The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Stuart]

Are we going to be seeing these consequences of TSW Goldman-Sachs being decapitated in Pantheocide, or waiting til Lords of War?

Both. . . . . .

[Surlethe]

Ho boy, that was a major two-part fuckup on my part. I made a quick assumption without reading thoroughly - d is not the density of the object, it is the density of air. Sorry again.

I need to stick to my homework tonight. With this record, though, maybe I should just go to bed.

[starslayer]

Unfortunately, there really aren't any analogies for this in real life,

There are, actually, because there are quite a few very large sheer cliffs around the world, and some of them calve off very large rocks. Go look up some of the major rockfalls in Yosemite, for example. The July 10, 1996 one is the largest that comes to mind. Not as big as one of these rocks, but still quite large, and it fell quite a ways. You can see pictures of the damage at the linked site. Unless the angels put something special in the rocks, there will be no fireball, just an enormous air blast and dust fall (the rock will pulverize itself on impact). Anything directly under the impact site is toast, and smaller buildings along with every single window near the impact are going to collapse/be blown out, but it probably won't have a huge effect beyond a few city blocks.

[GrayAnderson]

1) Mmmm...asparagus.
2) The Goldman Sachs bit strikes me as a natural test case for dealing with extending employment beyond the grave...the whole board being in there allows a pretty straightforward argument to be had (as it's not one person, it's basically all the executives, probably plus a fair share of their personal assistants...not to mention the loss of who-knows-what that hadn't been backed up yet). I'm sensing that those are the consequences, though a total boardroom clearout would cause who-knows-what to get revealed if new people come in with nobody from the old regime to answer to.
3) I get a funny feeling that "Michael had sworn the most holy of oaths that if Azrael supported him loyally, he would get everything that was coming to him" does not imply any rewards.
4) "Only black granite pierced the ice to make a strange, surreal landscape. A bitterly cold landscape." Does this refer to a real place (presumably in Antarctica)? Or is this a reference to some Lovecraft stuff?

[Burak Gazan]

*Getting whats coming to him, sounds remarkably like Darth Sidious telling Nute Gunray and the Seps that Lord Vader would "take care of you..."

[Pelranius]

Goldman Sachs executives choosing to change citizenship to say, New Rome, could make them even more unpopular as they'll be taking their income tax revenues away to another place. Which makes me wonder, are Wall Street bankers still receiving business as usual sized bonuses, despite the war and all?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Well if they're on the ball with re-writing their wills, hell's economy just received several billion dollars of cash.

[GrayAnderson]

Goldman Sachs executives choosing to change citizenship to say, New Rome, could make them even more unpopular as they'll be taking their income tax revenues away to another place. Which makes me wonder, are Wall Street bankers still receiving business as usual sized bonuses, despite the war and all?

If we're holding respectably close to the RL timeline, then at least some of the bonuses probably came down in size at some of the bigger banks. However, I recall the discussion we had back when this was being sorted out coming to the conclusion that the war effort would basically prop up the economy pending a later crash (as unemployment would be through the floor and you might even get wage pressures emerging as a concern).

Of course, it also just struck me that Goldman going down is going to make for more than a little chaos in the market...though the market has probably also been going through more than a few convulsions...which has probably been enriching the GS guys even more (I'm having trouble imagining the volatility you'd see in this situation overall...basically, I'm seeing the various attacks crashing out different sectors of the market, only to have the market pop back most of the way when the crisis of the week passes...I'm also seeing some fun technical games being played with betting on what the next bowl would hit).

By the way, I am getting the feeling that if Caesar's on the ball (or for that matter, Abigor), there's probably some sort of stock exchange going in Hell by now (even if it's rudimentary open-outcry...though I'd think getting a deal for computers to be moved in and hosting an electronic exchange would probably be more efficient). If nothing else, Hell's been ignored while Earth has been hammered by the attacks. Of course, if it wasn't there before, you can bet Goldman's executives will do everything short of walk into Hell working out plans like that (and a part of me is half-expecting them to try and pick up the conversation in the "dead room" while waiting to be processed).

[Darth Yan]

What did my character do exactly? I would just appreciate his exact role and job.

[Edward Yee]

Goldman Sachs executives choosing to change citizenship to say, New Rome, could make them even more unpopular as they'll be taking their income tax revenues away to another place.

Well, herein lies the question -- would New Rome be okay with it considering how disliked GS would be by New Roman allies (and what it would imply about the GS guys' own "loyalty" to New Rome), and in turn, what could Earth governments do to actually prevent these guys from coughing up the promised goods?

[Stuart]

There are, actually, because there are quite a few very large sheer cliffs around the world, and some of them calve off very large rocks. Go look up some of the major rockfalls in Yosemite, for example. The one is the largest that comes to mind. Not as big as one of these rocks, but still quite large, and it fell quite a ways. You can see pictures of the damage at the linked site. Unless the angels put something special in the rocks, there will be no fireball, just an enormous air blast and dust fall (the rock will pulverize itself on impact). Anything directly under the impact site is toast, and smaller buildings along with every single window near the impact are going to collapse/be blown out, but it probably won't have a huge effect beyond a few city blocks.

The speed of descent is grossly understated in the initial calculations (think about it logically, 20 m/s is 44mph. A terminal velocity that slow would mean that nobody would ever get killed by a falling rock. A potential victim could easily step out from under it). The actual velocity of the rock strike is around 1,000 kph. Rocks this big hitting this hard give a very convincing imitation of a nuclear explosion.

The actual maths of the impact are as follows. The rock weighs 100 tons (Biblical data) and is dropped from 5,000 meters up to give an impact velocity of 990 kph. This gives a KE of 49,005,000,000 joules which equates to an energy release equivalent of 11.1 kilotons. however, the overwhelming majority of that release goes into shaking rocks and so and the actual atmospheric effects equate to around 3.6 percent of the energy release. That gives a visual explosive effect of around 430 tons of HE. I do work these things out you know.

[Stuart]

When did ADIZ change from Air Defense Identification Zone?

When there were actual threats to be intercepted.

What did my character do exactly? I would just appreciate his exact role and job.

NCO watching the DIMON(N) portal warning display.

General comment.

The top staff of a major bank suddenly dying and appearing at once in Hell as sentient, independent individuals has vast ramifications, some of which are quite amusing. As you will soon see.

[Chlodwig]

The top staff of a major bank suddenly dying and appearing at once in Hell as sentient, independent individuals has vast ramifications, some of which are quite amusing. As you will soon see.

Hmm, does this end their contract? On the other hand what about life insurance? Does it trigger it?
This should be fun

[Buritot]

Hmm, does this end their contract? On the other hand what about life insurance? Does it trigger it?
This should be fun

Considering we're talking about an enterprise directly relevant to the economic system of the US (and the world in general) I would gather the executives have a number of contingency plans coming into effect right now. Although I wouldn't put it entirely past them it is unlikely they anticipated the termination of the whole executing head of Goldman-Sachs.
Furthermore I'm guessing they'll try to influence their former company one way or another via direct orders or using more clandestine ways. It is up to the legal system of the US to decide whether such participation is legal or not.

I just checked the sites in question: World Trade Center Memorial Site, Goldman Sachs Tower and New York City Fire Museum.
That's a wide area! If the portal was over these places in mere minutes it must drift rather fast.... also if its position is entirely random (in a certain radius) most of lower Manhattan (south of Houston Street) as well as the adjacent parts of Brooklyn and New Jersey are done for.
If it keeps drifting North West...

[Simon_Jester]

Ho boy, that was a major two-part fuckup on my part. I made a quick assumption without reading thoroughly - d is not the density of the object, it is the density of air. Sorry again.
I need to stick to my homework tonight. With this record, though, maybe I should just go to bed.

Sorry, Stuart, I should have spotted this too. All right. The equation is:

v2 = [(2)(mass of rock)(g)]/[(density of air)(cross sectional area)(drag coefficient of sphere)}

Plugging in correct density values (specific gravity of rock is about three for dense rock like basalt, air weighs about 1.2 kg per cubic meter), it looks like we get...

v2 = (3.47*104)(r in meters) m2/s2

Kinetic energy T = (2.18*108)(r in meters)4 J

The actual maths of the impact are as follows. The rock weighs 100 tons (Biblical data) and is dropped from 5,000 meters up to give an impact velocity of 990 kph. This gives a KE of 49,005,000,000 joules which equates to an energy release equivalent of 11.1 kilotons. however, the overwhelming majority of that release goes into shaking rocks and so and the actual atmospheric effects equate to around 3.6 percent of the energy release. That gives a visual explosive effect of around 430 tons of HE. I do work these things out you know.

Ah, Stuart, are you sure about that? I mean, maybe I'm just doing this wrong, but I've been checking and rechecking my math for something like an hour. And I really ought to be able to work something like this out myself, too.

Converting kph to m/s, we're looking at an impact velocity of 275 m/s... mass 100 tonnes or 10^5 kg... I get 3.8 gigajoules, which is close to one ton TNT, not ten kilotons.

And I get roughly the same answer when I plug a 100 ton spherical rock (roughly two meter radius, assuming that specific gravity of three) into the equation I derived above: 3.5 gigajoules at terminal velocity.

Based on my equation above, if I got that right, to get even a .43 kiloton energy equivalency out of a falling rock at terminal velocity, you need to drop something about twenty meters across, tipping the scales at more like ten thousand tons. And that's ignoring the point you raise about much of the energy going into shaking the ground; that's just the kinetic energy of the rock itself.

[Darth Yan]

so Azy's been strongarmed. You said everyone was involved in trying to overthrow Yahweh. Does this mean a.) Every one of the Chayot, or just the top 5, and b.) how are Chamuel and Zadkael plotting against him.

[Stuart]

[Based on my equation above, if I got that right, to get even a .43 kiloton energy equivalency out of a falling rock at terminal velocity, you need to drop something about twenty meters across, tipping the scales at more like ten thousand tons. And that's ignoring the point you raise about much of the energy going into shaking the ground; that's just the kinetic energy of the rock itself.

I used the calculator I provided earlier plus a joules to megatons converter I found on the web. The answer squared with stuff I had from elsewhere so I ran with it. The point is, the high speed of impact does give one an explosion-like effect. We can argue how much because there are so many incalculable variables involved and the altitude of release has a major effect (try recalculating for a drop from 15,000 meters and the figures are hair-raising). The real problem wasn't getting the yield figures up, it was cutting them down so that I didn't end up with a near-nuclear attack. As I said, Michael-Lan is dancing a very fine tightrope here.

[Stuart]

so Azy's been strongarmed. You said everyone was involved in trying to overthrow Yahweh. Does this mean a.) Every one of the Chayot, or just the top 5, and b.) how are Chamuel and Zadkael plotting against him.

have patience, all will be revealed in due course,

[Erra]

Wow, what a chapter.

Speculation time: Everything reaches a boiling point with shit being destroyed and us having next to no power to stop it, and suddenly Michael appears to the humans offering help (Obviously he wouldn't go himself right away, probably send a couple fodder angel messengers first). Tells them that he wants to defect to the humans side, that he's tired of how angels are being treated by Yah-yah. Takes a select group of humans up to heaven, specifically to the prison/concentration camp he had Belial set up. Confirms the stuff about Azriel being behind the attacks and says that Yah-yah is the one ordering Azriel to do these things, explains his involvement with the old Myanmar gov as a plot to subvert heaven through the use of drugs and human influences (not actually lieing on this part), and gives us the metaphorical key to heaven in exchange for safety of himself, his club, and those loyal to him.

Once all this goes down, he'll give us a list of top angels to destroy, which will of course be any angels that could connect him to the attacks and uncover his lies. His biggest potential liability would have been Lemuel, thus all the trouble to corrupt and convert him. However, I think that once the shit hits the fan, Lemuel will either realize what Michael has done and try to kill him himself or do something that uncovers Michael's plans to the humans and causes his death, possibly inadvertantly.

Another option is that once Michael is found out, he will flee to a different dimension that he has previously discovered (every good magnificent bastard has a getaway plan), leading into a plot for Lords of War in which humanity is hunting down the war criminal Michael and discovering new dimensions and races along the way.

Anyway, that's all speculation. I love this story so much. Get it to print fast so I can line your pockets with gold, Stuart.

[ANTIcarrot]

Poor Michael. Didn't anyone ever tell him that the House ALWAYS wins? I don't think he gets how much the humans already know about what he has done...

He might still 'win'. Remember, he would like to live, but ultimately his goal seems to be avoiding the genocide of his species. There's a good chance he'll get the latter at least.

He can also make a good case for giving the humans every chance he can. Even when it comes to New York. Jakarta is a very comparable city, but by picking the American target he gives the humans the best chance of dealing with the aftermath. Of course he'd be lying through his back teeth because that's NOT why he's doing it, but if he gets the chance (or creates the chance) to make that claim, it might sound plausable to a lot of people. It also might sound politically convenient for a military that's still running largely on fumes and duct-tape, and has absolutely no idea what it might have to deal with next.

After all, the humans also know the kinds of things that any Roman commander probably got involved with, but they seem happy to deal with Julius Ceaser.

[Simon_Jester]

I used the calculator I provided earlier plus a joules to megatons converter I found on the web.

Stuart, I think you've been betrayed by your calculators. A kiloton is 4*10^12 joules, not 10^9. That has a major effect on your math.

I mean, I'm sorry, but it really looks like you're off by four orders of magnitude in terms of the kinetic energy, even when I use your own stated numbers for the mass and velocity of the rock.

I know you can get high-velocity impacts by dropping rocks, especially extremely large ones for which the terminal velocity approaches (exceeds?) the speed of sound. But unless there's something drastically wrong with the terminal velocity equation the very site you used cites... you don't get kiloton-range impacts from rocks as (relatively) small as 100 tonnes. Not just by dropping them in atmosphere.

Unless, of course, I'm missing something really important, which is why I wish Surlethe would come back.

[Stuart]

Stuart, I think you've been betrayed by your calculators. A kiloton is 4*10^12 joules, not 10^9. That has a major effect on your math. I mean, I'm sorry, but it really looks like you're off by four orders of magnitude in terms of the kinetic energy, even when I use your own stated numbers for the mass and velocity of the rock.

Three orders surely? that would mean total energy yield of .01 kilotons equivalent to 10 tons of TNT. That works just fine with me; I can amend the story accordingly. Ten tons of TNT is still one hell of a bang.

[Simon_Jester]

Three orders surely? that would mean total energy yield of .01 kilotons equivalent to 10 tons of TNT. That works just fine with me; I can amend the story accordingly. Ten tons of TNT is still one hell of a bang.

Oh, absolutely... or you can use a bigger rock.

Here's the catch. I'm pretty sure it's four orders, not three, for the numbers you used, because I got (rounding off) 4E9 joules using your own figures for mass and velocity. And I got the same result (to within 10% or so) again using a completely independent formula that I worked out myself, without reference to the online calculators, starting only from your figure for the mass of the rock and a reasonable estimate of its density.

And that 4E9 J figure was terminal kinetic energy; dropping it from higher would not have helped.

Whereas using the calculator on a 100-tonne rock, you got 4E10 joules for terminal kinetic energy, and then converted that to 10 kilotons instead of 0.010 kilotons. So I think you may have made two mutually reinforcing slips: adding a zero somewhere by mistake, and then being "betrayed by the calculator," which added another three zeroes.

If you want the impact of, say, 0.01 kilotons, you're going to need a bigger rock. If my formula is to be trusted (and I'm cautiously optimistic on that front)...

Kinetic energy T = (2.18*108)(r in meters)4 J

You want 4.18*1010 J to get 10 tons TNT equivalency, so... r4 = 192 m^4...

r = 3.7 meters, and a mass of about 650 tonnes. Which is very difficult to set up with pre-industrial assets, but still at least more or less within the realm of sanity if the conditions are right, I'd think. Though, again, that's in pure kinetic energy; atmospheric effects are going to be decidedly less impressive.

To get a 10-kiloton impact you're talking about slinging around a rock that's in the same general size and mass range as the Pyramids. Which is just not on.

[Erra]

To get a 10-kiloton impact you're talking about slinging around a rock that's in the same general size and mass range as the Pyramids. Which is just not on.

Or maybe a super dense rock? Made out of crazy other dimension physics. And we can study it and do some sort of super sciency thing with it that lets us break into heaven, somehow.

Or maybe I'll just let the mathematicians and physicists talk and I'll hide in the corner with my business degree

[Simon_Jester]

Or maybe a super dense rock? Made out of crazy other dimension physics. And we can study it and do some sort of super sciency thing with it that lets us break into heaven, somehow.

Or maybe I'll just let the mathematicians and physicists talk and I'll hide in the corner with my business degree

Huh. Let me play with that... just to fiddle with the numbers and explore the consequences a bit.

Keep the size the same (roughly two meter radius). Terminal kinetic energy scales with the square of the density, so we could get 10 kilotons by increasing the density by a factor of 100... to 300 grams per cubic centimeter, which is about sixteen times denser than gold or depleted uranium.

The catch is that the rock now weighs roughly ten thousand tons and is only about four meters across. Which makes it extremely difficult to hold or maneuver.

To make matters worse, the ten thousand ton rock has to pick up a kinetic energy of about 4.2 million joules per kilogram, which is more than enough to melt any material by friction heating (unless I'm doing my math wrong). That corresponds to a speed of about eight kilometers a second, and we'd have to drop the rock from orbit to get it moving that fast.

Also, the rock originated in Hell, not Heaven, in this case, so it wouldn't tell us anything we could use about Heaven.