Underestimating The Requirements For General Order 24?

[Lucky]

I don't know. The more you estimate the energy requirements for General Order 24, the more you must for Base Delta Zero by several orders of magnitude. Order 24 involves destruction of all cities (in planets slightly more populated than modern day Earth). Base Delta Zero invovles eradication of all sapient life (Hutt's Gambit), at the very least.

Stay on topic. This thread has nothing to do with Base Detla Zero.

You need to reread the OP because that is not what Scotty said.

[Lucky]

I'm a bit wary of using "A Taste of Armageddon" as solid evidence of what GO 24 entails, if only because Kirk and company had every reason to emphasize their capabilities while trying to intimidate the Eminiars. So some of that dialogue might well be exaggeration or hyperbole.

That said, I don't doubt a ship like the Enterprise could ruin a planetary civilization in fairly short order if they wanted to. But there's a rather huge difference between that and wiping out all life on the planet.

Scotty was down playing how powerful Federation ships are. Being able to wipe out all life on a planet with a single shot was a plot point in a later episode as to why they could not just blast their way through a shield.

SCOTT: Mister Sulu, what do your sensors show?

SULU: We can't beam anybody down, sir. The force field on the planet is in full operation, and all forms of transport into the asylum dome are blocked off.

SCOTT: We could blast our way through the field, but only at the risk of destroying the Captain, Mister Spock and any other living thing on Elba Two.

MCCOY: How can we be powerful enough to wipe out a planet and still be so helpless?

Kirk and Spock were on the exact opposite side of the planet of the are they were targeting.

There are similar things in TNG, DS9, and Voyager as I recall.

[KSW]

Starfleet general Order 24 is to destroy all life on a planet.

In "Bread and Circuses," the Roman Prefect says that he understands that the ship can lay waste to the planet's entire surface, while in "Where No Man has Gone Before" Kirk orders the planet exposed to "a lethal dose of neutron radiation." So there is more than one way to do it.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

So, 1 old Constitution-class ship can do in less than 2 hours what it takes 3 ISDs less than 24 hours to perform?
Nice...

And Dankayo is not a valid example of a BDZ, as Kor so nicely demonstrated... :)

None of this has anything to do with the point I told you to go back and read. Clearly you don't understand it. As General Donner correctly points out, Kirk and crew have every reason to exaggerate their abilities, especially evident by their contradicting of their threats when not talking to the enemy.

Now maybe you are right, maybe General Order 24 does wipe out all life on a planet, but you did a shit job backing it up. If it is true, order 24 does not...

Eradicate all natural resources including mineral deposits inside mountains or oil deposits on the ocean floor
Kill everyone in deep planetary shelters, which to my knowledge have never been stated to exist
Eradicate all assets of production including fisheries, arable land and forests
Turn the planet's surface to "molten slag", be it literal or figurative [the low official CCG picture implies literal, but figurative is still too much for order 24]
Create dense clouds of gas that block out the sun [Camaas, CCG picture]
Allow for small mercenary groups to do the same thing

And nothing indicates that the order would take 2 hours to accomplish, Kirk was saying that he would start in 2 hours. To say otherwise would be to say that Kirk would start the instant he finished speaking and end 2 hours later, which he did not do and would have no reason to do, rather than start 2 hours later and end at an unspecified time.

Heck, why are you even arguing with me? You concede that turbolasers and photon torpedos are both triple digit kilotons, meaning that you deny that General Order 24 exists (since 250 or so sub megaton weapons can't destroy all modern cities, let alone all life) or any Base Delta Zero exists (since it would take months or more to eradicate all life with sub kiloton turbolasers).

[Mike DiCenso]

I'm a bit wary of using "A Taste of Armageddon" as solid evidence of what GO 24 entails, if only because Kirk and company had every reason to emphasize their capabilities while trying to intimidate the Eminiars. So some of that dialogue might well be exaggeration or hyperbole.

That said, I don't doubt a ship like the Enterprise could ruin a planetary civilization in fairly short order if they wanted to. But there's a rather huge difference between that and wiping out all life on the planet.

The big problem with that line of thinking is that takes AToA in complete isolation from other examples of planetary massive bombardment in Trek. If we only had AToA to go by, your hyperbole issue would be valid. As it it stands, at least twice later in TOS we have descriptions of significant planet-destroying firepower.

From "Bread and Circuses":

KIRK: If I brought down a hundred of them armed with phasers

CLAUDIUS: you could probably defeat the combined armies of our entire empire, and violate your oath regarding noninterference with other societies. I believe you all swear you'll die before you'd violate that directive. Am I right?

SPOCK: Quite correct.

MCCOY: Must you always be so blasted honest?

CLAUDIUS: But on the other hand, why even bother to send your men down? From what I understand, your vessel could lay waste to the entire surface of the world. Oh, but there's that Prime Directive in the way again. Can't interfere.

Note that neither Claudius nor Merrick contradict any of this, in fact it is Claudius who states what the Enterprise can do based on Merrick (a former Starfleet Academy student and later spaceship captain) having given him a substantial amount of information beforehand.

Lucky already gave the quotes from "Whom Gods Destroy", which fairly well establish that even on the far side of a planet, the Enterprise opening up full power to take down the Elba II shield would still likely destroy the asylum and everyone in it. He also posted Kirk and Garth's conversation about the former fleet captain's attempt to destroy Antos Four, for which his crew mutinied.

And that's just TOS. We can throw in TNG, DS9, and VOY into the mix as well, too. For example Garak's line from DS9's "Broken Link":

WORF: You were trying to override the launch controls for the quantum torpedoes.

GARAK: I was hoping to gain control of the phasers as well. I just hadn't got around to it yet. Don't you see? We have an opportunity here. A chance to end the Dominion threat once and for all. We have enough firepower on this ship to turn that planet into a smoking cinder. Personally, I think that would be a very good thing.

I think it's safe to say that Kirk and Scotty were not exaggerating all that much given the evidence.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

So, 1 old Constitution-class ship can do in less than 2 hours what it takes 3 ISDs less than 24 hours to perform?
Nice...

And Dankayo is not a valid example of a BDZ, as Kor so nicely demonstrated... :)

None of this has anything to do with the point I told you to go back and read. Clearly you don't understand it. As General Donner correctly points out, Kirk and crew have every reason to exaggerate their abilities, especially evident by their contradicting of their threats when not talking to the enemy.

Now maybe you are right, maybe General Order 24 does wipe out all life on a planet, but you did a shit job backing it up. If it is true, order 24 does not...

Eradicate all natural resources including mineral deposits inside mountains or oil deposits on the ocean floor
Kill everyone in deep planetary shelters, which to my knowledge have never been stated to exist
Eradicate all assets of production including fisheries, arable land and forests
Turn the planet's surface to "molten slag", be it literal or figurative [the low official CCG picture implies literal, but figurative is still too much for order 24]
Create dense clouds of gas that block out the sun [Camaas, CCG picture]
Allow for small mercenary groups to do the same thing

And nothing indicates that the order would take 2 hours to accomplish, Kirk was saying that he would start in 2 hours. To say otherwise would be to say that Kirk would start the instant he finished speaking and end 2 hours later, which he did not do and would have no reason to do, rather than start 2 hours later and end at an unspecified time.

Heck, why are you even arguing with me? You concede that turbolasers and photon torpedos are both triple digit kilotons, meaning that you deny that General Order 24 exists (since 250 or so sub megaton weapons can't destroy all modern cities, let alone all life) or any Base Delta Zero exists (since it would take months or more to eradicate all life with sub kiloton turbolasers).

SWST, mistating someone's position, "putting words in their mouth" as it were, is blatent dishonesty, and you were politely asked not to take the thread off-topic. This is not about comparing Base Delta Zero to General Order 24. Lucky never stated anything about photon torpedoes being triple-digit kilotons, nor concede anything to you in this thread. Since you are just back from your previous ban, I'm giving you an offical warning.

If you think Lucky is wrong, address his evidence. But don't derail the thread. Lucky has provided substantial quotes and information from other episodes to back up his thesis of what GO24 would have to entail to accomplish even a minimal destruction of a comparably advanced planetary civilization.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

And then:

In one hour and forty five minutes
[Bridge]
SCOTT: The entire inhabited surface of your planet will be destroyed.

:)

In fact, Malak with his tiny cruiser 5000 years before the movies was able to so thoroughly blast Taris that, in KOTOR 2, you, a Jedi, can't step outside of certain areas without dying quickly of radiation poisoning.

And did it with his hundreds of ships, in many many hours, for each individual blast, as seen in KOTOR, were not even close to KT range... :)

Praeo, knock off with the name calling here. It doesn't help anything.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

Praeo, knock off with the name calling here. It doesn't help anything.
-Mike

I will...

[StarWarsStarTrek]

SWST, mistating someone's position, "putting words in their mouth" as it were, is blatent dishonesty, and you were politely asked not to take the thread off-topic. This is not about comparing Base Delta Zero to General Order 24. Lucky never stated anything about photon torpedoes being triple-digit kilotons, nor concede anything to you in this thread. Since you are just back from your previous ban, I'm giving you an offical warning.

If you think Lucky is wrong, address his evidence. But don't derail the thread. Lucky has provided substantial quotes and information from other episodes to back up his thesis of what GO24 would have to entail to accomplish even a minimal destruction of a comparably advanced planetary civilization.
-Mike

Mike, you've really hit gold with this one. You read over my post that was a response to a quote of Praethomin's and conclude that it was Lucky that I was responding to. Who's mistaking who now, Mike? Nowhere did I state that Lucky said anything, I was talking to someone else entirely, now you're putting words in my mouth.

I also question how "mistaking" one's position, something which is done a lot more than you could every possibly track, equates to "dishonesty", which implies intent, whereas "mistaking" implies an accident.

[Mike DiCenso]

Be that as it may, no one in the thread conceded anything to you, nor does it excuse your attempting to derail it into a BDZ versus GO24 spat, or the fact that you have failed to address the evidence Lucky and others provided.
-Mike

[General Donner]

Note that neither Claudius nor Merrick contradict any of this, in fact it is Claudius who states what the Enterprise can do based on Merrick (a former Starfleet Academy student and later spaceship captain) having given him a substantial amount of information beforehand.

It was a good long while ago I watched that episode, so I remember the context only vaguely. With that qualifier, going by the dialogue alone I'm not sure how literally that should be taken. It's fairly unspecific, and could be hyperbolic. It would also seem odd the entire combined armies could be defeated by a hundred men on foot, even if armed with phasers, assuming Claudius' state was at least semi-modern in technology and not utterly minuscule.

Lucky already gave the quotes from "Whom Gods Destroy", which fairly well establish that even on the far side of a planet, the Enterprise opening up full power to take down the Elba II shield would still likely destroy the asylum and everyone in it. He also posted Kirk and Garth's conversation about the former fleet captain's attempt to destroy Antos Four, for which his crew mutinied.

That does seem to argue against me as stated. I don't remember watching the episode in question -- I missed out on large parts of TOS 3 -- so I won't add any further comment.

OTOH, what kind of firepower would we expect from such a case? Probable unintentional but massive damage to environmentally sealed ground structures right on the other side from the impact site of a presumably Earth-sized planet? That'd seem to go right up past the SW:ICS yields and far beyond.

GARAK: I was hoping to gain control of the phasers as well. I just hadn't got around to it yet. Don't you see? We have an opportunity here. A chance to end the Dominion threat once and for all. We have enough firepower on this ship to turn that planet into a smoking cinder. Personally, I think that would be a very good thing.

The way that's phrased, lacking context, I think it sounds rather like hyperbole. Though I'm not dismissing it out of hand.

Altogether, apart from the Elba II case (which is clearly in another league altogether) I don't see the necessity for firepower substantially above the megaton range in these quotes. (Which will still be more than sufficient to destroy any planetary civilization without very powerful shields or other such defenses in quite short order.) They're certainly open to that interpretation, but given the vague way they're phrased, they don't really confirm it.

[Mike DiCenso]

It was a good long while ago I watched that episode, so I remember the context only vaguely. With that qualifier, going by the dialogue alone I'm not sure how literally that should be taken. It's fairly unspecific, and could be hyperbolic. It would also seem odd the entire combined armies could be defeated by a hundred men on foot, even if armed with phasers, assuming Claudius' state was at least semi-modern in technology and not utterly minuscule.

There is a big difference; there is at least one "hostile" expert here. Merrick. He briefed Claudius on everything, including emergency codes, and Spock, who was being overly-honest, also confirmed the statements. The point being is that while you could argue Kirk and company were lying in AToA, they cannot get away with that here, and they didn't. But it is Claudius who brings up the capability of a starship to destroy the entire surface of a planet, and remember he's been briefed by Merrick well beforehand:

KIRK: What happened to your crew?

MERIK: There's been no war here for over four hundred years, Jim. Could, let's say, your land of that same era make that same boast? I think you can see why they don't want to have their stability contaminated by dangerous ideas of other ways and other places.

SPOCK: Interesting, and given a conservative empire, quite understandable.

MCCOY: Are you out of your head?

SPOCK: I said I understood it, Doctor. I find the checks and balances of this civilisation quite illuminating.

MCCOY: Next he'll be telling us he prefers it over Earth history.

SPOCK: They do seem to have escaped the carnage of your first three world wars, Doctor.

MCCOY: They have slavery, gladiatorial games, despotism.

SPOCK: Situations quite familiar to the six million who died in your first world war, the eleven million who died in your second, the thirty seven million who died in your third. Shall I go on?

CLAUDIUS: Interesting. And you, Captain, which world do you prefer?

KIRK: My world, proconsul, is my vessel, my oath, my crew. What happened to your vessel you've explained. What happened to your oath is obvious.

MERIK: And as for my men, those that were able to adapt to this world are still alive. Those who couldn't adapt are dead. That's the way it is with life everywhere, isn't it?

KIRK: You sent your own men into the arena?

MERIK: Just as I did, Jim, you're going to order your own people ashore.

MCCOY: You must know that's impossible. Starfleet regulations

CLAUDIUS: Are designed to circumvent any such order. There may be over four hundred men on your ship, Captain, but they can be brought down if it's handled properly. Say, a few at a time. You see, I have the advantage of a trained ship captain to tell me what is and what is not possible. Your communicator, Captain Kirk. Now do save us all a lot of unnecessary trouble and issue the appropriate orders.

MERIK: They're going to be arriving soon, anyway, Jim. A recon party, then a rescue party, then another rescue party. I had less men. It added up the same.

KIRK: Do you really believe I could be made to order my own people down?

CLAUDIUS: I believe this, Captain. That you would do almost anything rather than see these two dear friends put slowly to death.
(Kirk takes the communicator.)

MCCOY: Jim.

KIRK:Kirk to Enterprise.

SCOTT [OC]: Bridge. Scott here.
(Armed guards enter.)

KIRK: Scotty, if you have a fix. (guns are pointed at his head) Stand by, Scotty.

CLAUDIUS: Very wise of you, Captain. No point in sending up bullet-ridden corpses.

KIRK: Yet on the other hand, my chief engineer's standing by for a message.

CLAUDIUS: I do hope so, for your sake. Now, Captain, what are you going to order your men to do?

KIRK:If I brought down a hundred of them armed with phasers

CLAUDIUS: you could probably defeat the combined armies of our entire empire, and violate your oath regarding noninterference with other societies. I believe you all swear you'll die before you'd violate that directive. Am I right?

SPOCK: Quite correct.

MCCOY: Must you always be so blasted honest?

CLAUDIUS: But on the other hand, why even bother to send your men down? From what I understand, your vessel could lay waste to the entire surface of the world. Oh, but there's that Prime Directive in the way again. Can't interfere.

MERIK: Jim, you've already started a message. Your engineer's waiting. What are you going to do?
KIRK: Scotty. Sorry to keep you waiting.

SCOTT [OC]: We were becoming concerned, Captain. You were a bit overdue.

CLAUDIUS: Order your officers to come down.

KIRK: Condition Green, all's well. Kirk out.

CLAUDIUS: Guards, take them. Prepare them for the games.

MERIK: Ah, that was stupid, Jim. This is not an Academy training test. This is for real. They're taking you to die

Technology? Equivalent to mid to late 20th century Earth:

MCCOY: Quite logical, I'd say, Mister Spock. Just as it's logical that twentieth-century Rome would use television to show its gladiator contests or name a new car the Jupiter Eight.

That does seem to argue against me as stated. I don't remember watching the episode in question -- I missed out on large parts of TOS 3 -- so I won't add any further comment.

OTOH, what kind of firepower would we expect from such a case? Probable unintentional but massive damage to environmentally sealed ground structures right on the other side from the impact site of a presumably Earth-sized planet? That'd seem to go right up past the SW:ICS yields and far beyond.

All quite possible given that a an ounce of antimatter was enough to blast a massive crater into an Earth-like planet and rip half it's atmosphere away in "Obsession", and enough to fit into a small probe and blow up a planet-sized amoeba in "The Immunity Syndrome".

GARAK: I was hoping to gain control of the phasers as well. I just hadn't got around to it yet. Don't you see? We have an opportunity here. A chance to end the Dominion threat once and for all. We have enough firepower on this ship to turn that planet into a smoking cinder. Personally, I think that would be a very good thing.

The way that's phrased, lacking context, I think it sounds rather like hyperbole. Though I'm not dismissing it out of hand.

Altogether, apart from the Elba II case (which is clearly in another league altogether) I don't see the necessity for firepower substantially above the megaton range in these quotes. (Which will still be more than sufficient to destroy any planetary civilization without very powerful shields or other such defenses in quite short order.) They're certainly open to that interpretation, but given the vague way they're phrased, they don't really confirm it.

The context is one of the Defiant is in orbit of the second Founder's homeworld. The ship had been escorted there by a fleet of JH attack ships and was surrounded:




Garak's plan was to try and take over the Defiant's weapons and bombard the planet, and he had to do all this before the flotilla of ships surrounding them destroyed the Defiant:

WORF: Garak. Just as I thought.

GARAK: Don't tell me. I overlooked one of the security monitors.

WORF: You were trying to override the launch controls for the quantum torpedoes.

GARAK: I was hoping to gain control of the phasers as well. I just hadn't got around to it yet. Don't you see? We have an opportunity here. A chance to end the Dominion threat once and for all. We have enough firepower on this ship to turn that planet into a smoking cinder. Personally, I think that would be a very good thing.

WORF: And what about Odo, and Captain Sisko and Doctor Bashir?

GARAK: They'll die. And once the Jem'Hadar ships realise what we're doing, so will we. But what are our lives compared to saving the entire Alpha Quadrant?

WORF: We are not here to wage war.

GARAK: I'm not talking about war. What I'm proposing is wiping out every Founder on that planet. Obliterating the Great Link. Come now, Mister Worf, you're a Klingon. Don't tell me you'd object to a little genocide in the name of self-defence?

WORF: I am a warrior, not a murderer.

Of course we have good gauges of the Defiant's firepower as noted here and here. A ship capable of vaporizing most of a spherical 2 km comet nucleus in a couple seconds with phasers, and making 200 plus km explosions in low density atmosphere at an altitude of 50 km. Sounds like what you need to turn a planet into a "smoking cinder" in a matter of minutes before enemy ships destroy you. And on top of that we can add this line from "Apocalypse Rising":

DAMAR: Personally, I think we'd be better off launching an orbital assault on Gowron's command centre. A full spread of photon torpedoes would take care of him, the Klingon High Command and everyone else within a few hundred kilometres.

ODO: You should ask Dukat for some shore leave. I think you've been in space too long.

DAMAR: Why? Because I'm willing to spill a little Klingon blood to get the job done?

O'BRIEN: Shelling Ty'Gokor won't get the job done. You'd be lucky to launch one torpedo before they shot you down. Besides, even a dozen won't penetrate the shielding around the command centre.

Hundreds of km decimated with torpedoes from a BoP, a fairly small Trek starship.
-Mike

[KSW]

Note that neither Claudius nor Merrick contradict any of this, in fact it is Claudius who states what the Enterprise can do based on Merrick (a former Starfleet Academy student and later spaceship captain) having given him a substantial amount of information beforehand.

It was a good long while ago I watched that episode, so I remember the context only vaguely. With that qualifier, going by the dialogue alone I'm not sure how literally that should be taken. It's fairly unspecific, and could be hyperbolic. It would also seem odd the entire combined armies could be defeated by a hundred men on foot, even if armed with phasers, assuming Claudius' state was at least semi-modern in technology and not utterly minuscule.

I assume that Kirk meant armed with Phaser RIFLES, not hand-phasers.
Remember, all they'd have to do is take over Rome.

[KSW]

I'm a bit wary of using "A Taste of Armageddon" as solid evidence of what GO 24 entails, if only because Kirk and company had every reason to emphasize their capabilities while trying to intimidate the Eminiars. So some of that dialogue might well be exaggeration or hyperbole.

That said, I don't doubt a ship like the Enterprise could ruin a planetary civilization in fairly short order if they wanted to. But there's a rather huge difference between that and wiping out all life on the planet.

In "Where No Man has Gone Before," Kirk ordered "the entire planet exposed to a lethal dose of neutron radiation."

That's like a planet-sized neutron-bomb.
Also in "Obsession," a single ounce of anti-matter ripped away half a planet's atmosphere, which certainly would have destroyed any life on the planet.
That's enough to power the ship's phasers to do the same thing.

Finally, in "Whom God's Destroy," Scotty fired on the planetary shield on the opposite side of the planet, and still asked if there would be a margin of safety for the people on the other side. If he had to ASK, that's an indication that phasers can easily wipe out unshielded planetary surfaces.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Quit your lying, SWST. General Order 24 is an order to destroy all life on a planet. Not all cities, not all sentient life, all life period.

Life in Trek is just as silly as it is in SW. So those orders about destroying all life are meaningless, unless we consider very specific forms of like, like organic ones, and yet, with science fantasy being what it is, you just can't know. We've certainly enough oddities in ST to know that the concept of life is quite complicated.

So I consider that the destruction of planets through GO24 has little reason to be any different than SW's BDZ. Eventually, Star Trek having access to weapons of doom in greater quantities, it may allow for the exceptional use of such weapons, but treaties may have largely forbidden them. In fact, G024 may have been entirely forbidden itself.

So basically, G024 may have likely involved the use of exotic tech, the likes which massively abuse subspace and NDF for example.
What happened to the Founders' homeworld may very well be close to what GO24 was supposed to be -- I presume that the attack on this planet by the Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order involved the use of protomatter alongside subspace and NDF effects in order to explain how those weapons, particularly potent against a planet, yet in a very odd way, proved barely any better against typical starships... much like in Halo, where the Covenant use very special weapons for ground attacks, perhaps slipspace based.

It seems that during the age of the E-nil, the tensions were very palpable, with the Klingons around, and ships carried secret caches of exotic doomsday devices (like the weird thing used in Obsession).
Such weapons may be totally illegal around the TNG era.