Endtown by Aaron Neathery for March 26, 2014

Seems they’re determined to go through it. Wonder how much Clive can take without causing major damage?

A PT with arthritis? His tires out of joint?But maybe he has other thoughts. Do tell! Don’t disappoint!And meanwhile things are shakin’ in the inside with “Cab Four”Three hours slowly makin’ progress: They won’t stand much more=|====/ Level HeadVote for Endtown 2.0And for Doc Rat, tooThe Endtown ForumThe Endtown AuctionThe Endtown Books

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that this stuff marks the edge of a particular blast zone.

So I’m also going to guess that what lies beyond will surprise our heroes, and possibly us too.

I hope Clive’s passage through doesn’t leave a visible trail…

Wonder if the pain that Clive is experiancing is the damage and repair function of his nanites? If it really is “compressed dust” it must be all but vitrified to be so sharp/hard. That there is a great barrier/band of it argues against it being a weapons effect (unless we’re talking REALLY massive scale, far beyond anything so far in the scenario or RL, and involving still unknown physics) or some “natural” process. Deliberate barrier it seems?

Poor Clive! perhaps they could tie old blankets on his tires.PT’s are sentient beings.and should be treated as such. If people follow it the golden rule ,.

The worst part is that he has the arthritis in the one universal joint.

Interesting that the TopSiders would have wired up Clive’s pain neurons. If the TopSiders actually did wire the sensors up, and the machines haven’t risen up and begun to stake their claims.I predict on the Other Side, our intrepid crew will crash a tea party a Hatter and a March Hare are holding. Not sure if there might be a dormouse, but it gives Sarah a chance to ask “What Fresh Rabbit Hell is This?”. Remember to vote, and if you can, Financially Support our 21st Century Bard.

Thanks,

Sincerely and Respectfully Speculative, JusSayin

@JusSayin – pain serves a biological function, warning us of damage. Easiest to just hook the damage-sensors up to the existing pain nerves – especially when you don’t care much about the feelings of the harvested brain …

Nab – Normal nukes nor fires create anything like the level of vitrification suggested. Clive described it as “compressed” rather than fused or melted, hinting more that it is more likely fabricated or gone through an undetermined process. We will all see what its really all about soon enough, I hope. Arron likes to play with us so much.

“Oh the pain… The pain!”Poor Clive, the engineers who designed the crawlers tracks took a page from the book on heavy equipment design rather than military. Anyone who has ridden over uneven terrain in either can attest to the difference in how much more comfortable riding in a tank is compared to a bulldozer. How much suspension travel there is makes a huge difference.Clives tracks are more like the former rather than the latter, so for the next 3 hours we must endure his painful chatter.

With cat-like tread…

More concerned with the possibility of being followed by a visible trail…

Is that Clive’s drone above them in panel one?

HEY EVERYONE!!!!Notice the ad bar at the top of the page. Udigbooks now has ebook versions of Endtown. It looks like books one and two are already available.

maybe Clive had Arthritis before he was harvested?

I remember other times when I’ve heard a Transporter scream out in pain. The explanation of damage sensors wired to pain neurons makes sense. I wonder if the thing that has the others stressed out is not the ride, or Clive’s yelps of pain but the possibility that this mountainscape of compressed dust could crumble and bury them.

Barriers can be used to keep things out or in. Wonder what this ones for???

“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair” Indeed.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OzymandiasI always thought this poem fit the end of civilization as we know it very well.

What is in a name? Would a drone by any other name be just as menacing?The fact is that Aaron has his characters including various Topsiders and their PTs call the flying reconnaissance thing that comes with transporters “Airscouts”. “Drones” are those creepy helicopter things that were used to destroy the remains of the settlement. They may all be drones from our point of view, but Aaron Neathery has created this strip and he can call things in it what he wants to call them.

That doesn’t look, or feel any different than driving in New York city after this rough winter we had…ow!

Sounds Logical.

Trinitite is a very limited effect, just a surface glaze and/or percipitation of fused material drawn unto the fireball convection, not any kind of melt in depth or with any real mechanical wherewithal. Further, bigger weapons don’t equate to all that much more effect. Explosions scale up by inverse cube, simply twice the surface diameter of coverage may need up to ten times the bomb yield, as the yield is a volume function, though the various effects of a nuke explosion scale differently. Cold War nit-pick – the bulk of weapons throughout the bad old days were under one MT and a lot of those were in the 100KT range or so. The big weapons got a lot of press, but were not actually all that numerous, as they were harder to move, vastly more expensive per unit, and less reliable/all that more expensive to redundent target. And there was never a one MT detonation above or below ground in CONUS, though the 3MT shot in the Alutians might almost count. Biggest CONUS test was SEDAN, a 100KT cratering shot. Largest surface shots were in the 50KT range and most of the underground shots were in the 10-20KT range, testing H-bomb primaries and other small cores.

A correction, the big Alaskan shot, according to other refs say 5MT, more right that. The big multi-MT surface shots only generated craters only a bit over a mile in diameter, airbursts of any real altitude don’t crater at all. Even the Tzar 50+ MT shot, if it had been a surface burst, would have generated a crater only about two miles across, maybe. Weapons effects for nukes are not simply equivelent big chemical explosions nor are they the over-hyped cold-war weird science wonder weapons. In regards to our hero’s circumstance, the terrain has no relationship to any known RL effects nor any previous in-scenario effect, with the exception that there was the suggestion of other un-named exotic physics may have been unleashed in the war. ( I always wondered about the possible effect of real “gravity bombs” instead of the reference to free-fall munitions, for example)

Did you just make that flying trip in one drive?

Have I been suspended? My posts disappeared. Let me look at this. Darn, it may have been that coded message in one or more of my posts.

Night-Gaunt 49 – Ancient atomics is utter BS. Mainstream archeology doesn’t acknowledge it because it simply doesn’t exist outside of tabloids and delusional fantasies.