Infrastructure

Somtaaw wrote:physical access to the shuttle, and all you need to do is cut the single (or few) wires necessary that connect sensors to the autopilot; or hell connecting the sensors everywhere.

Regarding nukes as well, on Mesa itself, Seccies were able to create multiple nukes, without even batting an eyelash. Seccies being second-class citizens, and probably unable to just go to the corner store, so to speak not literally, it's obviously not all that hard to make something that has a nuclear boom. Anton would have preferred simple Fuel-Air Explosives, but the seccies basically insisted on using nukes.

And if Seccies can make nukes in less than a month on Mesa, just about any other planet could make them even easier, I would imagine.

I think the nukes in question were misappropriated construction industry devices repurposed for terrorism.

And they had locator beacons which Anton found very difficult to disable.

And no, you can't just cut wires, because you have keeplives and polling going on, and in intelligently constructed systems this all timestamped and then encrypted. If you lose contact with the sensors designed to keep you from doing something horribly destructive you do not assume everything is cool. You assume something is horribly wrong and you get this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qnd-hdmgfk

Somtaaw wrote:And if Seccies can make nukes in less than a month on Mesa, just about any other planet could make them even easier, I would imagine.

NIT: They didn't make them, they stole them.

kzt wrote:And no, you can't just cut wires, because you have keeplives and polling going on, and in intelligently constructed systems this all timestamped and then encrypted. If you lose contact with the sensors designed to keep you from doing something horribly destructive you do not assume everything is cool. You assume something is horribly wrong and you get this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qnd-hdmgfk

To expand on the topic, the more advanced the technology is you get less and less catastrophic failure modes (ie. things that go boom) - what happens is that things just stop working because "something" is wrong and all the interlocks kick in.

Of course, things that stop working at unfortunate moments may cause catastrophic accidents as a secondary effect.

Joat42 wrote:

kzt wrote:And no, you can't just cut wires, because you have keeplives and polling going on, and in intelligently constructed systems this all timestamped and then encrypted. If you lose contact with the sensors designed to keep you from doing something horribly destructive you do not assume everything is cool. You assume something is horribly wrong and you get this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qnd-hdmgfk

To expand on the topic, the more advanced the technology is you get less and less catastrophic failure modes (ie. things that go boom) - what happens is that things just stop working because "something" is wrong and all the interlocks kick in.

Of course, things that stop working at unfortunate moments may cause catastrophic accidents as a secondary effect.

Reminds me of my old '87 Porsche 944 - for an 80's car, it was an over complicated, electronic pain in the butt. I had a CV bolt break on the rear transaxle one fine morning on the way into work - sensors detected the torque imbalance on the transaxle and automatically disengaged the clutch so I wouldn't rip the transaxle apart driving down the road.

Of course I happened to be stopped at a traffic light, which was in one of "those" parts of town, and no matter what I tried, my zippy little car just wouldn't go.

Almost every problem on the car was like that - Once the rubber "limp-home" clutch failed spectacularly, jamming the actual, undamaged, clutch mechanism with rubber shards. another time a nearby lightening strike fried both the primary and secondary fan temp sensors, causing both radiator fans to stop working. A block temperature sensor detected dangerous temperature levels in the aluminum block and shut off the fuel pump while sending a cathedral's worth of bells ringing in alarm in the cabin as I drove down a country road.

If you ever hit the "soft" RPM redline (software limited to 6200 RPM - 1000 RPM less than the "hard" redline), the computers would shut down the second fuel rail, turn off "performance mode" if it was engaged, limit the fuel in the primary fuel rail and disengage the clutch - not a fun thing to happen when you are passing a truck in heavy traffic.

Everything was designed to stop you from damaging the car - or damaging it more than it already was. Nice, but annoying. As everything gets more advanced, these features become normal - but at the same time, the failure modes become less prevalent.

Somtaaw wrote:physical access to the shuttle, and all you need to do is cut the single (or few) wires necessary that connect sensors to the autopilot; or hell connecting the sensors everywhere.

Regarding nukes as well, on Mesa itself, Seccies were able to create multiple nukes, without even batting an eyelash. Seccies being second-class citizens, and probably unable to just go to the corner store, so to speak not literally, it's obviously not all that hard to make something that has a nuclear boom. Anton would have preferred simple Fuel-Air Explosives, but the seccies basically insisted on using nukes.

And if Seccies can make nukes in less than a month on Mesa, just about any other planet could make them even easier, I would imagine.

IIRC the seccies stole a construction nuke. Something like the U.S. Operation Plowshares program in the 1960's and 1970's. The USSR had something similar but it was almost as big a flop as plowshares was.

Somtaaw wrote:And if Seccies can make nukes in less than a month on Mesa, just about any other planet could make them even easier, I would imagine.

A nasty-minded person might wonder whether the seccies got access to nukes through MAlign machinations.

The E wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:And if Seccies can make nukes in less than a month on Mesa, just about any other planet could make them even easier, I would imagine.

A nasty-minded person might wonder whether the seccies got access to nukes through MAlign machinations.

Followed by the shock of the very center of the Onion, and the exposure to the nuke of the children of the Detweilers? I think not.

The Alignment does not do much. They do not have particularly direct power. They apply small, small efforts in carefully selected places to make certain fairly likely things they'd favor happen sometimes and that unlikely things they would not happen less often. Lots and lots and LOTS of things they have nothing whatever to do with making happen DO happen to and around them too.

It wouldn't take nasty-mindedness - it'd take a serious medical condition in need of institutionalization and treatment. Or at least, reading a story, a wildly excessive idea of how omnipresent the Alignment's operatives are.

The E wrote:A nasty-minded person might wonder whether the seccies got access to nukes through MAlign machinations.

JeffEngel wrote:Followed by the shock of the very center of the Onion, and the exposure to the nuke of the children of the Detweilers? I think not.

The Alignment does not do much. They do not have particularly direct power. They apply small, small efforts in carefully selected places to make certain fairly likely things they'd favor happen sometimes and that unlikely things they would not happen less often. Lots and lots and LOTS of things they have nothing whatever to do with making happen DO happen to and around them too.

It wouldn't take nasty-mindedness - it'd take a serious medical condition in need of institutionalization and treatment. Or at least, reading a story, a wildly excessive idea of how omnipresent the Alignment's operatives are.

Besides which, if they'd known that Cachet and Zilwiki were on Mesa, they'd have scooped them up promptly. You'd have been able to feel the shock wave from how fast they'd have done it.