Infrastructure

Infrastructure is what allows value creation and distribution. MALIGN showed they understood that by the Oyster Bay attack, which was primarily limited to the interstellar and orbital military INF.

How susceptible is Honorverse INF in general be to some sort of terrorist type attack? We have some of that with the OFS using local terrorists when Manticore found the new wormhole.

What if MALIGN has a puppet terrorist organization which has not yet been seen. With inexpensive contragravity, and hopefully hardened electronics being common, they might be in less danger than our current society (which routinely ships foods over thousands of miles) is to something like an EMP strike. But are they? And what other possibilities are there?

It wouldn't need to be MALIGN, whose aim is control. What would happen if some organization was like ISIS, wanting to return society to an earlier time, thus not caring about INF destruction, or even preferring to destroy it?

DDHvi wrote:Infrastructure is what allows value creation and distribution. MALIGN showed they understood that by the Oyster Bay attack, which was primarily limited to the interstellar and orbital military INF.

How susceptible is Honorverse INF in general be to some sort of terrorist type attack? We have some of that with the OFS using local terrorists when Manticore found the new wormhole.

What if MALIGN has a puppet terrorist organization which has not yet been seen. With inexpensive contragravity, and hopefully hardened electronics being common, they might be in less danger than our current society (which routinely ships foods over thousands of miles) is to something like an EMP strike. But are they? And what other possibilities are there?

It wouldn't need to be MALIGN, whose aim is control. What would happen if some organization was like ISIS, wanting to return society to an earlier time, thus not caring about INF destruction, or even preferring to destroy it?

Well, in the Honorverse, nukes don't need fissionables or radiologicals - just a powerful enough gravity field will do. It appears from a nuke missile, that a multi-megaton device can easily be built which is the size of a major household appliance. Beyond the detection of the power source, there would be no way to track a nuke capable of eviscerating a large city.

In Storm from the Shadows, we saw a 40Mton nuke snuck into a medium sized (for the Honorverse) space station and it destroyed the entire structure and it's 40,000 inhabitants.

Now, how easy is it to acquire a nuke? pirates have them - they are not cheap, but pirates do have them and can replenish them, so Destroyer and Cruiser class warheads are sold on an active gray/black market. Smaller devices are used for demolition and construction purposes as evidenced by Torch of Freedom, and probably much easier to acquire in even larger numbers than missile warheads.

As you said, electronics and infrastructure in the future will most likely be more hardened than now, so EMPs should be less dangerous.

I ship you a cargo container full of consumer electronics. And some Lithium Hydroxide. It's inside a full scale shipping container from a major producer of electronics. It has a gravity implosion fusion bomb just waiting for the right moment to go off. Which will be when you open the container for inspection on the station. A 40Mt bomb going off inside your main port should cause just a few minor issues.

I like the point and awareness that you raise on this issue. It is more than a bit sobering. It is believed that some hardening can be accomplished even now. And there are things that are recommended. Is it possible? One thing is for certain, we are at the mercy of the internet and our digital devices. It seems that the Honorverse would long ago have developed hardened systems against such catastrophies.

Imagine not having any electricity for days, weeks, months or even years... no lights, no communication channels, no water, no refrigeration, no navigation systems, no gas pumping, no food transportation, no waste pumping or garbage collecting. Former CIA director James Woolsey says “two thirds of US population would die”. No one in our country can survive something like this. Imagine what would happen if people only knew OUR NATION'S POWER GRID IS RATED A D+.

http://www.independentlivingnews.com/pr ... p1mOs6cGha

http://cryptome.org/emp.htm

cthia wrote:I like the point and awareness that you raise on this issue. It is more than a bit sobering. It is believed that some hardening can be accomplished even now. And there are things that are recommended. Is it possible? One thing is for certain, we are at the mercy of the internet and our digital devices. It seems that the Honorverse would long ago have developed hardened systems against such catastrophies.

Imagine not having any electricity for days, weeks, months or even years... no lights, no communication channels, no water, no refrigeration, no navigation systems, no gas pumping, no food transportation, no waste pumping or garbage collecting. Former CIA director James Woolsey says “two thirds of US population would die”. No one in our country can survive something like this. Imagine what would happen if people only knew OUR NATION'S POWER GRID IS RATED A D+.

http://www.independentlivingnews.com/pr ... p1mOs6cGha

http://cryptome.org/emp.htm

Some hardening and some manual backups. Photoelectric can be hardened, if you know how and will spend the extra cash. Many powered things are useful rather than needed, such as a power saw. I also have hand saws. Whoever had this house before us put a well in the basement, and we both grew up rural before septic tanks were affordable (by us anyway). So far I've helped dig the holes for three outhouses, as we moved or the old one filled up. The main problem in this climate would be winter heat.

Well, assuming the terrorist operative has decent computer/hacking skills they could always do like Harkness did in In Enemy Handsand hack a pinnace or shuttle to bring up it's impeller wedge inside a station. That would pretty much destroy any space station or orbital platform.

Henry Brown wrote:Well, assuming the terrorist operative has decent computer/hacking skills they could always do like Harkness did in In Enemy Handsand hack a pinnace or shuttle to bring up it's impeller wedge inside a station. That would pretty much destroy any space station or orbital platform.

There were multiple physical interlocks that had to be removed in addition.

kzt wrote:

Henry Brown wrote:Well, assuming the terrorist operative has decent computer/hacking skills they could always do like Harkness did in In Enemy Handsand hack a pinnace or shuttle to bring up it's impeller wedge inside a station. That would pretty much destroy any space station or orbital platform.

There were multiple physical interlocks that had to be removed in addition.

Well yeah, they would have to have physical access to the
pinnace or shuttle. But I seem to remember either Scotty or Harkness thinking how easy it was to actually do. Though it has been awhile since I read the book.

DDHvi wrote:What if MALIGN has a puppet terrorist organization which has not yet been seen. With inexpensive contragravity, and hopefully hardened electronics being common, they might be in less danger than our current society (which routinely ships foods over thousands of miles) is to something like an EMP strike. But are they? And what other possibilities are there?

Then there would need to be even more books, wouldn't it ? At this rate, the Honorverse will end up looking like a never ending story.

physical access to the shuttle, and all you need to do is cut the single (or few) wires necessary that connect sensors to the autopilot; or hell connecting the sensors everywhere.

Regarding nukes as well, on Mesa itself, Seccies were able to create multiple nukes, without even batting an eyelash. Seccies being second-class citizens, and probably unable to just go to the corner store, so to speak not literally, it's obviously not all that hard to make something that has a nuclear boom. Anton would have preferred simple Fuel-Air Explosives, but the seccies basically insisted on using nukes.

And if Seccies can make nukes in less than a month on Mesa, just about any other planet could make them even easier, I would imagine.