The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[CaptainChewbacca]

“That’s the ‘dead scientist’ jar.” Norman smirked. “When the Tank started, people used to keep saying ‘If only we had Einstein on this’ or ‘If only I could show this to Wheeler’. Really, they wouldn’t be nearly as helpful as we think, because we tend to imagine that dead scientists would still know what we know.

In fairness, Wheeler died very recently and was quite active up until a few years before his death. He might honestly be useful without all that much catch-up time. Come to think of it, he died in April '08... after the Salvation War had already broken out, and right around the time that Captain Stevenson led the first armored raid through the gates of Hell. So he's one of the very few "legendary greats" who could plausibly still be making a contribution, not that there's any reason to portray that in the story.

Einstein, by contrast, is a completely different kettle of fish, being sixty years dead instead of 1.5 and having a LOT of preconceptions about cosmology that could get in the way.

You're right, of course, but when dealing with eccentric minds its best to lay down the law in terms of absolutes. They could say 'Dead X number of years', but then there'd be hemming and hawing and hair-splitting, so its best to just disallow ALL dead physicists. Believe it or not, I was going to include an Erdos number joke, but XKCD beat me to it by about a week.

[GrayAnderson]

“That’s the ‘dead scientist’ jar.” Norman smirked. “When the Tank started, people used to keep saying ‘If only we had Einstein on this’ or ‘If only I could show this to Wheeler’. Really, they wouldn’t be nearly as helpful as we think, because we tend to imagine that dead scientists would still know what we know.

In fairness, Wheeler died very recently and was quite active up until a few years before his death. He might honestly be useful without all that much catch-up time. Come to think of it, he died in April '08... after the Salvation War had already broken out, and right around the time that Captain Stevenson led the first armored raid through the gates of Hell. So he's one of the very few "legendary greats" who could plausibly still be making a contribution, not that there's any reason to portray that in the story.

Einstein, by contrast, is a completely different kettle of fish, being sixty years dead instead of 1.5 and having a LOT of preconceptions about cosmology that could get in the way.

You're right, of course, but when dealing with eccentric minds its best to lay down the law in terms of absolutes. They could say 'Dead X number of years', but then there'd be hemming and hawing and hair-splitting, so its best to just disallow ALL dead physicists. Believe it or not, I was going to include an Erdos number joke, but XKCD beat me to it by about a week.

The worst part is that in that particular case, it's not so much of a joke considering what that "low Erdos number" auction went for. Even if that guy was refusing it and bidding just to make the point, he still had to bid that to fend off someone else.

Chewie, I think you did a brilliant job of getting the point across in-story that has had to be spelled out here to some extent on several occasions (even to me). Props to you.

[dragon]

“That’s the ‘dead scientist’ jar.” Norman smirked. “When the Tank started, people used to keep saying ‘If only we had Einstein on this’ or ‘If only I could show this to Wheeler’. Really, they wouldn’t be nearly as helpful as we think, because we tend to imagine that dead scientists would still know what we know.

In fairness, Wheeler died very recently and was quite active up until a few years before his death. He might honestly be useful without all that much catch-up time. Come to think of it, he died in April '08... after the Salvation War had already broken out, and right around the time that Captain Stevenson led the first armored raid through the gates of Hell. So he's one of the very few "legendary greats" who could plausibly still be making a contribution, not that there's any reason to portray that in the story.

Einstein, by contrast, is a completely different kettle of fish, being sixty years dead instead of 1.5 and having a LOT of preconceptions about cosmology that could get in the way.

You're right, of course, but when dealing with eccentric minds its best to lay down the law in terms of absolutes. They could say 'Dead X number of years', but then there'd be hemming and hawing and hair-splitting, so its best to just disallow ALL dead physicists. Believe it or not, I was going to include an Erdos number joke, but XKCD beat me to it by about a week.

Or just set up a second think tank/university for the dead and see what they come up with.

[Jim Starluck]

Heck, for the first part of its existence it would be less of a think tank and more of a "getting the dead guys up to speed" tank.

It could potentially be helpful if each generation of scientists has their predecessors and sucessors to talk with, so they can get a clear idea of what came before their time and what came after. They have someone who maybe they knew of before they died explain how they solved that one question that was bothering them so much.

Don't try and get them to understand current-day physics all in one go. Let them go through it chronologically. It'd almost be like a history lesson in some ways.



Edit: The more I think about it, the more the whole "dead = useless because they're out-of-date" thing seems like it would set up a rather drastic class system in Hell. People who died recently, especially after the liberation, have so much of a better starting point than those who have been dead even a few decades, to say nothing of centuries... actively stating that the older dead aren't any use can't be good for long-term relations.

[Darth Wong]

Banks? Frankly, this "let's bring in total amateurs" idea at DIMON seems like some bureaucrat's dumb idea, and I wouldn't be surprised if all of the amateurs accomplished nothing other than wasting the time of the professionals.

Yes, they might "think outside of the box", but the fact is that the scientists should not throw away everything they know and start over. That would be idiotic, since we still have all of the data points from the lasst few hundred years of science, and those data points are all still valid. We are dealing with additions to our existing data set, not a complete replacement of it.

Given that fact, the amateurs are likely to produce all sorts of worthless theories which the bureaucrats will expect the professionals to waste time exploring, even though these amateur theories are:

1) Incompatible with the existing data (which they don't know anywhere near as well as the professionals do), thus obviously wrong before we even begin.
2) Vague ideas expressed in useless qualitative terms since the amateurs are unaccustomed to doing any real scientific work.

As a general rule, when somebody comes along telling you that you need to "throw out the book" and "adopt new paradigms" or "think outside the box", he's usually going to be nothing but trouble. The "book" in this case just got some new chapters; it would be stupid to act as if all of the existing chapters are gone, and that all of the people familiar with them suddenly had their knowledge become worthless.

[ray245]

The Banks and Aperture Science references made me giggle far more than they should have.

And I totally missed my insert into the story! Only caught it on a second reread.

Won't there be some legal issues over using Aperture Science if the this story is going to be for sale?

[Stuart]

The Banks and Aperture Science references made me giggle far more than they should have.

And I totally missed my insert into the story! Only caught it on a second reread.

Won't there be some legal issues over using Aperture Science if the this story is going to be for sale?

That's the sort of thing that gets cleaned up when a book is prepared for publication.

[ray245]

Banks? Frankly, this "let's bring in total amateurs" idea at DIMON seems like some bureaucrat's dumb idea, and I wouldn't be surprised if all of the amateurs accomplished nothing other than wasting the time of the professionals.

Yes, they might "think outside of the box", but the fact is that the scientists should not throw away everything they know and start over. That would be idiotic, since we still have all of the data points from the lasst few hundred years of science, and those data points are all still valid. We are dealing with additions to our existing data set, not a complete replacement of it.

Given that fact, the amateurs are likely to produce all sorts of worthless theories which the bureaucrats will expect the professionals to waste time exploring, even though these amateur theories are:

1) Incompatible with the existing data (which they don't know anywhere near as well as the professionals do), thus obviously wrong before we even begin.
2) Vague ideas expressed in useless qualitative terms since the amateurs are unaccustomed to doing any real scientific work.

As a general rule, when somebody comes along telling you that you need to "throw out the book" and "adopt new paradigms" or "think outside the box", he's usually going to be nothing but trouble. The "book" in this case just got some new chapters; it would be stupid to act as if all of the existing chapters are gone, and that all of the people familiar with them suddenly had their knowledge become worthless.

I would be nice if we can find out what kind of discovery the scientist make every few weeks that can change their complete understanding about how the universe works.

For one, certain laws of physics that is obvious in our day to day lives still exist even in Hell or Heaven from what we can observe.

Like the fact that how we can build things that flies in the air is still requires our current knowledge to do so. While our laws of physics may not explain how the concept of hell works, those laws can still explain why birds can fly or why energy cannot be created or destroyed in our universe.

Unless our law of physics in our universe starts to change itself on a weekly basis, such the existence of gravitational pull suddenly disappearing because we make contact with hell, then we might have to reject most of our laws of physics.

[Stuart]

Banks? Frankly, this "let's bring in total amateurs" idea at DIMON seems like some bureaucrat's dumb idea, and I wouldn't be surprised if all of the amateurs accomplished nothing other than wasting the time of the professionals. Yes, they might "think outside of the box", but the fact is that the scientists should not throw away everything they know and start over. That would be idiotic, since we still have all of the data points from the lasst few hundred years of science, and those data points are all still valid. We are dealing with additions to our existing data set, not a complete replacement of it. Given that fact, the amateurs are likely to produce all sorts of worthless theories which the bureaucrats will expect the professionals to waste time exploring, even though these amateur theories are:

1) Incompatible with the existing data (which they don't know anywhere near as well as the professionals do), thus obviously wrong before we even begin.
2) Vague ideas expressed in useless qualitative terms since the amateurs are unaccustomed to doing any real scientific work.

There's a yes and no to that. The sort of parallel-logic think tank Chewie had described is actually quite common. They tend to major contributors to what we call Red Team Reviews. I don't know if you have those in the civil engineering side of things but in the defense industry they take place once a project has been formulated and its basic parameters defined. Then, there's a meeting where any and every objection that can be thought up is thrown at said project. It doesn't matter how implausible or outrageous it seems, if it can be made, toss it into the pot. For example, one Red Team Review I was on was concerned with using lasers to shoot down ballistic missiles. An objection that was thrown against that (from Martin Aerospace by the way) was that the system could be negated by spinning the missile so that no one part of it was exposed to the laser long enough to do any damage. Now, the people from Martin knew very well that nobody has ever built a spinning ICBM (or IRBM or SRBM for that matter). But, the suggestion led to a study on why not? The answer turned out to be interesting; if the missile was solid fuel, spinning it caused the plasticizers in the fuel to migrate away from the core towards the circumfrance of the rocket motor. That made the whole assemby unstable and teh rocket motor would fragment and explode. If the missile was liquid fuelled, spinning it caused the fuel to surge against the tank walls and they needed to be strengthened to the point where the payload of the missile vanished in structural weight. Now, that's pretty much what the rocket designers already knew but it did lead to an interesting development elsewhere.

By the way, a lot of the "this document says it won't work" quotations come from either Red Team Reviews or Budget Meetings. That's why it's essential to know where a document came from and why it was written before using it for anything.

As another example, one of my old friends in The Business was involved in a Red Team Review on the use of rail-mobile ballistic missiles. He knew from nothing about ballistic missiles but he'd got thirty years experience on the railway system under his belt. He pointed out that the combination of having fully-armed ballistic missiles riding the rails and the security considerations surrounding them were such that they would bring the entire North American railway system to a standstill. He was right, and that's why rail-mobile Midgetman was never deployed. So, out of the box thinking has its place and can be quite useful in its place. It very rarely brings up a useful idea directly, but it often gets the genuine experts thinking along the "why can't we" line and that comes up with ideas thata re useful in applications far removed from the original concept.

As a general rule, when somebody comes along telling you that you need to "throw out the book" and "adopt new paradigms" or "think outside the box", he's usually going to be nothing but trouble. The "book" in this case just got some new chapters; it would be stupid to act as if all of the existing chapters are gone, and that all of the people familiar with them suddenly had their knowledge become worthless.

Now here we agree completely. This is where the above idea goes completely wrong and the whole system turns into a disaster. It happens when the drive to innovate and think of alternative solutions ceases to be a means of making existing systems better and becomes an end in itself. Rummie was a classic example of persons who think along those lines and its not surprising that every idea he came up with was a disaster. The basic concept he had was actually quite right; the way economic, demographic and technical trends were pushing meant that we have to (note present tense) come up with different ways of doing things. In that environment, the Red Team Review concept works quite well. However, Rummie and his minions treated every unconventional idea as if it was worth pushing and regarded any objection to those ideas as being examples of "outdated hide-bound thinking by reactionary old generals and admirals". So we had:

"Ggee we'll build short fat ships that have planing hulls."
"Err guys, that won't work, hydrodynamics are against us."
"Then we'll use ***new technology***."
"But we can't rewrite the laws of physics."
"Typical hidebound reactionary thinking, we must be ***transformational***." and Rummie stopped listening at that point.

It got to the point that any program based on relatively sound science was dumped as "not transformational enough". That's what happens when the idea of pulling in out-of-the-box thinkers becomes dominant rather than a servant. It cost the US eight years worth of R&D money that was effectively flushed down the toilet.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Stuart's stories of the 'red team meetings' were one of the things that inspired my inception of the Tank. They need educated people coming up with different ideas, no matter how crazy they are. Most won't work, but they should probably get talked about anyway. Nobody is expecting Banks or their other writers to be right, but they DO make people think.

[speaker-to-trolls]

I stopped reading Armaggeddon!? after the first few chapters because, like the folks on tvtropes.com, I assumed it'd be dull to watch the forces of hell get bludgeoned time and again while the narrative tutted and said 'silly demons, they don't understand the power of MASSED ARTILLERY'. Having read this story, I think I will give Armaggeddon!? another try. Stuart, I have misjudged your works, this is a thoroughly entertaining story and the fact that the extradimensionals are outclassed militarily is a long way from depriving the story from challenges for the characters or interesting goings on from going on. I look forward to further updates.

With that out of the way, though, I have been wondering. The human forces are stretched really thin in Hell as it is, how are they going to go about occupying a whole new universe if they take over Heaven?
Whatever they plan on doing I'd advise Michael to start working on his 'in case of human invasion, do this' contingency plan, this Jack Daniels Conspiracy seems to indicate there is an open way into Heaven from Earth.

[Jamesfirecat]

Welcome to the crew Speaker-To-Trolls and glad to have you aboard, I'm especially glad to see that Pantheocide has made a "convert" out of you so to speak because I can personally say that there was nothing I enjoyed more than reading through Armageddon and all the comments surrounding it so I could see how various ideas took shape.

In response to your comment about the bottle showing that there's a portal from heaven to earth, bare in mind that Micheal is already known for doing drug runs from his plane to ours, and really any angel worth his salt can portal down and portal out with a bottle if he manages to avoid comming into hostile human contact, so it's no proof that there's any kind of permanent portal we could use like the gate that used to exist between heaven and hell only more so.

Also I'm pretty sure that Micheal back in chapter five (or whatever chapter we first saw him in this fic) mentioned how he already had a plan in mind for what to do if tanks were rolling down the "streets"(?) of Heaven.

So given what kind of a slick opperator he was my money would be on it would at the very least hanging a side outside his clubs door that says "Drinks are half off for humans" (or maybe a quarter off for humans half off for military personel) another one telling them what time the lesbian angel sex shows were, a third telling them what bands were playing and finally hand over a stack of paperwork proving how he had long ago stopped trying to support Yahweh he just couldn't directly help us because he felt he could do more good working form inside. Oh, and he'd probably have a couple dozen baskets full of roses to throw to the "liberating" army and maybe some balloons as well.


His main goal is apparently to pull of a successful rebellion against his boss and then hopfully sue for peace with Earth now that the evil dictactor has been disposed, but it's pretty clear that he's at least likes to think that he's got a plan for every possible turn of events. How correct he is remains to be seen....

[erik_t]

There's a yes and no to that. The sort of parallel-logic think tank Chewie had described is actually quite common. They tend to major contributors to what we call Red Team Reviews. I don't know if you have those in the civil engineering side of things but in the defense industry they take place once a project has been formulated and its basic parameters defined. Then, there's a meeting where any and every objection that can be thought up is thrown at said project. It doesn't matter how implausible or outrageous it seems, if it can be made, toss it into the pot. For example, one Red Team Review I was on was concerned with using lasers to shoot down ballistic missiles. An objection that was thrown against that (from Martin Aerospace by the way) was that the system could be negated by spinning the missile so that no one part of it was exposed to the laser long enough to do any damage. Now, the people from Martin knew very well that nobody has ever built a spinning ICBM (or IRBM or SRBM for that matter). But, the suggestion led to a study on why not? The answer turned out to be interesting; if the missile was solid fuel, spinning it caused the plasticizers in the fuel to migrate away from the core towards the circumfrance of the rocket motor. That made the whole assemby unstable and teh rocket motor would fragment and explode. If the missile was liquid fuelled, spinning it caused the fuel to surge against the tank walls and they needed to be strengthened to the point where the payload of the missile vanished in structural weight. Now, that's pretty much what the rocket designers already knew but it did lead to an interesting development elsewhere.

Having worked extensively with ammonium perchlorate / aluminum powder solid rocket motors, I think this statement to be unlikely, short of spinning at aphysical rates. Your mileage may vary.

[EdBecerra]

Having worked extensively with ammonium perchlorate / aluminum powder solid rocket motors, I think this statement to be unlikely, short of spinning at aphysical rates. Your mileage may vary.

If memory serves (and after my stroke, I freely admit there are still a few holes in the ol' grey matter here and there), the fuel used by American and British ICBM's was rather rubberlike. Hence the use of the word 'plasticizer'. This was due, or so I understand, to then cutting-edge developments in solid fuel technology that meant the missile could sit, fully fueled, for months on end.

Ah. Here we go. From Wikipedia (notorious for its inaccuracy, I admit...)

A powdered oxidizer and powdered metal fuel are intimately mixed and immobilized with a rubbery binder (that also acts as a fuel). Composite propellants are often either ammonium nitrate based (ANCP) or ammonium perchlorate based (APCP). Ammonium nitrate composite propellant often uses magnesium and/or aluminum as fuel and delivers medium performance (Isp of about 210 sec) whereas Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant often uses aluminum fuel and delivers high performance (Isp of about 265 sec). Composite propellants are cast and retain their shape after the rubber binder cross-links (solidifies) with the aid of a curative additive.

The rubber binder would, of necessity, have a certain amount of flex built into it, and if a missile spun fast enough, the fuel would tend to move outward.

Of course, "fast enough" would probably be on the order of at least one gravity, if not more. I leave it to the more mathematically inclined here at the forum to calculate how fast a missile with an outer diameter of 5 feet six inches would have to spin to create that much centrifugal force...

(ooo.. lookit me, I knows big wordies! )

Ed.

[Edward Yee]

I'd like to see what Belial's up to, but his utility really is limited, not just because of the arcane politics of Heaven but because of who he would have to work with. If the claim of "thousand years of Heaven barred" is true in the literal sense, then everyone before, during and since the Enlightenment has been going to Hell.

Seeing the result of Belial's last plots in the big picture when using them, as painful as they were (and only inadvertently effective in Detroit's case), and considering the human demographics in Heaven... how will he be worth the time of anyone there, except as an angelic whipping boy/laughingstock?

*Just had a mental image of Belial snapping and flipping out*

[erik_t]

The rubber binder would, of necessity, have a certain amount of flex built into it, and if a missile spun fast enough, the fuel would tend to move outward.

Of course, "fast enough" would probably be on the order of at least one gravity, if not more. I leave it to the more mathematically inclined here at the forum to calculate how fast a missile with an outer diameter of 5 feet six inches would have to spin to create that much centrifugal force...

(ooo.. lookit me, I knows big wordies! )

Ed.

The stuff is as firm as cold tire rubber; it will not deform noticeably under hand pressure. I mean, you have to remember, it's got to hold ITSELF together. The very edges of the "tube" of propellant in a shuttle booster, for example, have to keep over a million pounds of propellant from sliding right out of the motor casing.

[EdBecerra]

The stuff is as firm as cold tire rubber; it will not deform noticeably under hand pressure. I mean, you have to remember, it's got to hold ITSELF together. The very edges of the "tube" of propellant in a shuttle booster, for example, have to keep over a million pounds of propellant from sliding right out of the motor casing.

Okay, I can believe that.

At the same time, I knew a man who could squeeze a piece of car tire so hard, it deformed to the shape of his grip. Very impressive, and I vowed never to shake hands with him.

So I can't honestly say if rubber-bound solid fuel can deform or not, and if it can, how much effort it would require to make it do so.

Probably have to ask someone in the business, I suppose...

Ed.

[GrayAnderson]

I'd like to see what Belial's up to, but his utility really is limited, not just because of the arcane politics of Heaven but because of who he would have to work with. If the claim of "thousand years of Heaven barred" is true in the literal sense, then everyone before, during and since the Enlightenment has been going to Hell.

Seeing the result of Belial's last plots in the big picture when using them, as painful as they were (and only inadvertently effective in Detroit's case), and considering the human demographics in Heaven... how will he be worth the time of anyone there, except as an angelic whipping boy/laughingstock?

*Just had a mental image of Belial snapping and flipping out*

Well, if the scene at the Monte(whateveritwas) Club was any indication, there does seem to be at least some way for people to get in through the back door, so to speak. It's possible that Michael might have some people around who are of some use, though how many he has and how useful they are is questionable.

If I had to hazard a guess, Michael probably had a deal going with either Satan or one of the demons whereby in exchange for something or another, he'd get to pull people from the list of those going into the pit. Pulling a few hundred people over the course of a century seems eminently doable, and if he kept things under tight enough wraps he could keep them sequestered in-house.

If Michael is pulling in singers for his speakeasy, I'd be shocked if he hadn't pulled a few people of "more use" to him in, given that he was the one ringing the alarms in Heaven that this invasion was likely to go pear-shaped.

[Land Phish]

Stuart I've been a fan of The Salvation War series since I stumbled across it on TVtropes last year, and I just want to tell you that I think it's Goddamn amazing. I can't wait for the book of Armageddon??? to come out (There's gonna be a book right?) and if there's a movie it'll be ten times more epic than Lord of the Rings was.

Anyway keep up the good work.

[Battlehymn Republic]

The Salvation War seems like a hot series. Have you ever thought of bringing it over to big-name publisher, Stuart? Baen Books seems like a solid destination. Armageddon would fit right in there.

[Teebs]

I'd like to see what Belial's up to, but his utility really is limited, not just because of the arcane politics of Heaven but because of who he would have to work with. If the claim of "thousand years of Heaven barred" is true in the literal sense, then everyone before, during and since the Enlightenment has been going to Hell.

Seeing the result of Belial's last plots in the big picture when using them, as painful as they were (and only inadvertently effective in Detroit's case), and considering the human demographics in Heaven... how will he be worth the time of anyone there, except as an angelic whipping boy/laughingstock?

*Just had a mental image of Belial snapping and flipping out*

The angels seem to have a much better picture of what's important to humanity though, and this is particularly true when you take into account their contacts with North Korea and Mynamar. They probably don't need up to date humans.

[Samuel]

I'd like to see what Belial's up to, but his utility really is limited, not just because of the arcane politics of Heaven but because of who he would have to work with. If the claim of "thousand years of Heaven barred" is true in the literal sense, then everyone before, during and since the Enlightenment has been going to Hell.

Seeing the result of Belial's last plots in the big picture when using them, as painful as they were (and only inadvertently effective in Detroit's case), and considering the human demographics in Heaven... how will he be worth the time of anyone there, except as an angelic whipping boy/laughingstock?

*Just had a mental image of Belial snapping and flipping out*

The angels seem to have a much better picture of what's important to humanity though, and this is particularly true when you take into account their contacts with North Korea and Mynamar. They probably don't need up to date humans.

Unless they decide to raise an army to repel a human incursion. In which case Belial has the most recent combat experience as Heaven seems to be more politicing and less open warfare.

[MarshalPurnell]

Belial was picked up by Michael himself. Now, he could be devising new ways to match human capabilities, or plotting more sky volcano attacks, or locked in a cage in the largest square of Heaven to be mocked at by passers by, or he could be stuffed away somewhere Michael can use him as a bargaining chip with humans. Certainly handing him over on a silver platter might be worth something for the British and American governments. I am interested in his fate as a loose end from Armageddon in any case.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Any chance of my name being used for someone/something?

[Pelranius]

The thing with Belial is that is Yahweh aware of his presence in Heaven, or is that only info that Michael Lan and his inner circle are privy to?