Honestly, I don't think it would have been that bad, because if it had been they would have either boiled away the atmosphere, killed off all the bacteria in the soil we need to grow stuff, or even both.
FUN FACT! You know that pretty much all nuclear weapons are actually air-burst weapons? Otherwise they wouldn't be anywhere nearly as devastating. This is part of why the first nuclear bombs had parachutes.
Really, I think that the Zentradi bombardment weapons don't go for a ground penetration effect because they are the very same reflex cannon weapon the SDF-1 is famed for - and we all know that thing is much more famous for its ridiculous area of lethality than actual range.
I think that the bombardment weapons are actually saturating the atmosphere with high-energy particles...
... yeah. Anyone caught out in the open is gonna have a horrible end.
And also, if we really want to handwave away that planet's resulting crater-face, we can say that it was a cold tundra world with lots of permafrosts.
FUN FACT! You know that pretty much all nuclear weapons are actually air-burst weapons? Otherwise they wouldn't be anywhere nearly as devastating. This is part of why the first nuclear bombs had parachutes.
Really, I think that the Zentradi bombardment weapons don't go for a ground penetration effect because they are the very same reflex cannon weapon the SDF-1 is famed for - and we all know that thing is much more famous for its ridiculous area of lethality than actual range.
I think that the bombardment weapons are actually saturating the atmosphere with high-energy particles...
... yeah. Anyone caught out in the open is gonna have a horrible end.
And also, if we really want to handwave away that planet's resulting crater-face, we can say that it was a cold tundra world with lots of permafrosts.