Antimatter weapons

[Daishi3500]

There's some theory out there, damned if I can remember it, that says that x ammount of energy is required for a population of a certain size to achieve a certain level of technology.

I believe you are thinking of the "Civilization Types" chart of sorts. Basically it says there are 4 types of intelligent civilizations based upon each civilization types ability to control certain levels of energy.

Here's some more specific info:

Type 1, 2, & 3 Civilizations

A Type I civilization would be able to manipulate truly planetary energies. They might, for example, control or modify their weather. They would have the power to manipulate planetary phenomena, such as hurricanes, which can release the energy of hundreds of hydrogen bombs. Perhaps volcanoes or even earthquakes may be altered by such a civilization.

A Type II civilization may resemble the Federation of Planets seen on the TV program Star Trek (which is capable of igniting stars and has colonized a tiny fraction of the near-by stars in the galaxy). A Type II civilization might be able to manipulate the power of solar flares.

A Type III civilization may resemble the Borg, or perhaps the Empire found in the Star Wars saga. They have colonized the galaxy itself, extracting energy from hundreds of billions of stars.

By contrast, we are a Type 0 civilization, which extracts its energy from dead plants (oil and coal). Growing at the average rate of about 3% per year, however, one may calculate that our own civilization may attain Type I status in about 100-200 years, Type II status in a few thousand years, and Type III status in about 100,000 to a million years. These time scales are insignificant when compared with the universe itself.

On this scale, one may now rank the different propulsion systems available to different types of civilizations:

Type 0

Chemical rockets

Ionic engines

Fission power

EM propulsion (rail guns)

Type I

Ram-jet fusion engines

Photonic drive

Type II

Antimatter drive

Von Neumann nano probes

Type III

Planck energy propulsion

Judging by this scale, we are still a Type 0/Type 1 Civilization.... I would say in order to manufacture and utilize Antimatter type power sources with any level of efficiency, we are looking about 100 years into the future, maybe more, and very unlikely less time than that, but remotely possible.

Where's this information from, is it valid? And what the hell is black energy propulsion, sounds naughty.

[ewilen]

hopefully by the time we start harnessing anti-matter as an energy source, humanity has moved beyond thinking about how better to kill one another.

anti-matter drives in starships, or as powerplants would be so immensely productive, at the same time lowering our reliance on fossile fuels and nuclear energy.

Wait.. wait.. human responibility with something with that much destructive potential?

....growing past war? Haha..... HahahHAh.. Ahah. AHaHAHahaHAHAHAH!!!

....sorry, the cynic in me never sees THAT happening.

So many ways to go on this...

If antimatter bombs were small enough to fit in your pocket, maybe we'd see an end to war, on the theory that "an armed society is a polite society". Personally, I doubt it, but you never know. We certainly haven't seen a direct war between nuclear powers.

Or consider that, with limitless energy at our disposal, the superpowers will have little reason to get caught up in tribal and religious conflicts in resource-rich parts of the world. On the other hand, there's always some bottleneck in the means of production, so competition might simply move on to other areas.