The Testing Chat III: The Time of Great Chatting

[Oxymoron]

At least if we have less than twenty years of leading time.

[evilsoup]

I thought the scientific consensus was that, for any serious rock, nukes wouldn't really be a help?

[Oxymoron]

If you try blowing it, sure, it won't help.

But if you have only a few month of leading time, detonating a few nukes in succession, a few kilometers from the surface of the asteroid, and the flash of intense heat from the detonation will evaporate some of its surface layers, which will generate thrust in the opposite direction.

Do it enough time without blowing out the asteroid, and hopefully you will have deviated its course by a few thousand kilometers, enough for it to be a near miss instead of a collision.

[RyanThunder]

On a completely different topic: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2#p3761922

The irony, it burrrrrrrrrns!

Man. Vendetta is such a fucking moron.

[Bakustra]

On a completely different topic: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2#p3761922

The irony, it burrrrrrrrrns!

Man. Vendetta is such a fucking moron.

He's actually really smart and I wish we had him here so I could talk with him. His insight on Chrono Trigger was actually pretty illuminating.

[Losonti Tokash]

On a completely different topic: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2#p3761922

The irony, it burrrrrrrrrns!

Man. Vendetta is such a fucking moron.

Did you mistype bean or terralthra or something

[adr]

His insight on Chrono Trigger was actually pretty illuminating.

omg wat

[RyanThunder]

Did you mistype bean or terralthra or something

They are also fucking morons, in general. Maybe Vendetta is only being stupid in that particular thread.

Vendetta repeatedly complains about Alyx Vance having no agency when she and her associates repeatedly volunteer you to do things without your permission and you as a player are not given any opportunity to do anything but what they tell you.

Yeah, sure, she's a supporting character. Supporting you doing what everybody else wants you to do by doing things you can't.

The only character with no agency in that game is Freeman.

[phongn]

The flip side is that I'm relatively sure that the US did have a stated policy of first strike at one point, but I'm having a really hard time finding the signal (policy statements) among the noise (everything from contemporary journal articles to HPCA). I am 100% sure, on the other hand that that first strike policy had absolutely nothing to do with economic warfare.

NATO's rejection of "no first use" stemmed from the fact that there would never be the conventional forces to defend West Germany without falling back and losing huge chunks of said country. Nuclear weapons were the only credible deterrent.

I'm not sure if there's an actual policy statement saying "we will use nuclear weapons first"; a very quick glance shows that it was more a rejection of no-first-use.

Of course, this fact makes it even more important that the shot doesn't get taken, because when/if it does, then the whole charade falls apart, because now you have to actually make the decision. What's the punishment for nuking a US city? Proportional response is idiotic, and disproportional response even more so. Is it a massive conventional invasion with the threat of StratCom hanging over the theater? Is it a more literal version of "bomb them into the stone age?" Is it an assassination/precision strike? Do we try to get a coalition together? I don't want to have to come up with answers to those questions, and I don't think the person in the Oval Office particularly does either, so he/she needs to act like they're fully ready to launch on warning, even if they and everyone else know they won't.

It's fairly easy to say, in a time of peace, that the US will massively and disproportionately respond (that is, "you erase Anchorage, we turn your whole country into a self-lit parking lot"). It's sort of the public cornerstone of US deterrence. Would it actually happen (esp. given fallout patterns over various nearby nations, some of which are allies)? I have no idea. I suspect, as you do, that the answer to that question is something no-one wants to find out.

* I don't know if any is, but it would certainly be an interesting topic to explore in a conspiracy heavy world. I'm looking at you, Stewart, this would actually be a half-way interesting use of your secret society of immortal policy wonks, and also a fairly interesting reason for the United States you want to show so badly to exist. Because your version doesn't make sense without the original cold war context.

It's unfortunate that he's such a mediocre fiction writer, because one of the things he said he intended to explore was that the Eisenhower idea of massive retaliation was only workable in a Cold War environment! I think his story Crusade (and its later sequel) was supposed to show the terrible inflexibility of response and how American strategic thinking gets us into trouble ... but TBO's crushing US superiority and his writing means that gets lost in the noise.

[Bakustra]

His insight on Chrono Trigger was actually pretty illuminating.

omg wat

basically, that the only male character that does important, plot-affecting things is magus (and dalton gets ten minutes to do stuff before you kick his ass). otherwise, the plot is entirely driven by the female characters- marle, lucca, ayla, azala, queen zeal (and technically, mother brain in robo's sidequest). even lavos is technically feminine, since it produces children.

Did you mistype bean or terralthra or something

They are also fucking morons, in general. Maybe Vendetta is only being stupid in that particular thread.

Vendetta repeatedly complains about Alyx Vance having no agency when she and her associates repeatedly volunteer you to do things without your permission and you as a player are not given any opportunity to do anything but what they tell you.

Yeah, sure, she's a supporting character. Supporting you doing what everybody else wants you to do by doing things you can't.

The only character with no agency in that game is Freeman.

she does things solely to advance the player through the game and tell you where to go. she doesn't really have an implied existence outside of this, as even her presumed goals are accomplished essentially by the player. meanwhile, marle is a similar character, attracted to the mute player avatar, telling you generally where to go for the first part of the game and for large parts of the final third, but marle's major moments, character-wise, are entirely ancillary to what the player does. she decides to run off with chrono and lucca, she decides to try and save the world, she decides to rescue her father (and her doing so is entirely without player action- you fight three joke battles, then a lengthy cutscene begins, and the boss battle occurs after the actual character moment). lucca is somewhat similar, but she's less important overall. she still comes to rescue you in prison, figures out what to do with the sun stone, etc. and so on and so forth.

man, now i want to do a thread where we talk about characters in vidya games specifically

[xon]

Man. Vendetta is such a fucking moron.

Assuming Vendetta is using the same nick on spacebattles, that is utterly nothing.

Go read some of the utter bullshit he posts in the Non-SciFi-Debates forum over there, it's brain meltingly bad.

[Darksi4190]

So in continuation of my quest to watch movies that are universally panned but that I might actually find reasonably entertaining, I am now watching Red Tails.

I like the dogfighting scenes, but I can see why this movie bombed as hard as it did.

[F.J. Prefect, Esq]

Assuming Vendetta is using the same nick on spacebattles, that is utterly nothing.

Go read some of the utter bullshit he posts in the Non-SciFi-Debates forum over there, it's brain meltingly bad.

Dude they are completely different people. I can't even imagine how you would think they were the same ...

[Questor]

The flip side is that I'm relatively sure that the US did have a stated policy of first strike at one point, but I'm having a really hard time finding the signal (policy statements) among the noise (everything from contemporary journal articles to HPCA). I am 100% sure, on the other hand that that first strike policy had absolutely nothing to do with economic warfare.

NATO's rejection of "no first use" stemmed from the fact that there would never be the conventional forces to defend West Germany without falling back and losing huge chunks of said country. Nuclear weapons were the only credible deterrent.

I'm not sure if there's an actual policy statement saying "we will use nuclear weapons first"; a very quick glance shows that it was more a rejection of no-first-use.

That's about what I found, too. Which is really funny, because I'm almost sure I've read a primary source document saying "this is the policy". There's only one place I would have run into that document, so I'll check it out next time I have a chance, if I remember and still care in a few weeks.

Of course, this fact makes it even more important that the shot doesn't get taken, because when/if it does, then the whole charade falls apart, because now you have to actually make the decision. What's the punishment for nuking a US city? Proportional response is idiotic, and disproportional response even more so. Is it a massive conventional invasion with the threat of StratCom hanging over the theater? Is it a more literal version of "bomb them into the stone age?" Is it an assassination/precision strike? Do we try to get a coalition together? I don't want to have to come up with answers to those questions, and I don't think the person in the Oval Office particularly does either, so he/she needs to act like they're fully ready to launch on warning, even if they and everyone else know they won't.

It's fairly easy to say, in a time of peace, that the US will massively and disproportionately respond (that is, "you erase Anchorage, we turn your whole country into a self-lit parking lot"). It's sort of the public cornerstone of US deterrence. Would it actually happen (esp. given fallout patterns over various nearby nations, some of which are allies)? I have no idea. I suspect, as you do, that the answer to that question is something no-one wants to find out.

That's exactly what I'm getting at. Saying "You'll turn into a glowing hole in the ground!" and doing it are two different things. I just don't think the strike gets launched, but there absolutely HAS to be some sort of plan. I'd be willing to bet the plan's fairly well worked out, too.

* I don't know if any is, but it would certainly be an interesting topic to explore in a conspiracy heavy world. I'm looking at you, Stewart, this would actually be a half-way interesting use of your secret society of immortal policy wonks, and also a fairly interesting reason for the United States you want to show so badly to exist. Because your version doesn't make sense without the original cold war context.

It's unfortunate that he's such a mediocre fiction writer, because one of the things he said he intended to explore was that the Eisenhower idea of massive retaliation was only workable in a Cold War environment! I think his story Crusade (and its later sequel) was supposed to show the terrible inflexibility of response and how American strategic thinking gets us into trouble ... but TBO's crushing US superiority and his writing means that gets lost in the noise.

I think it's a bigger problem than that. The plot of TBO is an interesting concept as a one-shot. I've seen nothing to say that it would be impossible for TBO to happen the way it did. The problem is that Stuart wanted to take a story written as an answer to the disturbing prevalence of "The Nazi's could have won, if they had just done <this>." stories out there and turn it into this treatise on "what the world would look like if US milwank nerds ran it" but he just can't get there from the world he created in TBO.

It has nothing to do with the quality of his prose, and everything to do with the fact that his world building is atrocious. He never asked "Why would a singular super-power have a nuclear arms race with itself?" when doing the initial concepts, and then had to create the Daimones or whatever he calls them to explain it. Or at least I hope that's the order it happened in.

[Gands]

Did the TBO US ever have an actual nuclear opponent, to mirror the USSR?

That for me is the big weakness of using the whole thing as a foreign policy treatise. It's easier to be super world policeman when you're untouchable.

[Oxymoron]

IIRC, the cornerstones of TBO!USA were in fact massive retaliation for any attack, and "we are untouchable" (see : massive retaliation).

Why do you think his sig on TEO was "Nations do not set themselves as examples, they makes examples of each other" ?

[magic princess]

I think you're ruling out the fact that almost every country has targets of value which don't involve the nuclear destruction of a city or civilian population. Reading between the lines on HPCA and researching I many years ago came to the conclusion that a US city getting nuked by any country up to Pakistan or so would see a conventional invasion following a series of nuclear strikes, probably gravity bombs from B-2s, to take out isolated military facilities as a show of force and national will to retaliate with nuclear weapons while keeping civilian casualties very low (the fallout will be irrelevant from airbursts, as they basically don't produce any), perhaps on the same range as from a conventional bombing campaign. Then the country will be invaded and rebuilt in a much more Japan/Germany fashion than Iraq/Afghanistan, with no pretence of working with the locals.

[Oxymoron]

Yeah, thinking about it that's most probable.

I've been blinded by the usual "Hiroshima/Nagasaki" bias (aka : "nukes are city destroyers"), and forgot what you said about military targets not being necessarily close to an important population center.

[Oxymoron]

BALLS

[phongn]

That's exactly what I'm getting at. Saying "You'll turn into a glowing hole in the ground!" and doing it are two different things. I just don't think the strike gets launched, but there absolutely HAS to be some sort of plan. I'd be willing to bet the plan's fairly well worked out, too.

Stuart has hinted that for a long time there, in fact, was no plan other than SIOP or its OPLAN descendants (and he is utterly terrified that any sort of flexible response plan might weaken the deterrence against nuclear war. He genuinely is scared of nuclear weapons ever being used).

I think it's a bigger problem than that. The plot of TBO is an interesting concept as a one-shot. I've seen nothing to say that it would be impossible for TBO to happen the way it did. The problem is that Stuart wanted to take a story written as an answer to the disturbing prevalence of "The Nazi's could have won, if they had just done <this>." stories out there and turn it into this treatise on "what the world would look like if US milwank nerds ran it" but he just can't get there from the world he created in TBO.

I think thejester has criticized various aspects of TBO-WW2, but I can't recall them off the top of my head. But it's not unreasonable, and he did fairly thorough work in figuring out how to knock Britain out of the war. And, indeed, the further he gets from 1947 the worse things get.

It has nothing to do with the quality of his prose, and everything to do with the fact that his world building is atrocious. He never asked "Why would a singular super-power have a nuclear arms race with itself?" when doing the initial concepts, and then had to create the Daimones or whatever he calls them to explain it. Or at least I hope that's the order it happened in.

One serious issue he has is that he tries to address many of the questions outside of the story in various comments and Q&A threads. They're never obvious from the story itself. He goes into on why the US might decide on massive and assured destruction, why he created the immortal bureaucrats and a whole host of other things. Just not in-story.

IIRC, the cornerstones of TBO!USA were in fact massive retaliation for any attack, and "we are untouchable" (see : massive retaliation).

Why do you think his sig on TEO was "Nations do not set themselves as examples, they makes examples of each other" ?

The first part of "untouchable assured destruction" is more or less an extension of Eisenhower's strategic thought beyond the 1950s; it's not entirely ahistoric.

The second part is a reflection of his ideas on geopolitical thought ("maximal realism" - one of the various interpretations of realpoltik). He believes that hegemons must demonstrate their ability to remain on top, with force if necessary.

I think you're ruling out the fact that almost every country has targets of value which don't involve the nuclear destruction of a city or civilian population. Reading between the lines on HPCA and researching I many years ago came to the conclusion that a US city getting nuked by any country up to Pakistan or so would see a conventional invasion following a series of nuclear strikes, probably gravity bombs from B-2s, to take out isolated military facilities as a show of force and national will to retaliate with nuclear weapons while keeping civilian casualties very low (the fallout will be irrelevant from airbursts, as they basically don't produce any), perhaps on the same range as from a conventional bombing campaign. Then the country will be invaded and rebuilt in a much more Japan/Germany fashion than Iraq/Afghanistan, with no pretence of working with the locals.

My general concern over that is any such nation would probably have their weapons in hardened facilities (like, in mountains). Any attack on the US would have the population demanding we neutralize their arsenal at any cost, including vast fallout plumes over nearby countries.

[magic princess]

Perhaps, but I've never been worried about escalation from a small nuclear war. A country like India would be vastly compensated for the fallout plumes and, well, it's their mortal enemy going away. I suspect likewise that anyone using nuclear weapons would face a very carefully planned concert--that there would be a huge number of phone calls between the 5 permanent security council members carefully arranging the punishing strike to avoid accidental escalation. We have the communications capabilities, and they would be used.

[Oxymoron]

I think those we should worry about in such a scenario isn't the 5 Bigs (US, Russia, UK, France, China), but the secondary nuclear powers like Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

For example, let's say that for whatever reason Pakistan use nukes against India. Well, for starters India replicating in kind goes without saying. Further, AFAIK India is the closest ally Israel has outside of the US. I doubt Israel has Dolphin subs patrolling in missile-range of Pakistan, and its air force doesn't have the range either ; but depending on what would have been the events leading to that nuclear exchange in the first place and how it would have destabilized the already unstable geopolitics of the region, and as it would also take place south of the border of one of the Big 5 (China), well...

The Big 5 will probably manage to avoid starting a global thermonuclear war, but I would worry about further escalations between the different regional actors, and on the international scene.

I mean, heh, if we were in a bad Tom Clancy novel we could imagine North Korea jumping on the occasion, everyone focusing on the Indian-Pakistani war, to launch an invasion of South Korea, with all the possible consequences that might have.

[phongn]

So, random other thought re: nuclear war. What if North Korea takes a shot and we shoot it down?

[adr]

Lashing out the action, returning the reaction
Weak are ripped and torn away
Hypnotizing power, crushing all that cower
Battery is here to stay

Smashing through the boundaries
Lunacy has found me
Cannot stop the battery

Pounding out aggression
Turns into obsession
Cannot kill the battery

[Aaron]

So, random other thought re: nuclear war. What if North Korea takes a shot and we shoot it down?

What more is there to do? You've just demonstrated their impotance and humiliated them on the world stage.