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It was inferred by Wildbow that international shipping was stopped because they thought that Levi would sink ships crossing the ocean. That only shipping along coast lines saw any real business and that was short range, not continental, never mind international.
 
So - that was a fun Omake that sparked a lot of discussion, some of it fairly interesting. Were it not an Omake, I'd honestly have expected most of the Parahumans involved to have been killed in the first few seconds by anything from normal FMJ bullets to .50 AP to HEAT warheads (which would smoke Assault, quite literally), with Alexandria herself being the major possible exception, though anything taking oxygen out of the air will definitely put her down, and it's probable other gasses would also put her down.

Tanks and armored and anti-air vehicles appearing in the neighborhood manned by Army and Marine Corps crews would also be a hint that, you know, this isn't a gang.

It brings up a lot of detailed points to think about regarding the main story, too:

I do have to wonder about the distribution of Taylor's super-gadgets. Invisibility, if I recall correctly, is 'public' to her government contacts. Obviously the gravity drive is. From the weapon used, it seems highly likely that gravity shear based defensive shields/screens are also public.

Does her house have gravity shear based shields yet that the government knows of?

... that the government doesn't know of?

Her ShardComm detector I think is private to her, and that's the tech branch most likely to protect her against parahumans and Shard powers of all kinds, possibly including Clairvoyant.

Does she have parahuman<->Shard jammers yet (privately)? That would just shut down any parahuman assaults. And with the CUI in play and even the Elite, I'd be expecting parahuman assaults with teleporters.

So... honestly, I'd expect the government to have some level of teleport jammer/blocker in place on top of whatever Taylor's done.

Chances are Taylor actually knows the mechanics behind Shard-based teleportation by now, too.

Her protective detail includes naval forces offshore... did it include a CAP element? We don't necessarily know what kind of ground forces are around the Hebert home, but I wouldn't find armored vehicles amiss (probably brought in on gravity lifters using the invisibility device), honestly.

It also brings up the question of: what has Taylor programmed her parahuman detectors to do when they notice a concentration of unknown parahumans (i.e. not Vicky and Amy and their families) approaching/appearing?

And the other question: Has she given QA user accounts and access to any of her other stuff? Because QA can monitor literally everything she has all the time in high-performance realtime.
 
sdwood said:
To the best of my knowledge it's not, but I could be wrong.
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I think it's one of Wildbow's many (often nonsensical) WoG things. You know, like how Cauldron are the only reason the entire world hasn't decended into utter chaos. Or how Contessa is single handedly propping up the majority of the world governments and criminal empires and finding time to ensure nobody ever kills a parahuman with a hunting rifle, and also finding time to kill anyone who learns about Cauldron's existence (while also letting word get out about them) right up until the secret is spilled live on national television and it was taking too much time to try covering it up while not actually doing anything useful...
 
"So," the President said, "this cube is more powerful than every computer in history put together?"

"Yes, sir," the DARPA tech replied.

"So... Can it run Crysis?"

Glances were exchanged between the scientists, soldiers and spooks in the room.

"I'm sorry, Mr. President... But we can get the Primary Asset anything she wants... But a GPU."
 
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Leaving aside the fact that it's an entirely non-canonical omake, something occurred to me here, and not the obvious one: would Shadow Stalker even be in the Wards at all? We know that a bunch of the stuff that's 'supposed' to have happened to her has been butterflied away, and even if she'd murdered someone and been caught, without Emma as a 'character witness' she'd more likely just be in juvie. Or equivalent.
 
DoctorNobody said:
"So," the President said, "this cube is more powerful than every computer in history put together?"

"Yes, sir," the DARPA tech replied.

"So... Can it run Crysis?"

Glances were exchanged between the scientists, soldiers and spooks in the room.

"I'm sorry, Mr. President... But we can get the Primary Asset anything she wants... But a GPU."
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I ended up switching to a gaming laptop recently due to not having space for the desktop anymore.

You do not normally make a profit when you just dump year old hardware on Ebay.

Prices are insane at the moment.
 
@FaerieKnight79 , I think you are overstating the direct effects of S-class threats on food security in the continental United States.
FaerieKnight79 said:
The problem is that while Wildbow didn't actually show or even mention the knock on effects that should have occurred, I believe it is canon that fear of Levi attacking ships was crippling international trade.
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FaerieKnight79 said:
The S9 were allowed free reign to terrorize the entire midwest, wiping out farms and farming communities everywhere they went. This should have crippled the USA's food production.
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The S9 probably kills thousands of farmers per year. That is indeed higher than the number of farm workers who suffer fatal work related injuries, which is about 500 per year, but not that much higher. However, the United States has millions of farmers. The S9 simply doesn't kill them quickly enough to directly cause crippling shortages.

You might argue that fear of the S9 might cause fewer people to choose farm work. However, cities don't seem to be much safer. And in any event, people also fear starvation. The biggest consequence for the food market is probably higher costs for raw ingredients from a S9 hazard premium.

The collapse of international trade offsets even that. The United States produces about twice as much food as it consumes. Some of that covers food waste for various reasons*. But United States exports also account for over 10% of all international food trade. If international trade were disrupted, that food would be delivered within North America instead and more than offset the S9-related disruption.

Hawaii would have food problems due to the trade collapse, but that has little to do with the S9.


* Including some deliberate health/safety tradeoffs that could be reversed in a famine to make more food available in exchange for slightly higher risks of food poisoning.
 
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Plopping down my own IT support story. Once fixed a computer that was completely unresponsive and frozen like not cannot even power it off forcefully frozen, by feeding my lifeforce through the mouse which eliminated the problem and the computer resumed operating like normal. Felt like shit for a couple days afterward but it worked. Not sure how I did it but it worked. Now whenever a computer is on the fritz in the house for someone else whenever I step into same room as it to help the problem disappears. Every time. So potential loss of lifespan for aura of tech support? Worth?
 
I was IT support for a large Dutch company. We'd been having issues with the high security user file server crashing due to a lack of space. This was pissing off people, but we weren't allowed to just go in and check the drives due to security concerns. Only on specific user request could we check specific shares.
Then one day a guy calls asking us to retrieve files he'd accidentally deleted. We check, it turned out he was a high security user and he had every single porn video that starred Jenna Jameson stored on his section of the high security share.

The guy had a rather interesting time during the remainder of his stay with the company, short as it may have been.
 
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While I'm not IT, I think that I am mostly competent when it comes to wrangling computers. But I do have one tech-bane thing that isn't even related to a person, but instead is about a specific game.

Every time I ever tried to run S.T.A.L.K.E.R. it bricked some part of my PC. I'm pretty sure that my disk with the game came straight from the Pripyat Zone itself.
 
My family have notoriously strong electromagnetic fields. My sister accidently erased a 3 1/4 floppy once just by walking past it. And I was the only one in the family that could handle VHS tapes without them getting wiped. In fact, my mom got banned from Blockbuster Video because of this. As such we can't have a standard radio within 5 feet of us or the only thing it gets is static, even if the radio station in question is 3 blocks away. No joke. Mine is weak enough I at least can be within 3 feet of a radio and didn't erase VHS or floppy disks. Weirdly, this doesn't affect computers or gaming consoles. Just the radio, VHS, and floppy disks. It also for whatever reason means that wifi routers are a bit more effective if we're near them then otherwise.

*shrugs*
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
My family have notoriously strong electromagnetic fields. My sister accidently erased a 3 1/4 floppy once just by walking past it. And I was the only one in the family that could handle VHS tapes without them getting wiped. In fact, my mom got banned from Blockbuster Video because of this. As such we can't have a standard radio within 5 feet of us or the only thing it gets is static, even if the radio station in question is 3 blocks away. No joke. Mine is weak enough I at least can be within 3 feet of a radio and didn't erase VHS or floppy disks. Weirdly, this doesn't affect computers or gaming consoles. Just the radio, VHS, and floppy disks. It also for whatever reason means that wifi routers are a bit more effective if we're near them then otherwise.

*shrugs*
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*prepares my duct tape and wifi router* Where would you say you live again? Just the general area? :V *hooks a radio on a fishing line*
 
I, have been busting my guts laughing. At the thought of Queenie and a ton of shards basically just ignoring Scion and hijacking the Simurgh and using her as a Skype app. Just to talk to Taylor....for... DATA, SCIENCE, and the occasional Mind blowing KNOWLEDGE. So Contessa is chilling right now and just avoiding Rebecca. And Taylor is just calmly acknowledging the fact that aliens invaded her world and judging the time on when they invaded, she probably already guessed its Scion. Or not. Looking forward to more SCIENCE!
 
I kinda feel sad that they were just...deleted like that...but at least it was painless.... Poor Riley.....I hope you find redemption and innocence in the next life. Anyways. More moolah for Taylor and this is what I meant by the gov't weaponizing her tech. Well it won't be too bad. Taylor can always take away everything she built. And a little fear from a teenage super genius never hurt anyone.
 
Argentorum K said:
I kinda feel sad that they were just...deleted like that...but at least it was painless.... Poor Riley.....I hope you find redemption and innocence in the next life. Anyways. More moolah for Taylor and this is what I meant by the gov't weaponizing her tech. Well it won't be too bad. Taylor can always take away everything she built. And a little fear from a teenage super genius never hurt anyone.
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How can she do that? Remember its not tinker tech so anyone with the blueprints can build it. Do you really think that the only copy of the documentation is stored in Gravtech? There is not way the government is that stupid considering how component they have being displayed so far?
 
"Taylor A. Hebert, Super Genius." Taylor sat in her backyard in a chaise lounge, enjoying the afternoon and a glass of lemonade. "I like the way that rolls off the tongue. Taylor A. Hebert, SUper Genius. Muhahaha." Amy was there as well, the faint beginnings of a smile appearing on her face.

In a brief moment of supposed inattention, she appeared not to notice Vicky floating down silently behind her, portable air horn in hand. Waiting for exactly the right moment...

"Taylor A. Hebert, Soooooper Gen..."

Vicky pressed the button.

The resulting chaos caused by the blast of noise was exquisite. Taylor had flipped out of her chair, landed on the ground, had the chaise lounge land on top of her, and then her traitorous glass of lemonade, which had been tossed into the air, upended itself over her head, drenching her, landing on the ground nearby.

Amy had collapsed on the ground at the sight helplessly and maniacally giggling, which soon broke into gales of laughter from all three of them. Taylor, with great dignity, extracted herself from the pile, righted her chair, dried her hair with a suspiciously convenient towel, and grabbed another lemonade from the pitcher. Turning to Vicky, she gave the girl a high five. "Mission accomplished," she said, grinning. "Operation 'Make Panacea Laugh' is successful!"

"After all the paperwork we had to fill out to do this," Vicky complained, "It'd better be."

"Ems and I would do stuff like this all the time," Taylor answered. "I'm more than willing to do it if it makes a friend laugh."

Amy had finally recovered from her case of giggles and laughter. "Just don't do anything with boulders, TNT, rabbits and roadrunners, OK?"

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

In the cafeteria on the Rig, Velocity sneezed.

Assault looked worried for a moment, then scowled. "I feel a disturbance in the Farce...OW!"

Battery sighed after elbowing her husband in the ribs.
 
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