spartasman wrote:How many "UFO" siting were made during the 1960's? How many do you think actually made it to the press? Even if you could see a hundred lights in the sky during the daytime, the government could simply say that it is a weather anomaly, and with all the observatories and reputable astronomers being kept quiet, who other than the tabloids are going to say they are wrong?
Still absurd. The papers could replicate it for themselves, and do you think they're going to cover this up for years, decades? These aren't transient sightings, these are
years of observation. People might well be able to see it with the
naked eye. Furthermore, even if the governments are covering this up from the populace as a whole, they sure as hell will be making their own plans.
I will admit that I am most likely wrong on this. It was my understanding that civilian electronics and military gear were coming out of the vacuum tube stage in the mid 1960s.
Vacuum tubes don't matter. The military network is hardened, transistor or tube. A large portion of the civilian network is hardened. The US long-distance telephone network is hardened (at least in the days of Ma Bell).
The Race are supplying themselves from space, logistics are not dependent on control of roads or cities, at least at first. The Races objectives are to destroy any military threat to their dominance and then assert their control over the planet.
Logistics are dependent on roads, unless you think your spaceships are going to refuel tanks. In fact, it's
worse for the Race since they burn H
2 in their engines, which has a rather low energy density.
spartasman wrote:The Race would be trying to neutralize any threat against them by, say, driving a wedge between to utterly massive formations of WARPAC troops, or by landing right on top of a confused West Germany which is crawling with confused NATO forces.
A wedge? Put another way, the Race has just opened themselves to encirclement and destruction.
its 1966, the United States has every airbase and missile north of the Mason Dixon line killing the landings in New York. In Poland, the Soviet union has to deal with not only EMP, but with the masses of killercraft supporting the landing sites, which are considerably larger and more important than the ones in New York.
The BOMARC batteries can engage the landings against New York at range, yes, but the Nike batteries don't have the range. As noted, EMP isn't going to bother the Red Army, and Frontal Aviation has a whole lot of aircraft to throw at the enemy. An enemy, incidentialy, which is well-trained but has zero experience.
Because 20 nuclear warhead detonated in Poland are going to be sending radiation drifting back into Russa, and because nuclear weapons detonated at the head of the Yangtze are going to flow down-river and poison the crops the Chinese need to feed their ridiculously large, and until recently, starving, population.
You really don't know how nuclear weapons work. These are battlefield weapons which are airbursting and generating trivial amounts of fallout.
The National Guard is operating on their home turf, supported by every pissed-off hillbilly in Texas, the Soviets are stationed in Poland to counter any NATO aggression and are trying to counter-attack freakin' space invaders that have just cut their forces in half, disrupted their communications, and who are confused as hell as to what the situation is.
So ... the National Guard is trying to counter-invade freakin' space invaders that are landing all around then, who have disrupted their communications and are confused as hell as to what the situation is?
spartasman wrote:Well, they would have a choice. They could land a hundred thousand miles away from them, allowing the the Soviets to use their nuclear arsenal against them unhindered, or they could sit on their heads, engage them directly and force them to make the choice of either nuking Poland (and spreading Radiation throughout the Warsaw Pact nations), or slugging it out on the ground. Besides, isn't it the Races nature to be direct and stubborn?
You think the Russians are going to care about nuking Poland in the face of an alien invasion? The
US was going to use tactical nuclear weapons in West Germany!
Leonid Brezhev was in control of the Soviet Union at this time, but if that actually has anything to do with anything, I can't say. I have to believe that the Soviet Union would worry about nuking their own allies, and irradiating their own nation. I mean, I'm accused of making the Soviets stupid, but I don't think they would be THAT idiotic.
On the effectiveness of nuclear weapons on the Soviet Army, they would have SOME effect. One of the U.S strategies during the 50's and 60's was to create a wall of radiation with nuclear artillery in Germany to buy NATO the time needed to mobilize.That would lead me to believe the idea of the Race creating their own wall of radiation wouldn't be too ineffective.
You don't understand nuclear weapons or nuclear war. The US strategic wasn't to create a "wall of radiation". The 1950s 'New Look' strategy was to make it plainly obvious that any attack into West Germany would immediately escalate to nuclear warfare, at which point SAC would erase the USSR from the planet.
Who's to say that the Government doesn't have some super weapon hidden somewhere? But really, how interesting would the story be if a railgun in Area 51 begins destroying the conquest fleet within 20 minutes of the Race invading ? This isn't to say that the Governments can't have something, but the integrity of the plot does have to be compromised with reality.
We require logic on this board.
