The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Setzer]

Rule of Cool dude. Besides, Nanomachines would be harder to remove then an elastic hatbant, and less bulky then a metal plate.

[tim31]

Okay, so are we talking a foil cap under a TC-2000? Because to my line of thinking, if an enemy combatant has gotten close enough to remove your strapped helmet, or some kind of force or concussion has removed your helmet, your long term survival prospects are not very good anyway.

[JN1]

To take an obvious example, bomb disposal robots are a vastly better idea than even the best possible bomb-disposal suit. Even one with nanotech.

That reminds me that Ammunition Technicians and Ammunition Technical Officers (bomb disposal officers to you and me) in the British Army used to joke that the bomb suit they wore was just to keep their body in one, or two large pieces rather than lots of little ones if the bomb went off.
Despite the sophistication of modern bomb disposal robots like the British Army's Wheelbarrow, manual approaches are still often necessary.

Looks like Uriel's future may be on a bit of a knife edge depending on who gets to him first,

[NecronLord]

Or telekinetic subtlety. Of the Hat-removing kind.

But yeah. I'd like to see him knock a few planes out of the air and rip open APCs with "pure" sound and liquify everyone in them, or something.

Assuming he gets a chance to attack.

Which he would, because author fiat can justify anything, up to and including unknown badassery - we have no idea what the standard abilities of an archangel are, really, save that Satan could manage some kind of telekinesis.

[NecronLord]

Or, in short form, what happens if we run into Cthulhu out there?

Cthulhu really wasn't that impressive. Boat through head and all that. I'd bet on our buddy Archduke Dagon vs him any day.

First of all, I was speaking metaphorically.

Second of all, I would point out that the whole boat-through-the-head thing doesn't seem to have done much more than slow him down for some minutes; his going back to sleep appears to have been more of a "stars aren't really right" thing.

'appears to have been' - in other words, is said by butthurt fans to be? In his one canonical (and if you accept non Lovecraft authors, then there are published books that say they were all but wiped out by the Lords of Time - somehow I don't think you'd like the notion of them being casually exterminated by tedious old men in exteremly silly hats, and the hilarity that is 'Cthulhutech') appearance, he gets a boat through the head, starts regenerating, but gets sucked back down to the deep.

And even that's assuming our hypothetical Cthulhuoids don't come from a really weird bubble universe where the properties of matter are skewed enough that they don't behave like baryonic matter as we're familiar with it... which, given how much violence Hell-electricity does to Maxwell's Laws, seems horribly probable. Until now, we've dealt only with bubble universes where the inhabitants are enough like us that their weapons work on us to the same extent that our weapons and tools work on them. Since we have better tools, advantage us. That doesn't have to be inevitably true, and we might not know we'd run into the problem until it was too late to undo our mistake.

Could there be something scarier out there in the world of this story? Yes, of course, I just mentioned that. We indeed know that there is. But I wouldn't exactly be crapping myself at the prospect of meeting canon-Cthulhu out there.

[Simon_Jester]

'appears to have been' - in other words, is said by butthurt fans to be?

They say it; I think in this case they have a point.

"For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where - God in heaven! - the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form..."

Yup, sure. Nothing to worry about there; clearly ramming him upside the head with the Alert was responsible for disabling him.

[/quote]Could there be something scarier out there? Yes. But I wouldn't exactly be crapping myself at the prospect of meeting canon-Cthulhu out there.[/quote]Assuming the whole "defeated a civilization of beings with better technology and greater physical capability than ours" thing is bullshit, and that he does not in fact flow back together after a major injury the way "Call of Cthulhu" said, I agree. I'm just not sure that that is canon-Cthulhu.

[NecronLord]

'appears to have been' - in other words, is said by butthurt fans to be?

They say it; I think in this case they have a point.

"For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where - God in heaven! - the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form..."

Yup, sure. Nothing to worry about there; clearly ramming him upside the head with the Alert was responsible for disabling him.

Err, yes. It was responsible for disabling him.

Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more, for the Vigilant sailed over the spot after the April storm; but his ministers on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places. He must have been trapped by the sinking whilst within his black abyss, or else the world would by now be screaming with fright and frenzy.

Assuming the whole "defeated a civilization of beings with better technology and greater physical capability than ours" thing is bullshit, and that he does not in fact flow back together after a major injury the way "Call of Cthulhu" said, I agree. I'm just not sure that that is canon-Cthulhu.

It also doesn't help that the stuff is not very internally consistant. As for flowing back together - yeah, that's not terribly helpful, unless you can run the enemy out of ammunition to keep doing it.

As for the Elder Things, they survived just fine, despite being strictly material entities. They didn't manage to wipe out Cthulhu's spawn, and were in fact defeated, and forced to cede land - but they still held these abominations in check. In fact, the only thing that the Elder Things' wars prove is that a strictly material being can defeat these non-euclidian guys with 'curious weapons of molecular and atomic disturbances.' Oh, and the strictly material Elder Things managed to fight these guys to a standstill right after some world-shattering geological upheaval had wrecked a large number of their cities. Of course, they didn't fight Cthulhu himself, but his 'star spawn' who were presumably much more numerous and expendable. The Elder Things are, unusually for Lovecraft monstosities, somewhat sympathetic, and have motives and mentalities we can understand.

They had not been even savages-for what indeed had they done? That awful awakening in the cold of an unknown epoch - perhaps an attack by the furry, frantically barking quadrupeds, and a dazed defense against them and the equally frantic white simians with the queer wrappings and paraphernalia ... poor Lake, poor Gedney... and poor Old Ones[Elder Things]! Scientists to the last - what had they done that we would not have done in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible, just as those carven kinsmen and forbears had faced things only a little less incredible! Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star spawn - whatever they had been, they were men!

[Serafina]

If we are able to build power armor, we are also able to build sophisticated humanoid robots. Because thats what a power-armor basically is. You just need to add some more software.

And if we are able to build such robots, there is virtually no reason to build power-armor instead. Unless you have so much production capacity that it is trivial to build power-armor.

When we reach a "technology level" (for the lack of a better word), we will build combat robots instead.
Even if we do not have sufficiently advanced AIs at this time to make them combat-capable on their own, we would still deploy a couple of drones and a single human operator in power armor instead of a couple of soldiers in power armor.

The drones have various advantages to power-armored soldiers:
-They do not put human lives at risks, even if they are utterly destroyed (unlike power armor)
-They do not need any training and can be mass-produced - unlike soldiers
-They can have all kind of shapes, which allows them to fit through narrow spaces or hover.
-They do not cost a lot more than a suit of power-armor.

Their only disadvantage compared to a power-armored soldier:
-Lack of intuition. A human is way more adaptable. However, this can be solved with a human operator.
-Jamming. However, this can be solved with a close proximity operator - hence the power armor for this operator.

With technology like this, we will propably deploy small squads of power-armored soldiers with various combat drones at their disposal. Those drones will not only fulfill various tasks that are not possible for humans (such as airborne recon), but will also be the main combat unit of the squad.
Given the expense of these squads (probably more expensive than an MBT) they will be deployed to decrease loss of human life - something which the public is highly sensitive to. They are not going to be deployed for their increased combat effectivity - because you can do the same with more lowtech soldiers.

[Baughn]

Fighting demons from hell, perhaps? Just a thought.

Not when heavier weapons are a much cheaper and simpler countermeasure.

Granted. Lately, I've been starting to wonder why they don't nuke Uriel; they're risking his escape.

Also, you might want to re-check those .50cal figures for running into diamondoid. The diamondoid would shatter, granted (hopefully only in a limited area), but I'm pretty sure it'd do the same job as ceramic plating does today. Of course, that just means you need better bullets.

Ceramics are shit on their own, just like any highly brittle material. You have to wrap them in something ductile in order to create a composite of some sort which will resist fracture propagation. Hence, this will be heavy shit.

Don't take the comparison too literally. Whether material is brittle or ductile is a consequence of its molecular structure (just like.. everything else), so it should be possible to make diamondoid that's ductile en-masse yet still about as bullet-resistant as usual. In fact, that's pretty much the point; ceramic plates are, well, plates, and inconvenient to cover joints with. It might still be heavy, but I'm not going to believe it's too heavy until I see some figures. Diamond is, after all, extremely strong for its weight.

As for wrapping the soldier in armor that can get defeated.. hell, yeah. It's a heck of a lot better than not using armor, considering how expensive soldiers are.

Not when it would greatly increase the logistical support required for the soldier. Passive body armour puts very little increased load on the logistical train; the same cannot be said for hypothetical power armour.

Hold on, wasn't logistical support a non-issue with portals, now?

Hm. I don't personally believe they'd need to be all that high-maintenance or noisy, though; we aren't, and biology and nanotech are basically the same thing.

You're joking right? Biological organisms are enormously high-maintenance. We require a constant stream of highly varied nutrients and fluids in order to keep operating, literally administered every damned day. And are you now suggesting that the entire suit would be operating on nanotech? How are you supposed to move heavy .50cal-proof plates of armour around with micro-scale motors?

Using lots of micro-scale motors, to be exact. Don't even start on that one; finding a way to make multiple motors cooperate was done a very long time ago, and many motor designs achieve higher power-density as they get smaller. Power supply is harder, but natural gas would work; we have functional micro-turbines today.

Also.. yes? I was always assuming the entire suit would be operating on nanotech. Not much point in not doing it, assuming that it's also being built by nanofactories. The advantages, like atomically perfect seals, are too large to overlook.

Though I suppose now you'll be saying something about how nanofactories wouldn't work to build one, much less in one piece. Sorry, but I'm not going to believe that; much more knowledgeable people than me think they would, so you'd need to figure out something they haven't.

"Highly varied nutrients and fluids" doesn't apply, and you know it. Electricity covers most of the energy requirements (it might also need natural gas, depending), while the durability of these structures is high enough that it won't need much in the way of repair unless it actually absorbs damage, in which case, you can switch it out via a portal and repair in some specialized workshop somewhere.

It occurs to me, of late, man-portable amounts of armor are mostly only useful for stopping incidental damage; if you get the main gun of a tank targeted on you, you're dead, no questions asked. The Pantheocide universe has conveniently provided opponents whose offensive abilities may not be on par with our defensive ones, however; why not take advantage of it?

Because a Hummer with a .50cal gun on it is a far more effective demon-stopper for the money than a guy wearing some imaginary wanktech power armour that doesn't exist?

Unless you have to enter a building. For battlefields that can actually fit a hummer (or a tank), power armor is a no-starter. For a medieval-ish city with tiny, meandering streets?

[Baughn]

..how did this even get derailed into a discussion of "power armor"? Because that's a staple of SF, and therefore outrageous? It was hardly the only thing I suggested.

I'll state this right now, then: I don't believe power armor would ever be a factor in actual warfare, because AI-controlled drone swarms appear to offer far more bang for the buck. The controllers might use it, or they might be a thousand miles away, but either way it won't be a major factor.

I don't imagine that would work for a story - AI-controlled swarms do not make good protagonists, though I did enjoy Von Neumann's War - but I can't see humans staying very important in warfare (except as generals) forever, armor or no armor.

[Ilya Muromets]

Fighting demons from hell, perhaps? Just a thought.

Not when heavier weapons are a much cheaper and simpler countermeasure.

Granted. Lately, I've been starting to wonder why they don't nuke Uriel; they're risking his escape.

Well, from what I gather, Uriel did crash close to an inhabited area. Not a place you wanna set off nukes in, even if relative low-yield tactical nukes.

Not to mention how nukes are seen by the majority of the public. Sure, they're at war with heaven and Uriel is essentially a one-manangel WMD, but even to this day nukes and radiation are seen as something almost arcane and evil by many. Even if Uriel was not near an inhabited area, there'd be all sorts of groups in the US throwing conniptions fits at why a nuke was set off in America by US military forces.

EDIT: And, well, really nukes would just be overkill. Sure Uriel can take an insane amount of damage, but he can be harmed and killed by heavier conventional weapons. Conventional weapons are relatively cheaper and simpler and don't carry the "explain yourself!" baggage nukes would.

[Baughn]

I got the impression that it was a fairly small town. They could evacuate it..

Oh, but point taken. Though I still feel they're taking an awful risk.

[Ilya Muromets]

I got the impression that it was a fairly small town. They could evacuate it..

Oh, but point taken. Though I still feel they're taking an awful risk.

Small town or not, evacuating people is not quite that easy or fast. And the time spent evacuating is more time for Uriel to crawl away and heal.

[Baughn]

It occurs to me..

Currently, if you die, not all that much changes. Well, you do end up in hell, where there aren't many modern conveniences; but at least you won't be tortured forever or be lost to oblivion.

As such, shouldn't the public attitude to being blown up for the greater good have changed, at least a little?

[Ilya Muromets]

Death may not be as scary and final anymore, but I hardly think people would still shrug off getting killed, let alone getting nuked. It's just not realistic considering that the fear of death has been a HUGE part of human thinking for centuries. That's not gonna disappear overnight.

Also, once you die, you can't go back to Earth any more, at least not for too long. Currently, while Hell may have budding civilizations and good living areas and whatnot (if you can afford it), it's still a far cry from good ol' Earth with all of the conveniences many people have grown accustomed to. That, and Hell is still a frankly ugly place to beautiful Earth, and I don't think people'd appreciate leaving it sooner that they have to.

[Baughn]

This is true. I'm hoping it might at least deal with the frankly irrational fear of nuclear reactors; we do not want to start importing oil from hell.

Still.. no, they wouldn't be happy to be blown up, but if it's for the sake of taking out Uriel... besides, a tactical nuke exploding off in the hills somewhere probably would not do all that much damage to a city that's miles off, unless they're unlucky enough that the hills channel the blast that way.

Oh, I think I fully agree that they probably wouldn't use nukes, but I can't bring myself to see it as a completely one-sided argument.

[Ilya Muromets]

There's still the environmental issue of radioactive fallout. It would not be easy to clean radioactive material away from a wooded area with all of those little nooks and crannies radioactive material can get into. Not to mention possible streams that could siphon said material away. There's also wind which could blow material into the town.

Either of those is tantamount to political suicide from the massive outcry those would entail, and the people in control of the nuclear arsenal are politicians.

On a more practical side, nukes are relatively more expensive. Even smaller tac nukes. You wouldn't want to waste 'em for a target small and already injured enough to be taken out by cheaper conventional means. That, and nukes are humanity's ace-in-the-hole. You don't wanna use them on something already almost beaten, you use them on a possible bigger, badder future threat. And with the appearance of one of the beasts, humanity probably has some idea of how potentially bigger and badder possible new enemies might be.

[declan]

.. yes? I was always assuming the entire suit would be operating on nanotech. Not much point in not doing it, assuming that it's also being built by nanofactories.

The closest that your going to get to a powered exo suit , is the loader that Ripley used in Aliens. We dont have a power source that would walk , jump and all the normal good stuff thats come to be associated with exosuits, maintain a decent range of operations and operate the sensor suite that would have to accompany it.

You have to stay with chemically powered weapons, anything else will dig into your power budget. Now add life support for the trooper, food and water , waste recycling, possibly even air if your thinking of one of those harsh atmospheres.

You would be better off to breed low sentience demons with a stomach or something large enough to carry a human in a pod, rather than go with a mech that we wont have the technology for at least a century.

Declan

[Baughn]

The difficulties in constructing micro-scale power supplies are greatly overrated.

I mentioned them earlier, but take a look at http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/17815 for a gas turbine design that would fit in small devices; I trust you'll agree that natural gas has sufficient energy density for our purposes?

[Stuart]

I think the discussion about Nanotech is a waste of time. Stuart has established time and time again that the world is stretched thin trying to mass produce the weapons we have now, weapons we already know how to make. Why would we bother with nanotechnology armaments unless we were desperately flailing about trying to find a technological silver bullet like the war Third Reich? We'd have to research it, fine tune the technology, mass produce it, ship it to the various warzones, train everyone in its use, and what exactly would powered armor do in this war? Why build it when existing weapons are so effective the enemy nearly wets their wings just thinking about them. Nanotechnology is not anywhere near as useful to the war effort as portal research and nephilim sensitives are. Unless DIMON has some incredible discovery that offers a better way of invading heaven using nanites, I really can't see any massive government research project being done until after the war is over.

As Mike said, well put. To reinforce the point, I'll quote the Iron Law of Mobilization. "You build what you've got." One can tweak it, improve it, mess around with it but one keeps building in. Look at WW2. In the UK, the standard front-line fighter of 1939 was the Spitfire; by 1945, the standard front-line fighter was the - Spitfire. Much improved but basically the same aircraft (before anybody mentions the Hurricane, the last production Hurricane left the Hawker factory in November 1944). The German standard front-line fighter in 1939 was the Me-109; in 1945 it was still the Me-109 (before anybody mentions the FW-190, that predates 1939 as well). The U.S. mass-produced Cleveland class cruisers, not because it was a good design, it wasn't. But it was the one in production and could be mass produced right away. Same goes for the Essex class carrier and the Fletcher/Sumner/Gearing destroyer family. One doesn't hang around waiting for the better solution, one builds what one has and then makes the best of it.

In the Salvation War, the need to mobilize has had the same effect. The F-35 has been cancelled and replaced by mass-produced F-22s. DDG-1000 and LCS have been cancelled and replaced by Arleigh Burkes. CVN-78 bears much more resemblance to CVN-77 than to the planned Ford class. F-15s, F-16s and F-18s are being poured off the lines as fast as they can be built. In the UK, CV(F) died because it can't be built fast enough.

Implicit in all of this is that R&D hasd been hit very hard. Not stopped, but fundamentally reorientated. It's now directed to immediate objectives; finding out about Universe-Two and how it works, finding out about Portals and how they work. Comparing the rules of physics in Universe-Two with those in Universe-One and trying to work out how they differ and why. Trying to compensate for the fact that Universe-Two is non-Euclidean. Working out better ways to kill the inhabitants of Universe-Two quickly and efficiently. Far-field, non-immeditaely useful projects like Nanotechnology will be put in cold storage. Scene for you.

Nanotech research laboratory

"But you can't shut us down! We're working on. . . . . . ." The scientist rolled his eyes. "Nanotechnology!"

"We just have. You're . . . . . . . ." General Schatten rolled his eyes in a derisive copy of the scientist's gesture. "Unemployed"

Contrary to mythology wars aren't good for basic science. They're very good for applied science but lousy for basic research. Forgetting that fact cost Germany WW2 (along with simultaneously taking on the US economy and the Russian Army but that's another story)

[Stuart]

To take an obvious example, bomb disposal robots are a vastly better idea than even the best possible bomb-disposal suit. Even one with nanotech.

That reminds me that Ammunition Technicians and Ammunition Technical Officers (bomb disposal officers to you and me) in the British Army used to joke that the bomb suit they wore was just to keep their body in one, or two large pieces rather than lots of little ones if the bomb went off. Despite the sophistication of modern bomb disposal robots like the British Army's Wheelbarrow, manual approaches are still often necessary.

The bomb suit is actually quite useful from two points of view. One is that most terrorist bombs are made of really crappy explosives. If they go off, there's a good chance that only a portion of the explosives will go bang and that said explosives will go off with a low-order detonation only. Under those circumstances, a bomb suit will actually protect the wearer quite well. The other one (usually left unsaid) is that any bomb powerful enough to overcome the protection offered by the suit will kill the wearer outright. So, the bomb suit creates a binary solution - live unharmed or by killed outright. Without the bomb suit, its a trinary solution, be killed outright, live unharmed, or live with large numbers of bits of anatomy blown away - including legs, arms, genitals etc. Bomb blasts tend to remove peripherals like those but can leave the trunk alive. Most people don't like that idea. In WW2 experienced bomb disposal men used to sit on the bomb they were attempting to defuse to try and make sure they faced only the binary solution case

[Baughn]

Well, yeah. I wasn't implying they might be working on it now. That's us; a manhattan project is only necessary if.. hm. Why did they start the manhattan project, anyway? The USA basically had Japan beat.

But, Stuart - please, please tell me you aren't planning to have them go off half-assed, searching the universe for enemies instead of building up. A few decades is nothing on the time-scale most of these civilizations think, but it'd be everything for us.

[tim31]

Production question, Stuart. In another alt-hist series that sees near future military assets transported back to early 1942, by late 1942 Canada, the UK, and Australia are gearing up to adopt stamped metal copies of the Kalashnikov chambered in .303, and by 1944 American infantry have reequipped with a fascimilie of the M4, using the benefit of hind/foresight. How likely is this to happen? In the same book trilogy it explicitly mentions that the Sherman was retained(with modification) rather than moving up to the Patton simply because the line was already rolling. How realistic is all of this?

[Ilya Muromets]

The USA basically had Japan beat.

Not quite. The use of the nukes on Japan actually made logistical sense since, IIRC, all of the projections of a full-scale invasion on the Japanese Home Islands to force their surrender through conventional means would've taken months and would've been insanely costly in men and materiel. According to that History channel documentary on the subject (the title I can't remember), a conventional invasion would've made Okinawa and Iwo Jima combined look tame.

[Baughn]

Surely they would have surrendered before it came to that?