The Duchess of Zeon wrote: They're not learning impaired so much as highly limited in their adaptability. In short, Jade, should she survive to escape, may go on to a perfectly excellent career as a civilian helicopter pilot and function as a normal part of our society--but she'd be completely unable to, say, go back to a university and get a degree in biology.
If you completely removed neural plasticity people in hell would have no long term memory at all. That's actually a good idea from the demon's point of view; every torture would be fresh, they'd never go insane but they'd never become acclimatised to it either, because every 10 minutes would seem like the first 10 minutes since you arrived. This would be very effective at preventing escapees doing anything but wander about in a daze too.
Clearly the demons haven't done this though, presumably because they lack the capability. The other extreme is fixing the patterns that were there when the person entered hell but otherwise leaving plasticity. That would mean everyone can remember their final years on earth (and skills from that time) perfectly, and keep mostly the same personality for millenia. However their ability to remember what happened in hell 50 years ago would only be as good as a 70-year old human's ability to remember things that happened when they were 20. Of course if they've been tortured the whole time it'll all blur together anyway.
I like this option. It's simple, it makes encountering historical figures fun, it saddles the earth humans with a slightly less severe care problem. Locking down neurons such that they can remember what happened yesterday but not learn new skills or go insane is rather more complicated neurologically, and if the demons had that level of finesse you have to wonder why they didn't just block long term memory writes altogether.
Now, there's one obvious way around this--cybernetics. We're at a point where we can get brains to talk to computers already. The cure for that kind of brain structure would be cybernetic implants which can engage in "flash learning" of concepts. Then the killed and rescued soldiers of our army would be able to change careers like normal people simply by saving up enough money to get the appropriate uploads.
That's a very advanced application, much harder than simply reading out and inserting memories which is already much harder than exporting and importing sensory streams. Frankly we'd have uploading and all manner of other transhumanist goodies well before we had this. I very much doubt it's going to be relevant within the timeframe covered by the story.
I'd think we hit the rest of the Demon world with nukes to totally destroy it, and as for Dis, lay a line of airbursts along one side where the prevailing winds will carry the fallout away from Hell. "Breach the shield wall with atomics!" to quote Dune.
Is complete genocide actually necessary or justifiable here? We don't know if all the demons are inherently evil or just indoctrinated by an evil regieme (though it's true that many of them may be bioengineered to have an unpleasant outlook). There have been past human civilisations which would cheerfully do the same to creatures they could rationalise as nonpersons, inferior beings. Nuking Dis is probably reasonable, but is exterminating all life on the plane really justifiable given the minimal threat the demon remenants are likely to present at that point?
Furthermore we don't know if Satan actually has complete domination of this realm. Clearly he controls Hell itself, its surroundings and its spiritual-energy-supplies. But we don't know how big the overall plane or planet (it's not currently clear if this is a planet or not) is. There could be rebel communities existing far from hell, too much trouble to conquer due to distance, concealment or even defences. Whether they're morally any better is unknown, but even if they aren't they might be worth allying with in the short term.
Futhermore we know Hell has a peer of sorts - Heaven - we don't know if they're different locations in the same kind of space or in different 'planes' altogether, but there could potentially be more of the same 'nations' that just haven't interacted with humanity yet. If that's true to the total destruction of the demons by weapons of unprecedented power could start drawing even more attention to humanity, probably of the wrong sort.
CaptainChewbacca wrote:Though I already emailed you about it, Stuart, I'd be happy to write a few scenes about the American Military program dedicated to getting our forces INTO hell.
Damn, I wish this had started six months back when I had plenty of free time. As it is I'm feeling guilty enough checking this thread a few times a day.
