si vis pacem, para bellum -- Anon Guest
[AN: According to my translator webpage, this means: If you want peace, prepare for war. I believe Sir Pterry (GNU) had much to say about that though the Patrician.]
Humans have said for centuries, for millennia, If you want peace, prepare for war. Given the number of concurrent wars happening anywhere on the planet during those same millennia, one can safely posit that they got this horribly wrong.
They also believed that space travel would bring about peace. In a way, they were correct. Once anyone with an ideal and a quorum of followers had enough to make a world in their own image, they did so. They left with high ideals and fertile dogma and were never heard from again. Much to the relief of everyone else who had to put up with them.
If the resultant deep-time colony was lucky, they would be found on the other side of their isolation as a culture with their own identity, morals, and traditions. Many just became graveworlds because the dogma was unsustainable.
Those who went with hate, once they had no-one left to hate, self-cannibalised in an effort to achieve alleged purity. Some who fabricated their own history could not maintain it in the face of overwhelming evidence. Some went with the sure and certain knowledge that they would have to defend themselves from alien invaders at some point. Thus emerged cultures of weapons proliferation and contested land that glowed in the dark.
When those aliens came at last, all those weapons came to nothing. Navigation and travel aids like the Hungry Caterpillar snapped up all missiles and converted them into harmless compounds for later trade[1].
Energy weapons, though cool for fantasy, don't fare very well over wide distances. They tend to disperse. At close range, where they are most effective, the energy collection webs of the 'enemy' simply absorb it all for fuel.
Anything interesting enough to get through space in one piece is also adequate as either a weapon or a defense. In some cases, both.
Gravity drives, though interesting for space travel, refuse to be employed against vessels carrying life. How interesting when your mode of transport is more a pacifist than your captain. Best not to inquire about what happened to those who tried to force the issue. It's not pretty.
Humanity quickly gave up on going against enemies with all weapons blazing. Unless, of course, the foe was one with a similar mindset. It was how Pax Humanis came to be, after all.
It took them a few centuries to learn, but they have learned. Si vis pacem, reddere bellum obsoleta... if you want peace, render war obsolete.
[1] Though it is widely considered that selling a polity their missiles back in far more useful forms is tacky.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / focalpoint]
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