Family atomics

[TMA_1]

The Spacing Guild would care vary much if atomics were used. The Guild was directly involved (with other parties being involved as well) in the creation of the new era of human civilization after the great jihad, and acted as a kind of lynch pin to help hold together human society through it's space faring monopoly. The Guild uses it's powers as a monopoly to directly and indirectly manipulate other power structures in the known universe. They would have no problem even stopping the imperial house in it's tracks if it had to, by completely halting all interstellar travel to and from any place House Corrino needed to go. In fact in the prequels this is discussed, which I quite liked. I remember (forgot where) that the Spacing Guild threatened House Corrino by potentially blocking passage of the emperor and his forces from to any place they needed to go. I forgot the details of this, Ill try to look through my books to find the intent and purpose of this entire incident with the spacing guild and the imperial house. I remember though on a few occasions that the spcing guild's power was discussed, and their use of their power in order to keep peace in the empire, on their terms of course.

[MrFlibble]

The political and economical balance of forces in the Imperium wasn't called "Guild Peace" for nothing, after all ;)

[SparrowsOfDune]

The atomics were there "just in case". Illegal against humans, and seldom (never?) used, their desructive power was such that they still had to be factored in any sort of military assessment.

The legal wording of the great covention allowed for a stockpile for use against a "hostile non-human intelligence." This could mean aliens, but it could also allude to rediscovered/reactivated robots / AIs from before the Butlerian Jihad.

I'm not saying I like the idea of Omnius from the Ledgends series, but I can still see the BJ involving smaller-scale "sky-net"-style intelligences from time to time, as well as just plain old fashioned Ludditism and classist uprisings largely unrelated to computers.