Armageddon???? - Part Eighty One Up

[Mr Bean]

You scream your last as you watch your life bleed away from an otherwise minor wound that tears the aorta, you can choke to death on your own blood from a throat wound. You can die from infection from a gut wound within a day or so. Or sit mute when a spine wound turns your whole body dead, leaves your a prisoner in your own skin even as your body shuts down and you die and your helpless to do anything.


That's just gun-shot. Toss in burning for a truly horrible way to die, Chemical weapons feel almost tame in comparison.

[phongn]

Yes, they are fictional characters, but realistic depictions still trigger the pain-is-bad section of my brain (whereas absurd depictions, like slapstick violence doesn't, which lets me laugh at it, but that's completely different), which I actually like quite a bit (if I didn't, I would have stopped reading by now) - it is easy to forget that war is ugly if you skip the descriptions or use sanitized ones, which Stuart has not yet done. I get the feeling he wants people to get the gut reaction that war sucks when reading his stuff.

His depiction of nuclear warfare in The Big One was rather disturbing; he was rather thorough in how he described the nuclear destruction of Nazi Germany.

[Rahvin]

Why is gas worse than getting your limbs ripped off and slowly bleeding to death?

I'm not sure. I don't want either one to happen to me, but the nerve gas description triggered my brain a little strongly. I'm going off a subjective feeling right now.

Frankly, "better them than us" comes strongly to mind.

Besides, the alternative to fighting this war is the extinction of humanity and everyoe getting tortured for eternity.

It's one thing to say that this is what is needed to be done for the greater good and it isn't pretty, but it is necessary. It's another to like it, which every commentator who used the seems to have done. The only thing to be happy about with this - or any - battle is maybe the bloody war will be over faster and fewer people/demons have to die and we can start to stop the torturing of the other souls sooner.


Yes, they are fictional characters, but realistic depictions still trigger the pain-is-bad section of my brain (whereas absurd depictions, like slapstick violence doesn't, which lets me laugh at it, but that's completely different), which I actually like quite a bit (if I didn't, I would have stopped reading by now) - it is easy to forget that war is ugly if you skip the descriptions or use sanitized ones, which Stuart has not yet done. I get the feeling he wants people to get the gut reaction that war sucks when reading his stuff.

So, you get all upset when people say "wow, cool" in reaction to the Death Star, too, right?

Come on. Fictional representations are the place where we get to ignore moral repercussions and call mass-murder and wonton destruction "entertainment."

In Terminator 2, when the terminator blows out the knees of teh rent-a-cop at the mental institution, did you "Weep" for the pain of the innocent officer, or did you feel humor at the terminator's overly literal interpretation of "don't kill anybody?"

I understand that Stuart's writing style is very detailed and includes graphic, gruesome descriptions of modern weapons of war in action, but this is still a fictional story. Don't treat it like you saw it on CNN and need to cry out for the victims.

Not to mention, within the story itself we're talking not just about non-humans, we're talking about non-humans who have tortured and eaten human souls eons, including forced immersion in magma, eternal drowning while crucified in a swamp, incredibly brutal gang-rape, and much more. When you've spent your entire lifespan numbered in centuries at the low end causing extreme suffering as your primary goal in life, I'm not going to feel bad for you just becasue you went trough a few minutes of extreme agony as you're burned by white phosphorous or killed by sarin gas.

Of course war sucks. That doesn't diminish the "wow, cool" reaction to military hardware, even if out here in the real world we wish such things were never used or even necessary. That's part of what fiction is for. I could see a reaction of horror to things like Saving Private Ryan that are both happening to human beings and are closely based on actual events, but come on, we're talking about a war in Hell against demons here.

[Wyrm]

And the drought is over, for now, and another great chapter from Stu! Demons may be as tough as nails, but they're horribly outmatched against mechanized war.

Crowning Moment of Awesome indeed.

[Bayonet]

What the fuck is wrong with you people? How can anyone read the descriptions of what these horrible weapons do and do anything other than weep?

Jesus Christ, no one deserves that. It is bad enough to see them ripped apart by artillery and razor wire, but this is even worse.


I fucking hate war.

Better them than us. You think the GIs and Bratishkas don't hate war? Nobody hates war like a grunt. Particularly. knowing what has happened to their predecessors and what will happen to them if they die.

I suppose it would be better to negotiate with Satan.

[Bayonet]

It's one thing to say that this is what is needed to be done for the greater good and it isn't pretty, but it is necessary. ... The only thing to be happy about with this - or any - battle is maybe the bloody war will be over faster and fewer people/demons have to die and we can start to stop the torturing of the other souls sooner.

I can drink to that. And I bet the Brats in the BMPs will be drinking to that.

[Bayonet]

As an interesting note, I believe Sarin is illegal to use in real world wars. Do the rules not apply when using it against non-humans?

Neither we, nor the Russians, nor the Baldricks have signed those conventions.

CaptainChewbacca earlier asked how long before someone says we're committing war crimes. Well, aren't we? It seems like a perfectly valid in-universe objection.

Under the present situation, I suppose they'd be arrested for sedition, if they weren't casually shot by the citizenry.

In a total war, there is only one law. Don't lose. Nothing else matters. Nothing else will be allowed to matter.

Eventually, the demons will have to be integrated into the New Hell society and civilization - will they always be seen as subhuman? Will then end up being separate but equal? Or are we going to give them the respect that we give other intelligent beings? If the latter, when are we going to begin?

I believe Stuart indicated that wold be covered in Volume III. There are probably too many of them to genocide, and we're really not likely to have the long term stomach for that. Nasty as we are, we're still humans.

There will be some revenge. Revenge is a good thing, provided it is limited. It deters bad conduct in the future. Imprisoning and executing criminals is nothing more than revenge. All we've done of formalized and sanctified it. Private revenge becomes necessary when legalized revenge is inadequate or unavailable.

In the end, it will even out, and mellow.

I'm waiting for our GIs to discover that Baldrick kidlings are cute, even if they do bite viciously. Wait for it. It will be one of Stuart's defining moments.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

What the fuck is wrong with you people? How can anyone read the descriptions of what these horrible weapons do and do anything other than weep?

Jesus Christ, no one deserves that. It is bad enough to see them ripped apart by artillery and razor wire, but this is even worse.


I fucking hate war.

You think that dying in a minute of chemical weapons is worse than dying over an hour with your guts ripped up by shrapnel?

I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing how one is more immoral than the other.

[CaptainChewbacca]

My comment about war crimes was (of course) humor and satire, given that American (and Russian) troops are accused of war crimes on a frequent basis for actions far milder than deploying Sarin against massed troop formations.

[Beowulf]

It's illegal to produce or store chemical weapons. That treaty is probably going to go out of the window. No one uses them, because it's possible that such a use would trigger a retaliatory WMD strike. Which is certain to be nuclear, since no one has biological warfare agents, or chemical weapons in deliverable form.

The Geneva Protocol prohibits the first use of chemical weapons, but it's probably also been tossed under a bus, with a reasoning that the Baldricks have in some shape or form used poisonous gases. Alternately, the argument will be be that the Baldricks used a weapon of mass destruction against the allies, therefore a weapon of mass destruction is justified in use against them.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Is burning sulfur a chemical weapon? Does it produce toxic fumes?

[Bayonet]

Is burning sulfur a chemical weapon? Does it produce toxic fumes?

The test would be whether the toxic effect of the SO2 is greater then the burning effect of the sulfur.

[Fyrwulf]

I think the deployment of burning sulfur is irrelevant, really, since it can easily be proved that Belial's strategic strike produced gases which are directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. Under that, the Geneva Convention doesn't apply. Further, did Russia ever sign the Convention? If not, it doesn't apply anyway.

[MKSheppard]

I'm more concerned with the mental health of the Russians; who are sitting in their BMPs, up to their knees in cartridge casings, and sucking nervously through their gas masks (I assume that before they went into battle, they put on the russian version of MOPP4, except for the masks) and hoping like hell there are no breaches in the overpressure system...

[MKSheppard]

You know, don't most modern chemical warfare agents (i forget specifically which; and don't feel like whipping out the US Army FM on Chemical Agents to check); degrade rather rapidly in bright sunlight? It's why Mustard gas is still the undisputed area-denial weapon, even in a world with Sarin and VX.

That said, since hell is a very dim place; wouldn't this mean that we've effectively slimed the place for a few days?

EDIT: Ah screw it

Complete decomposition after 2.5 hours at 150C.

Rate of Hydrolysis is variable according to pH:

1.8 ph = 7.5 hr halflife
9 pH = 5 Hr Halflife.

Under acid conditions, hydrolysis of GB produces Hydrogen Fluoride (HF); while under alkaline condition, it produces isopropyl alcohol and polymers.

GB evaporates at approximately the same rate as water or kerosene.
Duration depends upon munitions used and the weather.

Oh this is awesome. If you walk through a G-agent vapor cloud in MOPP4, your suit will still enamanate G-agent vapors for 30~ minutes after contact with the cloud; so consider the time before unmasking.

[Surlethe]

It's one thing to say that this is what is needed to be done for the greater good and it isn't pretty, but it is necessary. It's another to like it, which every commentator who used the seems to have done. The only thing to be happy about with this - or any - battle is maybe the bloody war will be over faster and fewer people/demons have to die and we can start to stop the torturing of the other souls sooner.

Since this seems aimed at me, I might as well respond. I was expressing my glee at the wholesale can o' ass-whoop being opened up by the B-52s. I peg the reaction to the same reason I can be enthused when I win a Heroic Victory in Rome: Total War, or execute a strategic coup and wipe out an opposing faction; there's just a part of my brain that gets excited when I (or someone I identify with) wins big-time -- the whole "driving my enemies before me and hearing the lamentations of their women" thing.

Yes, they are fictional characters, but realistic depictions still trigger the pain-is-bad section of my brain (whereas absurd depictions, like slapstick violence doesn't, which lets me laugh at it, but that's completely different), which I actually like quite a bit (if I didn't, I would have stopped reading by now) - it is easy to forget that war is ugly if you skip the descriptions or use sanitized ones, which Stuart has not yet done. I get the feeling he wants people to get the gut reaction that war sucks when reading his stuff.

I do understand that is part of the reason he wrote TBO. The scenes in the bombing of Duren seemed like they were lifted straight out of Hiroshima (which, by the way, is an excellent read to really illustrate the horrors of nuclear warfare). And the personal baldrick scenes in Armageddon don't really elicit an "awesome!" reaction, at least in me, except at the sheer magnitude of the human magery. They really do drive home what it's like to be on the receiving end. I only get that 'awesome!' when the camera zooms out, so to speak, and I can appreciate the scale of the operations without considering details like individual lives.

[fb111a]

What the fuck is wrong with you people? How can anyone read the descriptions of what these horrible weapons do and do anything other than weep?

Jesus Christ, no one deserves that. It is bad enough to see them ripped apart by artillery and razor wire, but this is even worse.


I fucking hate war.

1. They didn't starts the f***ing war.
2. They wiped out two cities.

In light of sentences 1 and 2, I tend to have about as much sympathy for them as I do for the SS trash that got taken out by the 45th Infantry Division during the liberation of Dachau.

Note: You may get the impression that I have very little sympathy for the fictional Baldricks and the real SS guards. That would be utterly incorrect I have no sympathy at all for the fictional Baldricks and the real SS guards.

[Darth Wong]

What the fuck is wrong with you people? How can anyone read the descriptions of what these horrible weapons do and do anything other than weep?

Jesus Christ, no one deserves that. It is bad enough to see them ripped apart by artillery and razor wire, but this is even worse.

I fucking hate war.

You know, I've been known to uncork a moral lecture at times. Certain issues do it for me, like alcoholism. The thing is, they actually affect real people.

You, on the other hand, are being disgustingly sanctimonious about imaginary demons: demons who get their kicks out of torturing humans and eating our young. So hell yeah, we think it's great when we read stories about them getting their asses kicked, burned, blasted, corroded, or fucked up from the inside out by our fancy weapons.

My only disappointment in what's happening to Beelzebub's army is the fact that we didn't get to hear him express his horror in his own words. Yet.

[Sidewinder]

AWESOME!!!

I do like those Hell camouflaged aircraft. I do wonder, though if it is worth it? I can't help thinking that while in ODS/Op GRANBY we all painted our ground attack aircraft desert pink we did not bother for OIF/Op TELIC.
Do we really need to conceal aircraft that can fly higher and faster than anything in Hell?

The portal's size forces aircraft to fly low when they transition from Earth to Hell, so camouflage might be useful in case the demons try to block human reinforcements from coming in. (Unlikely, but a smart general ALWAYS plans for such unlikely circumstances, just in case.)

[Darth Wong]

As an interesting note, I believe Sarin is illegal to use in real world wars. Do the rules not apply when using it against non-humans?

Normally those acts are considered crimes against humanity. The baldricks aren't human

Seriously though, do you realize what would happen to the human race in this scenario if we lose? This is a fight for the entire human race; the kid gloves are off.

[Guardsman Bass]

I'll echo that frankly, I don't give a shit about how much the baldricks are suffering right now. Maybe if Dis got nuked, then we could call it even, but until then, what they've suffered is a fucking drop in the bucket to the millenia of torture that "dead" humans have suffered in their hands within the context of the story. It's like condemning a bunch of holocaust survivors for beating the shit out of a particular guard who took pleasure in tormenting and punishing during their captivity.

[Shroom Man 777]

I for one can't wait to see the human occupation of hell. Let's see how the Baldricks like Staff Sgt. Barnes and co.

DANCE MOTHERFUCKER! DANCE!

[Darth Ruinus]

In Terminator 2, when the terminator blows out the knees of teh rent-a-cop at the mental institution, did you "Weep" for the pain of the innocent officer, or did you feel humor at the terminator's overly literal interpretation of "don't kill anybody?"

Movies like that are too absurd to be taken seriously (which is why I love them!). I similarly enjoy movies like Starship Troopers with its absurd gore; it doesn't evoke empathy, since the suspension of disbelief isn't really there anyway.

Ummm. What?

Terminator is about future robots coming back to kill the unborn (and later on teen) leader of the future resistance that defeats the future robots.

Starship Troopers is about some idiot humans getting into a war with bugs that rip them apart or burn them to death or suck out their brains.

This is about humans being declared war on by being who think nothing of us. Some of them eat our kids and have been torturing us in a literal hell since we have been around, and the other wants us only to mindlessly praise him over and over for eternity.

How can suspension of disbelief not be here either?

[Shroom Man 777]

Armageddon is SRS BSNSS.

Which is why, like me, Destructionator is also enthralled and captivated by the exploits of everyone's favorite demons - Abrigor-kun and Luga-chan!

Everyone wuvs Abby-kun and Luga-chan!!! *fangirl squeals*

^_____^

[JBG]

How long before some jackass says we're committing war crimes and tries to have Petraeus removed?

Well, there was no call to have Petraeus removed, but 3 hours 11 minutes, Chewie?

There is nothing "the fuck wrong" with posters' responses. Ever heard of Total War? Avoid reading history as it will stress you out too much. We win utterly or we lose utterly. I thought that that aspect of this story had been made most clear.

Anyway, some pretty tasty bombing patterns Stuart. I'd been wondering whether a big belly program for the Buffs would be instituted or whether there was sufficient time to do so. As the gloves are definately off, have the under wing hardpoints of the Bones been installed? Can the B2s have underwing hardpoints ( in the same way that the "not a pound for air to ground" F15s gave rise to the F15Es )?

Jonathan