Tiwaz wrote:Really, so why are politicians acting extremely politicianlike in the story? Hmm?
Running separate nephilim research instead of pooling everything to common good...
Because that's not mutually exclusive with being part of an alliance?
The point is that you've got "these are my interests as my own independent country," but at the same time you've also got a huge "these are my interests as part of humanity" factor in play here.
If I am, say, Egypt, I don't want to wind up being ruled by one of the Yamantau powers, so I want to make sure I have what it takes to remain independent in the long run. But I also don't want my country getting hit by the Ten Thousand Plagues of Egypt or whatever, so I really do need to make a legitimate effort to keep the overall war running.
So up to a point, I'm going to accept compromises for the sake of a more efficient war effort. If that means organizing a hasty international convention to handle wartime logistics, so be it. Getting every last atom of status and position out of the agreement is less important than not losing the war, after all. For the nephilim research this is less of a problem, because we're not really in danger of losing the war due to a lack of nephilim. No one is going to harass Egypt because they didn't turn over all their nephilim to an international body, so keeping up their own program is simply a sensible insurance policy.
But if we're talking about, say, refusing to allow goods to pass through the Suez Canal*? That's a different question, because it can cause authentic harm to the war effort, and will make many powerful nations directly angry at Egypt. Not so smart.
*Assuming the canal still matters; when enough portals exist it won't.
It is much like a strike. Goal of the strike is not to cause the company to go bankrupt, but to make them agree to terms demanded.
If company is prepared to go bankrupt, then it does. But usually they try to negotiate and offer something in exchange for continued cooperation.
One thing you may notice about labor strikes: they don't happen very often during wartime. When bullets are already flying, no one really wants to find out whether the central government will react to a coal mine strike as evidence that the coal miners are in league with the enemy.
Wartime politics and diplomacy are related to how politics and diplomacy work in peacetime, but they are not the same.
How many members are in Yamantau-club? Hmm? Have you noted how many members are in UN?
192. That means you have to pull well over 100 deals on bilateral grounds to get where UN gets with just one.
As for baggage, all nations were involved in creating that baggage.
Why the fuck would they even need to go around actively setting up specific deals with most of these nations? Most of what the deal is going to be is basically "don't ally with Heaven, don't try to fuck with the war effort".
Hell, the Yamantau Council can probably just ignore most of the nations not directly involved in the war effort, and that includes most of the 192.
And how far their own capacity goes? Will they drive their own economy to ground to fuel the military?
Who said anything about "driving their own economy into the ground"? The oil producers are probably making a killing in the current situation, what with the way the immense war demand would have driven up prices.
“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
Who said anything about "driving their own economy into the ground"? The oil producers are probably making a killing in the current situation, what with the way the immense war demand would have driven up prices.
Besides, a few of the major oil producers are on the Yamantau Council (e.g. Iran). If the Saudis, Kuwaitis etc start being difficult we can look at oil from other sources - Siberia, the North Sea and the Falklands Basin, not to mention Texas. Oil that is in @ too expensive to extract becomes worth drilling for in this scenario.
We should also remember that Hell probably has significant deposits of useful hydrocarbons. The majority of the occupying forces are drawn from members of the Yamantau Council.
Involving the UN in day to day operations of the HEA, or even in setting strategy means we have to listen to the opinions of tiny countries who have very little significance on the prosecution of the war effort. Why should the US, UK, Russia, China et al care what Honduras, or Zimbabwe think?
As I've said earlier countries not on the council will look to their allies that are on it to represent their interests. For example New Zealand will probably ask Australia to pass on its concerns, Canada may chose the United States, or the United Kingdom (the UK will also probably represent the rest of the Commonwealth as we are already leading a CW Army), the Francophone countries will look to France, the various Stans to Russia.
'Fire up the Quattro!'
'I'm arresting you for murdering my car, you dyke-digging tosspot! - Gene Hunt.
Detention Area, Levin Reception Center, Phelan Plain, Hell
He'd heard that when the dead woke up in Hell, they did so in a comfortable hospital bed with a nurse standing by to take down their details and find any relatives that existed in the Second Life. Captain Alex Ben-Shoshan had found that a great comfort, most of his family had gone to the gas when they had been trapped in Russia during the Second World War. He had entertained hopes that his grandfather had been rescued from The Pit and could hear that Eretz Israel had finally won, that the longed-for homeland existed. But what he saw now was far from the scene he imagined. He was in a jail cell, a traditional western one with three brick walls while the fourth was a barred grid. Outside a stocky woman in her late middle age was staring at him, her eyes, cold, expressionless and unblinking. The gaze had all the emotionless menace of a poisonous snake. She was in army uniform although Ben-Shoshan didn’t recognize the decorations or the rank insignia. He did recognize one thing, the balanced scales of an officer from the Judge Advocate's Division.
"Colonel Thanas? The prisoner is awake."
The prisoner? What was going on here? The last thing he remembered was leaving his sinking submarine by the hatch in the forward end of the sail, seeing his men cut down by the relentless machine gun fire from the circling B-25 and feeling the impact as the heavy bullets struck him. Then, everything contracting to a small spot of light, some strange sights and sounds that seemed to go on for ever yet be instantly forgotten before the point of light expanded again to place him here. Where was here?
"Captain Alex Ben-Shoshan, commanding officer of the Israeli Navy Submarine Tekuma. You are charged with crimes against humanity, treason against the human race, one hundred and fifty three thousand, six hundred and twenty counts of murder in the first degree and failing to complete your navigation logs. I am placing you under arrest for these alleged crimes. I will now read you your rights. You have the right to make a full confession. If you do not wish to make a full confession we will beat the crap out of you until you change your mind. You have the right to have a lawyer write your confession for you. If you cannot afford a lawyer, boy are you screwed. Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?"
"Yes, I think. . . . What is going on here?"
"We will ask the questions." Colonel Thanas looked at the woman who was still staring at Ben Shoshan. "I've always wanted to say that."
"Comes of making a career with an army that has a German heritage." The woman's voice was contralto but had a distinct growl underlying the very precise pronunciation. "Old habits die hard. Do you think this piece of dreck will talk?"
"No, he's going to go all heroic on us. Not that it will matter in the long run. We have the entire crew, one of them will cough up the goodies. He'll get the deal, the rest can carry the load for him." Thanas returned his attention to Ben-Shoshan. "One chance. This is it. What the hell happened out there."
"We killed the Scarlet Beast. And the Whore of Babylon. With our nuclear missiles."
"No, you didn't. A formation of Australian F-111s took out the Beast. Your missiles were targeted on Damascus, Teheran, Baghdad, Cairo and Tel Aviv."
Ben-Shoshan went white. "Yitzchak! That bastard Yitzchak did it somehow. You talk to him." Ben-Shoshan looked at the woman who was still staring at him. Her face was still emotionless, menacing.
"We plan to. Now, you tell us everything that happened, everything down to the smallest detail."
Ben-Shoshan spoke for almost an hour, his words being recorded on a tape machine. When his story reached the point of his death, he stopped. "That's all I can remember. What happened to those missiles?"
"Your Air Force got four of them. The fifth, there wasn't time to stop it. Tel Aviv is toast."
Ben-Shoshan broke down, started to cry. "You said 153,000 dead? Can you check to find out if my family were survivors? We all lived in Tel Aviv."
For a moment Colonel Thanas let his act slip and real sympathy crept into his voice. The story Ben-Shoshan had told rang true although it was hard to believe anybody could be so sloppy in their control of nuclear weapons. "I do not have that information and the casualty lists are still being compiled. I will check for you though. Even if the answer is that they are not yet amongst the known dead, that may change. People will die from the attack your submarine launched for decades to come. Think about that if you think we are being harsh with you. Also, we can check here. The number of casualties from Tel Aviv has completely overloaded our receiving system and many of the dead arriving from there still have to be interviewed, documented and identified."
"That bastard Yitzchak. Right at the end, he said Yahweh would protect him."
"Well, he didn't." Major General Asanee grinned. It was not a comforting sight. "We have detained him in another cell. We'll have a chat with him. Colonel Thanas, get a crowbar, a bicycle pump and a plate of asparagus."
Two hours later, Ben-Shoshan was still trying to absorb what he had done when the two officers returned. Colonel Thanas went to the bars and called Ben-Shoshan over. "Captain, I wanted you to know this as quickly as possible. I am deeply sorry to have to tell you that your parents, wife and children were amongst those killed at Tel Aviv. They are here and have been identified. Please accept my condolences for your losses. On the subject of Yitzchak, he has made a full confession. He was approached by an archangel called Azrael who claimed to be acting on behalf of Yahweh. According to Yitzchak, Azrael believed that Michael wasn't prosecuting the war with us enthusiastically enough and Azrael saw this as a chance to displace Michael as Yahweh's leading General. Yitzchak was promised archangel status in Heaven and various other Second Life benefits if Azrael succeeded. Obviously, he was misled."
Ben-Shoshan nodded, still devastated by the news he had been given. "The rest of my crew?"
"We think they were loyal to us, right up to the time they died. The way your nuclear control system, such as it was, got set up, everything went through your communications officer and he was in a position to intercept some messages and substitute others. We have indications that other people were involved though. We'll be pursuing that. You'll be staying here with your crew until we've got to the bottom of this. Provided we don’t discover anything more, we will not be recommending disciplinary action against you. You'll punish yourself worse than anything we can think up."
The two Thai officers started to leave. There was one other question that Ben-Shoshan had to have answered. "Ma'am, the asparagus. What did you do with it?"
"Ate it with hollandaise sauce. It was lunchtime and I was hungry."
Plain of Mapheloistamitos, Hell
Azrael, didn't really recognize this set up. There were bronze columns set at strange angles in the rock and a long, sloping downramp leading to the center of the strange structure. Huge rocks, dozens of them were gathered at the top of the slope, ready to be rolled down. Gathered around the structure was a Choir of the Angelic Host, one loyal to Azrael, ready to sing the chants of blessing. Michael-Lan had explained that Belial, who had designed this set-up, had used Naga to generate the offset portal needed to drop Lava on Earth but the Angelic Host had no Naga. Angels weren't differentiated the way daemons were; an angel was a jack-of-all trades, the specialized daemons were masters of one. That meant the Choir was being pushed to the edge of its capabilities. Still, to Azrael, the arrangement was as strange and alien as the environment he found himself in.
The trip to get here had been equally strange. After his meeting with Michael, the meeting in which Michael had made it quite plain that Azrael didn't have many choices, he had portalled to Earth. A strange part of Earth, one where the ground was frozen and covered with ice. Only black granite pierced the ice to make a strange, surreal landscape. A bitterly cold landscape. Then, from there, Azrael had portalled to this point in Hell, one far removed from the human-occupied abode of the daemons. Michael-Lan had been very clear on this point. Never, ever portal directly from somewhere humans can see you to Heaven.
Disobeying Michael wasn't on the agenda, not any more. Michael had known all about Azrael's network of human loyalists, the ones he had tricked into continuing to support Yahweh's agenda. He had also known of Azrael's plot to supplant him as Yahweh's leading general. Azrael had been given two options, one was to join forces with Michael and become his second-in-command. For that he would be richly rewarded. Michael had sworn the most holy of oaths that if Azrael supported him loyally, he would get everything that was coming to him. The other option was to be arrested as one of those responsible for the spate of bomb attacks that had taken place across the Eternal City. After all, those attacks were human tactics and Azrael was exploiting humans and their tactics. The suspicion was inevitable even if it was wrong.
The Choir was starting its chorus and Azrael watched the center of Belial's array for the formation of the black ellipse. They were homing in on a Nephelim in the city called New York. On paper, this wasn't like Belial's lava attacks that centered on a specific point and needed to be fine-tuned. The whole city was the target and nobody really cared where the rocks landed. Only, Michael had a specific target in mind for the first rock. That would need a pathfinder to go in and move the Earth end of the portal to the desired spot. Azrael had picked one of his most loyal followers for that purpose. The black ellipse in the center of the array formed and the pathfinder dived through it.
New York Air Defense Interception Zone Command Center, World Trade Center Site, New York, United States
The alert siren filled the monitoring room, causing the staff to transition from somnolent ease to frantic activity within seconds. Mostly, the warning were false alarms, caused by a sudden increase in problems with the cell-phone network that was the backbone of the portal warning system. Corporal James Yan hoped that this was another one and he could go back to reading his graphic novel but one glance at bank of monitors told him that wasn't a likely probability. The spectrum analyzer was processing the data from the cell-phone network's receiver limitations, but it was clearly showing a broadband hump peaking in the low gigahertz. The spectrum display flicked and restructured itself, crisper and with fewer gaps. Secondary windows began to fill up with phase analysis of signal components. Yan stared at the screen absorbing the data on it, before speaking directly to his commanding officer.
“Sir, we have a portal forming over lower Manhattan. Confidence is high, say again, confidence is high for portal opening over lower Manhattan.”
There was a brief pause on the line and Yan could hear a hurried conference in the background. It sounded as if Mayor Bloomberg himself was there. Whatever was being said, the decision was sudden and obvious. All over new York, the air raid sirens started to wail and the street lights started flashing. The ACLU had seen to that, they had taken legal action on behalf of the deaf to force the government to organize visual and well as audio warnings of an impending Netherworld attack. New York was getting ready for its attack, the only question was what form it would take. Another angel of death like the late Uriel? Or was it the hypothetical rock attack? The disaster in Baghdad from the floods caused by the rock attack there was still on television every evening. So was footage of Indian, Pakistani, Iranian and American troops trying to rescue the people whose homes had been washed out by the tidal wave.
The telephone in his hand bleeped again. "We have confirmation from subordinate command centers. Looks like the angels are coming for our hide, coming in a big way. Fighters are on their way in. The anti-angel batteries are coming to readiness. So are the anti-portal missiles. Yan returned his attention to the screen. The cell-phone system error rates and signal strengths were climbing inexorably. Whatever was coming through the portal would be arriving very soon. He checked the displays again, getting a quick read on the location. "Sir, the portal, it's just south of here, a bit towards the Verrazano Bridge."
The status displays clicked again. "We have the anti-angel batteries on line. Governors Island is ready to shoot as soon as they have a target. Bayonne is reporting ready to fire also." That made eight 76mm Mark 75 guns ready to open up on whatever came through that portal. At 120 rounds per minute each, that was a lot of firepower.
"Kings is Up, Queens is up." Eight more 76mms. The National Guard and the U.S. Volunteers were doing the Big Apple proud. The city might be facing the worst threat to its existence in its history, but if it did go down, then it wouldn’t be without one hell of a fight.
"Fire control radars report a single hostile has come through the portal. It's moving the portal this way." Outside, the sky lit up as the anti-angel batteries opened fire.
Sky over Manhattan, New York, U.S.A.
Uzemah-Lan-Azrael found the sight below him awe-inspiring. The brilliant display of lights, their rippling flashing as their waves swept across the human city below, it was something that he had only thought could ever exist in The Eternal City. The treacherous thought crossed his mind that if it came to sheer beauty, New York at night could give The Eternal City a real run for its money. But, the sense of awe lasted for only a split second for he had work to do and he had to do it very fast. His orders from Azrael were very specific. Get in, move the portal to its required spot and get out. The humans reacted fast and their bite was deadly. Staying for more than a few seconds would be fatal.
His mind grabbed at the portal and he started to shepherd its end towards the selected target spot. He had it fixed in his mind, the open patch on the tip of the big island. Why he had to put the portal over one of the few open spaces around there was beyond him, but he had been assured that destroying this site would hurt them beyond all reason. Anyway, he was the servant of Azrael and he had his orders.
Just how dangerous those orders were, Uzemah-Lan-Azrael learned in the next few seconds. More lights joined the display, streams of them coming up from a dozen points in the city. All of them converging on his position. For a second he wondered what they were but that question too was answered for him when the explosions surrounded him. One of the strange human words that was entering the Angelic tongue covered them. Tracer. He felt steel fragments lashing at him, felt the sudden loss of strength as the iron fragments sank into his body. A quick glance down told him he had the portal in place. It was time to go.
The sudden acceleration as he let go of the portal threw the guns off for a second but only for that tiny second or respite. Then, they were on target again and this time, without the immediate presence of the portal to affect the fire control radars, their aim was perfect. Uzemah-Lan-Azrael took a 6 kilogram 76mm shell directly in the chest and it splayed his ribs open. Other shots were less precise but the showers of fragments were slashing at his body, draining him faster than he could compensate. He fell from the sky, landing in the East River with a splash that went almost unnoticed amid the noise and fury of the Big Apple's fight to survive the night.
New York Air Defense Interception Zone Command Center, World Trade Center Site, New York, United States
"The angel is going down. Portal is stationary. Oh shit, it's right overhead." James Yan shouted the situation report down the phone, caught by surprise as the gunfire outside ceased. The 76mms had tracked the angel down, continuing to fire until the safety stops had cut them off. The World Trade Center site had been a major building effort until The Salvation War had started. Then, work had stopped, only to be restarted when the partially-complete buildings had been converted to the new defense command center. Yan looked at his instruments again. "Abort that, the portal is drifting slightly. That angel didn’t quite stop it."
"Confirm that, Staten Island reports they're picking up very slow movement." The voice on the other end of the line was concerned; the anti-portal missiles were unguided. They had to be fired precisely through the portal if they were to work at all and a moving target was bad news.
"Something coming through now." For a moment Yan thought he could see the evil orange glow of lava as another sky volcano was created over New York. Then, the tracking radar gave him the information he was dreading. It wasn't a lava attack, a solid rock had just come though. And, according to the radar, it wasn't moving away from its current position. That meant it was heading right at the radar set. A radar set that was precisely sixty feet above Yan's head.
The first rock hit the West Side Highway, approximately 300 yards south of the World Trade Center site. The force of the impact was roughly equivalent to 430 tons of TNT, causing a blast wave almost 500 meters across to devastate everything within its reach. For the second time in a decade, the World Trade Center site was utterly destroyed by an explosion, only this time the effects were instantaneous. Nothing could have survived within the blast radius and nothing did. That left the New York defense zone effectively decapitated. The elaborate operations center was wiped out and all that it controlled left headless. The blast wave punched buildings askew, their glass windows blown out of their frames and showering down on the streets beneath. The ground wave of the impact was that of a small earthquake, shaking and shattering buildings up to a kilometer away. In the South Cove Marina, a mini-tsunami formed that tore boats free from their moorings and hurled them into the city. To the horrified gaze of New Yorkers across the city, a nuclear-like fireball rose over Manhattan leading to wild rumors that the city had, like Tel Aviv, fallen victim to nuclear attack
The portal was wandering at random, drifting slowly north west when the second rock came through. It caught the edge of the subsiding blast wave from the first strike, adding fresh fire and fury to the devastation that was being wrought in lower Manhattan. That second rock hit the global headquarters of Goldman-Sachs, the fireball from the impact joining the first in towering over the city. A full board meeting had been in progress at the bank at the time, a coincidence that was to have unexpected repercussions in the near future. A few minutes later, the third rock descended, plowing into the New York City Fire Museum. As the third fireball rose into the sky, the air defense sub-sector command station was frantically trying to re-establish communications with the city's defenses.
While there was still a city left to defend.
Last edited by Stuart on 2010-03-18 04:26pm, edited 1 time in total.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
Guardsman Bass wrote:
Why the fuck would they even need to go around actively setting up specific deals with most of these nations? Most of what the deal is going to be is basically "don't ally with Heaven, don't try to fuck with the war effort".
Hell, the Yamantau Council can probably just ignore most of the nations not directly involved in the war effort, and that includes most of the 192.
Yamantau Council will need supplies from countries not involved. They cannot produce everything their nations need to function on their own while trying to field massive expeditionary armies.
That means, they desperately need to deal with all those nations not directly involved.
Those nations, in turn, have every right to for example demand immediate payment for every supply or service granted.
Where is Yamantau Council going to get all that cash?
Will USA empty Fort Knox and then start leasing it's territories like Britain?
And how long will that last?
Who said anything about "driving their own economy into the ground"? The oil producers are probably making a killing in the current situation, what with the way the immense war demand would have driven up prices.
Yes, but right now they are not paid.
Point I am making and you are missing is simple.
Nobody, ever, gives something without getting something in return.
Yamantau Council exercises absolute control over some very important things like portals.
But... Yamantau Council is not able to run it's own internal economy AND expeditionary armies without support of those who are not in the Council.
This means, Yamantau has to negotiate deals to get what it needs. Alternatives are either trying to make deals with 150 or so nations separately, or run whole deal through UN in one move.
Which one do you think is far more effective and reliable method?
Specially since we speak of independent nations who may not have real reason to accept any Yamantau authority over them. But they HAVE signed and ratified UN charter for better and for worse.
As for finding replacement oil from elsewhere suggested by JN1.
Sure. Yamantau can try that. If they have time and resources. Again question is how long they are prepared to suffer from serious supply issues before they can establish new oil infrastructure in territories they do control.
To figure out how war is fought, first you have to figure out how it is paid.
And that, gentlemen, is my last contribution in this issue.
Great chapter. But you said "Dir." instead of "Sir." Also, wasn't it the earthquakes THEN the hailstones? and how the hell do hailstones cause fireballs?
Oy. I wonder if Michael knew he was targeting the command center.
Also, there could be some REALLY bad consequences from this. When the WTC fell, none of the sub-basement walls collapsed, which kept the river from flooding into New York's underground. If that changes, then every subway and utility tunnel on the island is going to be full of water in under an hour, and THAT is going to be the real nightmare for disaster relief; no power, no gas, no running water. For at least a week, maybe more, depending on how many breaches you get and whether or not they find them all.
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
For a moment Colonel Thanas let his act slip and real sympathy crept into his voice.
This was the only part that threw my SoD. Thanas? Sympathy? ()
A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
As for finding replacement oil from elsewhere suggested by JN1.
Sure. Yamantau can try that. If they have time and resources. Again question is how long they are prepared to suffer from serious supply issues before they can establish new oil infrastructure in territories they do control.
It's going to be a long war, they have all the time in the world to develop new sources. Besides sources like those in the United States and the North Sea already exist; American oil largely kept Britain going during WW2. IMVHO you underestimate just how much influence the Yamantau Council has over the rest of the world.
I think from reading the last chapter that the UN has largely become irrelevant for the moment.
Nice work on the latest chapter, Stu. Shame about the WTC site, destroying it will really inflame American opinion. If there is one lesson to be learned from the NYC rock attack it is that there should be a back-up ADIZ command centre some distance away from the primary site so that the defence isn't decapitated if the command centre is lost.
IIRC during the Cold War there were at least three sites in the UK that could act as ADOC (RAF High Wycombe, RAF Bentley Priory and the UKWMO H.Q at Longley Lane), though no doubt you will know better than me about that.
'Fire up the Quattro!'
'I'm arresting you for murdering my car, you dyke-digging tosspot! - Gene Hunt.
Darth Wong wrote:The Americans corrupted the original meaning of the UN back during the Korean War. That's when the two divergent visions of the UN sprung up:
1) The original idea: that the UN should promote international diplomacy and cooperation as a goal unto itself.
2) America's revised idea: that the UN should serve as a sort of global police organization.
That's why most Americans think the UN is a failure. It's doing job #1, not job #2, and that means it's "useless".
lol, no. Its failed on both accounts. Tons of minor bushfire wars have erupted since its formation and its failed to stop any of them except by 'force', and even there it failed.
If you want a success story in international politics you just need to look at the EU, and its even had its share of failures.
Does skysweeper ride again? Or is this a development of the ADF 76mm autocannon that was floating around in the 1980s.......or is it just a development of the OTO Melara for land use?
I'm definitely getting an OTO vibe from the 120 RPM.
Also, wouldn't the command center be buried underground in the WTC basement, and somewhat immune to some of the blast effects of the rock?
"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
Nice work on the latest chapter, Stu. Shame about the WTC site, destroying it will really inflame American opinion. If there is one lesson to be learned from the NYC rock attack it is that there should be a back-up ADIZ command centre some distance away from the primary site so that the defence isn't decapitated if the command centre is lost.
IIRC during the Cold War there were at least three sites in the UK that could act as ADOC (RAF High Wycombe, RAF Bentley Priory and the UKWMO H.Q at Longley Lane), though no doubt you will know better than me about that.
The problem with a backup C3I center is that you need to fill it with personnel as well, and with pretty much every metropolitian area and strategic target screaming for them, not to mention the manpower demands of the HEA, there probably isn't enough trained people at the moment to babysit a secondary command center for New York, which to be honest, isn't nearly as important to the war effort as Shenyang or Perm.
Turns out that a five way cross over between It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Ali G Show, Fargo, Idiocracy and Veep is a lot less funny when you're actually living in it.
Stuart wrote:"Captain Alex Ben-Shoshan, commanding officer of the Israeli Navy Submarine Tekuma. You are charged with crimes against humanity, treason against the human race, one hundred and fifty three thousand, six hundred and twenty counts of murder in the first degree and failing to complete your navigation logs. I am placing you under arrest for these alleged crimes.
My inner physicist reels: How did they manage to get the death toll accurate to five figures!?
New York Air Defense Interception Zone Command Center, World Trade Center Site, New York, United States
Don't tell me they put another key civil defense installation there after the first key civil defense installation they put there got knocked down!
The first rock hit the West Side Highway, approximately 300 yards south of the World Trade Center site. The force of the impact was roughly equivalent to 430 tons of TNT, causing a blast wave almost 500 meters across to devastate everything within its reach.
...How high are they dropping those things from again? I'd think that in atmosphere they'd hit terminal velocity before they could pick up that kind of energy unless they're really big, many thousands of tons. And that wouldn't be at all a bomb-like impact, because they'd still be coming in at ~100 m/s or less. As kinetic bombardment goes, these things aren't exactly Thor... or am I missing something?
Tiwaz wrote:Yamantau Council will need supplies from countries not involved. They cannot produce everything their nations need to function on their own while trying to field massive expeditionary armies.
That means, they desperately need to deal with all those nations not directly involved.
Those nations, in turn, have every right to for example demand immediate payment for every supply or service granted.
Why? People are happy to loan major nations with huge GDPs money under normal conditions; why would they not continue this practice?
Terminal velocity for a (roughly spherical of radius r) rock of drag coefficient 0.47 is about 23r^0.5. So since the KE on impact is 1.8E12 J, r = 28 m.
A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
Stuart wrote:"Captain Alex Ben-Shoshan, commanding officer of the Israeli Navy Submarine Tekuma. You are charged with crimes against humanity, treason against the human race, one hundred and fifty three thousand, six hundred and twenty counts of murder in the first degree and failing to complete your navigation logs. I am placing you under arrest for these alleged crimes.
My inner physicist reels: How did they manage to get the death toll accurate to five figures!?
Just survey all the people coming through Minos Gate and count up the ones who said they were coming from Tel Aviv.
Turns out that a five way cross over between It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Ali G Show, Fargo, Idiocracy and Veep is a lot less funny when you're actually living in it.
Surlethe wrote:Terminal velocity for a (roughly spherical of radius r) rock of drag coefficient 0.47 is about 23r^0.5. So since the KE on impact is 1.8E12 J, r = 28 m.
Hang on. Let me get my slide rule... assume a specific gravity of about five... 460 thousand tonnes of rock... Wow. OK, that's going to have the kind of impact we're looking for here. Sure. I can believe that.
The problem is that this is a rock roughly two hundred feet wide. It's huge, and I question the ability of a pre-industrial society to move something that size without an enormous amount of prep time. Also, the impact is subsonic; it's not going to look at all like a conventional explosion. Enormous energy release, but, again, this is at the extreme opposite end of the kinetic bombardment spectrum from something like Thor.
BTW, its terminal velocity is going to be something like 20 m/s. Definitely way subsonic. What kind of damage mechanism is it going to have? This doesn't feel to me like a convert-entire-impactor-into-plasma collision of the sort we were talking about in SLAM (to raise its temp to 2500 K, vaporizing it, you'd need two orders of magnitude more energy, ignoring latent heats of fusion and vaporization). I'm not seeing why it causes a fireball. Gas lines being severed?
Edit- Slide rule? Jesus, how old are you?
A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
Surlethe wrote:BTW, its terminal velocity is going to be something like 20 m/s.
Wait. You said 23 times the square root of the radius... the radius is ~25 meters... ergo, 23*5=115. Or am I confused?
Definitely way subsonic. What kind of damage mechanism is it going to have? This doesn't feel to me like a convert-entire-impactor-into-plasma collision of the sort we were talking about in SLAM (to raise its temp to 2500 K, vaporizing it, you'd need two orders of magnitude more energy, ignoring latent heats of fusion and vaporization).
At a guess, and only a guess:
I imagine it's going to have a "crush everything under it flat" damage mechanism. The rock may shatter and spray chunks in all directions (which could be moving considerably faster than the falling rock at the high end), and the ground's going to shake like crazy, and anything directly under the rock gets pancaked unless it can shrug off half a million tons of rock being suddenly introduced on top of it. But you don't get a fireball or anything; the velocities are just too low.
Unfortunately, there really aren't any analogies for this in real life, because half-million ton rocks don't suddenly appear out of the air under normal conditions. Meteor impacts are not at all the right analogy.
MKSheppard wrote:Does skysweeper ride again? Or is this a development of the ADF 76mm autocannon that was floating around in the 1980s.......or is it just a development of the OTO Melara for land use? I'm definitely getting an OTO vibe from the 120 RPM.
It's the OTO Melara 76mm L62 and the US license-made version. The gun is already in mass production and there are a lot of them in store so its an obvious item.
Also, wouldn't the command center be buried underground in the WTC basement, and somewhat immune to some of the blast effects of the rock?
That's a big rock coming down. The earthquake effect alone of the impact would cave in a nearby underground structure.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
Surlethe wrote:BTW, its terminal velocity is going to be something like 20 m/s.
Wait. You said 23 times the square root of the radius... the radius is ~25 meters... ergo, 23*5=115. Or am I confused?
I was doing the math on the fly. Let me back up and be more careful. The Wiki equation for terminal velocity passes a quick sanity check, so I'll use that. We have v^2 = 2mg/(dAC); m = mass, g = 9.8 m/s/s, d = density, A = cross-sectional area, C = coefficient of friction. So since m = dV, V = volume, v^2 = 2Vg/(AC). For a sphere, V = 4pir^3/3 and A = 4*pi*r^2. Pis and 4s and rs cancel, leaving v^2 = 2gr/3C. In the case of a sphere, that's 3.7r^0.5, which in our case gives just about 20 m/s. Sorry about the sloppy math.
A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
Surlethe wrote:BTW, its terminal velocity is going to be something like 20 m/s.
Wait. You said 23 times the square root of the radius... the radius is ~25 meters... ergo, 23*5=115. Or am I confused?
I was doing the math on the fly. Let me back up and be more careful. The Wiki equation for terminal velocity passes a quick sanity check, so I'll use that. We have v^2 = 2mg/(dAC); m = mass, g = 9.8 m/s/s, d = density, A = cross-sectional area, C = coefficient of friction. So since m = dV, V = volume, v^2 = 2Vg/(AC). For a sphere, V = 4pir^3/3 and A = 4*pi*r^2. Pis and 4s and rs cancel, leaving v^2 = 2gr/3C. In the case of a sphere, that's 3.7r^0.5, which in our case gives just about 20 m/s. Sorry about the sloppy math.
Stuart wrote:That second rock hit the global headquarters of Goldman-Sachs, the fireball from the impact joining the first in towering over the city. A full board meeting had been in progress at the bank at the time, a coincidence that was to have unexpected repercussions in the near future.
Are we going to be seeing these consequences of TSW Goldman-Sachs being decapitated in Pantheocide, or waiting til Lords of War?
"Yee's proposal is exactly the sort of thing I would expect some Washington legal eagle to do. In fact, it could even be argued it would be unrealistic to not have a scene in the next book of, say, a Congressman Yee submit the Yee Act for consideration. " - bcoogler on this
"My crystal ball is filled with smoke, and my hovercraft is full of eels." - Bayonet
Stark: "You can't even GET to heaven. You don't even know where it is, or even if it still exists." SirNitram: "So storm Hell." - From the legendary thread
)
" -