Posts
Well the YTF are out of danger and safely at a gas station. But all is not well. Y'see Taylor wants revenge against the GC; that unsaved heathen has the gall to want to actually :gasp: do something to thwart the GC as opposed to the YTF's strategy which is pretty much sit on your ass and twiddle your thumbs until TurboJesus comes. This of course makes him currently the only awesome character in this book. Basically Taylor's response to the YTF criticizing him for shooting missles at the GC is essentially my own: "Hey I saved your sorry asses so what are you complaining about." Though given that the GC is made up of eeevil hardened reprobates who refuse to kneel before Zod, why would they object to him killing them. It's almost as though they :gasp: care about the soldiers because they are humans and human life is valuable rather than their big saved or unsaved status.
The YTF watch the news and snicker as the newscaster does the standard "Freakish event happened/Zod not involved" story we've come to accept from the Ellanjay universe. Then Judd talks to John who has been forcibly drafted into working aboard one of the GC submarines which makes sense because again, they're evil despots.
They then read Token Jew's message which I won't snark because it's basically repeating what's already been said. Is it that difficult to remember the precise order of all the shit that's going to happen to you in the Tribulation that you need it repeated again and again?
Next chapter is told from John's perspective aboard the sub as it blows up an unidentified vessel. It's a fairly well-written scene but I can't vouch for the accuracy; I don't know anything about procedures related to subs. I have a sneaking suspicion that Ellanjay cribbed from a Tom Clancy novel.
So the YTF are meeting and for once, they're actually acting like teenagers fighting with each other over stupid things because they're stressed as hell over what's going on. But then evil bikers show up.
Back to John on the sub. Apparently they've just received word that a huge-ass meteor is headed to earth.
Okay so the gangsters are thronging the station and Pete goes out to confront them. The gas station owner tells them of a guy in Des Plaines who can help hide them. Vicki dyes her hair black and Judd gets a bad haircut.
Then they turn on the news and hear information about the incoming meteor which is a comet according to the news. Apparently it's the size of the Appalachian Mountains but the astronomers only just now spotted it and they predict it will burn up in the atmosphere. Y'know if I ever make a reality show out of these snarks, I'm going to see if I can get Phil Blatt aka Bad Astronomy guy to appear on my show and beat Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins with an astronomy textbook and a physics textbook. Me, if I had to pick a weapon, I'd do a college composition textbook.
The meteor/comet is going to hit at nine according to our brave heroes which currently means they have two hours left. I never thought I'd say this but this book is making the science in the movie Armageddon seem plausible.
Anyway, that's the snark and now I'll do my part in the continuing War on Christmas by saying, "Happy Holidays!"
5 comments:
I guess the YTF at least isn't actively collaborating with the enemy, the way the TF proper is.
The Soviets managed to run subs with draftees, so it must be possible. Seems like a pretty bad plan unless you have no other option, though.
Do they say what sort of submarine it is? What weapon does it use in the attack, from how far away? Anything like that?
...yeah, back in the real world you get more than a few hours' notice of an incoming meteor.
Wikipedia calls the Appalachians about 1500 miles long x 100-300 miles wide. Even assuming it's a slab only a mile deep, that's around 7e18 kg. Impact energy at 11-20km/s is around 4e26-1e27 J - in the low hundreds of petatons range. Good news! Earth's gravitational binding energy is 2e32 J. So there will actually be a planet left. Ecosystem and atmosphere, not so much.
I'd be interested in seeing that section with the teens actually being teenagers (instead of little RTCs trying to be like Rayford and Buck or Chloe and Amanda).
As for Firedrake's commentary on the meteor? Holy astronomy, Batman! L&J should have radically scaled down the size of the thing. The working theory is that a meteorite was the source of the still not fully explainable explosion over Siberia.
If a fairly small (by appalachian standards) meteor could do *that*, it really wouldn't take too large of a fella to just smash the hell out of a hemisphere or so.
I find it funny that Judd really is a mini-Rayford in some respects. The only action-y thing Rayford does, aside from being much like Buck, standing aside instead of interfering, is to use his "Saber" gun to try and shoot Nicolae (that, and he uses some fancy weapon near the final battle).
Judd, so far, strikes me as being set up by L&J to be much the same - inadvertently perhaps *doing* something but for the most part content to be with his future wife Vicki on the sidelines and carping at anyone who isn't an RTC because the YTF have Jesus, that's why.
Ha! Phil Plait (AKA the Bad Astronomer) would totally snark the heck out of this bit. He has a section on his old Bad Astronomy site where he tears into the bad science of movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact; he knows a lot of *very* cool stuff about asteroids, comets, meteors and what would happen if one of them hit Earth. Well worth reading!
Wait. Vicki dyed her hair BLACK?
Is there a reason given for this?
And isn't Vicki a natural redhead? Hell, Jenkins even gave her a nice Irish surname (Byrne).
If she is a natural redhead and is trying to make people believe she has black hair, she will fail. It is screamingly obvious when very fair people dye their hair dark, just as it is screamingly obvious when dark-featured people dye their hair blonde.
So if Vicki is trying to look like someone with black hair, she is very stupid. OTOH, if she is trying to look like the RTC vision of a Rebellious Teenager who is dying her hair black so she can be more emo, then...that may be kinda brilliant.
Hmmmm...
>>The Soviets managed to run subs with draftees, so it must be possible. Seems like a pretty bad plan unless you have no other option, though.
There's a difference between using draftees, who probably don't want to be there but are theoretically at least semi-loyal citizens, and actually enslaving your enemies to operate sensitive military equipment.
Apparently it's the size of the Appalachian Mountains but the astronomers only just now spotted it and they predict it will burn up in the atmosphere.
Hmm an asteroid of that size could theoretically 'burn up in the atmosphere', but only if it was travelling at a sufficient velocity that contacting the air itself would cause it to vaporize - simply because the energy is so immense that every atom of air hits with the force of a tactical nuke. Unfortunately, that's gonna be a fair fraction of the speed of light. As in, more like 90000 kilometers per second than 10-20.
Which gives us 3.037E+34 Joules. So yeah. That's pretty close to 'Death Star' level power there...
>>
If a fairly small (by appalachian standards) meteor could do *that*, it really wouldn't take too large of a fella to just smash the hell out of a hemisphere or so.
Yeah. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was something like 5-10 kilometers in diameter.
Post a Comment