The Old Hack

I suddenly remembered that the Greenpeace aliens actually kind of sort of were a thing in Brin's Uplift universe. And that humans got into big trouble because of our happy-go-lucky mass extinctions in our early years of civilisation and technology.

I suddenly have this mental image of Earth being invaded by alien Greenpeace activists who curb stomp us to save the environment.

That was actually what Turtledove's aliens had in mind, a combination. First the invasion and pacification force. Then, twenty years later, the colonisation fleet. The problem was that twenty years later the humans still weren't feeling very pacifistic.

That's okay. Mind you, I think the very southernmost tip of Sweden (Scania) got a few nukes aimed at them as well. I will agree that the rest of Scandinavia simply isn't that critical except possibly for control of Finland's strategic reindeer reserve.

Maybe we'll get lucky and the next world war will be fought in the form of competitive origami. o.O

Except for hapless Denmark, lying as a plug in the Baltic and in the way of the Baltic fleet. One plan that was revealed after the fall of the Berlin Wall had every single airstrip in Denmark -- even small private ones -- singled out for at least a tactical strike. Copenhagen, Aalborg, Aarhus and Odense were each selected for a strategic nuke. And the small strip of land connecting Jutland to Germany was marked out for saturation bombing to prevent German NATO forces from reinforcing Denmark. Let this be a lesson for you. Do not live in a strategically important junction. It isn't good for you.

And may God have mercy on their souls, for we shall have none.

You know, if they are that good, I don't think I'll be quibbling about them getting it a few seconds wrong. o.O

Harry Turtledove's 'Worldwar' series was about exactly this last scenario. It turned out that the aliens had been a little too patient. Spy satellites reported to them that the most advanced weaponry the Earth had was in the form of an ugly biped sitting on the back of a somewhat less ugly quadraped. The biped had a long stick and wore a suit of iron links. The aliens did not consider this too problematic. They prepared their invasion force carefully so as to make sure they could overwhelm Earth. Even bipeds on animals might be annoying if you didn't bring sufficient numbers. Eight centuries later, the invasion fleet arrived. The date was January 1942. Earth had somewhat better weapons than expected. And everybody on the planet and his brother was either making weapons or using them. The aliens considered, then invaded the five biggest trouble spots and demanded their unconditional surrender. The surrender demands arrived on the desks of five nice people known as Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Hideki Tojo and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For some unexplainable reason, none of them chose to give in to the demands. Maybe they were just contrary by nature. That war ended up taking a lot longer and being a lot more difficult than the aliens had expected.

Other Scout: "I think we are too late, sir. There is already a heavy Klingon presence here and they seem quite congenial with the natives."

Ah, the miracles of Autocorrect. One I rather liked was a hapless Jewish mother who attempted to text her daughter that she had just purchased a new menorah. The daughter was astounded to receive a text from her mother stating that she had bought a new man-whore.

Autocorrect at times has trouble in that regard. Someone I know is named Courtney Boland. When she tried to enter her name into a document, the autocorrect tried to change it into 'Courtesy Ebola.' ...which is not even mentioning poor Dr. Hiller, former head of the Danish Nuclear Test Station, whom the overzealous spell checker in one annual report renamed to 'Hitler' throughout the whole document...

I do not believe the dog would approve.

Not quite true. Even after matchlocks became common, reloading time was so long and range was so poor that it was eminently possible for a unit of halberdiers to defeat a unit of musketmen just by taking their hits and then crushing them in melee. What was more commonly done was to intersperse musketry with halberdiers to protect them while simultaneously giving the halberdiers ranged cover. As the quality of muskets and powder improved and especially as battlefield artillery became more common, units purely of pikemen very quickly vanished. And as Pharaoh mentioned, it was the invention of the offset bayonet that finally killed the pikes and halberds by turning every single musketeer into their own pikeman.

Good Lord Do take good care of yourself, Prof. And yes, I know that Mrs. Prof is looking out for you, which is a source of relief for me, but still. (Give her my regards and my thanks for the good job she is doing.) I hope that bollocking tree pollen crap starts tapering off soon.

Darn. Now I want to know what Charlotte was going to say before Susan cut her off. >.<

Well duh. The Uryuom flew them out and shared them.

If they have counterfeiting laws even nearly as strict as those we have in Denmark, copied issues of Action Comics #1 would be no good. They would just land the forgers in jail. Either you present the cashier with the actual comic or you can go look for groceries elsewhere.

Remember, the bayonet was originally intended to help fend off cavalry charges. Horses have a curious prejudice against running into sharp and pointy things so they tend to object to running straight into lines of pikemen or musketeers with fixed bayonets. These days we see less horse cavalry on the field of battle, somewhat reducing the need for the bayonet.

Travelling can be highly entertaining in open sandbox game worlds. One time, in World of Warcraft, I had left a server in favour of another one where I could play Horde instead of Alliance. I stayed there for a year, then went back to visit my old server. I logged in on my priest and found she was in the middle of a muddy swamp. Thankfully there was an outpost with a flight point right next to her. I headed straight there but as soon as I rode through the front gates all the guards attacked me and stomped me flat. In my eagerness I had forgotten I was now on an Alliance character and had headed into the Horde outpost I was by now in the habit of using in that area. This was not one of my better ideas.

I hope everything will go well in spite of the perfect rehearsal. And I am very sorry for your loss, too. I am glad we can provide you with a more rational breed of insanity here.

They are absolutely desperate for issues of Action Comics #1, which are usable as currency on their home planet. Therefore they invade the Earth to steal our comic collections.

Because that was the book series I was thinking of. Thanks for the blast from the past

They had the problem that in order to survive on Earth they either needed pressurised vehicles, breathing masks or habitation domes. They figured that by destroying Earth industry so we couldn't efficiently counterattack, they could solve the rest of the problem by altering the atmosphere to suit them. Since humans couldn't survive longer than a few minutes in their atmosphere, they were fairly sure it would have worked. (I cannot remember for certain but they also preferred a temperature of around 40 degrees Celsius/100 degrees Fahrenheit.) Though in theory the surviving humans could have created habitats of their own as well as breathing masks that worked the other way, so the aliens might have been overconfident. Instead they lost the war by being overconfident in a different area.

That's good news. On an unrelated note and more related to previous posts, one fantasy weapon that annoys me incredibly is the idiotic Gyrspike from a supplement to 3rd Edition D&D. They had a mania with two-sided weapons like staff-swords with a blade on either end; I blame Darth Maul for this. The Gyrspike was one of the children of this mania. It consisted of a bastard sword that had a chain with a morning star on it attached to the pommel. I do not know what the purpose of this thing is supposed to be. After a discussion with a friend. he and I decided that it was for simultaneous self-disembowelment and self-castration. Also: scythes look cool, but they are not actual fighting weapons. Peasants did weaponise them during times of war but they did so by straightening the blade along the handle and turning it into a polearm. In its default form, it is NOT superior to anything else. The reason Death uses it so successfully is that He is, well, Death.