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MariusRoi wrote:The one thing that McCain would have going for him big time over Obama is his service record. Thinking back on the wrap-up discussions here and on HPCA though, I think Stuart implied that Obama won the election.

It's entirely possible that Obama's vastly superior personal charisma would overwhelm that factor even in this timeline. People often underestimate the effect of personal magnetism in politics. Obama has it in spades, while McCain ... well, the less said about his personal charisma, the better.

Once this story gets to a decent number of pages, I'll start up a C&C thread to mirror it. It seems a bit silly to do it for one or two chapters.

Oh my. I do believe I am going to faint from excitement, wonderful opening chapter.

As an aside, this would be my first post, I hope my stay on this forum will be productive and rewarding.

Darth Wong wrote:It's entirely possible that Obama's vastly superior personal charisma would overwhelm that factor even in this timeline. People often underestimate the effect of personal magnetism in politics. Obama has it in spades, while McCain ... well, the less said about his personal charisma, the better.

Oh I have no doubt that it could, but I just wanted to raise the point that to an average voter, all other factors being equal (which they obviously are not), would probably have an inclination to vote for the one with military experience over the one without. Either way, it is Stuart's call.

Well, this was certainly worth the wait - I had started to worry that Stuart had forgotten. Irrational, I know.

Does whomping an AFB with a bunch of tornadoes really count as a surgical strike, or is that too much of a blunt instrument?

fnord wrote:Well, this was certainly worth the wait - I had started to worry that Stuart had forgotten. Irrational, I know.

Hell (oh wait), I'd forgotten about this. Three cheers cheers cheers to see it back!

Fuck yeah! It's back!

Holy shit. Heaven has definitely started things off with a bang.

Darth Yoshi wrote:Fuck yeah! It's back!

Holy shit. Heaven has definitely started things off with a bang.

Yahweh was never one for subtelty.

I wonder how long it is before he figures out how to start wildfires (all right, maybe wildfire isn't a correct term. More like Divine Arson, I guess).

Call 'em bushfires and be done with it.

Fires like that tend to require the right conditions to already be in place: specifically, lots of dry flammable material around. While Yahweh could start bush fires, they're not going to spread and become particularly dangerous unless the region is already at risk, in which case it might have happened anyway.

There's a reason why you never hear of these raging bush fires in northern Ontario.

MariusRoi wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:It's entirely possible that Obama's vastly superior personal charisma would overwhelm that factor even in this timeline. People often underestimate the effect of personal magnetism in politics. Obama has it in spades, while McCain ... well, the less said about his personal charisma, the better.

Oh I have no doubt that it could, but I just wanted to raise the point that to an average voter, all other factors being equal (which they obviously are not), would probably have an inclination to vote for the one with military experience over the one without. Either way, it is Stuart's call.

Seconded, for all we know, the GOP would STILL make use of the scaremongering card by saying Obama will go soft on Yahweh for all we know.

All that depends on the mental strain the revelation would have on McCain. Obama to me seems like a person who is more able to carry on living when faced with the fact that praying to god does him no good, mainly due to his family background. I think both of his parents are Atheist if I recall.

However, I do a see chance of Obama winning the 2012 presidency though, if the war officially ended by that time, due to the strain of war causing an economic meltdown around the world. They would need someone who is a fixer, so to speak.

I was just getting over the addiction, and now it's back. Fuck, man, I need another hit!

Heaven has certainly made a good first impression. If he can make tornadoes that powerful strike a place that small with such accuracy, think of what else he could do? Giant tsunamis perhaps, volcanic eruptions. I think humanity will have a much tougher time with this opponent. We'll get him in the end, of course.

The Vortex Empire wrote:I was just getting over the addiction, and now it's back. Fuck, man, I need another hit!

Heaven has certainly made a good first impression. If he can make tornadoes that powerful strike a place that small with such accuracy, think of what else he could do? Giant tsunamis perhaps, volcanic eruptions. I think humanity will have a much tougher time with this opponent. We'll get him in the end, of course.

Well, we might lose for all we know. Maintain the suspense!

Mmm, Delicious internety crack.

We really can't know who one the presidency, due to the fact the that the message and the war with hell would also dramaticly shift the results of the primary elections. We don't even know if it was Obama vs McCain.

This started off with a bang. Nice. I can barely wait for the update.

It occurs to me that the older demons and/or demon lords might well have personal acquaintances/friends in Heaven. Given that they are demons, they are by definition capable of opening portals. See where I'm going? Striking Heaven isn't a problem. Striking Heaven in force is the problem. I imagine there will be another gigantic OMG H@X portal in Hell somewhere by the time this is over. If this works, identifying and attacking other pantheons will be as simple as finding a demon familiar with them.

HSRTG wrote:This started off with a bang. Nice. I can barely wait for the update.

It occurs to me that the older demons and/or demon lords might well have personal acquaintances/friends in Heaven. Given that they are demons, they are by definition capable of opening portals. See where I'm going? Striking Heaven isn't a problem. Striking Heaven in force is the problem. I imagine there will be another gigantic OMG H@X portal in Hell somewhere by the time this is over. If this works, identifying and attacking other pantheons will be as simple as finding a demon familiar with them.

I think that Abrahamic demonology coopted a lot of the Egyptian and Canaanite gods into becoming demons. Moloch and Memnon are some that come to mind (or was that Milton?).

Oh. Oh yes. That's the stuff. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm........

The infantry wanker in me is wondering if we're going to see modern-armed Baldrick infantry and armored cavalry in this book. Perhaps a Baldrick boot camp?

Gerald Tarrant wrote:What do the ceiling-baldricks use in lieu of nagas (for portal generation)?

I have this image of angel winged nagas now. Very mesoamerican.

This is like sex for the brain.

And might I suggest since everyone is in love with the A-10 (and likely the Russian's Frogfoot), there's that design Burt Rutan came up with a few years back that was basically a 'mini' A-10 with the same size cannon, if 1/2 the ammo, on a 2/3 sized airframe. Got absolutely nowhere as far as I recall, due to only having one engine, but its a start.

How the hell am I going to get any work done this summer?

Speaking of politics, I think this story has diverged enough from the real time line that Stuart could credibly alter the outcome of the party primaries or even invent a totally fictional President. We could have a President Hillary Clinton or a President Giuliani or Edwards or (lol) Paul. I don't recall exactly how much the election was discussed in the last instalment.

The first book was what brought me to this forum, so it's great to see the next book starting to come up.

I'll use my first post to voice a question that I've been wondering about since I read the last book. Since the end of the war, when the full scale efforts to free souls from the various tortures of hell began, have we encountered any non human souls? IIRC the demons mentioned that they had routinely exterminated other species in the past. The fact that we’ve only ran into human souls so far is justifiable based on the fact that humans had been reproducing in much greater quantities recently, leading them to make up a larger proportion of the population of hell. However, with the full scale efforts to free souls underway, the souls of other species should start to turn up in the various torture sites, assuming they all haven’t been ‘re-killed’ of course.

That also raises the question of what the population demographics of heaven’s souls are like. If they closed the gate before human population growth fully kicked into gear, should their population of human souls be more or less equal to the populations of the souls of other species?

Thank's for all the encouragement and kind words guys; they really do give an incentive to buckle down and get the next part ready.

The story in Armageddon???? ended in late September 2008 with the epilogue about a month later, just before the election. This story picks immediately up after that so its just pre-election. You'll find out who won the 2008 election and how in the next part (unless something unexpected happens), it'll be coming up this weekend.

As with Armageddon, I'll be keeping the science as hard as possible. Technobabble will continue to be avoided - the policy will remain that if something can't be explained, the characters will just shrug their shoulders and say, in effect "We don't know, we can't explain it but we'll batter away at the problem until we find out. In the meantime, here's a work-around that solves the problem without us having to understand it." Good example, nobody knows why directionality in Hell is non-linear, they just used modern navigational technology to allow for it and get where they want to go anyway.

On the printed version, the printer's proof copies have been received and are veing proof-read while we speak. Target date for getting it out is July. By the way, the Salvation War has its very own page on TVtropes; it can be found HERE and there's quite an amusing exchange in the "just bugs me section" that's fairly obviously from a fundie nutcase.

Damn that TVTropes entry is a funny read, and the exchange with the nutjob had me in stitches. I could almost hear a smooth-as-single-malt British accent calmly and with wry humour pulling the other guy apart.

Excellente!

So there are still major combat operations in Hell? I thought with Satan dead and the regime change, there would be mass surrenderings and the need for major combat operations would be gone. Why does humanity still need A-10 strafing runs in Hell?

And why did you make the B-2 Spirit extinct? Personal preferences?

What happened to the F-22? Was it still canceled?

I mean I would think not due to the fact we need whatever advantage we can get over heaven and rogue demons in hell?