The Malarkies
04-12-2003, 06:40
As part of our nation's 3rd massive educational revival in as many years, Malarkey University was given a very large research grant to study a proposal it called "New Physics."
Now that out primary attention has turned toward our economy, we are selling the more ... practical results of this technological paradigm in order to raise capital.
Three new engineering applications seemed to be both the most promising, and the least dangerous to society at large, and have now been put up for sale.
Please note we are selling technology, not large numbers of individual units. They are, however, well documented, and easily reverse-engineered for the more industrial-minded. This should increase the general capability of your army.
1. Azure Defense Shield (ADS)
You get: 4 prototypes. "City-sized" model, "Personal defense" model, and 2 corresponding "non-functional" models to aid in reverse-engineering
Working on the concept of the force field at MIT, which is impractical except as a laboratory phenomenon, the blue-tinted ADS produces a useful defense shielding, however with large limitations.
It is not a force field, it does not stop projectiles: it slows them down by an order of magnitude. This means hyper-fast-moving objects, like space-based weapons, can easily penetrate, although causing less damage. Also, even though guns and lasers cannot penetrate, particle beams, such as star wars-style blasters, can, if someone has developed a way to use such technology effectively.
It is not a wall: Since slow-moving objects are unaffected. It is child's play to simply march troops through the barrier. Since persons can walk back and forth through it with no ill effect, the best way to defeat the shield is a simple ground assault. The shield will, however, stop planes, tanks, and most other fast-moving vehicles, if not directly, then by choking their engines. Although, with tanks, they can be rolled across and restarted.
The shield is also worthless at stopping arrows, catapults, or any low-tech, slow-moving weapons.
It is a power hog, requiring generous amounts of electricity at larger sizes (~10kwatts/hour for a tank-sized shield), limiting its use to vehicles or larger. Following the inverse-square law, it takes 4 times as much power to guard twice the surface area.
It also drains more energy as it stops more projectiles, possibly draining any batteries. While its maximum strength is technically infinite, it will eventually overload and cease entirely if bombed with several hundred objects at once, or with one "super-bomb."
The shield must be sphere-shaped, the center of which is the object producing the shield. Two shields are allowed to overlap to form a peanut shape, if narrow objects are desired. However, each shield-let will be completely independent of the other, saving no energy, and possibly restricting the left side of a plane from communicating with the right, as the left side's signals get trapped in the right-side's shield, and visa-versa.
It produces a recognizable blue tint around the edges. Most military personnel will immediately recognize that something's there. Combined with a several-hour "boot up" time, it is impossible to produce such a shield as a surprise, or to put one up "in an emergency." It can still be used to stop ICBMs, however, since they require several hours of air travel.
A larger shield or larger resistive anti-force requires a larger engine. To protect something the size of a military base, you would require a shed-sized "shield building." (Which, I will note, can be sabotaged.) The trade off for that, though: A larger shield can stop more force. Such a large shield can stop shells, bombs, bazookas, mortars, and most anything else that can be thrown at it, but will drain the batteries quickly. A tank-sized shield won't stop much more than the shells of other tanks. A city-sized shield would have to be epic, but could theoretically stop even some "city-busters" like MOAB or a tactical nuke (although they probably wouldn't stop strategic nukes and definitely not H-bombs, unless you built a national shield or something, in which case I'd hate to see your power bill.)
As our economy develops, we will subcontract the technology and mass-produce shields for our less-scientifically or less-industrial neighbors to purchase and have installed for them.
2. Retroprotovirus (Oh-3)
You get: a few dozen sample strains and three stasis pods (which are easy enough to build themselves even without the technology)
Retroprotovirus (or protoretrovirus) is used in more advanced hospitals to cure any weaponized biological threat. Once a swab is taken of a body's "helpful" bacteria, the patient spends many hours in a stasis chamber where the virus kills or changes back anything not matching the person's native DNA. Helpful intestinal bacteria is then reintroduced. Because of this secondary reintroducing procedure, protoretrovirus cannot be administered "in the field" but is immensely helpful to the general population.
As a downside, protoretrovirus will kill the body's own cells, if their DNA is sufficiently corrupted by another virus. While not a deterrent with the usual small quantities of such cells, within 3 days or so of exposure, it is impossible to "cure" patients with such a virus, or with those viruses that have a long incubation period, such as HIV. Bacteria have no such limitation.
As an upside, protoretrovirus cannot itself be weaponized, as it needs a template DNA to work from. The worst it can do is cure an uninfected patient, who will need replacement helpful bacteria that are easily cultured. It is possible to kill someone with protoretrovirus if you get them into the stasis chamber and administer someone else's treatment directly, but it would be far easier to shoot them at that point. Releasing protoretrovirus into the air or water should have no effect whatsoever.
3. Tripole signals.
You get: 3 tripole signal generators and 3 receivers.
Used mainly for getting radio signals in and out of ADSes, these "shield radars" can detect the distance to the shield, and manipulate the wavelength of signals so that their null points (where amplitude is zero) coincide with the shield, allowing electromagnetic signals to penetrate the shield.
No matter how well you encode or encrypt a standard bipole signal, the enemy at least knows a message of some kind was sent, possibly giving away covert ops (hence, radio silence in spy missions.) With tripole signals, you can additionally nullify the enemy's receiving antenna, so they don't even know you're there sending something. Radio silence while you talk, too!
This can theoretically be used to get lasers through shields too, but we are keeping that technology secret for the time being, although tech-minded nation-states might be able to figure it out on their own. (And, this action can be defeated by shrinking the field slightly, allowing only a few quick volleys into critical areas.)
Cost: 100M kudos per technological prototype, 250M for all 3. (Our kudo is ~2X the value of a Euro or U.S. dollar for currency comparisons.) Prices for ready-to-use technology units will be set once we have them ... ready to use.
We take payment in the form of national currency (Treasury) bonds, so we can continue to maintain a high exchange rate with our currency, even though our companies are now doing a lot of exporting.
If you must wire money, wire it in the form of temporary debt instruments so we don't shake up our economic revival. The bonds and debt instruments will be redeemed once our economy is up and running.
- Sim, ambassador of the Malarkies.
Now that out primary attention has turned toward our economy, we are selling the more ... practical results of this technological paradigm in order to raise capital.
Three new engineering applications seemed to be both the most promising, and the least dangerous to society at large, and have now been put up for sale.
Please note we are selling technology, not large numbers of individual units. They are, however, well documented, and easily reverse-engineered for the more industrial-minded. This should increase the general capability of your army.
1. Azure Defense Shield (ADS)
You get: 4 prototypes. "City-sized" model, "Personal defense" model, and 2 corresponding "non-functional" models to aid in reverse-engineering
Working on the concept of the force field at MIT, which is impractical except as a laboratory phenomenon, the blue-tinted ADS produces a useful defense shielding, however with large limitations.
It is not a force field, it does not stop projectiles: it slows them down by an order of magnitude. This means hyper-fast-moving objects, like space-based weapons, can easily penetrate, although causing less damage. Also, even though guns and lasers cannot penetrate, particle beams, such as star wars-style blasters, can, if someone has developed a way to use such technology effectively.
It is not a wall: Since slow-moving objects are unaffected. It is child's play to simply march troops through the barrier. Since persons can walk back and forth through it with no ill effect, the best way to defeat the shield is a simple ground assault. The shield will, however, stop planes, tanks, and most other fast-moving vehicles, if not directly, then by choking their engines. Although, with tanks, they can be rolled across and restarted.
The shield is also worthless at stopping arrows, catapults, or any low-tech, slow-moving weapons.
It is a power hog, requiring generous amounts of electricity at larger sizes (~10kwatts/hour for a tank-sized shield), limiting its use to vehicles or larger. Following the inverse-square law, it takes 4 times as much power to guard twice the surface area.
It also drains more energy as it stops more projectiles, possibly draining any batteries. While its maximum strength is technically infinite, it will eventually overload and cease entirely if bombed with several hundred objects at once, or with one "super-bomb."
The shield must be sphere-shaped, the center of which is the object producing the shield. Two shields are allowed to overlap to form a peanut shape, if narrow objects are desired. However, each shield-let will be completely independent of the other, saving no energy, and possibly restricting the left side of a plane from communicating with the right, as the left side's signals get trapped in the right-side's shield, and visa-versa.
It produces a recognizable blue tint around the edges. Most military personnel will immediately recognize that something's there. Combined with a several-hour "boot up" time, it is impossible to produce such a shield as a surprise, or to put one up "in an emergency." It can still be used to stop ICBMs, however, since they require several hours of air travel.
A larger shield or larger resistive anti-force requires a larger engine. To protect something the size of a military base, you would require a shed-sized "shield building." (Which, I will note, can be sabotaged.) The trade off for that, though: A larger shield can stop more force. Such a large shield can stop shells, bombs, bazookas, mortars, and most anything else that can be thrown at it, but will drain the batteries quickly. A tank-sized shield won't stop much more than the shells of other tanks. A city-sized shield would have to be epic, but could theoretically stop even some "city-busters" like MOAB or a tactical nuke (although they probably wouldn't stop strategic nukes and definitely not H-bombs, unless you built a national shield or something, in which case I'd hate to see your power bill.)
As our economy develops, we will subcontract the technology and mass-produce shields for our less-scientifically or less-industrial neighbors to purchase and have installed for them.
2. Retroprotovirus (Oh-3)
You get: a few dozen sample strains and three stasis pods (which are easy enough to build themselves even without the technology)
Retroprotovirus (or protoretrovirus) is used in more advanced hospitals to cure any weaponized biological threat. Once a swab is taken of a body's "helpful" bacteria, the patient spends many hours in a stasis chamber where the virus kills or changes back anything not matching the person's native DNA. Helpful intestinal bacteria is then reintroduced. Because of this secondary reintroducing procedure, protoretrovirus cannot be administered "in the field" but is immensely helpful to the general population.
As a downside, protoretrovirus will kill the body's own cells, if their DNA is sufficiently corrupted by another virus. While not a deterrent with the usual small quantities of such cells, within 3 days or so of exposure, it is impossible to "cure" patients with such a virus, or with those viruses that have a long incubation period, such as HIV. Bacteria have no such limitation.
As an upside, protoretrovirus cannot itself be weaponized, as it needs a template DNA to work from. The worst it can do is cure an uninfected patient, who will need replacement helpful bacteria that are easily cultured. It is possible to kill someone with protoretrovirus if you get them into the stasis chamber and administer someone else's treatment directly, but it would be far easier to shoot them at that point. Releasing protoretrovirus into the air or water should have no effect whatsoever.
3. Tripole signals.
You get: 3 tripole signal generators and 3 receivers.
Used mainly for getting radio signals in and out of ADSes, these "shield radars" can detect the distance to the shield, and manipulate the wavelength of signals so that their null points (where amplitude is zero) coincide with the shield, allowing electromagnetic signals to penetrate the shield.
No matter how well you encode or encrypt a standard bipole signal, the enemy at least knows a message of some kind was sent, possibly giving away covert ops (hence, radio silence in spy missions.) With tripole signals, you can additionally nullify the enemy's receiving antenna, so they don't even know you're there sending something. Radio silence while you talk, too!
This can theoretically be used to get lasers through shields too, but we are keeping that technology secret for the time being, although tech-minded nation-states might be able to figure it out on their own. (And, this action can be defeated by shrinking the field slightly, allowing only a few quick volleys into critical areas.)
Cost: 100M kudos per technological prototype, 250M for all 3. (Our kudo is ~2X the value of a Euro or U.S. dollar for currency comparisons.) Prices for ready-to-use technology units will be set once we have them ... ready to use.
We take payment in the form of national currency (Treasury) bonds, so we can continue to maintain a high exchange rate with our currency, even though our companies are now doing a lot of exporting.
If you must wire money, wire it in the form of temporary debt instruments so we don't shake up our economic revival. The bonds and debt instruments will be redeemed once our economy is up and running.
- Sim, ambassador of the Malarkies.