Look! Up in the sky! It's a lead balloon-- no, it's a lame duck...
no, it's C&C MAN!!!!
Firethorn wrote on 1/7/2004, 10:38 PM:
> November 23, 2003. That was the day of the first published, confirmed
> incident in the United States.
What?!? And I MISSED it! Darn it all! Gotta quit watching so much
anime, and start watching CNN more.
>The day the beings later known as youma
> first hit San Francisco, California. One hundred and fifty-seven people
> died that day. The monsters just teleported in and went on a
> rampage. It
Just a rampage? I bring this up because, while the Generals do seem
slightly less than tactical geniuses in canon (I blame their mental
domination by Beryl), I don't think they'd just throw youma away on
pointless rampages all over the world. "You" wouldn't know this
in-story, of course, but one wonders if there was no discernable pattern
or intent to the youmas' actions. Particularly, someone should notice
eventually that the youma are trying to drain people's energy (assuming
that Jadeite&Co were just looking for cities without Senshi. Otherwise,
they really need *some* kind of reason to be attacking the rest of the
planet).
> ended up taking a SWAT team, some citizens with heavy rifles, and a brave
> EOD man who improvised a large mine attached to his truck to take five of
Five of them, after which the rest retreated, or *all* five of them?
> them down. Suddenly the war on terror, Iraq and Afghanistan took a back
> seat. Sure, the attack killed less than Pearl Harbor or September 11
> did.
> It didn't matter. Sure, the mullahs whined that the 'Great Satan' was
> reaping his just rewards. They soon learned differently. I had recently
> read an essay about the "Jacksonian Tradition". It rung a chord in
> me. It
> was to ring a greater one later.
Sug: "And with this new situation, it rang..." Or something to
indicate that the "chord" is related to these new events.
> Me, I took stock of my finances, and ordered a .50 BMG sniper rifle.
> Cost
> me close to $8,000. Took every cent I had saved in my career.
Ah... lemme guess. That price tag means a Barret M82, I bet.
Semi-auto is normally overkill for a .50BMG, but in this case I suspect
it's gonna come in handy.
> Fortunately,
> the same day, Barrett had announced that they were going to sell at cost,
> plus tool-up costs. They were going to expand. Precipitously. The next
> attack came three days later in Tuscan, just long enough for the
> public to
SP: isn't that "Tuscon"? "Tuscan" is a region in Europe, IIRC.
> start wondering if the attack was a once-only event. Aliens, monsters,
> radioactive mutations, all the theories expressed in the movies were
What, no time-travelling killer robots? (:)
> proposed. The fact that the bodies decomposed to dust so quickly didn't
> help. We didn't know anything but that it took large amounts of
> damage to
Yeah. Makes it difficult to find any weaknesses to exploit.
> kill them. Until then they were a nightmare out of hell. How little we
> knew, and yet, how right we were. The second attack was with six of the
> suckers. But Nevada was a different proposition than California, and
> they
I'd suggest moving the line about "Tuscon" down here.
> had some warning. Only seventy-eight people died that day. Eight
> civilians
> opened up on the youma, delaying them long enough for many people to
> escape.
I'd suggest "just long enough". Merely IMHO, but eight civilians,
likely not very heavily armed, are going to have a hard time containing
six youma. But with every SWAT team in the country on edge, "not long"
should still be "long enough."
> Curiously, one man was more effective that what seemed right. Pastor
> Jack
> Newman's bullets, from a unimposing .38 revolver, did more damage than
> the
> .45's fired by several others. But it was several weeks before this news
> came out.
It would have been easier if any bodies had survived to be
post-mortemed. But yeah, eventually someone should notice this pattern.
> At this point, President Bush started calling up military forces. Every
> base was in Charlie, with west coast bases in Delta. We were scared.
> Troops overseas were clamoring to come home and help.
"Charlie" and "Delta" I'm not familiar with, but from context it's
fairly clear that they refer to alert status of some kind. I know some
people would suggest more explication here, but I'm not sure that would
match the narrative "tone" established so far. Author's choice, I suppose.
> The attacks accelerated and spread. We learned that Japan had been
> suffering from them, and some 'Sailor Scouts' or 'Sailor Warriors' had
> been
> fighting them. It was discovered that blessed bullets, especially from
> certain pious individuals, were more effective. It certainly resulted in
> certain priests being, well, marked as fraudulent.
Naming no names, but I bet most televangelists didn't fare too well.
> Our reaction was,
> well,
> extreme. This was a HOLY fight. Many mullahs were torn apart after
> their
> 'blessings' proved less than effective in killing the beasts. After Fort
I *think* I know what you mean here, but you might want to make it more
clear just which varety of mullahs you're referring to.
There's also Wiccans, buddhists, Shintoists, neo-pagans, and who knows
how many others. The Army has a least a few of each. I wonder how they
fared. And what about things like protective charms, "warded"
buildings, etc? Just food for thought.
> Carson was attacked, killing 12 soldiers, I was issued an M-16. But that
> was discovered to be capable of little more than harassing to the youma.
Too bad the Army never adopted the H&K G-11. In burst mode, it
essentially puts three rounds through the same hole (triple damage
score!).
I bet Marines are pulling lots of M-14s out of storage.
> They had gotten tougher. Well, so did we. You quickly started seeing
> weapons worn openly by people. First it was mostly handguns, but people
Sug: "but soon people..."
> started carrying the heaviest rifle they owned. I started carrying my
> Barrett instead of the M-16, and nobody questioned me.
Except for Lt Baka, but the Sarge had a quiet word with him.
>Anti-firearm laws
> were repealed at a local level as a fast rate if they weren't ignored
Hmm. Most restrictions would have to be repealed at the State level.
I could see some "executive orders" from Governors' offices, though, in
states whose constitutions allow for that.
> completely. The youma mostly hit population centers, but anywhere people
> gathered was a target. We, the military, just couldn't cover everywhere
> sufficiently. The NRA and other groups started setting up carefully
> staged
> 'parties', complete with .50BMG machinegun demonstration centers...
BYOG? Heh. Although since most enthusiasts own more than one firearm,
I suspect a lot of loaning started going on. Local NRA branches would
probably get right into the middle of that.
Minor factoid: during the Lend-Lease phase of WWII, many US civilians
donated rifles and ammunition to Britain to arm the woefully underarmed
Home Guard.
> It was
> the rebirth of the militia. In Colorado Springs, the local Class 3 arms
> dealer happened to be close to a youma attack with his... vehicle. He
"Vehicle." Ohboy.
> managed to dust 3 youma in short order with the two machine guns
> mounted on
> his SUV.
Wouldn't a pickup truck work better? Most SUVs aren't really good
prospects for mounting heavy weapons, to my mind. A lot have light
frames, and the cargo area is roofed over.
>This, to me, marked the start of the full restoration of the 2nd
> amendment.
Woo. *That* gets into some sticky political territory. But it does
match the narrational tone established so far.
> Meanwhile, every scrap of evidence about the attacks were gathered up and
> analyzed. I heard rumors of new weapons, even as precision-guided
> artillery
> was being set up in strategic points in and around cities. Police were
> given GPS devices and hasty training in calling in fire support. I
Now here my suspension of disbelief hits a snag. Without using
precision rounds, even the best artillery needs ranging shots to get
on-target. Between that and the fact that the youma are generally
hitting densely populated urban areas, I can't see anyone using
artillery this way. Maybe, if the battle has gone on long enough that a
large area has been totally evacuated, yeah, but not before then. Even
perfectly targetted arty is going to do massive collateral damage.
still
> remember the how the youma looked shocked when they were hit with the
> first
> artillery strick. For all of six seconds, when the second shell hit.
Sug: "until the second..."
> Heck,
> at Minot AFB we had a B-52 flying at all times armed with JATO laser
> guided
JATO=Jet Assisted Take-Off. I suspect you mean JDAM? This has the
same problem as artillery, though -- JDAMs have a CEP of 13m, at best --
30m if using inertial guidance. There *are* improvements slated to
bring that down to 3m, but even so, I sure hope those are 500-pounders,
not their larger siblings.
Another problem is how fast the Youma can move, rendering GPS-guided
bombs less effective -- it takes those bombs several seconds to fall.
In that time the youma could move a block or more. I'd go for
laser-guided, by preference. Best would probably be AGM-65s from
Warthogs, and Hellfires from Apaches. Gives the target less time to
> bombs. And people around with radios and pointers. Washington D.C. had
> alot of the protection, of course, with an A-10 constantly circling
> between
Ah, the A-10 -- the FINAL answer in close air support. I bet
somebody's going to start making more of them (since IIRC
Fairchild-Republic is either extinct, or was bought out).
> the white house and congress building. The 30MM rounds from the GAU-8
> don't
> need any blessings to kill youma. Hotlines were set up so people
It *is* a bit hard to hit something smaller than a tank with one, but
the fact that you don't have to correct for gravity or windage helps.
Plus burst fire....
> could call
> in attacks. Fast reaction heavy weapon patrols were formed. They
> usually
Since you use it as a acronym below, I'd suggest capitalizing the name
here.
> finished up what the citizens didn't kill. Youma started to learn,
> but they
> didn't have much of a learning curve, that's for sure. They had a hard
> time, even when they popped up in the dozens, learning to keep out of
> view
Wait -- had a hard time *learing,* or a hard time *despite* learning?
The grammatical construction is a bit ambiguous.
> of rooftops and towers. Most of them had snipers firing blessed
> ammunition.
"most of them" sounds like "most of the youma." Took me a re-read to
realize you were taling about the towers and rooftops.
> One round usually wouldn't kill one, but they would do rather serious
> damage. Three or four rounds would finish most of them off. Of
> course, it
> would be all over when the FRHWP, or 'FRAP', showed up. Heavy machine
> guns
> would keep the youma from charging the HMMWVs long enough for the
> others to
> nail them with RPGs and wire-guided missiles.
>
> Construction codes have been revised again. What, with the attacks, most
> public places are guarenteed to be attacked sooner or later. We
SP: "gauranteed"
> refuse to
> give up our lives for the youma. And that includes gathering.
I'm not sure the time scale supports changes in building codes. *Mods*
to public buildings, yeah, especially since so many older ones are built
to the old Civil Defense fallout-shelter standards.
>Anyways,
> public places have all been reinforced. After all, they have to take
> monsters, and the high-caliber response to them. The highest-risk sites
> have guards armed with machine guns just in case. Crime has dropped
> to just
> about zero. Everybody's armed, and any gunfire attracts an overwhelming
> response.
Which has certain drawbacks of its own, though. Like collateral
damage. And regrettably, I'd bet that accidental shootings have gone up
-- at least until people wise up some. While I'll cheerfully admit to
being a 2nd-Ammendmant supporter myself, arming large portions of the
public with heavy weapons isn't going to happen without *some* things
going wrong. The Swiss show it *can* be done, but the transitional
period is likely to be rough.
> Sure, we still take casualties. But we're in a fight for HUMANITY.
> Many of
> us view it as the preview of the final coming. Praise god and pass the
> ammunition type of thing. Even now, less than a year later, there's
Sug: quote marks around the 'praise...ammo' line.
Might want to modify the 'second coming' line, too -- the USA has a lot
of non-Christians who are not going to look at it in that light. And
even a lot of Christians wouldn't, either, IMO.
> talk of
> a monument to all those who've fallen to the monsters.
We put up monuments to *everything* these days. Not that I'm
*objecting,* really, but at some point we're going to run out of room...
> And the talk about pulling out of the other countries evaporated once we
> learned that other countries were suffering attacks as great, if not
> worse
> than us. China was direly struck, and became our ally once more.
"direly"? I'm not sure that's a legal word.
> They were
> unable to maintain their state as it was under the assault. Everybody
> had
> to be armed to hold back the tide, and you can't oppress an armed people.
While arming the Chinese populace *would* have a serious effect on the
structure of the PRC government, I'm not sure it would be so simple as
suggested here. At this point, you're in danger of sounding less like a
'fic than a political leaflet. Authorial "preaching" turns off a lot of
readers.
> The USA showed once again how much war material it could produce when
> threatened. We're the largest arms exporter in the world now. The
Weren't we already? Well, except maybe for the fUSSR states, if you
count them as one block.
And I bet the Russians would be big players in this, too. They're
better than almost enyone at making simple, idiot-proof, dependable
infantry weapons. And infantry weapons are going to make up the bulk of
this war, especially in 2nd- and 3rd-world nations. American weapons
are usually good, but dependent on heavy logistical support. The M-16,
frex, performs as well in battle as the AK-47, but is substantially
higher-maintenance.
>new
> M-20, firing an explosive 10MM round is the most popular, followed by
>the
Rifle or pistol?
> venerable .50BMG. I've heard some troops are being issued an
> experimental
> variation on the gyrojet round. Supposed to do more damage at longer
The gyrojet's biggest problem was a severe lack of accuracy. Whenever
you have propulsion taking place beyond the end of the gunbarrel,
accuracy suffers.
OTOH, I could see rocket-propelled ammo making a comeback, using rounds
that did all their burn *inside* the length of the rifle barrel, in
order to allow heavy rounds without heavy recoil. Recoil, weight, and
ammo reequirements are going to be big design drivers for this new
generation of battle rifles.
> ranges. Thing is, if you're that far from youma, you call in for an air
> strike or artillery, know what I mean?
I just hope the target area's been evacuated, as noted above.
>I hear that we've had some
> success
> in the research on how they manage to teleport in. The other day, I
> heard
> on TV that the youma might be coming using Antarctica as a relay
> point. If
> so, I can see us nuking the area...
Pity the poor penguins. I *would* hope that the NCA would decide on
more precise recon before resorting to such measures -- carpet-nuking
Antarctica would be just a *tad* extreme (I'll refrain from the
obligatory Evangelion jokes).
>
> ----------------------------------
>
> 1st draft, probably final, written in about 2 hours.
> If you're curious about the essay, it's at:
> http://denbeste.nu/external/Mead01.html
>
> Firethorn
>
>
> .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
> | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
> | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
> | Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject |
> `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'
>
.---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
| Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
| Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
| Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject |
`---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'