super-weapon n.

Regarding the tanks, the speaker declared that the trust of the country in those super-weapons was not misplaced.

An old, old idea, and quite a commonly used one, is to have these creatures about to declare war and conquer the hero’s country with the enemy’s super-weapons; and after capturing our brave, bold, and heroic heroes, proceed to tell the heroes the way the weapons work, the zero hour set for attack, and the line of march of the enemy’s armies (as if prisoners are told all these things!).

‘Haven’t they had enough of it?’ he cried. ‘They fought like beasts for a decade just thirty years ago. I was tempted then to reveal my super-weapon and let them butcher one another to nothingness. I am tempted now.’

And, so far, there has not been another battle. Neither side dares attack the other; each is waiting for the development of some super-weapon which will give it the overwhelming advantage necessary to insure victory upon a field of action so far from home. But as yet no such weapon has been developed; and indeed, so efficient are the various Secret Services involved, the chance of either side perfecting such a weapon unknown to the other is extremely slim.

Even if there were a superweapon that would help the remnants of one army to defeat the remnants of all others, the country that got the plans could not manufacture that weapon.

So the scientist destroys his super weapon. Has he accomplished anything? I think not. Somebody else is bound to make the same discovery soon.

So far there has not been another battle. Neither side dares attack the other. Each is waiting for the development of some super-weapon which will give it the overwhelming advantage necessary to insure victory upon a field of action so far from home.

The Martians are conquering the earth with their heat-rays and other super-weapons when they succumb to Terran bacteria.

And so it was that the vast Centaurian ship, armed to the teeth with super-weapons that could have brought our world to its knees in a week or less, turned tail and blasted hell-bent back to the safer spaceways of its own system. It was, after all, a matter of obvious expediency. A normal man, an average man, does not match brains with an Einstein. No Centaurian aboard doubted the wisdom, the absolute necessity, of the decision to retreat before it was too late.

Now, a cargo ship was travelling between galaxies on hyperspatial drive. In a crazy, billion-to-one odds accident, it emerged into normal space smack in the middle of a planetoid. It wasn’t a big one; the ship wasn’t atomized—just wrecked. It was carrying one of these super-weapons.

Gentlemen…. As the first superweapon with a conscience, I am removing myself from your national defense stockpile. Setting a new precedent in the behavior of ordnance, I have humane reasons for going off.

No alien invaders would pounce out of space. There was no need now for superweapons against Outsiders.

They usually have an evil scientist in their gang, or…the benefits of futuristic science, such as superweapons, hypnotic rays, invisible spaceships or whatnot.

There had been quiet rumours about what the frigates would be armed with back at the assembly platform and the town. Superweapons capable of protecting the fleet from any threat.

Hey, I'm a human being but I'm twenty thousand light years from home and we're all living in the midst of mad-shit aliens and super-weapons and the whole fucking bizarre insane swirl of galactic history and politics!