The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Stuart]

In regards to the sound issue wouldn't the easiest way to resolve it be to say that it's not perfect just so close that the imperfections aren't noticeable within the margin of error for the flight recorder data? Of course as I don't know anything about the subject that's probably just as bad and you'd only wind up getting into the "The audience will believe the impossible but not the very implausible" area.

That'll be good enough to explain any residual difficulties. The basic model here is a bat's sonar with power levels equivalent to a mdoern warship bow sonar. To give you some idea of how much power that is, when a warship is anchored, swimmers are prohibited from going within a mile of her. That's because if she cuts loose with her bow sonar on active, she'll kill that diver within that distance (some ships at anchor in questionable ports do give sonar pings at regular intervals to acheive exactly that). As I said, we've been compressing sonar pulses in frequency band and suppressing side lobes and harmonics for years. We've come a long, long way since the crude sonars of the 1940s, its a pity nobody can tell you how far

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Do they use MEMS based piezoelectrics for these transducers now?

[tim31]

^If above line was spoken on Star Trek the casual observer would assume it had been made up.

[CaptainChewbacca]

^If above line was spoken on Star Trek the casual observer would assume it had been made up.

If it had been Trek, they would've said 'PHASE transducers'.

[Sidewinder]

As Mr. Slade noted, the A-10 is a single-role aircraft, i.e., near useless against a Su-27 or MiG-29, which will get the first shot, as they can fly higher & use air-to-air radar, & the A-10 cannot. As much as you & I love the bird, the only thing it can do against Starscream, Thundercracker, & Skywarp, is run & hide.

Near, but not completely useless. The best thing a ground-pouder can do- hell, any pilot can do, is to force the opponent to fight on their terms. This means making them get down in the dirt and party.

With the advent of radar & BVR missiles, a fighter pilot does not have to fight on the ground-pounder's terms- the Su-27 pilot can simply have his radar lock onto the A-10, launch a missile or two, & move onto the next target. The A-10 has no means of bringing the fight to a Su-27 w/ a competent pilot- it has no air-to-air radar, which means it cannot use BVR missiles, & even if it had them, the A-10 cannot fly fast & high enough to bring the Su-27 within range of its own weapons.

A competent Su-27 pilot knows he's at an disadvantage if he tries to stay on an A-10's tail, i.e., low & slow, so he will not bother to stay on an A-10's tail- he'll just use his superior speed & altitude to make hit-and-run attacks, against which the A-10's only hope is to fly so low, ground clutter will prevent the Su-27's radar from tracking it.

[Satori]

Kate Langely? for a moment I thought it was a cameo by Angel character Kate Lockley. Guess not.

and ouch for sonic lazers.

[RecklessPrudence]

Gah, tried to post this earlier but had computer problems. Damn thing's getting more and more unreliable...

With regard to the angel's sonic weapon, apart from the demonstrated capabilities, could this have been used to aid in cowing and aweing primitive man? According to Wikipedia*, 'Infrasound has been known to cause feelings of awe or fear in humans.' If the 'angels' have such control over their vocal chords, could they (or beings like them) have added a little inaudible 'oomph' to their displays, getting their 'aduience' to feel things they wanted them to feel?

After all, churches have been using infrasound for centuries to get people to feel 'religious feelings', could an attempt to let everybody feel some of what those present at a 'divine miracle' experienced have unwittingly hit upon a crude version of the mechanism that brought about those feelings in the first place?

This would also add a little psychological warfare capacity to the angelic host, with them able to induce fear in the humans, even despite those same humans knowing that it's a trick.


* - I know wiki isn't exactly the most reliable source, so here are some other sources (along with one that you have to Ctrl-F for infrasound, and one that I'm loathe to link to, as it is from the 'Paranormal Research Association of Boston', but it has a table on the last page showing some of the known effects). Unfortunately, they all reference a study by Wiseman and O'Keefe called 'Soundless Music' that doesn't seem to have found its way to the internet yet.

[iborg]

That'll be good enough to explain any residual difficulties. The basic model here is a bat's sonar with power levels equivalent to a mdoern warship bow sonar. To give you some idea of how much power that is, when a warship is anchored, swimmers are prohibited from going within a mile of her. That's because if she cuts loose with her bow sonar on active, she'll kill that diver within that distance (some ships at anchor in questionable ports do give sonar pings at regular intervals to acheive exactly that). As I said, we've been compressing sonar pulses in frequency band and suppressing side lobes and harmonics for years. We've come a long, long way since the crude sonars of the 1940s, its a pity nobody can tell you how far

That would explain all those dead whales
I read somewhere that a class of USN warships has its water tank above the hull sonar, meaning that everytime the sonar's in use the crew gets very hot water. It certainly gives a layman's idea of the sheer power pumping through modern sonars.

[Zor]

I am going to throw this out here, what would you think of in regards to a Salvation War Graphic Novel/Manga?

Zor

[EdBecerra]

As I said, we've been compressing sonar pulses in frequency band and suppressing side lobes and harmonics for years. We've come a long, long way since the crude sonars of the 1940s, its a pity nobody can tell you how far

That sounds like the old line from the famous submarine officer interview decades back.

When asked how fast the new sub could travel, he was required to give the canned answer, "in excess of twenty knots." But then quickly added, "But we went more in excess of twenty knots than before!"

Ah, yes. An officer onboard the USS Albacore.

Heh.

Ed.

[Darth Wong]

In regards to the sound issue wouldn't the easiest way to resolve it be to say that it's not perfect just so close that the imperfections aren't noticeable within the margin of error for the flight recorder data? Of course as I don't know anything about the subject that's probably just as bad and you'd only wind up getting into the "The audience will believe the impossible but not the very implausible" area.

That'll be good enough to explain any residual difficulties. The basic model here is a bat's sonar with power levels equivalent to a mdoern warship bow sonar. To give you some idea of how much power that is, when a warship is anchored, swimmers are prohibited from going within a mile of her. That's because if she cuts loose with her bow sonar on active, she'll kill that diver within that distance (some ships at anchor in questionable ports do give sonar pings at regular intervals to acheive exactly that). As I said, we've been compressing sonar pulses in frequency band and suppressing side lobes and harmonics for years. We've come a long, long way since the crude sonars of the 1940s, its a pity nobody can tell you how far

The problem with this is that air molecules are much more loosely coupled to each other than water molecules are, so they don't transmit pressure waves as well. Much more of the energy gets wasted as heat. This is why a rock concert can set up a quarter million watts of amplification and still generate sound that creates only a marginally perceptible physical pressure at the point of the listener. It's also why the speed of sound is so slow in air (compared to water or metal). If you were to set up a 250 kW transducer underwater and then put somebody 10 feet away from it, I'm sure he'd feel something much more dramatic.

Even those famous multi-kW setups inside small cars which are said to create 150 dB SPLs only do so because of resonance inside the tiny little echo chamber that is the car. Take that same setup, put it in open air, and you won't get anywhere near that effect.

You would need to somehow "solidify" a column of air if you wanted it to transmit sound well enough to act like this: an ability which would seem more remarkable than the sound itself.

At the very least, I would suggest having at least one of the scientists say "but that doesn't make any sense", and have a second scientist retort "Well yes, but then again, the demon lightning bolts don't make any sense either. They should arc straight to ground instead of flying like arrows. There is clearly some additional mechanism at work here with demon lightning and angel screams that we don't yet understand." That would reflect the internal dialogue I had in my head when I read that passage in chapter 8. I had an initial negative reaction much like erik did, and then I thought "Well, it's a lot like the demon lightning, which also doesn't make sense".

[CaptainChewbacca]

I guess its good if things don't make sense, if they all don't make sense consistently in the same way.

[ray245]

I wonder if a death penalty for people who has died before would gain any sort of support.

Given the fact that those who died a second time might end up in a new level of hell and get tortured for eternity and the concept of a second afterlife is something people can easily buy into in my opinion.

[Shroom Man 777]

On the other hand, they might end up in oblivion.

[Stuart]

At the very least, I would suggest having at least one of the scientists say "but that doesn't make any sense", and have a second scientist retort "Well yes, but then again, the demon lightning bolts don't make any sense either. They should arc straight to ground instead of flying like arrows. There is clearly some additional mechanism at work here with demon lightning and angel screams that we don't yet understand." That would reflect the internal dialogue I had in my head when I read that passage in chapter 8. I had an initial negative reaction much like erik did, and then I thought "Well, it's a lot like the demon lightning, which also doesn't make sense".

That's more or less exactly what I had in mind a little further down the line. The laws of physics in Hell are subtly different from Earth, not enough to make things impossible but there are tweaks and factors that are just not understood (light in Hell - and Heaven is another example. Nobody can understand where the light comes from and when Humans find out that different bubbles have differently-colored lights, then its going to cause some head-scratching.)

The real problem is making things fit. We have a theology that's based on folk legends and a mythology that based on tales that were handed down verbally for centuries and then written down by scribes who were trying to restore a sense of national identity to a people who had been in exile. None of the people who were involved had any real understanding of any science at all. We're now trying to fit as much of that theology and mythology into a hard science framework. I've been industriously filing away, trying to smooth off the bits of the theology that are simply impossible (and I've caught a lot of flak for doing so) and trying to round off theological bits so they more or less fit with what we know from science. The problem is that we're left with bits that simply cannot be made to fit. One of the little things about these stories is that they highlight just how impossible the theologies are.

The Angelic weaponry is a prime example. We know from theology and mythology that the angels use sound as a weapon (hence all the references to them trumpeting) just as daemons threw lightning bolts. I'm stuck with trying to think of a way a sonic weapon could be made to work. The only way I can come up with is to take our basis in sonar technology (which is lethal used improperly) and modify it. Knowing the way sonar technology has evolved since the 1960s; basically using computer signals processing to eliminate frequency spread, sidebands and harmonics to concentrate the available power into the narrowest, cleanest pulse possible. That's made remarkable differences to what we can do with sonars in the way of range, power and beam definition. There's still lots of areas where mythology and science won't fit and I have to sort of blur over those gaps as best I can. Hence the difference in physical laws between Earth and Hell/Heaven. That was created specifically to smooth over situations like this.

[JN1]

Kate Langely? for a moment I thought it was a cameo by Angel character Kate Lockley. Guess not.

It is a cameo, evidently you've never watched the classic cop show 'Juliet Bravo'.
Stu suitably tweaked the names to avoid copyright issues.

[Stuart]

Do they use MEMS based piezoelectrics for these transducers now?

Sonar transducer technology is highly, highly classified. You won't find any descriptions anywhere of how modern transducers work; the accounts that are available (including those published by the people who make the systems) is for stuff that is long out of date or are hypotheses by people trying to fill in the holes. Work on the principle that if you can read about something in open source it's at least a decade out of date and leave it there. Sorry, I don't like doing this but sonar technology is an area where security is enormously tight. I know personally of a case where somebody at a shipyard made a mistake that allowed an unauthorized person to catch a glimpse of a new submarine active array (not even a hard look or a take a picture) and was out of the company by lunchtime.

One thing that does happen is that every so often ships come into dock to have their sonars upgraded. That upgrade usually comes in as a crate which completely replaces the wet-end of the sonar. The ship puts back to see and a few minutes later, the sonar operator can be heard saying "wow". There's a standing joke that a sonar upgrade on a warship or submarine means taking the old system out and putting a new one with the same name in. It's also true; technically SQS-53 is just a solid-state version of the old SQS-26 (whichw as pretty much a failure by the way due to reliability issues). But 53-Charlie is a whole different world from even 53-Alfa and 53-Echo is a whole world further advanced again.

[tim31]

But is actual sonar data interpretation still the black art it is shown to be in the popular media? Or is that asking too much?

[Baughn]

I don't see how it could be.

Considering that computer pattern recognition is already better than human even in areas where we're *supposed* to be good - eg. face recognition - I can't imagine modern sonar operators still getting much use from the raw take, compared to the computers he's using.

(And before you protest, consider that computers are *almost* as good as we at recognizing faces - with a much, much smaller baseline. We've got hours or days of "video"; they've got a couple pictures.)

[Lonestar]

The Angelic weaponry is a prime example. We know from theology and mythology that the angels use sound as a weapon (hence all the references to them trumpeting) just as daemons threw lightning bolts. I'm stuck with trying to think of a way a sonic weapon could be made to work. The only way I can come up with is to take our basis in sonar technology (which is lethal used improperly) and modify it. Knowing the way sonar technology has evolved since the 1960s; basically using computer signals processing to eliminate frequency spread, sidebands and harmonics to concentrate the available power into the narrowest, cleanest pulse possible. That's made remarkable differences to what we can do with sonars in the way of range, power and beam definition. There's still lots of areas where mythology and science won't fit and I have to sort of blur over those gaps as best I can. Hence the difference in physical laws between Earth and Hell/Heaven. That was created specifically to smooth over situations like this.

Or properly, for that matter. There's a reason why one of the force protection protocols for "diver in the water" includes "activate sonar".

[Simon_Jester]

Excellent! It's nice to see that there is indeed evidence of each nation developing its own covert portal program.

As for the possibility of opening a portal to Heaven, has anyone considered the possibility of going after one of Heaven's weak spots, ie- Yahweh's enormous ego? We still don't know how to get a portal open to Heaven, but I get the impression that Yahweh can still sense human praise (he seems to live on the stuff). So what if we convinced millions of people worldwide to gather together at a specified time and all chant in unison "Yahweh is a coward. He hides in Heaven." over and over? Would he hear it? Would we be able to goad him into opening a portal?

Possibly. On the other hand, it might very well goad him into repeating Belial's trick. And a portal that leads into the magma chamber of a volcano, or into the high-pressure depths of the ocean floor (the "windows of Heaven" referenced in the story of Noah's flood?) would not be very useful from a military standpoint.
_______

Near, but not completely useless. The best thing a ground-pouder can do- hell, any pilot can do, is to force the opponent to fight on their terms. This means making them get down in the dirt and party.

The catch is that the either the enemy has to be dumb enough to fall for that (not especially likely), or you have to be able to force a dedicated air superiority fighter to engage on the A-10's terms against its will. Which is even less likely, because the air superiority fighter can avoid combat in any direction (quite possibly including straight up).
_______

That sounds like the old line from the famous submarine officer interview decades back.

When asked how fast the new sub could travel, he was required to give the canned answer, "in excess of twenty knots." But then quickly added, "But we went more in excess of twenty knots than before!"

Ah, yes. An officer onboard the USS Albacore.

You'd think they could at least crank the number they'll admit up to "in excess of twenty-five knots" or something. No one's going to be fooled if you claim the same capabilities you had thirty or forty years ago.

[K. A. Pital]

Ground-attack gunships may be useful against primitive insurgents heavily armed with MANPADS and such, but not the primitive Hell insurgents... The USSR used the Su-25 in Afghanistan with great effect, and their survivability surely was handy in a MANPADS environment, but in Hell? Ground attack craft are nigh useless - there are no SAM nets, so survivability doesn't matter, and considreing range, payload everything is better for a normal fighter, there's no reason to use these overtly survivable craft.

Now if the enemy would have some sort of SAM, anti air machine guns... If Heaven had such... A-10 and Su-25s would make sense again. But I don't think it's likely to happen.

[erik_t]

The Angelic weaponry is a prime example. We know from theology and mythology that the angels use sound as a weapon (hence all the references to them trumpeting) just as daemons threw lightning bolts. I'm stuck with trying to think of a way a sonic weapon could be made to work. The only way I can come up with is to take our basis in sonar technology (which is lethal used improperly) and modify it. Knowing the way sonar technology has evolved since the 1960s; basically using computer signals processing to eliminate frequency spread, sidebands and harmonics to concentrate the available power into the narrowest, cleanest pulse possible. That's made remarkable differences to what we can do with sonars in the way of range, power and beam definition. There's still lots of areas where mythology and science won't fit and I have to sort of blur over those gaps as best I can. Hence the difference in physical laws between Earth and Hell/Heaven. That was created specifically to smooth over situations like this.

It occurred to me that sound might be a side effect of the actual destructive phenomenon. I'm pondering what that might be.

[Shroom Man 777]

Ground-attack gunships may be useful against primitive insurgents heavily armed with MANPADS and such, but not the primitive Hell insurgents... The USSR used the Su-25 in Afghanistan with great effect, and their survivability surely was handy in a MANPADS environment, but in Hell? Ground attack craft are nigh useless - there are no SAM nets, so survivability doesn't matter, and considreing range, payload everything is better for a normal fighter, there's no reason to use these overtly survivable craft.

Now if the enemy would have some sort of SAM, anti air machine guns... If Heaven had such... A-10 and Su-25s would make sense again. But I don't think it's likely to happen.

Hell had lots of Baldricks throwing lightning-spears with their tridents. Presumably, Heaven would have an answer to that too. Maybe even having Angels hurl telekinetically propelled slingshots or something.

Imagine the Angel-equivalent of Nagas filling the air with evil purple lightning and stuff. Playing merry-hell with all sorts of advanced targeting equipment, necessitating the use of A-10s coming in with miniguns to ruin their goddamn holy shit.

[Rahvin]

Possibly. On the other hand, it might very well goad him into repeating Belial's trick. And a portal that leads into the magma chamber of a volcano, or into the high-pressure depths of the ocean floor (the "windows of Heaven" referenced in the story of Noah's flood?) would not be very useful from a military standpoint.

Oh, wow - he did just -POOF!- the water into and out of existence, with portals!

But was that really Yahweh, or was it him taking credit for the works of others again, like with Sodom and Gomorrah?