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[Egan_BW]

bah, why not just long-gun them into submission?

[Eric Blank]

I didn't even think about blocking out the sun.

Also, isn't bombarding a planet with lots of small objects basically long gunning them? "Well stop tossing medium sized boulders/metal rods/derelict space junk at your major cities and coastlines when you surrender"

Just matters if you're launching it out of a rail gun (ferrous ammunition only?) Or strapping a rocket booster to it


What got me thinking about all this was that stupid "space force" proposal and the idea of creating a military agency to go fight aliens (also breaking the treaty regarding weapons in space, can't remember what it's called, which would certainly prompt Russia and China to launch whatever the hell they want (not that they already dont)) and the ramifications of "were going to go fight (potential) alien civilizations because our sovereignty or whatever" like, if there were aliens aware of us, and they haven't killed us all already, its probably because they don't want to. Giving them an excuse to kill us is a bad idea.

But it's probably a ploy to put weapons in orbit to shoot down Chinese spy satellites. Which also isn't a great idea because we don't really want to go to war with China right now anyway, do we?

[Lord Shonus]

The Space Force is primarily about consolidating things like recon satellites and GPS into one branch. Meanwhile the "no weapons in space" treaty only applies to nuclear weapons and anti-ballistic-missile systems. Kinetic weapons or satellite killers are unrestricted.

[Rolan7]

True, but if you're an interstellar civilization prepared to wipe out some primitives, it's probably still cheaper than a military campaign and doesn't risk retaliation or attempts to intercept your missiles.

Plus if another civilization asks "did you just glass those guys!?" You can just say "nope they got hit by a rock, not my fault"

I mean, probably the easiest way to wipe Earth clean would be to just park your giant-ass alien space fleet directly in the path of the Earth's sun, and just follow the planet around on its orbit, blocking enough sunlight to slowly freeze the planet. Then once all the undesirable life has been eliminated, you just let Earth warm up again and claim it.

Even if we knew what was happening, we're not advanced enough or cooperative enough to actually fight an attack like that.

I got curious as to whether the atmosphere would recover from that, and found some pretty cool (sorry) articles describing the sun simply disappearing.  It seems like the surface gets cold-in-a-physics-sense in just a few weeks, and the atmosphere, well... condenses/freezes.  Which I think mean it *should* recover when the sunlight is restored, though I shudder to imagine what happens when you expose frozen nitrogen seas to direct sunlight.  Gravity still works fine, but I wouldn't be surprised if some material gets ejected anyway.

I don't think any of this would penetrate much beneath the surface.  Mile after mile of dense rock insulates our molten core... I'm sure volcanoes would stay active.  Warm, but airless.  Ooh, I wonder how long it would take for the ocean depths to freeze?  Maybe some creatures could survive indefinitely by the ocean-floor heat vents?  They wouldn't be getting any biomatter from above anymore, though.

...What would a frozen ocean even look like?  That's a lot of expanding ice.  Seems to me like it'd be a sequence of the surface freezing, then inevitably cracking under above the force of the lower ice trying to expand against the incompressible seawater.  Causing massive high-pressure geysers?  That water eventually refreezes... and like a lake, this layer of ice would insulate the ocean quite a bit.  But inevitably more of the seawater freezes and pressure builds up again, shattering the surface ice.
And/or the ice expands up over the land, like some sort of glacier in some sort of ice age.  But SO much more so.  The land would be reshaped, presumably all of it, every human construction being ground under the walls of ice.  I wonder how fast such a glacier could go under such conditions?

So basically to survive this, you'd just need: 
Sufficient nuclear or geothermal energy
Enough plants to process your CO2 and keep you fed, lit by electric lamps
A deep enough vault to avoid getting evicted by a glacier, but possibly close enough that you can go get some ice (they'll stop... I have no idea when)

_{...sorry all, I've been exercising and hanging out with my mom lately, and it's made me a little manic I think.  Very... fortunate that I don't have any real alcohol at hand.}

[Eric Blank]

OK, there is a forest fire that's started near my house, like within 7 miles, and we've been asked to prepare to evacuate. So I got off work early to pack my bags. But I am stressed to the max whether the fire spreads this way or not.

At least we have the bags packed and someone willing to transport the horses and board them, but I dont want to lose my home. Or my parents to lose the only home they've been able to keep more than 4 years, and everything they've put into it.

There's at least four different tanker planes dropping retardant on the fire and we get to watch them come up over the hill so that's cool. For undesirable reasons but still.

[LordBaal]

I wonder, could you not make a... in spanish is "corta fuego". You preemptively cut down and/or burn a wide stretch of forest around your place so the fire can't really expand... however here wildfires are not that common and where they happen is mostly savanna like places were it's simply tall grass, not huge trees or anything.

Also I guess if it's 14 km of your place it's kinda late to try that.

Sincerely hope no one lose their homes pal. If there's any I could do to help you in any way, here I am.

[Kagus]

Controlled burns are a fairly common firefighter technique in the states too, the problem arises when you can't safely ensure the "controlled" part of that description because everything around is pure kindling and might burst into flames if you attempt to burn anything near it, even when watered down.

[Frumple]

Firebreak is the english word for it, LB, at least if you're doing it in front of an incoming blaze. It definitely is a common firefighting technique, at least when there's enough manpower to manage the work of it.

[dragdeler]

a

[LordBaal]

On second thought, depending on winds 14 km seems like a good enough distance and maybe something like that could be tried. Please keep us posted.

[Eric Blank]

It's pretty much out, just smoldering all night. Never made it to the ridgeline above our property, didn't have to evacuate. Hopefully safe for now. Still kinda worried and didn't get any good sleep due to the smoke.

[Gentlefish]

It's pretty much out, just smoldering all night. Never made it to the ridgeline above our property, didn't have to evacuate. Hopefully safe for now. Still kinda worried and didn't get any good sleep due to the smoke.

Hey hi hello coming back to the forum. You're also in Idaho yeah? Was that the fires near Lewiston or the ones near CDA? They were never this bad even, like, 10 years ago.

[Frumple]

Dream brain saw fit to inflict me with a high fidelity hallucination of a snake falling down on my bed. Woke up with my heat beating fast enough I may have been close to a literal heart attack, and about five ten minutes later it is still notably accelerated

Wasn't till a bit after waking up in a goddamn panic and nearabout literally jumping through my bedroom door that I realized I could actually see the damn thing, something that wasn't exactly likely in my more or less pitch black room. Fucking shit hell, I needed sleep, not murder attempts.

[scriver]

Brain: IT COULD HAPPEN! YOU HAVE TO BE READY!

[LordBaal]

At least is not Monococo the demon, chasing you to gruesomely kill you when you were a kid because you played with the wrong toy.