Writing a SciFi story, seeking feedback on background

[TCBF]

Hiding things will be difficult.
Ground penetrating radar is in use.
It is easier to detect 'hotter or colder' things yhan it is to hide them.
An ongoing revolution in ICBM accuracy may lead to heavy kinetic penetrators replacing nuclear warheads for precision strikes on bridges, dams, power plants, refineries, railway overpasses and trestles, seacan cranes and other critical port activities, gtain elevator silos amd law firms.

 

[DataPacRat]

Hiding things will be difficult.
Ground penetrating radar is in use.
It is easier to detect 'hotter or colder' things yhan it is to hide them.

Hm... for the potential containerized Arctic depots, how about putting some portion of them underwater, to shield from both radar and from thermographs, not to mention simple visual observation?

 

[TCBF]

"Undersea cans" would be visible by air to their structural failure drpth. In any case, how do you pick stores from them or even bring them up? If they become too high tech, it becomes ineconomical. If the MHE used to access them needs to be high tech, the expendive MHE (material handling equipment) then becomes the priority target.

Ya can't win.

Some sort of ECM to  disrupt without detection t
he technical recce assets used by the entity ISTAR.

Quislings - my hard question still stands - how do we deal with 'traitors'.?

 

[DataPacRat]

"Undersea cans" would be visible by air to their structural failure drpth.

A point.

(I frequently refer to the books of a certain role-playing game, GURPS Vehicles, to come up with useful stats that are at least in the general ballpark of reality - but reality always includes aspects that the RPG designers had to simplify out.)

Ya can't win.

Maybe not, which is why it's always worth looking for ways to cheat. 

If the containers can't be hidden - maybe go for a Ghost Army approach, and come up with some minimal-cost fake containers to spam all over the Arctic? Push for those self-contained-life-support RVs to maximize the population up there, further confusing what's a valuable military target? Push some sort of widespread sousveillance network, easily watched by everyone on the internet, to minimize the feasibility of any hostile boots on the ground appearing without being noticed?

... Arrange for friendly individuals living in Siberia to set up depots on Russian territory, under cover of homesteads or commercial developments?

Quislings - my hard question still stands - how do we deal with 'traitors'.?

I'm afraid that I don't quite understand who you're asking about - who are you suggesting is betraying who to whom?

 

[The Bread Guy]

I like this idea of yours. We need more Sci-Fi in our Sub-Arctic Banana Republic context.

Just to give a sense of what's out there now re:  fiction & the Arctic - "Arctic Wargame" by Ethan Jones:

.... Canadian Intelligence Service Agent Justin Hall--combat-hardened in operations throughout Northern Africa--has been demoted after a botched mission in Libya. When two foreign icebreakers appear in Canadian Arctic waters, Justin volunteers for the reconnaissance mission, eager to return to the field. His team discovers a foreign weapons cache deep in the Arctic, but they are not aware that a spy has infiltrated the Department of National Defense. The team begins to unravel a treasonous plan against Canada, but they fall under attack from one of their own. Disarmed and stripped of their survival gear, they are stranded in a remote location. Now the team must race against time not only to save themselves, but their country ....

Interesting exchange here.

 

[TCBF]

I'm afraid that I don't quite understand who you're asking about - who are you suggesting is betraying who to whom?

- You can't have wars without betrayals. Plan all you want, but some Canadians will sell you out to the enemy, or the entity, or both. In a fragmented, fractured society, simple solutions might be the best. Who is going to do the 'wet work' as the Comrades once called it, and how?

 

[a_majoor]

Since I understand you want to end up in space (with your story  ), here is a link to an interesting graphic showing the deltaV needed to get to various places in the Solar System:

http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png

 

[DataPacRat]

- You can't have wars without betrayals. Plan all you want, but some Canadians will sell you out to the enemy, or the entity, or both. In a fragmented, fractured society, simple solutions might be the best. Who is going to do the 'wet work' as the Comrades once called it, and how?

If you're talking about the pre-Singularity tensions between Canada and Russia... I assume that it would be essentially the same sorts of people as do that sort of thing today, slightly modified by many more ubiquitous cameras, computer processing to interpret all those images and generally piece together who is doing what. If you're talking about the Singularity itself, I've worked up a particular scenario based on some ideas I've picked up from the transhumanist community, and which I've tried to reality-check by other people. If you're talking about post-Singularity civilizations, the easiest answer is "it's complicated", in that few humans (and human-like people) are aware of which entities are truly in control of what, or even that such entities even exist to exert the influence they do.

 

[DataPacRat]

Since I understand you want to end up in space (with your story  ), here is a link to an interesting graphic showing the deltaV needed to get to various places in the Solar System:

http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png

That's a rather nice version - I rarely see such maps extended beyond Mars. (Eg, http://clowder.net/hop/railroad/deltaveemap.html )

Usually, for Hohmann transfers, I refer to the tables at http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/appmissiontable.php ; and when I start dealing with rockets capable of more than the minimum-energy transfers, in which choosing fuel mass, slingshots, and other mission parameters allow for even greater ranges of choices, I've been relying on Phil Eklund's "High Frontier", which is actually meant to be a board game.

All of which, of course, is merely the background to build stories on. For example, the centre-left flag at http://datapacrat.deviantart.com/art/More-Flags-388975594 tells something of a story all by itself: In chief is a flag representing people of Canadian culture who aren't part of the current Canadian state; the overall pattern is similar to that of the "Red Ensign" used by current and former British colonies, only with the black of space replacing the usual red; and the logo on the fly is a proposed astronomical symbol for Phobos. Putting it all together, it hints at some /fascinating/ historical developments and political details. At least, in my opinion.

 

[DataPacRat]

A first draft of a few paragraphs I'm currently planning on including:

-----8<-----

A couple of the messages 'addressed' to me summarized almost all the others. I already knew most of the outline, and could have guessed at most of the rest: Halloween night, comms cut off, bunker sealed up, the nearby town inexplicably transforming... then, over the next few years, the occasional scouting mission from which nobody returned.

As for the remainder... the people who were in the bunker were faced with a situation that was far beyond anything they could have been prepared for, and they carried out their duties with exemplary honour and dignity, and dedication beyond the call of duty. Any merely human failings they may or may not have experienced would do nothing but detract from those facts, so those facts are the ones I choose to describe.

After consulting with the bunker's AI, I post-humously awarded all twelve soldiers either the Cross of Valour or the Victoria Cross, As the mil-bot placed the freshly-fabbed decorations on the three coffins within the bunker, I felt myself embarrassed to be wearing the same uniform as those men and women - a fraud, a mere charlatan who was playing dressup, pretending to fill the role of being a head-of-state. At the time, I hoped that when a real commander-in-chief came by, they wouldn't quibble about the awards. I couldn't think of anything else I could do for those soldiers, other than try to ensure that the resources of the bunker they'd protected to the end would be put to the best use possible.

----->8-----

 

[TCBF]

- You are pretty loose and free with those medals.

- Here is an example of a Canadian VC winner:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Cosens

 

[DataPacRat]

- You are pretty loose and free with those medals.

- Here is an example of a Canadian VC winner:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Cosens

Thank you for the feedback - learning that what I tried to write isn't quite what a reader read is why I posted the initial draft.

What I want to get across with whatever those paragraphs get written into is less the free hand of my protagonist with the medals, and more the level of the situation faced by the recipients. In short, the people in the bunker had all communications cut off; and with the data they had available to them, they had every reason to believe that they could have been not only the last members of the Canadian Forces, not only the last Canadians, but quite possibly the last humans on the face of the planet. My protagonist also knows that the nine who seemingly vanished while trying to explore the outside would have ended up facing the creations of a set of terraforming AIs with resources far beyond what they could have done anything to significantly affect. And despite whatever personal and metal issues the three who stayed in the bunker faced, they kept the place operational and intact for whoever eventually came to relieve them. Thus, my protagonist gave the nine who went out to face an enemy almost literally beyond human comprehension the Victoria Cross, and the three who stayed and endured pressures that I hope are only ever faced in fiction the Cross of Valour.

I'm going to heavily revamp the first draft to try to get across all of that. If you have any suggestions on the military aspects, I'd welcome any further constructive criticism.

 

[TCBF]

- Read Aubrey Cosens' citation, then decide, but the bunker crew probably are due for a CDS Commendation.

 

[DataPacRat]

- Read Aubrey Cosens' citation, then decide, but the bunker crew probably are due for a CDS Commendation.

After re-reading the citation, and the description of the CDS Commendation, that sounds reasonable. I can even try to expand a bit on my protagonist's initial desire to go for the VC and CV, with the bunker's AI offering commentary and conversation that leads to the CDS being chosen.

 

[FJAG]

Looks like the Woz is now a believer.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3007920/Will-robots-make-PETS-Apple-founder-Steve-Wozniak-no-doubt-artificial-intelligence-world.html

:cheers:

 

[TCBF]

- Luddite that I am, I grudgingly welcome Artificial Intelligence, but only because the real stuff is in such short supply.

 

[a_majoor]

Clearing space junk for your story purposes might need something like this:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/g1928/sequester-space-junk/

 

[DataPacRat]

Clearing space junk for your story purposes might need something like this:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/g1928/sequester-space-junk/

In-story, I laid the groundwork early on for #5 of that slideshow, in the form of a no-fly zone defined by whether the top of the CN Tower has line-of-sight to the target.