Armageddon???? - Part Eighty One Up

[Junghalli]

It occurs to me that logically a normal diet or even starvation diet in Hell should make you morbidly obese very quickly. Your body doesn't need the energy, it gets everything it needs from the magical voodoo-field, so wouldn't it all just get stored up as fat?

[EdBecerra]

Belial is rapidly earning a place in my book as the real villain here. He's got everythign a proper villain needs: a supervillain lair in Tartarus, huge numbers of potentially expendable mooks now that he's claimed Asmodeus' holdings, and more plots and superweapons than you can shake a stick at.

The problem is that his intel is so stale, it's practically growing mold.

If humanity gets much more angry, the fusion weapons will be coming out, followed by long term persistent chemical agents to drive the message home - You. Don't. F**k. With. US.

Eventually, this thing is going to turn into an assault on Heaven. I can't help but wonder... one of Mr. Wylie's superweapons from his novel Tomorrow!, perhaps?

That would certainly get Yahweh's attention.

For the instant just before he is vaporized.

Heh.

Ed Becerra

[EdBecerra]

It occurs to me that logically a normal diet or even starvation diet in Hell should make you morbidly obese very quickly. Your body doesn't need the energy, it gets everything it needs from the magical voodoo-field, so wouldn't it all just get stored up as fat?

It might merely be stored as energy, either in the hell-victim personally (you'd heal even faster than 'normal', or would be able to heal even more severe injuries); or the energy would be stored in the "general" magic field for everyone to partake of equally.

Hmm. Maybe Hell was missing a trick here - human souls as energy generators is already a point of the story. If you designated a human soul as a goose to be fattened, and simply stuffed them with food, would they generate more energy for the baldricks to absorb and use?

Ed Becerra

[Col. Crackpot]

[
The problem is that his intel is so stale, it's practically growing mold.

If humanity gets much more angry, the fusion weapons will be coming out, followed by long term persistent chemical agents to drive the message home - You. Don't. F**k. With. US.

Eventually, this thing is going to turn into an assault on Heaven. I can't help but wonder... one of Mr. Wylie's superweapons from his novel Tomorrow!, perhaps?

That would certainly get Yahweh's attention.

For the instant just before he is vaporized.

Heh.

Ed Becerra

HEY! I Know you!

Last i checked fusion weapons were a pipe dream of sci fi fans. Though if anyone knew different, it would be Stuart.

[nickolay1]

[
The problem is that his intel is so stale, it's practically growing mold.

If humanity gets much more angry, the fusion weapons will be coming out, followed by long term persistent chemical agents to drive the message home - You. Don't. F**k. With. US.

Eventually, this thing is going to turn into an assault on Heaven. I can't help but wonder... one of Mr. Wylie's superweapons from his novel Tomorrow!, perhaps?

That would certainly get Yahweh's attention.

For the instant just before he is vaporized.

Heh.

Ed Becerra

HEY! I Know you!

Last i checked fusion weapons were a pipe dream of sci fi fans. Though if anyone knew different, it would be Stuart.

You're joking, right? Thermonuclear weapons have been in production since the 1950s.

[Crayz9000]

Last i checked fusion weapons were a pipe dream of sci fi fans. Though if anyone knew different, it would be Stuart.

You're thinking of antimatter weapons, not fusion (aka thermonuclear) weapons...

[EdBecerra]

HEY! I Know you!

Last i checked fusion weapons were a pipe dream of sci fi fans. Though if anyone knew different, it would be Stuart.

I meant (thermonuclear) fusion weapons, aka Hydrogen bombs.

It goes Fission, Fusion, Antimatter. We've already got the first two.

And yeah, I finally got signed up here. There was some problem, due to the nature of my ISP. The local service is provided by a farmer's co-operative, and therefore it has a domain name ending in ".coop".

Apparently, SD.net already had that marked up as a not legit domain. They've since fixed that for me, and I really should send them a nice "thank you" email for that.

This has happened before - many forums and BBS systems gag at the ".coop" domain - I've often had trouble sending or receiving mail because of that.

Ed.

[Col. Crackpot]

Last i checked fusion weapons were a pipe dream of sci fi fans. Though if anyone knew different, it would be Stuart.

You're thinking of antimatter weapons, not fusion (aka thermonuclear) weapons...

too much work not enough sleep... or maybe i'm just an idiot.

[Bayonet]

many forums and BBS systems gag at the ".coop" domain

Maybe they object to the chickens.

WHACK


Owwww!

[Sea Skimmer]

Pure fusion weapons have not yet been created. All existing thermonuclear bombs use a fission primary to ignite a fusion secondary. We'd need a super ultra high power laser or something similar for direct ignition of a fusion stage.

[Darth Wong]

Pure fusion weapons have not yet been created. All existing thermonuclear bombs use a fission primary to ignite a fusion secondary. We'd need a super ultra high power laser or something similar for direct ignition of a fusion stage.

With the fancy forcefields that are common in sci-fi, you could probably just squeeze it until it undergoes fusion. Not that this would help in reality, or in this story.

[Junghalli]

Pure fusion weapons have not yet been created. All existing thermonuclear bombs use a fission primary to ignite a fusion secondary. We'd need a super ultra high power laser or something similar for direct ignition of a fusion stage.

I read an interesting paper once that talked about the possibility of making really small pure-fusion bombs using small quantities of antimatter as the igniter.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0510071v1

[Darth Wong]

Belial is rapidly earning a place in my book as the real villain here. He's got everythign a proper villain needs: a supervillain lair in Tartarus, huge numbers of potentially expendable mooks now that he's claimed Asmodeus' holdings, and more plots and superweapons than you can shake a stick at.

The problem is that his intel is so stale, it's practically growing mold.

If humanity gets much more angry, the fusion weapons will be coming out, followed by long term persistent chemical agents to drive the message home - You. Don't. F**k. With. US.

Eventually, this thing is going to turn into an assault on Heaven. I can't help but wonder... one of Mr. Wylie's superweapons from his novel Tomorrow!, perhaps?

That would certainly get Yahweh's attention.

For the instant just before he is vaporized.

Heh.

Ed Becerra

The worst thing from his perspective is that he doesn't even have a way to differentiate old intel from new intel. His interrogation subjects lose all track of time so they can't tell how long they've been dead, and he doesn't have enough ancillary intel to evaluate any of it.

[EdBecerra]

The worst thing from his perspective is that he doesn't even have a way to differentiate old intel from new intel. His interrogation subjects lose all track of time so they can't tell how long they've been dead, and he doesn't have enough ancillary intel to evaluate any of it.

By that same token, he's gonna be really hurting (assuming that that we simply don't roll over him soon) when the foothold in Hell grows to the point of being a 'colonial outpost' and we openly start recruiting.

Has it occurred to anyone that, just like that excellent add-on for the original DOOM, a 'forge city' could be built? Factories? Small arms, arty and even other armament built there IN Hell, from materials MINED in Hell, et cetera?

Hey, it's not like Caesar is going anywhere, and we already know he's a good policitian... Nova Roma, anyone?

And there you go... the launching pad for the assault on Heaven.

(For that matter, a lot of what makes Hell, well... Hellish, can be terraformed out of the place with a little patience.)

But that's a ways down the road, I suspect.

Ed.

[TimothyC]

For the record - I wasn't pointing out Belial's intel operation, but the remarks about forging iron, and the implication that he has been doing it in spite of Satan's standing orders.

[EdBecerra]

For the record - I wasn't pointing out Belial's intel operation, but the remarks about forging iron, and the implication that he has been doing it in spite of Satan's standing orders.

If so, he's going to get a surprise - it takes a long time to figure out the best alloys of steel. We've spent generations perfecting it, and we're still not done.

Part of that process is going "Hey! Why is THAT guy's steel better than mine?!" and trying to reverse engineer it. You can't DO that when you're trying to keep your steel a "state secret".

Which, of course, is what Belial has to do if he doesn't want to become a head shorter at Satan's command.

So any steel he makes is likely to be low-quality, really crappy stuff.

It'll still come as an unpleasant surprise to the human forces, granted.

It would, however, be better used as a weapon against other demonic forces. If Belial had any sense, he'd be doing what the queen of the succubi is doing. Trying to make contact with humanity, then sell Satan (and then Yaweh) down the river to the humans in return for territorial concessions. ("I sell Satan and Yaweh out, you agree that I rule over *this* area on the map. And I'll let you have all the humans - they'll be transferred to your side of the Hell border just as soon as I take control.")

Hey, if the succubi queen had any sense of what's coming their way, she could make a sweetheart deal. I mean, can you IMAGINE the bucks a genuine succubi could pull in at a Nevada brothel? ANY brothel?

(And for those who go "ick!" at the idea, remember... humanity has been using mind-altering substances for over 50,000 years now, that we know of. Additionally, humans have gotten it on with nearly everything that can possibly qualify as female on this planet - and quite a few things that don't. A little slap-&-tickle with a gal from another race barely rates a mention on the "ewww" scale by now.)

Ed.

[Vympel]

Still closer, the baldricks still there – and then they broke, broke and ran from the tanks that were already far too close for any retreat to bring safety. Galkin’s tank tore into the mass, its machine guns still firing, the driver spinning the T-80U on its tracks, grinding the baldricks underneath the vehicle as it plowed through their ranks.

Just a note, unfortunately this nitpick has some small consequences for the chapter - the T-80U doesn't have a remote machine gun (the T-80UD does, however, but only Ukraine uses it now), the commander would be forced to be fighting unbuttoned, which is of course madness. The tank would have to be a T-90/T-90A.

(this also works because there are very few T-80Us [as opposed to T-80B variants] in the Russian Army inventory anyway, I believe all the T-80Us were concentrated in the Tamanskaya or the Kantemirovskaya in Moscow, until the recent rearmament when they got new build T-90As)

Of course, it could simply be an upgraded T-80U ("T-80U(M)") ...

[Darth Wong]

If so, he's going to get a surprise - it takes a long time to figure out the best alloys of steel. We've spent generations perfecting it, and we're still not done.

Part of that process is going "Hey! Why is THAT guy's steel better than mine?!" and trying to reverse engineer it. You can't DO that when you're trying to keep your steel a "state secret".

Technically speaking, it's usually been more a problem of saying "Hey, this steel isn't doing the job we need it to do, how can we make it better". The competitive model doesn't work unless there is some perceived need for the improved performance. In the case of (for example) plate armour, you're competing against your requirements, not necessarily against the other guy's materials. His hammer could be made of massively inferior steel to your plate, but it can still kill you.

Which, of course, is what Belial has to do if he doesn't want to become a head shorter at Satan's command.

So any steel he makes is likely to be low-quality, really crappy stuff.

It'll still come as an unpleasant surprise to the human forces, granted.

I think we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves. We still don't know what this thing is. If all he's doing is making crappy low-grade steel versions of what they currently make with bronze, it will make no difference at all. He must have something much more spectacular in mind if he expects this to make the slightest impact.

It would, however, be better used as a weapon against other demonic forces. If Belial had any sense, he'd be doing what the queen of the succubi is doing. Trying to make contact with humanity, then sell Satan (and then Yaweh) down the river to the humans in return for territorial concessions. ("I sell Satan and Yaweh out, you agree that I rule over *this* area on the map. And I'll let you have all the humans - they'll be transferred to your side of the Hell border just as soon as I take control.")

Belial is smart enough to know that it's too late for him to switch sides. He was the architect of the Detroit and Sheffield attacks, and the humans know it. They will want his head on a pike, and he won't be able to negotiate his way out of this one.

[Junghalli]

If all he's doing is making crappy low-grade steel versions of what they currently make with bronze, it will make no difference at all. He must have something much more spectacular in mind if he expects this to make the slightest impact.

I agree. I don't really see an iron or steel forge being enough to help the Demons that much, certainly not enough to have any chance of turning the tide of the war or even significantly lengthening it.

Personally I'm leaning toward the psionic WMD idea.

[EdBecerra]

Belial is smart enough to know that it's too late for him to switch sides. He was the architect of the Detroit and Sheffield attacks, and the humans know it. They will want his head on a pike, and he won't be able to negotiate his way out of this one.

There IS that.

Though I'd like to note that these clowns seem to still be playing with the old line "the more outrageous the lie, the better." It's altogether easy to see Belial trying (and failing, I admit) to trot out that old line "Satan made me do it! He gave the orders! I tried to countermand them, but I was unable to! Honest!"

He'd fail, but you'd have to admit, the attempt would be amusing in and of itself.

Ed.

[Pelranius]

At this point, Belial would have to deliver Heaven and Yahweh tied up with a pretty pink bow in order to make us not want to shot him on sight.

And even if he did, he has to realize that there's really nothing other than morality to stop us more going back on our word, and Belial certainly has enough sense to realize that human goodwill isn't exactly a tangible asset.

Maybe he'll try to run off to another one of those dimensions that have been hinted at? If I were him, I'd certainly be making plans like that in case his next scheme comes crashing down.

[Wyrm]

As to the Colonial Hell producing its own weapons, the world is already stretched to its limit gearing up to a war economy at home, without trying to overcome the challenges of building permanent sites (you will not be producing any good steel in an army tent) and manufacturing in Hell. Mining could be done with proper imported equipment, but it would have to be processed on Earth.

Shit, man, does concrete even cure in Hell?

PS. To Ed, welcome to the wretched hive of scum and villainy known as SD.net!

[CaptainChewbacca]

You know, Starglider claimed palelabor was foreshadowed in chapter 42. After re-reading it, I have no clue what he's talking about.

[Sea Skimmer]

You know, Starglider claimed palelabor was foreshadowed in chapter 42. After re-reading it, I have no clue what he's talking about.

Same here

[Stuart]

Just a note, unfortunately this nitpick has some small consequences for the chapter - the T-80U doesn't have a remote machine gun (the T-80UD does, however, but only Ukraine uses it now), the commander would be forced to be fighting unbuttoned, which is of course madness. The tank would have to be a T-90/T-90A. (this also works because there are very few T-80Us [as opposed to T-80B variants] in the Russian Army inventory anyway, I believe all the T-80Us were concentrated in the Tamanskaya or the Kantemirovskaya in Moscow, until the recent rearmament when they got new build T-90As) Of course, it could simply be an upgraded T-80U ("T-80U(M)") ...

All the Russian tanks were refitted with remote-control turret-top machine guns before deployment to hell based on American experience. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

You know, Starglider claimed palelabor was foreshadowed in chapter 42. After re-reading it, I have no clue what he's talking about.

It's subtle but its there. Don't worry, more will be coming to light shortly.