Megathread - Versus battles

[Ouroboros]

http://forum.gateworld.net/showpost....&postcount=121

[b]Me: Just out of curiousity, how long does it take the bolts to reach the ground in Misbegotten?

Oh ok I get it now. You actually dodged to misbegotten earlier in our discussion about sateda and I just got confused. Ok, I guess I should be keeping a better eye out for these things. To answer that question the ones in Misbegotten seem to travel to the planet a lot faster, well under a minute. Much faster than the Sateda ones.

Because...?

There's no exceptionally bright light when they don't land right next to the camera.

So when the entire ship blows up in Siege Part I, obviously, there was something they missed.

Who knows. The explosion wasn't as violent as some of the later ones, even the one in hive that went off as a result of damage from another hive. The causes could be numerous. A hiveship is a complex machine that can't be expected to die in the same fashion every time anymore than naval ships of the same class can all be expected to sink in exactly the same fashion.

Sure, if you rely entirely on circular reasoning.

Are you getting paid a dollar everytime you post "circular reasoning" or something?

There is nothing circular about thinking that the SGC would not drastically reduce shipboard warhead yields as their enemies got ever MORE powerful.

Do you seriously think it's logical that with all the advances constantly being made, and wanting to be made, to keep up with Earth's enemies, someone would suddenly jump up and say

"you know what we should do next guys, we should reduce our warhead firepower 1 million fold or more from what it was ten years ago, even though we now have beachball sized gigaton nukes".

You need to prove this ridiculous scenario is what has actually occured because the burden is most certainly NOT on me to prove that it didn't.

That were never sucessfully tested, as evident by season four. Or it was tested, only to fail.

What?!
Space mines 1200 megatons, Goa'uld busters 1000 megatons. They weren't just tested either, they were used in battle, and both of those are onscreen quoated yeild figures.

And why do you think that is?

Because the Chinese and Russians don't actually care about these jurisdictionally irrelevant treaties the way you think they do.

The Antartic Treaty is the starting place for SGA, and it's the reason that SGA is an international effort.

Prove it contains rules limiting nuclear yeilds or nuclear deployment methods on Earth made spacecraft.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/start1/chron.htm

Meeting in Washington, President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev agree that their START negotiators should build upon the areas of agreement in the joint draft START treaty text being developed in Geneva. These include:
A ceiling of 1,600 SNDVs with 6,000 warheads.
A ceiling of 1,540 warheads on 154 heavy missiles.
A 50 percent reduction in ballistic missile throw-weight.

So yes, the ceiling on warheads is different from the ceiling on heavy missiles. I know you'd like to believe that this came entirely out of my imagination, but my imagination isn't anywhere near strong enough for to influence internation military policy. And even if it was, hey, all the more reason to listen to me, right?

Wow, I didn't know Reagan and Gorbachev were present at the Antarctic treaty signing. I know this show's had some pretty high profile government guest stars before but that was quite an episode for me to miss.

[Ouroboros]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUW5vj07QFw

Ok here's a short vidclip of the scene where the Ori ship bombards Dakara with it's uberbeam.

Notice how not only are the explosions that result from the hits nothing to write home about but how they also come with a weird delayed effect.

The first part of the beam seems to cause no damage at all and then all of a sudden, POP goes the weasel. This is suggestive is some sort of weirdo exotic chain reaction effect in play. If the weapon was just a simple DET transfer gun there'd be no reason for only the back half of the bolt to cause damage while the front did nothing. Damage would start to happen as soon as the bolt hit and began to transfer energy.

There's good and bad news for the Ori in this.

-The good news is that because their weapon works on some sort of chain reaction as opposed to DET there's still a chance that it might be able to damage Wraith hull armour via this exotic chain reaction.

-The bad news is the chain reaction doesn't seem that impressive really, certainly not when scaled against the sheer size of a hiveship. Also because of it's odd nature it's just as likely that it will be less effective against the composition of a Wraith hull, as opposed to the mountain, as it is that it will be more effective.

[Schrodinger82]

To answer that question the ones in Misbegotten seem to travel to the planet a lot faster, well under a minute. Much faster than the Sateda ones.

Yet they don't seem to moving all that fast when actually leaving the ship.

The explosion wasn't as violent as some of the later ones, even the one in hive that went off as a result of damage from another hive.

Could be a self-destruct sequence ala Aurora. We know that the Wraith aren't above that in dire situations. Even then, it still shouldn't have been able to light up clouds from orbit.

A hiveship is a complex machine that can't be expected to die in the same fashion every time anymore than naval ships of the same class can all be expected to sink in exactly the same fashion.

Which explains why John could wound one with C4, and why the Ori could do the same thing with their death beam.

Are you getting paid a dollar everytime you post "circular reasoning" or something?

Are you getting paid a dollar every time you use it?

"you know what we should do next guys, we should reduce our warhead firepower 1 million fold or more from what it was ten years ago,

Which failed to successfully detonate.

even though we now have beachball sized gigaton nukes".

That would certainly explain why they seemed to have stopped with that strategy all throughout SG-1 since the initial incident. I suppose for the same reason that the airlines never attempted to build another spruce goose. Waste of resources, completely impractical, failure from the get go.

You need to prove this ridiculous scenario is what has actually occured

See Chain Reaction. Apparently, they were still in testing mode 3 seasons later, after discovering that necessity for and rarity of weapons grade naquadah, as opposed to relying entirely on raw ore.

But they were still using 10 kt nukes in season 8, and a low kt genii nuke was sucessfully used to blow up a hive ship.

Space mines 1200 megatons, Goa'uld busters 1000 megatons. They weren't just tested either, they were used in battle

Yes. And the Goa'uld busters impacted prior to detonation. From back when they were using raw ore, rather than the refined stuff.

The space mines were supposed to hurt the Wraith from what would have to be a considerable proximity in order to be effective at geosynchronous orbit. The transport option and even the missile option are far more efficient at delivering their energy the the proximity mine option, and thus, would require far less power for the same amount of damage.

One of your mistakes is that you assume that technology progresses in terms of raw power alone. It doesn't. Sometimes technology works by going the opposite route. For instance, a 60 watt incadescent bulb from 50 years ago might have a higher power rating than a 20 watt compact florescent from today, but does that make it more advanced? I could also point out that the calculators early on were probably a million fold less "powerful" (as in, "raw electrical power") compared to the calculators of today. Does it mean that technology has gone backwards? Of course not. It just means they aren't being wasteful. If you can accomplish with 10 kt of nuclear material what you couldn't accomplish with 7.2 GT of nuclear material, then great.

Because the Chinese and Russians don't actually care about these jurisdictionally irrelevant treaties the way you think they do.

Obviously they do, or they would have forced SGA to be an international effort, they wouldn't be pushing SGC to share it's military technology, and you wouldn't see China proclaiming things like "This is unacceptable" in response the 304.

I base my analysis both on what's been established in the show, and by established real world behavior (And remember, even though SG1 is a scifi show, they try to keep the military aspects believable.). You have absolutely no basis for your rebutal, other than circular reasoning of, "Well, we know that SGC rely on high yeild weapons because they obviously don't care, and we know they most not care because the 304 obviously relies on high yeild weaponry."

I know this show's had some pretty high profile government guest stars before but that was quite an episode for me to miss.

I guess so. Now do yo have an actual response, or are you just going to point out that even though I can list treaties proving my point, they aren't treaties specific to Antartica?

Here's what it all boils down to:

On resources:
1) The US has ready access to low yield nukes already available sitting by and collecting dust
2) In order to build enhanced nukes, you need refined naquadah, as opposed to raw naquadah
3) Refined naquadah is extremely rare, and is also necessary to run naquadah reactors.
4) Ergo, if you have a finite amount of refined naquadah, then every gram you put into enhancing nukes, is a gram you can't put into powering systems.
5) Naquadah reactor programs have also been started in other countries, ala the agreements in 48 hours and Disclosure. Therefore, we also need to share out refined naquadah with other nations as well, cutting resources down further.
6) By season three, SGA has switched entirely to a single model nuke, despite the fact that they hadn't used a single one since "The Siege." You're arguing that these models are all high end, where as I'm arguing that these are all low end.
7) My argument for them being low end is based on the fact that enhanced naquadah weapons aren't necessary for the primary delivery mechanism (transport), since even a low end nuke will do. Further, low end weapons give more options for precision strikes, and more efficient energy distribution according to the inverse square law. It doesn't make much sense to enhance weapons that don't need to be enhanced, when those same resources would be better used elsewhere.
8) Your argument is based on the entirely circular idea that they use high yield weaponry because that's what they need, and that they need high yeild weaponry because that's what they've used. If there's more, feel free.

On governments
1) Russia and China expect acess to all off world technology, including military technology.
2) The US gave Russia the Korelev
3) The US gave Russia weapons grade naquadah
4) The Korelev has nukes
5) Either these are enhanced nukes, or they aren't.
6) If it is, then it makes you wonder why the US would agree to give them this, aside from circular reasoning, since the US specifically does not want Russia to have enhanced nukes, particularily not from it's shielded space ship that can fire anywhere on America that it wants, with only a few seconds notice.
7) If the Korelev isn't armed with enhanced nukes, then it's just one example of a 304 with unenhanced nukes.
8) If the Korelev isn't armed with enhanced onboard tactical nukes, and the US isn't armed with enhanced onboard tactical nukes, then all is well, since everything is in balance due to internal agreements.
9) If the Korelev isn't armed with enhanced onboard tactical nukes, and the US is, then Russia will do whatever is within their power to enhance their own nukes. And since Russia has already been given refined naquadah, then it's within their power. Again, something that the US specifically does not want to happen.
10) In game theory, this is referred to as "The Prisoner's Dilemma." The best decision in such a game is not to play (e.g., not arming yourself with enhanced onboard tactical nukes in the first place.)
11) There's also no incentive to play, since again, we have no non-circular evidence that such enhancements are even necessary for typical encounters.
12) Missile treaties (not necessarily the antartic one) prove that yes, there is a separate cap between missiles and warheads. Other treaties make other restrictions, on things like testing, notification before launches, etc.

This is suggestive is some sort of weirdo exotic chain reaction effect in play.

Is it possible to come up with a scifi energy weapon that isn't exotic?

If the weapon was just a simple DET transfer gun there'd be no reason for only the back half of the bolt to cause damage while the front did nothing.

Sandstone would have a tendency to disperse energy. Think of it as a three dimensional spillway that acts on a molecular level. Energy continues to build and build evenly throughout, until finally it builds too far and the dam shatters, thus resulting in overexcited molecules and the resulting explosion.

[Kingomon]

The fact is those shelds of the Ori could take billions of hits. And those weapons could blast threw the shields. The Ori busted through asgard shields in two shots and the ship was damged from the first. The Wraith have trouble with a ship to ship battle with the D. Ship what makes it going to defeat the Ori ships.

[Mister Oragahn]

Tactical warheads

Is raw ore enough to upgrade an ordinary warhead?

SAMUELS: An otherwise ordinary Mark 12-A warhead has been enriched by the alien material, naqahdah.

HAMMOND: The Stargate element?

SAMUELS: Yes sir. As you know, a small amount of the raw ore was found by SG5 and brought back some months ago. The warheads should now yield in excess of 1000 megatons... each. We call them our Goa'uld busters. Our plan is to launch two rockets simultaneously into retrograde orbit. Now, the naqahdah-enriched warheads themselves are made of the same material as our stealth aircraft and should go undetected by their radar.

Answer: Yes, definitively.
A mark 12-A warhead has a yield of 335~350 KT. Up to 1000 MT with a bit of raw naqahdah. This demonstrates how actually it is to make powerful weapons.

Please notice that there were already able to get their hands on those amounts of naqahdah during season 1, at a time where they had only visited a handful worlds, and had little to no allies, with the Goa'ulds controlling a large portion of the galaxy.

It's a striking different to the situation eight years later, with the Goa'uld dominions that have fallen, with a kind of black market free trade that grew, and with the fact that Earth is allied to the Free Jaffa Nation, which I think should prove enough that finding small quantities of raw naqahdah should not be a problem. Plus Earth has several other outposts, which represents even more trade routes and potential mining sites.

Now, it was mentionned that in Reckoning part 2, the SGC was going to be destroyed by a 10 KT warhead. That's entirely missing the point. Those yields exist since decades, and there is no single evidence that such low yield nukes have been used against alien capships, or that a 304 ever had such weaker nukes onboard, which was my whole point.

Yet, it's easy to notice how only a small amount of raw naqahdah is enough to make a 3 digits kiloton warhead jump to a one digit gigaton nuke.

The goal of this argument was to know what the warheads used against alien capital ships and transported by the 304 as regular ammo were, without taking advantage of teleporation tricks and camouflage intrusion, thus discounting special cases such as the gatebusters or genii nukes (even if gatebusters turns out to be a new type of weaponry).
Warheads used in other cases are totally irrelevant, since they do not represent the classical ammo you would find on a 304. This means more face to face conventional fighting.

The Reckoning example is irrelevant, as it does not involve the destruction of an alien capital ship, but the sabotage of the SGC.

Here's a list of terran warheads used by the 304:

- SGA, The Siege part 3. They used on of the 304's numerous nukes to simulate Atlantis' destruction. All symptoms, from fireball size, growth, duration and height have proven that the nuke was in the megaton range.
- SGA, No Man's Land. The 304 fires a legion of nukes. Determining the yield directly is a hard thing to do, besides the mysterious and near 2 km wide fireball that has nothing to do with a flash, since the blue luminous shape clearly forms a kind of cloud of hot matter. However, later evidence showed that the hiveship was not strikingly damaged. It still could fight and repaired to some extent, despite the internal explosions due to the spawn camping tactic used by Caldwell. This is why this subject was started.
- SG-1, in Serpent's Lair, with two 1 GT warheads fired at Apophis' Ha'taks. We see that the very first time they face alien vessels, they already think that gigaton warheads were necessary. Though this has nothing to do with warheads you'd find as regular ammunition onboard a 304, it finely demonstrates the kind of yields the SGC thought would be necessary to deal with enemies.
As I also desmontrated, even those warheads would have not been enough if they had detonated near the Ha'taks' shields. After several years of conflict against the Goa'uld, you'd expect the SGC to know that and realize that tougher warheads would be necessary against Ha'taks. Which supports the idea that terran warships would actually come with more powerful warheads rather than weaker ones, especially since one of their missions was to fight enemy capital vessels. It would make no sense to revert to yields that would never ever threaten our enemies.
- In The Siege part 2, were 1.2 GT warheads on proximity fuse were placed all around the planet which Atlantis was stuck on. Those warheads were destroyed by a rain of asteroids. It is impossible to prove that the Wraith knew what those things exactly were, and thus impossible to claim that they sent asteroids just because they knew that those mines would destroy them... when they could have never known the yield anyway. Those could have been lantean weapons of a new genre or whatever.
- SG-1, The Pegasus Project, where 26 MT warheads were used to make a wormhole jump from one gate to another. One of them was teleported inside the hiveship, which, amplified by internal explosions, literally vaporized it.

As for the treaties related part, there's no circular reasoning there.
The USA and allied governments have been using those warheads, and are still building them. Spoilers reveal that...

Spoiler:

A weapon platform system, called Horizon, has been created and armed with six multi gigaton gatebusters to attack Asura.

Logic and common sense simply show that, as there is actually no reason to fall back to weaker weapons when facing even more dangerous enemies, like the Wraith for example, the SGC and its allies are actually building even more powerful weapons. There is no need to make things more complex than that, because it is extremely simple.

Evidence shows that the nukes deployed in No Man's Land wouldn't be of a yield lower to one digit megaton nukes, and highly likely closer to the gigaton range.


Lantean sattelite weapon

Associtated to the conclusion above, and to keep things simple, even if the beam fired at the hiveship used the totality of the 20 KT worth first generation naqahdah generator, the duration of the whole beam, the duration of what was actually necessary to puncture the hiveship and the fact that the weapon worked on principles close to continuous direct energy transfer weapon, that is, infuse terajoules of energy over one second, show that if that raw power was enough to literally impale a whole hiveship and destroy it, then a nuke, even a kiloton one mind you, as it releases all its energy in a very quick fashion, would have completely obliterated at least the entire rear half of the hiveship seen in No Man's Land in the blink of an eye, and started multiple chain reactions for the finishing blow. Needless to say that it would have been totally overkill if the nukes were of higher yields (megaton or gigaton).
But this never happened.

Which proves that the lantean satellite weapon uses an exotic mechanism which manages to damage hiveship with very low energy ressources.


Drone independancy

Unless someone manages to prove that the issue ranges beyond a simple dilemna, there's no other choice than choose between Beckett or the drone's own program as the source of the agressive behaviour.
For multiple and obvious reasons, I've shown that it was far unlikely that Beckett would have brought the drone into such an agressive mode, and that, at best, he was disturbing the weapon, which would explain the barely dodged attacks. Thus, the drone was actually trying to destroy the helicopter on its own, and Beckett simply reactivated certain codes by mistake.
This is largely and directly supported by the dialogue.
Unless there is a better theory as to what could have caused the drone to act so agressively, and unless one can prove that there are more than two possibilities besides Beckett of the drone's program, you must admit that only the later solution would explain the attempted destruction of the helicopter.


C4 and holes in wraith armor

I have posted two different pictures largely demonstrating that the so called kilometer wide holes were not created by the internal explosions, but already existed.

[Mister Oragahn]

Ori beams

The beam does nothing to its target until the whole beam has finished hitting the target. It's not even a question of dispersing energy, it's just that there's nothing happening. More like if there was a "build up" mode, a bit like the ancient pulse beam fired by Anubis' flower of doom in Full Circle.
In fact, both reactions are extremely similar.
Yet, that's strikingly different from the beam & shield interactions seen in Camelot or Flesh and Blood, where the head of the beam actually splatters over the shields, while the queue goes through and deals most of the damage and still continues on for most ships.

Clearly not DET. Exotic all the way.

This would tend to suggest that what really blew up was the "shielded" artificial structure on Dakara, in the "moutain", not the rock itself. However, considering the absolute lack of shield reaction, we should assume that if said shield is of any relevance against weapons (and not just a cloaking shield against sensors), then it was happening inside the mountain, probably in a layer between the rock and the aritifical structure.

Plus without any evidence, we can't claim that this shield would actually protect the device from anything else safe the disintegrator wave and sensors.

The most disturbing element is those country sized explosions seen when we look at the planet from orbit, at 43 and 47 seconds on this video.
It's like the Jaffa raised a theater shield there before the beams started to fall on Dakara.
Or it's due to some kind of intense light diffusion when the beam was passing through the cloud, but that's absurd, since the beam itself isn't even blinding when directly starred. How could it diffuse enough light over hundreds of kilometers then?
That's why I go with theater shield over Dakara. That would make sense anyway.

Those splashes seen from orbit still are impressive. I can understand a chain reaction, but considering the level of destruction such "chain reactions" seem to do on plain rock and artificial structures, there's little chance that they'd result in country sized chain reactions, or that would be one of the most useless weapons ever.

"- The planet is protected by our multi billion years old cloud layer mk I. I think we're relatively safe sir.
- Indeed ensign. That stratosphere should prove enough to deplete most of the Ori's weapons, and should only deliver minor damage once hitting the ground. Nothing we couldn't deal with after the assault."

[ACharmedAsgard]

In a battle between the wraith and the Ori who do you think would win?

The Ori have superior ships and technology but the Wraith have strength in numbers, and their life sucking ability. Personally I think that the Wraith may have a slight chance of winning, but becase of the Milky Way Galaxy's fight with the Ori, I think that the Ori have a better change of coming out on top.

What you you all think

The fact that Ori shields seem almost inpenitratable and that the beam weapon could penerate the asgard sheilds after a few shots - the Wraith Hive ships could be dealt with quite easily.

And about the life sucking ability, the ori have enthused priors with special abilities so they would probably be able to throw the wraith 100s of miles away or simply destroy them with the flick (or swing to be more realistic) of a staff before the wraith could get close to them, and the shields the ori's legions have would probably survive any gun fire from the wraith.

[Schrodinger82]

Tactical warheads

Is raw ore enough to upgrade an ordinary warhead?

Answer: Yes, definitively.

Sorry, but a failed nuke does not "definitively" prove anything. Particularily when contradicted in later episodes.

Please notice that there were already able to get their hands on those amounts of naqahdah during season 1

Which means that they had less than a year to runs tests on experiments to learn the subtle properties of a completely alien material that isn't native to Earth, and which is why they're still trying to get the recipe right by season four.

which I think should prove enough that finding small quantities of raw naqahdah should not be a problem

The problem is that you need weapons grade. Sorry, but a statement referring to an unsuccessful nuke from the season two premier does not override what was explicitly clarified later on.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/weapons-grade

weapons-grade - of a quality adequate for use in weapons (especially in weapons of mass destruction); "weapons-grade plutonium"; "weapons-grade anthrax"

You're claiming that SGC can make working (e.g., sucessfully detonated) weapons from non-weapons grade materials. e.g., from raw ore that doesn't fit the definition of being adequate for this purpose.

In other words, your argument relies on a complete oxymoron. "A non weapons grade nuclear weapon." Sorry, but that's completely self-contradicting.

Yet, it's easy to notice how only a small amount of raw naqahdah is enough to make a 3 digits kiloton warhead jump to a one digit gigaton nuke.

It doesn't matter if it made it jump to a yield of infinity, the warhead was never tested, and the science behind it was later revised. You're citing from the same episode that introduced the idea of "two shots kill, a third shot distinegrates," which the writers later regretted and went back on because they released that the massive jump in required energy was completely implausible, and because it would become too much of a plot device.

Those yields exist since decades,

And are still in use.

and there is no single evidence that such low yield nukes have been used against alien capships

The Genii would beg to differ.

or that a 304 ever had such weaker nukes onboard

The same goes for your Goa'uld busters and space mines.

Here's a list of terran warheads used by the 304:

- SGA, The Siege part 3. They used on of the 304's numerous nukes to simulate Atlantis' destruction. All symptoms, from fireball size, growth, duration and height have proven that the nuke was in the megaton range.

Once again, your star wars calculator that you used to get that yeild is empirically denied reality. Right now, the entire world is freaking out because of the fact that NK has tested what was probably a sub-kiloton nuclear weapon, and probably not even a very successful one.

Which is funny, because two years ago, North Korea was producing mushroom clouds 4 km wide, which the SW calculator insists would amount to the multi-megaton range, despite the fact that there is no evidence of any nuclear weapon whatsoever. Obviously, mushroom clouds are a lot easier to produce than what your SW calculator claims.

- SGA, No Man's Land. The 304 fires a legion of nukes. Determining the yield directly is a hard thing to do, besides the mysterious and near 2 km wide fireball that has nothing to do with a flash

A fireball in the vacume of space? Doubtful.

However, later evidence showed that the hiveship was not strikingly damaged.

Or that it simply healed over the most damaged areas. Which we know that they can do, and in fact, would have had to have done in order to repair the Wraith hyperdrives (Since all of the damage there was external, and they didn't have access to their space suits).

Again, Occam's razor.

Though this has nothing to do with warheads you'd find as regular ammunition onboard a 304

Correct.

- In The Siege part 2, were 1.2 GT warheads

Sorry, but this is a list of "warheads used by the 304."

- SG-1, The Pegasus Project, where 26 MT warheads were used to make a wormhole jump from one gate to another.

Yes, a project that using non-tactical non-missiles that had plenty of time to consult the world community.

One of them was teleported inside the hiveship, which, amplified by internal explosions, literally vaporized it.

You're only assuming it was amplified.

The USA and allied governments have been using those warheads, and are still building them.

Still building which warheads? The warheads that are subject to internaitonal oversight and approval prior to use, or the warheads that aren't?

Spoilers reveal that...

Spoiler:

A weapon platform system, called Horizon, has been created and armed with six multi gigaton gatebusters to attack Asura.

Spoiler:

"But Elizabeth Weir is gravely concerned about the mission. Even if it is a great success, they will be starting a war -- a war against a very powerful enemy. And she will have to take drastic measures in order to save the city of Atlantis."

Interesting. Why, it's almost as though they were being consistent with her character!

Anyway, I see nothing on that page on the gatebusters, or anything that would preclude the international community from having to approve of its use.

there is actually no reason to fall back to weaker weapons when facing even more dangerous enemies, like the Wraith for example,

Well, the fact that weaker weapons can do the job just as well due to more efficient delivery systems, for one. The Genii nuke proves this. There's a big difference between being "weaker" in the sense of raw power, and "weaker" in the sense of actual effect. By the same token, a bullet to the head probably has less kinetic energy than a baseball bat to the head, but I don't think anyone would claim that bullets are less advanced. I mean, you're talking about a show where the government cut down the SGC budget by 70% after learning that they were going to have to deal with a galaxy full of ascended beings who were already setting up shop in the MW galaxy.

Tsar Bomba was 100 MT in 1961. Did Russia keep making bigger and bigger nukes in the 3 decades of cold war that followed, as US military technology continued to improve?

There's also the fact that since season two, the DEMAND for Naquadah has gone up astronomically, both for the sake of building ships, and for the sake of powering their generators. Given how rare refined Naquadah is (Vala was willing to trade the Prometheus for a case of it, Daniel's eyes practically pop out when he sees it), and given the fact that it has extremely useful purposes outside of making nukes, it doesn't make much sense to literally throw the stuff away on missions you don't need. I mean, it's like comparing the TV ratings for the top rated shows from 30 years ago, and assuming that the ratings for the top rated shows today must be exponentially higher, since there are so many more TVs. The problem is, this logic is faulty, because people today also have a lot more options to chose from. Just like SGC now has a lot more applications to use its naquadah for, compared to what it had back then.

then a nuke, even a kiloton one mind you, as it releases all its energy in a very quick fashion, would have completely obliterated at least the entire rear half of the hiveship seen in No Man's Land in the blink of an eye

Only if it released it's energy in the same way. It didn't. A nuke is designed to release it's energy omnidirectionally as radiation in varying wavelengths, the absorbsion rates of which will depend on the type of matter it comes into contact with. The Ancient satellite, by comparison, is a very focused weapon that releases some type of green energy, which is very different from the energy released by a nuke, and which would presumably be primed for taking out wraith hulls.

Drone independancy

Unless someone manages to prove that the issue ranges beyond a simple dilemna, there's no other choice than choose between Beckett or the drone's own program as the source of the agressive behaviour.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/falla...e-dilemma.html

Description of False Dilemma

A False Dilemma is a fallacy in which a person uses the following pattern of "reasoning":

Either claim X is true or claim Y is true (when X and Y could both be false).
Claim Y is false.
Therefore claim X is true.
This line of "reasoning" is fallacious because if both claims could be false, then it cannot be inferred that one is true because the other is false. That this is the case is made clear by the following example:

Either 1+1=4 or 1+1=12.
It is not the case that 1+1=4.
Therefore 1+1=12.

You already conceded that Beckett could influence the drone, thus conceding the one point relevant to the actual discussion (whether or not Jack could influence the drone to seek out weak points in King). Which, strangely, is something that you seem to have dropped entirely.

C4 and holes in wraith armor

I have posted two different pictures largely demonstrating that the so called kilometer wide holes were not created by the internal explosions, but already existed.

And the massive bits of hull that exploded outwards came from where?

Clearly not DET. Exotic all the way.

If it's not DET and relies entire on shield draining, then please explain the following:

http://www.stargatecaps.com/sg1/s9/9...amelot538.html
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sg1/s9/9...amelot540.html
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sg1/s9/9...amelot573.html
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sg1/s9/9...amelot574.html
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sg1/s9/9...amelot575.html
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sg1/s9/9...amelot579.html
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sg1/s9/9...amelot581.html
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sg1/s9/9...amelot584.html
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sg1/s9/9...amelot587.html

It's amazing how weapons completely lacking in firepower could result in such a large amount of internal damage and explosions, and later punch through the Korelev like it was made of tissue paper.

The beam does nothing to its target until the whole beam has finished hitting the target. It's not even a question of dispersing energy, it's just that there's nothing happening.

Right. Just like when I put popcorn in the microwave and I don't hear anything for the first minute or so. What's your point?

Or it's due to some kind of intense light diffusion when the beam was passing through the cloud, but that's absurd, since the beam itself isn't even blinding when directly starred. How could it diffuse enough light over hundreds of kilometers then?

Apparently the same reason the Wraith bolts can light up the clouds in Misbegotten, and why the Genii nuke can light up the clouds in "Siege."

Thanks for proving my point.

It also proves what someone else said earlier, about how a lot of the energy of the blast might have been lost in the atmosphere.

[Ouroboros]

Yet they don't seem to moving all that fast when actually leaving the ship.

They cover roughly a half to a full hive length in about a second. That's about 5-10km/s or 18,000-36,000 miles per hour. That's not slow, and even if you cut that in half or quarter it it's still massively faster than those shots in Sateda were.

In any case the idea that they'd pick up speed after leaving the ship (possible due to the planet's gravity) would actually just hurt your orbiting hive theory even further.

Could be a self-destruct sequence ala Aurora. We know that the Wraith aren't above that in dire situations. Even then, it still shouldn't have been able to light up clouds from orbit.

Remind me why this particular line of argument is even relevant again?

Which explains why John could wound one with C4, and why the Ori could do the same thing with their death beam.

John didn't wound anything with C4. It didn't stop the hiveship from taking off or seriously impair its function in any noticible way. All that seems to happen is some fires get started. In those comparitive pics that were posted it looks like half of that fire is actually in the woods near the hiveship and the other parts could very well be something that's growing on it catching on fire after the initial blasts as well. The thing was pretty much buried under a forrest. Those deep holes and impressions in its hull would collect all sorts of stray twigs and dry leaves that would go up like torches when lit. It even seemed to be a fall type season on that planet when they went there, with most trees devoid of leaves.

Look at the sequence when they blow the charges to escape from the cell in rising, or to kill the guards trying to help the keeper. No obvious damage is even done to the floor or walls of the hallways by the charges and you think they're going to be able to damage the external hull armour on their own?

That would lead to a conclusion that wraith floor tiles are stronger than Wraith hull armour.

Looking at the scene where the charges are actually set off outside the hiveship to, only one of them seems to be an actual internally orginating explosion. The other's just sort of blow up around it. Quickly scaling it off the trees to, the internally orginating one looks more like something you'd get if you blew up a truck full of C4 as opposed to a handful.

Obviously helped along by something internally volatile.

Which failed to successfully detonate.

Which proves what about the stated firepower exactly?

That would certainly explain why they seemed to have stopped with that strategy all throughout SG-1 since the initial incident. I suppose for the same reason that the airlines never attempted to build another spruce goose. Waste of resources, completely impractical, failure from the get go.

What ever are you on about now.

See Chain Reaction. Apparently, they were still in testing mode 3 seasons later, after discovering that necessity for and rarity of weapons grade naquadah, as opposed to relying entirely on raw ore.

They were experimenting with better quality naquada in the hope of getting better quality weapons. Are you basically arguing here that because they kept trying to improve the weapon technology that proves that it still didn't actually work as of season 3. So I guess all those thousands of nuclear tests the US performed after Hiroshima/Nagasaki prove that those bombs didn't work either huh.

But they were still using 10 kt nukes in season 8, and a low kt genii nuke was sucessfully used to blow up a hive ship.

When did they use a 10kt nuke against a hostile spacecraft? The method through which the geni nuke destroyed the hive is something that's been explained to you already I think 3 times now as well.

The space mines were supposed to hurt the Wraith from what would have to be a considerable proximity in order to be effective at geosynchronous orbit. The transport option and even the missile option are far more efficient at delivering their energy the the proximity mine option, and thus, would require far less power for the same amount of damage.

Without knowing the intended proximity and keeping in mind that the SGC had not knowledge of the resilience of Wraith hull armour at this point it's impossible to claim that this situation proves that distant proximity detonations are all that's necessary.

Obviously they do, or they would have forced SGA to be an international effort, they wouldn't be pushing SGC to share it's military technology, and you wouldn't see China proclaiming things like "This is unacceptable" in response the 304.

And yet they don't attempt to force the US to comply with these various treaties that you keep bringing up. THAT MEANS THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT THEM! I don't know how much simpler I can make it for you.

They may have concerns and reservations about the stargate program but they're evidnetly not the same concerns and reservations you're attempting to ascribe them.

I base my analysis both on what's been established in the show, and by established real world behavior

If you were doing that you wouldn't be looking at the SGC exploding various gigaton level nukes and then coming onto a message board and arguing with people that the SGC does not infact, use gigaton level nukes, because of cold war era treaties that deal with testing limitations.

I guess so. Now do yo have an actual response, or are you just going to point out that even though I can list treaties proving my point, they aren't treaties specific to Antartica?

I'm thinking I should just post a definition of the word jurisdiction at this point.

You know I could post an article about dog grooming and say that it proved my point that hiveships had asguard level hyperdrives and shot exploding ZPMs. That wouldn't actually make it true though.

Here's what it all boils down to:

You, for some reason or another, really don't like the idea of Wraith hiveships being powerful enough to withstand an attack from an amraam missile let alone a nuke, canon be damned it seems.

Just a couple of things to deal with here.

1) The US has ready access to low yield nukes already available sitting by and collecting dust

Which can, and likely are, regularly modified into the high yeild variety jsut by adding small amounts of naquada.

2) In order to build enhanced nukes, you need refined naquadah, as opposed to raw naquadah

This is just a false statement as the quotes from Mr. Oragahn prove.

8) Your argument is based on the entirely circular idea that they use high yield weaponry because that's what they need, and that they need high yeild weaponry because that's what they've used. If there's more, feel free.

No my idea of high yeild nukes vs capships is based on precident, which then leads logically to the idea that, based on precident gigaton/high megaton nukes must be what they think is required for an effective anti-capship nuke.

If you want a real example of a circular argument here's one

7) My argument for them being low end is based on the fact that enhanced naquadah weapons aren't necessary for the primary delivery mechanism (transport), since even a low end nuke will do. Further, low end weapons give more options for precision strikes, and more efficient energy distribution according to the inverse square law. It doesn't make much sense to enhance weapons that don't need to be enhanced, when those same resources would be better used elsewhere.

Is it possible to come up with a scifi energy weapon that isn't exotic?

Yeah, but most SFX guys don't seem to know how to do it properly.

Sandstone would have a tendency to disperse energy. Think of it as a three dimensional spillway that acts on a molecular level. Energy continues to build and build evenly throughout, until finally it builds too far and the dam shatters, thus resulting in overexcited molecules and the resulting explosion.

That is not how direct energy transfer works.

It should change states as energy is applied to it, gradually or suddenly depending on the amount and the timeframe. It shouldn't remain completely untouched and then suddenly explode when the bolt is almost finished hitting it.

[Schrodinger82]

John didn't wound anything with C4. It didn't stop the hiveship from taking off or seriously impair its function in any noticible way. All that seems to happen is some fires get started.

And blow out massive quantities of hull.

Look at the sequence when they blow the charges to escape from the cell in rising, or to kill the guards trying to help the keeper. No obvious damage is even done to the floor or walls of the hallways by the charges and you think they're going to be able to damage the external hull armour on their own?

No, simply that whatever the C4 could do, the Ori beam can do better.

Obviously helped along by something internally volatile.

So why were the people inside affected?

Which proves what about the stated firepower exactly?

That it was never successfully tested, and later contradicted by future episodes.

What ever are you on about now.

You argue that the SGC would keep the yields at an arbitrary level so that they can successfully do X with them. I point out that they don't do X anymore to begin with, so X isn't a strong motivation towards keeping yields to that arbitrary level.

They were experimenting with better quality naquada in the hope of getting better quality weapons.

Yes, and in this case, the "better quality weapons" weren't even able to destroy the stargate, which we know from PP to be in the 26 MT range.

Further, weapons grade naquadah, by definition, is defined as the type of material that would be adequate from making WMDs from. Anything that fell short of that would be inadequate. So if your point is that "they were trying to make weapons out of materials that weren't woefully inadequate by definition," then yes, I would agree with you. Where I don't agree with you is that you could quickly and easily make a super powerful nuke out of the inadequate materials.

Are you basically arguing here that because they kept trying to improve the weapon technology that proves that it still didn't actually work as of season 3. So I guess all those thousands of nuclear tests the US performed after Hiroshima/Nagasaki prove that those bombs didn't work either huh.

It depends on what they were testing for.

Bauer: The Pentagon feels that the Stargate project, while exposing Earth to considerable danger has yet to produce any practical returns. Now we've been working on a device designed specifically to take advantage of this Naquada enhancing effect.

Why would Bauer complain that SGC had "yet to produce any practical returns," if past nukes had already proven successful? What was he planning to gain from this test that they didn't have already?

When did they use a 10kt nuke against a hostile spacecraft? The method through which the geni nuke destroyed the hive is something that's been explained to you already I think 3 times now as well.

Yes, and it's been the primary delivery mechanism for nukes throughout almost all of season 2. Even after SGA knows that the Wraith can jam them, their first thought is always, "Well, let's try to beam them in anyway!", and then they quickly give up when they realize, again, that the Wraith are jamming them.

The method that you explain on how a low end nuke can be used to destroy a hive ship can just as easily be explained to SGC, who could then fall back on using less powerful weapons.

Without knowing the intended proximity

Far enough to be protect Atlantis from 35,000 km away. Far enough so that the Wraith weren't comfortable with simply flying around them or shooting them down, and felt the need to fly all the way to the asteroid belt and start performing a game of cosmic monkey ball with their tractor beams.

and keeping in mind that the SGC had not knowledge of the resilience of Wraith hull armour at this point

Which would mean that they would have no reason to object to using low KT weapons. You can't have it both ways. If SGC underestimated the Wraith hive ships in the Siege, then there's no reason why they wouldn't continue the Wraith hive ships throughout season two. If SGC hadn't understimated the Wraith in "The Siege," then their estimates must have been accurate.

And yet they don't attempt to force the US to comply with these various treaties that you keep bringing up.

So China complains that an interceptor capable of both aerial and space assualt because...?

THAT MEANS THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT THEM!

Again, circular reasoning. Maybe they don't bring up the treaty because (ta-da) the US isn't currently violating them.

The difference is, my scenario would be consistent with both real world politics and stargate politics. The concept of a nuclear arms race and prisoners dilema is a very real phenemon, and the overall effect on international policy is undeniable. The only thing that your scenario is consistent is the very conclusion you're hoping to prove.

They may have concerns and reservations about the stargate program but they're evidnetly not the same concerns and reservations you're attempting to ascribe them.

Hard to be concerned over something that hasn't been shown to happen.

Obviously, they DO care about the treaties, or they wouldn't constantly demand that the US share all technology with them. If that includes the 302 and 304, then they'll want their own 302s and 304s as well (The latter of which Russia actually managed to receive, thanks to China's help.). If that includes high yield tactical for personal purposes, then they'll want that as well, which the US explicitly does not want. You still haven't answered the question of the nuke yield on the Korelev.

If you were doing that you wouldn't be looking at the SGC

BEAU BRIDGES: Stargate is a science fiction show, but, uh, it has a real feel. That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about it. For instance, the Air Force, the real Air Force, is very involved. They give their blessing to all the stories, and so there’s a certain responsibility to, uh, reality.

Complain to him.

You know I could post an article about dog grooming and say that it proved my point that hiveships had asguard level hyperdrives and shot exploding ZPMs. That wouldn't actually make it true though.

Right, because I just made all those treaties up. Reagan wasn't even a real president, he was entirely a product of my imagination. Same thing with the entire nuclear arms race in general, that never happened. Obviously, there's absolutely no correlation that anyone could possibly draw between the escalation in nuclear weapons that already occured in history, and the escalation of nuclear weapons that could occur on the show. Science fiction has never attempted to reflected the political climate of the world we live in. Ever.

Which can, and likely are, regularly modified into the high yeild variety jsut by adding small amounts of naquada.

Really? You've quantified it? How much naquadah? How much time and work does it take to upgrade the warheads?

This is just a false statement as the quotes from Mr. Oragahn prove.

Oh yes, the oxymoronic "super powerful, super easy, super cost effective non weapons grade nuclear weapon" argument.

Sorry, but you're trying to insist on something that, by definition, would have to be false, despite the fact that the writers appear to have since revised their stance on the matter by saying that SGC "has yet to produce any practical returns".

No my idea of high yeild nukes vs capships is based on precident,

Which failed to detonate. Further, I have precedents of my own, which are far more relevant to the actual delivery mechanism.

If you want a real example of a circular argument here's one

Really? Feel free to describe the conclusion I'm trying to prove which is already assumed to be true within the premise that attempts to prove it.

[Ouroboros]

Hiveship vs C4

The sequence from Rising shows 1 charge that seems to penetrate from the inside of the hull to the outside with an explosion and some hull debris visible flying away. The explosion is also far too large to be the result of any man-portable amount of C4.

The only sensible conclusion then is that something helped the explosion to grow in size and power to what was seen. The blast was the result of some sort of secondary explosion that the C4 just set off. Something like might occur if Ford or someone else placed some C4 on a fuel tank or ammo store inside the Wraith ship.

Nuke Yeilds and Precident

There have been two instances of nukes used (directly) against spacecraft to date both of which have been low gigaton level.

In response to this you now seem to be saying that the Goa'uld busters wouldn't have actually worked because all the scientists who built them, and the canon statements about them were actually wrong. That instead we should beleive your entirely unsupported, twistingly elaborate and entirely self-serving speculation as the actual truth.

Sorry, no sale.

Treaties

You've talked a great deal of distraction about this topic, as is your way, but never once have you attempted to indicate where in the Antarctic treaty it limits nuclear yeilds to the range you find satisfactory.

You've also failed entirely to show how these cold war treaties you keep bringing up actually limit the SGC in the show. You've complained and speculated that they should, which is in itself extremely dubious do to jurisdictional issues, but you've never once actually shown how they HAVE.

On one side of the scale we have your speculation that the SGC can't use gigaton level weapons because cold war era treaties forbid it. On the other side we have the SGC actually using gigaton level weapons numerous times in the canon events of the series.

Guess which side wins.

Spoiler:

They're also currently, despite these vaunted treaties of yours, building a platform containing multiple multi gigaton MKIX nuclear missiles to attack the Asurans.

[Schrodinger82]

Hiveship vs C4

The sequence from Rising shows 1 charge that seems to penetrate from the inside of the hull to the outside with an explosion and some hull debris visible flying away. The explosion is also far too large to be the result of any man-portable amount of C4.

And too small too be in the multi-KT, MT, or GT range, evident in the fact that John had absolutely no problem finding an escape route.

Nuke Yeilds and Precident

There have been two instances of nukes used (directly) against spacecraft to date both of which have been low gigaton level.

Yes, one example failed to detonate, the other was meant to detonate by proximity fuse.

In response to this you now seem to be saying that the Goa'uld busters wouldn't have actually worked because all the scientists who built them, and the canon statements about them were actually wrong. That instead we should beleive your entirely unsupported, twistingly elaborate and entirely self-serving speculation as the actual truth.

No, you should believe what SGC was saying about the technology 3 years later, which is that weapons grade naquadah (e.g., the type of naquadah you can make weapons from) has to be refined, and is extremely rare. This is about as antithetical to "raw ore" as you can get.

Treaties

You've also failed entirely to show how these cold war treaties you keep bringing up actually limit the SGC in the show.

These cold war treaties regulate nuclear proliferation. Naquadah enhanced tactical weapons would proliferate more powerful nukes. Not exactly rocket science.

You've complained and speculated that they should, which is in itself extremely dubious do to jurisdictional issues, but you've never once actually shown how they HAVE.

You've never shown that that I would have to, by proving the yeild of the Mark IIIs and Mark VIII tacticals.

On the other side we have the SGC actually using gigaton level weapons numerous times in the canon events of the series.

Yes, in situation that would be open to international oversight. This does not apply to the Daeadalus, however, which only answers to the President.

[Dragon_Heart]

Ok, so this is where you can basically put all and any versus battles, fanwank, fancanon, it doesnt matter, slap it in the thread, and get talking about it.

I made this because the versus threads are littered everywhere on this section, and they make the board move to quickly for anything to do with science and tech to get noticed and discussed thoroughly. It's not an attack on anyone who made them, its just to keep this section tidier. So use this sticky please, thanks

[timstro59]

ok how about that 3000 aruoras vs. 360 million borg cubes.
would'nt last long would it?

[Spimman]

Combining them all into sounds confusing.