StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Goramm Moron Sarli wrote:To give you an idea: Saxton calculates that it would require over 400 million megatons of energy, equally distributed over the surface of a planet, to melt its entire crust to a depth of 1 meter. Now, as a comparison: 100 megatons is enough to wreck the Earth and cause nuclear winter (see Carl Sagan's "The Nuclear Winter"), and the total US and Soviet arsenals during the height of the Cold War was somewhere around 400,000 megatons (give or take a hundred thousand), enough to completely obliterate every human on the planet several hundred times over. Saxton, meanwhile, assumes that the Imperial Navy would choose to spend its time liquifying the surface of a planet for no good reason -- why keep shooting once everyone is dead and there's nothing left in a usable form? -- and thus he comes up with a number about 1,000 times more than the combined arsenals of our entire planet. (Another comparison: This is 8 times more than the energy that would be produced by a 6-mile asteroid or comet smashing into the Earth, the current likely suspect for killing the dinosaurs and almost all life on the planet other than the the smallest scavengers such as rodents and insects.)

The sheer ignorance contained in this single paragraph beggars the imagination. He's wrong about the effects of 100 megatons, he's wrong about Carl Sagan's predictions (those were wrong too, but he was wrong about them), he's wrong about the nuclear arsenals of the US and USSR, and like all minimalists, he really has no way to rationalize his absurdly scaled down power estimates with the Death Star. If an ISD requires such a huge reactor to produce such limited amounts of power, how the fuck does the Death Star even move itself?

He's also slightly off in his figures about the K-T asteroid impact, although those are not as spectacularly wrong as his other figures. I can only imagine that his idea of scientific research is to Google. Badly.

PS. For those who don't know, a 100 megaton blast would not cause noticeable environmental damage to the Earth, never mind "wrecking" it (the Soviets set off a 60 megaton device in the 1960s with no noticeable effect whatsoever). The Cold War arsenals were less than 10,000 megatons. 400,000 megatons would not actually obliterate every human on the Earth several hundred times over, although it would cause a mass extinction event and severely reduce our numbers. Carl Sagan's "Nuclear Winter" was debunked a looooong time ago; something he would know if he did even the slightest bit of research, and he misstated its predictions anyway. As Camaas showed us, a BDZ operation leaves a planet so devastated that it would actually be easier to terraform a barren rock than to resettle it (a little detail he forgot in his attempt to downplay what a BDZ does to a planet). And finally, there is the aforementioned point about the Death Star. This guy has the scientific skills of a gopher, and he misrepresents the Star Wars literature too.

PPS. My reference source: Hazards Due to Comets & Asteroids, T. Gehrels, University of Arizona Press, 1994. Sarli's reference source: his ass.

[EDIT: Planet name corrected; it was Camaas]

Someone needs to tell this guy the Russians detonated a 50MT device and the planet didn't seem to notice. Hell, the only reason they didn't detonate a 100MT device is that the bomber that dropped it wouldn't clear the blast radius fast enough.

Adrian Laguna wrote:Someone needs to tell this guy the Russians detonated a 50MT device and the planet didn't seem to notice. Hell, the only reason they didn't detonate a 100MT device is that the bomber that dropped it wouldn't clear the blast radius fast enough.

Here On page two and three, two others have informed him of this.

It's just so natural. See, when these morons discover they have been refuted, they dig for the silliest and most mind numbing reasons to cover their asses/incompetence/stupidity/idiocy.

Now, I know some of you are atheists, but we should all hope/pray that one day the world won't have any more people who were destined to make people's brains explode by their sheer idiocy.

Yeah. That will happen when the God-Machine takes over the brains of Sarli and his likes.

P.S. Oh, he replied. With a reharsh of the silly 100 MT argument, no less.

Someone needs to explain to him that even 100 000 gigatons was not enough to wipe out all life on Earth and destroy the biosphere. Seriously, the guy is delusional. A 100 MT nuclear exchange would never, ever destroy the Earth biosphere

Same old bullshit, over and over again. Try to make everything in the EU "fit" with one another. A definitive source (The DK books) treated the Star Wars universe as if it were real, not an RPG. The DK books do NOT have to conform with RPG books, you fuckin' idiots. The DK books corrected the RPG books.

Then when these pricks start losing the argument, it's "oh, I'm wasting my time with made up numbers! Can't you just enjoy the movies? It's just entertainment!!"

But they won't answer you when you ask them why they care in the first place. If these fuckheads, yes, you too lurking pussy James Gilmer, didn't really give a shit about these numbers, then I call on them to erase every number in the Databank and replace them with 'big' 'really big' and 'really, REALLY big'.

I agree. Why the fuck should newer sources have to reach for ways to retcon away previous stupid ass shit? I appreciated the latest retcon that finally explained away the Five-Mile fallacy as an in-universe fraud, and made it so that "Super-class Star Destroyer" was just a nickname that stuck around. But LFL should have just come out a long time ago to say that they were wrong about the ship's size. When previous continuity is STUPID, there's no need to make up contrived retcons. Just get rid of it.

I also agree about the hypocrisy of the supposedly no-numbers crowd. All these fanwhores keeps saying that we're obsessed with the numbers, while they care about the "story" and the "spirit" of SW. Yet we're not the ones who fucking love SW because of the precise number of turbolasers on an ISD (or other similar trivia), while I HAVE seen a number of fanwhores claiming that Saxton's numbers have "ruined" SW for them.

3,000 G acceleration and gigaton-level turbolasers RUINED the story for you fucktards, but Traviss retconning the entire Clone Wars into a ridiculous brushfire war in which the Jedi were Palpatine's coconspirators DOESN'T?

Lord Poe wrote:Same old bullshit, over and over again. Try to make everything in the EU "fit" with one another. A definitive source (The DK books) treated the Star Wars universe as if it were real, not an RPG. The DK books do NOT have to conform with RPG books, you fuckin' idiots. The DK books corrected the RPG books.

No, they don't want the (Wizards) RPG books to fit with the ICS books, they want the RPG books to replace them. Of course, seeing that Sarli is in the same league as Traviss ("if you don't agree you're an evil Talifan and you'll be banned", not a literal quote of course), I'm afraid that this is what will be repeated in later novels etc., and not Dr. Saxton's excellent work. If that happens, I'm through with the EU. I like Chee, he's a nice guy, but I've wondered ever since the 3 million clones debacle what his (as well as the others) position as continuity editor really is worth. I'm not surprised that Sarli made new shit up to "replace" Dr. Saxton's work as Sarli has been antagonistic towards Saxton earlier.

Is anyone reading the Sarli thread?

Good grief, I had a few sad laughs just now:

Ra'ul_Tor'in wrote:Are really going to say that wiping out the thousand most populous cites would not leave us "devestated"? That is the important part. The Nuclear Winter argument is intresting, of course it would eventually happen, but at which point makes a good debate, but really all we want it how much it would take to "devestate" earth.

I have to do more research on the Winter before passing final judgement. The scientific comunity has been known to be wrong (Global warming, Evolution, Expanding Universe, act.)

BTW, I love physics and did rather well in them.

Global Warming and Evolution are wrong? Sarli's supporters do not do him justice.

Jim Raynor wrote:I also agree about the hypocrisy of the supposedly no-numbers crowd. All these fanwhores keeps saying that we're obsessed with the numbers, while they care about the "story" and the "spirit" of SW. Yet we're not the ones who fucking love SW because of the precise number of turbolasers on an ISD (or other similar trivia), while I HAVE seen a number of fanwhores claiming that Saxton's numbers have "ruined" SW for them.

I don't see why these goddamn minimalist and no-numbers jackasses have to go and shit on our particular Star Wars hobby. It's not like we're forcing them to change their appreciation of the genre; it's not like what we do in our spare time has to somehow affect their enjoyment of the fantastical elements of the story, the symbolism of the plot, or whatever else a Star Wars fan who's not a tech geek does. Why can't they just leave us alone, accept that our results are the best physical description of the Star Wars universe, and if they don't like the results, then don't think about them?

And how the fuck can Saxton's work "ruin" Star Wars for someone or detract from their enjoyment? Wouldn't you think the revelation of just how huge and wonderful the Star Wars universe is would increase enjoyment? That's like someone saying, "Well, the revelation that objects accelerate at 9.8 m/s/s when they're dropped ruined the Earth for me. I had thought they just dropped pretty fast."

Here's a hint, dumbasses: if you don't like the results, then don't think about them. It's not like anybody's forcing you to fucking try to wrap your pinhead-sized brains around the numbers. God, these ratty minimalists piss me off.

Out of curiosity, is there any group of peer-reviewed paper of note on the flaws of "nuclear winter" one can find for reading online?

Stas Bush wrote:Global Warming and Evolution are wrong? Sarli's supporters do not do him justice.

That's another common denominator of these cunts. Even Traviss repeats this "science isn't 100% right" bullshit.

I entered the discussion.

Stas Bush wrote:I entered the discussion.

Yeah, nice post! I guess the Ban Hammer™ will come crashing down soon.

Yeah, nice post!

Trying to be concise and not to waste any time to get boggled in the "let's play around with words in this ICS/ISB quotes". I was amazed when he went around with "Dankayo what size?" silliness, it was a life-supporting planet with an atmosphere for Christ's sake...

Of course, we may think that Dankayo was something of the likes of Titan - a small yet atmospheric planet, but this doesn't change the order of magnitude of the firepower that much. Besides the ISD(s) should be able to perform this feat on other, "standard" planets.

So neither is his claim of Dankayo's abnormality relevant, nor is it supported by a shred of evidence.

You know, we have been hit by a 200MT explosion during the human lifetime. About 200 years ago, in the middle of the French Revolution when Krakatoa exploded with Tsunamis and all and an island destroyed. The global temp fell by a few degrees celsius.

So... why are we still here? We don't need a freaking orbital bombardment, the planet would destroy all life on its own! I mean, hell, Lake Toba is the site of caldera that is large enough to fit a large city inside!

I said the planet is routinely shaked by volcanic explosions and earthquakes on the gigaton level. Somehow this does not compute in Sarli's mind with his idea of 100 megatons wiping out life on Earth.

There's only one logical explaination... God recreates everyone after 100 megaton events so wuickly, we don't even notice.

Personally, I think the 'Jedi Counselor' let his fans praises get to his head.

And Banned, , how'd I know?

General Schatten wrote:And Banned, , how'd I know?

You were banned? What the hell for?

You have been banned for the following reason:
Repeated inflammatory comments about other patrons

Date the ban will be lifted: Never

Is why. Oh, and he doesn't like dissent or someone making a discusiion that proves him wrong.

General Schatten wrote:

You have been banned for the following reason:
Repeated inflammatory comments about other patrons

Date the ban will be lifted: Never

Is why. Oh, and he doesn't like dissent or someone making a discusiion that proves him wrong.

Yeah, I saw his latest post:

Guys, I have to remind you to keep your comments polite and constructive -- that means you shouldn't be making comments about another patron at all unless you're saying something very nice.

He also spun that comment about Ra'ul not understanding how to calculate the properties of a nuclear device as 'Baiting'. Since I can't see the comments now, I'd still like to keep up with it though, can someone send me PM's of what's going on, that's not too much to ask is it?

General Schatten wrote:He also spun that comment about Ra'ul not understanding how to calculate the properties of a nuclear device as 'Baiting'. Since I can't see the comments now, I'd still like to keep up with it though, can someone send me PM's of what's going on, that's not too much to ask is it?

You mean you can't see the posts?

Nope, I haven't seen anything past my last post, and even though the e-mail they sent me informing me of the ban says I can rejoin under a new name, I'm unable to do so. He appears to be taking this personally.