The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

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darksoul
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by darksoul »

Ilya Muromets wrote:
iidave wrote:1,2 )With the help of dead nuclear scientists.
3) I don't know what minerals are in Hell, but if the have heavy elements, WW2 tech can get you fission type devices.
4) A lot of people know who Einstein, Oppenheimer, etc are. During the 1950s these men were celebrities.
5) Nuclear mines, bomb delivery via portals, nuclear artillery...
Nuclear scientists do not an atomic infrastructure make. All that knowledge is USELESS without infrastructure to support it. Oppenheimer alone didn't design the infrastructure needed to manufacture nukes. Ditto Einstein. And so what if Hell has uranium? If they haven't heard of nukes prior to bagging these guys, then how would they have learned of uranium in the first place? Before nuclear power, few people gave a shit about uranium or plutonium. Hell, few people even knew what those were. So how are they suddenly going to start mining those in massive quantities if A) they don't know what they are in the first place and B) have no clue where in Hell to start looking?

And let's put nuke size in perspective, shall we? Little Boy weighed in at over 4 METRIC TONS. Artillery? Not unless you're lugging around big, heavy Dora-style guns which are poor at mobility which makes them easy targets.

Mines? There were no mines that fucking big and that fucking heavy. And being that fucking big and that fucking heavy means it'll be hard to lug around.

The only way to deliver nukes that would be viable is portals. But, again, how do they do that if they don't have the nukes, don't have it in large numbers, or if humanity figures out the portals in time to counter them? And humanity did figure out portals and their counters pretty damn fast in the original story. And that assumes they'd go for a first strike instead of that grand invasion they did in the story.
I agree. I don't see baldrick developing nukes, at least not as fast as they must to be of any use in the current war. The portal technology can be use as Belial did, but more organized.
Imagine, not receiving any message whatsoever, no hinting at nothing, and all of a sudden, one city a week destroyed by a misterious lava eruption from the sky. Combined with demonic possesion of key leaders... you see my point.

It's all in the mind, I say. Yahwe and Satan mismanaged the war so severely, that there was no way to go after that. Given the initial assumptions on their societies, history and personalities, there was no other way the story could have developed. Thank Stuart for Abigor Belial and Michael, otherwise this history would have been as dull as Heaven.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by iidave »

Ilya Muromets wrote: Nuclear scientists do not an atomic infrastructure make. All that knowledge is USELESS without infrastructure to support it. Oppenheimer alone didn't design the infrastructure needed to manufacture nukes. Ditto Einstein. And so what if Hell has uranium? If they haven't heard of nukes prior to bagging these guys, then how would they have learned of uranium in the first place? Before nuclear power, few people gave a shit about uranium or plutonium. Hell, few people even knew what those were. So how are they suddenly going to start mining those in massive quantities if A) they don't know what they are in the first place and B) have no clue where in Hell to start looking?
Are we still talking about how the war would have gone if Baldricks had developed WW2 tech?
Ilya Muromets wrote: And let's put nuke size in perspective, shall we? Little Boy weighed in at over 4 METRIC TONS. Artillery? Not unless you're lugging around big, heavy Dora-style guns which are poor at mobility which makes them easy targets.
I'm not saying it's practical, merely possible :)
Of course if you think with portals you could have a huge immobile cannon (or even better a battery of them) firing into portals to Earth: Open portal over target, fire, close portal, reload, repeat. So a Baldrick force on Earth would have nuclear (or conventional if nukes were deemed overkill) artillery support only a portal away.
Also useful if a human-made portal appears within range in Hell and tanks start coming through.
Ilya Muromets wrote: Mines? There were no mines that fucking big and that fucking heavy. And being that fucking big and that fucking heavy means it'll be hard to lug around.
Blue Peacock says hi. Portal mine in. Bury it. Hope one of your own guys doesn't set it off by accident.
Ilya Muromets wrote: The only way to deliver nukes that would be viable is portals. But, again, how do they do that if they don't have the nukes, don't have it in large numbers, or if humanity figures out the portals in time to counter them? And humanity did figure out portals and their counters pretty damn fast in the original story. And that assumes they'd go for a first strike instead of that grand invasion they did in the story.
Don't have nukes - don't use them. Have a few - nuke a few cities and demand surrender threating to nuke others. Humanity figures out portals - so far closing a portal requires a pretty large device and there are only a handful of them. If the demons just open a portal, drop a bomb through and close it, there will be no time to deploy one anyway. If humans open portals into Dis then nukes will be flying both ways.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by darksoul »

Okay, looked at it that way, that is plausible. However, do remember that to send these Kamikaze armies in the first place they need to open a portal large enough for said armies to pass. Portals that large become permanent, just like the Hellgate in Iraq. Now consider that this theoretical WW2-level Baldrick army would have vehicles and other such equipment which would need to be spaced further for a deployment, which would necessitate an even larger portal.
I disagree. Petraus had manage to pour massive armies through temporal portals somehow. Maybe the time factor is important, that would require some planning not to blow up the stealth necessary. A small army wouldn't require nukes, a large one would take a long time to deploy... we could work with this, is an undeveloped idea, and not a great one to begin with, just to show a path not taken in war.
The very act of portaling over those Kamikaze armies in the first place gives humans access to Hell. Didn't take humans long to jerry-rig filters to allow jet operations into Hell. Given the gravity of the threat, priority would be filtering nuclear bombers and sending them in armed with gravity bombs to take out as much of the demonic threat as fast as possible before the buggers try anything else. Yes, there's still all that messy non-linear directionality to figure out even then. But now you have a human presence in Hell, essentially untouchable by WW2-level weaponry if they fly smart and keep at high speed and altitude.

Now it's the Baldricks who have to turn their attention to an enemy incursion force in their territory.
This is true. Can be countered if portal are made in far places, or with the necessary anti air craft. For example, a retinue similar to the stargate, for example, would make aircraft attack unlikely or at least difficult because it would need artillery or missile preparation to destroy the defenses, and them to pour the aircraft through.

you know, we could argue about strategic propositions in this scenario for a couple of years. It's fascinating, but represents a drift from the true storyline. After all, this we discuss is an alternative story of an alternative story :)
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by Ilya Muromets »

iidave wrote: Are we still talking about how the war would have gone if Baldricks had developed WW2 tech?
You're the one who brought up nukes with WW2 tech, so I assume so. In which case, my point still stands. Oppensheimer and Einstein did not set up the infrastructure, and demons would have no prior knowledge of fissile material prior to the capture of said scientists since few people knew what the hell uranium or plutonium was. Even then, said scientists often had little idea where to procure those materials (they worked with the materials, but they didn't mine them themsevles) , so how will they even know where to look in Hell in the first place?
I'm not saying it's practical, merely possible :)
Of course if you think with portals you could have a huge immobile cannon (or even better a battery of them) firing into portals to Earth: Open portal over target, fire, close portal, reload, repeat. So a Baldrick force on Earth would have nuclear (or conventional if nukes were deemed overkill) artillery support only a portal away.
Also useful if a human-made portal appears within range in Hell and tanks start coming through.
Again, practicality is king in warfare. Heavy nukes + heavy gun = long as fuck reload time. Why the hell do you think the Dora gun was never a practical weapon on its own. It's not as simple as you make it sound.
Blue Peacock says hi. Portal mine in. Bury it. Hope one of your own guys doesn't set it off by accident.
Wait, WW2 technology, and you're bringing in something developed in the 50s?
Don't have nukes - don't use them. Have a few - nuke a few cities and demand surrender threating to nuke others. Humanity figures out portals - so far closing a portal requires a pretty large device and there are only a handful of them. If the demons just open a portal, drop a bomb through and close it, there will be no time to deploy one anyway. If humans open portals into Dis then nukes will be flying both ways.
Don't have nukes = helpless against nuclear counterstrike.

Few nukes, and they use em? Humans have more nukes and nuking cities won't get people to surrender if A) they know they still have their own nuke arsenal and B) you just PISSED THEM OFF SOMETHING FIERCE by nuking their cities.

And how can nukes fly both ways if they don't have the same number of nukes humans have. The entire Cold War nuclear strategy was based on us humans nuke spamming each other, and you believe that an alien force hostile to humanity with only a WW2-era nukes is gonna discourage people?
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by Ilya Muromets »

darksoul wrote:
I disagree. Petraus had manage to pour massive armies through temporal portals somehow. Maybe the time factor is important, that would require some planning not to blow up the stealth necessary. A small army wouldn't require nukes, a large one would take a long time to deploy... we could work with this, is an undeveloped idea, and not a great one to begin with, just to show a path not taken in war.
Re-read the sections again. Petreaus' mobilizations other than the Hellgate were not in large armies all at once, but peice-meal portalling of smaller forces. Demons don't have the same luxury if striking at the heartland of any major nation. They'll need a large army all at once, since a small peice meal build-up will be detected. Small strikes will, as you said, not necessitate nuclear counter-strikes, so the point is moot.
This is true. Can be countered if portal are made in far places, or with the necessary anti air craft. For example, a retinue similar to the stargate, for example, would make aircraft attack unlikely or at least difficult because it would need artillery or missile preparation to destroy the defenses, and them to pour the aircraft through.

you know, we could argue about strategic propositions in this scenario for a couple of years. It's fascinating, but represents a drift from the true storyline. After all, this we discuss is an alternative story of an alternative story :)
Well, this forum is all about discussions. But, yeah, this has drifted so far it almost borders on off-topic.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by iidave »

if WW2 tech = WW2 era factories, WW2 era refineries, WW2 era reactors, WW2 era mines... in short: WW2 era infrastructure then yes. Otherwise it is merely knowledge of technology, but not the technology itself. So yes. If Baldricks had WW2 era technology available they would be able to develop atomic weapons.
Dora's main problem was its low mobility, the fact that it took forever to deploy properly and its ammo. With portals you could have a permanent emplacement right next to the factory that makes ammo for the gun, thus bypassing the logistics problems.
If you can make an atomic bomb you can bury it. It doesn't matter when somebody decided to try it IRL. Or are you implying that shovels and mine detonators are too advanced for WW2?
Ilya Muromets wrote: Don't have nukes = helpless against nuclear counterstrike.
COUNTERstrike?
Ilya Muromets wrote: Few nukes, and they use em? Humans have more nukes and nuking cities won't get people to surrender if A) they know they still have their own nuke arsenal and B) you just PISSED THEM OFF SOMETHING FIERCE by nuking their cities.
A) Those nukes need a target and until humans can make their own portals, targets will be few and far between (unless the demons do something stupid like opening a large permanent portal).
B) Pissed off? Probably, but also scared. Very VERY scared. Atomic bombardment with little to no prior warning, or possibility of prevention and no way of striking back? There would be mass panic in the streets and countries would be begging for peace left right and middle.
Ilya Muromets wrote: And how can nukes fly both ways if they don't have the same number of nukes humans have.
1) How do you know they have less? It is likely they would have had less, but this is a hypothetical scenario about Baldrick having WW2 equipment and atomic bombs are WW2 equipment. Also flying both ways says nothing about the respective numbers. If a thousand goes one way and one goes the other, it is still going both ways.
Ilya Muromets wrote: The entire Cold War nuclear strategy was based on us humans nuke spamming each other, and you believe that an alien force hostile to humanity with only a WW2-era nukes is gonna discourage people?
The same people who were on the verge of mass hysteria when some idiots decided to fly four planes into buildings? I don't know how old you were in 2001, but I remember the almost palpable aura of fear then. And that was NOTHING compared to an atomic attack.'

EDIT: I keep typing nuclear when I mean atomic.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by Junghalli »

I believe Stuart has mentioned that the demons could have given WWII Earth more of a fight and could potentially have won against WWI Earth, so personally I think it would have been interesting to see the story set sometime in the earlier half of the twentieth century.

Maybe make it sometime before WWII to avoid comparisons to Turtledove.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by xthetenth »

There's an important consideration I don't think anybody's mentioned, and that's the size of demons. They start at big, and in some types of vehicles that's a problem. Tanks for example, you'd have to
Junghalli wrote:I believe Stuart has mentioned that the demons could have given WWII Earth more of a fight and could potentially have won against WWI Earth, so personally I think it would have been interesting to see the story set sometime in the earlier half of the twentieth century.

Maybe make it sometime before WWII to avoid comparisons to Turtledove.
Putting it in the 36 region would be interesting, if it ramped up slowly the contest between the humans to develop proper weapons and the demons to get a full army through might prove interesting. Or the humans might get rolled over. I think it'd work better if Yahweh did it to put Satan on the spot so he had to scramble to deal with earth rather than send a trained army through at the first moment.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by Ryan Thunder »

Junghalli wrote:I believe Stuart has mentioned that the demons could have given WWII Earth more of a fight and could potentially have won against WWI Earth, so personally I think it would have been interesting to see the story set sometime in the earlier half of the twentieth century.
Well, if he absolutely must stick to his current interpretation of the supernatural, then yeah, I'd agree.
Maybe make it sometime before WWII to avoid comparisons to Turtledove.
Bah, I wouldn't worry too much about that. Stuart's writing is easily superior to Turtledove's, IMHO.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by darksoul »

Ryan Thunder wrote:
Junghalli wrote:I believe Stuart has mentioned that the demons could have given WWII Earth more of a fight and could potentially have won against WWI Earth, so personally I think it would have been interesting to see the story set sometime in the earlier half of the twentieth century.
I believe humans would still win head on, if we figure the counter against the demon influence fast enough, albeit with HUGE casualties. Now, the getting through to hell, that would be an entirely different story, without unmanned recon, missiles or sophisticated comm devices to maintain through the gates and in Hell, it would be difficult for first lifers to be in hell the way they are know. Not to mention that Belial could be a real pain to reach in time to avoid destruction of many cities.

Also the union of countries would be a big issue, if it happens during or shortly after the WW2.
In the other hand, maybe the Japanese would be spare the role of target dummies in the atomic bomb history. Who knows...

Anyway, current discussion was WW2 baldricks vs Modern humans, not WW2 humans vs biblical baldricks. The latter I believe we agree would had been a bloodier, longer (maybe more interesting, not sure) fight.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by Ilya Muromets »

if WW2 tech = WW2 era factories, WW2 era refineries, WW2 era reactors, WW2 era mines... in short: WW2 era infrastructure then yes. Otherwise it is merely knowledge of technology, but not the technology itself. So yes. If Baldricks had WW2 era technology available they would be able to develop atomic weapons.
Dora's main problem was its low mobility, the fact that it took forever to deploy properly and its ammo. With portals you could have a permanent emplacement right next to the factory that makes ammo for the gun, thus bypassing the logistics problems.
If you can make an atomic bomb you can bury it. It doesn't matter when somebody decided to try it IRL. Or are you implying that shovels and mine detonators are too advanced for WW2?
Again, does not follow. Since your argument for their development of nukes was that they gained it from captured human dead nuclear scientists. Again: HOW would they have heard of uranium and plutonium prior to the capture of said scientists? Uranium was UNKNOWN to most people before fission research, so how would the demons have even heard of it when all of their interest prior to capturing nuclear scientists was with conventional weapons, which Uranium has nothing to do with and most people they capture for such wouldn't even know about?

And when they capture said scientists and gain knowledge of it, WHERE DO THEY START LOOKING? Uranium was discovered pretty much by accident, and people didn't recognize it for centuries. Here, the demons have no prior knowledge of it at all, and NOTHING in the story implies that they've even stumbled across the ore unwittingly. Suddenly you assume that the demons would quickly find it and ramp up production just like that? Human uranium mining already existed prior to its recognition as useful in nuclear fission (see pitchblende), it's just that people didn't really know it could be used for that till scientists figured it out. We stumbled on to uranium deposits CENTURIES earlier and were using the unrefined ore for mundane things, so when nuclear production began we already knew where to look. The demons don't have that luxury.

Leave aside the one very important fact you chose gloss over: in WW2 nuclear production gave us a grand total of two weapons used. Production for the rest of the forties only resulted in around 50 bombs by 1948, and production rates didn't pick up significantly until the 50s. That's not even approaching the 400-500 B-61s the US has on standby alone, leave aside the bombs which are in storage and the nuclear arsenals of every other country with them. Even if, somehow, Hell has WW2-era production facilities it would be a stretch for them to make dozens of the damn things. How do they compete with all of the nuclear nations on Earth with their thousands of weapons in total?
COUNTERstrike?
Nitpicky nitpick is nitpicky. You know what I meant
A) Those nukes need a target and until humans can make their own portals, targets will be few and far between (unless the demons do something stupid like opening a large permanent portal).
B) Pissed off? Probably, but also scared. Very VERY scared. Atomic bombardment with little to no prior warning, or possibility of prevention and no way of striking back? There would be mass panic in the streets and countries would be begging for peace left right and middle.
A)Because the only reason the demons even fought people in the first place is because Yahweh gave Earth over to Hell. So why do you suddenly think that the Baldricks won't invade when that was their VERY FIRST MANDATE in the story? To invade they need to open a portal large enough to get an army through, and those end up permanent. You don't start nuking your prime real estate first if you plan to take it all.

B) The military loses its balls all of a sudden? And for that matter, so do people? You're assuming that people will behave like Imperial Japan after WW2 and sue of peace in a panic, forgetting certain key differences: Japan did not have it's own stockpile of nukes, and even after surrender a brief coup was launched because the military wanted to fight, damn the nukes. Now when the whole of humanity is at risk from essentially an alien invasion -- an invasion which has expressedly stated that it wants to torture them for eternity -- AND we have our own nuclear stockpile, and you think they'll sue for surrender? Humanity is fighting to prevent an eternity of SLAVERY AND TORTURE from the demons. There will be no surrender until we've exhausted our nukes or our capability to deliver those nukes back at the bastards.
1) How do you know they have less? It is likely they would have had less, but this is a hypothetical scenario about Baldrick having WW2 equipment and atomic bombs are WW2 equipment. Also flying both ways says nothing about the respective numbers. If a thousand goes one way and one goes the other, it is still going both ways.
Because your assumption is predicated on WW2 technology levels which would mean they have less sophistcated, heavy, unweildy, hard-to-deliver nukes which would be a nightmare to keep maintained in dusty-as-bumfuck Hell. Do you even realize how difficult it was to maintain those big, clunky WW2-tech-level nukes? They were tempermental as all hell, and had to be kept in careful storage or something fucks up their all-important mechanisms.

To assume that the demons would have those in large numbers, ready to go one-for-one with an ENTIRE planet which inherited a massive stockpile of much smaller yet more powerful nukes from the Cold War, is handwaving so many practical and implementation problems it borders on a fucking no limits fallacy.

The same people who were on the verge of mass hysteria when some idiots decided to fly four planes into buildings? I don't know how old you were in 2001, but I remember the almost palpable aura of fear then. And that was NOTHING compared to an atomic attack.'
And do you also remember that the fear led to a fucking war on terror THAT STILL ISN'T OVER THIS VERY DAY? You do realize you just shot your own point in the foot. You know what that mass panic and hysteria inspired? Feelings of revenge and calls for nucking the entire Middle East, and that was from a small bunch of idiots flying planes into buildings.

You think this translates to "OH NOES, LET'S SURRENDER!" when a demonic force Hell-bent on torturing and enslaving humanity for all eternity NUKES cities? How the fuck does that follow?

Your entire argument up to this point has predicated on EVERYTHING going perfect for the Baldricks (they magically get a massive stockpile of WW2 nukes, ignore all of the practical problems Hell would face making them in the first place, and deliver it at whim) and everything going wrong for the humans (they can never retaliate with their own much more efficient and easy to deliver nukes, and fear immediately = surrender). This scenario is only even remotely plausible if you stack the cards in favor of the demons while putting nothing but jokers in the hands of humanity. To put in in TV Tropes terminology, you're handing over humans an Idiot Ball so massive it might as well be a second goddamn moon while you demons suddenly turn hyper competent with PERFECT COMMAND AND CONQUER ENGINEERING where the only things needed to make anything is clicking something on the goddamn build tab and your infrastructure shows up magically.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by iidave »

Ilya Muromets wrote:HOW would they have heard of uranium and plutonium prior to the capture of said scientists? Uranium was UNKNOWN to most people before fission research, so how would the demons have even heard of it when all of their interest prior to capturing nuclear scientists was with conventional weapons, which Uranium has nothing to do with and most people they capture for such wouldn't even know about?
The same way they would have heard of other technology. In this scenario you HAVE to assume that the demons had some time to build infrastructure that would allow them to field WW2 era equipment (and I believe the scenario was that they were planning to tech-up even further, but didn't have enough time to develop the infrastructure for that). Assuming their infrastructure would enable them to replicate anything made before 1946, they could make a couple of A-bombs. How many is merely a question of scale.
In other words probably this would be something like fighting North Korea (if North Korea was a thousand times larger, located in another dimension, populated by demons and had enslaved billions of dead humans).
Ilya Muromets wrote: And when they capture said scientists and gain knowledge of it, WHERE DO THEY START LOOKING? Uranium was discovered pretty much by accident, and people didn't recognize it for centuries. Here, the demons have no prior knowledge of it at all, and NOTHING in the story implies that they've even stumbled across the ore unwittingly. Suddenly you assume that the demons would quickly find it and ramp up production just like that? Human uranium mining already existed prior to its recognition as useful in nuclear fission (see pitchblende), it's just that people didn't really know it could be used for that till scientists figured it out. We stumbled on to uranium deposits CENTURIES earlier and were using the unrefined ore for mundane things, so when nuclear production began we already knew where to look. The demons don't have that luxury.
Plenty of geologists in Hell. And you could make that same argument about every metal/material/element that wasn't used before Modern Age.
Ilya Muromets wrote: Leave aside the one very important fact you chose gloss over: in WW2 nuclear production gave us a grand total of two weapons used. Production for the rest of the forties only resulted in around 50 bombs by 1948, and production rates didn't pick up significantly until the 50s. That's not even approaching the 400-500 B-61s the US has on standby alone, leave aside the bombs which are in storage and the nuclear arsenals of every other country with them. Even if, somehow, Hell has WW2-era production facilities it would be a stretch for them to make dozens of the damn things. How do they compete with all of the nuclear nations on Earth with their thousands of weapons in total?
Yes it is unlikely that demons would be mass-producing A-bombs rather than trying to tech-up to better, more powerful weapons. I believe my original point was that nuclear weapons wouldn't be complete shock to them. They would have an idea about their capabilities.
Ilya Muromets wrote: A)Because the only reason the demons even fought people in the first place is because Yahweh gave Earth over to Hell. So why do you suddenly think that the Baldricks won't invade when that was their VERY FIRST MANDATE in the story? To invade they need to open a portal large enough to get an army through, and those end up permanent. You don't start nuking your prime real estate first if you plan to take it all.
If Baldricks used humans to create an industrial society they would have gained a lot of knowledge about contemporary military's abilities. That might lead to a different strategy being chosen (like the above described portal-based hit and run warfare).
Ilya Muromets wrote: B) The military loses its balls all of a sudden? And for that matter, so do people? You're assuming that people will behave like Imperial Japan after WW2 and sue of peace in a panic, forgetting certain key differences: Japan did not have it's own stockpile of nukes, and even after surrender a brief coup was launched because the military wanted to fight, damn the nukes. Now when the whole of humanity is at risk from essentially an alien invasion -- an invasion which has expressedly stated that it wants to torture them for eternity -- AND we have our own nuclear stockpile, and you think they'll sue for surrender? Humanity is fighting to prevent an eternity of SLAVERY AND TORTURE from the demons. There will be no surrender until we've exhausted our nukes or our capability to deliver those nukes back at the bastards.
If there already is a portal to Hell open then yes, a significant portion of Earth's stockpiles would end up being sent there. But if there is no way to strike back at Hell, while Hell can strike at will? I think a lot of people would be trying to negotiate. Of course, Baldricks would have to be willing to negotiate as well.
Ilya Muromets wrote: Because your assumption is predicated on WW2 technology levels which would mean they have less sophistcated, heavy, unweildy, hard-to-deliver nukes which would be a nightmare to keep maintained in dusty-as-bumfuck Hell. Do you even realize how difficult it was to maintain those big, clunky WW2-tech-level nukes? They were tempermental as all hell, and had to be kept in careful storage or something fucks up their all-important mechanisms.
To assume that the demons would have those in large numbers, ready to go one-for-one with an ENTIRE planet which inherited a massive stockpile of much smaller yet more powerful nukes from the Cold War, is handwaving so many practical and implementation problems it borders on a fucking no limits fallacy.
I did write that it's an unlikely scenario.
Ilya Muromets wrote: And do you also remember that the fear led to a fucking war on terror THAT STILL ISN'T OVER THIS VERY DAY? You do realize you just shot your own point in the foot. You know what that mass panic and hysteria inspired? Feelings of revenge and calls for nucking the entire Middle East, and that was from a small bunch of idiots flying planes into buildings.
You think this translates to "OH NOES, LET'S SURRENDER!" when a demonic force Hell-bent on torturing and enslaving humanity for all eternity NUKES cities? How the fuck does that follow?
Combined with the inability to strike back? Yes. See above.
Ilya Muromets wrote: Your entire argument up to this point has predicated on EVERYTHING going perfect for the Baldricks (they magically get a massive stockpile of WW2 nukes, ignore all of the practical problems Hell would face making them in the first place, and deliver it at whim) and everything going wrong for the humans (they can never retaliate with their own much more efficient and easy to deliver nukes, and fear immediately = surrender). This scenario is only even remotely plausible if you stack the cards in favor of the demons while putting nothing but jokers in the hands of humanity. To put in in TV Tropes terminology, you're handing over humans an Idiot Ball so massive it might as well be a second goddamn moon while you demons suddenly turn hyper competent with PERFECT COMMAND AND CONQUER ENGINEERING where the only things needed to make anything is clicking something on the goddamn build tab and your infrastructure shows up magically.
When you put it like that... you're probably right. I did reverse the roles here :)
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by GrayAnderson »

To rejoin the (unintentional) firestorm that I set off, let's assume that Satan or Belial takes out a subscription to the New York Times. It's been called Hell's Bible by enough people I know, so let's say they pick it out, though they may as well pick up The Times (London) or another major paper. So they read the paper. They keep a list of "people we need to talk to when they get here" (this would probably include Oppenheimer, Von Braun, etc.). And when they arrive, they make them a simple proposition:
"We're supposed to torture you for all eternity. Yep, this is Hell, you guessed right. We get energy from torturing people, but that's beside the point. We torture them. But we keep a small budget off to the side for people we really like and we don't need to torture or who we need to serve in our mines and foundries. This is a fraction of humanity, a very small one, but it's there, and you are included in it if you wish. In exchange for working with us on on building weapons, keeping things up to date in case we face some sort of invasion, etc., we'll exempt you from the pit. We'll also get you a support staff, almost entirely human...we'll even let you make some requests for the team, and we'll get you materials as you request them for your projects. We're also going to assign some demons to keep watch over you and make sure that you don't try anything funny."

That's really all they needed to do. It wouldn't put them on an even footing with humanity, but it would accomplish two things:
-First, it would ensure that they weren't in the dark. They hear of the size of industrial plants, they hear of the size of human armies, and most importantly in some ways, they hear of the size of nuclear tests out in the Pacific during the 50s...and they will almost assuredly start mulling over what they hear.
-Second, it would give them a list of people to speak to when they come in. For all intents and purposes, Second Life humans can't pop back over to Earth and warn humanity of what's going on, so the odds of an effective betrayal are pretty slim. Demons may generally be thirty years behind and may not be able to accomplish anything more than a pale imitation of human infrastructure, but knowing what they'd face would be half the battle.

Note that I am not saying that carrying out all of this was even within the ability of the demons to comprehend doing. However, I am saying that if they had done this then they would have avoided getting run over. At the very least, the could probably have disabled most of humanity's nuclear arsenals in an initial raid (popping portals open in our missile bases on day one...having somebody get through the wall and let you in is at least as old of a trick as ancient Greek epics) once it became clear that we weren't simply all going to lay down and die.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by Ilya Muromets »

iidave wrote: The same way they would have heard of other technology. In this scenario you HAVE to assume that the demons had some time to build infrastructure that would allow them to field WW2 era equipment (and I believe the scenario was that they were planning to tech-up even further, but didn't have enough time to develop the infrastructure for that). Assuming their infrastructure would enable them to replicate anything made before 1946, they could make a couple of A-bombs. How many is merely a question of scale.
In other words probably this would be something like fighting North Korea (if North Korea was a thousand times larger, located in another dimension, populated by demons and had enslaved billions of dead humans).
A question of scale and, again, you assume they can field this scale in the first place. Having the infrastructure to field a WW2 army does not equal to having the infrastructure to field a half-decent WW2 nuclear build up. Germany fielded a pretty damn well-equipped WW2 Army, but their nuclear development attempts were severely hampered by lack of access to decent uranium supplies from territory they controlled. And the Nazis at least had some idea where to look.

The presence of WW2 infrastructure =/= nuclear infrastructure unless they have the fissile material to support that development. Having to assume that they have the infrastructure to build a WW2 army does not immediately initial the similar assumtion that they can begin nuclear production in concert.
Plenty of geologists in Hell. And you could make that same argument about every metal/material/element that wasn't used before Modern Age.
No, you can't, because most of the stuff needed to make a WW2 army are already within the knowledge of the demons. Iron ore is nothing new, and they have plenty of it in Hell. They have a lot of diesel fuel well within reach too. Same thing for the materials needed to make gun powder and conventional weaponry.

"Plenty of geologists" doesn't do dick until they find someone with the right specialization to recognize even one of the various ores or uranium. And even then, those geologists were trained on Earth. From all of the descriptions of Hell we're given, the geological distribution of minerals in the strata on Hell are different from that on Earth. Which still begs the question of where to start looking.
Yes it is unlikely that demons would be mass-producing A-bombs rather than trying to tech-up to better, more powerful weapons. I believe my original point was that nuclear weapons wouldn't be complete shock to them. They would have an idea about their capabilities.
Yes, but your original point later morphed into the assumption that they could field those nukes at whim and force human surrender just like that.
If Baldricks used humans to create an industrial society they would have gained a lot of knowledge about contemporary military's abilities. That might lead to a different strategy being chosen (like the above described portal-based hit and run warfare).
If Baldrick's have knowledge of contemporary military capabilities then why are you still arguing that they'd still go with Yahweh giving them Earth. If they're smart enough to figure out that humans have figured out several things that they have, and are smart enough to innovate their industry and tactics, then they should be smart enough to recognize that you don't attack a nuclear power with more, better nukes than you have. Even with your advantages.

If they're smart enough to recognize that, then what's stopping them from recognizing that this fight is too goddamn risky and has all sorts of nasty possible consequences? What's stopping them from saying: Fuck you, Yahweh! Deal with your own shit!
f there already is a portal to Hell open then yes, a significant portion of Earth's stockpiles would end up being sent there. But if there is no way to strike back at Hell, while Hell can strike at will? I think a lot of people would be trying to negotiate. Of course, Baldricks would have to be willing to negotiate as well.
And what's there to negotiate? The Baldricks want to TORTURE the rest of humanity and, according to this scenario, only treat the small number they consider useful with any sort of dignity. Right, that's a compelling argument for surrender.
Combined with the inability to strike back? Yes. See above.
And, again, they only deny that ability by not sending their armies through to take control of Earth. Which contrasts with their original goals in the story, which begs the question of why they suddenly have the foresight to see so far beyond the original game plan that they don't even do it in the first place. And you also seem to forget that they needed to send their own portal makers through to our dimension to scope out a target and act as an anchor to make the portals over the target in the first place. They can't just magically pop portals over every target at whim, simple as you please.
When you put it like that... you're probably right. I did reverse the roles here
Right, and if we had gone with the old standby of magical/divine/unholy beings that pwn your silly human technology then we could snarkily say that we re-reversed the roles yet again and stacked the cards in the demons favor and that the only way for people to win was some silly Deus ex Machina and maybe an aesop about how humans should not be proud of their technology and all that? We can go all day making snarks about how the story is written, and that still wouldn't change the fact that the WW2-tech demons scenario still doesn't guarantee them a win.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by impatrick4life »

GrayAnderson wrote:
Note that I am not saying that carrying out all of this was even within the ability of the demons to comprehend doing. However, I am saying that if they had done this then they would have avoided getting run over. At the very least, the could probably have disabled most of humanity's nuclear arsenals in an initial raid (popping portals open in our missile bases on day one...having somebody get through the wall and let you in is at least as old of a trick as ancient Greek epics) once it became clear that we weren't simply all going to lay down and die.
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I'd like to point out that the circuitry inside an ICBM and inside the nuclear device itself is generally delicate and fragile, relatively speaking. Even a "weak" nuke of the Fat Man or Little Boy size could, with its detonation, give a severe shaking-up to said circuitry, even through thick bunker/silo walls - one would not have to destroy the device outright. It'd be enough to delay the deployment of any weaponry near the detonation point for at least a week, maybe more; the Air Force/Army/Navy would be reluctant to toss nukes that it wasn't sure would go off.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by Seggybop »

GrayAnderson wrote:At the very least, the could probably have disabled most of humanity's nuclear arsenals in an initial raid (popping portals open in our missile bases on day one...having somebody get through the wall and let you in is at least as old of a trick as ancient Greek epics) once it became clear that we weren't simply all going to lay down and die.
Portal into armories and steal every nuclear bomb around. Without any warning, we would have no defense against this. Even though they won't figure out how to get them to go off for a while (though they certainly would eventually) it would be quite a substantial blow to us.

That aside though, the portal ability is such a ridiculous advantage that they really should've been capable of wiping us out despite how bad their regular military was. Low-end things would include killing everyone important in human society with portal-assassins and destroying infrastructure like dams and power plants. If they just wanted to exterminate us and be done with it, many ways of doing that as well-- they could drain the oceans into an empty bubble world, or perhaps even place a portal from the center of the sun to another empty world such that it collapses into it (alternately, portal some other world's star onto the surface of Earth).

It wouldn't have taken much basic consideration for them to have been able to beat us, and actually building up infrastructure to fight us conventionally would have been totally unnecessary. The faintest idea of who they were going to be fighting would have been enough to tell them how they could beat us, but it's also understandable why in this story they lacked even that; for hundreds of thousands of years the humans had never made any appreciable advancement, and the demons didn't even realize that progress was possible.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by Ilya Muromets »

How would they portal into armories? Armageddon showed that for exact demonic porting involved either establishing contact with a nephilim in the vicinity or dropping a portal maker of their own nearby, have them scope out the area, and then act as an anchor for a portal. They have never showed the capability to portal anywhere they don't have an observer on or have no contact with a succeptible nephilim mind.

You're suggesting that they can put portals anywhere, anytime at mere whim.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by darksoul »

you know, all this talk about WW2 baldricks is all and well, but it goes through the fundamental flaw of baldricks: their own mind. Of course, all this ignores the personality of Satan completely.

I can almost see Belial reading newspapers, or Eurydale customarily questioning new arrivals. :) That's precisely what one would expect of them. Yet, there is a problem with all that: Immortality.

See, there is a reason why old people can't learn computers, and is not just that their brains are failing already. Is a problem of brain paths. Brains get wired in a certain way by culture, society and some say, natural inclinations (the old nurture vs nature thing). An immortal being is just not able to coup with change at the pace we do. Hell, we are not able to coup with the change we brought onto ourselves. We are rescued by our own mortality, which means new people and new ways constantly taking over and refining the old ones.
now that would give some pause to the demons. Suppose Belial makes a visit to XIX century Europe, and watch amazed the horrors of war in the time. One could follow that being a pretty logical and pragmatic being, he would try to obtain that results. But the fact of the matter is, that it would take centuries to him to get a grasp of the technology, the principles behind it, and why it works. he would be hopelessly outdated (not personally, the staff of baldricks he would charge with the task). So, he can't. Second best choice, slave work. Human scientist at work as described above, working their cryptic ways in front of baldricks that can't follow them fast enough. Still, we would be talking about the modernization of a country (in hidden, Satan or the other overlords can't know about this or it would be civil war, again) in a fast, FAST pace, to cover centuries of feudalism in mere decades, with slave work. granted, highly motivated slave work :), but still... The baldricks would always be behind in overall, unless they specialize.

My point is, the only way they can have WW2 equivalent technology is if they start developing it earlier than humans (an industrialized Hell) or if they consistently rob and mimic human technology, thus keeping track of us (but never being able to go forward).

The idea behind this rant is the postulate that an immortal mind works very differently than a mortal one, and that's why I'm not so bothered about Yahwe and Satan being assholes. Millennia of undisputed power can that do to anyone. an immortal being is not so prone to change or questioning as we are, regardless of talent, power or intelligence. They would lack the drive, the (ahem) divine spark that moves human development forward.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by Akalabeth »

I haven't read the entirety of this discussion, but canonically there are specific limitations on using portals that would make most of those ideas impossible, even if they had the desire to do them. They need a sensitive or demon on the other side to use as a targetter, and given that most sensitives were institutionalized that would pretty much mean demons only. Maybe they could try sneaking around with a succubus, but they would need to make sure they never appear on camera, because once they do we start using tinfoil, which would be difficult at a missile silo I'm guessing.

EDIT: Bah, posted too slow.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by darksoul »

Ilya Muromets wrote:How would they portal into armories? Armageddon showed that for exact demonic porting involved either establishing contact with a nephilim in the vicinity or dropping a portal maker of their own nearby, have them scope out the area, and then act as an anchor for a portal. They have never showed the capability to portal anywhere they don't have an observer on or have no contact with a succeptible nephilim mind.

You're suggesting that they can put portals anywhere, anytime at mere whim.
Actually, they can. Consider that they just need to take one nephilim under control, portal in some succubi, or some of Eurydale's host (can remember their names :( ) kind of what they did on Sheffield and Detroit. that one nephilim is a door, and each succubi on earth can open succesive portals, or serve as target for their masters to open portals. Remember that portal theroy says that you need an active transmitter, and the other end only needs to send a response. Theoretically, these means that every baldrick is a potential portal target for a powerful demon to use. I can't affirm this though, but is the impression it caused on me the investigation on portals developed in pantheoncide.

This even can serve as a quick way to deploy a small army. Catch one human, open a portal pour a dozen succubae. Each opens a portal, pour a dozen minions, and in well below ten minutes you have ported almost 150 baldrick warriors in the area. The point is, the first human is critical, after that, every demon can serve as a portal.

This comes, of course, assuming that this is going to be hell of a lot stealthier than the succubi attempt on Bill Clinton (that's one of my favorite passages, by the way), in which the succubi was caught on camera. Bad, very bad, not knowing what a camera is and how it works.

So, to get to an armory, you need to catch a nephilim. Transport a succubi or a gorgon (I remembered!). Control him to build a safe house (we take into consideration humans are not under alert on these kind of things yet, not as in England when the cult was tried). Use the safe house to lure more humans until you find someone useful. and then use him to steal/ disable/ initiate a nuclear launch on a political target, or something equally harmful.
Not to mention that it could be as easy as finding human diseases to spread, as I posted a couple pages ago about the blood bank contamination. I don't know, I'm not very imaginative on possibilities, but the point is, yes, for all effects and purposes you can assume demons can REACH everywhere with their portals. Just not directly, but through covert means.

i like the portalling of water idea. Belial needed a lot of power to open a portal to drop the lava assaults. It was shown specifically as very tiring to the naga, and requiring great efforts of synchronization and special buildings to enhance the energy. But we can consider the harm that can be done with smaller portals. for example, you could locate major dams or water reservoir or springs, and contaminate them all with nuclear wastes portalled from disposal facilities. That would be harder to counter than blowing up said facilities, although that too is an interesting thought. a couple dozen Chernobyls would make an excellent preparation for an invasion. Sure, it would fuck up the planet, but then again, baldricks never said there were going to stay here, did they?

EDIT: Note that we are supported on the basis that portals need one active side and one passive side, tuned to received and respond to the active signal. No need to have two actives, so any baldrick with enough affinity with a powerful lord could do. A gorgon would be perfect, or succubi...
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by Seggybop »

Ilya Muromets wrote:How would they portal into armories? Armageddon showed that for exact demonic porting involved either establishing contact with a nephilim in the vicinity or dropping a portal maker of their own nearby, have them scope out the area, and then act as an anchor for a portal. They have never showed the capability to portal anywhere they don't have an observer on or have no contact with a succeptible nephilim mind.

You're suggesting that they can put portals anywhere, anytime at mere whim.
Before humans learned of tinfoil hats and such, it was possible for them to perfectly disguise themselves or remote control humans. There would have been nothing preventing them from placing a suitable portal operator.

For less precise areas, I remember them not needing to have someone at the site, which is how they would create portals in uninhabited areas such as the ocean, but maybe I'm not remembering correctly and you are right.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by GrayAnderson »

Seggybop wrote:
Ilya Muromets wrote:How would they portal into armories? Armageddon showed that for exact demonic porting involved either establishing contact with a nephilim in the vicinity or dropping a portal maker of their own nearby, have them scope out the area, and then act as an anchor for a portal. They have never showed the capability to portal anywhere they don't have an observer on or have no contact with a succeptible nephilim mind.

You're suggesting that they can put portals anywhere, anytime at mere whim.
Before humans learned of tinfoil hats and such, it was possible for them to perfectly disguise themselves or remote control humans. There would have been nothing preventing them from placing a suitable portal operator.

For less precise areas, I remember them not needing to have someone at the site, which is how they would create portals in uninhabited areas such as the ocean, but maybe I'm not remembering correctly and you are right.
It's expressly possible for them to open a portal up in the Middle East without a contact. Also, when Luga is talking the first time she says that it's easy as long as you use a Nephillim...which suggests that a portal could be "forced" with enough effort.

Really, all you need are a day or two and a couple of demons willing to run a mission in the relevant areas to be able to open up the portals. For the US bases in North Dakota, just find one Nephillim in the region and go from there. It might take a few days or weeks to plan things out, but as messy as things probably were in the days following The Message, there's probably a window to get at least one of the bases under control. And if there's some forewarning that you're planning an attack, you can probably even get some Nephillim into place to open up portals by bases. It all depends on how much time and energy they're willing to put into planning the strike.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by SilverHawk »

Seggybop wrote:
GrayAnderson wrote:At the very least, the could probably have disabled most of humanity's nuclear arsenals in an initial raid (popping portals open in our missile bases on day one...having somebody get through the wall and let you in is at least as old of a trick as ancient Greek epics) once it became clear that we weren't simply all going to lay down and die.
Portal into armories and steal every nuclear bomb around. Without any warning, we would have no defense against this. Even though they won't figure out how to get them to go off for a while (though they certainly would eventually) it would be quite a substantial blow to us.

That aside though, the portal ability is such a ridiculous advantage that they really should've been capable of wiping us out despite how bad their regular military was. Low-end things would include killing everyone important in human society with portal-assassins and destroying infrastructure like dams and power plants. If they just wanted to exterminate us and be done with it, many ways of doing that as well-- they could drain the oceans into an empty bubble world, or perhaps even place a portal from the center of the sun to another empty world such that it collapses into it (alternately, portal some other world's star onto the surface of Earth).

It wouldn't have taken much basic consideration for them to have been able to beat us, and actually building up infrastructure to fight us conventionally would have been totally unnecessary. The faintest idea of who they were going to be fighting would have been enough to tell them how they could beat us, but it's also understandable why in this story they lacked even that; for hundreds of thousands of years the humans had never made any appreciable advancement, and the demons didn't even realize that progress was possible.
I wonder what they are going to do with all those worthless casings without their proper priming and detonation equipment fitted. (Not to mention the complete lack of Deuterium gas needed for modern fusion-fission bombs to have their punch.) Or how they would get somebody inside the missile silos in the first place, since they can be completely closed off from the outside world. (Getting past the barbed wire fence and post guard is the EASY part.)

This is forgetting that in order to open portals, you need a conduit on the otherside, otherwise it's just a blind jump into the unknown. Let's not forget the strain put on the Nagas to maintain the portal for the rock drops on NYC, how long do you think they can keep the Earth's oceans flowing through a portal before every Naga is dead from having to sustain a portal with all that exchanging volume? (Not to mention pressure)
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Three Up

Post by GrayAnderson »

SilverHawk wrote:
Seggybop wrote:
GrayAnderson wrote:At the very least, the could probably have disabled most of humanity's nuclear arsenals in an initial raid (popping portals open in our missile bases on day one...having somebody get through the wall and let you in is at least as old of a trick as ancient Greek epics) once it became clear that we weren't simply all going to lay down and die.
Portal into armories and steal every nuclear bomb around. Without any warning, we would have no defense against this. Even though they won't figure out how to get them to go off for a while (though they certainly would eventually) it would be quite a substantial blow to us.

That aside though, the portal ability is such a ridiculous advantage that they really should've been capable of wiping us out despite how bad their regular military was. Low-end things would include killing everyone important in human society with portal-assassins and destroying infrastructure like dams and power plants. If they just wanted to exterminate us and be done with it, many ways of doing that as well-- they could drain the oceans into an empty bubble world, or perhaps even place a portal from the center of the sun to another empty world such that it collapses into it (alternately, portal some other world's star onto the surface of Earth).

It wouldn't have taken much basic consideration for them to have been able to beat us, and actually building up infrastructure to fight us conventionally would have been totally unnecessary. The faintest idea of who they were going to be fighting would have been enough to tell them how they could beat us, but it's also understandable why in this story they lacked even that; for hundreds of thousands of years the humans had never made any appreciable advancement, and the demons didn't even realize that progress was possible.
I wonder what they are going to do with all those worthless casings without their proper priming and detonation equipment fitted. (Not to mention the complete lack of Deuterium gas needed for modern fusion-fission bombs to have their punch.) Or how they would get somebody inside the missile silos in the first place, since they can be completely closed off from the outside world. (Getting past the barbed wire fence and post guard is the EASY part.)

This is forgetting that in order to open portals, you need a conduit on the otherside, otherwise it's just a blind jump into the unknown. Let's not forget the strain put on the Nagas to maintain the portal for the rock drops on NYC, how long do you think they can keep the Earth's oceans flowing through a portal before every Naga is dead from having to sustain a portal with all that exchanging volume? (Not to mention pressure)
First of all, to be fair I don't know what we've got in terms of defenses at our nuclear facilities. 'course, they can probably do a respectable number on the base...the missiles aren't any good if we can't shoot them, you know?

Second, you presume that they have to do anything with them to have a substantial impact on the war. I wouldn't want to be in the position of humans who've lost a couple hundred nukes, let alone a substantial portion of the current arsenal. At the very least, our ability to attack them in such a manner is severely weakened; at the most, they do have a substantial amount of refined uranium that they're sitting on. Again, if they know anything about the dangers of radioactive stuff, simply pulling the cores out, grinding them down, and running an attack of some sort with the material mixed in wouldn't be hard to do. They could use the humans they have for the task...it wouldn't be that hard to pull off, even if it is a damn inefficient use of the material.
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Re: The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Seventy Two Up

Post by LoofahBoy »

Stuart wrote:Yes, Spoiler
quite pre-human
Spoiler
What, like, dinosaurs or something? Or early hominids?
I can't think of anything offhand the "two thumbs" thing would apply to in terms of a hominid species.
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