (In the comic books, she doesn't appear to be able to fine-tune it like that... and wouldn't have bothered sparing the soldiers, anyway.) At the end of the first movie, Magneto tries to use a weapon that is supposed to turn normal humans into Mutants, but will actually kill them.
    • In the second X-Men movie, X2, Cerebro is redesigned to kill only mutants..and then redesigned to kill only non-mutants.
  • The first movie of Get Smart, titled The Nude Bomb, features a bomb that only destroys clothes.
  • The film version of V for Vendetta had Biological weapons that wiped out humans in a region while keeping the resources and atmosphere intact. The corrupt UK government used it on one of their own regions to control their subjects with fear. In a chilling case of Truth in Television, such weapons really are likely being developed and may be perfected in the future.
    • But in real life only the most insane people ever would be willing to use them in practice; they are notoriously unreliable, and can easily mutate or demonstrate unexpected effects that will quickly turn against the original user, as well. They are mostly being developed for the sake of finding countermeasures against them, just in case an insane enough person ever got their hands on them.
  • In Casino Royale 1967, the rather height-challenged antagonist is devising a weapon that will make all women beautiful and kill all men who are taller than he is.

Literature

  • The "blue-rinse" bio-bomb in the Artemis Fowl series kills all organic life, but leaves everything else untouched.
  • One of the Biblical plagues killed every first-born son in Egypt.
  • In Seeing Redd, the sequel to The Looking Glass Wars, there is a device called WILMA (Weapon of Inconceivable Loss and Massive Annihilation), the exact workings of which are kept somewhat vague, but the effects of which seem to be destroying the imaginative powers of anyone within range.

Live Action Television

  • In Stargate SG-1, the Goa'Uld planet of Dakara turned out to be home to a device that could create or destroy anything, including specific lifeforms or objects. Ironically, the device was originally used to recreate life in the Milly Way Galaxy after a plague swept through it. While its range normally only extended to the planet it was on and the surrounding space, SG-1 managed to use it in conjunction with the gate system to destroy all the Replicator nano-bots in the galaxy.
    • Later, the Ori are destroyed by the Sangraal (Holy Grail), a weapon designed to specifically destroy all Ascended beings in a galaxy while leaving all other lifeforms unharmed. Understandably, their followers remain a threat next season.
  • In the last episode of Power Rangers in Space, Zordon tells Andros to break open his tube, killing him, eliminating the Power Rangers' source of power, and most importantly wiping out all evil in the galaxy. It works, destroying nearly every villain that ever appeared on the show except Divatox, Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa, who are inexplicably turned into yuppies. Considering how many seasons there have been since then, this obviously didn't take.
  • Dark Angel had a massive EMP destroy the world's computer systems, creating enough record loss and confusion that Max and her fellow Biological Mash Ups could escape into normal society without immediately being tracked down.

Real Life

  • Sort-of Truth in Television: An EMP (electro magnetic pulse) will disable electronics without affecting humans (at least directly). However, seeing that large scale tests were never conducted (mostly due to a potential side effect of knocking out all the electronics in too large a radius to make a test feasibly safe), its true effects in any realistic scenario are not precisely determined, and may range from doing near nothing at all to total destruction of all electronic circuits on the continent. Also, seeing that the only feasible way to produce an EMP powerful enough to be of use in warfare with current technology is a high altitude nuclear explosion, we likely won't be seeing it used in anything short of a nuclear exchange.
  • A real-life example, and the likely inspiration for many fictional versions, is the Neutron Bomb, a special kind of nuclear warhead developed during the height of the Cold War. Although it's not entirely blastless, its purpose was to wipe out armored divisions with neutron radiation, which would leave the vehicles intact while lethally poisoning the soldiers within. Sort of a What the Hell, Hero? moment for the United States, the idea was always extremely controversial, and the last American neutron bomb was dismantled in 2003.
    • The justification for this was that tanks are actually very good at withstanding a nuclear blast as long as they're not right at ground zero - and the Soviet Union had a bajillion tanks they could use in a European ground war.

Video Games

  • The Halos in the Halo series, which kill all sentient life in the galaxy, but leave lower life (ie incapable of sustaining the Flood) untouched. For them to directly kill the Flood (rather than starving them out), they would have to wipe out all life period.
  • One of the many powerups in Warblade turns everything on the screen into diamonds, which only give 1000 points (a good score is about 2 billion so that's not a lot) but when you catch 100 of them you get a special bonus round where giant gems drop that are worth 100000+ each. You can normally get 10000000 from such a bonus round. Diamonds that increment the counter by 5 or 2 appear in other forms of bonus levels. There are 5 different forms of bonus levels by the way. Another powerup turns everything into money, which is much, much more beneficial in the long run.
  • The Syphon Filter virus is genetically engineered to kill people of certain ethnicities, sort of like Fox Die in Metal Gear Solid.
  • The Xel'Naga artifact you assemble over the course of the Terran campaign in StarCraft II kills all Zerg and only Zerg within its blast radius. As a side effect, at full power it also cures infested humans and restores them to normal.
  • In Freelancer, when the Hyper Gate is finally activated, all the Nomads get sucked through to some faraway sector, but the good-guy ships stay right where they are.
    • Only because the Hypergate messed with the power supplies that the Nomads were using, since they all draw from the same quantum foam-based power technology. Power to the ships gets screwed with, thus get left helpless while the Hypergate sucks them up, unless my memory fails that badly.
  • Bloodtox gas in Prototype, which causes necrosis in those infected with the virus (including the protagonist) but is completely harmless to normal human. "In fact, it's so harmless that you've been breathing it since you entered this room."
  • The Necrotic Mutox (or Rust Gas) of the second Thief game can function this way. The reaction it causes will spread until it runs out of organic matter to fuel it, with no inherent size or range limit other than constantly needing fresh material to spread to. It could (and was likely intended to) consume all organic life on the planet of the games, and was explicitly expected to destroy all human life.

Web Comics

Western Animation

  • In an episode of Batman the Brave And The Bold, Gorilla Grodd builds a device that could turn all the humans within a 500-mile radius into apes. His downfall was probably adding a switch that made it do the opposite.
    • He tried that in the DCAU Justice League cartoon as well, but the effect was only temporary. What was worse for Grodd was that finding out THAT was his master plan finally got Lex Luthor annoyed enough to shoot him and take over the Injustice League.
  • The Omnitrix on Ben 10 Alien Force has the ability to repair genetic damage, such as removing DNAlien parasites from their hosts. It reaches phlebotinum bomb proportions in the season finale, when it repairs the genetic damage of the entire Highbreed race that had rendered them sterile due to inbreeding.
  • In the second-to-last episode of the first season of Teen Titans, Slade presents the threat of a Cronoton Detonator (which will freeze everyone in time if detonated)
    • Subverted when the actual goal was to separate Robin from the other Titans. Not to mention that what it really did was put nanomachines inside the other Titans' bodies.
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