I Just Painted That Barn!

[Shyal_malkes]

I'd like to see a fire storm as a pokemon move.

but then, I'd like to see a low level tactical nuclear device as a pokemon move.

[Sharuuk]

ok, so what if the fire weren't heading outwards but inwards, surrounding the area the tornado already was?

either way, high speed winds, lots of oxygen, plenty of fuel, and a little luck and you've got a massively fast (and probably hot) fire going.

You've just described fire storm....or more precisely a fire voretx. I saw a massive one just after a 3-bird napalm strike in VN. The spinning vortex climbed to over 1000ft and lasted for almost 2 minutes. I was over a mile away, could feel the heat strongly, and it had the most eerie "howling" roar I've ever heard. It wasn't the F-4's, they were alread gone and the sound is completely different. Not like the "freight-train" or "jet engine" roar of a regular tornado, this thing had an actual tone to it.....and the fire itself on the ground was nearly yellow-white in it's intensity.....burning trees and huge pieces of flaming debris was being sucked up into this thing and I could even feel the self generating wind it was creating as it pulled more and more air into itself. It was incredible....facinating, terrifying, and in a strange way, beautiful all at the same time.......and nothing could get away from it. And then it was gone....just like that......and with it about 3/4 square mile of jungle.

Unbelievable sight...

S'aaruuk

And I can picture you in your Arthur Brown Nomex suit, sitting at the keyboard of this.

Oh MAN would I LOVE to sit and play at the keyboard of the LHPO.. ..or the DANTE ORGAN for that matter.....I be happy just to SEE them in operation but I just can't afford the shekels for the trip to Germany.

S'aaruuk

[Sharuuk]

I'd like to see a fire storm as a pokemon move.

but then, I'd like to see a low level tactical nuclear device as a pokemon move.

Now....you see? You're just at weird as I am.....I would have LOVED to have been around to have seen some of our above ground nuclear tests and seen the first air dropped Thermonuke (H-bomb) the "Baker" on Bikini Atoll.

Of course I'd never want us to have to be forced to use one against another nation again, but to actually witness the indescribable power and see that giant incandescent mushroom cloud rising..............what a sight and what an experience!

S'aaruuk

[Shyal_malkes]

I wonder if it's possible to make a weapon that intentionally creates a fire storm, it wouldn't be nuclear, because the prevailing wind is inwards it wouldn't be very likely to cause widespread damage (ie forest fires, prarie fires etc) and yet it could cook virtually any enemy emplacement within it's effective range and boundries (not to mention that those who've not seen it before might think we've unleashed some unholy deamon to do it and freak out!) and make a decent homing beakon in times of distress.

ok, so the homing beakon is a bit overkill but seriously if we could make some way to make these things it might prove a usefull alternative to the A-bomb, no nuclear waste to last for generations mutating each generation along the way.

is it right to refer to a power of destruction as indestructable?

[Sharuuk]

A true firestorm can and does generate winds up to 400mph coming in from all points of the compass. Most firestorms are born from multiple other fires.

Think of a target shape with the rings comprised of multiple fires and the bullseye a cluster of small fires forming one large fire. This larger fire with start creating a draft drawing air into itself while the collective rising heat from the other fires is drawn toward and adds to the more central column of rising air. This cycle continues to increase, more air, hotter fire, creating more rising air, drawing in more air, etc. until a sort of "critical mass" is reached in the reaction and the cycle suddenly accelerates in an almost exponential curve. Air is drawn toward the central fire column at upwards of 3-400mph carrying everything in it's path along with it. And the central temp will sometimes reach 12-1500+ degrees. That's a true firestorm and during WWII when we rained incendiaries down on Japan, most of those cities disappeared in firestorms simply due to the wood and paper construction of most of the structures.

As far as a powerful non-nuclear weapon, we already have one....the FAB or "Fuel-Air Bomb". The largest of these was the MOAB and before that "Big Blue 52" the "Daisy Cutter". These are the most powerful non-nuke weapon in use today. Incredible blast damage without radiation and very little fire damage.

S'aaruuk

[Squeaky Bunny]

I'd like to see a fire storm as a pokemon move.

but then, I'd like to see a low level tactical nuclear device as a pokemon move.

Now....you see? You're just at weird as I am.....I would have LOVED to have been around to have seen some of our above ground nuclear tests and seen the first air dropped Thermonuke (H-bomb) the "Baker" on Bikini Atoll.

Of course I'd never want us to have to be forced to use one against another nation again, but to actually witness the indescribable power and see that giant incandescent mushroom cloud rising..............what a sight and what an experience!

S'aaruuk

There were two Indians watching the mushroom cloud of an atomic test rising in the distant desert. One looked at the other and commented, "I wish I had said that!"

[UncleMonty]

I wonder if it's possible to make a weapon that intentionally creates a fire storm, it wouldn't be nuclear, because the prevailing wind is inwards it wouldn't be very likely to cause widespread damage (ie forest fires, prarie fires etc) and yet it could cook virtually any enemy emplacement within it's effective range and boundries (not to mention that those who've not seen it before might think we've unleashed some unholy deamon to do it and freak out!) and make a decent homing beakon in times of distress.

ok, so the homing beakon is a bit overkill but seriously if we could make some way to make these things it might prove a usefull alternative to the A-bomb, no nuclear waste to last for generations mutating each generation along the way.

is it right to refer to a power of destruction as indestructable?

Dresden Germany, in WWII, might fit your specifications...

[Tbolt]

On the topic of fiery death and destruction: how would you take a thing like that out? Is there a way to stop something like that before it burnt itself out naturally?

Sometimes I wonder just what humanity could accomplish if we could just pull our heads out of our collective backsides. When I look at the recent series of disasters to strike the world, the tsunami in Thailand, the various hurricanes in the Atlantic, the earthquake in Pakistan, sometimes I wonder if this is God

[StrangeWulf13]

Sometimes I wonder just what humanity could accomplish if we could just pull our heads out of our collective backsides.

Probably something like the Towel of Babel. God nipped that little project right in the bud, didn't He? One language becomes many languages. Pretty clever.

[Fusion]

A majority of humanity coming together will only happen during the Tribulation. The problem is, as long as there are differences among us, there will always be those who don't accept them.

[RHJunior]

You know, there is one big assumption being made by people who talk about the Tower of Babel and the Tribulation--- namely, that it was humanity's unity at those times that angered God.

The reason God dispersed the people at Babel was because <I>they were abandoning him.</i> The "tower to heaven" wasn't just a really really tall tower...OT scholars and translators believe that it was intended as a center of pagan and occultic worship--- astrology and other practices.

[Shyal_malkes]

I've noticed that the tower of babel story leaves many details out, as though the writers were merely referencing to a story that they knew everyone had heard in detail elsewhere or that the details could be had elsewhere.

sometimes I wish we knew where the debris was so we could figure out just how tall they managed to get it.

it is amazing what people can do with a little engineering skill, a creative mind, a lot of time on their hands, and many generations of slave labor at their disposal.

the pyramids are amongst those I wonder about, I also wonder about how many ancient wonders have existed previously that time and the earth have destroyed that we haven't even learned about yet.

[The JAM]

[...unWARP!]

Good evening.


Theory:

Human intelligence, like everything else, is subject to entropy. Hence, humans 5,000 years ago were more intelligent than those of today.


That would explain why some of the extremely ancient languages are practically impossible to decipher today, even with computer assistance, and why even with modern machinery, some ancient monuments are practically impossible to recreate.


Then again, there are those who say that the aliens did it...

[Fusion]

If anything contidics evolution, people will try to explain it away with odd reasons that noone in their right mind would belive. Unforchantly, there are very few of us in our right mind.

[Sharuuk]

Hey.....I'm left handed.....that puts me in my right mind!

S'aaruuk

[Shyal_malkes]

then where's your left?

[Maxgoof]

I sometimes wonder if the languages split up because each guild got so involved in their own jargon that they couldn't communicate with anyone else.

I mean, ever talked to a computer geek, and try and have him explain to a novice how a computer works? His head would explode.

It could be that the carpenter's guild, and the mason's guild, and the royalty, and the slave laborers all developed thier own jargon for things, to the point that they simply could no longer communicate with each other.

[Shyal_malkes]

while I am normally not one to try and downplay a "miracle" yet I know god follows his own laws and therefore did it somehow (just maybe not in a somehow we may understand yet)

that said it may have been something chemical or disease related, possibly a nerve toxin that effected the speech portions of the brain. you knew what you were saying, but nobody else could understand you.

[Kerry Skydancer]

Theory:

Human intelligence, like everything else, is subject to entropy. Hence, humans 5,000 years ago were more intelligent than those of today.


That would explain why some of the extremely ancient languages are practically impossible to decipher today, even with computer assistance, and why even with modern machinery, some ancient monuments are practically impossible to recreate.

That's not a theory. Theories are solid testable sets of ideas making verified predictions. This is more in the nature of a hypothesis at best. In any event, intelligence is not an energy state, and is therefore not directly subject to the laws of thermodynamics.

I am curious as to which languages are 'impossible to decipher'. As far as I am aware, the only one for which this is still true is Linear B, simply because there is not enough data to analyze. Heiroglyphic Egyptian is starting to succumb to the codebreaker's assaults now that they've realized that it isn't consistent between any two scribes, and the Mayan and Aztec scripts were broken decades ago. I saw an article recently about someone working on the Inca knot-script, too.

And as for the ancient monuments - don't confuse 'we don't know how they did it' with 'we can't do it ourselves.' There's nothing the ancients put together that we couldn't duplicate ourselves if we wanted to bother spending the money.

[Fusion]

Well, how did they move those stones that our modern equipment can't? They say they made the stones float on water with sound. For years they thought that was imposible untill NASA started floating quatters with sound.