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Frodo has failed to destroy the Ring, and Sauron manages to conquer all of Middle Earth. Consolidating his power in Mordor, he looks for other worlds to enslave. He locates a world full of life and resources (our own) and opens several portals, one to each major continent.

What happens?

How does the world react?

Would we be capable of fighting off an invasion from Middle Earth?

Would we be capable of taking the fight to him?

Notes: The portals are large enough for Sauron's forces to move the largest beasts and siege machines we have seen in the films, and they allow two-way traffic of both material goods and energy (radio, etc...). They are permanent once established and cannot be closed either by us or by Sauron. The portals are anchored to the geographical center of each of our major continents, and likewise anchored to different places in Middle Earth (Sauron is too paranoid to have them all anchored in Mordor, but one of them might be).

What era is this invasion taking place in? If it's the modern era, barring any absurdly potent magical powers I suspect armoured infantry and large beasts will die quite readily when confronted by heavy machine guns, tanks firing canister and artillery and air strikes.

It would probably look like something from the Salvation War series by Stuart.

I suppose the only way he can pull it off is to use the power of the rings to corrupt the leadership of earth powers and bend then to his will, because there is no way he will winin a straight fight.

Yeah it's in the modern era. The only warning we'd get is having hundreds of thousands of orcs, along with trolls, Nazgul, and a few Balrogs pouring out of all the portals simultaneously...so we'd have to mobilize to fight off the initial invasion before we even thing of launching one of our own.

At this time, Saruon would have far more power than he does during the novels...but I'm not certain exactly the limit of his strength. We know he would probably be stronger than any of the wizards but that is hard to quantify.

If the portals are in the centre of continents, that means at least one-sixth of the invasion is in the middle of the Aussie desert, they won't do much damage there. Another sixth will be in the centre of Africa, which is also not too pleasant. Europe would be a problem, too much stuff too close together, but air forces would be able to respond quickly and they would slaughter the orcs wholesale.

Once the word is spread about this madness appearing, I can see some drones quietly flying back through the portals with some of those instant-sunshine firecrackers known as nukes aboard.

Borgholio wrote:Yeah it's in the modern era. The only warning we'd get is having hundreds of thousands of orcs, along with trolls, Nazgul, and a few Balrogs pouring out of all the portals simultaneously...so we'd have to mobilize to fight off the initial invasion before we even thing of launching one of our own.

At this time, Saruon would have far more power than he does during the novels...but I'm not certain exactly the limit of his strength. We know he would probably be stronger than any of the wizards but that is hard to quantify.

Sauron in the past had to bow down to Númenor due to its military might overwhelming even his armies desire to fight. While Sauron would be immeasurably more powerful in this context, our armies, hell, even a lesser power like the EU or India could put in the field an army immeasurably more powerful than Númenor crossbows and plate knights.

As seen in LOTR, his armies are made up of impressed soldiers who aren't brainwashed automatons. The initial 24 hours might cause a lot of havoc for the cities surrounding the portals but after that? Zilch.

And UNLIKE Númenor , Sauron can no longer appear pleasing and fair to the eyes, he lost that after Númenor sank. So, there's less chances of us being hoodwinked.


A more likely, and survivable scenario would be Sauron triggering some kind of nuclear war on Earth first, say, North Korea launching nukes and etc... If its a

The level of massacre would make the Salvation War look like a joke, 99.999% of the stuff coming through is completely vulnerable to small arms. Meanwhile the entire population of Middle Earth might not even be 10 million bipedal beings capable of serving Sauron, so this would indeed be an invasion in the hundreds of thousands, against billions of humans with 600 million small arms, a half million tanks, armored vehicles, mortars and artillery pieces, fifteen thousand something combat planes, why does this thread exist? His troops aren't brainwashed as noted, so they'll break and run when the first machine guns open fire, let alone the first time a tank simply CRUSHES them under its tracks.

At least deem Sauron to have invested the Needle Gun or something so his troops can fight off armed police.

Sauron absolutely, positively cannot win an actual fight. His only hope would be to somehow subvert and corrupt important people, but I can't imagine he'd be willing to let the One Ring out of his sight again after those damn Hobbits nearly destroyed it.

Fun Fact: the shortest war in recorded history is the Anglo-Zanzibar War (1896.) It lasted a bit over forty minutes, because the British had anticipated the conflict (the old, English-friendly sultan was dying and a previous treaty gave the Brits the right to choose his successor, a fact which rather put out the eldest son, who declared himself sultan anyway.) and gave their ambassador the power to declare war the moment the inevitable happened, and largely because the British Navy and royal marines were carefully pre-positioned.

An army of half a million orcs wielding medieval weaponry might just give Zanzibar a run for it's money.

Borgholio wrote:Yeah it's in the modern era. The only warning we'd get is having hundreds of thousands of orcs, along with trolls, Nazgul, and a few Balrogs pouring out of all the portals simultaneously...so we'd have to mobilize to fight off the initial invasion before we even thing of launching one of our own.

I'll assume they get lucky and manage reach a small town without being noticed. The first town they hit will be slaughtered. Guns in civilian hands will be an unwelcome surprise for Sauron but, unless the army breaks, the people with guns will be overwhelmed. His army might even be able to stop anyone escaping by car. But he has no idea that the radio spectrum even exists, let alone what humans do with it. Video of the massacre will make it out.

Then things go downhill for Sauron. His army will be easily tracked by satellites until aerial recon gets in position. Ground forces might not be able to get into position to defend the nearest towns before Saurons army gets there, but that just means more airstrikes.

At which point Sauron's forces are in a lot of trouble unless they took prisoners, because they don't even know how to surrender to human forces. Humanity will take a bit longer to work that out.

The second town hit will let humans know that these portals are opening up all over the world. How long will it take to search the entire planet for Sauron's armies and/or portals ?

Any idea if Sauron has anything that might resist modern weapons? Did Morgoth have anything that powerful for that matter?

About the only thing I can think of that could possibly take a bullet to the face and still move around is a Nazgul. Maybe. I can't think of anything else that would be able to survive getting shot repeatedly. I guess a troll could survive getting shot up by small arms, like pistols, but many parts of the world pistols aren't the weapon of choice. Assault rifles are everywhere and I'm pretty sure one would make short work of damn near anything in Middle Earth. Oliphants may be able to withstand them, though, simply because they're so goddamn huge that the bullets may have difficulty getting in deep enough to damage something important.

Nonetheless, the armies of Sauron would end up getting butchered once a government (any of them) became aware of them. And that would happen in pretty short order.

Oliphants can't be very numerous as they would be functionally impossible to feed in any numbers with wagon based supply lines. Also they'd still die from grenade launchers and .50cal weapons pretty quickly. Once the archers on the backs are swept off by small arms fire they are as much a threat to trampling Saurons own forces as a modern force, more in fact as they'd flee away from gunfire.

Balrogs and dragons were supposed to be the top of the line for Morgoth's forces, and a dragon can still be killed by a single arrow. Details of Balrogs changed over time in the writing, but were at times actually using iron armor, which entirely suggests that at best they'll take a tank or missile hit to kill. Nothing really implies they were anything but large, and thus very hard for humans and human scale creatures with melee weapons and bows to kill. Modern humans are massively equipped to kill large vehicles with incomparably greater firepower, mobility and armor protection. Even if he had utter swarms of dragons and Balrogs it would merely suffice to put us back to Salvation war, an utter curb stomp.

Gee you know its almost like modern weapons already proved a thousand times they can make jokes of even a single earlier generation of weapons, while the stuff Sauron has is at least six hundred years out of date while being massively outnumbered. See say, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Omdurman for an example of this in action

That's a battle where the inferior side still had something like modern rifles too for some of its troops. But not a single modern machine gun or artillery piece. Eight British Maxim guns were attributed with inflicting as many as 15,000 Dervish casualties. A modern force has more then an order of magnitude more firepower even without heavy armored vehicles or artillery being considered, Sauron has an order of magnitude less then the Dervish.

If the armies of Sauron all appeared all over a single smallish country like Holland, and said country was entirely isolated from outside help, maybe they'd be able to take over that by shear surprise and shock effect. Even then, if any resistance mobilized and got machine guns into action at an ammunition depot they'd be able to rapidly expand outward massacring medieval orcs until the remainder flee in panic. That is usually what happens when a military force encounters a completely unexpected and unknown weapon for the first time. They break and run.

Here' a question, how exactly will the nations of the Earth carve up Middle Earth if the portals stay open? Would Sauron rapidly close the portals due to the slaughter of his forces and move on to greener pastures?

Portals would be permanent, he would be unable to close them. Then again, neither could we.

Elves and Gondor Rangers are a pragmatic lot. I think they'll take to scoped rifles and radios with great enthusiasm. Though I think even the ancient elven smiths of legend will weep once they find out about modern metallurgy.

Doublepost. Please delete.

Highlord Laan wrote:Elves and Gondor Rangers are a pragmatic lot. I think they'll take to scoped rifles and radios with great enthusiasm. Though I think even the ancient elven smiths of legend will weep once they find out about modern metallurgy.

If all of Middle Earth has been conquered, would there be any elves or rangers around to be made into a guerilla army, or would have the armies of orcs wiped them out by now?

We're never seen the entire of Middle Earth...but supposedly it's actually "our" Earth, just many millennium in the past. That said, there should be plenty of room for refugees or guerrillas even if Sauron *practically* controls the entire world.

Yeah, I think the more interesting question here is what happens after we blow Sauron's armies sky-high. Specifically, what happens to Middle Earth. Even if Sauron rules all of his chunk of the planet, you still have the Valar and their place (my memory fails me as to the name) intact since it isn't reachable by anyone other than Elves (even with the Ring, Sauron is a darn-sight weaker than Morgoth so he sure as heck isn't getting near the Valar). So you'll have literal Gods and their High Elves who may see what has happened and start going WTF at all the strangely dressed humans with their fire-weapons and metal horses.

Well, on the plus side, elves can't be all hoighty toighty about the superiority of their race.

I did some quick research, portals would be in the centre of each continent, so:

Depending on the metric and what you deem "Europe", it would be one of those points:

Either of those is populated, so there will be casualties for the first 24 hours - but since telephone/radio&television is available, evacuation will start quickly once the first reports arrive. (As my luck would be, one of those is pretty close to my residence.)

For Asia, it's either Kyzyl in Russia or Ürümqi in China (Which are relatively close, so it could be anywhere nearby) - I cannot decide which position would be worse for them - Either China or Russia will certainly have their day made finally putting their shiny new armies to test.

North America: Rugby, North Dakota +/- a few miles - This will end badly for them

South America: Cuiabá in Brasilia - I can see them doing quite well there, as it would be hard to find them in the jungle. On the other hand, it will be hard for them to find anything wort attacking, and something to eat, as well. Local armies would have more troubles as they can't bring modern weaponry to bear as efficiantly as on open ground.

For Africa, it's pretty much where Congo, Cameroon and the Central AfricanRepublic meet - middle of the jungle. See Brasilia, but twice as bad, for both sides.

Australia: Somewhere between Alice Springs and Ayers Rock. They would linger around for a few days and then turn back, unless the Australians decide to stomp them. They won't do much there except littering and making ecellent targets. Could more damage if they are closer to Alice, because of the nearby sattelite tracking station & thus bigger than expected population. Still, they would be visible for miles if approaching, and airplanes/cars are abundant, so evacuation shouldn't be too hard.

I believe the poor sods marching out the portal on Antarctica would pretty much instantly turn around and back, as it would be very close to the pole.

Doesn't it get to like 500 Celsius in that part of Australia? I don't think the orcs would even make it through the portal there, or in Antarctica.
Which leads me to wonder, what happens to the areas around those portals with the massive heat differences?

Lord I hope it doesn't hit 500 C. 500 K sounds more reasonable, though.


Things would probably get kinda windy, considering different atmospheric pressure between locations. It depends on barometric pressure between the two. Wind likely wouldn't be that bad, though. Wouldn't interfere with people getting through, I wouldn't think.

Depending on the season, North America and Asia (especially Asia, Russia is fucking COLD) would be pretty damned inhospitable to an army marching in full armor. Anything into jungle would also be a problem for the invading armies. Extreme cold will cause massive problems because they won't likely be equipped for -20 C or colder, while the jungles are very good at making movement difficult and getting wounds infected.

And then there's Australia... They'd probably just make an about face if they went through in the dead of Australian summer. 50 C isn't unheard of there, I don't think. Antarctica would, of course, result in the orcs and such just laughing and going home. They'd know it was cold as fuck before even stepping through, even. Australia's heat would also announce itself long before they walked through the portal. Once they stepped through and saw nothing for Sauron knows how far they'd likely call that portal a loss and go home. Russia could be the same story as Antarctica, though to a lesser degree. NA they could stand a chance, though they may call it a wash if they can't see habitation and there's a lot of snow to tromp through. Just wait until things warm up, by which point someone would have noticed and investigated.

About the only portal I could see being worth going through regardless of season is Europe, and that's largely because it has far fewer areas where there's absolutely nobody around for miles upon miles. If it were to happen during the northern hemisphere's summer they'd fair a lot better with NA and Asia, though. Probably be able to march more effectively in Australia, too. SA and Africa would still be hellish for them, though, because of the jungles. Both are hard to move through and both have some delightfully deadly wildlife. Sure, some of that is pretty noticeable. But snakes tend to be really easy to miss, and some of the particularly dangerous stuff looks entirely harmless.


Any place close enough to civilization for most of the marching orcs and the like to survive getting there will probably have quick enough responses that they don't hit much else before getting annihilated by military forces. Or heavily armed people, if they stumble on a place that's recently had problems with civil war or the like. Or is American and armed to the teeth because guns.

LaCroix wrote:South America: Cuiabá in Brasilia - I can see them doing quite well there, as it would be hard to find them in the jungle.

Can a large army really move around sneakily in a jungle, or would it have to knock down so many trees just to move around that it would be visible ?