Ryan Thunder wrote:You did assume that they never advanced an iota beyond the bronze age, which did marginally bother me. I do still enjoy reading it of course.
The Bronze/Iron Age is a fairly stable state for cultures to occupy. Moving beyond that is hard as demonstrated by the fact that it took millenia to happen even with everyone on Earth "working" on it, at least insofar as trying to build your own culture counts as "working" on its advancement. And a lot of the intermediate stages between where we are now and where we were in the Bronze Age were motivated by Necessity being the mother of Invention. In Heaven and Hell the dominant beings have a lot fewer needs that mid-level technology can actually address, so the process gets short-circuited.
I'd expect that to go double if the government doesn't change because it's a tyranny ruled by an immortal being so powerful they can crush any possible assassin.
[Note: while by most human metrics the demons and angels are in the Bronze Age because they do not use iron, the difference is sort of academic; they don't use iron because it's poisonous to them, not because they don't know the trick. Other aspects of their culture are more normal the Iron Age, such as the castles in Hell.]
By the way, completely stagnant cultures? Actually quite common. China up to the 20th century would be one example, arguably Rome would be another. They may change in surface respects but the underlying culture remained the same.
Are we talking about cultural stagnation, technical stagnation, or something else here?
Are we talking about cultural stagnation, technical stagnation, or something else here?
Cultural stagnation, particularly if it begins while a society is sufficiently advanced vs. those around it, can lead to technological stagnation. Once the neighbors catch up, the formerly-dominant society has to not only defeat them, but also "the way it is" syndrome. Toss a theocratic government on top of things and this can be nigh on impossible.
The fact of the matter is that notwithstanding iron being poisonous to them, these societies have existed for hundreds of millennia with no readily visible impetus to change how they operate...and in that time the leadership in the story seems to have gone senile. Now, granted there's some sort of external threat that's been hinted at that might have offered some impetus, but...the other problem is that you don't have regular leadership changes, which even the most tyrannical government usually runs into. Lacking changes in leadership sure isn't going to help with revitalizing a society.
Emerson33260 wrote:My reading of Genesis ch. 11 is that God gets pissy because people are staying together in one place, and defying the instruction to "fill the Earth". Unless all the renditions into English I have seen are grossly incorrect, the Tower was at worst (from the deity's point of view) an attempt at illegal immigration into Heaven, not conquest. A tunnel under the border fence. In the context of NecronLord's story, the Tower of Babel would have been an expression of a bad attitude on the part of humans that might lead to trouble in a millenium or six.
It's also accompanied by 'they have one language, nothing will be beyond them' - and honestly, if they can drag massive stones up to the top of the dome, they can hoist up iron chariots and go get God up there, too.
Superior Moderator - BotB - HAB [Drill Instructor]-Writer- Stardestroyer.net's resident Star-God.
"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
Without necessarily thinking it, Stuart already hinted at a more fundamental reason you'd see cultural stasis in Hell and Heaven: the fundamental nature of demons and angels. He noted how demons trained by humans simply don't operate the same way with guns, operating in firing squads and infantry platoons, as humans -- because they're not human. Their minds weren't subject to the exact same evolutionary pressures and thus they don't look, sound, act or think like humans. Their intuitions about economics, physics, psychology, numbers and other things are bound to differ from ours.
Besides, evolution means organisms have to die. Natural selection as we know it would work exceedingly slowly in a dimension where beings didn't die of disease and other natural causes. Humans in succession evolved an understanding and use of tools, moral scruples, and language over millions of years and eventually a mastery of the environment that allowed us permanent settlements. As much as genes vied for preservation then, so did dozens of disparate societies and their strategies for energy capture and security. Competition and trade kept ratcheting up human ingenuity until eventually we happened upon the scientific method, leading eventually to the wonders of the space age and information age which enables pantheocide.
There's no appreciable comparison to heaven or hell. Both suffer under the stifling shadow of strong-arming dictators. However far their core biology progressed, their societies became stagnant, I guess you could say, at the memetic phase of information carrying.
edit: and it occurred to me, one of the few areas in heaven or hell isolated enough from those dictators to even permit some degree of creativity, Belial's little fortress, you did see it
I think their problem with squad tactics has to do with the institutional culture of their armies, not with their biology. Each unit competes for kudos so trying to help other units requires a paradigm change to them.
Earth history is furnished with many examples of technologically stagnant societies; why is it surprising that demons and angels would fall into this category? Yes, there was a large block of societies which underwent continuous technological advance from >1000BC right up into the modern age, but they were all connected, so advanced from one tended to be eventually shared by all. Europe and Asia were connected by land, history, and conquest for thousands of years.
In other parts of the world, many societies reached a certain level of sophistication and then just stopped. In an environment devoid of philosophical freedom where beings are immortal, fatalities are exceedingly rare, and a constant supply of fresh slave labour and/or food is being pumped in, why should there be technological advancement? The entire environment seems to act against it, even leaving aside the dimensional curiosities which make it difficult to manufacture precision devices in Hell (and possibly Heaven as well).
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
Darth Wong wrote:In other parts of the world, many societies reached a certain level of sophistication and then just stopped. In an environment devoid of philosophical freedom where beings are immortal, fatalities are exceedingly rare, and a constant supply of fresh slave labour and/or food is being pumped in, why should there be technological advancement? The entire environment seems to act against it, even leaving aside the dimensional curiosities which make it difficult to manufacture precision devices in Hell (and possibly Heaven as well).
Well if you wanted another guy's land one way to get it would be to have some kind of technological edge over him. Like gunpowder, say.
Same thing that's driven most of our technological development, AFAIK.
But yes, you're right. Those particular societies aren't the ones that came to my mind...
“We’ve joked about doing this you know. Never thought we actually would.” Group Captain Martin Winters was keying the GPS coordinates for the 96 GBU-39 bombs nestling in the Spirit of Sheffield’s bomb bay. Behind him, he knew that the weapons systems operator on the second B-1C, Spirit of Detroit was doing the same.
“What, bomb a U.S. City? We had plans for that was well, and we weren’t joking. But then SAC had plans for everything.” Colonel Fitzhubert was an old SAC hand, recalled to the colors along with every other veteran with a pulse and a body temperature greater than ambient. Or so it seemed. “Double and triple-check those coordinates, we’re threading a needle with these things.”
That was an understatement, Winters thought. The bombs had to go down along a thin strip of rough country between the built up areas on Hacienda Heights and the crowded city of Whittier down in the valley. They were lucky they had small-diameter bombs. He could imagine the chaos that two thousand pound bombs could cause down there. “Everybody keeping out of our way?”
“You bet. The fighters are hanging back, waiting for us to flush the game. As soon as Uriel bales out of his cover, we’re out of here and they’re in. Guns and missiles blazing. And the two Scalpels of course.”
“How does that look?” The display showed the bright areas of built-up Los Angeles with a red spot indicating the predicted impact point of the bombs. They formed a dense mass, completely blanketing the Turnbull Canyon area. Spirit of Detroit was making her run at almost a 90 degree angle, pounding the area between Hacienda Heights and La Habre. They had the bad job, there were a small number of scattered homes in that area and the chance of people in them surviving was slight.
“Good job. Let’s hope it all works.” Fitzhubert swung the B-1 around and set the bomb-navigation system to make the optimum delivery run. Bombing people had come a long, long way in a just a little less than a century. “And how do you like the B-1C?”
“She’s beautiful. Can’t wait until we get our hands on ours.” Winters paused and then spoke awkwardly. “I’d like to thank you guys for her name. On behalf of those who didn’t get out of the city.”
“It seemed right somehow. You know two of the Russian Blackjacks are named For Sheffield and For Detroit?”
Winter nodded . “The cities need to be remembered, it’ll be hard enough rebuilding them in our lifetimes. Ah, here we go.”
Underneath the B-1, the bomb bay doors had opened and the GBU-39s were spilling out in a steady stream.
West of Hacienda Heights, Los Angeles, California.
Uriel sat cross-legged on the ground, his wings folded behind him, every nerve concentrating on transmitting his will to the humans gathered beneath him. They were resisting him, fighting him even more strongly than the humans at Eucalyptus Hills and El Paso had fought him. It was as if the very fact that others had proved fighting was possible that inspired these humans to try and outdo the earlier efforts. With almost grim despair, Uriel realized that was precisely what was happening and its significance was not lost on him. Every city, every target he attacked from now on would fight harder than the last. His brain tiring from the effort just added pathos to Uriel’s sudden realization that Heaven was going to lose this war.
Whether paying attention to his surroundings would have made any difference to Uriel was dubious to put it mildly. The B-1s were flying so high that their sound barely reached the ground anyway and it was lost in the blizzard of noise from the circling fighters and the howling of the sirens in the city below. Uriel was lost in his effort to bring his peace to the humans below and even if he had heard the sound of the B-1s high overhead, there was little he could do about it. The bombs were already on the way down.
It was the first ripple of explosions that warned him of the mortal danger he was in. They snapped him out of his trance and broke the concentration of effort he needed to maintain his drive to peace. The bombs exploded several hundred yards to the north of him, their orange flowers looking curiously beautiful in the darkness. As the tide of fire grew nearer to him, Uriel saw something strange and terrible forming, a hideously beautiful silver-blue wall that seemed to devour everything in its path. The sight filled Uriel with terror for as an archangel more deeply associated with death than any other, he knew that silver-blue wall meant death and it was coming for him. For a brief, terrible second he thought of the oblivion he had sent so many millions into and he feared it. Worse, he feared that those others might be waiting for him there.
It was that thought, that he would have to answer for what he had done to the humans in the name of his peace, that broke the spell. Uriel hurled himself into the air, clawing desperately for altitude, his efforts to bring his peace to the humans forgotten. All he knew was that he had to get away with that deadly silver wall and make a portal through which he would escape. In his heart, Uriel knew that he would never again bring his benison of peace to another human community. Even if he survived this night, the humans had broken his spirit. They’d won.
Harvelles Blues Club, 4th Street, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California
The earthquake shook the club, rattling glasses behind the bar and sending them shimmying off the tables. For a brief moment, it looked as if the crowd were going to panic but the club host was on top of the situation. In any case, he had been listening to a police scanner and knew what the shaking really meant.
“Ladies, gentlemen and other species.” Once again the joke got an appreciative roar from the crowd. “There is no need to panic. The Air Force had found Uriel and the noise is their aircraft bombing his position on the ground. There are more fighters than we can count overhead and they’ll get him. Oh my, will they get him.”
The host paused, he’d suddenly realized something critically important. He wasn’t having to force himself to breath, the pressure forcing him to die was gone. “And, everybody, the Uriel attack is over. The bombing must have forced him to stop. We’ve won. Everybody, we’ve won. And to celebrate, everybody join the band.” He spoke quickly and the band nodded gleefully. Then the thumping rhythm started and the entire audience slammed their hands down in time and echoed the chorus.
“You got mud on yo’ face.
Yo’ a big disgrace.
We’re kickin yo ass all over the place.
We will we will rock you.
We will we will rock you.”
F-18H Over Los Angeles, California
“There he is! Damn, he’s a big bastard.” Wong pulled his F-18 around in a tight racking curve to bring its nose to bear on the great shape that was leaping into the sky. The monster was at least twice the size of the Greater Harpy Heralds he had killed on the first day of the Salvation War, it’s massive bulk starkly outlined by the orange-red explosions that swamped the area where it had been hidden just a few seconds before. Wong saw it trying to claw skywards, trying to get away from the jets that were already converging on its position. Uriel tried to face one of the jets and trumpet but the sound blast was weak and feeble. Probably winded by the blast of the bombs that were still exploding underneath him Wong thought. Then, Uriel seemed to stagger in mid air as two AIR-120 rockets from an F-15 plowed into him.
That was when Wong saw the one thing that none of the human pilots wanted to. A great black ellipse was forming in the sky ahead of Uriel. The monster was running for it, running to escape the pent-up vengeance that was waiting for him at the hands of the humans. The F-18 suddenly bounded forward as its throttles were firewalled and the afterburners turned raw fuel into thrust. Uriel was lurching in the air, Wong realized that he was already hurt, his flying ability degraded by cumulative injuries. He saw Uriel lose stability in the air as the supersonic shock wave from the F-18s passing hit him and the beast tumbled down before trying to regain a path to the ellipse and safety.
The F-18 was doing almost 900 knots when it went through the ellipse. Wong saw the dark of an Earth night replaced by the clear white light of Heaven, saw the green fields and crystal clear sky surrounding him, saw the ellipse behind. He had little time, he skidded his fighter around in a tight curve whose shock waves flattened the crops underneath and sent the humans laboring in the fields flat on their faces. Well, Wong thought at least they’ve learned about supersonic bangs today. Ahead of him, staring at the racing fighter was an angel, a white figure, taller than a human, with great wings folded behind him. Wong couldn’t resist the temptation, the Angel was on a direct line between his aircraft and the portal. It was the work of a split second to dip the nose slightly, thumb the cannon button, then watch the angel fall and disappear in a cloud of dust and explosions as the strafing pass bit home.
Then, white light and green fields were replaced by the darkness of Earth night, a night lit up by the city lights below and the streams of gunfire and the exhaust trails of missiles in the skies above. Wong saw almost instantly that the only reason why Uriel was surviving lay in the sheer numbers of human aircraft that were fighting him. He was alone, he had no allies, no friends, everything that surrounded him was hostile. The human pilots were having to watch each other, avoid each other’s maneuvers and make sure they didn’t shoot each other down. It was an old story, then had been many such tales in the past, of heroic fights by one against many. They always had the same basic problem at their heart, the way a single fighter alone could use the numbers of enemies surrounding them to survive. But they all ended the same way, one day, the single fighter would run out of luck and die.
Uriel had been heading for the ellipse again when Wong’s F-18 streaked out of it. It was a perfect AIR-120 shot, the angel and the fighter were on a direct collision course, there was no need for deflection, no need for leading the target. Another quick thumb stroke on the firing button and four AIR-120s hurtled from their racks and closed the target. The last one missed, to avoid a collision Wong had had to swerve at the last second and that had thrown his aim off, but the other three scored direct hits, one up high near Uriel’s chest, the other two low-down in his groin. Wong passed Uriels head so close that he could see every detail of his face. For the rest of his life, he would swear that Uriel’s eyes were crossed as a result of the pain and shock from the two AIR-120 hits in his groin.
He had worse problems than just trying to avoid colliding with Uriel though. Brilliant orange-red streaks passing his cockpit. Tracers, an F-16 was behind him, snapping out short bursts of cannon fire.
“Can it, you damned fool!” Wong almost screamed in rage.
“Sorry Squid. Saw you come out of the portal and I thought you were one of them.”
“Bloody Air Farce.” Wong simmered down slightly and swerved his fighter around to line up for another pass. Uriel was still airborne but he was staggering, trying to trumpet, to create a new portal and to emit his killing waves all at once. Shock and injuries were overcoming him and in his anguish he was trying to do everything at the same time and, as a result, he was achieving nothing. He was writhing and flailing in the middle of the mass of fighters that tormented him. Wong felt not the slightest shred of pity for him, and he lined his F-18 up for another pass at the dying archangel.
Presidential Palace, Naypyidaw, Myanmar
Captain Madeuce coughed, the spasms racking his body. The cloth he used to cover his mouth came away stained with dark green mucus, a darker, red-gray dirt that was even more ominous than the infection-laden slime and a spattering of bright red blood. None of it surprised him. The scientific name for what was killing him was Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, the common name was acute silicosis. To Madeuce it was ‘rocks in the chest’ and he knew he didn’t have much longer to go. Every time had had seen the doctors, the prognosis had been worse. Their forecast had dropped from decades to years, and now was but a more few months. And those months would not be good ones.
It was his visit to the Hell-Pit that had killed him. He’d breathed the dense clouds of volcanic dust for over a week without any form or protection and the fine pumice had infiltrated every portion of his lungs. It was too heavy for the normal actions of breathing to expel so it had settled there, irritating the tissues around the particles. The lungs had dealt with the problem their traditional way, by producing mucus. Only, that had been absorbed into the pores of the pumice and what had started as a fine dust had quickly set into solid cement. In its simplest, most accurate version, Madeuce was suffocating as his lungs filled with rocks. Just to make matters worse, the pumice agglomerates had sharp edges and were tearing at the delicate tissues around them. The doctors had tried everything they could think of but it was no use. The damage was too great and it all went to show that First Life human beings had no real place in Hell and even less in the Hell-Pit.
“You all right boss?” His sergeant had real concern in his voice, he recognized the symptoms of asphyxia easily enough. The blue shadows under the eyes and around the lips, the constant heaving for breath, the blue-tinged fingertips.
“Will be soon enough.” Madeuce shook himself. He had this last job to do then he would be out of the Army. Total disability for the few months he had left. Then, things would get better. He’d been quietly contacted by some old friends who knew some other friends who were part of the new Roman Army. There were commissions for those who wanted them, who had talents that the new army needed. And it helped that Jade Kim was Second Consul. Madeuce looked back on his work with her with nostalgic affection even though he knew the fighting there had killed him as surely as a bullet, bomb or artillery round. She’d remembered him as well and put in some glowing words on his behalf. So, his Second Life as a Tribune in the Legions was set up. He just had to live out his first one.
“Here he comes. That’s Michael-Lan-Yahweh himself. He’s one big sucker isn’t he.” The Sergeant sounded impressed.
“He’ll be one dead sucker soon.” Madeuce coughed again and wiped his lips. It was getting so that even coughing was wearing him out. “He’s opening the portal now. Is the kit getting all the readings?”
“Sure is Boss. And we’re datalinking them right out of here, back to DIMO(N) field operations. They’re getting everything we pick up.”
“Right. He’s moving down there. Taking his crap with him.” Madeuce reached down and punched a code into a transmitter box, unlocked a keyed handle then lifted it up and twisted it. “Surprise package now activated. It’ll blow in five minutes. Let this be a lesson to the whole team Sergeant, just say no to drugs.”
Down in the palace courtyard, Michael-Lan stopped pulling his cart and looked at Than Shwe with exasperation. The idiotic man was still whining about how Michael had betrayed him and left him to the mercy of the wretched Siamese. While Michael thought he did have some cause to be upset, in the final analysis he had brought all this down on his own head. One of the signs of wisdom was the ability to resist temptation. Michael reached out with his mind and detected the familiar ground he used for his transits to and from Earth. He found it, localized it and then opened up the portal. He waved a cheery farewell to the assembled Myanmarese dignitaries and then pulled his cart through the portal to its destination.
It really was a remarkably heavy cart. Michael-Lan was using a significant portion of his strength to pull it, even with the electric motor helping him. Once the other side of the portal, he paused to catch his breath. It was a blessed relief to be away from that wretched Myanmar junta. They’d spent all their time whining at him, instead of shutting up and listening to the wisdom he could impart. Complaint after complaint, accusation after accusation. Nothing but the constant effort to shift the blame to other shoulders. Self-justifying miserable. . . .
Michael-Lan stopped suddenly. It was just as if they had spent all their time justifying themselves. Just as if . . . . .
He found himself looking at the cart he had pulled through the now-closed portal. It really had been incredibly heavy for the load it represented. Neither Number 4 heroin nor methamphetamine pills were that heavy. An idea suddenly came to Michael-Lan and he shook his head in admiration. “Clever, clever little humans.”
It was the work of a moment to start the motor on the cart and fix its towbar so it would move in a straight line. Then he reopened the portal, pushed the cart through and closed it again behind the cargo. He wasn’t quite sure what was in there but he did guess that he wanted to be as far away from it as possible as quickly as possible.
Captain Madeuce and his small team were already beginning to take down their equipment when he saw the portal suddenly reform and the cart loaded with a variety of drugs and a single fifty kiloton nuclear warhead come rumbling back through it. He dived for the weapons control box, trying to slam his hand down on the emergency abort transmitter built into it. He almost made it.
Human Expeditionary Army, Field Headquarters, Yangon, Myanmar.
“Well, we always knew it was a win-win proposition.” General Petraeus looked at the mushroom cloud boiling over Napyidaw on the direct feed from the Global Hawk reconnaissance drone. “If it worked, we got rid of Michael but if it didn’t we got rid of those idiots in Napyidaw. One of the nice things about governments that insist on putting themselves in remote locations with only their closest supporters for company, makes a clean sweep just that. Nice and clean.”
“We lost Captain Madeuce and his team.” General Asanee was looking at the mushroom cloud as well. With the last remnants of the Myanmar military junta gone, the country could be handed over to a reasonable civilian administration again. There was so much rebuilding to do, it would keep them occupied for decades.
“They got the information through though. Complete readouts on the portal Michael-Lan-Yahweh used to get back to Heaven. The DIMO(N) people are ecstatic, they reckon we can duplicate that portal within days. Then we can get the Army into Heaven and start taking that place apart. We did good here General, let’s hope the battles at Los Angeles and Jerusalem go as well.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
I knew it was a nuke. Would it have been possible to put the nuke on a fuse that detected portal transit, though? Seems like it would've made the thing way more useful.
I had a Bill Maher quote here. But fuck him for his white privelegy "joke".
Goddamn Micheal is a fucking asshole, that was pure assholery! Pure dickery! What a dick!
MICHEAL! You MAGNIFICENT bastard! One would think that when HUMANITYMERICA FUCK YEAH decides to sneak a nuke into a pompous angel's ass to fuck him up, that would be that, but nobody totally expected Micheal to just return to sender the nuke back to HUMANITYMERICA FUCK YEAH! Oh man. That's awesome, Stuart. For those who say humanity's being wanked, oh man, did humanity end up getting nuked by their own nukes. That was LULZ!
Poor, poor Uriel. I hope he gets captured, even if he gets his limbs amputated, and his dick blown off. Yahweh's Angel of Death, not only captured by humanity but also rendered barely alive by grevious injuries and sustained only by virtue of being connected to all sorts of machines... who can't even shit or piss and has to use a colostomy bag and a catheter to do his bodily functions. That would be totally cool!
Haha, Micheal Wong gets to bag a bandit! Splash one! Bingo! Gun kill!
I find it highly ironic that Micheal had the gall to think about "wisdom" being the ability to "resist temptation" when he ends up nearly getting nuked because he just couldn't help himself to a HUEG and HEAVY pile of crank.
Man, Stu. You are a horrible person!
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
While I can't say that SW was the only reason I joined SDnet, certainly it was one of the major reasons. It's magnificent. One of the best stories I've ever read in my life.
Keep on being awesome.
One thing occurred to me when Michael sent the bomb back to Burma: if he was really thinking, he could have sent the bomb back almost anywhere. Wouldn't that have been a hoot?
73% of all statistics are made up, including this one.
Ah, Michael-Lan. Not only did you fuck up once, allowing them to monitor the portal readings and possibly find a way into heaven, but you opened a portal to Heaven twice, offering a chance to double-check any readings they got from the first opening. As is, now he's going to be remembered by the surviving angels as the Archangel who lost Heaven to the humans, for reasons he himself understands (he pointed out earlier on that Heaven's streets and the like were perfect for human conventional warfare).
And then there's Uriel's portal - how stable is that sucker? Considering how rushed Mike Wong was, I figured it probably closed not long after he got back.
I suppose on the bright side, getting nuked at close range would probably be as painless and quick as good euthanasia in terms of making your way to the Second Life.
Last edited by Guardsman Bass on 2009-09-28 12:00pm, edited 1 time in total.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” -Jean-Luc Picard
"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." -Margaret Atwood
SCRawl wrote:One thing occurred to me when Michael sent the bomb back to Burma: if he was really thinking, he could have sent the bomb back almost anywhere. Wouldn't that have been a hoot?
It was probably easiest for him to open up a portal to a place he already had 'in mind'.
Stuart: The only problem is, I'm losing track of which universe I'm in.
You kinda look like Jesus. With a lightsaber.- Peregrin Toker
SCRawl wrote:One thing occurred to me when Michael sent the bomb back to Burma: if he was really thinking, he could have sent the bomb back almost anywhere. Wouldn't that have been a hoot?
It was probably easiest for him to open up a portal to a place he already had 'in mind'.
That thought occurred to me as well. But I wonder if it really would take any more time to open a portal to, say, Washington? In any case, it implies to me that Petraeus was still opening himself up to tremendous risk by putting a nuke within Michael's reach. I probably would have done the same thing, but it was still carried the possibility of having it blow up in my face (pun intended).
73% of all statistics are made up, including this one.
Well, it was done with a manual abort button in mind... The archangel can't possibly have known how fine he actually cut it, but he did know he was on borrowed time. In the end it was all up to serendipity that he a.) got it back through before it could annihilate him and b.) did not leave enough time for the initiation to be aborted.
Shoulda planned it a bit better. Get one of those old artillery shell rounds, so that Michael can't figure out the weight of that nuke. I mean, 1-2 kilotons will kill him just as well as 50 kt; I mean, it's not like he's going to be any appreciable distance from the cart.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
Well that at least puts an end to Uriel I doubt he's gonna get away from this one, no way, no how.
Though how come he wasn't able to make a portal as close to himself as he was in El Paso? I'll just assume it has something to do with the wounds he picked up in Sandiego unless there's a better explanation out there.
Also after the scene in the club, I really want to see us bring some sonic moral breaking warfare to heaven when we bust in. Let's see how Yah-Yah's chorus likes having some power rock blasted at them! Of course Micheal's boys will probably be use to it, but they're only a small percentage of all the angels in heaven.
Also this begs the question of if humanity is going to try and subvert some of Micheal's minions out from under him by offering drugs since we now know he's bringing them to Heaven, his supplies are going to start running low (he didn't get away with the drugs right, he sent them back with the nuke, or did I misread that?) and we've got more than enough to make sure even a gigantic angel gets high.
Also in response to the question of if we just handed Micheal a 50KT warhead and the ability to have sent it anywhere, remember even he seems to need a Nephilliam in order to pick the location he portals down to earth. (Do angels need Nephs the way that Baldricks do? It certaintly makes more sense then them not needing them) Thus with him not knowing how much time was left on the bomb is he more likely to play "where in the world is Carmen Sandiego" and try to find an unprotected Neph nearby some big important human target, or is he going to go with the one whose location he knows by heart and send the cart right back where it came from ASAP?
Last edited by Jamesfirecat on 2009-09-28 12:52pm, edited 1 time in total.
Jamesfirecat wrote:and we've got more than enough to make sure even a gigantic angel gets high.
Wow, I totally missed that point. Angels are probably a bit larger than humans even at the lower scale; and that means more drugs will be needed overall.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
MKSheppard wrote:Shoulda planned it a bit better. Get one of those old artillery shell rounds, so that Michael can't figure out the weight of that nuke. I mean, 1-2 kilotons will kill him just as well as 50 kt; I mean, it's not like he's going to be any appreciable distance from the cart.
Shame on you, Shep. What kind of nukeosexual are you if you don't recognize that if you can blow up an archangel with a 2kT warhead and a 50kT warhead, the 50kT is OBVIOUSLY the more awesome choice?
"Show me an angel and I will paint you one." - Gustav Courbet
"Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent of the Aztecs... you are a pussy." - Stephen Colbert
"Really, I'm jealous of how much smarter than me he is. I'm not an expert on anything and he's an expert on things he knows nothing about." - Me, concerning a bullshitter
Wow, I totally missed that point. Angels are probably a bit larger than humans even at the lower scale; and that means more drugs will be needed overall.
The real question is, how long until we get our selves a living angel or at least some fairly intact angel carcasses to play with? Once we've done that does anyone want to bet humanity might start to think "Hmm, aparently angels are every bit as vunerable to being junkies as we are, let's make a drug that is especially designed to be addicting and debilitating to angels!"
Of course this sort of has "wonder weapon" written all over it, so I think we're more likely to see vast amounts of the narcotics we already have used, but still it would be cool if we at least got some guys somewhere working on it for after we conquer heaven, opiate of the masses and all that...
Shame on you, Shep. What kind of nukeosexual are you if you don't recognize that if you can blow up an archangel with a 2kT warhead and a 50kT warhead, the 50kT is OBVIOUSLY the more awesome choice?
The phrase "nukosexual" makes me think back to the third to last scene in Doctor Strangelove, you know the one.
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- PeZook
