Armageddon???? - Part Eighty One Up

[JN1]

Another excellent chapter, Stu. I was wondering when Humanity would get round to finding a way of preventing the dead from suffering at least some suffering.
At least now military casualties can be immediatley recovered and returned to service pretty quickly.

She chuckled, poor old Dennis Healey had been excoriated in the press for canceling them so many years ago.

Probably wishing he was dead, though these days that wouldn't save him from further criticism.

Stevenson smiled broadly. “Why faith in science, engineering and applied firepower of course. What other faith could there be?”

Great last line.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Stuart is also good for pointing out that when people find themselves actually facing death, they tend to back off whatever principles they previously had.

There are two kinds of people who claim they would stand resolutely in the face of death. The first kind is the liar, and is by far the most common. The second kind is telling the truth and is a really scary, albeit rare (possibly imaginary in most cases) individual. The fact that people generally break under waterboarding is proof of that.

I personally think that everyone who can stand and face death is mentally ill to some degree. For example, there were times I could and did, but I was suffering from such extremely low self-esteem then that I didn't care whether I lived or died; it wasn't bravery but rather severe mental distress, and the likelihood of my doing it in the future is drastically lessened by my improved mental state today.

I think the same is true of a lot of excellent combat fighters like, for instance, Ernst Juenger--they were probably borderline sociopaths. I remember one story I was told of a guy who crawled across on his belly over the lines from the US to the Chinese side in Korea and killed several Chinese with an entrenching shovel and crawled back; he said he'd done it because he was bored.

[JN1]

A lot of the VC and MoH winners seems to have done what they did because they did not think of the long term consequences, or the danger at the time. For example the UK's last living VC winner only thought about getting his mates in the back of his Warrior to safety on both occasions the vehicle was hit, not about the danger to himself.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Holy snap! There's a McDonald's in Hell! That's AWESOME!

[The Duchess of Zeon]

A lot of the VC and MoH winners seems to have done what they did because they did not think of the long term consequences, or the danger at the time. For example the UK's last living VC winner only thought about getting his mates in the back of his Warrior to safety on both occasions the vehicle was hit, not about the danger to himself.

That's true for the most part, and I'm not really talking about them when I refer to exceptional combat veterans--I'm talking about documented cases of people who could keep killing in person constantly, over and over, for endless years and not be broken by the effort.

[tim31]

No more souls for hell. Outstanding!

And now of course I'm itching to know if there is another side to the Minos portal, and if so, what.

[CaptainChewbacca]

No more souls for hell. Outstanding!

And now of course I'm itching to know if there is another side to the Minos portal, and if so, what.

Its gotta be some sort of energy/transferrence conduit. Taking a soul/consciousness from earth and manifesting it physically in hell can't be an easy thing.

[JN1]

A lot of the VC and MoH winners seems to have done what they did because they did not think of the long term consequences, or the danger at the time. For example the UK's last living VC winner only thought about getting his mates in the back of his Warrior to safety on both occasions the vehicle was hit, not about the danger to himself.

That's true for the most part, and I'm not really talking about them when I refer to exceptional combat veterans--I'm talking about documented cases of people who could keep killing in person constantly, over and over, for endless years and not be broken by the effort.

Those people are slightly worrying, some indeed seem to miss it once the war is over.

[Stuart]

Stuart is also good for pointing out that when people find themselves actually facing death, they tend to back off whatever principles they previously had.

Thank you

In the good old days we did a lot of studies on how people react and why they react the way they do (the reason being obvious, our principals wanted to know if people would launch the missiles when told to). The big thing that came out of all that work was that nobody knew what they would do when the crunch came - ironically people close to the subject had a better idea of how the subject would react than said subject did themselves. People mostly had a romanticized image of themselves that put them on a pedastal above the plane of mortal men and assumed they would react in accordance with that self-image. Overwhelmingly they did not.

Oddly, it cuts both ways. The mild-mannered person who is convinced that he could never do something heroic is often the one who actually goes and does it (Audie Murphy being a good example). There's a lot of truth in the old saw "beware the wrath of a patient man".

There are two kinds of people who claim they would stand resolutely in the face of death. The first kind is the liar, and is by far the most common. The second kind is telling the truth and is a really scary, albeit rare (possibly imaginary in most cases) individual. The fact that people generally break under waterboarding is proof of that.

I'd say that's pretty much spot on. The way various fanatical suspects cave in under waterboarding is a very good example, not least because waterboarding is a fairly mild way of persuading somebody to be sensible as such things go - if you doubt that invite your wife to hold one of your testicals in a vice and start closing the jaws. Waterboarding is mild by comparison.

I honestly doubt if anybody would, under the circumstances then prevailing, not signed on for the Hitler Jugend. They'd have found a justification for it (Gee, well, yes I signed it but I had my fingers crossed.)

[CaptainChewbacca]

I honestly doubt if anybody would, under the circumstances then prevailing, not signed on for the Hitler Jugend. They'd have found a justification for it (Gee, well, yes I signed it but I had my fingers crossed.)

This was my thinking exactly. Fanaticism gets you nothing if you're dead for your convictions. Better to live for them than to die for them, if the death accomplishes nothing else.

Question, Stuart: Where'd you get 3 deaths per second? It has to be higher than that.

[fusion]

They’d made it sound like the “White Ghosts” were winning the war single-handed.

That is a nice cultural reference...

Also, awesome reference to MacDonald.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Those people are slightly worrying, some indeed seem to miss it once the war is over.

Exactly.

One wonders if a margin of sociopathy is actually an evolutionarily useful trait as having several borderline sociopaths around can far outweigh the disadvantages of their behaviour in times of conflict; when your tribe was undergoing a substantial amount of conflict, having some berserkers who'd fling themselves into the midst of your rivals and just keep killing until they won or were killed could be enormously useful.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Hmm...I wonder if the Forrestals or even the Midway are salvageable as warships?

It was already stated that the Dino-burning carriers are too far gone to be restored to service; they've simply been run much to hard. I'm afraid 13 carriers and 164 surface combatants (as usual, I forgot the two Littoral Combatant Ships from the last list I did) is all we can put together for some years, until we can start commissioning Burkes at the rate of 12 a year or so--probably five years post-event we'll see the first year in which 12 Burkes are commissioned, unfortunately. We'll see a few more vessels before then, the Burkes already in the pipeline (the current built + 11 - 13 or so more that the Navy wants OTL can probably be done in that timeframe) and more of the other designs that are on tap, and those designs can be brought to mass production as well.

Of course, how much of that programme comes to fruition is anyone's guess, depending on how the occupation of Hell and the war with Heaven go.

[Darth Wong]

Question, Stuart: Where'd you get 3 deaths per second? It has to be higher than that.

3 dead per second works out to roughly 95 million per year. The global crude death rate is saidto be a little less than 9 per 1000 per year, so (assuming that figure is accurate) for a population of 7 billion, we're looking at around 63 million deaths per year. 3 dead per second may actually be too high, although that figure could have incorporated the surge from religious people laying down and dying.

[Darth Wong]

Stevenson smiled broadly. “Why faith in science, engineering and applied firepower of course. What other faith could there be?”

Great last line.

Technically, those things do not require faith. One's faith would be better reserved for the future of humanity, which is nowhere near as certain as the effectiveness of superior firepower.

Of course, Stevenson would not be the one to point out or recognize that philosophical distinction. Dawkins would.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Question, Stuart: Where'd you get 3 deaths per second? It has to be higher than that.

3 dead per second works out to roughly 95 million per year. The global crude death rate is saidto be a little less than 9 per 1000 per year, so (assuming that figure is accurate) for a population of 7 billion, we're looking at around 63 million deaths per year. 3 dead per second may actually be too high, although that figure could have incorporated the surge from religious people laying down and dying.

Interesting. It had seemed high to me, but I hadn't multiplied it out. It could indeed be a backlog from all the people who died after the message that's doing it.

I imagine its quite distressing to die and then suddenly have to wait in a line.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Interesting. It had seemed high to me, but I hadn't multiplied it out. It could indeed be a backlog from all the people who died after the message that's doing it.

I imagine its quite distressing to die and then suddenly have to wait in a line.

2 deaths a second is still pretty bloody fast.

[JN1]

I imagine its quite distressing to die and then suddenly have to wait in a line.

I'm sure the Brits would enjoy it, after all we're supposed to like queuing.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

There is a very old skit from saturday night live. (Actualy it's a film by Albert Brooks) It describes people having a near death experience. They claim to have gone down a tunnel of light, into a large well lit room. Where they then take a number and wait!

[Peptuck]

There is a very old skit from saturday night live. (Actualy it's a film by Albert Brooks) It describes people having a near death experience. They claim to have gone down a tunnel of light, into a large well lit room. Where they then take a number and wait!

I always found the Dr. McNinja version of the afterlife horribly amusing.

[Andras]

Hmm, interviewing the dead as they arrive will be an interesting way to solve murders back 'home'.

[Edward Yee]

A lot of the VC and MoH winners seems to have done what they did because they did not think of the long term consequences, or the danger at the time. For example the UK's last living VC winner only thought about getting his mates in the back of his Warrior to safety on both occasions the vehicle was hit, not about the danger to himself.

In the case of the American MoH, it's been a consistent theme of all those whose citations I read just now that were for actions post-Vietnam... that they saved other service members by their sacrifice; for example, all but the first of the Iraq ones (plus the nominated Sgt. Rafael Peralta, USMC) being for diving onto a grenade to shield their comrades, and SFC Paul Ray Smith (Army)'s citation specifically says that he took his action "n total disregard for his own life."

[EdBecerra]

To take an oath I don't mean to a power I don't respect to save lives? I'd do it in a second.

Then how can you be trusted with any other oath? Break one, and sooner or later, you'll break two. Then a third. And a fourth.

I'd always have to watch my back around you -- if you're willing to betray the bad guys, it's possible, however remotely, that you might betray the good guys. I can't be CERTAIN about you any more.

The odds that you might actually do so are likely smaller than the odds of being struck by lightning out of a clear sky, but even odds that high are too risky for me. I'd prefer an evil guy with iron clad honor - whose behavior I can predict, whose behavior is bound by rules - to a good guy who can't be trusted to keep his word, and who can't be predicted.

I won't break an oath I give, however evil the oath is. But neither will I GIVE an oath I don't want to have to keep.

People who keep their oaths regardless are predictable. Trustworthy. They make the world a simpler place to deal with.

As someone else quoted in their sig, Death, lighter than a feather. Duty, heavier than a mountain. Or, stripped of the poetry - Life? Big deal. We're ALL going to die. Just a question of where and when. Save a child's life? Child's still going to die, just at a different time and place.

Whole universe is going to grow cold and die someday.

Honor, though? Honor has importance.

But that's just my take on things.

Someone once told me "Ed, you'd fit in well with a paranoid end-of-the-world, Montana militia group." My reply was that the militia group didn't take things grimly enough. Too damned cheerful.

Ed.

[EdBecerra]

"Keep the faith.”

Haggerty started. “What faith.”

Stevenson smiled broadly. “Why faith in science, engineering and applied firepower of course. What other faith could there be?”

Okay, now that's just perfect. I love it.

I've heard folks excoriate science, claiming it's just another religion, with Logic as its god, but is that really such a bad thing?

Ed.

[EdBecerra]

At least now military casualties can be immediatley recovered and returned to service pretty quickly.

She chuckled, poor old Dennis Healey had been excoriated in the press for canceling them so many years ago.

Probably wishing he was dead, though these days that wouldn't save him from further criticism.

Stevenson smiled broadly. “Why faith in science, engineering and applied firepower of course. What other faith could there be?”

Great last line.

Yeah, military society's never going to be quite the same again. I recall, from decades ago, a novel where twin discoveries resulted in (1) the loss of most military battlefield electronics and (2) the ability to "tank" and revive almost any casualty that wasn't either burnt to solid charcoal or ground to hamburger. The result was something of a contempt for death on the part of the soldiers (since they'd be back in mere days) with guys charging machineguns barehanded, and their use as living computers in the areas where solid state systems no longer worked.

As for Dennis Healey - well, if there's a McDonalds in Hell, there's going to be a CNN branch office soon enough.

And you thought you couldn't escape from the news on this side of the portal. Now even Hell will have anchorpeople yammering on, 24/7. Heh.

Ed.