Honorverse ramblings and musings

Clearly, what many think of as "death", lack of pulse, isn't death. You can thank Hollywood for this perpetual myth.

For instance, anyone going in for open heart surgery, under the Hollywood definition, dies and gets "reborn."

Relax wrote:Clearly, what many think of as "death", lack of pulse, isn't death. You can thank Hollywood for this perpetual myth.

For instance, anyone going in for open heart surgery, under the Hollywood definition, dies and gets "reborn."

I think he's wondering if cold water drowning victims you read about who are brought up clinically dead but are revived later with little or no ill effects at all.

saber964 wrote:

Relax wrote:Clearly, what many think of as "death", lack of pulse, isn't death. You can thank Hollywood for this perpetual myth.

For instance, anyone going in for open heart surgery, under the Hollywood definition, dies and gets "reborn."

I think he's wondering if cold water drowning victims you read about who are brought up clinically dead but are revived later with little or no ill effects at all.

No.

This research is completely my niece's project. Her mother is a medical doctor. A neurosurgeon involved in R&D, at RTP.

My friends in Romania are mostly MDs.

My niece had corroborating discussions with them all. Apparently, to an MD., it is old news this revival after unheard of timeframes of being pronounced clinically dead. Sometimes, there is truth fueling our TV.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/1 ... 72438.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbaiC9N6bGU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOc1ko00YiI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyO7QWYeFTE

cthia wrote:"saber964"]"Relax"]

Clearly, what many think of as "death", lack of pulse, isn't death. You can thank Hollywood for this perpetual myth.

For instance, anyone going in for open heart surgery, under the Hollywood definition, dies and gets "reborn."

----------------

Cthia --

Go back and check out "Queen's Gambit" in World's of Honor Anthology. You will find the response / reaction of Monroe, King Roger's 'cat-companion at the king's death by accident/assassination.
Monroe was with the body of the king and Roger's Mind-Glow and Spirit were not there.
Per this text and Samantha's near suicide at the end of Honor Among Enemies, when a 'cat's companion dies, the 'cat generally goes into self-starvation / dehydration.
Sam did not die when her 1st bonded companion Harold Tschu died in battle because Nimitz would not let her go.

-- Stewart

cthia wrote:

saber964 wrote: I think he's wondering if cold water drowning victims you read about who are brought up clinically dead but are revived later with little or no ill effects at all.

No.

This research is completely my niece's project. Her mother is a medical doctor. A neurosurgeon involved in R&D, at RTP.

My friends in Romania are mostly MDs.

My niece had corroborating discussions with them all. Apparently, to an MD., it is old news this revival after unheard of timeframes of being pronounced clinically dead. Sometimes, there is truth fueling our TV.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/1 ... 72438.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbaiC9N6bGU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOc1ko00YiI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyO7QWYeFTE

Hence the old saying that "you're not dead 'til you're warm and dead."

All of the recent talk about Darius has me thinking again. And I'm wondering what kind of hard data does the MALign have on GA hardware. I know that they've been monitoring certain battles as much as they could. But wouldn't that data have come at extreme ranges from civilian grade sensors? Unless, the MALign had parked their stealth ship in other sectors before to ... observe. But even so, they wouldn't actually know about the fiendishly effective RMN's ECM. Right?

My wonderment revolves around the fact that between the RMN and the RHN, each of them ran simulations revolving around the other's currently known technology. How can the MALign run sims with less than battle conditions recon? And their own weaponry isn't going to be battle tested, so it seems they are going to have to battle test it before any serious confrontations. It would seem.

A question.
It came as a very recent surprise to me that the SLN had erased Manticore's missile range advantage. When the hell did that happen? What really surprises me is the speed at which the range advantage was eliminated. Why is Technodyne still standing? And how quickly will other advantages be neutralized?

cthia wrote:
A question.
It came as a very recent surprise to me that the SLN had erased Manticore's missile range advantage. When the hell did that happen? What really surprises me is the speed at which the range advantage was eliminated. Why is Technodyne still standing? And how quickly will other advantages be neutralized?

Uh, no. If you're referring to Filareta being in range at 2nd Manticore, that's because he attacked a position close to the hyper limit which the RMN could not afford to abandon.

The SLN's cataphract has a powered range of 15.5 million km. This is barely a quarter that of the original MDMs used by Manticore in Operation Buttercup, which had a range of 65~ million km. Ballistic phases can extend those ranges substantially, of course.

Cataphract, from what I understand it, is a brute force solution to not having MDMs. They took a regular single drive missile and attached a countermissile on one end. Unfortunately for them, doing so required a step down in missile size for shipboard launchers - SD-scale missiles could only be fired from pods, SDs could only fire BC-scaled missiles and BCs could only fire DD/CL-scaled missiles. Compared to the RMN's MK16, it's a very feeble weapon system, all the more hindered by the SLN not being set up for fire control at such ranges.

cthia wrote:All of the recent talk about Darius has me thinking again. And I'm wondering what kind of hard data does the MALign have on GA hardware. I know that they've been monitoring certain battles as much as they could. But wouldn't that data have come at extreme ranges from civilian grade sensors? Unless, the MALign had parked their stealth ship in other sectors before to ... observe. But even so, they wouldn't actually know about the fiendishly effective RMN's ECM. Right?

My wonderment revolves around the fact that between the RMN and the RHN, each of them ran simulations revolving around the other's currently known technology. How can the MALign run sims with less than battle conditions recon? And their own weaponry isn't going to be battle tested, so it seems they are going to have to battle test it before any serious confrontations. It would seem.

A question.
It came as a very recent surprise to me that the SLN had erased Manticore's missile range advantage. When the hell did that happen? What really surprises me is the speed at which the range advantage was eliminated. Why is Technodyne still standing? And how quickly will other advantages be neutralized?

I feel confident that the MAlign could have gotten at least partial access to the RHN analysis of Manticore's tech edge. Also, they are the Übermensch; why would they need to test their tech against the untermensch?

As for your question; I don't think "erased" is quite the right term, however the range advantage has definitely been mitigated. With the Cataphract missile, the SLN can include at least a small ballistic component before activating the sprint drive, allowing them to get more range. However, several things still give the GA the advantage.

1) Even the Mk 16 has a longer powered range than the Cataphract, allowing for continuously running strikes from outside of the SLN's powered range.

2) In order to get the extended range, the SLN had to step down the size of the warhead in their missiles, making ship launched missiles to weak to do much damage to a waller, while at the same time the RMN and RHN have increased the power of their warheads over the course of the war.

3) The range of the sprint drive is severely limited; if the ballistic flight is too large, the target ships can move outside of effective range much easier than they could of an MDM from GA.

4)SLN fire control is still optimized for close in missile fire and energy weapon range, not the extended range that the extra drive gives you. Up until the Haven Quadrant wars, missiles were not the deciding factor in combat, just something to test enemy ECM with.

As for why Technodyne is still standing; how exactly would the GA have taken it down? It is a company in side of an independent star nation; THE star nation that NOBODY wants to fight. They would have had to invade the SL to shut it down. Now that they are in a war with the League, Yidlun and any other SLN R&D centers will be high on their target list.

For the rest of the tech edge, well, most of it (I'd say everything but the grav-com, and the SLN is experimenting with them) probably already has counterparts in the SL, just nobody wanted to spend the money to put them in the SLN's ships. The idea is to destroy the SL before it can wake up.

cthia wrote:A question.
It came as a very recent surprise to me that the SLN had erased Manticore's missile range advantage. When the hell did that happen? What really surprises me is the speed at which the range advantage was eliminated. Why is Technodyne still standing? And how quickly will other advantages be neutralized?

The missile range advantage was erased when Technodyne produced the Cataphract. This happened even before the confrontation between the League and Manticore. Technodyne started developing the Cataphract because the Mesan Alignment pushed them into it. The Alignment didn't have Manticore's MDM technology, so they got Technodyne to develop something as close to it as possible.

It is quite possible that Manticore's other tech advantages can be similarly neutralized. As you noted, the Alignment has been watching the technology developments as closely as it can. They have not actually cracked most of Manticore's new tech, but they have at least some idea about the tech. They have undoubtedly been working on their own versions of Manticoran technology for many years. Technodyne is one of the front companies doing this R&D for them. Remember that the text notes that Solarian companies have been experimenting with FTL comms for a little while; it is likely that this, too, is being secretly pushed by the Alignment. There could be any number of R&D projects underway for years that could erode the Manticoran advantage.

As for why Technodyne is still standing--that's because Manticore has not yet executed any attacks on Solarian bases. Even if they did start raids, they might not target civilian facilities. Manticore's strategy does not involve direct attacks on infrastructure.

cthia wrote:So. Tierney asks me what would happen if something similar happens to a treecat. She even rang Andreea, my Romanian MD. friend and her mother, also an MD., to corroborate her research about death. Seems people can truly die for minutes, even much longer under certain rare circumstances, and be later revived.

What if a bonded cat dies, temporarily, and the other treecat truly goes through the normal hell of almost dying, but lives. Then the cat thought to be dead, is revived, and the two cats are again reunited after the remaining cat has rebonded. Then what? Can a cat be bonded to two?

It probably depends. 'Cats don't always know if their bonded half dies. Sure, often they're within mindglow range of each other, so they'd feel the death and know. But we've seen situation (Nimitz's supposed death at Honor's "execution" comes to mind) where the surviving 'cat only finds out about their bondmate's death when another human or 'cat comes back to tell them.

Sure in that case the report was wrong, but Samantha didn't know that. Nimitz was way outside of mindlink/mindglow range and she had to rely on human news reports to discover he (supposedly) wasn't coming back. There wasn't a transgalatic "breaking" of their mindlink.

Conversely I imagine if 'cat died temporarily (but without major brain injury) that upon reviving the 'link' wouldn't be broken. Both halves would feel it when reunited. (With major brain injury, enough to significantly alter their mindglow and personality, probably all bets are off)


But a 'cat lost and presumed dead for years, beyond mindlink range of his clan, could potentially come back to find his former mate bonded with a new 'cat (assuming she didn't die of grief). But I don't know if both links would be present, or if the grief and subsequent relinking would have altered the her mindglow sufficiently to effectively "delete" the original link.