Re: [HoE] Re: Tech Level

[Pat Phalen <pphalen@yahoo.com>]

> But in HOE wouldn't the "cold war" (between the USA and the CSA)
still have
> been going on up until the end? After all, the Mason-Dixon Wall was
still
> up when the bombs fell...

I'll admit that I haven't read Wasted West yet, so I don't have a good
picture of the ongoing hostilities between the USA and CSA....
> 
> Aren't most military electronics shielded against EMP?

Depends on the application, but, generally, most devices are only
sheilded against Tactical Nukes.  The things that are (allegedly)
shielded against Strategic level EMP are prohibitively expensive.  It
is also difficult to truly ascertain if devices are fully EMP
protected, as most of t his work is now being done through analysis
rather than atual teste (Detonating nukes is very un-PC these days)

> 
> As I stated a few months ago, I still feel that the weapons tech
should be
> more advanced. Maybe not a lot of energy weapons, but certainly more
> caseless ammo, ETC ammo, flechette weapons, etc...

I'm not sure I believe that they would be too much more advanced.  Wwe
are currently reaching (reached?) the point of diminishing returns. 
The army has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 20
years tying to design a weapon to replace the M-16.  They aren't much
closer to selecting a new design.  Their goal was very small: in a
combat situation, the M-16 has about a 5-10% effectiveness.  They
wanted to raise that to 15% and are just starting to come close to
that.  The problem is that it isn;t cost effective (I used to be a
systems analyst for the army, and had to calculate morbid measure like
cost/kill)

Look at it this way:  100 years ago a gun was probably the most
effective wasy of killing a person.  Today it still is.  Granted a
Glock is slightly more tecnologically advanced than a PeaceMaker, but
they pretty much do the same thing.
> 
> With the addition of mad science more exotic weapons could be
perfected...

Problem is, IMNSHO, mad science is "clunky"   At my last job, we could
prototype amazing systems.  The problem ws that they were about twice
the size and weight that a pilot wanted on his airframe, and used more
power than was allowable!  I see Mad Science as the same, especially
since I go with the steam-tech angle....

> In "The Real World" the Germans during WW2 were developing sound based
> weapons (they had a working ultrasonic cannon that could kill at
several
> 100 yards), cannons which fired compressed water vapor (which could
destroy
> an aircraft at 1000 feet), and an artillery shell which could create a
> small tornado... They eventually gave up on this research for various
> reasons (the vortex shell only worked under certain weather
conditions, the
> sound and water vapor cannons were too big and immobile), but with the
> addition of mad science these devices could possibly have been made
> practical. If so then they certainly would have been refined over
the next
> couple of 100 years.

Of course, you would be losing your great minds at a quicker rate due
to mad science, which would tend to slow down development.

Patrick

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