Armageddon???? (Part Fifty Up)

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2008-03-26 01:17pm

We haven't had the several years of mass media telling us how bad they are yet. I dont think the populace has given it much thought.

If we see some atrocities and it gets some publicity, ground troops might start returning the favor. I, personally, think the angels will feel the bite first.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-03-26 01:20pm

Enforcer Talen wrote:We haven't had the several years of mass media telling us how bad they are yet.

Uhhh ... dude, we've had centuries of media telling us how bad they are.

Zed Snardbody · Post by **Zed Snardbody** » 2008-03-26 01:26pm

we're tainted by the story. Imagine that you're a person. A few weeks ago, you learned, god is real, heaven is closed, you're doomed to eternal torment, everyone you loved is being tortured, and the armies of a very real hell are coming for us and demons can and will appear where ever they please.

I think we're in new pants territory.

Most of us are going to panic, think things in Iraq are going to well and freak out about what they're not telling us.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-03-26 01:31pm

Darth Wong wrote:To be honest, I find it hard to believe that with the stakes this high, nobody has tried torturing baldricks for information.

Well, so far, they seem to be quite cooperative and forthcoming; I think experimenting on them is more likely.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-03-26 01:33pm

NecronLord wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:To be honest, I find it hard to believe that with the stakes this high, nobody has tried torturing baldricks for information.
Well, so far, they seem to be quite cooperative and forthcoming; I think experimenting on them is more likely.

That's a good point. And it's entirely possible that one or two of them was quietly taken away for experiments. It's not as if the others need to know. I wasn't saying that they would torture or mistreat all of them; that would be silly. But they have more than enough captives to quietly waste a few of them.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-03-26 01:35pm

Doubtless they're cooperating because hideous things normally happen to captured soldiers (and populations) where they come from. They already fear torment, there's not much reason to do it...

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-03-26 01:36pm

NecronLord wrote:Doubtless they're cooperating because hideous things normally happen to captured soldiers (and populations) where they come from. They already fear torment, there's not much reason to do it...

True, but they already seem to be getting pretty cocky about their captors.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-03-26 01:39pm

Y'know, I am wondering what a cattle prod would do to them...

Stuart · Post by **Stuart** » 2008-03-26 01:41pm

Darth Wong wrote:To be honest, I find it hard to believe that with the stakes this high, nobody has tried torturing baldricks for information. They already do it with Iraqis over a trumped-up threat; is it believable that they wouldn't do it when all of humanity is actually under attack by Hell itself? What about performing experiments to see how various weapons systems work on them?

The reasons are many and varied. One is that, so far, the Army et al are keeping things to themselves and keeping the grubby hands of the CIA out of it. However, there are additional ones.

One is that in order for estreme measures of interrogation to be used, one has to know which questions to ask. One also has to have a very good basis of information on which to evaluate the answers. Usually in such operations one already knows the answer to eight or nine questions of the ten that are asked - that way one can use the answers to the questions already known to determine the reliability of the answer to the one or two we didn't know.

A severely practical answer is at the moment, nobody knows how to torture a demon. It's pretty pointless using enhanced interrogation methods if the subject is enjoying the experience. A different cut on the same issue is one has to understand the culture the victims come from in order to determine the efficiency of the systems used.

That leads us to another problem, enhanced interrogation is a means of getting hard information; how many tanks? how many guns? where and when will the next attack come? The information humans need here is soft, social information. How does hell work? how is it organized. Taken to its ultimate extreme one would hardly waterboard somebody to find the answer to the question "what would you like for breakfast?" (oh boy is there a comedy sketch there).

The comparison with the WoT isn't really on point because we know and understand a lot of the background the terrorists come from. We know what questions to ask and how to evaluate the answers. In Armageddon, the ultimate answer to your question is that the prisoners aren't being tortured because (a) we don't know how to and (b) we don't know what questions to ask.

As a final practical point, until very recently, we had only one demonic prisoner who was (apparently) being as helpful as she could. Even now we have only a handful, only one of whom is likely to have any useful information and he's much too important to be hurt.

Stuart · Post by **Stuart** » 2008-03-26 01:43pm

NecronLord wrote:Y'know, I am wondering what a cattle prod would do to them...

Probably be a form of medical treatment. Remember these creatures biogenerate and direct electrical charges that make an electric eel look positively feeble. If they did notice a cattle prod (which isn't likely) it would be just another charge (electrical) they are built to handle.

See what I mean about not knowing how to torture them?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-03-26 01:44pm

That makes sense, and I certainly wouldn't have advocated torturing or experimenting on Abigor himself. It just seems to me that at the very least, you'd want to run some tests on a couple of unimportant low-ranking baldricks whose mates assume they're already dead anyway. Just grab a couple of them and take them to a testing facility somewhere without putting them in lockup with the others, so no one's the wiser.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2008-03-26 01:45pm

It seems to me like we might see the more classic WWII war criminal interrogations, where an intelligence officer would sit and play chess with a german general and just 'talk' to get information. We need to know EVERYTHING about them, and that sort of info comes more easily on friendly terms.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-03-26 01:50pm

CaptainChewbacca wrote:It seems to me like we might see the more classic WWII war criminal interrogations, where an intelligence officer would sit and play chess with a german general and just 'talk' to get information. We need to know EVERYTHING about them, and that sort of info comes more easily on friendly terms.

True. But other kinds of information (like whether a baldrick will drown if you shove his head underwater) seems like they would be easier to obtain through direct testing. Same goes for the electric shock thing. Maybe mild electric shocks don't hurt them, but then again, sufficiently powerful electric shock can blow holes through steel and would undoubtedly hurt them, so you'd want to know the threshold.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-03-26 01:51pm

Stuart wrote:Probably be a form of medical treatment. Remember these creatures biogenerate and direct electrical charges that make an electric eel look positively feeble. If they did notice a cattle prod (which isn't likely) it would be just another charge (electrical) they are built to handle.

So then, do their shock abilities have much use in inter-demon warfare, or is their ability to handle elecrical discharge far inferior to their ability to generate it?

Similarly, if they're like elecrical eels, there's a probability that they'd be highly dangerous for eight or nine hours after their death. It would be ironic if more casualties were caused by humans being elecrocuted while clearing away the bodies than during the battle...

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-03-26 01:54pm

What happens if you subject an electric eel to electroshock? Does the fact that they generate electricity really make much difference to their reaction to externally applied electroshock?

Darmalus · Post by **Darmalus** » 2008-03-26 01:55pm

NecronLord wrote:
Stuart wrote:Probably be a form of medical treatment. Remember these creatures biogenerate and direct electrical charges that make an electric eel look positively feeble. If they did notice a cattle prod (which isn't likely) it would be just another charge (electrical) they are built to handle.
So then, do their shock abilities have much use in inter-demon warfare, or is their ability to handle elecrical discharge far inferior to their ability to generate it?

I imagine thats is why they developed their tridents. They might need them in order to build up their natural electrical charge to lethal levels.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-03-26 02:11pm

Darth Wong wrote:What happens if you subject an electric eel to electroshock? Does the fact that they generate electricity really make much difference to their reaction to externally applied electroshock?

I honestly have no idea. I had a look around to look for information, but nothing immediately shows up. I would imagine they have to be resistant to their own shocks, it may be that they're simply so conductive that such things don't harm them. Obviously, there'd be a threshold, though.

On the other hand, the Baldricks appear to only have part of their bodies (big cells on the back, wasn't it?) containing generator cells, though their arms must as well; what about their chests, legs, groin, and head? These would presumably be much more human in structure, and thus, one would assume, not conductive in the same way.

I wonder; fighting in deep water might be problematic to the baldricks attempting to use their tridents, simply by bypassing whatever insulation their bodies include.

Buddha · Post by **Buddha** » 2008-03-26 02:11pm

This is a very large fanfic and I haven't even gotten to the most recent chapter yet. I did read enough though to know that in some way Heaven has been closed off to humans and that all go to hell prior to the Message. One thing does kind of not make sense about that, I mean think about it. Another thing, are the Boddhisattvas still around and helping humans? By that I mean Guan Yin, Dizang, et cetra? If Dizang is there, he will be pissed with Hell overflowing and more people to save and his eventual attainment of Nirvana so far away. Finally, Hell would only be for a little while as the people work off their bad karma. In a way they would eventually get out, but only after a long time. All in all, a great story and hopefully it gets better.

Cecelia5578 · Post by **Cecelia5578** » 2008-03-26 02:16pm

Buddha wrote:This is a very large fanfic and I haven't even gotten to the most recent chapter yet. I did read enough though to know that in some way Heaven has been closed off to humans and that all go to hell prior to the Message. One thing does kind of not make sense about that, I mean think about it. Another thing, are the Boddhisattvas still around and helping humans? By that I mean Guan Yin, Dizang, et cetra? If Dizang is there, he will be pissed with Hell overflowing and more people to save and his eventual attainment of Nirvana so far away. Finally, Hell would only be for a little while as the people work off their bad karma. In a way they would eventually get out, but only after a long time. All in all, a great story and hopefully it gets better.

Its sorta up in the air right now as to how non-Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions figure into this. We'll probably have to wait for Stuart to fill in the gaps.

Ma Deuce · Post by **Ma Deuce** » 2008-03-26 02:23pm

Darth Wong wrote: It just seems to me that at the very least, you'd want to run some tests on a couple of unimportant low-ranking baldricks whose mates assume they're already dead anyway. Just grab a couple of them and take them to a testing facility somewhere without putting them in lockup with the others, so no one's the wiser.

I imagine that might still happen, possibly even without major repercussions: After all, Abighor seemed willing to "volunteer" some of his subordinates for experimentation.

Another completely unrelated issue I was wondering about the equipment used in hell, and what prolonged exposure to airborne sulfur (not to mention other noxious substances) would do to them. Obviously it's there in sufficient quantities to make things very unpleasant for the lungs of still-alive humans. Even in our world, AR15s and some similar assault rifles are sensitive to dust fowling, so I wonder if that's going to become a major issue for our hell-bound geurillas (on the other hand, even if it is an issue, they could probably swap out fouled equipment during the regular supply drops).

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2008-03-26 02:26pm

NecronLord wrote:So then, do their shock abilities have much use in inter-demon warfare

Some, but it isn't one-shot one-kill like it is on humans. The upcoming segment I wrote references this.

Darth Wong wrote:Don't you mean "Microwave Heating"? Anyway, I don't see how microwave heating would explain the baldricks' telepathy.

No, I meant microwave hearing. However this effect apparently relies on the small scale effects of microwave heating. I didn't quote the document because it's a scanned printed document that doesn't seem to have been OCRed. However just for you I'll retype a segment;

Microwave hearing is a phenomenon, described by human observers, as the sensations of buzzing, ticking, hissing, or knocking sounds that originate within or immediately behind the head. There is no sound propagating through the air like nomal sound. This technology in its crudest form could be used to distrac individuals: refined, it could also be used to communicate with hostage or hostage takers directly by Morse code or other messagse systems, possibly even by voice communication.

This technology makes use of a phenomenon first described in the literature over 30 years ago. Different types of sounds were heard depending on the particulars of the pulse characteristics. Various experiments wer performed on humans and laboratory animals exploring the origin of this phenomenon. At this time, virtually all investigators who have studied the phenomenon now accept thermoelastic expansion of the brain, the pressure wave of which is received and processed by the cochlear microphonic system, to be the mechanism of acoustic perception of short pulses of RF energy. One study (in 1975) using human volunteers, identified the threshold energy of microwave-auditory responses in humans as a function of pulse width for 2450M Hz radio frequency energy. It was also found that about 40 J/cm2 incident energy density per pulse was required.

In principle this would be a good explanation of the 'voices in the head' phenomenon, which would otherwise be far harder to explain than the 'detect what people are thinking' phenomenon (technologically, detecting the localised electrical fields produced by neurons firing is far easier than coercing specific neurons to fire with an externally applied electric field). However for the purposes of the story it'll probably be 'some kind of photon-mediated remote quantum entanglement' and left at that.

The Vortex Empire · Post by **The Vortex Empire** » 2008-03-26 03:23pm

Darth Wong wrote:What happens if you subject an electric eel to electroshock? Does the fact that they generate electricity really make much difference to their reaction to externally applied electroshock?

I seem to recall that Electric Eels harm themselves when they generate a charge, and are visibly in pain. Shouldn't a Baldrick do the same thing?

Sidewinder · Post by **Sidewinder** » 2008-03-26 03:24pm

The latest chapter has me wondering: what is the demonic equivalent of the words FUBAR and SNAFU? I imagine the demons will be saying those words a lot in the near future.

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2008-03-26 03:39pm

The Vortex Empire wrote:I seem to recall that Electric Eels harm themselves when they generate a charge, and are visibly in pain. Shouldn't a Baldrick do the same thing?

Perhaps they're laced with organic hyperconductors. Which are chemically quite feasible, but probably lack an incremental path to make them accessible to evolution (ionic conduction was very easy by comparison).

Edward Yee · Post by **Edward Yee** » 2008-03-26 03:41pm

Sidewinder wrote:The latest chapter has me wondering: what is the demonic equivalent of the words FUBAR and SNAFU? I imagine the demons will be saying those words a lot in the near future.

Do they exactly have the concept yet?

But I do agree with the discussion against torture of the demons, even if it's just for scientific purposes -- after all, Abigor so "kindly" offered them up anyway.