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Re: [GZG] Invading Mars (was FTverse colinies)

From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@g...>
Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 20:28:01 -0500
Subject: Re: [GZG] Invading Mars (was FTverse colinies)

On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 4:54 PM,  <Beth.Fulton@csiro.au> wrote:

> The KV apparently want a foot hold in the Sol system. They also
> apparently want a planet-side base of operations rather than simply
> building/taking over a dome on an asteroid or moon. They seem to have
> decided Earth is too big to take in the first step so they have dived
on
> Mars instead.
>
> Now fire away - feel free to tell me why that was a dumb decision on
the
> KV's part (or maybe why it was the right one). If you want to say how
> you'd take Mars I'm all ears too.

Question 1:  Has Mars been terraformed enough that humans can survive
outside of a domed or underground city for more than a few minutes
with minimal equipment?

Question 2: Has Mars been terraformed enough that Kra'Vak can survive
outside of a domed or underground city for more than a few minutes
with minimal equipment?

Question 3: What is the objective of the Kra'Vak in 'taking' Mars?

Question 4 and 4b: What is the human settlement pattern and population
distribution like?  How are far-flung colonies connected (both
physical transportation and information flow)?

Question 5a and following: What, if any, logistical resources are
available for the Kra'Vak to take over and consume to support their
invasion forces, or are they going to have to import every liter of
water they drink?  We know they use gauss weapons, which means they
should (to my mind) need precision-machined slugs of ferrous metal to
fire.  Is ammo something that you can turn out on with equipment
organic to the military unit if they should capture a stock of human
steel?	Are the vehicles thirsty hydrocarbon guzzlers, or (more likely
for expeditionary forces whether human or Kra'Vak) fusion engines that
run on distilled water?  Can the Kra'Vak machinery use lubricants
captured in human garages, or do they need something specially
formulated?  What do Kra'Vak eat, and can they survive on
requisitioned human food?  Do they consider human combat casualties
field rations?

If I only want to take the orbital elevator and the surrounding area
in a 100km radius, do I need to either hold or destroy a major urban
area with 1 million inhabitants and 4 million in surrounding area, or
do I just need to take a town with a population of 5,000, and blow the
monorail lines that connect them to the rest of the planet?  If I
shoot down the commo satellites, drop a nuke on every major spaceport,
and take what territory I actually care about holding, is it going to
take the relief force from the biggest mining colony six months to get
there?	Imagine if the orbital elevator was in Kenya, and the nearest
major city was in Cairo, how long would it take to march a mliitary
unit across howling wilderness?  Planets are vast, and I think a lot
of the discussions have been ignoring that single significant factor.

Personally, if I were an invading species with no moral or ethical
objection to exterminating my competitor species en masse, a colony
with domed cities would have a non-persistent neurotoxin dumped into
the air processing system to forestall guerilla warfare, for those
installations I felt I needed to take intact and not just drop a Mach
20 crowbar on it from orbit, cracking the shell and turning all the
inhabitants inside out.

Guerilla war only matters if your opponent has a reason to keep the
civilian populace alive and sufficient incentive in the form of
domestic political pressure to actually bother differentiating between
guerillas and noncombatants.  Otherwise, it's Central Asian Muslims
vs. Ghengis Khan, and that did NOT work out well for the Muslims.
Personally, I don't think it will work a damn on aliens because they
simply don't have an objection to eradicating entire populations of
humans if it's more convenient that way.

John
-- 
"Thousands of Sarmatians, Thousands of Franks, we've slain them again
and again. We're looking for thousands of Persians."
--Vita Aureliani

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