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@SwordNimiForPresident

We've seen Elantrians on other planets in the Cosmere. We've only seen them use their magic on Sel. We've only seen their magic at full power near their magic city. I don't know how effective they would be off world but I'm assuming not very.  And maybe the Elantrians can undue damage of a nuclear weapon.  They cannot bring back the people it would kill.  Now if Elantrians weren't Geographically locked in power I could see them ruling the Cosmere against all comers. But with their limits the planet is extremely vulnerable. 

For the super Rare Fullborn,  I think you might be overestimating their admittedly broken power set. Aluminum blocks Investiture.  Fire melts even Invested metalminds.  I'm not even saying the first shot kills the guy. As long as you have weapons that can hit the guy from miles off you keep pounding him. You keep tossing aluminum at him, keep that rate of fire going. He will go down eventually.  The more Fullborn there are the harder the strategy but it can be done.  Rashek knew it could be done,  else he wouldn't have suppressed knowledge of firearms so completely. In no scenario are you one-shot killing a Fullborn,  but continuously bombarding the guy with planes flying 5 miles up, hitting him with artillery bouncing berries with aluminum shrapnel that annihilates grid squares at a time, every structure rigged to explode,  thermite, napalm, it's death by 1000 cuts. And once the Fullborn fall the rest of the planet stands no chance. 

As I look at it, Roshar stands the best chance of standing up to modern Terra and the havoc we can bring. There defense does not rely on one or two ridiculously powerful individuals like Scadrial or one city with people who aren't even close to as powerful when they stray from their amplified home. They can counterpunch with things we have no defense for (Cognitive Realm, Soulcasting, ect), and they have command over physics that is absolutely terrifying for a modern day person who is tasked to fight them. They have limited instantaneous travel, faster than light communication,  and the terrain control that would make our vehicles useless. And if Jasnah and friends get one look at a science library from our world I'm not sure that there's anything we could do to them. We have one major advantage over Roshar.  Disease immunity.  If they're calling a common cold a plague I don't know how they deal with our true whammies. I'm talking malaria.  Cholera. Bubonic plague. Ebola. Stormlight healing beats some of this stuff but not all. And again,  no protections for the average joe. The Listeners wouldn't be effected by the natural stuff but something could be cooked up just for them as well. Beating Roshar means crippling their war machine before it has a chance to start up.  Send in the plague carriers to the most populous cities in Roshar, fast actors like Ebola first. 

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6 hours ago, Bigmikey357 said:

@SwordNimiForPresident

We've seen Elantrians on other planets in the Cosmere. We've only seen them use their magic on Sel. We've only seen their magic at full power near their magic city. I don't know how effective they would be off world but I'm assuming not very.  And maybe the Elantrians can undue damage of a nuclear weapon.  They cannot bring back the people it would kill.  Now if Elantrians weren't Geographically locked in power I could see them ruling the Cosmere against all comers. But with their limits the planet is extremely vulnerable.

Sure we don't see them use Aon Dor outside of Sel, it's very nature makes that impossible. But in Secret History they demonstrate the power to steal a Shard. I can't think of something more powerful than that.

6 hours ago, Bigmikey357 said:

For the super Rare Fullborn,  I think you might be overestimating their admittedly broken power set. Aluminum blocks Investiture.  Fire melts even Invested metalminds.  I'm not even saying the first shot kills the guy. As long as you have weapons that can hit the guy from miles off you keep pounding him. You keep tossing aluminum at him, keep that rate of fire going. He will go down eventually.  The more Fullborn there are the harder the strategy but it can be done.  Rashek knew it could be done,  else he wouldn't have suppressed knowledge of firearms so completely. In no scenario are you one-shot killing a Fullborn,  but continuously bombarding the guy with planes flying 5 miles up, hitting him with artillery bouncing berries with aluminum shrapnel that annihilates grid squares at a time, every structure rigged to explode,  thermite, napalm, it's death by 1000 cuts. And once the Fullborn fall the rest of the planet stands no chance.

It doesn't matter how rare they are, you only really need one.

The issue is that you are talking about targeting them with artillery and aircraft. In real life both of these things depend on forward observers. If the FO literally can't see the Fullborn because they can move faster than sight. How are you going to target them? You literally cannot hit them with your conventional weapons.

Rashek worried about guns because he was a lazy slob. He recognized that any idiot can shoot a gun with very little training. He didn't want to put such a powerful weapon into the hands of potential revolutionaries who might be able to overpower his armies. If they beat his armies, he is stuck killing them all himself. Like I said, lazy slob.

Again, bombing from altitude only works if you have eyes on the ground.

Artillery rounds are actually pretty much hollow shells filled with high explosive. They mostly depend on the environment for shrapnel.

Thermite would be effective if you could land a hit (you can't)

Napalm would be useless.

It would be our death while inflicting zero cuts. We literally could not hit them, we do not have the means to do so.

Without them the rest of the planet poses a logistical nightmare. How do you run supply lines for millions of soldiers across space? At our current tech levels, its a challenge to keep the handful of people in the ISS supplied. We established that we have FTL not that we also invented space elevators with billion ton weight limits.

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@SwordNimiForPresident ok u have convinced me that Scadrial isn't as easy to conquer as I thought. 

 

I still think it can be done but I accept there's a big chance that they can hold out.

Elantris tho I completely disagree with.  

U said nukes wouldn't effect magic but that's not how investiture in the Cosmere works. They are within jurisdiction of other laws of physics.

Saying Elantrians won't get nuked cause of magic , is like saying a Mistborn need not fear stonehead arrows. 

We have seen Mistborn being terrified and even falling to stone arrows. 

Also we could remove all unnecessary metal or get them galvanized with aluminum. 

And while they are op too. They aren't as op as fullborn and they are geographically locked to a very small city. 

They emotionally find it hard to live. Let's see them try to live through trauma a war with us Earthians will bring. 

Roshar I agree is impossible to conquer. The best we can do is scour the landscape with nukes and hope they all die. Maybe concentrate the atmosphere with all sorts of natural or engineered viruses. 

Taldain seems easy tho.

Nalthis might be hard but I think we can overrun lifeless and awakened stone with some heavy artillery.

If they create more smoking swords. Yep then we are stormed. But the swords still need someone to world them and lots of investivure to sustain lest they subsume the souls of the wielders themselves. 

It wouldn't be too hard to snipe out the wielders. And then maintain a mile wide quarentine over them. With orders to snipe out anyone who touches the sword. Friend or foe. 

Fots seems easy enough to capture. 

Threnody. Idk. Ambiguous information. 

But if it's only shades. I guess aluminum could be of use. Maybe. Idk. 

And there's the Evil. 

Probably best left alone. Although we could bring a nuclear winter on them. 

Braize is probably untouchable. They are already dead . What more could we possibly do ?

Ashyn might be easy. Take out the sky cities. They don't seem to have surgebinding anymore so maybe we can easily conquer them. Or hey just hit the guys with penicillin darts. 

@Bigmikey357 FTL communication on roshar  ? Where did we see that ? Wait spanreefs aren't FTL ? They are just ...as fast as radio . Maybe light speed  but not FTL 

Edited by PrinceGenocide
A little polishing
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8 hours ago, Bigmikey357 said:

The problem  with these scenarios isn't necessarily if we could win them, it's why we went in the first place. 

IMHO, the problem with this discussion is that the arguments in favor of the earth military pre-suppose cosmere knowledge on the part of the Earthlings and ignore local conditions that would play havoc with our technology - like greater gravity on Elantris, lesser gravity and higher oxygen content on Roschar, ash in the air on pre-Catacendre Scadrial, different magnetospheres on the cosmere worlds coupled with the lack of satellite guidance, etc. Unlimited supply and reinforcements from Earth also seem to be a feature for some reason, which is not how conquests ever worked and would indeed make any resistance futile eventually.

Now, if we were playing the old game of an army being unexpectedly sucked into a dimensional rift and stuck on one of the cosmere worlds, this could provide a better frame for debate.

Even so:

8 hours ago, Bigmikey357 said:

So are we all thinking Roshar, Nalthis, Taldain, First and Threnody would be pushovers? 

Taldain and the First, probably yes.

Roshar would present a number of problems, depending on the initial bridgehead (east or west) and on whether the Radiants are around or not. Gravity/oxygen content, etc. should throw a significant monkey wrench into the more complex earth  technologies as well. 

Threnody, absolutely not, given that literally anything that an army would need to do would infuriate the shades and the Evil is supposed to be even worse. 

Nalthis should be fairly susceptible, IMHO, since the Lifeless and even the Phantoms aren't anything that modern firearms and explosives  can't easily deal with.  Unless Vasher manages to throw Nightblood into any and all earth army encampements, Nalthians would be pretty SOL.

Scadrial during TLR's tenure would be a hard nut to crack, between the ash, the killing heat on most of the globe, the kandra, the Inquisitors, the Mistborn, not to mention TLR himself and atium. The Second Era would be much easier and the planetary population is very low, to boot. In fact, there should be a lot of uninhabited, but very inhabitable land estate between the 2 poles, so it would be trivial for earthlings to establish bases with nobody the wiser. And Scadrial being very metal-rich, including the rare metals, would make it a very desirable target for conquest.

Elantrians have a teleportation Aon that can potentially  transport things to another planet, according to a WoB. They can also create things, IIRC. So, they would be able to potentially strike back at Earth and certainly to attack army encampements in a way that can't be countered, as long as they know their locations. Also, higher gravity would affect both sophisticated technology and soldiers. Etc.

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27 minutes ago, PrinceGenocide said: ok u have convinced me that Scadrial isn't as easy to conquer as I thought. 

 

Elantris tho I completely disagree with.  

U said nukes wouldn't effect magic but that's not how investiture in the Cosmere works. They are within jurisdiction of other laws of physics.

Saying Elantrians won't get nuked cause of magic , is like saying a Mistborn need not fear stonehead arrows. 

We have seen Mistborn being terrified and even falling to stone arrows. 

Also we could remove all unnecessary metal or get them galvanized with aluminum. 

And while they are op too. They aren't as op as fullborn and they are geographically locked to a very small city. 

They emotionally find it hard to live. Let's see them try to live through trauma a war with us Earthians will bring. 

To be clear, I said nukes can’t break Aons. This is a fact, it is literally in the text. 

Quote

“Galladon still wore his mask. The Aon illusions were good as long as Raoden left them alone. Whether they were drawn in air or in mud, Aons could be destroyed only by another Elantrian. The books claimed that an Aon inscribed in dust would continue to function even if the pattern was scuffed or erased.”

From chapter 52

We later learn that the Gradget of Dakhor can also break Aons with their magic. I suspect a chromium misting might also be able to do it.

Elantrians don’t need to fear nukes because nukes can’t break their magic system. If you don’t break their magic system, you cannot kill them short of complete anihalation.

Mistborn worry about stone arrows because they do not have the unlimited healing abilities of Elantrians or gold compounders.

If anything, a war that threatens to kill their families is more likely to motivate them to live, even if it’s just to save the people they care about.

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51 minutes ago, Isilel said:

Elantrians have a teleportation Aon that can potentially  transport things to another planet, according to a WoB. They can also create things, IIRC. So, they would be able to potentially strike back at Earth and certainly to attack army encampements in a way that can't be countered, as long as they know their locations. Also, higher gravity would affect both sophisticated technology and soldiers. Etc.

I didn’t even consider using Aon Tia. They could use it to drop a rock on us and sit back to enjoy the show.

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Forward Observers are no problem at all. Drones and Radio.  The Fullborn will have to stop sometime.  And steelrunners still have to play nice with Newton,  meaning they aren't as fast in the air as on the ground. So make it so the guy has to get airborne to knock out certain targets. 

1 hour ago, SwordNimiForPresident said:

Artillery rounds are actually pretty much hollow shells filled with high explosive. They mostly depend on the environment for shrapnel.

The shell provides the shrapnel. It's driven by the high explosives.  So make the shell aluminum.  Use drones as FO, like we do now. Use area weapons.  No matter how fast the Fullborn is he ain't the Flash.  He isn't escaping damage if someone were to rain down destruction over a grid square or 3. And they can fall into traps. OP, but not impossible to kill.

 

1 hour ago, PrinceGenocide said:

FTL communication on roshar  ? Where did we see that ? Wait spanreefs aren't FTL ? They are just ...as fast as radio . Maybe light speed  but not FTL

Conjoined fabrials (spanreed)  acts just like quantum spin particles.  One effects the other regardless of distance. 

@Isilel

I considered some of these factors when building my scenarios  and I agree that they must be factored in for any coherent discussion.  Environmental conditions are always going to be a factor in an invasion.  That being said, the Terrans must get to the Cosmere somehow.  In order for the scenario to work we must assume that Earth puts together an invasion force capable of assaulting a planetary population,  including adequate resupply and support.  A squad of marines ain't taking over nothing over a planetary scale.  

Intelligence gathering goes both ways. The longer the conflict the more aware each party becomes. But first there will be culture shock. Scadrial Era 2 and Roshar are the only Cosmere societies that have a chance of true understanding of what we bring to the table tech wise, every other Cosmere world is much less advanced.  Terrans will have trouble getting Cosmere awareness.  However,  as the invaders it would be lax of them not to do their flipping homework, and thus they're going to have a head start. They have to experience the magic to truly understand it but I'd expect them to at least take into account Scadrial's bad air, Roshar"s extreme oxygen content or Sel's higher gravity and do things to mitigate these factors before they ever fire a shot in anger. 

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23 minutes ago, Bigmikey357 said:

Forward Observers are no problem at all. Drones and Radio.  The Fullborn will have to stop sometime.  And steelrunners still have to play nice with Newton,  meaning they aren't as fast in the air as on the ground. So make it so the guy has to get airborne to knock out certain targets. 

The shell provides the shrapnel. It's driven by the high explosives.  So make the shell aluminum.  Use drones as FO, like we do now. Use area weapons.  No matter how fast the Fullborn is he ain't the Flash.  He isn't escaping damage if someone were to rain down destruction over a grid square or 3. And they can fall into traps. OP, but not impossible to kill.

A Fullborn could easily rip drones out of the sky, Wax anchored an entire airship. 

Why would a Fullborn have to stop? That’s literally what makes them so powerful, the fact that they never have to stop. Their abilities form an infinite power loop.

To be clear, your plan is to shoot someone moving at hundreds of miles per hour with long range artillery? I don’t know if you have any real life experience with artillery, but I can tell you that it doesn’t work that way. The FO spots the target and calls in a location to the Fire Control Center. The FCC calculates the angles and distance using maps and GPS (neither of which will be available). The FCC relays the targeting info to the Fire Team, who then load and fire the shot. The FO then spots that shot and calls the FCC to either repeat or adjust their angles. It would be utterly useless against a single person running faster than the human eye can track.

An even more pressing issue. How did you manage to set up several brigades worth of artillery pieces without anyone noticing. We are talking about hundreds or even low thousands in terms of soldiers, and several thousand tons of equipment. You wouldn’t even get a sandbag filled before the Fullborn was in your midst killing you like ants, let alone get a shot off.

edit: I also realized that I was ignoring Scadrials scariest weapon, the faceless immortals. They could infiltrate is with ease and replace our leaders. From there they just start an internal conflict with another world power (who is also controlled by  a Kandra). Mire us in internal conflict to the point that we are even more useless than usual. It wouldn’t even be a challenge, half of us are looking for an excuse to destroy anyone different from us to begin with.

Edited by SwordNimiForPresident
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43 minutes ago, SwordNimiForPresident said:

A Fullborn could easily rip drones out of the sky, Wax anchored an entire airship. 

Why would a Fullborn have to stop? That’s literally what makes them so powerful, the fact that they never have to stop. Their abilities form an infinite power loop.

To be clear, your plan is to shoot someone moving at hundreds of miles per hour with long range artillery?

An even more pressing issue. How did you manage to set up several brigades worth of artillery pieces without anyone noticing. We are talking about hundreds or even low thousands in terms of soldiers, and several thousand tons of equipment. You wouldn’t even get a sandbag filled before the Fullborn was in your midst killing you like ants, let alone get a shot off.

edit: I also realized that I was ignoring Scadrials scariest weapon, the faceless immortals. They could infiltrate is with ease and replace our leaders. From there they just start an internal conflict with another world power (who is also controlled by  a Kandra). Mire us in internal conflict to the point that we are even more useless than usual. It wouldn’t even be a challenge, half of us are looking for an excuse to destroy anyone different from us to begin with.

The ship was at a low altitude relative to Wax. If it were at a higher altitude , Wax wouldnt have been able to do it.

Well , it would get pretty terrifying not ever stopping , going on non stop. Killing so many , watching so many of your own die. Traumatic stuff. Something like pewter dragging but probably worse. I'm sure even fullborn can't do that for too long or they will have negative consequences to suffer from.

He's army. He probably knows more about artillery than the rest if us.

Do you know of carpet bombing or cluster bombs ?

Thin aluminum shrapnel so fine you have to slow down to pick em out. Or u have to burn them , depleting all metals. 

Keep the fullborn boxed in long enough and he/she will run out of metals eventually. 

You saw how quickly Wax ran out of F-zinc for example. 

The same way we invaded normandy , hard and fast. Set up in some desolate corner of  TFE or out in the roughs, fire some nukes to attract attention and Wipeout known fullborn locations. Any fullborn not dead by Nuke will come running in and get trapped. 

U make a good point about the satellites tho. 

The kandra too can be very hard to deal with. But it's probably possible to identify them using biochemistry based detector kits or something. 

 

Edited by PrinceGenocide
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Also if we had knowledge of hemalurgy and I'm assuming we do since we have read about it .

Well we could make every bullet a potential spike. They might neglect it thinking they will heal and we will strip them of atleast some of those powers. 

We could also make our very own fullborn or atleast compounders. 

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8 minutes ago, PrinceGenocide said:

The ship was at a low altitude relative to Wax. If it were at a higher altitude , Wax wouldnt have been able to do it.

Well , it would get pretty terrifying not ever stopping , going on non stop. Killing so many , watching so many of your own die. Traumatic stuff. Something like pewter dragging but probably worse. I'm sure even fullborn can't do that for too long or they will have negative consequences to suffer from.

He's army. He probably knows more about artillery than the rest if us.

Do you know of carpet bombing or cluster bombs ?

Thin aluminum shrapnel so fine you have to slow down to pick em out. Or u have to burn them , depleting all metals. 

Keep the fullborn boxed in long enough and he/she will run out of metals eventually. 

You saw how quickly Wax ran out of F-zinc for example. 

The same way we invaded normandy , hard and fast. Set up in some desolate corner of  TFE or out in the roughs, fire some nukes to attract attention and Wipeout known fullborn locations. Any fullborn not dead by Nuke will come running in and get trapped. 

U make a good point about the satellites tho. 

The kandra too can be very hard to deal with. But it's probably possible to identify them using biochemistry based detector kits or something. 

 

If a ship is out of reach of iron they could simply steel push themselves into the air while tapping iron and the store iron at maximum rate. They would shoot into the sky like a bullet and get in range of the drones.

It wouldn’t be so bad for Kelsier, you said you are going to preemptively attack with nuclear weapons. Near as I can tell you don’t posses a continence. In his mind killing you would be the same as killing noblemen.

So am I, and his statements don’t match reality. I explained how artillery works and the logistics of deploying it. If you don’t believe me go read a book on the topic. Artillery doesn’t just appear and start shooting. It needs to be carried or driven to a location, supplied through baggage trains, supported by screens of infantry, and directed by controllers. That’s how it works, period.

Carpet and cluster bombing wouldn’t kill a Fullborn. Even if you killed their body, their mind would enter the CR. As long as any piece of their body is still touching one of their goldminds, they can completely regenerate. Look at what Wax did at the end of BoM.

Surprise attack is all well and good, just tell me Kelsier’s exact location on Scadrial so we can launch this hypothetical surprise attack.

People keep talking about TFE and Rashek. TFE no longer exists. It is not part of the Cosmere. Rashek was a clown. He would probably die to any of the attacks you listed because he is wildly incompetent. I would never use him as an example of Fullborn potential. I wouldn’t even use him as an example of canine potential. He was useless and died like a chump. Key point being, he’s dead and not part of the scenario. The currently known Fullborn are Kelsier, and anyone holding the BoM. I’ll add Spook might have used hemallurgy to become something close to one, and Marsh is close enough to be nearly one.

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22 minutes ago, PrinceGenocide said:

Also if we had knowledge of hemalurgy and I'm assuming we do since we have read about it .

Well we could make every bullet a potential spike. They might neglect it thinking they will heal and we will strip them of atleast some of those powers. 

We could also make our very own fullborn or atleast compounders. 

Now we are adding magic to earths armys. If our world leaders discovered hemallurgy their is zero chance of them sharing that knowledge with anyone else. They would use it to cement their control over their people and then try to subvert other countries.

Edited by SwordNimiForPresident
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The way I see it, there are two scenarios:

1. We nuke every cosmere planet into oblivion. Even if the Elantrians can survive one nuke,  they couldn't survive us nuking Elantris a dozen times. And even if they could, we can turn their planet into an nuclear wasteland and kill off their entire population, leaving them alone in their city. On Scadrial, one fullborn might survive, but the rest of the population? Not so much. Roshar also goes down to nukes, as does every other planet in the Cosmere.

2. We invade with military. This scenario is were the Elantrians, Fullborn, and Radiants come into effect. The winner of this scenario depends on how effective the magic users are at killing soldiers.

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2 minutes ago, Nameless said:

The way I see it, there are two scenarios:

1. We nuke every cosmere planet into oblivion. Even if the Elantrians can survive one nuke,  they couldn't survive us nuking Elantris a dozen times. And even if they could, we can turn their planet into an nuclear wasteland and kill off their entire population, leaving them alone in their city. On Scadrial, one fullborn might survive, but the rest of the population? Not so much. Roshar also goes down to nukes, as does every other planet in the Cosmere.

You seem to think that nuclear weapons are capable of killing a planets population by virtue of their explosive potential alone. This is not accurate. Most of the deaths from nuclear war would be due to radiation and crop loss, as well as the loss of infrastructure.

As I have established over and over and over and over and over.. in this thread, you cannot kill an Elantrian with mundane weapons. If you use all of the nuclear weapons in existence against Sel, you will kill countless millions of people. The Elantrians will however easily fix the ecological devastation and heal anyone suffering from the effects of radiation. Arelon, at the very least, will be just fine. They will of course lose a tragic number of people to the initial attack, however they will be fine in the long term. The Elantian counter attack in the other hand would end our species. Giant rock meets fall from sky, no more people.

Scadrial has no way to deal with the long term impacts. Their magic systems are not made for it. You would leave behind a world populated only by Koloss, Kandra and the most powerful among the metalborn. Basically, they’re coming for you, and you don’t stand a chance. Kandra infiltrate and trick us into destroying ourselves. Net outcome, mutually destruction, their most powerful live on.

On Roshar, everyone already lives in bunkers. Nukes would net high casualties in cities and not much else. Radiation can be soulcast away. Jasnah and Kaladin ride the Highstorm on a trip around the planet soul casting all of the fallout into fertilizer. Meanwhile, the rest of the radiants set up triage centers to cure radiation sickness using the wind runners to move from place to place. End result, they took a hit but will be fine. We would be screwed. After their recovery Jasnah and Dalinar can take s little trip to Earth where he opens a perpendicularity and she starts soulcasting air into plutonium.

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10 minutes ago, SwordNimiForPresident said:

You seem to think that nuclear weapons are capable of killing a planets population by virtue of their explosive potential alone. This is not accurate. Most of the deaths from nuclear war would be due to radiation and crop loss, as well as the loss of infrastructure.

 

I do not think that. I meant what I said. Although I would like to ask whether you have seen this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

11 minutes ago, SwordNimiForPresident said:

As I have established over and over and over and over and over.. in this thread, you cannot kill an Elantrian with mundane weapons. If you use all of the nuclear weapons in existence against Sel, you will kill countless millions of people. The Elantrians will however easily fix the ecological devastation and heal anyone suffering from the effects of radiation. Arelon, at the very least, will be just fine. They will of course lose a tragic number of people to the initial attack, however they will be fine in the long term. The Elantian counter attack in the other hand would end our species. Giant rock meets fall from sky, no more people.

 

Even if one Nuke wouldn't kill all the Elantrians, I see no reason why we couldn't simply send say... a hundred nukes into Elantris, completely evaporating the entire city, along with everyone in it.

15 minutes ago, SwordNimiForPresident said:

Scadrial has no way to deal with the long term impacts. Their magic systems are not made for it. You would leave behind a world populated only by Koloss, Kandra and the most powerful among the metalborn. Basically, they’re coming for you, and you don’t stand a chance. Kandra infiltrate and trick us into destroying ourselves. Net outcome, mutually destruction, their most powerful live on.

 

And how would they get to us with no infrastructure? Are they going to magically appear on earth? Without technology they have no way to get to earth, unless you can reach it from the cognitive realm.

22 minutes ago, SwordNimiForPresident said:

On Roshar, everyone already lives in bunkers. Nukes would net high casualties in cities and not much else. Radiation can be soulcast away. Jasnah and Kaladin ride the Highstorm on a trip around the planet soul casting all of the fallout into fertilizer. Meanwhile, the rest of the radiants set up triage centers to cure radiation sickness using the wind runners to move from place to place. End result, they took a hit but will be fine. We would be screwed. After their recovery Jasnah and Dalinar can take s little trip to Earth where he opens a perpendicularity and she starts soulcasting air into plutonium.

People don't live in bunkers on Roshar, they live in houses designed to survive a Highstorm. The crops would still die, the people would still get radiation sickness, and though the Radiants could mitigate that, they could not stop it. That's even if any Radiants survive. I see nothing stopping us from nuking Urithuru, which would likely kill not only Dalinar, but a large number of Radiants as well. The vast majority of Radiants would be in the cities that would be destroyed, so I don't see a strike force coming to earth anytime soon, assuming they can even get off-world. As for soulcasting the fallout away, that is not feasibly possible in a reasonable amount of time. I can see them doing small areas, but the entire world? No chance.

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3 hours ago, SwordNimiForPresident said:

To be clear, your plan is to shoot someone moving at hundreds of miles per hour with long range artillery? I don’t know if you have any real life experience with artillery, but I can tell you that it doesn’t work that way. The FO spots the target and calls in a location to the Fire Control Center. The FCC calculates the angles and distance using maps and GPS (neither of which will be available). The FCC relays the targeting info to the Fire Team, who then load and fire the shot. The FO then spots that shot and calls the FCC to either repeat or adjust their angles. It would be utterly useless against a single person running faster than the human eye can track.

There's a way around that. An easy fix. Draw the Fullborn to a known location, maybe a garrison or some other high value target. Bomb the holy storms outta that location as soon as he arrives to start the slaughter. Have the jets on standby at another location.  When the aluminum rain drops get the birds in the air and let them add to the tapestry.  You know if you succeeded if the guy doesn't get up and immediately come after you. Repeat as often as necessary. 

I understand your contempt for TLR but the reason people keep pushing him into the scenario is that he's the only one with any real military experience.  Kelsier was a thief and an eventual revolutionary.  Marsh was a failed revolutionary,  then a tool without any volition fighting against a mostly defenseless populace.  TLR on the other hand conquered the world in about 200 years of near constant warfare. What Vin ultimately killed was the shell of a powerful man, one who'd been chewed on by Ruin for a millennia. So if you can't depend on a guy like that, the man Rashek used to be then Scadrial really is screwed. 

 

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