AN: Information about how naquadah and Force-related mind-affecting abilities work in this story, and generally in all my SW stories.

Naquadah

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While naquadah is still incredibly useful super-materail, and has the same basic properties like OTL, the way it enhances explosions and such would be more reasonable - so pratically speaking, no making regular nukes better than antimatter warheads for example. What makes naquadah better as power source, and material for warheads at most technological levels, is that it is far more stable and safer than antimatter, where you need extensive containment mechanisms and safety precautins not to blow yourself up.

That said, a nuclear bomb going of beside a Stargate must be a big damn bomb boosted with a lot of naquadah to detonate the gate, which would at the very least bust a continent and well, thats going to be an extinction event unless you have powerful shields over your cities, and a way to patch up the environment. Either way, a planet would be crippled at best, dead at worst depending on where fault-lines and such are, naquadah veins that could be ignited by the explosion and blow up the planet through a chain-reaction, etc...

Either way, a nuke going beside that much naquadah, would be enhanced, and even if the gate don't detonate, it would be pusted, and thrown away from the explosion to be likely burried somewhere. At a minimum, the US for example might be looking at losiong most of a state if they have to initiate a tactical nuke to contain a breach.

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Mind-Affecting Force abilities

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So, the way mindfuckery through the Force works in my stories is this:

1. Mind Trick TM - works well on weak-willed people. Those with stronger will, or of speces with natural resistance can be mind-fucked, however the sheer energy needed to do so would leave very noticeable brain damage. So under most reasonable circumstances, even for Sith it is not viable to do so. In combat, there are faster ways to mess up someone, that require less concentration.

2. Mind-reading, or tearintg secrets from people's heads, and brainwashing. It is possible. At its very basic, the techniques have the Mind Trick as a foundation, and they all have similar limitations. For someone particularly weak-willed, you need just the Mind Trick to get them to spill any secrets. People with natural resistance, strong will, or a combinatiojn of those and training, then it is complicated. Someone who knows what they're doing, can tear certain relatively simple secrets or facts out of a person's head, fast. That is a blunt approach that will leave your targets mind and brain damaged, preventing you from getting more than scraps after you've torn your way through.

The other option, what we see Perun do with the brainwashing, is a slow approach that can take months per person to get all the necessary inforamtion/subver them. Someone with natural tallent, the right training, power to utilize it properly, and free time can significantly decrease that time frame.

Perun has the training, experience and power, but like with Battle Meditation, no natural tallent with those disciplines. So that, combined with his other committments, means he takes months to subvert a single individual. The same would be true for comprehensive interrogation if you want everything - the faster you go, the greater the odds you end up with a brain-dead vegetable. A Sarcophagus won't help much, because even if it heal the brain cells, that only means that there are new ones. The original ones, with the memories they held would be gone.

The Goa'uld are nearly unique with their genetic memory. While the sheer breadth and depth of those memories are an issue, making comprehensive interrogation, compared to subversion, not practical, there is a way around it, which Perun did.

Perun basically has the Goa'uld in his head with its high-brain functions destroyed. A combination of the connection between them, and the Force, means that he can draw on Perun's memories because even with the mind gone, and the brain damaged, their genetic nature means they're still there, free for the grabbing.

Notably, he can't do the same with a Goa'uld that is not stuck in his head. In that case, Perun would be left with a more typical approach. Further, Sith or not, a Goa'uld memories are too much for him to try replicationg what he did with Perun on other snakes. Doing so can potentially fuck his own memory due to overload, in similar way the 'head-grabber' device messes up people through shoving too much data in their brains, leading to catastrophic consequences.

Again, a Sarcophagus might heal the physical damage, but lost memories would be gone. That would be issue because of Perun's training as a Sith. He is as powerful as he is in no small part due to standing on the shoulders of giants, literally in Zash's case. There were handful of Jedi or Sith who both lived that long, and went as deep in the mysteries of the Force, caring not how dangerous said knowledge could be.

To an extent, training and experience can compensate for lack of natural tallent, or worse connection to the Force.

At least, that's the way the Force works in my stories.