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A stone burner is an atomic weapon or fusion bomb in the Dune fictional universe, whose explosion and radiation could be precisely adjusted.
Atomic weapons in the Dune series of stories were almost never used against humans, as that violated the Great Convention. Yet a number of Great Houses as well as the Imperial House kept them as weapons/bluffs of last resort in their wars, mostly as political bargaining chips allowing a defeated House to flee into a safe exile.
Actual use of these weapons against humans was considered a terrible crime, often subjecting the offending State, House, or user to total extermination.
It was hinted in the Dune Encyclopedia that atomic weapons were invented in the remote human past, perhaps 30,000 years before the term "stone burner" was first used. Their first recorded use was on Earth (the alleged planet where humans evolved) by a state called the House of Washington. The House of Washington is known to have invented a kind of primitive stone burner called a neutron bomb that prevented battlefields from being totally destroyed by atomic weapons. It emitted a neutron shower and a very minimal explosion, thus in theory preserving cities and buildings while killing off an opposing army.
As noted, atomic weapons were rarely used, and it is thought that the collapse of the House of Steel, a onetime rival to the House of Washington, was due the House of Steel's fear that neutron bombs would destroy their armies.
There are also reports that the House of Steel practiced a very centralized economic system supported by a bloated bureaucracy. Some writers think that the House of Steel would have caved in eventually, and point out that communistic economic systems tend to fail, with only a few exceptions such as the insurance industry and private or religious philanthropy. Historians still thus argue over the significance of the neutron bomb.
It is also related in the Dune books that humans kept atomic weapons because they feared that an alien civilization might someday be found. Similar themes of a mysterious "great enemy" are hinted at in the Dune series. The "great enemy" also may have been of robotic origin, such as intelligent computers, or some say a form of nanotechnological "life."
Atomic weapons were used twice in the reign of Paul Atreides, the Mentat Emperor. Paul Atreides used one such bomb to blast a pass through a wild desert range called the Shield Wall. Later in his reign, a stone burner was used in an attempt to kill him. He survived but was blinded for the rest of his life.
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