Grrl Power #1028 - Nope field
Added 2022-03-03 11:01:01 +0000 UTCThanks so much for your support! For serious!
You would think that force fields would change warfare considerably, but honestly I think at most they would cause a fairly temporary disruption. The first ironclads and tanks probably had a few months of feeling pretty invincible, but really all they did was force someone to invent a better canon or landmine or armor piercing whatsit. A force field is the next step. They just raise the bar higher for anyone on offense, so instead of the lone insurgent being able to take down a blackhawk or whatever with a lucky RPG, now it takes three hits in rapid succession, or five, or two RPG's followed by a TOW or whatever, depending entirely on the properties of the shield.
It's got to be wildly demoralizing to score a direct hit on something and not even fuck up the paint job. A lot of people would probably jump straight to movies like War of the Worlds or Independence Day where the shields are effectively invincible. Eventually they'll figure out how much damage a shield can take, and the problem won't seem as insurmountable. They'll be downright surmountable, or I dare say, mountable, especially once people get their hands on the inevitable next generation pew pews.
As many of you mentioned in the comments under the previous page, locks do in fact exist for raising and lowering ships. Thank you to the 270th person to point that out. I'm well aware, and so are Deus and Sydney, but Sydney was trying to picture something compatible with structures like the Hoover Dam. A single lock that could elevate a super shipping container that far in a single go would be a far more impressive engineering feat than the dam itself. It would be possible to do in a series of enormous yet shallower locks, but at a certain point, it's probably more efficient to offload the ship, move the shipping containers up an elevator, and reload them on another ship that just travels between locks, or really, once you get to that point, just stick 'em on a train.
And yes, you can totally get power out of a river without having to build something as crazy as the Hoover. A series of smaller dams is probably geographically much more realistic for the Zambezi anyway. It's just when you're talking about dams around Sydney, the first and probably only thing she's going to picture is the Hoover dam. She's not especially worldly or well traveled, and the Hoover dam has been blown up and earthquaked in movies plenty of times, so that's her mental image of a dam.
Man, it is so hard to type "dam" without typing "damn" and then having to erase the "n." I guess I don't have that much cause to talk about dams that much online.
Comments
...is that a Team Rocket charm... on the rocket launcher? :P
Kevin Wright
2022-03-05 20:12:01 +0000 UTCWe weren't responding so much to the imagined imagery but rather your speculation in the text that no such locks existed
Andrew Park
2022-03-04 11:52:36 +0000 UTCIt grows harder to hate the guy, even if you can't support his goals.
PSadlon
2022-03-04 03:40:15 +0000 UTCAs I mentioned last time, offence vs. defence is the age old conflict, and generally defence loses to offence before too long. The biggest problem with defence is that it has to cover everything from all directions (which it usually cannot as it weighs/ costs too much, which is why tanks have lighter armour in some places that it hopes are less likely to be hit). Meanwhile, offence just focuses on one small spot, punches through and you are done. Because of this, modern warships have no armour to speak of. They rely on not getting hit in the first place (stealth, anti-missile systems, killing the other guy first, etc,( So while in the short term they'd need to use multiple current weapons to penetrate the energy shield, the aforementioned next generation of pew-pew would just breach the shield in a very small spot and then pierce the target. If it doesn't hit anywhere important, the target lives, otherwise it dies. For example, in the 2003 Iraqi invasion I saw pictures of T-55s killed by the 25mm cannon on an M2 Bradley, and by the 120 mm cannon on an M1 Abrams. The 120 just blows the obsolete tank up via pure kinetic energy. The 25 however penetrates the armour in one place; if it hits the engine it is mission killed (unable to operate), if it hits the crew compartment... the crew is shredded by spalling from the breached armour and the shell itself. Either case the 25 leaves the T55 looking more or less intact until you find the hole or look inside. Also, energy shields are extremely energy inefficient, to project a field that can stop an attack of X mega-joules, but covers the entire plane? That takes a lot of power. Like a LOT of power (its one of the main reasons why energy shields may never exist in the real world().
Eric Loken
2022-03-03 19:33:42 +0000 UTCI hate to say it, but I think Sydney and that Alari would not only get along great, but Sydney might be a good influence on her...
JasonAW3
2022-03-03 17:09:32 +0000 UTCand does the force field attenuate(weaken) or diffract (bend) incoming beams?
Ian Birchenough
2022-03-03 16:02:37 +0000 UTCI'd think a laser would be the best choice, unless the force field was opaque. The main trick would be keeping it focussed on one point long enough to heat up something important, or making a powerful enough laser to dump all that heat in quickly enough.
Sam Johnson
2022-03-03 14:50:22 +0000 UTCDeus must be VERY confident none of the global super powers will want to come and take away his toys, especially how he's just showing a bunch of them to Maxima. Deus doesn't seem to be one to underestimate people, so I'm guessing all his plans are still going ... well as planned.
Seth Swanson
2022-03-03 14:28:51 +0000 UTCI have questions. How permeable is the field? That *looks* like an airfoil-lift vehicle. How fast does the craft fly before the field is triggered be the air, thus instantly killing the pilot and destroying the craft? Same with the exhaust. Or maybe there are ‘holes’ front and rear to allow thrust and air flow? Maybe the field has a detection mechanism and only triggers long enough to defeat incoming threats?
Christopher Upton
2022-03-03 13:49:07 +0000 UTCThat just opens up the question about how much damage Halo's shield can take.
Ray
2022-03-03 13:45:37 +0000 UTCSowell's comments on Africa's geography is a real eye-opener: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fof9xZA7dpg
Noise
2022-03-03 13:24:28 +0000 UTCDeus is missing the biggest revenue-generating technology he has - the energy storage/generation device powering this shield. It's not as sexy but the utility would be unmatched, and everyone, military and civilian alike, would need them.
rhekke
2022-03-03 13:09:02 +0000 UTCI’m sure Max can restrain herself from a further test against the shield.
Andrew
2022-03-03 12:44:11 +0000 UTCI don't really agree with that point about tanks only creating the need for a stronger cannon tho. Even in a world with efficient anti-armor weapons, they are still immune to small arms fire, wich is what lots of infantery men will carry ; being vulnerable only to dedicated weapons creates a notable evolution in tactics and how you have to organize your armies (energy shields could do the same if they required specific "shield disruptors" that needed to be used by special weapons teams). Also, tanks have unparalleled mobility compared with anything that existed up to that point. They are one reason why we don't really have trench warfare like in WW1 any more.
Etienne M.J. Dubourg
2022-03-03 12:40:17 +0000 UTCWhy am I not surprised she has that in her contract.
Graeme Thorburn
2022-03-03 11:33:13 +0000 UTCLove the Team Rocket toy hanging on the rocket launcher. Gave me the sniggers
2022-03-03 11:28:14 +0000 UTCWhat was Queen of the Dams about, again?
Tomek Kowal
2022-03-03 11:25:06 +0000 UTCForce fields will be enormously valuable even if/when weapons get made to go through them. Just being proof against sucking debris or some hapless bird into an engine will reduce wear, tear and even outright risk of crashing very noticeably.
Simon Magid
2022-03-03 11:17:00 +0000 UTCI've not seen a lot of damns in movies now that I think about it
Forecaster
2022-03-03 11:11:57 +0000 UTCDave needs to watch his dam spelling.
Dan Merget
2022-03-03 11:07:54 +0000 UTCLoralara has just the best job, lol
Michael Obert
2022-03-03 11:02:45 +0000 UTC
