The Salvation War: Pantheocide Epilogue Up

[Jamesfirecat]

As long as we're talking about Music for Pantheocide, how about "Hum Hallelujah" by Fall Out Boy?

[The Vortex Empire]

Ugh. Fall Out Boy is bloody terrible. The Salvation War soundtrack would have to be hard rock and heavy metal, not that emo crap. Try Breaking into Heaven by Heaven & Hell. Highway to Hell by AC/DC, those Iron Maiden songs mentioned by people a few pages back.

Of course, The Salvation War would never make a good movie. You'd have to water it down too much to make any sort of success in the mostly Christian market, and there's far too much stuff. I could see it working as a long-running high budget TV series though. Of course, Stuart would have to maintain creative control.

[darksoul]

Ugh. Fall Out Boy is bloody terrible. The Salvation War soundtrack would have to be hard rock and heavy metal, not that emo crap. Try Breaking into Heaven by Heaven & Hell. Highway to Hell by AC/DC, those Iron Maiden songs mentioned by people a few pages back.

Of course, The Salvation War would never make a good movie. You'd have to water it down too much to make any sort of success in the mostly Christian market, and there's far too much stuff. I could see it working as a long-running high budget TV series though. Of course, Stuart would have to maintain creative control.

Amen to both music and TSW series.

[Deebles]

We're on a highway to hell! We're on a ...

Ahem.

With the mass die-offs as a result of the Message, I don't doubt there's plenty of fertile (and needed) farmland on EARTH. Given the nearly infinite labor supply of second life humans, I can't see us sending living, breathing first-lifers to heaven to farm when resources could be put to more effective use on earth.

Remember, at the start of this all something like a FIFTH of all humans on earth died. NOBODY has an overpopulation problem right now. Not anymore.

I disagree. If you take the most extreme example, Bangladesh today has a population density of about 2,800 people per square mile, 35 times that of the USA. That's 1/35th the amount of land per person on average, and an economy that's much more agriculturally based (2/3 of Bangladeshis are farmers). Even if one fifth of the population died, if you offered a Bangladeshi farmer the chance to get a whole square mile of land or more to farm themselves... well, I'd imagine it would be pretty tempting.

So I don't think you'd have to send people, if the land is available, affordable, accessible and safe. I think, if anything, you'd have trouble holding them back...

[FuzedBox]

As long as we're talking about Music for Pantheocide, how about "Hum Hallelujah" by Fall Out Boy?

No. Are you trying to troll?

[Jamesfirecat]

As long as we're talking about Music for Pantheocide, how about "Hum Hallelujah" by Fall Out Boy?

No. Are you trying to troll?

No clearly I awful taste in music....

[The Vortex Empire]

No clearly I awful taste in music....

Indeed you do. I recommend listening to Judas Priest's Painkiller album to cleanse yourself of your sins.

[Darth Yan]

Hey I like Fall Out Boy.

[Seggybop]

With the mass die-offs as a result of the Message, I don't doubt there's plenty of fertile (and needed) farmland on EARTH. Given the nearly infinite labor supply of second life humans, I can't see us sending living, breathing first-lifers to heaven to farm when resources could be put to more effective use on earth.

Remember, at the start of this all something like a FIFTH of all humans on earth died. NOBODY has an overpopulation problem right now. Not anymore.

eh, but that wasn't a flat 20% across all humanity. Strongly Christian areas should have been much more heavily affected. It seems like substantially more than 20% would have died in the US and South America, for example, vs only a few % in India or China (where population problems are the worst in the first place....)

[Borgholio]

I'm thinking for the final battle with Uriel over Los Angeles, the best song for that part would be "Los Angeles is Burning", by Bad Religion.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I wouldn't say a 'very few %' anywhere would be a affected. China and India might not have been predominantly Christian, but the entire planet was faced with incontrovertable proof that there was 1. An afterlife, and 2. They weren't going.

I'd be shocked if deaths anywhere were less than 10%.

[atheistcanuck]

With the mass die-offs as a result of the Message, I don't doubt there's plenty of fertile (and needed) farmland on EARTH. Given the nearly infinite labor supply of second life humans, I can't see us sending living, breathing first-lifers to heaven to farm when resources could be put to more effective use on earth.

Remember, at the start of this all something like a FIFTH of all humans on earth died. NOBODY has an overpopulation problem right now. Not anymore.

eh, but that wasn't a flat 20% across all humanity. Strongly Christian areas should have been much more heavily affected. It seems like substantially more than 20% would have died in the US and South America, for example, vs only a few % in India or China (where population problems are the worst in the first place....)

Actually, the highest death tolls were among the Middle Eastern Muslim population. That whole thing about "submission" and all.

[wickeddyno]

I wouldn't say a 'very few %' anywhere would be a affected. China and India might not have been predominantly Christian, but the entire planet was faced with incontrovertable proof that there was 1. An afterlife, and 2. They weren't going.

I'd be shocked if deaths anywhere were less than 10%.

I think you mean 1) there was an afterlife and 2) no matter what kind of life you lived, your afterlife would invariably suck ass.

[Deebles]

eh, but that wasn't a flat 20% across all humanity. Strongly Christian areas should have been much more heavily affected. It seems like substantially more than 20% would have died in the US and South America, for example, vs only a few % in India or China

You've got a better case for China than India there - a lot of Muslims in the latter, and the Hindus would be sure to be pretty disappointed besides.

(where population problems are the worst in the first place....)

And here I'd agree much more with regards to India than China. China, overall, has a population density only a little bit higher than the EU, or, in other words, about 2/5 that of India, because it has about three times India's land area (or about the same land area as the USA). However, once again, China has a lot of farmers, and quite a bit of China is desert besides. Therefore if plentiful land was on offer, I'd imagine there'd be people interested.

[Land Phish]

Now that the salvation war is over, we can finally concentrate on answering that all important question:

What happened to Mr. Rogers?

[Drake]

I've just finished reading the story, and it's quite good. There's one issue however that made me stop reading each time it came up - the defense budget. $1.6 trillion. $1.6 trillion?????

That's what? 10% of the GDP? 12%? If that; looking at WWII the GDP grew over 5% each year, and the situation of the US prior to the Salvation war was very similar - high unemployment, trained workforce, unused/underused factories. The storms etc will lower the numbers, but $1.6 trillion is still less that 12% GDP under any circumstance. Maybe 15% if the initial killing got more people than the rest of the story suggests.

Compare that spending to WWII: (average spending in percent GDP 43/44)
USA 42%
UK 54%
USSR ~55%+LL
Japan 59%
Germany ~70%

The social consequences you describe in the story are in line with UK level mobilization - or about $6.6 trillion; low estimates for initial casualties could even give you figures around $8 trillion.

It may just be a minor point, but it's something that irritated me a lot. Give it some consideration, please.

Edit:
If angels could create storms, can they disperse them as well? If the dust storms and other hurricanes/typhoons can be dispersed/weakened that could make recovery easier and permanently lower damages caused by storms. Certainly worth investigating and a decent start for a global weather control system. Though the imitative for that shouldn't come from the US; controlling the weather would certainly be considered more natural by communist raised (party/government controls everything mentality), so the initative should come from Russia or China.

[Bayonet]

Would there have been time to grow the defense budget much past the $1.6T level? This was a pretty quick war, as major wars go. Could the manufacturing infrastructure support more rapid growth? We prevailed by drawing our pre-existing stocks pretty low.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Hey I like Fall Out Boy.

I can deal with some Fall Out Boy, but I wouldn't choose them for a Salvation War soundtrack.

Something along the lines of The Crushing Heel of Tyranny wouldn't be too bad. Hard Rock Hallelujah would be ironic.

Disturbed has some rather apt songs, remove the soundbites from the intro and Deify would work, Believe is a really good one. The one that strikes me as the most appropriate of their songs is Indestructible, especially for the line 'Indestructible master of war.'

[Jamesfirecat]

I've just finished reading the story, and it's quite good. There's one issue however that made me stop reading each time it came up - the defense budget. $1.6 trillion. $1.6 trillion?????

That's what? 10% of the GDP? 12%? If that; looking at WWII the GDP grew over 5% each year, and the situation of the US prior to the Salvation war was very similar - high unemployment, trained workforce, unused/underused factories. The storms etc will lower the numbers, but $1.6 trillion is still less that 12% GDP under any circumstance. Maybe 15% if the initial killing got more people than the rest of the story suggests.

Compare that spending to WWII: (average spending in percent GDP 43/44)
USA 42%
UK 54%
USSR ~55%+LL
Japan 59%
Germany ~70%

The social consequences you describe in the story are in line with UK level mobilization - or about $6.6 trillion; low estimates for initial casualties could even give you figures around $8 trillion.

It may just be a minor point, but it's something that irritated me a lot. Give it some consideration, please.

Edit:
If angels could create storms, can they disperse them as well? If the dust storms and other hurricanes/typhoons can be dispersed/weakened that could make recovery easier and permanently lower damages caused by storms. Certainly worth investigating and a decent start for a global weather control system. Though the imitative for that shouldn't come from the US; controlling the weather would certainly be considered more natural by communist raised (party/government controls everything mentality), so the initative should come from Russia or China.

Given that the way they made the storms worse was to open portals beneath them to add more hot hair, yeah it would doubtlessly be possible for angels, or even humans to reduce the strength of hurricanes /tornadoes by opening portals and adding cold air to them assuming we can find a plentiful supply of the stuff somewhere (maybe 9th circle of hell?) and target the portal creation well enough and not get sucked in by whatever winds from the tornado show up wherever we open the portal.

[Drake]

Would there have been time to grow the defense budget much past the $1.6T level? This was a pretty quick war, as major wars go. Could the manufacturing infrastructure support more rapid growth? We prevailed by drawing our pre-existing stocks pretty low.

I'm not certain what level the US spending was prior to the war, but it was between $600 bn and $800 bn with all those extra spending bills at that time. Simply adding the salaries for all the additional soldiers (and calling up all NG and reserve soldiers at once) would push it very close to the $1.6 tn without any industrial mobilization - and we know that the industry produced enough tanks and vehicles to field many additional armored divs. And even if the story is just two books long, I think four or five years passed. That's a lot of time to mobilize industry. This is not a Cold War turns hot and the story is over after half a year of shooting story!

How long does mobilization in general take?

The only real data we have is WWII; things would be a bit different now, but not that much. We need more people to maintain infrastructure (because there is simply more), but for many duties (clerical for example) have become far more efficient with modern tech (photocopier alone was a massive boost). Aging society is another difference, but not that important for the US yet.

Defense spending in %GDP 39 / 40 / 41 / 42 / 43

Germany 23 / 40 / 52 / 64 / 70 / NA
Japan 22 / 22 / 27 / 33 / 43 / 76
UK 15 / 44 / 53 / 52 / 55 / 53
USSR - / 17 / 28 / 61 / 61 / 53
US 1 / 2 / 11 / 31 / 42 / 42

In the story the US begins at ~5% defense spending and with some mobilization plan (not that up to date, but better than anything they had in the 40s). I'd say it would take three or four years to get to a 50+% level, but that much time has passed. So yeah, it could be done.

[JN1]

And even if the story is just two books long, I think four or five years passed. That's a lot of time to mobilize industry. This is not a Cold War turns hot and the story is over after half a year of shooting story!

It was roughly real-time. IIRC the war begun back in 2008 and has ended in mid to late 2010, so that's roughly two years.

EDIT: Stu, I'd suggest that LoW would be a good book to have Gordon Brown step down as both PM and leader of the Labour Party after calling a General Election. Now that the war is over the various parts of the Coalition Government will be keen for a return to normal party politics; we'll also need to reconvene our various parliaments and assemblies, which have been prorogued for the duration (pesky Cold War Emergency Planning ).

[westrim]

I'd say good end, but that would be odd given all the foreshadowing of difficulties to come.

I do find all the political and economic undertones rather interesting, in regards to our reality. I don't recall Stuart ever taking any firm stances on people, parties, or philosophies, but he's done a good job of keeping it balanced. There were a few things I found odd about the last chapter though, so bear with me. The first is Obama being "stricken," as though he didn't see those numbers coming or that it would be over quickly- that is very at odds with how he appears to perceive Afghanistan and his intellectual agility. I think he'd understand very well that it wouldn't just be finished and done with. I doubt he ever referred to stuff like healthcare as 'social programs.' And again, he'd understand well the havoc that 5% of a population can wreak. And he's clearly demonstrated that he'll back off of stuff he believes in passionately that he's not sure will win, even if it pisses off his base; having him not be pragmatic about second life economics is kind of jarring.

I don't see how we could realistically become food importers. We already produce a third more than what we consume (as in put onto shelves) in the States, and many nations have USAID as a significant part of their food supply. There aren't that many net food exporters, and none on a scale to provide the US with even a portion of what it eats. That massive a shift either needs way more mention earlier, or to not happen to nearly this extent. The dust storms can't happen nearly as widely as they did in the 1930's simply because practices have changed and the cropland isn't as susceptible, and tens of thousands of tornadoes would be needed to cause that scale of damage. And the second to last paragraph; if he did half of what he's done in our timeline, he's done quite a bit (whether people realize it or not, more has been done since he was elected than in Bush's first term politically).


I see the war as roughly parallel to the recession, chronologically: it started and climaxed during Bush's term at about the same times (early 2008 the housing crisis caught up with the banks, which began failing, the crash in October), and Obama came in on cleanup duty, taking a year and a half or so to stabilize the situation (rearming to take on heaven). And now, though the situation is stable it is still very guarded, with lots of anticipated difficulties and potential problems that could make things even worse than before. Where it breaks down is that we obviously didn't have a clean finish with the recession analogous to Yahweh being deposed. Any thoughts on that summation?

But hey, I'm hoping we run into Aesirs with crystal spires and togas, ready to hand us a beer and some higher technology. But perhaps that's just fantasy.

Two additional thoughts (like this isn't long enough already ). First how do developmental defects pan out in second lives? Do people with Down's syndrome lose the extra chromosome? Do the severely autistic get to be social without freaking out? Perhaps there will be a push to ban any and all substances that can be of concern in that department, no matter how useful, on the basis that we could be screwing up people for eternity.

Second, how are immigration and energy concerns panning out for the US?

[Darth Yan]

who would mccain have used as VP?

[[R_H]]

who would mccain have used as VP?

Hopefully not Palin, or Huckabee.

[tortieconspiracy]

Two additional thoughts (like this isn't long enough already ). First how do developmental defects pan out in second lives? Do Down's syndrome people get their chromosome back?

Get this one right. It's "Do Down's Syndrome people lose the lose the extra chromosome?"