51 Comments

God that is so damm good. Love the amount of detail, can't wait to see more as well! Probably one of my most hyped for series

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thank you this means so much! if you love detail you'll love the next lore posts!

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Yessss, I love to hear that! I love re-reading the Departure Day and Papal Appinontments chapters, some of my favourite works of fiction.

A quick question though;

- What's the best way to comprehend Mach 15 speed? Is it like going at hyperspeed, or going something below that?

I can just comprehend how fast Mach 1 is, Mach 15 just seems like a whole nother level times 10.

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Mach 15 is covering 3 miles *every* minute, it is insanely fast almost re-entry speed but at sea level.

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I think it per second, right?

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oh god you're right i did the math and then my brain beefed it

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It was getting late (for me, anyways)

Now I want a nice grilled ribeye

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*converts to Kilometers*

*sees number*

.....Jesus f*ck. Actually nuts.

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precisely, that's why I specify that the acceleration is timed until the very last second because the G force and thermal stress is uh insane

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Yeah, bloody hell. The sheer force would be *insane*. That's an impressive feat of engineering.

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Wow! One line suddenly stood out to me: "leading to high-altitude battles on the Himalayan Front" and I got an image of O2 bottle equipped Indian mountain troops fighting PLA 52nd Mountain soldiers at 21,000 feet on the Siachen glacier.

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Hell yeah

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Feb 22, 2023Edited
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definitely think there are stimulants used in the Himalayas but actual bio-engineering is probably too bleeding edge for practical applications during the war

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Feb 22, 2023
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EPO and corticosteroids, blood doping. Think pro cycling - stuff to increase O2 uptake. And prophylactic dexamethasone and other stuff for mountain sickness. Also, both sides are probably drawing troops from Tibetans, Sherpas, Jirals, and more.

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Ok now you've got me reading actual papers to figure out the med series for optimal mountain fighting. Over the baseline of "recruit heavily from mountainous areas, train and test extant soldiers for high altitude fighting."

Figure one side leans heavily into next-gen O2 therapy (personal high altitude concentrators, special sleeping tents and recovery areas, rely on extant battery & fuel loggie setup instead of introducing O2 bottles that can get lost, run out or be mismanaged). The other relies on dexamethasone, Nifedipine and Acetazolamide, with heavy EPO use for reduced / eliminated acclimatization time. The downside of the O2 route is if your gear breaks or loses power, the downside of the steroids/meds combo is the occasional massive stroke.

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I ponder on how that region (Arab Peninsula) should be divided after the UN rule, as one country alone is too big to govern it.

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probably figure out something less culturally ignorant and try to organize nations out of the Complicated messwork that'd be...

*gestures

After so many years the original cultures have merged and all that, but theres still distincts and-

Nationbuilding isn't fun at the best of times. Godspeed to the poor working group that has to hash out new borders lol

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This is incredible, it reads as if a Tom Clancy novel were written by Armando Iannucci. High technical accuracy and meets pitch black humour.

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What happens to China after this war?

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revolving door of leadership changes, major domestic insurrection boiling toward a popular revolution

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So I’m guessing china eventually becomes a democracy?

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yeah probably by late 2042/mid 2043

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Republican Australian Navy?

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Australia becomes a Republic, probably in the late 2020s or early 2030s!

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at least Canada won't leave us :p

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Furthermore most Caribbean commonwealth republics in comparison are more or less favor the good guys within mine.

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I consider myself if I am commonwealth citizen a "royalist", but an interesting take of Australia, at least not pro china.

(In comparison, within my lore, Australia stayed as it is today)

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I have a question, what’s the state of the Vietnamese military? Because they probably would have westernized I would guess. Also how many aircraft are in the Task force?

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In 2042? Basically fully STANAG'd, start doing so after First Sino in 2024 and really go into overdrive after 2028 and OSATO getting spun up. They get their teeth kicked in the opening stages of the war but remarkably don't collapse (probably should've considering how much of PLA's heavy armor they face down).

Aircraft-wise, the CTF has basically an entire nation's air force, ~700 aircraft of all types (jets, helicopters, tilt-rotors), about half of those are the Marine Brigade's ACE which are partially stored for transit and have Not Great sortie generation when operating direct from the LKBNs.

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How many nations operate carriers in the 2042 timeline? Also how many carriers does the United States even have like in 2042. This is some interesting lore.

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US, PLA, France, Japan, UK, India, Russia for sure, potentially also Indonesia, Brazil, and Australia

US big carrier fleet peaks in 2037 with all 10 Nimitz being run ragged plus 4 Fords and 3 William D. Leahys, however US lose Nimitz, GW, and Reagan in the first year of the war. The US also operates CVVs, but i haven't figured out how many/timeline for building them. The PLA absolutely cranks out just a swarm of Type 003s tho (and also were planning on selling carriers to folks like Russia, Indonesia, and Brazil before the Second Sino sees those seized).

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...

im crankin my output capacity man im a shipbuilder man im-

Awful meme aside, how's the CONUS reaction to eating three capital losses in the first year? I assume the PLAN pays the reaper with gritted teeth, so it's not that bad?

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Makes sense. How many ships do we lose in the second sino?

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not sure, but its a 3 year long war—so more than a few

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Alright!

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How much is orbital/cislunar space militarized by 2042? Are there military space stations/ lunar bases? How much will that interfere with civilian/commercial infrastructure off-Earth? (Sorry if you haven’t gotten everything fleshed out on this, I’m just curious)

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Was reading this again.

1. What’s fob emancipation?

2. Do we lose any ships in the gulf wars?

3. Does Israel do stuff to Iran after the 5th gulf

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"RANS Hobart (DDG-39), USS Philippine Sea (CGN-75), USS Radford (DDG-169), JS Musashi (DDB-185)—will make it back to Yokohama, all with severe battle damage."

i wonder if Hobart and Musashi become cultural touchstones later? The ships that stood first in line and came back alive.

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Vietnam will not in fact be the main character this time, it seems.

;~;7

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How is the Philippines doing after going through the Day of Three Coups, Filipino Civil War and PLA Occupation?

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"Jungles and cities of borneo". And so Indonesia is indeed not spared... much more with the new capital

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And so Taiwan is an independent Sinophone state then - I can think Singapore but with Chinese as working language instead of English... A well deserved end of the conflict. (As much as I am more like "Taiwan is real China" thing)

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What happened to Mekong area countries other than Vietnam?

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> Admiral of the Navy Chowdah

You mean Fleet Admiral? Or six star rank?

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