Armageddon???? (Part Fifty Up)

[Sidewinder]

A good chapter, but I wonder: why isn't something more durable than an aluminum foil hat being manufactured and used, e.g., an aluminum helmet?

[DarthShady]

A good chapter, but I wonder: why isn't something more durable than an aluminum foil hat being manufactured and used, e.g., an aluminum helmet?

To my knowledge aluminum isn't exactly durable.It is more useful to use it under a helmet.

[Kodiak]

An aluminum helmet would be expensive and in short supply. Aluminum foil is easy to make, cheap to buy, and easy to use. It isn't used for durability, but for adaptability to any hat.

[Academia Nut]

I really like this chapter, really drives home the psychological differences between the demons and the humans.

The human commanders know the every move of their enemy, know that they don't have the capacities to properly resist, and still they worry, because they don't fully understand their enemy. They have fall back positions, reinforcements, and still they worry. They feel confident that they can succeed and instigate a massacre, and yet they are already thinking three or four moves ahead, wondering what the next stage of the war will be.

The demons on the other hand, despite the fact that they have lost much of their command structure and their morale is suffering for it, have no idea where their own troops are and even less what the enemy is doing, and they have seen the fact that humanity has powers they can't even comprehend, and still they advance believing that victory is theirs, because it has been ordained so.

I am so going to have to assemble an 'ass-kicking' play list in anticipation of Part Ten. Warriors of the World United will be quite necessary in this instance.

Oh, as to the whole aluminum foil thing, just think of the logistics nightmare of trying to design an aluminum helmet and then build enough for millions of troops and key personnel in a few weeks, especially since you will need to make multiple sizes if you need a relatively snug fit. Then moving those helmets to where they need to be. Then trying to make enough for billions of civilians who are also vulnerable.

In contrast, production of aluminum foil was at about 1.4 million tonnes/year in Europe and the USA in 2003, so the facilities are already in place for their production. Thus it is only the distribution that is difficult, and aluminum foil is a hell of a lot easier to move than helmets.

[Sidewinder]

Conceded regarding the aluminum helmet idea.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

A good chapter, but I wonder: why isn't something more durable than an aluminum foil hat being manufactured and used, e.g., an aluminum helmet?

To my knowledge aluminum isn't exactly durable.It is more useful to use it under a helmet.

It's actually quite durable, which is why you can use it in engine blocks. It just lacks the sorts of qualities you're looking for in something you'd want to wear as armor. And has been mentioned, industry is already in place to manufacture aluminum foil by the megaton, whereas there's no industry to produce anti-demonic aluminum helmets.

[Xess]

Excellent chapter, I'm actually feeling sorry for the demons. The poor bastards have no idea what they're getting into.

[Fleet Admiral JD]

Fantastic chapter. Really shows the crucial differences between bronze-age warfare and our modern strategic thinking.

Brilliant as always, Stuart.

[Starglider]

The Predators and Global Hawks were doing sterling work, tracking every move the baldricks made. Zoom down far enough and the display could show how and where individual baldricks were deploying and spending their time.

Headquarters, Army of Abigor, Western Iraq.

It seems pretty obvious that the USAF can level the enemy headquarters whenever they chose. Presumably Petraeus is holding off to ensure that they continue predictably into the trap - take out the leadership and the local chaos may throw up a few unpleasant surprises as local commanders try to improvise. In fact given the demon's fear of their superiors, taking out the middle echelon and isolating the commander rather than killing him is probably ideal; the unit commanders won't be able to reach high command for orders, but will be too fearful to deviate from the (hopeless) plan if they believe high command is still alive (when did I last read about this plan - ah yes, it was in Heinlein's 'The Day After Tommorrow', the US rebellion against the Japanese invaders ).

Petraeus knew that if he pulled this off, it would go down as one of the greatest envelopments of all time, comparable with those the Germans had pulled off at the start of their war with Russia.

It's kind of nice to see this guy get a straight-up military challenge he can excel at, after the PR circus of the Iraq War where he could do his job perfectly and still be reviled back home. That said I'm still trying to work out how serious the character assassination of Secretary Gates was supposed to be.

Those flying chariots were a nuisance, they’d made the demonic fliers too vulnerable to use except in large groups.

At this point a team of engineers, on some obscure airbase somewhere, must be on a crash program to reinvent nuclear AAMs.

It would make a nice private retreat for his personal use, would Satan allow him to keep it? He had conquered it after all. In his heart, he knew that would not be the case, Satan wouldn’t allow any of this realm to establish a presence outside it for to do so would be to give them the chance of establishing a power base independent of his reign.

That actually implies a significant chance that there are demon outlaws on some planets somewhere, given Hell's deeply unimpressive intelligence capabilities. However if there are they're unlikely to be a factor in the story. More likely we'll see demons fleeing to other 'lower plane' planets in the endgame, if Hell surrenders or looks likely to be completely wiped out, hoping the humans won't be able to follow them there.

This planet would be abandoned, left to develop without humans. Perhaps to see another species of intelligent life develop and in its turn be harvested to serve the beings from the higher dimension.

If hell is exploiting the dead souls of numerous planets at once (visting each one every few thousand years), it seems almost impossible that they didn't notice the huge spike in the death rate over the last couple of centuries, vastly outstripping what any medieval-or-worse worlds might have been sending them. Of course it is not beyond plausibility that whoever was in charge of paying attention to earth exploited this for personal gain, hiding the surplus and easily exceeding his/her/its quotas while having plenty of spare 'soul energy' to buy favours and influence elsewhere. Perhaps the 'harvesting' of earth was triggered when the ruse became unsustainable (e.g. hell actually began to get crowded) and the deception came to light - or the relevant demon lord prompted the harvest to prevent it becoming obvious.

Once he and one of Yahweh’s angels had held a competition to see who could cause the most minor fatal accidents in one day; he’d won that, 106 to 10

One wonders if Yahweh and Satan have this split influence deal on other planets or if Earth is the only one they're both trying to exploit.

[The Vortex Empire]

A bronze age army against 21st century military with good positions? The Baldricks have no idea what they're getting themselves into. Maybe next time they try to send a large army onto Earth, they'll get to meet a tactical nuke.

[Stravo]

I just want to remind everyone that there is evidence that these bastards can pull WMD style attacks as Sodom and Gomorra proved as well as if God decides to unleash the angel of death how exactly do you defend against all your first born dying in a single night? I doubt tin foil helmets will do in that case.

I wouldn't be chuckling too freely about this just yet. They may not understand what they're up against just yet but these bastards have magic and we can't even conceive of how it works much less how to defend against spiritual attacks such as possession.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I just want to remind everyone that there is evidence that these bastards can pull WMD style attacks as Sodom and Gomorra proved as well as if God decides to unleash the angel of death how exactly do you defend against all your first born dying in a single night? I doubt tin foil helmets will do in that case.

I wouldn't be chuckling too freely about this just yet. They may not understand what they're up against just yet but these bastards have magic and we can't even conceive of how it works much less how to defend against spiritual attacks such as possession.

Soddom and Gomorra were (if we believe the Bible) done by God. Satan may not have massive bombardment capability. Of course, we could be wrong and he just gets so fed up he glasses D.C.

Now THAT would be a time when our psychics would come in handy!

"Mister President, our psych division just keeled over hemmoraging blood and screaming 'Get out, the fire is coming for this city!' We need to get you airborne NOW!"

[Academia Nut]

Actually, the tin foil hats may actually help against the Angel of Death, if I'm reading the structure of the cosmos right. Namely, in that since the supernaturals can no longer screw with our minds to make us think we're not there.

I can just see the Angel of Death being deployed to take out GWB only to find an annoyed looking Secret Service team in his way saying, "We can see you, dumbass," before opening fire and shredding the Angel in a hail of fire.

Plus, if I remember correctly, Angels may be invisible to humans but animals can see them quite clearly. There was a story where some guy was riding on his ass and the thing just stopped in the middle of the road because there were two angels standing in the way armed to the teeth and out for blood. From Stuart's description I would say that it is impossible for supernaturals to imprint on two different kinds of brains simultaneously. They can work on multiple individuals, but not multiple species, the differences in structure too great to overcome.

[Starglider]

I just want to remind everyone that there is evidence that these bastards can pull WMD style attacks as Sodom and Gomorra proved

Actually we have seen no evidence of 'magic', in the 'rituals and spells' sense yet. We've seen telepathy, portal creation, possibly cross-dimensional teleportation and a range of abilities (breathing huge gouts of fire, resisting huge amounts of firepower) that are rather a stretch for conventional biology but make sense as 'biology exploiting extra bits of physics earth life doesn't have access to'.

The actual wording for the destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim is "Then the LORD rained down brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the LORD out of the heavens." The obvious explanation is that Jehovah asked Satan to do something about it and Satan (or more likely his minions) opened portals between one of Hell's many active volcanos and a point 1000 metres above the centre of each city. No special abilities required beyond what we've already seen. This would certainly be quite devestating, but the relatively slow pace of the lava advance would allow most of the humans in a modern city to escape. I get the image of tens of thousands of firefighters drafting in from hundreds of miles around, spraying water on the slowly-advancing wall of lava at the 10km perimeter to try and solidify it enough to stem the tide. Meanwhile firefighting aircraft fly overhead dumping water on fast moving streams while helicopters try to pluck survivors from the roofs of office buildings before they collapse. Of course the perimeter can't hold indefinitely if the lava keeps coming; maybe the newly formed psychic task force can close it, or perhaps the source volcano can be located and nuked from the Hell side, destabilising and collapsing the portal.

as well as if God decides to unleash the angel of death how exactly do you defend against all your first born dying in a single night? I doubt tin foil helmets will do in that case.

If tin foil helmets negate invisibility and suicidal suggestions then actually they may do very nicely.

[Sidewinder]

Back to the aluminum helmets idea: the human world may not need it, considering the availability of aluminum foil, but it's easy to imagine a company manufacturing helmets to fill a perceived need, claiming the helmets are made of durable aircraft aluminum and able to defend the wearer's head against physical attacks, e.g., a demon's fangs and claws. Then the government might have to step in to prevent the helmet manufacturer from competing against the aviation industry for aluminum supplies.

[Sidewinder]

I can just see the Angel of Death being deployed to take out GWB only to find an annoyed looking Secret Service team in his way saying, "We can see you, dumbass," before opening fire and shredding the Angel in a hail of fire.

That'll be such an awesome scene. Hopefully, this bad boy will be used against the supernatural assassin.

[Vehrec]

You know, if this was actually happening, I would be frothing at the mouth to get a chance to study the Ecology of Hell. Preferably one without dieing. I'd probably tell my classmates that they can go to Kentucky and the creation museum-I'm going to Hell.

*long contemplative breath* Calm before the storm now. Next chapter should be messy. When are the conventional bombings of these nice dense formations going to begin?

[Typhonis 1]

HMMM and praytell would it be the nastiest of conventional bombings as in say an Arclight?

[KlavoHunter]

I wonder if Napalm might actually be *MORE* effective than cluster munitions in such a situation, where the flesh of the average demon sounds fairly resistant to shrapnel. Whereas napalm would be delivering a bit of their own patented fire and brimstone right back to them; see how they like it?

[phongn]

Abigor shook himself. Why was he worrying, a few days and it would all be over. Humanity would be a panicked mass, fleeing for its survival and a few days beyond that it would be gone forever. There wasn't any point in worrying about details.

This makes me wonder if information isn't being properly distributed amongst Hell's forces. Satan - or at least whoever sent out the Heralds - knew that multiple major population centers existed outside the Middle East, yet Abigor believes they're all concentrated here.

Was Abigor simply not given that extra information? Or does Hell have other plans, as well - we've only seen a tithe of their forces in the field (60/~10K legions)

[MKSheppard]

This makes me wonder if information isn't being properly distributed amongst Hell's forces. Satan - or at least whoever sent out the Heralds - knew that multiple major population centers existed outside the Middle East, yet Abigor believes they're all concentrated here.

I think Abigor knows about the other pop centers. He's just hoping on a complete utter crushing victory, to cow everyone and make them break; it's what DID happen when the Conquistadors met the Aztecs.

[Typhonis 1]

Only he Conquistadors didn`t have to face an enemy that was technologically superior to them.

I still say Arclight the demons. They won`t realise the danger they are in till the bombs start hitting.

[Fleet Admiral JD]

I would love to see a few choppers with gatling guns buzz the advancing lines of demons and. . . chew them up a bit.

[Starglider]

I would love to see a few choppers with gatling guns buzz the advancing lines of demons and. . . chew them up a bit.

The humans tried that earlier. The harpies outran the helicopters and tore them to pieces.

The lack of area bombing does seem a bit odd, given the pathetically ponderous and relatively densely packed enemy forces. Even if the planes and ordenance available is limited, every enemy unit wiped out before contact reduces the likelihood of a breakthrough at the defence line. My guess is that the human leadership is maximing the shock effect of the attack and that the bombers are on hot standby ready to wipe out any demon forces that break and make a run for it back towards the portal. Another possibility is that all available heavy bombers are being prepared (or at least reserved) for a major airstrike into Hell itself.

[Fleet Admiral JD]

Starglider--I was talking in the upcoming battle when the Harpies will be occupied with the F16s and 18s and 22s