Salvation War in the United Federation of Planets

[NecronLord]

It won't matter. The Federation can stun them from orbit and go around head-shotting them or taking them prisoner at its leisure. They lost very hard to modern technology. The Federation could defeat the world's armed forces with ease, especially if they gave battle as demons are wont to do.

And just for bonus points, the Demons don't have any notable resistance to verbal interrogation and decent treatment, so they'll soon be spilling the beans happily about everything.

And if you think the US was bad when it got into hell, the UFP will be a thousand times worse. There will be no funny tricks like sky volcanos because the Demons won't last that long. There will surely be nagas in the invasion army to be captured, and once they're studied, hey presto, there are Defiants and Intrepids over Satan's palace.

[Junghalli]

According to this only about 1% of present day Earth's land area is city, so unless Star Trek Earth is vastly more heavily populated than ours the odds of a Baldrick invasion force randomly opening a portal in a city are probably going to be pretty low.

[NecronLord]

Even if they did appear in a city, and get whoever couldn't be evacuated by the planetary transporter grid in time, the Federation would just start taking them seriously and gas them. Yes, the Federation has been known to use (non lethal) gas, at least in Kirk's time, it was standard issue aboard starships.

[frogcurry]

ok, I have a point which might give the feds a problem in the war.

But, I have to wander if that area would still be desert, as someone has pointed out before. Several hundred years have past since today, and who knows what terraforming measures have been done. Even if, as I seem to remember a mention on one of the episodes i watched, there had been a nuclear war, if Earth has the population to colonize other worlds then what is Earth's Population going to be like? How do we know that region has not been chosen as the location for a nice great big city?

Or it might have been turned into an island on a giant lake, and the Hell troops stand around embarrassed on the beach awaiting orders from their confused boatless leaders. anythings possible but it'll not have much effect. A city might be worse - all the cars and machines around would seriously confuse and scare the demon troops, say the invasion portal comes out on the side of a high speed rail line wwhhhhhiiizzzzzzz- SPLAT.

Nothing, nothing, nothing at all that happens could allow a bronze age civ with the bonus of a few reasonably damaging magic weapons to defeat the homeworld of an interstellar civilisation with ranged weapons and advanced technology.

Want to use a strawman "Federation can't kill people from space because they've never done so before" (if we let that sort of argument stand, then by that logic Ewoks could conquer Coruscant, since they destroyed a stormtrooper unit, and the Empire didn't orbital bombard them despite having hundreds of ships in orbit)? Want to accuse them of being unable to hurt the poor demons? Go ahead, they could still win by:

- projecting a giant image in the sky scaring the army crapless.
- using the weather control system to pour strong wind, giant hailstones and torrential rain on them continuously. Or hit them with tornados
- Park a shuttle a few hundred metres overhead with its shields on and play AC/DC at 150 decibels to them 24 hrs a day
- set fireworks off over their heads all night when trying to sleep.
- Fire a shuttle phaser on a wide beam heat setting to warm their bodies above their comfort zone, causing large scale discomfort, dehydration and possible loss of conciousness
- use a ships phasers to dig a large ditch around the army, maybe fill in with water. They don't have bridge building equipment with them...
- replicate lots of glue, pour it on their heads from a shuttle.
- replicate lots of water with detergent and other irritants in it, fire continuously with a water cannon on a shuttle any demon giving orders.
- replicate lots of barbed wire and caltrops, drop around the army continuously faster than they can remove it.
- replicate concrete, wall them in while they sleep overnight.
- replicate a big cloth, suspend from shuttles and block the sun out overhead to scare them.

Seriously, how on earth did it take 4 pages of conversation on this subject?

[Rossum]

Don't forget that the Federation has holodeck technology and they once were able to move a whole tribe of people from a primitive culture from one planet to another by beaming them into the holodeck, keeping them in there for a few days, and then beaming them onto their new planet without them knowing about it (frankly that's kind of scary that they can treat tribes of humanoids in a manner similar to how people treat goldfish).


But anyway, they could probably set up barricades and lead the Baldrick army into the nearest giant holodeck stadium and then just mess with their heads forever. Thats assuming they can't just use transporters to beam them into holodeck holding cells around the world in which all the Baldricks live in fake settings without ever knowing where they are or the fact that they are trapped in jail and being toyed with by scientists who can study them like rats in a maze.

[Simon_Jester]

That would be a good ending too...

[The Vortex Empire]

I have a question. One possibility for how transporters work is that they basically kill you and make a new copy. People do this thousands of times per life in the ST universe. Doesn't that mean there should be hundreds of copies of everyone running around Hell?

[Stofsk]

I have a question. One possibility for how transporters work is that they basically kill you and make a new copy. People do this thousands of times per life in the ST universe. Doesn't that mean there should be hundreds of copies of everyone running around Hell?

If that was *really* how transporters worked, why would anyone in Star Trek use them?

[thegreatpl]

If that was *really* how transporters worked, why would anyone in Star Trek use them?

Would they even know?

[Samuel]

I think they mention in Enterprise that they don't work that way. The person who invented it does an explanation- did anyone watch the episode?

People having souls in the series is the best way to insure continuity... but than you have them duplicating people in TNG. Course since you can split a persons soul in TOS this isn't exactly a surprise.

[Uraniun235]

Well we know FTL is impossible so obviously every time they engage the warp drive, they're just shifting into alternate universes. Every time they go to Earth it's a different Earth!

I have a question. One possibility for how transporters work is that they basically kill you and make a new copy. People do this thousands of times per life in the ST universe. Doesn't that mean there should be hundreds of copies of everyone running around Hell?

That was just addressed on page 3 of this thread.

[Junghalli]

Well we know FTL is impossible so obviously every time they engage the warp drive, they're just shifting into alternate universes. Every time they go to Earth it's a different Earth!

That would actually seriously be an interesting idea for an FTL drive. Of course to keep it from being too insane it might be a good idea to make it so generally the shift is to a very "nearby" parallel dimension that only diverged from ours with, say, a single quantum event that happened 5 minutes ago, so it would be rare that the alternate universe you end up in is different enough that you notice any change. Your buddies back home will get to say hi to an essentially identical version of yourself from a microscopically different parallel universe when you get back ... probably.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Well we know FTL is impossible so obviously every time they engage the warp drive, they're just shifting into alternate universes. Every time they go to Earth it's a different Earth!

That would actually seriously be an interesting idea for an FTL drive. Of course to keep it from being too insane it might be a good idea to make it so generally the shift is to a very "nearby" parallel dimension that only diverged from ours with, say, a single quantum event that happened 5 minutes ago, so it would be rare that the alternate universe you end up in is different enough that you notice any change. Your buddies back home will get to say hi to an essentially identical version of yourself from a microscopically different parallel universe when you get back ... probably.

There's a webcomic whose FTL drive does the whole "FTL via moving into alternate universes" thing.

[Werrf]

There's a webcomic whose FTL drive does the whole "FTL via moving into alternate universes" thing.

Also the FTL method used in the Old Man's War series by John Scalzi, called a Skip Drive.

[Stofsk]

If that was *really* how transporters worked, why would anyone in Star Trek use them?

Would they even know?

I dunno. At first I dismissed the idea because it sounds absurd or trite. On reflection, it's an interesting idea that could be explored - if it were the case that transporters truly functioned like that. The argument for it is fortified with two examples from TOS and TNG, one which involved Kirk getting 'split' into two different Kirks, one good the other bad. And of course the TNG episode where they pick up Riker's transporter duplicate. On the other hand, IIRC both circumstances were entirely unique and were the result of an exotic contaminant somehow affecting the transporter's usual functions, thereby invalidating any conclusion you could draw. The live issue is whether transporters as per their design and usual function operate in this manner (i.e. killing off the 'original' and 'cloning' them). Considering how ubiquitous their function is in Trek society, I seriously doubt this would be the case. And as for them even knowing, I imagine with the plenty of psychic phenomena they've observed, some conceptual understanding of an 'essentialist nature' to a person (call it a soul if you like) might have firmer understanding than we would be used to.

Take Spock's katra and all Vulcans for that matter. A katra is for all intents and purposes a soul. It can be transferred telepathically into another sentient organism, even an alien. But the katra survives going through the transporter (McCoy beamed down to Genesis, and beamed back up in Star Trek 3, yet the katra wasn't compromised as a result). So what can we conclude? If transporters do work by killing someone and cloning them, then it obviously doesn't really matter much does it - a person's soul isn't 'killed' at all. It's a tricky philosophical/theological argument, and I'm not at all convinced by it. Plus, the aggravating feature of it, from what others in this thread told me last page, is it's baggage from the wretched versus debates. It strikes me as yet another 'hurhurhur trek sux lol' example.

[Samuel]

Duplicating Riker is the real feat. Maybe the best explanation is that the transporter can copy souls.

[Rossum]

Take Spock's katra and all Vulcans for that matter. A katra is for all intents and purposes a soul. It can be transferred telepathically into another sentient organism, even an alien. But the katra survives going through the transporter (McCoy beamed down to Genesis, and beamed back up in Star Trek 3, yet the katra wasn't compromised as a result). So what can we conclude? If transporters do work by killing someone and cloning them, then it obviously doesn't really matter much does it - a person's soul isn't 'killed' at all. It's a tricky philosophical/theological argument, and I'm not at all convinced by it. Plus, the aggravating feature of it, from what others in this thread told me last page, is it's baggage from the wretched versus debates. It strikes me as yet another 'hurhurhur trek sux lol' example.

There is a thread in the Star Wars vs Star Trek page called "Do Transporters Kill" its pretty long but has about all the information you would need about the argument (I assume).

Though, about Spocks katra... one could argue that Vulcans are a telepathic race and their "katra' could simply amount to telepathically communicating their entire life history and personality into another person so that their lifetime knowledge could be passed on. Sort of a really advance way of telling someone your lifes story. Spock 'uploaded' that knowledge into McCoys brain, McCoy carried that around for a while, and later it was safely removed from McCoy and loaded back into Spock (who had been brought back to life via the Genesis device and effectivly forgot everything he knew).

Plus, Spock gave his katra to McCoy before he went to work on the engine that killed him from radiation poisoning. I'm not sure how immortal souls work but I don't think you can remove it and put it somewhere for safekeeping while retaining the intelligence to work on complex starship engines. Spock gave McCoy a copy of his memories, not his soul. Since Spock was killed via radiation poisoning and was later revived via the genesis device then there's really no way to know if Spocks soul left on death and his body got a new one while on Genesis, or if the Genesis effect was able to repair his body and put his real soul back in place (but wiped the memories from his brain). But no matter what happened on Genesis, Spock basically got his memories back after he stored a 'backup copy' in McCoy.


Though actually... it could go either way. Transporters are able in certain circumstances create copies of a person and presumably the copies have their own 'souls' (though the Good and Evil Kirks could be the result of some kind of weird soul-splitting thing which opens up a whole new can of worms). Weather or not Transporters do this sort of thing on a regular basis is something that we don't have evidence for.

I'm just saying that one of the only ways to determine how Transporters interact with 'immortal souls' would be to find an afterlife dimension where the souls of the dead usually go and see what's going on there. I don't think the Star Trek sereis has ever actually found any location that fits that description so the question is up in the air.

However, a Star Trek/Salvation War crossover would result in Federation scientists coming into contact with a dimension where the souls of the dead go. Soo... we can't answer the question without someone writing a fan crossover story which answers the question and even then the answer would only apply for that particular fan crossover.


So the moral of the story is that if a teleporter machine that moves you from place to place by disintegrating you and putting you back together on the other side then its probably safe to be a bit skeptical until such time as science also figures out where the souls of the dead go.

[Cecelia5578]

I have a question. One possibility for how transporters work is that they basically kill you and make a new copy. People do this thousands of times per life in the ST universe. Doesn't that mean there should be hundreds of copies of everyone running around Hell?

If that was *really* how transporters worked, why would anyone in Star Trek use them?

Around the time this meme was going strong on ASVS and the early days of SDN, the TNG era Federation was depicted as a bunch of incompetent, communistic atheists. As compared to the glorious capitalists of the Galactic Empire who had money, private property, religion, etc.

Granted, since 9/11 and the first Bush term much of this attitude has disappeared, but it was always assumed that religion had disappeared for the most part in the Federation, so the Feddies and their wimpy New Age mumbo jumbo would be less worried about the philosophical ramifications of cloning and rebirth.

[Simon_Jester]

Duplicating Riker is the real feat. Maybe the best explanation is that the transporter can copy souls.

Or maybe souls just automatically lock onto the nearest available copy of the person. Beam Kirk from the ship down to the planet, Kirk's soul goes "Oh, crap, my Captain Kirk just got yanked out from under me!" and goes hunting for the nearest Kirk... finding one down on the planet and moving to it.

Seriously, if there's some mechanism that allows my soul to remain attached to me as I walk around, even though it obviously isn't a physical object I carry by normal means... why can't that same mechanism be used to yank my soul back to me after I'm teleported a great distance?