Grrl Power #418 – High level talks
Hopefully you all can follow Sydney’s pantomime. Without motion it probably loses something. In case you can’t tell, the second panel of the pantomime she’s doing the universal symbol (in her mind) for “two toes.” Dabbler “Two Toes” Tantalis.
It bugs me in movies/spy shows when people fail at spycraft 101. Your contact hands you a USB drive? Don’t plug it in to your agency computer idiot! Or the network connected to your agency mainframe in Skyfall. I’m looking at you, Q. Plug it into an air gapped machine inside a Faraday cage. You and your cohort arrive early for the meeting? Discuss top secret plans why not? It not like anyone has invented a thing called a microphone.
I get why that stuff happens in movies and shows though. If the good guys did everything right all the time, the plot would either stagnate, or the bad guys would have to actually be especially clever. By which I mean the writers. I want to write my characters acting smart (at least the smart ones) and Maxima is certainly used to keeping secrets and thinking at least a little bit like a spy. The problem is if I somehow accidentally write the good guys being smarter than me, it’s possible the bad guys will never get away with anything, so I guess everyone in the comic has to be, at most, slightly dumber than me. :/
That’s kind of weird to think about. No character can really be smarter than the person writing them. Crazy math/tech/science/magic skills don’t count, since the writer isn’t showing the work. That stuff really happens “off screen.” Inventing a time travel button isn’t smart, it’s just something the author wrote. When the character uses it to travel to 5 seconds before the life altering event he has to stop instead of an hour before or a week, that’s actually dumb, or at least, high INT, low WIS. The characters’ plans and courses of action and witty dialog are entirely limited by the person writing them. The one advantage all characters have in common is that a writer can spend a 5 hours, 6 months, 10 years or whatever, coming up with said plan or snappy dialog, and that’s what makes a smart character seem smart. So there’s probably a formula that incorporates the author’s intelligence factored against the time spent that will tell you how smart any given character of theirs can actually be.
Sydney’s rebreather fits neatly under her jacket and has a retractable loop-over-the-ear stillsuit style nose hose, because otherwise you guys and I both know I’ll forget to draw it. I pledge to at least remember to draw a bump under her jacket once in a while. The rebreather can also function without the hose, actively pulling in then venting recycled air, but that eats up the battery much faster. Eventually Sydney will have her gun and other gear on her so I’ll need to design a super easy to draw utility belt.
Speaking of gear, Maxima’s facemask is supposed to look like it’s able to fold up and tuck into her jacket, but… it doesn’t. Just pretend for now. Maxima mostly needs it to speak, cause you know, sounds doesn’t transmit in a vacuum. She does need to breath, (otherwise Vehemence’s attempt to strangle her wouldn’t have been nearly the same threat) but her internal power can subsidize her oxygen needs for a while. A human body (or any aerobic cell) uses oxygen to create ATP, which is chemical energy. Maxima’s cells generate their own “super energy” and in a pinch her body can use this energy instead of ATP, lowering her O2 requirements. The exact amount of time she can go without air will surely be determined by the needs of a future storyline. :) It’s not measured in hours, but it’s definitely longer than a human can go without air.
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I get it! I’m lying, I don’t get it…
Shaking booty, 2 toes, and horns.
You forgot: cupping the hypnotizer’s :D
That might be during the panel where we see Maxima’s face. =P
No, that’s part of the SEXY WAG panel
Exactly, she’s cupping her fly- and shield- “orbs”
(“” added for maximum suggestiveness :-P )
I still don’t understand what she’s getting at.
“Dabbler isn’t the only one.”
That Dabbler isn’t the only alien on Earth.
Came here for this. Thank you Captain. I couldn’t figure it out either. (my author must be really dumb, haha)
That’s my name. Captain Pander Obvious, at your service :)
And here’s your trophy Cpt.
(holds the trophy)
I’d like to thank the Academy, my parents, and God, and in the spirit of equality, the devil…
Those are horns? It looks like they’re curving out of her eyes.
I think she’s pantomiming a certain thing growing to a certain two toed individual with boobs.
Thanks, even with the author comments I didn’t understand the horns pantomime.
Writing smart characters is always a tricky problem. It’s like wring a sci if story or historical piece, someone is always ready to point out your mistakes.
In this case, they not only need to be cautious about the civilian contractors, but also members of their own organization. Not like traitors in the vein of Harem, but rather casuals who might bald to a reporter or congressman, and as history has shown, that rarely ends well.
*blab, that is, stupid tiny keyboard.
Panel #3, “Hands of the…” should be “Hands off the…”
Whoops, fixed!
I’m just gonna drop this here.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RationalFic
Dave I hate to tell you this People are idiots especially with technology. If you want a very interesting subject concerning human stupidity and computers you should take a look at agent.btz and operation Buckshot Yankee. If you can’t find anything look under DoD Cyber Security Breaches 2008.
For that matter, look at code-breaking. Especially the Axis codes in ww2 (the Allies had their failures, certainly, but compared to the Axis …. Geez!)
Nazi Germany had the Enigma machines, which should have been almost impenetrable. However, they kept doing a bunch of things that made cracking their codes much much easier for the Allies (eg. when changing Enigma settings, the first message sent was always a duplicate of the message sent in the previous setting; AND all messages had a strict standardized format and layout).
The Japanese military never seemed to catch onto the notion that foreigners could speak their language. There is no other way to explain just how slipshod they were with their cyphers.
In either case, the biggest problem for the Allies was not so much cracking the codes, as sifting through the enormous volume of data being created.
The main reason why the Allies managed to crack the Enigma code? The British got hold of one of the damn machines without the Germans knowing (they thought that sub was lost at sea), oh, and contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, the Yanks had nothing to do with it
The Americans DID capture a U-Boat with an Enigma machine…just not until much later in the war. U-505, which is on display at the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry.
That may be, but the operation that Hollyweird made a movie about was an entirely British one
There were in fact, a number of U-Boats captured by the Allies (and one by the Japanese) during the course of ww2.
The movie ‘U-571’ majorly screwed around with history. It was sort of the U-110 story, only with a triple helping of extra drama, an American crew instead of the British, and noting the “real” U-571 was sunk, never captured.
It wasn’t so much that the British got their hands on an Enigma machine without the Germans knowing. It’s that the British were smart enough to make sure Alan Turing got his hands on it.
Alan Turing, a real life genius, and so incredibly important to the allied during the war. But after the war all of that was forgotten as he had the nerve to be gay!
Way to celebrate a hero! Drive him to suicide…
Huh, didn’t know he was part of the war effort, though I’m far from a history-minded person so that doesn’t mean a whole lot. Still, Turing wasn’t totally forgotten. Even if his part of the war isn’t widely remembered, he is known for his work in computer science.
He worked at Bletchley Park and had a hand in ensuring that the British were able to decode the German cyphers. Here is a quote from Wikipedia:
After the war things didn’t workout for him. In 1952 Alan was accused of being homosexual, something that was at the time criminal in the UK. During the trial his solicitor “reserved his defence”, which means he didn’t contest the accusation. He was found guilty and got to choose between a prison sentence or chemical castration. He ended up choosing the later. The treatment made him impotent and caused him to grow breasts.
What probably was almost as traumatic was that they revoked his security clearance;
Two years later he died.
@Guesticus
“A” reason, not the only reson – the Germans updated the machines a couple of times during the course of the war and, as I said, a lot of things they did made it much easier for the Brits to crack the codes used.
Yeah that’s one thing I think I’m bad about including in my writing, which is basic human failings. When I see a character in a show fuck something up because their ego can’t be bothered with the possibility of failure, or I see a religious crackpot that’s clearly steering themselves or others down a path of destruction, they seem 2 dimensional to me and written in to exist only as a black and white antagonist.
I guess sometimes there’s just no way around it when you have a 115 minute movie establish all your characters, set up the enemies and setting and motivations, its tough, you don’t always have time for nuance. It just bums me out when I see a villain character I can’t empathize with at all.
I guess that’s digressing slightly from your point though, which is humans can be egotistical and lazy and don’t always apply a grand master level chess stratagem to all aspects of their lives at all times. :)
Yeah, characters don’t have to be grand-masters ALL the time, but at the same time it’s definitely kind of annoying in a lot of movies when they write the Big Bad, who’s supposed to BE the grand master thinker make stupid mistakes just so the heroes can capitalize on them and win. It’s one of the reasons I like the movie Fallen so much (Denzel Washington movie from ’98). The villain in it is written so well, and despite being insanely arrogant, also has a master plan that it follows, even allowing for his own ego. It’s a great movie.
I’ll have to check it out. I love smart villains. I guess that’s one reason I like the show Hannibal so much.
David Xanatos was a really good ‘smart villain.’
Heck there’s a whole trope named after him.
There are (or were) SEVERAL tropes named for him.
Well I know about the Xanatos Gambit and Xanatos Speed Chess. Which other ones are there? Just curious :)
The Xanatos Roulette (which is what you call a chain of multiple interlocking Xanatos Gambits), and the Thirty Xanatos Pileup, which is what you get when you have multiple Xanatoi trying to pull off successive Xanatos Roulettes against each other.
Yeah. Within the constraints of a movie, or a comic strip, or a role-playing session, it can be very hard to properly emulate human failings -especially for a major character.
I think the best that can usually be done is to keep certain traits very specific to that particular character in mind during writing.
For example, in the game ‘7th Sea’ (great RPG – pirates and magic, very basically), all Villain NPCs have a Hubris of some kind, a specific personality flaw (eg. arrogant, greedy, cowardly, single-minded) that is used to their detriment. That approach may seem simplistic, but it can be used as the basis for something more.
There is another example – when password files are cracked, guess what the most common password in the world is? It’s “password”.
Also that same trick (leaving USB drives lying around) is how Stuxnet infected the Iran Nuclear programme.
It’s such a big problem that companies can make money by advising others: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03q84ld
Also, a security company (I believe it’s RSS) found that people would give up their work passwords for something small.[1]
I can’t remember if it was chocolate, £5 or a cuddly toy.
Any of the above seems plausible, depending on the individual.
Quick Question.
In a fight between a base Vehemence and For Whom The Death Tolls, who would win?
Would FWTDT’s powers count all off V’s powers as one or seperate powers?
Also what would happen if Varia touched either off them?
Unknown, but it probably depends on Vehemence’s current powerlevel. Non charged he’s probably relatively weak, in which case FWTDT would kick his ass easily.
As for the stored energy, we know that FWTDT’s power can drain Anvi’s stored power, so maybe it can do something similar to Vehemic energy? We’ll probably never know
That is hard to tell since FWTDT was beaten in a deus ex machina fashion, off-panel.
There was an explanation though. He can only counter 1 thing at a time, so attacking all at once is how you beat him
Not 1 thing at a time- it’s rather that he has a limit to how many things at once. I’d also imagine it’s more like “people”- since his power doesn’t seem to work specifically on powers, but rather on people/attacks.
I feel like, 1v1 Death Toll and Vehemence, we’d be getting something of a Hulk v Thing contest, where one character keeps getting stronger based on the fight, but the other has an axiomatic full-stop power (Thing is apparently just axiomatically ‘indestructible’, from what I’ve seen)- Death Toll could probably continuously keep countering Vehemence without fail, probably gaining invulnerability and strength to counter his foe, while V would keep powering up. It would be very bad for the environment, but they’d both probably love it.
V would probably win in the end by rage-aura-ing Death Toll into attacking first instead of countering, though, or using the aura to get others to dogpile him.
Actually, although Archon didn’t catch on, Death Toll’s powers even counter V’s aura. The only two people it didn’t affect were Death Toll and Opal. It was suggested that this might be because Opal’s concussion was so bad, then discarded because Death Toll didn’t wake up. The more logical reason is that Opal’s concussion was that bad, and Death Toll’s powers recognized the aggro aura as an attack. I would agree with the Hulk vs. Thing analogy, if Hulk kept powering up, except that Death Toll’s counters tend to one-shot his enemy.
I strongly suspect that no matter what power level Vehemence was at, in a 1-on-1 fight with Death Toll, attacking Death Toll would wind up with an unconscious Vehemence and an even more smug Death Toll. Also, I agree with the earlier suggestion: if Death Toll can suck offensive energy out of people, like Anvil’s stored kinetic energy, then aggro energy is even more likely to be something he can suck out of people.
Death Toll would probably win, because Death Toll’s powers would eventually create a power that negates Vehemence’s powers, like marijuana smoke or intoxication touch or something.
Eventually? More like instantly. I like the suggestions, though. Instant coma? A flood of dopamine…that’s the chemical that makes you happy, right? Hallucinating ponies and rainbows? Oh, wait, it needs a real mechanism. How about excreting DMSO and THC?
By default, Vehemence would win that fight because he either knows how DT’s powers work or is smart enough to figure it out (plus from what we saw his nemsis powers just lets him counter attacks, it wouldnt help him in preventing V from charging up on the violence being swung back and forth Or help him stop V from simply healing (and growing stronger in the process) from any counters thrown at him.
In other words, for the purposes of being able to counter eachother, V has the better toolbox Unless DT brings a gun and somehow starts the fight of by shooting V in the head repeatedly until well and truly dead.
Edit: granted… DT Was able to drain Anvil’s stores of kinetic energy…so maybe he Could zap all of V’s violence energy -if- V was foolish enough to hit him directly like that and also explains very well why V didnt revive the guy along with everyone else with his aura.
Sooo, if DT can drain V, then he could very well manage a win if he can somehow get V to attack him directly, but given V’s clear aptitude for tactics (like dont hit the kinetic energy absorber) that is unlikely.
Without a direct hit, how does V beat Death Toll? For that matter, how does he do it with an indirect hit? Death Toll even countered a choke hold.
Death Toll would gain the power to make Kevin suddenly not feel like being violent at all. Just like how they are containing him.
If Vehemence is sufficiently charged-up, it seems that he can mind-control FWTDT into getting into fights with other people on his behalf; at which point Death Toll is merely helping power up Vehemence, and V has effectively already won.
This may require Vehemence catching Death Toll by surprise.
Death Toll and Opal were the only two people V’s aggro aura didn’t wake up. Opal had a concussion. I think DT’s power countered the aggro aura. If I’m right, V can’t make him attack.
The guy that was stopped by a knife to the butt? Meh, Vehemence wins.
I don’t think Varia would get anything special from FWTDT because my theory is his powers come from the mask.
Don’t forget that when Varia touched Sydney to see what superpowers she would get, Syd wasn’t holding any of her orbs – so had no superpowers for Varia to copy or miscopy. It’s no surprise, and not meaningful, that Varia didn’t get anything.
(What could be fun: Syd holds the two unknown-function orbs and Varia tries again…)
Actually Varia DID get something, that was hinted at in Dave’s comments. Namely, look at what the orbs are doing over their heads.
To make it easier, the orbs spread their circle to encompass both of them. The obvious takeaway being that if Varia is touching Sydney, she can utilize the orbs as well (possibly allowing for up to four orbs at a time)
Of course the most interesting part of that exchange is what it means for Sydney. Varia gets a power based on the genetic structure of the person she’s touching, and it can, but is to required to, be related to a super’s power.
And all she got the orbs orbiting her and Sydney; it implies that Sydney is genetically predisposed to control the orbs, or that the orbs changed her DNA to enable her control.
DESTINY!
I hadn’t thought of that. Interesting point.
Does that mean that the orbs found Sydney, not the other way around?
If so, did the Geode find Max?
Or, it could be that the orbs bond to the genetic structure of the first human they encounter and Varia’s power temporarily absorbs/mimics any genetics (and thus power) that vary from human baseline. (Do we know if she can absorb non-human powers? I don’t remember her having absorbed alien abilities, but I don’t have the time at the moment to go back and check…)
On Varia: we see her gaining power by touch, but we don’t know yet if it is completely under her control or if it is involuntary. What if, for instance, she encounters someone with a useless, disadvantageous or uncontrollable power (such as in Marvel’s Ruins), and accidentally ends up with superspeed she can’t turn off? Or backs into a bystander in the middle of combat and acquires the power to detect the suits of playing cards?
It would make an interesting disadvantage.
If it’s absorbing or mimicking only genetics that vary from human baseline, she wouldn’t get powers from touching normal people. Which she does.
Her power gaining appears to be involuntary, as she mentioned that she would have had a traumatic childhood if it weren’t for the safety feature that whoever she is touching is immune to the power she gains.
Yes, that means she could have problems in a fight. If she’s standing around as a lightning golem and zapping people, and someone tackles her, she probably gets a different power. Of course, she’s already got a problem in a fight: she has to be touching the person she’s getting power from. As seen at the construction site, that can get awkward.
What would be funny is if she accidentally discovers that she gets some amazing power from a baby. She can easily strap on a baby harness, but no way is Archon going to let her take that baby into combat…
Oddly enough, in a one on one, my money would be on Tolls. Notice that when V woke up everyone fir his perpetual violence machine, he left Tolls out cold. One on one, Tolls can take anyone, since that’s his power. Depending on how sarcastic his power was feeling, it likely would either drain V and hit him with a blast that would take him out, or it would pull an Erfworld Flower Power attack and make him unable to fight.
Are DT’s powers only counteracting super attacks?
IOW, If you used your super power to throw a car (for example) at him, could DT stop that? Once the car is no longer touched by the super, it’s just a large heavy object flying through the air. Or fly over him with a 5000 lb boulder and drop it on him.
I believe it has to do with power used within a certain range. Sonic attacks or lasers don’t carry the super attackers DNA to let it know it’s a super attack. Otherwise such attack types could be replicated by tech means and there is no good reason why he would then be able to do the same counter. Light is just light and sound is just sound after all.
No, he can counter all attacks. His most unusual counter was countering a choke-hold.
We know who would win between Vehemence and For Whom The Death Tolls, because it sort of happened.
Vehemence stood back and pointed Sydney at FWTDT and let them take him down for them. The power of him being a smart-ass.
Would enjoy very much to have an animated version of that dance :D
Or a live version, live and animated would both be cool :D
I know that I can hold my breath upto about 3 minutes 50 seconds if I pre breathe for a minute beforehand. Without that I can hold my breath for just under 2 minutes. That being completely still though. That is NOT fighting with someone trying to choke the ever living snot out of me and electrocuting me at the same time.
With that out of the way, Maxima could very well be able to go 5-10 minutes without air, but she would be building up a major CO2 debt in her body that would further impair her as the minutes went on.
For most people, their cells will not generate CO2 unless oxygen is available to react. In an anaerobic reaction, lactic acid is built up. That is what generates the burn in your muscles when you exercise longer than you are used to.
SEALS, and several other special forces units, have a minimum requirement of 5 minutes. I don’t know if that’s with or without hyperventilation first, but I think with. Given their past, I think Peggy is past that and Max is WAY past that.
5 minutes of activity, or just sitting in a pool?
I believe just sitting, which isn’t terribly difficult with meditative techniques, but I don’t know. US military protocol is that all specifics on training are classified in as much as you aren’t supposed to tell someone about them unless that person has already gone through them. You’re not allowed to tell details of Basic Training to someone who hasn’t gone through it, but you can find summaries on the websites of the various branches. It came up once while I was talking with a SEAL, and I didn’t think to ask details. Even if I had, I’m not sure he would have told me.
Good for Sidney that her shield then probably blocks the cosmic radiation that’s plentiful at that altitude.
…
So I’m guessing that Sidney can’t get a tan when keeping her shield up?
She’s probably only at around 30-35 thousand feet (airliner altitude). Cosmic/UV radiation is higher, but not so much it’s immediately dangerous. you need to get to about 20+ miles for that
If I remember an air line flight is the same level of radiation as eating 3 bananas depending on the length of the flight
Airline flights are in a metal shell, though. Even “space walks” you have a thick suit.
Honestly, though, my understanding is that the amount of radiation isn’t hideous, just “don’t go too long” and Reed Richards is an idiot.
Even so, the amount is enough that aircrews have a significantly higher incidence of a variety of cancers. Granted, we’re talking about people that spend the majority of their work-year in the upper atmosphere, so even small increases add up quickly.
Bananas are trying to kill us all!
Or give us superpowers, if everything I know about radiation from comics is true. Which it surely is.
Bananas, Potato’s, Carrots, Lima Beans, pretty much anything with significant amounts of potassium.
We are all doomed to become potassium-powered freaks of nature.
So, in the future, we are all Bananaman.
Heh, hadn’t noticed that Sydney had been issued with a re-breather until you mentioned it, looks like one of those things you have to wear in hospital
Nerd alert:
Cells don’t actually need oxygen to make ATP. All aerobic cells are also capable of anaerobic cycles, which don’t require oxygen.
The oxygen is needed to bind Carbon and Hydrogen atoms that are released during Aerobic cycles (and breathe out as CO2 and H2O.
But the actual motor that creates ATP doesn’t use oxygen
(sorry)
you forgot to say that doing it without air, has a byproduct.
And you forgot to say the byproduct islactic acid
Well shoot, the stuff I googled right before posting said that O2 was used specifically to make ATP. I guess they were being really general, like “cells without O2 die, and therefore can’t produce ATP.”
Ok, this article takes several paragraphs to get to it, ( https://physiology.knoji.com/why-do-we-breathe-oxygen/ ) but apparently O2 is used to clean up electrons produced by ATP, allowing the ATP to produce more electrons, and without the O2, the ATP can’t produce more energy. So her power source can still step in and allow her cells to function by providing the energy the ATP can’t when she’s low on air.
Not exactly, but close.
The ATP doesn’t produce electrons, but the ATP production does (it’s what carries the energy from burning the glucose to the ATP pump). Without oxygen you can still use anaerobic cycles, but that leaves toxic by-products. The only real way for a big multicellular being to get rid of those is by plugging those by-products back into the aerobic cycles.
When you sprint, your muscles actually burn through fuel without oxygen, because that releases energy faster (but way less efficient). But afterwards, the liver needs more oxygen to process the results of that sprint
SCIENCE!
Is that what results in the lactic acid that builds up?
Yes. The liver can turn it back into glucose, but it takes time to get it out of the muscles
For those who like more images with their SCIENCE!
https://bio100.class.uic.edu/lectures/respiration.htm <– introductory biochemistry lecture on aerobic energy production
The trick to remember is that nothing in biology happens directly.
First: Glucose is broken down in multiple steps, producing a little ATP, but mostly "upgrading" the carriers NADH and FADH into NADH2 and FADH2.
Second: In the mitochondia, NADH2 and FADH2 are then used to fill a "pressure vessel" with H+
Third: The protons drive a dynamo when they flow back out of the pressure vessel. The "dynamo" literally has a spinning axis, the turning "upgrades" spent ADP back into ATP
I guess everyone in the comic has to be, at most, slightly dumber than me.
That’s the problem the ancient Greek and Roman religions had. The gods did stupid things, had marital problems, at cetera because they couldn’t imagine Gods more intelligent than actual humans.
(Not why our God who’s a freaking genius making it look like natural physics caused everything.)
You really need an edit feature in the comments.
“Not like our God…”
I’m confused as to why you would presume that humans imagined the Greek and Roman gods, but not “our” god. And by “our” god you of course mean “your”, and quite a telling bit of presumption it is that you seem to think that your god is everyone else’s god as well.
News flash: Humans have invented all gods. Those you don’t believe actually exist, and any you might foolishly believe exist.
Fun fact, nearly everyone is 99.999% atheist. The believe in only one of the 20,000 gods humans have invented. Actual atheists just like round numbers, so they ditch that last one as well.
So it’s like setting the TV volume to 50 instead of 51?
That’s the basis of a meta-religion in the Buck Godot series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Godot) – they practice one other religion per day in rotation. That way the cover all the bases.
i feel i should point out that your prestige would only work for monotheistic religions Hindu’s believe in lots of gods for example. plus there are the growing percentage of the the population who are atheists where i believe the number under 30 in western cultures currently sits at between 10% & 20%
I think you might be reading too much into what Jayesell was saying.
Pander gets it.
I was agreeing with Dave that his characters could not be smarter than he is because he is their creator. Which explains why in all of the religions that I know about the God isn’t that much smarter than his worshippers or priests, because he’s a character in their holy book. (My apologies to the people with the elephants and monkeys.)(Aren’t the ‘Trickster Gods’ of the American Indians supposed to be smart?)
I think the Greek gods were really more a cautionary tale about having too much power. The gods were has all the same failings as humans, ego, vanity, etc, and having power made didn’t make them better than us, just more dangerous.
Most or maybe even all of the pantheistic deities follow the general guideline of being powerful being who also share human foibles such as lust, greed, conceit, etc. It makes for a good story, after all.
Even the Judaeo-christian deity has plenty of moments of pettiness and other human failings for the purposes of telling an engaging story. Placing bets with Satan that Job would remain devout even if plagued by horrible tragedies, inflicting curses on people like Jonah just for not wanting to be bothered to do something an all-powerful deity could very well get done by himself, picking and choosing who wins and who is massacred or enslaved in wars, no shortage at all of wrath (great flood, tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc.), that sort of thing.
And of course it leads to the question they explored in that episode of Star Trek (TOS) Where they met the actual Apollo, where a sufficiently more advanced species could be mistaken for a god. In Star Trek it was advanced aliens visit Earth and become the Greek Gods, but it leads to the thought… if say…. I went back to oh the year 1000 or so, Could the people tell the difference between Thor bringing the lightning by the power of Mjölnir, and me bringing the lightning by the power of Tesla?
Zelazney had a great example of this in his The Lord of Light. In it the rulers of humanity are those who have tapped in to a power field surrounding the planet a colony ship landed on a very long time ago. But attuning to the field takes time, and since the ‘gods’ are just as fractious as any pantheistic group of ‘gods,’ sometimes one dies in a duel or something, and has their place taken by a younger ‘god.’ Leading to the new ‘god’ of fire using thermal grenades while waiting for his energy field induced deific Aspect to kick in for real. :-P
Thermal grenade, actual beam of fire from the hand, it wasn’t any different to the masses of humanity kept in eternal ignorance by their ‘gods.’
Actually in the jewish religion, there is no Satan. At least not ‘Satan the Devil.’ I think it’s more referred to as ‘the satan’ rather than an actual being called Satan/Lucifer/the Devil/etc. They also don’t have Hell either.
I think there’s something called Sheol though, which is sort of a …. very bleak limbo-like state cut off from God sort of thing, which is probably the closest thing they have to the Christian and Islamic concepts.
As if we would ever bother with tiny details like the bump of her rebreather under her jacket.
By the way, where on Google Earth is that? These mountains must be huge.
Pretty sure those ‘mountains’ are actually clouds as seen from above – a sight that very much looks like a sea of mountains irl. Quite the sight to behold and one of the more unique experiences you’ll have when you fly with an airliner.
No, there are only a few clouds
Pretty sure they’re supposed to be clouds. Looks like the ocean to me.
I would use a throwaway tower PC that doesn’t have WiFi or a network connection to use that USB. I just don’t get why anyone would out any kind of sensitive information on any hardware even in spitting distance of an Internet connection.
Be sure it doesn’t have a sound card either. Researchers have found a virus that uses the microphone and speakers to “talk” to other computers.
If it’s the virus I’m thinking of, the WROTE the virus, and set up the computer so it could receive it. Like the guy that put viral code on an implanted RFID just to say there was a computer virus that was transmitted through a biological component. Basically, a publicity stunt.
Yes, but if the other computers aren’t *listening* (because they are not also infected with the same thing) it’s no problem. So… just make sure the machine you plug into doesn’t have data you don’t want to be exfiltrated. :-)
I loaded Windows 7 on a Vista notebook so I could locate the appropriate video driver for Windows 10.
A hard drive that is formattable is all that’s required for a secure test.
Or discardable.
Dang Root kit viruses!
A VM sandbox works just fine. They can be trivially deleted and recreated fresh.
Re: “a VM sandbox works just fine”
If you want to keep believing that, then don’t google
– “break out of virtual machine” (exactly what it says on the tin)
– “hard drive firmware rootkit” (survives drive wipe + OS reinstal)
– “lenovo uefi rootkit” (survives hdd replacement, clean windows reinstall)
– “nsa tailored access operations intercept delivery” (rootkitted before it even arrives at your door)
If you have to worry about state-level adversaries (which ARC-SWAT definitely should), about the only thing you can really trust is an abacus or a clay tablet.
Faraday cage around a computer with no network connection hardware, as stated above. If the original Mission Impossible movie taught us anything, it’s that secret agencies DO bother with secure computers.
sorry, not above, below.
I should suggest a laptop with a bernt out WiFi card as they can also send info down power cables. so a laptop unplugged working on battery power is best
Note make shout the Bluetooth is also fryed
On many laptops (not Apples) its quite easy to remove the Wifi and bluetooth, since theyre often on internal addon cards thats easily accessible (or you could just disconnect the internal antennas), unplugging video cameras are also easy.
Its easier to write smart characters, since you have much time on your side, than to play them live. High INT and WIS are hard to live up to in table top games.
How would that work? You can send all the info into the powergrid as you want, I can’t imagine anyone would be able to filter it out by tapping a powerline.
Unless they have infiltrated the building and are tapping the lines in the walls, in which case you have bigger problems than a flashdrive
other pc’s on the same circuit only
Which means your building was already infiltrated and as pointed out above, you have bigger problems by that point.
not really this is a simple usb drive you can mail that to someone
You need the Faraday Cage and the UPS inside with your PC for real isolation. Because that USB stick may have other functions built in. And yes ideally it’s an isolated room with no other gear inside.
As for a infected system using sound/light/power to infect other systems, not possible now (but cell phone makers seems to be trying) . But I can easily see a infected using those to try to gather INTEL.
There are now some wi-fi and/or bluetooth light bulbs and speakers that can be remotely controlled. Which potentially means they can be remotely hacked.
reason for faraday cage. plus no matter how good the USB stick is, the light bulb/speaker device is not already hacked, so is unlikely to cooperate with the Evil USB stick’s plans.
How about, simply not use it at all? That is the only assured way to not send information you don’t want sent or not to be infected
Except that the USB stick in question theoretically has vital data that you’ve just risked your something for.
Make sure it uses a tape drive. According to Burn Notice, the best way to secure information is on obsolete technology.
At least it cuts down on the number of people having access to equipment capable of handling it. A company I worked for had all kinds of ancient storage devices in the basement. They were under contract by the government to keep them in working condition just in case they ever need to read an old punch card archive or other ancient media. I’m sure it’s much the same in most other countries.
Even so building new card reader that’s much faster than the old junk would be trivial today. Tape decks is a little harder, but still no problem if you really need the data. If your bogeymen are the NSA or Homland then they probably already have all equipment needed to read just about any old data storage you can think of.
Not to mention the software needed to read some of the older tape readers is obsolete and hard to find as well. And it’s not actually as easy to build an Iomega or Conner tape drive as it is to build a punch card system :)
I still have like… 20 Conner tapes and a Conner tape drive on an old DOS computer. And the program to read the tapes (which is backed up on flash drives and DVDs. I think the computer might be older than I am. Not sure why – not like 800 megs per tape is a lot anymore. I just keep thinking if I ever become a spy I’ll need a way to securely store my spy data.
I don’t even know what’s on them. Probably Infocom video games or something. I used to love those when I was 6 (my mom would give me all sorts of innovative ways to trick me into liking to read).
Ohh and Sydney is still going to need a small pony bottle of air, 2-6 liters. Most rebreathers do have an air tank, however something small enough to fit under her jacket wouldn’t have that large of a tank, so having an auxiliary air tank to supplement it on her “Utility Belt” would be very helpful, plus it can be used in emergencies to provide O2 to injured people for up to 15 minutes depending on the size of the tank and the altitude it is being used at.
her shield *is* an air tank, and it holds far more than 2-6 liters :P
Ok, so Dabbler isn’t the only one? Is she implying that a different alien has made contact with Deus? Got to admit, I can be really slow on the uptake with things like this. I had no idea what Sydney was doing until I read the commentary.
not necessarily with deus, but more like “earth” in general.
few pages ago, we have seen 2 other aliens.
sydney alerted dab about them, and… i think then one of them was found on the couch… dab.
No the one found on the couch was a regular earth super. It was anvil who was dancing with a vagly lizerd like alian, who seamed to have stolen his dance moves from Carlton of fresh prince fame
No, that was Jean, the alien waitress
Retracted I was thinking about the first pile of leftovers dabs left on the couch.
you mean “barberian”?
yep
She means she knows that Dabbler isn’t the only extraterrestrial on Earth.
Soooooooo… Maxima has no environmental resistance, despite all her might.
Why do you say that? She stopped at that height for Sydney’s safety, not hers
I.d say yes and no.
Max still needs an oxigen suply and while she has one here, it doesn’t look like it would be suitable for deep space.
As stated, Maxi is wearing that mask so she can talk, not to breath
So then, the conversation between Halo and Maxima is happening across their radios?
Because otherwise we have a nice bit of bad science. Assuming that the sound of her voice can’t transmit through the thin atmosphere, but that it can be produced within her mask and then transmit across that same thin atmosphere is just wrong.
Of course it’s via their radios
Aaaand, I was waiting for that. :) Maxima’s radio is in her neck choker, is it not? That’s where everyone has their radio, right? Even Sydney has one now. And the choker is not within the mask Maxima is wearing. So it’s just a case of bad science to assume she is within an atmosphere so thin that it doesn’t have enough material to transmit sound waves, but that it can also transmit sound waves across the nigh-empty space from her mask to her neck.
The sound is being captured in her throat, through her skin. Your body also tansmits sound, and with software correction you can make it sound right. She still, however, needs to run plenty of air past her vocal cords to do this
does she? she just need her cords to vibrate, what part does air have to do with it, if the radio is pressed against her throat or something?
The vocal chords vibrates because there is air or another suitable medium going past them. Another thing is that a lot of the sounds generated when we speak is modulated by tongue, jaw, and lips shaping your mouth as it acts as a sound box. So “air” is essential for a throat microphone to work, and you have to speak for the microphone to pick it up, this is not capable of supporting sub-vocalization or silent communication.
For silent communication there has to be sensors monitoring not only the larynx but also the shape of the mouth. The sensors are basically trying to read the users lips.
Regular headphones are also dependent on air to transport the sound from a small speaker to the ear drum. For supers able to survive without air it would be possible to use bone conduction to receive instructions while in a vacuum.
Addendum to the above, I’m assuming that is also how max is listening to Sydney, though I think those speakers needed contact with your skull to work. You wouldn’t want your secure radio to work any other way, because just a regular speaker would let bad guys hear your comms
Hear, but not interpret. Because encryption is a thing.
Speaking of specialist gear, I think Halo should get some kind of special gloves (uncovered inner palm to keep the skin contact with the orbs, some elastic holder for the orb) for high altitude flying and similar occasiond (diving?). Dropping the shield orb by accident, even for a moment, could be… unfortunate.
Or…
Gloves with a pocket on the back of the hand so she can still use that hand to pick up and hold objects.
Has it been determined that the orb has to touch her palm and/or fingers?
Yes, it has been determined that her balls have to be cupped in the sweaty palm of her hand
Phrasing.
Thought the phrasing was spot on actually :P
The sweat is not a requirement, so not spot on.
Didn’t say it was a requirement, just a typical result
They better hope the rebreathers aren’t bugged, or the comm ball (and one of it’s capabilities) isn’t classified any more :-) One secret kept, one secret spilled..
The Comm-ball has been revealed, it’s just the Tru-Sight capabilities haven’t been
The Tru-Sight capabilities have been revealed, but neither Maxima or Sydney knows that. Harem told Deus back when we found out about her being a double agent.
Okay, let’s put it another way: as far as Maxi and Syd know, the Tru-Sight Capabilities have not been revealed
Exactly. And if Deus is using the re-breather to record/transmit their conversation, a smart man like Deus, or a team of smart analysts, should be able to figure out at least some probably theories why Maxima didn’t want Sydney using her comm orb. Because a restriction like that makes no sense in any logical context.
Max says Deus knows there are other aliens on Earth. She’s just practicing good intelligence protocol.
That’s one of the problems with D&D style RPG’s. Someone that can’t benchpress a baguette but can do long division in their head can still play a barbarian with 3 int and 18 strength. It’s easy for people to imagine what strong people do “Ragnar picks up the tree and hits a guy with it”.
It becomes hard when someone of average intelligence tries to play a character with an int of 18 and 15 points in knowledge (tactics) for example. You might have a character who is a brilliant tactician on paper, but the person playing them doesn’t know what a pincer movement is.
Is that the movement you make after eating a crab complete with shell and legs? o_O
No, it’s when you corner an opponent by attacking from multiple directions, like the pincer of a crab’s claw.
Was being a smart arse, have known about the ‘pincer movement’ and outflanking since at least Intermediate School (believe most countries would call that Junior High?) around age 12 & 13
That’s why my last DM loved me. I’d make extensive use of Disarm and Trip maneuvers and set up flanking positions for my warlock that most enemies just couldn’t respond effectively to (being in a “flanking” square but hovering 10 feet above ground and using a reach weapon [Spike Chain]being a prime example)
*sigh* I should have been so lucky. My last GM just wanted me to beat on things with a weapon until they were dead, he absolutely hated tripping and other maneuvers.
Smart role playing can be fun, and extremely annoying when the DM joins in. Suddenly the players realize that most orcs they are likely to run into are warriors. They have grown up fighting each other, fighting for food, fighting for rank, fighting for mates, and fighting for fun, and they are good at it. Surprise!
Most every “monster” that’s reasonably intelligent can become a serious threat if played competently, but most of the time they are treated more like XP piñatas. When it comes to summoned monsters I can understand it. They are after all just ripped from whatever they were doing and plunked down in a situation they know noting about and with no time to prepare. But if you are going after a tribe of kobolds in their home territory you better prepare to suffer for it.
I did this once. I had a Major Artifact in the middle of a kobold village. Six party members thought they would wipe out 1,000+ kobolds and seize the artifact. They bared escaped with their lives. And couldn’t even confirm the artifact was there.
Kobolds are a special case. PAPER MACHE is dangerous in the hands of a Kobold. They have higher-than-average intelligence, and are generally led by the smartest, not the strongest (sometimes it’s the wisest).
Yeah, kobolds are stupid dangerous–and hard to catch. An excellent example is the Silver Anniversary module “Return to Keep on the Borderlands”.
As for tactics, people who can’t play that character shouldn’t MAKE that character.
Indeed. I played in a different GMs campaign where the most feared opponents were monsters with class levels. They might look no different from the average member of their species, or they might be distinct as any good fantasy monster general, sub-overlord, or overlord is. But in either case the players can’t just yawn and go “Orcs, huh? 1d8+1 hit points, we’ll rip through them with out 6th level characters!”
He was also famous for making the final fight of just about any dungeon romp memorable. After wading through a pile of Bugbears in a cave we’d be in a room with a pole leading up into a hole in the ceiling. As we cleared the last of the Bugbears out, the boss Bugbear, with 4 arms, would start climbing down the pole. The anticipation as we wondered how the fight with this mutant would go was palpable across the several rounds it took for it to reach the floor and begin to engage us.
I did the monsters with class levels things for a little while. All it did was scare the players into avoidance. I was nice enough to give them a hint by giving the goblins who were mid-level fighters armor and properly-maintained weapons. It seriously got to the point where the characters would see humanoids walking around town in armor and cross the street to avoid a confrontation.
When a player does something that their character ought not to have done in my games, as GM I usually give them a Stat Check or relevant Skill Check to reconsider their action, *provided* the character has sufficient reason or information to do so.
Example: The team is attempting to enter the secret base. The team does no investigation and attempts to blast their way through by performing a move-through on the secret base. Not one player has said out loud that the walls of the base might be tougher than expected. The player flying into the base at mach 3 gets a big surprise as he does not break the wall of the base, knocking himself unconscious. He also manages to knock a sizable portion of those inside the base well and truly out – and does enough damage to the surrounding buildings via the shock wave from impact to destabilize their foundations, causing structural collapse of all the buildings in the city block where base was, as well as the buildings directly adjacent to that city block. Poor Chicago.
Second Example: Two years later, same game-world, someone suggests using a move-through to break into a vault to rescue some hostages. EVERYONE gets an INT check to realize this is not really a good idea (after giving the players enough time to come up with that conclusion on their own, of course – more fun for the players when they puzzle it out themselves).
Same essential idea, but incident two has precedent to inspire second thoughts. The check represents the character going “Oh yeah…” while leaving room for failure (representing panic, a character foible, bad memory, what have you). All too often players forget things which their characters probably shouldn’t – giving the player a not-terribly-subtle hint is only fair play on the part of the GM, when appropriate.
In case the point isn’t clear, if the tactician is about to do something dumb, Tactics Check to the rescue. I explain to the player why his choice is less-than-optimal, why his character should know that, and give options that are more in keeping with what the character is trying to achieve.
Again, however, the character would need an in-game reason why that is dumb to get the check, and once pointed out the character/player is responsible for learning the lesson.
I sometimes have the opposite issue as well, where i come up with an idea i know my character is too dumb to have thought of himself. On one occasion i had to have a sidebar with the GM and say “i know my character couldn’t come up with this idea, but bobs character should be able to think of it, can i tell bob?”
Or the one that ends up driving me crazy sometimes: an idea that works great for character A but not for character B, and the other players get the character motivations confused.
I run a dwarven battle-bard who is built to be useful in multiple combat situations, but isn’t interested in diplomacy, information gathering, and the like. If not asked to talk to people, he won’t, and if asked, he’ll put in minimal effort (he’s good enough at those skills, better than the rest of the party usually, but…). A different character is well built for personal interaction and *always* offers, but he’s nearly always shot down by the rest of the party when he tries: “We need someone seedier to go asking around about this. You’re too conspicuous and obvious.”
Or yet another character who is good at snooping but not so much at sharing is never asked to snoop, since she can’t be trusted. Granted, she’s never done anything but be helpful (so far as anyone has found out), but someone so good at snooping can’t be trusted, right? :D
Snooping but not good at sharing? Have we played together?
That sounds like a halfling I played long ago. When in a town and the other characters took their eyes of me I tended to go missing for a few hours. When asked about it I just said I’d gone for a walk. No one ever believed me though. I also had remarkable luck in finding things. A magical dagger here, a purse of coins there, a pretty and affectionate girl by the fountain and squad of her fathers guards pursuing some miscreant who’s laid his paws on his only daughter, the family silver, and his wifes wedding band…
There were a lot of strategic relocations. So many that my mates started planing for them while traveling already… Don’t know why they got so upset.
However I did occasionally play a Kender, now he could get people a bit upset at times. I remember a magician who didn’t appreciate a particularly clever cantrip that had all the words in his spell book chasing each other. It was great fun and it only took him a week to get rid of it without dispelling the entire book…
Thing is I carefully checked each detail of how the cantrip was to work with the DM, but I never told him what I intended to do with it. It was munchkin class rule lawyery of the highest standard, using incredibly obscure examples from rule books and whatever sources I could find to wrangle with the DM over details. First when the DM had approved everything did I reveal that I intended to use the spell on the mages spell book. DM did try to dissuade me but hey, Kender!
Painting the rabidly devout paladins armor pink with scarlet flowers while he slept? Kender!
Getting beaten within an inch of his life regularly? By party members? Kender!
More game systems need Floating Vagabond’s “detect the obvious” stat/roll.
Yes, that’s its official name.
Tales of the Floating Vagabond. Much like Paranoia, good on its own, better when intoxicated.
Our party never left the bar and we killed six hours IRL. GM decided that he’d never be able to repeat the experience and thus, much like the band Aha, he gave up after his one hit wonder.
Sad, really.
Still can’t find a copy of that game for a decent price. My copy vanshed in a move from one apartment to another.
I feel your pain. My copy of TotFB has completely fallen apart–very poorly bound. I keep it in a sealed mailer against the day I can find another copy (I’ve lost pages of other games, usually the irreplaceable ones).
I, um, DEFINITELY DID NOT torrent a copy to play from…
nope.
My copy of HOL is in perfect shape, however, but no one has ever wanted to play it.
pretty obvious you’ve never actually put any effort into RPGs, improving a character smarter and wiser than yourself in real time isn’t that difficult
I wonder whether Sydney’s top speed is the same this high up. Can she, for instance, carry out rescue missions to the ISS (400km up, which isn’t much, but 8km/s speed, which is)?
We know Sydney can reach reach at least 350m/s and she can upgrade her speed more but we have never bean told he current max speed. Or what the orbs can top out at.
She doesn’t have to catch the ISS, she just has to get high enough and wait for ISS to catch her
then again. Speed-limitations are normally when the friction equals the thrust or the means of thrust doesn’t work in the current medium anymore.
Since space has no friction and her means of thrust doesn’t seem to be medium-dependent (so working in space), she shouldn’t have a problem reaching the speed of the ISS
She’d still have to match speeds with the ISS if she wants to do more than watch it wiz by, I’m getting a mental image of a fly striking a car windshield at highway speeds.
Didn’t mean that Sydney would wait in it’s direct path, but close enough that she can ‘latch’ on with her Hent-orb (being in space she shouldn’t be needing the flight ball)
the ISS isn’t in space, it’s orbiting earth, so she would still need the flight orb to stay still.
That would be quite catastrophic, if not for sydney, then definitely for the ISS.
Space debris the size of a tennis ball can destroy the ISS if it hit it at 8Km/s. Sydney + shield? nothing will be left.
In fairness Syd should hit it at 7.65 km/s
We know that’s the top speed at ground level. Higher up, the top speed might be different.
In #1856, Maxima says Sydney can reach about Mach 4, about 1372 m/s, ignoring variables like air pressure. The question for me, is if this is acceleration+momentum or just some techno-magic “speed”. If Sydney just stops using the fly-ball while in motion does she coast along + gravity? Or does all of her momentum vanish and she starts falling?
In deep space, would she have a top speed of 1372 m/s or could she continue to accelerate at 1372 m/s/s?
Unless I’m off my rocker (and that’s quite possible) in Deep Space once acceleration is removed you’d coast at whatever velocity you had reached.
There’s also the question of whether Sydney’s flight orb will function well outside a gravity well. Are her flight powers a gravity drive or anti-gravity drive? If it’s an anti-gravity drive, the further she gets from a gravity well, the less effective it will be. A gravity drive means she likely has a set “top speed”that she simply can’t exceed. I’d basically be an inertia-less drive where she would like resume whatever state she was in when she shut it down.
Her flight is more of a ‘localised gravity well’
400 Km up is nowhere near “outside the gravity well”. IIRC, the gravity at 400Km is more than 90% the gravity at ground level.
The reason the ISS is in micro-gravity isn’t because it’s so far away that the Earth doesn’t pull it. The reason is that the ISS is falling, and the induced gravity as a result of the acceleration (or, if you’d like Newtonian physics explanation, the Coriolis forces as a result of the acceleration) cancels out the gravity field.
Shachar
You are not crazy. About this, at least. :-P
But… We don’t know all the particulars of the flight orb yet. When Maxima took Halo flying and got her up to (I think it was) 400 MPH, they both just…stopped. There was no indication that either Sydney or Maxima needed to use any effort to decelerate. Atmospheric braking would help, but it still would be a far cry from immediate. And the same thing happened in this very comic. They were going up at some kind of speed (and why not go fast?), and then just…stopped. No deceleration needed, and in this case atmospheric braking would be greatly reduced, while gravity braking would be a thing.
So both of their flight powers could be inertialess, or nigh inertialess. Or it could just be easier to draw them back at zero speed without showing them decelerating.
Now they just need a lot more rebreathers considering how clumsy six can be and that she may need to take passengers and she already has acres to air tanks from skuba diveing.
Certain powers if used intelligently in a super hero universe would mean that there are NO bad guys at all.
Telepathy\Scrying\Super Intellect should all mean that any bad guy (for whatever value of bad the prot\antagonist choose) would be captured in very short order with minimal losses of any sort either personnel or material. I’m writing a super hero story atm and the only way I found to stop myself having no story to write is by using human stupidity basically anyone with those types of game over style powers is already in opposition to the heroes and is very self motivated or is part of an organisation which is run purely on financial morality. If you don’t pay you can’t get the info or if you pay well enough others can’t get your info. Anyone outside this organisation who exhibits powers that could infringe on their area is executed or joins, there is no possibility of another outcome. How do you fight an organisation which has not only a stranglehold on all information gathering powers but also has dirt on pretty much every major player as well.
Writing characters can be hard the other way too, I find myself having to rewrite sections because the characters wouldn’t be that smart or they wouldn’t have had the amount of time I’ve had to come up with super awesome plan Alpha2.
I don’t think telepathy and scrying as as good at finding info as you think
in the case of scrying you need information before you can start you need to know when and were to look or exactly what you are looking for
As for telepathy the telepath needs proximity to the the guy with the right info, wile the guy is thinking about it and possibly fwile there arnt to meany people around thinking ‘to loudly’.
Lastly super intalect can be a hazerd without good intelligence work knowing group x what’s to launch a terarist attack is uslus if you can think up thousands of potenchel targets they might hit
OP is describing a bunch of mental paranoids, and does not GROK general population.
Did you ever wonder how many people a day , think wistfully that some person(s) should die today? During Election Season it’s easily tens of millions. And you got how many telepaths/scryers to check that these daydreamers don’t have the resources to carry out their thoughts?
Telepathy, say a modest range of 50m, how many sensitive areas can you get within 50m of quite easily?
I know I could have a lot of information about how my country is actually run just with a 50m range and sitting on a bench, sure there’d be a lot of dross but people pre-vocalise when they are talking about things so you only have to find the guy talking to someone about something interesting, people also think what they are typing, all of their written communication are wide open for your telepath.
Scrying is remote viewing so once again depends on the range but it’s the equivalent of an invisible camera recording everything in a location, you just have to find a good location and if it is the classic version range is frequently in kilometres or hundreds of kilometres so somewhere with sensitive information is likely within that range open to you seeing and possibly hearing everything.
Add those sources of information to someone with super intellect to make use of it and your terrorists don’t get a chance to go past the planning stage, they and all of their allies are picked up well before so who cares what their potential targets were.
And that is me with my very non super intellect thinking things up quickly as a response to you, give someone with actual intelligence skills time to plan and I’m positive they could come up with a lot more.
Both of those abilities still require you to know what you want to know. Sure, you can probably tackle known threats extremely effectively, but someone you don’t know about? Can’t have a telepath or a scryer on every individual, they have to do something to alert you to their existence before you can use your abilities.
People will probably know about you more widely than you know them, and if they are gifted in the same field they might spy on YOU and decide they don’t want to join or die. Then they can blindside your omniscient genius person using the same tactics, simply because they know about your organisation while they are still off the radar.
Spying on known places of interest would be relatively easy.
Its finding that guy with the sniper rifle in his basement and explosives might be a bit more tricky. Especially if said guy (knowing that telepathy and scryers exist) was careful of his general thoughts while out and about.
Again we run into the problem of knowing where to look. Now if he were to slip up and think about part of his plan within range of a telepath, then it would be game over as then he becomes a suspect and finding out what he has in his basement and listening in on him in his basement becomes easy.
BUT, on the other hand, if when a telepath encounters him and his thoughts are on last night big game, and not his blow up half the city plan, nothing would seam out of place on a casual thought eavesdrop. A telepath would have to specifically invade his mind and go digging for those planes, and once again, in most cases, they would need to have a reason to do so. They would have to suspect him of something first.
In such a world it would still be possible to cat the intel world by surprise, but it would be much harder. Especially since in most cases, plans require implementation and keeping the implementation a secret while your in process is a lot harder. Moving a half tone of explosive by van to target while team B is doing their setup, chances are the guy driving the van is thinking about what he is doing and what he is carrying, prime target for a telepathic eavesdrop. At which point, interception becomes the rule for the day.
Naturally, the larger the group, the harder it becomes since keeping the planning stage a secret relies on a great deal of mental discipline.
All that being said, as some one pointed out, you eavesdrop of a few hundred people’s casual thoughts their broadcasting and oh look, a few thousand have though about some one dying, should be dead or killing some one. Ok now the questions become, how many are just wishful thinking, how many might actually be considering taking action, how many have any kind of actual plan in their head, and how many actually have the resources and intelligence need to actually execute their plan. also in that chaos, probably including plans ranging from simple but improbable to fantastically unrealistic. Basically, you potentially endup in a situation of too much information to sift through.
“Now if he were to slip up and think about part of his plan within range of a telepath, then it would be game over”
assuming the telepath is not distracted by someone else thoughts such as the newly wed daydreaming about the wedding night s/he just had or the guy mentally undressing your telepath because s/he thinks they are cute, or the insane ramblings of anther guy
Where is the orphanage?
behind the guy with a bullseye on his chest
I’d add “Super Speed” to that list. Realistically all of Flash’s fights would probably consist of the villain going “MUAHA-” and that’s as far as he gets before he gets a supersonic whack on the noggin.
Considering that Flash has cracked the time/reality barriers more than once more like Temporial Whack upon the noggin.
If it’s so unsafe to be up there, Max is taking a real risk by taking Sydney there. I mean, our heroine does have a habit of letting go of her orbs at unfortunate times.
Meanwhile, I clearly would suck at charades. I’m one of the ones who didn’t get what she was doing at all until I read DaveB‘s comments.
I figured out Sydney was referring to Dabbler in the first panel, Boobs and “Sexy Wag” butt had to be.
I got that but thought she might be talking about the most oversexed female on the team – Harem.
while I’m also horrible at deciphering pantomime in this case it was fairly clear that “there are aliens besides dabbler” is the reason sydney is barred from com-balling. so from that point “reverse engeniering” the charades part was quite easy for me.
Yeah, I also got the message only because I knew what the message was, however I got the boobs, but not the toes or horns. The toes are super-confusing, actually. The horns are just poorly placed.
Look at dabbler. While she has horns on her forehead she also has larger curved horns pretty much exactly where Sydney pantomimes them. but yeah the toes were confusing. ^^
The easiest way to write smart characters is to have other people read your early drafts with a red pen. There’s nothing harder than hearing “But why didn’t they just…” and realizing you are trying to justify them having the idiot ball because there’s this cool thing you want to do, but they have to ignore six ninjas in an empty room and the fact the hero is on fire…
lol. was about to say get friends to help but you got the smart char advice on the nose. and its funny too. :D
Well stated. Writer’s groups often serve this function at the higher level to plot-check.
/but even the most thought out SuperBright can be taken down by the advancement of knowledge (happens a lot when you read through 20th SF and catch the glaring disproven concepts that a story is based upon)
Um, ok. Sorry, no idea what she’s pantomiming? Can someone spellit out? ELI5?
Dabbler.
Specifically
Dabbler(1st Panel) “Two Toes”(2nd Panel) Tantalis(3rd Panel… little unsure exactly what she is doing here)
Actually I think its more: Panel one is making out she moves like Dabbler and has big breasts, panel two is talking about Dabbler having two toes, and panel 3 is the tusks/horns on Dabblers face.
Breasty waggle-but (panel 1) with 2 toes (panel 2) and horns (panel 3) isn’t the only one.
Hey Sydney, Got another reason not to use the Comm Ball…….. Your Flying on the edge of space, using your comm ball would require dropping either you shield or your flight orb……
Both would have…………………….Negative effects……………
Don’t believe she was talking about touching that ball at that time, but earlier during her tour of Machina Inc
I know… was an attempt at humor…..
Note to Self “Delivery needs work……”
Um. Sorry, but that mask won’t allow Maxima to talk to Sydney if air is that thin, for two reasons:
1) The whole affair is too flimsy to be able to hold more than a tiny fraction of the air-pressure needed to make conversation possible. Frankly, it’s too flimsy-looking to make up for even a tiny shortfall in atmospheric density – most people can produce audible sounds even when the air is so thin they are passing out.
2) OK, let’s pretend the mask *IS* rigid enough to contain that sort of pressure of air. Problem: if they are at an altitude where the air is too thin to generate speech then the air *between* the mask and Sydney’s bubble is too thin to *carry* the sound.
Conclusion: Don’t bother drawing the mask, or else say it’s for Maxima’s comfort even if she doesn’t absolutely need it for respiration.
Forgetting of course that its high tech devices that probably have a com-system integrated into the very design and would be made strong enough that Maxima could wear it in a Super fight at such conditions.
Max has a com unit on the choker of her throat, it can transmit the sound from her neck just fine.
You’re forgetting about the choker-comms that they all use. That’s how they’re speaking to each other.
It doesn’t matter how flimsy the mask is, Maxima’s shield protects things she’s wearing too.
Remember the almost-big bang explosion she made? She wasn’t naked after standing in it.
Unfortunately.
Even though Max’s mask doesn’t appear to fold up, the way I envision it based on appearance is that the clear mask part is detachable from the actual oxygen tank, allowing each part to rest in its own pocket. Like when the parts are connected the part that covers mouth and nose clips into a slot just above the tanks oxygen release area allowing the oxygen to flow into the mask without leaking. If at all that makes any sense, considering I’m typing this up at 111am Friday morning.
Wow. 111 am? On a Friday? So that’s…3 pm on Tuesday?
Amazing! It’s still Friday for me! We have a time traveler in our midst!
Sorry, couldn’t help it. ^_^
O.K. So.
A person normally can survive without oxygen under normal circumstances for 4 mins. (1) At that point the person suffers brain damage, and under those circumstances on average, it’s 15 mins before death / irreversible brain damage.
Outerspace, since the suit pressurizes and compresses the body, without it there to keep the person stable. It’s 15 seconds on average before death (2).
Then you have the extremes of being strangled. The brain looses consciousness within a couple of seconds, but it takes minutes afterwards for the act to cause death, on average.(3). *
* I say on average since there are people who due to physiology, base health, age, prep, and other circumstances that can last longer, or shorter amounts of time.
1) https://www.transweb.org/faq/q3.shtml
2) https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2007/08/can_you_survive_in_space_without_a_spacesuit.html
and
3) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangling
____________________
So for Maxima. It’d literally be base * however much stronger she is. (Plus or minus special circumstances, McGuffin weaknesses, or other Supers). Then you’d get your base max.
My guess. If Stalwart can lift a space station and he’s the strongest. And that sucker weights 925,000 lbs. And I’m guessing weights what, 190 – 210 lbs? That’d put him at lifting 4868 times more than his weight, at 210 it’d be 4405 times.
Since Maxima’s stronger, it’d be what 5,000 times body mass? Of course if that’s her base boost (5,000 X), then that’d put her ability to survive without oxygen up to hours (since 15 mins and secs is how long before death / unconsciousness. Let’s hit up the seconds, since that’s how long till blackout without oxygen (not counting strangulation since that’s a blood loss thing)).
15*5,000 = 75,000 / 60 = 1,250 60 = 21 (rounded up) hours.
But since it’s not hours … then does the boost scale down with other things?
I mean as is, Base human speed for females is about 7 mph, * 5,000 would put her at: 35,000 mph. Which would be Mach 46 (rounded up from 45.616327). Which is leagues above Re-Entry Speeds.
Strangulation is due to stopping blood to the brain, not oxygen. Suffocation or smothering is what you would be going for but honestly very good armchair math.
Actually I read up on it. And it takes about the same amount of time for a person to passout from strangulation as it does from suffocation. But death does still take a few minutes to happen. The same as with suffocation, since the brain doesn’t store oxygen, dizziness / blacking out, etc. Is from changes in blood flow to the brain. (at least from what I saw when looking around for fixed times.)
Although other than it taking the same amount of time to blackout, and it taking minutes for actual death to occur. I was never able to get a fixed time for actual death other than the minute bit.
Thanks for the compliment though ^_^.
*minutes bit
Yea there’s not actually much research done into how long it takes for a person to die like that.
I believe the only actual data from getting caught out in space comes from 1 astronaut who accidentally removed his mask in a pressure chamber. He didn’t die, but did pass out
Actually when it comes to outerspace there’s quite a bit of data.
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/08/how-would-you-die-in-outer-space.html
Is a good little bit. In outspace, as long as you don’t hold your breath, you can survive for 90 seconds and be saved. After 2 mins. You’d die of asphyxiation (if you’re lucky. If you hold your breath your lungs would expand and explode).
But 15 seconds before you pass out.
Actually, there is…field research…on that at altitudes where people live. I have no idea where you got your 4 minute baseline, but the rule of “The Thumb” is this: you have three minutes to give a tracheotomy (oh, you can also ask an E.R. doctor about this one) before brain damage occurs, and ~5 minutes before brain death. Your source puts it at 10, which is interesting. Might be from having defibrillators handy. However, your source also contradicts itself:
“After five to ten minutes of not breathing, you are likely to develop serious and possibly irreversible brain damage.”
“3 minutes Serious brain damage likely”
I’m not totally confident in that source. I would ask an E.R. doctor or even an EMT.
Um, this field research is related to crushed throats, if you couldn’t tell. This is relevant, because there is a BIG difference in “not breathing” and “no blood flow to the brain”. No blood flow to the brain (also happens when someone’s heart stops) results in immediate lack of oxygen in the brain. Not breathing? 1. Your lungs have a variable amount of air in the process of absorption.
2. Your body is smart, and shunts blood flow to the brain, killing your hands and feet first.
So…while my numbers aren’t really helpful for your math, your first source contradicts itself, but…wait for it…stress is making me a jerk tonight…
Muscle strength has 0 correlation to how long before your brain dies without oxygen.
https://legacy.wwltv.com/story/news/2014/08/27/14359828/
[When a diver brought Parrish up, there was no heartbeat, no respiration. He was without oxygen for 25 minutes. Doctors say in four minutes, the human brain suffers severe damage. After 16 minutes in cardiac arrest, in normal temperatures, when no blood is pumping so the brain gets no oxygen as well, no patients survive.]
It was the first base line.
Although most other sources after I posted it. Say 3 Mins.
https://www.transweb.org/faq/q3.shtml
https://www.livescience.com/32320-how-long-can-a-person-survive-without-water.html
https://www.goodnewsaboutgod.com/studies/spiritual/home_study/live_breath.htm
That’s the average.
As for the source. There’s no real contradiction as read here:
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/brain-death1.htm
After the 3 min mark. The damage can be repaired, but at 10 mins, the damage is to extensive, and irreparable.
And all sources point to 3 minutes before brain damage is incurred. And the brain doesn’t store oxygen, it gets it’s oxygen from the blood going to the brain. A person passes out, or gets dizzy because the brain sense a change / loss of blood flow and the body reacts accordingly.
I didn’t say the brain stored oxygen, I said the lungs and blood do.
You also didn’t react to the entire point of your original post that I countered, so I’ll say it again:
Muscle strength has 0 correlation to how long before your brain dies without oxygen.
You said:
“So for Maxima. It’d literally be base * however much stronger she is. (Plus or minus special circumstances, McGuffin weaknesses, or other Supers). Then you’d get your base max.”
No. Well, okay, Dave said Maxima can burn power for oxygen, but Stalwart? Dies exactly as fast from lack of oxygen as anyone else. You do not multiply by strength.
You can write characters that are smarter than you, because you can have them figure out from first principles in 5 minutes what takes you 1/2 an hour with Wikipedia.
I kind of note the same tendencies of lax security on Babylon 5, though there it usually doesn’t come back to bite them. Created an Advantage/Stunt for it in my Fate-based urban fantasy game:
*************
Casual Conversationalist – You have a knack for discussing every subject with such a level of casual attitude that nobody thinks there’s anything important being discussed. You’re the sort of person that can talk about top secret, classified materials on the open street and be sure that nothing will leak. You seem to have a sense of when it is safe to talk. By spending a Fate Point, you can insure that nobody listens in on you for the scene regardless of what the topic of conversation is. If your character is already under surveillance when this activated, the GM instead tells you that you have a vague sense of being watched.
************
Other than that, yeah, I’m also of the sort that prefers that the necessary mistakes be the sort of mistakes that would logically be made by a professional in the occupation rather than some sort of amateur hour thing.
I wonder if this means that Sydney can do something definitely superior to Maxima? Maybe she had her stop because Maxima was at her flight ceiling already (and Sydney has no flight ceiling)?
As far as Maxima goes that is undetermined.
But I would agree that Sydney has no flight ceiling because she is in effect, bringing her own environment with her. Just from past discussion it seems her force shield is pretty damn complicated and advanced to the level where nothing outside can affect the inside, so I would even guess she would not have to worry about eventually freezing or cooking due to thermal transfer.
Hmmm… it would possibly need to have a top ceiling though because she could go hide in a sun otherwise.
She’s suffocate if she hid in a sun, but otherwise…why not?
The main problem with hiding inside a star isn’t the heat or light or radiation or gravitational pressures from the star (as I’m assuming the shield will prevent harm to her for those things).
The main problem would be getting TO the sun. The nearest star (the Sun) is almost 93 million miles. Currently Sydney can go at Mach 4. Unless the next dot on the fly orb has a MASSIVE jump in speed, she’d never make it to the sun. She’d either fall asleep and her hand would let go of the orb (unless she glues/tapes her hand to the orb I guess) or she’d die of lack of food or – more likely – water first (assuming the rebreather can infinitely re-scrub the CO2 into O2 the entire trip).
A commercial jet, travelling at 550 mph continuously from the Earth to the Sun, would take 19 years. Assuming Halo flew at top speed the ENTIRE time, even not accounting for sleeping, eating, and other bodily stuff, that’s still about 3 1/2 years at mach 4. No way she’d be able to carry enough food and water, even if there’s some sort of waste recycling thing. Yes I know. Ew. But science is ew sometimes.
Anyway, assuming the fifth dot let her move at 157,000 mph (the speed of the fastest moving space vehicles we’ve ever created, the Helios probes)… it would still take about 25 days to just reach the sun… Then going inside it would take more time…. then getting back to Earth….
I figured this would be interesting to hear, since Grrlpower does tend to talk about realism vs comic book logic :)
Actually I guess she COULD survive a trip to the sun and in it now that I think about it. I forgot that her shield can get bigger.
Technically, she could put an entire RV or other vehicle or ship or other structure within her shield, somehow tape or glue her hand to the shield orb so she won’t let go of it even when sleeping, and stock the RV/ship/structure with enough food, water, and a method of CO2 scrubbing to last the entire flight (easier to assume if the next level of the fly ball massively increases her max speed while flying. Then she could use the shield and fly orbs to fly to the sun, and fly into the sun with no ill effects, assuming the shield is able to resist the energy/radiation/gravitational output of the sun – which so far there’s no reason to not assume, since it hasnt been shown to have any real limits to its durability.
This, of course, assumes that the orbs work if she’s holding it while sleeping. So far, all we know about that is that the orbs power down if she’s NOT holding them while she’s sleeping. Nothing about whether they would power down if she’s sleeping but still holding one and able to keep her grip on it. Given the fact that she found it in the ocean before it tethered to her, and it seems to have been there for a long time implies that its power source (if it has one) is also possibly unlimited.
That would be pretty funny, taking an RV into space…crap, now you made me think about Space Balls…but she would never be able to stock years worth of food and water. Air she could do if she took enough plants with her. A human being (never mind the plants) goes through about 180 gallons of water a year, depending on local humidity and exercise and other variables. Hmm…that’s 36 of those 5 gallon water containers you see on water coolers. I guess if she got a big RV and packed it with water, she actually COULD manage it. Round trip of 7 years. Sydney would have to level up her planning skill, though.
This all assumes sleeping with the orb taped to her hand works. I want to say they do, just because it’s funnier, but flight isn’t static. It’s possible it would revert to “hover” mode (pointless in space) while she’s sleeping, making it a round trip of ~10 years. Still, her shield has the volume to carry 360 5-gallon water bottles.
Suggestion: if you ever need to be smarter than yourself, Dave, outsource. You may not know people that are necessarily smarter than you, but you can at least get outside perspectives that can point out things you missed. Do that, and you can look a whole lot more clever than you actually are, which is good if part of your story relies on competent spycraft.
Also, getting the input of people with an education (
oftenusually more useful than raw intelligence) in the relevant area helps enormously.DAVE! Authors of fiction, including you, can draw from experiences and knowledge of other people. Example: war movies. Some of those have had real veterans of war working on them, usually as consultants. You can do the same. Though finding a (former) spy to tell you about his trade is likely easier said than done…
Ummm…
Why didn’t Sydney simply take The List out of her pocket, write what she wanted Maxima to know on a page, then turn the book around so Max could read it? It’d be a lot simpler and less of a chance of misinterpreting it, and the information density would be higher. Then she could tear up the page or scribble on it or something.
grab two croquet balls, one in each hand. Now, without letting them go, try to get out a pad and paper to write something down.
+1
Perhaps because she just didn’t think of that? Its Sydney after all, sometimes the simple action escapes her for something a bit more dramatic.
Because it’s The List, buddy, not The Emergency Communication Scratch Pad!
And I’ve got my eye on you now too, so you just mind your p’s and q’s.
:p
q:
They need to get the design department on that gas mask for maxima though, it just doesn’t scream ‘merchandising’ enough.
It needs a racing stripe, to be black or to be part of a dramatic face mask.
Make it cool enough and you can even sell it as part of a separate ‘accessory pack’! ;)
Ya I can just see that. Maxima’s high altitude breathing mast replicas, 19.99 in the Arkon gift shop, ground floor. :) That would be a good way to supplement thier operating budget since their main force is being setup to be divas and what not. Merchandising.
They already have plans for merchandising. Throwing off marketing projections is actually the main reason Arianna was pissed at Max for her big-badda-boom attack on the tank.
That being said…Dave should start making merchandising plans. I’d buy a t-shirt.
I’d buy a T-shirt too! :)
Shut up and take my money!
There is worse. In the Harry Potter series Hermione used a time travel device to take two classes at the same time. And then later they used it to save Buckbeak from execution and get Sirius to safety. But in each movie there was a reveal which could have been solved by going back in time to prevent things from happening. Harry tells Dumbledore that Quirrel was hosting Voldemort? Go back in time and arrest him! Saves all that damage caused by the troll (it was an ogre, damnit) Quirrel released, and a pile of other inconveniences. The same can be said for all the other movies as well. Ginny is possessed by Voldemort’s old diary? Go back in time, kill the basilisk with a pile of powerful wizards (if a bird and a second year student can do it, then a bird and an adult wizard or two can also do it), and then stab the diary with a basilisk tooth. Problem solved.
I think this is an even better solution. :)
In all fairness, I think it was established that Harry Potter followed the “you can’t actually change anything” form of time travel. There were no such thing as alternate timelines. They could save Buckbeak because he hadn’t been killed to begin with. They just thought he had been.
So give the Time Turner and a gun to a Muggle. As far as they’re concerned, nothing changed. I guess all that other stuff was just a hallucination Harry had. Probably a bad fever. But hey, it made for seven best-selling novels. Profitable hallucination.
But then I guess the Muggle would invest heavily in betting on sports events, maybe even get into the stock market, or…OMG! Donald Trump killed Voldemort!
That isn’t consistent with Hermione using the time turner to take two classes at the same time. If time is immutable then she can’t take the second class because she was in the first class all along.
And also, time travel is a BS story plot. You can do absolutely anything at all with it because it breaks causality and makes no sense all at the same time. You can justify anything at all if you twist things up enough, such as saying that you both can’t change anything using time travel but Hermione can still take two classes at the same time. If you can’t change anything with time travel then time travel cannot exist, because the very fact of it existing changes things. It isn’t consistent, but then with time travel you don’t have to be, because it’s both time travel and a steaming crock of fresh crap all at the same time. Pun intended.
Having held TS/SCI and various CW clearances for over twenty years, what Dave said in his comments are quite true. Heh, I had an office in a three story building (Secure Compartmented Information Facility) that was basically built as a faraday cage for several years. As far as the reality of high level government officials doing stupid things regarding security we had a US Army Major who was busted carrying TS/SCI documents in a briefcase out of our SCIF so he could “review them’ at home. Got a lot more instances but in every case it was a matter of “oh the rules don’t apply to ME” for the most part. More recently there Gen. Petraeous and of course Hillary Clinton with her spiffy home server. Lotta people in Leavenworth Prison for doing a fraction of what Hillary did.
I can believe it. That last especially..
I.O.K.W.A.R.D.I.
Took a bit of searching before I could figure that acronym – “It’s OK When Any Republican Does It”. Yeah, based on all I see of US politics, that seems true.
I always liked PJ O’Rourke’s take:
DEMOCRAT – We don’t know what’s wrong with the country, but we’ll fix it.
REPUBLICAN – There’s nothing wrong with the country, but we’ll fix THAT.
Interesting. I worked at a Northrup Grumman facility which had been CIA and was similarly Faraday equipped. It was also a three story building, two above ground and a basement. It also had several large vaults with bank style doors which had been converted into office space. The doors were left permanently standing open, which was probably rather comforting to the personnel who had to work in the windowless space.
Amongst the most amusing security breaches I witnessed were the head of security waving off the desk guard in the unsecured lobby area when he attempted to perform his job duties on a visitor with a glare and a “He’s with me,” and then escorting the individual right into the secured portion of the facility, and the large, prominent “No cameras allowed” sign which was ignored by everyone walking past it with their camera equipped cell phone.
When I was transferred to that facility I attempted to purchase a cell phone which did not have a camera. That turned out to be impossible, so I broke that rule right next to everyone else. I think you’d have to be carrying an actual dedicated camera to be refused entrance, and that’s just ridiculous on the face of it.
With regards to Hillary and her private email server, there was no law regarding that when she assumed the office of Secretary of State. Rules but not laws were put into place during her term, and she showed a clear lack of judgement for not having at least relocated the server to a secure facility, or just allowing the government to manage the email server entirely. But so far as I am aware she broke no laws. Lots of unclassified material is classified well after the fact, but you can’t charge someone with a crime which wasn’t illegal at the time it was committed.
Time will tell, though, as the FBI investigation is still underway. But no matter which way the FBI goes, either dropping the case or making an indictment, there will be people who will believe that it is a case of politics and not justice. And they might be right.
… WHICHEVER way it goes ….
Given that Sydney is such a nerd I was hoping to a certain scene before this one.
Syd & Max are standing on the ground with Max waiting not-at-all-patiently while Syd goes through a faux NASA launch sequence.
Sydney: Roger Houston we are go for throttle-up in 10…9…8…7…
Max: grrrrr.
HEADCANON ACCEPTED!
+1