SCRawl wrote: No, and I said that the walls would certainly not be made from concrete, since that was invented long after this gate was constructed. But it's within a few percent of whatever the gate is made of. (If it's marble, by the way, that's about 8% denser, and granite is 13% denser.)
The gates themselves are timber. Each is 1,000 meters long, 100 high and a meter thick. They rest on multi-wheel clusters spaced out along the length of the gate (so it is evenly supported at every point along its length) with the wheels running on brass arcs let into the road surface.
The walls themselves, by the way, weigh almost 8 BILLION tons. That meant an awful lot of rock moving. I must admit I'm not sure if the wall dimensions are possible given the crush strength of granite. Even at my advanced age, I've never had to design a stone castle. . . . . .
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
If the doors are made of wood, then could we send in the buzzsaw helicopters? The wood might be too thick, but the sheer awesome would be overwhelming for all onlookers.
Wood? How long has it been there? Wood doesn't last forever, and considering how much of the rest of the eternal city was bieng described as in shoddy repair, I can imagine the doors having dry rot or something. Also it sound's like the Aussies have made it farther into the city than the SAS. Good, since poor Australia aways seems to get forgotten about when fiction is featuring things worldwide.
Technology, the great equalizer, and the great un-equalizer.
Alternatively, torch them? Where do you get the trees for kilometer-long, 100-meter-high, and meter-thick doors of sheer timber, anyways? (kinda makes you wonder why the surroundings of the city are nothing but hills)
Controller Sean 'Jaguar' Mirrsen
Competent Modder, Proficient Programmer, Grand Master RtD GM.
GM of Multiworld Madness, a Roll to Dodge epic.
GM of Space Whaler Escape!, a Roll to Dodge survival/skirmish.
Plus, those chopers are designed to cut down BRANCHES, not very thick, very old, and VERY, VERY solid doors.
A M1A2 going at about 30MPH, weighs about 67.6 short tons, so they might be able to just ram them down, but I can't say for certain. Any one want to do the calcs on how much kinetic energy that's going to be hitting the doors?
If Dr. Gatling was a nerd, then his most famous invention is the fucking Revenge of the Nerd, writ large...
"Lawful stupid is the paladin that charges into hell because he knows there's evil there."
—anonymous
"Although you may win the occasional battle against us, Vorrik, the Empire will always strike back."
Night_stalker wrote:Plus, those chopers are designed to cut down BRANCHES, not very thick, very old, and VERY, VERY solid doors.
A M1A2 going at about 30MPH, weighs about 67.6 short tons, so they might be able to just ram them down, but I can't say for certain. Any one want to do the calcs on how much kinetic energy that's going to be hitting the doors?
These are doors, aren`t they? by definition they cover a hole in the wall and as such must have a juncture point on it. Find the junctures, destroy it with whatever weapons you like, and run like hell before the freaking thing falls on you. If it had been standing for so long that it doesn`t go down on its own, a explosive in the base of the door would shake the foundation enough to shatter its balance.
there is no need to go through the door literally, if you can throw the door down.
hell of a good wood they had in heaven, by the way. I wonder if they would export it when war is over. So much for the Amazonas....
Stuart wrote: The gates themselves are timber. Each is 1,000 meters long, 100 high and a meter thick.
100K m^3 = 3.53 E6 ft^3 x 50 lb / ft^3 for oak = 88 K Tons. Add some bronze fittings and you have 100 K tons per gate.
Spacing the roller arcs at 1 m apart gives you 100 T per wheel cluster. That indicates that the entire entryway might be paved with bronze, and the wheels densely packed across and maybe four to six rows deep under the gates. You'd hear those suckers rolling in Hell!
The hinges probably can't carry enough load to reduce that by much - the question being what are the hinges anchored to and how. The gates would sag enough naturally, that the weight would end up on the wheels, anyway.
My guess without calculation is that the gates would be strong enough to support their own weight, but not strong enough to be opened and closed many times.
There would be some absolutely massive timbers, indicating some enormous trees. Without lateral bracing, the gates would tend to buckle, twisting themselves to pieces. So they weren't opened. I suppose they could be stiffened with rolling buttresses, apread out along each face. Perhaps there's a story, somewhere, about the first one failing, and them never being opened again.
The easiest way to get them open might be to cut the hinges and gate bars, and let gravity do the work. An acetylene torch won't touch bronze or brass. I don't know if plasma cutters would do the job, but explosives would. Just stand back when that sucker falls over. It would probably explode as it buckled.
There are granite cliffs 100m high, so I think the rock would be OK. The quarries would be impressive, as would the transportation system. I'm visualizing a great natural granite dome, with the stones quarried from the foot of the walls, all around the perimeter. The walls must be founded on competant rock; nothing else would support the load. Actual construction might be granite cells, wall faces with cross walls to tie them together, and rubble infill.
Granite is a rock produced at great depth, so the geology of Heaven must be interesting to produce such a dome.
- Dennis
--
Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war.
-Frederick the Great, 1777
Simon_Jester wrote:For whatever reason, they prefer to read stories where wizards and gods are conquistadores and we're the Aztecs.
Provided that we somehow pull through anyway in spite of all that, yeah. The reverse is about as interesting as a SW v. ST fanfic written from the perspective of Palpatine.
Bayonet wrote:
There are granite cliffs 100m high, so I think the rock would be OK. The quarries would be impressive, as would the transportation system. I'm visualizing a great natural granite dome, with the stones quarried from the foot of the walls, all around the perimeter. The walls must be founded on competant rock; nothing else would support the load. Actual construction might be granite cells, wall faces with cross walls to tie them together, and rubble infill.
Granite is a rock produced at great depth, so the geology of Heaven must be interesting to produce such a dome.
Hum, screw Carrara marble, new sculpture material : Heavenly granite. directly from the Great City walls.
There is enough to export for a few years to come. Im looking forward to war reparations
Precious gems are another matter, though. These must be restricted or the value will go down fast. Not good for anyone.
Bayonet wrote:The easiest way to get them open might be to cut the hinges and gate bars, and let gravity do the work. An acetylene torch won't touch bronze or brass. I don't know if plasma cutters would do the job, but explosives would. Just stand back when that sucker falls over. It would probably explode as it buckled.
Acetylene torch will melt brass no problem. They're used all the time for brazing. Plasma cutter would be ezmode.
Knocking down a wooden gate isn't going to be a problem, in any case
Stuart wrote:My basic world model is that the whole Eternal City is built of goods (wood, metal, stone, precious stones) looted from worlds without number.
That's one Hell [sic] of a lot of looting!
- Dennis
--
Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war.
-Frederick the Great, 1777
Not just one - that's quite a lot of Hells worth of looting.
For that granite wall, they must've opened a portal to the Elemental Plane of Granite or something - I can't imagine that kind of scale of work going on, not with just human labor. Or even angel labor - even if they were constructed before Earth got into the angels' sights, those walls would still be built by the lowest-ranking angels, not much stronger than humans. Though I guess being able to fly somewhat offsets the inherent difficulty of getting stone slabs so high up and across such a large distance as would be required for any quarry - you just need a few hundred angels and a very very large amount of rope.
Last edited by CSJM on 2010-07-20 01:33pm, edited 1 time in total.
Controller Sean 'Jaguar' Mirrsen
Competent Modder, Proficient Programmer, Grand Master RtD GM.
GM of Multiworld Madness, a Roll to Dodge epic.
GM of Space Whaler Escape!, a Roll to Dodge survival/skirmish.
CSJM wrote:Not just one - that's quite a lot of Hells worth of looting.
For that granite wall, they must've opened a portal to the Elemental Plane of Granite or something - I can't imagine that kind of scale of work going on, not with just human labor. Or even angel labor - even if they were constructed before Earth got into the angels' sights, those walls would still be built by the lowest-ranking angels, not much stronger than humans. Though I guess being able to fly somewhat offsets the inherent difficulty of getting stone slabs so high up and across such a large distance as would be required for any quarry - you just need a few hundred angels and a very very large amount of rope.
Not really; flying is more energy intensive than walking, so it's a lot more efficient and easier to carry the stones at ground level.
Where having a second-lifer or ishim (low-rank angel) workforce would pay off is in resistance to work-related injuries, and reduced logistics constraints because you don't have to feed them as much as you would an equivalent force of first life humans
Also, they may have been able to use extremely strong draft animals- picture their equivalent of Hell's rhinolobsters. That would help considerably with the task, though it would still be a staggeringly large project. I imagine the construction must have taken place over a period of thousands of years, taking a decade or so to construct a few miles of wall in a process much like the construction of the great pyramids.
Ryan Thunder wrote:
Simon_Jester wrote:For whatever reason, they prefer to read stories where wizards and gods are conquistadores and we're the Aztecs.
Provided that we somehow pull through anyway in spite of all that, yeah. The reverse is about as interesting as a SW v. ST fanfic written from the perspective of Palpatine.
They usually do it by making the wizards the protagonists (many examples, Harry Potter being perhaps the most famous one that is both recent, well received, and artistically decent), or by giving the hero an excess of manly determination (Conan the Barbarian).
The point being that there's a genre convention whereby superpowers must confer a significant advantage, without any corresponding disadvantage to offset it: the wizard's magic blasts give him firepower equivalent to a guy with a pistol, but for some reason you won't see him going down to a random guy with a pistol.
Stuart's entire story is built around the subversion of that convention, by creating supermen who are actually kind of dumb and easily beaten by a savvy opponent with better engineering and organizational skills. Hence the screaming from the anti-fans; they can feel their genre convention being violated and it hurts, but they don't quite understand what the problem is*, and that makes them angry.
*If they did, they might be less enthusiastic about stories where the superheroes always win, because they'd be thinking through the implications of that...
Last edited by Simon_Jester on 2010-07-20 01:38pm, edited 1 time in total.
Bayonet wrote:The easiest way to get them open might be to cut the hinges and gate bars, and let gravity do the work. An acetylene torch won't touch bronze or brass. I don't know if plasma cutters would do the job, but explosives would. Just stand back when that sucker falls over. It would probably explode as it buckled.
Acetylene torch will melt brass no problem. They're used all the time for brazing. Plasma cutter would be ezmode.
Cutting is a different matter. You heat the steel to white heat, and then hit it with an oxygen blast. That literally ignites the steel, burning it away. The burning melts more steel, some of which is carried away by the blast, the rest burning. Once going, the process can be self sustaining without pilot heat, in large objects. Brass and bronze (aluminum, too) conduct heat too well for the process to work. To demolish brass or bronze objects with a torch, you'd need to use way too much gas, and melt the whole danm thing. Brass and bronze sheets are used in safes to defeat a torch attack.
A plasma cutter doesn't have that limitation. It will cut aluminum or bronze just fine. Depending on the size of the fittings, it may take too much current to be practical.
Anyway, I'd not want to be standing next to those gates when they started to fail.
- Dennis
--
Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war.
-Frederick the Great, 1777
CSJM wrote:Alternatively, torch them? Where do you get the trees for kilometer-long, 100-meter-high, and meter-thick doors of sheer timber, anyways? (kinda makes you wonder why the surroundings of the city are nothing but hills)
Given that a lot of the buildings in the city are built of plaster with wooden supports, setting fire to the gates could result in a repeat of the Tokyo firebombing.
Turns out that a five way cross over between It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Ali G Show, Fargo, Idiocracy and Veep is a lot less funny when you're actually living in it.
for that matter, how do you stop the gates destruction from hitting to houses behind them? Sure, we could blow them out wards, but wouldnt the hinges mean the gates opened outwards? And isn't it easier to blow a door off it's hinges against the direction it is supposed to go?
I dont really know and might be talking complete nonsense here, since i'm not a scientist or engineer.
If we do blow it that way, then i cant remember seeing anything that says that the road on the other side is the same width as the gate.
The area behind the gate is small enough to evacuate (if this is a planned and coordinated operation to bring the gates down). It's a tiny fraction of the overall area of the city.
Stuart wrote:My basic world model is that the whole Eternal City is built of goods (wood, metal, stone, precious stones) looted from worlds without number.
That's one Hell [sic] of a lot of looting!
mind numbing, actually. which leads us to another potential problem in the future: if we stablish Michael or any other puppet government in Heaven, and embark ourselves in a series of stargate-y explorations in buble worlds, preemptively, I suppose, if we find some race looted by angels, would they be entitled to ask for reparations? will we pressure angels to return something to them, an apology at least?
darksoul wrote:mind numbing, actually. which leads us to another potential problem in the future: if we stablish Michael or any other puppet government in Heaven, and embark ourselves in a series of stargate-y explorations in buble worlds, preemptively, I suppose, if we find some race looted by angels, would they be entitled to ask for reparations? will we pressure angels to return something to them, an apology at least?
I got the impression that once Yahweh is done with looting a species, they get handed over to Satan to be destroyed, so there's not going to be enough left to demand anything.
Humans had changed Heaven already, were recasting it in their own image and rebuilding it to their own needs. What had once been a bucolic pastoral scene with winding earthen roads separating lush green fields tended by happy peasants was gone forever. The roads were being converted to blacktop, straightened out and painted with strange hieroglyphic markings. Yet those changes were nothing compared with the human work he was standing on. A great blacktop strip, 4,000 yards long and 50 wide, with arrays of lights at both ends and smaller service strips all around it. Raphael-Lan would have been even less happy about the change if he had known that all the blacktop he was seeing was asphalt brought in from Hell.
Around him, engineers were still hard at work building the airfield. Several teams were erecting strange buildings to house the human's fighter aircraft that were already operating from here. Inside those shelters, the aircraft would be safe from weather and sonic attacks. Raphael looked at the buildings with interest, noting that they were built on shock-absorbent mountings. The four F-15s that had brought him to this base were parked on the hardtop a few dozen yards away. Raphael noted that nobody really seemed interested in him. He didn’t let that impression delude him, these were humans and he was very sure that something incredibly lethal was trained on him. He was, of course, entirely correct in that assumption.
The sound of Heaven had changed as well. The wind sighing in the trees, the rustle of grass, the far-off sound of the happy humans singing hymns as they worked in the fields had all disappeared. They had been drowned out by the growl of diesel engines, the roar of earth being scooped up and moved and the crash as anything that got in the way was ruthlessly chopped down. Even those sounds were drowned out now and then as the sky-ripping howl of jet engines briefly dominated the scene. Raphael reflected there were a lot of human aircraft around. The vicious little fighters, the great pot-bellied transports, the ominous shadows of the bombers, the humans surely did love their aircraft and they had some tailored to every need they could think of. Perhaps it was because they had no wings themselves and needed their machines to fly?
There was a new sound, a curious pulsing noise. Another human aircraft was approaching, this one a helicopter. A large helicopter with a single rotor over its fuselage. It swung in to land a few dozen yards away from him. As soon as it was down, the tail ramp dropped and a group of humans walked out. Raphael reflected that was another change in Heaven. Before, the humans who lived here had been friendly and grateful for the kindness shown to them. These humans were not grateful for anything and certainly not friendly.
Human Delegation, Heaven-17 Forward Airfield. Heaven
"Mike is upset he isn’t here for this." Asanee spoke with a certain degree of relish.
"One of us had to remain at base in case this is some sort of trap." Petraeus stood up and groaned. Unobtrusively he reached into a pocket and took a pair of Motrin tablets. "No disrespect meant Asanee, but I need a General who is also a politician here. We don't want to repeat the mistakes Norm Schwartzkopf made at the end of ODS."
"No offense taken David. Mixing the two roles is a familiar thing in our Army. Three roles in fact, we also run businesses. Are you sure you do not wish to carry a gun to this meeting?" Asanee's right hip was weighed down by a Desert Eagle pistol, one that she had owned for years before the demands of the Salvation War had made its heavy-caliber bullets vital.
Petraeus shook his head. "Not necessary. It's a subtle message to this messenger that I can have him killed without worrying about doing it myself." He paused for a second. "Have you ever actually fired that thing?"
"At people? Twice. They both died. But it was mostly to impress others, to make them remember me. I'd put it away before all this started." Asanee saw they were approaching the angel patiently waiting on the taxiway and dropped back so she was following a respectful distance behind Petraeus.
"You bring a flag of truce?" Petraeus's voice was clipped and certain. "And you are?"
"I am Raphael-Lan-Yah . . . Lan-Michael. I come here under a flag of truce to bring you a message from Michael himself. He has seized power in The Eternal City. With the aid of his fellow-insurgents, he has killed Yahweh. He did this for one purpose and for one purpose only and that is to bring this war to and end. I am charged with negotiating an end to hostilities between us. As a first step we are declaring The Eternal City an open city. It will not be defended and it's gates will be thrown open to you."
Petraeus glanced quickly over his shoulder and saw Asanee shake her head slightly. He agreed, what he had just heard was a skillful mixture of bullshit and truth. The trouble with such mixtures was that even a small amount of bullshit made the whole mix stink. "You expect me to believe that Michael overthrew Yahweh just to end this war?"
Raphael smiled at the human standing below him. "Of course not. Yahweh had gone completely mad. What was once a peaceful and happy community here in Heaven was being torn apart. Yahweh had already betrayed you humans by slamming the doors of Heaven in your face. He betrayed us by ruling with fear, arresting and tormenting all those who displeased him. You have found the concentration camp he founded for those who dared disagree with him? There may be more, I do not know. If there are, I beg you, in Michael's name, to find them and rescue those within. Ending this war is a part of remedying the harm Yahweh's madness caused." Raphael looked sadly at the blacktop roads and airfield, heard the roar and hammering of machinery and his next words were truer than anything else he had said. "Michael understands that things have changed forever and we can never go back to the past."
"So what are your terms?" Petraeus was slightly impatient. Apart from anything else, his back was killing him and he urgently wanted to sit down.
"The simplest possible. Michael-Lan-Michael, Commander of the Angelic Host, ruler of the Eternal City and all that surrounds it, wishes to surrender unconditionally to you. He has ordered all resistance to you to cease with immediate effect. He asks you to understand that communications are slow and uncertain here in Heaven. We do not have much in the way of radio equipment."
Petraeus heard the tiny cough from behind him. "You have some radio equipment?"
"We do, we have the ability to make limited broadcasts from our headquarters to a few trusted allies. That was essential for our coup to succeed. But, for the rest, we rely on couriers and message relays. So, spreading the word of surrender will take some time. Also, there may be Yahweh loyalists and other hold-outs who may continue to resist. If so, their fate will be in their own hands. And yours of course."
"So you expect us to kill off any resistance to your coup? Not going to happen. If they attack us, they die. That's all."
"Heaven is a well-ordered place and we do not expect resistance. All we say is that if any misguided angels do resist, it will not be our doing. If we can, we will throw the gates of the Eternal City open to you."
"If you can?"
"Those gates are vast and have not been opened since they were built. We are not even sure they can still be opened. If they cannot, we must ask you to blow them open."
Petraeus nodded. "Very well. On behalf of the Yamantau Council and subject to their approval, I will accept your unconditional surrender. General Asanee, call General Sir Michael Jackson and advise him that the Angelic Host has surrendered. He is to spread the word to our Army commanders. Raphael-Lan, return to Michael and tell him we have accepted his unconditional surrender and will be moving to occupy the Eternal City." His voice hardened noticeably. "And make sure he understands that if there is any treachery, there won't be an Eternal City left to occupy."
Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.
General Sir Mike Jackson, Chief of Staff of the HEA and Commander British Forces, Heaven, sighed. It was over. Today, July 20th, would forever be Salvation Day. He knew this wasn't the end of the fighting, Hell still wasn't pacified completely two years after the collapse of Satan's rule. Then there was the problem of the rest of Heaven and Hell. The areas occupied by the daemons and angels were only a small proportion of the total land area of the worlds. Who knew what else was out there? Hell had already thrown one nasty surprise at them. There would be more.
"Sir, your 11 o'clock is waiting." Captain Rye was standing at the door, her clipboard in hand.
"Harriet, get through to all our sub-commanders ASAP. Tell them, Michael-Lan in Heaven has just surrendered unconditionally. Then arrange a portal for General Petraeus to go to Yamantau so he can brief them on what has happened."
"It's really over, Sir?"
"If Michael's authority holds, yes." Jackson sighed again. Back to routine. "Now trot that person in."
It was one of the penalties of being Chief of Staff. If he didn’t have enough to do in effectively running much of the HEA and all British military forces in the Heaven Theatre of Operations he also had to meet with dozens of visitors who arrived every day. Many were essentially official sightseers who had come up with some excuse to come and see Heaven, but others were a mix of boffins and crackpots who were convinced that they held the key to the ultimate victory and wanted Jackson’s backing before their proposals were sent to General Petraeus. It was his responsibility to search through the garbage and come up with the odd nugget of gold that was sometimes hidden within.
At least he was no longer directly responsible for the command and administration of the 1st Commonwealth Army; General Sir David Richards, who had been pencilled in as the next Chief of the General Staff before the war had extended Sir Richard Dannatt’s tenure, had taken over that command. The army was still expanding, two new British divisions and a third Canadian division had recently arrived in Heaven, but it was probably now very close to its natural maximum size.
His attention snapped back to his visitor. Fortunately, he didn't seem to have missed anything significant.
“…And because one of my ancestors was deeply involved with the guns and howitzers I’ve always had a deep interest in them as weapons. Of course when I decided to join the army the Royal Artillery seemed to be the natural choice, even though modern artillery never seemed to quite have the attraction of the really big weapons from the world wars…”
“So you never got your Jacket then?” Jackson asked the ageing Royal Artillery Colonel for no other reason than to stop his rather meandering explanation of why he was here.
The Colonel was a retired officer brought back into service, what in World War One would have been called a ‘dug-out’. His job was to run a training depot for National Servicemen assigned to the Royal Artillery.
“Ah, no, Sir. I’ve never had the pleasure of serving in the Royal Arse Hortillery.” Colonel Jonathon Cleeve replied, laughing at his own joke.
General Jackson’s stony face, indicating that he did not share the joke brought him up short. He cleared his throat a couple of times, rather nervously.
“Very funny I’m sure.” Jackson said, his tone of voice indicating very clearly that he thought otherwise. “What exactly was it you came to see me about, Colonel Cleeve, I trust it wasn’t to give me a history of British Army railway artillery in both world wars?”
“No, Sir, not at all.” Cleeve replied. “I just thought you would want some background. I’m here because I heard you had a potential problem in breaching the walls of the Eternal City and I thought I could offer you a non-nuclear option.
“One of the 18inch howitzers we built just after the end of the First World War has survived as a proof-firing weapon and is currently at Larkhill.”
Jackson nodded, he had seen the howitzer a few times, both when it had been at Woolwich and later after it had been moved to Larkhill when Woolwich had closed.
“Well in 1943 a concrete penetrating shell was developed and test fired; it was planned to use it against German fortifications in France and Italy, but in the event it was not chosen to deploy the howitzer. It was a mistake in my opinion, but…”
“Get to the point, Colonel.” Jackson interrupted irritably.
“Well, Sir it struck me that the combination of the 18inch howitzer and the concrete penetrating shell would be a perfect way of blasting a breach in the walls. We’d need a week, or two to knock up a proper mounting because I don’t think the current proof-firing sled would be really suitable. Once the howitzer and ammunition were ready we could open a portal in front of it and fire at the target from this side, so we wouldn’t even have to move it very far. It would cut down a great deal on logistical problems that way.”
General Jackson hated to burst the bubble of someone so enthusiastic and knowledgeable about his subject. He took no pleasure in it.
“I am sorry to have to tell you, Colonel, that within the last few minutes, Heaven has surrendered unconditionally. There is, apparently, no longer a need to breach the walls of the Eternal City.”
Colonel Cleeve looked both downcast and like a man who had just seen the bottom of his world fall out. It looked like it was back to the training depot for him.
“No, I, ah…hadn’t heard that, Sir.” He said quietly.
“Cheer up, Colonel.” Jackson said. “I’ll need to speak to Major General Maxwell, but I am sure we can find a place for the howitzer once it is on a proper mounting. We may have to open the Gates on the City ourselves. The Angels are not certain they can throw open the gates themselves. Also, we may well have won the war against Hell and Heaven, but there is a lot of occupation duty in front of us. There is also the matter of what other nasties might lurk out there.”
Cleeve brightened up considerably at this.
“Of course we will also need a knowledgeable officer to oversee this particular project. I am sure we can spare you from the training depot to take this on.”
“Thank you very much, Sir. You will mention this to General Petraeus?”
“I’ll make sure he hears about it, Colonel.” Jackson told him. “I’m sure he will find this very interesting. I believe the Americans still have some railway guns in preservation, so they may follow your lead if you can pull this off.”
Underground Command Facility, Yamantau, Russia, July 20, 2010
"And so, contingent upon Michael-Lan-Michael's surrender being effective, resistance ceasing as per his promise and on this council's agreement with our acceptance of his unconditional surrender, all major combat operations will cease. The occupation of The Eternal City will take place as soon as we can get troops into position. That should be within a few hours." General of the Armies David Petraeus swallowed two more Motrin tablets and sat down.
All fifteen members of the Yamantau Council were present in person, an achievement that would have been impossible before the spread of portal transportation. Now, Yamantau had its own portal room and its own staff of sensitives. The applause from the assembled Council Members was deafening.
Chairman of the Yamantau Council Vladimir Putin waited until the noise quieted of its own accord. Then he spoke softly, relying on the sound system to ensure his voice carried to every corner of the room. "I formally propose the motion that the declaration of unconditional surrender proposed by Michael-Lan-Michael be accepted."
"Seconded!" President Sarkozy of France emphatically agreed. The roar of acclamation was convincing.
"Comrades, I would like to make a another proposal." President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil spoke as soon as the applause wound down. "That we declare this day to be Salvation Day, a worldwide holiday forever to be celebrated as an affirmation of humanity winning its freedom and liberty from an age-old curse. Never before in the history of humanity has such a victory been won. And let us not forget that in doing so, we have freed the daemons and angels from those who would oppress them also. Today is indeed Salvation Day for us all."
Last edited by Stuart on 2010-07-21 09:17am, edited 1 time in total.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
Speaking of heavy artillery, what about the Republic of China (Taiwan) Army's 240mm howitzers. They have a few on Kinmen and I believe they are still fully operational. Speaking of the ROCA, which Army group did they get bunched in with?
Turns out that a five way cross over between It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Ali G Show, Fargo, Idiocracy and Veep is a lot less funny when you're actually living in it.
