The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Peptuck]

True. On the other hand, angels and demons are nigh-immortal. They can afford to take the long view.

Don't forget that humans are effectively immortal too.

[Darth Wong]

True. On the other hand, angels and demons are nigh-immortal. They can afford to take the long view. Abigor is a vassal ruler right now, and will remain so for decades, but who can say how much independence he'll have in two or three hundred years? I'm sure that's an important question in his mind at the moment; I know I'd be giving it a lot of thought. Look at how Abigor sends devils to help rebuild after disasters and things like that. He's taking the long view, probably with the hope of building up a good PR image in the minds of future generations.

Humanity won't be waiting hundreds of years to inflict its terrible retribution upon the angels. I never disagreed that they might settle into a more peaceful relationship after that happened.

Michael could easily be thinking the same thing. For instance, he might recall that the US was deeply angry at Japan during the Second World War, but that we reverted to a mutually beneficial trading relationship even while Hirohito was still reigning over Japan. Human bitterness and rage against Heaven will be much more intense than American anger over Pearl Harbor, but it remains finite. Just as it is not in human nature to forgive people instantly, it is not in their nature to harbor grudges for all eternity.

See above. The United States did exact its terrible retribution against Japan, in spades. The fact that it was willing to enter a normal trade relationship afterwards does not change this.

So if Michael can stay alive and maintain even some nominal shred of control in Heaven (in the sense that Abigor has some control in Hell), sooner or later he'll be trying to rebuild his dimension's economy along more progressive lines. At which point what he has to offer in exchange for foreign help becomes relevant.

And my point is that humanity will not allow this to happen until they've taken their pound of flesh, unless humanity is totally defeated and has no choice. Your original argument was that this violent reckoning might somehow be avoided, and I'm saying it can't be. Either humanity will take its pound of flesh or it will be defeated. No way they're just going to settle into a nice cozy relationship after all that's happened.

[K. A. Pital]

Is someone arguing humans could just let Mikey rule his place? Only if humans never, ever set foot in Heaven that is possible. No trade or "tourism" - that's just preposterous.

No human will trade with a secluded dimension which tried to exterminate them, not until that dimension is under firm human control. That's like the Russians suddenly making a ceasefire with Nazi Germany on the verge of defeat in 1945 and start negotiating with Himmler who replaced Hitler about mutual trade. That's ridiculous.

[Junghalli]

A though with respect to the sensitive-killing plague.

It's possible that sensitives don't go to Hell when they die on Earth. After all, we know the Demons don't; Abigor's devestated army didn't respawn in Hell. The same might be true for Nephilim. Perhaps psychic sensitivity is somehow connected to having a Demon-like essence (for lack of a better term) that doesn't go to Hell after death.

Although the simplest explanation is still just that the Angels are diverting them to Heaven and then whacking them for good as soon as they rematerialize on the other side.

[MarshalPurnell]

Is someone arguing humans could just let Mikey rule his place? Only if humans never, ever set foot in Heaven that is possible. No trade or "tourism" - that's just preposterous.

No human will trade with a secluded dimension which tried to exterminate them, not until that dimension is under firm human control. That's like the Russians suddenly making a ceasefire with Nazi Germany on the verge of defeat in 1945 and start negotiating with Himmler who replaced Hitler about mutual trade. That's ridiculous.

It is indeed a ridiculous scenario, which is why no one has proposed anything quite that straightforward. Presently humans cannot get a portal foothold in Heaven. It seems like it may be a couple of years at minimum, barring later plot developments (and who doesn't expect those) before they have the ability to start punching holes into pocket dimensions without a foothold already there. If Michael moves relatively quickly there might be time for him to carry out his coup and wage a civil war to establish his authority and eliminate Yahweh. That doesn't mean the humans won't demand unconditional surrender anyway, though if the attendant difficulties are such to make them give concessions to Michael for his surrender he might wind up in a position like Abigor. At the very least if Michael has to open up Heaven for occupation that could save months or years of effort in trying to invade properly, and if they didn't genocide the Demons I don't really see any reason they'd genocide the Angels.

Now, all of the broached scenarios make a whole bunch of other assumptions that may or may not be feasible, and which are probably not the way the story is going to go. But assuming Heaven is just blasted into a radioactive wasteland or that Michael and all the other major angels are pulped under tank treads would make for rather boring speculation. Though I do think even the "best" case scenario for Heaven is that it gets off like Hell, with the angels under Michael roughly the way demons are under Abigor.

[PainRack]

The conference room had a table, a circular one, that occupied most of the floor. There were 15 seats around the table, one for each member of the council. Fourteen were identical, the 15th was subtly larger and more imposing. Obama had already been briefed on that, in this room, the Chairman of the Council was just the first amongst equals. Nations had gained their place in this room in one of two ways. Either they had the military and economic power to demand it or they had simply been in the right place at the right time to earn it. The United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, India, Iran, Israel, Brazil, Italy, Thailand and Singapore. The countries that had been in the fight since the beginning and had scored the first kills against humanity’s enemy. There was one great advantage of this council, since it met in secret and its existence was largely unknown, its membership was free of politics. Mostly.

lol. Why the love for Singapore. Sure, cops took down the first Balderick for littering, and there were F-16s involved when the Angels started throwing their shit around, but even as a leader in ASEAN, Singapore position is relatively insignificant when compared to the world.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Singapore has a highly-educated populace, maybe they've got more nephilim than most nations.

[Simon_Jester]

Singapore has a highly-educated populace, maybe they've got more nephilim than most nations.

Does education produce nephilim?

I have to disagree.

As much as I hate to say it, but from all appearances, there ARE grudges humanity can hold for all of eternity.

Isreal vs. Palestine? Just saying. They hated each other' guts when the Pyramids were still new, and they still kill each other on a fairly regular basis well into the 21st century. I'm sure I can dig up a few more, if I felt like getting off my lazy ass to look.

The current crop of Palestinians aren't really the same people as the ancient Canaanites; you certainly don't see them using things that happened back around 1000 B.C. as justification for acting against Israel today. So I'd have to disagree, not about the fact that they kill each other, but about the idea that this grievance stretches back three thousand years. The Israelis were fighting someone back then, but there's no cultural continuity between that "someone" and anyone that now exists.

Except for a few specific regions of the world, you'd be hard pressed to find a conflict that's been running continuously for more than a few generations. Either they get resolved one way or the other, or people get tired of fighting an irresolvable conflict.

Also, even when dealing with long-term multigenerational conflicts as in the Balkans, one does not see true unending war in which all sides in the war refuse to have anything to do with anyone on the other sides. Bosnians and Serbs have been in conflict for hundreds of years, but for most of that time it was very much possible for Bosnians to trade with Serbs and vice versa.
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And my point is that humanity will not allow this to happen until they've taken their pound of flesh, unless humanity is totally defeated and has no choice. Your original argument was that this violent reckoning might somehow be avoided, and I'm saying it can't be. Either humanity will take its pound of flesh or it will be defeated. No way they're just going to settle into a nice cozy relationship after all that's happened.

I don't think my original point was what you think it was.

As best as I can determine, in this discussion, my original point in this discussion was here:

On the other hand, Michael has some advantages Muhammad Ali did not. For one, Heaven can be quite a nice place to stay when the management isn't being willfully negligent about your living conditions. It's going to be a lot easier to convince people to move to Heaven to offer technical advice than it was to convince them to move to Egypt.

I don't see anything there about Heaven being able to completely avoid taking a pounding during the current war.

Two posts later, I pointed out that:

The only really fundamental problem Michael has is that it's going to be hard for him to build up Heaven on a purely autarkic economic regime. He needs a negotiated peace, and he's going to be hard pressed to get one.

The fact that Michael needs a negotiated peace does not guarantee either that there will be one, that I expect one to come easily or quickly, or that Heaven won't take a beating first. In this case, "negotiated peace" was probably the wrong word for me to use, because I was trying to express the idea of any peace other than "they make a desert and call it peace." Which is a plausible outcome for this war, but I don't think it's the only one possible.
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I honestly am not sure where I said that I was talking about a case in which Heaven gets off with absolutely zero damage, or even with only minor damage. I'll grant that I didn't specify that I was talking about Heaven taking major damage, but I didn't realize I'd have to. So I think you've misunderstood my argument, probably by conflating it with someone else's.

[Stuart]

Why the love for Singapore. Sure, cops took down the first Balderick for littering, and there were F-16s involved when the Angels started throwing their shit around, but even as a leader in ASEAN, Singapore position is relatively insignificant when compared to the world.

They just happened to be in the right place at the right time and nailed one of the first Baldricks to appear (As you remind us, for "littering". The one in Bangkok got executed for a much more serious offense "refusal to bribe a police officer"). The logic comes from looking at a night picture of the area; Singapore and Bangkok are two very brightly lit areas surrounded by darker regions, so from above, they look very important.

[TheClueless]

In my opinion, exactly what happens in Heaven depends on two things.

First, can humanity find a way to force their way into Heaven? If humanity can't do this, we can't conquor Heaven, and almost certainly can't destroy it either.

Second, if humanity does find a way to force an opening to Heaven and are in a position to conquor/destroy it, just how much damage have the angels caused by that point? If humanity's armies hadn't curbstomped Hell's armied, and/or if the demons had managed to pull their trick with the "rain of lava" with 20 cities instead of two, I don't think we would have conquored Hell and placed a demon as the realm's puppet ruler.

[Darth Wong]

In my opinion, exactly what happens in Heaven depends on two things.

First, can humanity find a way to force their way into Heaven? If humanity can't do this, we can't conquor Heaven, and almost certainly can't destroy it either.

If we can't force our way in, we'll sneak our way in. There's no way trade is being normalized between Earth and Heaven without us getting in there one way or another. We were talking about this "open up trade without wiping out huge numbers of angels first" scenario.

Second, if humanity does find a way to force an opening to Heaven and are in a position to conquor/destroy it, just how much damage have the angels caused by that point? If humanity's armies hadn't curbstomped Hell's armied, and/or if the demons had managed to pull their trick with the "rain of lava" with 20 cities instead of two, I don't think we would have conquored Hell and placed a demon as the realm's puppet ruler.

If the demons had burned 20 cities instead of 2, we would have nuked their asses.

[Surlethe]

We'd even drawn up plans to nuke the shit out of Dis, remember? There would have been nothing left but radioactive firestorms and huge fallout plumes. And IIRC there was an outcry to nuke the demons after Detroit & Sheffield.

[Darth Wong]

I honestly am not sure where I said that I was talking about a case in which Heaven gets off with absolutely zero damage, or even with only minor damage. I'll grant that I didn't specify that I was talking about Heaven taking major damage, but I didn't realize I'd have to. So I think you've misunderstood my argument, probably by conflating it with someone else's.

You were talking about Michael modernizing Heaven by attracting tourists and trade. This scenario required that:

A) Heaven is intact enough to have a tourist trade.
B) Heaven is intact enough for Michael to even think about trying to modernize it instead of simply trying to keep his angels alive despite hordes of angry vengeful humans running around the place.
C) Humans would actually willingly leave Michael in charge as anything other than a puppet ruler like Abigor, and that they would let him have a degree of autonomy.

[Peptuck]

Except for a few specific regions of the world, you'd be hard pressed to find a conflict that's been running continuously for more than a few generations. Either they get resolved one way or the other, or people get tired of fighting an irresolvable conflict.

Or the generation starting the conflict dies, and subsequent generations resolve their differences.

Except they don't really die, now. They just get shuffled off to another reality, where they hold on to their grudges.

[Simon_Jester]

Peptuck: See my comments below. Even given that the dead don't disappear from the picture when they die, I still don't expect humanity to bear an eternal grudge aganst Heaven and Hell over the events that triggered the Salvation War.

You were talking about Michael modernizing Heaven by attracting tourists and trade. This scenario required that:

A) Heaven is intact enough to have a tourist trade.
B) Heaven is intact enough for Michael to even think about trying to modernize it instead of simply trying to keep his angels alive despite hordes of angry vengeful humans running around the place.
C) Humans would actually willingly leave Michael in charge as anything other than a puppet ruler like Abigor, and that they would let him have a degree of autonomy.

In the fullness of time, I predict all this happening eventually, even given a total defeat of Heaven that places Michael in charge as a puppet. It may take centuries or millenia, but Michael (like Abigor) has millenia.

Abigor takes orders from humans. But that does not mean that humans automatically prohibit anything and everything that could conceivably give him any sliver of power or improve the economy of (nominally) demon-ruled sectors of Hell. Or that they intend to do so forever, even if they do so now. Consider the courier service Euryale has set up- a demon-run enterprise for the profit of demons. At the least, we have seen no evidence of this. Given time, the people living on Earth will regard demonic abuse of human souls as a detail from the history books, not as an urgent fact justifying keeping them subordinate for eternity.

People who were alive before or during the Salvation War are a different question, of course. But even among them, I must question their ability to hold an infinite and indefinite grudge, and to enforce it even when the living and recently-dead no longer share it? If so, we'd expect a lot of indefinite grudges. Is Julius Caesar going to go looking for Brutus and the other conspirators to get revenge on them after two thousand years? I doubt it; he has better things to do than chew over ancient grievances.

And assuming humanity survives over truly sustained time-scales of many millenia, the anger of the ninety billion odd pre-Salvation War human dead (less any who went to Heaven) becomes even less relevant, because they will be greatly outnumbered by the postwar dead who have no such memories. That would take something like a thousand years, but as I said, Abigor and Michael can afford to wait that long.

If you don't think Abigor isn't keeping all that in mind, you're fooling yourself; he's an ambitious demon and I doubt he wants to see his race as second-class citizens for eternity.
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The same goes for Heaven. Eventually, all living humans will be people who have no personal memory of the idea that Heaven and its rulers had "promised" to protect them from Hell and then betrayed that promise. They won't feel personally betrayed by the message any more than I feel personally betrayed by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. There will still be plenty of dead people who do feel betrayed, but as time goes on they will make up a decreasing share of the population.

At which point it becomes a great deal easier for Michael to introduce free enterprise, electricity, and other aspects of modernity to Heaven.

[tim31]

Singapore has a highly-educated populace, maybe they've got more nephilim than most nations.

Does education produce nephilim?

I think the angle Chewie is going for is 'Does nephilim produce education?'

[CaptainChewbacca]

Singapore has a highly-educated populace, maybe they've got more nephilim than most nations.

Does education produce nephilim?

I think the angle Chewie is going for is 'Does nephilim produce education?'

I was just thinking that Singapore has what may be considered an 'elite' populace, where you have to undergo IQ tests, physicals, and other personal and backround checks. It could be that being able to perceive dimensions differently is linked to a higher intelligence, or vice-versa. Its mostly just me guessing, but any time you have an isolated population you get odd genetic variables popping up.

[K. A. Pital]

Is Julius Caesar going to go looking for Brutus and the other conspirators to get revenge on them after two thousand years? I doubt it; he has better things to do than chew over ancient grievances.

You really don't understand right? Brutus betrayed him. Daemons basically tortured him for ages. If you can hardly comprehend seconds of torture, imagine ages of torture. What will you do with the torturer, when you are set free? Ancient grievances between humans pale in comparison to thousand- or hundred-year long torture.

As for the daemons having "thousands of years" to modernize industry - are you fooling yourself? They have huge lifespans, but so do the undead humans. After initial completion of the conquest of Heaven and Hell, with some demonocide inevitably occuring, the following will most likely happen: the reservations of daemon society will be slowly incorporated into the society of undead humans. After a while, the daemons might get some "rights", but since they would not be a separate part of society, not controlled by humans, they simply will not find it necessary to deviate from the human social norms that they'd pick up during these thousands of years.

Daemons will be consumed by the human modern society as aborigines, and after Hell is sufficiently modernized, will be just another sentient species in the overall Hell society which will be dominantly and overwhelmingly human. They'll be a species with a very bad history, but the sins of the fathers have no bearings on the sons, so eventually new daemonic generations will integrate better.

[PainRack]

They just happened to be in the right place at the right time and nailed one of the first Baldricks to appear (As you remind us, for "littering". The one in Bangkok got executed for a much more serious offense "refusal to bribe a police officer"). The logic comes from looking at a night picture of the area; Singapore and Bangkok are two very brightly lit areas surrounded by darker regions, so from above, they look very important.

Sure...... But that in no way explains why Singapore was invited to an apparently top secret meeting where massive world wide decisions are being made. Being targeted is one thing, being invited to have a say in worldwide opinion is another.

[Pelranius]

The Singaporeans could also be useful for presenting the viewpoints of their fellow ASEAN members. Member of the "15" or not, Singapore still depends on its neighbors for a lot of its economic lifeline. They're sort of the most acceptable ASEAN member since putting Indonesia or Vietnam or even Thailand in charge would create all sorts of controversy with the other ASEAN countries, while Singapore has a fair amount of advantages when dealing with other nations (they're very capable militarily and they probably have a better image with NATO countries and Australia, for starters) while its regional rivalries aren't nearly as venomous as say Indonesia vs. Malaysia or Thailand vs. Burma.

[ray245]

The Singaporeans could also be useful for presenting the viewpoints of their fellow ASEAN members. Member of the "15" or not, Singapore still depends on its neighbors for a lot of its economic lifeline. They're sort of the most acceptable ASEAN member since putting Indonesia or Vietnam or even Thailand in charge would create all sorts of controversy with the other ASEAN countries, while Singapore has a fair amount of advantages when dealing with other nations (they're very capable militarily and they probably have a better image with NATO countries and Australia, for starters) while its regional rivalries aren't nearly as venomous as say Indonesia vs. Malaysia or Thailand vs. Burma.

Thailand is part of the council as well, which kinda invalidate your argument.

I think that Lee Kuan Yew will be beaming with joy that Singapore now holds so much geo-political influence now.

By the way Stuart, what role does Taiwan plays in this story? It's seems rather weird to leave out Taiwan, given they do have a decent military capability.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Thailand is part of the council as well, which kinda invalidate your argument.

I think that Lee Kuan Yew will be beaming with joy that Singapore now holds so much geo-political influence now.

By the way Stuart, what role does Taiwan plays in this story? It's seems rather weird to leave out Taiwan, given they do have a decent military capability.

Erm, in many ways, regionally, we do because of the tonnes of cash we have, in the form of foreign assets etc., and the fact that our military is the most modern regionally, despite the fact that our military fitness is inferior to our neighbours. However, it is not politically prudent to exercise it publicly because of the nationalist streaks in Indonesia and Malaysia. Typically leadership in ASEAN is deferred to Thailand or Indonesia, but Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos might have a point or two to pick if it were Thailand, so it has typically been Indonesia. Behind doors is a different matter from the public domain and often rhetoric is directed towards their local populace.

Our foreign policy is essentially distilled along the following:

1. To ensure that the US maintains a presence in SEA to balance China. Europe to some extent, but I suspect that the Europeans' preoccupation with human rights makes them somewhat behind the US in terms of hierarchy, though we have close ties with the Germans and French at the least. Japan is somewhere in the hierarchy, though Japanese foreign policy has been rather idle and concentrates more on US, Russia and China.
2. To suck up to China because we want them to be nice, i.e. no Kra canal etc. and allow us to continue training in Taiwan.

[ray245]

Thailand is part of the council as well, which kinda invalidate your argument.

I think that Lee Kuan Yew will be beaming with joy that Singapore now holds so much geo-political influence now.

By the way Stuart, what role does Taiwan plays in this story? It's seems rather weird to leave out Taiwan, given they do have a decent military capability.

Erm, in many ways, regionally, we do because of the tonnes of cash we have, in the form of foreign assets etc., and the fact that our military is the most modern regionally, despite the fact that our military fitness is inferior to our neighbours. However, it is not politically prudent to exercise it publicly because of the nationalist streaks in Indonesia and Malaysia. Typically leadership in ASEAN is deferred to Thailand or Indonesia, but Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos might have a point or two to pick if it were Thailand, so it has typically been Indonesia. Behind doors is a different matter from the public domain and often rhetoric is directed towards their local populace.

Our foreign policy is essentially distilled along the following:

1. To ensure that the US maintains a presence in SEA to balance China. Europe to some extent, but I suspect that the Europeans' preoccupation with human rights makes them somewhat behind the US in terms of hierarchy, though we have close ties with the Germans and French at the least. Japan is somewhere in the hierarchy, though Japanese foreign policy has been rather idle and concentrates more on US, Russia and China.
2. To suck up to China because we want them to be nice, i.e. no Kra canal etc. and allow us to continue training in Taiwan.

Yeah, but I'm not talking about regionally.

It's surprising that we managed to becomes one of the very few selected members in the council to dicate the war policy whereas nations like South Korea and Spain which have committed more military forces than us didn't managed to get a seat.

[K. A. Pital]

Such are often the fortunes of war. It may have been a combination of bribes, luck and skill.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Yeah, but I'm not talking about regionally.

It's surprising that we managed to becomes one of the very few selected members in the council to dicate the war policy whereas nations like South Korea and Spain which have committed more military forces than us didn't managed to get a seat.

S. Korea's foreign policy seems to be make it such that S. Korea is often in the shadow of some one more powerful, like the US or China. They aren't very active globally. But such is the way it is when you are often in the shadow of powerful neighbours and you have few levers.

Spain well, Spain is saddled with lots of domestic problems, traced from its very tumultuous history in the last two centuries.