Armageddon???? (Part Fifty Up)

[Darth Wong]

Oh... crap. A quick look at Cities by Population gives Mumbai and Krachi as #1 and #2. What do you think will happen when an Indian and a Pakistani city are suddenly, simultaneously annihilated in firey blasts?

Here's a hint: Rhymes with SMOOKLEAR.

Indians aren't morons. They could tell the difference between a nuclear blast and a lava flow. They would know it was Hell, not Pakistan.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Oh... crap. A quick look at Cities by Population gives Mumbai and Krachi as #1 and #2. What do you think will happen when an Indian and a Pakistani city are suddenly, simultaneously annihilated in firey blasts?

Here's a hint: Rhymes with SMOOKLEAR.

Indians aren't morons. They could tell the difference between a nuclear blast and a lava flow. They would know it was Hell, not Pakistan.

Would Pakistan, though? And, even if they recognized it, would they care? 'We're losing our largest city and we're going to be at a point of crippled weakness for a long time. Might as well shoot our nukes at our hated enemy'.

Not really unreasonable to consider.

[Shroom Man 777]

I think Broomstick is somehow going to catch whiff of this after interrogating a demon.

It will be time for our plucky heroes to go and save the day! A daring raid into the fiery furnaces and forges of Tartarus itself!

Marines, Tonight We Dine In HECK!

[Mayabird]

Pakistan is already at a state of crippled weakness compared to India, though. They probably lost a significantly larger portion of their population than India did. I doubt many of the Hindus were all that interested in lying down and dying for some other god.

Which brings up another note. Population loss varied greatly from place to place depending on religious beliefs. Tokyo, in very secular Japan, might have lost a few thousand people out of a metro population of over 30 million, and that's probably including a handful of pesky missionaries from the U.S. Sao Paulo, Brazil probably lost a few million people out of a metro population of 20 million or so. Those lists of the largest cities would be rearranged quite a bit.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You will choose two of their largest cities and destroy them utterly as you destroyed Sodom, as you destroyed Gomorrah."

I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen this way, but when I read the line, I was reminded of every Japanese monster movie, anime, and so on where Tokyo gets attacked.


Also, to whoever it was pages back that explained the energy plane gradient thingy, thanks. I'd confused myself over it and couldn't straighten my head out.

It's probably going to be Lagos and Mexico City; it's not like Demons would understand that some cities are more valuable than others, and how will they know the population except by sizing them based on sprawl? Tokyo would seem much to small to have that many people in it, because it's built so compact. Hell, so would New York City.

Not like I expect it to be that severe, even so. The average "city" in Judea when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed had a population of about 3,000. He was apparently trying to replicate that portal. Belial is about to find out that human cities are much, much larger these days.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm a little concerned as to what will happen to Mexico. I mean, we've never seen a massive blast of fire and lava land INSIDE an active volcano.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'm a little concerned as to what will happen to Mexico. I mean, we've never seen a massive blast of fire and lava land INSIDE an active volcano.

I wouldn't worry about it. I doubt they can produce enough.

That, and toss some Icelanders with heavy moving equipment onto a few C-5s. We can fight lava like anything else, sometimes quite successfully, and save a lot of the cities from destruction--the portals are almost certainly going to be perpendicular to the planetary surface at that one point, since I don't see them having a better aiming mechanism, and I just don't think they're going to be that big. Certainly not movable once formed.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm a little concerned as to what will happen to Mexico. I mean, we've never seen a massive blast of fire and lava land INSIDE an active volcano.

I wouldn't worry about it. I doubt they can produce enough.

That, and toss some Icelanders with heavy moving equipment onto a few C-5s. We can fight lava like anything else, sometimes quite successfully, and save a lot of the cities from destruction--the portals are almost certainly going to be perpendicular to the planetary surface at that one point, since I don't see them having a better aiming mechanism, and I just don't think they're going to be that big. Certainly not movable once formed.

Well, it all depends on speed and volume. A hundred-foot-wide hole in the sky at the bottom of a lava flow will deliver differently than a hundred-yard hole 200 feet under an ocean of lava. We can mitigate the damage, true, we've been doing it in Hawaii for years. But the city that's targeted is going to be a loss. Heck, what if they filled San Francisco Bay with lava? Or the Chesepeake? How badly would that screw us up?

[Shroom Man 777]

Hrm... I wonder how impressive it'll be. I mean, if Sodom And Gamorrah were "big citadels" back in the day, today they would probably be the equivalent of... a small town?

Maybe this great smiting might end up being less damaging than a B-52 bombing run, for all we know. All the melodramatic buildup, and then *poot*

[NecronLord]

Would Pakistan, though? And, even if they recognized it, would they care? 'We're losing our largest city and we're going to be at a point of crippled weakness for a long time. Might as well shoot our nukes at our hated enemy'.

Not really unreasonable to consider.

Given that the partition was originally about religion, all of which have now been rendered null and void by the Message, I rather doubt there'll be that much fanatisim.

[Darth Raptor]

Uh, doesn't The Message only demolish the Abrahamic religions? We've seen nothing of the response from everyone else. With the verified existence of extra planes and the weird things that inhabit them, people might just be flocking to the banner of the apparently more benign deities of the Hindu pantheon et al.

[NecronLord]

Uh, doesn't The Message only demolish the Abrahamic religions?

The thread that spawned this was about it being utterly incontrivertable and trumping all religions, though that may not be the case in this story. However, while we've seen a Buddhist claim that it doesn't really affect his beliefs much, at the very least, proof that all humans automatically go to hell dispoves many key tenets of Hinduism, even if the Message did not co-identify Jehovah with thier gods. They obviously have no power to save your soul, and if by some chance they do exist, they've been lying to people about that. Best case scenario, for Hinduism, is that the Hindu pantheon have been blown out of the water by the Abrahamic ones at some time in the past, and are cowering somewhere, or suffering in hell themselves.

[Sidewinder]

So the controversy with the Nephilim is explained as Luga lying. (Shrugs.) It's a better explanation than a lot of other mistakes by lesser authors.

As noted, the destruction caused by Hell recreating the devastation of Sodom and Gomorrah may be limited by modern damage control techniques, e.g., fire departments. Then humans will demand vengeance, e.g., nuking Dis or another Hellish city, to be followed by aircraft dropping propaganda leaflets saying, "We can and will match any act of terrorism you commit. Try us, and you will face the full power of our weapons."

As for Asmodeus' plan to build a chain of fortified camps close enough to quickly reinforce each other, that can be countered by randomly sniping the demons on watchtowers or otherwise exposing themselves, until the demons are afraid to poke their heads over the walls, which will rend the camps unable to communicate with each other, i.e., call for help. Then demolish the camps one by one.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

As noted, the destruction caused by Hell recreating the devastation of Sodom and Gomorrah may be limited by modern damage control techniques, e.g., fire departments. Then humans will demand vengeance, e.g., nuking Dis or another Hellish city, to be followed by aircraft dropping propaganda leaflets saying, "We can and will match any act of terrorism you commit. Try us, and you will face the full power of our weapons."

That depends on how the demons plan to execute this attack. If it's on the order of "Route lava flow through portal" or "open portal and use trebuchets to fling burning rocks through" then yes, modern techniques can be used to mitigate the damage. If it's on the order of "open portal, drop avalance/tap volcanic eruption, or open portal in middle of magma chamber, then the only way parts of their target will be saved will be via portal location, portal size, and local topology.

[Starglider]

With regard to nautical miles, I used 'nm' because I was reading about the RQ-4A here, and that was the abbreviation the author used for nautical miles. It was careless of me though and I don't mind DW ridiculing me about it.

I am really interested in this fire and brimstone business. How exactly are the Baldricks going to do it?

You'll have to wait and see, but I guarantee that the narrative won't gloss over the mechanics.

Though an interesting (and none too disturbing) question . . . what happens to matter that happens to be in the way of the portal when it opens?

This isn't canon (yet) but here's the mental model I'm using. The exact geometry of the portals is a little complicated. They aren't a pair of two-dimensional discs cut out of three-dimensional space (in each plane) and joined by a conventional cylindrical tunnel. Rather, they're a region of three dimensional space (normally taking the form of a oblate spheroid with something like 5:1 diam/width ratio) in which extra spatial dimensions have been rendered partially accessible. Matter that enters a portal mouth is caught in the grip of an attractive force that is quite literally at right angles to reality. The force emanates from the strange matter hypertoroid, which is in higher dimensional space; once the physical object is fully in the portal mouth it is pulled transdimensionally (and nearly instantaneously) through the toroid and into the opposite portal mouth. Individual photons have a very high probability of being scattered into extradimensional space when this happens, which is why the portal mouths appear pitch black and why microwaves can directly interact with the strange matter.

Explaining why portals work in both directions is a little harder. My guess is that normal matter is charged with this mysterious energy (the stuff that flows from higher dimensions to lower dimensions), and that's what's actually attracted to the strange matter ring. When matter passes through the 'centre' of the portal, the energy is stripped off - it leaves the object and is either drawn into the torus or flushed away by the concentrated energy flow that fills the portal. Higher-dimensional Inertia carries the object to the other portal mouth, where it lodges in 3-space again. To travel back again an object has to leave the portal mouth, allow itself to become saturated with fresh dark energy (which probably happens within a few seconds), then return to the portal mouth, where the renewed attraction will pull it back through.

This model is improvised and hideously non-empirical, so feel free to suggest improvements. Anyway, it implies that the answer to your question is 'it will get pulled through to the other side if it's small enough to fit through the portal mouth, otherwise it will be unaffected (but temporarily obscured by the portal)'. This is why portals don't leave craters in the walls, ground etc despite usually being oriented perpendicular to the ground with the bottom third buried (for convenient access).

[CaptainChewbacca]

Quick but important question: Is it possible to be 'inside' a portal, or are you either on one side or the other? I guess the question is whether a portal is a doorway, or a tunnel. Both options have interesting implications.

[Robo Jesus]

Also, wasn't there an article on this board a long time ago that said some people had found the historical Soddom and Gomorrha? I can't remember if it was actually buried in lava, or just destroyed by out of control fires. That would be amusing, the demons open the portal, lava starts to flow, then suddenly they all get soaked by the high pressure fire hoses aimed their way.

From what I remember, the people who found the cities think that there was a buildup of methane and other assorted flammable gases from both underground and from the local dumps, making the places ticking time bombs.

Essentially, they think they were killed either by 'underground gas pockets' or by their own trash as it decomposed and then exploded.

[Robo Jesus]

So the controversy with the Nephilim is explained as Luga lying. (Shrugs.) It's a better explanation than a lot of other mistakes by lesser authors.

Actually, this was mentioned, and then not really touched on again. There is circumstantial evidence within the story itself (discounting our debates within this thread), but at this point, the evidence is still circumstantial. However, it's also been mentioned that the Succubus are "different", and Luga has made mention of the Succubus having closer ties with humans than any of the other demons, claiming among other things that some Succubus do breed with humans.

I.E. just wait a bit before jumping to any conclusion, as it seems a bit presumptious to make definitive statements like that when the author hasn't shown what he has planned one way or the other, especially when he's purposely being vague about some things at this point in time.

[Starglider]

Quick but important question: Is it possible to be 'inside' a portal,

If this model is correct, then it should be possible to stay inside an outgoing portal mouth if you're firmly anchored to something that extends outside the portal mouth. This is a dicey business though, non-rigid objects are likely to find themselves torn apart and coming out the other end as mincemeat. You can stay inside the portal mouth at the other end for as long as you like before leaving, although the total blindness would make this of limited use.

Objects only occupy the transdimensional part of the portal for a few milliseconds at most; the effective length of the portal in higher dimensions is quite small, and conventional matter is pulled across that distance very quickly (with no real way to resist it once you've been pulled out of alignment with the plane you started on).

[CaptainChewbacca]

Interesting. This leaves some possibilities for extradimensional mayhem. Like, for instance, mining the inside of a portal, or placing some sort of active barrier inside it. Here's a fun thought: What happens to someone stuck inside a portal if it closes? Do they unexist? Get dropped into a random other dimension?

[Starglider]

Interesting. This leaves some possibilities for extradimensional mayhem. Like, for instance, mining the inside of a portal,

You could certainly place mines inside the portal mouth, but you couldn't place them in the extradimensional part of the portal, both because there's nothing to place them 'on' and because 3space objects don't interact with each other in the expected ways once they're extended into multiple higher dimensions. It's probably a good thing that the trip lasts at most milliseconds because all kinds of bad things (mostly involving your body dissolving into a fine mist) could start to happen otherwise. Which is fine, I imagine mining the portal mouths suffices for whatever tactic you have in mind.

Here's a fun thought: What happens to someone stuck inside a portal if it closes? Do they unexist? Get dropped into a random other dimension?

Sorry to disappoint, but probably nothing. If they're sitting in one of the portal mouths, they just become visible again. If they're travelling through the portal, inertia will most likely carry them through to the other side. If you dissipated the strange matter ring at the exact moment someone becomes 'unstuck' from 3space, they might end up with so little momentum that they get 'lost' in extradimensional space, which will probably lead to them disintigrating into the void after a few seconds. But you'd have to initiate the collapse within a window of just a few microseconds to get that result.

The main tactically relevant conclusion is probably that you can shoot guns and artillery through portals just fine, the object doesn't have to be moving under its own power. That and of course you can enter portals from either side (and in theory any angle, though entering highly oblate portal from off the central axis is not recommended if you want to stay on your feet).

[Crayz9000]

As for Asmodeus' plan to build a chain of fortified camps close enough to quickly reinforce each other, that can be countered by randomly sniping the demons on watchtowers or otherwise exposing themselves, until the demons are afraid to poke their heads over the walls, which will rend the camps unable to communicate with each other, i.e., call for help. Then demolish the camps one by one.

Well, except that the demons happen to have non-line of sight communication in the form of telepathy. However, it doesn't seem to be terribly useful at conveying information to a large number of people fast, so we'll just have to wait it out and see how its impact plays out in the story.

Also, as soon as the guys at DIMO(N) figure out how to create telepathy jammers, the demons are totally screwed.

[fusion]

Ahem:

Unit symbol

There is no widely accepted international standard symbol for the unit nautical mile. The preferred abbreviation of the IEEE is nmi,[2] while M is used by the BIPM[1] and the maritime authorities of the USA[3] and Canada.[4] For aviation use, the preferred abbreviation of the ICAO is NM.[5] The abbreviation nm, though conflicting with the SI symbol for the nanometre, is also in widespread use.

In other words, the non-ambiguous abbreviation of "nautical mile" is nmi, not nm.

Learn to read, fusion. Learn to read.

I was giving a logical statement that could have worked...

Otherwise, very good and very delicious.
Can't wait for the lava

[Edward Yee]

As for Asmodeus' plan to build a chain of fortified camps close enough to quickly reinforce each other, that can be countered by randomly sniping the demons on watchtowers or otherwise exposing themselves, until the demons are afraid to poke their heads over the walls, which will rend the camps unable to communicate with each other, i.e., call for help. Then demolish the camps one by one.

So is this suppression (of enemy "reconnaissance") followed by defeat in detail?

Well, except that the demons happen to have non-line of sight communication in the form of telepathy. However, it doesn't seem to be terribly useful at conveying information to a large number of people fast, so we'll just have to wait it out and see how its impact plays out in the story.

I will be interested, especially if it results in a PFLH attack actually failing. (As thusfar the equipment available to PFLH has been just personal equipment, small arms and explosives.)

By the way, what is "cyunse"? I figured out engineering for "enjunyrin," but...

[phongn]

By the way, what is "cyunse"? I figured out engineering for "enjunyrin," but...

Science.