The Temple and Merlin

Undercover Fat Kid wrote:I think it would be entirely worthwhile to stage a city burner nuke within range of the temple, and threaten to use it.

The problem is, that we didn't knew, how deep exactly is the bunker under the Temple. The "city burner" described as "multi-megaton" weapon, but how many megaton exactly - we didn't knew. The Cheyenne Mountain Complex was designed to withstand a 30 megaton-blast with ground zero within 2 kilometers. Of course, OWL could probably construct something in hundreds of megaton scale, but i doubt that this weapon would be transportable and useful.

Also, let's not forget, that the surface blast on this scale would mean death of everyone in Zion and tremendous fallout over a good part of Temple's Lands.

And, also - we didn't knew exactly how important is "something under the Temple". From pure military logic, it would make a lot more sence for the Archangels to leave only a rely station here, and put their central control in some other point - some not so obvious point, that could not be assumed automatically as the main target. It would be quite unfortunate if Merlin would blow up Zion with all population and all charisian forces nearby only to suddenly realize that there was nothing more than a retranslator under Zion, and the real Archangels bunker was hidden somewhere under Tesselberg...

There are tantalizing fragments of mentions in the unclassified literature about shaped-charge or blast-focused nuclear explosives. The damage to Zion and the civilian casualties would probably still be unendurable.

It's too simple, but I kind of like the idea someone here presented of a PICA phoning up the Temple and saying "Computer, recognize Nimue Alban, authorization Omicron Omicron Alpha Yellow Daystar 2 7, open a root shell".

Expert snuggler wrote:There are tantalizing fragments of mentions in the unclassified literature about shaped-charge or blast-focused nuclear explosives. The damage to Zion and the civilian casualties would probably still be unendurable.

Well, i knew about that stuff enough. Yes, you could channel, as i recall, up to 80% of the total energy of the blast in relatively narrow channel - sort of plasma plume. But the problem is, with the multi-megaton weapons - even the 20 percent of ten-megaton blast would still be two megatons.

With something like 100-megaton bunker buster, the effect would be the same. The Zion evaporated with all population, the charisian army around are dead either from blast or from radiation effect, and a large ammount of highly-radioactive fallout thrown into atmosphere. Definitely not good.

It's too simple, but I kind of like the idea someone here presented of a PICA phoning up the Temple and saying "Computer, recognize Nimue Alban, authorization Omicron Omicron Alpha Yellow Daystar 2 7, open a root shell".

And the computer probably answered: "There is no Nimue Alban in the list of allowed users. The acsess code is outdated and not confirmed. Your acsess in unauthorised. Please stand by for downloading the termination program in your software."

Guys, you can speculate. Nothing wrong with that. But please (wince), think about the collateral damage...

Merlin and Cayleb are certainly sensitive to that.

Don

n7axw wrote:Guys, you can speculate. Nothing wrong with that. But please (wince), think about the collateral damage...

Merlin and Cayleb are certainly sensitive to that.

Don

Oh please. They already wrecked all the planet upside down - how many collateral damage they could additionally do? Actually, they should be pretty gratefull to Clyntahn, who allowed them to be complete good guys.
Without the Clyntahn, Merlin would be forced to orchestrate all situation by himself - and in Safeholdian therms, it would mean that he would be forced to engineer the planet-scale religious war (because there is simply no peaseful way out of the whole situation). Definitely not the job that he would like to do.

Let's not forget; the main Merlin mission is to change the situation on the Safehold. I.e. if Clyntahn wasn't here to destabilise the situation, it would be Merlin's work to do that. And in THAT case, he would be completely responsible for ALL collateral damage.

Dilandu wrote:

n7axw wrote:Guys, you can speculate. Nothing wrong with that. But please (wince), think about the collateral damage...

Merlin and Cayleb are certainly sensitive to that.

Don

Oh please. They already wrecked all the planet upside down - how many collateral damage they could additionally do? Actually, they should be pretty gratefull to Clyntahn, who allowed them to be complete good guys.
Without the Clyntahn, Merlin would be forced to orchestrate all situation by himself - and in Safeholdian therms, it would mean that he would be forced to engineer the planet-scale religious war (because there is simply no peaseful way out of the whole situation). Definitely not the job that he would like to do.

Let's not forget; the main Merlin mission is to change the situation on the Safehold. I.e. if Clyntahn wasn't here to destabilise the situation, it would be Merlin's work to do that. And in THAT case, he would be completely responsible for ALL collateral damage.

That doesn't mean that they will contemplate n-bombs going off in the midst of a city numbering more than a million people.

Don