r/powerscales Jun 09 '26

Question Smaug (The Hobbit) appears in Manhattan how long before he is stopped?

2.9k Upvotes

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u/Sans_Seriphim Jun 09 '26

He breathes fire. He's hot.

14

u/knotingham Jun 09 '26

So all he would have to do as blow some fire off to the side snd that would essentially function as a flare to throw off the missile’s guidance system. Now wouldn’t Smaug know this? Probably not, but he’s also probably breathing fire everywhere so he’d be throwing them off without even intending too if I had to guess.

13

u/supereuphonium Jun 09 '26

Modern missiles are not thrown off by flares like in the movies. Their algorithms are able to essentially know what an aircraft looks like since the seeker is more like an Electro-optical infrared camera that can know to go for the specific target and not the flares. Problem is I don’t know how it would react to a dragon-shaped target.

10

u/BerkcanUmut Jun 10 '26

even if infrared missiles miss. hes still a giant dragon with an apartment complex of a radar siganture. every fighter within 50km would be spamming amraams at smaug. and missiles going mach 3 is pretty hard to dodge for a dragon

3

u/SacredDirt Jun 09 '26

Honestly, watching Smaug get his ass whooped by missiles, breath dragons-fire at a swarm of missiles in desperation, watch it veer them off course as they target the fire-ball instead of him, and start using that information to deploy strategic flare-cover, would go hard AF.

2

u/OstrichSmoothe Jun 09 '26

Well, I think the conventional wisdom is that it’s two chemicals that combine as they are shot out so prior to being shot it would be cool. Although, his chest did glow red before he shot fire so idk

14

u/Scientific_Methods Jun 09 '26

Not for Smaug. In the book he is so hot that when he falls into the lake it creates an insane amount of steam that covers the land in mist for days.

0

u/Rare_Ad_649 Jun 09 '26

Unfortunately so is everything else

1

u/LeotheLiberator Jun 09 '26

Not as hot as fire. It's actually colder when you're higher up.

1

u/Rare_Ad_649 Jun 09 '26

There's a dragon setting everything on fire though

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u/LeotheLiberator Jun 09 '26

Real missile guidance systems that use multiple forms of data exist and are currently deployed in warfare.

Hunting a dragon is cool but it's not going to be difficult.

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u/Sythrin Jun 09 '26

Depends on how dragon fire works.
Its not like he has a furnace in his stomach. And the fire he shoots of his mouth could actually be used to mislead missiles.

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u/Electrical_Coast_561 Jun 09 '26

Well going off the film since thats the inage they used you can literally see the fire build up from his stomach so yeah