The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Pelranius]

For the plague, could it be modified to 'snuff' out the souls of its victims like what Uriel did (of course, it's entirely possible that the people who died in those villages got sent off to somewhere else)?

As for the issue of Heaven itself, perhaps firestorms initiated by nuclear devices would be appropriate (someone had to mention it). The firebombing of Hamburg could serve as an inspiration for target and dispersal patterns.

[Lonestar]

It does rather sound like variola to me, but on the other hand, smallpox vaccines have been in producton recently and a lot of the human population would still be immune, and fortunately, I don't really think that Yahweh would be up to modifying the thing for increased lethality.

It just wouldn't occur to anyone in heaven.

Those who have been inoculated have had their immunity warn off. So while a Good chunk of some militaries would be immune, I haven't read anything about smallpox being administered en masse to the population in the story.

And, to be perfectly blunt, while some countries will be able to weather a smallpox pandemic, quite a few(even quite a few industrialized nations) are going to be brought to their knees.

[Samuel]

It does rather sound like variola to me, but on the other hand, smallpox vaccines have been in producton recently and a lot of the human population would still be immune, and fortunately, I don't really think that Yahweh would be up to modifying the thing for increased lethality.

It just wouldn't occur to anyone in heaven.

Those who have been inoculated have had their immunity warn off. So while a Good chunk of some militaries would be immune, I haven't read anything about smallpox being administered en masse to the population in the story.

And, to be perfectly blunt, while some countries will be able to weather a smallpox pandemic, quite a few(even quite a few industrialized nations) are going to be brought to their knees.

On the bright side, we know exactly where the disease starts from and we can probably cordon it off immediately... that is, if humanity figures out what is going on fast enough.

Knowing Stuart and God, it is going to be a mix of multiple different diseases- why just have one when you can have people die in 20 different ways?

[Pelranius]

Speaking of other pantheons of deity, I've read that the Hindu deities seem to have access to weaponry which could be interpreted as nuclear warheads, flying vehicles, lasers and the like. The Chinese deities like the Jade Emperor seem to have some significant stuff as well, though Chinese mythology isn't as nearly fleshed out in that regards (at least from my readings and recollections)

[TimothyC]

Speaking of other pantheons of deity, I've read that the Hindu deities seem to have access to weaponry which could be interpreted as nuclear warheads, flying vehicles, lasers and the like.

That's Duchess' fault. She wrote some fiction at one point describing characters (with the Hindu deity's names) using modern weapons, but in flowery language. It got moved offline at some point, and then some scholar-in-name-only used it as a source in some paper or something.

[ray245]

Speaking of other pantheons of deity, I've read that the Hindu deities seem to have access to weaponry which could be interpreted as nuclear warheads, flying vehicles, lasers and the like. The Chinese deities like the Jade Emperor seem to have some significant stuff as well, though Chinese mythology isn't as nearly fleshed out in that regards (at least from my readings and recollections)

Chinese mythology is even more obvious in regards to its plot holes, namely due to the fact that everyone has their own version of a certain event. All the major Chinese religion never really bothered to canonise all the different stories into a single book like the bible.

Hell, what happened in a novel , Journey to the west, is seen as a canon story concerning Chinese mythology, even when it is very obvious the author wrote it as a fictional novel.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Speaking of other pantheons of deity, I've read that the Hindu deities seem to have access to weaponry which could be interpreted as nuclear warheads, flying vehicles, lasers and the like.

That's Duchess' fault. She wrote some fiction at one point describing characters (with the Hindu deity's names) using modern weapons, but in flowery language. It got moved offline at some point, and then some scholar-in-name-only used it as a source in some paper or something.

No, there are passages legitimately in the Mahabharata / Ramayana which have been interpreted like that, they're just a LOT less directly descriptive than what I wrote, which was for an old fanfiction story, and the early STGODs. Which then showed up not merely on some UFOlogy websites, all dated after my posts, but also on a website run by the Indian Ministry of Culture. Seriously. Christians aren't the only people who don't read their own Holy Books.

[Mr Bean]

I wanted to comment on something I've been mulling over the past few days. Specifically Hell and Stuart's comments about a vastly smaller force harassing a large force into impotence and defeat.

Heaven does not have much pull with Satan's forces(Humanity has put the fear of Technology into them) but what about the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf? (Nazi Death camp guard division), what about the land forces of the Imperial Navy of the Empire of Japan who participated in the Rape of Nanking? What about the entire armed forces of the dark ages who think that raping the women & burning down the village is standard practice? Assuming the 1000 year rule holds, we have over a thousand years of murderous bastards to draw on who were murderous bastards towards someone else. Everything from the Founders of the American KKK and old fashion naked Imperialistic British from before the 1900's. The victims of the Rwandan and Bosnian Genocides. Hell consider the simple fact that along with more famous people such as Stalin, Hitler and the Khan's we are going to have more pedestrian concerns such as Racism.

We have in essence a hundred and fifty years of people in American(Less and more in other countries) who thought of "the Negro" as an inferior race to man. We have two hundred or so years more of peasant who thought it was a swell thing to go off on order of the pope and kill those dirty Mohammedans and recover the holy land. That's leaving aside the dozens of King's and Queen's of Europe who are out there somewhere. Some of the later Roman emperor's to be sure.

What I'm saying is that we here on Earth have a long history of killing each other for various stupid reason for pretty much entire existence. So here we are setting up massive camps with filled with a smattering of people who hate someone or something, and color me cynical if I think an 19th century southern is going to accept the fact that there's a mulatto in the White House. These camps, and the faster they pull people out of the mud/fire/sand is going to start biting them in the ass sooner or later. All of the best of humanity is out there in Hell true, and I know that Stuart wants to stay away from the famous dead people showing up in the story, but seriously, you don't need to be famous to hate Christians, or want to enslave your fellow race. Heck we have a few hundred years worth of various slave owning cultures who would be shocked as hell that their former race of choice is now their masters. Never mind the changes in culture.


Either way it's my own speculation that sooner or later we are going to be in that situation where some refugee camp becomes a huge battlefield as all those old racial, national and ethnic tensions boil over, hell or not.

[Darth Wong]

I agree, but that's the reason why Hell is going to be very difficult to control. I think that ultimately, we're going to see some rather heavy segregation in Hell, with massive civil wars.

Just wait until those Jewish concentration camp victims wake up and start going after the Nazis. The odds are even now: the Nazis no longer have their weapons.

I'd imagine there would be well-defended pockets of civility, with a lot of lawless wastelands in between. That's actually not unlike the conditions in much of primitive history, where well-defended city states existed in relatively lawless lands, and travelers always feared being attacked while moving from city to city.

[Stuart Mackey]

I agree, but that's the reason why Hell is going to be very difficult to control. I think that ultimately, we're going to see some rather heavy segregation in Hell, with massive civil wars.

Just wait until those Jewish concentration camp victims wake up and start going after the Nazis. The odds are even now: the Nazis no longer have their weapons.

I'd imagine there would be well-defended pockets of civility, with a lot of lawless wastelands in between. That's actually not unlike the conditions in much of primitive history, where well-defended city states existed in relatively lawless lands, and travelers always feared being attacked while moving from city to city.

Moreover this is something that is documented from those times, to say nothing of some parts of the world today that are like this, so its almost a certainty that this will happen. I think that technology may change, but people don't change that much.

[Academia Nut]

A lot of the stuff that was just brought up has actually already been discussed at least in part in Stas' spin off story. The Nazis, especially the guys in charge of the extermination programs, are in huge piles of shit as pretty much everyone from the second half of the 20th Century wants a piece of them, and there are several million pissed off Jews, Russians, Gypsies, etc who want a piece of them, and the guys supplying the modern weaponry are all the descendents of the victors of WW2.

From Stas' fairly reasoned arguments, there will probably be a sort of neo-feudalism that springs up, with power trickled down and outwards from the enclaves of the modern nations as they sponsor groups of undead from the 20th century, who in turn sponsor older groups and so on. The modern groups have the firepower, but modern ideals are in the timescale of humanity, really weird by the reckoning of our history (sadly enough) and the older groups probably won't want to deal with us directly.

[Mr Bean]

Moreover this is something that is documented from those times, to say nothing of some parts of the world today that are like this, so its almost a certainty that this will happen. I think that technology may change, but people don't change that much.

Which is something that's going to quash any ideas some countries might have of going back to it's old nations dead for a ready made Army. The US can do this right up to WWI without that many issues, beyond that your going to face serious nationalism and racism issues. As noted the German's face issues getting dead vets for obvious reasons. The French and Britis are under no such restrictions. The Russian's face this the oddest however. Yes they get all those lovely veterans back of the Great Patriotic War, and much of the foot-soldiers will be usable. What happens however when they find out that the Soviet Union is no more and worse Russia is capitalist. Face it we are going to have to in effect create interment camps for millions of people. Not just the Nazi's but some peoples like the various barbarian tribes that attacked the Asia and European powers.

The plus side however is if we do go the city state route(Something our dear Julius has a great deal of experience with... funny enough) it will be relatively easy to prevent Barbarians at the gates. Gather together a group of the dead, set them up a government, build a wall around their settlement and pass out a dozen machine guns and enough barbed wire. Even for a 1100 AD thousand screaming German berserking barbarians horde, that should be enough to stop them cold. Dead healing factor or no. And even if you lose the MG's, hell is very poorly suited to weapon production at this time, ammo production will prevent the barbarians from using any taken weapons for long.

I can almost picture a side story set in Hell about a German/Mongol/heck NA band of skilled warriors getting together for some good old fashion pillaging.

[tim31]

Vikings hordes? Are you going to be advocating... Cowboys In Hell too?

Book three's going to be fantastic for the social historians.

[Peptuck]

Vikings hordes? Are you going to be advocating... Cowboys In Hell too?

You just gave me the mental image of Vikings on motorcycles. IN HELL.

[Jim Starluck]

Oooh, hey, how long 'till we see a chapter of Hell's Angels down there?

[EarthScorpion]

Oooh, hey, how long 'till we see a chapter of Hell's Angels down there?

Quite possibly negative time. I'm sure that's already occurred to people in universe.

[NecronLord]

Humm. How long until some of Michael's angel-performers and prostitues find out they can get a better deal on Earth, I wonder. With Lugasharmanaska!

Succubus-Angel action!

[Darksider]

You do know that the Succubi in Salvation-verse (Do we have a name for it yet?) Just use telepathy to look hot to their prey, right?
In reality they're scaly black monstrosities.
On another note, whilst I didn’t follow this series from the beginning, I just did a marathon read-through of Armageddon and I wanted to offer praise to Stuart and the other writers. Are there altars built for that yet?

[NecronLord]

You do know that the Succubi in Salvation-verse (Do we have a name for it yet?) Just use telepathy to look hot to their prey, right?

Err. Their scaly black bodies weren't that unattractive either AFAIK. And I'm pretty sure any decadent pornographic/showgirl environment would let them use their pheremones. Even if just on the angels.


On a more serious topic, I'm willing to bet that the situation of female angels is truly abominable, or at least, worse than the males.

[K. A. Pital]

I just wanted to add that even me as the biggest proponent of "internal Hell tensions", I wouldn't say Hell is going to be a total cesspool of violence of Hell man against Hell man.

Sure, some things will simply be culturally incomparable, but all undead humans of Hell are united by a common wish (not to die any more) and a common understanding (all daemons are the enemy; all of them tortured humans). This is the great unifying common enemy which allows the various factions in Hell to at least keep some semblance of a hierarchy, be they centuries or merely decades old.

The undead have received a second shot of life after eternal torment. Their hate of the demonic race and xenophobia are probably extreme (I tried to depict them as such in my stories, where a daemon's life is worth less than a bullet to the undead), but their hate of each other goes only as far as they are sure they aren't risking their second life attempt.

Of course, people from older eras (Medieval and early industrial) are probably retaining their barbaric ways (but again, no industry, economy, colonialism, capitalism is in Hell - only feudalism, and food is not an issue).

Hell is going to be more free and advanced in industrial zones controlled by Earth or XX century groups directly affiliated with Earth (imagine eternal life + no need to consume foods and ability to live outdoors = no bottom-line social darwinist competition), and truly brutal "out there"...

[NecronLord]

So, how long before demons become second-class in Hell?

[XaLEv]

Some thoughts on use of portals for space travel. It would be complicated by the fact that air will pass through them, so the Hell-end of a portal to anywhere other than the surface of Earth would have to be inside a sealed chamber, at least as insurance against depressurization of the other end.

One starting point I see for introducing portal use in space travel would be a special portal module for the ISS, which can make and hold a small portal inside for personnel and small equipment, and a larger portal outside for spacecraft, along with a facility in Hell. A small number of rocket launches to send up the module and the people to run it (or perhaps to refit an existing module), and then you can skip rockets and send satellites and spacecraft through the external portal, and use the internal portal for crew exchange and resupply (the crew could even go through to Hell to sleep and exercise in gravity). From there you could send a spacecraft through from Hell and send it to the Moon. Spend a few days in transit, land and open a portal, and a permanent ground structure can be sent through immediately. Something like this might be a priority from a security standpoint given the Moon's hostile environment and lack of weather.

On a manned mission to Mars you might even be able to maintain a portal open aboard the spacecraft, thus nullifying the long term isolation issue.

[Samuel]

So, how long before demons become second-class in Hell?

They already are. We have the new upper class, made up off people who died and willed themselves money, a middle class made of those who joined onto a stable state and everyone else, with the demons being on the bottom. Even without the torment they'd be on the bottom- anything they can do humans can do cheaper.

On the subject of infinite energy portals that was brought up a while back, as much as I can remember, all but two of the portals were vertically faced- the exceptions being the lava ones. In neither case did humanity try to counter them with making a portal to beam it out or dump water on it and given that the main hellmouth was opened up where it was "easier", it seems likely that they can't do it.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Some thoughts on use of portals for space travel. It would be complicated by the fact that air will pass through them, so the Hell-end of a portal to anywhere other than the surface of Earth would have to be inside a sealed chamber, at least as insurance against depressurization of the other end.

Actually, we havn't seen movement of passive atmosphere through portals. The hellgate isn't permitting swirling red dust through to our side, so I think that only things with at least the energy/mass of a strong wind will move through.

[Baughn]

Stuart may have simply forgotten to show us; otherwise, this is an instance of the mythical atmospheric shield.

Please keep in mind that individual particles often have velocities that are better compared to fighter jets than walking speed, and any shield that keeps those in while letting people through without serious resistance, while not somehow breaking in trying to hold those people back.. well, it just ain't gonna happen.

At least, not without serious computer support controlling it from moment to moment.