I was thumbing through old posts when I saw this in the Worldbuilding: Space Opera Cliches entry:
Nobody would ever think to run a starship up to 50% of light-speed and ram a planetOh, lots of people have thought of it.
But there is a very strong consensus in the Worlds against causing gigadeaths and destroying valuable worlds and their ecologies, which is what Chapter I of the Ley Accords is all about.
It’s happened exactly once, mostly because no-one ever believes in consequences until they happen to someone. Since those consequences amount to “We, for values of we equal to everyone else in the known galaxy, will hunt you down and kill you, along with your entire organization, your military forces, your government, and anyone else involved in the operation – which may, if we think it was done with popular support, involve bombing your entire civilization back into the stone age and possibly further down the evolutionary ladder,” everyone is highly incentivized to (a) not do this sort of thing, and (b) police their own crazies to make sure they won’t, either.
Is this a story that has been told / will be told at some point in the near future? I cannot for the life of me remember anything about it if it has