king of nowhere

the problem is that from the time the nuke is launched to the time it hits, it takes 10 to 20 minutes. So even if your fabrial can detect the missile the very moment it launches (without triggering false positives every time a plane passes), then "far far before" means no more than 20 minutes. if you have common radars, make it closer to 5 minutes. now, you may have spren watching those missiles, sending the alarm the moment they start to prepare to launch. Problem is, in the nuclear stalemate, to ensure that you can retaliate with the 5-minutes warning (because, remember, that's the alert your radars are going to give you. 10 minutes at most) all of your missiles must always be ready to launch within 5 minutes. so, even spy spren watching the missiles could increase the warning time to 25 minutes. without knowing where the missile is going to hit. No, when missiles are flying, it's far too late to do anything. Before missiles are flying, that's when you want to do stuff that's actually feasible. Not when the missiles are launched, of course, but at the first suspect that the other guys may want to really try something like that. But that's not foolproof. while some nuclear missiles are stored in underground silos, some are hidden in submarines. who stay out at sea for months and whose sole mission is to stay hidden. theoretically, an elsecaller could get them. but good luck finding them, the ocean is huge. Thinking about it, to disables the ones on the ground, the elsecaller whould need to go deep under the ocean. also not trivial. and then there are other nukes hidden in safe places. your elsecaller is going to miss some. there is also the risk that if the enemy discovers you (if roshar knows of nukes, there has probavbly been some contact, so earth will probably know of shadesmar, and will take countermeasures) and discover that you are tampering with their nukes, they may take it as an aggression and launch a nuclear strike while they still can! that's how MAD (mutually assured destruction) works. the enemy trying to destroy you is not an aggressive act. during the nuclear war, the two superpowers never took much notice when the other side made more bombs. we can obliterate them, they can obliterate us, it doesn't change the stalemate if they can obliterate us even more. but when the US considered building a space shield, Russia grew very hot. because if the US could remove the threat of being nuked, then they had Russia at their mercy. "do what we want, or we'll nuke you, and you won't be able to strike back". being able to defend against the enemy is the most dangerous kind of offence in a MAD scenario. the russians may well have launched a strike before their position became unteneable. So, perhaps the appropriate answer from roshar would not be to try and disable all the missiles. It would be to send a strike team of kaladin (flight), shallan (stealth), jasnah (demolition) and szeth (i'm sure he'll make himself useful) and show that they can go anywhere on the planet undetected and wreak havoc on a global scale. not sure they could assassinate any leader (one sleeping in a random room in a huge subterranean complex should be safe enough), but if nothing else they could set oil rigs on fire, soulcast acqueduct water into poison, and so on. Not as destructive as massive nuclear apocalipse, but enough to act as deterrence. Now roshar can also threaten to cause massive destruction on earth, and there is equilibrium. Also, Dalinar should easily understand the concept with a bit of help.

to expand on this: a nuclear missile travels at thousands of kilometers per hour, well above the atmosphere. and it takes a few tens of minutes to go round half the globe. good luck seeing it by night. even by day, you'll have a hard time spotting it from more than ten kilometers away, which is awfully small compared to the whole world. and if one launches a nuclear missile, one generally launches many. so, if kaladin knows that a nuclear missile has been launched against urithiru, he MAY be able to do something about it. maybe. considering his flying trip to his home village, the amount of stormlight required to reach a missile would be very impractical to gather, especially on short notice. it would be more practical to try and send some other object flying against it (nuclear weapons are quite delicate, they require some fine engineering to explode; break it, and the bomb won't go off. it will smatter radioactive material all over the place instead); but given how fast those things move, and how big is the sky, it would be extremely difficult. As difficult as hitting a bullet in flight. But still, a chance. If kaladin knows that a nuclear missile has just been launched against somewhere else than urithiru, there's absolutely nothing he can do. perhaps contact someone via spanreed and telling them to hide in a basement, if they are far away enough from the explosion they may survive. or someone could try to leave the city on a fast horse. anyway, too late to stop the bomb. if 1000 nuclear missiled are launched simultaneously at objectives all across roshar, then the only thing kaladin can do is to throw himself into the honor chasm.

there is one major problem with that: the lerasium would have not made elend better at burning atium. lerasium makes you full mistborn, but as far as we know it's not cumulative with preexhisting metallic arts. if you are a lerasium mistborn and you eat lerasium, you don't become stronger, you stay a lerasium mistborn. so even if elend had been a seer, he'd not have become stronger.

A bit more complicated that that. i see a circle of a bit more than 400 miles of diameter, but there is also a sizable chunk of sea in it. so my first estimate of 300000 square kilometers is to be revised downwards a bit. but approximating the empire to a circle, and counting the pixels on the image, i get roughly 3000 miles of diameter for the final empire, translating (approximating it to a full circle) to 18 million square kilometers. considering the seas, 15 millions is a fairly good approximation. as scadrial is the same size of earth, it means if the empire was centered on the north pole, it would stretch southward to include cape north, the northernmost parts of alaska, and a sizable chunk of siberia down to norilsk. EDIT: incidentally, i think some of that stuff here should be updated on the coppermind. it is rather sparse of precise geographical informations

considering what happened to scadrial, it's much better to burn a continent by self-nuking than to let tlr win. the death count will be even much lower.

525 square miles make no sense. that's a square 23 miles by side. it barely covers elendel. but it's not just a missing zero, since what i get is a circle with a radius of 200 miles, which brought me to 300thousand square kilometers. where do you get the 525 from?

we don't know, but the creation of all the mountains surrounding the basin certainly altered the watershed and distribution of rivers. probably the mountain ranges also affect general weather with their rain shadow and effects on air circulation. so, the irongate river comes from the water fallin on all the basin. the mountains surrounding the basin are a watershed. the channerel is probably still there, as all the rain falling on the rest of the continent still will drain somewhere, but probably the raising of the mountains has shifted its mouth westward, and it's somewhat smaller than it used to be because it has a smaller drainage area. also, it is not an assumption. it is confirmed

the coppermind article says 50% bigger (not clear if by "bigger" they mean by radius or by surface area) but only 20% more gravity. I'll ignore mostly magic because in most cases magic users are too few to alter a battle too much, and i'll just look at the main factors: technology, numbers, environment. Any modern army would absolutely pulverize anything in their way just with technology. kaladin may just be able to fly high and fast enough to take down a modern airplane, maybe. too bad we have thousands, with guns powerful enough that i'm not sure there would be enough left of kaladin to regenerate if he gets hit, and a single nuke on urithiru would just quell any resistance. the lord ruler on scadrial would actually be able to stand even against a modern army, that's how crazy his power is. a close hit from a nuke would probably kill him - if nothing else, it releases enough heat to vaporize his metalminds, and goodbye powers. But good luck getting such a close hit. and nothing short of nuclear power would come close to inconveniencing him, so ancient scadrial is off limits for any other army if we count the lord ruler. even industrial army would make piecemeal of any shardworld, because guns. and industrial production. seriously, guns are huge. there's a reason if europe conquered the rest of the world in the discovery age. modern scadrial has guns, but limited numbers and no military organization. renaissance armies would probably fail to conquer modern scadrial, because modern guns are a lot better than renaissance guns. sure, modern scadrial does not have much military organization, but just mass produce guns and give them to the population and you should do the trick. they are an industrial society, they can mobilize, and with the basin being superfertile, they have a lot of population. perhaps a highly mobile army (mongols?) could invade them fast enough to be done before mobilization. maybe. or perhaps they'd get drowned in numbers. even at their height the mongols only had a few hundred thousands warriors, while the basin population is in the tens of millions, and some of them have guns. the constabulary forces may actually be enough to repel the mongols. otherwise, renaissance armies would sweep most of the other shardworld with gunpowder and advanced armor.roshar would be a tough nut to crack mostly because of the unfriendly environment, but i doubt any rosharan army would be able to stand against muskets. romans won't get very far anywhere. romans conquered most of the world because they had several advantages over their competitors at the time. they started to lose their edge near the end of the classical era. but aside from numbers and organization, their technology was far weaker than middle age military technology, which is what most shardworld have. roman armor was utilitarian, but in no way comparable with medieval armor. ancient scadrial (minus tlr) would drown them in numbers, plus environment (they'd have troubles surviving with the ash and different plants). roshar has a better technology, decent numbers, and environment. the romans may make some headway there because rosharan nations are so divided and disorganized, but shardbearers should tip the balance. we don't know enough of the military might of the selish empires to make any kind of estimate. nalthis has better soldiers with the lifeless, but their numbers (40 thousands for the hallandren empire) aren't impressive. still, when they mobilize they can probably pull many more. but nalthis would also be a potential conquest. mongols wouldn't go far on roshar (unfriendly environment. they require pasture for the horses). but if they can graze the horses and survive the highstorms, then they could potentially take roshar. once you take those factors out, the environment (large expanses with scattered cities) is favorable to them, and the general lack of chivalry puts the rosharan armies in trouble when facing horse archers. if the horses don't have too many problems with the ash, they'd also conquer ancient scadrial; again, pastures, lots of space, few horses to give chase. nalthis would be harder: lifeless soldiers can march tirelessly, they should be able to overtake horses by endurance, thus negating the mongols main advantage, that of mobility. they may conquer a continent on sel (again, we don't know how powerful they are) but they'd stay there; they never had decent naval power. they'd die of thirst on threnody, who would pose no significant military resistance otherwise.

wow! where does that map of the final empire come from? is it form the new leatherbound edition? is there a higher resolution version?

in fact, this raises the question: if the rest of the geography was kept the same, does this mean that there are some big islands a relatively short trip from elendel? or were those islands moved?

I improved the map a bit, and found a better scale. you may see that also lake tyrian is in the same place

we don't have any hard data on it, as the full extent of the continent is unknown. however, the scale of the map tells us that the whole basin is around 400 miles in diameter, which gives us an area of roughly 300000 square kilometers. roughly the size of italy or germany, or half the size of texas. a size much lower than that of a full continent. we can get some good comparison if we assume that the rest of the continent was unchanged over the time of the final empire (which seems likely). Because if you compare the maps of the elendel basin and of the final empire, you may notice that a bit of coastline is the same: the peninsula of Bilming is identical to the peninsula west of mount Doriel in the final empire; the rest of the coastline matches, for all of the map. from this, you can get a good idea of how the basin fits over the rest of the continent. I made a superposition of the two maps

let me just stop you here. in our real world we didn't have shards messing around, and yet we didn't have much peace either. on the other hand, peace is not necessarily good for progress. some speculate that europe was more advanced at the beginning of the discovery age exactly because it had one millennia of almost constant warfare, where everyone was forced to innovate or succumb, while in other continents a big monolitic empire formed and ensured peace, but the ruling class didn't have many reasons to try and change things. Another thing to account is that the speed of progress can be highly variable. We don't know what directs it. we only have one world to observe, and cannot know how it could go in other places. But we know that even in our world, different geographical areas have experienced periods of flourishing and periods of stagnation. the rate of technological innovation has been anything but constant or predictable so, while there is certainly the possibility that some non-shardworld has some advanced civilization on it, there is also no guarantee, and no way to surmise

sanderson mentions in the annotations that he went for a long time with some different metals, so after he swapped them he still didn't fix them everywhere. there are also instances of swapping tin for silver. later prints fixed it. i'm too lazy to fish out the references now

i actually prefer that scenario. i don't like when the magical people are the only ones who actually matter. i don't like the lone hero doing everything. i prefer that the muggles can contribute. and i find that being the only superpowered guy around lessens the heroism of a hero. "I will do it because someone has to" is better than "i will do it because i am invulnerable and shoot lasers from my eyes and everyone else cannot" that said, wax is not reduced of importance just because there are guns. spensa's powers make her useful even with future tech available.

there are many, many kinds of bows, but that's irrelevant. the reason to launch at an angle has to do with the laws of ballistics. If you shoot directly, gravity still affects your arrow, so it will fall down. you shoot directly over short distances, where the falling down of the arrow is negligible. if you are shooting at a target far away, you aim above your target, to compensate for the fact that your arrow will fall down a bit due to gravity. the more distant the target, the higher you have to aim; you get the greater distance by aiming 45 degrees over the horizon; if you keep raising your trajectory over that angle, you lose range again, because you lose too much forward speed. so, the reason in some scenes they are firing directly and in some scenes they are firing high has nothing to do with strategy and depends only on the distance of the target. when the alethi armies charged each other, they were far away, and the archers were aiming far to hit the distant army. when the parshendi shoot at the bridgmen, the bridgemen were very close, so they would shoot directly. and once kaladin used the side carry to protect his team, the parshendi again shoot high to hit the army, which was farther off.

only until armor technology developed enough. later on, armor impervious to longbows became more commonplace. at agincourt the longbows were ineffective against the heavily armored french, who were nonetheless defeated by tactical blunders and wheather. and the two river men's feats of marksmanship are way exaggerated. it is stated somewhere than any boy could hit a target at 200 paces; i doubt in real life many can, besides high level athletes. and with much better bows that said, yes, they were very effective. technically you could, but it's very impractical. if you consider how a longbow is held, you realize that firing it upwards requires bending your back awkwardly. most important, you lose a lot of accuracy. still more likely to work that shooting at a thick bridge, though. that, too. i'm not sure those kind of losses would have been sustainable in the long run. there's only so many destitutes you can put under a bridge

first of all, i doubt the parshendi have the military knowledge for it. secondly, and most important, you can't do parabolic fire at point blank, not unless the arrows are so slow that they are a threat to no one. given the speed of the arrow, the distance to your target determines the angle of the trajectory. if nothing else, longbows propels the arrow with more force, so the arrow should fly even straighter. thirdly, it was actually done, and it worked well enough, with real shields. a bridge is bigger, higher, thicker than a shield, and it has less gaps. there must be a way to make it work with a bridge too. a bridge has others drawbacks over a shield (you certainly cannot fight while carrying a bridge) but as long as you only have to cover a short distance with it you should be fine. DiePie summed it up well: the system worked, they had no reason to try too hard to improve it

on the other hand, now that i think about it... 20 bridge crews with side carry. marchin in formation. using the bridges to cover the rest of the army. Out with the old shield wall! in with the new bridge wall! seriously, it could work to reduce the losses of both soldiers and bridgmen. it's basically what dalinar does with his armored siege bridges

it's interesting, actually. many people, even here, strongly associate fantasy with low tech. some people think that if there is technology, then it's not even fantasy anymore. except that technology does not in any way preclude "gods and monsters and magic". there really should be no reason to associate fantasy with low tech except tradition.

to be fair, there would have been some better strategies. one was to have some permanent, trained bridge crews that would carry the bridge until the last chasm. being trained for speed and endurance, they would be faster than regular bridgemen. then at the last chasm you take that permanent crew off and you put in the expendable crew. anyway, yes, there are some things sadeas could have done better. for example, instead of trying to get kaladin killed, he could have promoted him and his crew.

true. on the other hand, dalinar always had an honorable side to him. ever since that first flashback where he spared looting the city because one man impressed him. moash? not so much.

eh, i think most of the community will like the book even if the characters didn't go where they hoped. i doubt people will actively dislike the book just because shallan and adolin divorce or don't. and regarding moash, I have to adapt an old religious dogma: "Can Sanderson write a character so loathsome that he cannot be redeemed?" "Yes, he can. And then he can write him a satisfactory redemption arc"

when i had to invent a fantasy world for a D&D campaign, i decided to take a classic fantasy world and advance it by a few centuries. it's always come naturally for me, whenever confronted with fantasy, to wonder "what would happen with more progress"? having magic with late-renaissance or early industrial tech has always appealed to me. i still hadn't made the next step, to advance it further to modern era or space era (though there is an argument to be made that the star wars universe has many elements that fit more closely in fantasy than in sci-fi), but as soon as i read brandon's plans for mistborn i realize it was the logical prosecution. so, all hail magitek! also, there is a ton of classical fantasy with medieval stasis out there. probably more than one can read. i don't think we need more of it. better to explore in different directions.

then perhaps i did not find the proper places to check