Armageddon???? (Part Fifty Up)

[Typhonis 1]

Wonder how the Harpies will like he Russian ZSU 57-2 and ZSU 23-4 that will be arriving?

[Junghalli]

As far as I can see the 'fire lots of nuclear cruise missiles through the portal' strategy is seriously hindered by the fact that humans in hell can be killed again and this death is apparently permenant

Remember that they're in Hell, experiencing horrible torment 24/7 indefinitely. You could make a pretty good argument that killing them is doing them a favor if anything; most people would probably be grateful for peaceful oblivion after decades or more of constant torture.

[phongn]

Wonder how the Harpies will like he Russian ZSU 57-2 and ZSU 23-4 that will be arriving?

You mean Tunguska?

[CaptainChewbacca]

I also really like how the world is pulling together. Mentions of the Indian Air Force (flying over Pakistan and various gulf states) & the Russian armor transiting through Iran are rightly awesome stuff.

[MKSheppard]

those that still clung to the "accept the will of God" line just did as they were told, laid down and died. That's about 20 percent of the US population, much higher percentages in the Islamic world and correspondingly less in various other parts of the world.

I'm not too sure of that. I mean, if you commit suicide, aren't you mainlining directly in to Hell and an assured torment for all eternity?

You KNOW hell exists, and if you die; you're mainlined right there....so why pop yourself? I mean I can see suicides happening amongst the really really religious; because everything they dedicated their life to was in effect a lie; but amongst the majority of the population, it would be "uh, so I better not die then"

[Pu-239]

those that still clung to the "accept the will of God" line just did as they were told, laid down and died. That's about 20 percent of the US population, much higher percentages in the Islamic world and correspondingly less in various other parts of the world.

I'm not too sure of that. I mean, if you commit suicide, aren't you mainlining directly in to Hell and an assured torment for all eternity?

You KNOW hell exists, and if you die; you're mainlined right there....so why pop yourself? I mean I can see suicides happening amongst the really really religious; because everything they dedicated their life to was in effect a lie; but amongst the majority of the population, it would be "uh, so I better not die then"

In the same vein, I don't get the suicide bombing either.

[CaptainChewbacca]

In the same vein, I don't get the suicide bombing either.

The suicide bombing was (I believe) very poigniant. Not only did he sacrifice his life to take out the enemy command (which we have to assume was the goal), he did it KNOWING FOR SURE that he would be going straight to hell where everyone would know what he did.

[Academia Nut]

I think the point was that the Message had an additional compulsion affect on the faithful. Since from the looks of things Heaven seems to harvest the most obedient souls in order to use the energy from their praise and worship, they may very well have done some quick math and said, "Okay, if all the most obedient suckers down there all off themselves at once we can meet quota 200 years ahead of schedule." Since they have been lying to us already, it would not be out of character to do something like that in the Message.

Those of us who were not faithful enough to get in anyway were under no such compulsion to off ourselves.

Looking at what Stuart has shown us so far, the scheme looks like this:

Yaweh and his cronies either create or find us humans and set up shop to harvest the best quality souls they can, sending down the occasional prophet or angel to keep things running smoothly. The problem is probably two-fold though. First, since they require obedience to their will to get what they want, they need some method of punishment to scare their followers into line. The other is that all the souls they don't take could end up milling about and get ideas about storming the gates and ruining the whole scam.

Thus they invite Satan and his buddies in on the deal. Since the demons seem to prefer mass torture of the dead to the whole praise and worship deal, they can use the huge numbers of cast offs from Heaven. The two are made to be adversaries to work the ignorant humans for all they're worth, but in reality they're both in on the scam, even if they probably aren't exactly drinking buddies.

[Pu-239]

In the same vein, I don't get the suicide bombing either.

The suicide bombing was (I believe) very poigniant. Not only did he sacrifice his life to take out the enemy command (which we have to assume was the goal), he did it KNOWING FOR SURE that he would be going straight to hell where everyone would know what he did.

Unfortunately there's no justification for being willing to do this, esp since the consequences are so much greater than just death or 72 virgins. The US is around to steamroller the demons anyway (heck, there are other non-suicidal (at least directly) tactics that could be used, i.e. mortar or rocket attacks). It's plausible that someone would do this, but it would take a rather strong motivation, which should be elaborated upon.

[Academia Nut]

Actually, from the scenario, the suicide bomber objectively made the best move, presuming he wasn't sent there intentionally.

He was in a shack in the middle of nowhere, with no means of rapid transportation, with a demon army barrelling down on him. He probably had the bomb already cooked up for use on the Americans. His options are:

a) Die a horrible death and then get tortured for eternity

or

b) Die a quick and relatively painless death, take out a number of demons, and then get tortured for eternity

In both of the scenarios "eternity" may or may not be that long, but in the second one there is a higher chance of liberation if he can weaken the forces of Hell first.

Thing is, since the demons don't take prisoners, and you probably wouldn't want to be captured anyway, there is an objective incentive to fighting to the last and going down in a blaze of glory taking as many enemies with you as you can if there are no options for escape. If you're going to lose, it is best you make the other guy pay for it with as much blood as possible.

[Stuart Mackey]

Hmm, National Mobilization.
What would NZ throw into the fight?. Given the equipment: a reinforced division {4th division, 3 NZEF, naturally), but on hand a light infantry brigade with fuck all support.
Our airforce might get up a few of its M339's but we lack pilots for all 17 and the 17 old A4's require a lot of work to fly again and lack pilots.
On the plus side we do have: a couple of flyable spitfires {and a couple of museum jobs}, one Hurricane, a couple of vampire's (with a three or so in museums) there is a P51D around and a Sea Fury. Someone also has a B model Corsair and there is a Hawker Hunter about.
There is also a Canberra bomber as well as a B25 and I know of a Mosquito in the Nelson are that could be got going if given 6 months intensive work. Airforce also has a Tiger Moth with bomb racks.

Civvie street also has a large quantity of machine guns and a few artillery pieces, most of which is in working order and a couple of blokes have Centurions, and one fellow has a Matilda.

This is not counting any WW2 stuff that army has stashed that they have forgotten about (they found a battery of 25pdr's a few year back that no one knew about and, a couple of the Vampires were found in crates at the back of an airforce warehouse after 35 years).

Amazing what a nation has when you think about it.

[Junghalli]

I think the point was that the Message had an additional compulsion affect on the faithful. Since from the looks of things Heaven seems to harvest the most obedient souls in order to use the energy from their praise and worship, they may very well have done some quick math and said, "Okay, if all the most obedient suckers down there all off themselves at once we can meet quota 200 years ahead of schedule." Since they have been lying to us already, it would not be out of character to do something like that in the Message.

Yeah, I'm getting really curious about what this culling of the obedient looked like, exactly. A command to off themselves? A pit opening in the ground with a command for them to walk in? Or maybe "lie down and die" just means they're still alive busily flagellating themselves and begging God to forgive them?

I also like your take on how the set-up of this universe works, it sounds very logical given what we've seen so far.

[brianeyci]

I hope Abigor is still alive.

1. Some of his family is dead -- it could be his wife, his children -- so he's got motivation to really hate humans if he finds out. It gives motive, finally something solid to hate the humans rather than just dislike them.

2. He seemed smart enough to figure out it was retarded opening a permanent portal.

3. After the command group was hit by hellfires, someone ordered those harpies to close in on the helicopters. If the harpies could see the helicopters earlier, they should've engaged earlier. It only makes sense if someone with uh better senses felt the danger, saw the direction and pointed with a "Go!"

4. He seems smart enough so he wouldn't be so retarded to stay with the command group in front, but maybe in the middle somewhere. At least in naval combat, some Admirals were smart enough to ditch their fancy clothes and dress as normal sailors.

[KlavoHunter]

Wonder how the Harpies will like he Russian ZSU 57-2 and ZSU 23-4 that will be arriving?

You mean Tunguska?

Frankly, against targets like the Harpies, a Tunguska isn't terribly much more effective than the older AA vehicles.

[dragon]

In the same vein, I don't get the suicide bombing either.

The suicide bombing was (I believe) very poigniant. Not only did he sacrifice his life to take out the enemy command (which we have to assume was the goal), he did it KNOWING FOR SURE that he would be going straight to hell where everyone would know what he did.

Plus he can join up with the helicopter pilot thats now there and whom has undergone SERA training or it's like is going to be the most likely candidates to start a resistance there if one is not already there.

Plus can the souls that are there die permanently as he said the souls are tortured until they they give enough energy to pass to the next level. Or do they only temporary die after so much torture and then regain conscious to undergo more torture. After all if a sou there could experience a true death then then really no eternity of torture.

[[R_H]]

Frankly, against targets like the Harpies, a Tunguska isn't terribly much more effective than the older AA vehicles.

Why wouldn't SPAAGs be effective against Harpies?

[Starglider]

Remember that they're in Hell, experiencing horrible torment 24/7 indefinitely.

Well maybe. Given the demon's rather abysmal performance in various other respects, I'd hesitate to assume that they're super-efficient torturers. There are less demons than dead souls and they don't have much technology to assist, so they can't actively torture everyone all the time. They can possibly leave humans impaled on spikes or burning in flames indefinitely (depending on what 'magic' they've got and what if any special resistances once-dead humans have), but frankly human neurology is such that people will eventually become accustomed to that kind of pain and be able to mostly ignore it (unless there is a supernatural way of preventing it). This goes double for people who died as young children.

In short I would not be surprised if the demons aren't actually any better at torturing than they are at warfare, and the dead souls simply spend a lot of time languishing in cells, toiling in mines, nailed to crucifixes etc. They likely don't have the resources or competence to keep everyone isolated from each other all the time, and that significantly improves the chances of staying sane over solitary confinement. Finally, if their procedures and equipment are genuinely primitive, they're going to have a fairly significant escape rate. Those evil spirits taunting the human psychics may well be escapees; how many others stayed in hell and tried to free more humans?

In any case, killing lots of humans in hell doesn't match the announced 'leave no human behind' strategy - unless dragon's theory is correct and humans in hell immediately ressurect when killed (I think this is unlikely though for dramatic reasons, it would tip the scales far too far in the human's favour).

Plus he can join up with the helicopter pilot thats now there and whom has undergone SERA training or it's like is going to be the most likely candidates to start a resistance there if one is not already there.

It's clearly possible (given what we currently know) that there will be a pre-existing 'resistance movement' in hell, but again this depends largely on as-yet-undisclosed supernatural capabilities of the demons. For example if they have the ability to magically track every soul in hell at all times, then organised resistance is going to be pretty much impossible and the earth humans will also be in for a nasty reversal in the intelligence situation when they invade.

Plus can the souls that are there die permanently as he said the souls are tortured until they they give enough energy to pass to the next level. Or do they only temporary die after so much torture and then regain conscious to undergo more torture

The demonic narration talked about 'prolonging deaths for millenia or more'. This pretty much confirms that permanent death is possible; it doesn't rule out constant ressurections from an alternative 'temporary death', but frankly that seems unlikely (see also dramatic reasons mentioned above).

It's interesting that the demons don't seem to have had any direct contact with the 'next level up'; they don't know what the afterlife there is like. Do humans who die in hell have the potential go to the next level (perhaps this needs an extra energy supply in the way that humans do)? Given that no one seems to have come back from the next level, how can the demons be certain that this steal-energy-from-tortured-humans process actually works? Perhaps they have some supernatural means of sensing where 'souls' are going, enough to confirm that they get to the next level but not enough to confirm what happens to them when they get there. That said, if demons are virtually imortal, why are they sinking so much energy into getting into the afterlife rather than merely minimising the risk of them dying in the first place?

Clearly there are major things still to be revealed about exactly what the cosmology and demonic motivations are here.

[KlavoHunter]

Frankly, against targets like the Harpies, a Tunguska isn't terribly much more effective than the older AA vehicles.

Why wouldn't SPAAGs be effective against Harpies?

I never said that, indeed, I meant the precise opposite - SPAAGs are PRECISELY what are called for here.


What I was *SAYING*, is that a more advanced system like Tunguska, as opposed to the earlier ZSU-series, probably wouldn't be terribly much better than the ZSUs, when it comes to shooting down slow-moving, soft targets like the Harpies.

All you need is a mobile chassis with a bunch of small-calibre cannon slaved to a radar, with deep magazines. The Tunguska and ZSU-23-4 happen to share these qualities.

[GuppyShark]

On the 'are there any other sapient species trapped in hell', this section;quite clearly implies that there are multiple lower dimensions with intelligent beings for hell to dominate. Whether these are parallel earths full of humans or truly alien worlds isn't clear, nor is whether the later have the same souls-tortured-for-their-energy fate as earth.

Personally I hope this implication is left as an implication only.

When I imagined where it would go, I ended up with a turncoat demon/angel (for speaking in tongues) on a small spec ops team using a portal generator buried in a secure facility....

[Stuart]

I'm not too sure of that. I mean, if you commit suicide, aren't you mainlining directly in to Hell and an assured torment for all eternity? You KNOW hell exists, and if you die; you're mainlined right there....so why pop yourself? I mean I can see suicides happening amongst the really really religious; because everything they dedicated their life to was in effect a lie; but amongst the majority of the population, it would be "uh, so I better not die then"

The "lie down and die bit" is a reference to the communities who take the "have faith in God" and "its God's will" lines and the "Submission to the Will of Allah" line (remember "Islam" doesn't actually mean peace, it means peace through submission). So a significant number of people, told that God demands that they submit to the Divine authority and accept they will go to hell will do just that. Also, quite a few Christian cults (Jehovah's Witnesses for example) state that the number of people who can go to heaven is fixed. limited and pre-ordained. So to those cult members, reaction to The Message will be "Gee, we knew that anyway. See guys, we were right all along." And they were. From the Islamic point of view, submisison to the will of Allah is a very real thing. Virtually every plan that involves future things is tagged with "Inshallah" (Allah Willing). I personally know of one case where a Saudi pilot flying an F-5 had a minor non-critical malfunction and banged out on the grounds that "the Ground belonged to the King but the sky belongs to Allah" and obviously Allah didn't want the plane in his sky any more. Excellent theology but no way to run an air force. So a lot of Moslems, told that its the will of Allah they go to hell will accept that.

In this case "lie down and die" means just that. They accept that they have been consigned to hell and just lie down and die. They don't actively commit suicide, they just accept they are going to die and do so (scientifically is a psychosomatic death reaction; if somebody actually believes they are going to die, there's a good chance that they will).

Unfortunately there's no justification for being willing to do this, esp since the consequences are so much greater than just death or 72 virgins. The US is around to steamroller the demons anyway (heck, there are other non-suicidal (at least directly) tactics that could be used, i.e. mortar or rocket attacks). It's plausible that someone would do this, but it would take a rather strong motivation, which should be elaborated upon.

It's a human reaction, very human. Knowing that he's going to hell anyway (and that he's going to die sooner or later anyway) instead of just waitinga nd probably dying and going to hell for nothing, he has decided to make his death and damnation count for something. To really hurt those who are going to damn him. Also, his friends blew themselves up on a deceitful and dishonest promise of paradise, by hitting hard at those who deceived them, he's exacting revenge. Here we have an al-Quaeda volunteer who has got this thing set up (probably for the Americans) when suddenly an even worse enemy turns up, not a metaphorical Satan but the real thing. So he puts the plan into action and gives it his best shot.

A point about story-telling, one can't elaborate on everything and explain everything in detail in the story itself. If we try, the story itself bogs down and becomes dull and unreadable. The point of a story is to provide the situation so that the reader can visualize the scene and imagine the rest. Remember Shakespeare's chorus at the very start of Henry V?

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

So we have the scene, the actions, the behavior of the man and his ambush. Think when we talk of motivations, that you see them, you can put together what runs through the man's mind. That you put yourself into his shoes and so see the world through his eyes.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I doubt that everyone is being tortured 24/7 in Hell. I cannot see the demons doing anything beneath themselves like housework; surely they select a few broken and pliant individuals for such tasks. Probably also as amusement toys--slaves for sexual purposes who are tortured on a whim but who are not tortured constantly. These two groups, and especially because it seems they're so conscious of social roles that I seriously doubt that Army was doing anything except standing around, almost certain exist, and some labour--depending on the sort of economy hell possesses--might also be done by slaves. It is likely that when a demon dies, however, these people that they possessed are normally sacrificed as part of the funeral.

[CaptainChewbacca]

One thing that we need to do (I'd do it if I knew how) is figure out how many people are in hell. I know there are numbers floating around for 'how many people have ever lived', so if we can get THAT, and subtract from it the total number of pre-christian Jews (according to the OT they get to heaven) and a reasonable percentage of Christians (they're not ALL going to heaven) we can figure out how many people are in hell.

As I recall, that number should be in the low billions.

[Sidewinder]

As I recall, that number should be in the low billions.

A line I got from one of Arthur C. Clarke's novels is "There are 100,000,000,000 stars in the galaxy, one for every human who has ever lived to make his own heaven... or hell." Or something like that.

[Cecelia5578]

One thing that we need to do (I'd do it if I knew how) is figure out how many people are in hell. I know there are numbers floating around for 'how many people have ever lived', so if we can get THAT, and subtract from it the total number of pre-christian Jews (according to the OT they get to heaven) and a reasonable percentage of Christians (they're not ALL going to heaven) we can figure out how many people are in hell.

As I recall, that number should be in the low billions.

My understanding of pre-Christian Jews is that they would have to recognize Jesus as saviour first-the Eastern Orthodox icons of the Harrowing of Hell show Christ leading Adam and Eve out of hell, with a somewhat startled John the Baptist pointing out that he is indeed the messiah. Anyways, its been years since I've given a rats ass about this sort of thing, so feel free to critique my lazy theology.

[Stuart]

One thing that we need to do (I'd do it if I knew how) is figure out how many people are in hell. I know there are numbers floating around for 'how many people have ever lived', so if we can get THAT, and subtract from it the total number of pre-christian Jews (according to the OT they get to heaven) and a reasonable percentage of Christians (they're not ALL going to heaven) we can figure out how many people are in hell. As I recall, that number should be in the low billions.

When I was working out the mutation frequency and population numbers for the long-lifers in TBO, I worked on the estimate that the total population of the world since humanity got started is approximately 120 billion (that's assuming the rest of you aren't a figment of my demented imagination). Also assuming an 80:20 hell:heaven split, that would suggest that the inmates of hell total 96 billion with 24 billion in heaven.