Shadow Planet Killer
    The Shadows never used their "planet killer" until the Vorlons used theirs.  The Shadows preferred to use conventional weapons to scare the younger races enough that they would panic and fight each other.  They only had to do moderate damage themselves.  They excelled in manipulating other races to do most of the fighting for them (like the Centauri).

    But when the Vorlons began destroying entire civilizations to kill the few Shadows and/or servants of the Shadows, they retaliated.  The Shadows began destroying entire civilizations to kill the few Vorlons in the area as well.  They used a large web-like structure that was covered with some kind of dust-like cloud.  This web encircles a planet, trapping it's inhabitants inside.  The cloud prevents scanners from penetrating to or through the web.  When the planet is completely enveloped, the web begins firing missiles.  These missiles drill into the surface of the planet.  When they reach deep inside the planet close to the core, they detonate.

    The energy release from these missiles causes earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami, etc.  The planet quickly becomes a barren wasteland with a poisoned atmosphere that is uninhabitable to any known lifeform.  If someone scans the planet from orbit afterwards, it would look as if the inhabitants of the planet had been dead for years.  When President Sheridan inspected Daltron 7 after an attack by this weapon, he was surprised to discover that the attack had taken place only a few days earlier.

    The planet killer was scanned by a probe sent inside the cloud by a Whitestar commanded by a man named Ericsson.  He said the planet killer's destructive capabilities came from "thousands of megatons times thousands of missiles."  He used the plural form of thousand(s) both times.  If we assume that the cloud only had one thousand missiles with a yield of one thousand megatons apiece, then a conservative estimate on the destructive potential of the planet killer is one million megatons (4.2 billion terajoules).  The actual figure would be many times this.

        NASA reports that it requires energy delivery on the order of a million megatons to cause a significant change in a planet's atmosphere, which causes massive loss of plant life, starvation and disease on a global scale.  It requires the delivery of around 100 million megatons to cause massive extinction of a planet's population.  As the planet killer causes massive extinction on a target world, it must deliver energy levels on the order of a hundred million megatons to each of these target worlds.

    This level of energy delivery places the destructive potential of the planet killer at the upper limits of Ericsson's statement.  He said "thousands" of missiles, each with a yield of "thousands" of megatons.  The delivery of a hundred million megatons requires that at least one of these numbers be in the "tens of thousands" range.  A possible distribution of explosives is ten thousand missiles, each with a yield of ten thousand megatons.  Since the bombardment lasted ten to twelve hours by Ericsson's estimates, regardless of weapons distribution, the sustained "firepower" output of the planet killer is on the order of ten million terawatts.


Ericson describes the Shadow Planet Killer.
    The planet killer travels by "phasing" to and from hyperspace, as other Shadow vessels do, without the need for a vortex.  This allows the cloud to attack a planet by surprise, so that the inhabitants cannot evacuate.  This ability is enhanced by the fact that the cloud is almost undetectable by sensors.  Additionally, the cloud tends to cause jump engines to automatically shut down, allowing escaping vessels to be shot down by the planet killer's defenses.
 
    The planet killer causes the target planet's core to decrease in temperature, the atmosphere to become poisonous to humanoid life, and filled with particulate matter due to volcanic eruptions.

    Daltron 7 was attacked by the planet killer, and scanned by the Excalibur shortly afterward.  The computer described the planet as having "anomalous surface details."

    In this image, numerous craters are seen, presumably where the missiles drilled into the surface.  Some of these may now be volcanoes, as each hole was drilled deep inside the planet.

Excalibur's computer analysis of Daltron 7.
    The missiles must be very durable.  They can drill almost to the core of a habitable planet without being crushed, and with their guidance systems still operating properly.  Their thermal and pressure resistance are amazing.

    The Shadow planet killer is also very useful in ship-to-ship combat, as it can envelop an entire fleet and destroy all the vessels enclosed with it's missiles.  The "Army of Light" had the largest fleet assembled in the recent history of the galaxy in Into the Fire, and the planet killer enveloped the entire fleet, along with the Vorlons!  It is likely that the Shadows could have won the whole war at this point.  In A Call to Arms, the Interstellar Alliance had gathered a fleet to defend Earth from the Drakh.  This fleet was almost trapped inside the planet killer as well.  The cloud destroyed itself when the missiles all detonated prematurely.

    The cloud also has an internal defense network.  Hundreds or thousands of defense stations fire beams that appear to be similar to the ones fired by Shadow warships.  These beams easily destroy any vessel that would conceivably attack.  Even the Excalibur's sister ship, the Victory, was quickly crippled by these beams.  Only the vessel's momentum allowed it to damage the web's control center when it impacted.  Much of the vessel had already been blown off.

    It is unknown if these beams fire at a planet's surface during a bombardment.  They could easily be used to shoot down any ship attempting to escape the bombardment.
    The cloud covers a large net-like structure.  This structure completely envelops a planet, limiting escape opportunities.  In A Call to Arms, this net almost trapped the entire fleet defending Earth.  Thousands of joints in the network contain defense batteries powerful enough to destroy large capital warships.

    One particular joint is the control center of the device.  This control center was destroyed in A Call to Arms, causing the device to lose control, launching all of the missiles simultaneously.  The detonation of all of the missiles resulted in the destruction of the planet killer itself.


Structure of planet killer.

False and true control centers, as viewed from Excalibur's bridge.



A joint flanked by three defense batteries.

Concept drawings fr the Planet Killer.
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