Modern Day Military VS Olympian Pantheon.

[SpaceMarine93]

Let's assume that the Olympians are real, and they decide to return to Earth after a long absence and declare that they are back in charge. The world unites in opposition. How well do you guys think will the world's combined military forces and resources, fully unleashed with no holding back, will fare against the Olympians?

[spaceviking]

Do we have any limits on power or strength of an Olympian. If Poseidon can conjure full tsunamis at will, then humans lose. Though this thread seems silly every answer will be "We don't know". Can Zeus take an artillery shell,"We don't Know". Can Hermes avoid an air to air missile?, We Don't know".

[Batman]

While I do expect this to be the most likely outcome, who knows? Maybe there's something in ancient Greek literature that actually does let one quantify the powers of the Olympians and you and me simply haven't run across it.

[Ahriman238]

Posieden can, at the very least cause Earthquakes at will. Zeus defeated Typhon by dropping Mt. Etna on him. Demeter caused all plant life on earth to stop growing once, and supposedly does so again each winter. Helios/Apollo the sun god could either scour the earth clean with fire, or simply never rise again.

Basically, we're fucked.

Have a nice day.

[Batman]

Since plants keep growing the bit about Demeter is already factually wrong.

[Thanas]

No, if we accept the mythology as fact (which is the premise of the thread) then Demeter can actually cause eternal winter if need be.

We're screwed either way.

[DudeGuyMan]

Weren't a couple deities wounded by mortals on the battlefield during the Illiad? Aphrodite and Ares, I think. I'll bust out my old copy of Mythology by Edith Hamilton tomorrow or something.

[Solauren]

As I recall, the mortals doing the wounding had Immortal backing (either in the form of favor or ancestory), so they are probably not the best barameter.

[DarkSilver]

Ares got injured by a mortal who had the backing of Athena during the Trojan War...so he had some Olympian Mojo working for him.

Basically, yeah, the Olympians are pretty powerful in the myths, being gods and all. Apollo or Helios (which ever one is driving the sun on that day) can just drive the Golden Sun Chariot close to the Earth, and scorch us all to death from the heat. Posiedon is known as the Earthbreaker for a reason (he can cause Earthquakes at will pretty much) and Zeus can rain down lighting bolts at will.

Ares can cause men to become raging berserkers, or in the inverse, and cause people to not be all war like, what with him being the God of War and what not.

So, yeah, we'd be pretty fucked depending on what scale of power we're talking about here.

[Simon_Jester]

Nonsense. The Christian fundies save us by turning the Olympian pantheon into a forgotten historical footnote... again.

Seriously, "how dangerous is a mythological god" is all about how you interpret the myths. Are the gods interpreted favorably? Does mythical ability to create the Earth imply REAL ability to create the Earth, or whatever else they please? Or are the gods interpreted unfavorably, on the assumption that their seemingly unlimited powers are the result of Bronze Age primitives who fell for a lot of boasting and trickery? Will an ancient demigod supposedly invulnerable to swords and spears prove to be equally invulnerable to machine guns and bazookas?

So the question is by nature unanswerable. The ancients thought they had gods of unstoppable power and will, with infinite knowledge and abilities over the natural order. How does one assess whether they were right to think so?

[Steve]

Heh, interesting timing, since I'm in the middle of Riordan's "The Lost Hero" after reading the second Kane Chronicles book. Which are both pretty much about mythological entities in the modern day. ("Lost Hero" is the first book in a followup to the Percy Jackson quintology while the Kane Chronicles are about a brother and sister who deal with the Egyptian gods and become magicians).

And while I wouldn't mind giving Horus some humbling with a Hellfire to the face... as has been pointed out, it all comes down to how willing you are to buy into the claims of the myths. Thus this thread is silly.

[Revy]

Might it not be easier to work out by selecting a particular fictional depiction of the Olympians? For example, Modern Military vs Percy Jackson Olympians, or vs Xena Olympians. That way there'd be more concrete data on what they're actually capable of.

[mr friendly guy]

Xena Olympians get screwed so easily its not funny. Unless they use their invisibility thing, and its debatable whether that will hide from things like infra red.

[Revy]

They can time travel though, teleport at will, and I seem to recall Ares flat out stopping time in one episode.

[mr friendly guy]

Ares can withstand machine gun fire, but he however gets routinely trounced by Hercules whose blows at best knock him back a few metres. I am sure we can calculate the work done by estimating the mass of actor Kevin Smith, multiplying that by acceleration to get force, and then multiple it by the few metres to get work. Hardly as destructive as modern weapons.

Also there are limits in time travelling. They never think of time travelling to prevent themselves being killed when Jehova when some force starts empowering Xena warrior princess, so its not like they have Powergamers TrekkiesTime Lord level of imagination when it comes to utilising time travel.

[Eternal_Freedom]

One thing I have just thought of: in some of the myths surrounding Zeus, it was said that a mortal human could not see Zeus in his Godlike form without being burnt and dying, this happened to one of his girlfriends IIRC.

So maybe Zeus just has to stand up and whole armies die.

[Ted C]

Strictly speaking, the Olympian gods cannot be killed, but they can be defeated. It typically takes an enormously powerful monster to stop a god, but it can be done.

Also, the Olympians are, quite literally, powered by worship. Given how few true followers of the Olympians are left in the world, I daresay they no longer have the power to enforce their wishes on a disinterested population.

[Thanas]

Also, the Olympians are, quite literally, powered by worship.

Eh?

[Revy]

I can't imagine the Olympians derive their power from worship given that they supposedly created humanity itself. In Greek mythology they predated human existence and thus their power had to come from somewhere else. Also, certain gods didn't give a damn whether they were worshipped or not (Chronos was said to be as old as the universe itself, I doubt he cared what humans believed. Also I think Zeus, Aphrodite, Apollo etc were more widely worshipped than the Fates, yet the Fates were considered to outclass Zeus in terms of power).

I always thought their power came from ichor - a sort of heavenly ethereal blood that gods have in place of regular red blood, owing to their consumption of ambrosia and nectar. Kind of like a super power serum.

EDIT -

Ares can withstand machine gun fire, but he however gets routinely trounced by Hercules whose blows at best knock him back a few metres. I am sure we can calculate the work done by estimating the mass of actor Kevin Smith, multiplying that by acceleration to get force, and then multiple it by the few metres to get work. Hardly as destructive as modern weapons.

^Also I forgot, but this doesn't work. Hercules is half god and gains much of his strength from his divinity. In one episode he willingly gave up his divine half and became as weak as a regular human, despite retaining the same physical build and stature. Presumably then when he hits Ares, he's hitting him with the same kind of strength he uses to knock out giants and punch through walls. Hercules hitting you probably isn't far off from Superman hitting you, and trying to work out how hard Superman punches by going off the mass of the actor portraying him isn't fair given his strength is a quasi-magical super power.

That's not to say a modern military couldn't thrash Ares. For all the Xena Olympians powers they rarely use their abilities in situations where it would make sense. None of them simply teleport Xena a thousand feet into the air and let her flatten on the ground, or stop time and stab her in the eye. Heck, when she starts killing them they don't even use lightning bolts against her, they use puny little glowing fireballs that she can easily deflect. And it never occurs to any of them to just teleport spam to keep out of the reach of her sword and zap her relentlessly from a safe distance with lightning bolts, like any halfway decent video game boss would do.

[DudeGuyMan]

As I recall, the mortals doing the wounding had Immortal backing (either in the form of favor or ancestory), so they are probably not the best barameter.

This is true. There are some anomalous incidents of immortals being injured by odd things (Cupid being burned by Psyche spilling lit lantern oil on him) but ultimately it doesn't matter anyway since the gods have multiple ways of WMDing the planet without ever giving anyone anything to shoot at.

[mr friendly guy]

Also, the Olympians are, quite literally, powered by worship.

Eh?

Its a trope that Gods are powered by their worshippers, used in numerous fiction eg Forgotten Realms, David Edding's Tamuli series etc. In the latest Crap Clash of the Titans starring Jake from Avatar Sam Worthington, Hades manages to overpower Zeus when the former's worship is greater.

Before you say it, I don't recall anything in Greek myth to suggests they need it either.

[Ted C]

Also, the Olympians are, quite literally, powered by worship.

Eh?

At least according to some of the mythology books I've read, the Olympians derived power from the love and worship of humans. That's what made them more powerful than the Titans and allowed them to take over.

[mr friendly guy]

Also, the Olympians are, quite literally, powered by worship.

Eh?

At least according to some of the mythology books I've read, the Olympians derived power from the love and worship of humans. That's what made them more powerful than the Titans and allowed them to take over.

Didn't the wars predate humanity? Because I thought humans were created by Prometheus after the wars. The reason Prometheus (a Titan) and his brother weren't imprisoned was because they sided with the Olympians.

[Ted C]

I can't imagine the Olympians derive their power from worship given that they supposedly created humanity itself. In Greek mythology they predated human existence and thus their power had to come from somewhere else. Also, certain gods didn't give a damn whether they were worshipped or not (Chronos was said to be as old as the universe itself, I doubt he cared what humans believed. Also I think Zeus, Aphrodite, Apollo etc were more widely worshipped than the Fates, yet the Fates were considered to outclass Zeus in terms of power).

In at least some accounts, humans were already around, having been created by Eurynome even before the rise of the Titans. In others, the Titan Prometheus is credited with creating humans from clay. I'm not aware of any account in which the Olympians created humanity: Zeus was raised by shepherds in Crete, I believe, while hiding from Cronus.

[Ted C]

At least according to some of the mythology books I've read, the Olympians derived power from the love and worship of humans. That's what made them more powerful than the Titans and allowed them to take over.

Didn't the wars predate humanity? Because I thought humans were created by Prometheus after the wars. The reason Prometheus (a Titan) and his brother weren't imprisoned was because they sided with the Olympians.

I'm pretty sure that the creation of humans predates the birth of the Olympians in most accounts. Rhea kept Cronus from swallowing Zeus like his elder siblings and sent him to Crete to be raised.

Also, there are myths saying that the reign of Cronus was actually pretty good for humanity, which wouldn't make much sense if humans didn't exist yet.