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Work Pages I Launched and Help maintain.
- Death to the French
- Death Lands
- Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon
- Hell on Wheels
- Sniper Elite
- Sniper Elite V2
- From the Depths
- Earth Defense Force 5
Assorted General Research links and topics. Warning some of the links are to websites I don't always visit as overtime I have expanded my resources. If you find a link is down let me know I can remove or replace it. If you have a good link you think would fit here feel free to send to me in a PM.
Simple Medieval Demographics for fantasy settings.
Encyclopedia Astronautica A collection of articles on numerous space and space-based and related projects from around the world.
General Research Link Recommended. Warning limited access on a monthly basis sans subscription.
Rand Space Weapons Earth Wars Real-world considerations of space-based weaponry and warfare and its impact on the terrestrial side.
A collection of weapons law including various considerations in how the laws are interpreted.
- Graphic Nuke Effect
- Nuclear Warfare (Armageddon Online link)
- Chemical Warfare
- Chemical and Biological Weapons
- Chemical Warfare
- Nuclear Warfare
- Nuclear Warfare Topic Links Page
- Biological Warfare
- More Bio-warfare
- CDC bio-weapons info
- A New Scientist article from October, 1986 highlighting the possible use of SDI "Star Wars Program" Laser Satellites. If they were used against terrestrial targets as a possible type of WMD.
List of declassified Nuclear Test Videos This is a list of recently declassified, preserved, and now publically shared videos via the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Civil War Tactics
- Basic tactics and Battle of Gettysburg
- Selected Civil War Weapons
- Civil War Weapons, Equipment, and Tech
- Civil War Rifles
- Assorted Civil War Weapons
- More tactics
"Tactics and Techniques"
Urban Warfare
- Urban Comabt the Israeli Experience
- Military Operations in Urban Terrain
- Guerrilla Warfare in Urban Environments
- Mouse Holing
- Urban Guerrilla Warfare
- Second Battle of Fallujah
General Strategy
General References
- Zenos Warbirds A collection of assorted training and informational films from mostly WWII and Korea era. Youtube link so it is not guaranteed to always be around.
TM 43-0001-28 Army Ammunition Data Sheets google for the reference.
Designation Systems.net A website cataloging a large number of US aircraft and weapon systems.
For the curious, I dug these up on early explosive small arms rounds.
Check this out. The old description of early small arms exploding bullets. Referred to as shell bullets or shell rounds.
A description of Fulminating rounds being used for hunting in reference to their effects against lions in particular.
bulletpicker.com a large general listing of all sorts of ordinance backed up by documentation where possible.
Ballistics General Reference STOP Before reading through any of the links below read this article. It is a very solid look at the mechanics of biology and physics of wounding via gunshot.
- A sort of clearinghouse for all sorts of odd and unique propulsion systems.
- A new take on the HEAT charge that utilizes magnetic forces to enhance the efficacy and efficiency of shaped charges.
- Page on project Ithacus. An insane proposal project that would have had massive rockets delivering troops and vehicles in intercontinental ballistic trajectories.
- A demo of a remotely operated Zepplin dropping dynamite bombs.
- Covert Shores It covers a lot of submarine history, concepts, future projects, and abandoned projects.
Mostly assorted reference charts, calculators, and guides from around the internet that have proven useful in many discussions or for references.
- Understanding LD-50 and LC-50
- ''Impact Earth'' Purdue Asteroid Impact Calculator Same one linked from Atomic Rockets Text Version.
- A handy chart explaining gun gauges as a measurement of gun barrel diameter Aka Gauge to caliber conversion chart.
- Aqua Calc A large collection of measurements and conversion tables, charts, and tools.
- Engineering Tool Box Another site full of useful conversion tables, charts, and tools.
- Naval Weapons References
- Winchester game rating
- A general set of shooting and ballistic calculators for guns
- Weight by volume Calculator
- Muzzle Energy Computer
- Kyle's Converter An online website for various converter calculators.
- Cartographers Guild for map-making for your worlds.
- skillsyouneed.com Numeracy "math" section.
- World Bank Free/Open Data
This section is where various rough estimates, explanations, and ideas are outlined based on a discussion had at some point. The idea being to give some detail to an idea or concept. These are not perfectly accurate examples and are not intended to be. They are just simple illustrations of the idea being discussed.
| Implications of Gravity Control Technology by Fighteer |
First, let's get a few things clear about our definitions. We already know how to produce artificial gravity in one sense: spin something and stand on the inside — aka, Centrifugal Gravity. Easy, cheap, and seen in amusement parks around the world. Of course, this is just using inertia to create an acceleration force that makes us feel like we're experiencing gravity; it's not the curvature of the fabric of spacetime.
We also already know how to create "real" gravity — what you need is mass or its energy equivalent. Any amount of mass-energy, even a single photon, creates spacetime curvature. However, it takes an enormous amount of mass-energy to produce appreciable gravity. To get 1 g (what we're used to on Earth), you need a rocky ball with a mass of 5.972 × 10^24 kg and you need to stand 6,378 km from its center. You could also concentrate a powerful set of laser beams at a central point and pump in 5.37 × 10^41 J of energy, and you'd have the equivalent spacetime curvature... for a few thousandths of a second until the laser light went on its merry way into space. Aliens observing the event from a few hundred light-years away would wonder how our sun went supernova. (For bonus points, if you focused the lasers into a spherical radius of less than 9 mm, you'd create a black hole).
In another thread, I did some estimates on what you'd need to generate a field of 1 g at a radius of 10 m. The answer comes to about 1.5 x 10^13 kg of mass equivalence, which is contained in a 10 m radius sphere would be about as dense as a white dwarf star.
Clearly the mass-energy curvature method is out as a means of generating casual artificial gravity. So what we're left with is some sort of sci-fi mechanism for manipulating gravity itself. Some have suggested that this could come about through manipulating the Higgs field, which gives particles (some of their) mass. Others propose that it could be a result of the discovery of the Theory of Everything — an equation that unifies quantum mechanics and general relativity and solves the mystery of how gravity operates at the quantum level.
The Holy Grail, if you will, is the ability to create gravitational fields — spacetime curvature — without the concentration of mass-energy that they usually require. If we can do this, then the sky is the limit. Or not even the sky: the universe. All kinds of fantastic rule-breaking become possible since you'll have broken quite a few physical laws that we thought were absolute, such as conservation of momentum and symmetry.
Fine, what you want is applications, not an armchair physicist babbling about theories. Let's talk...
Shields, sure. If you can create gravity fields you can bend incoming projectiles, even light, away from an object. Artificial gravity. Well, duh, but if you want to be able to walk around normally on the side of a building, or a 100 m long spaceship, you're good. Inertial dampers: Obviously. You could negate the inertial effects of acceleration on objects, or just create a gravity field to accelerate them. (FYI, it's "damper", not "dampener", unless you're suggesting inertia can be made wet.)
Fantastic weapons. You could compress spacetime around any object, irresistibly squashing it down until it's a soup of subatomic particles. Call it the "spaghettification gun". Unlimited power via artificially created black holes, from which you'd harvest Hawking radiation.
Nucleosynthesis — creating heavier elements from lighter ones — via controlled fusion reactions. Want gold? Americium? It's just a matter of the right gravitational pressure and temperature.
Starships capable of traveling near the speed of light due to gravitationally-assisted acceleration, or if you aren't that exotic, antimatter drives. Yes, artificial event horizons are a great way to harvest antimatter.
If you can figure out how to create negative gravitational energy, you've got an Alcubierre warp drive — i.e., FTL. Here's hoping Unruh radiation doesn't fry you. Geo-engineering of unprecedented scale. Want to turn the Earth into a donut shape for kicks? You got it.
Solar engineering: sculpt stars to your specifications. Turn stars on and off.
Rearrange the orbits of planets. You could pop over to the Alpha Centauri system in a year or so (subjective transit time) and spell out dirty words with its planets. Interstellar shows a few of the applications of artificial gravity, but also throws in a few purely fantastical bits that don't make sense even with command of that force. For example, once you're inside the event horizon of a black hole, that's it. You aren't coming out again even with space magic. You can mess with where the event horizon is, however.
| Asteroid Mining Summary by @Native Jovian |
Steering a rover on Mars has the advantage of 1) being a small scale project, and 2) dealing with a relatively static situation. It's one rover doing one thing at a time, and the things the rover on Mars has to deal with are unlikely to change in the time it takes to send messages back and forth. If you're trying to do industrial-scale asteroid mining, neither thing is true anymore. Your project is going to have a lot of moving parts (collecting ore, smelting it, storing the finished product, occasionally sending the stored metal back to Earth, etc), and many of these things are time-sensitive and the situation can get away with you if you're not able to monitor it in real time (what if your ore collector accidentally causes a rockslide? what if your smelter has an issue and doesn't turn off when it's supposed to, so starts cooking itself? what if a return launch fails and an exploding rocket lands on the rest of the facility?)
Okay, so you send some humans to keep an eye on things in real-time. The problem is that human presence makes everything vastly more complicated, because you have to add "while keeping several humans alive in a situation which can kill them very quickly if something stops working properly" to whatever else you're doing. The farther you are from Earth, the worse it gets, because the longer your backup plan has to last. Going to the moon? If something screws up and you have to abort, you just have to last for three days before you get back to Earth. Coming back from Mars? That takes eight months under ideal conditions. Hope you planned for that.
Landing on Titan, intercepting a comet, or making a flyby of Pluto is all just rocketry. You're going to have to do that sort of thing for asteroid mining regardless of whether you're doing the actual mining there or bringing the whole asteroid back. But if you're moving the asteroid, all you're doing is landing a rocket there and then doing some more rocketry to bring it back. The only technical challenge here is bringing enough propellant along (which, to be fair is not a small challenge, but it's pretty much the only one). If you're doing something like an ion thruster or a solar sail, then you don't have to carry literal tons of propellant with you, but you do have to wait a few years before your asteroid gets home.
If you're going to do the asteroid mining there, then suddenly your payload has increased massively. You've got to bring not only all the mining equipment but all the mass dedicated to the care and feeding of humans, which is going to be a lot. Then you have to bring enough propellant for your humans to come home eventually anyway, which by itself negates much of the savings of not trying to move the whole asteroid. You're presumably getting your refined ore home somehow, which means either more rockets and more propellant, or something like a mass driver, which is not only yet more stuff to schlep up there in the first place, it means you also have to build some sort of receiving system in Earth orbit anyway or else your payload just burns up in the atmosphere. (The other option is making your payload-return ship capable of reentry on its own, but that adds a ton more mass, and you have to drag it all the way out to the damn asteroid in the first place, which boosts your costs of setup even higher.)
If you're going to run this for more than one crew cycle, you need to ship more people out to replace the original crew, which increases your costs again. (Alternatively, all the infrastructure you invested in to get the process started is wasted because there's still ore and still equipment to mine it, just nobody there to run it.)
The super-tldr version is this: moving stuff through space is hard. The farther you're moving it, the harder it is. Human spaceflight requires a lot of stuff, and the amount of stuff increases the farther you're going, which only compounds the problem. Moving the asteroid allows you to reduce the amount of stuff you need to travel long distances to a minimum (one rocket to go there and bring the asteroid back), and then have all the actual mining stuff move a relatively short distance (just into orbit instead of all the way out to the asteroid).
Think of it like this: the only real benefit of doing the asteroid mining on site is that you don't have to move the ore slag and mining tailing (the parts of the asteroid that aren't the actual metal you want, basically) back to Earth. The downside is that you do have to move all the equipment, supplies, etc out to the asteroid. Which is going to have more mass overall? The asteroid parts, or all the stuff you need to mine it (including crew and all their supplies and equipment, rockets and propellant for traveling there and back, rockets and propellant to send the mined material back, etc) over the lifetime of the entire project?
If we're talking about a reasonably pure asteroid (and we should be, because if we're not then why are we mining it in space instead of on Earth?), then moving the impurities is going to be cheaper than moving everything but the impurities.
| Travel Time Chart |
A series of simple estimation tables generated for a discussion on a theoretical Planetside to Space "Shore Battery". 15km/s was used as the low end for all basic projectiles and the baseline for most of the comparisons. This chart would apply to any projectile fired in space. The projectile in this case would be things like railgun rounds, giant rocks, missiles, rockets, or anything comparable. For the sake of simplification, the basic assumption is that the projectile has achieved the listed velocity at launch or shortly after and maintains a steady velocity from launch to target.
| HEO Table in 10 km/s Bands | |||
| Base Distance to Target 35,786 km | |||
| Speed km/s | Time To Target est. Seconds | Difference from previous velocity band | Difference from 15 km/s Starting Velocity |
| 15 km/s | 2,385.7/s | N/A | N/A |
| 20 km/s | 1,789.3/s | 596.4/s | 596.4/s |
| 30 km/s | 1,192.8/s | 596.5/s | 1192.9/s |
| 40 km/s | 894.6/s | 298.2/s | 1,491.1/s |
| 50 km/s | 715.7/s | 178.9/s | 1,670/s |
| Common GPS Orbit Table in 10 kms Bands | |||
| Base Distance to Target 20,350 km | |||
| Speed km/s | Time To Target est. Seconds | Difference from previous velocity band | Difference from 15 km/s Starting Velocity |
| 15 km/s | 1,356.6/s | N/A | N/A |
| 20 km/s | 1,017.5/s | 339.1/s | 339.1/s |
| 30 km/s | 678.3/s | 339.2/s | 678.3/s |
| 40 km/s | 508.7/s | 169.6/s | 847.9/s |
| 50 km/s | 407/s | 101.7/s | 949.6/s |
| LEO Orbit Table in 10 kms Bands | |||
| Base Distance to Target 2,000 km | |||
| Speed km/s | Time To Target est. Seconds | Difference from previous velocity band | Difference from 15 km/s Starting Velocity |
| 15 km/s | 132/s | N/A | N/A |
| 20 km/s | 96/s | 36/s | 36/s |
| 30 km/s | 66/s | 30/s | 54/s |
| 40 km/s | 49.8/s | 16.2/s | 82.2/s |
| 50 km/s | 39.6/s | 10.2/s | 92.4/s |
| The 15 km/s shot at the three bands | |
| General Band at the borders of each band | Time in Seconds to target |
| HEO 35,786 km | 2,385.7/s |
| Common GPS 20,350 km | 1356.6/s |
| LEO 2,000km | 133.3/s |
| Shots with range bands in 10K km bands. | ||
| Distance in increments of 10K km | Base speed of 15km/s= Time to target in seconds for base comparison | Velocity in increments of 10km/s band starting with 20 km/s = Time to Target in seconds |
| _________ | _________ | _________ | _________ | _________ | _________ |
| _________ | 15 km/s | 20 km/s | 30 km/s | 40 km/s | 50 km/s |
| 10K/km | 666.6/s | 500/s | 333.3/s | 250/s | 200/s |
| 20K/km | 1,333.3/s | 1,000/s | 666.6/s | 500/s | 400/s |
| 30K/km | 2,000/s | 1,500/s | 1,000/s | 750/s | 600/s |
| 40K/km | 2,666.6/s | 2,000/s | 1,333.3/s | 1,000/s | 800/s |
| 50K/km | 3,333.3/s | 2,500/s | 1,666.6/s | 1,250/s | 1,000/s |
| 1,000 Km with velocities from 10km/s-100 km/s in 10km/s bands. | |||
| Object Velocity | Time Taken in Seconds | Difference from previous velocity | Difference from base 10km/s Velocity |
| 10 km/s | 100/s | N/A | N/S |
| 20 km/s | 50/s | 50/s | 50/s |
| 30 km/s | 33.33/s | 16.6/s | 66.67/s |
| 40 km/s | 25/s | 8.33/s | 75/s |
| 50 km/s | 20/s | 5/s | 80/s |
| 60 km/s | 16.66/s | 3.33/s | 83.4/s |
| 70 km/s | 14.28/s | 2.37/s | 85.72/s |
| 80 km/s | 12.5/s | 1.78/s | 87.5/s |
| 90 km/s | 11.11/s | 1.39/s | 88.89/s |
| 100 km/s | 10/s | 1.11/s | 90/s |
| 5,000 km with velocities form 10km/s-100 km/s in 10km/s bands. | |||
| Object Velocity | Time Taken in Seconds | Difference from previous velocity | Difference from base 10km/s Velocity |
| 10 km/s | 500/s | N/A | N/A |
| 20 km/s | 250/s | 250/s | 250/s |
| 30 km/s | 166.66/s | 83.34/s | 333.34/s |
| 40 km/s | 125/s | 41.66/s | 375/s |
| 50 km/s | 100/s | 25/s | 400/s |
| 60 km/s | 83.33/s | 16.67/s | 416.67/s |
| 70 km/s | 71.42/s | 11.91/s | 428.58/s |
| 80 km/s | 62.5/s | 8.92/s | 437.5/s |
| 90 km/s | 55.55/s | 6.95/s | 444.45/s |
| 100 km/s | 50/s | 5.55/s | 450/s |
| 10,000 km with velocities form 10km/s-100 km/s in 10km/s bands. | |||
| Object Velocity | Time Taken in Seconds | Difference from previous velocity | Difference from base 10km/s Velocity |
| 10 km/s | 1,000/s | N/A | N/A |
| 20 km/s | 500/s | 500/s | 500/s |
| 30 km/s | 333.33/s | 166.67/s | 666.67/s |
| 40 km/s | 250/s | 83.33/s | 750/s |
| 50 km/s | 200/s | 50/s | 800/s |
| 60 km/s | 166.66/s | 33.34/s | 833.34/s |
| 70 km/s | 142.85/s | 23.81/s | 857.15/s |
| 80 km/s | 125/s | 17.85/s | 875/s |
| 90 km/s | 111.11/s | 13.89/s | 888.89/s |
| 100 km/s | 100/s | 11.11/s | 988.89/s |
| Charts for Light Second to 1 Light hour distances with velocities in 100 km/s, 500 km/s, and 1,000 km/s | Time Taken in days, hours, minutes, and seconds m=minute and s=seconds rounded up. |
| 1 Light Second=299,792 km | _____________ |
| 100 km/s | 49 m 58 s |
| 500 km/s | 10 m |
| 1,000 km/s | 5 m |
| 30 Light Seconds=8,994,000 km | _____________ |
| 100 km/s | 24 h 55 m 48 s |
| 500 km/s | 4 h 55 m 48 s |
| 1,000 km/s | 2 h 24 m 0 s |
| 1 Light Minute=11,180,000 km | _____________ |
| 100 km/s | 1 d 7 h 3 m 0 s |
| 500 km/s | 6 h 12 m 0 s |
| 1,000 km/s | 3 h 6 m 0 s |
| 30 Light Minutes=539,626,424 km | _____________ |
| 100 km/s | 62 d 10 h 57 m 44 s |
| 500 km/s | 12 d 11 h 47 m 32 s |
| 1,000 km/s | 6 d 5 h 53 m 46 s |
| 1 Light Hour=1,079,252,848 | _____________ |
| 100 km/s | 124 d 21 h 55 m 28 s |
| 500 km/s | 24 d 23 h 35 m 5 s |
| 1,000 km/s | 12 d 11 h 47 m 32 s |
| Personal Rail Gun by Tuefel Hunden IV |
Jasaiga: For our hypothetical personal EM weapons it all boils down to can we get the power source for it to be small enough and have enough acceleration behind a projectile to compete with or surpass contemporary firearms.
Let's start with a very rough approximation for a very rough idea of what it might look like.
So we have a black box soft sci-fi power source and sorted out the material science side of the problem. For fun, lets say we have a way to manage recoil up to 20mm Hispano Suiza and Soviet 14mm rounds as a standing shoulder-fired weapon for big guns and .50 BMG for common infantry weapons.
Let's start with an AMAT weapon. The weight for the weapon is let say arbitrarily as heavy as the Barret M82A2, about 30lbs, with the same part over the shoulder stock design. Because it is just for a simple frame of reference and I think it looks kind of cool. Just about everything we know about the weapon is a black box design to simplify this.
This will be an AMAT weapon I will do a smaller caliber rifle next.
Ok, we need to figure what it would take to possibly put the punch of those bigger bullets in terms of joules delivered into a smaller projectile.
Let's go with a 10mm diameter projectile and say it is half the weight of the heaviest .50 BMG rounds which puts it at a 400 Grain bullet.
We need a rough point of reference for our target energy to find out how fast this round needs to zip along to meet that estimated target energy. According to this NAVSEA DTIC article stumping for 20mm AMR's, the NTW-20 firing 20mm HS has a muzzle velocity of 2,600 FPS firing the M-95 20mm HS AP round. Said round, just the projectile itself has a weight of .29 lbs/0.13 kg for just the round. Plug that into the Shooters Calculator for an estimate for impact energy and you get 40,836 joules. Let's say our target energy is about 40,000 joules. That is our target energy for our MANPACK EM AMAT (translated man/personnel portable/packable Electro Magnetic Anti-Material) Weapon from the projectile at the muzzle.
The EM AMAT would have a projectile profile very roughly like this.
So to get that 400 grain/.0259kg .39"/10mm projectile to hit that hard you need it to go about 5,800fps:1,767.84 m/s:1.767 km/s.
That is one zippy little round and has higher muzzle velocity than most modern large tube artillery pieces. It would have a very flat comparative trajectory at very long ranges and would likely kill or seriously damage just about anything short of a tank.
So taking that basic information and plugging it into another simple ballistic calculator with ballistic coefficient borrowed off of a similar weight high-velocity round, in this case, the .408 Cheytac-claimed but for our case, it works as we are not looking to be super accurate.
note
note
Here is your very rough ballistics chart. The projectile is still supersonic at 9,000 yds and potentially lethal well past that. You would have a huge MOA drift but guided projectiles could possibly solve that issue.
Now for the EM Semi-Auto AR pretty much all the same black box considerations as the other weapon only smaller and lighter.
So let's step it back for the personal firearm. I am just going to halve the bullet weight and diameter so a 5mm projectile with a 200 g/.0129 kg weight.
Let's say we want this bad boy to hit as hard as the 800 grain Barnes .50 BMG which gives us a target energy of about 20,000 joules.
So to make that smaller round hit about as hard as that .50 BMG round it needs to hit about 5,775 fps:1,760.22: 1.760 km/s. The reason the velocity is about the same is pretty much all the values are just halved. However, those two estimated muzzle energies for the 20mm HS and the Barnes .50 BMG are pretty much exactly that.
For the sake of simplicity, I am going just say it has the same BCE as the other round by design as calculating an actual BCE of the desired shape is a huge pain in the ass. You pretty much have the same ballistic chart only this round has obviously less energy at impact than its bigger AMAT cousin at the same ranges.
Here is the basic and fairly simple ballistic calculator I used. You can play with it and see what it does. It isn't the most accurate calculator but it is good enough for the back of napkin stuff like this. It has a basic trajectory calculator, a recoil energy calculator, a bullet kinetic energy calculator, and a max point-blank range. Max PBR is the distance that you do not have to adjust your sights for the drop. Firing at 16"x16", rough center mass target size, the EM AR rifle, for example, would have a max PBR of about 3,000yds/2.743 km. That is a really flat trajectory. For recoil, the estimated powder charge is about 200 grains.
So there you go some very rough back of the napkin and with a can of salt look at one possible consideration of personal EM weapons.
| Loitering Attack Munition or Mini-Attack Drone Payload in Cluster Weapons By Tuefel Hunden IV |
Because I was a bit bored while cooking dinner after getting home I decided to do another "Back of the Napkin" calculation.
This is for those Mini-UAV drones linked a few pages back. Now obviously they have the usual obvious signal and visual recon value but what about a weaponized version?
I did some digging around and got the general specs for the mini-drone. I re-watched the launch vid and noticed how the drone deploys. It deploys in a manner very similar to various cluster bomb weapons. That is, it uses a chute or ballute, to air brake and slows the velocity down so it can properly deploy. So I got to thinking. If we can pack this thing into the various flare launchers why not the various cluster munition carriers? Sort of like the LOCASS was designed to ride the MLRS ATACM missile.
So I crunched the numbers a bit and figured the current drone is a bit small and that a warhead plus other attachments would make it overall bigger.
A very very rough estimate would be about 10" long 3" diameter and roughly occupies a cylinder-like space of about 70 cubic inches. It could fit a lightweight HEDP warhead like the DPICM cluster bomblet which can penetrate 4" of RHA on average and produce casualty inducing fragmentation for about 13.1 feet. Alternately it could possibly fit the EFP puck from the smart cluster bomb that could take out armor and personnel.
So I then made an assumption that it would be using typical cylindrical carriers for internal volumes similar to at least two weapons. I started with the CBU-105 with BLU-108 sub-munition packages. There are 10 of those units in a single CBU-105 weapon. I also wanted to do one with the "Grid Square Eraser" rockets.
CBU-105 bomb with BLU-108 units first. The individual BLU-108 units are 31" long 5.25" in diameter. That is roughly 500" cubic inches per unit. There are 10 units in the CBU-105 which give us roughly 5,000 cubic inches of occupied internal space.
So using the rough size estimation above you get a mini-drone CBU-105 container packing in about 71 drone units. That is actually more units than the puck system that can be self-propelled, have larger area coverage, likely higher accuracy, can chase moving units, and are semi-self directing.
Pretty nice. So what about ye Olde "Grid Square Eraser" MLRS rocket units?
The one I chose was the more recent MLRS M30 Rocket with DPICM M855 payload rocket. I found the dimensions of the bomblets and worked out the volume they occupied. Height 3" and 1.5" diameter with 404 per rocket. That is 3.68 cubic inches per unit and an estimated 404 units per rocket is about 1,490 cubic inches.
So like above. For the US MLRS M30 Rocket with DPICM M855 payload rocket, you get about 21 mini-drone units. While you get fewer drones in this one they are comparably more accurate. The higher quantity of smaller munitions is to ensure target area saturation to get hits because they had purely ballistic trajectories on release. The smaller number of smart munitions are far more capable and far less likely to have issues with duds or misses. Basically the same advantages as the bomb unit. It would be filling a niche the re-purposed Brilliant Anti-Tank weapon was going to fill.
Now for the fun part. You launch your weapon and after arrival, you tell it what you want it to attack. Using an onboard target reference library the weapons then hunt, track, and engage the targets according to attack profiles most likely to produce maximum effect. This means if needed multiple units hit the same target or possibly go after individual targets. You could even, in theory, use it to attack low slow targets like slow-flying helicopters and loitering enemy drones as well as ground targets.
| The Giant Space-Based Planet Raiding Gigacarrier by Tuefel Hunden IV |
Fox: Your ship is fucking huge.
Since we don't know the specific shape or dimensions of the object we use the basic volume formula of LxWxH=Volume. We can use this general information to get a general estimate by using ratios and comparative information.
So 32km x 11km x 4km =1408 kilometers of cubic space in total. We don't know the shape and dimensions of everything for the ship like its actual detailed dimensions but we have a rough estimate.
We can make a general estimate of a known terrestrial Super Aircraft carrier. The biggest one is the Gerald R. Ford which isn't quite complete yet but we know its general stats. All of the supercarriers have the ability to carry an estimated 90 max fixed-wing aircraft. What they do operationally carry varies from as low as 60 up to 80. The Gerald R Ford is roughly rated at 75+ craft. So using its general dimensions we can make a ratio for comparison. We apply the same comparison to your ship and you get a decent rough estimate.
Since the Gerald R. Ford is not as big as your massive vessel we need to match up the numbers for decently accurate ratio comparison. The Gerald R. Ford doesn't reach into the Kilometer ranges for sheer size but your ship does.
Your ship has 32,000m long x 11,000m wide x 4,000m tall for a total of 1,408,000,000,000 m of estimated cubic space by general dimensions. Your ship is fucking huge to put it lightly.
The Gerald R. Ford has 337m of length x 78m max width x 76m max height for a total of 1,997,736 meters of total estimated cubic space by general dimensions.
So Gerald R. Ford has a Max estimate of 90 fixed-wing craft to the total general dimension of 1,997,736 meters of space. That is a ratio of 1 aircraft to 22,197 meters of space roughly.
The Gerald R Ford has a max estimated crew of 4,297 note
So the ratio of crew to space is 1 crew to 464 meters.
Your super ships massive size assuming fighter craft and crew dimensions are similar or the same is going to house a lot.
Your max estimated craft is 63,431,995 craft. Even only a 1/3rd of that number you would have well over 20 million aircraft.
Your total crew is 3,034,482,758 Or roughly just less than half the population of Earth.
It matches Gerald R. Fords Ratio of 1 craft to 47 crew.
Those are very rough numbers based on general volume estimates.
You are flying around a small to medium-sized country and fitting half the earth into berthing you would find on common modern naval vessels which trend towards the very compact. Same for the aircraft. You could easily afford to have much larger ships in your hangers and have plenty of room for a fighter complement capable of drowning air space of the planet earth with just straight fighter craft.
You could wipe out the entire population on the planet and then repopulate it with your crew.
Now let's say for various reasons your crew and craft compliment is 75% less due to a need for more supplies, various pieces of equipment, larger berthing spaces, more varied and larger craft, etc.
At 75% Reduced craft compliment is still a whopping 15,857,998 craft.
Your crew size is still massive. 758,620,689 crew.
That is a shitload of craft and crew and because we reduced both by the same amount the craft to crew ratio remains the same.
In short, your ship is huge. This is the kind of vessel you use to attack entire planets.
| Future and Near-Future Paratroopers by Tuefel Hunden IV |
Likely [nja] several times over.[nja][nja][nja]
Zepv: I wrote this up in a word doc after I saw your post this morning and came back to it off and on as I was doing other things. I finished it several hours back but I only just now got around to posting it.
The really short and condensed version is that a lot of the same technology that affects regular infantry affects paratroopers as well with a few exceptions. The key areas of difference for paratroopers is their ride to the jump point and how they get down.
Going to break this down into a few sections under some notes because there is a lot there. Mostly because you suggested the near future. You have a lot of material to possibly work with including new or extant technology that is likely to improve not far down the road.
Paratroopers and detection threats
As for the detection of metallic objects like guns, while metal can give a stronger return than cloth it is dependent on an angle relative to the beam and really unlikely that anyone will actually successfully sweep a beam across enough exposed metal on a gun to matter and would likely be dismissed as noise by most systems. The only systems that might track it are the ones designed to track things as small as light mortar shells and even then those are fairly short-ranged and if the detection is momentary it will likely be missed or dismissed. If you have any story based hand waves or concerns about detection by radar simply wrapping them in a disposable textile or plastic bag that can absorb at least some of a radar beam with uneven surfaces would render that to almost a non-issue.
IR systems could feasibly do it but they would be effective at comparatively shorter ranges than radar. You would have to release or be dangerously close to the system in the first place. There are larger long-range systems but they are not exactly widely fielded and tend to be part of larger ADA systems and are almost always paired with various radar to be qued in on a possible threat.
Basically, the individual paratroopers are actually fairly stealthy in the majority of conditions. The catch though is the aircraft that deliver them are not. One of the approaches for dealing with ADA systems is to land paratroopers at the edge of or inside the defensive perimeter of such systems and have them take the targets out. Paratroopers have also used helicopter assaults to slip through gaps or under long radar systems. They used a similar tactic in the gulf war to exploit gaps found in the ADA systems detection coverage and take out their main facilities with gunships and helicopter-borne troops.
The biggest threat to most paratroopers is the ground fire in general. In terms of AA defenses, it is the gun-based systems that are the most dangerous. However, the majority of gun-based systems rarely break 10km of effective range in unguided projectiles. You don't really start seeing 10 km+ unguided gun ranges for AA weapons until you get to systems in 75mm and above. Even the majority of those are unlikely to be effective against paratroopers. However, Counter-Rocket-Artillery-Mortar (CRAM) systems are another story. They tend to be paired with both radar and IR/Thermal systems for tracking projectiles as small as mortars but their tracking and detection ranges tend to be short and good for maybe a few tens of km at most. A lot of the previously noted limitations in detection would still apply.
Near future tech for paratroopers and infantry in general.
Improvements in IR and Thermal signature equipment, we already have uniforms that have reduced IR signatures from reflected IR provided you don't do something silly like washing them with soap with optical brighteners. They have a soap that doesn't have it so they can wash them. Personal cooling systems to help control body heat which helps reduce your thermal signature somewhat and keeps the troops from overheating with equipment.
New body armor types like non-Newtonian fluid impregnated Kevlar weave body armor. Early demonstrations show it to be significantly stronger than traditional Kevlar and on par with some hard insert armor plates. They are still testing carbon nanotube fabrics and panels for body armor but what information there is to be found is generally promising. There is synthetic spider silk which has just begun to reach feasible mass production.
New small arms tech like the Cased Telescopic Ammo firearms from Light Weight Small Arms Technology program which has made big strides in that regard. Like an LMG that weighs as much as an M-16 with full 30 round magazine. There are also guided bullets out of .50 caliber weapons as well.
Next-gen thermal and Night Vision. There is already a colour night vision though the colors are a bit washed out because of how night vision works. It basically is just better resolution, better distance, better light enhancement, better field of view, etc.
Possibly lightweight powered exoskeletons that are still kicking around and slowly improving. Those would help carry weight and possibly mount armor but that is just a maybe as far as anyone knows. The US Special Forces are working on a variation of what is basically power armor along those lines.
Drones for a myriad of purposes ranging from scouting, communication, possibly electronic warfare, and even as weapons themselves. There are so many different varieties from barely the size of a dollar coin to larger systems that are carried like a backpack. I couldn't even try and list all the possibilities.
Aim correction systems. There are several small arms systems in existence that give real-time aim point correction before a shot and significantly improve first shot first hit reliability. The original variants are a system integrated into the weapon. The newest example is a removable scope and optic system with a laser range finder. To illustrate how effective they are 30 minutes of instruction for someone who has never shot before has netted people with a first shot first hit at 1,000 yards. These systems also exist on heavy weapons like the SMAW II Serpent and Carl Gustav M4.
Other aim assist systems use a tracking system that basically acts like a soft auto-aim and the weapon has a self-adjusting cradle that adjusts the point of aim center mass on the target being tracked.
Guided mini munitions and sensor fused munitions. Increasingly soldiers are getting more and more compact guided weapons. From Loitering Attack Munitions like the Switchblade drone, the in the works Grenade Launcher fired mini-missile PIKE, to even guided LAW 72 type rocket launchers. Sensor fused munitions are basically programmable fuses that have a sensor embedded in the projectile that either detonates in a programmed air burst, proximity fuse, timed airburst, impact or delayed impact.
The aim correction systems are already using pretty much the same system used to set sensor-fuzed munitions so they could also, in theory, feed these projectiles the info needed to program the fuse and to help aim it.
There are also simpler ones like the 40mm Anti-Defilade grenade that can discern clutter vs a targeted wall or window. How it does this is still classified but we do know it is working so far.
There are also now guided bullets the size of .50 caliber projectiles that are laser-guided. The projectiles can be steered midflight and made to chase moving targets and even have some limited cornering ability. It is still rather experimental at this point.
Jump Gear.
For the jump part of being a paratrooper, there has been some interest in using powered or unpowered glide bodies and various wingsuit designs to give paratroopers longer jump range and more control of where they are heading and improve landing precision. There have been various proposals along those lines for almost a decade at least.
The British SAS are rumored to have used them in a raid in Syria sometime this year gliding around 20 miles, landing, and then immediately assaulting. Exact details of the equipment are scarce, to say the least.
What I can find is that in the unpowered options reach up to 30 miles from ideal jump height and move around 60-70mph and either allow a landing with the kit or a 200-foot altitude opening. The load out of the troopers is somewhat reduced to around 80-100lbs of kit depending on your source. The various designs are made of some sort of lightweight composite that has very low radar signature so they are stealthy now and maybe future material tech may keep them viable later down the road.
The powered possibilities allow up to 60 miles of distance, comparable speed and similar weight loads and use miniature turbines. There has only been one actual military propelled wingsuit style design that I have seen developed by a German company. It is an interesting concept in general.
Other examples are mostly in the civilian realm but have caught both the attention and the imagination of the military to varying degrees. Examples would be Yves Rossy's jet wing pack, Visa Parviainen jet-assisted wingsuit which is a traditional wingsuit with mini-engine strapped to the legs, Skyflash: Jetman-like wings is a version designed to lift off a wheeled sled and boasts a reported 300+lb max takeoff weight, and a few other similar designs.
The Sky Flash sounded fairly impressive with an estimated cruising speed of about 78 mph, a service ceiling of about 11,000feet, and an estimated range of about 100km with an estimated endurance of about 1 hour of flight. There hasn’t been much on it since 2013 but overall it sounds like it had some promise.
A somewhat related technology called Flyboard a type of jet-powered hoverboard. It reportedly can hit up to 93 mph, its ceiling is about 10,000 feet, and set a world record for continuous operation along the French coast by flying over 2 km.
The idea behind the kits is to help the troops reach targets further from the aircraft, give the aircraft a standoff launch ability for the troopers, give them more control, and faster insertion. There are obviously a variety of technologies that may or may not be applicable in the future but aren't too far out of the realm of possibility to be considered.
The transports
Airborne in general have been ferried into battle form everything like towed gliders, helicopters, to various aircraft. All of them have their own pros and cons but have been the key aspect of delivering troops to the field via paratrooper insertions.
One of the biggest threats to the paratroopers is their ride being detected and shot out from under them. There have been proposals to create a stealth troop transport but cost is an issue for obvious reasons but not necessarily off the table in the future.
We know there are in fact Special Forces stealth helicopters thanks to the raid on Bin Laden so you could use similar tech for future helicopter and vertical lift concepts maybe even some sort of fancy ducted fan aircraft.
This is the part where it starts to get kind of sci-fi crazy. There have been honest to god multiple suggestions since the 1950's of using rockets to land troops in enemy territory. The idea keeps coming up in various iterations and with varying levels of feasibility.
The first idea was to basically use modified heavy lifting rocket bodies to launch multiple troops in special compartments. It was known as Project Adam. That one actually got some study done on it but it never went anywhere and ultimately the science test side of it wound up being done by the space program. Their feasibility test would have been carried out by an SRBM called Redstone but the actual troop moving would be done by larger rockets if it had ever got that far. The next one was called Ithacus.
This one was a bit crazy. It was generally based around the somewhat feasible design of the Reusable Orbital Module-Booster & Utility Shuttle or Rombus heavy lift vehicle but the military lift capability was frankly insane. The huge rockets would have lofted and made landing on ICBM like trajectories with the biggest proposed version lofting 1,000+ troops and the smaller one over 200 plus troops. They even had a proposal to base the smaller ones off of an Enterprise-class Carrier that would generate the fuel for the ships from seawater. There were numerous drawbacks to the overall concept but it is an interesting one to consider.
The latest one is the sanest and reasonable. It is called Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion or SUSTAIN. Basically it was part of a DARPA and USAF initiative to study the use of Sub-orbital space craft like Space Ship One. The Marines added a further proposal of low orbit option improve flexibility in terms of putting of a landing if needed but still being ready to descend. You could in theory use other space planes and sub-orbital craft in similar roles. Think a military space shuttle hauling troops instead of scientists and satellites. You could also launch the space plane from a body in space to enter the atmosphere.
The point of the rockets was to rapidly mass deploy or even deploy a team into a critical area on a moment’s notice. For example the proposed USMC space plane would in theory have had an estimated 2 hour response time. From launch to arrival at nearly any point in the world.
Finally, the craziest concept I saw in a fictional story was this. Using a modified rotary bomb rack to mount pressurized break away aerodynamic capsules a strategic bomber would deliver commandos via stealth bombers like the B-2 into enemy territory at high altitude.
I can't remember the exact details but I will do my best. Basically they encapsulate the trooper in a sealed pressurized pod with HALO gear. They could only load like four or five of the capsules per rotatory device.
The capsules which are a glide body would be loaded onto a rotary launcher used by strategic bombers and then they would be lofted to HALO jump altitude. The bomber would briefly reduce airspeed and release the capsules as fast as the launcher could spit them out and then close up and speed back up and angle away. The capsules would glide towards the target and I can't remember if they had a guidance kit or were ballistic but at some point they would crack open and release there passenger into the airstream after a breaking maneuver or something like that. They would then continue on with the rest of the jump as normal. Take my account of the concept with a pinch of salt as I can't recall what story I read it in or the exact details.
| Farming on Mars by Tuefel Hunden IV |
Bel has partly ninjad me on this.
Tom: It is not easy, quick, or self-renewing. All man-made fertile farming soil creation is labor, time, and resource-intensive as it requires constant input and processing of materials and the end product yield is comparatively low and needs constant replenishment as farming depletes the material fairly quickly. Natural replenishment takes even longer with a well established and reasonably healthy ecosystem. We are talking centuries worth of time scales for any meaningful quantities of fertile soil. Those areas that still have those nice thick layers of fertile soil are the result of thousands of years of assorted biological processes.
For farming on Mars in general. To top it off the farming is not self-sustaining even with rotation, fallow, and nitrogen fixation. Traditional dirt farming is highly reliant on the environment to help provide everything that makes that soil viable for farming and it is generally a time-consuming process. Even with rotation, fallow, and nitrogen-fixing plants soil still becomes exhausted and areas which have poor soil quality with no extensive environmental process to replenish them are exhausted even faster. Creating or recovering new farmland is a fairly time-consuming process. It takes deliberate effort to replenish minerals, elements like nitrogen and carbon, biological matter, and other soil nutrients in soil faster than the natural cycle and even then full and proper creation or recovery of exhausted or infertile soil is a multi-year process that approaches multiple decades worth of time and effort.
Even using deliberate man-made efforts in soil production it takes literally years of rotting biological material to create even shallow layers of fertile soil good for farming. It is one thing to make small vegetable garden off of a 5x5x5 foot compost heap it is another feed an entire population year in and year out. Then there is the variable mineral content that you will have to adjust for with regions that lack or have excess in the desired mineral content. Then there is ph balance. Then there are the nitrogen/carbon mixes. Then there are the living things in the soil not just bacteria but a myriad of creatures including nematodes, protozoa arthropods, earthworms, microbes, and fungus. Then there is the soil itself which adds other layers of variability if it is a largely homogenous soil or a composite of other soil types which can impact other factors including crop suitability, drainage and evaporation of water, and how much effort goes into processing soil.
To put it simply folks there is no easy way to make Mars farmable. Even farming on Earth is still a resource, time, and labor-intensive process and Earth is a jungle world compared to Mars.
Here let's put this far more simply on the most basic aspect of what you need to modify to make a patch of farmable land. The soil itself.
The most basic variety of soil with a bit of everything in it in terms of soil composition in a dry loose form for our composition. Processing a rather shallow 2-3 inches worth of soil for a US acre means in the dirt alone you are processing up to 264-381 tons in soil alone. That isn't accounting for the quantities of water, oxygen for compost and other living things in the farm soil, carbon, nitrogen, assorted biological materials, and the surprising number of living things that are in good farming soil. You are literally talking hundreds of tons of material for only a few overly shallow inches of farmable soil across an acre. Material that will need constant replenishment because Mars soil is about as barren as you can get. It will stay that way unless someone has terraformed the hell out of it.
Even if the farms are not exposed to an un-terraformed Mars and are free from erosion threats they are not free from soil exhaustion. They would be more vulnerable than on Earth sans the ecosystem that helps even man-made efforts in this regard and would be reliant on a constant stream of deliberately altered material to sustain the farms.
On the global average in broad terms, you are looking about .5 acres of plant-based farmland alone to support a single human being. That is based on total farmland to a total population roughly. Not all farmland is created equal and not all farming techniques and crops have the same output so that broad estimate is about as good an answer you are going to get without more detailed examinations on various levels and in varying degrees. For the Earth, that means per 1 million people you need half a million acres of farmland. With those really shallow layers of dirt per acre is 132,000,000-190,500,000 tons of soil processed on a regular basis.
Feeding a Martian colony is actually a pretty major undertaking. Unless we get some sort of uber technology feeding Mars is going to be quite challenging.
The You Are Green Speech From Boot Camp: MCRD Sandiego
Here your race, color, creed, and religion do no matter. You are all worthless until you prove yourselves. You are no longer "I" you are This Recruit. You only have last names so we can pick your worthless slimy hides from the mass of green. Your are all GREEN, you may be light green or dark green, but you are all GREEN.
- Deliberately Mispells the Teufel Part of his name as it is usually taken. Yes I am aware of the nuances of the German language and that Teufel Hunden is technically incorrect but its how the corps has viewed it for a long time and its how we are known.
- Was an armorer for the Marines. Armorer=Armored Cages full of hundreds of guns to repair, tweak, and tinker with.:)
Tuefel humor are things I find funny or amusing. Unless stated otherwise I am not the originator of the material
List: The 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army
A little joke poem written when I made a bunch of pound cakes for people one year.
This weekend eight pound cakes will be made forged in the Ovens of Tuefel Haus.
Two Cakes for families to have alongside their holiday pie.
Four for the hungry mouths in the echoing lobby of office.
One for the friend at work who made that really tasty stuff.
One cake to feed the bakers in their comfy computer chairs.
In the land of corn fields where sleeping Chihuahuas lie.
One kitchen in which to bake them all, One person to serve them,
One person to give them all and into hungry mouths feed them.
In the land of corn fields where sleeping Chihuahuas lie.
Now for the groan factor the nom-dictionary... my poor wife she ended up laughing and shaking her head then unleashing PUNishment. This is Tuefel Made.
DeNOMination-Religion with tastiest souls
NOM de Guerre-a very tasty name
NOMinate-to pick the one with most flavors.
aNOMaly-To eat the irregular
AstroNOMer-studying nomming of existence.
astroNOMical-tasteful finity.
carciNOMa-in Soviet Russia NOM eats you.
chroNOMeter-measures NOM per second.
ecoNOMic-greedy companies go OM NOM NOM NOM NOM taxpayers money.
enveNOM-disagreeing with something you ate.
NOMad-food on the go.
trigoNOMetry-a complex meal.
USMC Rules for Gunfighting
1. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns.
2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Your life is expensive.
3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.
4. If your shooting stance is good, you're probably not moving fast enough nor using cover correctly.
5. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral and diagonal movement are preferred.)
6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a long gun and a friend with a long gun.
7. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
8. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running.
9. Accuracy is relative: most combat shooting standards will be more dependent on "pucker factor" than the inherent accuracy of the gun.
9.5 Use a gun that works EVERY TIME.
10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.
11. Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
12. Have a plan.
13. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won't work.
14. Use cover or concealment as much as possible.
15. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.
16. Don't drop your guard.
17. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees.
18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. (In God we trust. Everyone else, keep your hands where I can see them).
19. Decide to be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH.
20. The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get.
21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
22. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one.
23. Your number one Option for Personal Security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.
24. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with a ".4"
Navy Rules to Gunfighting
1. Go to Sea
2. Send the Marines
3. Drink Coffee
General Notes: WWII Common US Rifle Grenade. AT Grenade effective range for light and medium tanks and hardened position point targets is 75 yds. Fragmentation timed or impact 200yds area target.
Small Scale Naval and Land Artillery
Experiemental Armored Vehicles
Exotic Weaponry
Felsen Luft
Fora Thanks
MellonCollie for Felsen Luft and reminding me to describe how the alloy works better.
- No problem ^__^. Glad to help.
Preserved for Posterity since no one else can write on other tropers user pages any longer.
Oorah you silly Jarhead. -Barkey
- scribbles "USAF wuz here" on your wall*
TUEFEL IV! TUEFEL IV! TUEFEL IV! TUEFEL IV! ~Zudak, natch.
Vandalism Muffin Go! -MissHedgey
You are awesome -Rumetzen
Here's to our very own Srgt. Rock. HUP TWO! - Krrackknut.
* pokes* I saw what you did there, you vandal. :P - Dec
Heya Tuefel, Keep it classy. ~Lance.
I hide in your shadow and make faces at the ants that cross my path. * nods* Also, a buttercup is a flower, a butter cup is a cooking aid. Get it straight before I poke you >:[ ~Buttercupistiny
You have one of the most chaotic contributer pages. Not that that's a bad thing. And you keep on bringing interesting links to the aviation thread. —Catfish42
You always bring an expert opinion to anything military. Someday I wish to be as cool a person as you. - Flanker 66
"But Tuefel is an Elite Mook. Forget not that I am a former U.S. Marine. I eat razor wire and piss napalm." I salute thee, sir. - The Fan
First I found this page. Then I was like "hey that's awesome". Then I was like "whoa how does he know all this". Then I was like "haha so saving those images". Then I was like "my good sir, I can only aspire to being as awesome as you one day."-Dreadnought
-salute- I'm impressed sir. There really aren't as many tropers who stir up admiration in me as much as you. Sir. :) - Keybreak
Proud Warrior Race Guy - harmattane, adding tropes as requested.
"That is the first sign of aging. You have absorbed so much Media your emitting trope radiation and its affecting your bio-electric systems." %Haven
Cool, you'd really hug a bear too? ~Enzeru
You have probably heard this before, but that is an amazing amount of research material. 0_0 Amazingness is known to be distributive, and your own amazingness has been confirmed separately by external observation in the fora, so... myth confirmed? I'm not sure exactly where I was going with that; I should probably reorganise before I publish. - Noaqiyeum
Greetings! I appreciate the humor ^_^ nil desperandum! ~Libris Dedita
I had a good laugh looking at your pictures folder. -Mokona Zero
You have the biggest troper page in the world... T 448 Eight
Post/Wiki Work/Wwrite up save space.
| One Day Parable made a horrible joke in the forum. | |
 | They say there is no black and white, just shades of grey. |
| To which Parable responded, "there are 50 shades of grey, to be precise." |
| Little did Parable know that his most heinous crime was witnessed someone watching quietly. |
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| The initial reaction was obvious. |
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| Action had to be taken soon. |
| It was clear something had to be done. |
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| So hunters were sent for Parable. |
| They scoured the world for Parable. |
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| Parable was alerted to the search. |
| An attempt at drastic action by Parable was made. |
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| It was not enough so Parable in an act of desperation made a shady deal. |
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| But alas Parable was betrayed and forced to seek the final act to escape. He summoned his mighty army. |
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| The Mighty Spartans. They were a force to be reckoned with. For a time they protected Parable from his pursuers. |
| Sadly the Spartan shields and spears were no match against an A-10 Thunderbolt Air Strike. |
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| His army defeated Parable faced capture at the hands of his enemies. |
| The appearance of an implacible foe forced Parable to surrender. |
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| His trial was swift and the verdict was stunning. |
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| Parable was elated. |
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| The public response was less enthusiastic. |
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| Many were surprised. |
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| Others Furious. |
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| Soon an angry momb chased Parable. |
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| While valiantly fighting back the mob Parable was suddenly slain by an assassin. |
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| This is how the Parable Zombie Apocalypse started. |
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| How this goes is a story for another day. |
After Credits
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| FFiiiifffffty Ggggrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeyyyyy!!!! |
[[folder: Trope idea]]
Help Tuefel with a trope idea.
What I am looking for.
Examples where an elevator used as a set piece for a surprise attack. This can be done anyway as long as it is focused on the elevator. The two chief examples being someone in an elevator is attacked by someone outside the elevator. This can be in the elevator lobby or through the ceiling or walls by surprise. The inverse is someone inside the elevator catches someone outside it by surprise in a surprise attack. This trope can play into other elevator related tropes. Elevators delivering a surprise booby trap would feasibly work as well.
Please PM me with examples.
Summary of the trope idea
The elevator often serves as a convenient method to direct some aspect of a work. Be it an action sequence, romance, or even a drawn out battle the elevator is a useful plot location. Because of the nature of an elevator it easily traps even powerful characters and induces a artificial weakness. It serves as a handy way to eliminate or kill a character and/or NPC's. Heroes and villains alike are vulnerable when inside an elevator as its confines limits options for movement and rarely offers any form of cover or protection from an attack. This makes the elevator an ideal point of ambush often leading to other elevator themed tropes like Elevator Action Sequence. Elevators packed with potential targets often become a mobile room filled with carnage.
It is not limited to action going into the elevator but can have the action coming from the elevator. An elevator door opens and suddenly all hell breaks loose from inside it. This can play into Empty Elevator where an empty elevator arrives and suddenly. Whether or not the elevator is attacked by those outside it something or someone burst from the elevator and surprises the people outside it. Sometimes an inquisitive person investigating what looks like might be an empty elevator gets snatched into the interior or through the roof hatch before they are dispatched.
Another possibility is the elevator is used to deliver a deadly surprise like bomb, grenade, or claymore mine that goes off taking out anyone lurking around elevator and often taking out the elevator as well.
While this is a trope you would more commonly find in Action, adventure, and/or suspense works it can show up in horror/scary works. Often with the monster/creature/<insert bad thing here> attacking people in the elevator through the roof, floor, walls, or door while the elevator is in motion. Sometimes the creatures stop the elevator before attacking with the occupants wondering what those strange sounds are before they are often fatally attacked in their suspended metal coffin. Two other variations are the monster jumping out of the elevator or the monster charging into as soon as the doors open. Sometimes someone will be snatched from inside the elevator through a roof maintenance and access hatch.
This trope is likely to serve as the spring board to other tropes and action sequences. For example the monster ambushes people in the elevator it comes to stop and the survivors run out with monster tearing through the elevator and initiating a chase sequence. Or the ambush doesn't quite work out and leads to an elevator action sequence.
The key part of the trope is the elevator serves as the point of surprise either from or into the elevator.
A specific example of how this trope might work is the elevator scene from the movie The Departed Which can be seen here. The Departed Elevator Scene
Costigan has apprehended Sullivan in front of Trooper Brown and takes Sullivan to the elevator leaving Brown behind. The scene then focuses on those two on their elevator ride down. As soon as the doors open at ground floor Costigan is ambushed and killed with a close range gunshot to the head by Trooper Barrigan. While two other characters are shot in this scene only one is ambushed thanks to the nature of the elevator delivering him to a predictable point allowing him to be shot in the head a second or two after the doors open.
Blurb Example
In movies an elevator can be a dangerous place to be in. Especially if you are any sort of character in an action, horror, thriller, or suspense work. Elevators can be deadly traps, an impromptu prison, mobile battle ground, or even possibly your ride to destiny. However there is another type of hazard from elevators. While they provide a often quick, convenient, and a easy way to rapid traverse vertical distances there are good reasons to avoid an elevator. Any character be they {{Mook}, Red Shirt, Protagnist, Antagonist, or any other character climbing into an elevator is putting their life on the line. The elevator travels a predictable path in the majority of cases one of two directions handily indicated by some mechanism or device, most elevators cannot be seen out of meaning the characters inside cannot see possible threats outside the elevator, and many elevators are relatively small boxes that notably limit options for both cover and freedom of movement.
The very structure of most elevators scream shooting fish in a barrel or come get me I am an easy target. Unless you are on an absurdly large elevator you have little or no room to move and the majority of elevators have no place to hide. This makes them ideal spots to ambush someone while they are in it. Sometimes though the surprise comes from inside the elevator sprung upon those unsuspectingly waiting outside or perhaps Genre Savvy Mooks and Red Shirts waiting or looking for the wrong thing only to be in turn surprised from inside or above the elevator.
There is a reason why in a combat situation in real life Military and Law and Enforcement opt to take the stairs instead. Genre Savvy or paranoid characters may avoid the obvious death trap altogether sometimes even opting to leave the would be ambushers with an empty elevator instead.
Elevator Ambushes are usually portrayed in one of two ways. The first way is someone gets into an elevator expecting the elevator ride to go as expected only to suddenly find themselves under attack from someone or something outside the elevator. In action movies it is pretty common for the elevator to be shot up as soon as the doors open just like shooting a fish in a barrel. Sometimes the shooting starts before the doors even opening denying the occupants any chance of being aware of their impending doom and possibly retaliating. In any horror or thriller movie the monster, mad man, or creature may surge through elevator doors as they open, drop in through the roof into the car, pull someone up through the roof, or even attack right through the floor, roof, or walls of the elevator car itself.
The other depiction of the elevator ambush is the surprise coming from inside the elevator being sprung on those waiting outside it. The doors on an elevator open and suddenly there is a character attacking from the supposedly easily controlled space often rapidly plowing through any opposition thanks to their element of surprise. An unlucky Mook or Red Shirt might get yanked into a elevator suddenly if it opens and they go to investigate the lack of a person getting out. Sometimes the parties waiting outside the elevator attack the elevator before the doors open or lay in wait for any to occupant to arrive to their doom to suddenly have the tables turned on them. The character they were planning on ambushing will often burst from the elevator typically from the roof access hatch, a small part of the elevator not able to be seen directly, or even drop from a ceiling cling from above. Monsters, creatures, or other scary critters often surge out of the elevator or launch themselves from the ceiling or access hatch above.
Sometimes it is even possible for someone in the elevator to ambush someone else in it.
Elevator Ambushes are typically short. Those that run for too long lose the element of surprise and turn into other tropes like elevator action sequence.
Particularly clever or Genre Savvy characters may instead choose to leave a surprise in the elevator in their stead like a bomb, claymore mine, grenade sans pin or other unpleasant surprise to deal with their would be ambushers.
- Dredd: Shortly after Dredd and Anderson assault up the stairs through the riot gas cloud an elevator is shown ascending. It arrives at a floor with an audible ding and is noticed by by two of Ma-Ma's thugs. One of the thugs goes to investigate the elevator peering into it before being jerked inside followed by the sound of the one the judges guns putting him down. Dredd and Anderson then attack out of the elevator with Dredd shooting the second thug.
- The God Father:Victor Stracci and an associate are ambushed in an elevator by Peter Clemenza who uses a shotgun to kill both of them. The doors open and as they are trapped in the elevator they are killed with blasts from from the shotgun.
- Die Hard with a Vengeance: While John Mc Clain is riding the elevator with the Mooks down he catches on that they are not who they claim to be. While still in the elevator he distracts them with idle chatter and springs a surprise on them shooting the first guy and launching a Elevator Action Sequence that results in an elevator full of dead Mooks.
- On Hermajestys Secret Service: A mook is sitting at a desk when the elevator rings. Noticing no one gets out the Guard Mook walks over to the elevator and question. Bond leaps out shoving the door into the mooks face launching a short brawl with Bond subduing the Mook.
- Film/Watchmen: Ozymandias is discussing things with the business men when the elevator dings. The scene has an awkward pause as the surprised people and the faux delivery man stare at each other for a few short seconds. Then the faxu deliveryman drops his delivery and pulls out a pistol and begins shooting before stepping out of the elevator.
- Space Adventure Cobra:
- In Episode 8 Fierce Battle! Cobra versus Bowie, Cobra has to ascend an elevator to continue pursuing Crystal Bowie. At the top two of Bowie's mooks are waiting outside the elevator. As soon as it arrives they spray the elevator with weapon fire. The doors then open revealing no one is there. As they approach Cobra drops from the ceiling inside the elevator and kills both of them.
- Episode 7 "Janes's Revenge!", when Tavege is riding the elevator back down from the Refresh Center Cobra ambushes him outside the elevator with his Psycho Gun splitting both him and his armor in half from crotch to the top of his head.
- Armored Trooper VOTOMS: Chirico Cuvie and Fyana are fleeing together in VOTOMS from the plotters. Their pursuers rouse the local arena fighters with a promise of a big bounty. Instead of descending in the elevator Chirico places a directional bomb in it. The elevator doors open and the would be ambushers realize too late what it is. The bomb goes off and wipes out the ambushers and destroys the elevator in the process.
- Video Game/FEAR: At one point in the game while wandering around one of buildings an elevator unexpectedly arrives and opens revealing a waiting enemy soldier who attacks the player right off the bat.
- Metal Gear Solid: Snake gets onto a cargo elevator scouted out by Otacon. As he is riding it down it is revealed he is caught in ambush by four enemy soldiers wearing stealth camo suits waiting for him to get on. This leads to an Elevator Action Sequence as Snake fights the hidden enemies.
- Dead Space 2: After repairing the Solar Array elevator you are suddenly attacked by monsters as you ride the elevator resulting in an Elevator Action Sequence battle.
- Hitman: Blood Money: In one mission it is an option to hide on top of an elevator and ambush someone getting into and hauling their body through the maintenance hatch.
- Gearsof War 3: The player has to select an elevator to call. There is chance said elevator will arrive with enemies who immediately burst out to attack the player and friendly NPC's.
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