Magic and magictec vs Technology

[Frustration]

2 minutes ago, alder24 said:

The energy itself, in the close proximity to the explosion, would for sure destroy the plate in a split second, and vaporize Radiant inside. Plate can crack just by falling from too high, hammers, Kaladin jumping etc, this is all energy. Nuke has a lot more energy than what plate experiences normally. Even the WW2 nukes. Radiant just needs to be close enough to the epicenter to be dead.

It's certainly still a threat, but air bombing is also horribly inaccurate, getting them close enough to the epicenter is more a matter of luck than skill, which in my mind makes it a realistically survivable threat.

7 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Is it? Yes, it's powerful, but the B-29 has a range of 32k feets and almost 6k miles. Dropping a few WW2 nukes would still do a lot to Urithiru. I might not destroy it fully, but will deal such an amount of damage that it will cripple the Tower and decimate Radiants. Not to mention there is a very high probability that the blast wave would shatter the crystal column of the Sibling, which might cause even greater damage.

Um, you do realize how big urithiru is right?

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The gem room is below the ground floor, and the building itself is primarily stone. There would need to be a lot of restorative work done, but I don't think the tower is under any serious threat from a nuclear payload that could be made, the thing is an absolute fortress. You might as well try to nuke a mountain.

[alder24]

13 minutes ago, Frustration said:

It's certainly still a threat, but air bombing is also horribly inaccurate, getting them close enough to the epicenter is more a matter of luck than skill, which in my mind makes it a realistically survivable threat.

Yes, it is, the Little Boy missed by "only" 240 m, and had a radius of total destruction of 1.6 km. But considering this, Urithiru is on a much higher elevation than Hiroshima, the bomb would be falling much shorter and it wouldn't drift that much because of that. Still not perfectly accurate, but they would destroy part of Urithiru.

1 minute ago, Frustration said:

Um, you do realize how big urithiru is right?

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The gem room is below the ground floor, and the building itself is primarily stone. There would need to be a lot of restorative work done, but I don't think the tower is under any serious threat from a nuclear payload that could be made, the thing is an absolute fortress. You might as well try to nuke a mountain.

Yes, that's why I said "few nukes" to soften it up. Mountain is solid, Urithiru is empty inside. And you don't need one to explode in the basement, just close enough for the blast wave to travel into the basement, or rocks would transfer powerful vibrations into the column. But I admit, WW2 nukes are not the best choice for that task. But if you manage to weaken weight bearing columns, the whole thing will just collapse under its own weight.

And a very, very, improbably lucky strike can drop the nuke through the glass wall, right in the very center of the Tower, damaging the structure enough to collapse on its own. Do it Dambusters Raid style, like the RAF destroyed the German dam, but here without the bomb bouncing off the water, just straight into the window.

And I don't advocate for the use of nukes in this conflict. I don't like using weapons of mass destruction in those scenarios.

[Frustration]

1 minute ago, alder24 said:

Yes, it is, the Little Boy missed by "only" 240 m, and had a radius of total destruction of 1.6 km. But considering this, Urithiru is on a much higher elevation than Hiroshima, the bomb would be falling much shorter and it wouldn't drift that much because of that. Still not perfectly accurate, but they would destroy part of Urithiru.

In terms of hitting an individual that's a huge variation, as I was specifically speaking about it against a radiant in the inaccuracy, not urithiru. That you could reliably hit.

3 minutes ago, alder24 said:

And I don't advocate for the use of nukes in this conflict. I don't like using weapons of mass destruction in those scenarios.

They do kind of reduce the entire fight to being just about them.

[alder24]

31 minutes ago, Frustration said:

In terms of hitting an individual that's a huge variation, as I was specifically speaking about it against a radiant in the inaccuracy, not urithiru. That you could reliably hit.

You don't drop the nuke just to kill one person (unless it's a Bondsmith), you drop it to destroy an important target and ensure maximum damage and casualties. Dropping it on the place where there are lots of Radiants will kill the majority of them. And that’s what I was talking about. Urithiru would be the best target to choose, but getting there and succeeding would be very hard.

[therunner he/him]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

Yes, it is, the Little Boy missed by "only" 240 m, and had a radius of total destruction of 1.6 km. But considering this, Urithiru is on a much higher elevation than Hiroshima, the bomb would be falling much shorter and it wouldn't drift that much because of that. Still not perfectly accurate, but they would destroy part of Urithiru.

It would at best destroy few outer rooms, most of Urithiru would be fine.
This building (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial) was just ~620 meters from the detonation, and considerable parts remained intact.
So if building made out of bricks and concrete, can remain standing, building that is basically carved into mountain with far thicker walls (that are just one piece, not several connected by weaker bonding material) will be fine.

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Yes, that's why I said "few nukes" to soften it up. Mountain is solid, Urithiru is empty inside. And you don't need one to explode in the basement, just close enough for the blast wave to travel into the basement, or rocks would transfer powerful vibrations into the column. But I admit, WW2 nukes are not the best choice for that task. But if you manage to weaken weight bearing columns, the whole thing will just collapse under its own weight.

I don't think Urithiru is really built with weight bearing columns and such, it is more like carved into the mountain.
The stones on 14th floor remember being the original mountain, and the building seems like one giant piece with tunnels.

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

 Urithiru would be the best target to choose, but getting there and succeeding would be very hard.

Downright impossible more like.
Bombers are slow and cumbersome compared to Windrunners, bomb can be in principled lashed away (unless Aluminum plated), or the Windrunner can carry Elsecaller who could soulcast air in front of bomber into stone.

Edited April 26, 2023 by therunner

[alder24]

2 minutes ago, therunner said:

It would at best destroy few outer rooms, most of Urithiru would be fine.
This building (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial) was just ~620 meters from the detonation, and considerable parts remained intact.
So if building made out of bricks and concrete, can remain standing, building that is basically carved into mountain with far thicker walls (that are just one piece, not several connected by weaker bonding material) will be fine.

You missed one important part about that building, the whole idea behind dropping nukes on Urithiru: "Everyone inside the building was killed instantly". Plus: "Because the explosion was almost directly overhead, the building was able to retain its shape. The building's vertical columns were able to resist the nearly vertical downward force of the blast, and parts of the concrete and brick outer walls remained intact." - A bomb detonated at the side of the Urithiru would do more damage to its wall, than directly above it. Don't target the base nor the top, but the middle sections instead. 

Fat Man had a fireball radius of around 200 m, reaching 3000-4000 degree celsius. Any piece of Urithiru within that radius is just gone. 

7 minutes ago, therunner said:

I don't think Urithiru is really built with weight bearing columns and such, it is more like carved into the mountain.
The stones on 14th floor remember being the original mountain, and the building seems like one giant piece with tunnels.

I don't think it was carved, more like the whole mountain was shifted into the shape of Urithiru. 

10 minutes ago, therunner said:

Downright impossible more like.
Bombers are slow and cumbersome compared to Windrunners, bomb can be in principled lashed away (unless Aluminum plated), or the Windrunner can carry Elsecaller who could soulcast air in front of bomber into stone.

Presence of Windrunner patrols around the Tower would protect it well enough to prevent such an attack from occurring (Unless Shins start the war by surprise attacking Urithiru with nukes, catching them unprepared). But the travel of planes across Roshar might go almost unnoticed - there are simply not enough Windrunners to cover such a large area of sky, and Roshar have almost no real means of detecting planes outside from spotting them with bare eyes. That's why night would be the preferable time of attack, and that would even help with spotting Urithiru, as you know, it glows now.

If not Urithiru, target Oathgates. Those would also be protected, but less so, maybe enough to destroy them and sever their logistic lines. But here we have the problem of accuracy back.

[therunner he/him]

13 minutes ago, alder24 said:

You missed one important part about that building, the whole idea behind dropping nukes on Urithiru: "Everyone inside the building was killed instantly". Plus: "Because the explosion was almost directly overhead, the building was able to retain its shape. The building's vertical columns were able to resist the nearly vertical downward force of the blast, and parts of the concrete and brick outer walls remained intact." - A bomb detonated at the side of the Urithiru would do more damage to its wall, than directly above it. Don't target the base nor the top, but the middle sections instead.

It was still 150 meters away from center, that is relatively side-ways (if not completely). And again, Urithiru has far thicker walls than that, and is about as large as modern skyscraper, if not larger.
There is a reason why most anti-nuke shelters are built into mountains/hills, it makes them practically immune to nukes, unless you drop several of them on the same spot.

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Fat Man had a fireball radius of around 200 m, reaching 3000-4000 degree celsius. Any piece of Urithiru within that radius is just gone. 

Some of it not all, that fireball is relatively short lived, and rock has quite large heat capacity.

Edit: Melt cavity for underground testing (where explosion energy has nothing else to do but push and melt stone) has radius that goes like 3rd root of kT of energy.
So even if the nuke was inside Urithiru, at most rock in radius of 11-33 meters would be melted.
And rock would get crushed only inside radius 80-110 meters.

Of course, since Urithiru has holes, a lot of that explosion energy would instead be deposited in shock wave, and travel through those 'escape' holes, so actual radius of melt and crush would be far lower.

Explosion on the outside of Urithiru is basically guaranteed to not melt any rock, unless it would be directly against the side of Urithiru (which as you note is unrealistic precision). It would probably crush some of the outer walls, but I think anything more than 10-20 meters deep would survive basically intact.
 

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I don't think it was carved, more like the whole mountain was shifted into the shape of Urithiru. 

Which would just make it even more structurally sound.

Basically, to properly attack Urithiru you requires something like bunker buster, which nukes are not.

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Presence of Windrunner patrols around the Tower would protect it well enough to prevent such an attack from occurring (Unless Shins start the war by surprise attacking Urithiru with nukes, catching them unprepared). But the travel of planes across Roshar might go almost unnoticed - there are simply not enough Windrunners to cover such a large area of sky, and Roshar have almost no real means of detecting planes outside from spotting them with bare eyes. That's why night would be the preferable time of attack, and that would even help with spotting Urithiru, as you know, it glows now.

Windrunners do seem to regularly patrol, since Fused intentionally mimic those patrols in RoW.

And detection could also be done with alerter fabrials, though they would have to know what to look for.

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If not Urithiru, target Oathgates. Those would also be protected, but less so, maybe enough to destroy them and sever their logistic lines. But here we have the problem of accuracy back.

That is more feasible target.

Edited April 26, 2023 by therunner

[Frustration]

8 minutes ago, therunner said:

and is about as large as modern skyscraper, if not larger.

It's slightly taller than the Burj Khaliffa, and much wider

[Nogo]

A lot of Nuke talk here... Sibling can keep every spit of investiture from a specific shard out of Urithiru... I imagine that in a pinch, charged with the proper investiture of their own with a bondsmith handy, that a nuke blast would zip right on around the sides of Urithiru like Kaladin holding back the stormwinds for the innocent people in Alethkar.  With the mass power available to the bondsmiths and their massive spren, I just can't envision one big boom (or even multiple big booms) just ending things.  I think it would take a whole lot more savvy than fancy big boom weapons.  

Great thought provoking topic though!  We got population comparisons, aluminum production talk, tanks on rock vs soil, skysraper size models, discussing the dinosaurs in Shinovar (yeah, no oil there I dont think).   Nice work thread-leader!

PS   If you've been on a tracked vehicle before on anything but dirt or sand.... yeah, yuck.  Tanks in Roshar would be a living hell to tank crews.  And the maintenance would be nuts.  However, with no mud, the tanks would have no weather limitations to include highstorms.   The major mountain areas tho, as all mountains, would be inaccessible.  But ouch, I don't want to be in a tank crew in Roshar.  No sir no way!

[therunner he/him]

5 hours ago, Nogo said:

A lot of Nuke talk here... Sibling can keep every spit of investiture from a specific shard out of Urithiru... I imagine that in a pinch, charged with the proper investiture of their own with a bondsmith handy, that a nuke blast would zip right on around the sides of Urithiru like Kaladin holding back the stormwinds for the innocent people in Alethkar.  With the mass power available to the bondsmiths and their massive spren, I just can't envision one big boom (or even multiple big booms) just ending things.  I think it would take a whole lot more savvy than fancy big boom weapons. 

That is actually a very good point!
 If single 4th Oath Windrunner can create a column holding back Highstorm, what can fully functional Sibling do? They already have fabrials for pressure control, and you can create soulcasted 'forcefields'.

On this note, regular hurricane can produce about as much energy as ~10000 'regular' nukes, some estimates being that hurricane releases same amount of energy as 10 megaton bomb every 20 minutes. Highstorm is larger and stronger than any hurricane on earth and lasts longer. So amount of energy that Godspren can provide is orders of magnitude greater than WW2 nukes.
Even re-scaled to account for  energy vs work (in that nuke deposits that energy in much shorter time frame), regular hurricane generates in a minute same energy as 10 kT nuke.

Based on that, I think Sibling could straight up tank WW2 nukes, or simply utilize pressure fabrials that would mostly block the blast wave. Maybe at most once a minute or two, but that is more then enough.

Edited April 27, 2023 by therunner

[alder24]

12 hours ago, therunner said:

And detection could also be done with alerter fabrials, though they would have to know what to look for.

Not really, they don't have 10 km range.

12 hours ago, therunner said:

Some of it not all, that fireball is relatively short lived, and rock has quite large heat capacity.

Edit: Melt cavity for underground testing (where explosion energy has nothing else to do but push and melt stone) has radius that goes like 3rd root of kT of energy.
So even if the nuke was inside Urithiru, at most rock in radius of 11-33 meters would be melted.
And rock would get crushed only inside radius 80-110 meters.

Of course, since Urithiru has holes, a lot of that explosion energy would instead be deposited in shock wave, and travel through those 'escape' holes, so actual radius of melt and crush would be far lower.

Explosion on the outside of Urithiru is basically guaranteed to not melt any rock, unless it would be directly against the side of Urithiru (which as you note is unrealistic precision). It would probably crush some of the outer walls, but I think anything more than 10-20 meters deep would survive basically intact.

Urithiru is not a solid mountain. There are lots of windows and doors in its walls. It has lots of narrow corridors, and a shock wave would propagate through those tubes, killing everyone on its way.

2 hours ago, therunner said:

That is actually a very good point!
 If single 4th Oath Windrunner can create a column holding back Highstorm, what can fully functional Sibling do? They already have fabrials for pressure control, and you can create soulcasted 'forcefields'.

On this note, regular hurricane can produce about as much energy as ~10000 'regular' nukes, some estimates being that hurricane releases same amount of energy as 10 megaton bomb every 20 minutes. Highstorm is larger and stronger than any hurricane on earth and lasts longer. So amount of energy that Godspren can provide is orders of magnitude greater than WW2 nukes.
Even re-scaled to account for  energy vs work (in that nuke deposits that energy in much shorter time frame), regular hurricane generates in a minute same energy as 10 kT nuke.

Based on that, I think Sibling could straight up tank WW2 nukes, or simply utilize pressure fabrials that would mostly block the blast wave. Maybe at most once a minute or two, but that is more then enough.

Yeah, but a hurricane spans for hundreds of kilometers across, while nuke propagate from the epicenter, hurricane is a low pressure system, while nuke create extreme high pressure, wind speeds in a hurricane can reach 300 km/h, shock wave in nuke is faster than the speed of sound (>1234.8 km/h). There is no comparison between a nuke and a hurricane. If you could compress a hurricane into a single point, then yes, this would be a valid comparison. But you can't.

Moreover Urithiru is still made out of rock, not even a god metal. The Sibling operates by using fabrials and I seriously doubt they were made to handle such pressure and temperature. Soulcaster fabrial is gone, all nodes were destroyed. If rebuilt it would only protect the crystal column. I'm not saying that a single Fat Man bomb will destroy Urithiru - it won't for sure. It will cause some damage, but if multiple bombs at once strike Urithiru at the right place, you can cause so much damage to the structure, that the whole thing will just collapse under its own weight. That's the best nukes can do to kill as many people and Radiants as possible. It would be hard to achieve this, yes, very hard. Like I said, WW2 nukes are not the best tools for that. But they would still cause lots of damage.

Edited April 27, 2023 by alder24

[therunner he/him]

33 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Not really, they don't have 10 km range.

That we know of. Pewter cage + large amount of Stormlight would increase the range most likely, possibly larger gem could be required.

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Urithiru is not a solid mountain. There are lots of windows and doors in its walls. It has lots of narrow corridors, and a shock wave would propagate through those tubes, killing everyone on its way.

Neither are bunker complexes, and those are typically smaller/under smaller mountains.
And yes, shockwave would propage through corridors, if only there was no way to close the corridors. However, Sibling can open and close the doors/manipulate the structure (seemingly).

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Yeah, but a hurricane spans for hundreds of kilometers across, while nuke propagate from the epicenter, hurricane is a low pressure system, while nuke create extreme high pressure, wind speeds in a hurricane can reach 300 km/h, shock wave in nuke is faster than the speed of sound (>1234.8 km/h). There is no comparison between a nuke and a hurricane. If you could compress a hurricane into a single point, then yes, this would be a valid comparison. But you can't.

Point is that Godspren can exert power on the level of modern nukes, hence Sibling could plausibly counteract nuclear explosion.
All of Siblings power is concentrated within that mountain as far we know, so this is possibly within scope of their power, as he is hurricane concentrated in single point (power wise).

Point is that WW2 nuke simply does not have enough power to melt or shatter stone, not when exploding out in the open. It would have to explode directly next to the mountain, and even then the melt radius would be certainly less then 11 meters (since explosion would have lower pressure areas to expand to), and so would the shatter radius be less then 80 meters.

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Moreover Urithiru is still made out of rock, not even a god metal. The Sibling operates by using fabrials and I seriously doubt they were made to handle such pressure and temperature. Soulcaster fabrial is gone, all nodes were destroyed. If rebuilt it would only protect the crystal column. I'm not saying that a single Fat Man bomb will destroy Urithiru - it won't for sure. It will cause some damage, but if multiple bombs at once strike Urithiru at the right place, you can cause so much damage to the structure, that the whole thing will just collapse under its own weight. That's the best nukes can do to kill as many people and Radiants as possible. It would be hard to achieve this, yes, very hard. Like I said, WW2 nukes are not the best tools for that. But they would still cause lots of damage.

Yes, and as seen above, WW2 nukes simply don't have enough power to melt rock, or shatter it, on the scale of Urithiru (or even on scale of just regular rock formation, when it comes to melting).
Destroying it would take multiple nukes at least, even if Sibling had no way to defend itself. And as we already discussed, managing to pull of such attack is going to be very difficult, due to limited attack options.

They can rebuild soulcaster fabrial, and make it affect other things. It had model of Urithiru which probably served as 'target'/source of Intent, so you could make similar one that would create 'shield' around the mountain, though it would consumer much more Towerlight to power it. However, it would be within scope of power of awake Sibling.

Even if those fabrials cracked under strain (which since they are made directly out of Siblings body I doubt would happen), all they have to do is partially protect inhabitants of the Tower. Combination of closed doors, increased pressure, and lowered temperature would be enough to shield against most of the damage.

People standing in the open just ~800 meters away from epicenter, with no shielding, survived in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People shielded by a mountain worth of stone and effects of fabrial would survive as well. Sure, there would be losses, but it would not be anything that could not be rectified, and any radiation poisoning would be quickly healed by Edgedancers and Truthwatchers.

Hell, there were people who were ~300 meters away from the bomb and they survived! And those had only regular old cinderblock building for protection.

Edit: And if ordinary crosswind could carry bomb more than 240 meters away from target, bunch of Windrunner (or one 4th Oath one) could push the bomb completely away from the mountain. As mentioned previously, 4th Oath Windrunner can generate hurricane level air currents, and those would knock the bomb away even if was covered in Aluminum, since air is still air, even if it started moving due to Investiture.

Or Sibling could generate such air currents on its own.

With luck you could land one nuke, which would damage outer sections on one side of Tower. But there would be no second time.

Edited April 27, 2023 by therunner

[Frustration]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

Not really, they don't have 10 km range.

We don't really know that, we know that Vistim's one could detect the shin coming before he saw them, so even portable ones have really impressive range.

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

Urithiru is not a solid mountain. There are lots of windows and doors in its walls. It has lots of narrow corridors, and a shock wave would propagate through those tubes, killing everyone on its way.

The doors can be closed, and the Sibling has control of the atmoshpere inside the tower, in it's awakened state I wouldn't be entirrely surprised if it could just stop the blast outright.

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

Yeah, but a hurricane spans for hundreds of kilometers across, while nuke propagate from the epicenter, hurricane is a low pressure system, while nuke create extreme high pressure, wind speeds in a hurricane can reach 300 km/h, shock wave in nuke is faster than the speed of sound (>1234.8 km/h). There is no comparison between a nuke and a hurricane. If you could compress a hurricane into a single point, then yes, this would be a valid comparison. But you can't.

Considering that the Stormfather is powerful enough to control an entire Huricane, and the Sibling was their equal before Honor died, I say that is exactly what the Sibling is.

[Beodrakis he/him]

There is no way for Roshar to win, humans are great at adapting, and pretty soon, most (if not all) guns, ammunition, armour, would be plated with aluminum, making it completely Shardblade resistant. On the point of windrunners being able to destroy a bomber with a shardblade, most late war aircraft were made out of aluminum, and bombers usually had plenty of turret mounted .50 M2 Browning machine guns, capable of firing 450-600 rpm, and even though a wind runner is able to lash some of the bullets away, the sheer amount would eventually hit them. Since mass is conserved during soulcasting, any wall created in front of a bomber would have to be massive in order for it to do anything, and soulcasting requires concentration, which is tough if you're floating in the air, a B-29 superfortress is flying in your direction and firing at you, and you have no protection against bullets. The tanks are capable of firing devastating high explosive rounds, and when plated in aluminum they'd be nearly invincible. it all stacks up against Roshar, however, that is what would happen on Earth, but this is on Roshar, the first highstorm would wipe out nearly everything, planes, infrastructure, infantry, and even tanks, and because of how new they are, they'd have no way to predict highstorms, or have any reason to believe they could be predicted, this would almost completely wipe them in the first few days, and barely anything would be left after a few weeks, all before they even engage with radiants, because there is no more infrastructure to mine aluminum, and they have no idea that aluminum stops shards, the remaining soldiers would get massacred.

[Frustration]

5 minutes ago, Beodrakis said:

On the point of windrunners being able to destroy a bomber with a shardblade, most late war aircraft were made out of aluminum, and bombers usually had plenty of turret mounted .50 M2 Browning machine guns, capable of firing 450-600 rpm, and even though a wind runner is able to lash some of the bullets away, the sheer amount would eventually hit them.

We already went over this, it's an aluminum alloy, and those are not always resistant. Pure aluminum doesn't make a good aircraft, so that probably isn't a good defense.

And Shardplate is incredibly bullet resistant. Even Wax would take multiple rounds to the same section in order to break it, with a reverse lashing shield, shardplate and far better maneuverability the bomber stands no chance.

12 minutes ago, Beodrakis said:

Earth, but this is on Roshar, the first highstorm would wipe out nearly everything, planes, infrastructure, infantry, and even tanks, and because of how new they are, they'd have no way to predict highstorms, or have any reason to believe they could be predicted, this would almost completely wipe them in the first few days, and barely anything would be left after a few weeks, all before they even engage with radiants, because there is no more infrastructure to mine aluminum, and they have no idea that aluminum stops shards, the remaining soldiers would get massacred.

The OP said that we are assuming that the Shin developed WW2 tech.

[therunner he/him]

21 hours ago, Beodrakis said:

There is no way for Roshar to win, humans are great at adapting, and pretty soon, most (if not all) guns, ammunition, armour, would be plated with aluminum, making it completely Shardblade resistant.

You have to build factories to do that, and those are highly susceptible to sabotage via Soulcasting, or Stoneshaping.

21 hours ago, Beodrakis said:

 On the point of windrunners being able to destroy a bomber with a shardblade, most late war aircraft were made out of aluminum, and bombers usually had plenty of turret mounted .50 M2 Browning machine guns, capable of firing 450-600 rpm, and even though a wind runner is able to lash some of the bullets away, the sheer amount would eventually hit them.

Single Reverse lashing on a piece of metal tied to Windrunner would divert vast majority if not all bullets. In previous thread I ran numbers on it, and Reverse Lashing is sufficiently powerful to divert bullet by ~10 cm per 1 meter of distance at minimum (possibly up to nearly 50 cm per 1 meter), so in dogfight it would be very good defense.
And Windrunner is far smaller target than bombers/fighters those turrets were useful against, they are ~1/10 the size , so targeting them will be incredibly difficult even without Reverse Lashing.

21 hours ago, Beodrakis said:

Since mass is conserved during soulcasting, any wall created in front of a bomber would have to be massive in order for it to do anything, and soulcasting requires concentration, which is tough if you're floating in the air, a B-29 superfortress is flying in your direction and firing at you, and you have no protection against bullets.

You have Reverse Lashing and/or Plate for protection, and plate would resist bullets well per WoBs.

Additionally, we have seen walls 15 feet tall, 10-30 feet wide and 4-6 feet thick being Soulcast in the middle of battle previously (Jasnah in O), so it would be doable. Or you can do it from Shadesmar if need be. And you don't have to soulcast entire wall, really piece of rock 1 meter in diameter would down the plane if it ran into it.

21 hours ago, Beodrakis said:

 The tanks are capable of firing devastating high explosive rounds, and when plated in aluminum they'd be nearly invincible.

Tanks are hilariously weak against Stonewards/Willshapers, they can simply render the ground underneath them liquid, and tank is completely immobile with basically no chance of recovery.
Similarly Lightweavers/Elsecallers can render air around tank into mud/rock, and render it immobile that way.
Basically 4/10 Orders can on demand create nightmare scenarios for tanks.

And you can blast aluminum away, since pure aluminum is quite soft metal, so lashed rocks would strip it away eventually. Or just use Soulcasting to set the tank on fire, crew wont enjoy that, or Soulcast air inside the gun barrel into rock, and watch as the tank blows itself up.

21 hours ago, Beodrakis said:

 it all stacks up against Roshar, however, that is what would happen on Earth, but this is on Roshar, the first highstorm would wipe out nearly everything, planes, infrastructure, infantry, and even tanks, and because of how new they are, they'd have no way to predict highstorms, or have any reason to believe they could be predicted, this would almost completely wipe them in the first few days, and barely anything would be left after a few weeks, all before they even engage with radiants, because there is no more infrastructure to mine aluminum, and they have no idea that aluminum stops shards, the remaining soldiers would get massacred.

Well, the location is Roshar per OP, and we assume Shin developed the tech.

Edited April 28, 2023 by therunner

[Beodrakis he/him]

Reasons why I think a reverse lashing shield wouldn't be effective:

1. They need to be held by an advanced Windrunner to function. (otherwise the soulcaster would be yanked towards the shield

2. WW2 saw HE Machine gun belts

3. Flak existed

If a windrunner tried to use a reverse lashing shield, it doesn't matter that the MGs aren't accurate, the bullets would arc towards the shield, detonate, and kill the windrunner, dooming the soulcaster. even if they decide to not use a reverse lashing shield, HE fuze rounds(most notably Flak) existed, which detonated when they got close to something, this would rip a windrunner to pieces even if said windrunner was wearing shardplate, the sheer volume of bullets and explosions would spell death. This is without taking into account the fact that all radiants need gemstones and they have to lash themselves, their gemstones, all of the bullets fired at them, while reppeling the soulcaster so that they won't crash into their shield. Planes would almost invulnerable to shards, as they were made from 90-95% aluminum (duralumin/7075) which is likely shard resistant. this means that the Shin have air superiority, and if there was a large scale bombing of Urithiru they could drop thousands of bombs, only one of them being the nuke, windrunners might be willing to sacrifice themselves for a reverse lashing shield, but not many, and those brave enough for that would quickly die, probably not having much effect on the majority of the bombs dropped.

[alder24]

I've found the WoB saying aluminum alloys retain some properties of aluminum, which might mean that normal planes are able to resist a Shardblade cut.

Spoiler

Longshot_97

This question concerns Mistborn Era 2. Aluminum at this time is supremely rare and quite expensive, and Wax is seen lamenting his profound lack of aluminum guns and bullets fairly often. However, couldn't he fashion a "Poor Man's Aluminum" of sorts by coating his guns (and potentially bullets) in a thin veneer of iron, then Feruchemically charging it? You've noted that metalminds can still be pushed, but much less than un-Invested metal. This could help him, in the absence of aluminum. So, is there a reason he has not done that?

Brandon Sanderson

The layer you would get by just that little coat would be so small that it'd have very little effect. Now, there's a pretty good argument for putting it into bullets. The problem there is: are the alloys that make good bullets going to work very well? Now, granted, aluminum doesn’t make for great bullets either. But any aluminum alloy kind of gets the property of aluminum. Where any iron alloy does not necessarily get the property of being able to allomantically or feruchemically interact with it in the right way. Can you get there? It's an excellent question that I perhaps should explore. I like this idea. But it's harder than you make it out to be. It is a good idea, though; it's a pretty good idea.

r/books AMA 2022 (July 7, 2022)

 

[Frustration]

35 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I've found the WoB saying aluminum alloys retain some properties of aluminum, which might mean that normal planes are able to resist a Shardblade cut.

  Reveal hidden contents

Longshot_97

This question concerns Mistborn Era 2. Aluminum at this time is supremely rare and quite expensive, and Wax is seen lamenting his profound lack of aluminum guns and bullets fairly often. However, couldn't he fashion a "Poor Man's Aluminum" of sorts by coating his guns (and potentially bullets) in a thin veneer of iron, then Feruchemically charging it? You've noted that metalminds can still be pushed, but much less than un-Invested metal. This could help him, in the absence of aluminum. So, is there a reason he has not done that?

Brandon Sanderson

The layer you would get by just that little coat would be so small that it'd have very little effect. Now, there's a pretty good argument for putting it into bullets. The problem there is: are the alloys that make good bullets going to work very well? Now, granted, aluminum doesn’t make for great bullets either. But any aluminum alloy kind of gets the property of aluminum. Where any iron alloy does not necessarily get the property of being able to allomantically or feruchemically interact with it in the right way. Can you get there? It's an excellent question that I perhaps should explore. I like this idea. But it's harder than you make it out to be. It is a good idea, though; it's a pretty good idea.

r/books AMA 2022 (July 7, 2022)

 

I mean you don't need to completely sheer through it to knock it out of commission, all you really need is to puncture a hole into the main body and let decompression do the rest, so I don't think that changes anything.

[alder24]

4 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I mean you don't need to completely sheer through it to knock it out of commission, all you really need is to puncture a hole into the main body and let decompression do the rest, so I don't think that changes anything.

Vast majority of WW2 planes weren't pressurized. B29 was pressurized but they of course have oxygen masks as well. Decompression won't work on them. B17 could fly 4k feet higher than B29 and it wasn't pressurized at all.

It does change a lot when you can't punch a hole with a Shardblade.

Plus WW2 was the first time jet planes were introduced, with speeds of 600 km/h - ~1000 km/h (mach ~0.8) - Windrunners might be fast, but planes can be fast as well. And before you say anything, yes, Windrunners are more maneuverable than planes.

[Frustration]

Just now, alder24 said:

Vast majority of WW2 planes weren't pressurized. B29 was pressurized but they of course have oxygen masks as well. Decompression won't work on them. B17 could fly 4k feet higher than B29 and it wasn't pressurized at all.

It does change a lot when you can't punch a hole with a Shardblade.

You're going to need that pressure to get anywhere close to Urithiru.

[alder24]

15 minutes ago, Frustration said:

You're going to need that pressure to get anywhere close to Urithiru.

I'm not talking about Urithiru now. But yes, devoiding the air around bombers will make them drop (which can be salvageable if they drop below the vacuum back into the air). But bombing formations were enormous. The smallest unit containing several planes was called combat box, which could span (depending on numbers and type of planes) 2,440 ft (740 m) wide and 700 ft (210 m) vertically, but only 320 ft (98 m) deep, but the entire bombing raid could be the size of  70 miles long and 5-6 miles wide (for ~500-600 bombers) - but Feb 3 1945 raid on Berlin contained 2500 planes and was  360 miles long. You need a lot of Windrunners to drain the area so large out of the air - and most of the planes would just change directions and go around or to secondary targets.

Info from google/wiki, don't trust me on that.

Edited April 29, 2023 by alder24

[Argenti he/him]

Roshar could set up a whole bunch of alerter fabrials linked up to spanreeds as a form of radar. Thus they know where planes are

[Beodrakis he/him]

On 5/6/2023 at 8:22 PM, Argenti said:

Roshar could set up a whole bunch of alerter fabrials linked up to spanreeds as a form of radar. Thus they know where planes are

they know when the planes arrive but they have no good way of fighting them, and you'd need an absolutely massive gem to store the amount of stormlight necessary to detect planes at an effective range, since B-29s have a ceiling of almost 10km , there would need to be an extremely large amount of extremely large gemstones to detect them, and just a guy with 2 eyes and a spanreed could probably get the job done much more efficiently, either way, you wont know there is a bomber till it's too late.