KIDS TODAY!! Young whippersnappers show some respect for your elders! lol

I didn't notice this because I was doing other things and it's a stupid strawman. But fortunately for me, it's a stupid strawman, meaning that you just threw me a slow pitch. Good job.

You don't have target numbers in 4th edition. And "The Moon" is on the far side of very large Background Count (Rating 12 Mana Void, represent). So a majority of characters cannot cast a spell that will reach Luna at all. Hypothetically, if you were hard core enough to punch through that, you'd suffer a substantial dicepool penalty anyway (from Mana Void, not distance). Then you'd only have to beat the very low OR of whatever part of the Moon you targetted - which is generally one.

But here's the deal: getting a success doesn't "destroy the target" - it causes boxes of damage. It causes one box of damage per (reduced) Force of the spell, and one box of damage for each net hit of the spell. And our friend Luna is some 3,474,000m thick. How many "boxes" do you think it has?

Well, if we assume that The Moon is made out of something between "average" and "heavy" material (which is probably a bit generous to our powerbolter), then it has 6 "boxes" for roughly every 0.1 cubic meter (SR4, p. 157). And with a volume of 2.1958x10^19 cubic meters, that gives gentle Luna approximately 1.2 sextillion boxes.

So to answer you question fully: yes. If some player of mine shouted "AKIRA!" and shot a Powerbolt at the Moon, spent Edge, and then kept rolling sixes until he got Sextillion hits, I would have The Moon explode. No question.

Rules are rules.

-Frank

And we had to roll our six siders uphill, both ways, in the snow!

(Just teasin ya a little, Kid. )

But Frank, is Luna really gentle? Some say that she's a harsh mistress.

Oh man. What happens to the Moon Maiden mentor spirit if someone makes the Moon invisible? Does she send all her followers dreams calling them to respond?

I'm thinking of other amusing things to make Invisible. The Sphinx, and then all the tourists demand refunds?

Ah, Shadowrun, such a playground of the mind.

...heck we had to whittle our six siders out of wood back then, then paint the dots on with the juice of crushed blackberries using brushes made from a lock of our hair.

Doesn't matter. We're casting wreck here and it ignores Armor.

Nineteen. Remember that while the Moon is a huge pile of what is essentially rubble (and thus modeled as a wall that happens to be a quarter the size of our entire planet; the 797 airliner is a vehicle which is supposed to stay in the air. So what would amount to superficial or even insignificant damage to Luna or any other inanimate object would bring a plane right down. Similarly humans are much easier to kill than it is to blast through walls of meat. Animate objects are much more vulnerable than inanimate ones in game mechanical terms, and in return when a plane runs out of boxes it goes down in flames rather than exploding outwards into dust.

Remember that in Shadowrun you can throw a spell every 3 seconds even if you aren't juiced up on super juice. And spells strike their target at what is effectively the speed of light. A frictionless object dropped from 10 kilometers up would take over 45 seconds to hit the ground. Even a sketchy Mag 3/Spellcasting 3 Magician would be able to repeat cast a basic plane into oblivion before they could even have help sent.

That's the face of terrorism in 2070. The world is a really dangerous place, and if you think you can protect anything without tremendous investment, you're fooling yourself. About the only forms of security worth a damn are secrecy and apathy. Anything else is just fodder for the insurance companies to worry about.

Since airliners appear to continue flying in the daytime at all, getting all bent out of shape about passengers having hand grenades is just closing the barn door after the cows have left.

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Sure, there's a market for hyper-secure plane flights. But honestly, while those flights are doubtless accompanied by Spirits providing spell defense and concealment; and they travel by randomized and unpublicized routes; and they have extra reinforcement and probably some sort of redundant hull; and hell they have extra technological complexity to drive up the Object Resistance of the machine; and they have missile defense systems; and who all knows what all - what they don't do is check the IDs and weapons of the passengers. Because honestly anyone willing to pay for that kind of security from a travel provider is willing to pay that company to shut up and stop asking them questions.

I just do not and can not see the invisible hand of the market allowing intrusive security measures on passengers of sixth world aircraft as anything other than a deliberate inconvenience in order to drive up the prices on "premium" tickets where they don't take your pistols or palminate your rectum for explosives.

The only reason it is allowed to persist today is that the people who make the call (the TSA) aren't answerable to market forces.

-Frank

In the Snow too.

hell Kid I love Uno and scrabble, and yes even War!!

Even if there is no way to protect a plane from mages casting wreck, the number of mages actually interested in taking down a plane is minute in comparison to the number of mundies with access to grenades and explosives who are interested in taking down a plane. In addition, the idea of a mage taking down a plane as the biggest threat ignores the idea of hijacking a plane and using it as the weapon. In fact, I suspect that some mages might even be employed by the Department of Homeland Security to take down planes that have been hijacked. Still, that's an expensive waste of magical power keeping those guys on call, so why not just implement simple and cheap security solutions at the gate.

But we're not talking special charter flights like that. We're talking commercial air. We're talking what the lowdown, dirty runners would be flying most of the time. And that means coach. If you have the money to fly a hyper safe flight or a Johnson with the means to get one for you, good for you, but my runners don't. They have to buy a ticket like everyone else. And given the amount of business travel happening, it's in the airlines' best interest to at least make it seem as safe as possible, even if those security measures are a waste.

I see no reason why not. Pay a little extra, skip security. There are already several airlines right now implementing plans like this, where you pay for your luggage to arrive early and get to go through VIP security check points because you paid a little more. Of course, this does mean you're going to be better known by the guards, airline, and employees at the airport as a regular, which isn't exactly ideal for a runner.

Really, it's less about actual security than it is the appearance of security, and that's what sells. It's just business, Frank. It's always just business.

I agree with Frank, here. Putting a pistol under every airplane seat is the only reasonable solution to prevent hijacking, both in Shadowrun and in reality. If someone attempts to hijack the airplane, there will be heroes. There will be heroes because allowing oneself to be taken hostage will be a crime punishable by summary execution. The best hostage negotiation technique is to just kill all hostages, after all. Only idiots do otherwise (unfortunately, there are a lot of idiots in the real world who actually try to get hostages back alive, which should never be done under any circumstances).

The killing of anyone who is enough of a coward to allow himself to become a hostage combined with universal armament will ensure that no hostage situations ever exist and that commercial planes are never used as weapons.

Killing al hostages seems not be the standard procedure when negotiating with criminials who took the hostages for security forces in the 6th world.

Cogent point on Wreck, and I'm with you on the Sixth World being generally dangerous, some things are safer but none are absolutely safe. Nice list of high-end countermeasures.

My low-life PC and my conception of Mr. Johnson both have a *strong* preference for travelling on airliners on which no other passengers have frag grenades, nor slugthrowers. They both prefer for security measures to be streamlined and efficient, eg VIP prices result in hiring more screeners resulting in shorter lines, plus screening automated as much as possible. (Gene-engineered sniffer dogs might help a lot.) If some or all passengers have Super Soaker guns, or subsonic stick&shock ammo, or shock gloves or cyberspurs, that's not such a big deal, since that form of armament is less of a hull breach risk.

As for Hyzmarca on hostages... in some cases, risking or giving up on the life of hostages may be the lesser evil, but in other cases, the odds of saving some or all hostages while nailing most or all the hostage-takers are reasonably good, as evidenced by actions such as the Iranian Embassy takeover in London in 1980. The SAS killed five and captured one of the six "democratic revolutionaries", and rescued 24 of the surviving 25 hostages (the DRs had already killed one). Operation Barras (Sierra Leone, 2000) recovered all seven remaining hostages, killed 25+ terrorists, captured 18 including the leader, at a cost of 1 British SAS soldier killed in action and 12 British soldiers wounded. Four hostages were released and one rescued, with one killed, in the Platte Canyon High School shooting. All four of the Ennepetal hostages in 2005 were rescued, with one injured. Maybe you would have shot the four teenage girls in Ennepetal on principle, and *then* gone after their captor, but I would not; nor do I consider them cowardly for being captured. Hyzmarca, would you really have shot them?

Please post full stats for the Wall of Meat spell. Is it Manipulation?

Can one cast Turn to Goo on a Wall of Meat, or on a "royale with cheese"? Does Spam have extra resistance?

Which means there is no reason for terrorists and criminals to spare the lives of anyone. Sure, if you're a facist regime that's fine, then people migtht not have much value in the first place.

But in most democratic societies, heck in most societies period, people value lives. Actually trying to save hostages doesen't mean everyone and their mothers start buying kalashnikovs and get's a few. The fact that most hostage taker either ends up in jail or dead is good enough motivation not to do it in the first place. And the people who doesen't care if they live or die might as well just drive a plane into a scyscraper and try to kill as many people as possble anyway, which not caring about hostages is not going to stop.

And never forget the human factor. People try not to get killed, and relatives will do alot to have a chance to save them, otherwise there would be no such thing as hostages and ransom. I'm glad people care enogh that hostage situations and ransom exist.

People pay huge amounts of money to attain the high that can be achieved by simple low-cost hypoxia. It could be marketed as a feature.

...yup, and hence my response.

[edit]

...just one little nagging detail though, it usually ends up a "one way trip" (in several ways) when flying at 10,000m or above

Well I thought the first post about shooting the hossies was sarcasm, but then why people actually means the most extreme of arguments... this is the internet, remember?

I have no idea how decompression etc. work in a plane or elsewhere.

Hyz, if you're full of shit come clean.

But that's a non issue, and in Shadowrun it has been a non-issue since before the characters were born. The Story of Flight 93 is that taking planes hostage to use them as weaponry expired as a tactic on September 11th before 9/11 was even over. That's why there have been no successful or even serious hijacking attempts since then. Not because of security provisions, not because we have actionable intelligence, but because the tactic itself will no longer work.

The original 9/11 crew took the planes armed with box cutters. You can do more damage with a roll of dimes in a clenched fist. Except symbollically they weren't armed at all. They took the planes because at the time the anti-hijacking wisdom was to rely upon the hitherto successful model of the Entebbe operation: cooperate "fully" with the hostage takers and draw things out as long as possible until you can bring in Mossad experts to solve the problem under controlled circumstances on the ground.

But once it became clear that the hijackers were not going to fly the planes to someplace where the passengers could survive under cramped conditions for a few days while Israeli hardasses prepared to rescue them, but instead were just going to fly them into the side of a building, what happened? Oh right, the passengers flipped out and fought until the plane scuttled in a field.

In a future hijacking attempt, people would already feel that way before the hijackers even got to the cabin. Hijacking the plane requires fighting every passenger to the death because they are dead anyway. This is why noone has tried to redirect a plane to Jamaica while demanding $10,000 and a cheeseburger. Not because they can't smuggle a bomb on board (or claim to have a bomb, something which no security can prevent anyway); but because no amount of weaponry can reasonably allow you to capture a plane in flight from the inside anymore. Heck, the only thing Islamic Terrorists do to planes these days is make up rumors of various stupid plans to smuggle bombs onto planes hoping that the TSA will bite and add more security restrictions: because frankly a modest inconvenience to every single airline passenger (all 232 million of them) equals billions of dollars of damage to the US.

Sure, people in airliners of the future will be asked to put their penetrating rounds in the overhead compartment and you can probably purchase pistol caliber salt crystal flechette ammunition at the duty free store. But disarming the passengers completely is just a scare tactic. And when the industry is regulating itself it has no interest whatsoever in scare tactics.

-Frank

The issue of overpenetration in an aircraft cabin can be dealt with by simply lining the passenger compartment with kevlar. In a balkanized world, it is a necessary precaution to protect against flack from drunken rednecks with surplus WWII antiaircraft cannons, anyway. In a world where all commercial automobiles have bulletproof armor, I imagine that lining airplanes with Kevlar would be common practice.
In the case of suborbital, armor would be necessary to catch micrometeors. Given the velocities involved, a solid micrometeor would be more dangerous than a handgun bullet of comparable size and mass.

Sarcasm? Never even thought of it. Curse you, internet communication!

If you feel like believing Paul Greengrass's version of things, sure. The fact is, noe one is sure quite what happened to 93, and there are plenty of good conspiracy theories out there that say it wasn't the passengers at all, but scrambled jets, air to ground missiles, or the flight crew.

The problem with this theory is that you've extended out your version of flight 93, but it's not nearly paranoid enough for me in a Shadowrun world. What about flight 264, where 17 passengers affiliated with the IRA killed everyone on the plane before actually crashing it into Dublin as a sign that the old Ireland would rise again? Or Flight 27 from Mumbai, on which Air Africa attempted to arm every passenger to prevent hijacking only to have a drugged up dumbass start a shootout when a crying baby "ruined his high," leaving no one able to fly alive on the plane and it accidentally crashed into the center of Morocco? Or Flight 78, where a mage with 4 spirits killed everyone who could fly the plane and then claimed he could land it safely before flying it into crowded airspace over Japan and scuttling it into another plane, causing a chain reaction as people tried to land during the rainy season? (Hell, they're still not sure if the guy they pinned it on was actually the mage or some possessed asshole.) Or Flight 641, where the terrorists didn't even bother to try and carry weapons since the airline provided them? Sure 4 of the terrorists died before they finlly gained control of the plane, but the majority of people didn't even know how to properly use the pistols they were given. Half of them were too busy in AR or VR or games to listen to the stewardess explain how to take the safety off. Or Flight 993, where three children used the provided guns as toys and killed one another, sparking the MAADF (Mothers Against Arming Domestic Flights) to start wide scale protests about regulations of weaponry on airlines?

If anything, the level of paranoia for pilots on armed flights alone has ramped up 30-fold, and unless you're a suicidal pilot, you won't work for an airline that's unsecured. I'm sure there are a couple airlines that use almost entirely suicidal pilots and crews, but why would you even consider flying those airlines if there's a 50/50 chance your pilot is so crazy, he'll crash the plane before anyone is going to even attempt to hijack it? Are most passengers in so much of a hurry that they'll trade their safety for 2 less hours of security before the flight? I doubt it. Are most pilots and crew going to want to fly a plane on which every Joe Shmoe has the ability to file a formal complaint about turbulence with a bullet to the head?

If the risk of going down is so high that it's a daily occurrence or that airplanes and pilots have a job expectancy of a year or two tops, the airlines will all end up folding. And arming the passengers will likely put an airline out business and lower the survival rate of any airline more rapidly than you can say 9/11. The fact is, the must be so paranoid that self-regulation is simply not an option.

Instead, commercial air must be just as bad, if not worse, in most cases when it comes to how tight security is. They've streamlined and sped up the process thanks to new technology, and I'm sure a few small-time airlines (like Southwest maybe) have done away with security or armed the passengers, but people will know it's riskier to fly those airlines. The only safe way to travel is a) to not travel at all or b) to make private arrangements. And the private industry is already assumed to have grown, hence the number of small airports growing exponentially and the number of corporate jets increasing.

There is simply no way I could see the majority of airlines taking the tactics you suggest, Frank. It's not that they're not going to be successful some of the time, but that they're going to have as many ramifications as the 9/11 flights. And if you're going to extrapolate out the timeline, you should go all the way.

...one small issue here, weight. It is one thing to armour the flight deck bulkhead, it is another thing to armour the entire fuselage of a plane such as a 777. Weight = additional fuel consumption, shorter operating range, and poorer performance. This is why Boeing and Airbus have gone to extensive use of composites for control surfaces and skin panels. In an aircraft such as an HSCT or Sub Orbital, weight becomes even more critical as composites would fail due to the excessive heat buildup. There the only material suitable would be Titanium.

Next, there is the passenger standpoint. You still want windows because passengers will want windows even in a virtual immersion world. An aircraft cabin is claustrophobic enough and not providing windows will make it only more so. Windows will always be the weak point as they are made of a polymer derivative (plexigalss in use today) which is lighter than normal or ballistic glass would be.

@Simon: Good job. That was to be my next argument.

Sure, becuse SR lives in that wonderful world where adding armor doesn't impact vehicle cost, load, or range in the least.

Micrometeors would shred unarmored suborbitals often enough to make armor a necessity. When you run into a rock at 20 times the speed of sound, bad things happen.