Eridani Edict Violation of the most Dismissive Kind...

This is getting to be like the discussion over how to use the captured Solly SDs. I wonder how long it will last...

Don

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Bluesqueak wrote:In the book he wrote, the Seccie resistance fighters steal the nuke, the Seccie resistance fighters put David in charge of it (despite hearing how he'd love to blow up somewhere like Green Pines),and the Seccie resistance fighters decide to help Anton and Victor escape with the vital information.

Anton's contribution is to remove the locator so that they don't all get captured and provide the group with a set of plans for its detonation that are designed to minimise civilian casualties. Later, he suggests that detonating the bomb would now be pointless, and asks Carl to tell David and Karen to stand down and go to ground.

An enemy agent of a nation at legally declared war with Mesa gives technical advice to a local resistance group. Colour me shocked.

As @Papillion has said, we can't give Zilwicki omniscient powers, or hand him complete control of a group he doesn't have control over, or basically turn him into someone who failed to use his godlike powers to stop a nuclear explosion.

Because, did I mention, the above scenario did not happen in the book?

And yet there were actions Zilwicki could have taken to have prevented David from having control of a working nuke. They would have been detrimental to the ultimate success of his mission but they did exist. Because there was a point where he had physical access to the nukes and to David - it's not loke he was only consulting via videoconference unable to take any physical action.

Just a quick list:
1) He could have refused to disable the locator beacons - making it more likely that the nukes would be recovered before they were used.
2) He probably could have disabled the nukes or their triggers while hacking them.
3) He could have attacked and crippled or killed David when he advocated nuking Mesan families
4) He could have anonymously turned in the seccies
5) He could likely have killed them all to preserve his mission and prevent the nukes
6) He probably could have rigged the nuke so it requited him or Cachat to remotely detonate
7) He probably could have rigged the nuke to something like GPS so it could only be detonated in the planned location
8) He could have strenuously objected to handing back a nuke to someone his own group called bloodthirsty and who had advocated for nuking civilians

Now like I said, many of those are somewhat to extremely likely to compromise his mission. But he did choose to assist and not object or work against the Seccies plan to use their stolen nukes - despite the obvious risks. So lets not pretend there was nothing he could do and he had no choice but to go along.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Bluesqueak wrote:In the book he wrote, the Seccie resistance fighters steal the nuke, the Seccie resistance fighters put David in charge of it (despite hearing how he'd love to blow up somewhere like Green Pines),and the Seccie resistance fighters decide to help Anton and Victor escape with the vital information.

Anton's contribution is to remove the locator so that they don't all get captured and provide the group with a set of plans for its detonation that are designed to minimise civilian casualties. Later, he suggests that detonating the bomb would now be pointless, and asks Carl to tell David and Karen to stand down and go to ground.

An enemy agent of a nation at legally declared war with Mesa gives technical advice to a local resistance group. Colour me shocked.

As @Papillion has said, we can't give Zilwicki omniscient powers, or hand him complete control of a group he doesn't have control over, or basically turn him into someone who failed to use his godlike powers to stop a nuclear explosion.

Because, did I mention, the above scenario did not happen in the book?

And yet there were actions Zilwicki could have taken to have prevented David from having control of a working nuke. They would have been detrimental to the ultimate success of his mission but they did exist. Because there was a point where he had physical access to the nukes and to David - it's not loke he was only consulting via videoconference unable to take any physical action.

Just a quick list:
1) He could have refused to disable the locator beacons - making it more likely that the nukes would be recovered before they were used.
2) He probably could have disabled the nukes or their triggers while hacking them.
3) He could have attacked and crippled or killed David when he advocated nuking Mesan families
4) He could have anonymously turned in the seccies
5) He could likely have killed them all to preserve his mission and prevent the nukes
6) He probably could have rigged the nuke so it requited him or Cachat to remotely detonate
7) He probably could have rigged the nuke to something like GPS so it could only be detonated in the planned location
8) He could have strenuously objected to handing back a nuke to someone his own group called bloodthirsty and who had advocated for nuking civilians

Now like I said, many of those are somewhat to extremely likely to compromise his mission. But he did choose to assist and not object or work against the Seccies plan to use their stolen nukes - despite the obvious risks. So lets not pretend there was nothing he could do and he had no choice but to go along.

The point is there are really no good choices. How important was his mission? That was what Anton decided to give priority to. It was important to get the info about the Alignment out along with Simoes. Although he did not have advance knowledge of what David would do, he was well aware that he was taking risks both ways. Did he make the right choice? I think so. Given what he knew, not getting out the info could have had catastrophic consequences for Manticore and the Haven sector generally.

But you decide. How you make Anton's choices will reveal your priorities.

Don

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The locator had two inherent possibilities IIRC (maybe not likely):
1) It could bring concerned individuals or the authorities to the location of the device, or 2)it could be used to remotely detonate the device.

Option one is bad option 2 is ... OOPS.

n7axw wrote:This is getting to be like the discussion over how to use the captured Solly SDs. I wonder how long it will last...

Don

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We haven't gotten to "Count Pointercount" just yet; with people hurling epithets at each other.

Jonathan_S wrote:And yet there were actions Zilwicki could have taken to have prevented David from having control of a working nuke. They would have been detrimental to the ultimate success of his mission but they did exist. Because there was a point where he had physical access to the nukes and to David - it's not loke he was only consulting via videoconference unable to take any physical action.

Just a quick list:
1) He could have refused to disable the locator beacons - making it more likely that the nukes would be recovered before they were used.
2) He probably could have disabled the nukes or their triggers while hacking them.
3) He could have attacked and crippled or killed David when he advocated nuking Mesan families
4) He could have anonymously turned in the seccies
5) He could likely have killed them all to preserve his mission and prevent the nukes
6) He probably could have rigged the nuke so it requited him or Cachat to remotely detonate
7) He probably could have rigged the nuke to something like GPS so it could only be detonated in the planned location
8) He could have strenuously objected to handing back a nuke to someone his own group called bloodthirsty and who had advocated for nuking civilians

Now like I said, many of those are somewhat to extremely likely to compromise his mission. But he did choose to assist and not object or work against the Seccies plan to use their stolen nukes - despite the obvious risks. So lets not pretend there was nothing he could do and he had no choice but to go along.

I'd say that a lot of your suggestions are things the author could have done - again, people are falling into the trap of granting Zilwicki omniscience.

Which is my basic problem. It's not that 'there was nothing he could do and he had no choice but to go along' - it's that posters are either rewriting what he did do, or presuming that he can see into the future. They're assigning him major responsibility for something he played a minor part in. As I keep saying, he's the technician who repairs the missile that Honor then uses to nuke New Chicago. If the technician had known Honor was going to do that, do you think he'd have repaired the missile?

I would say that most of your points require that ability to see into the future. Without that ability to know what this particular nuke will end up doing, Zilwicki has only bad choices - and takes the one he thinks at the time will be less bad.

Without foreknowledge:

1) Probably result in either the Seccies getting caught (best case) or the nuke being detonated remotely (worst case).
2) That's possible, but to quote Anton: "Which part of 'this is really quite tricky' do you not understand?"
3) Bit extreme. Other people normally take a dim view of someone crippling a mate over verbal threats.
4) Who would have then turned him and Victor in under interrogation - mission failure time.
5) You're probably confusing Anton with Victor. But even Victor only kills in batch lots when he's under direct, immediate threat or the person has already done something heinous.
6) See 2)
7) The plan had to be adjusted on the fly - which was how David Pritchard ended up in Green Park with the nuke. Limiting the nukes to particular locations would have limited the mission options.
8) And the Seccies (whose support he needed for his mission success) could have taken their toys and gone home. It's in the book that he failed to convince them to use some other kind of bomb.

With foreknowledge he would probably have done any or all of them. But Anton Zilwicki is not the author, nor does he know he's a protagonist in a book. He doesn't know that he's in a world where a character who makes extreme threats WILL later try to carry them out. He doesn't know that his plans to persuade the Seccies to use their nukes in locations that limit civilian deaths won't work, and he doesn't know that David will a) refuse to do what Carl tells him and b) crash-land in a park full of kids.

He's not the author. The author decided to make the protagonist character in his novel a minor actor in the matter of the nuke. Later on, Mesan propaganda tries to re-cast Zilwicki as the major actor.

But the major actors are two minor characters: David Pritchard and Carl Hansen.

The purpose of the Green Park nuke is to highlight the double standards of the Mesan Alignment. They're crying real tears over the death of those Citizen kids ... and then later use another nuke on an equally blameless group of Citizen kids. It's even possible that the stolen nuke was one that was going to be used as part of Houdini, because we know the MAlign was using one of those 'construction' nukes under Gamma Centre.

And protagonists aren't always the protagonist of a particular plot or subplot. It wasn't the mighty Honor Harrington who caused the escape from State Security, it was the minor character of (Sir) Horace Harkness. There's even a little joke later on about that tendency to see the protagonist as responsible for everything.

Which is, I think, what's happening here.

Bluesqueak wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:And yet there were actions Zilwicki could have taken to have prevented David from having control of a working nuke. They would have been detrimental to the ultimate success of his mission but they did exist. Because there was a point where he had physical access to the nukes and to David - it's not loke he was only consulting via videoconference unable to take any physical action.

Just a quick list:
1) He could have refused to disable the locator beacons - making it more likely that the nukes would be recovered before they were used.
2) He probably could have disabled the nukes or their triggers while hacking them.
3) He could have attacked and crippled or killed David when he advocated nuking Mesan families
4) He could have anonymously turned in the seccies
5) He could likely have killed them all to preserve his mission and prevent the nukes
6) He probably could have rigged the nuke so it requited him or Cachat to remotely detonate
7) He probably could have rigged the nuke to something like GPS so it could only be detonated in the planned location
8) He could have strenuously objected to handing back a nuke to someone his own group called bloodthirsty and who had advocated for nuking civilians

Now like I said, many of those are somewhat to extremely likely to compromise his mission. But he did choose to assist and not object or work against the Seccies plan to use their stolen nukes - despite the obvious risks. So lets not pretend there was nothing he could do and he had no choice but to go along.

I'd say that a lot of your suggestions are things the author could have done - again, people are falling into the trap of granting Zilwicki omniscience.

Which is my basic problem. It's not that 'there was nothing he could do and he had no choice but to go along' - it's that posters are either rewriting what he did do, or presuming that he can see into the future. They're assigning him major responsibility for something he played a minor part in. As I keep saying, he's the technician who repairs the missile that Honor then uses to nuke New Chicago. If the technician had known Honor was going to do that, do you think he'd have repaired the missile?

I would say that most of your points require that ability to see into the future. Without that ability to know what this particular nuke will end up doing, Zilwicki has only bad choices - and takes the one he thinks at the time will be less bad.

Without foreknowledge:

1) Probably result in either the Seccies getting caught (best case) or the nuke being detonated remotely (worst case).
2) That's possible, but to quote Anton: "Which part of 'this is really quite tricky' do you not understand?"
3) Bit extreme. Other people normally take a dim view of someone crippling a mate over verbal threats.
4) Who would have then turned him and Victor in under interrogation - mission failure time.
5) You're probably confusing Anton with Victor. But even Victor only kills in batch lots when he's under direct, immediate threat or the person has already done something heinous.
6) See 2)
7) The plan had to be adjusted on the fly - which was how David Pritchard ended up in Green Park with the nuke. Limiting the nukes to particular locations would have limited the mission options.
8) And the Seccies (whose support he needed for his mission success) could have taken their toys and gone home. It's in the book that he failed to convince them to use some other kind of bomb.

With foreknowledge he would probably have done any or all of them. But Anton Zilwicki is not the author, nor does he know he's a protagonist in a book. He doesn't know that he's in a world where a character who makes extreme threats WILL later try to carry them out. He doesn't know that his plans to persuade the Seccies to use their nukes in locations that limit civilian deaths won't work, and he doesn't know that David will a) refuse to do what Carl tells him and b) crash-land in a park full of kids.

He's not the author. The author decided to make the protagonist character in his novel a minor actor in the matter of the nuke. Later on, Mesan propaganda tries to re-cast Zilwicki as the major actor.

But the major actors are two minor characters: David Pritchard and Carl Hansen.

The purpose of the Green Park nuke is to highlight the double standards of the Mesan Alignment. They're crying real tears over the death of those Citizen kids ... and then later use another nuke on an equally blameless group of Citizen kids. It's even possible that the stolen nuke was one that was going to be used as part of Houdini, because we know the MAlign was using one of those 'construction' nukes under Gamma Centre.

And protagonists aren't always the protagonist of a particular plot or subplot. It wasn't the mighty Honor Harrington who caused the escape from State Security, it was the minor character of (Sir) Horace Harkness. There's even a little joke later on about that tendency to see the protagonist as responsible for everything.

Which is, I think, what's happening here.

It is quite clear what Zilwicki should have done. He should have immediately gone to Mesan Security, turned himself in and denounced the seccies.

That way he would have been tortured to death after doing some propaganda films about the horrid Manties and how sweet Mesans are and the seccies would all have been arrested and tortured to find other unhappy ones.

Since we know the Mesans would never, never, ever use nukes against their own people...

I know it sounds stupid (because it is) but this seems to be the argument of some people.

Why not discuss something really vital? Like the high price of food on Mesa?

Bluesqueak wrote:The purpose of the Green Park nuke is to highlight the double standards of the Mesan Alignment.

No, the purpose was to highlight the double standard of the protagonists. It’s OK is we accidentally kill a few thousand innocent kids because our hears are pure, and besides, the end justifies the means.

How about we get the next book and read for a while?

kzt wrote:

Bluesqueak wrote:The purpose of the Green Park nuke is to highlight the double standards of the Mesan Alignment.

No, the purpose was to highlight the double standard of the protagonists. It’s OK is we accidentally kill a few thousand innocent kids because our hears are pure, and besides, the end justifies the means.

Well. At least we're now down to 'accidental'.

Next target is to blame the right characters...