The Salvation War: Pantheocide Epilogue Up

[Jamesfirecat]

The Pension issue is very easily settled. Pension, SS, Annuties payments end when you die in your first life. There is your alternative. You just put a time limit on benefit payments that currently have no time limit. There still has to be somewhat a legal connection between a person first life and second life.

And second lifers are expected to just suck it up? They have all the duties their former first life nations imposed on them (like military service) but reduced benefits?

Yay! That is SO going to work out well. If you want to keep second lifers in your ranks, as soldiers pilots or whatever... You have to give them absolute equal treatment.

And, as said, pension is only one part of problem. How many unemployment checks you would have to mail to Hell if you demanded that person is same in 2nd and 1st life?
Or voting. Give it some time and you will have bigger voter base in second than first life.

Or are you going to deny them these rights? Sure you could!
It is not that these things could not be done, but what kind of situation it creates between First and Second life people. It would be form of Apartheid, which tends to create lots of bad blood in the underdogs.

There does not have to be ANY legal connection between first and second life of person. We have corpse of guy rotting in grave, that person is dead as rock.

Nothing demands us to consider person which popped out from magic gate few hours later as same person. By not considering that person same who died a while ago, you solve all those issues.
This appears to be the attitude taken by governments in the story, which is why governments are also averse of war losses. Those losses have high chance to flock to Caesar, making him all the more dangerous player in Hell.

For a convicted killer rotting in prison second-life is going to look much more attractive than rotting in prison for the rest of there first-life. To have absolutely no connection is completely insane. Basically somebody could do whatever they want in there first life and then just walk away from any prison time by committing suicide. For example that Craiglist killer who committed suicide in jail before the trial. Does he just walk away from all the responsiblity for murder? There is a lot of serial killers currently sitting on Death Row.

So? They died. Death penalty is just that, you kill someone and that's it.

There is even issue that in our Earth, if you survived the execution for some reason... You might have been acquitted.

Let's say they do not commit suicide. You successfully execute someone. What then? They STILL go to Hell, or Heaven. No idea how gates work.

What then? Hmm?

There is nothing making first-life attractive to them. Lets see I can stay here in a cell 23+ hours a day and rot away or I can committ suicide and get transfered to Hell where body will be re-born as young again and I will be free from any legal entanglements. The choice will be simple for them.

And what do you think New Rome would do to guy who went in killing spree in their country?

Romans were REALLY good at coming up with gruesome ways to die. Some of which might actually be survivable for second lifer... Just very, very painful.

It's not like Hell has no governments and laws, they simply are not governments (and quite possibly not laws) of Earth.

"There is even issue that in our Earth, if you survived the execution for some reason... You might have been acquitted. "

This is wrong on numerous levels.

There's a reason the sentence is handed down "To be hung by the neck until dead." Or so on and so forth with "until dead" being the key part.

The idea is that if your neck isn't broken the first time you go through the trap door for some reason, guess what you're going right back up there to take another drop.

Same thing happens with electric chair or lethal injection if it doesn't work, that just means they now have a right to to try harder.

[Bayonet]

"There is even issue that in our Earth, if you survived the execution for some reason... You might have been acquitted. "

...

The idea is that if your neck isn't broken the first time you go through the trap door for some reason, guess what you're going right back up there to take another drop.

Same thing happens with electric chair or lethal injection if it doesn't work, that just means they now have a right to to try harder.

That has actually happened a few times. The poor mope is simply re-hanged, or re-sparked, whatever.

[Razor One]

Of course, if First Lifers want to maintain the loyalty of of Second Lifers, they better damn well treat them as equal citizens with equal rights or, as someone rightfully mentioned above, risk alienating them and pushing them towards New Rome.

Help me out here. How can a first lifer 'treat' a second lifer at all? Second lifers are already establishing their own governments. Second Lifers CANNOT come to Earth. They are now citizens of Hell, not citizens of the United States. How do we guarantee them rights?

Admittedly we have a big honking army in Hell and Heaven, but eventually Hell will begin administering itself. I imagine Earth having ambassadors and so forth, even inspecting Hell. But in the end I imagine Second Life interests diverging from First Life. I cite the dead soldiers of the Curbstomp.

True, second lifers cannot return to Earth. This does not preclude first lifers from visiting hell however.

The new Roman state however only considers you a citizen if you purchase land, you are not a citizen of new Rome by default. Arguably, you are still a citizen of your country until you choose to renounce that citizenship, and your rights can be guaranteed the same way your rights can be guaranteed when you travel abroad. At this point in the story, Hell is just another country, the only difference being that once you begin your second life, you cannot return.

Second lifers also have family still enjoying their first lives here on Earth. There is a divergence, yes, but not one that is unable to be overcome, provided one wants to maintain one's connections with one's family. If I were to drop dead tomorrow and find myself in TSW Hell, I'd definitely want some way to keep in touch with my folks, even if I couldn't pop over for a visit.

As to killing Second Lifers... Do you really imagine that Second Lifers are going to allow gangs of first lifers to hunt second lifers? Or Second Lifers? Administering permanent death? On the orders of what First Life judge? From any corrupt government? And I don't imagine Caesar is going to look fondly on executions of his citizens by ANYONE.

The best move would be a clean break. Second Lifers move on. They can't sue or be sued. They trade with us, they communicate with us, but that's most of it.

I imagine Second Lifers will have a sense of justice. If they hear that someone killed a dozen people before committing suicide to avoid jailtime, you can damn well be certain that even Second Lifers will be out for justice. Not everyone that ends up in hell becomes a part of the new Roman state, they need to purchase land to be endowed with Citizenship, either during their first life pre-emptively or during their second life after they've got their finances sorted out.

And a clean break? Really? Think about that for a second.

Johnny B. Crook swindles a few million dollars out of hardworking people's wallets and is about to get caught. He's transferred his funds to a bank account in Hell and has the cajones to off himself before he's captured. He later finds himself in Hell, gets up, collects his money and gets off scot free thanks to the "Clean Break" since his victims can't sue him to get their money back.

Now, let's say that Bobby B. Hardworker dies of a heart attack and finds himself in hell. He phones up only to find that his family has already swooped in on his property, finances and so on before he's even woken up. He can't sue his family to get what was rightfully his anymore because of the "Clean Break", he has to suck it up and start from scratch.

Let's take the Clean Break a little further. Debts? Gone when you die. Your creditors can't touch you once you start your second life. Sounds great right? Unfortunately, your debtors are now also free and clear of any money they may have owed you. And neither party can sue one another to get what is rightfully theirs. After all, its the Clean Break!

A Clean Break is a load of crap. Nobody wants to live a life without consequences. You begin your second life in hell (or heaven now) with all the money you earned, the debts you accrued, the friendships and family you've built and the experiences you've gained. They cannot and should not be taken from you arbitrarily just because you've begun your second life.

Regarding why countries on Earth would want to maintain the loyalty and citizenship of Second Lifers... have you actually considered how large Hell is? It's possible that I've read the relevant passages in Armageddon wrongly but I got the impression that TSW Hell has a significantly huge amount of land... land that is effectively unclaimed by Demons, Orcs or even Rome.

Since the land has resources and is effectively open to a land claim, it offers countries on Earth a potential to expand their territory without having to conquer their neighbours. Even if New Rome claims all of hell as its territory, they need to be able to enforce that claim physically, and given their nascent state I doubt that they can do that much if at all once the inevitable land grabs start in both Heaven and Hell.

Once nations on Earth have claimed and settled land, it offers Second Lifers the opportunity to retain their First Life Citizenship and reside within their respective nations territories. I absolutely guarantee you that no matter how promising the New Roman way of life is there will be First Life patriots that will want to remain a citizen of their nation of choice into their second life as well. The only way I can see this not happening is if dying significantly changes the psychology of the second lifer to want to disassociate themselves from their first lives as much as possible, something I've not seen strong evidence of in the narrative.

{Ninja Edit}

Something that just popped into my head. Expertise is another reason that some countries would want to try and retain their citizens after they die. There are reams and reams of magnetic tape and other storage devices that we have no clue how to access because the equipment and expertise to do so has been lost. Imagine we manage to dredge up a computer specialist from the 1960's from the Hellpit.

Sure, his knowledge is woefully out of date, but the moment we show him some of the old computer systems we have no clue how to work anymore he'll definitely be able to make himself useful. Just an example.

[Simon_Jester]

Now that I think about it, if this really does follow an 'event horizon' model then it would have to emit some Hawking radiation (but a very small, probably undetectable amount). What makes Hawking radiation at a black hole is when a virtual particle-antiparticle appears randomly due to a quantum fluctuation, and that pair is very close to the black hole, such that the energy of one member of the particle pair is enough to allow it to escape, but the other is just a little closer to the black hole and falls into it.

[Takes deep breath]

That's the very, very simplified version. One step higher than that is the version where you take into account that the quantum fluctuations happen way more often in the immediate vicinity of the hole than they do an normal flat space. Space around a black hole is curved to an extent that makes Hell look almost pancake-flat, and that creates a stress which has a lot to do with particle pair production.

(General Dynamics Land Systems but we need Kuroneko in here; he actually knows this stuff, on a level I don't, and I have a haunting suspicion that I might be mistaken)

Another comment : giving the death penalty to second-life humans is a bad idea. The reason, besides all of the problems with the death penalty now, is that it's unreasonable to think that second-life humans won't get a third life elsewhere.

Well, unreasonable to assume, in any event. Stuart has given us ample reason to believe that the gate/resurrection machinery is in fact artificial, and probably the product of entities that far exceed humanity in their capabilities (they can punch portals to places we can't go, engineer capabilities into living creatures that we can barely even model, and so on).

Obviously, the very existence of second-life humans means that humans have 'souls' separate from their physical bodies that store all of the experiences a human encounters in their life. It is unreasonable to think that killing the physical body of a second life human would destroy this soul, and most likely they would wake up elsewhere, probably in a still higher dimension than the one containing these bubble worlds.

Occam's razor: which of the two requires more un-evidenced assumptions?

1) A mysterious technology/magic somehow records the body and mental state of a human being upon hir death, and creates a near-duplicate, except with systematic changes that produce the known differences between first- and second-life humans. This process is entirely material, and if it did not occur, human beings would cease to exist upon death.

2) A mysterious technology/magic somehow records the body state of a human being upon hir death, and creates a near-duplicate, except with systematic changes that produce the known differences between first- and second-life humans. This process then also captures a substance known as the 'soul' of that human being, which is a natural but immaterial entity (for which we have no direct evidence) produced from the natural, first-life human body, and includes a perfect record of all memories and personality traits that existed in the first-life human brain. This 'soul' was released from the first-life body at death, and is matched with and anchored to the correct body in every single case, with 0% error. No souls are lost or have incomplete memories.

Since we have absolutely no clue what the mechanism is by which (1) occurs (what does "entirely material" even mean when we're talking about Universe C entities and machinery?), I would say that applying Occam's Razor in this way is premature. For all we know, there really is some sort of pattern that one could call a "soul" in the Salvation War, something as real as a neutrino if not necessarily any more tangible. Something that, if we knew all the underlying physics of the Minos Gate and its resurrection equipment, would explain to us:

-What, exactly, it is that receives the ambient energy in Universe B and directs it to regenerate the body, rather than having random atoms pop out of nowhere, which would be useless for purposes of regeneration.
-What, exactly, it is that allows homo caelis to project electromagnetic waveforms that can stimulate the brain in various ways, despite the fact that we know the brain to be a singularly poor radio antenna... and despite the fact that we know that they are doing this across higher-dimensional barriers, which ought to be impossible since EM signals as we know them propagate only in three-dimensional space.
-What, exactly, it is that causes second-life humans to perish if they are moved to Universe A: what's missing in Universe B, and how does it work to keep them 'alive' in Universe B?

We do not have even the beginnings of a mechanism to explain those processes, except for vague handwaving about "energy." We could equally well be talking about "souls," about some kind of physically real organizational pattern that takes raw energy and turns it into building materials for bodies, something that you can interact with across dimensional barriers, and so on. Something that the Minos Gate machinery uses as the template to reconstruct bodies on death.

And the fact that we call it a "soul" in no way prevents there from being a rigorous, "purely material" science that describes its behavior. It's just that we don't know that science, and at this point in the series have no good place to start figuring out that science, any more than 16th century proto-physicists were in a good position to understand electromagnetism.

We could also consider a third explanation:

3) A mysterious technology/magic invariably, whenever a human dies, captures a substance known as the 'soul', which is a natural but immaterial entity (for which we have no direct evidence) produced from the natural, first-life human body, and includes a perfect record of all memories and personality traits that existed in the first-life human brain, and at least some record of the body as well, which is used by the technology/magic to produce a near-duplicate body, except with systematic changes that produce the known differences between first- and second-life humans. This occurs every time a death occurs with 0% error. No souls are lost, none have incomplete memory or body records.

Now, I don't object to any of these explanations in principle. Stuart is the author and world-builder, and he can decide which of these three explanations he likes the best, or come up with one I didn't think of. But at the present time, the first explanation fits all the facts he's given us, and is the simplest.

Your explanation (3) is essentially what I'm getting at. Nothing made of Universe-A atoms can explain what the Minos Gate does. So far as we know, nothing made of Universe-B atoms can either. And applying Occam's Razor to confirm or deny possible mechanisms by which an unknown machine works is a dangerous game, as seen by:

[Medieval monk William of Ockham looks at an electric car, but cannot look under the hood because it is welded shut or something]

"Option A: Under this hood is of this vehicle, there are a large number of interlocking pieces, many of them made to precision tighter than the eye of any imaginable blacksmith could achieve. Quite a few of the pieces are made out of substances not known to civilization and in no way similar to any known metal, stone, wood, or other substance. This massive array of interlocking pieces that no one I know could possibly duplicate, or learn to duplicate in less than a few centuries even if the methods of their creation were explained in full detail, interacts to drive the vehicle. It does this through a set of gears and belts. The underlying principle that makes the interlocking pieces drive the vehicle is a very advanced descendant of Peter de Maricourt's studies involving lodestones, combined with some interesting observations on that stinging sensation I get when I scuff my feet on a fur rug and then touch a metal door handle, and all held together by mathematics not due to be invented for several hundred more years.

"Option B: There is a very strong little man under the hood of this vehicle running on a treadmill. The treadmill powers the vehicle. It does this through a set of gears and belts. The underlying principle is that of mechanical advantage as known since the time of the ancients."

"Option B is simpler, and therefore more plausible as an explanation for how the vehicle works."

(Parts of the two explanations that overlap underlined, as is often good practice when comparing two explanations to see which is simpler)

This kind of thinking is obviously flawed. The essential flaw is that it assumes we can accurately assess the "simplicity" or "prior probability" of ways a mechanism might operate without knowing anything about how it works. That automatically biases us to assume that a mechanism operates along known lines instead of unknown lines, that it uses known methods for generating power (like very strong men) instead of unknown ones (like precision-machined electric motors).

Today, we know that it would be much easier to build a precision-machined electric motor capable of propelling a car than to build a very strong little man that could exert the same amount of power in the same space. In the Middle Ages, the opposite assumption would have seemed reasonable, but only because they didn't know what we do.

So in general, I would be cautious about assuming one can apply Occam's Razor to processes like the Minos Gate and get results that one can assert with confidence. It's hard to gauge the simplicity of a process you don't understand.

Finally, as to Michael: I don't think he necessarily "knew" what was going to happen, but if Yahweh and Satan had played around with worlds for, say, an average of 500 years before moving on (or if his next project was coming too slowly), I think he might have been able to guess that "this is probably not going to end well" once the gates were shut and humans had gunpowder in decent quantities, not to mention the exponential population growth issue.

My best guess is that 500 years ago Michael just had vague stirrings of ambition against Yahweh, and decided to occasionally save people he valued. At this point he did not expect humans to put up any significant fight against Heaven or Hell; they would still be overpowered easily and he knew it.

Over the past century or two, he observed the marked advance in human capabilities and began to wonder if we might not be such pushovers as the other species Heaven and Hell had exterminated over the aeons. He gained a greater appreciation for the luxuries that modern human civilization makes possible, and he got some vague notion of using the chaos stirred up by the inevitable war between humans and homo caelis as a chance to overthrow Yahweh. At this point he still expected Heaven and Hell to win, but not easily.

Finally, shortly before the war began or as the war began, he realized that between modern technology and nuclear weapons (which he probably found out about some time between 1950 and 2000), humanity might very well take on the combined forces of Heaven and Hell and win. That there was a real danger of the destruction of his species if humans went nuclear on them. At this point, he shifted gears of his plans, focusing more and more on maintaining good PR with the humans as a way of manipulating them into allowing his species to live, preferably with him running it.

The original trilogy titles were

TSW: Armageddon
TSW: Pantheocide
TSW: The Lords of War.

The last could well end up being retitled The Salvation War: Ooops.

As a working title, it works. I like it.

That's an issue I intend to pick up in the next book. The bit about Robert E Lee becoming the man in charge of the veterans rehabilitation center was intended to be setting the stage for that. I'd point out, it's made clear that Jade Kim does have severe issues as the result of her treatment in Hell and they're not resolved by a long way.

Ah, since I seem to have not perceived this clearly made point, could you identify the place where you made it to me? It's certainly commented on early on, but the presence of deep lingering issues is... well, it got lost in the enormous amount of background material to think about, which doesn't mean it isn't there.

[Stuart]

Ah, since I seem to have not perceived this clearly made point, could you identify the place where you made it to me? It's certainly commented on early on, but the presence of deep lingering issues is... well, it got lost in the enormous amount of background material to think about, which doesn't mean it isn't there.

Armageddon Part 81 where Jade Kim is trying to establish her personal relationship with Caesar. The extent of her traumatization and extreme difficulty in initiating sexual contact as a result of her rape on arrival in Hell is explicit.

[xthetenth]

Ah, since I seem to have not perceived this clearly made point, could you identify the place where you made it to me? It's certainly commented on early on, but the presence of deep lingering issues is... well, it got lost in the enormous amount of background material to think about, which doesn't mean it isn't there.

Armageddon Part 81 where Jade Kim is trying to establish her personal relationship with Caesar. The extent of her traumatization and extreme difficulty in initiating sexual contact as a result of her rape on arrival in Hell is explicit.

Yes, that's good, but I agree that somebody more generally traumatized might be good too. The only one I can think of like that is the Frenchman from Verdun, and that sets up an implicit comparison that I feel works against you because it basically whispers in the reader's ear and says this is what WWI did to people, look how nobody else seems to be as much a wreck. If there were somebody borderline non-functional like that who wasn't implied to be a result of WWI, I think it'd help considerably.

[Habeed]

One comment : Didn't you mention that electromagnetism doesn't quite work the same way it does in our universe compared to the universe the bubble worlds of Heaven and Hell are in? That's why a Trident can shoot a lightning bolt, and somehow will continue to work if taken to earth, yet if you made a trident on Earth exactly the same way and used a generator to charge it it doesn't work.

This same difference would explain why the mind control powers of the demons and the instant death power of Uriel work. As mentioned earlier, the human brain is a terrible antenna. Moreover, a total foil barrier - as in a complete box with metal on all sides - forms what is called a faraday cage. According to known Earth physics, NO electric field can get through a faraday cage, not ever, without the current induced in the cage being so strong to actually vaporize the cage material itself. (basically, an EMP powered by a nuclear bomb might be able to get through a faraday cage, but nothing lesser)

So Uriel's power shouldn't have been able to harm anyone completely protected by a metal barrier, and any competent engineer would have told the people in charge of civil defense to make the safe rooms like faraday cages.

Which makes me wonder...even a slight change in the laws of physics, and computers and nuclear weapons would not work right. Maybe it has to do with the SOURCE of the matter...if a machine is made from atoms from our universe, the laws of physics are the same for that machine when it is in Universe B of the bubble worlds. But it you made a nuke or a high speed computer chip with raw materials mined from Universe B, you might have to adjust your design to compensate for the differences.

The interesting bit will be when they start trying to manufacture stuff with raw materials taken from Hell. I can just see someone trying to make computer chips with copper mined from Hell and finding that none of them work.

And it opens up a whole new line of technological development : machines made with elements taken from many different universes could have capabilities we cannot imagine today

[GrayAnderson]

Stuart: Actually, that's my bad. I misread an old post asking "Wasn't the order supposed to be" the one I listed there. My bad based on someone else's bad.

[Werrf]

A Clean Break is a load of crap. Nobody wants to live a life without consequences. You begin your second life in hell (or heaven now) with all the money you earned, the debts you accrued, the friendships and family you've built and the experiences you've gained. They cannot and should not be taken from you arbitrarily just because you've begun your second life.

Of course, the problem with this is the inevitable and rapid draining of all resources from Earth into hell, leaving Earth as a useless backwater with a dead economy.

After all, I've worked hard all my life, I die, why shouldn't I have my computer, my car, my house, everything else I own shipped to me in Hell so I can enjoy my new life with a minimum of disruption? Who cares that all those resources are now never going back to Earth - I'll be comfortable, right?

The only sensible path I can see is a middle road - details will differ, but I can see the Earth Nation A legislating that second lifers can take a certain amount of resources out of the country on their death, but not everything. Their debts and credits remain extant in some way, but perhaps reduced, or with interest frozen. Someone convicted of a crime would be 'extradited' from whichever Hell nation they end up in - since Hell will undoubtedly want their independence soon enough - to a court in the convicting nation's embassy. In other words, death will be treated like moving to a foreign country, which is effectively what it will be.

A true clean slate would never work, but neither would total legal continuity - that would be a disaster as far as Earth is concerned, and since Earth governments are going to control all contact with Hell for the foreseeable future, I really don't see it happening. We need an equitable middle ground, one that neither "Clean Slate" nor "Legal Continuity" can address, and nations that find the best middle ground will be the most likely to hold onto their citizens in Hell, and to be able to expand their territory in Hell most effectively.

[impatrick4life]

So what do we do with life sentences now, if it's treated like moving to a foreign country? You can't lock someone up for all of eternity, I'm afraid.

[Razor One]

Hard labour would be a good possibility. Building infrastructure doesn't come cheap or easily.

Once all the work is out of the way, sentence them as standard. However many years of life they robbed from their victims (assuming murder) is how long they get sentenced for. Kill a man of 40? Life expectancy to 80? Jailtime for 40 years, plus whatever extra if you fail to behave. Kill three men of 37, 40 and 45? That's 40, plus 35, plus 43, that's 118 years behind bars or spent doing hard labour.

Seems fair to me.

Manslaughter would be interesting though considering the victim may be able to choose whether they wish to pursue charges or have them dropped... depending on how the law leans on that one.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I could see second-lifers opposing the death penalty for first-lifers:

Hey hey hey! We don't want that asshole HERE!

[GrayAnderson]

A Clean Break is a load of crap. Nobody wants to live a life without consequences. You begin your second life in hell (or heaven now) with all the money you earned, the debts you accrued, the friendships and family you've built and the experiences you've gained. They cannot and should not be taken from you arbitrarily just because you've begun your second life.

Of course, the problem with this is the inevitable and rapid draining of all resources from Earth into hell, leaving Earth as a useless backwater with a dead economy.

After all, I've worked hard all my life, I die, why shouldn't I have my computer, my car, my house, everything else I own shipped to me in Hell so I can enjoy my new life with a minimum of disruption? Who cares that all those resources are now never going back to Earth - I'll be comfortable, right?

The only sensible path I can see is a middle road - details will differ, but I can see the Earth Nation A legislating that second lifers can take a certain amount of resources out of the country on their death, but not everything. Their debts and credits remain extant in some way, but perhaps reduced, or with interest frozen. Someone convicted of a crime would be 'extradited' from whichever Hell nation they end up in - since Hell will undoubtedly want their independence soon enough - to a court in the convicting nation's embassy. In other words, death will be treated like moving to a foreign country, which is effectively what it will be.

A true clean slate would never work, but neither would total legal continuity - that would be a disaster as far as Earth is concerned, and since Earth governments are going to control all contact with Hell for the foreseeable future, I really don't see it happening. We need an equitable middle ground, one that neither "Clean Slate" nor "Legal Continuity" can address, and nations that find the best middle ground will be the most likely to hold onto their citizens in Hell, and to be able to expand their territory in Hell most effectively.

Actually, there's a second middle road of sorts: Keep Heaven and Hell mostly deindustrialized. Wealth flows in when people die and through natural resource extraction, but it flows out through goods consumption (likely including anything that's not most efficiently made by hand and lacking in aesthetic value). Remember, Earth-built electronics and machinery (which almost all machinery is right now) will require Earth-built parts; ditto anything from other "first life" worlds.

To pull from Keynes for a moment, you want Earth and Heaven/Hell (treating the two as a single collective identity for a moment) to have a roughly even balance of trade. My guess is the following:
-Early on, Earth shows a surplus in its current account through exporting industrial goods to build roads, and also provides at least some engineers. Heaven-Hell shows a capital account surplus through dead people transferring both some goods and financial resources, as well as Earth-based investment in resource extraction. Bear in mind, however, that a lot of those dead people will transfer assets right back in the form of shares of stock and whatnot if we let them, blunting this issue somewhat...a bank from Hell will still prefer lots of Earth-based investments for risk purposes because Earth is at least less likely to face any aftershock fighting (compared with the fact that the various human groups with a BC understanding of how you settle disputes will be showing up, different groups of a given nationality claiming mantles, and so on...not to mention issues with the demons, etc.).
-As time goes by, Earth should retain at least some of its current account edge, but that will shrink over time. Any Hell-based currencies should appreciate relative to Earth-based ones as Hell runs a net surplus due to resource extraction and other services that they slot into. The capital account situation will likely improve for Earth if we get access to colonies elsewhere through portal networks through shifted investment, and also as the growth opportunities in Hell start to fade.

...and going through this just made me think of how to resolve the wealth issue. Kill "death taxes" but have a simple capital transfer tax between dimensions. As long as your wealth sits on Earth and is invested in "first life" concerns, we'll let you keep it, but if you try to make a withdrawal in Hell, you have to pay tax. There'd be some exemptions and some other limits on rates of transfer, but it would basically be an old-style currency control.

[xthetenth]

A Clean Break is a load of crap. Nobody wants to live a life without consequences. You begin your second life in hell (or heaven now) with all the money you earned, the debts you accrued, the friendships and family you've built and the experiences you've gained. They cannot and should not be taken from you arbitrarily just because you've begun your second life.

Of course, the problem with this is the inevitable and rapid draining of all resources from Earth into hell, leaving Earth as a useless backwater with a dead economy.

After all, I've worked hard all my life, I die, why shouldn't I have my computer, my car, my house, everything else I own shipped to me in Hell so I can enjoy my new life with a minimum of disruption? Who cares that all those resources are now never going back to Earth - I'll be comfortable, right?

The only sensible path I can see is a middle road - details will differ, but I can see the Earth Nation A legislating that second lifers can take a certain amount of resources out of the country on their death, but not everything. Their debts and credits remain extant in some way, but perhaps reduced, or with interest frozen. Someone convicted of a crime would be 'extradited' from whichever Hell nation they end up in - since Hell will undoubtedly want their independence soon enough - to a court in the convicting nation's embassy. In other words, death will be treated like moving to a foreign country, which is effectively what it will be.

A true clean slate would never work, but neither would total legal continuity - that would be a disaster as far as Earth is concerned, and since Earth governments are going to control all contact with Hell for the foreseeable future, I really don't see it happening. We need an equitable middle ground, one that neither "Clean Slate" nor "Legal Continuity" can address, and nations that find the best middle ground will be the most likely to hold onto their citizens in Hell, and to be able to expand their territory in Hell most effectively.

Just remember that earth has all the industry and U-2 has only resources. It'll probably end up more like a balanced colonial era where the rich emigrating as well balances out the net import of resources from the colonies to the factories. In addition, modern value-rich portable assets aren't particularly large, they gain most of their value through complexity, so it's not like a large amount of resources will be leaving, probably not even close enough to counterbalance earth's imports of resources as cheap second-lifer labor (lower safety regulations for starters, black lung and the like is no issue after all) pushes earth resource-gathering to a much smaller share of those markets, and the much higher concentration of wealth in earth means that most of the proceeds of this go to earth use. (I'm also pretty sure that some stuff like computers can't be made in U-2, so earth will always have an advantage in that it owns some of most valuable industries per unit resource input). I'd actually expect to see a net influx of resources to earth before a gradual evening cycle as the wealth holders die and spread it out.

Grr, ninja'd but I have something somewhat different to say.

[Werrf]

So what do we do with life sentences now, if it's treated like moving to a foreign country? You can't lock someone up for all of eternity, I'm afraid.

That's where extradition treaties come in - whatever entity finally ends up running the Minos gate effectively extradites dead convicts to those who originally sentenced them. It's not a perfect system, political prisoners are going to be in serious trouble, but it's the only way I can see it working.

Actually, there's a second middle road of sorts: Keep Heaven and Hell mostly deindustrialized. Wealth flows in when people die and through natural resource extraction, but it flows out through goods consumption (likely including anything that's not most efficiently made by hand and lacking in aesthetic value). Remember, Earth-built electronics and machinery (which almost all machinery is right now) will require Earth-built parts; ditto anything from other "first life" worlds.

Not sure exactly who's going to "keep" Hell deindustrialised - I doubt Caesar, for one, is likely to happily agree to a handicap of that magnitude just because Earth says so. Sure, right now Earth has all the leverage, but with enough smart dead guys - recently deceased, I mean - he'll be able to start building his own factories with no problems. That's the trouble - unless First Life powers are willing to invade, occupy and rule ALL of Hell, they're only going to be able to control what happens on Earth, not in Hell. Sure, short term it's not much of an issue, they have too much of an advantage to be easily overtaken, but long term, earth is in trouble.

[GrayAnderson]

xthetenth,
Don't sweat it. You're discussing labor conditions and I'm discussing currency controls. One thought in passing from your bit, though: Looks like the Arabs get economically screwed again as we're likely going to have access to plenty of non-Middle Eastern oil in the future. Still, one suspects that they made a pretty penny during the war (particularly as the demon army went north instead of south, and didn't bother striking towards the Persian Gulf).

[GrayAnderson]

Actually, there's a second middle road of sorts: Keep Heaven and Hell mostly deindustrialized. Wealth flows in when people die and through natural resource extraction, but it flows out through goods consumption (likely including anything that's not most efficiently made by hand and lacking in aesthetic value). Remember, Earth-built electronics and machinery (which almost all machinery is right now) will require Earth-built parts; ditto anything from other "first life" worlds.

Not sure exactly who's going to "keep" Hell deindustrialised - I doubt Caesar, for one, is likely to happily agree to a handicap of that magnitude just because Earth says so. Sure, right now Earth has all the leverage, but with enough smart dead guys - recently deceased, I mean - he'll be able to start building his own factories with no problems. That's the trouble - unless First Life powers are willing to invade, occupy and rule ALL of Hell, they're only going to be able to control what happens on Earth, not in Hell. Sure, short term it's not much of an issue, they have too much of an advantage to be easily overtaken, but long term, earth is in trouble.

The only way Caesar is going to get a full-bore industrial economy going will be through a combination of recruitment and import-substitute industrialization (Translation: Big tariffs once he gets companies started). And frankly, he's likely to be stuck a decade behind the curve producing imitations of Earth technology on a lot of fronts that he can't export back out because of compatibility problems...and that's before you confront 'clean room' issues in Hell. Not only that, but ISI tends to run into another issue, namely the production of substandard parts because of market protections...which are notoriously hard to get rid of.

The way I see it, Hell is going to be stuck as the British Empire circa 1950 to the US circa 1950: Much more dominated by smaller industries due to the wage structure, slower to adopt technology, and generally stuck behind the curve...and probably stuck with a bad case of Dutch Disease to boot.

Edit: Ok, I probably need to explain things a bit better with that last paragraph. Britain in the 1950s was stuck with an industrial sector that was crowded by smaller companies, while the US had managed some natural shakeouts over the years. This is typified in the UK needing legislation to force companies into conglomerates while the US had to focus on keeping those conglomerates under control. Basically, there was a lack of competitive instinct in the UK.

As to "Dutch Disease", that's the odd effect where a country with a lot of resources deindustrializes to at least some extent. Resources get directed towards resource extraction (which is usually cheaper and easier than manufacturing or service, not to mention being more profitable in terms of profit margins). In Hell, you've got those resources in abundance, so it's going to be more profitable to go into the oil business (especially with prices pushed way up and the oil fields under your control) than into the computer business (where you've got established companies who can compete). Also, currency appreciation tends to be a problem here, but Caesar is going to catch hell (no pun intended) from the US and others if he kicks off his rule with a regime of currency tampering along the lines of China.

[Habeed]

Did you not read my post above??? Hell CAN'T go into the computer business because there are slight differences in the laws of physics for how things built out of raw materials mined in Hell behave. The only way you could make computer chips in Hell is to import the silicon and copper and everything else from Earth. Or spent many years of R&D finding out how to make a 25nm transistor out of Hell-native minerals.

Hell probably cannot manufacture anything electrical at all. Heck, many machines in general probably cannot be made in Hell.

[GrayAnderson]

Did you not read my post above??? Hell CAN'T go into the computer business because there are slight differences in the laws of physics for how things built out of raw materials mined in Hell behave. The only way you could make computer chips in Hell is to import the silicon and copper and everything else from Earth. Or spent many years of R&D finding out how to make a 25nm transistor out of Hell-native minerals.

Hell probably cannot manufacture anything electrical at all. Heck, many machines in general probably cannot be made in Hell.

No, they can get into it, but they have compatibility issues with Earth-based stuff. Stuart specifically said that the hangup was if you tried to mix and match parts, and I believe that the problem was with the constructions of the parts differing rather than the underlying atoms. Two precision parts made on Earth will work together fine. Two parts made in Hell will work together fine. One made on Earth and one made in Hell will be a match made in Hell, if I recall rightly, due to spacetime curvature issues. But it's the manufacture, not the underlying material, where the problems arise.

[Simon_Jester]

One comment : Didn't you mention that electromagnetism doesn't quite work the same way it does in our universe compared to the universe the bubble worlds of Heaven and Hell are in? That's why a Trident can shoot a lightning bolt, and somehow will continue to work if taken to earth, yet if you made a trident on Earth exactly the same way and used a generator to charge it it doesn't work.

This same difference would explain why the mind control powers of the demons...

It might, but we haven't seen any evidence that the effect is strictly electromagnetic. We know it is characterized by low-power EM activity, and that EM shielding can block it, but that does not mean electromagnetism is the only force involved.

Portal generation seems to be more strictly electromagnetic (or are we up to the point where we can generate portals without using a nephilim yet?), but projecting specific hallucinations, even ones as basic as "I am not here," let alone "I look like this other person," suggests something a bit more exotic. Or at least the possibility of some such.

In the Salvation War, it is a simple fact that there is more to physics than the four-force Standard Model, or the whole thing couldn't happen. Let's not have too many preconceived notions about what beyond-Standard Model physics will look like, OK?

and the instant death power of Uriel work...

No. EM effects alone cannot explain Uriel. Sure, I can posit an EM signal that acts as some kind of death ray... but I cannot believe the same death effect disrupting the machinery used by the Minos Gate, and thus preventing the humans who die in Uriel attacks from appearing in Hell or Heaven.

Whatever mechanisms Uriel, demonic possession, and the Minos Gate use to do their stranger feats are natural- part of nature- not magic. But that does not mean that we can assume that every aspect of them can be described by close analogy to laws of nature that are already known ("it's electricity but it works differently") with no need to develop new theories to describe new phenomena.

Which makes me wonder...even a slight change in the laws of physics, and computers and nuclear weapons would not work right. Maybe it has to do with the SOURCE of the matter...if a machine is made from atoms from our universe, the laws of physics are the same for that machine when it is in Universe B of the bubble worlds. But it you made a nuke or a high speed computer chip with raw materials mined from Universe B, you might have to adjust your design to compensate for the differences.

The interesting bit will be when they start trying to manufacture stuff with raw materials taken from Hell. I can just see someone trying to make computer chips with copper mined from Hell and finding that none of them work.

All this has already been addressed at length in the commentary.

[rdfox2]

Actually, I did have a bit of a Fridge Logic moment with Pantheocide earlier today...

Stuart, if I might ask, how was the GLCM that took out the Incomparable Legion of Light guided? I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have a TERCOM database for it to follow, and I'd think that going pure inertial and hoping that the difference between Earth and Heaven would be the same as between Earth and Hell would be a recipe for potential disaster. (GPS is not an option, for obvious reasons!) I know that the warhead size would make it so you don't exactly need "between the uprights" accuracy like Tomahawk has in U-1, but still, I'd consider it a bit risky to let a nuke loose when you're just guessing as to its final trajectory.

Maybe radio-command guidance? Not something you'd want to use on too many weapons at once, but for a single round at a time, it's more than viable...

[Negativedark]

Something occurs to me though. A lot of serial killers and spree killers have defense if they died before the message. They can say that a Baldrick was controlling them. It was outright established that this could, and did happen. And it could be very very hard to disprove the claim. Sure you could track down some guy who shot up a school before commiting suicide, but if he starts sobbing that he didn't want to, and how horrible it was because he was bieng manipulated like a puppet, then he's got a defence that introduces reasonable doubt.

[Habeed]

Something occurs to me though. A lot of serial killers and spree killers have defense if they died before the message. They can say that a Baldrick was controlling them. It was outright established that this could, and did happen. And it could be very very hard to disprove the claim. Sure you could track down some guy who shot up a school before commiting suicide, but if he starts sobbing that he didn't want to, and how horrible it was because he was bieng manipulated like a puppet, then he's got a defence that introduces reasonable doubt.

Is that a bad thing? Would a normal person without a disease and/or demonic possession kill large numbers of people for fun?

[Night_stalker]

If they have some really F***ed up psychologial issues then yes, but otherwise he makes a valid point. However, first they have to be able to PROVE their daemonic posession.

Last I checked we really decimated the Baldrick's numbers, but the ones who seemed to be doing the possession and then making them kill lots of people were the kids who did it for laughs(Remember Domiklespharatu, the Baldrick from Chapter 82 of Armageddon?), and last I checked we didn't kill daemonic kids...

[darksoul]

So, despite "centuries of plotting" or whatever, everyone still seems to insist that Michael's plot was conceived exclusively to spare angelkind from the wrath of humanity and that he's an all-around good guy instead of a common dirty little self-aggrandizing coup leader in the grand tradition of Latin America. Are we now intended to believe that Michael gazed upon the Thirty Years War, went "holy shit, these people are only too soon to invade Heaven", and started plotting a backup plan? I somehow doubt that angels are that prescient, even given the extra juice their brain chemistry may have.

yep.
we have one more inconsistency to pile up to those things left unexplained.
Centuries ago, we weren`t enough of a worry for Michael to plot for us. We weren`t such for Elhmas to want to confuse us. So Michael was plotting since then to dethrone yahwe for his own reasons, and the human war was a very nicely timed pretext.
And Elhmas was genuinely trying to do something good for us. he just came about real hard on the means to do it....