The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Junghalli]

Re: the black hole idea:

What about if the black hole was substantially less massive than the upper crust? After all, having a black hole is a function of density, not mass, so it doesn't have to be the most massive part of the system. If the central black hole was less massive the upper crust would be able to hold itself together just fine with its own self-gravity. The black hole could be held at equilibrium at the exact center of the hollow interior space, where the gravity of the upper shell would pull on it equally in all directions. Granted, this would be a delicate arrangement.

One could postulate that the spacetime of Hell is curved in such a way that mass naturally falls into two "wells", one on the "edge" and one in the "center". The central "well" might be much "steeper" than the edge well, hence why a black hole forms there, while a rocky crust forms at the edge well.

[Peptuck]

Speaking of Hawking, if he were to die, would he be up and walking and articulate in hell?

By all observations, yes.

IIRC, the rule is, if you died young, you get a body equivilant to your age when you died. If you died infirm, at an old age, or due to a terminal disease, you end up with a middle-aged body in otherwise perfect health.

[D.Turtle]

The thing is, you can't have a sphere of whatever (black hole or anything else) as the light source in hell, because then we would have already seen it. There is no single light source in hell, there simply is light everywhere.

[EdBecerra]

It could just be kinetic transfer.

I recall - gods, from nearly 40 years ago! - a book republished by the now-defunct Avalon press. The central character was a hillbilly prodigy, creating inventions he didn't understand, to do jobs that he was too lazy to do himself.

One of these was that, when his fishing boat became too leaky and he didn't want to go to the trouble of re-caulking it, he invented a device that converted heat into motion, directly. That is to say, once the device was applied to a hot bit of metal, the heat, ie, random movement of molecules, would become the purposeful movement of all the molecules in the same direction.

And tah-dah, the block of metal would start moving in one direction. Instant flying fishing boat. (After all, UP is a direction...)

(Side note - of course, when the government found out about him, they freaked, which was most of the plot. Pity the poor FBI agent who gets the assignment to be his minder once he's declared a "national resource"...)

Could be that this is what the angels are doing - all the air molecules suddenly 'decide', thanks to the angel's actions, to all move in the same direction, all at once. A "force beam", if you will, just made out of air.

Just a thought...

Ed.

[Peptuck]

One thing I'm still amazed by....

People at TVTropes are still bitching about how the war is never in doubt, calling the human military "boring invincible heroes" because they always win, etc.

Have these people ever looked at a documentary? Have these people never read a book about World War II or the Gulf War or OIF or any other war where the winner was never really in doubt? Yet these wars remain interesting, precisely because of the individual stories of the soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict.

Most wars in history reach a point where the outcome is never really in doubt. Some of those wars, it happens pretty quickly. That doesn't stop the story of the war from being interesting. Yet the way these people act, its like WWII stopped being anything worth paying attention to the second the Red Army started the countermarch on Berlin. They act like there's no reason to bother with Desert Storm or OIF because there was never any doubt the Coalition would stomp the Iraqis.

The Salvation War doesn't stop becoming interesting just because we know the demons are going to lose. TSW remains interesting because of everything else going on in the story.

It just boggles my mind that people are so....short-sighted? Is that the right word for this?

[Setzer]

I was the same way once, when I was younger. I lost interest in reading WW2 histories when the tides turned in the war. It's probably a bunch of whiny twelve year olds, if there's any comparison.

[starslayer]

I like the idea that the universes are shrinking. Could one model background radiation as having wavelength proportional to the size of the universe? Then what's happened in our universe is the universe has gotten really huge, so the wavelength has gotten proportionally large, pushing the peak of the blackbody distribution into the microwave. In these universes, the wavelength has gotten smaller, pushing the peak into the visible. It would also correspond to an increase in temperature, ensuring that the universes are livable.

How would this model work with the klein bottle topology, as opposed to our mostly-flat cosmology?

This is, in fact, how it works in our universe. Simon_Jester mentioned the surface of last scattering, the surface that we see the CMB coming from. Originally, it would have been mostly visible and UV light (stable atoms form the majority of particles at about ~5-10,000 K), but space expanded under it, stretching and redshifting it until today it is mostly microwaves, effectively cooling the universe. In Hell, this would translate into roughly a 800-1000 K blackbody (a dull red). If the background worked the way it does in our universe, everything in Hell would be at least that hot, and given Hell's volcanism, and most of it would be hotter. So while the contracting universe idea could work, and I like it as well, it certainly doesn't result in something analogous to the CMB for Hell.

If Hell had a CMB analogue, the background could potentially do some "light laps," but that's about the only change I can think of off the top of my head.

[Baughn]

But it doesn't, because it's too small.

It bears re-mentioning: All the light in the CMB was emitted near the birth of the universe, several billion years ago. Hell isn't big enough for light to move without hitting anything for several billion years.

[Crayz9000]

Most sonar operators are a bit odd by the way.

I have to admit, I loved the sonar operator in Down Periscope. Definitely exemplified "a bit odd".

That whole movie was actually kind of classic. I mean, where else can you find an old WWII diesel boat shown trying to hide from a modern attack sub by acting like a boat full of drunken fishermen in the middle of a storm?

[Chris OFarrell]

Twas a fun movie.

The best bit had to be the start, with the crew taking target and range bearings, acquiring a 'firing solution'...and then the XO 'firing' his Golf Ball at the 18th hole as they sailed past


On topic.

These Angels with their sound/TKsound whatever ability are going to be a big problem.

I don't suppose there is any hope for a crash ABL program, doing whatever is needed to get an airborne laser operational soonest? Even if it comes down to using some kind of horribly expensive power plant to get the energy for the laser, like a miniaturized Nuke system, fuel cell array or SOMETHING?

It might at least buy time to come up with some kind of countermeasure to this weapon, if we can 'plink' Angels off at a distance.


And what about their delivery mechanism? Dropping Anthrax from a 'bowl' over a small area sure as hell doesn't sound like a very effective delivery mechanism to me, especially to get major coverage of a large area. They can't possibly carry much, or distribute it quickly or evenly, yet its clearly having a major worldwide effect here. I do like the idea that Anthrax WAS originally a bioweaopn designed to take out the offsrping of human/demon matings (are these people seperate from the 'Angel'/human matings like the Grigori?) and it mutated naturally over a long time to become generally deadly.

Still, Heaven is seriously upping the ante here. We COULD resist the urge to use nukes on hell in revenge for Sheffield then Detroit because we were already invading and did have options to close those portals quickly enough. Here, God has killed more people by far then Satan did on Earth in the first half of this war, and he probably has a lot of stuff in reserve we have not seen, AND has smart people working for him helping to target his rage.

We might have to break out the WMD's of our own in revenge soon...



And on another topic, I've been getting a vibe for a while now, even more since this book started, that Michael is preparing to 'off' Yahweh by using the humans, and putting himself in charge.

I mean he clearly has the 'on the ground' knowledge of how the humans are working and the fact that they are going to probably win this thing, AND that they WILL do the whole 'total war' thing.
All HE has to do is head down to Hell and someone he knows (a Grand Duke probably) and get them to pass a message to Gen Petraus, or even just CALL him on a phone. I'm sure he has gotten one by now.

Just call up and say 'Yeah, Dave, Michael, Archangel of war here BIG fan of your work bro. We need to work together to off this dick Yahweh, I'd be happy to take over running the place under human guidance if you help me, ready to launch a Coup d'état in fact!. Oh and I'd evacuate the fleet from Norfolk tomorrow, Yahweh is going to bring a Tornado down on the place. And if you have any Patriots around Washington, turn them on, Urial is coming to visit shortly. Those are freebies as a sign of good faith, I'll call you later, okay? Bye!"

That would get a lot of peoples attention right then and there.

[K. A. Pital]

The question is does Michael want humans running Heaven, or does he want humans simply distracting Yahweh while he removes the old bugger, and then Heaven stops bothering Earth. They might even negotiate a ceasefire. But no "liberation" and no human forces entering Heaven - no problems for Mickey and other coupists in the future or immediately after Yahweh's demise...

In fact, they could run Heaven for ages after that. He doesn't need humans to succeed - he needs to succeed if he wants to control Heaven and avoid humans sticking their paws into his lawn.

Were I Michael, I'd note that humans lack the ability to open portals to Heaven, and act to remove Yahweh before they manage to achieve such abilities. Humanity will most likely want to avoid another grandiose war - so they might just leave Heaven to Michael if he negotiates a reasonable ceasefire and then stops attacking Earth.

[Shroom Man 777]

Maybe the light in Hell (and Heaven) is a result of the unexplained phenomena that's also part of the mechanism of how "souls" in our reality end up in Heaven and Hell? I mean, shit, there is no way physics or chemistry or biology or geography can explain how a dead guy can materialize in another universe with a lean and spry body that doesn't need to eat or sleep or shit for all eternity.

A lean and spry and fabulous (*swish!*) body that can remain intact and alive despite being submerged in frickin' lava for a hundred thousand million years!

The only way you can explain that is with ridiculous technobabble, which the stories might have already induced before hand in explaining the portals and all that stuff (I don't know, I glossed through those explanations). But whatever.

How Angels can kill fighter jets by screaming at them, I don't know. But now that we've established the Salvation Stories as having even more patently unbelievable stuff in 'em, justifying the Angel Screams with remotely believable science isn't really necessary and trying to realistically explain it might just be a mistake of Bad Science.

It might end up being totally vibranium.

Anyway, I don't really care much for the science, I care more for the story. It might have been a mistake to give the Angels such an effective weapon while neglecting to give the Demons anything similar at all to counter modern human weaponry - I mean, shit, the Naga Force Lightning had piss-poor range and had no way of engaging anything from a meaningful distance (and yet these Nagas are supposed to be creatures powerful enough to rip holes through the fabric of reality, space and time!). Despite this disparity, somehow Hell's forces were able to match Heaven's in a Celestial War, to the point of somehow creating a Cosmic Demilitarized Zone between Heaven and Hell - with Satan being the Infernal Kim Il-Sung!

I mean, crap, if Angels can effectively engage fighter planes from long ranges - to the point of shooting down missiles and attaining near parity in kill counts with modern combat aircraft - then during the Celestial War, the forces of Heaven could've practically done to Hell with its Angels what humanity just did to Hell with its fighter jets! The Angels could've murdered the harpies en masse just as easily as the human air forces, establishing air superiority and ruining the shit out of the Baldricks on the ground!

For example, it might have been better if some Baldricks - like the Nagas - had something that neared the Angel Screams in terms of firepower. It would've been quite a sight, for example, to see human A-10s and other ground attack fighters come in low for a strafing run, only to be confronted by a proverbial bioelectrical storm of anti-aircraft demon-lightning, purple energies crisscrossing across the skies in a withering (and spectacular!) barrage. Some aircraft would be lost, but then the pilots would be screaming homosexual innuendo at each other (squeeze off some exhaust! it's got my tail! I've got brown thunder and lightning ALL OVER MY ASS!) and in triumph they'd release their bombs and napalm would drown the Nagas and Baldricks in a sea of fire, incinerating them and putting an end to their infernal fucking demon-lightning.

Eh, but who knows? Maybe in the Celestial War, Hell was able to match Heaven by sheer Human Demon Wave Attacks. Just like Korea!

Kim Il-Satan! Dear Leader! When Kim Il-Satan screams there are storms!

[phongn]

One thing I'm still amazed by....

People at TVTropes are still bitching about how the war is never in doubt, calling the human military "boring invincible heroes" because they always win, etc.

While that often happens in history - it does make for a bit of a boring story. One of the early ideas was that humanity (with reason) could crush their enemies (no reason, faith only) - but the overwhelming military power of Earth minimizes that reason-vs-faith conflict. I - personally - got a bit tired early on of the Short Victorious War [against Hell]. But now? Now we see the other side, and events have become much more complex.

Stuart mentioned before that the events of Armagaddon?! help provide a background. And stand-alone, I think the criticism of "curbstomp boring" is quite right: but as an opening act to a story it fits much better.

[Simon_Jester]

By all observations, yes.

IIRC, the rule is, if you died young, you get a body equivilant to your age when you died. If you died infirm, at an old age, or due to a terminal disease, you end up with a middle-aged body in otherwise perfect health.

Yeah. The really interesting question is how far that goes towards repairing cumulative damage that's not a part of the aging process. Consider the following scenarios:

Bob, at the age of eighty, suffers some kind of horrible accident in which he loses an arm and dies. He comes to in Hell with his arm back and a fortyish body.

Bob-II, at the age of thirty, suffers a similar accident, and likewise gets his arm back... but in a thirtyish body.

Bob-III has an accident at the age of thirty, loses an arm, but does not die. He dies of unrelated causes at the age of eighty; does he get the arm back?

Bob-IV is missing an arm due to a congenital birth defect, but dies of something completely different at the age of eighty. Does he get the arm back?
_________

It could just be kinetic transfer.

I recall - gods, from nearly 40 years ago! - a book republished by the now-defunct Avalon press. The central character was a hillbilly prodigy, creating inventions he didn't understand, to do jobs that he was too lazy to do himself.

One of these was that, when his fishing boat became too leaky and he didn't want to go to the trouble of re-caulking it, he invented a device that converted heat into motion, directly. That is to say, once the device was applied to a hot bit of metal, the heat, ie, random movement of molecules, would become the purposeful movement of all the molecules in the same direction.

And tah-dah, the block of metal would start moving in one direction. Instant flying fishing boat. (After all, UP is a direction...)

(Side note - of course, when the government found out about him, they freaked, which was most of the plot. Pity the poor FBI agent who gets the assignment to be his minder once he's declared a "national resource"...)

Could be that this is what the angels are doing - all the air molecules suddenly 'decide', thanks to the angel's actions, to all move in the same direction, all at once. A "force beam", if you will, just made out of air. Just a thought...

That's de facto telekinesis. Conservation of momentum stops you from doing it by "converting heat into motion." Even though the air in the room has a total mass of a hundred kilograms or more, and the individual air molecules are zipping around at the speed of pistol bullets, the net momentum is still zero, and there's no place to get it from.

You'd need telekinesis to make it happen, or some other way of acting on air molecules at a distance.
________

One thing I'm still amazed by....

People at TVTropes are still bitching about how the war is never in doubt, calling the human military "boring invincible heroes" because they always win, etc.

Have these people ever looked at a documentary? Have these people never read a book about World War II or the Gulf War or OIF or any other war where the winner was never really in doubt?...

The Salvation War doesn't stop becoming interesting just because we know the demons are going to lose. TSW remains interesting because of everything else going on in the story.

It just boggles my mind that people are so....short-sighted? Is that the right word for this?

I don't think you're being quite fair. The TVTropes concept of "boring invincible heroes" comes from people who not only have no chance of losing the war, but who have no chance of losing any of the battles on the way. And at that point it does start to become boring, because there's no conflict. Not only is he going to win in the end, but he's never even going to face a significant setback. He's fighting an enemy so far below his weight class that he barely even notices their best shot. No matter how clever they are, he's always several steps ahead of them. The only reason the villains even exist is to show off how powerful the heroes are.

Applying the "boring invincible hero" standard to the Salvation War isn't quite accurate, because it's clear that the demons are capable of causing significant harm (Sheffield and Detroit come to mind). You know they'll lose the war... but nobody goes into a World War II movie not knowing which side won the war. They can at least make a few dents along the way. And the forces of Heaven are definitely powerful enough to leave the outcome of battles in doubt- even the outcome of the war is still in a little doubt.
______

But it doesn't, because it's too small.

It bears re-mentioning: All the light in the CMB was emitted near the birth of the universe, several billion years ago. Hell isn't big enough for light to move without hitting anything for several billion years.

That means that it can't be a closed FRW metric. The cosmic background radiation never disappears in that metric, it just keeps blueshifting until you're bathed in X-rays in the last few centuries before the Big Crunch.

Put simply, the existence of Hell as described in the Salvation War disproves the theory of general relativity, or at least restricts it to the special case of a more general theory. This is true in the same sense that Newton's theories of gravity and motion are a special case of general relativity in the low-density, short-distance limit.

[Singular Quartet]

Shroom, I think your problem is you're thinking Angels and Demons conduct war the same way Humans conduct war. IIRC, in the first book, two armies would meet, send each other Heralds, maybe engage once or twice, and then whichever army thought they were going to lose would surrender. MAybe every once and a while, both sides would break an army killing each other, but for the most part, they didn't engage.

Also, doesn't Hell have a much larger manpower supply? That might have also contributed.

[Simon_Jester]

It occurs to me that if Hell were described by the "closed universe" variation on general relativity, the flight of the B-1s to hit Tartarus would have taken the entire age of Hell to get there and back, even if the B-1s were travelling at the local speed of light. The time required to circumnavigate a closed universe at c under general relativity is equal to the time it takes for that universe to experience a full Big Bang-Big Crunch cycle.

Don't take my word for it; get someone else here to check the math.

[Shroom Man 777]

Shroom, I think your problem is you're thinking Angels and Demons conduct war the same way Humans conduct war. IIRC, in the first book, two armies would meet, send each other Heralds, maybe engage once or twice, and then whichever army thought they were going to lose would surrender. MAybe every once and a while, both sides would break an army killing each other, but for the most part, they didn't engage.

Those are formalized battles conducted by Demon Lords on each other in ritualistic martial attempts to increase personal stature, influence and power at the expense of their foot soldiers who get killed, enslaved and/or eaten. Traditional wars in Hell are basically done to determine the pecking order of the Demon Nobility.

The conduct of the Celestial War, on the other hand, which was a full battle for freedom, survival and secession by Satan against Yaweh, would be another matter entirely. Do you think Yaweh would give a fuck about ritualized rules of warfare, judging by how much of an omnicidal fuckopath he is? I don't think so. The Celestial War would be nothing like the normal Hell Wars.

If I remember correctly, the Celestial War was mentioned by Abrigor not in a first-hand account, but rather as something he was told by people much older than him. I don't know if most of the Baldricks are old enough to have fought against Heaven during the Celestial War.

Also, doesn't Hell have a much larger manpower supply? That might have also contributed.

Hence the massed Human Demon Wave Attacks!

But then again, who knows how massive the Celestial War was? The last portal between Heaven and Hell was tiny and post-Celestial War combat just involved raids and stuff. Who knows how the armies of Heaven and Hell fought during the Celestial War? Were they popping off huge portals and sending massive armies? Were the portals smaller because they were harder to open, and instead we get brushfire conflicts? Who knows how nasty it really got?

[MarshalPurnell]

Angels probably cannot reach speeds significantly greater than those of the harpies, and presumably their flesh is vulnerable to fire. The ranks of flying angels may have been able to take out large numbers of harpies at range but would unable to prevent them from closing to close quarters, where the harpies may be able to physically overmatch them. Same thing on the ground, really; the lightening blasts and trumpet calls of each side are line of sight, I'd guess, and just not really able to prevent the demonic phalanx and whatever formations the angels use from coming to grips. The angels have more long range power, are probably more nimble and flexible, but can be overpowered by demons acting in a mass formation. If Satan already had control over Hell then the "chokepoint" effect of the portals would have made it possible for him to fight off even the superior numbers of angels in the aftermath of the revolt. And it seems that demons breed pretty readily, whereas angels do not, so the ratio of manpower would shift in favor of Hell over the millennia that followed.

Though speaking of Angels, and since O'Farrell raised the point, the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees, part of the Ethiopian Orthodox canon, establishes responsibility for creating the Nephilim on the Grigori, "Watchers," who rebelled against God under their leader Samyaza and went to Earth to take human wives. In some interpretations they also taught humanity creative arts, and among their number Azazel taught them methods of war. God dealt with it by sending Gabriel to incite a war between the descendants of Nephilim, and then by the Great Flood, sparing Noah since his line was free of Nephilim taint. In Salvation War the portal-casting Nephilim seem to have been instead the offspring of incubi with human women, using human sperm collected by their succubi counterparts. While that would satisfy the requirement for Nephilim to be descendants of "Fallen Angels" it seems the Nephilim mentioned in the Bible and the Ethiopian texts originated from the members of a much later, more localized rebellion against Yahweh by angels entranced with the sensations of the mortal world. The angels do look at least to be much closer to Homo Sapiens than the Demons do, and it stands to reason that Michael may not have been the first angel to be completely disenchanted by Yahweh's reign, so could any of those Nephilim (or even their Grigori parents) still be around on Earth, or were they just garbled accounts of the demon's activities?

[Shroom Man 777]

Who's to say that such things did not occur repeatedly over periods of time and human history just garbled them up to a single event?

We need to get this settled. Are Angels roughly humaniform, but with wings? Or do they look as different from humans as demons do? If so, why? Demon physiology and evolution has been touched on in the stories, but very little has been mentioned of specific details on Angels. Does Satan look like an Angel? Wasn't he one of the Angels, Yaweh's favorite, before he Fell (according to Biblical myth)? Or doesn't he? If he has horns and shit, while most Angels don't, then why is that?

[ray245]

Shroom, I think your problem is you're thinking Angels and Demons conduct war the same way Humans conduct war. IIRC, in the first book, two armies would meet, send each other Heralds, maybe engage once or twice, and then whichever army thought they were going to lose would surrender. MAybe every once and a while, both sides would break an army killing each other, but for the most part, they didn't engage.

Those are formalized battles conducted by Demon Lords on each other in ritualistic martial attempts to increase personal stature, influence and power at the expense of their foot soldiers who get killed, enslaved and/or eaten. Traditional wars in Hell are basically done to determine the pecking order of the Demon Nobility.

The conduct of the Celestial War, on the other hand, which was a full battle for freedom, survival and secession by Satan against Yaweh, would be another matter entirely. Do you think Yaweh would give a fuck about ritualized rules of warfare, judging by how much of an omnicidal fuckopath he is? I don't think so. The Celestial War would be nothing like the normal Hell Wars.

If I remember correctly, the Celestial War was mentioned by Abrigor not in a first-hand account, but rather as something he was told by people much older than him. I don't know if most of the Baldricks are old enough to have fought against Heaven during the Celestial War.

Perhaps we can assume that Heaven actually bothered to develop new sort magic attacks or new kind of weapons while Hell doesn't bother to do so?

After all, those angels who became a threat to all the fighters planes might have received some sort of personal upgrades from Mike.

Afterall, Heaven is more prepared for a open conflict with the human race than the forces of hell.

[Shroom Man 777]

I don't think Mike would've bothered upgrading those Angels since he sent those Angels to Earth to die specifically because they were Yaweh supporters and he didn't like them.

But I guess your point does have merit. Armageddon made a point about Hell's stagnant sprawling Satan-society, how the pace of development in that society was fucking glacial not just due to Satan's tyranny, but also because of the nature of its fucking feudal government - basically turning it into Dark Ages Europe, but with more cloven hooves and goat horns and lightning trident spears.

The same cannot be said for Heaven. While Yaweh does rule like a tyrant, Heaven is not an overpopulated hole with an industry focused on human torture. It's more centralized, its government is NOT a feudal Dark Ages joke. In fact, it's more akin to Nazi Germany or other modern technologically-progressive regime.

AND Heaven has apparently been planning, for quite some time, to forsake Earth and humanity and to allow Hell and Satan free reign to do whatever they want on Earth. Why? Because apparently they've got a Master Plan, no doubt designed to take advantage of the situation and win. While they didn't really foresee humanity kicking Hell's ass, Heaven was still intending to come out as #1 in this situation and probably had made the proper preparations - whereas Hell did not.

Hell's attempt to conquer Earth was half-assed and probably not properly planned. Heaven, on the other hand, has an actual-factual game plan - Heaven's pre-mediated this, which makes things all the more dangerous.

EDIT:

So, yeah, it is conceivable that over the course of how many years or centuries or millennia of planning for this, Heaven might have considerably improved its weaponry since the last time it conducted a major military campaign, back in the Celestial War.

[Richard Sharpe]

Hello all! New poster, but I have lurked a bit and only recently was able to procure a "Real" email address.

First off, I'd like to say how much I enjoyed the first Salvation War. Very compelling fiction and I would be more than willing to purchase it in stores or on Amazon if the opportunity arose. I also have some questions about the universe, and I hope you folks can help me out. I apologize in advance if any of these questions are too trivial or if they have been asked before.

1. What is the natural resource situation in Hell? With the demons in hell having simple metal working, I'd assume that there are in fact metals to be had. But surely the denizens of Hell don't have the same mining techniques we do. Is it conceivable that there are billions, or maybe even trillions of dollars of mineral wealth in Hell?

2. Since demons live off meat, I assume there are animals in Hell. The question is: are their plants in Hell? One would think with all the volcanic activity, that Hell property is very fertile, but that runs into my next question.

3. Where is the light coming from? Does Hell have a sun?

4. What happens when you shoot a rocket up from the surface of Hell? Does Hell have a solar system, or would it crash into the other side of Hell given it's Mobius strip nature?

Thanks!

[ray245]

I don't think Mike would've bothered upgrading those Angels since he sent those Angels to Earth to die specifically because they were Yaweh supporters and he didn't like them.

Well, you can always say Mike is clever to ensure the upgrades are more spread out among the angelic community in order to ensure people's suspicion towards him is not raised.

[tim31]

1. What is the natural resource situation in Hell? With the demons in hell having simple metal working, I'd assume that there are in fact metals to be had. But surely the denizens of Hell don't have the same mining techniques we do. Is it conceivable that there are billions, or maybe even trillions of dollars of mineral wealth in Hell?

This I can't answer, but...

2. Since demons live off meat, I assume there are animals in Hell. The question is: are their plants in Hell? One would think with all the volcanic activity, that Hell property is very fertile, but that runs into my next question.

Stuart hinted at the Russians finding a whole lot of What The Fuck in between Tartarus and Dis. Hopefully this will come into play later.

3. Where is the light coming from? Does Hell have a sun?

In universe, they don't know. Read the previous to pages of discussion in this thread for some theories.

4. What happens when you shoot a rocket up from the surface of Hell? Does Hell have a solar system, or would it crash into the other side of Hell given it's Mobius strip nature?

The USAF have sent birds above the clouds to discover the weird lighting situation, but I don't recall a mention of the 'ceiling'. But essentially, no, Hell does not have a solar system. It is a world that exists in a Klein Bottle. It is on the interior surface of a realm, not the exterior surface of a body, as with out dimension.

[Darth Wong]

But I guess your point does have merit. Armageddon made a point about Hell's stagnant sprawling Satan-society, how the pace of development in that society was fucking glacial not just due to Satan's tyranny, but also because of the nature of its fucking feudal government - basically turning it into Dark Ages Europe, but with more cloven hooves and goat horns and lightning trident spears.

The same cannot be said for Heaven. While Yaweh does rule like a tyrant, Heaven is not an overpopulated hole with an industry focused on human torture. It's more centralized, its government is NOT a feudal Dark Ages joke. In fact, it's more akin to Nazi Germany or other modern technologically-progressive regime.

What makes you say that? There is no indication whatsoever that they have achieved technological advancement of any kind. Michael is aware of human technology, but that's it: he's aware, and most of his peers aren't.

If you want to draw an analogy between Heaven and a real-life government, you might want to try North Korea, not the Nazis. Backward, regressive, and run by a massively self-indulgent dictator who seems to think his empire exists primarily for his own ego gratification, and who is paranoid about traitors.