Lasgun

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This article is about the weapon described in the novel Dune. For the weapons in the fictional Warhammer 40,000 universe, see Weapons and Equipment of the Imperium (Warhammer 40,000).

A lasgun is a fictional directed-energy weapon in the fictional Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. In Terminology of the Imperium, the glossary of the novel Dune, Herbert provides the following definition:

LASGUN: continuous-wave laser projector. Its use as a weapon is limited in a field-generator-shield culture because of the explosive pyrotechnics (technically, subatomic fusion) created when its beam intersects a shield.

The weapon is available in a variety of sizes, ranging from hand-held to ship-mounted. Lasguns have enormous destructive potential; using an arc ray consisting of some sort of subatomic energy, the lasgun is capable of decimating large areas and structures. In fact, the Dune Encyclopedia, usually regarded as not canon, states that the small batteries used by hand-held lasguns are some form of nuclear batteries themselves. If this is so, it is not clear how the user would be protected from the radiation that would be produced by the batteries, nor is there enough information to guess the precise principle by which the batteries would operate -- whether by nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, as radiothermal generators, or by some principle that is not known today.

There was an incident in the beginning of God Emperor of Dune, when one of the Duncan Idaho gholas unsuccessfully tried to use a lasgun to kill Leto Atreides II. After this, we learn that lasguns have sufficient fragility that it is very easy for a trained person to permanently disable a lasgun once he has it. Moneo Atreides disabled the weapon in obedience to the God Emperor's order -- he simply crushed certain capsules that were part of its mechanism, and disconnected certain exposed wires. Furthermore, in the beginning of Chapterhouse Dune, a lasgun that is being carried by a sentry is described as "heavy". It is notable that in the Dune Encyclopedia's article on lasguns, the included picture appears faithful to the written descriptions. There, the "rifle" version of a lasgun does indeed look heavy and unwieldy, composed of blocky shapes -- and there are indeed exposed loops of wiring, Interestingly, the picture seems to show a telescopic sight and laser rangefinder.

If the ray from a lasgun meets a Holtzman shield, a pseudo-atomic explosion may occur due to the high energy levels disrupting the stability of the shield creating the Holtzman effect. This effect was predicted by Norma Cenva during the Butlerian Jihad, where the shield was first developed by Tio Holtzman; Norma, a woman possessing extraordinary mental abilities at the cost of a stunted growth, noticed it in Holtzman's calculations despite Holtzman's insistence against it. A test upon a shielded asteroid proved him wrong, and, ironically enough, the same effect ultimately caused his death when Aliid, a Zenshiite rebel leader, fired a lasgun at him while he was shielded during a slave uprising, destroying Holtzman's entire estate and much of the surrounding countryside and the city of Starda on Poritrin.