The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Simon_Jester]

Re: Michael's private stash of liquor

He's so big he'd have to drink the stuff by the pint just to get tipsy, though. I wouldn't be at all surprised if even for his own personal supply he has to compromise on quality to get volume at a sane cost.

[Jamesfirecat]

He's so big he'd have to drink the stuff by the pint just to get tipsy, though. I wouldn't be at all surprised if even for his own personal supply he has to compromise on quality to get volume at a sane cost.

I think you should bear in mind that from much of what we've seen of it, while Heaven might seem to be one big gigantic shanty town, but its one where most of the major buildings are made of precious gems instead of bricks and concrete. This doesn't do the occupants any good since nobody is going to pay for what is already out there in large quantities (not to mention Heaven doesn't seem to have much of an open market of products to buy for that matter) but still I think Micheal has access to what amounts to a very very large fortune of expensive gems...

[Simon_Jester]

There's also a quantity issue: there's only so much "finest of the fine" whiskey on the market, and if they're charging thousands of dollars a bottle I doubt there are more than a few tens of thousands of bottles of the stuff in the world. Michael isn't buying up 10% or 20% of the overall stock, either; that kind of thing would get noticeable.

He may have the money to pay for the very best in the quantities he'd like, but if he wants to lay in any kind of truly large stockpile (enough to do more than celebrate a few special occasions), he's going to have to trade off to get the quantity he needs.

[Panaka]

Johhny Walker red and black label for the masses. That stuff is mass production anyway.
Keep the good single malts and blends for the enthousiasts and the realy good stuff for special occasions.

Of course the 42 year old Bowmore would be reseved for the "I am now the undisputed ruler of heaven, and I'm not sharing the bottle" party. The rest of the time it would be behind a steel reinforced locked door.

[Jamesfirecat]

One other possibility when it comes to Micheal's drinking habbits is that he can affoard to play the long game in a way that we humans can't. Maybe he just buys some of everything every year and so as it ages he's bound to find that he's now the proud owner of some impressive vintages.

It's a shotgun approach to winding up with fine wines, but when you've got a castle made out of diamonds and live forever it might seem like a reasonable approach...

[hongi]

I fail to see how this is does not make him a foe of scientific rationalism.

What makes him a foe of scientific rationalism in your view?

[Pelranius]

Michael could be buying from liquor distributors instead of the distillers themselves.

You'd think he'd learn to start making some of the stuff himself now.

I wonder how hard it would be for the doctors to start messing with Michael (though it might violate the Hippocratic Oath).

Couldn't the British bomber command just settle for modified C-17s?

[TimothyC]

Couldn't the British bomber command just settle for modified C-17s?

I'd guess that they are even further out than the Lancer B.1. I'd also imagine that a whole lot of C-17s in the pipeline might be built as KC-17s.

[Shroom Man 777]

If Micheal was also in charge of indoctrinating young impressionable dead humans who went to Heaven, that might explain why he's so experienced and so cool with humans in the first place. He would've been the angel who had most exposure to them, even before he went rogue after seeing the Renaissance or something, and maybe even before his mutiny, those centuries or millennia of him de-educating humans made him develop soft fuzzy-wuzzy feelings for 'em.

Of course, when the human population started growing, Micheal could've delegated the job of indoctrinating young dead humans to other angels - who would come to form his clique of like-minded assholes. Or maybe when Yah-yah decided to stop taking humans into Heaven, yeah, that might've been another formative experience.

[Count Chocula]

Couldn't the British bomber command just settle for modified C-17s?

Sure, as an idea. Then, of course, there's the whole "where would you put the bomb bay doors, and the bomb racks, and oh yeah we need to but a bomb-drop-capable radar in this thing, and we need a MIL-STD data bus run into the fuselage to load target data to the bombs and tell them when to drop, oh don't forget about the electrical requirements. Gee, is the C-17 GPS nav capable of loading coordinates into a JDAM? Don't forget a SNIPR pod, most of our smart bombs are laser guided don'tcha know, and need the target lased before and during the drop. Oh shit, can we just drop a BUFF's nav/attack system in this thing? No, you say, all the B-52Hs are already being used and the boneyard BUFFs are being recommissioned too? Goddamn, this is a pain in the ass. How about we just slap some pylons on the wings, and run control and power leads to them? What's that? We'll have to reinforce the main spars, and do wind tunnel testing, and still have to put all that electronics in the plane to drop mebbe 20,000lb of pylon attached bombs, which is like 1/3 a BUFF's load? And what about the main landing gear that's on the fuselage, and how do we reinforce the fuselage to account for the gaping holes of the bomb bay doors, and what kind of bomb racks do we use, and do we need to add lateral bracing to the fuselage, and by the way do we need in-flight refueling capacity? and, a little aside, how long will it take to make all these mods? Then train the pilots and bombardiers?" issue.

Unless you're talking about deploying bombs out the aft loading ramp a la the C-130/MOAB, converting a cargo ship to a bomber role is tantamount to designing a whole new airframe. You'd be better off putting those people and material into a production line to turn out more B-1Cs.

[Pelranius]

Couldn't the British bomber command just settle for modified C-17s?

Sure, as an idea. Then, of course, there's the whole "where would you put the bomb bay doors, and the bomb racks, and oh yeah we need to but a bomb-drop-capable radar in this thing, and we need a MIL-STD data bus run into the fuselage to load target data to the bombs and tell them when to drop, oh don't forget about the electrical requirements. Gee, is the C-17 GPS nav capable of loading coordinates into a JDAM? Don't forget a SNIPR pod, most of our smart bombs are laser guided don'tcha know, and need the target lased before and during the drop. Oh shit, can we just drop a BUFF's nav/attack system in this thing? No, you say, all the B-52Hs are already being used and the boneyard BUFFs are being recommissioned too? Goddamn, this is a pain in the ass. How about we just slap some pylons on the wings, and run control and power leads to them? What's that? We'll have to reinforce the main spars, and do wind tunnel testing, and still have to put all that electronics in the plane to drop mebbe 20,000lb of pylon attached bombs, which is like 1/3 a BUFF's load? And what about the main landing gear that's on the fuselage, and how do we reinforce the fuselage to account for the gaping holes of the bomb bay doors, and what kind of bomb racks do we use, and do we need to add lateral bracing to the fuselage, and by the way do we need in-flight refueling capacity? and, a little aside, how long will it take to make all these mods? Then train the pilots and bombardiers?" issue.

Unless you're talking about deploying bombs out the aft loading ramp a la the C-130/MOAB, converting a cargo ship to a bomber role is tantamount to designing a whole new airframe. You'd be better off putting those people and material into a production line to turn out more B-1Cs.

Well, I was just thinking about the B-3 that Stuart mentioned, which was a modified B-3.

[Simon_Jester]

I fail to see how this is does not make him a foe of scientific rationalism.

What makes him a foe of scientific rationalism in your view?

He argued directly against the only major school of rationalists to be found in the classical Muslim world, with considerable success, and helped shift the focus of Muslim intellectuals away from trying to reason out truths about the world towards trying to figure out the truths about the world by looking them up in a collection of ancient books. This was probably not his intention, but he wound up doing it anyway.

There are many, many people more to blame for the sorry state of the lands of Islam and the loss of what they could have contributed to world civilization if they hadn't ended up the way they did. But al-Ghazali is on my personal list of "people the world would have been better off without."

I wonder how hard it would be for the doctors to start messing with Michael (though it might violate the Hippocratic Oath).

They need his protection; if he decides that he'd be better off without them he can just throw them out onto the street (or rip them apart with his bare hands if he's mad enough). Also, Michael is smart, and it would be difficult for doctors to manipulate him the way that, say, Dr. Morrell manipulated Hitler.

Re: Converted transport planes as bombers
I suspect you could do it if you really wanted to, but it would be more trouble than it's likely to be worth for the reasons Chocula describes. You'd be using so much in the way of specialized resources and personnel that you'd be better off putting all that effort into speeding up production of existing bombers.

[Pelranius]

I wonder how hard it would be for the doctors to start messing with Michael (though it might violate the Hippocratic Oath).

They need his protection; if he decides that he'd be better off without them he can just throw them out onto the street (or rip them apart with his bare hands if he's mad enough). Also, Michael is smart, and it would be difficult for doctors to manipulate him the way that, say, Dr. Morrell manipulated Hitler.

Re: Converted transport planes as bombers
I suspect you could do it if you really wanted to, but it would be more trouble than it's likely to be worth for the reasons Chocula describes. You'd be using so much in the way of specialized resources and personnel that you'd be better off putting all that effort into speeding up production of existing bombers.

For messing with Michael, you don't necessarily need to poison him or something. They could convince him to start behaving erratically (I don't think Michael really understands biology anymore than he does with electronics). That would probably only happen once things get really pear shaped for Heaven.

Yeah, the only reason I thought of the converted C-17s was because I think Stuart mentioned a while back (or I might be imagining things again).

[dragon]

Nice update.

[Simon_Jester]

For messing with Michael, you don't necessarily need to poison him or something. They could convince him to start behaving erratically (I don't think Michael really understands biology anymore than he does with electronics). That would probably only happen once things get really pear shaped for Heaven.

How do you see that working?

Yeah, the only reason I thought of the converted C-17s was because I think Stuart mentioned a while back (or I might be imagining things again).

The idea isn't completely psychotic. It just doesn't make much sense unless you have time to design your "C(B)-17" years in advance and set up the tools to to the conversions with.

[TimothyC]

The way I understand it the B-3 takes the wings and tail of a C-17, and mates them to a new (as of yet undesigned) fuselage. The resulting aircraft would be a conventional bomb truck, and would replace the B-52 in that role.

[Jeremy]

So Humans starting from the Cro-magnon like races populate the depths of Hell and Heaven. What distinguishes post Cro-Magnon on from the other races and subspecies of Humans that populated the Middle Pleistocene and early half of the Upper Pleistocene?

If I recall correctly, Humans and our supernatural foes share a common ancestor 50 million years ago and are about 0.5% genetically similar. Chimpanzees and Humans share a common ancestor 5 or 7 million years ago and are about 2% genetically similar. 50 million years ago Bats, Primates, and Rodents were becoming differentiated from one another.

Suspension of disbelief?

[Baughn]

Although it has never been stated outright, in my opinion it's already well established that the entire reincarnation system is artificial.

The difference between those who got reincarnated and those who didn't, is that the latter hadn't been noticed by the gods yet.

[Jeremy]

Re:

So Humans starting from the Cro-magnon like races populate the depths of Hell and Heaven. What distinguishes post Cro-Magnon on from the other races and subspecies of Humans that populated the Middle Pleistocene and early half of the Upper Pleistocene?

Are Archaic Humans covered by the "earlier races" quote below or does that reference someone else entierely (like the Orcs of Hell)?

Once again, he back-winged neatly and landed on the ledge, this one of a temple devoted to Yahweh. Who else Michael-Lan thought with a certain level of scorn. Yah-yah never grew tired of people worshiping him. Still, he'd found a whole new planet full of primitive sentients he could convert into a new cult. Had things gone the way they had before, the discarded humans would have been condemned to Hell, there to disappear slowly, just as they themselves had replaced the ones who had gone before them. Michael-Lan wondered if, somewhere tucked deep in the bowels of Hell, there were still survivors of those earlier races.

[hongi]

I'll bow out now because I think I'm way off-topic, but I have to object to this:

He argued directly against the only major school of rationalists to be found in the classical Muslim world, with considerable success, and helped shift the focus of Muslim intellectuals away from trying to reason out truths about the world towards trying to figure out the truths about the world by looking them up in a collection of ancient books. This was probably not his intention, but he wound up doing it anyway.

That's ironic. The Mutazilites were just as heavily indebted to 'a collection of ancient books' e.g. Aristotle.

The Mutazilites were rationalists, but so were the Asharites...to a different degree. Yes, al-Ghazali argued against the Mutazilites (it's doubly ironic that their debates were basically about Islamic theology e.g. did God create the universe [the Asharite position] or was it eternal [the Mutazilites]). He criticised philosophers like Avicenna on their faults, but he used their methods to do it. He didn't say 'but the Qur'an rules this! Heretics, accept it or burn!'.

[Darth Wong]

I wonder how hard it would be for the doctors to start messing with Michael (though it might violate the Hippocratic Oath).

They need his protection; if he decides that he'd be better off without them he can just throw them out onto the street (or rip them apart with his bare hands if he's mad enough). Also, Michael is smart, and it would be difficult for doctors to manipulate him the way that, say, Dr. Morrell manipulated Hitler.

Michael's not necessarily that smart. He's clever, but that doesn't mean he can necessarily anticipate everything a human might try to do to him. The biggest reason why this wouldn't work is Michael's durability, not his intelligence. Simply put, when he isn't wounded he doesn't need medicine, and he is a student of addiction so he knows how dangerous it is to get hooked on anything the doctors give him.

[Stuart Mackey]

Couldn't the British bomber command just settle for modified C-17s?

I'd guess that they are even further out than the Lancer B.1. I'd also imagine that a whole lot of C-17s in the pipeline might be built as KC-17s.

I wouldn't mind knowing why the Brits are not planning their own strategic bombers now that the universe has changed, so to speak. Britain used to be able to do it, there should be no reason why they cannot do so again if the political will is there this time (as opposed to the 1960's/1970's)

[Jamesfirecat]

If Micheal was also in charge of indoctrinating young impressionable dead humans who went to Heaven, that might explain why he's so experienced and so cool with humans in the first place. He would've been the angel who had most exposure to them, even before he went rogue after seeing the Renaissance or something, and maybe even before his mutiny, those centuries or millennia of him de-educating humans made him develop soft fuzzy-wuzzy feelings for 'em.

I somehow doubt that was ever Micheal's job (do you have any proof of it I might have missed something...) since he mainly seems to be Yah-Yah's, eyes and ears around heaven and hi s main military commander if there ever is a war, besides I think that Saint Peter, if there is such a person would be the one responsible (or at least involved in on some level) giving the entire "welcome to heaven" speech.

[JN1]

I wouldn't mind knowing why the Brits are not planning their own strategic bombers now that the universe has changed, so to speak. Britain used to be able to do it, there should be no reason why they cannot do so again if the political will is there this time (as opposed to the 1960's/1970's)

Because it would take even longer than waiting for Lancers to be available. Remember that Britain's aerospace factories are completely occupied building Typhoons, Tornados, Hawks, Apaches and components for various Airbus products (e.g. A330 tanker/transport).

[Pelranius]

Couldn't the British bomber command just settle for modified C-17s?

I'd guess that they are even further out than the Lancer B.1. I'd also imagine that a whole lot of C-17s in the pipeline might be built as KC-17s.

I wouldn't mind knowing why the Brits are not planning their own strategic bombers now that the universe has changed, so to speak. Britain used to be able to do it, there should be no reason why they cannot do so again if the political will is there this time (as opposed to the 1960's/1970's)

They might have decided it to be more cost effective to buy B-1Cs, though apparently that's not going to happen. You probably could jury rig an old design or modify a transport, but the British sound like they really want something modern.

The way I understand it the B-3 takes the wings and tail of a C-17, and mates them to a new (as of yet undesigned) fuselage. The resulting aircraft would be a conventional bomb truck, and would replace the B-52 in that role.

That sounds like a pretty sound idea. I've heard that wings are often a pain to design.

For messing with Michael, you don't necessarily need to poison him or something. They could convince him to start behaving erratically (I don't think Michael really understands biology anymore than he does with electronics). That would probably only happen once things get really pear shaped for Heaven.

How do you see that working?

I was thinking of the doctors and nurses convincing Michael that there's poison in the bullets that would require him to not exert himself, limit his intake of certain substances and maybe even hook him up to some piece of medical machinery that he doesn't have.