The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[spartasman]

Given how stodgy Washington was, I would love to see him and other famous generals (A certain, equally stodgy, Lord Wellington comes to mind) get together. Equally funny would be the fact that he would most likely be diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder.

[MysteriousDarkLordv3]

George Washington would be even more out of his depth than Cousin Robert was. I think he would step aside for Petraeus. George would be of more use on morale-building exercises - one thing George understood was that morale could make or break an army and was charismatic as all heck. So George would probably end up in a P.R. capacity (Plus, American audiences would line up to buy the war bonds).

[spartasman]

Or they could just find Uncle Sam, or his real-life counterpart, and use him as a propaganda machine.

[Stuart]

The stars, because the entire point of Washington getting them is that he's the only one to get them. Ever. He didn't even get them until 1976.

Pershing and Marshall got six stars as well. IIRC Eisenhower was offered six but refused. The US has an interesting of making sure that its senior officer on scene is one grade higher than any allied officer on scene. So, Petraeus got six stars although Washington and the others have seniority. Also, he's commanding by far the largest army in human history. He's got five army groups reporting directly to him. He needs that sixth star.

As for the F-35, I had multiple issues with that, admittedly as an outside observer to its development. The biggest is that it was canceled in favor of the F-22, which to my knowledge takes an immense amount of time to build and maintain, not to mention money, and is an air superiority fighter intended to top any other human aircraft- severe overkill against enemies which the major requirement is supersonic speed. I don't know how far along its development is (from what I know it was pretty much done testing wise in early 2008) or how feasible bringing older aircraft lines back into construction is, but it bugged me at the time (and I guess it still does.)

The problem with the F-35 is that its still a development aircraft and, in January 2008, was suffering a lot of problems. The Iron Law of mobilization (it is in fact called the Iron Law) is you build what you've got. It doesn't matter how good something looks on paper, if it isn;t coming off the production line it gets cancelled. A lot of programs got clobbered that way. The Navy lost DDG-1000 and the LCS and got additional DDG-51s instead. The CVN-78 was a repeat CVN-77 instead of a new design. The Army lost a lot of its new kit and got extended production of what was already being built. Same happened worldwide. The British lost their CV(F) and got more Type 45s, Type 26 was cancelled. Also, what's on the lines gets simplified. The F-22s lose their composites and stealth features, the tanks and AFVs get simplified as well. New production M1s get 105mm and 90mm guns from storage instead of 120mms (increased ammunition supply compensates.

The F35 is nice for our universe but for the TSWverse, it's much better to ramp up production of F15s, 16s and 18s.

As for the museum recoveries, that is actually part of US mobilization plans. Clear out the boneyard of everything that can be fixed. Then go around the museums and salvage anything that might he of use. That isn't just aircraft, ships and tanks. Steel helmets for example have a lot of advantages in the TSWverse. They're snaffled for service. Rifles, pistols, shells, you name it. A lot of museums are going to be looking very bare.

[nightwyrm]

There's a nasty trap built into this and it's one that has sent several of the fundies running screaming for the hills. If we take an omniscient, omnipotent god, the changes in physics required to make that god work are so enormous that the god in question couldn't possibly interact with our dimension and so, from our point of view, it might as well not exist. If, on the other hand, we create a god that can interact with our dimension, the demands of reciprocity dictate that the god in question will be very much like the ones described here - ie eminently killable. This gives fundies a nasty choice, they can either stipulate a traditional god that might as well not exist or a god that might exist but would be very vulnerable to us. (That, by the way, is a definition of agnostic that people miss. Somebody who believes that there might or might not be a god but either way, it simply doesn't matter.)

*Amused chuckle*

Yet the believers will insist that their god can magically change the laws of the universe(s) whenever he wants to suit his needs so that he can touch us but we can't touch him ala Neo in the Matrix.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, they don't consider the principle of reciprocity to be a basic axiom; they believe that the laws of nature cheat. Vulnerable gods are only going to exist in a universe that doesn't play favorites, and that's not the one that they think they live in.

Picture the cosmos as being like a Looney Toons cartoon, with humanity as the villain, and you have a good image of how typical believers expect human efforts to cross God to go.

[westrim]

Whoo, that set off a flurry. Thanks for the responses, especially Chewie and Stuart. To clarify my position now, so far as I know in real life the US has had only a handful of 5 stars and no one living or dead has 6. Its all a bit hard to go over, what with changing standards, military sizes, and rank/ star equivalencies when you get past 3. No one has ever actually gotten 6 stars, but if there were one it would be Washington, per Chewie's public law 94-47 (though it is interesting that it does not, in fact, mention future, which means Jorge can in fact be surpassed. So that settles my uneasiness with Petraeus passing Igor somewhat). Several people have gotten General of the Armies, like Pershing and Marshall, but that does not directly = 6 star status.

On the F-35, I guess I should have made it clearer that it wasn't so much that it got axed, but that it got axed and the F-22 didn't. Though I was under the impression that it was further along towards being in full production than people seem to be saying (there have been delays the last two years, but that's mostly Lockheed dragging its heels so far as I know, and the design itself is sound), and that it would pass the Iron Law. Guess not. My skepticism of the F-22s viability in TSW still stands, as (again, to my knowledge) many of the very expensive and secret bits are integral to the design and not terribly swappable. Exporting the aircraft is even banned, which would seem to indicate that they can't take out enough secret stuff to do so. The skin, for example, can't be really done another way without significantly affecting fly-ability (again, I must emphasize, to my knowledge).

Apparently everyone missed where I supported bringing older production models back online or ramping up production of same. And I do remember the faced museum directors from Armageddon.

[Night_stalker]

Yeah, I liked the return though of the B-29 to the Smithsonian though. Did they have the original Col Tibbets, or was it one of his descendents returning it?

Ohh, and has anyone found either Washington or Lincoln yet? I can't wait to see how they view their monuments...

[Sea Skimmer]

Pershing and Marshall got six stars as well. IIRC Eisenhower was offered six but refused. The US has an interesting of making sure that its senior officer on scene is one grade higher than any allied officer on scene. So, Petraeus got six stars although Washington and the others have seniority. Also, he's commanding by far the largest army in human history. He's got five army groups reporting directly to him. He needs that sixth star.

Pershing didn't get a sixthstar. The US had nothing above a four star when he was promoted to the title of 'General of the Armies'. He was however declared to be the senior five star when we created the five star ranks in WW2, which were given to nine men in total. General of the Armies never had a formal insigina though. The US did not create any six star ranks in WW2, because that would have just led to the British and French creating a new rank, after all they care about that kind of spit and polish more. Certainly a mere lack of forces would never have stopped a French Field Marshal from being promoted!

The only time I've ever heard of a serious push to make a living man a six star in the US military was just prior to the end of WW2, when it was suggested MacArthur should be made one to command Downfall. That didn't happen of course. I do fully agree however that it would happen in this situation, the troop numbers more then justify it. In fact we might as well make Petraeus a seven star, because IIRC North Korea has a seven star equivalent position and is now part of the Human Expeditionary Army. If you want US generals outranked by no one seven or eight stars is what it would take.

[GrayAnderson]

Fun fact:

Public Law 94-47 authorizes that:

Whereas Lieutenant General George Washington of Virginia commanded our armies throughout and to the successful termination of our Revolutionary War;

Whereas Lieutenant General George Washington presided over the convention that formulated our Constitution;

Whereas Lieutenant General George Washington twice served as President of the United States of America; and

Whereas it is considered fitting and proper that no officer of the United States Army should outrank Lieutenant General George Washington on the Army list: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That
(a) for purposes of subsection (b) of this section only, the grade of General of the Armies of the United States is established, such grade to have rank and precedence over all other grades of the Army, past or present.
(b) The President is authorized and requested to appoint George Washington posthumously to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States, such appointment to take effect on July 4, 1976.

Approved October 11, 1976.

George Washington will ALWAYS be the most senior officer in the US Military. Always.

Well, there's a quick way to deal with that: Pass another law shuffling Washington technically under someone else. Note that the Act says "past or present" but does not stipulate (and could not reasonably stipulate) "future". I think that while there would be resistance on some level to it, after he liberated Hell and arguably saved humanity, there is a case to be made that under these circumstances Petraeus does belong above Washington.

For chain-of-command purposes, considering that there are about ten "six-star" commanders from the last century or two, throwing the seventh one in there and declaring it superior to "all commanders past and present" avoids the usual issues that come up of making X senior to Y to avoid a "snub". Also, considering the odd nature of Petraeus' command (being multi-national and all), I think it's fair to give him a rank of "outranks all".

Also, a seventh star has a certain symbolic value due to the number seven and whatnot.

[xthetenth]

On the F-35, I guess I should have made it clearer that it wasn't so much that it got axed, but that it got axed and the F-22 didn't. Though I was under the impression that it was further along towards being in full production than people seem to be saying (there have been delays the last two years, but that's mostly Lockheed dragging its heels so far as I know, and the design itself is sound), and that it would pass the Iron Law. Guess not. My skepticism of the F-22s viability in TSW still stands, as (again, to my knowledge) many of the very expensive and secret bits are integral to the design and not terribly swappable. Exporting the aircraft is even banned, which would seem to indicate that they can't take out enough secret stuff to do so. The skin, for example, can't be really done another way without significantly affecting fly-ability (again, I must emphasize, to my knowledge).

Apparently everyone missed where I supported bringing older production models back online or ramping up production of same. And I do remember the faced museum directors from Armageddon.

The key bit is that they actually have a production line for the F-22. It doesn't matter how much more cost-efficient older models are, the line for the F-22 exists and we have the resources to keep it fed. That is the only consideration as to whether we should be making F-22's, survival is on the line. Maybe by now, production is ramping down to shift resources to other planes, but now that the up-gunned trainers we made for hell aren't really fast enough for heaven, the F-22 is absolutely critical. In a war for survival the only questions are whether the line exists and the resources to keep it fed wouldn't be better off going to another line. That's it unless it's not worth giving to the people on the front lines. Additionally, it's likely that the war would've been decided before the F-35 was ready, let alone present in numbers.

[Pelranius]

Speaking of the F-35, what happened to the few prototypes that are floating around? Do they scrap them, try to shove them into service or just mothball them?

I wonder how steep the cancellation penalties were (though Lockheed Martin and the others can't really complain, they have all those F-22s to make up for the loss of the Lightning II)

[Questor]

I wonder how steep the cancellation penalties were (though Lockheed Martin and the others can't really complain, they have all those F-22s to make up for the loss of the Lightning II)

"Start building what we tell you or we send this nice company of pissed off soldiers to talk to you about it," is probably the cancellation penalty.

[JBG]

The fact is that the daemons and angels are overpowered, not underpowered. Their capabilities are laid out in mythology and they've got them all. They can fly, they can trumpet, they can breathe fire, they can throw lightning bolts, they're functionally immune to swords and arrows, they can possess minds, they heal very fast. They've got all that. It just doesn't do them very much good and I had to play games with physics to give them those "powers". You see, by the standards of their time, the gods, daemons, angels etc are omnipotent and omniscient. it's just that they aren't that way by our standards.

That is somewhat Popperian Stuart.

Well done.

[Vanzetti]

There's a nasty trap built into this and it's one that has sent several of the fundies running screaming for the hills. If we take an omniscient, omnipotent god, the changes in physics required to make that god work are so enormous that the god in question couldn't possibly interact with our dimension and so, from our point of view, it might as well not exist.

Come on, Stuart! Omniscient and omnipotent god is by its very definition above every possible law of physics.

What your story describe is basically medieval level aliens. Kinda like "The Road Not Taken" short story by Turtledove.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Exactly. It is not possible for a being which exists above or beyond our understanding of physics to interact with our physical world in ways which we can comprehend. So, Stuart is left with two choices:

1. Explain the impossible interactions with impossible physics.
2. Reconcile the possible actions with the possible physics.

In TSW, he has chosen to do the latter, since he's not a physicist and there are no known physical laws to explain how God could do all the things he is said to have done in the Bible. This story serves a narrative concept, so rather than tell a story about a big floating energy being made of superstrings and bosons and nth-level energy, he's telling us the story as presented in ways which we can relate to.

If you wanna go the other way, go for it.

[iidave]

Here's a comparative list of WW2 ranks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparativ ... rld_War_II
A lot of countries had an officer rank above OR-10.
Soviet Union had two (only Stalin had the highest rank though). But makes up fot it by having a whole lot of Marshals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshal_of ... viet_Union
Then again at its height during WW2 Red Army had over 30 million men.

[Darth Yan]

It would be so cool if there was an update on my birthday (tommorrow)

[GrayAnderson]

I wonder how steep the cancellation penalties were (though Lockheed Martin and the others can't really complain, they have all those F-22s to make up for the loss of the Lightning II)

"Start building what we tell you or we send this nice company of pissed off soldiers to talk to you about it," is probably the cancellation penalty.

Actually, if I had to guess, it was more in the vein of "We have these other things we need you to build, but we're not in a good mood. We have a declaration of war. So let's just ignore the whole penalty thing, unless you want to be defending yourselves against nationalization in court. Sound good? Good."

------------------

Stuart has raised an interesting point that I'd like to toss about further. He mentioned the issue that if A can't harm B, then B can't harm A, and noted that if a deity couldn't be harmed by us within known physics (i.e. bullets simply wouldn't hit it, etc.) then it couldn't do us harm. This has started some wheels spinning in my mind, as follows:

Say we have a being from Universe C in the story, who is physically incapable of attacking us in Universe A because of law-of-physics issues. Said being has a problem with us, for whatever reason, and as a result communicates with a group in Universe B (where Heaven and Hell are located and which can interact with both universes) to deal with us. Assuming for the moment that we can't immediately hire someone else from Universe B to deal with the situation, and assuming that the deity can offer these creatures safe haven in Universe C (which they are compatible with):
1) What are our options? and
2) Referring back to the issue with a deity that we can't interact with being irrelevant, if this creature were to be considered a deity, would it be relevant that we couldn't directly interact with it?

[Nematocyst]

1) Use our Universe B troops to solve the problem (if possible) or to negotiate an agreement (if necessary).
2) No, because we wouldn't even notice its' presence.

[Simon_Jester]

Speaking of the F-35, what happened to the few prototypes that are floating around? Do they scrap them, try to shove them into service or just mothball them?

I'd expect that they'd get mothballed. There's at least a chance the US will still want to build F-35s again after the war, though the odds are reduced by the glut of recent planes making it unnecessary to replace aging F-somethingteens. So scrapping the prototypes and burning the plans would be premature, even though it's a complete waste of resources to actually build the damn things in a factory that could be dedicated to building planes that have already been debugged.

2) No, because we wouldn't even notice its' presence.

I don't think I follow your argument here. Assuming for the sake of argument that Universe C beings can interact with Universe B, and that B can interact with A, but C cannot interact with A...

Of course Universe C is real and noticeable to denizens of Universe A. Things that have a tangible effect on things that can be observed are themselves observable; how do you think we know the strong nuclear force exists?

[Nematocyst]

If Universe C is 'real and noticeable to denizens of Universe A', it can interact with us and, by reciprocity, we can interact with it.
This is apparently not the case. Everything Universe A sent to Universe C (like those drones we sent through Minos Gate) would be instantly destroyed, and viceversa. We would never see traces of Universe C

[Bayonet]

If Universe C is 'real and noticeable to denizens of Universe A', it can interact with us and, by reciprocity, we can interact with it.
This is apparently not the case. Everything Universe A sent to Universe C (like those drones we sent through Minos Gate) would be instantly destroyed, and viceversa. We would never see traces of Universe C

If universe B denizens can interact with Universe C, and can interact with denizens of Universe A, then they can be viewed as sensors capable of detecting UC phenomena.

Since UA entities can exist in UB, they can presumably work out the A-B-C physics, after which they can create systems in UB that can operate in UC, even if they cannot go there, themselves. We could, for example, nuke UC using weapons built to the rules of UB.

[DKeith2011]

Except that you cant build high precision stuff (like a nuke) in UB due to the spatial distortion effect.

[Nematocyst]

We can't, but they can.