The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Gil Hamilton]

Long hours at the mill that's how.

A winmill, you say?

I can see that though.

ABIGOR: "Good children shall get presents while naughty children will be devoured by my ferocious maw!"*

(*said with the same voice as Morbo the News Monster)

[Pelranius]

What inspired this are the legends (that go right back in time) of communities that were threatened by some hideous monster from outside and saved themselves by gathering together under cover and supporting each other. Like the old mead halls and so on. I'm suggesting that those legends were actually folk memories of communities that survived Uriel attacks and the stories are efforts by those who survived to tell others how they could do likewise.

Leave it to Stuart to tie a Christian archangel to Viking legends! And, perhaps, drop a hint on humanity's next "five year mission" after Michael's suborned like Abigor and Yah-Yah's turned into random atoms. If my conjecture is, indeed, Stuart's path, I can see the Aesir becoming humanity's staunch allies as we take on the Indian pantheon. We'll save Ra, Isis and Quetzalcoatl for later. If any human-invented deities respect and honor the sheer ability to kick ass, it's the Norse gods! Excellent work, Mr. Stuart.

Incidentally, what should we make of rumors like the hanging of people on gallows as offerings to Odin? I doubt that we know enough of the context to judge either way.

[Simon_Jester]

how is the truck gonna do damage? My guess he'll blow up fluffy's leg, causing it to fall 200 feet, or the israeli's will transport him to where Dumah is, and he'll blow her to hell, crippling fluffy, and leaving him further to more truck bombs, I'm sure there are more. Anyway, Al-Sohl deserves to be immortalized; they immortalized that mall guard and while what he did was cool, it pales in comparison to weakening one of heaven's ultimate weapons so it can be destroyed. The fact that he made the decision to sacrifice himself as soon as he realized what was happening is more then can be said for a lot of other people.

Let's hear it for the Civil Defense Truck Bomb Corps!

Their motto: "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you."

Anyhow, the point of this huge wall-o-text is really that, most likely, the initial portal-forming warning signal would probably be the "alert" steady-tone, with the sirens switching to the "attack" wail when Uriel comes through, and either another "alert" signal or a third signal being sounded as an all-clear after the attack is over. Also note that, today, siren networks are integrated into the rest of the public warning system; the Emergency Alert System (in the US) would doubtless be used to issue attack warnings over radio and television...

Of course, once you're in your mind control-proof shelter you're probably not going to be able to get decent radio reception. After all, that's the whole point of building one.
[minor observation, not significant objection]

[tortieconspiracy]

Of course, once you're in your mind control-proof shelter you're probably not going to be able to get decent radio reception. After all, that's the whole point of building one.
[minor observation, not significant objection]

Isn't that what cable's for?

[Pelranius]

Of course, once you're in your mind control-proof shelter you're probably not going to be able to get decent radio reception. After all, that's the whole point of building one.
[minor observation, not significant objection]

Isn't that what cable's for?

Wouldn't military grade communications be able to go through that sort of aluminum?

[Mr Bean]

Wouldn't military grade communications be able to go through that sort of aluminum?

?
The military has these things called Bunkers, made of lots and lots of Concrete and Steel buried underground, when you need communications in a Bunker you drill a hole somewhere(And reinforce that area with even more protection) and run a cable out to a dish or re-transmitter on the roof somewhere. Speaking of aluminum is a terrible insulated of several kinds of military communications so chances are standard coms equipment would still work just fine underneath all that aluminum.

[Stuart]

Speaking of aluminum is a terrible insulated of several kinds of military communications so chances are standard coms equipment would still work just fine underneath all that aluminum.

That's true; its one of the problems we had while designing warships wil aluminum superstructures. It turned out that the superstructure provided only a very low level of insulation for the electronic equipment on board so systems were effectively jamming each other, even when on dummy load. That caused a lot of design problems that were never really overcome. Along with the flammability issue on aluminum superstructures, the problems with electronic equipment led to the idea being discarded.

Aluminum foil works against daemonic possession because the signal strength is very low (it had to be low because it hadn't been observed before, it was lost in the background electronic noise until investigators consciously looked for it). Aluminum is light. cheap and easily fabricated so it's ideal for single-point human protection (headware for example) but it's only suited to screening against low-level threats. As the Uriel attacks show, it's use against high-intensity attacks is severely limited.

[Bayonet]

Aluminum foil works against daemonic possession because the signal strength is very low (it had to be low because it hadn't been observed before, it was lost in the background electronic noise until investigators consciously looked for it). Aluminum is light. cheap and easily fabricated so it's ideal for single-point human protection (headware for example) but it's only suited to screening against low-level threats. As the Uriel attacks show, it's use against high-intensity attacks is severely limited.

I suppose I need to find that old bronze Greek helmet. I think it's in the attic.

[Ryan Thunder]

Fighting off Uriel is a real achievement. Try sitting for a minute or two, keeping thinking "heart keep beating, heart keep beating" and imagine that if your mind drifts off to something else, you'll die. Then imagine doing that for an hour or more. If somebody is on their own, its almost impossible but if they have somebody with them who can watch and prod them if they start to drift away, its much easier.

I don't mean to be a bother or anything, but how the hell is anybody supposed to do that, given that its totally involuntary, anyway?

Shouldn't we also expect to see alot of people with ADD (like me) dying as well?

[Baughn]

I was going to write a long comment to that effect. But as it turns out, the hearbeat is not totally involuntary.

I still think the whole Uriel thing is pretty questionable, but.. there are nerves going from the brain to the heart, and it's not totally beyond belief that conscious control could override his "blessing".

[Stuart]

I don't mean to be a bother or anything, but how the hell is anybody supposed to do that, given that its totally involuntary, anyway?

Actually, the autonomic system is not totally involuntary; it's a mix of voluntary and involuntary in varying proportions. Breathing is a good example, normally it's entirely automatic and we breathe without thinking about it but it is possible to override that and hold one's breath. Of course, the automatic system kicks in when one passes out. Likewise, there are documentated cases of people who have learned to raise or lower their heartbeat by conscious control. Breathing is a very good example because it shows something else, the autonomic system is biased to "on" - it defaults to "keep going". What happens in a Uriel attack is that Uriel's version of midn entaglement targets the autonomic system and commands it to shut down. In the past, people were hit and died before they knew what was happening. Now, with awareness of what happens and the protection of tinfoil beanies we have just enough warning to countermand the Uriel assault and think "Hell no, we won't go". Given conflicting commands from Uriel and the conscious mind, the autonomic system defaults to "keep going"

Shouldn't we also expect to see alot of people with ADD (like me) dying as well?

Yup. Sorry. Although the prevalence is open to serious debate.

[Gil Hamilton]

I think there is a flaw in that logic that not all autonomic functions are created equal. You aren't actually overriding the automatic reflex to breath, but consciously accessing a different set of muscles to prevent air from entering your lungs. When you hold your breath, that tightness in your chest that you immediately feel is the muscles that expand and contract your rib cage trying to work, but they can't due to an inability to fill the air with lungs and maintain pressure (PV = nRT, after all they can't expand the volume of lungs at a constant amount of air without dropping the pressure in the lungs somewhat dramatically). You can consciously make your ribcage rise and fall to force breathing, however...

The heart is another matter. People aren't the Bene Gesserit. No one actually has conscious control over the muscle itself. What they have control over is their brain. Consciously raising and lowering your heart rate isn't a function of control over the cardiac muscles, but conditioning your brain to regulate the automatic signals that tell your heart to beat based on oxygen level (I.E. consciously willing your brain to believe that it needs more or less oxygen). If Uriel is actually preventing the cerebellum from talking to the heart and you have to consciously command that signal, you are out of luck. How many people have any experience making their heart actually beat? The cerebellum does it for you all the time.

Of course, all of this is not actually that particularly big a deal, because the premise is that an actual angel is psychically jamming your brain, thus, like the Gift of Tongues and automatic healing for dead/daemonic/angelic beings, don't particularly require consistency with reality, except that one presumes that there exists an explanation that is consistant with reality if the issue was fictionally investigated. *shrug*

[Baughn]

All that would be required is that Uriel's jamming is somewhat fragile, which sounds pretty reasonable.

The heart doesn't take individual pulses from the brain. It gets a basic throttle signal, but generates the pulses itself; if the nerve in question (it's a cranial nerve, but I don't quite remember the name right now) is disrupted, it seems perfectly reasonable that the heart would just shut it off and switch to autonomous mode. It can perfectly well measure the oxygen level in the blood for itself.

In that case, Uriel wouldn't simply have to jam it. He'd have to set it to a very particular, out-of-gamut but technically legal state, and any interference from the rest of the brain could be enough to run it outside that very delicate condition.

Meanwhile, if you have a pacemaker, that's because the heart's control system is already malfunctioning, and Uriel would be unable to do much of anything, since he'd start with wrong assumptions. He might jam it, but as established that does nothing - less than nothing, with pacemakers around.

The reason the whole thing is so tiring could be that you more or less have to give yourself a minor epileptic fit to cause sufficient chaos to break the suppression. Or something like that.

Well, I'm satisfied. No problems here.

[Simon_Jester]

So... the problem is that the victims are not accustomed to putting out the kind of internal ECCM that cancels out what Uriel's doing to their brain?

I wonder: do nephilim and/or daemons/angels have increased resistance to a Uriel attack? And is Uriel's ability unique, or could other powerful 'celestials' do it if they knew how/cared to try?

[Baughn]

That's how I'm interpreting it. That, and the brain just plain not being designed to support it; fortunately, it's pretty flexible.

Actually, this adds another way being with others might help. Assuming that the theory is correct (in some fictionall sense), and you basically just need to introduce noise in the autonomous nervous system to defeat Uriel - at least on the heart side..

You don't have conscious control of that part of the brain (obviously), but due to the brain's general architecture, activity in other areas will tend to spill over.

As it turns out, a great deal of the brain is given over to dealing with social skills. Empathizing with other people (or animals), etc. The broader activation you can accomplish, the less any single area will need to do, and the better your chance at survival.

You'd still have to drive yourself into a bit of a mental frenzy, though. It's really not very far divorced from an epileptic fit; indeed, I'd expect actual epileptics to have higher survival rates.

What I would not expect is for ADD sufferers to have poorer survival rates, given these parameters. One cause of ADD is for currently irrelevant parts of the brain not to be properly suppressed, which would just be an advantage under these conditions. It doesn't matter what you think about, just so long as you think.

[Ryan Thunder]

Yup. Sorry. Although the prevalence is open to serious debate.

I wasn't thinking anything as silly as "dozens of people everywhere drop dead as they're distracted by something shiny."

More like the odd guy is really struggling with it and finally succumbs because he couldn't keep his concentration up.

[Gil Hamilton]

The problem is that alot of the necessary hormones to get you into a right state, I.E. the fight-or-flight state, are ALSO the result of autonomic functions. Someone coming under Uriel's attack wouldn't get the rush of adrenaline that comes with being under attack, because that would be jammed. Uriel might be correct that it is bringing people peace, because if you shut down peoples autonomic functions, they can't be *physically* afraid. That's more damning than alot of things, because those hormones are really necessary to work yourself into a fighting state.

Further, balance is also another automatic thing. People would have to really concentrate on standing erect. Ironically, lying down and going limp might be the best option when under Uriel attack, because it means one less distraction. The only thing that is truly important in a Uriel attack is keeping the brain supplied with oxygen, which means your lungs and heart have to work. Everything else is a secondary thing. Breathing can be manual, the heart is a bit more tricky particularly since your heart isn't something people are accustom to physically operating. Your friends and neighbors will just have to be forgiving about you loosing your bowels and bladder all over the place during a Uriel attack.

Music isn't a bad idea, particularly bass heavy music, the kind you can actually feel in your chest when you listen to it at an appropriately loud volume. A rhythm that closely matches a person's resting heart rate might go along way to helping Uriel be survivable.

[rdfox2]

Sounds to me like Uriel would have to basically issue the sort of confused commands that result in ventricular fibrillation--not a simple shutdown or blocking of commands, since the heart's own autonomic function would take over, but instead commands that, while keeping the heart operating, would result in no effective blood flow. (V-fib, as doctors call it, is what most people think of as a heart attack; the heart doesn't actually stop, but it starts beating in a fashion that doesn't pump blood effectively.)

I'm not so sure that there's not at least some conscious control over the fight-or-flight reaction; ask anyone who's ever done something to get themselves "pumped up" before they do something difficult. Basically, they use some technique that works for them to generate at least a limited adrenaline rush; it may not be the full "oh #$%$ I'm gonna die!" flow rate that overclocks the brain to speed up reactions and overrides limiters to give you the ability to bench-press the Buick that just fell on your chest, but you *can* consciously get your body to release a bit more adrenaline than normal. (Very useful for things like athletic competition and getting over stagefright!)

I've read that it is possible to consciously command breathing (probably by conscious control of the muscles of the chest wall and the diaphragm) even when the autonomic system shuts down; reputedly, that happens at 140 degrees fahrenheit, and part of US Navy firefighting training is to be able to fight the fire while consciously controlling one's breathing, since the temperature often exceeds that--including controlling the temperature in the training room at 150F to force trainees to practice it. (I know from experience that one can, with practice, completely control respiration--used to play trombone, and anyone who plays wind instruments gets very good at inhaling when they have almost-full lungs, and controlling the rate of exhalation.)

Whether or not shielding would prevent radio/television reception in the shelters, of course, is a somewhat moot point--the EAS would be used like the old EBS was, to inform people to take shelter in the first place. Other methods would be used to issue an all-clear, obviously; the point was that public warning systems are now highly integrated. Indeed, sirens are now intended, at least in the US, more to warn people outside than people indoors; television, radio, and NOAA Weather Radio are expected to do most alerting of people indoors...

[Chad]

So far there hasn't been a Christmas since the Message, but I'm guessing it'll devolve into a more family-oriented Yule, kinda like a Mardis Gras 2.0 with presents.

Mardis Gras is a family oriented holiday? Could you explain what you mean by this.

Humans are such creatures of habit that I expect Christmas will still be around it will just be called X-Mas instead. Ie take the Christ out of Christmas. Besides I would argue that Christmas has more nonreligious aspects then religious ones at this point. Particularly in all of the non-third world countries.

On the other hand the catholic church still exsists and by extention I would expect that the other churches also still exsists. (ie they excommunicated god in Armagendon and claimed he wasn’t the “real” God so maybe religious holidays stay unchanged.[shrug])

[Scottish Ninja]

Besides, given what we've heard of Jesus, humanity might end up deciding that he's a cool dude after all and there's nothing wrong with throwing a big party for his birthday anyway.

[Gil Hamilton]

Sounds to me like Uriel would have to basically issue the sort of confused commands that result in ventricular fibrillation--not a simple shutdown or blocking of commands, since the heart's own autonomic function would take over, but instead commands that, while keeping the heart operating, would result in no effective blood flow. (V-fib, as doctors call it, is what most people think of as a heart attack; the heart doesn't actually stop, but it starts beating in a fashion that doesn't pump blood effectively.)

Absolutely, makes sense.

I'm not so sure that there's not at least some conscious control over the fight-or-flight reaction; ask anyone who's ever done something to get themselves "pumped up" before they do something difficult. Basically, they use some technique that works for them to generate at least a limited adrenaline rush; it may not be the full "oh #$%$ I'm gonna die!" flow rate that overclocks the brain to speed up reactions and overrides limiters to give you the ability to bench-press the Buick that just fell on your chest, but you *can* consciously get your body to release a bit more adrenaline than normal. (Very useful for things like athletic competition and getting over stagefright!)

You can, I get into a manic state myself when I'm going to play some soccer or sit an exam. However, I think there is a difference between that and consciously willing you glands to ramp up epinephrine production in order to tell the body to get ready for some serious activity. I mean, moving a muscle is one thing, but how to you consciously squeeze more hormones out of a gland?

[MarshalPurnell]

Besides, given what we've heard of Jesus, humanity might end up deciding that he's a cool dude after all and there's nothing wrong with throwing a big party for his birthday anyway.

Though the traditional "It's a Wonderful Life" TV marathon spam would be replaced by the assorted adventures of Cheech & Chong. I'm not sure if that's an improvement or not.

[Simon_Jester]

Besides, given what we've heard of Jesus, humanity might end up deciding that he's a cool dude after all and there's nothing wrong with throwing a big party for his birthday anyway.

At this point, though, he's probably too baked to remember his actual birthday anyway, so...

[Gil Hamilton]

I'm reminded of the song "Heaven is a Halfpipe" by OPM

One lyric is

In Heaven there'd be a DJ,
Just spinning dub night long.
And Heaven would be just kickin' back,
With Jesus packing my bong.

[Brovane]

One thing I was wondering was what was happening to the prison system since all this started.

I would think that people that are either sentanced to life without Parole or Death have to start thinking about just commiting suicide and move onto Hell. If a prisoner commits suicide and comes out in Hell are they taken back into custody again? I would also think that crime solving could be easier. Missing persons case, are they dead. If they come out in Hell then they are dead. The police can then interview them after they are dead. How about people that do murder suicide? I was also thinking what do they do with the first death penalty person that they rescue from hell? What do they do when the uncover one of those people that are really evil like Ted Bundy?