Questions you want answered.

I don’t think gassing every soldier at once would be plausible. I was thinking more along the lines of planned skirmishes. To even capture 5% of Faction-B’s soldiers in this manner would probably be nigh impossible.

Another problem with the plan is that once enemy soldiers are captured and imprisoned, Faction-A would need to care for and feed the prisoners. The cost in manpower, and materials to pull that off would be huge.

One odd thought that came to me was the idea that while the enemy was knocked out, a prison could be built around them where they lay. I don’t know. My head is doing strange things today.

The whole thing is just a silly scenario that occurred to me as I was thinking about JRPGs and sleep spells and how something like that might work in the real world.

Gas is an excellent localized weapon and a crummy at-scale one.

For one thing, wind exists.

For two, airlifting a sufficient amount of gas to blanket an entire nation would bankrupt the nation attempting it.

Since ghosts are incorporeal do they all fall through the floor and get stuck in the earth's core or would they get launched out the other side into space?

Since the Earth spins at 1,000 miles per hour and rotates around the sun at like 66,000 miles per hour, if ghosts are incorporeal and not affected by gravity then in a split second the planet would have moved past them and they would just be sitting in the vacuum of space.

But usually they are tethered to something corporeal, I thought? Which is why they haunt a particular location. I'm not sure what happens if their tether is destroyed though.

Ghost are effected by gravity just like thoughts are. They weigh heavy on the mind.

Huh, did we not have a thread for Ace Combat 7? I'm wondering if I should get it for my spankin' new PC, or my PS4.

Any idea who the hood graphic is of?

I thought maybe Barbarella but not sure.

Rawk, I really don't think so. Troops are pretty highly dispersed even in an active war, with maybe 10% or so actually doing the fighting, while others train, rest and refit, organize, handle logistics, and so forth. This means you'd have to strike simultaneously not just at the front lines, but at the training areas, supply centers and so forth. You'd have to then project force immediately - within hours, I guess - to subdue the ones in the rear. And you need total air superiority, both to disperse the gas behind the lines and in deep strikes, but also to transport troops as follow-on.

No one has that many planes or troops. If you could pull this off, you'd already be in a winning situation, overwhelmingly.

Then there's manufacture and transport of the gas, along with keeping it secret in an age of electronic and satellite and human intelligence. As mentioned above, the POW problem would be devastating; where would you put them, and what do you feed them? How long can you hold them, and how do you guarantee that they don't go back to fighting right after? Think Iraq in this regard.

Further, since it's modern day, you have to overcome whatever NBC protective measures the enemy has. Otherwise, a large percentage reach shelter or don protective gear and immediately fight the oncoming troops.

This is just off the top of my heads and ignores politics, international law and so forth. Although it's worth thinking about overdoses, under-doses and allergic effects, too.

For me, this would play out successfully in a tactical situation. Google "Eben Emael" for more insight. But the Germans tried using chlorine to gas a large section of front, and it did not do well. Modern systems would work on the scale of miles, but not tens of miles, I don't think. Not for the quick effects you are looking at, and the pre-positioning of equipment and gas would surely be noticed by intelligence assets. (Whether they could act on it is another question.)

I hope some of this helps.

Prederick wrote:

Huh, did we not have a thread for Ace Combat 7? I'm wondering if I should get it for my spankin' new PC, or my PS4.

I have it for my PS4 Pro. It's pretty solid, with good frame-rates and reasonable visuals. It's stupid, cartoony aviation, but it's a laugh!

- Two million active soldiers is actually really high even for superpowers these days; only China has that at the moment--US active military peaked around there in 1989 but the post-cold-war military is much smaller. Throw in reserves and paramillitary resources and more countries fit the bill, but that still suggests that tactical use of a non-lethal attack doesn't need to scale quite as large.

- No war was ever won by killing all of the enemy. You don't even win battles that way: even the bloodiest battles in history only have a fraction of the total soldiers as casualties. The Battle of Antietam, "the bloodiest day in United States military history": 22,717 casualties out of 125,000 participants. Battle of the Somme "one of the bloodiest battles in human history", over 141 days in July-November: 4.47 million soldiers, about a million casualties.

- A sleep spell or gas, even as a strategic weapon, wouldn't have to incapacitate everyone to meet its strategic aim. Take out the right people and the resistance will collapse. True on both the strategic level and the tactical level: if there's a sudden hole in the middle of the line, that will obviously make it much harder for the rest of the army to resist.

- In the real world, even non-lethal weapons have major risks: tasers can kill, they're just less likely to. A sleeping gas would likely have some side effects or people who end up in lethal situations while helpless. There are actually major protests against non-lethal military weapons, because for the military "non-lethal but incapacitating" generally means that they leave the victims permanently blinded or maimed.

- There's existing military doctrine that could probably be applied to something like this. For example, one things studied during the Cold War was using radiation to kill the humans in an area while leaving structures intact. That doesn't line up exactly with this, but there's probably a number of plans that were discussed that might have some bearing on how someone might deploy something like this.

Gremlin wrote:

- No war was ever won by killing all of the enemy. You don't even win battles that way: even the bloodiest battles in history only have a fraction of the total soldiers as casualties.

...one things studied during the Cold War was using radiation to kill the humans in an area while leaving structures intact.

Yeah, you're talking about neutron bombs. Kill the people; take their stuff. The problem remains that military forces on a combat footing are spread over a large geographic area, in a mix of ground, air, and sea-based platforms, many of which are either have intrinsically protected against gas or dispersed-type attacks (aircraft, at-sea ships and submarines, mobile armour), electromagnetic attacks (most modern hardened military platforms), or are of sufficient mobility and number that targeting them becomes infeasible (mounted/mechanised infantry). Even if you did manage to take out an entire region with a magical weapon, you'd still have to deal with the strategic submarines that were lurking half a world away and are now dropping ballistic nuclear weapons on your population in retaliation.

As far as battles not being won by killing all of the enemy, it doesn't mean that people don't give it a bloody good try. It's just fantastically difficult to do so, even with high-lethality weapons. Trying to accomplish the same thing non-lethally would be so difficult as to be almost nonsensical. Frankly, if you had that weapon, you'd be better off just advertising it, perhaps with a small demonstration (which is how the whole nuclear bomb thing was supposed to go before the politicians decided that Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be more persuasive). Breaking the spirit of the politicians and the people is how wars end. Basic humanitarian principles are why such appalling weapons haven't been used since. It's far, far, far easier to just wipe an entire city off the map than to try to take control with minimal use of lethal force. Without constraints, the U.S. military probably could have ended all conflict in Iraq in a matter of hours, permanently.

The military chain of command is specifically designed so that taking out the "right people" doesn't make resistance collapse. Taking out leadership is a well-established principle of war, but leadership extends all the way down to squad level. Remove the generals, and colonels will take control. Remove them, and the majors will step into the role. All the way down to the squaddies. Incapacitate one region, and the others will move to adjust. The last surviving Marine of a unit isn't a lost soul, he is that unit, and his mission remains.

Finally, the logistics are entirely insurmountable. One of the best ways to break a military force isn't to kill its members, it's to injure them. Because that requires massive resources to deal with. An occupying force that is trying to deal with a full-strength military force that has been temporarily incapacitated but in all other ways is entirely unharmed is just asking for trouble. Modern military forces are highly professional and take a great deal of pride in their work. It would just be a matter of time before the knives come out again, this time in close quarters.

Forget the sleep spell, and start working on the suggestion spell that turns enemies into allies. Mind-rays are where the real juice is! Failing that, a spell that makes all of their weapons jam and their knives get stuck in sheathes. That would be entertaining to watch.

Coldstream wrote:

Forget the sleep spell, and start working on the suggestion spell that turns enemies into allies. Mind-rays are where the real juice is! Failing that, a spell that makes all of their weapons jam and their knives get stuck in sheathes. That would be entertaining to watch.

So more like Voldemort and Kylo Ren. Or maybe use the shrink ray from Despicable Me to shrink, well any number of things. But if you could make the fart blaster from Despicable Me and cause the enemy to pass out from the smell, then rush in and bind their arms and legs...

And BadKen wins in stunning style. Clearly, there can be no more effective weapon!

LeapingGnome wrote:

Since the Earth spins at 1,000 miles per hour and rotates around the sun at like 66,000 miles per hour, if ghosts are incorporeal and not affected by gravity then in a split second the planet would have moved past them and they would just be sitting in the vacuum of space.

Ghosts may be incorporeal but they must be affected by the curvature of spacetime. The planet rotating away from them leaving them in space would imply they're at absolute rest, violating general relativity.

"Lisa, in this house even ghosts OBEY the laws of general relativity!"

Coldstream wrote:
Prederick wrote:

Huh, did we not have a thread for Ace Combat 7? I'm wondering if I should get it for my spankin' new PC, or my PS4.

I have it for my PS4 Pro. It's pretty solid, with good frame-rates and reasonable visuals. It's stupid, cartoony aviation, but it's a laugh!

I got it for my spanking new pc, I've downloaded but have not yet played. I've been itching for an old school shooter like this for a while now.

When did frosted or glazed donuts become the norm? I noticed in Curious George Learns the Alphabet (1963) that when George gets a bunch of donuts, they're plain donuts in a big bag. When did the common idea of donuts become frosted donuts, and what caused the change?

The gas that can cleanly knock out a human being without any consideration is a fiction. Star Trek does this a lot with their "anesthizine" gas.

Any gas that you distribute on a population at large is going to affect each individual differently - for some not being nearly enough, to others being entirely too much. You're going to have a percentage unaffected, a percentage moderately affected, a percentage knocked unconscious, and a percentage dead.

There's a reason anesthesiologists tend to be full M.D. doctors.

ClockworkHouse, total guess here, but the original book (no donuts) was written in Paris and (perhaps) revised and published after they fled to New York City. They then moved to Cambridge Mass, where they lived for the rest of their lives. By 1963, they had been in Cambridge for what, 22 years?

Boston, and New England in general, shows a decided preference for cake donuts, and a particularly tasty variety based on strong cake spices (nutmeg, lemon rind, cinnamon and cardamom I think) is ubiquitous. I first ran into them as a child in the 60's, and while yeast donuts have become more popular over the years, I don't think they have overtaken cake donuts in New England, even today. It's still easy to find plain cake donuts in small towns that will live in your gustatorial memory for years...

So that's my guess, that they were depicting the familiar "grab and go" treats, donuts that would hold up to being knocked around in a sack (ie, cake) and not get icing or sticky glaze all over everything (like, say, a chimpanzees hair). Make sense?

And now I miss good New England cake donuts. Sigh...

Edit - Oh, and to answer your direct question, donuts have been topped since they were invented, in all their various forms, with powdered sugar and spices, nuts, sugar glaze, icing, bits of fruit, all sorts of things. So that choice goes all the way back.

That was deliciously informative.

NSMike wrote:

Any gas that you distribute on a population at large is going to affect each individual differently - for some not being nearly enough, to others being entirely too much. You're going to have a percentage unaffected, a percentage moderately affected, a percentage knocked unconscious, and a percentage dead.

Still, it's been popular for long enough that it has been tried, with horrific results. In 2002, Chechnyan terrorists took over a Moscow theater and held over 800 people hostage. They claimed to have strung bombs in linked chains throughout the theater, and several were spotted with suicide vests. So the Russian internal security folks decided to gas the place. It worked, and they killed every terrorist on the spot. But what they used is familiar to us now (and was verified by direct third party analysis of victims clothing in 2014 or so). It was carfentanil, which is 100x as strong as fentanyl, and it killed over 120 of the hostages directly.

I don't think it's a big thing in the popular imagination anymore...

Mario, if you ever get to go to Connecticut or north, avoid the chain donuts and find that small local bakery where you are. Even a general store or local grocery will buy from a local baker. The cake donuts are much stronger in flavor than they are in the South. It's a huge difference. I'd venture to say that raised donuts are so popular in the South because their cake donuts are bland. And I don't mean that in a bad way, I love a good raised donut and there's no place better to get them than in the South. But man, a good cake donut makes you realize what you've been missing (and why a pair of donuts with a glass of milk was a meal in the 1930's...).

Edit - Looking at recipes, I see that in New England, soured milk is favored over plain; there's at least 2x the nutmeg, a relatively large dose of cinnamon, and lemon rind is popular in the dough. I've personally seen other spices used (sometimes cardamom, sometimes black pepper in small amounts), but those seem to be the big differences. So it's got more spice to it, and a tang from the soured milk and lemon rind that is very distinctive.

Robear wrote:

Mario, if you ever get to go to Connecticut or north, avoid the chain donuts and find that small local bakery where you are. Even a general store or local grocery will buy from a local baker. The cake donuts are much stronger in flavor than they are in the South. It's a huge difference. I'd venture to say that raised donuts are so popular in the South because their cake donuts are bland. And I don't mean that in a bad way, I love a good raised donut and there's no place better to get them than in the South. But man, a good cake donut makes you realize what you've been missing (and why a pair of donuts with a glass of milk was a meal in the 1930's...).

Will do!

You're making me crave donuts now...

Yeah, me too lol.

In the original Aramaic they're actually bagels.

I find the juxtaposition of donuts and fatal knockout gas rather disturbing.

The greatest donuts in the history of humanity are the piping hot ones sold out of tiny food-stands on the sea-shore in Cromer, England. This is irrefutable, scientific, gospel, unquestionable truth, and we will not suffer the heretic to say otherwise.

I miss the apple cider donuts from Stowe Vermont.
The Minnesota mini-donuts are pretty good too.

Making me miss this one little donut shop in my hometown. Just a simple yeast donut with a light glaze on it but the part that makes them special is just how light and airy they are. It is almost like eating a glazed cloud. If a donut shop isn't owned/operated by an old Vietnamese couple I don't want anything to do with it.