Comedy/Tragedy of Errors: Stupidity in the Honorverse

dscott8 wrote:

n7axw wrote:I thought that kidnapping Helen Zilwicke was a less than bright move on the part of the Peep ambassador. Using the Scrags was even worse.

Don

The real stupidity in that case was the way his superiors "handled" Anton Zilwicki. If they'd had orders from the First Space Lord to piss him off, they couldn't have done more, and pissing off a superhacker when you have online records of playing footsie with Manpower is not a good move. Nor is telling a single Dad to be cool over his daughter's kidnapping wise.

Actually I think it was more of a case of his superiors putting an official break in between them and him. They knew what he was going to do but needed to cover the rear of the Manticore government. If things went really bad he could be denounced and left to hang.

those two idiots didn't have enough brain cells to try and distance themselves and SKM from whatever Anton was going to do.

I suspect the ambasdor got his position as part of a deal for the income tax or something else which needed widespread support to go through. Young was just being a young, he didn't care about some peasant and his daughter, not when the SKM was about to massively embarrass the CPS by having Parnell explain what really happened during the coup.

Anton pointed that unless you read his file carefully no-one had a clue that his speciality when a yard dog was software

I wonder are Hendrix Young and Janver, cellmates?

Dauntless wrote:those two idiots didn't have enough brain cells to try and distance themselves and SKM from whatever Anton was going to do.

I suspect the ambasdor got his position as part of a deal for the income tax or something else which needed widespread support to go through. Young was just being a young, he didn't care about some peasant and his daughter, not when the SKM was about to massively embarrass the CPS by having Parnell explain what really happened during the coup.

Anton pointed that unless you read his file carefully no-one had a clue that his speciality when a yard dog was software

If you're his superior officer, you'd damned well better have read his file carefully.

His CO was a Young!

so obviously promoted way past his competence levels and i got the impression that he spent more time partying and trying to play politics then he did actual navy work.

does this strike you as the kind of person who bothers to read the personnel files of those assigned to him? more likely it gets dumped on his flag lieutenant or his XO (who in all likelihood will be doing Young's job for him), who either because he has a million things to do or because his boss is a jerk doesn't point out any interesting facts that can be found in Anton's personnel file

More importantly, Anton was ONI. While an attache is automatically suspect, they aren't invariably in the business. In this case, you can count on Young _not_ being fully briefed on ONI ops or personnel [whatever he may have thought - you'll recall that they still had a competent 2ndSL at this point] - and personnel files will have been edited as needed to match the public covers of the ONI staff on station. In Anton's case, the careful reading would probably involve knowing exactly what work was being done at each of his BuShips duty assignments. Odds are no one person in the RMN would know that without looking up historical records going back several reorganisations.

Dauntless wrote:His CO was a Young!

so obviously promoted way past his competence levels and i got the impression that he spent more time partying and trying to play politics then he did actual navy work.

does this strike you as the kind of person who bothers to read the personnel files of those assigned to him? more likely it gets dumped on his flag lieutenant or his XO (who in all likelihood will be doing Young's job for him), who either because he has a million things to do or because his boss is a jerk doesn't point out any interesting facts that can be found in Anton's personnel file

It doesn't happen on screen, but the strategy of the Western European Federation during the Final War has got to be the single dumbest idea in the history of fictional histories "Lets genetically engineer a bunch of super viruses and unleash them on the masses. We are all vaccinated. There is no way that will backfire." Only a complete ass-hat would forget that viruses mutate and vaccines quickly become useless.

GabrialSagan wrote:It doesn't happen on screen, but the strategy of the Western European Federation during the Final War has got to be the single dumbest idea in the history of fictional histories "Lets genetically engineer a bunch of super viruses and unleash them on the masses. We are all vaccinated. There is no way that will backfire." Only a complete ass-hat would forget that viruses mutate and vaccines quickly become useless.

You should read the book "Biohazard" by Ken Alibek. He was the head of the Soviet Biowarfare unit Biopreparat and he was busily building offensive bio weapons until 1991 when he defected. Yes, the Soviets signed a treaty where they solmley promised to not do this years earlier, they lied. These sorts of problems are not insolvable, and you are not the first person to think of them

kzt wrote:

GabrialSagan wrote:It doesn't happen on screen, but the strategy of the Western European Federation during the Final War has got to be the single dumbest idea in the history of fictional histories "Lets genetically engineer a bunch of super viruses and unleash them on the masses. We are all vaccinated. There is no way that will backfire." Only a complete ass-hat would forget that viruses mutate and vaccines quickly become useless.

You should read the book "Biohazard" by Ken Alibek. He was the head of the Soviet Biowarfare unit Biopreparat and he was busily building offensive bio weapons until 1991 when he defected. Yes, the Soviets signed a treaty where they solmley promised to not do this years earlier, they lied. These sorts of problems are not insolvable, and you are not the first person to think of them

Aye, but the Soviets were not stupid enough to actually unleash them in Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, or any of the other places they launched military offenses.

GabrialSagan wrote:
Aye, but the Soviets were not stupid enough to actually unleash them in Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, or any of the other places they launched military offenses.

They were saving them for the big one. SS-18 warheads filled with modified smallpox bomblets were not tactical tools.