The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[CaptainChewbacca]

No aircraft would've been bad, because there would have been tens of thousands (maybe 100,000) harpies raining death from above.

[Edward Yee]

No aircraft would've been bad, because there would have been tens of thousands (maybe 100,000) harpies raining death from above.

Did Abigor reveal the concept of "close air support" in Satan's court, or did Beelzebub come up with that one on his own?

[xthetenth]

No aircraft would've been bad, because there would have been tens of thousands (maybe 100,000) harpies raining death from above.

Did Abigor reveal the concept of "close air support" in Satan's court, or did Beelzebub come up with that one on his own?

We left that one out, hence Beelzebub thinking Belial taught us the idea. Mass ciws would've been the best answer, but it would've taken time to make. I can see the navy getting stripped of their phalanx mounts for that in a heartbeat and massively ramped production for ground mounts of aams like the amraam mount on hummvees and the like.

[Night_stalker]

Introing the Angels to the God of War does sound appealing.

[Ryan Thunder]

No aircraft would've been bad, because there would have been tens of thousands (maybe 100,000) harpies raining death from above.

So, he made up the hell-filters to further destroy whatever sense of actual tension there might've been without them?

[Baughn]

The war would have lasted longer without them - or, more likely, they would have started spamming nukes. Which is rarely good in a story.

As I read it, they were pushed pretty close to the edge of what could be done with conventional weapons even with the filters; with a real aerial assault on top of that, chances are they'd go over it, for lack of ordinance if nothing else.

[pharo212]

IIRC, supplies were running out at that point. So, assuming we continued with the attacks without air support, the probable result is that we would have taken more losses, the war would drag on, and we'd either retreat and re-supply (same result but takes longer) or nuked them. Neither of those greatly improve the story, so the hell-filters are a narrative convenience to prevent tediousness, like the portals.
Just my view, though.

[ANTIcarrot]

No aircraft would've been bad, because there would have been tens of thousands (maybe 100,000) harpies raining death from above.

Technically no filters would have meant limited/disposable aircraft, rather than none at all. Even if an F15 got knocked out after 1 hour, and took a hundred to repair, the USAF has thousands, and could still service dozens at any one time. Cruise missiles might not fly long enough to be effected, and B-1s *might* still be able to get through the hellmouth and up to a dust-free altitude quick enough that they wouldn't suffer any serious effects.

So, he made up the hell-filters to further destroy whatever sense of actual tension there might've been without them?

As Baughn said, the most immediate and obvious solution would have been to start using trident nuclear missiles in an air defense capacity. Something in the 10kt range would probably kill all the harpies all at once without unmanagable effects on the army below; especially if detonated at range as well as height. Or just use a lot of VX early and often.

[Stuart]

As Baughn said, the most immediate and obvious solution would have been to start using trident nuclear missiles in an air defense capacity. Something in the 10kt range would probably kill all the harpies all at once without unmanagable effects on the army below; especially if detonated at range as well as height. Or just use a lot of VX early and often.

Exactly; there are plenty of options and nuclear-tipped SAMs are not precisely unknown entities. Without aircraft around, such weapons would have been free right from the start and nuclear initiations would have been commonplace. That means they'd have been used on the ground forces as well. Dis and every other major population centers would have been nuked as a matter of course. The story would simply be one of a nuclear onslaught and then humans mopping up the pieces. Armageddon was actually rigged to give the daemons the best plausible position; their defeat could have been far, far faster and more devastating.

[Kuroji]

Actually, that makes me wonder... radiation poisoning probably has similar effects on someone who's already dead, I imagine? That would not be a pretty sight, to watch what would be at least millions of people in Hell suffering the effects of radiation poisoning... sometimes things made for the sake of narrative convenience can avert other unintended consequences for how things would need to be otherwise.

Beside, with the proper incentive, I'm sure someone could create something that served to recreate the same effect. And I think 'let's go kill the devil' would certainly qualify for that kind of incentive.

[Brovane]

As Baughn said, the most immediate and obvious solution would have been to start using trident nuclear missiles in an air defense capacity. Something in the 10kt range would probably kill all the harpies all at once without unmanagable effects on the army below; especially if detonated at range as well as height. Or just use a lot of VX early and often.

Exactly; there are plenty of options and nuclear-tipped SAMs are not precisely unknown entities. Without aircraft around, such weapons would have been free right from the start and nuclear initiations would have been commonplace. That means they'd have been used on the ground forces as well. Dis and every other major population centers would have been nuked as a matter of course. The story would simply be one of a nuclear onslaught and then humans mopping up the pieces. Armageddon was actually rigged to give the daemons the best plausible position; their defeat could have been far, far faster and more devastating.

This is exactly what would have happened if Armageddon would have happened in the TBO universe. SAC would have rained nuclear destruction down on Satan's armies instead of engaging them in ground to ground combat. Satan would have felt the full force of the nuclear destructive power that humans can bring to bear. In TBO the US doesn't really know moderation and limited application of fire power. Nuclear weapons are the first and the last option that the US brings to the table during a fight.

[Simon_Jester]

No aircraft would've been bad, because there would have been tens of thousands (maybe 100,000) harpies raining death from above.

I think the main counter to the harpies was mobile AAA (and, if you're Russian, gas), not air support. Fighter jets just don't carry enough munitions to make major dents on a harpy cloud on a reasonable time scale.

Actually, that makes me wonder... radiation poisoning probably has similar effects on someone who's already dead, I imagine? That would not be a pretty sight, to watch what would be at least millions of people in Hell suffering the effects of radiation poisoning... sometimes things made for the sake of narrative convenience can avert other unintended consequences for how things would need to be otherwise.

Not necessarily. The second-life dead might be quite resistant to radiation poisoning, except in extremely intense dosages that would basically require you to gargle thorium salts or stand five feet away from the bomb going off. Demons and angels could actually be more vulnerable, but given their sheer recuperative abilities, the ability of radiation to trigger systemic breakdown isn't going to be as high.

This is exactly what would have happened if Armageddon would have happened in the TBO universe. SAC would have rained nuclear destruction down on Satan's armies instead of engaging them in ground to ground combat. Satan would have felt the full force of the nuclear destructive power that humans can bring to bear. In TBO the US doesn't really know moderation and limited application of fire power. Nuclear weapons are the first and the last option that the US brings to the table during a fight.

"Oh, hostile universe full of demons?"
[lobs fusion bomb]
"Wait, they're still staggering around in the ruins! Throw in another one!"

[PaperJack]

As Baughn said, the most immediate and obvious solution would have been to start using trident nuclear missiles in an air defense capacity. Something in the 10kt range would probably kill all the harpies all at once without unmanagable effects on the army below; especially if detonated at range as well as height. Or just use a lot of VX early and often.

Exactly; there are plenty of options and nuclear-tipped SAMs are not precisely unknown entities. Without aircraft around, such weapons would have been free right from the start and nuclear initiations would have been commonplace. That means they'd have been used on the ground forces as well. Dis and every other major population centers would have been nuked as a matter of course. The story would simply be one of a nuclear onslaught and then humans mopping up the pieces. Armageddon was actually rigged to give the daemons the best plausible position; their defeat could have been far, far faster and more devastating.

Why not using a fuel-air bomb instead, then ?
I think that would have annhilated them too.

[Heatherine]

Why not using a fuel-air bomb instead, then ?
I think that would have annhilated them too.

Umm...I think there was a fuel shortage, right? ^^; So they probably couldn't afford to make bombs with it.

[ANTIcarrot]

Why not using a fuel-air bomb instead, then? I think that would have annhilated them too.

Speaking of which, and the handgun/rifle problem, has anyone considdered using man-portable thermobaric weapons against demons? The russians probably have plenty of TBG-7V rounds. On a smaller scale, the US XM1060 is a 40mm weapon that could be fired from cheap and simple M79 or M203 derivatives, or in an M72 varient. The M79 in particular strikes me as slightly more practical than the comedy-handgun featured in the story. Not a lot more practical (especially in Mall style situations) but still...

I know anti tank weapons were used a lot in the Curbstomp War, but 40mm grenades and thermobaric weapons sit on the dividing line between small arms and small artillary. If bomb blasts kill demons, I'd have thought FAE would too. Would/Did they work? Or is it simply be a case that HEAD works much better?

[TithonusSyndrome]

Well, the hipsters have gotten wind of TSW, so I'm going to forget I ever read it now before they co-opt it as their own in any sense... and considering the age of the article, it's probably wending it's way through hipsterdom as we speak.

[fnord]

This is as always, subject to correction by those (eg Stuart) who actually know what they're talking about, but:

FAE simply don't pack enough punch - the MOAB (whether you refer to it as the Mother Of All Bombs or the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb), according to globalsecurity.org's page on it here, masses 9.5 tonnes and goes off with approximately that yield from 7.8 t of an Australian-made composition explosive.

I think that most common deployed devices are in the 100-300 kt yield range - for example (and again, subject to correction, but hopefully should be good to within an order of magnitude), Peacekeeper MX missiles have a payload of 3.95 t (according to nwfaq.org), with (up to) 10x 300-kt devices.

Comparing area trashed (and using Mike's nuclear weapon FX calculator), I get a widespread destruction airblast radius (at optimum burst height) of 4.9 km for a 300kt device, and going back to the scaling equations, 160m for MOAB. In area terms, 75.4 sq km trashed for a Peacekeeper MX warhead versus 0.08 sq km for MOAB.

Depending on how big Dis is, even a Peacekeeper volley might completely embuggerise it.

[Col. Crackpot]

Why not using a fuel-air bomb instead, then? I think that would have annhilated them too.

Speaking of which, and the handgun/rifle problem, has anyone considdered using man-portable thermobaric weapons against demons? The russians probably have plenty of TBG-7V rounds. On a smaller scale, the US XM1060 is a 40mm weapon that could be fired from cheap and simple M79 or M203 derivatives, or in an M72 varient. The M79 in particular strikes me as slightly more practical than the comedy-handgun featured in the story. Not a lot more practical (especially in Mall style situations) but still...

I know anti tank weapons were used a lot in the Curbstomp War, but 40mm grenades and thermobaric weapons sit on the dividing line between small arms and small artillary. If bomb blasts kill demons, I'd have thought FAE would too. Would/Did they work? Or is it simply be a case that HEAD works much better?

Who needs man portable thermobarics, when we have THESE!

[JBG]

No aircraft would've been bad, because there would have been tens of thousands (maybe 100,000) harpies raining death from above.

I think the main counter to the harpies was mobile AAA (and, if you're Russian, gas), not air support. Fighter jets just don't carry enough munitions to make major dents on a harpy cloud on a reasonable time scale.

Actually, that makes me wonder... radiation poisoning probably has similar effects on someone who's already dead, I imagine? That would not be a pretty sight, to watch what would be at least millions of people in Hell suffering the effects of radiation poisoning... sometimes things made for the sake of narrative convenience can avert other unintended consequences for how things would need to be otherwise.

Not necessarily. The second-life dead might be quite resistant to radiation poisoning, except in extremely intense dosages that would basically require you to gargle thorium salts or stand five feet away from the bomb going off. Demons and angels could actually be more vulnerable, but given their sheer recuperative abilities, the ability of radiation to trigger systemic breakdown isn't going to be as high.

This is exactly what would have happened if Armageddon would have happened in the TBO universe. SAC would have rained nuclear destruction down on Satan's armies instead of engaging them in ground to ground combat. Satan would have felt the full force of the nuclear destructive power that humans can bring to bear. In TBO the US doesn't really know moderation and limited application of fire power. Nuclear weapons are the first and the last option that the US brings to the table during a fight.

"Oh, hostile universe full of demons?"
[lobs fusion bomb]
"Wait, they're still staggering around in the ruins! Throw in another one!"

I agree, ground based AAA was very effective and could be more so. Any harpie unit attacking a group of ZSU23/4s would be in a world of pain.

I am not sure about TBO analogies though. Bear in mind that at that stage there was still Heaven to go next and humans may have wanted to keep some cards up it's sleeve.

[meyerkev]

everyone's talking about the TBO universe. What's TBO, and where is a link? If it's anywhere near as good as this, I want to read it.

[Edward Yee]

Mind you though, the CAS capacity allowed the human militaries and WMD control authorities to be able to go "save it or use it."

[CaptainChewbacca]

Well, the hipsters have gotten wind of TSW, so I'm going to forget I ever read it now before they co-opt it as their own in any sense... and considering the age of the article, it's probably wending it's way through hipsterdom as we speak.

Maybe if it catches on, I can get a Salvation War t-shirt.

[[R_H]]

Why not using a fuel-air bomb instead, then? I think that would have annhilated them too.

Speaking of which, and the handgun/rifle problem, has anyone considdered using man-portable thermobaric weapons against demons? The russians probably have plenty of TBG-7V rounds. On a smaller scale, the US XM1060 is a 40mm weapon that could be fired from cheap and simple M79 or M203 derivatives, or in an M72 varient. The M79 in particular strikes me as slightly more practical than the comedy-handgun featured in the story. Not a lot more practical (especially in Mall style situations) but still...

Far more important than the lethality of small arms is the lethality of support weapons organic to infantry formations. After all, historically, those kinds of weapons (along with artillery and CAS) have killed many more soldiers than rifles and pistols. An increase in the lethality and number of support weapons would be much more effective than focussing soley on/too much on the lethality of individual weapons. IMO, issuing as many (multi-shot) grenade launchers down to the squad level, and possibly even commando mortars, would greatly improve lethality. Ignoring the logistics-related issues that idea poses.

Would infantry continue to wear (hard-plate) body armour? Or just soft armour against fragmentation?

[nobody_really]

everyone's talking about the TBO universe. What's TBO, and where is a link? If it's anywhere near as good as this, I want to read it.

It stands for The Big One, also by Stuart, which, as far as I know, is not online. It does have a wiki at http://tbo.wikidot.com/front-door, and it is for sale at Amazon and B&N. It's an alternate history story of "what if Lord Halifax had been able to negotiate an armistice with Nazi Germany and engineer a coup to depose Churchill in 1940?"

A tvtropes summary is included at http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBigOne.

[Stuart]

everyone's talking about the TBO universe. What's TBO, and where is a link? If it's anywhere near as good as this, I want to read it.

The TBOverse refers to a universe I created with an alternative history novel called "The Big One" and then continued through a series of sequels and prequels. The timeline for the TBOverse splits from ours on June 18th 1940. The actual time span of the stories runs from 1200BC up to the 25th century. The ones set before 6/18/1940 are interleaved with actual history.

The basic concept of The Big One is that Britain dropped out of the war in June 1940 after Lord Halifax manipulated his way into the prime ministership and negotiated a cease-fire with Germany (in our time line he tried that and failed; in the TBO timeline his attempt succeeded). In response, the US adopts AWPD-1, a plan for the destruction of Germany by air attack based from the United States and using B-36 bombers (in our timeline, the fact that Britain kept fighting meant that foreign bases would be available and AWPD-1 was replaced by AWPD-42 that envisaged the use of B-29s. AWPD-42 was the basic warplan that the United States used in WW2 and it was fulfilled to the letter. In TBO, AWPD-1 is likewise fulfilled to the letter).

Fast forward to 1947, the bombing fleet of B-36s is ready. AWPD-1 has been modified to aaccommodate the availability of atomic weapons and the first wave of the bombing offensive consists of B-36s dropping 232 atomic bombs on German cities. The sustained cruise altitude of a B-36 configured for these missions was 51,500 feet; the highest any German interceptor could manage was 48,500 feet so the B-36s are substantially immune (historically correct; it was 1953 before B-36s could be reliably intercepted in daylight and 1955/56 before they could be countered at night). What happens is that a helpless Nazi Germany is totally destroyed.

The reason behind the novel was to counter the monotonous "Nazi underweapons and Erwin Rommel win WW2" that dominated alt-hist up to the date of its publications. The book demonstrates that there was nothing uber about Nazi weapons; they the Nazis were already behind the scientific curve and dropping steadily further behind and that the better they did in the early stages of WW2, the worse it would be for them (Nazi Germany was the primary target for nuclear weapons right up to September 1944 when attention shifted to Japan). The neo-Nazi wankers really hate this novel, a fact which gives me quiet pride.

The following novels in the series look at different what-ifs and try to put them into a historical context. What if the US did end WW2 with the destruction of Germany? What if it had maintained the policy of massive retaliation? What if there was a solid, enduring alliance between Russia and America? What if Japan got its way and occupied China? What if a relatively small and insignificant country managed to manipulate its way into becoming a major player? What if the Islamic fundamentalists got their way and established their Caliphate?. What if we had gone into space in a big way from the 1980s onwards? What will happen when we finally meet another intelligent species? The real these is that these are not clean-cut answers or optimal solutions. They're a mix of good, bad and ugly. Messy situations that have no really clean-cut good/bad resolution.

You can find some of the stories (that are either unpublished or partially written) on HPCA. Five of the primary have now been published and are no longer available on the web. They can be found on Amazon HERE