Magic

Just like you can't play a character who's smarter than yourself, you can't portray technology past your understanding.

I've watched a lot of ultra-tech space settings where the GM kept presenting problems that would be definitively solved by technology listed in the game.

One of the most famous fiction examples is how Star Trek conveniently forgets all the replicator and transporter accidents.

The two most important words in science are, "that's odd," and NCC-1701 sure found a lot of them.

Not least of which is a fountain of youth.

Since I played Traveller the most, it's where I see tech concept blind spots most often.

You don't even have to get to Traveller TL 14 to make some of the errors and I blame Hollywood.

If you encounter a back-pack nuke ticking away, how do you disarm it?

Hollywood tells you that you have to find the red wire.

I says light it up with your rifle.

The explosives surrounding the core might still explode, but they will do so asymmetrically and no fission boom.  If it's a fusion bomb, you've made sure it's not going to get fusing.  You're going to have a problem with explosively scattered fissile materials now, but not near as spread out as if you'd let it go high-order.

Starting about Traveller TL9, they don't even bother with the fissile materials!

Gravitic technology is sufficient that you use artificial gravity to collapse your fuel to fusion pressures.

The minimum size to do this gets smaller and smaller as tech advances and for a bomb or warhead, you are skipping the hardware that siphons off power from the unit, and keeps it from exploding.  Exploding is the point.

But it shouldn't make them less susceptible to being bashed on to the point they don't work anymore.

Getting something to fusion is difficult.  Slight asymmetries cause failures to go boom.

How did I conceptualize all this?  Having a high-school education and being resistant to math when you have a, no shit, doctor of astrophysics and two people who do calculus for fun in your gaming group means your assumptions about a tech WILL be challenged.

Physics is, regardless of how you achieve them.  Traveller technology is astonishing on many levels.

How the meson gun MUST work is a terrifying level of control over subatomic particles.

But back to the Traveller TL 12 equivalent to a backpack nuke.  It's going to need a powerpack (some sort of super-science insane rate of discharge capacitor) to fire off the gravitic node that collapses the fuel, holds it for a swish then lets it go.  Ripping that pack off the side of the node-core means no-boom.  It might discharge spectacularly, but it doesn't detonate.

Likewise, a couple light armor piercing explosive rounds into the node will keep it from forming a symmetrical wave-front and no boom.  It might not be a good idea to stand next to it as it collapses from it's brief attempt to be degenerate and then fly apart again when the powerpack tries to fire the node...  But it will be a much smaller explosion than firing correctly.

But the point is... it's easier to keep nukes from going off than to get them to go off.

Ideally, you separate the powerpack from the node without the pack discharging.  Demolitions, Engineer or Jack of All Trades skill should get you there.  Mechanical or Electronic should get a roll with penalties.

Dangerous, no skill required, methods are chancy, but are better than letting a nuke go off.