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So, there's 27 intact B-52Ds, 10 intact B-52Gs, 1 intact B-52E, 1 intact B-52F, one each B-52A and B-52B, and 4 RB-52Bs intact. How many of those have been/are restorable to service, as a precise breakdown, if I may?

Im just wondering what this Grey Lady is, I know its the nickname for bombers but where does it come from? Is it part of the story and I just missed it or something?

As late as my response is, here's 4 words re: the sarin... "In The Pale Moonlight."

Destructionator XIII wrote:What the fuck is wrong with you people? How can anyone read the descriptions of what these horrible weapons do and do anything other than weep?

Jesus Christ, no one deserves that. It is bad enough to see them ripped apart by artillery and razor wire, but this is even worse.


I fucking hate war.

"But then anyone who has been to any of the higher dimensions will know that they are a pretty nasty heathen lot up there who should just be smashed and done in, and would be, too, if anyone could work out a way of firing missiles at right angles to reality." - Hitchhikers Guide

Destructionator XIII wrote:What the fuck is wrong with you people? How can anyone read the descriptions of what these horrible weapons do and do anything other than weep?

Jesus Christ, no one deserves that. It is bad enough to see them ripped apart by artillery and razor wire, but this is even worse.


I fucking hate war.

Remember, so far, the weapons used have been in the most humane viable way. It's not as though anyone's given the humans a Time Lord gun they could just shoot the Baldrick army with to induce surrender, and they decided to drop gas on them anyway. They can either:

1 - Rip the demons to bits.

2 - Be ripped to bits by the demons. Then have all their families ripped to bits by demons. And oh yes, after that, it'll happen again and again.


Do I feel some pity for the demons? Yes. Though infinitely less than I feel for any real human suffering. However hapless the average demon infantryman is, they're being defeated in the nicest possible way. Observe that the humans haven't just gone for gassing their families in Dis (something the demon leadership would have done in a hot second) or killing them all with the horrors of radiation.

I'm afraid I'm not going to cry for any baldricks. They want to completely destroy all of humanity and torture it for all eternity, in a total war for survival of the species there is only one rule: to win.

Frankly given how painful it is to be disemboweled by an artillery fragment, crushed by a shock-wave, or have one's body torn to shreds by lead projectiles I hardly think that chemical weapons are especially bad. Interestingly it was argued during and immediately after WW1 that it was a more humane form of killing.
War is exceedingly unpleasant and Stu is doing a very good job of getting that fact across. Something he has done very well previously in TBO and its sequels.

Im just wondering what this Grey Lady is, I know its the nickname for bombers but where does it come from? Is it part of the story and I just missed it or something?

The BUFF (B-52) is painted grey, so I presume it comes from that.

Darth Ruinus wrote:Im just wondering what this Grey Lady is, I know its the nickname for bombers but where does it come from? Is it part of the story and I just missed it or something?

The Gray Lady is the B-52; its the in-phrase for the aircraft used by the crews and the bomb groups. The term BUFF tends to be used by people on the fringes of but outside that community. The Gray Lady has a nasty habit of pulling unexpected surprises on fighters that try to take liberties with her - including but not limited to chasing an F-16 around (at high altitude a bomber with big wings and lots of power has a better turning circle and acceleration that a fighter with small wings and not many engines).

There is also the well known story of an F-4 and a B-52 that ends with 'just shut down two engines'.

The V bombers also had a better turning circle at altitude than fighters like the Lightning and Mig-21. I'm sure I've read of stories where fighters attempting to follow them in tight turns went into flat spins.

Beowulf wrote:It's illegal to produce or store chemical weapons. That treaty is probably going to go out of the window. No one uses them, because it's possible that such a use would trigger a retaliatory WMD strike. Which is certain to be nuclear, since no one has biological warfare agents, or chemical weapons in deliverable form. The Geneva Protocol prohibits the first use of chemical weapons, but it's probably also been tossed under a bus, with a reasoning that the Baldricks have in some shape or form used poisonous gases. Alternately, the argument will be be that the Baldricks used a weapon of mass destruction against the allies, therefore a weapon of mass destruction is justified in use against them.

The difference is that this is a total war. The only reason why humanity is holding back on some categories of weaponry is that their use is either inappropriate or they are being kept as a nasty shock for the enemy in the future.

Once a total war has started, the conflict is not under the jurisdiction of the Geneva and Hague Conventions. Instead the ruling convention is the Lidice Convention.

This goes as follows.

Lidice Convention On The Conduct Of Total War.

Rule One. There are no rules.

Here ends the Lidice Convention On The Conduct Of Total War.

Gas makes a very good final protective fire system assuming one's own troops are under cover and in MOPP-4. The enemy is in the open and exposed, the casualties under those circumstances are going to be very lop-sided. FPF is probably the ideal case for the use of chemical weapons (why didn't NATO plan the use of them? Simple reason, the prevailing winds in Europe are east to west. Simple as that.

OK, now why I've gone into the gruesome details of what can being under a gas attack is like. I have an acute hatred for the sanitizing of weapons effects; I find it very annoying when somebody in a TV show gets hit on the head with an iron bar and they stagger around a little dizzy or get up a few moments later with no apparent ill-effects. In fact, smack somebody over the head with an iron bar and there's a good chance the victim will have his or her skull crushed and either be dead or spend ther est of their lives sitting in a chair, covered with drool and with their tongues hanging out the corner of their mouths. I have little objection to violence on TV but I believe that the effects of the violence should be shown graphically, people should have what guns and knives - and blunt objects - do to their victims demonstrated so nobody can avoid the implications. When poisoning somebody, the victim doesn't just go "urgh" and fall on the floor in an aethetically-pleasing heap, they usually die an agonizing death that takes anything from a few minutes to several hours. Even cyanide can take upwards of 30 minutes to kill its victims.

So, when I use weaponry in my novels, people get told exactly what those weapons do to their victims. It's not nice, neat and santized, its the most vivid picture I can call up of what the consequences of using a certain type of weapon are (and we're not finished with the consequences of using sarin yet by any means). In The Big One, I got the most accurate descriptions I could of what happened to people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the description of Duren is a blend of the two with some scenes from each city) and highlighted them - then drove home the fact that it was happening in 200 cities all over Germany. I deliberately used incidents and scenes from Hiroshima nad Nagasaki so if I was accused of overdoing the horror for some reason, I could point people at the original source.

There's a buried question in there. Is it worth it? That's a question that I leave up to the reader - is the necessity of winning worth using weapons that have these appalling results? That's the moral dilemma. That's also why the statement "I hate war" is a non-sequiter. On one hand its obvious, everybody hates war and the closer one gets to it the more one hates it. But again, we hit the question, is the consequences of not fighting a war worse than the consequences of fighting one? And if, on that ground, a war is considered inevitable, doesn't it make sense to win it as quickly and decisively as possible?

That's the trouble with the laws of war and their ilk. War should be something that people view with fear and dread for the horrors that it holds. By banning the horrors and glossing over the carnage we have made war acceptable. To quote Nathan Bedford Forrest "War means fighting and fighting means killing". Too many people have forgotten that.

Stuart wrote: The difference is that this is a total war. The only reason why humanity is holding back on some categories of weaponry is that their use is either inappropriate or they are being kept as a nasty shock for the enemy in the future.

Which is probably why nuclear weapons have not yet been employed. Humanity has not yet found a suitable target which will not result in the loss of thousands of human souls, and it is something to keep in reserve for the future.

In war it is sometime necessary to kill lots of people in the short term to save many more in the longer term. Moreover keeping a war as short as possible will save lives.

Historically, a lot of limited wars were begun for many different reasons: a popular reason was the desire to acquire more territory, or seize control of natural resources.

But if one starts a war with the explicit objective of annihilating the enemy, then it would be completely absurd to expect that enemy to hold anything back. That's what the demons have done: they have started this war, and made it clear to us that we and our descendants will suffer for all eternity if we lose.

PS. There is no need to throw ethics out the window in order to justify these kinds of actions. The whole purpose of ethics is to serve the benefit of society. Therefore, logically, the prime value of every ethical system should be survival of the species. We have rules which we impose upon ourselves for various ethical reasons, but those ethical reasons are subordinate to survival: there is literally no ethical imperative one could imagine which could possibly supersede the survival of the human race. Not even mercy or compassion.

Bayonet wrote:I'm waiting for our GIs to discover that Baldrick kidlings are cute, even if they do bite viciously. Wait for it. It will be one of Stuart's defining moments.

I have this mental image of kidlings looking somewhat like the BSD Daemon

Therefore, logically, the prime value of every ethical system should be survival of the species. We have rules which we impose upon ourselves for various ethical reasons, but those ethical reasons are subordinate to survival: there is literally no ethical imperative one could imagine which could possibly supersede the survival of the human race. Not even mercy or compassion.

Exactly, if we lose this war because we try to be 'too' ethical and hold back using some capabilities then ethics will be somewhat irrelevant. The balricks are not likely to be ethical, or show mercy to any human souls.
If we win then we can be as ethical as we like and beat ourselves up about how 'evil' we were to the baldricks.

JN1 wrote:

Therefore, logically, the prime value of every ethical system should be survival of the species. We have rules which we impose upon ourselves for various ethical reasons, but those ethical reasons are subordinate to survival: there is literally no ethical imperative one could imagine which could possibly supersede the survival of the human race. Not even mercy or compassion.

Exactly, if we lose this war because we try to be 'too' ethical and hold back using some capabilities then ethics will be somewhat irrelevant. The balricks are not likely to be ethical, or show mercy to any human souls.
If we win then we can be as ethical as we like and beat ourselves up about how 'evil' we were to the baldricks.

That's not precisely what I was trying to say; I was trying to say that merciless conduct actually is ethical in this particular context, because the survival of the human race is the prime value in any ethical system. People just take it for granted so they don't mention it, but it looms over every other ethical principle. So there is no need to say that we don't need to be ethical in this case; we are being ethical by placing the survival of the human race first. In fact, the people who would do otherwise are the ones who are being unethical.

Of course, this assumes that one has a concept of ethics which is based on utilitarianism, not rigid observance of rules. It's one of the reasons that utilitarianism is a superior ethics system; it can adapt to new situations smoothly, whereas other systems often cannot. If a system of ethics forces you to choose between "ethics" and the survival of the human race, it is clearly not a very good system.

Out of curiosity, how large of a proportion of the human army's strength has been destroyed so far in this battle?

Darth Wong wrote:

JN1 wrote:

Therefore, logically, the prime value of every ethical system should be survival of the species. We have rules which we impose upon ourselves for various ethical reasons, but those ethical reasons are subordinate to survival: there is literally no ethical imperative one could imagine which could possibly supersede the survival of the human race. Not even mercy or compassion.

Exactly, if we lose this war because we try to be 'too' ethical and hold back using some capabilities then ethics will be somewhat irrelevant. The balricks are not likely to be ethical, or show mercy to any human souls.
If we win then we can be as ethical as we like and beat ourselves up about how 'evil' we were to the baldricks.

That's not precisely what I was trying to say; I was trying to say that merciless conduct actually is ethical in this particular context, because the survival of the human race is the prime value in any ethical system. People just take it for granted so they don't mention it, but it looms over every other ethical principle. So there is no need to say that we don't need to be ethical in this case; we are being ethical by placing the survival of the human race first. In fact, the people who would do otherwise are the ones who are being unethical.

Of course, this assumes that one has a concept of ethics which is based on utilitarianism, not rigid observance of rules. It's one of the reasons that utilitarianism is a superior ethics system; it can adapt to new situations smoothly, whereas other systems often cannot. If a system of ethics forces you to choose between "ethics" and the survival of the human race, it is clearly not a very good system.

So what you are saying is, it is unethical if humanity don't throw everything they have for our own survival?

Mongoose wrote:Out of curiosity, how large of a proportion of the human army's strength has been destroyed so far in this battle?

On the southern front, one Russian motor rifle division has been badly chopped up, on the norther edge, casualties are rather less. That's roughly ten percent of the deployed force not counting reserves. The casualty ratio is horrific, over 1,000:1 in favor of the humans.

ray245 wrote:So what you are saying is, it is unethical if humanity don't throw everything they have for our own survival?

I'd have thought that was self-obvious. One can't be ethical and extinct.

The point is that in this utilitarian ethics system, survival of the species overrides any other concern. So if the situation demands it, you can pillage and burn with the worst of them and still be ethical, if the survival of the human species depends on you doing so.

My question is, why was sarin chosen as opposed to one of the other gases?

Enforcer Talen wrote:My question is, why was sarin chosen as opposed to one of the other gases?

Primarily due to its short duration, rapid effects and relatively easy clean-up afterwards. Tabun is inadequately toxic (!!!!), Soman and Cyclosarin are too long-lasting for final protective fire work.

The V-agents are being held back in case of future need. Remember human strategy is to reveal as little as possible of their capability at any one time. We won't even begin to get into T-2 Trichothecene Mycotoxin yet.

Stuart wrote:

Enforcer Talen wrote:My question is, why was sarin chosen as opposed to one of the other gases?

Primarily due to its short duration, rapid effects and relatively easy clean-up afterwards. Tabun is inadequately toxic (!!!!), Soman and Cyclosarin are too long-lasting for final protective fire work.

The V-agents are being held back in case of future need. Remember human strategy is to reveal as little as possible of their capability at any one time. We won't even begin to get into T-2 Trichothecene Mycotoxin yet.

How would that work?

Enforcer Talen wrote:How would that work?

Very, very nastily.

Enforcer Talen wrote: How would that work?

In a blistering burning fashion.

Swell is the word!

Sidewinder wrote:AWESOME!!!

JN1 wrote:I do like those Hell camouflaged aircraft. I do wonder, though if it is worth it? I can't help thinking that while in ODS/Op GRANBY we all painted our ground attack aircraft desert pink we did not bother for OIF/Op TELIC.
Do we really need to conceal aircraft that can fly higher and faster than anything in Hell?

The portal's size forces aircraft to fly low when they transition from Earth to Hell, so camouflage might be useful in case the demons try to block human reinforcements from coming in. (Unlikely, but a smart general ALWAYS plans for such unlikely circumstances, just in case.)

It is better to be safe than sorry!



Stuart, you ought to number your chapters...

Other wise great.