Bolo Balls

[Uraniun235]

Furthermore-how does the Bolo magically know the opponent is a Mundane? It doesn't. If it fights, it'd fight normally... then poof out of existence. Meanwhile the guy and his platoon wonder why they were sent to blow up a movie prop, do so, and walk back for beers.

It depends on how you frame the encounter. If the 'Mundane' has been sent to destroy it and sees it first, then yeah no sweat he'll just 'poof' it into harmlessness.

If the Bolo sees him first, on the other hand, he's dead. One laser to the head before the 'Mundane' can even react.

[Ford Prefect]

What about Killy or Sanakan from BLAME!? I think they'd be able to do it assuming they have unobstructed line of sight, or they have some other way to see the Bolo and shoot through a mountain. I am reasonably sure that they are capable of at least surviving some fairly impressive firepower-and a GBE on Level 4 Extra should probably blow a good chunk of Bolo away.

I doubt a Bolo, even with battlescreens, provides any more resistance than 70km of megastructure, so even basic should do it, it's just a lot less likely to hit something vital.

The problem here, of course, is that the Bolo can probably plaster them if they see them first.

While a Bolo can almost certainly kill even high level Safeguard like Killy or Sanakan (amusingly, one of those armoured cyborgs from the last volume would have better chances of survival), conversely, they could almost certainly kill a Bolo in return.

Do you remember the explosion from the contact experiment Cibo was running? It's practically impossible to measure due to the vast scale of the environment, but the fireball has to be kilometres tall at least, if not tens of kilometres. The plate wasn't even marked by that, yet Killy's GBE punched through like it like it was paper.

And though they can see extremely far (Killy made out a door at something like three thousand kilometres?), on a planet the Bolo's array of sensors and drones gives it the range advantage.

[MJ12 Commando]

Yes, I do. I also remember that Domochevsky was capable of function with most of his skull and a significant portion of his torso gone, and Killy only lost... what was it... 40% of his body mass from being at near ground Zero of the Level 9's radial blast (which was, like any explosion worth calling an explosion in Blame, pretty huge).

[Lord of the Abyss]

Those are the ones that suppress anything they don't believe in right ? Well, don't they believe in nukes ? Or what about collapsing buildings that the Bolo shot the other side of ? How about assassins or armies sent by governments that the Bolo offered to pay with tech specs ? Bolos are smart enough to think of those things.

Do normal people get crushed by collapsing buildings or nuked?

Yes, they do. Plenty of ordinary people died in Hiroshima; and when buildings fall, there's often an ordinary person under it.

Do people send armies after one guy? Or elite assassins against a relatively normal dude, even one in the armed forces?

They do if they are offered a big enough incentive to do so.

Furthermore-how does the Bolo magically know the opponent is a Mundane? It doesn't. If it fights, it'd fight normally... then poof out of existence. Meanwhile the guy and his platoon wonder why they were sent to blow up a movie prop, do so, and walk back for beers.

I assume that the Bolo knows the same way the other side knows to go after it. As for your "It's just a prop" scenario, they look around, and decide to go look for the actual target instead of wasting their limited explosives on something that is obviously not what they were sent to blow up. The Bolo returns to normal, figures out something funky is going on and tries something indirect.

And frankly, I have my doubts that this "Absolute Mundane" stuff would work nearly as well as you seem to think. For example, if he's been told he's going after some sort of supertank, he'll believe in it and he'll get vaporized. And in general this "Absolute Mundane" concept doesn't hold together logically very well as I've heard it described; pretty soon these Absolute Mundanes would find out that there's something odd about themselves just because they'd be leaving a trail of confusion and chaos behind them as they shut down anything they didn't happen to believe in or know about. And once they realized how their power works they'd become way more credulous, which would pretty much negate it.

[MJ12 Commando]

Yes, they do. Plenty of ordinary people died in Hiroshima; and when buildings fall, there's often an ordinary person under it.

However, it is not a normal occurence for buildings to blow up suddenly and crush you.

They do if they are offered a big enough incentive to do so.

Tell me the last time someone who was not important was assassinated by professionals. I will presume it's unlikely enough to be affected by mundanity.

I assume that the Bolo knows the same way the other side knows to go after it. As for your "It's just a prop" scenario, they look around, and decide to go look for the actual target instead of wasting their limited explosives on something that is obviously not what they were sent to blow up. The Bolo returns to normal, figures out something funky is going on and tries something indirect.

Ah. I'm assuming that the guy was just told that there was some funky movie prop thing that they wanted blown up for some reason and just lugged an AT4 to do exactly that. Different scenario. I'm fairly sure Absolute Mundanity is also permanent.

And frankly, I have my doubts that this "Absolute Mundane" stuff would work nearly as well as you seem to think. For example, if he's been told he's going after some sort of supertank, he'll believe in it and he'll get vaporized. And in general this "Absolute Mundane" concept doesn't hold together logically very well as I've heard it described; pretty soon these Absolute Mundanes would find out that there's something odd about themselves just because they'd be leaving a trail of confusion and chaos behind them as they shut down anything they didn't happen to believe in or know about. And once they realized how their power works they'd become way more credulous, which would pretty much negate it.

...that's pretty much exactly what happens. The entire reason Mundanity exists is to give you a fighting chance in a world where there's a biomechanical OGRE floating around as a normal dude.

It also causes massive chaos. Absolute Mundanes are just... cruel and unusual in any high-technology realm, because they quickly collapse it.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Yes, they do. Plenty of ordinary people died in Hiroshima; and when buildings fall, there's often an ordinary person under it.

However, it is not a normal occurence for buildings to blow up suddenly and crush you.

It is if you are a soldier. The kind of fellow who goes into places where people fire artillery and such at you.

Tell me the last time someone who was not important was assassinated by professionals. I will presume it's unlikely enough to be affected by mundanity.

That's just ridiculous. And the answer is, if they are an "Absolute Mundane", then it would happen all the time. You are describing people who would be a plague upon the land. They are important enough to kill on sight.

And frankly, I have my doubts that this "Absolute Mundane" stuff would work nearly as well as you seem to think. For example, if he's been told he's going after some sort of supertank, he'll believe in it and he'll get vaporized. And in general this "Absolute Mundane" concept doesn't hold together logically very well as I've heard it described; pretty soon these Absolute Mundanes would find out that there's something odd about themselves just because they'd be leaving a trail of confusion and chaos behind them as they shut down anything they didn't happen to believe in or know about. And once they realized how their power works they'd become way more credulous, which would pretty much negate it.

...that's pretty much exactly what happens. The entire reason Mundanity exists is to give you a fighting chance in a world where there's a biomechanical OGRE floating around as a normal dude.

It also causes massive chaos. Absolute Mundanes are just... cruel and unusual in any high-technology realm, because they quickly collapse it.

Which is why they'd be killed by mobs, or assassins, or just starve.

And once again, these are not the normal" troops the OP specified.