The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[EdBecerra]

With regards to the sonic weapons of the angels, and the arguments about "coherent" sound (ala coherent light), this article in the New Scientist amused me, and I trust it will amuse you too.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... nline-news

Ed.

[Stuart]

I think having someone mispronounce Mr. Phelps' name as "Phlops" is amusing in and of itself. Maybe have them correct themselves, but that's one name I don't think anyone here minds seeing get mangled. When I first saw the error, I actually thought it was a minor flub on the part of the speaker, not an actual story error.

Standard disclaimer; The Salvation War obviously takes place in an alternate reality to our own; all the characters are fictional although (due to the fact it is a parallel universe) some do bear the same names as people in our universe. In this case, Mr. Phlops (the name was chosen deliberately) is a parallel to Jim Phelps, the head of the Mission Impossible team

When thinking of the Nazis, WWII scientists come to mind (given that the Nazis had a lot of the "toys" during the war). Though it feels like the Blues Brothers, it might be worth a mention of some of the scientists "putting the band back together" to start playing with the physics problems floating around. Though Einstein solving science problems is almost assuredly out, this brings back another idea, though: Pick a badly-run old corporation (say, Disney under Eisner) and throw in a footnote about the shareholders revolting and trying to put Walt back in charge of the board. Honestly, I'd like to see GM and Chrysler pushed to hire back their old executives (from the 40s and 50s, when they were big). It'd certainly be an improvement on just reshuffling the deck with who they have now. I know the need for bailouts there was mooted by the war, but I can also see a push for a Truman-style efficiency commission suggesting something like this. I'll set aside thoughts of Truman getting put in charge.

Not going to happen I'm afraid. One reason, look at the numbers involved. There are 90 billion souls in the Hell-pit. If we rescue them at a rate of three per second, without break or interruption, its going to take a thousand years to get them all out. Also, just how many really notable people are there in history? 100,000? 500,000? Not much more than that. The chances of finding one of them let alone several in the short time the humans have been mounting their rescue mission is negligable. So, its stretching credulity too far to assume that we suddenly start digging out large numbers of prominent people who can do things like take over whole corporations. The overwhelming number of people who are rescued will be nonentities, people whose only appearance in the history books is as part of the statistics (dead on the western front, died of influenza, run over by a bullock cart, whatever).

Another reason, it's a hackneyed and rather cliched idea to have large numbers of prominent dead people returning and doing great things, cliched and very unsatisfactory. The focus in The Salvation War is on today's people, in Pantheocide both human and angelic, not on the dead who are just part of the background. There's no story in great people doing great things, the idea that Napoleon (for example) gets rescued and does something spectacular is a non-story. Everybody expects great people to do great things. But, take an ox-cart driver from the 12th century backwoods and put him into a situation where he has to do great things and the story of how he rises to that situation is a good story. So, the reintroduction of historically-prominent figures is strictly rationed. No more than two per book (Armageddon has been edited down to that number).

Another reason, the skill-sets of people who died more than a few years ago are going to be largely inapplicable. Drop Napoleon into the modern world and modern military forces will eat him for breakfast - you think the invasion of Hell was a curb-stomp? Wait until you see what modern military forces would do to a Napoleonic Army. Scientists would be so far out of touch they'd spend centuries catching up, if they were able to at all. More likely they would never do so and give up. Businessmen are creations of their time and environment. Take J.P. Morgan, put him in charge of a modern bank and he'd be doing time within a year (and as for the executives of GM, they're the ones responsible for the current mess). So, a storyline where some figure comes from the dead and saves the day isn;t going to make the cut I fear.

I'd like to see a vaunted historical figure fall flat on their face. Someone who's overblown. Perhaps have Douglas MacArthur or someone else with a super-strong reputation get brought back on board to run an operation and end up looking like an idiot.

This really picks up from the last of the previous point. Any historical figure dropped into todays environment is going to be hopelessly out of his depth and is going to screw up. I've thought of a number of such storylines and every one of them doesn't hold water. While TSW is fantasy (although a hard science fantasy on the human side) it has to be internally consistent and the idea that a person who died decades or centuries ago will be put in charge of modern military units will not be internally consistent. For example, take Seleucus Nikator and the charge of the Elephants at the Battle of Issus. Very impressive but how is that going to help him handle modern armor and mechanized infantry? It doesn't need somebody who is overblown or overhyped to do that, anybody who is more than a decade or two behind the curve will.

What this means is that if historically prominent people turn up, they will be fish out of water. The environment in which they were prominent no longer exists. GJC got away with it because he had 2,000 years of study to understand the dynamics of Hell, he was a unique case. If such people are going to have any role at all, its likely to be something quite different from their historical role
Spoiler

For example, Robert E Lee appears in The Lords Of War, not as a general, but as the administrator of a convalescent home for people traumatized by their sufferings in the Hellpit. There, his personal kindliness, civility and courtesy combine with his professional administrative ability to give hima job he can do. But, commanding a modern army would be utterly beyond him.

So, in summary, the dead are background and environment, they aren't foreground, not in Pantheocide at least. They appear more in The Lords of War but even then they'll be average people trying to cope with situations, not great historical figures. I know there's a temptation to write a story in which one's favorite historical figures return but it has to be resisted. (I had the same problem when I created the long-lifers that form a sub-plot in the TBO stories; that idea caught on as well, and everybody wanted their favorite characters to be a long-lifer - including most of the world's entertainement figures. The number of suggestions I had that Elvis should be one........) By the way, we've had one obscure character returning already. Five points to anybody who knows (without using Google or Bing etc) who Elva Jones was (there's a hint in her appearance).

[D.Turtle]

By the way, we've had one obscure character returning already. Five points to anybody who knows (without using Google or Bing etc) who Elva Jones was (there's a hint in her appearance).

I cheated, so I won't say anything, but it is a nice tribute. Reminds me of what Broomstick (or was it Wicked Pilot?) said: Most regulations in air travel are based on things learned through the loss of life.

[Darth Wong]

As an addendum to what Stuart is saying, it's worth pointing out that even a modern fully qualified technical person (such as an engineer) whose experience and education are completely up to date will require months of training and acclimatization before he can fit into an existing technical team. Every single company does things a bit differently, has its own internal preferences and often even their own internal jargon, their own particular procedures, their own particular set of equipment which can force changes to the way he might otherwise do things, etc. The bottom line is that if you've ever walked into a technical job, you will know that even if you're fully qualified, you will be lost at first, and it will take a while to get up to speed.

It's not much better down in the machine shop. While they can move from company to company a bit more easily than engineers, go back just 30 years and you'll find that almost all of your machine operators have no idea what "CNC" means, never mind knowing how to operate CNC machining equipment. Before you could put them to work, you would need to send them to training courses.

HR people generally figure on roughly six months before a new technical employee is fully up to speed and contributing as well as a veteran member of the team, assuming he already starts with the requisite talent, abilities, and training. And that's for someone who was completely current yesterday! How long would it take for someone who's just few decades off, never mind someone who's a century or more out of date? Forget it; it's a complete waste of time and the whole idea is frankly nothing more than history-geek wankery.

[Mayabird]

[whips out the Cap of Crazy Ass Speculation]

Alright, so we know now that Yah-Yah and Satan were exploring other dimensions without knowing exactly what they were doing or where anything was. And the moment they came across another vaguely habitable Klein bottle dimension, which we now call Hell and which can't be considered more than marginable, Satan rebelled so he could get his own turf. But this doesn't mean that they didn't find anything before.

If Michael knows how to get to some of these places, he could use them as enticements to, say, Kim Jong-Il and co. They complain that they don't want to get killed when things go badly, and he tells them that if they do as he says, he'll evacuate them all to Paradise or something. Just, not telling them that "Paradise" is another bubble dimension that's almost completely frozen except in some deep caves with hot vents, and the air's still rather thin there.

[adjusts the cap] A bit more realistically, if/when humans start trying to hunt down Heaven by boring portals to wherever, they'll probably come across a few of these along the way. Also, some of those other bubbles might've been unsuitable to Satan if they were already inhabited and the natives could fight off an invasion (unlike the orcs). On the natives...we still haven't met the gods or whatever who helped Caesar.

[Darth Wong]

I don't want to sound like your stereotypically ruthless mad scientist, but one possibility occurs to me: they are now in control of the transfer to Hell, so they can determine whether these "fifth column" resistance fighters are showing up in Hell when they die. If they aren't, then it stands to reason that they are going to Heaven instead. If that's so, then find one of them, get a nephilim or naga to familiarize himself or herself with the individual's thoughts, and then kill him. The nephilim might be able to track the person to Heaven and then open a portal there.

Well ... it's what I would do, anyway

Another idea would be to quietly deploy Naga and Nephilim in the path of where they think Uriel will strike next (since he appears to be moving in a somewhat predictable direction) so they can get a fix on Heaven when Uriel opens a portal to get here (and subsequently leave). Of course, that is a bit of a shotgun approach and might not work. It might also be dangerous to their dwindling supply of Nephilim. However, this is war: one does have to be prepared to take certain risks.

[Darth Wong]

And, like I said, they're just as much victims as everyone else...

Bullshit. They [fundamentalist Christians] knew perfectly well what kind of monster they were worshiping. They just thought it was OK for him to act that way because he's God.

I have known fundamentalists who simply do not think this way, but I'm quite sure there are fundamentalists who do think this way.

No, you have not. You have known fundamentalists who think God was a wonderful guy, yet they also believed that he committed horrific acts of mass murder and terrorism. They just won't call a spade a spade, so they make up excuses and euphemisms for his atrocities, as if that makes it better. Quite frankly, their moral compass is broken.

That said, there are Christians who believe that the Old Testament is literally true but who do not believe that God is a monster. Perhaps they rationalize it by concluding that all the people God was smiting were truly evil people who deserved a smiting.

Yeah sure, like all of the male children in Egypt deserved smiting. Not to mention the entire cities or tribes that were supposedly wiped out down to the last man, woman, and child, like the Amalekites or Jericho. Face facts; some of the best-known stories of the Bible are also definitive proof that Yahweh is a monster. They are also definitive proof that fundamentalists who worship him unreservedly have serious holes in their moral code. If fundamentalists think he is a creature of "love" despite also believing that he did all those things, then they're just as bad as the Germans in 1940 who thought that Hitler was a wonderful guy.

Take the Flood for example: how many fundamentalists cheerfully accept that every single man, woman, and child on Earth was "wicked" and deserved to die except for Noah and his family? How much different is that from Nazis who cheerfully accepted that every single Jewish man, woman, and child was "wicked" and deserved to die?

[Darth Wong]

Question: what altitude do angels fly at? Could they be shot down with old-fashioned AA guns? Might it be possible to capture one that's wounded but still alive? It seems that direct hits from missiles are exceedingly unlikely to leave a breathing body, but AA guns might.

[Guardsman Bass]

[adjusts the cap] A bit more realistically, if/when humans start trying to hunt down Heaven by boring portals to wherever, they'll probably come across a few of these along the way. Also, some of those other bubbles might've been unsuitable to Satan if they were already inhabited and the natives could fight off an invasion (unlike the orcs). On the natives...we still haven't met the gods or whatever who helped Caesar.

It's interesting, though, that Caesar didn't end up in the pocket dimension where those gods are, instead getting protection from torment and capture in Hell. Perhaps the other bubbles don't connect to the flow of human souls from Earth upon death in the way that Heaven and Hell do, so they don't have an opportunity to capture them.

In any case, I'd be very curious to see what other gods have been doing in other bubbles. Maybe Mount Olympus was named for a dimension with a massive but dormant shield volcano.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

As an addendum to what Stuart is saying, it's worth pointing out that even a modern fully qualified technical person (such as an engineer) whose experience and education are completely up to date will require months of training and acclimatization before he can fit into an existing technical team. Every single company does things a bit differently, has its own internal preferences and often even their own internal jargon, their own particular procedures, their own particular set of equipment which can force changes to the way he might otherwise do things, etc. The bottom line is that if you've ever walked into a technical job, you will know that even if you're fully qualified, you will be lost at first, and it will take a while to get up to speed.

It's not much better down in the machine shop. While they can move from company to company a bit more easily than engineers, go back just 30 years and you'll find that almost all of your machine operators have no idea what "CNC" means, never mind knowing how to operate CNC machining equipment. Before you could put them to work, you would need to send them to training courses.

HR people generally figure on roughly six months before a new technical employee is fully up to speed and contributing as well as a veteran member of the team, assuming he already starts with the requisite talent, abilities, and training. And that's for someone who was completely current yesterday! How long would it take for someone who's just few decades off, never mind someone who's a century or more out of date? Forget it; it's a complete waste of time and the whole idea is frankly nothing more than history-geek wankery.

They will be useful in Hell for starting native industrialization there, however, but that's completely 100% irrelevant to the war effort, just to quality of life in Hell after the war is over. Stas nailed that aspect pretty well in his subsidiary story.

[Stuart]

Question: what altitude do angels fly at? Could they be shot down with old-fashioned AA guns? Might it be possible to capture one that's wounded but still alive? It seems that direct hits from missiles are exceedingly unlikely to leave a breathing body, but AA guns might.

About the same height as birds, a factor determined by oxygen supplies and musculature. The highest a bird has been reported to fly is 29,000 feet (geese over India) which is just marginally within range of anti-aircraft gunnery (the controlling factor isn't the guns, its the fire control. Even with radar, AA gun efficiency drops off dramatically over 20,000 feet and by 36,000 feet AA guns are useless).

More commonly, birds fly in the 7,500 to 15,000 feet bracket. That is within AA gun range. Angels fly in the lower end of that bracket.

[Samuel]

So we will have AA guns emplaced throughout the US like in WW2, but more seriously?

[GrayAnderson]

As an addendum to what Stuart is saying, it's worth pointing out that even a modern fully qualified technical person (such as an engineer) whose experience and education are completely up to date will require months of training and acclimatization before he can fit into an existing technical team. Every single company does things a bit differently, has its own internal preferences and often even their own internal jargon, their own particular procedures, their own particular set of equipment which can force changes to the way he might otherwise do things, etc. The bottom line is that if you've ever walked into a technical job, you will know that even if you're fully qualified, you will be lost at first, and it will take a while to get up to speed.

That's true, and I do keep forgetting how much has changed in the last few decades.

It's not much better down in the machine shop. While they can move from company to company a bit more easily than engineers, go back just 30 years and you'll find that almost all of your machine operators have no idea what "CNC" means, never mind knowing how to operate CNC machining equipment. Before you could put them to work, you would need to send them to training courses.

Alright, disclosure time. My family business is, in fact, a machine shop. Been in the family since the 40s, though I don't work there (I just don't work well with or enjoy working with my hands; my personal specialty is data analysis). We do use CNC stuff, but there's also a lot of non-CNC machinery we use. Truth be told, most of our equipment is not computerized in the main machine shop. In the calibration offices, sure, but in the main shop not so much.

HR people generally figure on roughly six months before a new technical employee is fully up to speed and contributing as well as a veteran member of the team, assuming he already starts with the requisite talent, abilities, and training. And that's for someone who was completely current yesterday! How long would it take for someone who's just few decades off, never mind someone who's a century or more out of date? Forget it; it's a complete waste of time and the whole idea is frankly nothing more than history-geek wankery.

While I do agree to some extent, with respect to literal machine shops and other "skilled" trades, many of them haven't fundamentally moved on from a long time ago. Some of this has to do with the actual usefulness of upgrading vs. the cost of doing so, while some has to do with a simple lack of change.

As to centuries ago, I agree here wholeheartedly; however, I do think that we're likely to be encountering "current" people first (as they would literally be on top of the piles). To the extent that that assumption is wrong, however, I do concede the point.

-----------------------------------

Stuart,
First and foremost, thanks for the clarification on Mr. Phlops.

On the point of military leaders, I do see the issues with them. However, I also would be hard-pressed to see us not using them for patrol forces in Hell. As it stands we're getting stretched pretty thin down there, and we are using Baldricks. Particularly w.r.t. WWI and later deceased, I'd be hard-pressed to see us not using them as patrol forces, particularly once the shooting begins with Heaven. We don't need to be tying down 200,000 soldiers doing street patrols when we're fighting elsewhere, even if what we have them doing teeters on "observe and report".

On the point of corporate execs, that would actually be a funny aside to include. "Hey, I heard that J.P. Morgan tried to bring back Mr. Morgan to help them with the credit mess." "Really?" "Yeah." "How'd it work out?" "Well, I hear Andrew Cuomo [NY's AG] is getting to know him really well." It doesn't need to be a storyline, and that's one thing I think I fail to say clearly. Side-mentions (say, in a cabinet meeting) are also worthwhile, and I think they give the benefit of dropping a few names without getting hackneyed as well as handling them as part of the environment.

The idea that had brought this to mind in particular was the idea that the shareholders at Disney, when Eisner was still in office, would have leapt at having Walt back...even though knowing Walt's quirks and so forth that would likely have been a nightmare. Basically, I see it as an error that is likely to get made once or twice, and something that does bear highlighting in the story (even if a highly non-prominent example is used). Like I said above: It doesn't need to be a plot, and probably shouldn't be, but I'd still like to see the point conveyed in the story. Most people are even worse than me in that they won't get that bit without illustration.

And finally, you are absolutely right in that I keep losing track of time in the story (in the sense that I keep forgetting that it's only been a year in-universe). For some reason, I keep assuming a longer timescale even though the story explicitly says otherwise.

[GrayAnderson]

One other thing: What is that "Harry Potter" point that was made earlier? I'm still lost (blame my lack of interest in "standard" fantasy; this is probably the first fantasy I've really enjoyed in many ways, with the possible exception of Narnia when I was little).

[Surlethe]

Scientists would be so far out of touch they'd spend centuries catching up, if they were able to at all. More likely they would never do so and give up.

I'm not sure that it's entirely hopeless. Your average dead physicist is probably going to have the scientific knowledge of a sophomore physics major in college and the mathematical aptitude of a graduate student; re-attending university and graduate school would handily complete re-education.

[Samuel]

One other thing: What is that "Harry Potter" point that was made earlier? I'm still lost (blame my lack of interest in "standard" fantasy; this is probably the first fantasy I've really enjoyed in many ways, with the possible exception of Narnia when I was little).

In Harry Potter one of the unforgivable curses is a mind control spell. After Voldemrt dies the first time, a large number of people claim they were mind controlled and many are let of- partially due to bribes amd difficulty determining guilt, but also due to the belief that they were good people who wouldn't have done something like that. The desire to use mind control as a justification for doing something bad is strong- however due to the demons lack of technical knowledge I sincerely doubt they were involved with any leaders after the middle ages.

[Mayabird]

Question: what altitude do angels fly at? Could they be shot down with old-fashioned AA guns? Might it be possible to capture one that's wounded but still alive? It seems that direct hits from missiles are exceedingly unlikely to leave a breathing body, but AA guns might.

About the same height as birds, a factor determined by oxygen supplies and musculature. The highest a bird has been reported to fly is 29,000 feet (geese over India) which is just marginally within range of anti-aircraft gunnery (the controlling factor isn't the guns, its the fire control. Even with radar, AA gun efficiency drops off dramatically over 20,000 feet and by 36,000 feet AA guns are useless).

More commonly, birds fly in the 7,500 to 15,000 feet bracket. That is within AA gun range. Angels fly in the lower end of that bracket.

Birds have much more efficient lungs than mammals, though, so it's much easier for them to pull it off. I saw mention of Lemuel filling sacs, I suppose some kind of air sacs, before he started flying. But then, if they have feathery wings...I'm not going to think too hard about this.


Back to the bubble dimensions. [dons crazy cap] More ways that postwar life can get crazier - discovering new bubbles that are habitable in some way, and thus ripe for colonization. I'm sure China and India, with their huge populations, need for resources, and probably public discontent when the postwar economic depression hits their huge populations, would love to get control of one or more new bubbles. Uninhabited would probably be preferred, but if things are getting really rough, they might not be picky. Or nice.

[Stuart Mackey]

On the point of corporate execs, that would actually be a funny aside to include. "Hey, I heard that J.P. Morgan tried to bring back Mr. Morgan to help them with the credit mess." "Really?" "Yeah." "How'd it work out?" "Well, I hear Andrew Cuomo [NY's AG] is getting to know him really well." It doesn't need to be a storyline, and that's one thing I think I fail to say clearly. Side-mentions (say, in a cabinet meeting) are also worthwhile, and I think they give the benefit of dropping a few names without getting hackneyed as well as handling them as part of the environment.

The idea that had brought this to mind in particular was the idea that the shareholders at Disney, when Eisner was still in office, would have leapt at having Walt back...even though knowing Walt's quirks and so forth that would likely have been a nightmare. Basically, I see it as an error that is likely to get made once or twice, and something that does bear highlighting in the story (even if a highly non-prominent example is used). Like I said above: It doesn't need to be a plot, and probably shouldn't be, but I'd still like to see the point conveyed in the story. Most people are even worse than me in that they won't get that bit without illustration.

.

I can defiantly see your point and I think the same can be said of politicians. Take W.S.Churchill for example, that's a man who just wouldn't give up and go and drive a truck for a living, especially once he works out how society in Hell may evolve, now if he would be successful at it, that is another question entirely, when you look at his second stint as PM and his time as a backbencher between the wars.
Who knows, he and others, might simply recognise their ignorance and start at the bottom again, and do it all again, because they have a new life to live, and eternity is a very long time.
Certainly not worth a leading role in any way however.

[Simon_Jester]

So we will have AA guns emplaced throughout the US like in WW2, but more seriously?

Only if no one can think of a better way to gain access to Heaven than to try and wing a random angel. The cost of such a network would be very large, and the resources needed to do it are all urgently needed elsewhere.
______

It's not much better down in the machine shop. While they can move from company to company a bit more easily than engineers, go back just 30 years and you'll find that almost all of your machine operators have no idea what "CNC" means, never mind knowing how to operate CNC machining equipment. Before you could put them to work, you would need to send them to training courses...

Forget it; it's a complete waste of time and the whole idea is frankly nothing more than history-geek wankery.

You're right that the skills of the dead would be useless to the living. For the dead-controlled human governments in Hell, it might at least be slightly better than nothing. Better a machinist who retired in 1949 than a random guy whose only toolmaking skill is to chip sharp rocks... and do it badly.
________

An aside, but anyone else seeing parallels (alright - tenuous parallels) with Job: A Comedy of Justice?

Sort of, but in this setting Satan is a real bastard rather than being merely the victim of a propaganda campaign. But yes, tenuous parallels.

I like them both. Not sure which I enjoy more.
________

No, you have not. You have known fundamentalists who think God was a wonderful guy, yet they also believed that he committed horrific acts of mass murder and terrorism. They just won't call a spade a spade, so they make up excuses and euphemisms for his atrocities, as if that makes it better. Quite frankly, their moral compass is broken.

I agree. However, even if they are internally inconsistent and morally in the wrong, they still believe what they are saying. And prior to the Message, it was not illegal to believe or say what they believed and said.

That doesn't make them right, either in real life or in the Salvation War. But it does make it tricky to convict them of a crime on the grounds of what they said and did. Unless you pass an ex post facto law against being an evangelist (which violates a lot of precedents in Western law, and not just freedom of religion), an attorney going after Pat Robertson will be in for a very difficult fight.

Yeah sure, like all of the male children in Egypt deserved smiting. Not to mention the entire cities or tribes that were supposedly wiped out down to the last man, woman, and child, like the Amalekites or Jericho. Face facts; some of the best-known stories of the Bible are also definitive proof that Yahweh is a monster. They are also definitive proof that fundamentalists who worship him unreservedly have serious holes in their moral code. If fundamentalists think he is a creature of "love" despite also believing that he did all those things, then they're just as bad as the Germans in 1940 who thought that Hitler was a wonderful guy.

I didn't say they were right. Nor did I say they were ethical. I said they were sincere. There's a difference.

I am not trying to make religious fundamentalism a defensible position here. I don't think it is. What I do think is that in the Salvation War setting, by the real-life standards of Western legal systems, the pre-Message actions of Christian evangelists were not criminal. They had no more warning of the Message than anyone else did, and they truly believed that they were trying to save people from Hell at the time.

Again. that doesn't mean they're right. It just means they weren't actually breaking a law. There is no law against being illogical, inconsistent, or immoral. At least, not anywhere I'd want to live.

[Edward Yee]

After looking at Stuart's spoiler for Lords of War, what I would be interested would be seeing how he came to that position (which makes sense), or alternately/as well how he came to find that he wasn't cut out for what he used to do. Doesn't need to be more than that of course.

[Pelranius]

I think that we should be fairly careful about probing into those little bubble universes. Some of them might come equipped with something that could easily beyond our capability to handle, much as Hell found humanity to be too much (of course, that begs the question why haven't they been going around the "multiverses" already).

[GrayAnderson]

Simon:
Well, here's what I'll say about the Germans in 1940: There's a difference between "Something isn't right here" on the one hand and "My leader is committing mass murder of a group of people in my country." The former should have been glaringly obvious, but the latter wasn't quite so much. Truth be told, the Germans did go to pains to keep the extent of what they were doing from people (and between the propaganda and the simple fact that the mass murder was neither explicitly stated nor brazenly evident for quite some time could easily remain ignorant of a fair deal of what was going on).

More to the point, with what is known about the ancient world, one could easily stick the same spin on the Bible that has, in this universe, "always been stuck on it": Yahweh was an overly-controlling, overly-dominating, and overly-demanding jerk, but if you did get on his good side he'd make sure you were in a very comfortable position vis-a-vis your opponents. Slaughters of populations being reasonably commonplace in the ancient world after a siege (at least based on what documents we have from then; even if the claims are overblown, which is almost assuredly the case, one does suspect that when a siege was broken the winning army celebrated by lopping more than a few heads off), so most of that isn't untoward. Yahweh's no worse than a mob boss in this particular regard: From all appearances, at least as long as he was playing around with Earth, if you were "in the family", so help anyone who attacked you.

With that said, in all fairness (Revelation notwithstanding, at least) the New Testament seems to imply something of a "new leaf" has been turned over. Revelation is, in the meantime, taken to be symbolic by many Christian denominations (rather than being literally prophetic). Even those that take it literally were also working under the not-unreasonable view that there were a lot more people "in the family" than turned out to be the case. In general, I get the feeling from a lot of the non-Phlops people that there's an expectation that a substantial fraction of humanity (I'm guessing at least 5%, possibly as much as 10%) is on the "good side" of Yahweh.

This of course brings another idea to the fore: I think that a good number of those who did lay down and die, at least on the Judeo-Christian side of things, may well have had the story of Abraham and Isaac in mind: Many of them likely expected that they wouldn't, in spite of what they were being told, actually end up in Hell (much as Abraham wasn't actually forced to sacrifice Isaac).

And I would like to also offer up a wonderful thought if the story goes where it seems to be going: Stuart, congratulations on turning Left Behind on its head with the last few sections. Well done!



Samuel:
I'd say that makes sense for the "higher ups" (i.e. Satan and friends). However, considering the brutal command structure in place in Hell (and the apparent ban on iron weapons from the first book), it is entirely possible that some demons did know from such tinkering and simply didn't say anything for fear of (literally) getting their head bitten off. Michael is known to have known about the advances on Earth (and also known to have been unable to get anywhere with Yahweh on the matter), and that was as one of Yahweh's closest advisors. In the case of Hell, some of the middle management might well have had inklings...and of course, their involvement might well have also been comparatively incidental.

More to the point on the Voldemort issue, I think disproving the "demonic possession/influence" plea will be difficult enough that a lot of people will get reduced sentences for it. Good evidence in some cases may be found, and I can even see some "Elders of Zion"-esque books coming down the pike blowing demonic possession/influence cases far above what we're looking at. I think we all know that what we call the "tinfoil hat brigade" will still be coming up with conspiracies, and I expect demons to be given the direct or indirect blame for everything from WWI to the sinking of the Titanic to that lunch that didn't agree with you last week.

What gets accepted popularly will probably be much more "moderate", but knowing what gets published I expect to see plenty of nonsense theories propagating that exceed any reasonable level of demonic influence (not to mention such theories undoubtedly extending to "continuing control" in some form or another). Honestly, sorting out every detail of the truth will probably prove to be impossible, but people will likely settle on a slightly more colorful (and idealized) version of what happened than that which actually did, resulting in demons getting the (deserved or not) blame.

[Junghalli]

That said, there are Christians who believe that the Old Testament is literally true but who do not believe that God is a monster. Perhaps they rationalize it by concluding that all the people God was smiting were truly evil people who deserved a smiting. I don't know.

Or they think that some of God's acts were seemingly evil but somehow ultimately benefited humankind in the long term (the old kill ten to save a hundred deal). That's how I used to rationalize it to myself before my deconversion.

Of course, this isn't particularly coherent with the whole omnipotence deal, but I'm not saying it's a good explanation.

[K. A. Pital]

Most people in Hell are so, so utterly irrelevant and hapeless. The "great" people of yesterday have skills pathetically useless for a modern society.

That's why in my story the great "Peter the Great" is just a small nobody running a castle in the middle of nowhere, and he ends up being a posterboy for tobacco ads. Kings of old and all other people of old are virtually useless. I did make a point about World War II and World War I soldiers getting drafted into paramilitaries to run the Hell occupation, due to their familiarity at least with basic automatic weapons, etc. and in general recently dead form a higher class of people in the Hell hierarchy...

But that's about it. I fully agree with Stuart. The idea that rescued deaders do something great on Earth is ridiculous at all; the idea that they rise to greatness in Hell is also pathetic. All they can do is be sidekicks of humans, manpower for the humans, and such (all undead knowledgeables in my story are basically that). And it simply follows from the environment and facts.

Prominent historical figures often rise to greatness via circumstances. In Hell, the field is levelled again - there are no circumstances, and the knowledge of the undead is decades if not centuries obsolete. They are just no-name undeads. No one cares about them. No one knows who they are. And most of them are utterly, completely useless except from being the manpower resource for the ever rising industrialization of Hell to feed the human furnaces of war. I can't believe people cling to "great undead stories in Hell".

I fully agree with the premise of TSW because it makes perfect sense; and I'd actually ask Stuart to throw out some of the more famous names from my story when he gets to integrate it into LoW...

[Stuart]

I fully agree with the premise of TSW because it makes perfect sense; and I'd actually ask Stuart to throw out some of the more famous names from my story when he gets to integrate it into LoW...

Will be done. In fact, I'd already been thinking along those lines. One possible story line for TSW:LoW is to haev somebody who considers himself to be one of the greats (just to add irony, somebody who isn't actually great, just thought he was) slowly discovering how little he knows and how unimportant he truly was/is.