The problem with that is that you can make radioactive Isotopes with a Mass accelerator. And well, you know the Sun? Understanding how the hell that works would be an interesting question I imagine. Or What the hell the difference be Helium and Di-hydrogen is. or tritium. Like, The hell's a Neutron? What happens when you smack together a pair of atoms Fast enough? What happens if you get atoms that are too big? There are simply so many basic questions that are answered fairly simply with an understanding of Radiation.And with their tech level... If they ask the question, they'll know the answer.
Actually, no, this makes even less sense since there are actually a lot of naturally occurring radioactive Isotopes, even at lower nuclei sizes. C-14 being a rather prominent one, for example. Like figuring out radiation just isn't that hard with the level of tech they have. They don't need Plutonium, or Uranium or any of that to find it.
All they have to do is smack two atoms together and see what happens. And There are a lot of pretty obvious questions that would lead to exactly that.
Ok, look, I'll admit- physics? Not my strong point. Like, at all. I
failed second-year physics.
That's like bankrupting a casino, it's not possible. You can't
do that.
Ok, work new information into the established explanation, I can do this-
They know about radiation. The problem is, as discussed before, the only things that give off radiation are kind of... unimpressive. Carbon dating? Useful, sure. X-rays? Yeah, they're pretty cool. Hell, x-rays barely count- most x-ray generators use tungsten for the anode because it has such a high melting point, but there's no radioactive substance involved, far as I can tell.
... But they're not
nukes, y'know? There's nothing
big. Remnant doesn't
have an equivalent of Marie Curie, or Harry Daghlian, or Robert Oppenheimer, nobody's
died of radiation poisoning on Remnant.
As for fission and fusion- the first is impossible to implement in even a theoretical sense, none of the existing elements are large enough to cause a chain reaction, and fusion is in pretty much the same state as it is in real life-
possible, but far too expensive and not really efficient enough to make up for what's taken, outside of maybe one or two hopeful startups who are still in the teething problems stage.
Also, last I checked, the only person who
has a proper plasma weapon is Penny's death ray. Neptune's weapon is a glorified taser, and I can't think of anything else that even comes close.
The problem is, when Dust is as abundant as it is, I mean, there are literal
islands of the stuff, and it all burns the same, alternate energy sources just don't get the priority they should.
speaking of Salem's council has there been any conjecture of what Tryian is based off of?
In terms of story reference, the only thing I can think of would be The Scorpion And The Frog. I don't entirely know how that would translate into his backstory, but he's obviously too far gone to recognise there's something wrong with him or his views, let alone
change who he is- everything he does is simply in his nature.
And frankly, I'm ok with that, it rounds out the team- Hazel has his reason for why he joined Salem, Cinder also has a reason, she's just more selfish about it, I suspect Watts, in canon, anyway, may subscribe to some form of nihilism, or perhaps just some sense of moral superiority, either way, out of the four he seems the most likely to be purely philosophically motivated, but Tyrian's...
just batshit crazy. And I'm ok with that.
Some villains just want to steal forty cakes because they ran out of puppies to kick, and that's ok.
... Wait no-
