pappilon wrote:I do not think I misunderstood. I think we are trying to do the same thing in different ways. 1)Albrecht kisses his wife goodbye and presses the little red button. which (2) sends the detonate signal which simultaneously (3) detonates the bomb under his private wildlife sanctuary and (4) sends the same signal to some perhaps geosynchronous satellite which (5)because of the Line-of-Sight-Propagation issue (6) relays that signal to all other relevant satellites which in turn (7)relay the command to all nukes in their respective propagation zone. There being a slight built in light speed delay which may have been set on delay to make all detonations appear simultaneous; or might not have depending on the desired effect. These light speed delays would not be long enough for word of one explosion to reach anyone else in time to react before the last one went off.
But then again, maybe I did.
Not all the nukes were planetary - so there would be longer lightspeed delays to the further nukes. Also rechecking it's not actually clear that the explosion that killed Albrect was instantly set off.
Shadow of Victory wrote:“I’m glad,” he said…and pushed the button on the device in his right hand.
* * *
“Admiral Gold Peak!”
The sheer shock in Dominica Adenauer’s voice whipped Michelle Henke around towards her flag deck’s tactical section.
“What?” she asked urgently.
“The sensors.” For the first time, ever, Dominica Adenauer seemed unable to find the words she wanted. Or needed, at any rate. “It’s…it’s—”
Adenauer made herself stop, made herself draw a deep breath, then squared her shoulders and looked across the top of her display at Michelle.
“We’ve just picked up a series of nuclear detonations, Ma’am,” she said in a voice of flattened iron.
“A series?” Michelle heard her own voice repeat.
“Yes, Ma’am. Most of them’re on the planet, but we have at least four in-space detonations, as well. One of them—” She stopped for a moment, drew another of those steadying breath. “Three of them were in fairly small installations. One of them was a single ship, really. But the fourth…the fourth took out Lagrange One.”
That point of view shift could have been instant, but it just as easily could have been a little while later. I tend to suspect it wasn't
much later, a handful of minutes at most, but we've no direct text-ev that the nukes started the instant the button was pressed.
However it appears we'd misremembered how far away the space nukes were, because later we're told "
All we know is that planetary and orbital sensors confirm a total of thirty-nine separate nuclear explosions over the space of less than ninety seconds."
Still whether you play delay games to obscure the signal origin or not the lightspeed delay means your targets get no warning
unless you prematurely detonated at least one nuke and then play delay games with the rest. It's that combo that gives possible warning time.
But now that I've double checked the text it's not actually written that Albrecht
instantly died in a nuclear explosion when he pressed the trigger - so if there's a delay scenario there's no need to think his nuke went off immediately and screwed it up.
Also with the total sequence taking just 90 seconds that means the furthest target could be no more than 90 lightseconds away. So even if you wanted to simulate a signal coming from beyond it you'd need no more than 180 seconds (3 minutes) delay to pull that off.
So concerns about targets wandering out of the blast zone also seem overblown as 3 minutes isn't much time to outrun a nuke.
Still, for all our speculating, it's unlikely that Albrecht bothered to hide the origin. (Though it he did, simulating an orbital origin near Mike's ships would make the most sense, and that would add just a few seconds of delay)
)