Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Magic and Technology

[T]

And the three deep one states together have:

stuff

All in all, it's easy to justify why they've not been wiped out. There's probably people trying and lots more people who've tried and given up, but no real successes.

I would say that certainly justifies why. Too powerful, inaccessible, etc.

[kzt]

70% of the earth is covered in ocean. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find something on the ocean floor? Finding the Titanic took an extensive search, even though people knew about where and when it went down and it was huge. Technology has improved, but it's still extremely difficult to find things that are just sitting there even when no effort has been made to hide it.

The Titanic wasn't emitting megawatts of waste heat. Nor was it moving or running machine tools. Which are the kind of things that technological civilizations do.

[Endovior]

70% of the earth is covered in ocean. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find something on the ocean floor? Finding the Titanic took an extensive search, even though people knew about where and when it went down and it was huge. Technology has improved, but it's still extremely difficult to find things that are just sitting there even when no effort has been made to hide it.

The Titanic wasn't emitting megawatts of waste heat. Nor was it moving or running machine tools. Which are the kind of things that technological civilizations do.

True. It also wasn't in a place where we could easily send a military force to attack it, either. Any sub we can send down that deep has to be purpose-built for the task, in preference to having useful combat capabilities. So while your subs are floundering around looking for a heat source that might be an enemy base, or might just be an underwater volcano, they can just swim up to a sub and stick bombs to it for the lulz.

And, of course, the real Deep One cities that are actually important and such are surrounded by a terrifying aura of madness and doom that will drive a nontrivial portion of any attacking force insane before they actually manage to do anything useful. You could try to get around this by using a lot of drones, but there are nontrivial signal transmission issues at those depths; you'll need some kind of control vessels on-site to run things, or you don't have an effective force on-hand. And those become priority targets; and are still just as vulnerable as anything else. AI is another option, but it's a fairly expensive one; I don't think any of the major powers have enough capital to invest in enough AI-run underwater combat systems to successfully pull off raids on the Deep One capitals; anything less, though useful, doesn't do much but stir up the hornet's nest.

All told, the best way to deal with your Deep One problem is to pay them off to go after your enemies whenever you need to do anything non-trivial by sea; hopefully keeping them occupied while you do whatever it was you wanted to do. Your enemies are probably doing the same thing, so it's not reliable, but since a long-term solution to the Deep One problem isn't on the table, it's the best way to ensure an operation goes smoothly.

[kzt]

True. It also wasn't in a place where we could easily send a military force to attack it, either. Any sub we can send down that deep has to be purpose-built for the task, in preference to having useful combat capabilities. So while your subs are floundering around looking for a heat source that might be an enemy base, or might just be an underwater volcano, they can just swim up to a sub and stick bombs to it for the lulz.

And, of course, the real Deep One cities that are actually important and such are surrounded by a terrifying aura of madness and doom that will drive a nontrivial portion of any attacking force insane before they actually manage to do anything useful. You could try to get around this by using a lot of drones, but there are nontrivial signal transmission issues at those depths; you'll need some kind of control vessels on-site to run things, or you don't have an effective force on-hand. And those become priority targets; and are still just as vulnerable as anything else. AI is another option, but it's a fairly expensive one; I don't think any of the major powers have enough capital to invest in enough AI-run underwater combat systems to successfully pull off raids on the Deep One capitals; anything less, though useful, doesn't do much but stir up the hornet's nest.

Well, yeah. But 20 megaton nukes in a pressure vessel dropped out of a C-17 or an An-70 are probably not going to be terribly impressed with how scary things are. And nukes have an astonishing kill radius under water.

Associated with this is my feeling that if you threaten to starve Japan I tend to suspect that they will find some way to utilize their 50 tons of Plutonium to make your plan more painful and difficult to carry out than you might have expected.

[Endovior]

To that, I can only assume that if you try to simply nuke R'lyeh, Cthulhu will personally teleport the nuke someplace less annoying. Possibly the office of the guy who sent it there.

You could probably get away with nuking less-important Deep One outposts, though.

[Grek]

Alternatively: Nobody wants to nuke the ocean because they don't want radioative fallout in the world's precious water supplies.

[Username17]

Nuking the ocean is surprisingly ineffective. There are three waves of destruction sent out by a nuclear device: blast, heat, and radiation. Blast works pretty impressively well under water, because water is essentially incompressible. It still falls off at more than distance squared, but not a lot more. The heat and radiation, however, basically do dick all under water. Water is a pretty damn awesome insulator, and it's kilometers thick. There is no difference between night and day just 200 meters down, and the melting flash of a nuclear device isn't going to do much better.

Against under water targets, a nuclear device is just a big depth charge. Certainly something to worry R'lyeh with, but not something that you could feasibly expect to take them out with. After all, we actually tested nuclear weapons for anti-submarine duties, and the results were disappointing. From Wikipedia:

An example of a deep underwater explosion is the Wahoo test, which was carried out in 1958 as part of Operation Hardtack I. The nuclear device was detonated at a depth of 500 ft (150 m) in deep water. There was little evidence of a fireball.

It's not that you couldn't make weapons that could do some serious mass destruction to Deep One bases, it's that no one ever has.

-Username17

[Vebyast]

If you really want to mess with underwater civilization, a better bet might be to just make a lot of noise. The only reasonable way to sense or communicate underwater is with sound. First, you just plain confuse them. If you can't hear your own sonar you can't "see". Second, better sonar means more sensitive ears, and those are easier to blow out. Just drop enough noisemakers around and you might see dead Deep Ones washing up on beaches later.

[kzt]

Nuking the ocean is surprisingly ineffective. There are three waves of destruction sent out by a nuclear device: blast, heat, and radiation. Blast works pretty impressively well under water, because water is essentially incompressible. It still falls off at more than distance squared, but not a lot more. The heat and radiation, however, basically do dick all under water. Water is a pretty damn awesome insulator, and it's kilometers thick. There is no difference between night and day just 200 meters down, and the melting flash of a nuclear device isn't going to do much better.

Indeed, the primary destructive effect is the blastwave. It pretty much always is for nukes.

But you understate the destructiveness a lot. For example, (per 'Effect of Nuclear Weapons' 1964 ed) in deep water a 1 kt bomb produces a peak overpressure of 200 PSI at 3 miles. A 20 mt bomb would do that at 81 miles. It produces a 1000 PSI peak overpressure at 16 miles. It's like dynamite fishing on a really, really large scale.

The 20 MT bomb going off on the sea floor would also produce a crater more than 4000 foot wide and over 280 feet deep at the center.

Anyhow, I suspect that, if needed, humans could provide some basis for fruitful negotiations.

[Grek]

Protip: Detonating a 20mt bomb at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean will cause New York to be destroyed by tidal waves.

[Stahlseele]

Need a way to implement a SEP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else's_Problem

[kzt]

Protip: Detonating a 20mt bomb at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean will cause New York to be destroyed by tidal waves.

So is this a vote for or against the bomb?

Anyhow, it's not that bad. The chart I have bottom is 0.1 feet at 100 miles for a 1kt bomb, so we'll use 7 miles and 70 miles to show the trend.

At 7 miles a 20mt bomb would produce a wave height of 212 feet. At 70 miles a 20mt bomb would produce a wave height of about 20 feet.

So I think that at a thousand miles the wave effect would be pretty minor. However if you nuked the colony off of Innsmouth anyone living on the Isles of Shoals or along the MA coast would probably be very unhappy.

[Username17]

With 20 mt bombs you're talking proper planet buster weapons. But such weapons have never actually been made. There have been a couple dozen 20+ mt bombs produced (almost all of them by the Soviet Union), but none of them have been made to be deployed under deep water.

It's not that you couldn't make an ocean floor deployable 20 megaton nuke - it's that no one ever has. So basically one of the countries that fractured off the 20th century empires would have to either get their hands on one of the 10 Soviet Voivode Mark 6 ICBMs (they were supposedly decommissioned in 2009, but maybe one of them is still around?) and retrofit it to be deep underwater-capable, and then deploy it against Devil's Reef. Or start up a new planet buster strategy, wherein your nation scratch-builds weapons capable of wiping out major cities and then uses one in anger.

I can't readily imagine that working out for the country that does it. Imagine for the moment, that you're the Commonwealth. Your capital is Philadelphia and you're butting up against New Egypt, the Confederation, and the Union Territories all the time. You have about the population of Holland or Czechoslovakia. You also have the Limmerick Nuclear Power Plant and Three Mile Island - and you can mine heavy isotopes out of Mount Pisgah. So if you really want to get some special isotopes going you totally can.

But let's say you actually built a planet buster to use on Devil's Reef, and then you used it on Devil's Reef. Then what? You just made a planet buster and used it in anger to destroy a city. All of your neighbors now hate and fear you no matter how they felt about Devil's Reef. You just seriously demonstrated the capability and willingness to wipe out entire cities that piss you off - and you're still just the size of Czechoslovakia or the Netherlands. Completely irrespective of whether and to what extent other Cthulian forces like Rlyeh or Devil's Reef's remaining military strength can revenge themselves on you, the governments in New York, Chicago, and Atlanta are all going to consider you a dangerous rogue state.

All I can say is that if you build one such weapon, you'd better be prepared to build at least two. So that you can spend the next fifty years staring down all your neighbors while they alternately plot your demise and cower in fear. And even that might not be enough, because it seems very likely that since your nation is surrounded by other forces that have WMDs of one sort or another that they may panic and try to use them to wipe out your first strike capabilities.

The United States is still the only country that got away with nuking another country. And you'll note that they were the only nuclear power in the world at the time. And the most powerful empire that had ever existed. And already in a war that had seen the other side perform the largest atrocities in human history.

There is a reason that the United States does not now respond to Somali pirates by nuking Mogadishu or to Afghan terrorists by nuking Kabul. Well, when you consider the very real possibility that privateers are so distributed that leveling the capital cities may not seriously reduce their capacity to make war I guess it's two reasons. But the first reason is that the game theorists do not give good answers when generals ask them what happens if they use nuclear weapons to eliminate power centers from a multi-polar global power balance. Not even if the power centers in question are super dicks that everyone hates.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

I think nuking Deep Ones would not be considered cause to fear any country. Aren't those actual evil monsters and enemies of every human?

[Grek]

Deep Ones are an ethnicity. They can successfully interbreed with humans and are considered to be people in every country worth visiting. Saying that it's OK to nuke Devil's Reef to deal with Deep One Pirates because Deep Ones aren't really people would go over exactly as well as Russia nuking Tbilisi over Georgians robbing oil from their oil pipes and then justifying themselves by claiming that it's OK because Georgians are subhuman monsters.

[Fuchs]

I honestly doubt that any fishman-civilization that threatens modern shipping, worships Chtulhu and wants human sacrifices would be considered worth protesting when nuked by any sane country.

[Username17]

I honestly doubt that any fishman-civilization that threatens modern shipping, worships Chtulhu and wants human sacrifices would be considered worth protesting when nuked by any sane country.

How is that different from Somalia?

I mean let's face it:

• Threatens Shipping
• Worships Cthulhu
• Wants Human Sacrifices

The only difference between Allah and Cthulhu is that Allah's cities are on the ground and easier to nuke. Nevertheless, people don't do it because becoming global threat number one by destroying another civilization (regardless of how horrible that civilization was) is basically not worth it.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

I honestly doubt that any fishman-civilization that threatens modern shipping, worships Chtulhu and wants human sacrifices would be considered worth protesting when nuked by any sane country.

How is that different from Somalia?

I mean let's face it:

• Threatens Shipping
• Worships Cthulhu
• Wants Human Sacrifices

The only difference between Allah and Cthulhu is that Allah's cities are on the ground and easier to nuke. Nevertheless, people don't do it because becoming global threat number one by destroying another civilization (regardless of how horrible that civilization was) is basically not worth it.

-Username17

If Allah's fanatics actually presented a global threat such as the Deep Ones present, threatening everyone but themselves (and not just a few shipping crews mostly made up of poor folks from 3rd world countries), then I'd say the nukes would fly already because then Allah's fanatics would have become Global Threat Number 1. At the very least conventional bombs and grenades from anyone with a navy would be raining down on everything in Somalia.

People don't destroy civilizations because civilizations do not present a global threat. But if something actually threatened the world? Why do you think the world would not nuke it, pat each other on the back, and then go back to business as usual?

[Username17]

People don't destroy civilizations because civilizations do not present a global threat. But if something actually threatened the world? Why do you think the world would not nuke it, pat each other on the back, and then go back to business as usual?

Because historically they don't do that. All out war against a powerful country is not something that countries do very often. When the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, who attacked the Soviet Union? What about when the Nazis conquered Czechoslovakia?

My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.

Seriously, how eager do you think countries of the world are to escalate conflict with a powerful threat of unknown (but provably significant) military capabilities? They don't blow the fuck out of North Korea, and we know how many mega cities they can credibly threaten to destroy on the way down (two). Do you really think that countries are going to line up to be the first to escalate things to the city destruction phase when they don't know how many cities they are going to lose?

Honestly, if you're even asking the question "How many cities are we going to lose?", the vast majority of world leaders are not going to make that call. Holland doesn't invade countries of comparable or larger size to themselves. Atrocities in Myanmar and North Korea are penalized only with trade embargoes. If those countries were truly self sufficient, their mass murders would go completely unpunished.

Seriously: name a line that would actually cause the nations of Europe to go to war with a country more powerful than Libya. Yes, getting their oil supplies threatened was enough to provoke France into throwing bombs into a Libyan civil war. But getting their gas pipeline cut didn't provoke Poland to go to war with Ukraine. Having the oil supplies threatened with closing did not provoke Germany to bomb Iran.

Yes, countries start shit with other countries of equal or greater military might in Africa. Also in Central America. But the countries that do that are actually really weak countries with incredibly terrible intelligence. The only example of a country with a reasonably modern military picking a fight with a country of equal or greater military might since the Korean War is Pakistan attacking India. But pretty much everyone considers that to have been fucking insane.

Basically, your claim is that it is "unrealistic" for the nations of the world to not be individually and collectively as cavalier with their own existence as Pakistan is. That each country is going to selflessly throw itself on the grenade of rogue states. But historically, countries don't do that. Like, ever.

Let's walk through the North Korea comparison. North Korea is a bunch of dangerous psychopaths who threaten OECD countries with fiery annihilation every day. South Korean military have staged hundreds of raids across the border, and North Korean military have staged comparable numbers in the other direction. It's the most heavily militarized border in human history, and maintaining those defenses is not cheap. The South has access to NATO forces, including the most powerful military the world has ever seen. The North... well... it doesn't have that. It may be supplied by Russia and/or China as a backhanded way of fucking over NATO. Then again, it may not.

Nevertheless: the South doesn't declare final confrontation and wipe the North off the peninsula. The cost would simply be too high. The status quo is intolerable, but substantially less intolerable than having Seoul shelled.

---

So... how much raiding would it take from a power with WMDs, global reach, the finest blue water navy in history, kilometer thick water walls over every military installation and town, and a secret and unknown distribution of military bases all over the world before countries in the post NATO world decide that it's more intolerable to try to fight off the raids as they come than to go all in and fight a final confrontation against that foe?

This isn't "Aliens are trying to wipe out all life on Earth, ally or die!", this is "It turns out we badly underestimated Micronesia, and they have the most powerful military force on the planet. Also, they are total assholes and a state sponsor of terrorism."

-Username17

[Fuchs]

When the Nazis actually attacked Poland, the UK and France did go to war. If the Nazis had attacked the Czech, they have gone to war as well.

You assume they'd treat Deep Ones as a human nation, and not a global threat on par with "aliens are trying to wipe out all humans, ally or die".

I also think you underestimate how quickly a nation that doesn't just threaten, but actually attacks all ships of the humans and raids coasts alienates the world. The point of WMDs is to make sure you're not attacked, if you are still attacked by another nation, then obviously those are ax-crazy and can't be expected to be reasonable. Sane nations do not attack or raid nations with WMDs.

North Korea hasn't actually done much to anyone outside North Korea since the Korean War, and everyone hopes it'll reform due to lack of an actual economy and hunger soon enough, as did so many other regimes with the same ideology. Or collapse. What do you think would happen if they started to raid coastlines? Chinese ones?

If you act like a rabid dog you get put down because you make everyone else feel threatened.

[Username17]

When the Nazis actually attacked Poland, the UK and France did go to war. If the Nazis had attacked the Czech, they have gone to war as well.

The Nazis did attack the Czechs. And the UK and France didn't go to war. The UK and France did the whole Munich agreement thing in 1938, giving Germany control of the Sudetenland without consulting the people who currently lived there or administered it. In March of 1939, the Nazis invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia, violating even the ridiculously generous agreement that the French and British had made with them. The UK and France did not come to the aid of the Czechs and Slovaks.

What they did instead was to issue a new decree that they would go to war if Germany invaded Poland, which of course Germany did in fact do in September of 1939. When the Nazis invaded Poland, they were given two day's notice to withdraw or the UK would declare war. The Nazis of course did not withdraw, and that time the UK actually went to war. Two weeks later, the Soviets invaded Poland, figuring that Poland was weak enough that they could probably take it (which they did).

I also think you underestimate how quickly a nation that doesn't just threaten, but actually attacks all ships of the humans and raids coasts alienates the world. The point of WMDs is to make sure you're not attacked, if you are still attacked by another nation, then obviously those are ax-crazy and can't be expected to be reasonable. Sane nations do not attack or raid nations with WMDs.

And yet... South Korea has raided North Korea hundreds of times. North Korea has raided South Korea hundreds of times.

If you act like a rabid dog you get put down because you make everyone else feel threatened.

Care to name one example of that actually happening? There have been lots of Pariah states. From Assyria to the Timurids. Can you recall even one such empire that was actually purged from the world by the nations of the world joining together to crush them?

Unsavory empires can push things pretty damn far. We know this because they actually have in the past and continue to do so to this day.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Once vital interests of the world are endangered - and shipping is one, as history proves - nations will band together.

As far as acting as a rabid dog is concerned - that's a modern stance. Until the 20th century, gobbling up your weak neighbours was business as usual. It took even longer until massacring your own population was deemed unsavory.

The monarchies of europe banded together to (try) to crush France following the revolution. And against Napoleon again.

I also have to point out that neither North nor South Korea had WMDs during (at least the majority of) those raids.

[Username17]

Once vital interests of the world are endangered - and shipping is one, as history proves - nations will band together.

Your faith in countries putting aside their interests for the common good is noted, but fucking laughable. Pirate attacks have increased each year for the last four years. What exactly do you think the line in the sand is countries to band together to take out Somalia? There's a pirate attack every day.

And let's not forget: Climate Change. See the massive international scientific agreement that if we collectively don't do anything about climate change that we're super fucked? Right. Now notice the complete lack of any nation doing fuck all about it? I mean, the Maldives and Palau are going to cease to exist and they can't even get a non-binding resolution through the UN.

And not to put too fine a point on it: aren't you personally Swiss? You know that your country has actually pledged in writing to never join any collective alliance no matter how justified, right? Your country is a little more extreme on that point than most, but not by nearly as much as you seem to think.

NATO exists today, but it was not united enough to put the smackdown on Ukraine when they were disrupting gas pipelines and killing Polish people. Nor was it ever confident enough to stand up to Russia directly. In the future, with no American hegemony and no NATO, who exactly do you think is going to sign up to be global police?

I also have to point out that neither North nor South Korea had WMDs during (at least the majority of) those raids.

North Korea has never been a signatory to the chemical weapons ban, and has had a nerve gas arsenal since before the establishment of the DMZ. They have not as yet shelled Seoul with nerve gas canisters, but they do indeed have the capacity to do so and have had for decades.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Once vital interests of the world are endangered - and shipping is one, as history proves - nations will band together.

Your faith in countries putting aside their interests for the common good is noted, but fucking laughable. Pirate attacks have increased each year for the last four years. What exactly do you think the line in the sand is countries to band together to take out Somalia? There's a pirate attack every day.

And let's not forget: Climate Change. See the massive international scientific agreement that if we collectively don't do anything about climate change that we're super fucked? Right. Now notice the complete lack of any nation doing fuck all about it? I mean, the Maldives and Palau are going to cease to exist and they can't even get a non-binding resolution through the UN.

And not to put too fine a point on it: aren't you personally Swiss? You know that your country has actually pledged in writing to never join any collective alliance no matter how justified, right? Your country is a little more extreme on that point than most, but not by nearly as much as you seem to think.

NATO exists today, but it was not united enough to put the smackdown on Ukraine when they were disrupting gas pipelines and killing Polish people. Nor was it ever confident enough to stand up to Russia directly. In the future, with no American hegemony and no NATO, who exactly do you think is going to sign up to be global police?

I also have to point out that neither North nor South Korea had WMDs during (at least the majority of) those raids.

North Korea has never been a signatory to the chemical weapons ban, and has had a nerve gas arsenal since before the establishment of the DMZ. They have not as yet shelled Seoul with nerve gas canisters, but they do indeed have the capacity to do so and have had for decades.

-Username17

During World War 2 - before the fall of France - the swiss army leadership had made plans to work with the French in case the Germans would go through their country. Quite the diplomatic problem when said plans fell into German hands after the fall of France. It's not about the common good, it's about our own skin.

I would honestly think that if faced with unhuman, evil monsters such as the Deep Ones who attack everyone on the high seas any sane country would support wiping them out. Paying them off never works, as the barbary coast pirates proved.

Somalia currently is not really a problem yet that mandates being considered a global threat. If they actually managed to say threaten the oil supply, how long do you think they would last? Somalia would be scoured of any possible pirate boats in a few weeks.

As long as the Deep Ones stick to being a nuisance and to bother those to poor to matter, I guess they could be left alone or even paid off. But mess with the vital interests of the world? Say hello to nukes.

Remember: About 100 years earlier, a situation like Somalia would have been "pacified" Roman-style. Likely with international cooperation, just like the boxer uprising in China was handled.

We currently don't cover Somalia's fishing villages and ports with bombs because we've started to care about black and poor people in the last 70 years, but should things change on a scale like, oh, whatever brought Deep Ones around, why do you think we'd act like it was the second half of the 20th century, and not like we did for thousands of years?

Do you honestly think that if things turn bad we'll stick to our morals like that?

Should we actually enter a cyberpunk-ish world I bet any Somalia situation would be solved in the style of the 19th century.

[Vebyast]

Ok, here's a thought. Who says the entire ocean is one giant nation in the first place, and who says that it's just as densely populated and has just as much industry as the rest of the world? Even more, who says it can attack the surface so easily? On the contrary, I'd think that it'd be:

• less densely populated: no sunlight means you have to bring energy down from the surface, which is inefficient.
• not as heavily industrialized: mineral surveys are more difficult, metals are far more difficult to work with, water is a better solvent than air so chemistry is damn hard, electronics are a pain in the arse, and pollution is a problem because it doesn't stay where you dump it.
• split into many states: you don't have as much geography or history to split things up, but at the very least you have the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian oceans. The Mediterranean probably has another state. Changing water temps mean the arctic and southern oceans are different states, and the Ring of Fire means you have another state down the coast of Asia. Another volcanic ridge separates the Gulf of Mexico into another. On top of that, you have smaller states taking the much deeper and much shallower regions like trenches, island chains, mountain ranges, and so on.
• quite at war with itself: things in water drift, particularly pollution. If you let go of something, it will happily drop itself in another population center, even if it's a kilometer-wide stream of nerve gas, plutonium, or cadmium. This only really happens on the borders of the bigger nation-states, but it will happen, and there will be history between the ocean states. Oh, and don't forget the fact that borders are quite impossible to police. You thought the US-Mexico border was hard? It's like that, except everybody is invisible and can fly.
• unable to attack the surface: We all know that it's hard to go down, because the increase in pressure will crush you. Well, it's also hard to go up, because the decrease in pressure will tear you apart. Machines get the bends too. If you've trapped a pocket of something - anything - in a weld, that weld will fail as the machine ascends. Throw in a requirement for low-density lifting bags (much more difficult to build when getting gas to fill gasbags is nearly impossible), and getting things to the surface might be really nontrivial.