Municipal Darwinism comes your way (RAR!)

[Vendetta]

What IS the tech level of this thing anyway? Does it have tech above our own? Considering you mentioning radioactive wastes, there are nukes in the setting so the real question is:

Can our military turn this monstrosity into slag?

The fact that they could make a 600m tall vehicle move at 80MPH and not immediately explosively dismantle itself suggests that yes, the tech level is considerably above ours. The strength and toughness of the materials involved in building something like that would by itself grant it considerable resistance to conventional weapons fire.

Over time, a modern military could wear it down with artillery and strategic bombardment, but it would take a hell of a lot of doing.

Nukes would work. The setting doesn't have heavier than air flight, so their air defences wouldn't be able to deal with high speed air attack. (There aren't any nukes in the setting as is, because they all got used or superceded by much nastier weapons. The current era is lower tech than the world before the Sixty Minute War, which had megaton range energy weapons at the very least, and possibly some of the intervening also collapsed societies.)

[bilateralrope]

Any defenses against chemical or biological weapons ?

Because I can see a lot of people wanting to try and capture the city intact.

[Tribble]

Any defenses against chemical or biological weapons ?

Because I can see a lot of people wanting to try and capture the city intact.

Ya, that does raise the issue of what we do with all the squishy people inside. Is it realistic to make these things surrender and avoid killing them all?

[Jub]

Ya, that does raise the issue of what we do with all the squishy people inside. Is it realistic to make these things surrender and avoid killing them all?

I don't see many nations willing to take that risk when these things show up, eat a nearby military base, and start consuming buildings wholesale.

[Tribble]

Ya, that does raise the issue of what we do with all the squishy people inside. Is it realistic to make these things surrender and avoid killing them all?

I don't see many nations willing to take that risk when these things show up, eat a nearby military base, and start consuming buildings wholesale.

Joke's on them - Toronto's nearest military bases have hardly any equipment in them!

Apart from having these things choke on our gridlock there's not much that we could throw at them should they pop up next to us, and no obstacles to get in the way (apart from lake Ontario). Looks like we'll be calling the Americans for help if we actually decided to fight.

Which begs the questions: What would Trump do? Would he help Canada out of the goodness of his heart? Maybe because he finally gets an excuse to blow shit up? Do so only in return for concessions/payment etc? Let the things roll over Toronto while blaming us socialists for not defending ourselves probably?

[madd0ct0r]

You could collapse a building or two on them. The gut would dismantle and chew its way out, but it would be immobilized - and the cities are vulnerable to boarding by conventional troops.

[bilateralrope]

What's it going to take to bring the cities rules to the negotiating table ?

I'm assuming they understand English and they capture enough cellphones that they can start negotiations if they want to.

[Mr Bean]

What's it going to take to bring the cities rules to the negotiating table ?

I'd assume breaking the tracks alone would force them to talk as others have mentioned if they throw a track or worse lose one things get very interesting for the occupants.

[madd0ct0r]

What's it going to take to bring the cities rules to the negotiating table ?

I'm assuming they understand English and they capture enough cellphones that they can start negotiations if they want to.

With a single city - comprehensive demonstration of destructive power aimed nearby. For multiple cites, the complete destruction of a single city is enough to make the others start talking, based on the novels. I understand the fixation with breaking the tracks, but that's an attack that never succeeds in the books, while a few other vectors do.
The rulers are intelligent humans, but incredibly narrow minded and utterly wedded to their ideology of superior way of life over ground dwelling prey. something something lumbering extractive empires something

[Sky Captain]

Eastern Europe is mostly flat terrain so would actually be quite good for this thing to roll over unless it bogged down somewhere. With half an hour warning time I could only run away. It would take at minimum several hours to get over WTF moment and launch effective airstrikes against it.

Overall unless this thing have 100% effective AA systems or it is made of some sort of super strong materials it would be pounded to scrap by NATO air forces. Against modern military it is just a huge target.

[bilateralrope]

How slow will they be moving through our cities ?

Not because they can't go faster, but because they are consuming the city as they go.

[Vendetta]

Eastern Europe is mostly flat terrain so would actually be quite good for this thing to roll over unless it bogged down somewhere. With half an hour warning time I could only run away. It would take at minimum several hours to get over WTF moment and launch effective airstrikes against it.

Overall unless this thing have 100% effective AA systems or it is made of some sort of super strong materials it would be pounded to scrap by NATO air forces. Against modern military it is just a huge target.

It has to be made of super strong materials just to exist.

Modern conventional weapons would probably be able to disable the city over time, but its core structure is unlikely to be seriously damaged because the stresses and forces it has to withstand just existing under its own weight and moving would be greater than they would inflict.

[madd0ct0r]

But the low quality slum housing would go, and without population the city would starve quickly.

Sufficient conventional artillery would kill a city - the anti-traction leauge has a huge wall of cannons that has killed smaller cities. We never see the wall in action though, and its possible its armed with apocalypse flower weapons

[Q99]

Nukes would work. The setting doesn't have heavier than air flight, so their air defences wouldn't be able to deal with high speed air attack. (There aren't any nukes in the setting as is, because they all got used or superceded by much nastier weapons. The current era is lower tech than the world before the Sixty Minute War, which had megaton range energy weapons at the very least, and possibly some of the intervening also collapsed societies.)

Definitely some of the intervening societies. The Stalkers (transhuman, resurrected supersoldiers) were invented by the 'Arctic Pyramid Builders'.

Old tech included asteroid drops too (or 'slow bombs').

[Jub]

It has to be made of super strong materials just to exist.

Modern conventional weapons would probably be able to disable the city over time, but its core structure is unlikely to be seriously damaged because the stresses and forces it has to withstand just existing under its own weight and moving would be greater than they would inflict.

That doesn't matter if you use a thermobaric device to rip the air out of any non-sealed parts of the city. A nuke set to airburst would do much the same, and more of course; given the size of the city, a small nuke might not even cause that much collateral damage. If collateral damage isn't an issue, and it may not be, use bigger nukes. You could even use ground bursts and leave the city stuck falling into a massive crater. That's not even accounting for JDAMs and missiles ripping the tracks off as drones and manned jets fling weapons at it from kilometers away.

If we get really desperate scorch the earth around it, ironic due to the setting it's from, and let it starve or run out of fuel.

[Sky Captain]

Eastern Europe is mostly flat terrain so would actually be quite good for this thing to roll over unless it bogged down somewhere. With half an hour warning time I could only run away. It would take at minimum several hours to get over WTF moment and launch effective airstrikes against it.

Overall unless this thing have 100% effective AA systems or it is made of some sort of super strong materials it would be pounded to scrap by NATO air forces. Against modern military it is just a huge target.

It has to be made of super strong materials just to exist.

Modern conventional weapons would probably be able to disable the city over time, but its core structure is unlikely to be seriously damaged because the stresses and forces it has to withstand just existing under its own weight and moving would be greater than they would inflict.

Sure, the structural frame has to be extremely strong, but all exposed stuff would be vulnerable. Destroy it's defensive weapons, sensors, damage the tracks and it becomes sitting duck. It should also be possible to launch a helicopter assault and land the troops on the city and try to capture it after it's AA systems are disabled.

Probably biggest potential threat coming from the city is biohazard. It is essentially from another dimension, who knows what kind of virusses and bacteria those humans have. What if their version of common cold is highly lethal to us?

[bilateralrope]

It has to be made of super strong materials just to exist.

I'm more interested in what it has to do to the ground so that the ground can support its weight.

[Vendetta]

But the low quality slum housing would go, and without population the city would starve quickly.

The low quality housing tends to be lower down and further in. It's the nobility that get all the fresh air and good views.

That doesn't matter if you use a thermobaric device to rip the air out of any non-sealed parts of the city. A nuke set to airburst would do much the same, and more of course; given the size of the city, a small nuke might not even cause that much collateral damage. If collateral damage isn't an issue, and it may not be, use bigger nukes. You could even use ground bursts and leave the city stuck falling into a massive crater. That's not even accounting for JDAMs and missiles ripping the tracks off as drones and manned jets fling weapons at it from kilometers away.

Again with thinking the tracks will be vulnerable.... Every part of the tracks of a traction city will have to stand up to far more force than any of our conventional weapons can deliver to them every moment of their service life, which has been centuries.

These things hold up millions of tons, think two aircraft carriers long by twelve wide by twelve high. Set off a nuke directly underneath and you might make a difference to them, but even a nuke formed crater like the Sedan Crater is likely to be in the range they can traverse.

[bilateralrope]

Probably biggest potential threat coming from the city is biohazard. It is essentially from another dimension, who knows what kind of virusses and bacteria those humans have. What if their version of common cold is highly lethal to us?

That goes both ways. Question is: Who can better deal with an outbreak ?

With London actively capturing people, would I be right to think that one of our diseases getting in is likely to happen before one of their diseases gets out ?

That's excluding someone attacking London with biological weapons because they want to capture it intact and/or have decided that destroying it isn't a viable option.

[Jub]

Again with thinking the tracks will be vulnerable.... Every part of the tracks of a traction city will have to stand up to far more force than any of our conventional weapons can deliver to them every moment of their service life, which has been centuries.

These things hold up millions of tons, think two aircraft carriers long by twelve wide by twelve high. Set off a nuke directly underneath and you might make a difference to them, but even a nuke formed crater like the Sedan Crater is likely to be in the range they can traverse.

There are different stresses between a missile exploding and firing a hypersonic jet of molten metal and the, admittedly ludicrous, grind of daily service. The same goes for for the heat and peak pressure wave of a bomb going off. Unless you show me a direct quote about direct hits from shaped charge warheads and bunker busting bombs not disabling a track I'm not buying it.

As for a nuke, it doesn't matter what you can climb if you fall ass over head into a crater that formed in front of you while you're in motion. Good luck stopping short or having any warning about it coming when you're used to facing blimps and not modern misile systems.

[bilateralrope]

The most damaging place to stick a nuke on one of those cities is probably wherever they take apart the things they have eaten. Maybe you destroy the machinery the city uses to feed, leading to it starving. Even if that machinery survives intact, you've irradiated it, preventing humans from working there.

Why all the focus on blowing up the city when the humans running it are a much easier target and whatever military is trying to deal with the city will see the value in taking the city intact for reverse engineering ?

[Jub]

Assuming we had one, pointing a large microwave array at one ought to make living in it really uncomfortable very quickly. I still think dropping a full air bomb over it is our best bet. Let the overpressure kill the occupants and then send a team in to mop up what's left.

[Q99]

The real change of a traction city appearing is not who's in the immediate path, but rather the spreading of the technology.

Then we can all experience municipal darwinism!

[Tribble]

The most damaging place to stick a nuke on one of those cities is probably wherever they take apart the things they have eaten. Maybe you destroy the machinery the city uses to feed, leading to it starving. Even if that machinery survives intact, you've irradiated it, preventing humans from working there.

Why all the focus on blowing up the city when the humans running it are a much easier target and whatever military is trying to deal with the city will see the value in taking the city intact for reverse engineering ?

I assume that we're trying to disable the city without killing all the inhabitants in the process?

[Q99]

Yea, the human resources are one of the things a city eats.