- Pronouns
- He
And they attacked Boulder with it. That seems like a good use of a first strike. Actually, of an only strike, since there's a distinct lack of follow-up attacks in the hours since then.
Set A Course For Suck, Mr. Sulu: Let's Read "Warp Speed" by Travis S. Taylor
- Thread starter The Victorian
- Start date
- Books
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
...but why though?
I mean, yes, we know why, those evil Chicoms - this is a Baen novel after all - but why Colorado? If you're evil enough to blow up Denver, you're evil enough to just target the Megalopolis. An area the size of Colorado would net you the destruction of Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, literally all of New Jersey and Delaware, fuck you could probably get Pittsburgh if you aimed it right, fuck the Penguins.
As you can see from my incredibly scientific analysis it would be trivial to cripple the entire US in a moment with a weapon of this caliber. Why the fuck are you potshotting in the fucking Rockies?
Oh wait, because the Chinese have to be smart enough to steal the research but too dumb to actually use it effectively, otherwise this whole novel would be ending right now with the US collapsing.
Last edited:
For that matter, using an attack that can be compared to an "extinction level event" on the planet you are on is rather contraindicated.
This is an attack that on the one hand if the consequences of destroying a whole, rather large state with one blast were taken seriously would be disastrous or even civilization ending for the whole world, including China. On the other hand as other posters have said the immediate effects do little to prevent the US from retaliating. It's maximum self-harm and provocation for minimal return.
Or meteorite, at least. It's a meteorite if it actually impacts; a meteor if it doesn't.
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There are so many stupid things about this plot development that I'm not sure where to start.
Well, except for the fact that when you had said that the next chapter will feature Colorado being blown up, I HAD THOUGHT YOU WERE JOKING.
But no, it turns out that the author really is that batshit and this plot is not so much off its meds as it's an adrenaline junkie taking five different kinds of hard drugs at once (at high dosages) before screaming in mentally-deranged defiance at sanity before taking a running leap off of a massive cliff.
First off, the fact that they have to be TOLD that Colorado just got blown the fuck up (along with 50 million people) shows that the author has no concept of scale or, indeed, physics. A single explosion destroying an entire state (and killing 50 million people) would make itself quite known by the shockwave reverberating across the continent. Remember: even Tsar Bomba wouldn't destroy Colorado all by itself--Tsar Bomba was a really oversized city-killer, and Colorado is VASTLY bigger than a city). And there are far, far fewer than 50 million people living in (or even near) Colorado.
Second, why would China ever want to do this? Even putting aside trade relations, this is a completely unprovoked act of mass murder (of civilians, no less) using a WMD--this China nuked the global economy while also making itself the global villain. Also, the environmental fallout of blowing up all of Colorado at once (and 50 million people...so probably a LOT more than just Colorado) would be somewhere along the lines of "man, who's up for some mass starvation and throwing all of human civilization into chaos?" territory.
I feel like the author fails to understand that merely acquiring the means to blow up your nation's rival along with all of its people (and ecology) does not give you any reason at all to actually use them. Hell, even the US, when faced with a Soviet Union that had just conquered all of Eastern Europe and had a massive army ready to storm down and take the rest of Europe didn't go with the "let's use our nuclear weapons to genocide the Russians before the Russians get their own nukes" option because genociding people with nukes is just not okay, man.
And then the president of the US, inexplicably, tells the world that this was a meteor impact rather than a deliberate attack on the United States by China with a new kind of superweapon, thereby robbing his nation of its own leverage to turn the world against China...so that he can...uh...hm...yeah, I've got nothing. Literally no idea why he would do that. Also, for some reason, they're talking about making their own warp WMDs to attack China with instead of using the, y'know, massive arsenal of ICBMs the US already built many years ago to respond to this exact kind of situation am I going crazy here what's the point of this whole plot if it's just "lol Dr Strangelove but stupid in every way"?
But yeah, China control+alt+deleting a massive chunk of the US in a single explosion of such scale that China will suffer mass deaths even without the US retaliating with its giant arsenal of ICBMs is a truly 8head 5D chess move plot development. Shows a really great grasp of what makes a believable and compelling plot. Especially when the US president asks about how long it'll take to invent warp-missile ICBMs to strike back at China with (dude you have the nuclear football right there they're waiting for a single order you've got a huge arsenal of nukes just waiting for the order REMEMBER THE COLD WAR REMEMBER THE NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON ON A SWITCH MADE FOR THIS EXACT SCENARIO THE WARP MISSILES DO JACK SHIT TO STOP THAT WHY ARE YOU EVEN HAVING THIS CONVERSATION)...before he goes and lies to the world by saying that it was a meteor impact, no one's to blame, just letting China off the hook while preparing to strike back with warp missile genocide X10?
What the fuck even is this shit anymore? Are nukes just not good enough anymore?
Well, except for the fact that when you had said that the next chapter will feature Colorado being blown up, I HAD THOUGHT YOU WERE JOKING.
But no, it turns out that the author really is that batshit and this plot is not so much off its meds as it's an adrenaline junkie taking five different kinds of hard drugs at once (at high dosages) before screaming in mentally-deranged defiance at sanity before taking a running leap off of a massive cliff.
First off, the fact that they have to be TOLD that Colorado just got blown the fuck up (along with 50 million people) shows that the author has no concept of scale or, indeed, physics. A single explosion destroying an entire state (and killing 50 million people) would make itself quite known by the shockwave reverberating across the continent. Remember: even Tsar Bomba wouldn't destroy Colorado all by itself--Tsar Bomba was a really oversized city-killer, and Colorado is VASTLY bigger than a city). And there are far, far fewer than 50 million people living in (or even near) Colorado.
Second, why would China ever want to do this? Even putting aside trade relations, this is a completely unprovoked act of mass murder (of civilians, no less) using a WMD--this China nuked the global economy while also making itself the global villain. Also, the environmental fallout of blowing up all of Colorado at once (and 50 million people...so probably a LOT more than just Colorado) would be somewhere along the lines of "man, who's up for some mass starvation and throwing all of human civilization into chaos?" territory.
I feel like the author fails to understand that merely acquiring the means to blow up your nation's rival along with all of its people (and ecology) does not give you any reason at all to actually use them. Hell, even the US, when faced with a Soviet Union that had just conquered all of Eastern Europe and had a massive army ready to storm down and take the rest of Europe didn't go with the "let's use our nuclear weapons to genocide the Russians before the Russians get their own nukes" option because genociding people with nukes is just not okay, man.
And then the president of the US, inexplicably, tells the world that this was a meteor impact rather than a deliberate attack on the United States by China with a new kind of superweapon, thereby robbing his nation of its own leverage to turn the world against China...so that he can...uh...hm...yeah, I've got nothing. Literally no idea why he would do that. Also, for some reason, they're talking about making their own warp WMDs to attack China with instead of using the, y'know, massive arsenal of ICBMs the US already built many years ago to respond to this exact kind of situation am I going crazy here what's the point of this whole plot if it's just "lol Dr Strangelove but stupid in every way"?
But yeah, China control+alt+deleting a massive chunk of the US in a single explosion of such scale that China will suffer mass deaths even without the US retaliating with its giant arsenal of ICBMs is a truly 8head 5D chess move plot development. Shows a really great grasp of what makes a believable and compelling plot. Especially when the US president asks about how long it'll take to invent warp-missile ICBMs to strike back at China with (dude you have the nuclear football right there they're waiting for a single order you've got a huge arsenal of nukes just waiting for the order REMEMBER THE COLD WAR REMEMBER THE NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON ON A SWITCH MADE FOR THIS EXACT SCENARIO THE WARP MISSILES DO JACK SHIT TO STOP THAT WHY ARE YOU EVEN HAVING THIS CONVERSATION)...before he goes and lies to the world by saying that it was a meteor impact, no one's to blame, just letting China off the hook while preparing to strike back with warp missile genocide X10?
What the fuck even is this shit anymore? Are nukes just not good enough anymore?
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- He
I can at least see a certain amount iof logic in not telling the world about the warp bombs and then using your own on China instead of nukes. Removes their ability to complain without leading to certain awkward questions about how they knew they were getting attacked and not just suffering some 'bad luck'. The opportunity cost, though, is ridiculously lopsided.
- Location
- Busan Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea
To be fair, this assertion is not that uncommon across political spectrum, albeit for different reasons.
- Location
- Busan Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea
The few things I can think of are Denver and the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. But it still makes more sense for them to hit targets further west or east.
Last edited:
- Location
- Finland
Well obviously the answer is "all those forreigners are evil, and stupid." but i am trying to imagine a world where destroying Colorado instead of, anything else, makes sense.
So Colorado is where US keeps all of its aliens and alien derived tech.
- Location
- Busan Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea
I mean, SGC.
- Location
- Finland
Sure.
I may have watched total of 3 episodes worth of it.
Thought not 3 episodes.
So can't really comment.
Entropy Judge
Recurring Bouts of Misanthropy
Maybe it is! Colorado is home to a few space and satellite-based groups, including the Air Force Base that is the main control hub for GPS.
Chapter 17
The Victorian
Elven Supremacist
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 17 mercifully begins with less jingoistic fantasizing on the author's part, and instead has our "heroes" discuss the possibility of getting a warp weapon into space by using the warp drive itself:
Anson calls a meeting with the others to discuss his plan of getting them established on the far side of the moon, away from the prying eyes of the eeeeevil Chinese. The plan involves taking as much space-rated hardware as they can get their hands on and then just warping it to the moon. They would live inside the Spacelab module inside the shuttle's cargo bay while they did the EVA work necessary to assemble their secret moon base. But then Sara comes up with another idea:
They could also warp some freshwater up to the moon and then hook it up to the main base using a gravity-fed plumbing system. What follows is several excruciating long paragraphs describing the hypothetical construction of the moon base, with such illuminating information like this:
Thrilling stuff, I know!
Sara asks Anson why the Chinese decided to attack them, and he rambles on about how, during the early nineties China announced they were going to open their borders to American businesses "with the hopes of moving China into the world market place."
Uh, what? I'm not familiar with China's history during the nineties, but the idea that they would announce that they're open for business, then turn around and say, "Hey, we don't actually NEED your business!" seems like a rather dubious understanding of what actually happened.
Can someone more familiar with 90s politics tell me if there's any truth to this whatsoever? "Clinton gave missile guidance to China in exchange for a campaign contribution" sounds like something that would be a major scandal, but the closest thing I can find that sounds even remotely like that is the Cox Report.
So the reason the Iraq War dragged on was because you weren't holding the Iraqi people to account over the actions of the insurgents? What, exactly, would be involved with "holding them accountable" ? Bombing then even harder? Doing more raids on peoples' houses? Did it never occur to the author that the reason the war "didn't seem to have a decisive end" was because the United States was seen as a hostile occupying force by many Iraqis? As the old saying goes, wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
And that first line - "I'm not racist! I have Chinese friends!" Yeah, sure buddy. And I like how he basically admits that he has no idea why the Chinese launched their attack, and given that the protagonist is such an obvious self-insert it's pretty clear the author has no idea, either.
Anson calls a meeting with the others to discuss his plan of getting them established on the far side of the moon, away from the prying eyes of the eeeeevil Chinese. The plan involves taking as much space-rated hardware as they can get their hands on and then just warping it to the moon. They would live inside the Spacelab module inside the shuttle's cargo bay while they did the EVA work necessary to assemble their secret moon base. But then Sara comes up with another idea:
They could also warp some freshwater up to the moon and then hook it up to the main base using a gravity-fed plumbing system. What follows is several excruciating long paragraphs describing the hypothetical construction of the moon base, with such illuminating information like this:
Thrilling stuff, I know!
Sara asks Anson why the Chinese decided to attack them, and he rambles on about how, during the early nineties China announced they were going to open their borders to American businesses "with the hopes of moving China into the world market place."
Uh, what? I'm not familiar with China's history during the nineties, but the idea that they would announce that they're open for business, then turn around and say, "Hey, we don't actually NEED your business!" seems like a rather dubious understanding of what actually happened.Can someone more familiar with 90s politics tell me if there's any truth to this whatsoever? "Clinton gave missile guidance to China in exchange for a campaign contribution" sounds like something that would be a major scandal, but the closest thing I can find that sounds even remotely like that is the Cox Report.
So the reason the Iraq War dragged on was because you weren't holding the Iraqi people to account over the actions of the insurgents? What, exactly, would be involved with "holding them accountable" ? Bombing then even harder? Doing more raids on peoples' houses? Did it never occur to the author that the reason the war "didn't seem to have a decisive end" was because the United States was seen as a hostile occupying force by many Iraqis? As the old saying goes, wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
And that first line - "I'm not racist! I have Chinese friends!" Yeah, sure buddy. And I like how he basically admits that he has no idea why the Chinese launched their attack, and given that the protagonist is such an obvious self-insert it's pretty clear the author has no idea, either.
- Location
- London, England
I just... can't figure out the supposed reasoning of the Chinese here.
People have already said "why Colorado", but beyond that, why just the one strike? If you have a number of different facilities producing these weapons and they're almost ready, why not just... wait for them to be ready? Heck maybe you can blow up Wyoming, Nebraska and both the Dakotas into the bargain! That would really show those perfidious Americans...
People have already said "why Colorado", but beyond that, why just the one strike? If you have a number of different facilities producing these weapons and they're almost ready, why not just... wait for them to be ready? Heck maybe you can blow up Wyoming, Nebraska and both the Dakotas into the bargain! That would really show those perfidious Americans...
Now if he wanted to make it interesting, blow up Wyoming. No one lives there, and they could set off the Yellowstone supervolcano. Except that interesting things can only happen to our protagonists. Or maybe hit Minnesota, just to smash the Mayo Clinic.
Dumping on Bill Clinton? What decade is it?
Dumping on Bill Clinton? What decade is it?
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
What baffles me is that they're doing all of this just to replicate an ability that they already have. Namely, a ton of ICBMs.
Also, it would take a lot of time to actually DO all of this, and that's assuming that A) everything works just fine on the first attempt, B) China somehow doesn't notice an entire fleet of spaceships warping up to the moon, C) China's own intelligence agencies/assets don't notice all of the military's and NASA's space-capable assets all being suddenly sucked into a single massive operation, with all of the huge logistical and personnel impacts that would inherently entail, and D) that China wouldn't just have another bunch of warp missiles already in orbit to retaliate with (MAD-style) by the time the US finally catches up to where China is already at.
And again, one wonders why the whole nuclear arsenal is not considered since, y'know, it's basically the one thing no amount of warp missiles could actually defeat/defend against.
I don't really understand why going into such pointless detail about establishing a specific kind of moonbase is something the author put any effort into, given that this new magical technology isn't even being used to create a cool sci-fi twist on the real world, but is rather just instantly weaponized in a way that is already pretty much just like nuclear ICBMs that have been around for decades, but with a lot of extra steps (and a million times less safe/reliable, since a single bullet hitting a dumbbell would cause the entire missile/weapon to explode in SPECTACULAR fashion, meaning that these weapons are about as fail-deadly as antimatter weapons, except that they also use antimatter as fuel, effectively).
This is about as batshit insane as I'd expect out of a right-wing warhawk that is also quite racist. Displaying a total lack of understanding of...so much that it's hard to even wrap my head around it. A total lack of understanding of China's history, its culture, its economy, its geopolitics (both past and present), which is bad enough on its own. But a total lack of understanding of even the fundamentals of diplomacy, international relations, economics, realpolitik, morality/ethics, and human psychology, all in one?Sara asks Anson why the Chinese decided to attack them, and he rambles on about how, during the early nineties China announced they were going to open their borders to American businesses "with the hopes of moving China into the world market place."
This guy. This guy is so dumb, so insane, so uninformed, that trying to wrap my head around how absolutely wrong he is about...everything...is a daunting prospect.
Now, what I think he was trying to talk about was how China had (and still has, though most have caught on to it by now) a practice of enticing big businesses to operate in China with its gigantic population (read: potential customers/massive demand/terrible workers' rights), but using either espionage or deals designed to effectively get all of the tech, expertise, and infrastructure so that they could then undermine and outcompete these big businesses with state-backed businesses of their own. For example, Google Earth and its related services don't work properly in China, because China deliberately fucks with it, forcing someone in China to use China's version of the service if they want accurate GPS-style guidance or maps for anywhere.
This reeks of total bullshit on so many levels. It also supposes that China was incapable of developing its own missile guidance systems, or that it couldn't get such assistance from the now-financially-desperate Russian Federation eager to keep its high-skill personnel employed with any work they could find.
At this point, I'm shocked that this shit actually got published. This book now has the main character advocating for mass slaughter of Chinese peasants because of the actions of its central government, through the use of supernukes, as a first resort. And he even tries to justify it through pretty plainly racist reasoning!
So the reason the Iraq War dragged on was because you weren't holding the Iraqi people to account over the actions of the insurgents? What, exactly, would be involved with "holding them accountable" ? Bombing then even harder? Doing more raids on peoples' houses? Did it never occur to the author that the reason the war "didn't seem to have a decisive end" was because the United States was seen as a hostile occupying force by many Iraqis? As the old saying goes, wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
And that first line - "I'm not racist! I have Chinese friends!" Yeah, sure buddy. And I like how he basically admits that he has no idea why the Chinese launched their attack, and given that the protagonist is such an obvious self-insert it's pretty clear the author has no idea, either.
And yeah, this author's complete lack of understanding of the Iraq War or war in general is just becoming ever-more glaring.
First: as far as a first strike goes, China obliterating Colorado and killing 50 million people could only make any sense at all if China was hoping for deniability while still doing enough damage to wreck the US's economy...except that all of that goes out the window if one takes a single second to consider that the likely American response to such an attack would be "nuclear football, please, we have thousands of nukes to launch and cities that need to become radioactive craters urgently" after calling out China for stealing a brand-new technology being tested by NASA for interstellar travel and immediately using it as a WMD to commit a flagrantly illegal mass murder of 50 million civilians without provocation. Furthermore, China would essentially be going: "Man, this is amazing technology, but horrifyingly dangerous. No one has any defense against it, no one COULD have any defense against it, and it can scale from microscopic to planet-busting without much difficulty. If an arms-race starts with this stuff, it might well be the end of the world, especially because unlike nukes, this stuff is fail-deadly. Y'know what we should do? Weaponize it immediately, and then use it in a totally unprovoked first-strike on the United States, thereby ensuring that everyone in the world will desperately want their own warp-bombs and will probably be seen as the good guys by the rest of the world if they use it in a first strike against US. This sounds like a great plan!"
The fact that the entire plot is basically "nuclear armageddon, but portrayed as a practical, desirable outcome rather than an existentially terrifying and horrific tragedy of unprecedented proportions that humanity will never truly recover from"...which was pretty thoroughly discredited already in the Cold War as an idea. And yet the author seems to have somehow missed the memo? This author seems to think that not only can you "win" a full-scale nuclear ICBM war, but that it can be a heroic and decisive victory, even when the enemy gets a free first strike on you. Just...what the fuck?
Oh yeah, I forgot: doing this, even assuming that there would not be any response or hit to international relations or anything, would fuck China over completely, too. Because the global economy would crash overnight. Not just from the damage, but also from the terror. The spending habits of pretty much everyone on Earth would change immediately, and the economic disruption would be immense. The damage to the global environment/ecology would no doubt be massive, too. Trade between the US and China would fall off a cliff overnight, and a lot of that trade is food imported into China, as well as products from China being sold in the US.
Oh yeah, and all of the nuclear material and radioactive dust/etc being spewed everywhere from the nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons, and nuclear waste being blown the fuck up and thrown into the atmosphere/around the world by the blast.
Last edited:
Because this has to be a tragedy for taylor, and the idea of all the dead liberals hitting anywhere east or west probably made him very happy instead.
Remember, we are working with people who don't just hate the chinese. They hate most americans too. You can't kill the americans you hate because that's not a tragedy, that's a victory
Chapter 18
The Victorian
Elven Supremacist
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 18 begins with our heroes working on their portable warp field generator, which they can use to generate 1G gravity on their secret moon base, thus they won't have to worry about bone and muscle degradation during long-term habitation. The author then gets in a little jab about the way doctoral dissertations are defended:
Still bitter about something, Mr. Travis T?
Anson decides to catch up on the senate hearings for the deposition of the NASA administrator, who's been grilled over why they hadn't detected the meteors before they hit Florida and Colorado. Poor bastard, being asked why his agency didn't pick up something that didn't actually exist...
He then gets to musing how, even with warp weapons, humanity would probably be screwed if they came under attack by an intelligent alien race.
The question, of course, is WHY an alien race would do such thing, other than doing it for shits and giggles.
Well, I must admit he's not entirely wrong here. I always found it strange that Star Trek went out of its way to point out that there is no money in the future. I get that it's supposed to a be post-capitalist, post-scarcity society, but money is simply a means of facilitating trade and the exchange of goods, and I don't see either of those going away any time soon.
We then get a rather pointless detour wherein Anson chats up one of the guards, and it turns out he's also into martial arts. This goes absolute nowhere, so let's skip ahead to where Anson is looking over some photos from a spy satellite, which indicate a significant military build-up in China:
What's worse, there's some massive naval build-up going on the Taiwan Strait, and the Russians are also preparing launches in Svobodny and Kazakhstan. Wait, the Russians, you say?
First of all, while relations between the US and Russian warmed a bit after the end of the Cold War, I don't think they could ever be considered "allies." And to think that anti-American sentiment in Russia is the solely the purview of former members of the CPSU is...well...it's fucking ludicrous, is what it is. And this is at least the second time the author has had his self-insert simply throw up his hands and go, "Who knows why our enemies are doing anything?" as if to underscore how one-dimensional they are.
Jim and 'Becca show up and inform him that they've been working on a way to use the "flubells" to generate energy, which three orders of magnitude more effective than the Clemons Dumbbells. What's better, they even have a working prototype. Of course, it will all be for naught if the eeeeevil Russians and Chinese turn the US into a smoking crater.
Then Tabitha stuns everyone by revealing that the Chinese rockets have already launched, seemingly ahead of schedule. Anson wonders why they managed to get payload integration done so fast, and now they've got 30 minutes to an hour before they can fire off another warp missile. This means Anson's got to think of a plan, fast.
Great, you just HAD to refer to one of the most infamously terrible episodes of TOS, didn't you? (Although I will say that Spock's Brain is at least enjoyable in a campy, so-bad-it's-good kind of way, and not in the "Dear Doctor" oh god, did Dr. Phlox just advocate for genocide? kind of of bad.
Anson asks for the dimensions of the facility and where he can find video cameras with an outside view of the world, which strikes me as a bit odd, but this is all part of his cunning plan to evade the Chinese attack:
Still bitter about something, Mr. Travis T?
Anson decides to catch up on the senate hearings for the deposition of the NASA administrator, who's been grilled over why they hadn't detected the meteors before they hit Florida and Colorado. Poor bastard, being asked why his agency didn't pick up something that didn't actually exist...
He then gets to musing how, even with warp weapons, humanity would probably be screwed if they came under attack by an intelligent alien race.
The question, of course, is WHY an alien race would do such thing, other than doing it for shits and giggles.
Well, I must admit he's not entirely wrong here. I always found it strange that Star Trek went out of its way to point out that there is no money in the future. I get that it's supposed to a be post-capitalist, post-scarcity society, but money is simply a means of facilitating trade and the exchange of goods, and I don't see either of those going away any time soon.
We then get a rather pointless detour wherein Anson chats up one of the guards, and it turns out he's also into martial arts. This goes absolute nowhere, so let's skip ahead to where Anson is looking over some photos from a spy satellite, which indicate a significant military build-up in China:
What's worse, there's some massive naval build-up going on the Taiwan Strait, and the Russians are also preparing launches in Svobodny and Kazakhstan. Wait, the Russians, you say?
First of all, while relations between the US and Russian warmed a bit after the end of the Cold War, I don't think they could ever be considered "allies." And to think that anti-American sentiment in Russia is the solely the purview of former members of the CPSU is...well...it's fucking ludicrous, is what it is. And this is at least the second time the author has had his self-insert simply throw up his hands and go, "Who knows why our enemies are doing anything?" as if to underscore how one-dimensional they are.
Jim and 'Becca show up and inform him that they've been working on a way to use the "flubells" to generate energy, which three orders of magnitude more effective than the Clemons Dumbbells. What's better, they even have a working prototype. Of course, it will all be for naught if the eeeeevil Russians and Chinese turn the US into a smoking crater.
Then Tabitha stuns everyone by revealing that the Chinese rockets have already launched, seemingly ahead of schedule. Anson wonders why they managed to get payload integration done so fast, and now they've got 30 minutes to an hour before they can fire off another warp missile. This means Anson's got to think of a plan, fast.
Great, you just HAD to refer to one of the most infamously terrible episodes of TOS, didn't you? (Although I will say that Spock's Brain is at least enjoyable in a campy, so-bad-it's-good kind of way, and not in the "Dear Doctor" oh god, did Dr. Phlox just advocate for genocide? kind of of bad.
Anson asks for the dimensions of the facility and where he can find video cameras with an outside view of the world, which strikes me as a bit odd, but this is all part of his cunning plan to evade the Chinese attack:
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I…what? I don't even get what's happening anymore. There's no motive for anything that anyone is doing that makes any sense. Also, warp tech can now generate artificial gravity???
The Last One
Here because reasons
I'm getting whiplash from the TNG references and then mocking the idea humanity could improve.
The Victorian
Elven Supremacist
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Some of that is undoubtedly my fault, as I'm glossing over quite a bit of technobabble (and there is a LOT of it, all packed into incredibly dense paragraphs), but the whole "warp field generates gravity" is a describe as follows:
You can imagine, then, that reading paragraph after paragraph of this stuff tends to cause one's eyes to glaze over.
- Location
- Reading, Berks, UK
And presumably so they don't have to think about how to do low gravity plumbing.
Hainan Island is more west than south of Guangzhou (Canton). IIRC it is south of Nanking and is 10% larger than Belgium.
Macau is the island one thinks of south of Guangzhou.
The launch site on Hainan would be better described as Wengchang. But it was only built in 2014.
Travis was going to be either the religious fundamentalist who blamed everything on the gays, or the atheist who blames all the worlds ills on religion. I suppose this way he gets to be more smug which seems in character.