Attacking Darius:

Brigade XO wrote:Would the general population rise against the leadership of Darius? Not without a lot of information and being able to avoid the kind of security something like the Alignment would have put in place. The possibility that the Alignment keeps a very close watch on anything that could be considered thoughts of discontent and move too quickly and quietly eliminate the perceived individual is very high. Industrial accidents, medical problems, just cull them and slot in the next person.

cthia wrote:
A Shoutout to Jeff Foxworthy—

You just might be a slave if...

1. If you are made to work for the Man every night and day until you drop dead.

2. If you have a very short lifespan as many slaves throughout history.

3. If you were "bred" to be the best that you can be. As slaves in history were often bred to be the healthiest, and the most valuable by being bred with a certain qualification of slave. Like breeding horses.

4. If you are not free to leave.

5. If you are not allowed to vote?

6. If you are not represented by government.

7. If you can not rise to the top of the food chain, or get rich.

8. If you do not have access to the best medicine.

9. If only some of you are allowed inside the Master's house. (The fact that these slaves may all be allowed a better choice of food does not change the fact that they are slaves.)

10. If you are brainwashed into thinking you really got it good.

11. If you are segregated. Alphas Only

12. If the only reason you don't have to sit at the back of the bus is because there are only cattle on the bus.

13. If you are born, raised, and die in the same place.

14. If there is a whole group of people who look down on you.

15. If it is illegal to marry them.

16. If you are executed if you get out of line.

17. If you are killed because you look the Alpha-male in the eye and say the wrong thing.

18. If you are killed as an exercise because the Master don't like how you were born.

19. If someone like Jeremy X established an underground railroad leading up "North."


Then you just might be a slave.

n7axw wrote:

cthia wrote:
A Shoutout to Jeff Foxworthy—

You just might be a slave if...

1. If you are made to work for the Man every night and day until you drop dead.

2. If you have a very short lifespan as many slaves throughout history.

3. If you were "bred" to be the best that you can be. As slaves in history were often bred to be the healthiest, and the most valuable by being bred with a certain qualification of slave. Like breeding horses.

4. If you are not free to leave.

5. If you are not allowed to vote?

6. If you are not represented by government.

7. If you can not rise to the top of the food chain, or get rich.

8. If you do not have access to the best medicine.

9. If only some of you are allowed inside the Master's house. (The fact that these slaves may all be allowed a better choice of food does not change the fact that they are slaves.)

10. If you are brainwashed into thinking you really got it good.

11. If you are segregated. Alphas Only

12. If the only reason you don't have to sit at the back of the bus is because there are only cattle on the bus.

13. If you are born, raised, and die in the same place.

14. If there is a whole group of people who look down on you.

15. If it is illegal to marry them.

16. If you are executed if you get out of line.

17. If you are killed because you look the Alpha-male in the eye and say the wrong thing.

18. If you are killed as an exercise because the Master don't like how you were born.

19. If someone like Jeremy X established an underground railroad leading up "North."


Then you just might be a slave.

Actually I think kzt's one liner summarizes things quite well.

Cthia, your Jeff Foxworthy quote stretches the meaning of the word "slave" completely beyond recognition. Throughout history at least 70% of people could have one or more of these sentences applied to them. To take this a bit further, 100% of all people experience limitation or restraints on their behavior of some sort. That doesn't mean we become slaves.

A slave is someone who can be bought and sold. His boss is also his master to whose whims he is completely subject and who has absolute authority and the power of life and death over him.

The rest of us enjoy limited freedom. Even the subjects of a fundamentally repressive regime like that Darius are now slaves. Their freedom is severely limited, but that's not slavery.

Don

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Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Yeah, energy weapons as the Palace's only defenses is an assumption of mine, but it seems reasonable for the reasons you mention. We talked way too much about the destructiveness of wedges in the atmosphere.

However, another reason I mentioned the nasty effect of grasers in the atmosphere is that I don't think they should be readily used without pause, instead of just for emergency situations of dire circumstances. So, Palace defenses might include conventional missiles for attacking belligerents in the atmosphere, in case they get by the Palace's sting ships. Because with energy weapons there is the chance of missing the target and destroying something else.

Although, if grasers are used against ships in the atmosphere, I would imagine that even a near hit would bring the air breather down. "Shit, we just flew into a jet wash!"

Well, we've seen small wedges used in the atmosphere - the impeller head SAM that shot down Honor's pinnace on Grayson. (IIRC there are similarly small, short ranged, impeller missiles for anti-armor work) But there's a pretty big difference between a little man portable missiles with a wedge probably measured in meters and an full up anti-ship missile with a wedge measured in km. (And as far as I know shuttles and pinnaces don't operate their wedged in atmosphere -- and I believe they're the same order of magnitude in size as an anti-ship missile or CM)

However I would assume that the palace defenses would include those small impeller head SAMs for atmospheric targets -- so it wouldn't be purely energy mounts; even if the anti-ship weapons are.

[Though while I was looking for the description of the ground attack missiles from Peep assault shuttles I did stumble across this in the description of the defenses of Hades -- "There wasn't a single manned fortress in the entire star system. Shoals of mines—old-fashioned "contact" nukes designed to kill small craft as well as the laser buoys designed to shoot LACs and starships, and both seemingly thick enough to walk across—surrounded the planet and its moons, seeded with more sophisticated and modern energy platforms for good measure, and he suspected there were ground-based missiles on the planet, at least, if not on the moons." So it seems maybe you can mount anti-ship missiles on a planet, not just on an airless moon ]

n7axw wrote:There are no slaves on Darius. Textev in TEIF establishes that it's entire population is composed of Alignment members numbering about 4 billion. I would imagine that includes alphas, betas and so on down the chain of stratification.

To double check text evidence, go to the first encounter with Zach McBryde on page 166 of 688(23%) in my e pub edition which bn uses on its nooks.

Don

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kzt wrote:They are not 'slaves'. But they are not free either.

Galton was a harsher, harder and far more militant entity than Darius had ever been. It was also the reason that even though Galton's cloned workforce might not be called slaves they were still indentured servants -- workers indentured for a lifetime and, at best, a step below Mesa's seccies. Galton never treated them with the brutality of Manpower, their physical standard of living was actually quite good, and the perversions routinely practiced upon "pleasure slaves" were strictly prohibited, but they remained noncitizens, with no voice in their governance, their employment, the places they lived ...

Darius's cloned workforce had never been slaves, never been indentured. Like every Dariusan, their lives were more regimented than they might have been elsewhere, but that was because of the great cause in which they, just as much as any alpha- or beta-line member of the Alignment, were fully invested. And that, too, was part of the Plan.

kzt wrote:Zig-zagging has limitations when trying to dodge light speed weapons at a range of tens of km. Like your aircraft moves a cm or two during the time between the beam being emitted and it striking your aircraft.

cthia wrote:That is shocking. Makes you wonder about the size of those ground to orbital wedges. One stage would be used to reach escape velocity?

cthia wrote:That is shocking. Makes you wonder about the size of those ground to orbital wedges. One stage would be used to reach escape velocity?

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:That is shocking. Makes you wonder about the size of those ground to orbital wedges. One stage would be used to reach escape velocity?

Now that I think about it, we are told that (modern) pods, and ship's launchers, are quite powerful mass-drivers. (Though their effect doesn't seem to show up in the performance numbers in the books during ship to ship combat. I'd speculate because RFC didn't want to write his combat scenes in Excel )[/size]
So ground-based missiles might have powerful enough mass driver launch tubes to kick them up to pretty significant altitude prior to activating their wedges.
Lighting off a 10+ km wide wedge at, say, 100,000 or 200,000 feet has to be less disruptive to the atmosphere and destructive to the environment than doing so at 17,000 feet (which itself is about as low as you could activate one without the trailing edge momentarily impacting the ground as it formed )