I was glancing at one of my Star Wars encyclopedias and was looking at the map of the galaxy. Hosnian Prime is quite a ways from Starkiller base so in order to destroy that system Starkiller base was obviously packing some power. But you would have thought they would have had plenty of time to evacuate the planet. I also noticed that the blast would have went passed Coruscant which seemed odd.
I mean, SKB's primary weapon is powered by the energy of entire stars, so yeah, it's extremely powerful.
The beams themselves are also massively FTL -- the TFA novelization and a few sourcebooks state the beams achieve such speed by literally tunneling through hyperspace. That's how they traveled from SKB's location in the Unknown Regions, to the Hosnian system's location in the Deep Core, in roughly 1 minute. Tack that onto the fact that the Hosnian system had absolutely no warning/indication they were about to be attacked, and evacuation wasn't really a practical option. The only survivors would've been those who were off-world at the time.
Originally posted by Galan007
I mean, SKB's primary weapon is powered by the energy of entire stars, so yeah, it's extremely powerful.The beams themselves are also massively FTL -- the TFA novelization and a few sourcebooks state the beams achieve such speed by literally tunneling through hyperspace. That's how they traveled from SKB's location in the Unknown Regions, to the Hosnian system's location in the Deep Core, in roughly 1 minute. Tack that onto the fact that the Hosnian system had absolutely no warning/indication they were about to be attacked, and evacuation wasn't really a practical option. The only survivors would've been those who were off-world at the time.
So regular people can see the beams? SW people have FTL perceptions?...Because I'm recalling in TFA that one could follow the beams on eyesight alone.
Since the beams are traveling such a large distance one could conceivably see the beams (though of course not the people on the targeted planets). There are far bigger holes like the fact that they can see the planets being destroyed despite the fact that they are in different solar systems (yes, I know the book came up with some bullshit about this being due to hyperspace shenanigans). That straight up confused me in the theater. I know films, especially SW films, don't follow real world physics. But almost everyone realizes we can't see planets from other solar systems while unaided.
This Q&A with Justin Ridge is pretty interesting:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/a-star-wars-resistance-producer-answers-your-burning-qu-1833278483