I've decided I hate Beam Klaves

[Master of Malfeasance]

hell yeah!  In the novels, they describe any permutation of the almighty Boltgun as a non-parabolic grenade launcher.  Jaq Draco (I believe) described the noise as "bang! Screee! crump!" the only reason the explosion is muffled is because it's being insulated by the great messy gobbits of tissue it is blowing apart.


I think my UnExalted kingdom (another post) will include a primitive boltgun... maybe like a renaissance grenade-pistol.  Perfect for blowing apart the undead!

 

[Andrew02]

The only 40K novel I read was a collection of short stories, so unfortunately they never went into much description of how the weapons worked. Only one of them actually had a Space Marine in actual combat, and it was a Terminator soldier who landed on some primitive world and ended up fighting a demon with only a power weapon since his stormbolter was out of ammo, if I recall correctly.

 

[Persell]

Close, the creature the Marine was fighting was a Carnifex, that's why the was the screaming from the jungle. Old Carnifexs were sometimes referred to as "screamer killers".

 

[Flagg]

And frankly, the information available to us today confirms this. It is almost certain that had Truman not utilized atomic weaponry, a million or more lives would've been lost over the next several years of fighting.

Not to dredge up ancient topics, but I was just leafing though a book entitled Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History, which claims that a Congressional report made shortly after the bombs were dropped concluded that Japan was going to surrender anyway, and that dropping the bombs did little to shorten the war.


Of course, I don't know what referrences the author cited, because as I said I only leafed through it -- but if true, it would directly contradict TSJ (and many peoples') argument.


-S

 

[Persell]

I too have encountered this claim.


I browsed the web during the period of that particular flamè, and was left wondering how anybody could claim that there was decisive evidence either way.


Put geekily: asserting the veracity of social counterfactuals provides a statement with no truth-value.


Put plainly: if it didn't happen, nobody can say how it would've happened if it did.


Some physical sciences can get around this by having predictable systems, but the social world is far too unpredictable.


Comparing events that did happen with events that... weren't actually events... well, you can see why the argument went on and on and on without any conclusive victory. So, excellent choice for the flamings.

 

[Flagg]

I browsed the web during the period of that particular flamè, and was left wondering how anybody could claim that there was decisive evidence either way.

In particular, this Congressional inquest heard testimony, from some of the surrendered Japansese, that the generals had secretly resovled to throw in the towel, and that the actual surrender was merely working its way through bureaucratic channels.


Of course, these people could have been lying. Who knows?


-S

 

[SagaciousAscendingHero]

In defense of WH40K, the only difference between chainSAWs and chainSWORDs is the latter was built with the idea to be weilded one handedly by those with sufficient strength to do so. that and the blade went up from the hand, not out. I never saw any issues with this other than it would seem a tad unweildly, but you'd have that issue with a chainsaw too.